Logica van het gevoel (Feeling’s Logic) |
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Logica van het gevoel - Filosofie van de stabiliteitslagen in de cultuur als nesteling der emoties (Feeling’s Logic - Philosophy of the cultural stability layers as the embedding of emotions), by Arnold Cornelis (1995)
According to Cornelis humanity nowadays lives in a ´culture gone astray´. We live in a state of transition from the logic of the social ruling system to a logic of communicative deep self-steering. In the social ruling system people were being directed and managed from outside, by accepting orders and following rules. Individuals were silent; they obeyed and adapted themselves to what was required from them. Also knowledge systems were, and many still are, ´autistic´. There is no communication between systems and no recognition of the fact that every system is just a part of the whole reality, and not the whole reality itself. Facts and materialistic and scientific aspects of reality are highly overstressed, while neglecting many meaningful but intangible aspects. To unleash all the untapped potential of human beings and to be able to cope with the intangible aspects of reality like the human experience, we need a new logic, in which we don’t give orders but enter into a dialogue, in which we don’t just look for facts but also take into account possibilities, in which we don’t just follow the rules to find the truth, the answer, the solution, but use our creativity to reflect on what truth and the goals of human activity really are. Today’s questions and problems can not always be solved by using the old logic of the social ruling system, often this even makes matters worse; we need a higher logic of communicative deep self-steering.
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Thanks for the tip. This book should really be translated in English for all those people who can’t read Dutch. I started reading in it but what I find a little bit peculiar is that I have not yet encountered a reference or a word about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I would expect that the natural system relates to the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid and the communicative self-steering system to the top of Maslow’s pyramid.
Mark,
I experience the freshness of this book as a break with much of the old thinking as compelling. It fits with much of what is currently seen as a blurring of the scientific disciplines in the areas of cognition, chaos theory, living systems theory and the peculiar ability of living systems to be self-referring in terms of having the blueprint of the entire system present and cognitive in the smallest parts of that system. In this blurring of the fields in often chaotic ways, new patterns are becoming visible and Cornelis is, in this book, pointing at a transformation of man that will lead to a new layer in the culture, the one that he calls communicative self-determination or self-steering, or self-governance (this points to the need for a careful translation) The freshness and also the newness of his observations and philosophical thinking demands, that though he stands on the shoulders of others, there must be a new language and new way of communicating this phenomenon, because casting it in the language of cartesian (machine or deterministic) thought, which was still in vogue when Maslow and other social thinkers were active, would inadequately communcate the recognition that man is truly embedded in probablility and uncertainty. Though this can be scary, it also gives wide berth to human cognition and ingenuity which allow him to transcend and become something entirely different than what he has been before. Maslow could see this and hence his concept of self-actualization. Yet he was too embedded in the thinking of his time to create adequate thought experiments and to show empirically what this new state of man would look like and how it could be achieved. Indeed for many in science the clearly observable nature of the early stages of personal development in Maslow’s hierarchy are self-evident, but the last stage is an enigma. I think that Cornelis has penetrated this last stage in the hierarchy and as such he has contributed a marvelous building block to the understanding of man as a transcendent being who does not understand his own transcendence, yet does begin to understand the transcendence of all that is around and in him. That is why the book had to be free from these references. I find the book by Fritjof Capra - The web of Life (Anchor Books - Doubleday 1996) hugely important for informed lay people in regards to understanding the systemic connections betwen the sciences and his deft way to use systems theory to create a credible web of connectivity. These are just my suppositions, but I invite others to tune into this discussion and add their insights.
Does this make any sense to you?
Kees
It makes sense to me what you say and I don’t mind he excludes Maslow and many other developmental psychologists perhaps. What I do often wonder however is whether Arnold Cornelis is not also close to the Christian philosophy. Mutual dependence and supporting each other are strong recurrent themes in Christianity as well. Self-actualization in Christianity is realized through faith in God and following in the steps of Jesus Christ as described in the Bible. Although I think Cornelis is more practical, I often wonder whether this communicative layer is not some form of idealism.
If organizations would give self-control away to communities of individuals, how do you ensure that power is and remains evenly distributed across individuals? Otherwise it just ends up with the consumer who has the most money to spend and we are back where we started. It then probably boils down to who we really are as individual human beings and how we deal with the power given to us. Do we support each other to full self-actualization or do we choose for ourselves when it comes down to it? More education on human development is probably needed for all of us, especially our leaders. The good news I suppose is that you can find a source of great meaning and purpose in trying to understand this philosophy and advocating it to others. The timing may also be right; we are moving into an experience economy where there is a growing demand for meaningful experiences.
Mark,
In essence I think that the drive towards self-actualization, enlightenment or transformation is part and parcel of the human spirit. Whether this is due to divine design or due to the unfolding of the implicate order of things human due to self-consciousness, creativity, curiosity, adventure or a realization that mankind is at a point of choice. We can allow expanded predatory practices aided by technology to destroy all of us or we can decide to recognize that the destiny of man can be a place of great progress and harmony when we learn to live in diversity and honor the innate dignity of all things because we are part of all things and all things are in us.
Many great leaders of the past, Christ included and in my humble opinion foremost, and many traditions such as the Kabala, Sufi, and the oriental philosophies and religions have all acknowledged that the destiny of man can be transformational towards a much higher energy level and a manifest nobility of mankind into a new homo-???????.
Some achieve that In the present, but the transformation of the human race will require a critical mass of self-organizing dynamics that will lift all instead of just the one here and there. Any guru will tell you that enlightenment is not possible without help and guidance. Margaret Wheatley already has laid the foundations of thought for the new organizations of the future. These organizations will require self-organization and self-discipline and management as a requirement for mining the precious and highly individualized energy of individuals through passion, creativity and initiative as well as through team based pursuits that have a certain meta-virtue in their vision that requires people to think and feel wider and deeper than themselves and that will stretch them to reach ever deeper into themselves and bring forward the hidden treasures that are buried there.
I have been a part of a prototype of this sort of organization before Wheatley was even on the scene. I can tell you that, though the effort was limited as far as the overall scope of self-organizing systems is concerned, it far outstripped the run-of-the-mill factory productivity as well as the run-of-the-mill feelings that factory workers have. I have seen how ordinary factory workers with just high-school diplomas were able to display real genius once their sense of self-efficacy had been truly awakened.
My sense is that Cornelis had no specific religious drivers acting on him, yet I feel that the Judeo-Christian culture was operant in his philosophy. It is uncanny how ennobled thought around the world emanating from vastly different philosophies and religions is beginning to converge. The underlying themes are very similar and highly cumulative.
It is my sense that people are reaching to ward off the very real possibility of the annihilation of mankind and current culture by directing thought and feelings away from an overdependence on objective thought and technology towards a greater balance with the subjective spiritual and mental processes and self-preserving cognition that is natural and perhaps providential in all living systems.
The book that I am in the process of writing deals with exactly that. It is my insight that management, though ubiquitous the world over, has a significant flaw in its “genetic” make-up that cannot be fixed. This is what we have tried to do over the last 80 years, to fix management as it was postulated by Frederic Taylor and exploited and institutionalized by the robber barons of the early 20th century (hugely simplified). Legislation, Regulation and science have blunted the most vicious aspects of that mode of governance, yet the costs to mankind over the last century have been truly staggering. Sure much has also been accomplished and perhaps this age of Social Control Systems as Cornelis calls it was a necessary step in our evolution. Yet, we are now reaching the limits of its efficacy and costs are increasingly depressing the energy necessary for new forms and levels of self-organization because energy and resources are squelched and hoarded by the few at the cost of the many.
Management must go and leadership will take its place to facilitate the drive of mankind towards new levels of self-organization and being. Leadership is completely in alignment with communicative self-control or self-governance as I would like to see it called. Will there be problems there as well? Of course, there is no panacea or perfect utopian society. Yet, the new order of communicative self-governance will encourage, require and facilitate that most people will participate at some level in the dialog of the new way of being. That new frontier will generate new patterns and efficiencies of thought and feeling and new development at a higher level that will help mankind to reach its next plateau (in a shorter time-frame as the previous revolution as Cornelis identifies) while perhaps discarding the leadership paradigm at that point as deeply flawed as well.
It must be recognized though that while the new order proceeds, the skills and disciplines of management will not be lost. Instead of acting from an external locus, the locus of control will become increasingly more internalized and as this happens trust and integrity will also increase again as they once were in rural societies. At some point when leadership is discarded as the communal form of governance, the art and discipline of leadership will nevertheless be operant in each individual as s/he thrives in the value added relationships of the new age.
Well you probably did not want this much, but thinking about this and writing things down helps me test and organize thoughts. Thanks for that opportunity and please feel free to shoot holes in my reasoning.
Kees
I so agree with you on the need for the translation of this book, I’m even thinking about doing it myself after the PhD is finished. Maslow by the way is not the only one famous for his developmental model that is not being mentioned in Cornelis’ work, if you want to know more about all (or at least many) developmental models maybe Integral Psychology of Ken Wilber is a good place to start, he makes a comparison of an incredible amount of developmental models and theories, showing their commonalities and differences. I think that Cornelis’ philosophy and Maslow’s piramid can be related like you say but I don;t think one can be translated literally into the other, but that’s a whole different story.
Anna,
While on a visit in Holland I was given this book and I immediately saw the tremendous application and use of this philosphical work in the field of leadership wich really drives towards inviting people towards this third stability layer in the Culture and enables them to find their inner self-steering drivers and make them conscious. I too was looking for the authoritative translation and did not find one. My sense is that we are mixing a lot of concepts and nomencalture in our ad-hoc translations that really require deep thought and dialogue before “casting them in concrete” so to say. The whole issue of steering and control and the issue of “locus of Control” from societal control systems to self-control or steering is a natural movement. The stability layer of the Social Control Systems and the stability layer of Communicative Self-control as I have coined them are in keeping with established terminolog in English while the terms you use, though lingueistically correct, might have a level of confusion in the english speaking countires.
It is not my intent though to get into this other than to illustrate that without a concerted effort to calibrate the translations of this seminal work we may end up with a bunch of mongrels. I have tried to find a website for the publisher, who would be the rightful initiator of any translation, but have been unable to find it. I would really love to hear your take on this and add my energy and interest to any translation effort that might be attempted.
Kees
Dear Kees, It is really fascinating to discover people that are also enthusiastic about the works of Arnold Cornelis.We agree that we have to be very carefull in translating the concepts of Cornelis. I will approach his widow and see if their is interest in translating his book. As EE we would like to take the initiative to pick up the translation.In our book A new look at the Experience Economy we are very much inspired by him. Our book will be published in English beginning of 2007. On our site you can download a summary in English
See our last post on Cornelis in English
Hi Anna, Albert, Kees,
I have an English book Chapter and an English paper on water management by Cornelis that both capture his key message. If you want I can send them by mail. Let me know.
Anna, Albert, If Cornelis’ Widow agrees to your proposal. I would gladly join the translation team. Keep me posted. Idea: Open source it and do it chapter by chapter combined with a global dialogue.
Re. other hierarchical frameworks. Verna Allee has published one in the Knowledge Evolution, her first book. See: http://www.vernaallee.com/knowledge_management/Knowledge_Archetype_in_Theoretical_Constructs.pdf
For some context of how she herself uses this thinking see the short excerpt from her book here: http://www.vernaallee.com/knowledge_management/Knowledge_Complexity_Framework(c).pdf
Cheers, Sergej
Thanks Sergej
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