Insecurity => creativity LO10802

Mnr AM de Lange (AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za)
Thu, 31 Oct 1996 15:03:33 GMT+2

Subject: Insecurity => creativity LO10760

> Joan wrote: (LO10739)

> > As our morals have decayed, our strength of character has
> > done likewise.
> > More and more people are conformists who act as "others" believe they
> > should act rather than in accordance with some strongly held personal
> > values, character. So, more and more people experience stress from the
> > events in their lives. "When the goin' gets tough, the tough get goin'"
> > has been replaced by "I''m only human" and "Oh, poor me!".
>

Ben wrote: (LO10760)

> Help me understand what you mean when you say "as our morals have
> decayed." Are you implying a universal (or societal) decay of morals? If
> so, specifically what morals? And how has the decay of those morals
> created the conditions you explain?
>
> It sounds like to me, from the tone of your message, that you're
> specifically addressing the abidication of personal responsibility.
> Please, help me better understand your reasoning.

Ben

I also tried to understand Joan's message in terms of the words she used.
I could not fit it into my framework. Then I began to question my own
understanding of morals and if there is not a big black hole in it. I
still could not make out what she tried to say about morals. Finally I
began to think about tacit knowledge and whether Joan probably may have
used incorrect words to verbalise that which she obviously tacitly knows.

Now, if I change the word 'morals' to 'creativity', her message becomes
the following:

As our creativity has decayed, XXX our strength of character has done
likewise. More and more people are conformists who act as "others"
believe they should act rather than in accordance with some strongly held
personal values, character. So, more and more people experience stress
from the events in their lives. "When the goin' gets tough, the tough get
goin'" has been replaced by "I''m only human" and "Oh, poor me!".

This is not Joan's message (say message 1) because I have changed it. But,
by changing only one word, the changed message (say message 2) becomes
crystal clear to me in terms of my own framework. For example, as our
creativity decays, our morals decay because in my framework our morals
concerns that which enhance the creativity of our fellow humans. I can now
even change the changed message somewhat further by adding her phrase "our
morals have decayed" together with 'and' at the place XXX. Thus the
overall meaning of the doubly changed message (say message 3) is still
clear to me in terms of my own framework.

What I now would very much like to know from Ben and Joan is how the two
changes into message 2 and message 3 affect the meaning of Joan's original
message 1. Does Ben have any difficulty in understanding message 2? And
what about message 3? Does Joan have any difficulty in understanding
message 2? And what about message 3? What about other readers on this
list?

Obviously, by changing 'morals' into 'creativity', I have introduced a new
proposition into the discussion, namely "our creativity has decayed". Is
it true or false? If it is true, why did it happen? Can we do anything to
revert this decaying course?

Best wishes

At de Lange
Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education
University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za

-- 

"Mnr AM de Lange" <AMDELANGE@gold.up.ac.za>

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