Humans have an innate need for the *experience* of awe, wonder and purpose. For this experience to be sustained it needs to be contained in a story.

There have been many stories around to fulfill this function; religions and mythologies abound.

However, many of these stories are definite and closes the minds of the people they envelop. Together with the fact that most people can not distinguish between the actuality of experience and the truthfulness, or lack thereof, of story, a dangerous cocktail is brewed.

I.e. the only available or given story for a certain experience is believed to be true. The out of awareness thinking goes something like “Since I have the experience X and it is explained as Y by authority Z, it must be true – since I have no other available story to contain it”.

On one extreme we get dead religions – all story and no experience. At the other end we get experience that’s dependent on dogmatic adherence to a story, which brings a host of problems in a modern world.

The confusion lies in the erroneous belief that the sense of awe, wonder and purpose – being in the presence of mystery – beholds a question that needs an answer.

Rather, mystery in itself is the answer…and a story that can sustain mystery in a modern world does not begin with giving the answers…rather, it’s all about asking ever better questions.

.2 cents on a rainy day.

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Probably the best blog post of the year …
New Games and New Code …
Survival and Prosperity in the New World Order

If you’ve read some of the posts on this blog you’ve seen me mention the “Graves model” on several occasions. Another very useful model that I’ve been looking into recently is “The Leadership Maturity Framework” that distinguishes nine levels of “action logics” or stages of development that describes the different world views held by adults.

The driving force behind this model, as well as the “Sentence Completion Test” which is their prime assesment tool, is Dr. Susanne Cook-Greuter, doctorate of Harvard University and an internationally known authority on Mature Adult Development.

From my short correspondences with Dr. Susanne she seems to be a highly competent and a very generous woman, and I recommend all of you interested in this type of work and research to look into her material and do a Sentence Completion Test (SCT) for yourself.

You will find a lot of great, free material as well as the SCT on their website, www.cook-greuter.com.

Check it out now!

Prerequisites to Power and Influence

The main operating principle you need to have in place for maximum power and influence in any situation is the ability to be equally satisfied and able to take action wheter you keep getting what you get from a situation, wheter you keep the association, or not. In this, an absolute unwillingness to walk away and a total comfort with doing so can both be contained.

This is part of being inter-dependent. One thing you need to decide in relation to this is a choice about your values. That is to come to a position where you VALUE INTEGRITY above status, recognition, monetary gain or anything else. This can be a foreign concept and a quantum shift in thinking for many people. I belive, though, that as we move forward into the future it will give you power, influence and connections beyond anything you could gain operating any other way as other come to see, hear, feel and fully experience this uncompromising quality about you and the effects of that.

If there is anything pushing you to do something against your better judgement, integrity or values – don’t compromise yourself. When you don’t the reward will be overwhelming – both for yourself AND others, in the short and the long run.

Systemic Business Design

@ Generation of Wealth in multiple parallell systems.

@ Sound ecology in maximum timeframe.

@ Targeting leverage points in social, economic and political structures moving towards global transformation.

@ Multiple inter-dependent mini-businessess working along a global brain structure towards a common intention.

From the Dao comes one,

from one comes two,

from two comes three,

and from three comes the ten thousand things.

-Laozi

The Universe seems to be complete and undivided in it’s wholeness. When we name things we create distinctions and pairs of opposites. These pairs can be balanced, one can dominate the other, or the other can dominate the one. From these distinctions and relationships we construct the web of reality as contained in language. I sometimes say that all language is arbitrary and that language cannot contain any truth. Now that’s a pretty bold and kind of weird statement – pointing at and explicating the paradox it contains.

I do have a passion for language…its uses…its functions…its beauty. Language can trap you and it can set you free. Language can be a tool for rebuilding neurologies and creating transformation. Language is a pre-requisite for the social functioning of the species…AND…it’s always just a “pointing to”.

Now, the difference that makes THE difference is the form of what it is pointing to, and how the language form needs to be organized to point “there”. Whether “there” is within an individual, a group or globally all-encompassing.

Three Magical Questions

In relation to data expressed in language there are some questions I often apply to widen the frame and scope

of consideration, illuminating what’s not being said, a systemic perspective and at the same time pointing

towards a wholeness beyond language.

The man I call my mentor, Dr. Joseph Riggio, has come up with what he calls “The Ultimate Meta-Model Question”,

referencing the Meta-Model in NLP created by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Josephs question asks “What has to be true for “that” to be true?”. Answering this question also reveals a “hidden” data set and encourages consideration of a systemic perspective…

My magical questions are;

“What’s the starting point?”

This includes identifying the context, implicit criteria, and the boundary conditions set within the presented information.

“In relation to what?”
This is about narrowing in on the trajectory of movement related to the starting point, both historical and future.

Informing all this is the knowledge and insights about how words have different semantic loading and connotations

for all individuals. Applying all of this what we start to sketch out is a kind of holographic representation that reveals both the extended shape and form of the data presented as well as the angle of approach and the resulting perspective contained…as well as an infinite number of variations related to the same data set…its potential relationships and trajectories…the arbitrariness of it all…and the immense power as well.

Makes sense, right?

The lecturer asked “Why should we keep bio-diversity?” – and it got me thinking about this great article on complex adaptive systems and their properties. On the page you will find this picture and text:

“The agents in the system are all the components of that system. For example the air and water molecules in a weather system, and flora and fauna in an ecosystem. These agents interact and connect with each other in unpredictable and unplanned ways. But from this mass of interactions regularities emerge and start to form a pattern which feeds back on the system and informs the interactions of the agents. For example in an ecosystem if a virus starts to deplete one species this results in a greater or lesser food supply for others in the system which affects their behaviour and their numbers. A period of flux occurs in all the populations in the system until a new balance is established.”

So from a systemic perspective we could say that one reason to keep bio-diversity is to avoid flux/chaos that could be a threat to the level of equilibrium that’s present in the system at large that contains us. In my mind this [flux/chaos] in itself could be a really good thing though, as it frees a lot of response potential that could lead to the transformation of the system into something more sustainable and adaptable. Although I would definitely NOT target bio-diversity or fundamental eco-systems with any intentional perturbations. Better places would probably be man-made, constructed systems for which there are better designs waiting to be implemented. Any suggestions?

Anyway, do yourself and the world a favor, READ THE ARTICLE and start thinking systemically.

In the Mythoself(TM) model, as I see it,  a primary  area of focus and interest is on the stories we tell ourselves and others about ourselves, the world and others. These stories can be called the myths that we are living into and out of…a sort of matrix container that shape our perception and experiences in the world.  There are many different kinds of myths and I’ve seen a multitude of categories presented from different sources. These categories are naturally arbitrary, like most language seem to be, especially when you have access to a multitude of perspectives. Yet some examples would be, for instance, our identity myths – who we are. Then there’s the functional myths – they teach us how things are done and embed the structures of practical applications. And we also have our cosmological myths which is the stories we tell about the universe, the world at large and who we are in relation to it.

Joseph Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 31, 1987) is the grand daddy of comparative mythology and religion, devoting his life to following his bliss by pursuing that work and teaching others about it. Immersed in the writings of ancient mythologies and religions he noticed a common pattern of movement and transformation that was repeating itself throughout his sources and at the same time describing something elemental to human nature. This pattern, known today simply as “The Heroes Journey”, is thoroughly presented in his seminal masterpiece – The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

In his books, Joseph Campbell describes how most mythologies reserves love and peace for the in-group, the people who belong and identify with the group, while aggression and violence was directed to anything or (mostly) anyone outside of it. We can still see this manifesting all over the world today…and Campbell says that probably one of the greatest challenges and quests of our time is to find a new myth. As I ponder the global challenges facing us today, his words ring true in my head; there isn’t really a in-group or out-group on this planet any more. We’re all facing the same predicaments. That simple realization should, in my mind, be enough for everyone to start thinking bigger. Start considering the long-term impacts of our day-to-day lives and what we can do to transform the way we go about our business so that things will continue to work for us in the future.  And I realize for a lot of people, it won’t. Some don’t have the interest. Some just doesn’t care. For some, there are more important things to be doing. Others simply don’t have the cognitive capacity.  So for the time being there is actually an in-group that counts. The group that chooses for life. All of it. No Holds Barred.

So, I suggest we start with a common cosmological myth – a story that provides us, as a species, with context, meaning and direction. A story that teaches us that we are nature incarnate – that points us to the transcendent experience dormant in the very essence of our being – in the world. Informing us about the legacy we have co-created and inherited – and what we want to pass on…carrying the world on our shoulders through this passage of transformation that awaits…as children of the earth…a Tribe of Tellus.

Alf Hornborg has written a great article titled “Towards an Ecological Theory of Unequal Exchange”.

In the article, he writes about how we can only conceptualize and perceive the mechanisms that generate inequalities in distribution by taking into consideration the ecological conditions of our economies. By doing this, he suggests, we can gain access to a higher degree of precision when it comes to analyzing and defining what unequal exchange “is”.

He points out how the criteria used in and by popular economic ideology negate the possibility of identifying the markers of an unfair market transaction (as that perspective doesn’t include any ecological considerations). He moves on by suggesting some markers to track for that will indicate whether a transaction fits the criteria for being unequal or not – one of them being to look at the net flow of energy and materials (productive potential) detached from its (attributed) economic value. In a sharp and concise description of the exergy in the production process he shows how the relationship between productive potential and economic value is in fact inversed. The more energy and resources that’s being dissipated in the process of production, the higher the price of the end product. Looping these factors together draws us toward the conclusion that, essentially, exploiting the negated factors of unequal exchange is rewarded, and that reward is then put into more ecologically ignorant production and further down the rabbit hole we go…

To me, Hornborg doesn’t only provide a perspective that is invaluable in the formulation of arguments and discussions but more importantly I believe these aspects are of outmost importance in designing what I believe will come to be a new kind of economic/trade model altogether. A model where the scope of consideration is widened to account for its impact and effects in all global systems.

The global ecological footprint is a measure to describe how much land and water area a unit of society (individual, nation, company) use in order to produce the resources it needs and absorb the waste it generates. The footprint is calculated by converting resources like fisheries, forests, energy etc into hectares of land and water. It is estimated that we’ve been using more than we have since at least the mid 80s. This can be described in many ways, for example, that we are using 1.3 planets rather than the one we have available, or that it now takes about 1.4 years for the planet to regenerate what we use up in a year.

Learn more at Global Footprint Network.

“Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.”