The implements used by humans once made the objects of our world more manageable. Tools increased the capacity of The Creative (see Part 1) to push and pull, squeeze and twist, grasp, cut, tear and gouge. In the early stages, natural objects were used to apply force: the stone became a hammer, the stick served as a lever. But beginning with the screw-cutting lathe in the 18th century, the building of machinery produced new types of tools, and soon required a new type of human being to assemble and adjust the machines.
Standardization of fastening devices and interchangeable parts mandated extension handles for the hands and feet, as well as a class of mechanics whose understanding of machine processes extended the power to control the environment. Human beings were equipping themselves to act as "lords and possessors" of nature.
In the second half of the 20th century, however, our faith in instruments – both our mechanical and institutional tools – was transformed into frustration. Vehicles of progress, we noticed, were creating obstacles and consuming vast quantities of energy rather than enhancing our individual power. Ignoring the dangers, society's managers reacted by further escalating bureaucracy and technology. An addiction to tools had infected us with "growth mania," the blind belief that poor application of knowledge could be corrected by more knowledge, the further classification and refining of facts.
It was widely assumed that errors of scientific experiment and implementation could be handled by new inquiries and more efficient control. The faith that crises could be resolved through escalation was related to a belief that, as Ivan Illich put it, "the cure for bad management is more management" – more scientific, objective and systematic. But technological escalation, he noted, had also led humanity and its institutions through two phases, or watersheds, during the century:
"At first, new knowledge is applied to the solution of a clearly stated problem and scientific measuring sticks are applied to account for the new efficiency. But at a second point, the progress demonstrated in a previous achievement is used as a rational for the exploitation of society as a whole in the service of a value which is determined and constantly revised by an element of society, by one of its self-certifying professional elites."
Medicine, to take one example, passed through its first watershed in the second decade of the 20th century; at this point the odds tipped in favor of effective disease prevention and treatment. But by the 1940s the tools of medicine, which had, among other accomplishments, reduced infant mortality, were also starting to cause genetic damage. Doctors began to create new kinds of illnesses, and research was increasingly directed at medically created problems. Life was extended, but at exorbitant cost.
Advanced medical technology, widely equated with increases in life expectancy, actually did little to improve the general level of health. Rather, high-tech medicine increased patients' dependence on machines, drugs, and the experts who controlled them. As new illnesses were defined, specialization of services increased. Although benchmarks set by the medical establishment continued to be reached, the negative costs skyrocketed – social control, illusion, prolonged suffering, loneliness, genetic deterioration, and frustration. By 1999, the Institute of Medicine estimated that medical errors were killing almost 100,000 people in the US every year.
The medical crisis is in many ways analogous to those affecting other institutions. All are consequences of the evolution of professional industries and a society which demands that they provide "better" services – health, transportation, education, and so on. In order to improve the standard of service, however, people voluntarily offer themselves as guinea pigs. In the case of health care, we have surrendered the right to declare ourselves sick or well; our claims are accepted by society only when a member of the medical bureaucracy certifies them.
Since the second watershed, society's managers have exercised almost unlimited power through manipulative tools, expanding their control over our activities in the interest of efficiency and order. In Illich's words, "they hold and manage power no matter who lives in the illusion that he owns the tools." The issue is no longer ownership of the means of production, but rather the characteristics of leaders and their tools.
Managers of most organizations are selected on the basis of specific characteristics, competencies and interests, all geared to maximizing production – that is, providing more of everything as they move ever higher, and meanwhile promote the conditioning of their employees and clients. Their favored tools are those that increase regimentation, dependence, and impotence. A few of the most dangerous of these have been highways, systems of mass communication and resource exploitation, and compulsory schools.
For "modern" managers the central criterion is the ability to achieve. As competitors in their specific fields, they steadily narrow their interest and motivation. In fact, success rests on their ability to become machines, engines without limits, dedicated to the pursuit of victory and the satisfaction of ego. How predictable, then, that our political leaders so often instruct us to "win" some economic or social war. In the last 40 years, inhabitants of the United States in particular have been rallied to wage war on poverty, unemployment, inflation, terrorism and drugs, to name but a few, urged at each turn to think of themselves as "number one."
According to Philip Slater, leaders ultimately must choose between two forms of power – negative and positive. One is the ability to control, force, imprison, invade and kill; the other is the ability to influence, arouse love and respect, and get one's needs met. The latter is "personal power," described by Carlos Castaneda and other students of this primal force. But competing institutions, states and nations usually choose the static, negative form, creating a deadly balancing act. Negative power relations are like two people with guns at each other's heads – or two opposing nations with weapons of mass destruction aimed at each other's territory.
Concentrated negative power, one of the most destructive legacies of scientific rationalism, grows from fear and mistrust, an acceptance of the notion that the natural state of humanity is war. The necessity of coercion flows naturally from this assumption, and leads in turn to the threat of destruction. Thus, even the most benign of power centers can't promote spontaneity, change or independent creative action. Their very natures require control, a reliance on defensive structures and regulations, and a preference for conditioning.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, when a person acquires the habit of negative power he (or sometimes she) is unlikely to tolerate restraints. "The worst horrors in history," Slater notes, "have been perpetuated by 'sensible,' practical males 'taking the necessary steps' to beat some symbolic opponent to a symbolic goal." In a society that has internalized such an ethic of control, achievement and inhibition, the "great evil" of our time – authoritarianism – becomes a life style. The Great Dictator is each of us.
The process that has led us to this pass began with absolute monarchs, extreme individualists who nevertheless often provided their subjects with a facsimile of wholeness and belonging. The basic social contract, however, had an unstated amendment: the ruler will create order in return for total deference. Eventually, however, the sense of isolation, uniqueness and separateness that haunted rulers was diffused to the masses. Society's leaders were no longer the lone individualists. Everyone was a potential individualist and manager, to the extent that he or she learned to act logically and rationally. As the global process of democratization began, technology extended this revolutionary prospect to the millions.
But there is one more step – the inhibition of impulse and feeling at the mass level in societies overwhelmed by their narcissistic goals. Responsibilities require that managers become adept at postponing gratification; and this quality too has been effectively diffused, with entire cultures exhibiting the ethic of control. Today individualism is mainly an illusion, since "free" citizens are largely unable to function spontaneously, either alone or in groups. With most people acting as their own dictators, managers find it easy to "facilitate" democracy within organizations. In such rational collectives, achievement is usually the accepted standard against which most activities are measured. Responsiveness to self or others, on the other hand, is too often a casualty.
Despite the empty promises of several generations of modern leaders, we have gained little to date by trusting the judgment of technicians, bureaucrats, and other rational managers. If proof is needed, just ask yourself: Are we any more secure today about where we and the planet are heading?
Security, say the dictionaries, is a feeling of safety or freedom from anxiety. Based on this definition, few people can claim true security in the opening moments of the 21st century. Our political and social systems are seriously flawed; in fact, they apparently breed corruption. Most societies can't even meet the most basic human needs – shelter, food, and health for all. And the industrial way of life is probably the single largest factor in the violent disruption of nature all over the planet.
Even the richest among us, the few for whom the "system" still works, will admit that the price of our domination and wasting of nature may be too high for us to pay. We can't even be secure about our long-term existence on the Earth. In the coming years, the average global temperature may rise by several degrees, even taking into account a major reduction in pollution. In less than 40 years the world could be from five to eight degrees warmer.
Experts differ, as usual, about what this means, but it seems likely that sea levels will rise. In the Southwestern US, temperatures could easily be above 100 degrees almost six months out of every year. Meanwhile, thousands of acres of oceanfront in Massachusetts may disappear, and enormous expanses of forests will probably die. America may no longer be "breadbasket" to the world. The predictions are abundant, of course, and many of them contradict each other. But few provide any sense of security.
The very idea of nature as something independent of human will has become obsolete. Yet, rather than reacting with concern and looking toward the restoration of nature, most of the solutions being proposed focus on forms of "global management," new forms of manipulation designed to compensate for the older forms that produced this mess. The rallying cry of this misguided crusade has been to "take control of the planet" – meaning that we need only find new ways to dominate the mutated nature we’ve created. If our past mistakes have overheated the world, "global managers" suggest that we find new and better methods: make the forests grow denser and straighter, harvest not only crops but animals. Researchers are creating new species, in the long-term hope of turning the life process itself to our advantage.
For several hundred years we have believed that nature was nothing more than a complex mechanism, a machine whose secrets we could eventually unlock. Humans considered themselves the "lords of nature," destined to control the cosmic factory. We extended our quest to the very heart of matter – and smashed it. But we were wrong. Atoms are not solid, nature is not a machine, and the universe can't be divided and dissected without the gravest of consequences.
Domination of nature has led us to a dead end, just as domination of humanity has brought misery, poverty and the devastation of most of the world's peoples. The legacy of our mistakes is insecurity and alienation, war and waste.
At the heart of the problem is the set of values underpinning life in the developed countries. A desire for endless material advancement, the basis of our addiction to growth, has prevented us from setting limits or ending the domination of nature to suit our current fancy. Yet that is what it will take. In essence, we must transform our way of life, turning away from accumulation and toward sustainability.
Our old approaches – rationalism, competition, inventions and invasions – will leave us with nothing but a deadened, artificial world. If we want to save the planet, therefore, we must turn from the mechanical to the creative, from Apollo to Dionysus, from domination of nature and human beings to cooperation with both nature and one another. The time has come to choose; either we continue to adapt nature to suit ourselves, or we change ourselves.
Even if we do everything we can, the process will be slow and probably painful. And all along the way, the temptation to settle for some technological quick fix will continue. But if we resist, if we defy and, when we can, transform those who would manage nature into extinction rather than defying and transforming nature itself, we may find the way back to harmony, cooperation and the ecological security we have lost.
Prisoners of the Real is part of the process, a look back at how we reached an impasse, and a vision of where to go from here.
This is about the people in charge. We give them a variety of names -- executives, administrators, managers, coordinators, officers, foreman, leaders, presidents, and kings. When they meet, discussing their problems and ours, their decisions affect everyone.They are wielders of power, the men and woman who are "responsible."
The ideas and actions of our leaders are like pebbles tossed into the stream of life. And in a sense, we all send out intersecting ripples. But leaders, because most of us listen to them – and usually follow their advice or directions – make the largest waves. Clearly, then, we owe it to ourselves to understand how they think and how their thoughts are transformed in the real world.
This is also, and perhaps more importantly, an examination at how individuals currently and, potentially, could relate to organizations. Like any conceptual system, this one establishes artificial boundaries for the purpose of analysis. Categories are proposed, and admittedly debatable distinctions are drawn. The approach isn’t strictly logical; rather it is a combined product of intellect, emotion and will. The central assumption, eloquently stated by John Lilly, is that we should continually strive to move beyond our current structures of belief. "In the province of the mind," Lilly once wrote, "what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.In the province of the mind, there are no limits."
According to system theorist Kenneth Berrian, any attempt to "master" knowledge in a discipline will result at best in an outline of ignorance. Since what will follow is a synthesis of knowledge from several disciplines, Berrian's warning is especially apt. Thus, I don’t claim mastery, but rather offer my observations, combining them with some hopeful speculation.
The observations began more than 40 years ago, when I began to examine first-hand the American struggle for self-government. As an aspiring journalist, I admired the "muckraking" reporters of an earlier era.One of the foremost, Lincoln Steffens, traveled across the United States in 1901 to investigate structures and processes at the municipal and state levels. Among his findings about the power brokers of his time was that Mark Hanna, who had engineered William McKinley into the White House for a second term, didn't much concern himself with the "issues." Like many leaders, what Hanna wanted was "the management of the American people in the interest of the American businessman for the profit of American business and politics."
At the end of his journey, Steffens concluded that it would be "worthwhile to look straight in the face the fact that there is no marketable commodity more easily cornered than the people themselves. The people are a crop that costs little to harvest, and not the ablest men in the country go into the business." Unfortunately, the same could be said of contemporary political life.
Over the years since Steffens chronicled what he called "the shame of the cities," however, people have continued to struggle valiantly against the cynicism of journalists and the schemes of social engineers. Aware of this dynamic, I offer a conclusion of my own: the decisive issue is autonomy. Each human being, however limited his or her choices may appear, cherishes freedom and believes in the ability to make wise independent choices – that is, to find the best way to reach personal goals. Many of us also think we have something unique to contribute to our work group, community or society. This is a dynamic spirit I call Dionysian Leadership. The world is rich with potentially Dionysian leaders, and together they constitute a vital alternative to the dangerous growth of rational collectivism, a phenomenon reflected in the dominance of society at large by rigid technicians and obsequious bureaucrats.
Though it may sound extreme at first, the argument that will be made in the installments to folllow is that the solution to many organizational problems, at the local as well as the global level, will be found by turning to a model of group guidance grounded in the intuitive approach of mystics and artists. These natural Dionysian leaders understand that diversity benefits both the individual and the group. Drawing from their experiences, others can move away from directive techniques and toward an "enabling" role that poses challenges for choice. Like Thoreau, they extol the sovereignty of each individual. Like Voltaire, they believe that reality is the lie agreed upon.
On the surface, this may seem a bit mystical and abstract to be practical for complex situations in a post-industrial society. However, such an approach to organization-building and ongoing management is also consistent with the discoveries of system theory. There is even a systems term for the impulse to find independent routes to a shared goal – equifinality. As a systems analyst might put it, the structure of organizations should shift as "role tenants" change. Despite this advice, however, most modern organizations opt for increased structural rigidity in the face of almost any crisis or change.
Another relevant observation of system thinkers is that the merging of smaller systems within larger units is a progressive inevitability. The problem is that, very often in such circumstances, individuality is viewed as a form of deviance. Within most bureaucracies, specialization and rationalization make workers subservient to division of labor concerns. The organization, say our “rational” managers, must advance "as a whole," and can't easily consider the needs of everyone. In reality, however, an understanding of parts rather than the whole is actively promoted. The concomitant anonymity and secrecy that characterize rational collectives are potent forces working against responsibility. In the end, decisions are made independent of human choice.
With such contradictions in mind, Dionysian leadership stresses the centrality of individual responsibility and true engagement. The simple fact is that loyalty oaths and security measures can provide little help in forming ethical positions or nurturing organizations based in a moral awareness. And if we are to respond effectively to the myriad problems facing the world, nothing less than that will do.
An intellectual odyssey – from Pythagoras to planetary consciousness – and a new vision of freedom and cooperation
One: The Creative Also Destroys
Ye instruments, forsooth, but jeer at me, your wheels and cogs mere things of wonder; when at the door, you were my keys to be, yet, deftly wrought, your bits can move no wards asunder.
-- Goethe's Faust
In the alternative universe where fact and fantasy fuse – that intergalactic space of science and speculative fiction – super-heroes, alchemists and misguided or "mad" inventors search for occult formulae through which the secrets of matter and spirit can be unveiled. Faith and reason meet within a cosmic flash and, for a moment, they see a source of limitless power.
Long before paperback novels and films turned this universe into an industry, magicians of an earlier age attempted to unravel the mysteries of space and time through number systems, using experience and experiment to juxtapose "sacred" numbers with chemical and material correlates. Number theory also fascinated many founders of modern science; for Descartes there was "universal mathematics," for Liebnitz the key was "universal calculus."
More than two thousand years before that, however, Pythagorean philosophy launched this quest by synthesizing the use of numbers in several religious traditions. The Babylonians had based their system on the number 60, with a god for each number. In the Old Testament 40 was a holy cipher. In Jericho the number seven was powerful, referring both to the seven deadly sins and the seven spirits of God. In Chinese mythology odd numbers represented white, day, sun and fire, while even numbers signified black, night, earth and water.
With such precedents, in about 550 BCE Pythagoras used his knowledge of numbers, along with related beliefs about music, magic and astrology, to construct a knowledge system that eventually served as the basis for "solar" systems of thought. With his discourses, numbers began to expand humanity's grasp of the actual, imposing order on matter.
According to legend, the "first philosopher" had noticed a relationship between the sizes of four anvils and the notes they produced when struck. From this revelation he developed a philosophy based on the numbers one through four. Creation begins with the One – pure unity, he concluded, and then expands to the holy four. In turn, they beget the sacred number ten. For Pythagoras, all life sprang from this formula. Using the four basic numbers he proceeded to build his great triangle:
* * * * * * * * * *
During the renaissance rational scientists finally made the Pythagorean system accessible to reason. The number one, they argued, represented the source of all numbers -- pure reason; two was man and three was woman. Four, the product of equals (2 + 2) was justice and cosmic creation, leading to the "mother of all" -- ten (1 + 2 + 3 + 4). Elements of Pythagoras' theory can be traced to Plato, and from there to Descartes. Subsequent practitioners further concretized the mystical basis of the system; Copernicus' correction of Ptolemy's mistake, about 2000 years after the formation of Pythagoras' "secret brotherhood," committed Western civilization to a one-sided expansion of "solar" knowledge in which the cosmos was given over to rational explanation.
Despite the trend a few mathematicians did manage to maintain their belief in the mystical basis of number theory. Liebnitz, for example, accepted the universe as an expression of perfect reason and proposed the "universal calculus" that eventually developed into symbolic logic. His intention was to replace the decimal system's repeating sequences of one through ten with a binary system in which only one and two were used. Yet this notion, which ultimately led to the 20th century's computer revolution, was linked to his recognition that the binary system reflected another form of knowledge, a "lunar" system known as the I Ching. Although Liebnitz' attempt to express all knowledge through mathematical symbolism might well be classified as a simplistic error of rationalism, his insight into the revelatory power of the I Ching was nothing less than inspired.
A series of 64 oracles, the I Ching is said to have been written by King Wen about a millennium before Christ. Its subconscious, or lunar insights – sometimes used as a spur for meditation or a form of fortune telling – are derived from a dialectic of light and darkness, the primal thesis and antithesis known as Yin and Yang. Yin is the dark, night side of mind, the opposite of the bright, white and orderly Yang. The 64 oracles have a simple mathematical basis, the total number of possible combinations of Yang (represented by unbroken lines) and Yin (broken lines). The symbols of the hexagrams are paired opposites: heaven and earth, thunder and wind, water and fire, mountain and lake.
When I began this project many years ago I consulted the oracle in a moment of intuitive expectation. The idea was that the answer to any question is – and has always been – known to the asker. The coincidence of thrown coins, or even a page randomly opened, records this subconscious knowledge, and can eventually be understood through meditation. Jung called this principle synchronicity, the meaningful coincidence of two or more events:
"Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychophysical events, which scientific knowledge has so far been unable to reduce to a common principle."
In this case, the Wilhelm-Baynes translation of the I Ching fell open at the commentary on the first hexagram, six unbroken lines called Ch'ien, or The Creative. This hexagram represents primal power, light-giving and strong, the power of time and duration, motion with time as its basis.
In the human world, The Creative represents the action of the leader, the ruler or manager, who awakens and develops the higher nature of his or her fellows. The Creative "sees with great clarity causes and effects" and attempts "conservation," which the translators define as the continuous actualization and differentiation of form. The qualities of such leaders are potentiality of success, power to further, perseverance, and sublimity; in this context "sublime" means "head" and success implies that the Creative lends "form" to archetypes of ideas.
According to the oracle, The Creative brings peace and security to the world by creating order: "The course of The Creative alters and shapes beings until each attains its true, specific nature, then keeps them in conformity with the Great Harmony." The leader is personified by the dragon, Chinese symbol of the electrically charged, dynamic, arousing force, a thunderstorm which is active in summer and withdraws into earth in winter. The oracle explains that the leader chooses a specialty and exerts influence on his environment without conscious effort.
Ch'ien seemed an ideal definition of the manager, bringing order to the environment, shaping the actions of others through creative activity that can lead to harmony. The Creative strives upward – toward heaven, giving support to the idea that managers and other leaders are natural ascensionists. Psychically oriented toward brightness, flying, climbing, pointing and moving upward, ascensionists are also often particularly concerned with hierarchic order. In sum, the I Ching defines the creative nature of humanity, organizing the universe of ideas.
My reading, however, wasn’t complete; there were also the "lines" which reflect the changes in individual situations. Lines that "move" reveal the direction of subsequent events, and sometimes offer warnings. Reading the lines related to The Creative, "nine at the top" caught my attention. In any hexagram, this line concerns the effect produced by the beginning line; in this case, it provides the warning that the "arrogant dragon will have cause to repent."
Several interpretations are possible. When a person attempts to move too high he or she loses touch with humanity and becomes isolated. Extremes also lead to confusion. Arrogance leads one to press forward, moving outward and upward without understanding how to draw back – inward and downward.
Put another way, an "arrogant dragon" knows existence but not annihilation; such a leader "meets with misfortune." Although the hexagram deals with creative powers, suggesting that an excess of strength isn’t necessarily harmful, this line illustrates the final effect of the leader's situation. If one's character is strong and inner preparations have been made, the end may simply be a transition. Yet the line also implies remorse, "since there is no possible way out."
"Nine at the top" is a succinct description of leaders in a world of manipulative tools that they create to order reality, a world of efficient production that culminates in techniques of death, a world of predictability, assimilation, and alienation. Over the last century, The Creative has certainly become a destroyer. More than once, order had led humanity to the brink of annihilation in a cycle suggested by the lunar system.
Burlington...the People's Republic...Progressive politics and Chittenden Mysteries... 40 plus years in the Green Mountains with many a side trip along the way....Writer, editor, historian and progressive manager. Former Pacifica Radio CEO & Editor of Toward Freedom, Vermont Guardian, Vanguard Press, Public Occurrence, and Vintage.
Part 4 of Prisoners of the Real
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