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.”
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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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]]
[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.
Have you noticed how many people are starting to become aware of the many national and global crises seemingly spinning out of control and how impotent governments appear to be to do anything constructive about them? Not that the numbers of people are anywhere near the majority but certainly they are less a minority than they’ve been in some time.
In my circle of acquaintances, which are largely aware people such as authors, futurists and organizational leaders, I am hearing more reports of their friends coming to the realization that the world isn’t as rosy as they thought. More of their colleagues are looking about and seeing some real messes, many of them for the first time, and they are surprised even shocked at what they are seeing. Many have assumed that others were taking care of all these challenges, that they were being corrected or well on their way to being fixed. And then we have glaring high-profile examples of gross impotence such as the U.S. congress supposedly reforming healthcare and the 170 nation climate change conference in Copenhagen where it was clear to any sane observer that the true power was not emanating from the inner circle but with the tens of thousands outside.
Suddenly my colleagues are realizing the challenges have gotten more challenging while our leaders have been engaged in petty squabbles and ideological debates, like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. In the past two days alone I’ve had friends tell me their acquaintances are using the “Oh shit!” exclamation upon realizing matters are worse than they imagined. This prompted me to name this the “oh shit decade” – ten years when people will finally come to the realization that we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking or consciousness with which we created them, three generations after Albert Einstein warned us!
Our crises are getting worse while our leaders are focused on their petty differences and agendas instead of the global commons on which the whole world depends for life sustenance. The bureaucracies we have created cannot effectively function anymore! They are dysfunctional to the core. They are obsolete! Trying to transform them has proven impossible to date so why not take them out of the equation and invest that energy elsewhere?
In the coming ten years, perhaps sufficient numbers of people will start to see the wisdom of protecting and restoring the ability of the global commons to sustain life before pursuing individual ideologies and ambitions. Perhaps sufficient numbers of people will begin to honor the needs of the collective whole over those of any one segment or group, to assure the global family is healthy before claiming any unfair share for any minority. Perhaps sufficient numbers will realize the classic “Tragedy of the Commons*” is being played out in real life, here and now, with our oceans, rivers, forests, aquifers, wildlife and air – all essential to sustaining life for all people regardless of class or location in the world – not to mention the disrespect and disdain with which we hold each other as people.
Will this new decade encapsulate the great turning, the tipping point, when the consensus reality concedes that the welfare of the commons needs to be secure first and foremost, that the commons has priority over the individual, be it a person, a group or a country? If enough people have the “oh shit” experience, the rude awakening to undeniable truth, there’s hope things can be turned around. Then the question is how long with the turnaround take and how far will we have allowed conditions to deteriorate in that time. One thing certain: Life will be different.
