Leveling the Playing Field

Heidi and Dan Chay chay at alaska.com
Tue Oct 16 22:03:12 PDT 2001


Glory Ressler wrote:

>>
Go boldly, in your scepticism, into the world please...  We need your voice.
<<

Hi Glory and others,

Thanks for your kind words and encouragement.

Like many of you, I had parents and grandparents and teachers who helped
open many wonderful spaces for me to learn.  Along the way as I grew older,
my personality was shaped by  two competing twins, one, love of learning
spontaneously, and two, boredom and feelings of rebellion toward
authoritarian institutions and rote learning these institutions demanded
from me.

Roughly six years ago, after having read Peter Senge (Fifth Discipline) many
years earlier, I came across the learning-org listserve.  On there, in my
reading I soon encountered At de Lange and numerous others who I found to be
incredibly generous in their creativity and sharing.  Artur Silva and John
Dicus among them.  In particular, since I first subscribed there, At de
Lange has been a terrific inspiration for me. Compared to these people, in
my learning I am an infant.

Did you know turkey buzzards regularly give birth to twins?  I haven't seen
this myself, but I understand it to be true. Last spring in the mountains on
the edge of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts I hiked for days hoping to find
where the soaring turkey buzzards might roost.  At any rate, I understand
the first-born twin has a great advantage over the other in competing for
food resources.  So much so, I understand, that the second-born usually
dies.  Do any of you know this to be true yourselves?

Many times, At de Lange would write, "To learn is to create."

This observation seems powerful to me these tempestuous days.  There is
something only marginally if at all creative in rote learning, simply
repeating patterns as they already before have been set forth.  In contrast,
authentic learning offers promise of emergence.  If we think about profound
learners we know or about whom we have read, then we realize that authentic
learning follows spontaneously from creative engagement.

A Harvard professor whose name I've forgotten distinguishes three types of
problems:

- Type I problems are easily diagnosed and their solutions are easily
implemented by an expert.  For example, a broken femur.

- Type II problems are easily diagnosed, but their solutions require
commitment of from the stakeholder(s).  Lung disease due to smoking tobacco,
for example, requiring expert diagnosis and stakeholder commitments to a
solution.

- Type III problems are neither easily diagnosed, nor are their solutions
easily implemented.  Pro-life/pro-choice, family violence, pollution, global
warming, population and growth concerns, and the so-called "war on drugs" -
drug problem, for example.  No single experts can solve these problems.

It strikes me that we're dealing with a Type III global situation now.
Increasingly, we must move from simply adapting to change to changing to be
adaptable.  We must become learners.  We will serve ourselves jointly by
engaging individually and collectively - creatively to learn.  As much as
possible, we all must engage because there are no "experts" to carry us from
the hazards of modern complexity to emergence.

Demergence happens easily.  It requires nothing constructively creative of
us.  So-called leaders will take us down that path: Mao, Stalin, Hitler,
Milosovich, Pol Pot...  I've seen many families take demergent paths.  In
contrast, self-organization into emergence takes many things coming together
constructively.  Couldn't that be one of the primary lessons of the last
century?  Does this make any sense to anyone?

Many times, also, At has observed that in addition to openness, we must
increasingly become aware of wholeness, otherness, fruitfulness, liveness,
sureness, and spareness -- as well as increasingly become aware of the
dynamics of the transformation of energies as they inform the potential for
emergence and demergence.

It strikes me he might be right.

But the skeptic in me says, "Nah.  Let the politicians figure it out.  It's
time to go back to business-as-usual."  <ironic grin>

What do you all think?

Best wishes,

Dan
http://www.learning-communities.com

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