As regular readers of this blog know, I rarely feature the work of others here as I usually have something to say myself. But in late December, a colleague published a video on YouTube about a project he has been working on for 35 years. He calls it “Mission: Paradise”. I think it is worth it to postpone one more stand on my soapbox. First a few words about the creator/architect of this vision.
His name is Jim Channon, a genius and a visionary in my view. Jim was an officer in the U.S. Army and founded the “First Earth Battalion.” I first met Jim when I was Managing Director and a Founding Trustee of the World Business Academy (WBA) in 1990. He lives in Hawaii where he facilitated a retreat for the WBA in 1991. He also contributed to my first anthology – New Traditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Century.
Jim’s powerful vision for the future reminds me of another colleague’s idea for a transformed humanity, Martin Rutte, who talks and writes about “Heaven on Earth”. Of course both these visions are aligned with the one I put forth in my new book – The Great Growing Up – which I call the “New Great Dream.“ But you can’t beat video for a compelling presentation!
I suggest you watch the first 15 minutes of Jim’s presentation. The last 10 minutes you can watch at your leisure but plan on the first 15 as a minimum.
Watch this with an open mind and notice any cynicism that may rear its head from time to time. Notice also that Jim has been having this conversation with thousands of pragmatic people in the world , including corporate leaders, political and military leaders, and knows his way around these communities. Of course these conversations are private as most high-profile people won’t want to acknowledge these exchanges publicly.
As always, I’d appreciate any feedback you’d like to share here after you watch the video.
Typically we think of dictators as power hungry people, usually men, like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, and Libya’s Muammar Kaddafi. Sometimes they were once popular rulers but became more and more corrupted by the power like perhaps Egypt’s Mubarak and many others past and present.
But do dictatorships need to be flesh and bone human beings? Can an oppressive autocracy be created by a power-hungry system that dominates and operates similarly to a Kaddafi or a Hussein? I think so.
Let’s take three classes in one of these oppressive systems, as a simplified breakdown of the primary actors. Let’s call them the Elites, on top of the pyramid, the Enforcers in the middle row and the Exploited at the bottom, carrying the weight of the two levels above (see cheerleaders pyramid below).
The Elites are the privileged, the group who continues to gain wealth and power by making sure the system continues to function for their convenience, occasionally slanting the playing field even more to their advantage. They aren’t prone to giving up any of their advantage and often become insensitive to their excesses.
The Enforcers make sure the system is maintained and do the bidding of the Elite. They enjoy some power but just enough to remain loyal to the Elites.
The Exploited are the majority who have the least power, wealth and influence.
The Arab Spring movement has been fueled by growing injustices as seen by the Exploited (the masses) and even some of the Enforcers (military and police). The movement has been led by many educated professionals who are willing to risk physical harm to take their stand against oppression. In so doing, some of the Enforcers have been sympathetic, finding it difficult to harm fellow citizens with whom they empathize.
Now let’s look at the United States and the Occupy Movement. Obviously masses of people are feeling exploited and oppressed, giving rise to Occupy. Let us look at the similarities.
Many Americans are feeling oppressed by the economic system and powerless in making any change happen to improve things. They feel exploited even though they may not have a personal dictator to point to as the identified oppressor. Fear, financially insecurity, and gridlocked political leaders acting like teenage brats incapable of doing anything to rectify the situation make matters worse. The status quo is oppressive. By most definitions the common people are the Exploited.
The Enforcers in the U.S. are similar to the Enforcers in the Arab world. They consist of the courts, the prison system, local, state and national governments, the military and police. They keep the Exploited in line by maintaining order and squelching disorder. When the Elite see their hold on power threatened, they will subdue and suppress. In this regard, the Elite reactions to the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement are somewhat similar.
The U.S. Elite are not despots living in sumptuous palaces with harems and surrounded by personal militias. But they live in extravagance, often have flamboyant personalities and flaunt their wealth and power and maintain their power base. They may not imprison or execute anyone whom they see as a threat to them, but there are similarities!
The ruling Elite in the U.S. is largely hiding behind very powerful and wealthy corporations. They purchase political favor much like people bribe officials in other countries. And now the courts have removed all restrictions on them to purchase even more political power, which has helped to paralyze our legislators who sit in “special interest gridlock.”
To use an old expression, we have put the foxes in charge of the hen house. The changes that are desperately needed in our systems will not be made by the people who are currently benefiting from those systems. Campaign finance reform, tax reform or election reform will never come about unless some force outside the existing system takes responsibility for making reforms happen. The foxes are very happy with the status quo! Why would they change something that benefits them so much? They may put on a good show at trying to change things but there is no incentive to actually lessen their perks as things stand. The status quo is good for them!
Perhaps it is time for a new constitutional convention where “we the people” take back our country much like the courageous Arab people are attempting to do. If we can oust our corporatocractic dictators we will face similar challenges as those in the Middle East and North Africa. Once you succeed in ousting the source of oppression, a system that has been in place for a couple of generations that has maintained stability, even though oppressive, things can get unstable pretty fast. Recreating a true democracy from the tenets of a constitution can be challenging and not for the faint of heart. It is a task for the stand-takers, the collaborators who put the well being of all ahead of any special interest or ideology they hold privately. Our founders had the chutzpah and made it happen - so can we. However, we have to don the cloaks of our colonist founders and summon that historic degree of personal responsibility to make the new system work as our founders envisioned, not as it has devolved after centuries of special interest skewing.
Do we have the moxie, the chutzpah, the spiritual courage to pull it off? Do we possess the ability to recreate a system that serves the people instead of the privileged few? Do we have the will to stop energizing the existing system in all its dysfunction and work together to form “a more perfect union”? I think we do.
******* [My editorial in this month’s issue of my free newsletter is titled “The Human Species Grows Up: Transcending Our Adolescent Stuckness” (see link here)]
The other day a reader reminded me that my April blog from earlier this year – what has now been named “the Arab Spring” - predicted the Occupy Movement here in the U.S. With that in mind, here it is again:
April 1, 2011
Growing Income Gap Could Spark Our Own Tahrir Square
Watching the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo several weeks back followed by the storming of the Wisconsin state capitol building by crowds upset over the prospects of being disenfranchised here in the U.S., I wondered when there might be pro-democracy demonstrations popping up all over the United States. After all, one of the major factors of the leaderless demonstrations in the Arab world is the oppressive economic disparities between rich and poor. As can be seen from the graph below, the gap between the richest one percent of Americans and the rest of us continues to widen. Eventually this gap will reach a breaking point. No society can sustain this rising disparity before the other 99% figures out the system is rigged against them.
John Perkins, former “economic hit man” who has inside experience of the power of corporate appetites, calls this result “corporatocracy.” Wikipedia defines corporatocracy, in part, as a governing system where “corporations, to a significant extent ‘own’ or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies, etc).”
In many respects, corporatocracy causes this growing disparity. By its nature it continues to drive economic wealth to the rich while leaving the lower and middle classes pretty much stagnated. This becomes especially notable when you adjust for inflation. Some argue that 99% of us are actually worse off now, in terms of spendable income, than we were thirty years ago!
As I was drafting this article, the popular CBS News TV show “60 Minutes” featured a shocking story which included, in part: American families have been falling out of the middle class in record numbers….One of the consequences of the recession that you don't hear a lot about is the record number of children descending into poverty….it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. (see entire report here)
Here’s a TED talk by Wael Ghonim, which was recorded last month at TED 2011. Ghonim is the Google executive who helped jumpstart Egypt's democratic revolution. He tells the inside story of everyday Egyptians showing that "the power of the people is stronger than the people in power." When enough people get fed up enough being victims of unfairness they will stand up for themselves.
Remember the parable of the boiled frog? Like the slowly-boiled frog we can get sleepy, then become unconscious and eventually die if the process is slow and gradual enough. The temperature rises so gradually that we acclimatize to the heat without triggering our life-threatening -danger responses. The disappearing middle class and the lower classes have been lulled into near-oblivion over the past thirty years as the gap continues to widen between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert opined a few days ago, “There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.”
Where is that tipping point for organizing our own Tahrir Square vigil? Like the people in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain who have been willing to risk their lives for liberty, perhaps Americans can emulate what the protestors in Cairo bravely declared on television, “This isn’t fair!” and “We want our country back.”
Fortunately we are not frogs. We possess consciousness which, when awakened, allows us to make dramatic changes in our responses to situations. A dear friend recently reminded me of a pertinent quote to share here. It comes from Scottish psychiatrist, Ronald Laing: "The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
NOTE: My December 2011 newsletter features an editorial titled “Bad People or Bad Systems? A Crisis of Social Conscience.” To read it click here.
Have you ever wondered if the debate, discussion and general conversations that occupy our collective consciousness most of the time – climate change, population growth, terrorism, sustainability, etc. – are all essentially “small talk” when it comes to what’s really important? Have you had a nagging feeling that these issues – as serious as they are – are simply symptoms of some larger crisis?
To put it into popular colloquialism, are we all passengers on the Titanic arguing over the deck chairs?
Each one of these crises is the result of human behavior driven by an immature consciousness - a consciousness that once was sufficient for us but we have now outgrown. The consciousness that created all these problems has been either uncaring or lacking in awareness of the long -term impact we will have on future generations. This consciousness is adolescent and, like modern day teenagers, we often pretend to be mature.
And like most unchecked adolescent behavior there are consequences, often showing up as surprises to the unaware or uncaring. The crises we face today are the consequences we didn’t think about before. It is time to grow up, clean up our messes and start having “the larger conversations” about consciously evolving to a level of collective maturity that is capable of generating a sustainable, just and fulfilling human presence on this planet.
It isn’t just about solving problems, although many problems still need to be solved. It’s about generating a future we can bring into being consciously – a future we actually want for our descendants instead of a default future that will devolve from the wreckage of our past actions and inactions.
Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, once said that the best way to predict the future was to create it. So let’s create it!
But how? you may ask.
That’s a fair question but does it come from a place of hopelessness, powerlessness and victimhood? Does the future occur to you as unchangeable, set on a course of degeneration? Or does it seem to you as something to be created – on a course of generation and renewal?
Larger conversations require people who see real possibility for a better future – not incrementally improved but one generated from an entirely different worldview or paradigm. They see a possibility even if they don’t see exactly how to bring it about. They have a deep intuitive knowing that the reality in which we all find ourselves is not the ultimate destiny for human beings. They know something very different is within our grasp if we can shift our consciousness from one that generates scarcity, hyper-consumption and fear to a consciousness grounded in connection, sufficiency and caring for all.
Those of us who are engaging in the larger conversations - who see possibility where others may not, who feel hope rather than despair, interconnectedness instead of separation and isolation - are risking being seen as “the crazy ones.” Cynics may see us as a bunch Pollyannas, idealists just wasting everyone’s time. They once tried idealism and really got burned. So they pulled the blanket of cynicism over their heads and swore never again to dream, to aspire for higher ideals. They are hardly going to be attracted to these larger conversations any time soon.
But those of us in the larger conversations can evoke possibility for a world we dream of, a reality based on what we want, not on the past. Future-based language will replace past-based thinking and the language which follows.
Would you like to be part of one of these larger conversations? The cost of entry is low – simply a willingness to see a world that works for everyone, a world that is environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling for al human beings. Conversations of this kind are going on all over the world, maybe not in the mainstream, but they do exist. They begin whenever two or more people are willing to engage in such unfettered explorations. They are going on in small coffee houses, retreat centers, people’s homes and certainly on the Internet.
Are you engaged in one of these larger conversations? If not, locate one and introduce yourself. You may be surprised by the welcome you receive! Once you are engaged in the exploration set aside all the reasons your “rational” mind might dismiss as pure folly. Tell your mind to leave you be, with strong emphasis if necessary. Disengage the egoic rationale that tells you such a conversation is a waste of time. Instead, allow yourself to dream without restraint about what is truly possible for an awakened human society having transcended the crises and circumstances we are facing today.
What better conversation is worth having at this time?
Last week I was reminded as to why some political ideologies gather more traction than others, when they seemingly have less support amongst the population. This has puzzled me for many years.
Allow me to admit that I am a fiscal conservative, more liberal when it comes to providing a safety net for the disadvantaged, an advocate for small but effective government, pro-government regulation on matters where the public well-being is at stake (such as the FAA, infrastructure and parks) and pro-entrepreneur having been one since I was 18. I have voted for numerous Republicans but probably more Democrats in my lifetime and backed Ross Perot out of frustration back in 1992.
At present, I don’t feel much loyalty to either of the two main political parties here in the U.S. I was excited when Obama replaced Bush in 2008 but have since witnessed the greatest dysfunction in both parties, to the point of feeling significant embarrassment for my government.
This leaves me as somewhat of an objective observer of Washington without any strong loyalty. In this context I offer the following opinion.
It is safe to say that I have more Liberal friends than Conservative, quite largely due to living in San Francisco, which like many coastal cities is a largely-Liberal community.
One of the frustrations I hear from my Liberal friends is their inability to strategize and implement changes like Conservatives do. It appears that a few Conservatives can focus on issues they feel strongly about and make lots of progress politically in a short time, as has the recent Tea Party movement in the U.S. which was unheard of a couple of years ago.
My Liberal friends care passionately about a whole range of social ills and they want to see them all fixed. They are puzzled by their Democratic leaders’ inability to compete with Republicans who, in their opinion, have less to do with social good and more to do with ideology.
The Right seems to be able to rally massive support for a few issues and maintain consistent talking points amongst its spokespersons, even to the point of exposing themselves to ridicule by the satirists who compare them to robots or playback machines. They pick their issues, gather support for those issues amongst their leadership and orchestrate consistent narratives around those issues. They are laser focused on what they have chosen as their primary issues.
The Left, by contrast, seems to have no end of issues they care about. This leaves them with many leaders of various causes attempting to rally support for a wide-ranging myriad of issues – from climate change to rainforest protection, from human rights to poverty prevention, from campaign reform to closing tax loopholes. As a result, the Left’s agenda is scattered and diffused, sometimes confusing to those who observe the clear focus of the Right.
Is this a matter of strategy then? Or is it culture? Perhaps it is both.
From a strategy perspective, the Left and Right certainly employ very different means to bring about the change they are seeking. From an effectiveness point-of-view, the Right seems better at getting their issues on the table, presenting a more united front and bringing them to the fore of the public narrative. There is significantly more alignment amongst their politicians on these issues, as if there’s been “a meeting of the minds” about each issue. Even the same catch phrases are used by their advocates.
How long has this distinction been obvious? My earliest memory of U.S. politics was watching the Republican Convention in 1952 when Eisenhower was nominated. Reagan was the first President in my memory to focus on just a few major issues and champion them consistently, rallying his constituency around those same views and issues. “Reaganomics” still lives loudly despite the thirty years that have passed since he took office. Some might say it live louder now than it did in the 1980s when he introduced Art Laffer’s version of supply-side economics.
Not only was Reagan successful in implanting this economic philosophy into Americana, it has become embedded in the Right’s many arguments for lower taxes, smaller government and less regulation. This ideology manages to remain strong and compelling for many despite glaring evidence that tax cuts do not necessarily create jobs nor are they good for the economy at large. The Bush tax cuts, extended by the Obama Administration, and the present state of employment and the economy should be ample evidence that this cause–effect relationship is mythical. Nonetheless, the idea retains a fervent championing by the Right who have been successful in taking any increase in revenue or taxes off the table even in these times of historic budget crises.
So what does all this mean? For me, the lesson is that focus and unification on a few key issues gains public support more effectively than trying to promote many issues no matter how compelling they may be. The latter engenders “cause fatigue” where people feel somewhat overwhelmed by so many issues they should care about.
What does all this mean to you? Let me hear from any of you with thoughts to share, comments to make. Whether Liberal or Conservative, I welcome your responses. Even you cynics who may feel like reengaging, your comments are most welcome.
Next month is the officially launch month for my new book – The Great Growing Up: Being Responsible for Humanity’s Future. While my 14th book, this one feels like my magnum opus – “my baby” – but then I suppose every new book is like a newborn child to an author. I have certainly heard this before from experienced authors.
The Great Growing Up is about an urgent collective choice: to opt for responsible adulthood over the largely adolescent ways we have been relating to one another and our planet Earth. I have tried to demonstrate that it is not too late to create the future we all say we want for our children and our children's children--a future that is environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling and socially just. It is about a change of thinking that supports a paradigm shift-from adolescent self-centeredness to adult responsibility for all life forms.
I call for any readers who are willing to genuinely "grow up” to make this necessary choice. Ever-increasing numbers of individuals today are already seeking self-actualization, growing in consciousness, and willing to take on leadership roles in bringing about the first conscious evolution of our species. This represents a somewhat invisible global movement of historic proportions. The Great Growing Up invites anyone concerned with humanity's future to participate in this new thinking. The work of growing up is about a change of mind; we simply need to begin acting like mature adults.
The book has been blessed with much advance praise from many of my peers and mentors. In the near future I will have a website for the book, which will include these endorsements as well as a blog where I can exchange notes with readers. I shall look forward to connecting with many of you there.
You can advance purchase the book from Amazon.com as well as Barnes & Noble at substantial discounts.
The other day I got an email from a friend forwarding New York Times columnist Tom Freidman’s syndicated column in a local newspaper, the Press Democrat, published in Santa Rosa, just north of me in California. The title of the article was “Make way for America's radical center.”
This was the first time I had heard of Americans Elect which is “the first-ever open nominating process.” According to their website, “We're using the Internet to give every single voter—Democrat, Republican or independent—the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012. The people will choose the issues. The people will choose the candidates. And in a secure, online convention next June, the people will make history by putting their choice on the ballot in every state.”
Apparently, two out of three Americans say they would like another choice in our elections. According to Timothy Garton Ash in the UK’s The Guardian, “American politics have become so hopeless that I begin to be hopeful…. In a CNN poll, 77% of Americans say elected officials in Washington have behaved like ‘spoiled children’ in the crisis over the debt ceiling; 84% disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job.” In what seemed to be an appropriate follow-on from last month’s blog subject of my Third Thursday conference calls, here’s what I discovered.
Apparently motivated by the shameful game of “chicken” that was played out in Washington in the last days of July and early August, Freidman admits to signing a pledge, as I have done since reading his column. He writes about “a viable, centrist, third presidential ticket” that will be elected by an Internet convention and will emerge next year. He writes, “I know it sounds gimmicky — an Internet convention — but an impressive group of frustrated Democrats, Republicans and Independents, called Americans Elect, is really serious, and they have thought out this process well.” As of this writing, over 1.7 million of us have signed this pledge.
In late July, Americans Elect reported they were “submitting a record 1.6 million signatures to gain access to the Californian ballot in 2012….this is the largest number of signatures ever collected in California for any one initiative. More importantly, the signatures were gathered in all 58 counties, making this a truly state-wide effort.”
As Freidman writes, this initiative may “take a presidential nominating process now monopolized by the Republican and Democratic parties, which are beholden to their special interests, and blow it wide open — guaranteeing that a credible third choice, nominated independently, will not only be on the ballot in every state but be able to take part in every presidential debate and challenge both parties from the middle…”
This initiative is not quite new governing system we have envisioned in the Third Thursday phone calls, but it does offer some hope that the old system might be salvageable. If so, our political leaders could be liberated from special interests and extreme ideas – radical left or right.
Last Summer, I started hosting a special conference call each month in conjunction with the Heartland Network, a social network hosted by the same people who host the Thought Leader Gatherings in Minnesota and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The intended purpose of this call was to explore with colleagues around the world how it would be to stop investing in the social institutions on which we depend for governance, regionally and internationally. By “investing” we mean the emotional capital and the high hopes we embrace for changes we may make, such as bringing in new leaders, funding dysfunctional systems, spending time in debate or conversing about better candidates and planning reforms.
Our existing institutions may have served us well in the past but it seems that their time may be over given how dysfunctional, in some cases, even harmful, they have become. If their time is over and the time has arrived for them to retire, let us treat them as we do our dying – hospice with respect and compassion – honoring their service. Simultaneously, let us midwife what wants to be born, the yet-to-be-revealed replacement organizations to serve our 21st Century globalized, diverse adult society.
Every third Thursday, unless I’m traveling, I host an open conference call to explore alternative systems and structures that might be more deserving of our energies - our hopes and our dreams for change which most of our existing institutions are squandering. The calls are open to anyone who wishes to engage in such an exploration. I ask people to email me at john@renesch.com to reserve a space. Once I know who will be on the call, I send prospective callers the call-in information. The calls take place for one hour, on the third Thursday of each month at 10 AM Pacific time.
Here’s an interview I did with a local cable show on this subject:
Those of us who are veterans of the human potential movement in the 1970s may well remember one of the popular mantras of the day urging us to “be willing to be totally responsible for creating our reality.” Remember that?
If I look around today and scan the horizon for who are amongst the most socially responsible people in the world, I’d be hard pressed to find anyone putting “more skin in the game” than the people who are risking their lives each day standing for democracy. These people – most notably those in the Middle East and North Africa - not only include those who are demonstrating in the squares and circles, marching peacefully against totalitarianism, and showing their faces to the cameras publicly, they also include the many ex-patriots who could afford to flee their countries who are now returning to their homelands to be part of this pro-democracy revolution. They know they are at risk doing what they are doing and they are doing it anyway. They are standing on their values and willing to risk their lives in their stand.
Who would have thought we could find so many models for the courage of responsibility we are seeing in our media today? People from Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan are serving as models for leadership from the rank and file.
Map of Northern Africa and Middle East: Revolutions Civil war Sustained civil disorder and governmental changes Protests and governmental changesMajor protestsMinor protests Map source: Wikipedia
The paradigm of leadership is changing. We are shifting from a paradigm of a leader in an elevated position of authority with a following, a parental model you might say, to an emerging paradigm of universal responsibility – we are all responsible! Stated more poetically perhaps – It is time to stop looking for leaders “out there” and start looking leadership within ourselves. Said another way, it is time to stop looking outside and start looking inside.
This is the revolution we wrote and talked about years ago – no charismatic leaders, no Churchill’s or Roosevelt’s leading the charge. Just ordinary people willing to say, “No – that’s enough. We aren’t going to take this anymore.”
The Arab Spring is a collective stand by our fellow brothers and sisters putting their lives on the line, reminiscent of a collective stand taken over 230 years ago here in North America.
The founders of these United States of America were willing to pay a price to stand for freedom and liberty in the 1776 version of a pro–democracy movement. It might be worth a brief review of what it cost them to fully appreciate what risk really means. This summary is courtesy of Rush Limbaugh (you can read his entire essay – “The Americans Who Lost Everything” here):
Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were, at one time or another, the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.
Now that’s putting your butt on the line. That’s putting your money where your mouth is. That’s putting skin in the game!
[Excerpted from Chapter One (“The New Great Dream”) of John’s forthcoming book, The Great Growing Up: Being Responsible for Humanity’s Future]
Some years back, before voicemail, a friend of mine recorded a memorable message on his answering machine. As I recall, it went something like this: “Hi, this is Gary. At the sound of the beep please tell me who you are and what you want. If you think these are trivial questions, be reminded most of us have been trying to figure this out all our lives.”
These kinds of questions have been the focus of philosophers, mystics, clergy and teachers of all varieties. Anyone who has embarked upon some level of self examination, personal development, vision quest, or other inner exploration has most likely ventured into this inquiry as well.
When Apollo 15 astronaut Dave Smith stepped onto the moon in 1971 and proclaimed, “…there’s a fundamental truth to our nature; man must explore,” he was affirming a deep-seated need of human beings. Once we have satisfied our basicl needs like food, sex, shelter, relationship and safety, we human beings are compelled to explore the unknown. We have wondered about everything, searched the Earth, are still exploring space (the macro) and the world of subatomic particles (the micro). Wherever there is a frontier, a horizon beyond which we cannot see, humans need to check it out. Indeed, we must explore!
We have made huge technological advances in recent years. We have gained vast wisdom from sages throughout the ages. Yet some of us wonder why we haven’t achieved the peaceful and secure existence here on Earth that we claim to want. Who are we and what do we really want?
In the past century we have seen breakthroughs of all kinds that allow us to create the kind of world we want for ourselves. So it isn’t a matter of the conditions being right. We have the wherewithal.
The cynic’s cry, “It will always be the way it has been.” This a disillusioned perspective, resigned to the present reality being as good as it gets. This is hardly the song of an adventurous human eager to explore the unknown, setting out on the quest for what lies over the horizon. The cynic has lost the spirit of adventure, spirit of exploration and, perhaps, the spirit of being human.
Let us re-engage that inner explorer in us and leave space to NASA and other outer space experts. Let us leave the oceans to the people already engaged in those explorations and leave the study of subatomic particles to the world’s scientists. With all these people and organizations fully engaged in their adventures into these uncharted territories, there are still at least five billion of us who could start exploring who we are and what we want.
We have everything we need to pull it off. The first step is to choose. We must decide that the promise of humanity is important enough to stand for it . . . and stand tall for it with all our might. Then we may get closer to answering the question of who we are and start acting more consistently with what we want.
The title of this blog series is “Exploring the Better Future.” In this post I would like to explore why people fail to do what we know would be best for all of us.
Each of us is completely unique. Even twins are different. So why do we try so hard to be the same as everyone else and conform to some standard we made up?
We yearn for love and companionship yet hold ourselves back when it comes to expressing our affections and emotions with people we care about.
So many of us complain, publicly or inwardly, about the very same things we enable and empower through our silence or apathy.
We say we want relief from the hectic, stress-filled lifestyle yet we are quick to fill in each empty moment with something, maintaining the very busy-ness we claim to detest.
Many of us say we want community, yet we avoid contact with people as they walk by or avoid talking to anyone we don’t know. We choose to communicate through technology rather than in-person.
We claim to want people to be authentic and real yet do our part in protecting our sacred images of ourselves, withholding our vulnerabilities and private secrets.
Look at all the ways we say one thing yet do another, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unconsciously. This is co-opting ourselves, forcing ourselves into lives of wheel-spinning double-mindedness and energy-sapping inner-conflictedness.
Why do we do this? Are we so afraid of being who we are, so afraid of living the lives we say we want to live?
Could it be we trust more in our mind and all its manufactured opinions and beliefs than we do in our heartfelt values and deeper yearnings? Could it be we have allowed our minds, our egoistic “thought machines,” to become the slave masters of our lives while subjugating our hearts to the prisoner life of unrequited happiness?
How about breaking the chains we have placed on our own hearts and demoting our minds from master to servant? How do we do that? It just might be a time to turn things over to a Higher Power, a power greater than ourselves - call it Nature, Providence (as the founders of the U.S. did), or God, however we might imagine that God to be.
And it always helps to get unreasonable. My favorite quote in this regard comes from George Bernard Shaw, adapted to modern language: “The reasonable person adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable person.”
Watching the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tahrir Square in Cairo several weeks back followed by the storming of the Wisconsin state capitol building by crowds upset over the prospects of being disenfranchised here in the U.S., I wondered when there might be pro-democracy demonstrations popping up all over the United States. After all, one of the major factors of the leaderless demonstrations in the Arab world is the oppressive economic disparities between rich and poor. As can be seen from the graph below, the gap between the richest one percent of Americans and the rest of us continues to widen. Eventually this gap will reach a breaking point. No society can sustain this rising disparity before the other 99% figures out the system is rigged against them.
John Perkins, former “economic hit man” who has inside experience of the power of corporate appetites, calls this result “corporatocracy.” Wikipedia defines corporatocracy, in part, as a governing system where “corporations, to a significant extent ‘own’ or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies, etc).”
In many respects, corporatocracy causes this growing disparity. By its nature it continues to drive economic wealth to the rich while leaving the lower and middle classes pretty much stagnated. This becomes especially notable when you adjust for inflation. Some argue that 99% of us are actually worse off now, in terms of spendable income, than we were thirty years ago!
As I was drafting this article, “60 Minutes” featured a shocking story which included, in part: American families have been falling out of the middle class in record numbers….One of the consequences of the recession that you don't hear a lot about is the record number of children descending into poverty….it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. (see entire report here)
Here’s a TED talk by Wael Ghonim, which was recorded last month at TED 2011. Ghonim is the Google executive who helped jumpstart Egypt's democratic revolution. He tells the inside story of everyday Egyptians showing that "the power of the people is stronger than the people in power." When enough people get fed up enough being victims of unfairness they will stand up for themselves. Remember the parable of the boiled frog? Like the slowly-boiled frog we can get sleepy, then become unconscious and eventually die if the process is slow and gradual enough. The temperature rises so gradually that we acclimatize to the heat without triggering our life-threatening -danger responses. The disappearing middle class and the lower classes have been lulled into near-oblivion over the past thirty years as the gap continues to widen between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert opined a few days ago, “There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles. Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush. As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.” [For the full column click here.]
Where is that tipping point for organizing our own Tahrir Square vigil? Like the people in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain who have been willing to risk their lives for liberty, perhaps Americans can emulate what the protestors in Cairo bravely declared on television, “This isn’t fair!” and “We want our country back.”
Fortunately we are not frogs. We possess consciousness which, when awakened, allows us to make dramatic changes in our responses to situations. A dear friend recently reminded me of a pertinent quote to share here. It comes from Scottish psychiatrist, Ronald Laing: "The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change, until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."
In her book The Watchman’s Rattle*, Rebecca Costa writes about what she calls “supermemes” that drive our culture. She identifies the third of these supermemes as “counterfeit correlation,” explaining that we have begun to substitute correlation for causation. We have started leaping to conclusions in the sea of complexity of our daily lives and giving false cause to matters we are unable to explain rationally. In addressing correlation she gives the following example:
The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. It is obvious that speaking English is what kills you!
Costa uses this ridiculous example to masterfully demonstrate how complexity has caused us to lower our standards for proof. She writes, “Casually observing a relationship – any relationship - between two events is magnitudes easier than the grueling effort required to prove one thing actually causes another to occur.” She goes on to say that as the world grows more complex and it becomes more difficult to resolve the true causes of our problems, lowering our standards is a “natural response.”
I’m reminded of Einstein’s warning from a half century ago - that we cannot solve our problems with the same consciousness with which we created them. We need to be more aware that we can shift our consciousness, become more aware, and look at things from a different frame of reference. Our simplistic thinking will continue to yield the kinds of adaptive behaviors we are seeing - tragic attempts to explain what we don’t know, to substitute beliefs for facts.
When you consider that the two telltale signs of a pending civilization collapse are gridlock and substituting beliefs for facts – Costa’s major point in the book – it appears we are well on our way toward that predictable end. What will change things? Heeding Einstein’s warning and shifting our consciousness will enable us to transcend the puzzling complexities that currently confound us. Not only will this avoid collapse but it could give birth to a world that works for everyone.
*The Watchman’s Rattle, Rebecca D. Costa, Vanguard Press, 2010
There’s a parable told in various versions that goes something like this: A Native American elder describes his own inner struggles to a young boy. He says, “There are two dogs inside me. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean and evil dog constantly fights the good dog.” The boy then asks him which dog usually wins. He answers, “The one I feed the most.”
Like the beautiful photograph below which I can hold either right side up or upside down, I can put my attention on the good thoughts or the bad, the positive or the negative. It is my choice.
I have found this simple parable incredibly valuable as I work to maintain a positive attitude for the future, not only my own but the future of humanity. While a bit of a maverick, I do call myself a futurist and have written and spoken about the future for many years. The future of humanity is probably not at the forefront of most people’s consciousness but, since it is the focus of my work, it almost always is mine.
While I occasionally get a bit down or despairing about the future of humankind - and the trends can be pretty discouraging - I consider this an occupational hazard. These times are when I must focus on the “good dog” inside me and look for the positive that is bringing us to a tipping point – not to a worse future but to a better one.
Another battle that goes on within me sometimes is whether to repair or transform existing systems and institutions or to move on and consider what new structures would better serve the conscious evolution of our species. We often make dysfunctional institutions stronger and more resistant by trying to change them. Putting our energies into those efforts may be counterproductive. In other words, there frequently comes a point when the more we try to improve them the worse they get! What a downer to contemplate!
One of my heroes is R. Buckminster (“Bucky”) Fuller who writes, “You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
By feeding the “good dog” inside me I am able to focus more on the positive vision I have for our future – what I stand FOR – rather than focusing on all the negativity confronting us and being AGAINST that.
"Our ordinary waking consciousness....is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness." - William James
It occurred to me the other day while I was in a discussion about consciousness that people mean different things when they use this word. In a spiritual discussion, people usually mean the degree someone is aware of their interconnection to the cosmos, God, and humanity. What about professional athletes who are totally in tune with their bodies, possessing extraordinary awareness of their physical presence? Or the person who possesses exceptional psychic abilities but is rather amoral when it comes to ethics?
How can we consider someone truly conscious when they may have exceptional awareness about one aspect of life – say in the spiritual domain – but are almost devoid of consciousness when it comes to some other part of their life, say their physical health? How do we rate someone’s consciousness when they possess uncanny awareness and presence in the domain of nature, for example, but are completely oblivious of any relationship beyond the material/physical plane?
Since we are all human and each of us possesses different strengths and weaknesses, or different degrees of awareness in different areas of our lives, how do we assess consciousness of the whole person?
I have been writing about conscious leadership for a decade or more now. My work has been focused on observing the consciousness of leaders – their skills and awareness, their mastery of their actions as well as their dominion of ethics, their commitment to responsibility for the whole and their continuous willingness to question their assumptions and choices. But is the conscious leader who has mastered one domain still regarded as conscious in the many other domains of his or her life?
We have all heard of highly-evolved spiritual teachers who have scandalized sex lives or other behaviors unbefitting a conscious icon in our society.
Is one’s consciousness a cumulative assessment of the various facets of one’s life?
I would enjoy hearing from anyone out there in the blogosphere on this subject.
Did you ever hear yourself say something you didn’t even know you knew much less ever thought about? If you have, you know the feeling of surprise and wonder…like who just said that? Was that me talking? This is why so much wisdom flows out of dialogue with one another. The exchanges are spontaneous and we often don’t have time to get ensnared in our minds. Our intuition just comes through uncensored.
Well, the other day, in such a dialogue with one of my spiritual communities, we were in conversation about service. Some read quotes about service. Others read poetry. I found myself saying that as we mature as people we are less and less motivated by survival fears and more and more motivated by wanting to be of service to others….we morph from survival focus to service focus. Sometimes this journey is slow and gradual. Sometimes it is quite sudden. It depends upon the rate we are maturing.
Not only was I surprised but a silence filled the room for several seconds. Then one of our group asked me to say more.
Now my mind got into the act and I’m sure I was less precise and concise as I tried to “explain” what I said. I liked the uncensored contribution to the dialogue better than my subsequent explanation.
We see this phenomenon is our aging society, whereby people are more apt to volunteer and do other service work when they are part of the growing older community. They have dropped the insecurities of youth and the façade that adolescent minds tend to take on. Pretense has gone out the window for many seniors who have become much more comfortable in their skin that when they were younger.
Another bit of wisdom that seems to come with age is the value of real meaning. The more people chase material possessions and stuff the more they realize the gratification is only skin deep and doesn’t sustain. They learn that true meaning comes by serving others without condition, getting out of themselves.
So if this happens for many people as they get older and some get more mature - and I’m clear these are two distinct qualities - then why couldn’t a society do the same? Why couldn’t the species known as human make this transition and grow up into an adult society? What a concept?
Many of my consultant friends have backgrounds in corporate life. Like the canaries of old, many of them found a different kind of toxicity and decided to leave the corporate world and focus on trying to influence corporate clients into becoming healthier places to work - less dysfunctional and more conscious. Many of these consultants left the corporate world to specialize in organizational design or development. Many focus on large scale change, often called transformational or breakthrough.
While coal miners might have been gasping for air as they emerged from the mines, forewarned by the canaries, these consultants emerged from the corporate innards gasping for something different – something less tangible than fresh air. Perhaps we could call it fresh air for the soul. In the absence of canaries these people were more sensitive than the majority and could detect toxicity of a different kind – perhaps a spiritual toxicity.
Nearly all the consultants I know have big hearts and want to make a positive difference in the world. Having had an experience that was less than optimal, they have chosen careers of service in making the work experience something more fulfilling, joyous and fun. God bless them all!
Last month I was asked by a noted Australian futurist to preview his new book and write a pre-publication review of it. I agreed and started perusing his manuscript. Soon after I started reading I came across a reference to Australian author and public intellectual Clive Hamilton who “notes that political leaders ‘tend to be those who have internalised the goals of the system most faithfully.’ As a result they are among ‘the most immune to arguments and evidence that might challenge it.’”
This is one of the most concise descriptions of why it is so hard to create meaningful and lasting change in systems. And the more emotionally people are vested in the system, the more loyal they are, the more difficult it is to get anything to happen.
When one strongly identifies with their role in the system – when who they think they are is confused with their position in the system – they can be “immune to arguments and evidence that might challenge it.”
Political leaders are one example. Clergy are another. Educators are yet another example and the list could go on and on. But let’s stick with politics since this was the subject of Hamilton’s reference that caught my attention.
What are the “goals of the system” that politicians have internalized most faithfully? While we would all like their primary goal to be “to serve the public interest” we know that from the politician’s point-of-view the goals also include getting reelected (which includes campaign funding and serving the special interest of one’s constituency) and increasing influence (which includes committee seats, chairing committees, seniority, authoring bills, etc.). But, perhaps the most insidious of all the goals is the one that is implicit in any system in which one is invested - to maintain the status quo and resist all attempts to change it.
Gridlock in Washington and elsewhere is common. Never have so many spent so much to get so little done. In business, this would never do; enterprises displaying such abysmal performance would be declared insolvent and put out of their misery. The system is broken. And it appears unfixable. It may require a new system to be created instead of wasting more time or money, or investing more hopes and dreams in trying to fix the existing one.
As visionary inventor Buckminster Fuller once wrote: “You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
***
On the third Thursday each month until further notice, I am hosting a conference call to explore how we might create alternative systems to the dysfunctional and outmoded ones we now endure. The one-hour call takes place at 10 AM Pacific time. If you would like to join one or more of these calls, RSVP to me at john@renesch.com and let me know you’d like to be on the call. I will then send you the call in information.
How many times have you sat around talking with friends, family or co-workers and wondered about how great it would be if the world was different? We all do it to some degree or other. This wondering could be in the form of rhetorical questions like “Why do we have to have wars and kill one another?” or “How can we claim to be so civilized yet do such uncivilized things to each other?” or in the famous words of Rodney King, “Why can’t we all get along?”
Let me propose some other queries I hear in my travels:
• Wouldn’t it be great if we would trust one another? • Wouldn’t it be great if everyone would have enough to eat so they don’t have to die of malnutrition? • Wouldn’t it be great if we stopped hating one another? • Wouldn’t it be great if we all told the truth to each other? • Wouldn’t it be great if we all felt free to say what we would like to say?\ • Wouldn’t it be great if every human being was valued equally?
Why do these common “wonderings” remain merely ideological? Why are we satisfied having them as “thought candy’ rather than moving into action to make them happen in the world? Why are we content to talk these values but not walk them?
There’s a Christian hymn that concludes “Let it begin with me.” This is the only place we humans can begin to bring about the values we all claim to hold dear: ourselves. Starting with our daily actions, our words, our silences, our abstentions, our routine habits, our addictions, our consciousness, our consciences, our fears, our personas, our unexpressed emotions, our rhetoric and our own pompousness. “Our” means yours and mine.
Let’s stop wondering “wouldn’t it be great if” and start walking our talk before the world gets so insane it becomes the defacto asylum.
In the midst of widespread institutional ineptitude, I can’t help but wonder why we keep insisting on creating organizations that so easily and readily encourage dysfunction, that beget cultures that are riddled with all our social pathologies. These top-down, hierarchical structures, modeled after the military in most cases, grow so large they get “too big to fail” and require society – their primary customer – to bail them out.
There’s no such thing as too big to fail in nature – just ask the dinosaurs!
Why don’t we form organizations that resemble nature more than the military, where pockets of enterprise can grow separately like fractals, or branches on a tree.
When VISA was originally founded it was designed to be a different kind of organization, what the founder called a “chaordic organization.” It has since caved into convention and now is publicly-held/traded like most multinational corporations having forgone its original unique member network structure.
There is a movement to make corporations more democratic, conscious, transparent and agile, but the underlying structures are still rigid frameworks that more closely resemble high-rise buildings rather than forests.
In my wondering I looked for organizations that seemed to work more organically, like nature. Social movements have this nature-like quality, whereby people in different parts of society, even different parts of the world, develop a field of interest without hierarchy, patents, licensing or other market accessories. Often they are steeped in more of a gift economy than a market one with people freely giving of themselves to the cause. The civil rights movement in the 1960s, the women’s movement that followed, and the present day green movement are examples of social organisms that grows wherever they find passion to feed them.
Extremists with darker motives also organize themselves this way. The Mafiosi, drug cartels, Al Qaeda, para-military and skin-head groups all thrive without massive structures or conspicuous physical presence. They have strong social and organizational codes and often very negative consequences for going against those codes. They not only thrive in multiple cultures they defy the best attempts by the conventional organizations to curtail their antisocial activities. In other words, they grow more like fractals, cell by cell, without the hindrances of conventional structures.
Is it time for conventional structures from the past to give way to new forms for governance, leadership and other social commons matters? Is it time for us to bid farewell to the hierarchical boxes over boxes organizational structure we’ve grown so used to and start imagining something more befitting of the times we live in now, not the times of our ancestors?
As some of you know I am hosting telephone / Skype conference calls to explore alternative structures for the institutions we rely on for governance and leadership on the second Thursday each month, 10 AM California time. If you are interested in joining an upcoming call email me at john@renesch.com and I’ll send you the call in info.
The thoughts this post may have stimulated would be welcome there also.
One of the joys of growing older is perspective, or perhaps it has more to do with growing consciousness. Regardless, I am moved to share a perspective on “conscious capitalism,” a phrase I coined in the early 1990s when I was Editor-in-Chief of New Leaders Press. This was to be the title of a book to be edited by Willis Harman and Joel Kurtzman. Harman, then President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, was my colleague and friend. Kurtzman was then Business Editor for The New York Times, soon to become editor of Harvard Business Review.
The nascent book was to be a collection of essays published as an anthology by various thinkers on the potential of our economic system if we made it more conscious, sustainable and less destructive. Kurtzman had recently published The Death of Money, a sobering reminder of how fragile and dysfunctional we have allowed our economic system to become. For several reasons the book was never fully developed nor published in any form by New Leaders Press, but I loved the title.
A few years later, 1998 as I recall, a colleague, financial advisor and would-have-been contributor to the New Leaders Press anthology, David Schwerin, published a book of the same name. Amongst other things, the book provided David a huge opportunity to make several trips to China where his ideas were eagerly embraced.
Around 2006, my friend Patricia Aburdene published Megatrends 2010 in which she identified the birth of conscious capitalism as one of the trends. She even used the phrase in the book’s subtitle - The Rise of Conscious Capitalism.
My most recent encounter with the phrase was just a year or so ago. Whole Foods founder John Mackey started using the phrase in his writings which gave rise to the 2009 founding of the Conscious Capitalism Institute.
Now no doubt there are many other applications of the phrase but these all were close to me, or in some way touched me. since I’ve had a “crush” on the concept for almost twenty years now. Other writers may know what that means – to be enamored of a word or phrase –even to the point of thinking it’s your baby. There’s nothing quite as ego-busting as hearing your word or phrase used elsewhere and thinking “they can’t do that, that’s MY word!”
Because I was involved in book publishing I am aware that titles cannot be copyrighted but my experience is that most people don’t know this. It seems counter-cultural to them in this era of patents and trademarks and branding. For me, it is a lesson in attachment in the Buddhist sense and, once recognized, an opportunity to let go of any emotional, mental or imagined claim of ownership
The funny thing is that someone probably used it long before I did. That’s the beauty of words. They defy ownership, and are free to land in the hearts and minds of anyone anytime.
A few months ago, I started a discussion at the Heartland Circle social network community suggesting we recognize that existing structures on which we have depended for governance and leadership have become dysfunctional and impotent, often becoming barriers to the very values they were created to champion. While many recognize this reality, we continue to pour our hopes and dreams into these calcified dinosaurs while expecting them to suddenly and responsibly respond. Stated another way, we keep doing the same things we’ve always done expecting different results. Does that sound familiar?
Not only are our institutions not responding (the green summit in Copenhagen, politicians in Sacramento, response to Katrina, gridlock in Washington, etc.) they are heading down a path of further dysfunctionality (U.S. Supreme Court decision on corporations, losing the War on Drugs, a lasting Middle East peace, etc.). Yet we seemingly have no choices other than our existing institutions.
We send competent, well-intended and good-hearted people into these hurricanes of dysfunction and watch them spit out by the system, chewed beyond recognition and often appearing to have been capitulated or compromised by the very system they were bent on changing. We send money and add our legitimacy giving these dysfunctional systems even more power despite their inability to break the gridlocks of their own muscularity, like weightlifters who cannot tie their own shoe laces. But worst of all, we waste our hopes and dreams on these broken systems.
The discussion started with declaring these institutions, the ones on whom we depend for leadership and governance as a society – locally, nationally and globally - outmoded, defunct, obsolete and illegitimate. Very revolutionary, you say? How can we begin imagining a responsive system, how can we even begin thinking about creating a fully-functional, responsible system of governance and leadership for our times, unless we park the existing archaic systems on the sidelines?
Having done this FIRST, we can now start imagining systems that are responsive to the needs of NOW. Once we begin we might want to borrow useful parts from the old systems, still parked on the sidelines. Parts may be salvageable. They deserve compassionate engagement for they have brought us thus far. But their time has past and we need to move on. This is where a hospice-like attitude is warranted.
Here some people get really nervous, for this is all new to us. We are creating anew, and new words may be needed, new reasoning will be needed, new structures will be needed. As the metaphor I’m used to using goes: we would be building the ship while still at sea. This is the “frothy field” of creation, not reformation, not even transformation. It is frothy in that it is unclear exactly what it will look like, a bit scary perhaps but also exciting.
With this frothy attitude, we can stop legitimizing the old (as in dysfunctional, archaic, outmoded, impotent and calcified) and start co-creating the new. This step requires an approach similar to mid-wifery; even though we aren’t sure exactly how to do it or what it will look like, we have faith that something meaningful will emerge. As Josh Groban sings in “Let Me Fly,”……”let me fall, let me fall…and let the ME I am becoming catch me.”
Terry Chapman sent me the picture below, after being on one of our Heartland calls. It was taken in Honduras shortly after Hurricane Mitch came through and ravaged the region. Thousands died and the economy was destroyed. And as you can see, when the flood waters receded, the river had moved! What was left behind was this bridge. It had survived the flooding but was now useless because it led to nowhere! This incredible visual can be compared to today’s institutions. Society has moved and our institutions aren’t very useful anymore!
When we engage in a conversation about creating new structures more appropriate to our times, a person who is very attached to the status quo might interpret it as revolution, even treason. Those who are benefiting from the dysfunction – the bureaucrats, politicians, pundits and wonks, some media and others – may feel threatened and start acting defensively or even nastily. Existing laws, which grew out of the existing systems, may have to be bent or even broken if new systems are to be created.
Those who engage in bringing forth a new system of institutions, a new paradigm, may be seen as traitors much like the early American colonists were seen by the British in the early 1770s. Similarly, being a “traitor” to the old system could mean being a “patriot” in the new.
An example right here in my part of the world is the building of a new bridge on the Oakland side of the the San Francisco Bay Bridge, totally bypassing the older structure which failed during the 1989 earthquake. The old is being bypassed and will ultimately be demolished once the new span is complete. The old section served the Bay Area well since the mid-1930s but it is time for it to be replaced, not further repaired or modified. We can do this with our institutions too. They served us well for a while but it is time for them to go now.
Watch a 60 Minutes video. To view the process of replacing the Eastern portion of the Bay Bridge click here.
[NOTE: For the next several months, I am hosting monthly conference calls exploring this process. If you are interested in joining the call send me an email at john@renesch.com]
[This article is adapted from a similar one published by The Bay Area Organizational Design Network in a 2007 issue of Practicing OD]
Having written about organizational dysfunction for over twenty years now, I am often asked about what I would propose as a model for greater system functionality or healthier, more functional organizations. To date my answer has been what I call “the conscious organization” – my label for an organization whose culture invites investigation and intervention whenever any dysfunctional behavior starts to surface. This is in stark contrast to the bureaucratic organization which develops a high tolerance for dysfunctional behavior and practices such as fusion, denial, co-dependence and gossip – all behaviors that distract from and impede full functionality and efficacy.
Admittedly conceptual, much like “learning organizations” were in the late 1980s before they came into vogue, the Conscious Organization hasn’t yet been tried, at least not to my knowledge. That doesn’t mean it isn’t practical, only that we don’t yet have a “poster child” organization to serve as a model or example.
However, there is an existing organization that possesses uniquely high functionality and many other characteristics deemed desirable by organizational theorists and practitioners alike. It has been tried. In fact, it has been around since the mid-1930s. It has passed the test of market fluctuations and economic cycles over seven decades. Started in the U.S. and now operating all over the world, it transcends cultural differences and plays well globally.
When it comes to results, this organization is remarkably successful. Since its beginnings it has consistently achieved its mission while remaining true to its purpose. Millions of people all over the world have had their lives enhanced by this organization yet only a small staff provides administrative support.
Additionally, this organization has practiced participative management since its founding, long before it became fashionable. Whenever there is some question about how to proceed or, in the rare occurrences when some disagreement occurs, decisions are made democratically, much like the dynamics described in the book The Wisdom of Crowds. People in charge in this organization rotate every six months so no one ever gets into a position of great power. There is no hierarchy or politics.
Its operating principles and formulas are publicly displayed so it is transparent in dealings with customers and workers. It practiced “open architecture” long before the phrase became popular in the high tech industry.
No investment capital was raised by venture capitalists or investment bankers to start or maintain this organization, despite the fact that one of the co-founders was a New York stock broker. No monies needed to be borrowed at the start-up or in the decades since to finance this organization. No public subsidies have ever been sought or required so there is no need for lobbying or seeking special treatment.
The organization does not seek out customers or promote itself but responds immediately when approached by people who need and want the products and services being offered. As a result, no advertising or promotion is needed to “convince” people to become customers. No marketplace or consumer “demand” needs to be created. Growth is based on the principle of attraction. Word of mouth is solely responsible for new customers.
At its core is a non-religious spirituality that engenders service and community, making it sustainable, fulfilling and socially just as well. Another core principle of the organization is relationship. It was started by two people in partnership and mentoring is widely encouraged in its community. Shared experience among its customers is vital to maintaining its vitality and functionality.
Sound too good to be true?
You might wonder: What is this organization? Where is it? Why haven’t I read about this before?
Well, chances are you have heard about it but, like most of us, you weren’t thinking of it as a model for a fully-functioning organization. No advertising. No capitalization. No debt or subsidies. No management hierarchy. Yet millions of people, all over the world, benefit from this organization and are extremely grateful for its existence. This organization is not hiding. It is in plain view all over the world!
Here’s a hint if you haven’t skipped ahead: the terms used by this organization to describe its non-religious relationship with Spirit are “a power greater than ourselves” and “Higher Power.” Now, do you recognize it? That’s right. The organization is Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in 1935 by two drunks, “Bill W.” and “Doctor Bob” a stock broker and a physician. It is estimated that there are currently more than 100,000 A.A. groups and over 2,000,000 members in 150 countries. That’s a lot of branches and many, many customers! In addition, there are tens of millions of other people who have benefited in the past but may not be currently participating in A.A. How about “customer satisfaction”? Ask any sober alcoholic and the odds are that he or she is profoundly grateful to A.A.
There are untold tens of millions of family members who have benefited from the services provided for their loved ones over the past seventy years and many more who’ve benefited from the spin-off 12 Step groups, such as Narcotics Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous and a couple of hundred others that have been remarkably successful thanks to their parent organization. What is affectionately known as the “big book” to millions of people around the world, Alcoholic Anonymous, has sold over 25 million copies so far!
And what of overhead? you might ask. Since the dynamics of A.A. is so focused on service and relationships, most of the effort is donated by its members who freely give their time and energies out of gratitude for their recovery. There are no highly-paid senior executives or large bureaucracies. Therefore only a minimum of paid employees is required. In the U.S., for instance, the General Service Office only employs 85 people who coordinate services and publish books and pamphlets for millions of members!
Not only is there no hierarchy or power pyramid, people maintain anonymity so there’s little room for egoism or hubris. People who come into the program voluntarily contribute a dollar or two each time and the local secretary-chair, a volunteer, rotates regularly so no one ever acquires any power over the groups. Its “corporate charter” can be found in the “12 Steps” and the “12 Traditions,” which have stood the test of time with little if any modification since they were first drafted.
What if more of our organizations were founded on such a brilliant platform of self-reliance, service, community and non-religious spirituality? Most likely it would not be practical to apply all aspects of the A.A. model but think about what a difference it would make if even some aspects were used in designing or transforming otherwise less-than-fully-functional organizations. For instance, A.A.’s Sixth Tradition states in part that they will “never endorse, finance or lend our name to any outside enterprise.” This is because it could cause problems and divert A.A. from its primary purpose. Can you imagine how much heartache could be avoided if corporations “stuck with their knitting” and stopped merging and acquiring? Besides the pain M&A activity causes, eighty percent of them fail and make money only for the deal-makers! Everyone else loses.
What if our corporations possessed the same innate respect for non-religious spirituality and were as life-affirming instead of life-draining? What if they were content to offer only services and products that were truly wanted and needed? What if they were committed to serving the long-term future of all humankind and accepted fair profits instead of short-term profit maximization at the expense of people and the environment? What if places of worship focused more on supporting their members having a direct relationship with God, as A.A. does, instead of being so literal and rigid in their interpretations of doctrine or dogma?
What if more of our public institutions could be like A.A. in their approach to unselfish service and fostering community. Imagine our society’s organizations placing “principles before personalities” such as stated in A.A.’s Twelfth Tradition or the “common welfare should come first” as included in the First Tradition?
What a difference life and work would be if society’s organizations adopted some of these principles!
In my newsletter last month I mentioned the forthcoming launch of the FourYears.Go initiative where I have been spending a fair amount of time lately. Since late January, I have been hosting introductory conference calls as well as reaching out to organizations I know and inviting them to join us. In mid-March the launch finally happened and, with the website up and rich with information, the questions are getting fewer while the number of people learning about the initiative is growing exponentially.
The initiative adds urgency to the need to turn the tide of the various crises facing us (climate change, social justice, shortages of clean water, fish and other species declines, institutional gridlock, dialogical polarities, the ever widening between rich and poor, etc.) by setting February 14, 2014 as the deadline for this turning to occur. If you haven’t yet heard of the initiative, here’s a video explaining what it is.
Our goal was to have 100 organizations on board as allies, endorsing the initiative and incorporating this deadline into their missions before we launched. At launch we had almost 500 allies on board.
Coincidentally, while I was hosting calls several days a week, I learned from another Fellow in the Global Collaborators’ Alliance that a three-day online public jam was to take place March 29-31th, hosted by the USAID, and that the FourYears.Go team could play a role in it. The public jam – one of those wide open online discussion forums - was the direct result of an initiative by the Obama administration to make the U.S. government more transparent and open to public input.
GlobalPulse2010 attracted over 15,000 logins from people in more than 150 countries over the three days, focusing on ten discussion threads on subjects of great concern to the entire world - not just the U.S. I had the privilege of facilitating one of the threads, “Inspiring a New Generation: Developing Global Citizens of the 21st Century” – which turned out to be the third most active during the three days. Here’s a radio interview of an USAID representative aired prior to the jam:http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=19&sid=1911173.
Coincidental to these two events over the past month, I received a copy of John Peterson’s 2008 book, A Vision for 2012: Planning for Extraordinary Change. He might as well have been writing this book for the FourYears.Go initiative. Peterson is a well-credentialed futurist who has held positions of responsibility at the White House, various Cabinet staff positions, and a stint as National Security advisor. His book is even endorsed by Newt Gingrich and a former CIA director. He writes:
"I believe we are entering one of those punctuation points in the evolution of our species that will rapidly propel us into an unimaginable new era. This new world won’t work at all like what we currently find familiar. Because this shift is so fundamental and acute, the most positive option will not make sense at all from this vantage so early in the transition. In the face of almost certain uncertainty, our job is to rise to the occasion, to evolve - in our thinking, our perspectives, and in our commitment to make this transition as positive as possible. We will probably become some kind new kind of human at the end of it all — it is that big and important."
I’ll close with an excerpt from the Earth Charter which Peterson reprinted in the backmatter of his book:
"As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning…..Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life."
As Peterson states, we can become “a new kind of human at the end of it all,” which makes significant that we emerge from this transition ready for this “unimaginable new era” that he writes about. This is also the theme of my forthcoming magnum opus, The New Human: Consciously Evolving to Civilization 3.0. I’d like to think we’re on the glide path to that transformation as a species but, like many shifts of such magnitude we could be in for one helluva ride before we arrive.
Last month on this blog I labeled the 2010s the “Oh Shit! Decade” - the ten year period in which growing numbers of people start to realize that the systems upon which we rely for our survival and lifestyles – those we have designed ourselves and those natural systems which we have been abusing for so many generations – are starting to fail. After generations of taking our natural resources and our institutions for granted, we are beginning to notice there are limits to how much strain Nature and our organizations can take.
The human species, particularly the modern industrialized version, has been slowly lulled into a stupor of unconsciousness concerning the environment. This stupor is, in part, the result of having achieved such technological prowess that attitudes of arrogance and superiority over Nature came easy. Such attitudes led to abuse of so many kinds that we may have irreversibly spoiled the system upon which we humans depend for life.
These same modern industrialized humans have also created organizational systems that are no longer capable of serving them, and people are beginning to notice this as well.
Over the years I have used the boiled frog parable frequently in my speeches, books and articles to demonstrate how humans have been lulled into a sense of entrancement. Do you recall the parable? If not, here is how it goes:
Drop a frog into a pan of hot water and it will almost certainly leap from the pan sensing the danger immediately. However, place the fog in a pan of tepid water and raise the temperature slowly and the frog gradually grows groggy and finally is boiled to death.
Recently I was talking with a colleague whilst working on a new initiative, FourYears.Go, to which we have both committed ourselves. Mark Dubois is an environmental activist working on the FourYears.Go initiative, a recently-launched coalition of many organizations dedicated to social justice and environmental sustainability. Mark was the international coordinator for Earth Day in 1990 and 2000, events that involved 200 million people from 184 countries. In our conversation, Mark and I agreed that there is an urgent need to confront and deal with the many crises facing humankind at this time. I was stressing the need for us humans to come out of our collective entrancement and engage these issues before they become irreversible, using the parable of the boiled frog. I shared that I had heard more people come to that “oh shit!” moment in recent weeks than ever before, to which Mark exclaimed spontaneously, “The frogs are waking up!”
I loved it! What a great metaphor for our work. What a great saying for a movement that’s been brewing for decades and could be about to become mainstream. All it takes is a few of us “frogs” to come out of our trances and rally those still dozing, arousing the sleepy masses so we don’t all begin the perpetual slumber. After all, unlike the frog in the parable, we can’t simply jump out of the pan. We either make it together or not at all.
