How Introverted Is That?

I am a very introverted person. When I walk down the street, if I hear people behind me talking, I pull over to let them pass. Same with the sound of shoes clacking behind me; I pull over to let them pass. The other day Karen and I were watching the Indianapolis 500, and one racing car was right up behind another. I said to Karen, "If that front car were me, I'd pull over and let him pass." Now how introverted is that?

Mr. Humanity and Mr. Nasty

I had a flash of insight the other day, one that may seem a bit strange, but here it is: I am both Amebocyte and Slug, and so are you. This illumination struck me as a fundamental truth about our human condition. I have often been disturbed by how inconsistent - seemingly hypocritical- I am in my reactions to others -- fluctuating between being Mr. Humanity full of empathy and compassion for others, and being Mr. Nasty full of snap judgments, anger, snide reactions to these same others. And then it hit me: Amebocytes and Slugs. (See "Amebocytes and Slugs: The Key to Almost Everything.")

Amebocyte and Slug is more than a cute metaphor; it captures a truth about the human condition:  the two phases of our existence. Sometimes we are amebocyte: solitary "I"s, swimming alone, independent, separate, apart, competitive, reactive to one another; and sometimes we are  slug:"We"s, part of the whole, one with one another.

In the amebocyte state, our separateness predominates; whereas in the slug state it is our connectedness, our oneness.

There is no hypocrisy here, only two sides of human existence. For much of our lives, we exist in the amebocyte state, swimming alone, experiencing our separateness, our difference from others; we judge, evaluate, compete. And then there are the rare moments of illumination in which we experience our connectedness, our oneness with others, our love.

Little Slugs and Big Slugs. The amebocyte/slug shift occurs in many different contexts. It may be in the family in which, at times, we experience ourselves as separate, competitive, evaluative of the others, while, at other times, we experience our oneness.

Sometimes whether we are in the amebocyte or slug state is shaped by systemic organizational conditions: Bottoms in their condition of shared vulnerability are more likely to experience themselves as a "We",as embedded in the slug; whereas Middles, in the organizational space that pulls them apart from one another, are more likely to be in the amebocyte state, experiencing themselves as a collection of independent "I"s. We observe this phenomenon regularly in the Organization Workshop when we ask organizational groups to describe their peer relationships. Bottom groups, the front-line workers, describe themselves as "WE"s, using such words and phrases as "teamwork," "creative," "supportive," "we could run the place if only THEY (Middles and Tops) got out of our way." Middles, by contrast, see themselves as a collection of independent "I"s, no group, no collective power among them, separate from, and often competitive with one another.

The amebocyte/slug shift also occurs in the larger context of nations, religions, ethnic groups. In our amebocyte state our connection to nation, religion, or ethnic group is minimal or non-existent; then something happens - a threat, challenge, insult - and we are embedded in our slug state - one with the nation, religion, or ethnic group.

All of this is old hat for me and, possibly, for you. What struck me as special the other day was that moment in which I felt embedded in the BIG SLUG, the slug that encompasses all other slugs. And, more than the personal experience, was the knowledge that our separateness from and connection to the BIG SLUG is a truth of human existence.

 

 

Van Gogh's Roses

I am in the Washington, D.C. National Gallery standing in front of Van Gogh's Roses . I am stunned by its beauty. That's my first reaction. Then comes righteous indignation: How come this genius could never sell any of his work? Their beauty and value are so obvious to me now, why weren't they then?   It's "world views" again, and the tricky thing about world views is that they are invisible to us; they simply are the way things are. We see the world through the lens of our world view, but the lens itself is invisible. Looking through the lens of the times, Van Gogh's Roses were too wild, too undisciplined, to removed from reality to be art. Just as our ex-Nazi prison guard who had no second thoughts about killing Jewish children (see "Morality versus Morality: World Views") in the March Archives); through his lens, Jews stood apart from humanity.

World views do change. Minority voices rise up to challenge them. The Emperor is naked! Can't you see that? Then the struggle begins.

There is much talk of faith these days, although a fairly narrow view of faith. One act of faith would be to consider the possibility that our judgments of people may reflect not them but the lens through which we see them. Isn't this what Maimonides meant when he said, "We see the world not as it is, but as we are."

Ah, if only Van Gogh were alive today, what I wouldn't offer him for that painting lying untouched and unloved in his garrett. That's how smart I am.

Internal Strife and the Search for Certainty

Here is how it has gone with deadly regularity throughout human history.

1. We humans exist in uncertainty, facing questions for which there are no clear-cut, obviously correct answers.

2. We humans do not take well to mystery, so we quickly migrate from uncertainty to certainty. We now have answers. (Consider, for example, the rich variety of creation myths that have arisen from peoples across the globe.)

3. The greater the uncertainty, the more certainties it will give birth to. Existence is the greatest uncertainty of them all, and from it have sprung the rich and often conflicting religions of the world. The deadliness of their wars of certainty versus certainty has been well chronicled; and the irony of all that murder and devastation is that if we could get beneath our arrogance and righteousness, we would be faced with the reality that none of us really knows what we are talking about. It is beyond our limited imaginations.

PAUSE: It is at this point that I can be accused of joining the war against people of faith, or equally as assaulting the sometimes smug certainty of science. My issue is with neither - I consider myself to be both a deeply spiritual person and a scientist - my focus is on the phenomenon of certainty.

4. Since certainty is a defense against uncertainty, we are very sensitive to having our certainty questioned. Thoughtful questioning threatens to cast us back into the abyss.

5. Try as we may, there is no escaping uncertainty. No sooner do we find comfort in a belief system, than uncertainties arise within it. Four examples, more later.

I. Reza Aslan, in No god but God, maintains that the real Islamic jihad is not against the West but is a longstanding struggle between the Rationalists and the Traditionalists. Both camps accepted the Koran as the word of God, but the Rationalists treated the meaning as changing over time, while, for the Traditionalists, the meaning was fixed and eternal. The current form of the struggle, according to Mr. Aslan, is between the Reformers and the Reactionaries. The Traditionalists/ Reactionaries won the battle and are still the dominant force in Islam.

II. Elaine Pagels, in Beyond Belief, describes similar internal struggles in the early days of Christianity; for example, the conflict between those who sought revelation through spiritual intuition - epinoia - and those who chose to rely on traditional sources of revelation. That conflict was only settled with the emperor Constantine's charge to the bishops to work out a standard formulation of the Christian faith. Very quickly,epinoia became heresy. That conflict, too, carries forth into the present with those who take the Bible as the fixed and eternal message of God, and those who believe, as a banner on my neighborhood church proclaims, "God is still speaking."

III. Within Judaism there has been a similar historic internal conflict that carries forth to today between those who adhere to the laws as detailed in the Torah and those who adapt the teachings to changing times. As divergent as these camps are in belief and behavior, both feel firmly grounded in Judaism.

IV. In our Merging Cultures Workshop, one culture with its cultural norms enters another culture with very different cultural norms. With great regularity, within both cultures, a tension develops between those who want to preserve their culture intact and those who are willing to allow in or adapt to the culture of the other.  And once again, this is a struggle within cultures. In the larger society, this same tension between Preserve/Protect and Allow/Adapt is reflected in the "culture wars."

To be continued...

The Wages of Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is under fire for its low wages. (New York Times, May 4, 2005) As a corporation, Wal-Mart is doing precisely what it is supposed to be doing: maximizing shareholder value.

In The Corporation, Joel Bakan makes the point that the fundamental business of corporations is to provide value to their stockholder owners. Corporations, by law, are not in the business of doing good for the environment, their employees,or the nation, unless that "good" can be justified as serving the bottom line.

In order to understand the Wal-Mart picture, one needs to work backwards from the fundamental goal: profit. One increases profit by reducing costs; one reduces costs by making excruciating demands on vendors and by keeping wages low. Reduced costs leads to lower prices which lead to satisfied customers which keeps customers coming back which creates profit, which is what it is all about. No corporation advertises - except to its stockholders - "We specialize in everyday profits!" Yet that is precisely what its business is.

Let me put the corporation in the amebocyte/slug systemic framework. (For reference, see "Amebocytes and Slugs: The Key to Almost Everything.") 

Corporations are free-swimming amebocytes existing in the larger context of the slug, the nation, the world.  The universal amebocyte/slug tension is this: How free will the amebocyte be to pursue its self- interest; how much restraint will the slug exert on the amebocyte?

System survival  - whether the system is the amebocyte/slug, the  family, a team, or  a corporation  - rests on maintaining some balance between  amebocyte  (responsibility for self) and slug  (responsibility  for the whole.) Unrestrained amebocyte led to the collapse of the world economy in the 1930s and it could do it again any time. Unrestrained slug led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Balance is required; that's the science; but then ideology, often in the guise of science, enters the picture.

There are the amebocyte ideologues and slug ideologues. Amebocyte ideologues are the champions of free enterprise;  Milton Friedman is their spear carrier and Slug (government constraint, regulation) is their enemy. Slug ideologues are champions of socialism or communism;  Marx and Engels are (were?) their spear carriers, and Amebocyte (greed, selfishness) is their enemy.
 
In the 1930s, as a result of unrestrained amebocyte activity, the world economy was in a shambles. Franklin Roosevelt created the New Deal, regulatory (slug) reforms aimed ar restoring economic health. The slug ideologues hated the New Deal and hated Roosevelt; some even plotted to overthrow his administration.

Nowadays, especially emboldened by the collapse of that biggest of all Slugs (the Soviet Union), the amebocyte ideologues are in charge. Regulations are stripped away and the amebocyte corporation is allowed to run free. In their unrestrained self-interest, corporations ship jobs from point A to point B. The people in point B leave their farms to take these new jobs. Then the corporation moves those jobs from point B to a still cheaper source of labor in point C. The corporation is doing its job, maximizing shareholder value. The disruptions in people's lives, their culture, the environment,  these are not the concern of the corporation; they are "externalities." The wages of Wal-Mart are so low that many of its workers are on Medicaid and food stamp programs. We taxpayers pay the bill for those "externalities."

Unrestrained amebocyte works for many of us: it works for those around the world who were poor and jobless and who are now employed; it works for the shareholders; it works by providing us consumers with low cost products and services. And then there are the "externalities."

My sense is that unrestrained amebocyte will reach its limit. The disruption will eventually outweigh the benefits. A new New Deal will arise. The amebocyte ideologues will hate it, but it will restore system health. Sooner or later, the amebocytes return to the slug.