|
Dynamic Markets Leadership: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Business and the Hidden Soul of Capitalism
by Lorin J.B. Loverde
Volume I of New Planetary Culture: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Dynamic Fields Leadership in the Coming Eras
TABLE OF CONTENTS and Excerpts from the Text
Executive Summary (Approximate page # p xii)
Introduction ( p1 )
Part A - Understanding the Approach
1. Approach Taken - A multi-disciplinary view of business leadership
The Concept of Culture
A Multi-disciplinary Approach
Emancipatory Philosophy
The Shift from (a) Self-perserving Control Systems of a Rigid Past to (b)World Creation and Flexible Adaptation to Dynamic Markets
Part B - The Must-Read Basic Context
2. Market Conditions: new driving forces in dynamic markets
External Areas
Internal Areas
3. The Challenges of Dynamic Markets Leadership and Multi-disciplinary Integration
The force of culture is much more powerful than most business people assume. Just the concept of corporate culture proved how traditions and values shape business practices. On the larger scale there are the forces of social institutions, science, and art. I do not assume that all business people who are reading the NPC can see or understand what is the new driving force. Now, here comes an interesting turn of events: what is needed to see and understand? In Grand Lazy Markets what was needed to understand each business event were narrow economic and engineering concepts like commodities, efficiency, standardization, long productions runs using inflexible automation, and economies of scale. Those concepts were almost specific to profit making in Grand Lazy Markets and formed the basis of common sense in that context.
Today we have a different ball game. In Dynamic Markets, the necessary concepts are not specific to profit making; rather, they are generalizable to the phenomenon of humans adding value to things. Obviously, for a business to stay in business, a profit will be required, but the means to profitability will be understood in terms of added value, ethical value, and sustainability. My position is that adding value is not limited specifically to business or even economics; it is much larger. Therefore, the concepts needed to understand it are much larger than what have been traditionally associated with success in business. Intro pp24-25
Chapter 1 - Overview of Major Issues in Volume One ( p91 )
Part A: The Direction of the NPC in Volume One and Its Implications
1. Philosophy of Business
2. My thesis in this volume and the contxt of leadership through
World Building and breakthroughs into new possibilities
3. Directionality of the new forms, praxis of practical action
Standards for Accepting New Ideas in the NPC
Mental Models
Normative Models
Praxis
4. Ethical Standards which we need to stay on course
5. An Ethical Life 101
6. The Spirit of Capitalism and Planetary Scope
Part B - A Much Larger Scope, a New Tool Box, and Boundary Questions
7. A New Tool Box(a) three ontological aspects for the span of consideration for tool making, and (b) some tools from the NPC for World Building
8. Three Types of Capitalists
9. Boundary Questions: beyond the limits of ordinary sense
Making Sense out of Current Boundary Questions
Boundary Questions for Capitalism and Adding Value
Summary of the Action Plan
Where Are We Going?
Closing Thoughts
Interlude: Implications of DML for Dynamic Markets Leadership
Business people have to get things done. Briefly, I agree but believe that most important concepts are almost endless in their complexity. For example, consider the concept of the good. We use it to guide most of our value judgments and ethics. Yet, philosophers have written thousands of pages about it. Obviously, a given business leader cannot read the thousands of pages about that word and thousands of other words like it. It would take lifetimes. We need to recognize that words are not simple signs or representations of what is obviously “there.” Words are also complex concepts of thousands of years of history, like geological strata, that are invisible unless you dig. Likewise, those concepts compress into powerful symbols, which contain forces in ways similar to subatomic compression of quanta. Break the compressed bonds and you can release vast atomic energy. With conceptual strata buried deep and symbolic compression packed like quanta, we cannot unpack all the implications. We need to pick our battles, face the current situations and the megatrends underlying the changes. That is our pragmatic imperative: take action. The solution, however, is not blindly charging like a bull at a red cape. We have to investigate some strata, some quanta, and some evolutionary trends that affect the right course of action. The NPC is about those points of selection, those points of leverage, saving the informed reader from having to plow through hundreds of books to get to the point of action. Ch1 p45
PART ONE: DYNAMIC MARKETS LEADERSHIP
Chapter 2 - Psychological and Moral Foundations of Organizational Development ( p154 )
Managerial Vulnerability
Selection of a Model
A New Psychological Model for OD
Seven Psychological Types
Transformation, Types and Phases of Transformational Leadership
The Authentic Inner Center
Making the Impossible Become Ethically Possible
These distinctions, such as levels and ideals, might seem trivial at first glance. The Lazy Markets leaders can get away with confusing these distinctions because they do not become important until we are challenged and even overwhelmed in Dynamic Markets. The DM Leaders are intuitively in tune with many of these ideas, such as the need to do more than try to be nice and try to motivate people to seek impossible ideals. There are now many Dynamic Markets Leaders operating intuitively because they understand that the implications of the old paradigms just do not work in their new competitive environment. That does not mean the intuitive DM Leaders can make explicit a new paradigm, nor that they at least would probably limit their paradigmatic considerations to work-related models. In fact, business overlaps with many other disciplines, so any new paradigm would have to include such far ranging ideas as cosmology, history, and directionality. If business leaders never used a paradigm like this, it would be rather easy to say such big-picture ideas are irrelevant to getting the job done. In fact, business leaders constantly rely on one or another underlying cosmological paradigm, and thereby their decisions are steered in some directions rather than others. We have already seen that the direction of organizational development is steered by the psychological paradigm presupposed by the managers of the company. So also the direction of all business strategic planning and implementation is steered by the cosmological/historical/directional paradigm presupposed by the leaders of the company. I know perfectly well that most business leaders will rebel at this claim and try to pretend they can get away with avoiding these philosophical issues… and they can, in the Grand Lazy Markets that have held sway for the past few hundred years of Capitalism. Chap 2 pp184-185
Chapter 3 - Diversity and Identity ( p191)
Individual and Organizational Identity
The Business Case for Diversity
Ethical Co-Primacy
Part I: Theoretical Models
A Theory of Co-Primacy: the Development Context
Types of Authenticity
Life Cycle Principles
Identity and Stages of Development
Part II: Applications
The Authentic Inner Center and Provisional Universal Principles
Benefits
Risk Factors
Implementation
Dynamic Markets Leadership and Level 5 Options
A practical question here is which comes first, the spiritual growth or the Dynamic Markets Leadership? Actually, both. My argument is that Dynamic Markets prompt spiritual growth in terms of the Hidden Soul of Capitalism because that is what we need to accomplish sufficiently ethical actions, creative actions, cooperative actions, flexible actions, rapid learning, supportive culture, diversity, multiple perspectives, etc., as described in the NPC. In the process of gaining those necessary competencies, Dynamic Markets Leaders also expand the radius of their consciousness, transform the structures of their consciousness, and raise the vertical maturity of the stage of growth on the spiritual path.
There is no need to be in or think about any religion in this process. It is not a religious issue. As a result, most Dynamic Markets Leaders already are on the way to profound ontological feeling, which in fact most do use as a touchstone of value for decision making. …In other words, if you are a financier throwing money into a new venture but know little about how the industry and the action world of that venture works, you would be lacking the required tacit knowledge base: when you go deep inside to tap your ontological feeling, you would find no tacit knowledge about the industry, no connectivity to others either horizontally or vertically, so in other words, as a financier you would be isolated from this business into which you want to invest, and when you go inside yourself for a touchstone of ontological feeling you would find nobody home.
Chap 3 pp119-120
Chapter 4 - A New Paradigm for Business ( p260 )
The New Paradigm and Competition in Dynamic Markets
New Paradigm Characteristics
Complications in Implementing the New Paradigm
The New Paradigm Decision Making Systems
The New Paradigm and Post-Newtonian Reductionism in Science
The New Paradigm and the Humanities
Taking a Critical Approach to the Current Social Era: Philosophical Issues in the Application of a New Science to Business Organizations
Organizations as conscious entities
Principle of Self-reference and Identity
Principle of Emergent Properties
Organizational Growth and Development
A new approach to Business Develpment
Why multi=plexing is not readily used
Characteristics of One-party, Two-party and Multiplex companies
Reality
Problem One, Method of Interpretation
Problem Two, Understanding Co-Primacy of Ethics
Problem Three, New Structures of Consciousness
Problem Four, Organizational Development or Corporate Integrity?
A less dramatic but more pervasive kind of destructive choice is the individual seeking his own self-interest regardless of the consequences for his fellow employees, the company or the customers. Far too many employees believe they have to look out for Number One first (one's self). While meaningful business corporations will reduce those numbers, I do not believe that they can very easily eliminate them. Cooperativeness, trustworthiness, strength of character, ethical integrity and any number of other similar personality traits come from other sources: family, schools, society, religion, and most importantly spiritual growth. Thus, the business community has relied upon a spiritual externality in the same way that it has relied on clean air, clean water, etc., as environmental externalities. The spiritual factor is the ability of the employee to withstand extreme selfishness. Traditional religions may have distorted that social mission by imposing excessive and arbitrary rules on people to gain power, but nevertheless they did give people a moral strength that provided another externality: moral capital for businesses to use...free of charge as an off-the-books external asset. It does not take any understanding of advanced science to bring to mind that the human animal also has its nasty side. One of the main reasons for developing a new planetary culture along the spiritual lines suggested in this book is to reduce the Strange Repulsor of selfishness.
This is one externality that the business community would do well to support. The individual firm needs to develop corporate integrity to maintain the proper atmosphere … Likewise, a company cannot simply say it has its rules and everyone has to be dedicated to them; it can only say it has its rules and everyone has to obey them or be fired. Dedication is much more than obedience, and dedication is needed in Dynamic Markets because it means that the members of the company are all trying to do as much as ethically possible to achieve the same goals; compliance is the typical minimum done in companies in Lazy Markets. The moral of the story is simple: if you have an organization and you need people in it to do their best, then you also need to have an organization that is worthy of their respect; it needs to justify itself in terms of the Good. If the organization wants my best, it also has to be worthy of respect and dedication. This is the moral Catch-22 in Dynamic Markets: the company needs its people to perform with excellence, but people cannot perform with excellence for a company not worthy of that effort. Chap 4 pp290-291
Chapter 5 - The Learning Organization in the New Paradigm ( p413-414 )
The Learning Organization and Advanced Spiritual Knowledge
Motives for Implementing a Learning Organization
Types of Learning
Corporate Integrity
Learning and Development: Expansion and Growth
L&D Programs and Their Larger Contexts
Types of L&D Programs
Political Balance
Authentic Dialogue
Stories
Training, Coaching, Mentoring
Virtual Communicative Action
Improving Virtual Communication: Holding Open Learning Online
The Challenge of Holding Open the Learning Space
Customers: Learning an Teaching
Valuing the Learning Organization
The transmission of knowledge is a vast and difficult undertaking. The traditional concept of imparting knowledge was that of the lecture: one who knows speaks to those who do not. This mental model has been called the banking metaphor: the student is perceived as being a passive receptor, like a piggy bank, and the teacher puts information into the student.; Implicit in that root metaphor is that the student is passive, subordinate, and makes no changes. It is interesting to note that the societal preference for such obedient students parallel two other unfortunate historical trends: empiricism and automated assembly. The theoretical model of Empiricism denies the importance of interpretation and makes the highly dubious presupposition that all knowledge is just bits and bricks lying around to be picked up, which will in a distant future somehow fall together into place like a jig-saw puzzle. The mental model for empirical knowledge is a bucket theory, as noted by Karl Popper, which is a metaphor similar to the banking theory of learning. Further, automated assembly developed with some machinery making the pace at which workers must do their operations. In the Lazy Markets, manufacturers could simply give orders and sit back while the workers passively accepted the orders and executed those standard operating procedures. Thus, top-down dominance, passive learners, jig-saw reality, and standard operations in automated assembly all were part of a similar era of dominance, exploitation, and Lazy Markets.
But what needs to take place in a Learning & Sevelopment (L&D) Program is exactly the opposite: the student is a worker who has to be actively involved in implementing the new knowledge in new situations that come up frequently in Dynamic Markets. Also, the learner is part of a group and cannot be classified as subordinate; authentic dialogue means interchange with trust and mutual exploration, where the role of student and teacher switch at a moment's notice. Further, the student is responsible for helping to build the knowledge base, adding to it, making many changes in the knowledge base, questioning it, applying it, improving it, and even being self-correcting to overrule it when it does not fit. So instead of being a teacher who merely imparts information, one must become a coach who helps the learner perform at a high standard. Chap 5 pp54-55
Chapter 6 - Cross-Cultural Knowledge Management ( 426 )
Part 1 - Theoretical Level: A Model for Knowledge Management (KM)
Contextual Challenges from Dynamic Markets
Thesis on Knowledge in Knowledge Management: World Creation
Dangerous Presuppositions: Facts
A Larger Philosophical Framework for Dynamic Market Leaders
Three Basic Philosophical Options and the Importance of Non-Dualism
Grand Lazy Market Leaders and the Philosophical Risk of Instrumental Logic
Summary: The Relationship between Knowledge and Context
Connecting Leadership and Markets: Embody the Relevant Contexts
KM Response: First Steps
KM Tasks: From Efficiency to Higher-Order Integration
What is KM? 1) Value Systems and 2) Integration of Experience
What is KM? 3) The Principle of Principles
KM Response: Second Steps
Emancipatory Thinking for World Creation
World Creation: Knowledge, Style, and Tacit Knowledge
What is KM? 4) Knowledge Life-Cycles and Temporal Assets
Phases of Knowledge Life-Cycles
Developing a Business Philosophy
What is Valuable?
Foundations in Philosophy of Business: Metaphysical Dualism
The Four Worlds Model: The Concept of World
The Four Worlds Model: Worlds 1 - 3 in Popper and Habermas
The Four Worlds Model: World 4
World Creation: Barriers
Going Beyond Current Knowledge Management to Use KM Well
Part 2 - Application Level: New Uses for KM
Advanced KM Applications
Typical KM Applications
Ontological Aspects of KM Application: First-Aspect Vision
Ontological Aspects of KM Application: Second-Aspect
Dialogic Context
Ontological Aspects of KM Application: Third-Aspect
Knowledge Context
Ontological Aspects of KM Application: Third-Aspect
Edge Management
Ontological Aspects of KM Application: Third-Aspect Validity
Ontological Aspects of KM Application: Third-Aspect
Steering Media
Part 3 - Application Level: KM in Dynamic Markets Leadership
NPC Applications
NPC Applications: The Exclusionary Mode of Consciousness
NPC Applications: Executive Coaching
NPC Applications: Dynamic Markets Leaders and
Creative Communities
NPC Applications: Executive Access Coaching
NPC Applications: World Creation, Founding Acts, and Good Fit
NPC Knowledge-Based Risks: Totalizing vs. Diversity
NPC Knowledge-Based Risks: Knowledge Deficits
The Multiple Planes Model for Beginners
The Tapestry Model of Knowledge for Beginners
Philosophical Framework
Transition: Why a Theory of Interpretation?
It is extremely important for professionals in the Knowledge Management industry to realize that they probably do not know what knowledge is. This is true if for no other reason than the simple fact that discussions of knowledge have been taking place in philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, art, and many other disciplines for thousands of years. It would not be wise to make the usual Euro-centric fallacy that says (wrongly) all that junk discussed in the past was merely a series of false steps leading up to the splendor of current Western knowledge that has finally found the truth. KM can be a tool for efficiency, though it is not a simple or straightforward tool. KM efficiencies give executives more control again. If KM works well enough, it can give executives in Dynamic Markets some tools to keep up with the dizzying pace of change, which in effect could help tame (at least temporarily) the Dynamics.
While that is possible and still a great hope, the subtleties and complexities of KM itself are not penetrated by the simple efficiency model and the correspondence theory of truth (that truth is a property of statements made about what we see, and perception is an immediate representation to us of reality). KM is complex because the theories of knowledge we tacitly assume will drive us in different directions according to those assumptions, and we work out the implications as we make decisions. For example, if we assume that efficiency is good, we then also imply that we have the right to make workers more efficient; that sounds simple enough since no one wants to waste time and money…yet...built into that efficiency model are other related assumptions about issuing orders, punishing deviance, classifying people into acceptable types, treating people like cogs in machines, etc. Chap 6 p454
Chapter 7 - Structural Interpretation ( p560 )
The Case for Interpretation
Three Ontological Aspects of Perception and the Four World Model
Positive and Negative
SI and the Seven Level Circle
Differentiating Seven Levels of Interpretation in the Hermeneutic Circle
Theses about SI
Implications for Knowledge
World Three Theory and World Three Judgment
Twenty-One of the Twenty-Eight Levels of Structural Interpretation
Twenty-One of the Twenty-Eight Levels of Structural Interpretation: Adding the A' -Cycle
A Structural Interpretation of Learning Organizations
Social Reality
Integration of SI with Related NPC Concepts
The Three and the Seven
Structural Interpretation and Knowledge Management
World Creation, Infrastructure, Crystallization, and Overcoming Resistance
Interlude: World Building , World Maintenance, and World Service
Change vs. Establishment
Transition: Intellectual Capital
In effect, the SI model requires that we recognize no immediate perception is immediate; each perception is already primary interpretation in larger Hermeneutic Circles stretching back through history. The more we use SI and become conscious of being in the Hermeneutic Circles, the more we are conscious and illumined about what a given primary interpretation means and how we might breakthrough beyond its presuppositions to achieve World Creative founding acts. Conversely, lacking this illuminated perception we remain trapped in the horizon of the event that we do not yet understand adequately. This is why I insist that the model of Structural Interpretation is a key methodology for the emancipatory thinking needed for World Creation and World Building. Chap 7 p617
Chapter 8 - Intellectual Capital and Corporate Integrity ( p648 )
Action-Based Assets: Traditional Approaches (Book Value) Versus
Alternative Approaches of IC Evaluation
What Counts as an Asset?
Highest and Best Use
Intangible Differentiation
A Balance Sheet Approach
A P&L Statement (Long Term) Approach
Categories of Long-Term Evaluation of IC
Transition
…we can differentiate elements of Intellectual Capital (IC) by their respective weighted percentages of contribution to that future cash flow. We can also assign a consideration for increased risk if we identify missing elements when not all ten of the listed IC categories are adequately represented in a specific company. We can identify IC liabilities in the forms of many unnecessary expenses, including duplications, conflicts, factionalism, and mistrust. Finally, we can benefit from evaluating IC because we take the first steps to making the invisible become visible, the tacit become explicit, the routine become creative, and the expedient become both more reliable and more ethical. While the M&A approach emphasizes the impact of IC on profitability, we must always remember that ruthless expediency in search of (short-term) profit can have disastrous consequences both for the company and its environment, so the profits will not be sustainable. Highest and best use of IC includes the moral dimension of corporate responsibility for its impacts on its own people (through its socialization process and its organization of work) and its impacts on its surrounding stakeholders.
-
Action-Based Assets: Traditional Approaches (Book Value) Versus Alternative Approaches of IC Evaluation
-
What counts as an asset
-
Highest and best use
-
Intangible differentiation
-
A Balance Sheet Approach
-
A P&L Statement (Long-Term) Approach
- Levels of Intellectual Capital
Chapter 9 - Action Plan and World Building ( p680 )
Overview of Chapter 9: Tips for Time
Action Plan
Advanced Spiritual Knowledge and Self-Interest
Corporate Governance
Support, Coaching and Guidance
The Ontological Level
Ontological Discomfort: What is a Warm and Fuzzy Business Deal?
Intra-Framework, Inter-Framework, and Universal Framework
Candidates in Life-Cycles
General Bill Creech
Three Phases of an Action Program for Dynamic Market Leaders
Phases of the Action Plan
Phase 1-A: Doing Your Homework Before Leading Others
(The First Aspect) : The Mission, the Vision, the Values, the Principles, and the Strategy
Phase 1-B (The Third Aspect): Organizational Structures, Teams, and the Interconnection of the Product, the Process, and the Quality
Action: Organize Around Teams
Action: Empower Teams
Action: Establish Feedback for Performance
The Question of Subjectivity
Action: Use Authentic Dialogue
Action: Work Through Processes, Not Specializations
Action: Check for Good Fit
Action: Focus on the Product/Service
Phase 2 - The First Aspect: Organizational Leadership, the Common Purpose, and the Common Good
Action: Define the Common Good
Action: Keep Visible the Mission
Action: Uphold Corporate Integrity
Action: Establish a Common Interpretative Context to Achieve a Unified Perception of the Key Issues
Action: Emphasize the Key Values
Action: Maintain Touchstone Values
Action: Seize the Moral High Ground and Lead the Culture
Action: Articulate a Transcendent Purpose
Action: World Building with Business Leadership and Spiritual Evolution
Action: Keep the "In Group" Open to New Ideas 792 Action: Cultivate the Qualities of Good Leadership
Action: Develop Complementarity in Leadership 794 Action: Support Distributed Leadership at All Levels
Risks
Action: Choose, Commit, Change, Charge!
Action: Corporate Multiplexing, Extended Organizations, and Venture Capital
Phase 3 - The Second Aspect: The Organizational Horizon, Corporate Culture, Symbolic Action, and Group Consciousness
Action: Develop Intuitive Skills
Action: Inspire Commitment, especially to the Common Good
Action: Foster Commitment through Symbolic Systems in the Corporate Culture
Action: Breakthroughs
Action: Strong Transformations of Shared Structures of Consciousness
Action: Identify the Cultural Forces that Affect the Organization
Action: Shape the Contexts by Which Interpretation Arises
Action: Begin to Integrate the Teams through Group Consciousness
Action: Ask Good Questions
Action: Clarify the Difference Between Management and Leadership Philosophy -- the Trust Factor
Action: Ask Good Questions II
Action: World Building with Morality in Capitalism
Action: World Building to Shape or Reshape the Markets
Action: Dealing with Dispersion, Impact and Infrastructure
Action: Analyze Stock Market Motivations and New Modes of Evaluation
Action: Corporate Universities, Higher Education, and Preparing Now for the Future
Summary
There are many candidates for leadership qualities, for example, intelligence, insight, aggressiveness, compassion, dedication, honesty, courage, confidence, etc. It is not unusual for the leader to need to do something which comes up again and again in the New Planetary Culture: span the opposites, for example:
• Intelligence as logical capability and insight as intuitive capability,
• Aggressiveness to overcome the barriers and compassion towards those led
• Shrewdness to find the quickest way to succeed and integrity not to yield to expediency
While the list of the right leadership qualities is important, a list does not say anything about how to develop the right qualities. A list says this is the ideal, go do it. Then, of course, a person can work on cultivating those particular qualities, or an organization can work on instilling them. But in what ways? Chap 9 p725
PART TWO: PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS ON CAPITALISM
Chapter 10 - Three Types of Capitalists and Ethical Creativity ( p794 )
My thesis is that a new and more potent kind of Capitalism is emerging through a new and more potent kind of spirit, and this spirit is the most important factor in Dynamic Markets Leadership as it seeks a better understanding of directionality. We do not need a hard-core explanation of directionality as if there is only one direction in which spiritual evolution is going, but we do need some understanding of it to assist others in appreciating the coming changes. Before talking about it in general terms, the more technical issue is simple to state but difficult to understand. Directionality is oriented toward the common good and the highest good, whereby we make our decisions considering things as a whole. This means we have to be ethical in our choices. In Chapter 4, we have already looked at the importance of the co-primacy of ethics. At this point we need to consider the ethics of deciding “what ought to be” not only as equally important as “what is.” We also need to consider the ethics of creating. In this sense the First Ontological Aspect is as much involved in the will power in creativity as in the will power in the right decision. This combination is ethical creativity. To clarify that a little, it is easier if we remember that there is World Creation that is a breakthrough striking out on a new path seeking to go beyond the barrier of the horizon. If that choice is unethical, the creative power might still be there but the consequences will violate the common good or the highest good. Chap 10 p8
Chapter 11 - Corporate Social Responsibility: Planetary Design, Values and Consciousness in Support of World Building ( p819 )
If the goal is that everyone be able to live like they are the upper-middle class in California or Cancun, then we have some systemic problems: even if they have the disposable income to buy that lifestyle, do we have enough primary resources on the planet to produce it without ecological catastrophe?
I personally believe that we have to curb our enthusiasm for an endless stream of more stuff: TVs, games, cars, boats, and soon spaceships. Voluntary simplicity is a lesson we can learn from tribal cultures, Feng Shui, Taoism, and Buddhist economics. We do not have to revert to acetic lifestyles, but we do have to rediscover the simple fact that money does not buy satisfaction. I do not believe that voluntary simplicity will destroy Dynamic Markets as we have today; on the contrary, the rate of change will probably increase as diversity increases. But just as the birth rate for developed countries drops low and for impoverished countries remains high, so also must the consumption rate. We need a larger common share in the common good. We can still expect production increases as the majority of people will bring up their standard of living while the minority of (rich) people will stabilize or voluntarily simplify their standard of living. Part of the answer of how to live will be to live in such a way that we maximize our opportunity to sustain life. Greedy materialism neither provides the desired satisfaction nor assures the sustainability of life…which means the consequence could easily be ecological catastrophic and wipe out all higher life forms. Another fun option for selfishness is our favorite sum of all fears in nuclear/biological world wars that wipe out both higher life forms and the lower life forms. The dead planet scenario is already within our technological hands. These risks are not news. What is interesting that that the carrier of most of the threats to the world is business and yet it is now also the carrier of most of the options for cures. Chap 11 p7
Chapter 12 - Thoughts on the Evolution of Capitalism ( p841 )
At this juncture, it will be helpful to anticipate some of the ideas of the New Planetary Culture about socio-economic trends, as well as their ontological grounds. This anticipatory view can be described as an interpretation of phases of Capitalism which parallel other phases of growth in the structures of consciousness and the history of Western philosophy. In Western civilization especially, its struggle for self-understanding, scientific understanding, political expansionism, and technological dominance of nature can be understood as a struggle of its competing philosophical systems. This means that the people and especially the cultural leaders who fail to understand the underlying philosophical issues at stake will also fail in directionality: they will not really be leading but instead will be driven by social forces that they cannot see or steer.
Many business leaders as well as leaders in the cultural intelligensia may be skeptical that the driving forces can be properly described as philosophical rather than economic, political or artistic. Nevertheless, the easiest way to appreciate this key role of philosophy is to ask the question: How do we justify the choices we make and the direction in which we seek to develop? Chap 12 p58
Chapter 13 - An Experience through Literature: Objectivity and the Personality Vehicle in Rand ( p892 )
But in point of fact, the business world is a microcosm of the whole world. The business world is more like a hologram that reproduces all the elements of the world at large, including the passion, frustration, excitement, wonder, discouragement, adventure, extreme selfishness, corruption, heroism, boredom, romance, achievement, values, paradigms, and philosophical issues of the world at large. Those outside the direct activities of the business world are so ignorant of the complexities of the business world that such people will probably be surprised that such a claim is being made here. Even worse, most of those inside the business world bury themselves in a little corner and try to do only what they are told to do. The ones who will understand what I am trying to describe here are the achievers in the business world: the highly creative inventors who struggle to develop a new product, the highly creative executives who try to develop a new market, the highly creative entrepreneurs who start from almost nothing and build a company. Chap 13 p6
Chapter 14 - Ethics, Nostromo, and a Free Society ( 931 )
The moral progress of Capitalism does not automatically become justified by the moral principles which may be adopted by material interests. Those adoptions are only as good as the subjective strength and purpose of the humans who adopt them. Moral progress and a moral code are not objective issues: they are deep in man's fallible subjectivity full of such factors as endless desires, passions, self-indulgences, greeds, glamours, and illusions. Only when man faces his own fallibility can he begin the process of authentic transformation and spiritual evolution in a given lifetime. Chap 14 p2
Chapter 15 - Postscript: Preview of the Subsequent Volumes ( p938 )
This first volume focuses on value-added activity in business, which was a good place to start talking about our task of World Building where many value added activities will be required.
The second volume focuses on personal growth and the areas of strong transpersonal changes in structures of consciousness, as well as changes in social reality. This is foreshadowed here in Volume One as the capacity for breakthrough thinking exhibited by Dynamic Markets Leaders and who spread this through distributed leadership. There is a reality beyond the current perception of most people and it makes sense--it is intelligible. It is not "supernatural" in the religious sense of heaven. Even so, the path to this larger scope of reality needs to be traveled with a lot more than psychological self-help. People need more than faith: they need to know. Leaders want to know sooner. Volume Two will consider this issue from the viewpoints of psychology, sociology, philosophy, and hermeneutics. This last viewpoint is especially important because it provides a new methodology that cross-cuts business functions, social institutions, cultures, and civilizations. Volume Two will address questions like:
- What are blocks to the flow of my creative abilities?
- What is the place of subjectivity in relation to scientific knowledge?
- How can knowledge go beyond both personal and objective types to become transpersonal?
- What is the role of the Higher Self in transpersonal knowledge?
- What is reality and how does social reality limit our attempts at World Creation?
- Why is it so difficult for some people to be creative while others find it natural?
- What role does interpretation play in World Creation and perception?
- What is the role of imagination and how can it become a reliable skill?
- What does it mean to aspire to advance on a spiritual path?
…My position is very straight forward about this growth process: you have every right to proceed with your own and find self-validation in the process. Neither my approach nor positions taken from ancient times (also called ageless wisdom) are didactic, dominating, or doctrinaire. I am not attempting to force you into a change of worldview or religious faith. I am claiming that my position (which is not mine in the individual sense but simply the ageless wisdom with which I have agreed) is intelligible and thereby that you will be able to find good reasons for following a similar path. This path is comprised of great diversity, so the unity we can share is in the diversity, not a unity imposed on others that will wipe out creative diversity. You should be able to notice the different tone of voice in people who promote an absolutist doctrinaire position (whether in religion, politics, or any other way of life) and the people who support a living, evolving position.
The path of the ageless wisdom is a less tidy process, not limited to the one discipline of philosophy, but it is more authentic because the pieces of the puzzle in the overall directionality that we need to find are cast across all the artificial boundaries of the academic disciplines. The spiritual aspirant struggling on the path does not care whether the pieces fall into place for him or her from here or there. It can be some from sociology at one moment and then business management theory at the next, from philosophy here and from anthropology there, from novels as well as poems as well as political theory or religion. Some hints come from ancient cultures, other hints come from Eastern religions. The important thing is that the pieces fall together and reveal in a flash of light something that was otherwise obscure because the NPC provides a better context to interpret what they mean and in what direction they are headed. We always rely on a philosophical framework, but usually it is too narrow; the NPC provides a greater scope within which we can recognize many new and impossible things as becoming ethically possible.
Glossary
(page 996)
Bibliography
(page 1065)
Index
|
|
