Treat all information equally!

[Corrie van Wijk]

The section 'Emergent Knowledge is labelled as: "David Grove's ultimate developments including the space of ABCD and the significance and application of 6 iterations."

The section: 'Emergent Knowledge developments' says: "Processes and approaches developed by others from David Grove's work, either in collaboration with David or independently."

I don't think anyone can make this distinction for Emergent Knowledge, as David worked closely with others on it, like Carol Wilson and Steve Saunders.

David only gave permission for a 'light' version of Emergent Knowledge, as now used in coaching, and only gave that permission to certain people he trusted on it and while he was supervising it.

There was never an Emergent Knowledge section on the cleanforum untill just after David died. I think the timing of it's establishment wasn't very well chosen. Yet Steve shared freely and generously his knowledge on the subject. For him to be moved into a section 'developed by others from' disregards his importance.

Similarly, when I put much effort into reuniting David's and Steve's views and sharing them on this forum, I get moved into 'developments', saying that my notes on the Sangatte emergence gathering are 'just' modelling emergence, meaning 'no more than'. (It is not even possible to model emergence).

When I explain in the next posting in the thread, after it has been moved, that there is no point in contuining writing down the notes in this context, this posting gets rémoved.

I appreciate fourm administration's attempts to keep law and order on this forum and making it accessible to visitors, but by making a distinciton between one section and another it implicitly makes a difference in appreciation, certainly in the context of a forum that is about David and his work: in-group and out-group (with exiles). I don't think that is in the true spirit of clean.

[forumadmin]

I appreciate you taking the time to bring up the classification of threads and postings on cleanforum.

I agree it is hard to distinguish David's work from others' in the Emergent Knowledge field. Yet I think it is worth the effort to do so. Unless I am mistaken, I believe it was David who first explored and then applied the principles of emergence in relation to his own work. The valuable collaborations with several others were subsequent to this fundamental innovation, as far as I understand it.

So it appears to me that David was the 'lead innovator' (so to speak) in the principles of emergent knowledge and 6 iterations in the context of Clean Language, Clean Space and so on. Add to this the fact that there are many people who were touched by David's work over 3 decades. They are most interested in the man himself, his own work and his own ideas. They are less interested in the nonetheless valuable developments of his work, including established models like Symbolic Modelling.

There is no intention here of disregarding anyone's importance by placing their postings on different subjects into different forums. As far as I can remember, Steve has not complained of such a thing.

I hope you are not confusing people with postings, when you speak of in-groups and exiles. My clumsy attempts at classification are not aimed at separating people or groups, rather at collating and collecting related information. I don't expect the structure is right yet and it may never be.

I understand that you wish to reunite David's and Steve's views. I hope the distinctions I make above clarify why attempts to do so belong in 'developments' IMO. While they shared some similar views, they were by no means united, as Steve himself has gone to some effort to explain in these pages. David stopped collaborating with Steve sometime in 2007, as I understand it, and as Steve by his own words is an innovator, it is reasonable to assume that as time goes on, Steve's own innovations form an increasingly large percentage of his overall model and output.

To treat all information equally would be to mix all threads and posts together in one big forum - this would be a lot less effort for me. It would be much harder to find relevant related items which is why I persist, for the moment at least.

I'm sorry if you are offended by the removal of your post about it being pointless to continue posting. If you like, I can look at it again and ascertain why it was deleted.

[Steve Saunders]

Thanks Phil and Corrie,

The trouble is that, at stage 4, labelled "the wobble" by David, something different than the starting topic emerges, and becomes "the new locus of attention".

Thus all topics will naturally veer away from starting points if emergence is involved. Thus in all likelihood, the censoring process will interrupt in stage 4b of any emerging interaction "for the sake of clarity and compartmentalising" aspects of something.

Emergence dissolves and blurs boundaries and structures allowing freely flowing mind. The very fixing and categorising reflects fragmented mind - necessary for those seeking to understand perhaps but frustrating for those experienced in emerging.

I agree to keep separate David's developments from others. Although please credit the external sources that inspired him - after all the 6's came from a book, and there are many others. Ultimately no-one can claim the credit for an invention because so many others crossed their paths to give the little pieces that eventually made the jigsaw - I do not seek to, and I'm not sure that David would want all the credit himself either. He would be moving on now, as am I.

A section on Emergence needs to have uncensored flows within it, and expect the posts to wander off-topic; this is how REAL learning works IM(less than humble)O. The rest of the forum could remain fixed on its dots, but please let emergence explore the spaces and movements in-between these dots, or the connections will not be made!

Cheerio

Steven
(PS Apologies to those who want a Steve-free forum)

[phil]

I do understand those principles of emergence that you describe, Steve. It is not my purpose to have everything on dots.

My hope was/is that as... a something different than the starting topic emerges, and becomes "the new locus of attention" ...one of the correspondents in the thread would start a new thread, and continue the conversation on that salient topic. The original thread might continue on the original topic or if that has run its course it might end there, the locus of attention having moved on.

In levels terms, those who want to discuss emerging topics could use the thread level and forum levels to reveal it to us: as news of difference emerges in the text of a thread, it can coalesce as a new thread at the forum level and more text appears there and so on.*

That way IMO, the new locus of attention that has emerged coalesces as a new node in what, over time, can become a network of pertinent information, highly visible to visitors and those who want to find something of interest to them quickly. And to my mind that's one way for us ALL to explore the spaces and movements in-between these dots and make the connections for learning.**

Well, that's the theory. In practice, my attempts to spark that process by creating new threads and moving threads don't seem to have worked. I can understand that having your threads moved, even with good intention, could be irritating.

I think, too, that the inherently hierarchical structure of the software works against the multi-dimensional interconnected nature of networks and systems. I have ideas for something other than this - I have not the time or budget at the moment though!

With so few posting too, maybe a critical mass has not been reached where such a process could work.

Whatever happens, I am not interested in running or even belonging to a forum like so many others with long rambling exchanges of self-important pontification which occasionally descend into a soap opera of personal emotional exchanges, be they belligerent or sycophantic. IMO such stuff is not of much interest or relevance to anyone not involved in those emotions and is upsetting to the protagonists.

Now, I realise that's a colourful description! It is not meant to be insulting to anyone - I include myself as one of those who has taken part in such exchanges. It is an accurate summary of my impression of SOME of the exchanges that have gone on in the last few months. While there has been good stuff too, it is buried amongst the challenges and counter-challenges and quite hard to get at, so I doubt anyone is trying.

Change is coming to the cleanforum site - not sure what, or when. The forum itself will probably survive in some form, the calendar certainly. We'll just have to wait and see what emerges when the time is right, eh!

Phil (forumadmin)

*The same process can happen one level up: as the network grows, the need for new forums emerges. This has already happened at cleanforum.

**Of course the space between the dots BECOMES a dot when it is examined so in one sense we are playing an endless game of 'chase the space'!

[Corrie van Wijk]

Phil: "I can understand that having your threads moved, even with good intention, could be irritating."

It's not just the moving, your apparent appreciation of the information gets in the way: you tend to dump things in threads that are below the David-line or disregard them as off-topic.
You change titles and even remove postings, lately even without any warning or notice. Parts of a conversation are taken out of context, e.g. the discussion between me and Steve about projections is now spread over I guess four threads. My posting on coincidence gets moved to the Adjacency section, when I think it is about clean timing, etc.

May-be you can just put in a link if you think it is relevant to another thread.

And if you hesitate, it can't hurt to consult the author first (e.g. I object to my titles being changed).

Corrie