-Something We Already Know, Yet Rarely Say or Fully Account For-
PART I
Walking across Midtown New York one beautiful sunny day with a forgiving breeze, I stopped. I sat and I observed some of the most intriguing creatures on the planet – women – in one of our natural human habitats:
COMMERCE
Commerce includes that old timeless favorite, shopping, and goes way, way beyond it. Why? Because women today c-a-u-s-e commerce. Women today are capitalists, business people, artists, entrepreneurs, teachers, leaders, partners, experts – they are …. in participating with men, now …. busy re-making, re-constituting, re-inventing the world they and we inherited.
What world?
And, re-inventing it from what to what?
Consider, for eons, we have generated and known human history as being given by the exploitation of things: The natural world and its peoples (people as things, people as property). Today, a new framework is emerging, based on something called: collaboration.
To collaborate: from the Latin, “laborare” (to work) and “co” (together).
To compete: To strive for an objective; to be in a state of rivalry (Webster’s).
To exploit: (a) To make productive use of; can include “meanly or unjustly for one’s advantage” (Webster’s). (b) To extract, or to take, without regard or concern for one’s impact or replenishment (T. Smith).
It is none too soon.
Above is a simple graph of human history as seen through what I propose are the 3 dominant themes and organizing principles of our human eras:
1. Exploitation
2. Competition
3. Collaboration
None of these eras are mutually exclusive, and the behaviors and mind-sets of different eras have dominant themes.
Human History:
Unrelenting threat and challenge to human beings …. specifically, persistent hunger and starvation, disease, climate (topography, our water, our terrain, et al.) …. have impacted and shaped all that the human life has depended on: hunting; gathering; planting; harvesting; discovering and exploring (rivers, oceans, mountains, food supplies, raw materials) …. and have shaped and “compelled” our human responses, e.g., tools, weapons, agriculture, settlements, supply chains, commerce, property, territories, all sorts of “institutions”, et al.
This struggle against nature has been ongoing and has included/still includes the domination and exploitation of people. This drive to possess, dominate and exploit “scarce” natural resources (including people as things, people as property) has dominated thousands and thousands of years of our history.
It is the “us” of our pasts.
Wars, of course, were both seasonal sports and regular events. Read any text of human history and you’re struck by how much of it is a struggle, often violent, amongst peoples for domination and exploitation. This domination and exploitation has been presumed to protect against the relentless threats of hunger, disease, storm and each other. The conquests of people, and of nature, have been unrelenting.
Exceptions: From time to time, throughout our history, human beings were able to invent, think, and speak new possibilities – not limited to the past – as part of being human. We are a species capable of creative thought, word and deed. We have created innovations, even spectacular masterpieces and occasional breakthroughs, the sum total of which constituted what we might call the evolution of our culture, the forwarding of our human enterprise (see Winners, Opportunists, Hustlers as to “breakthroughs” and leadership).
Scarcity: Today, believe it or not, actual scarcity itself does not need to run the show. The Industrial Revolution was designed specifically to take on the threat of scarcity and has largely succeeded, alongside the various communications, energy and transport technologies we have developed in the last 100 – 200 years. Today, actual scarcity itself is no longer the fundamental threat.
Duly noting that for 80% of us [and there is work to do for and with the seriously impoverished …. because while the means are here …. the will (mindset) is missing and needed], material scarcity itself, doesn’t (need not) run the show. And yet, the mindset, the fear of scarcity, definitely still does runs the show almost all the time for almost 100% of us, as a widely unexamined and pervasive “mind-set” of all human beings. (See Carol Dweck, “Mindset”).
Mindsets: I assert that fear, that mindset of scarcity, domination, and exploitation, that frame of reference, world view, that model of reality, is obsolete, even while it may still be killing us, quite literally.
Zero Sum:
For example: The notion/belief that, “if I win, you lose”, and “if you win, I lose”, became –overtime – a persistent, tenacious model in our heads, our brains, a lens we have adopted, a filter through which we see, transparently (and thereby invisibly, as with all our lenses for ”reality”). This mind-set, this lens, this “paradigm”, is called “zero sum”. One person’s “winning”, necessarily, must require another person’s “losing”.
Genuine or wide-scale (global) win-win is still considered rare or impossible. This” impossibility” is, of course, a given, dramatized daily by our “mainstream” media who some writers, and many human beings, consider clueless. (See The Clue Train Manifesto that suggests traditional print and television media and marketing are industrial dinosaurs, operating as one-way broadcasts to passive, “unknowing” consumers). That industrial media approach is distinct from marketing and media characterized as an authentic, two-way conversation which in some instances we’ve seen begin to take hold on the Internet, including some aspects of social media.
Lenses and Filters: When one sees through any lens, or any filter, one rarely sees, or accounts for, the lens, or filter, itself. The lens becomes – “is” – transparent, and therefore, invisible, to us. Our models of reality, the ones we carry in our heads, our brains, are just like a lens: and these lenses become, once in place, over time, completely transparent to us, therefore invisible to us, even though pervasive. Like if one were looking through brown goggles, after a while the terrain is no longer “brown”; it simply is “just the way it is”. Models of reality are like the air we breathe: pervasive, transparent, invisible, and therefore, not fully accounted for. Having a-n-y model in our heads as the “true and right” model biases and predisposes, even requires, human beings to act consistent/persistent with that particular model. This includes our inherited, historical model that insists on scarcity, domination, exploitation as “is”, “as the way it is”. Inside that reactive model, life shows up as, occurs as, threat, threat, threat. So says my brain! This fear/anxiety invites, insists on, and perpetuates this condition: win/ lose, win/lose, win/lose …. zero sum!
Note: It is a zero “sum” because in the logic of a “zero sum” mindset, each “victory”, breakthrough, or innovation of someone must be offset by someone else’s loss, tragedy, or failure.
Enter women. Why women? Because women are designed by nature, and by now, by culture, to naturally collaborate when they’re free to be women, (and not male clones). Women carry, and are equipped to carry, life; living, breathing life, felt and seen. They’re built to carry life in them before, during and after pregnancy; their bodies and psyches are preparing for carrying life, giving life, being responsible for life (for all time actually). Their feeding, caring, developing, nurturing of life shapes their view (and increasingly ours as men) including our modern mind-sets and skill-sets. Women naturally come to, learn to, value and foster relationship, connection, coordination and communication because the life they carry depends on it. Without that, the life they carry, nurture and foster, dies. The consequences are real. (see Dr. Dorothy Dinnerstein, “The Mermaid and the Minotaur”).
Boys, Girls and “Mom”: Dr. Dinnerstein asserts that when boys separate from “Mom” —- the immediate, early physical, nurturing “source” of life itself —- it is for keeps because boys never, ever will or can become “Mom”; they turn to the world outside “Mom” and their accomplishment is then given by that boyish independence and its action (including its later hormones like testosterone). When girls “separate” from “Mom” and they turn to the world, whether they actually have children or not, they are given by the fact that they are themselves Moms, or Moms-to-be, and as such, naturally acquire the outlook, orientation and physiologies (e.g. , estrogen) that comes with mother: relationship, connection, how things go together, inclusion, collaboration, and managing throughout life. Men’s priority – not exclusively, yet nonetheless, a priority – really has been and is, historically and now, action; and women’s priority, historically and now, is relationship. Note: This fundamental difference in orientation heavily impacts how sex is sought, invited, resisted, ignored and negotiated …. both straight and gay….and how different leadership styles emerge and are seen …. men from women, women from men.
Girls are, have been, and likely will be, designed in real and foundational ways to physically and psychologically be and become mothers …. amongst many other roles they take on, and take on effectively. Young girls do naturally orient and organize themselves to bring life (the “mother” foundation) to life and thereby naturally “see” and fulfill the contexts and connections of mothers …. mothers naturally related, connected, inclusive, collaborative and managerial.
Men, God bless ‘em, for better and worse, do not carry life. They may carry something (or have carried something) … swords, egos, intelligence, heart, cajones, humor … yet men’s purpose is not naturally “justified” by carrying or bearing, or preparing to carry, and bear, the physical life of the next generations, as women’s lives are. Historically, men get their purpose, their “justification”, their reason for being, their distinct existence, through their works, their impact out here in the world. Historically, at least, they do and have done stuff: they have built, fought, hunted, written, performed, argued, debated, challenged, attacked, defended, destroyed …. they do, they do, they do. As part of all that action, all that doing, men have created and destroyed, and created and destroyed, for eons.
Note: Creative Destruction
Note: By destroy, I do not mean some nightmare Hollywood image of killer monsters on the loose like violent, wanton chaos (certain aspects of war or terror notwithstanding). By destroy, I mean the word at its origin: to de-structure. Often when something is created, it de-structures something else; it de-constructs the structure it’s in or has been there. Creating and destructuring, in the most straightforward sense, can be viewed as related, like two sides of the same coin (see the economist, Joseph Schumpeter, “Creative Destruction”).
Maybe “creative/destruction”, when engaged 100% responsibly, is the essential means by which any society evolves, innovates, develops.
Consider: Historically, “men”, when well managed by women who genuinely empower them (meaning that such men are empowered to bring integrity, vision and compassion to the “create/destroy” framework), they then have been/are/can be very productive, useful, valuable, inspiring, creative, imaginative …. and contributing. Creating the Internet, by both men and women, for one example, destructures, to some very real degree, music, publishing, and now, education. These industries become destructured, and then re-structured, and when intelligently so, are still viable, competitive and valuable.
Historically, “men” have made and met targets, objectives, results in whatever medium they have been engaged in, out in the world …. especially in the material world (from the design arts, to building, to science, to the professions, commerce, etc.). Men are oriented to be natural winners, opportunists and hustlers who see, create and exploit opportunity to hit and exceed “targets”. They can be (and have been) at times, ruthless, brutal and shortsighted IF they are un-tempered by a powerful vision, grounded in integrity, and compassion. Often this is a vision tempered and shaped by a powerful, grounded, empowering woman, or, a man who has had such real exposure to genuine compassion, integrity and vision for what is possible in life, all of life, not merely what is predictable in life.
Without the vision, integrity, compassion …. tempering and shaping their natural opportunism, winning and hustling, their creative/destructive bent …. men (interestingly) often do not make, and often have not made, very good leaders; and much of human history is evidence of that – not all, yet much.
Today, the biggest threat to humankind is not nature, disease, starvation, storms (other than those storms invited and precipitated by us). Today, by far, the biggest threat to humankind, to the natural world, to human being, is: human being. Billions of them, armed with enough technology (or the ability to hack into enough technology) to quickly blow up (or rapidly pollute) the entire planet. With so many well armed actors bumping into each other at the speed of light (quite literally), the likelihood that we’ll end up where we have been headed, for millennia …. to have exploited our planet and ourselves right out of existence (quite literally) …. is at or near 100%. [See “Ishmael” by Dan Quinn regarding how mankind, when it quite “sensibly” created, evolved to, agriculture 10,000 years ago —- and thereby let go of the less predictable , less certain access to their tribal food supply through hunting and gathering —- came to believe and expect the Earth to now be Mankind’s dominion, its tillage, its preserve, its playground, its property! The Earth became ours, to plow up, carve up, exploit as we saw fit. We “owned” it. We became “entitled” to, expected to, privileged to exploit the Earth because it was ours, to do with it what we will. And we have. And we do.]
Where we have been headed is given by, and based on, a PAST model of the world …. constructed in language, carried in our heads, residing entirely in our brains over thousands and thousands of years … one of scarcity, exploitation and domination, including the ruthless exploitation of nature and of each other. We now can, and must, shift our mindsets, our institutions, our behaviors, into a model founded fundamentally on a different way and means, a different way of being, a new and now timely model for human society.
What model?
Collaboration.
A collaboration, beyond individual, nation, beyond me, as a natural view and way of acting, needs now to become our second nature; as welcome, and human, as enjoying a sunset. “Beyond” includes, respects, and even honors our past and yet goes clearly past it, “beyond” it. We now – right now – need a different leadership model where people themselves, men and women, even children, are and are seen as, collaborative leaders…. each of us working together, in full communication, to literally re-direct, reconceive, re-construct the biggest threat ever to our human history: ourselves.
References and Resources:
1. Werner Erhard, Steve Zaffron, Karie Granger and Michael Jensen; See, “Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership, SSRN”
2. Mindset by Carol Dweck
3. Ishmael by Dan Quinn
4. Landmark Education
5. The 3-Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron and David Logan
6. The Sterling Institute of Relationship
7. Michael Madden, One Feather
8. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus – John Gray
9. The Hunger Project Source Document by Werner Erhard
10. Joseph Schumpeter, Creative Destruction
11. The Mermaid and the Minotaur, Dr. Dorothy Dinnerstein
12. The Clue Train Manifesto by Doc Searles, et al. (Editors of Wired Magazine)
13. How Malala Yousafzai’s Courage Inspired a Nation: ‘We Are No Longer Afraid’
14. Camille Paglia: A Feminist Defense of Masculine Virtues by Bari Weiss
15. 2013: The Year Men Became Obsolete? By Camille Paglia
Acknowledgement: I want to acknowledge Andie Davis, Rosa Leader-Smith, Amber C. McDougall, Aaron Manuel, Al Rivera, Michael Madden and John Arthur Redfield for their abundant, keen input and editorial oversight.
© Tony Smith
