Richard Antcliff ponders:
>I was wondering if their have been any discussions around the contrast of
>ideas in these two realms [Christianity and LO]. If I've missed an
>archive, please help me.
To which Rick added:
>
>[Host's Note: I don't think there has been a sustained thread on this
>topic here on the LO list. ...Rick]
I'd contribute my own observation that two separate tendencies on this
list have referred, either directly or obliquely, to religious literature.
The first of these is a kind of fundamentalism which has linked these
ideas to [God-given?] universal values and which has repeatedly tended to
reference ideologies of individualism, objectivism, and a libertarian
aesthetic. This "line" would be comfortable with the thought of Cotton
Mather, Norman Peale and the sitting Lutheran synod, I think. Its
advocates seem to me to be business-minded, formal, engaged in definitions
and logic. :-)
The other is a kind of mysticism which has openly embraced and quoted from
Buddhist writings, the poetry of the Sufi master Rumi, and tends to
communitarian social thought and an interest in story and metaphor. This
"line" would, I believe, probably be comfortable with the thought of
Swedenborg, Paul Tillich and the Catholicism of Graham Greene. :-)
Some people clearly bridge these tendencies, most notably in my opinion
Michael McMaster who manages to embrace both tendencies in an ongoing
struggle against reductionism. His vision of emergence is not unlike the
Cloud of Knowing, but he insists on finding its meaning in etymologies
from a wonderful old Scottish dictionary. :-)
--Jack Hirschfeld How many years must some people exist jack@his.com before they're allowed to be free?
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>