Sean entices me to keep the "vision" question alive. What I want to keep
alive, however, is the nature of dialogue, what can and cannot be said,
and what can be expected from saying certain things and from saying them
in different ways and in different contexts.
As unchallenged dogma, vision and the many other such words, phrases and
processes are merely serving to maintain the dogma and those who wield
it. The postmodernists are saying that the uses of "dogma" -
metanarratives in their terms - are for the maintenance of previously
agreed social systems and previously worked out authority or power
structures to match. There is little evil intent here - its just the way
its happened from some very deep and unexamined starting assumptions about
the relationship of reality and human beings.
Assume with me (or with Heidegger if you will) that there is a vast amount
of knowledge, information, understanding, etc that can't be said - ever.
partly because there's just too much. Partly because its embedded in the
structure of language and of custom and of tools and of being in a society
- of being human. Partly because it forms out of the whole of a complex
being or a complex network of conversations that we call a human being.
At any rate, there are things that can't be said that are profoundly "who
we are". I think these are more social expressions with an individual
twist than individual expressions with a social twist and so there is an
even deeper sense in which much cannot be said. This is the source of
ground of what can be said.
My question is, what is the first thing you can say from this place? What
is there for you to say when you reach into that unknown and unspeakable
complexity that is embodied uniquely in you and in touch will all of
society and then say what can be said? It can't express the whole but its
as close as you can get.
Vision, for me, is that speaking. And it is always changing, always
developing, always becoming. Having spoken it once, I am able to speak
something more profoundly or more closely related to the unsayable.
Having engaged in conversations with others who are all speaking from that
place creates even more rich expressions for me and for them. Being in
the presence of those who practice, who know practices, who can share the
space created by those practices enhances the process even more. And we
will never reach that place because there is always mystery at the
source. And I love that there is always mystery at the source even as we
move ever deeper towards the source.
The modern "dogma" of management will not approach this space. This is
the source of passion for Hermeneutics, Postmodernism, deconstruction - at
their best - as western ways to remove the barriers of "dogma" that
inhibit the exploration of these spaces.
> Under certain conditions they can be very useful, and that's as far as it
> goes.
And there's no need to throw anything out. Each can be useful if
distinguished, operationally defined, etc.
> Doesn't the newly popular theory of "vision" come from the school of Human
> Resource Management?
Vision doesn't arise from Human Resource management. I don't think
there's anything there deep enough for anything to arise from. Just more
or less useful stuff. The assumptions of Human Resource management is
based on bankrupt management theories (at best) and metanarratives (at
worst.) These arose from the western cosmology - the philosophies that
dominated the day in what has become the western world - and can be seen
most clearly in Aristotle, Descartes and Newton to the popular thinking.
Theses philosophers determined the questions and the way that they were
framed and we've been dealing from that context they established ever since.
The vision one comes first from the profound basis of our cosmology that a
force (god or ???) created everything, that there is therefor an outside
creator of things and that there is an end for which things were created.
That is the source of vision in HR, in management, in psychology, in
religion, etc. There are others. The far east has a sort of organic
model that isn't going anywhere is just sort of happening - probably the
closest to current complexity theory. The near east has a cyclical
cosmology that has no begining and no end and isn't going anywhere but
repeating itself. Neither of these has such a notion as vision as used in
the western sense.
> My personal understanding of vision has far more relevance to freely
> emergent communities than an existing, hierarchical organization.
Welcome to the new cosmology.
--
Mike McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
"Intelligence is an underlying organisational principle
of the universe. The 'logos principle' is hidden and
perceptible only to the intelligence." Heraclitus