John Renesch: Exploring the Better Future

Modern Day Tyrants – Part One

[Both parts of this article - Part One and Part Two - have been adapted from an article titled “Who Are the Modern Day 'Tyrants'?" published in the June 2002 issue of John’s monthly newsletter]

Back in the middle ages, royalty was assumed to be either divine or very well-connected to the Gods in what has become known as the “Divine Right of Kings.” Kings and queens could do all sorts of nasty things and everyone excused it as “willed by the gods” or some such rationalization. This was the assumption everyone had grown up with. This assumption was passed on from one generation to the next, one century to the next, pretty much unchallenged. People went along with tyrannical behavior, social injustice, unfair application of the laws, and even tolerated absolute madness, assuming that this was the way it was supposed to be. No one questioned it. Then, one day, someone said – “hey, why are we going along with this?” (Thomas Paine and his crowd) and democracy was born.

 

             Thomas Paine

Once this long-held assumption was questioned and perceived as having no real validity in fact, the divinely-endowed rights and privileges associated with royalty started becoming things of the past.

Today, we have a new class of privilege, a new group of tyrants who only possess the rights they hold because the rest of us allow them to by granting them the same sense of legitimacy that our forefathers and foremothers granted their royalty. Similar injustices and inequities exist in the world because a new generation of tyrants is being allowed to run roughshod over the vast majority. A new “madness” is being condoned by the masses who don’t appear to be challenging the underlying assumption that this is “willed by the gods” and, thus, we think we have no power to change it.

Please notice that I did not say we don’t have the power to change it – only that we think we don’t. Also, let’s see how “tyrant” is defined before we get too far into this. The dictionary defines tyrants as people who are unrestrained by law, who usurp sovereignty and are harsh users of power and authority.

So where do most of these “new” tyrants hang out? Where are most of them concentrated? Where does the most power appear to lie in these days of very complex systems in a globalized world?

We tend to think that the real power resides with our national leaders – like heads of state. Fewer of us realize that the real power these days lies with money and the system in which it functions. Students of systems thinking know that answers to questions in complex problems are rarely obvious.

The economic system has the greatest impact on global society than any other system in the world. Let’s look at what players within the economic system are having the most negative influence. Who are the least restrained by law? Who are the harshest abusers of power? Who are the greatest usurpers of sovereignty?

Are they the Arab despots in the Middle East? The billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet or George Sorros? Hardly. They have too high a profile to dominate the system effectively. If you examined every group of people from the most disenfranchised people to the most opulently privileged, where would you find the ones who have the most negative global impact today?

The people who have most of the influence on the most influential system work behind the scenes, content to simply make scads of money while most of the public’s attention focuses on the faux leaders - like politicians, celebrity activists, CEOs of the large multinational corporations, major investors, religious leaders, and prominent academicians.  These modern day tyrants let the faux leaders get on the covers of the magazines and distract attention from them.

The tyrants of today are the people who are engaged in pure financial speculation, without having any loyalty to any person or any organization except making the most money in the shortest time. Traders are like casino gamblers, and their actions wouldn’t be particularly harmful if the winners reaped the rewards from knowledgeable players – where all parties know the rules of the game they are playing.

Today’s stock and option traders don’t add any value except to make themselves more money. They “bet” on upswings in the so-called “market” which resembles a lottery more every day. Companies that do nothing but speculate are out to make as much money as possible without ever really “investing” in anything. Growing numbers of day traders speculate on short-term price fluctuations rather than longer term appreciation. Arbitrages, margins, caps, puts and calls fill their vocabulary, punctuated with Daisy Chains, Double Tops and Bottoms and Day Orders.

[To be continued……Next month I will continue this line of inquiry]

Recognizing Our Uniqueness

In my latest book, The Great Growing Up, I write about holons and how everything and everyone is part of something larger and a whole for something smaller. In a seeming paradox, each holon is also unique. Even “identical twins” are not 100% identical.

I am presently reading Your Unique Self in which the author deftly addresses this parts/whole conundrum for us. Before I continue I want to be clear about one distinction: while our uniqueness is factual, saying we are each “special” arouses the egoic mind and can reactivate the separation paradigm that ranks me versus others, not as unique parts of a larger whole but as my being better or worse than you. Now back to Marc Gafni’s book.

In a section he calls “The Puzzle-Piece Teachings,” Gafni writes: "You are a puzzle-piece. If you try to round out the unique curves of your puzzle piece through meditation or any other spiritual oneness practice, the puzzle piece that is you will simply not fit into the divine oneness. The part fits into the whole through its unique part nature. You are not interchangeable with any other part. Only the puzzle piece that is your authentic Unique Self can seamlessly connect you to the divine one. Similarly, Unique Self is not absorbed in the whole. Unique Self is integrated into the whole, meaning that the part does not lose its integrity as it merges." 

Gafni makes one of the clearest distinctions about how our uniqueness is our gift – even our gift to God – so long as it is not confused with “the skin-encapsulated ego” or separate self. As he writes, “The puzzle piece becomes part of the whole only through its unique puzzle-piece nature…. if you are identified exclusively with your ego-separate self, then you think that your puzzle piece is the whole puzzle."

This is where extremism gets loose in the world, when the partial truth becomes the one and only truth and violence results. Discussing this fine line between ego-specialness and our Unique Self is challenging yet Gafni does an admirable job applying his writing skill and brilliance to the task.                 

Crisis of Discernment: Living in Truth or Living Lies?

Prompted by a lot of what I see in social media, it appears that we as a society are blurring the lines between what is real and what is illusion. If we are intentionally entering into this fantasy, such as playing “Second Life” or other virtual games, or attending a “Harry Potter” movie, then fine.  We are consciously choosing to spend time in a mystical, magical alternative reality as a relief from the real world, as pure entertainment or even escapism.

But when we start accepting fantasy as reality simply because it is labeled as if real, we are entering a dangerous world of self delusion. This is when escapism gets dangerous, in my view.

As we have all witnessed in our government leaders, there is a common practice of repeating an assertion over and over again so that eventually enough people believe the assertion is a truth. Paraphrasing Nazi Joseph Goebbels, “Tell a lie long enough and it becomes the truth.” Failing to distinguish between fact-based reality and a frequently-expressed ideology is dangerous because we start confusing the two and begin living lies!

Allowing lies (fantasy) to shape how we live and relate to one another is a disservice to the soul, completely out of integrity with our world. It means living in a falsified reality rather than living in the world as it is. We are culpable by subjecting ourselves to influence by a system we know to be false.

Another example from Facebook: Total strangers invite us to be their “Friends” – not “Connections” as LinkedIn called our virtual assemblage of contacts before Facebook came on the scene, but “Friends”! I don’t know about you but I have pretty clear criteria for who my friends will be.

Another newly emerging example from LinkedIn: People I do not know are endorsing me for skills I don’t think I have. In other words, these “endorsements” are more likely given in order to prompt a reciprocal response, making LinkedIn endorsements totally meaningless, not to be relied upon by any thinking person.
I’m reminded of an earlier confusion with what was true shortly after the printing press made it so easy to publish. One of the phenomena that came to the surface was that people started confusing the truth with what had been printed – as in if they saw it in print it was fact. To some degree that may also apply today.

Confusing the truth with an untruth has already impacted our quality of life. Keep in mind that all of us don’t need to be living lies as long as some of us are. This confuses the issues and restricts progress on matters important for the masses. As long as there is any confusion about any of our global crises, corrective measures are hijacked at worst or delayed at a minimum. Matters such as bank regulation, healthcare and campaign reform, environmental protections and gun control are only five crises that have gotten confused enough to prevent meaningful interventions in the U.S. In some of these cases, delays brought on by confusion can be just as deadly as a out-and-out  hijacking.

I am reminded of Rebecca Costa’s conclusions, in her book The Watchman’s Rattle, (see my earlier article on this) as she researched failed empires throughout history. Each empire she studied failed after two changes occurred; first, when collaboration and cooperation turned into gridlock (see Washington as a glaring example of gridlock) and, second, when ideology replaced facts. It seems we passed both these phases some time ago. So can collapse be far behind?

Straddling Paradigms Can Make You Crazy

I recently reviewed Dancing at the Edge: Competence, Culture and Organization in the 21st Century, by Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester, for Amazon.com and a short story in the book caught my attention. The story’s punch line points to a conundrum many people are facing today. First the story:

In his book Radical Hope the philosopher Jonathan Lear tells the story of …Plenty Coups, chief of the Crow nation at the end of the 19th century. His tribe [was] coming under pressure from the white man to give up their way of life and enter the reservation. The culture that had supported and defined the Crow nation’s world was threatened with collapse.

Plenty Coups described the transition many years later as follows: “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again.” As one Crow woman put it, in terms that many would echo today: “I am trying to live a life I do not understand.”

How many people today are trying to live lives they do not understand?

I contend that anyone with any awareness knows the old ways are losing ground, credibility, even usefulness while nothing seems to be rising to take their place. We are living in a world where one paradigm is falling away while the new one isn’t fully formed.

Using a physical metaphor, it is like having one foot on the dock and the other on a tiny dingy which isn’t tied to the dock. If you have ever been in that position your know that at some point you either have to put all your weight on one or the other, the boat or the dock, or you will most certainly get very wet.

Paradigm straddling can be that way too. If you remain loyal and invested in the old, you will have trouble with anything that challenges that worldview, precluding acceptance of anything that doesn’t make sense from that perspective. If you try to live in both worlds, it can drive you crazy.

My suggestion is to invest yourself in the new paradigm, even if it hasn’t been fully formed or accepted. Start living from that place and let the rest of the world catch up with you. Remember, the old paradigm of thought doesn’t replace the old one, it simply absorbs it, continues using the bits that are still useful and releases what no longer fits.

The FutureShapers Covenant: A Sacred Commitment (Part B)

[Last month I posted Part A of this two-part article and failed to mention that FutureShapers, LLC is a new company I am starting. We will be forming executive peer groups that we are calling Roundtables and members will be asked to make major commitments to living and working more consciously – what we are calling “The FutureShapers Covenant.” This article has been adapted from FutureShapers online material. Now I will continue where I left off last month.]

    “Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your     intentions. And the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is     none. Coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff     character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over     skepticism.” - Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s idea is that one’s character is made up by how one lives up to one’s commitments. As an antidote to this withering of our social fabric, FutureShapers offers this model for encouraging true commitment from its members.

FutureShapers has set a standard for commitment that instills character, consciousness and meaning into one’s life and one’s work. Members in FutureShapers Roundtables are encouraged to aspire to unconventional levels of awareness in what they say, how they say it and what they mean by what they say. They become aware of distinctions such as the difference between an opinion and knowing, a belief and a fact, a promise and an indication of interest, a desire and a preference, to name  a few. Here are aspirations to which FutureShapers Roundtable Members are asked to commit:

•    Seek self transcendence, deepening self-examination/exploration, increasing my experience of equanimity and serenity;

•    Be authentic; integrate my mind, body, heart and soul; be consistent with my walk and my talk;

•    Continuously examine myself - personality traits I can improve upon, my stories and my beliefs that limit me, and my attitudes and actions that negatively impact others;

•    Do no harm; whenever I am wrong, promptly admit it and make amends for any harm I’ve done to anyone;

•    Treat others as I would like to be treated (“The Golden Rule”);

•    Seek out ways to be in relationship with a power greater than my own egoic mind;

•    Spend at least 20 minutes each day in meditation/quiet time;

•    Do the right thing always; whenever there is a question, follow my heart and my conscience, not my head;

•    Be more compassionate about others and reverent about life, honoring my interconnectedness with all living things;

•    Accept my leadership responsibilities as an honor and a gift, not an obligation or cause for self-importance;

•    Consciously be a role model for others; and

•    Create workplace cultures where these aspirations are honored and respected.

Until one can truly commit oneself to something larger than oneself, one is destined to a life of mediocrity. Explorer William H. Murray said it most succinctly in his 1951 book, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition. He writes, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.”

The FutureShapers Covenant: A Sacred Commitment, Part A

Individual and collective commitment to a cause has been at the backbone of all major social transformation – from the founding of the U.S.A. to getting a man on the moon, from changing the public attitude about drinking and driving to the ending of apartheid in South Africa.

Much of our history as human beings was the result of true commitment. However, true commitment is one of the scarcest human qualities today. People say “yes” or make agreements every day that they hold as tentative in their minds, subject to whim and convenience. As a result, we live in a world of empty promises which leads to social cynicism which, in turn, leads to lowered expectations. What people say is often quite different from what people do. As an old saying goes, “We judge ourselves by our intentions while judging others by their actions.” If we judge ourselves with the same criteria – our actions not our words – then we may start to see how culpable we may be in this weakening of our social fabric.

It is so easy to give lip service to doing the right thing, stating the moral high ground, saying what people want to hear, but an entirely different moral toughness is required to keep our word – to do what we say we are going to do. After years of these tentative “commitments” the rest of us have gotten used to people reneging on their promises and not keeping their word. The worst if it? It has become “socially acceptable.”

The dictionary calls a commitment “an agreement or pledge” to do something in the future. A pledge is defined as “a binding promise” or “guaranty.” These hardly sound like casual, half-hearted promises. When one guarantees something they stand to lose something of value. When they make a promise they have given their word. Implied in giving one’s word is a certain sacredness, similar to a sacred oath. This is what FutureShapers asks of Roundtable members: to hold their Roundtable commitment and aspirations as a covenant, a sacred pledge to oneself and the other members.

Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said, “Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality. It is the words that speak boldly of your intentions. And the actions which speak louder than the words. It is making the time when there is none. Coming through time after time after time, year after year after year. Commitment is the stuff character is made of; the power to change the face of things. It is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.”

Olympic legend Bruce Jenner states, “Abolish your fears and raise your commitment level to the point of no return, and I guarantee you that the Champion Within will burst forth to propel you toward victory.”

Do either of these quotes sound like idle “indications of interest” subject to the big “if” – if something better doesn’t some along; if I still feel like it when the time comes; if it feels comfortable; if events align so as to make it easy; or if it isn’t too inconvenient? These are all tentative, conditional, and provisional – nowhere near “the power to change the face of things” as Lincoln suggested.

Next month I will finish this thought and include the list of aspirations we ask people to commit to. Check back around January 10th.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Jim Carrey and Eckart Tolle Team Up to Bring Consciousness to Media

Over the last couple of decades I have been part of many, many discussions, dialogues and debates about how the Great Turning, the “new paradigm,” the Age of Consciousness. They have all been directed toward a shift from a social paradigm based on separation, fear and scarcity to one based on connection, love and sufficiency. In each of these conversations, both private and public ones, the final “yeah but” comes by way of this discourse stopper: “How will we ever get the media to change, after all they are driving much of what is unwanted in our culture?” or something to that effect.

Well, three years ago, an organization was birthed with a mission to transform the entertainment and media industry that has so much influence on so many people. It was formally inaugurated on June 4th, 2009, at the Zanuck Theater on the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles. It seeks to empower entertainment and media professionals and companies to produce and distribute content that inspires new consciousness-based worldviews for global audiences by providing information in three primary arenas: 1. education, 2. collaboration and 3. advocacy.

1.    Education
It plans to provide resources and guidance supporting its members’ personal, inner education thereby assisting them in deepening their fundamental connection with themselves which, once achieved, results in the desire to express that essential sense of self and personal transformation in and through their work; to bring to members’ awareness the need for responsibility for the ideas, issues and events that they are shaping the world we live in – for both “good and ill;” and provide mentorship,  giving back and supporting the next generation of industry professionals.

2.    Collaboration
It will provide resources and services to help its members in the entertainment and media businesses, who are living a transformational lifestyle, to connect with their like-spirited peers; its offerings will encourage collaboration to create content that expresses transformational intentions and values.

3.    Advocacy
Within the trade, it will support the larger media and entertainment communities in understanding transformation and its importance in a cultural and global context, and to help them become comfortable with the reality of transformation; In the public arena, it plans to help legitimize the genre of transformational entertainment and of transformational content in the media.

Pretty ambitious. you say? Pie in the sky, you say?

Over the decades I have seen hundreds of well-intended initiatives fizzle out within a few years or even months. Could this be another?

Well, it might if it lacked credibility. In this case, there is credibility. The founder, John Raatz, who has introduced many transformational films and books into the world through his public relations firm Visioneering, brought in superstar actor Jim Carrey and bestselling author and spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle as his co-founders.

Here is a video of Carrey talking about the initiative and introducing Tolle at one of the inaugural events:

                                                                 Jim Carrey introduces Eckhart Tolle (13 mins)

The name of this membership organization in the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment (or “GATE”) which describes itself as a global movement to Transform the World by Transforming Entertainment and Media. Still evolving, GATE has just morphed its legal structure to a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization in the U.S.

GATE is now accepting memberships, so I urge you to join me as a member and, even better, forward this article to anyone you know in media or entertainment. This is the best initiative I have seen to dramatically transform an industry that, for better or worse, possesses so much influence in the world, for better or worse.

The Power of a Vulnerably-Shared Story

After World War II thousands of young U.S. veterans flooded the job market and, thanks to the G.I. Bill, purchased homes in newly-built neighborhoods. Frequently, the men and their brides would come together and share stories of their experience in the Pacific, Europe or Africa. One man shared that he landed on the Normandy beach on D-Day and was four miles inland before he was able to pry his fingers loose of his rifle. Others shared their harrowing experiences that their wives had never heard from their husbands privately. These young couples experienced a deep bonding and developed a community of friends that, in many cases, lasted a lifetime.
 

Post WWII family getting started

Groups of people stranded together by some unexpected situation such as a snowstorm or power outage often facilitates strangers getting to know one another. This is especially true when people aren’t sure they are going to survive or be rescued. Many people open up so much that they inspire reciprocal shares and sometimes lifetime bonds are formed. As collective intelligence theorist Tom Atlee says:

    Story is a powerful way of organizing and sharing individual experience and exploring and co-creating     shared realities…..every person, every being, everything has a story and contains stories -- and, in     fact, is a story -- and that all of these stories interconnect, that we are, in fact, surrounded by     stories, embedded in stories and made of stories.

    Lived stories are those real-life, actual stories that are happening in the real world all around us all     the time. The actual unfolding events relating to any one actual entity or subject comprise that     entity's or subject's lived story…..become sensitive to lived stories... to learn about the lived stories     of people, places, things... to share our own lived stories... to discover how all these stories     intersect, who or what is in the foreground and background of each other's lived stories. Ultimately,     this provides the guidance we need to find our own most meaningful place in the universal story.

    While analysis is good for control and prediction, story-sensibility is good for understanding meaning     and role.

Vulnerably shared stories evoke trust, inspire even greater vulnerability, and can build bonds that last forever. These are the seeds of community that people used to have and now miss. We have forgotten how to tell our stories vulnerably. We are socially conditioned to “play it safe” and not reveal too much of ourselves. Then we wonder why we miss community so badly.

Naturally, there is something to be said about “appropriate vulnerability.” With some people you may not feel entirely safe sharing deeply personal matters. This requires discernment on your part. But when you do feel safe and trust the people you are with, and desire a deeper connection, it may help to allow yourself some discomfort by opening up. Then, when you are asked to tell your story, share yourself from your heart, not your head. Recall life-defining moments and share those. What shaped you to be the person you are today?

If you feel stuck and can only think of your standard check-in, your “elevator speech,” look for something you have never shared about yourself and share that. This could start a flow of additional disclosures that people would like to know about you and you would like to know about them.

Doing Business with Boiled Frogs

The degree to which I hear reports of growing cynicism in today's workplace reminds me of the parable of the boiled frog. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this analogy, imagine an experiment involving a frog, a pan of water and a stove.

As the parable goes, the frog is placed in the pan which contains room temperature water. The frog is content to sit there, especially if it has been out of water for a long time. It has no compelling reason to move. When the heat under the pan of water is warmed ever so gradually, the frog slowly adjusts to the warming water and, in the absence of any sudden change in temperature, eventually doses off and is boiled to death.

    photo by Peter Turla

On the other hand, goes the parable, if you were to heat the water in the pan before the frog is placed in it, it will immediately sense the danger and leap from the pan to a place of presumed greater safety.

The purpose of the parable is to show how unaware we can be about insidious threats to our well-being. It graphically illustrates how easily humans can adapt to incremental changes, even changes which threaten their health and spirit, if these changes are slow and gradual enough.

In this parable, the frog represents people. The water represents the system - the places where we work and live. The pan represents the container, the larger system - society - which includes our workplaces, the market, entire nations, nature and the environment. The heat under the pan represents the energy that is threatening to destroy everything in the pan, albeit very gradually. The frog - people in this parable - slowly gets drowsy to the point of asphyxiation, as can happen when one spends too much time in a sauna or hot tub where the temperature is constantly increasing. Finally, it’s too late and the frog gets boiled, just to finish things off. Mercifully, the frog is by then oblivious to its eventual fate!  

Like the frog, people don't notice the small incremental changes in their environments, at work or in society in general. They become insensitive because they've adapted; they have done what their ancestors did to survive - adapt or perish. In adapting, they have learned to ignore creeping degradations in the quality of their lives and their work experiences. They have become desensitized to situations that would have caused previous generations to "leap from the pan."

An important distinction between people and frogs: frogs don't think. Frogs react. Frogs don't make choices. They respond by instinct. People think and can make choices. They can awaken from their complacency and choose different outcomes for themselves. They can respond to critical choice points when they become aware of them.

Who would you want on your team - a group of highly-adaptive cynics who had mastered coping in a spiritually hostile environment (like the boiled frog) or a group of people who are fully awake and alive, and bring their entire beings - their whole selves - to the job? For me, there's no way I'd want to depend upon a team of boiled frogs.

Bribery vs Lobbying: One is Illegal and Wrong; the Other is Legal, but Is It Right?

Thanks to the federal and state politicians who don’t possess the will to reform our campaign finance laws, the endless amounts of money that special interests are willing to spend to gain special advantages and a U.S. Supreme Court who thinks corporations are people, millions of anonymous dollars are pouring into political advertising and influence peddling without any accountability or transparency. Let’s look at the similarities between illegal bribery and legal influence peddling:

    •    Both buy favors.

    •    Both are anonymous or faceless.

    •    Both tilt the playing field of fairness.

    •    Both disenfranchise those who can’t afford to purchase favorable treatment. 

    •    Both compromise the politicians.

    •    And both subvert the system.

Bribery is illegal and frowned on by society. Lobbying is legal and thereby tacitly condoned by our society.
Who made campaign financing and lobbying legal? The beneficiaries are the ones who made the laws. The issue of morality versus legality I shall leave to you the reader.

This query was prompted by two recent media pieces. One was a June online piece by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor: see http://robertreich.org/post/24472398883?632ecf88

The other was a segment on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on July 8th where Lesley Stahl interviewed Jack Abramoff, one of the most notorious U.S. lobbyists of our time, who served more than three years in prison for his crimes – one of only a few lobbyists who ever served time. You can watch the interview here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57319068-10391709/jack-abramoff-inside-capitol-corruption/?tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.1

Please read the former and watch the latter. Then see if you have the same reaction that Stahl had during the interview: "I think the public's going to be furious watching this," she said after expressing her anger at what he’d done. I hope people do get angry. I hope you do. We need to get mad as hell and stop taking this anymore!!