Kenoli, what you think/write about balance, creative tension and paradox of chaos and order ...YES, that's it. I only model it on basis of other words.
Describing it as paradox is describing it in terms of logics, because only from the logical point of view (which does not permit contradictions) it is paradox, if you describe it as creative tension it seems to be quite 'normal', if I can accept the existence of fundamental contradictions as normal, even basical for social life. The problem with balance is, that it is very near to the concept of "Equilibrium" (modeled in physics), which implies a statical 'situation' not a process. It is balance, but flowing, never in equilibrium because the tension always will continue. I am very sorry, that our occidental culture nearly forgot about the fact, that, beginning with the pre-socratic philosophy (Heraclitos), den Socrates (in Platons presentation), then Hegel and Marx, (even Mao Tse Dong wrote a text "About Contradiction" which is still very interesting) there is a tradition of non-logic thinking, defining such basical contratiction as APORIES and the way to treat them, as DIALECTICS. Perhaps, because historical and dialectical materialism got hands on the whole concept and spoke so much about dialectics, that it was finally used to explain everything, but only within the political discourse. I am very often astonished, when I meet people from ex-'comunist' countries, because they not only threw their old political convition overboard, but also the whole idea of dialectics. They destoyed/unlearnde a mental, which could be of great use in our everyday life and in all professional context of consulting, moderating, training... because it is dialectical thinking, which permits to deal in a creative and peaceful way with tension. Perhaps this seems to be a bit far from OS and FS, but not to me. Useful mental models are no private property, no plants, which only grow in marxist gardens. If there is a basic understanding to identify aporetic situations and dialectical ways of dealing with them, concepts like "holding creative tension", "holding open space", "having positive impact on selforganizing processes by not doing anything, but being" (WuWei) are easy to understand (which not implies, that they are then 'automatically' easy to practice, of course). Within a logical framework of thinking and perceiving, however, there comes always the confusion about being paradox (which somehow implies, that it should not be), these tentatives to treat it by "Either...Or?" questions (separating, which is inseparable) and if everything goes well, finally getting to the point, that you have to accept the paradox (which is perhaps a process of emotional learning). What I basically mean is: it is fine to use oriental concepts like YIN-YANG, WU-WEI and so on as mental approaches (and I do it a lot myself) but it is quite difficult to combine them with all the other existing occidental frameworks (mental, social, political) than using our homegrown concepts, or trying to treat the paradoxes we meet everywhere with logical concepts until you notice, that you have to get rid of them, climb over them, leave them behind. A comment about what you write about Chaos/Order/Selforganisation in OS (and FS) For me, OST defines the Minimum-Order/Structure necessary to a) permit a optimum of chaos b) 'shooting out', or should I say "paradoxing out"?, some of the most harmful basic logical convictions of "social well behaviour" which inhibit people normaly to use chaotic situations in a creative, self-organizing way (wich means, for example: not to exclude potentials and potencialities in the room, just because they are 'in contradiction' with others. In my opinion, that is the main function of the principles. And insofar it is "better" than FS in the sense of beeing more advanced in reduction. I am shure, that you are right, that FS has basically the same basic attitude, but it installs a level of Order, which is not "minimal" and since it does not define the principles in the simple, perfect, naive way as OS does (which really kicks the crowd back to their already existing capacity to self-organize from the beginning), it has to support this capacity step-by-step by using a more complex order/structure and I think, that is, why you can do a 1,5 hour Open Space, but not a 1,5 hour FS. Still, if the client system goes for Future Search, I will facilitate acording to Weisbord/Janofs model, because it also works. Space and Peace There is a 'paradox' hidden behind these two concepts: a) Whenever you can 'flee' from a situation, where foundamentally contradicting (social) interests, there is no need to fight against each other (the non-existence of break-out space seems to be one of the deadly ingredients in the Israel/Palestine-conflict). b) Whenever such contradicting interests confront each other, there is space to 'learn peace', oping (another level of) space for holding the contradictions in creative tension, flowing equilibrium (balance)... What I like so very much about OST, that it permits, promotes, develops both sides of the contradiction and that is why OST (on basis of a wider OS-framework) seems to be a basically dialectic aproach to social fenomenons. Whenever the contradiction is to intensive, to hot, or simply not productive for a specific individuum (perhaps we should reframe this concept also, beeing an individuum "unseperable" from its social context), the law of two feet permits to flee. That is great, because, if you can not flee and you are not a very mature person, there is the automatical (logical) tendency to suppres the other side of the contradiction. On the other hand, the law permits to everybody to "go in", flocking together the birds of different feathers, intensify the interaction between the different poles. But also birds of a feather can flock together, not working on contradictions, but working in an objective-orientated way in a group of people with similar positions. Well, contradictions always emerge then, because we are all different. Bernhard P.S. re-reading my text I notice that I am wrong about "balance". Balancing IS dynamic, riding a bicyle you never get rid of the tendency to fall off to the right or to the left, you hold the 'tension' by moving on along a 'snake-line'. ----- wb-traincons...@gmx.net 10.05.2002 at 12:51:33 (GMT/UT + 02:00) My anti-virus precautions: 1) attached to this e-mail : No file 2) All attached files are mentioned by name in the line above.Please do not open any other attachment! 3) Please send text documents in RichTextFormat/*.rtf, if possible. 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