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thanks for stewardship paper (fwd)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 16:26:59 WST
From: Victor Guest <vic@daena.eepo.com.au>
To: Permaculture WA <perma@eepo.com.au>
Subject: thanks for stewardship paper (fwd)

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From: pdonovan@orednet.org (Peter A. Donovan)

Sissel thanks for the paper on forest stewardship contracting.
 
Lately I came across my notes from reading, some years ago, Morris
Berman's THE REENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD (Cornell, 1981).  It was an
influential book for me in its contrast between the conventional
scientific view and what Berman calls Batesonian holism:
 
conventional scientific view             Batesonian holism
 
no relationship between fact and value      fact and value inseparable
 
nature known from the outside;               nature is revealed in our
  phenomena observed out of context                  relations with it
 
Goal is conscious, empirical control      Unconscious mind is primary;
  over nature                            goal is wisdom, beauty, grace
 
linear time, infinite progress, we         circuitry (single variables
can in principle know all of reality             cannot be maximized);
                                           we cannot in principle know
                                       more than a fraction of reality
 
only matter and motion are real            process, form, relationship
                                                           are primary
 
wholes are nothing more than         wholes have properties that parts
the sum of their parts                                     do not have
 
nature is dead                                         nature is alive
 
and so on.  Berman, who is a Canadian professor, also wrote in this
book:
 
     Digital knowledge is not necessarily wrong in itself, but
     pathetically incomplete and thus winds up projecting a
     fraudulent reality.  University personnel, and more broadly
     the techno-bureaucratic elite of Western culture, are paid
     pretty much in proportion to their ability to promote and
     maintain this world view.
 
I suspect this may be changing, fifteen years later.  Perhaps we are
in the midst of one of the great changes of all human time.  Anyway, I
recommend this book.
 --------------
 I thought this was interesting and complementary to HRM.

Holistic Management.
Vic 
peter

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