> Rick, you have stated that you did not appointed an inner circle. I
> believe you, I thank you and everybody else should also do it.
>
> But if you say that you had nothing to do with the inner circle, then I
> believe that you are lying without knowing it. You have worked very hard
> to create an environment in which emergences up to the spiritual level are
> possible. You worked willfully. Now, if something emerged which many
> definitely be percieved as an inner circle, it was because of the
> environment you provided. So how can you claim in not having had any part
> in it?
Dear organlearners,
I know that I am speaking much to myself in order to save time on my inner
creations, but I am not so mad as to write to myself on a forum open to
learned people as you. I merely had to refer to my own contribution to get
to Rick's reply. It is:
> [Host's Note: At, I'll plead guilty! Yes, I agree with your comments
> about the "inner circle." So, now that we have seen it, and named it...
> Now what? ...Rick]
Never before has anyone given me such a blank check "Now what?".
I will use this freedom to set up a close connection between this response
and my response to Winfried Deijman under the thread TQM vs LO. Pleas read
that response. It might trigger a new thread "Entropy -> Creativity ->
Learning". I hope it does.
Like in my response to Winfried, I have to warn you. This is a long
response. Do not read it, unless you will regret that your life has not
changed forever.
But I think that Rick has sensed the historical importance of the moment.
It has happened - an emergence of collective spirituality on Internet.
Some have sensed it, perceiving that they were at the outside of the inner
circle. But they actually belong to the inner circle because they were
OPEN enough to percieve it and ACTIVE enough to question this perception
in terms of their basic idea - the IDEA that we all are part of THE
circle. Others were a little bit more mature, realising that the
perception of the inner circle was not imagined, but something to be
understood in terms of that which we were talking about at least since the
Wheatly dialogue. First chaos, then bifurcation, then either emergence or
immeregnce, then digestion upon an emergence. Poor old Rick. He was the
one denying everything, and finally having had to admit that he was caught
unaware. But this only goes to show that whenever a thing is very complex,
we little humans are usually not prepared enough to predict and determine
its outcome. So much for uncertainty.
I do not know if Rick has sensed it, but since my first contribution to
this forum, I have worked to a very definite goal. I want to thank here in
open Keith Sandrock of Wits University for having introduced me to the
list. I wandered over many newsgroups and listservers on internet, seeking
the one where IT will happen. I remembered having seen links to this forum
and comments about it. But it took HUMAN interaction between Keith and me
to get me on this list.
The moment when I entered this forum, I sensed the Inner Circle like a
thirsty animal in the desert sensing water. I shall never forget the
feelings which Ben Compton, Ian Suanders, Michael McMaster, Robert Ingram,
Sherri Malouf, Julie Beedon and others have awakened within me. Often when
in the desert, an animal smells water like the enigmatic desert elephants
of the Kaokoveld (mainly a rock desert) in Namibia. These elephants can
cover vast distances (80km+) during the night - incredible for an animal
of that size. They have to do it when they cannot find some succulent
plants to replenish their immense need for water. They originally lived in
the abundance of trees and water, but they had to flee to the desert to
escape destroying humans.
When thirsty, these elephants are capable of smelling the few molecules
transpiring from a desert grape (Cyphostemma uter). Each of these
succulent (fat) plants looks almost like an octupus reaching into the sky,
begging God for rain because the rocks do not have water. And when an
elephant begins to chew on a tentacle (branch) of this magificent plant,
his/her mouth begins to burn like chewing a bag of chili at once. (I know
this hot sensation - its terrible. My mouth oosed saliva to try and save
whatever is to be saved for hours on end.) Then, in terrible agony, the
elephant tugs this plant out of the rocks where it anchored itself for
centuries. The the elephant tramples the object of agony into a jelly
mass. I see this happening every day on the sci.* newsgroups of internet.
But I see (from the firsst day) on this list the same elephants arriving
at the clear water of the Kunene river, enjoying God's gift to all living
things. Whereas our elephants have time and again have to flee into the
desert, I pray it will never be like that for the elephants on this
server.
Now, towards what goal have I worked? To get the learners on this list
into sensing that the count down to the critical fission moment of the
nuclear reactor has started, that the countdown to the launching of the
Appolo mission to the moon has started, that the countdonw to the
openening of the hunting season has started. Some have already sensed it
before my coming, but others not. Many more of us will soon experience the
throbbing of the reactor, the thrushing of the rocket and the stalking of
the prey. There will be disasters like Chernobyl, the last Apollo mission
before the shuttles and some trigger happy citizins firing in the dark at
some farmer's prized bull or ram. We will have to prevent that as far as
possible.
In each of my responses when I had the opportunity to refer to my
forthcoming book, a lower ordinal (number) had been reached. Yesterday we
have reached an orinal very close to zero with LO11962. In that response I
claimed that I have discovered the Digestor as a model to explain why some
of us experience ourselves outside the inner circle. It is due to what I
call the 'intimidation of complexity' which forces us to become
nonspontaneous and hence lurkers for time indefinite.
I think that today we have reach an ordinal even closer zero with my
response to Winfried Deijman (LO11937, TQM vs LO). I claim in that
response something which many of you has suspected at least since the
Wheatly dialogue. The Second Law of Thermodynamics or the creation of
entropy and hence its manifestation as chaos and then order, is at the
root of our creativity, our learning and even our deepest spiritual
activities. But my claims are still in manuscript form. I now have to
finalise it into a photo copy format. Then I wil have to find a publisher
before you can have a go at it, either emergently or immergently. If any
of you can bring this manuscript to the attention of a reliable publishing
agent or two, I will appreciate it very much. The sooner we can get the
butterfly to clap its wings at one part of the globe, the sooner we will
get a storm all over the globe.
Now to what event does this count down refer to. My forthcoming book? No.
The event which I am driving to, is that the thread "Entropy -> Creativity
-> Learning" should become alive in your mind as it did in mine. I cannot
prevent it, but this thread will also be the main title of my book. But
forget about the book and rather begin to think about this thread. You are
all members of this forum on LOs. Inferior learning within a LO makes it a
pityful organisation. Superior learning is possible when some of us
understand that learning stems from creativity and that creativity stems
form entropy production.
Now what should the roaming elephants, the throbbing reactor, the
thrushing rocket and the stalking hunter begin to do when zero has been
reached? Ben Compton has given some excellent advice in LO....(Rick or
Ben, help, I cannot refer to it because I cannot save these immensely
valuable digests.) He gives a list of books that he has read. Read those
books. If you want to select your own books, begin one them with with
books in which words such as irreversibility, entropy and energy,
nonlinearity, chaos, order, bifurcation and emergence occurs. But also
select as another theme books in which words such as being-becoming,
wholeness, sureness, connecting, limit, quality, variety, openness and
paradigm occurs. I wish to mention specifically one or two books, namely
Prigogine and Stenger's "Order out of Chaos" and Jantsch's "The
Self-organising Universe". Let your thoughts roam over the thoughts in
these books like the elephants roam over the rocky flats and rocky
mountains of the Kaokoveld. Do not forget the wise advice of Alan Bloom in
The Closing of the American Mind: read the old books themselves, those
books which have shaped the course of human history irreversibly. This
includes the Bible.
Apart from reading, go and make contact with people from all walks of
life. Visit assylums, prisons, orphanages and schools for the deaf and
blind. Visit museums and the people from the distant pasts. Visit other
countries and people of different cultures.
You will discover like Columbus, Da Gama and Americo did for the earthly
globe, the New Worlds of the abstract globe (cyberspace) of humankind as
some of you already are doing. This means that you will get more and more
into contact with the very essence of human existence. The danger is great
in getting confused or loosing sight of your ideas, or even stopping in
creating them. Thus you need to get away from the influence of humans once
in a while. Go to a wilderness where you can experience loneliness. Try
then to sense the throbbing of life all around you. Go to the desert to
live the world now as it was milleniums ago. Go to the high mountains to
be closer to your Creator and what He has in mind for you.
But what about your activities on this list? I want to quote a tiny part
of the speech of Socrates to Thaetetus, mentioned by Plato in his
Dialogues IV
Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs:
but differs, in that I attend men and not woman, and I look
after their souls when they are in labour and not thier
bodies. The triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining
whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings
forth is a lase idol or a noble and true birth.
Do you now recognise what is happening on this forum. Many of you had
been acting as midwifes, often to your own thoughts, sometimes to the
thoughts of others. Keep on with it. Encourage others to speak out the
things about which are important to them, despite their fears. Read
between the lines when they are in labour and answer them in this list
between your own lines. They will come to you in private by email. Keep it
private. Do not then try to place your own thoughts in their mental womb.
It cannot go in there and there is no place for it. Just act as midwife.
Finally, Rick, what about you? You are the Columbus who have to steer this
ship on its voyage to the new worlds. You will have to be cool headed as
you have proved to be. The storms will become more intense and you will
have to bail out something at such times, but this is part of being the
Captain. Many countries in the Americas now celebrate the holiday
Discovery on 12 October. Hopefully at some point in future we will
celebarate the holiday Cyberday. If it happens, then your name and the
name of this forum must be prominent in that day.
And me. I am not a Columbus like you. I am rather like Erik Thorvaldson (I
think it is the correct name) who sneaked a peek at the New World some
centuries before Columbus. When you pursue the thread "Entropy ->
Creativity -> Learning" you will understand why. I may do the same as the
elephants of the Kaokoveld. Somehow they also heard the advice of Jesus to
the inhabitants of Jerusalem how to escape death when it falls. Or, God
may take me away even before that since He owns our lives.
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>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>