Difference that Makes a Difference.
Systemic Change on the one hand.
Symptomatic Change on the other hand.
Is this a difference that makes a difference?
*****
The kind of thinking that generates the problem can not be
the kind of thinking that resolves it, says Einstein: which is
easy for him to say. He’s Einstein. He claims imagination
is more important than knowledge.
Our universities... continue to teach and
operate in the system that is destroying the
biosphere. Adherence to the old mind-set,
the old curricula, obsolete pedagogy, and
shortsighted planning are producing
graduates who are trained to
perpetuate the destruction
of the biosphere. . .
Get them ready for a different future. Paradigms
are shifting. The folly of the prevailing paradigm,
represented by the “modern” industrial system,
is taking hold: waste-free, renewable, cyclical,
resource efficient, benign, socially equitable,
in harmony with nature. Ray Anderson
******
Information, Please
You’d call this data and facts
and figures and bundles of
content and subject-matter:.
stuff you need to make a
choice, and the well-informed
are those with a lot of this and
a decent memory to carry it
along so as to have on hand
when one is in decider-mode.
what one goes to school to
get among other things.
Information.
To be informed.
Energy.
To have some.
MEANING (information):
a difference that makes a
difference. I don’t believe
there is a more radically
reduced or fundamentally
practical definition for
meaning (information) than
this one used by linguists
and information theorists
A Difference : differentiation,
distinction, discontinuity, contrast,
juxtaposition: difference’s galore:
this’s and that’s all over the place. :
That Makes a Difference.
There’s the rub: the making.
Differences abound that make
no difference. Meaningless?
Potential? Waiting to be
chosen.
A difference has no location.
Intangible. Can’t touch it.
No substance. Immaterial.
Not directly subject to the
laws of thermodynamics;
negentropic, in fact: drawing
a distinction that provides
basis for new order by virtue
of differentiation, dividing
and conquering so to speak
what was indivisible—a
continuum if not a state
of equilibrium.
I see that there are 2 kinds
of people in the whirl, 2
kinds of students, 2 kinds
of artists, 2 kinds of teachers,
2 kinds of whatever: origins
of meaning (information);
sure. I’m reducing to either/ors
the basis for our yes-buts &
both/ands that build up our
complexities, significances
we’d never easily construe
in terms of differences that
make a difference.
A western sunset,
glass of wine
smell of coffee
pat of puppy
protestation of love
job offer
bad teacher evaluation
flood in
quake in
forest fires outside
a letter that never arrived…
Differences that Make a
Difference or they would
be meaningless, devoid
of information or trans-
formation. .
Not to be confused with
energy: physical impact.
Immaculate Conception
“Without some differentiation among the
sides or meridians of the unfertilized egg,
it is impossible for the egg to “know ” or
“decide” which shall be the future median
plane of symmetry of the bilaterally
symmetrical frog.
Epigenesis cannot begin until one meridian
is made different from all others…
A spermatozoon is not necessary for this purpose.
All that is needed is a maker of difference, and
the organism is not particular regarding the
character of this marker. Without some marker,
there will be no embryo. “Nothing will come of
nothing.”
The needed message is not carried in DNA or
other complexities of the structure of the spermatozoon
A prick with the fiber of a camel’s hair brush will
do the trick.” Gregory Bateson: Mind and Nature:
a Necessary Unity.
I have entitled this speech:
Will any of you tell me the difference
between systemic change and merely
symptomatic change? Because Ray is
asking for the systemic, not the
symptomatic—but it that difference
isn’t seen as a difference that makes
a difference, then what Ray says is
meaningless.
xxxooo, Sam
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