Complexity LO10551

Michael McMaster (Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 18 Oct 1996 08:16:08 +0000

Replying to LO10546 --

The results we get are a reflection of the way that we talk (and
understand). If you talk about quality the same way as before, you
will not get a breakthrough in quality. (You might be able to talk
about things other than quality - say community - in new ways to get a
breakthrough in quality.)

Malcolm introduces some ideas about "ordinary language" being unable
to create new thinking, breakthroughs, alterations in the asleep,
unaware continuation of what has gone before.

The implication is that we need new language to accomplish change.
Language is both complex and adaptive in itself and is the major
source of complexity and adaptation in human beings and their
institutions.

This does not mean, necessarily, that we need new words. It may be
sufficient to use existing words with new meanings. It often is
sufficient to recover earlier meanings of common words. It always
means that we will put common words together in new ways.

To make a change in a social group, the group needs to change the way
that it talks about things. This may involve a few new words (and
many over time) but it won't involve a complete new vocabularly
because that doesn't happen with groups. It is the complex
interactions of words, put together in different ways, that allow us
to create an infinite variety of meaning. Finding these combinations
is an essence of the art of change.

Ordinary language performs an incredibly powerful function in a
social organism. It keeps the continuity of past and identity in
place. To change this order of things cannot occur within what is
experience to be ordinary language. Yet some have developed the
art of making such new, change generating language sound ordinary.

--
Michael McMaster :   Michael@kbdworld.com
book cafe site   :   http://www.vision-nest.com/BTBookCafe
"I don't give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity 
but I'd die for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." 
            attributed to Chief Justice Brandies
 

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