Catalyst 4 Change Article - Competing Against Time and Obsolescence

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"So quickly that few have recognized what is happening, a society that lasted for ten thousand years has begun to dissolve. In its place a new society has been growing up, one in which the mores, habits, and goals of a hundred centuries are being profoundly altered. Some might take longer than others to recognize this colossal reorientation; many will undoubtedly spend the rest of their lives resisting the new direction of humanity. But it is real." ~ William Glasser from Breakpoint and Beyond

"Today’s change is unlike any encountered before. The surprising fact is that change itself has changed!" ~ Breakpoint and Beyond

C A T A L Y S T 4 C H A N G E

Competing Against Time and Obsolescence

[Readers' Reactions]

To think that societal transformation heralds social, commercial, environmental, educational and, yes, even political reforms, is quite exciting. As members of our societies go about "resisting the new directions of humanity" however, vast numbers of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual lives are adversely affected by societal change. Out of these crises a cultural creatives movement is giving birth to a new socioentrepreneurial spirit, determined to fill societal needs with passion and renewed purpose.

"[S]urrounded by a rampage of phenomenal change - failures in education and business, global competition, disappearing jobs and industries, growing deficits, political upheavals, proliferating drugs and crime, cities running short on money and long on garbage - we continue applying age-old methods and solutions." ~ Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering The Future - Today!.

If there is any competing to be done, let it not be against each other but against time and obsolescence. As economies fail and natural resources dwindle, it is against whatever robs people and earth of what remains for continued life that we must now compete in earnest.

"Many of the best minds of our time are engaged in finding ways to use the finance system to claim even more of the world's real wealth for those who already control much of it.

But there are also those who are concerned with how we might redesign money to serve a society that works for all people and preserves the natural environment." ~ David Korten, Money versus Wealth

Increasing societal needs demand extreme urgency for setting right 20th century wrongs. To start with, our overall future well-being will clearly hinge on parallel and alternative socioeconomies replacing the failing economies of these past several decades.

"Not long ago, even in the most supposedly advanced countries, half of the adult population worked without pay to maintain home and community. These are among the most fundamental and important functions in a healthy economy.

Now, it typically takes two adults holding two to three paid jobs between them to support a household. Child and home care is either left undone or hired out. Community service becomes the work of public employees to the extent there is public money to pay them. As the social capital of caring relations is depleted, family and community life fall into disarray." ~ David Korten, Money versus Wealth

The speed of affecting societal change will directly depend on inter-generational collaborations and the successful results likely to emerge from such symbiotic relationships. Little room for competition here. The nature of these collaborations will be focussed on helping people in general, to overcome their apathetic resistance to change so that they too, may play inclusive roles in all that needs doing.

In all these past C4C articles, we have balanced enthusiasm for our immediate future with biting realities currently threatening IONs - Individuals, Organizations and Networks. The tipping point, as some refer to the Breakpoint wherein the rule change is so sharp that continued use of the old rules will not work, is about to occur due to a chaotic mixture of catalysts for societal change. The mix includes a broad spectrum of profound, compounded effects an imploding Industrial Age is having upon all of modern civilization. The advent of whatever is destined to emerge from the concoction will undoubtedly involve a strong focus on repairing the damage to living and future generations; damage caused by industrial age mentalities that paid little import for much beyond personal gain and glory. Amongst the extensive casualty list of the critically wounded to be tended back to health is our Mother Earth and her children. The survival of future generations hangs in the balance. Anything less than striving for socioeconomic sustainability from this point onward is likely to prove fatal.

In light of all threats, we submit that entrepreneurial competition would slow down socioentrepreneurial collaborations for creating a new civilization. The competition socioentrepreneurs need be most concerned about will be from moribund (outdated) institutions, and the efforts of self-interested parties wishing to perpetuate them. When the arduous tasks include bringing to a halt any further degradation of global ecosystems or the perpetuation of human disfunctions that mortally wound the souls therein, time itself becomes a formitable competitor.

Co-opetitive Heart and Skill-Sets

No doubt this will smack of being paradoxal, even hypocritical, however the co-opetitive heart and skill-sets needed for achieving socioeconomic sustainability find their beginnings in a determination to prevent narrowly focussed competition from ever reaching the higher ground.

The word 'co-opetiton' is formed by combining co-operation with competition. The skill-sets to best suit the intent of that word, will eventually be attained by first adopting the heart-set needed to nurture their evolution within each of us.

Co-opetiton is a heartful, caring activity as opposed to a spiritually robbing, self-serving heartlessness. Competition's downfall will be that in order to have winners, there must be losers. In a post-Breakpoint civilization wherein even the old rules of success will no longer apply - where the desire is that there be as many winners as it is possible to achieve - there will be very little room for competition.

What life-lessons would a child learn within a village wherein most of the residence were looking out mostly for themselves? And if, in that village the main activity were focussed on rebuilding their lives on the heels of a devastating war or some natural disaster, what view would be taken of competition?

Ignoring The Rules

Socioentrepreneurship's supreme purpose is, at the very least, repairing this civilization; at the most, it is the creation of a new civilization. The socioentrepreneur's aspiration is to be an integral part of that, and socioentrepreneurs are entitled as any entrepreneur to bring into existence their own realities. After all, is this not an essential means of bringing into existence something that never before existed?

"A natural principle of Breakpoint change is creating what's never been seen before - and couldn’t be predicted by the past." ~ Breakpoint and Beyond

David Korten, noted author of When Corporations Rule the World claims that in order [t]o heal society, we must heal the money system. To a large extent that is true. I hesitate in refuting anything David may have to say in these matters, yet so many facits of daily living are in dire need of similar healing. Competing against time and obsolescence in order to raise marketspace awareness and gain the attentions of potentially willing consumer bases, will prove challenging. Even more challenging will be devising ways of creating inclusions where so many are now excluded from enjoying quality of life, and fulfillment of work.

"The trick to mastering the future is to base our new thinking solidly on these three cornerstones: Creativity, Connecting, and Future Pull. If any one of them is missing, the whole edifice will totter and fall." ~ Breakpoint and Beyond

The Future Changes Everything

Let us examine the validity of Breakpoint authors George Land and Beth Jarman's claim that "Breakpoint change abruptly and powerfully breaks the critical links that connect anyone and anything with the past."

In the past, formal education centred mainly on preparing students for their adult lives to be lived in a subservience to industrial-aged organizations with all that that encompassed. As smokestacks crumble and pass into history, taking long-term employment along with it, little point remains to perpetuating whatever "connects anyone and anything" to such obsolescence. It is an excellent case-in-point wherein the old rules no longer apply, even work against the main objectives of education.

Preparing for an uncertain future of fast pace change calls for alternative methods to learning. While everyone currently linked to these existing systems agree these systems have obsolesced, representatives of what forms their organizational and implemented structures are locked within heated conflict. Meanwhile the children, for whom these systems supposedly exist in the first place, are learning lessons no parent really wants learned. This all creates major frontiers on which socioentrepreneurs can help make the needed break from the past.

When I think of all that is required to meet the societal needs of an education system in upheaval, the old system is not even a contender. The time will soon arrive when the old systems will need to break their critical links to the past. When it does, socioentrepreneurs waiting at the finish lines will be well positioned to help provide for the needs of them that wish to survive within the rules of a new civilization.

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Readers' Reactions

The first thing that got my attention was the phrase "Increasing societal needs demand extreme urgency for setting right 20th century wrongs." I would be careful with this, as it emphasizes the negative aspect, painting the whole century and modernism - even post modernism - as essentially and fundamentally wrong. I prefer to frame things in a broader way. I see those "wrongs" as experiments in learning how to do things, and as the misapplication of the benefits of the ideas of the times. Author Ken Wilber is quite good on this. Beck and Cowan's Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Complexity and Change also provides a broad framework for understanding the deeper causes and principles at work in such transitions as we are currently undergoing. The kind of urgency you advocate is indeed part of this process - but only a small part. Understanding how it fits into a bigger picture can help avoid getting stuck too long in that place.

And all of this also reminds me of what Plato says in the Republic: "The seeds of change are always present in the nature of a system."

With respects to your saying that "the speed of affecting societal change will directly depend on inter-generational collaborations." Beck and Cowan show how what they call the green vMEME, or deep level cultural value system - is based on going beyond the entrepreneurial, self centered vMEME before it. The green vMEME is based in such collaborative, communitarian values. However, they warn that each of these "first tier" vMEMEs think that they themselves, are the one and only right way of thinking, of being, or in doing. They show that what is needed to better facilitate change is "second tier" vMEMEs. These are qualitatively different in that they can see the value and appropriate domain for each of the vMEMEs. At this level, other values, such as those referred to as "20th century wrongs," are not viewed as wrong, but as manifestations of a certain level of evolution, and have a value that plays an essential role in our growth.

I do not know, but for me parts of this just have such a bitter, negative, judgmental orientation, which from my personal experience of doing just such things, only produces stronger defensive reactions in the very ones wished to be reached. This way of saying things only preaches to the choir.

Jonathan Reams is Co-Founder of Institute for Transformative Leadership located in Nelson, B.C. Canada. The institute offers facilitation and training to improve the effectiveness and capacity of teams, organizations, communities, and corporate entities, and that empowers their constituent individuals.

http://jonathanreams.com/ Jonathan(dot)Reams(at)svt(dot)ntnu(dot)no

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As of April 30, 2005

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Bernie Slepkov is the Founder and President of Sustainable Niagara and Senior Associate of Trendspire Canada, Inc. As a New Society Strategist, (Sustainability Advisor/Consultant) he envisions, maps out and defines sociocommercial models likely to contribute towards affecting widespread change and to assist IONs - Individuals, Organizations and Networks - into and through those transitions. St. Catharines, Ontario Canada.

http://For-Legacies-Sake.ca

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