Amerika

The emergence of Dark Organizations in Western civilization can be contrasted by examining the opposite, light organizations. Attempts to Turn the Ship Around are generally aimed at single organizations, but it makes sense to look at how a society exuding “light” may work.

I would like to start with language as the basic energy driving light:

To take the idea from Sir Philip Sidney’s Defense of Poesy, literature has the ability to prepare the mind to accept virtues. So literature is timeless, because it can stay relevant over the years, even with the shifting issues of different generations. All literature is, anyway, rooted in the creative force of the human being, and humans, anyway, have collective truths, beliefs, and issues that need to be talked about and addressed.

When literature looks at promoting virtue instead of fighting vice, every writer appears to be proud of his/her expressions and are quite willing to explain to anyone listening, and in detail, meanings that may be important. The same energy is expended to transfer observations and wisdom from parents to children (“social capital”). The importance of this becomes noticeable when that child is taken out of its language environment, where it may suffer post traumatic stress. When alienation persists however, the child may quite easily become antagonistic — not towards its parents, but towards society.

Therefore, it can be deduced that different peoples use language for different purposes, but in all cases it remains an energy driving light in that scenario. I have investigated two typical scenarios, the first being in Africa and the second in Europe. Without assuming that all African languages have similar characteristics, it is possible to imagine similarities. These extracts are from a Ugandan newspaper article 26 March 2023, written by Mary Karooro Okurut:

[The] jewel of communication, [is] timeless instruction.

“Of course, the value of literature and its study and praxis cannot be more pronounced than in Africa. This is because our histories are transmitted from one generation to another orally, through inter-generational tale-telling by the fireplace, under tree shades while grazing livestock, gardening, or doing other communal activities.”

“So we learn our culture by what we are told. We understand our customs and values by bounds set in expressions. We bond as a people and resolve conflict through the magic of talking. Our critical thinking is triggered by the hidden meaning of tropes or the unsaid. Our pauses during conversations time a message to sink deeply.”

“In short, literature awakens the mind, body and soul by provoking thought in what radical English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, aptly likens to “a single word… spark[ing]… inextinguishable action”.”

“My eyes welled with tears of joy. And pain too. Well, we know writers shed their sickness through writing.”

Clearly, these words succeeded, despite being translated into English, to demonstrate the creativity required to establish timeless meaning, but undoubtedly also, by expressing the requirement for function to produce light. But it also characterized this language as “timeless instruction” which is the apparent scenario describing African languages. In summary therefore, it can be assumed that African languages uses their creativity and functionality to drive knowledge for a sustainable intergenerational ethnic group through simultaneous bonding and conflict with unstoppable “inextinguishable action”. In my opinion this points to an ebb and flow affecting society that may be peaceful or equally in conflict as time passes.

The above description applies to individual tribes/ethnic groups in Africa and is not a generally applied construct to all at the same time.

In addition to the above a further investigation of what exactly is meant by “values set in expressions” is required. Another Ugandan newspaper article 28 March 2023, written by Didas Bakunzi Mafusha provided a few answers:

Violation of trust is betrayal (and points to a) lack of (and further deterioration) of remaining values.

“You will never understand betrayal until you witness water participating in the boiling of fish” is an insightful African adage. It explains the pain arising from betrayal in relationships and the violation of trust by someone close to you.

“What is the main reason for betrayal? Researchers have discovered excessive ambition, greed, lust or passion. When a person cannot control himself or herself and is overcome with these vices, he is liable to betray. A drug addict will betray the trust placed in him because his addiction is overpowering. It is greater that any sense of loyalty, integrity, or honesty he may have.”

Lt. Gen Sir Fredrick Stanley Maude was tasked with conquering Baghdad in 1971. One of his first enquiries was on values of the residents of that country. After establishing they would do anything for money, he told his soldiers “As long as this kind of mentality prevails in this country and you can buy anyone, don’t fear anything or anyone”.

The moral of the above (military) story is that the deficiency of values is detrimental to societal wellbeing and indeed development (in fact one should be afraid of those who have and stick to values). It manifests through betrayal that at times results in criminality. The building blocks of a good society, which are the requisite values, include loyalty, spirituality, humility, compassion, honesty, kindness, integrity, and selflessness.

Take note that values can lead to development based on trust, but also to criminality if betrayal is felt because trust is destroyed. A further observation is that the person that becomes a criminal may not be the same person experiencing the betrayal, but a son or grandson. This same betrayal is the kind of emotion that may turn into revenge recurring multi-generationally to exact perpetual reward or reparation (regardless of whether it is reasonable), that in typical toxic form destroys any prior development achieved.

It can thus be said that, as is demonstrated in the South African case, “reparations” is more akin to exacting torture (with English characteristics), with the intent of perpetuating such torture because the loss of trust due to prior betrayal, is unrecoverable (history can’t be changed) and it therefore becomes an unstoppable downward self-reinforced spiraling and barreling darkness to obliterate any developmental light trying to escape upwards. Exacting torture is insufficient to quench the thirst for revenge causing the cycle to repeat, over and over.

The deduction from above may be those values described in language are absolutely needed for development but that at the same time, great care should be taken to avoid betrayal. A general assessment based on this, is that African development, despite having the inherent advantages of language creativity and functionality describing active values, has been undermined by its own intertribal betrayals.

More effort was expended in the above analysis because it is foreign to those speaking English as a mother-tongue. In the European scenario less effort to demonstrate the creativity, functionality and values will be required because it is proven. The one puzzling difference found in Europe, other than the African scenario is that values are not only expressed in language, but in objects too. That is not to say Africans don’t use objects to communicate, it just appears that Europeans for some reason use objects significantly more. For example, in Africa one outstanding object communicating a certain value is the Egyptian pyramid. It is a massive statement that dwarfs any other value Egyptians might have wanted others to see, and people to this day wonder how that was built.

While it is unnecessary to show a picture of the Egyptian pyramids which must have taken centuries to build and cost literal fortunes, which can only be equated to the American military expenditures with the same effort in today’s world, it is necessary though to picture the cheap but defining example of European values being entirely different and much smaller: the wheel.

Whereas the African value is energizing (due to its inspiring size), but static, the European value is also energizing, but because it is dynamic (not big). One can also say however, that the Egyptians had wheels as well, meaning there can be no animosity or betrayal in the use of the wheel as a value differentiation between Africans and Europeans.

It is fairly clear that language separated the development of Africans and Europeans despite both being energetically functional. So how did Europe advance so significantly economically? The deduction is that being dynamic causes society to “jump” start its own development because it focuses on objects (tools) to enhance that dynamism.

In other words, where humans in Africa focused on human sustainability, Europeans focused on object sustainability. Having too much dynamism is also not good apparently, because modernity may feel good, but serious problems have emerged as a result.

However, being dynamically oriented had an unintended benefit. It fed back into language turning itself into a tool as well. In stead of being the jewel of communication and timeless instruction, it became the weapon of communication and a timeless tool.

This is nowhere more visible as in the different development frameworks applied by Africa and Europe. In Europe the first step to development was observable in the recovery of East Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. The first step was to establish roads with fuel stations to facilitate (dynamic) movement and trade. The second step was electricity distribution to boost (dynamic) industry. The third step was (dynamic) schools and administration facilities. This took twenty years and a few billion euros to complete.

In Africa by contrast, a country like Uganda is struggling since its 1986 independence from British colonialism and dictatorial rule under Idi Amin. The steps taken to develop Uganda was firstly to establish cell-phone networks i.e., communication (as a top value). Secondly to ensure some form of education mostly at primary level aimed at children and not so much buildings or roads leading to schools, but more focused on boarding and feeding children. Thirdly to develop raw material extraction such as oil and gold to be completed (hopefully) by 2030. The costs are estimated to be a lot more than a few billion euros and will (have taken) forty-four years.

To say that Uganda is unsuccessful and East-Germany successful is of course wrong. Alternatively, one should rather say that the Ugandan language is human centered while the German language is machine-centered. In other words Ugandans are more about feeding the children, while Germans are more interested in changing their brains.

Language development is inherently a process of change. Exploring the multiple and varied trajectories of language can provide us with insights into the development of more general cognitive processes. Studies of language development have been particularly useful in helping us to understand the emergence of specialization of function and the scale and flexibility of cognitive processes during learning. Novel approaches and technologies for capturing the linguistic environment that the developing child grows up in (Greenwood, Thiemeann-Bourque, Walker, Buzhardt, & Gilkerson, 2011)—and for capturing what the child is saying (Oller et al., 2010)—should allow for more fleshed out theories and models of how language development actually works. Correspondingly, new tools for understanding brain structure (Dick et al., 2012; Glasser & Van Essen, 2011; Sereno, Lutti, Weiskopf, & Dick, 2013), development (Dosenbach et al., 2010), representation (Huth, Nishimoto, Vu, & Gallant, 2012) and learning (Wiestler & Diedrichsen, 2013) should allow us to make much finer-grained predictions about when, where, and how language development changes the brain.

The adage of “too much of a good thing is bad” applies to both Africans and Europeans. In the case of Africans their language scenario can easily lead to betrayal and societal decline, while European dynamisms feeding back into its language caused a societal jump start, but can also cause a more spectacular decline. How this jumpstart worked, is that language facilitated infrastructure, and infrastructure in turn became the tool that facilitates economies.

A different way of saying that is to think in terms of an extractive economy facilitating an Industrial economy facilitating a Service Economy where South Africa is a good example of how it was done in thirty-three years. Another way is to describe Roman roads as a force multiplier, followed by trains and underground trains as the English force multiplier, followed by aircraft and airports as the American force multiplier towards World dominance. Of course, as the Western brain rots away, its dominance will also.

To summarize how a light society works, one would have to consider the language orientation particular to an area, avoiding the negative aspects such as betrayal and dominance, followed by a style of development that accommodates the best parts of human and machine centered language relative to time. In other words, sometimes development is fast and other times slow i.e., sustainable, not in terms of seawater levels, but in terms of creative functionality and values. The new slogan of “Build Back Better” is farcical in today’s world and is a dark language abomination due to brain-rot.

However, that does not mean a light society should not “build” or that such building can’t be “better”, but light definitely does not mean going “back.” Light is always going forwards and onwards and so must societies, moving toward a light goal instead of trying to avoid the forms of the dark that occurred in the past and will take different form in the present and future.

Tags: dark organization, language, light organization, management, uganda