Exploring Common
Ground
by Robert
Theobald
 People can no longer leave
sociocultural, as well as economic, decisions to a few controllers, while
themselves concentrating on a range of personal problems from the search for
shelter to a good vacation spot. Whatever our standard of living or our habitual
associations, we now need to admit that each of us must be concerned with the
total situation of our society. Our prime requirement for working in this way is
the development of a new set of conceptual tools.
Effective
decision-making
I want at this point to
concentrate on the central issue which I see as shaping our future. This is
whether we can, in fact, create radical changes in the way we make decisions so
we learn how to work together on the truly critical questions of our time. It is
essential that we move beyond the current policy debate and come to grips with
the real nature of our challenges. We can only do so as we find common
ground.
When things go wrong, the easiest
response is to blame others for problems as they arise. We argue that if only
some other individual or group would
behave differently, then everything would go smoothly. In a homogeneous society,
some people are allocated a large share of the blame because of their unpopular
personalities. In an ethnically, racially, or religiously mixed society, there
is a tendency to put the blame on those unlike ourselves. We develop derogatory
terms for groups other than our own, and come to believe that there are certain
pervasive negative behaviors in groups which differ from ourselves by color,
race, or creed.
Efforts to bring about systemic
change are most effective when they move beyond seeing one person or clique as
the cause of trouble. It is often the system itself, as it is presently
constructed or conceptualized, which is dysfunctional. Modern psychiatric
practice recognizes this phenomenon. In the past, one person was commonly seen as "the problem" and
efforts were made to change their behavior. Now it is believed that the
difficulties can be traced to relationships between family members or friends,
and unless work is done to correct interpersonal dysfunctions, a new set of
difficulties will emerge even if the existing ones are resolved. This system
analysis approach is by no means perfect, but it does represent a progression
beyond treating patients as the sole source of their own
problems.
Altering the behavior of a single
individual, or even a class of individuals, will not change the way a whole
system works. The difficulty with trying to change the success criteria of
systems is, of course, that there are always some people who benefit from
present patterns and are loath to abandon them.
Self-healing
The idea of self-healing, rather
than imposed change, is at the heart of the shift from the industrial era to the
compassionate era. It assumes that all healthy organisms have the capacity to
recover if abuse is stopped. It is exemplified by the really central clash
between medical methods which are intrusive and aggressive, and health
strategies which assume that human beings need to encourage natural systems both
to heal themselves and to keep themselves healthy. Like all dichotomies, both
extremes are wrong. There are times when it is essential to intervene; there are
others when it is best to leave individuals, families, communities, and
organizations to heal themselves. Today, the only certainty is that the balance
is too far toward aggressive intervention.
Unfortunately, the process of
self-healing raises tough challenges. When one deals aggressively with symptoms,
health may improve in the short run, but worsen in the long. If we tackle the
underlying causes, there will be unpleasant consequences before improvement
occurs. The difficulties of dealing with addiction are one example of this reality, which does
not apply only at the personal, but also at the system, level. Decision-makers
who tackle today's real challenges therefore need time before the results of
their initiatives are evaluated. In today's super-critical world, this luxury is
rarely available. It is hardly surprising therefore, that most leaders deal with
the trivial.
We can only make the tough choices
if we involve the best leadership we can find, who will then join together to
enable new thinking to take place. I'm describing with extreme brevity some
potentially relevant groups from which such leadership may emerge. My
descriptions can easily be challenged. I am aiming only to remind us of a few
salient facts; I am not trying to describe the full potential of each group, nor
have I aimed to list every relevant one. I hope you will listen to the "music"
behind my thinking rather than to the individual words.
None of the following groups has
the knowledge or wisdom to resolve the crises that societies face by themselves.
Indeed, if they were in sole charge of our destiny, each of them would probably
worsen problems. Together, however, they may be able to find a way
forward.
Religious and Spiritual
Thinkers
These groups remind us that life
is not to be evaluated solely on the material level. They insist that we must
follow certain standards, if societies are to achieve any decent quality of
life. One short list of some necessary virtues consists of honesty,
responsibility, humility, love, and a respect for mystery. These groups aim to
force us to look beyond the certainties of nineteenth-century science and the
material world on which we have concentrated in the twentieth; they want us to
look at a world without certainties. One of the most surprising aspects of our
time is the convergence of the perennial wisdom which lies behind all religions
and the new sciences of chaos and complexity.
There is continuing controversy
about whether values should anchor us in the past, or provide a compass which
enables us to discover behaviors suitable for the future. Fundamentalists, in
particular, tend to assume that challenges to past standards are inappropriate.
But if religious groups try to maintain old standards after conditions have
changed, they make the development of
new positive directions more difficult. Too often, their inflexibility has the
tragic result of undercutting their own commitment to values, as well as that of
the larger society.
Business
Management
Management has pioneered in
developing an understanding of the need for new ways of organizing work. Many
companies have recognized that it is essential for everybody to have access to
relevant information. They are providing evidence that trusting people is an
effective management tool which now needs to be adopted in government and
academia.
Unfortunately, management has not
yet come to grips with the need to reexamine maximum-growth orthodoxies.
Companies are also increasingly committed to maximizing profits, even though
this means reducing the labor force. The idea that workers should do well when
companies prosper is increasingly being abandoned, as is the idea that the gap
between the wages of workers and salaries of management should be kept down to a
reasonable multiple.
Labor Unions
Labor unions have been one of the
primary forces which have struggled toward social justice. In the full
employment economy of the 40 years after World War II, their efforts, coupled
with progressive legislation, ensured that growing wealth was widely shared.
Unfortunately, labor unions have not fully faced up to the dramatic changes in
conditions, which ensure that they can only be effective if they change their
strategies fundamentally.
Unions are still aiming to
increase wages when their goals could be better achieved by recognizing the
necessity of a reduction in working hours and a change in the way the life cycle
is structured. They are often still relying on strikes, which are increasingly
unpopular with the general public because of their coercive nature, rather than
on educational programs.
Government
Those who work in government aim
to serve citizens. Unfortunately, the systems in which they work, and the
legislation which they must enforce, do not meet the needs of our times. It is
very difficult to create collaborative decision-making with parliamentary or
congressional structures. A recent news report in England showed that the children of
politicians no longer saw this career as a positive challenge and were choosing
other directions.
In addition, today's governments
still primarily use coercion to affect patterns of behavior, rather than
encouraging individual responsibility. Governments also spend too much time
dealing with problem cases, rather than assisting those who are working to keep
communities running successfully.
Social Justice
Activists
People who struggle to maintain
social cohesion by working toward social justice have always had an uphill
battle because reforms such as the abolition of child labor, or the creation of
the eight-hour work day, are always fought on the grounds that they will be
ruinous to the established order. Today, this group seems more besieged than
ever.
The basic reason for the loss of
energy in social justice circles is that many people with this orientation are
unwilling to recognize the need to abandon sixties' and seventies' tactics and
strategies which have proved ineffective. The need for measures to ensure social
cohesion is in reality more urgent than ever; the approaches that will be
effective have yet to be invented. Polls show that people still believe in
social justice, but they no longer believe in the way we are aiming to achieve
it.
The Artistic
Community
The arts community has always been
in a state of tension with the mainstream, holding up a mirror to our foibles
and enabling us to see what needs changing by depicting alternative visions of
reality and the future. It is often easier to see an alternative vision of
reality through the arts than through intellectual argument. Unfortunately, it
is the safe and the tested that most often gets public and private support. The
challenging and experimental have a much harder time finding resources. As a
result, many artists have been co-opted to support the norms of the dying
industrial era.
Women's
Movement
The growing challenge to male
organizational forms is one of the most welcome developments of the last quarter
century. It is leading to a quiet revolution as new management and relationship
styles develop. There can be no doubt that the values which have been ascribed
to women in industrialized countries
are more relevant to a new vision of societal relations than those which are
ascribed to men.
Unfortunately, much of the women's
movement has been co-opted by those who believed that its primary goal should be
to provide women with a fair share of industrial-era advantages. In those cases
where the movement has adopted this goal, it has ceased to be transformative,
and became part of a struggle for comparative advantage, rather than a catalyst
for fundamental change.
Ecologists
The primary challenge to maximum
growth strategies has come from the ecological movement, which is now supported
by high percentages of citizens around the world. But the clash between economic
growth and ecological principles means that the ecologists' challenge will fail
unless profound changes are made to socioeconomic systems. Jobs will necessarily
take priority over ecological balance until alternative economic structures are
put in place.
Many environmentalists and
ecologists have accepted the idea that it is possible for maximum growth
strategies to continue. From my perspective, this concession makes their work
irrelevant, for one primary issue of our time is to understand fully that
maximum economic growth strategies are now infeasible.
Technologists
As knowledge increases, we are
discovering that material production is possible using fewer materials and
creating far less waste. This happy understanding permits us to do more with
less, and thus increases the effective carrying capacity of the earth. Many of
those most concerned about carrying capacity issues underestimate just how much
technology can do. Unfortunately, many technologists seem to believe that there
are no limits to the increase in technological efficiency. They thus make it
difficult to discuss what long-run levels of production and population are
feasible for the future.
I would like to emphasize,
finally, that social structures are under increasing stress today because of
rapid rates of technological change. It is time we recognized the dangers which
could result from a breakdown in cultural systems. We need to draw a parallel between societal damage and the risks
which emerge as ecological systems are overloaded and threaten to collapse.
Social systems can also fail for the same reason.
It is this reality that will force
business to be increasingly involved with the support of societal structures.
The view of the Chicago School of Economics, that the business of business is
business, does not hold up given today's realities. Business requires certain
basic predictable systems and structures if it is to be able to function at all.
In current circumstances, there is clearly a risk that the preconditions for
successful operation can be destroyed as social cohesion declines. The dangers
ahead are visible in Russia and many developing countries, where businessmen
have to be guarded against kidnap and murder. The more threatening trend,
however, may emerge from the growing anger which is now developing against the
corporate sector.
A kaleidoscope provides a useful
analogy which can help us to grasp the need for maintaining the underlying
self-healing structures. Providing the internal mechanism remains intact, each
time the kaleidoscope is turned a new and beautiful pattern emerges. If the
mechanism breaks, all that remains are a few pieces of colored glass. So long as
societies are healthy, positive patterns can be expected to emerge after changes
take place. If societies lose their adaptive capability, then progressive
breakdowns are inevitable.
Today's crises require that all
groups commit to adapting old self-healing structures and creating new ones. It
is now in our self-interest to work together to preserve and enhance our quality
of life. The primary challenge that confronts us is to discover the skills we
need to think and act collaboratively.
This article was excerpted from
 Reworking Success: New
Communities at the Millennium
by Robert
Theobald.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New Society Publishers. The book can be ordered
directly from the publisher at 800-567-6772, or at www.newsociety.com
Info/Order this book on Amazon
More books by this author.
About the Author
Robert Theobald is a speaker, consultant and writer
who has been on the leading edge of fundamental change issues throughout his
forty-year career. He has worked with business and labor, education and health,
government and local communities. Widely published, he is the author of over 25
books that deal with change, economics, and related issues, recent titles
including Turning the Century (1993) and The Rapids of Change
(1987). A British citizen, he currently resides in New Orleans.
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