When Sherri Malouf said...
>I am wondering if we have to change the way we "see". The custom of
>breaking things apart is so inherent in our *natural order* of seeing
>things. I am thinking about Carol Sager's comments about right and wrong
>too. It seems as if we are so quick to judge things, compatmentalize them
>in order to understand. Maybe the kind of seeing required to be more
>holistic means pushing our own boundaries
...she expressed something that has been weighing heavy on my heart all
week long. Last weekend I said...
>Even attempting to stand apart from the cultural bias, I find it embedded
>in the very way I question it.
Rick Karash took issue with the way in which I framed this comment, and I
think he understood my approach to be anti-scientific. I suppose in some
ways it is. I think this is what prompted Rick to defend his own view of
science...
>I was trained as a scientist (physics) and believe in it. Science and
>engineering, in my eyes, have created a tremendous amount of progress.
>And, not incidently, education in these disciplines has been the vehicle
>for a much better life for my family who were immigrants and farmers only
>two generations ago.
As an immigrant myself who personally benefitted from a scientific
education, and was able to build a more comfortable life for myself and my
children than ever my parents imagined for me, I believe I can understand
Rick's point of view. But when I look at my own "achievement" and the
"progress" of the society around me, I try to remain mindful that this is
red man's land soaked with red man's blood, and that much of this
"progress" has been built by the toil of black slaves and the cruel
exploitation of people the world over, and that I am part of a system
which is ruthlessly despoiling the natural resources of the planet for the
ease and comfort of a handful.
Mike McMaster has described a practice for us which functions as a call to
awakening when people are gathered in a meeting: the random sounding of a
gong. I was reminded of Gurdjieff's teaching, that most people are
asleep, and that a true understanding can come only to those who endeavor
to wake up-- and that what they "see" when they do is something different
than what the rest of us "see".
A few years ago, computer generated 3-D pictures on a flat surface became
quite popular. If you change the way you "hold" your eyes, and if you
focus differently than you normally do, you see a three-dimensional image
where others see only visual gibberish. Most people can eventually do
this, and children have a particularly easy time. But if you don't see
it, you have a hard time believing that there's anything there... and
moreover, those who do see it can talk about it knowledgeably and to you
it will only be nonsense. (I learned to use these artifacts to explain
paradigm shift from Mike Munn.)
In my posting, I was only trying to describe how difficult it is to find
terminology with which to challenge the established way of looking at
things, and how difficult it is to free yourself of the way of "seeing" to
which you have been educated.
It saddens me that I triggered a defense of scientific method (which I
never questioned) when I intended to initiate an inquiry into the
underlying assumptions of the way that science "sees". There is no easy
way to do this in discourse, even when that discourse is dialogue. It was
long ago understood that the Tao which can be named is not the Tao.
My apologies to all for the length of this post.
--Jack Hirschfeld Tonight the light of love is in your eyes; jack@his.com will you still love me tomorrow?
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>