Learning - dialogue and advocacy

[Heidi and Dan Chay]

Hi,

Several days ago, there was a flurry of activity around the observation that
MS Word "obviously" was bringing anit-Jewish hate messaeges on our desk.
Like others, I responded, then followed up, connecting the experience to
learning.  Artur also responded to the original post, then responded to my
message on learning partly by connecting it with the ideas of balancing
advocacy with inquiry.  Artur also introduced the ideas of paradigm shift
and double-loop learning.

Artur concluded by reconnecting the thread to all of our experiences
post-9.11 by writing:

>>
Now, to conclude this long post: in what concerns occidental response to the
terrorist attack to the USA, the time is too short and the dangers of doing
"more of the same" (single loop learning) and initiating a war of unknown
consequences are very strong. Many people in the entire world (including the
USA, as many messages to this list have proved) are thinking that now is the
moment to "act quickly and strongly" (to use Bush's words) to prevent our
political leaders to engage us in a new crusade with the same effects of the
others - in fact, if you recall, the first ones were already against Islam,
and probably we are still suffering the consequences of them...).

If those people of good and peaceful will can obtain that objective, THEN
the world will be more open to Dialogue and Open Space. And, of course, we
will THEN also enter in dialogue to try to "understand" the reasons of the
people that directly or indirectly are supporting the war position. THEN we
will be glad to dialogue with the falcons and war makers and supporters. If
we are not able to attain that objective, the conditions for dialogue will
be not very good in our world in the future, I think...
<<

In "Learning as Transformation -- Transformation as Learning"
 http://www.mindspring.com/~owenhh/learnTrans.htm ), Harrison concludes:

>>
Time is fast running out for the old Level of Spirit. The immanence of
environmental, social, political and financial disaster -- caused by a
perception of the human spirit which began and ended with control,
rationality and intellect, all have set a very short time table. Whether it
is five years or fifty years, I have absolutely no idea. But I am clear that
we will have the opportunity to experiment with the new Normal Learning much
sooner than we might think.
<<

I think a lot of us recognize that continued single-loop, business-as-usual,
merely expert-driven, fragmented, assimilative, non-systemic learning
approaches toward shaping our collective future are not likely to be
sustainable.  On learning-org, Artur is rapidly distinguishing himself as
someone who has done considerable research and thinking about individual and
collective paradigm shifts.  On that list there are others, too, making
profound and original observations (particularly At de Lange, I think) that
contribute to thinking about making second-order organizational change that
is emergent (constructive) rather than demergent.  Here is a link to the
list:  http://www.learning-org.com .

By way of rounding out this message, let me just redistribute "Seven
Learning Disabilities" taken from Senge ("The Fifth Discipline") that Artur
recently illuminated for us again in one of his series of essays on
learning-org:

I am my position.
The enemy is out there.
The illusion of taking charge.
The fixation of events.
The delusion of learning from experience.
The parable of the boiled frog.
The myth of the management team.

Back to you Artur.  Others among you?  Thoughts?

Best wishes,

Dan Chay

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