From the SynEARTH Archives. … I have finally published Chapter 5 of UnCommon Science. It is available as a separate paper Understanding Order. This paper includes an explantion of the  advanced work of synergic scientist Edward Haskell.

Edward Haskell

Edward Haskell is one of the least known of the synergic scientists whose ideas and works are presented in the classic Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science and throughout the UnCommon Sense—Library. One can find information on the internet and elsewhere on Alfred Korzybski, Buckminster Fuller, Arthur Young and N. Arthur Coulter. But, you will find almost nothing on Edward Haskell. For this reason, I am including some biographical information on Haskell.

Edward Frˆhlich Haskell was born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria on August 24, 1906 into a large family of well educated Swiss missionaries. During his childhood, the family traveled widely throughout Europe. and Haskell learned to speak six languages.

The family eventually immigrated to the United States. Haskell finished his education here graduating from Oberlin College with an A.B. in 1929. He did postgraduate studies at Columbia University for one year 1929-30, then left school to travel and write a book. While waiting to get his book published, he returned to postgraduate studies at Harvard University 1935-37, University of Chicago 1937-40. His book, Lance — A Novel about Multicultural Men, was finally published in 1941. He became a fellow at University of Chicago from 1940-43, but never completed his thesis and was not awarded a Doctorate degree. He left University to teach, and he instructed in sociology (human, animal, plant) and anthropology, at the University of Denver 1944-45, and Brooklyn College, 1946-47. In 1948, he left teaching to devote himself full-time to private research.

Haskell was instrumental in the formation of the Council for Unified Research and Education (C.U.R. E., Inc.). This was a private non-profit research organization of scientists committed to the unification of science and education. Their goal was the synthesis of all knowledge into a single discipline. Haskell served as the Chairman of C.U.R. E., Inc., from its inception in 1948 until it was disbanded in the mid 1980s.

The groups membership varied over the years, but was made up of many notable scientists and thinkers including Harold Cassidy, PhD, Professor of Chemistry at Yale University; Willard V. Quine, PhD, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University; Arthur Jensen, PhD, Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley; and Jere Clark, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Economics at Southern Connecticut University.

The scientists of C. U. R. E., Inc. believed that the present universities were really multiversities, with specialists from different fields dividing knowlege into separate preserves with specialized languages and almost no communication between them. They were convinced that this division of knowledge played a large role in the division of the modern world.

Over the years this group created a body of work that became known as The Unified Science. The Unified Science was to be nothing less than the Assembly of the Sciences into a Single Discipline with a common language. While many made contributions, it was Haskell that was the guiding force and author of the majority of seminal concepts.

Haskell presented The Unified Science at seminars and short courses at Columbia University, West Virginia University, Southern Connecticut State College, and Drew University New School for Social Research. The Unified Science reached its peak of influence in 1972, which was marked by the publication of Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science.

I first learned of Edward Haskell while attending a General Semantics Seminar at North Adams State College in Massachussetts in August of 1981. General Semantics is the term chosen by Alfred Korzybski to represent his Non-Aristotelian System of organizing knowledge. The foundation for General Semantics can be found in Korzybski’s book Science and Sanity.

One of the faculty for the General Semantics seminar was a Dr. Donald Washburn, a professor of English at North Adams State College. On the second day of the seminar, he gave lecture on Haskell’s PCS.

The General Semantics seminars were very special experiences with students and faculty working very closely together, Dr. Washburn and I struck up a quick friendship and towards the end of the seminar he gave me several books, one of which was Haskell’s Full Circle.

A month after the seminar, I successfully tracked down Haskell who was living in New York City, and we began a letter correspondence. Haskell had became aware of synergy and its importance in the late 1930s, and the concept was incorporated deeply into the Unified Science and the Periodic Coordinate System.

In 1982, I was in New York City to attend an unrelated medical seminar, and took the opportunity to visit Haskell in person. He was 76 years old and living alone in a small “student” apartment on the East River near Columbia University. His tiny apartment was filled from floor to ceiling with books and papers. There was no room to even sit down, let alone accomodate guests. Haskell enjoyed being near the active academic community at Columbia University. He met and communicated with students and faculty in the coffee shops and resturants that surrounded Columbia. He was close friends with several faculty members at Columbia including the internationally respected Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. While Haskell was never on the faculty at Columbia himself, his faculty friends occasionally arranged for him to present classes and short courses at Columbia on his Unified Science.

I next visted Haskell in the spring of 1984. This time I stayed at the home of his friend, the Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, I am sorry to say I don’t recall his name. Over the next two years, Haskell and I would exchange occasional letters.

In early 1986 at age 79, Haskell suffered a stroke. When he was released from the hospital, he could no longer care for himself and had difficulty speaking. His family quickly decided to put him in a nursing home and throw his life’s work — all his papers and books — into the city dump.

As you can imagine, this caused him great emotional stress. He knew I was sensitive to the value of his work and so he begged his brother to call me. Fortunately, I was able to intervene and I did. My wife and I invited Ed to come and live at our home in California. He arrived a month later early in the summer of 1986.

A few weeks later, I recieved a shipment from his brother of forty boxes containing all the scientific papers and books from his apartment. Haskell lived with us for about three months, he rapidly regained his strength and began recovering his ability to speak. And, though he did made significant improvement, he was a shadow of the former master scientist I had visited in New York two years earlier.

In the fall of 1986, he felt well enough to return to New York to spend some time with his friends and those few family members who cared about him. He asked me to keep his papers and books safe until he could find a place for them. He hoped to find a University library willing to accept custody of them. To a large extent this was wishful thinking for Haskell was not well known, and fewer still valued his work. Haskell celebrated his 80 birthday with friends in New York, and shortly after that suffered yet another stroke and died.

By default, I became the final custodian of all of Haskell’s scientific papers. The greater part of The Unified Science remains unpublished.

I believe Haskell’s work is important to synergic science and to humanity.

The systems hierarchy which he presented in his Unified Science has probably been done better in Arthur Young’s Theory of Process. Much of his work that focused on cybernetics and general systems theory has been done elsewhere equally well or better (Bertalanffy, et. al.). But he still made several unique contributions to human knowing:

1) The discovery of the 9 Co-Actions.

Haskell explained that the two parties to a relationship would experience one of nine possible co-actions. A relationship can be effected in three ways. Your “X” can go up, remain unchanged, or go down. And, my “Y” can go up, remain unchanged, or go down.

 

Our relationship might be good for you, good for me; it might be good for you, neutral for me; it might be good for you, bad for me; it might be neutral for you, good for me; etc.; etc..

2) The discovery of three classes of relationships.

Prior to Haskell, Neutrality simply represented the boundary between Adversity and Synergy. Haskell recognized that the Neutral class of relationships, in and of itself, was of equal importance to both the Adversary class of relationships, and the Synergic class of relationships.

In effect, Haskell discovered Neutrality. If we are to build a synergic future, we will not only have to transcend the Adversary Way, we will have to transcend Neutrality as well. I think this is one of the major difficulties humans face today in understanding three-fold nature of relationships. Because Neutrality is invisible in our paradigm of human relationships, most individuals assume if they are not Adversaries they must be Synergic. The same old Either/Or scientific mistake.

3) The invention of the Co-Action Compass or PCS.

This at first appears abstract and mathematical, but once understood is a powerful reflection in one diagram of all three classes of relationship.

  

Haskell’s focus was on evaluating adversary, neutral, and synergic relationships between all stages of process. Much of his work was on relationships between particles, atoms, molecules, bactereria, plants, and animals. The PCS allowed him to plot the resultants of all three types of relationship on a single geometric grid.

The shape of the PCS was not invented by Haskell. The shape evolved and took form from the real data that was measured extensionally, and plotted from analyzing numerous relationships between particles, atoms, molecules, bacteria, plants, and animals. The term extensional here is borrowed from Korzybski to mean from the real world.

Haskell did not study or analyze human relationships, but he predicted that the PCS would be useful in anlyzing adversary, neutral, and synergic relationships between humans and groups of humans, and finally.

4) The Moral Law of the Unified Science 

Much more important than Haskell’s recognition of the importance of the spiritual truth “As you sow, so shall you reap,” was his restatement of this truth as a scientific law of Nature that applied in all seven stages of process—light, particle, atom, molecule, plant, animal and human. Haskell explained:

“The first formulation of the MORAL LAW for a non-human kingdom of Universe was Dimitri Mendeleev’s discovery of the Periodic Law in 1869. “The properties of the chemical elements are functions of their atomic weights.”

“What Mendeleev’s discovery states for Atoms is that “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” where reaping is the properties of the chemical elements and sowing is the co-Action between the atom’s two components ­ its vast, light, electron cloud, and its tiny, massive nucleus.”

Haskell’s analysis of the Atomic elements showed that these two components ­ the electron cloud and the massive nucleus related in only three ways ­ positive, neutral, or negative. Haskell called this the Moral Law of Unified Science.

Edward Haskell presented his scientific generalization to the general public in 1972. You can view that presentation by clicking the following link:

Generalization of the Structure of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table

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Full Circle: The Moral Force of Unified Science now online thanks to the hard work of Don Steehler

 Understanding Order    (in PDF Format)

Co-Operation simply means working together. Synergic relationship becomes available to human individuals because of time-binding. Our ability to invent and to understand new ways of doing things creates a new possibility for co-Operation which does not exist in the world of the plants and animals.

Co-OPERATION –def–> Operating together to insure that both parties win, and that neither party loses. The negotiation to insure that both parties are helped, and that neither party is hurt.

Cooperation is an old word with lots of different meanings and feelings attached to it. Similar words are uniting, banding, combining, concurring, conjoining, and leaguing. Individuals who cooperate are affiliates, allies, associates, or confederates. To some cooperation seems a losing word associated with socialism and communism. This is not what I mean. Co-Operation in synergic relationship means operating together to insure a win-win outcome. Co-Operation is the mechanism of action necessary whenever an individual desires to accomplish a task beyond his individual abilities.

Imagine, you and a friend are moving a heavy piece of furniture. Neither of you are strong enough to move the furniture by yourself. You decide to co-operate. You decide to operate together during the lifting. You would negotiate to insure that both of you win – to insure that both of you are helped.

The conversation might go like this, “Are you ready?” “OK.” “Ready, 1.. 2.. 3.. lift!”, and if things are going well that is fine, but if one end gets too heavy then synergic co-Operation requires that you also protect each other from loss. “Whoops! Set it down.” This is the synergic veto. This is the true meaning of co-Operation. The negotiation to insure that both parties win, and the synergic veto to stop the action if either party is losing.

A very limited form of cooperation exists among some animals. We see it the hunting pride of lions and within the hyena pack. Human co-Operation is a much more powerful mechanism. Animals have no voice with which to negotiate an action in which they win. They have no voice to veto an action in which they lose. Their primitive cooperation is guided by instinct, and it is quick to breakdown into the fighting and flighting of the adversary way.

We humans share the animal body, to survive we must also eat. We are omnivores. We meet our basic needs and survive by eating both plants and animals. Physiologically, we humans are also a dependent class of life. So adversary behavior comes to humans legitimately. But we humans are much more intelligent than the animals and that intelligence gives us the synergic option to avoid fighting or flighting.

Cooperation

Bah·’u'll·h

It seems as though all creatures can exist singly and alone. For example, a tree can exist solitary and alone on a given prairie or in a valley or on the mountainside. An animal upon a mountain or a bird soaring in the air might live a solitary life. They are not in need of cooperation or solidarity. Such animated beings enjoy the greatest comfort and happiness in their respective solitary lives.

On the contrary, man cannot live singly and alone. He is in need of continuous cooperation and mutual help. For example, a man living alone in the wilderness will eventually starve. He can never, singly and alone, provide himself with all the necessities of existence. Therefore, he is in need of cooperation and reciprocity.

The mystery of this phenomenon, the cause thereof is this, that mankind has been created from one single origin, has branched off from one family. Thus in reality all mankind represents one family. God has not created any difference. He has created all as one that thus this family might live in perfect happiness and well-being.

Regarding reciprocity and cooperation: each member of the body politic should live in the utmost comfort and welfare because each individual member of humanity is a member of the body politic and if one member of the members be in distress or be afflicted with some disease all the other members must necessarily suffer. For example, a member of the human organism is the eye. If the eye should be affected that affliction would affect the whole nervous system. Hence, if a member of the body politic becomes afflicted, in reality, from the standpoint of sympathetic connection, all will share that affliction since this (one afflicted) is a member of the group of members, a part of the whole. Is it possible for one member or part to be in distress and the other members to be at ease? It is impossible! Hence God has desired that in the body politic of humanity each one shall enjoy perfect welfare and comfort.

Although the body politic is one family yet because of lack of harmonious relations some members are comfortable and some in direst misery, some members are satisfied and some are hungry, some members are clothed in most costly garments and some families are in need of food and shelter. Why? Because this family lacks the necessary reciprocity and symmetry. This household is not well arranged. This household is not living under a perfect law. All the laws which are legislated do not ensure happiness. They do not provide comfort. Therefore a law must be given to this family by means of which all the members of this family will enjoy equal well-being and happiness.

Is it possible for one member of a family to be subjected to the utmost misery and to abject poverty and for the rest of the family to be comfortable? It is impossible unless those members of the family be senseless, atrophied, inhospitable, unkind. Then they would say, “Though these members do belong to our family–let them alone. Let us look after ourselves. Let them die. So long as I am comfortable, I am honored, I am happy–this my brother–let him die. If he be in misery let him remain in misery, so long as I am comfortable. If he is hungry let him remain so; I am satisfied. If he is without clothes, so long as I am clothed, let him remain as he is. If he is shelterless, homeless, so long as I have a home, let him remain in the wilderness.”

Such utter indifference in the human family is due to lack of control, to lack of a working law, to lack of kindness in its midst. If kindness had been shown to the members of this family surely all the members thereof would have enjoyed comfort and happiness.

His Holiness Bah·’u'll·h has given instructions regarding every one of the questions confronting humanity. He has given teachings and instructions with regard to every one of the problems with which man struggles. Among them are (the teachings) concerning the question of economics that all the members of the body politic may enjoy through the working out of this solution the greatest happiness, welfare and comfort without any harm or injury attacking the general order of things. Thereby no difference or dissension will occur. No sedition or contention will take place. This solution is this:

First and foremost is the principle that to all the members of the body politic shall be given the greatest achievements of the world of humanity. Each one shall have the utmost welfare and well-being. To solve this problem we must begin with the farmer; there will we lay a foundation for system and order because the peasant class and the agricultural class exceed other classes in the importance of their service. In every village there must be established a general storehouse which will have a number of revenues.

The first revenue will be that of the tenth or tithes.

The second revenue (will be derived) from the animals.

The third revenue, from the minerals, that is to say, every mine prospected or discovered, a third thereof will go to this vast storehouse.

The fourth is this: whosoever dies without leaving any heirs all his heritage will go to the general storehouse.

Fifth, if any treasures shall be found on the land they should be devoted to this storehouse.

All these revenues will be assembled in this storehouse.

As to the first, the tenths or tithes: we will consider a farmer, one of the peasants. We will look into his income. We will find out, for instance, what is his annual revenue and also what are his expenditures. Now, if his income be equal to his expenditures, from such a farmer nothing whatever will be taken. That is, he will not be subjected to taxation of any sort, needing as he does all his income. Another farmer may have expenses running up to one thousand dollars we will say, and his income is two thousand dollars. From such an one a tenth will be required, because he has a surplus. But if his income be ten thousand dollars and his expenses one thousand dollars or his income twenty thousand dollars, he will have to pay as taxes, one-fourth. If his income be one hundred thousand dollars and his expenses five thousand, one-third will he have to pay because he has still a surplus since his expenses are five thousand and his income one hundred thousand. If he pays, say, thirty-five thousand dollars, in addition to the expenditure of five thousand he still has sixty thousand left. But if his expenses be ten thousand and his income two hundred thousand then he must give an even half because ninety thousand will be in that case the sum remaining. Such a scale as this will determine allotment of taxes. All the income from such revenues will go to this general storehouse.

Then there must be considered such emergencies as follows: a certain farmer whose expenses run up to ten thousand dollars and whose income is only five thousand, he will receive necessary expenses from the storehouse. Five thousand dollars will be allotted to him so he will not be in need.

Then the orphans will be looked after, all of whose expenses will be taken care of. The cripples in the village–all their expenses will be looked after. The poor in the village–their necessary expenses will be defrayed. And other members who for valid reasons are incapacitated –the blind, the old, the deaf–their comfort must be looked after. In the village no one will remain in need or in want. All will live in the utmost comfort and welfare. Yet no schism will assail the general order of the body politic.

Hence the expenses or expenditures of the general storehouse are now made clear and its activities made manifest. The income of this general storehouse has been shown. Certain trustees will be elected by the people in a given village to look after these transactions. The farmers will be taken care of and if after all these expenses are defrayed any surplus is found in the storehouse it must be transferred to the national treasury.

This system is all thus ordered so that in the village the very poor will be comfortable, the orphans will live happily and well; in a word, no one will be left destitute. All the individual members of the body politic will thus live comfortably and well.

For larger cities, naturally, there will be a system on a larger scale. Were I to go into that solution the details thereof would be very lengthy.

The result of this (system) will be that each individual member of the body politic will live most comfortably and happily under obligation to no one. Nevertheless, there will be preservation of degree because in the world of humanity there must needs be degrees. The body politic may well be likened to an army. In this army there must be a general, there must be a sergeant, there must be a marshal, there must be the infantry; but all must enjoy the greatest comfort and welfare.

God is not partial and is no respecter of persons. He has made provision for all. The harvest comes forth for everyone. The rain showers upon everybody and the heat of the sun is destined to warm everyone. The verdure of the earth is for everyone. Therefore there should be for all humanity the utmost happiness, the utmost comfort, the utmost well-being.

But if conditions are such that some are happy and comfortable and some in misery; some are accumulating exorbitant wealth and others are in dire want–under such a system it is impossible for man to be happy and impossible for him to win the good pleasure of God. God is kind to all. The good pleasure of God consists in the welfare of all the individual members of mankind.

A Persian king was one night in his palace, living in the greatest luxury and comfort. Through excessive joy and gladness he addressed a certain man, saying: “Of all my life this is the happiest moment. Praise be to God, from every point prosperity appears and fortune smiles! My treasury is full and the army is well taken care of. My palaces are many; my land unlimited; my family is well off; my honor and sovereignty are great. What more could I want!”

The poor man at the gate of his palace spoke out, saying: “O kind king! Assuming that you are from every point of view so happy, free from every worry and sadness–do you not worry for us? You say that on your own account you have no worries–but do you never worry about the poor in your land? Is it becoming or meet that you should be so well off and we in such dire want and need? In view of our needs and troubles how can you rest in your palace, how can you even say that you are free from worries and sorrows? As a ruler you must not be so egoistic as to think of yourself alone but you must think of those who are your subjects. When we are comfortable then you will be comfortable; when we are in misery how can you, as a king, be in happiness?”

The purport is this that we are all inhabiting one globe of earth. In reality we are one family and each one of us is a member of this family. We must all be in the greatest happiness and comfort, under a just rule and regulation which is according to the good pleasure of God, thus causing us to be happy, for this life is fleeting.

If man were to care for himself only he would be nothing but an animal for only the animals are thus egoistic. If you bring a thousand sheep to a well to kill nine hundred and ninety-nine the one remaining sheep would go on grazing, not thinking of the others and worrying not at all about the lost, never bothering that its own kind had passed away, or had perished or been killed. To look after one’s self only is therefore an animal propensity. It is the animal propensity to live solitary and alone. It is the animal proclivity to look after one’s own comfort. But man was created to be a man–to be fair, to be just, to be merciful, to be kind to all his species, never to be willing that he himself be well off while others are in misery and distress–this is an attribute of the animal and not of man. Nay, rather, man should be willing to accept hardships for himself in order that others may enjoy wealth; he should enjoy trouble for himself that others may enjoy happiness and well-being. This is the attribute of man. This is becoming of man. Otherwise man is not man–he is less than the animal.

The man who thinks only of himself and is thoughtless of others is undoubtedly inferior to the animal because the animal is not possessed of the reasoning faculty. The animal is excused; but in man there is reason, the faculty of justice, the faculty of mercifulness. Possessing all these faculties he must not leave them unused. He who is so hard-hearted as to think only of his own comfort, such an one will not be called man.

Man is he who forgets his own interests for the sake of others. His own comfort he forfeits for the well-being of all. Nay, rather, his own life must he be willing to forfeit for the life of mankind. Such a man is the honor of the world of humanity. Such a man is the glory of the world of mankind. Such a man is the one who wins eternal bliss. Such a man is near to the threshold of God. Such a man is the very manifestation of eternal happiness. Otherwise, men are like animals, exhibiting the same proclivities and propensities as the world of animals. What distinction is there? What prerogatives, what perfections? None whatever! Animals are better even–thinking only of themselves and negligent of the needs of others.

Consider how the greatest men in the world–whether among prophets or philosophers–all have forfeited their own comfort, have sacrificed their own pleasure for the well-being of humanity. They have sacrificed their own lives for the body politic. They have sacrificed their own wealth for that of the general welfare. They have forfeited their own honor for the honor of mankind. Therefore it becomes evident that this is the highest attainment for the world of humanity.

We ask God to endow human souls with justice so that they may be fair, and may strive to provide for the comfort of all, that each member of humanity may pass his life in the utmost comfort and welfare. Then this material world will become the very paradise of the Kingdom, this elemental earth will be in a heavenly state and all the servants of God will live in the utmost joy, happiness and gladness. We must all strive and concentrate all our thoughts in order that such happiness may accrue to the world of humanity. the common people. Laws must be made because it is impossible for the laborers to be satisfied with the present system. They will strike every month and every year. Finally, the capitalists will lose. In ancient times a strike occurred among the Turkish soldiers. They said to the government: “Our wages are very small and they should be increased.” The government was forced to give them their demands. Shortly afterwards they struck again. Finally all the incomes went to the pockets of the soldiers to the extent that they killed the king, saying: “Why didst thou not increase the income so that we might have received more?”

It is impossible for a country to live properly without laws. To solve this problem rigorous laws must be made, so that all the governments of the world will be the protectors thereof.

In the Bolshevistic principles equality is effected through force. The masses who are opposed to the people of rank and to the wealthy class desire to partake of their advantages.

But in the divine teachings equality is brought about through a ready willingness to share. It is commanded as regards wealth that the rich among the people, and the aristocrats should, by their own free will and for the sake of their own happiness, concern themselves with and care for the poor. This equality is the result of the lofty characteristics and noble attributes of mankind.

Also see: Timothy Wilken’s UnCommon Sense: We Can All Win! – PDF

1—Life
2—Three Ways
3—The Relationship Continuum
4—Three Classes of Life
5—Human Neutrality
6—Interdependence
7—Wealth

 

From the SynEARTH Archives. As I wrote this past week, Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand the language of force.

Neutralists believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are financially  independent and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of money.

A new type of human is emerging called synergists. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone, but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are interdependent and can only obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language of love.

But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use them. Synergists must sometimes use the language of force, and sometimes the language of money, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies—when synergists are seeking to build community—they must speak the language of love.

ONENESS

Timothy Wilken, MD

In the first of an earlier series of essays, I explained how the human mind creates a Dual World a world of “is“ and a world of “ought to be“.  

In the second essay in that series, I explained that when we use our dual minds intelligently, our space-mind tells us what is and our time-mind tells us what could be. Our world of “ought to be” is just an opinion of how reality could be.

The term should is best left to describe the picture of how reality is. This is also the scientific definition of the term should. I went on to explain the value of learning to “could” on each other. If we want to make progress in our personal lives or as a community, we must learn to could on each other — to pull our fellow humans from the world of is toward the world of ought to be — to pull our fellow humans from the real world toward the ideal world.

Now I would like to could on my readers. I will start by revealing an important secret.

If you want to help make a world that works for all humanity, you must know this secret. It is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness.  You must live from the point of view of the whole.  You must identify with the whole. If you take care of the whole, the whole will take care of you.

The following analogy may help you understand.  Think a moment of how our brain functions — the neurons of our human brain focus entirely on the needs of the whole body, and in turn discover the whole body takes care of them.  They have no concerns and give no attention to maintaining their own temperature, to acquiring their own nutrition, to oxygenating themselves, or even in protecting themselves from bacteria or virus.

The neurons place their trust in survival of the whole.  By making decisions which keep the body healthy and safe, they  insure the body is capable of meeting all the needs of the neurons.  By serving the whole the neurons find themselves served.

I have taught that humanity is evolving. We evolved from the animals. Animals are space-binders. Their lives are dominated by adversity. Early humans lives were dominated by adversity. Humans who commit to adversity could be called Adversans. I explained to escape the Adversary world, humans invented Captitalism and the Great Market. This is a Neutral mechanism. Humans who commit to Capitalism and the Market could be called Neutrans. I have explained that if humanity is to have a future that we must give up the hurting of Adversity — give up the ignoring of Neutrality, and embrace the helping of Synergy. Humans who commit to Synergy could be called Synergans.

Now imagine that the Earth including all of life is a single organism — GAIA.  Further imagine the entire humans species  —  all of humanity — organized in a single organizational tensegrity. This evolved form of humanity could be called Synerganity.  Synerganity then could be the brain of GAIA.  Each human being functioning as a neuron within GAIA’s brain.

Synerganity will care for GAIA — care for all of Earth.  We humans could function as neurons.  We could care for the whole and discover ourselves to be cared for as a part of  Gaia.  Synergan will meet all the needs of the individual humans within it.  Just as our brain meets the needs of all the forty trillion cells contained in our bodies.

Synerganity structured as a organizational tensegrity could create an optimum environment to maximze individual meaning for all humans on earth. If we serve synerganity, synerganity will serve us. I believe this is what Jesus meant when he taught us to serve God and all  our needs would be met. Fuller knew this intuitively — he discovered the more humans he served the more important was his life. The only time he could’t meet his individual needs was when he focused on trying to meet them.

When a human begins to think as a synergan, then GAIA’s brain grows.  The more intelligent GAIA is, the more likely she will survive.

Thinking as a synergan is a state of mind — to begin we stop thinking about meeting our needs separately.  We stop adapting from our own individual point of view. Instead, we think wholistically — how can I help synerganity meet my needs. My needs are a subset of synerganity’s needs.  We stop thinking about accomplishing our individual goals separately, instead how can synerganity accomplish its goals which include the subset of my goals.

When I am a synergan, I think about meeting all Synerganity’s needs — which include my own individual needs, and my own individual survival. When I am a synergan, I think about meeting Synerganity’s goals — which include my individual goals.

Then the first and most important step on the critical path for human survival is for all of us to increase our awareness. 
 

AWARENESS   =   Who I Know on Earth 
                                    All Living on Earth

As a synergan, I decide with an awareness of the needs and goals of all of humanity.  There is no place for neutral in a synergic Earth.  To be unaware is to conflict by accident and redundancy.

Only by examing all points of view can I choose the action that promotes the most and hinders none — only by stabilizing our whole species can I hope to protect my family.  As Arthur Coulter teaches I must choose SYNERGY.

This then is FIRST TASK — I must learn to think as a synergan.  I must stretch my skin around the entire earth.  I must extend my senses to monitor all my fellow cells.  I must develop empathy for all of humanity.

With increasing awareness we will be able to self-organize much more effectively — to synergize much more powerfully.

We all have  our own individual awareness — each awareness is unique and different from any other awareness on the planet.  From whatever point of awareness we begin each of us can transcend ourselves and choose to become even more aware of the whole … the whole species.

As a synergan, I view life from the point of view of all.  My awareness is ONE.  I make my decisions with an awarenss of the goals and needs of all humans.  I need not know the detail’s of every human’s life to know every human’s needs.  I need not know everyone’s story to know what environments have potential for everyone’s meaning.  An awareness of ONE is more a qualitative change than a quanitative one.  It is a new point of view.

Choose to think as a synergan.  Think of yourself inside synerganity.  Meet your needs as a subset of synerganity’s needs.  Serve the whole and the whole will take care of you.

This is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness.  If you take care of the whole, the whole will take care of you.   If we serve synerganity well, we will find ourselves alive and well safe inside of synerganity. The world’s problems today are much larger than any single one of us.  But to synerganity, these problems will seem like nothing. No more than a few months work.  Then our future will truely be unlimited.  The stars will indeed be ours.

We now have a solution — the Organizational Tensegrity is a pattern we could use to become synerganity.  The binding is the win-win relationship.  Decision is made in Heterarchy with synergic consensus as first principle.  No one is coerced.  All losses are synergically vetoed.  Action occurs in Hierarchy  negotiated by all, here again we all win.

We could make the world better. We could work together. We could love each other. Are you ready to join the Synergic Evolution? All you have to do is change your mind.

What problem ? CRISIS, Problem #1, Scientists Speak, Global Warming, Its Much Worse Than It Appears, RWWNL

More on working together: A Synergic Future, SYNOCRACY, ORTEGRITY , GIFTegrity , Solutions #1, Chaordic Design Process, Vision for a Synergic Transition

There are three types of humans to be found in our present world. Which type you are depends on what you believe about how the world works.

Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand the language of force.

Neutralists believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are financially  independent and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of money.

A new type of human is emerging called synergists. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone, but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are interdependent and can only obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language of love.

But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use them. Synergists must sometimes use the language of force, and sometimes the language of money, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies—when synergists are seeking to build community—they must speak the language of love.

Synergists are trying to heal the wounds inflected by those who don’t understand how the world could work. This then is the essential challenge to the synergists.

Can we work together and act responsibly in time to save our ourselves on this planet ?

Not without tools!

Why ORTEGRITY ?

Timothy Wilken, MD

When I began searching for a better way for humankind, I new we would have to learn to do things in a different way. My goal was to find a safe path that humankind could follow to move from our adversary-neutral past to a synergic future.

I called this path SafePassage. This word was important to me and I even used it as the original title for my books on Synergic Science.  Before moving on it is important that the reader understand what is meant by synergic science. If you already understand this, skip down to the next section.

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What is Synergic Science ?

Some of you may be familar with the term synergy. Synergy means working together—operating together as in Co-Operation—laboring together as in Co-Laboration—acting together as in Co-Action. The goal of synergic union is to accomplish a larger or more difficult task than can be accomplished by individuals working separately.

R. Buckminster Fuller was a pioneer of synergic science —the science of working together— the science of whole systems, he considered the relationships between the parts that make up a system. He discovered that it is how these parts relate with one another that will absolutely determine the success of the whole system.

The dictionary defines synergy as the working together of two things to produce an effect greater than the sum of their individual effects. A simple example might be two muscles working together or two medications combined to treat a medical illness. R. Buckminster Fuller writing in 1975 explained it this way:

Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately. Synergy means behavior of integral, aggregate, whole systems unpredicted by behaviors of any of their components or subassemblies of their components taken separately from the whole. Synergy is the only word that means this. The fact that we humans are unfamiliar with the word means that we do not think there are behaviors of “wholes” unpredicted by the behavior of “parts”.

Synergy can best be illustrated I think, by chrome-nickel-steel — chromium, nickel, and iron. The most important characteristic of strength of a material is its ability to stay in one piece when it is pulled — this is called tensile strength, it is measured as pounds per square inch, PSI. The commercially available strength of iron at the very highest level is approximately sixty thousand PSI; of chromium about seventy thousand PSI; and of nickel about eighty thousand PSI. The weakest of the three is iron.

We all know the saying, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. Well, experiment on chrome-nickel-steel, pull it apart, and you will find that it is much stronger than its weakest link of sixty thousand PSI. In fact it is much stronger than the eighty thousand PSI of its stronger link. Thus the saying that a chain is as strong as its weakest link doesn’t hold. So, let me say something that really sounds funny: Maybe a chain is as strong as the sum of the strength of all its links. Let’s add up the strengths of the components of chrome-nickel-steel and see. Sixty thousand PSI for iron and seventy thousand PSI for chromium and then and eighty thousand PSI for the nickel, that gives you two hundred and ten thousand PSI. If we add in the minor constituency of carbon and manganese we will add another forty thousand PSI giving us a total of two hundred and fifty thousand PSI.

Now the fact is that under testing, chrome-nickel-steel shows three hundred and fifty thousand PSI—or one hundred thousand PSI more than the combined strength of all the links.

This is typical of synergy, and it is the synergy of the various metal alloys that have enabled industry to do all kinds of things that man never knew would be able to be done based on the characteristic of the parts.

Another Synergic Science pioneer Edward Haskell taught us that when we apply synergic science to examining our human relationships, we discover:

ïrelationships can be adversary where either I lose or you lose or we both lose,

ïrelationships can be neutral where we don’t lose, but neither do we win,

ïor, relationships can be synergic — good for both of us — WIN-WIN.

Synergic system analysis reveals that efficiency within a system is a direct variable of the type of relationship. Win-win relationships maximize efficiency. Win-lose or lose-win relationships severely limit efficiency. And the lose-lose relationship allows no possibility of efficiency.

We can be more working together than we can be working separately. And, much more working together than we can be working against each other. This is just common sense.

Human synergy is working together by explicit intent. (1+1)>>2

Human neutrality is working separately and ignoring each other. (1+1)=2

Human adversity is working against each other.(1+1)<2

R. Buckminster Fuller and Edward Haskell’s achievements were in understanding how whole systems are created in physical Universe. They discovered that Nature always forms whole systems using win-win relationships. This results in the sum of the whole system being much more than the sum of the parts making up the system.

Nature was always seeking more for less — always seeking maximum efficiency in all that she did. Fuller called the principle of seeking more for less the “dymaxion” way. This is of course simply another way of stating the Principle of Least Action.

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As I began to master synergic science—the science of working together, I began to realize that SafePassage would come from getting evermore humans using synergic process. How could I do that? I knew that most humans are motivated by making a profit. If I could show them how they could be more successful by acting synergically rather than adversarily or neutrally, they might seek co-Operation.

Synergic Systems — the cooperator’s reward

The most dymaxion principles always occur within wholes. Wholes — made up of parts having win-win relationships with each other. It is the win-win relationship that produces a profit for all of the parts. This is why the sum of the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Edward Haskell’s term for this more is the cooperator’s reward.

I was interested in synergic relationships not with atoms or molecules, but with human beings. I knew there was no law of Nature preventing humans from forming win-win relationships. If we humans could learn to organize synergically, we would also gain access to the co-operator’s reward.

By applying win-win strategy to human organizations, it would be possible to to synergize an organization so that the sum of the whole organization is much more than the sum of the talents, abilities, & resources of the individuals making up the organization.

Adversary Systems — the conflictor’s loss

However, today’s human organizations are at best neutral systems with much internal adversary process, or at worse adversary systems. Adversary process is characterized by losing relationships between the individuals of the system.

Adversary process is by definition conflict — the struggle to avoid loss. Within an adversary system, the sum of the whole organization is much less than the sum of the talents, abilities, & resources of the individuals making up that system. Haskell called this much less — the conflictor’s loss.

Conflict and losing relationships severely limit efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life. If we humans desire more for less, we must learn to organize without conflict. If we desire to avoid the conflictor’s loss, we must learn to organize without “losing”relationships.

Nature has succeeded in removing the conflict from between the cells of our bodies., Can we learn to remove the conflict from between the individuals within our human organizations? Nature has learned to produce win-win relationships between the cells and tissues, between the organs and systems of organs that comprise the human body. Can we humans now learn to produce win-win relationships between the individuals and departments, between the units and divisions that comprise our organizations?

I believed the very future of our species depended on finding the way. I knew the ideal system would be synergic, but as to what particular form it would take I was not sure. Then I realized I needed to make some synergic tools.

Tool Users and Tool Makers

Humans have been using tools from the days of our earliest history. Many Anthropology and Evolutionary Scientists define human as the tool maker and tool user.

Archimedes is generally credited with the first scientific description of a tool. It was called the law of the lever.

Tools—Physical Levers

Tools are physical levers of human action. It is any device or mechanism that provides the user with leverage—any device or mechanism that leverages human action. We are all familar with physical tools.

Our homes are full of tools. We all have a tool drawer that has our screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, scissors, needles, tape, etc., etc., etc.. These are all tools. These are all levers of human action. If we look around our house we find appliances, televisions, stereos, radios, and computers. These are also tools—levers of human action. If we look in our garage, we find our more tools, power drills, crowbars, skill saws, air pumps, lawnmowers, and automobiles.

Knowing—Metaphysical Levers

Levers are not always physical—not always tangible. Levers can also be procedures, formulas, or kitchen recipes. These are metaphysical levers. Buckminster Fuller explained that some of our most powerful levers are metaphysical—that means they have no weight or substance. They are simply patterns of advantage. Another term for these metaphysical levers—these patterns of advantage are “knowing”.

One of the earliest and most important patterns of advantage was the “knowing” of the sequence for starting fire. When a group of early humans had a member who could start fire, they held an enormous survival advantage. Knowing the sequence one must use to build a table for your kitchen or make a gourmet meal for your family are examples of metaphysical levers. These are patterns of advantage.

Learning to read is learning to understand sequence. The meaning of written words depend on the sequence of their letters and that is just as true for numbers.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQUSTUVWXYZ

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The meaning of written sentences depend on the sequence of the words.

The quick red fox jumped over the lazy dog.

Synergic Levers for SafePassage

I would need to develop synergic levers that humans could use to solve the real problems in their lives. The synergic process itself would be embedded within these levers.

Read the full description of ORTEGRITY

Also see GIFTegrity

From the SynEARTH Archives. … This is the fourth article in the series explaining synergic organization. See: (1) Discovery in North Carolina, (2) Heterarchy—The Secret of Japan, Inc. and (3) Defining the Ortegrity

ORTEGRITY—The Structure of Winning

Timothy Wilken, MD

Major Features

ï Decision-Action Tensegrities utilizing — 

  ï decision heterarchy with synergic consenus and veto,

  ï action hierarchy with synergic negotiation,

  ï conflict free mechanism

The Ortegrity is a system for organizing two or more humans. It produces win-win relationships between all individuals within the organization. This results in a conflict free environment which optimizes the two processes of human behavior — decision and action. The resultant is that efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life are optimized.

Decision-Heterarchy

In the Ortegrity, decisions are made in heterarchy. Each member’s role is the same. The goal is to find the plan of accomplishing the assigned task with best effect on all. A win-win solution. This search leads to the most efficient way of doing things. All members are protected from any loss by their veto. Only a win-win plan can be approved. Such plans that will be strongly supported by all members.

Humans develop strong feelings of community in heterarchy. It strengthens their committment to the organization. Individuals are more creative and enthusiastic in a setting where they feel respected and needed.

Decisions are always made heterarchically. All individuals in a heterarchy sit on the same level. They are equal in authority and responsibility. No one is superior to anyone else. It is the responsibility of all to accomplish the task assigned to the heterarchy. They all have equal authority and equal responsibility to decide how the task will be accomplished.

Anyone can propose a plan as to how the task might be accomplished. The heterarchy continues discussion until a unanimous decision is reached. Only those plans not vetoed carry. Every member has a veto and is expected to use it to prevent losses. This is synergic consensus. It is a powerful system for producing unanimous decision. Remember loss can still occur in synergic organization. But if loss must occur it is minimized and then shared equally by all members of the heterarchy.

 

The Synergic Veto — life’s secret for efficiency

Most humans are suprised to learn of veto power. It seems very strange in the world of “directed” management. How can the boss allow employee’s to veto his orders and get anything done?

Members of a heterarchy are not employees. They stand equal with the organizer. A major secret of life is that self-directed organization is much more efficient than other-directed organization. The secret is to transcend directing anyone. The Ortegrity creates the ideal environment for self-organization.

In an environment of self-organization, human potential blossoms. Humans operate at a more powerful level. Those in an Ortegrity soon realize that their well being depends on the success of their organizations. They realize that if they wish to be well paid their organization must be successful. They have high interest in successful solutions to their tasks. They desire to be successful, and they want their organizations to be successful as well.

Now once the members of a heterarchy have decided on a plan of action. They then renegotiate among themselves to divide the plan of action into subtasks.

Recall that all members sit on the same level as “equals”. No one has more authority than anyone else. Every one has equal responsibility and equal authority within the heterarchy. The assignment for the heterarchy is to find the best plan to accomplish the task so all members will win. It is the collective responsibility of the entire heterarchy to find this “best” solution. Anyone can propose a plan to accomplish the task. All problems related to accomplishing the task would be discussed at length in the heterarchy.

The proposed plan for accomplishing the task would be examined by all members of the heterarchy. Anyone could suggest a modification, or even a completely different alternative plan to accomplish the task — always seeking to maximize the win. All individuals would serve as information sources for each other. The heterarchy would continue in discussion until a plan could be found that worked well for everyone. The goal of the heterarchy is to find that course of action that maximizes the win for everyone, if that is not possible and the group must lose, then the goal becomes to find that action which minimizes loss for everyone. And when loss occurs it is shared equally by all. 

Organizing Humans

Those individuals within even today’s organizations are the ones who collectively “know” the most about the organization, and they certainly “know” best how to organize their own skills, talents and abilities .

In an environment of calmness and trust, two heads really are better than one. And it is the veto that lets this all work.

It is the veto that allows for synergic consenus within the Decision-Heterachy. Synergic consensus requires that all decisions be unanimous. All proposed plans are approved unless they are explicitly vetoed. Any member of the heterarchy can veto any plan in which they or anyone else loses. It is their duty to veto any loss in the system.

Because all loss positions are vetoed, all relationships become win-win. The power of synergic concensus rests on finding the third alternative. A major fact about human performance mental or physical is that it is greatest when the individual is winning. Examine our Olympic atheletes or our Nobel laurates. An environment that allows only win-win relationships will produce major increases in efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life.

We humans are presently conditioned to expect our relationships to be win/lose. We view most situations from that either/or point of view. Either I win or I lose. It has to be one or the other. Synergy science reveals the third alternative. It may be harder to find, but there almost always exists a third way of doing things so no one loses. Or at worst you are assured that the loss has been minimized and equally shared. This distributes the loss so it has the least negative effect on the individual. This is the win-win way — this is synergy.

When all were in agreement and only then would the plan be implemented. The plan must insure that all members of the group win. Any member can veto a losing plan. Taking the time in decision making to discover the win-win way means that action will be many times more efficient.

In most human organizations today, the boss simply assigns tasks or groups of tasks to each of his selected managers. This is other-directed management — telling the managers what to do. The Ortegrity operates very differently. No one tells anyone what to do. All other-direction is replaced with self-direction. Once the heterarchy has synergically decided on a plan of action, the system negotiates to form an action hierarchy. This is the structure used in implementation. Here, each member’s role is different.

Action — Hierarchy

Now once the heterarchy has approved a win-win plan of action to accomplish the Synergic Task, the members of the heterarchy begin to form a action team on a negotiated basis. The individuals within the heterarchy divide labor. Action is too large for any single member. Individual responsibility and authority is agreed to through open negotiation. The action team then functions as a hierarchy to carry out the plan. Participation within the system is always voluntary. The members of the team decide how they wish to work together, or even if they want to participate. No one is ever forced to do anything they don’t want to. However no win can occur unless they are successful.

Individuality is a strong feature of the action hierarchy.

Actions are always made heirarchically. All individuals in a heirarchy sit on different levels. They have different authority and responsibility for accomplishing the task. Their individual responsibility and authority is determined by synergic negotiation. Once having reached a decision in heterarchy they begin an open win-win negotiation to divide the labor of the plan. They develop levels of responsibility and authority. But these levels are voluntarily assumed. Again only a unanimous arrangement is permitted.

 

All relationships within a Ortegrity are win-win. This is the first principle of an Ortegrity, and all are pledged to uphold it. This is why every member is required to veto any action within the the system in which he or anyone else would lose. The utilization of synergic consensus and synergic negotiation produces very different forms of heterarchy and hierarchy. The forms used within the Ortegrity are nothing like committees with majority rule, or typical other-directed hierarchies. Heterarchy decides using the mechanism of synergic consensus and veto. And hierarchies are created by synergic negotiation of individual responsibility and authority. Synergic means all must win.

There is a division of labor with the individuals negotiating as to levels of  responsibility and authority in terms of implementing the plan. The individuals remain in hierarchy until the task is accomplished. When finished the hierarchy is abandoned and heterarchy reformed to make a new decision.

Ortegrity utilizes a dual mechanism in that everyone within the organization has two identities — two roles. Everyone participates in both decision making and in action implementation. Everyone has both heterarchical and hierarchical functions. The unit of organization with in the Ortegrity is the sub-tensegrity — the Decision-Action Tensegrity.

The Rhythm Of Life

During implementation, the action team would continue to function until the task was accomplished, then the action hierarchy is abandoned with all members returning to heterarchy to make a new decision about the next task. this of course leading to the creation of a new action team.

Decision —>Action —>Decision —>Action —>Decision —>
Action —>Decision —>Action —>Decision —>Action —>
Decision —>Action —> and on and on and on …

First it configures as a decision-heterarchy, it then considers its task, then one member declares a plan of action. If there are no vetoes, then the heterarchy configures itself into an action-hierarchy. During the action it functions as a hierarchy. Each member standing where he agreed to stand, performing those tasks he volunteered to perform. Once the action is successfully completed, the hierarchy is abandoned and the members return to the heterarchy.

Heterarchy —>Hierarchy —>Heterarchy —> Hierarchy —>Heterarchy —>
Hierarchy —>Heterarchy —>Hierarchy —>Heterarchy —>Hierarchy —>
Heterarchy —> Hierarchy —>Heterarchy —>Heterarchy —> and on and on and on … 

As a balanced system of discontinuous hierarchies and continuous heterarchies, the Ortegrity has the strengths of both heterarchy and hierarchy, and none of their weaknesses.  

The End of Conflict

This system is designed to eliminate all internal conflict. Elimination of all conflict maximizes efficiency, productivity and quality of work-life. All relationships between all individuals within the system are win-win. This is a design characteristic of the system. It is veto power that forces the third alternative — the win-win solution. It is synergic relationship that unlocks human potential. This is the relationship that elimates all conflict.
 

          CONFLICT                        FRICTION
   _____________    :      __________
    ORGANIZATIONS               MACHINERY
 

Using the win-win relationship in organizations is like applying grease to machinery. Japanese corporations are presently 150% more efficient and productive than American corporations. Those companies who choose to restructure as Ortegrities could experience an increase in efficiency and productivity of 1000%.

Decision-Action Tensegrities

The organizing unit of the Ortegrity then is the Decision-Action Tensegrity. These are also tensegrities. Synergic organization utilizes a tensegrity of tensegrites.

The D-A Tensegrity is a group of between two and twenty humans. The size of a D-A Tensegrity is limited by the complexity of decision making. In a complex area such as in research & development, the ideal size may be six or seven members. In a system with simpler decison making as many as 16 to 20 individuals may form a production D-A Tensegrity.

During decision making the D-A Tensegrity uses the heterarchical form. A heterarchy with seven members is a base seven tensegrity. A two member heterarchy would be called a base two. A three member heterarchy is a base three and so on.

The following illustration of a base seven D-A Tensegrity represents the heterarchical relationship on the perimeter and the hierarchical relationships with direct lines of communication. All individuals have a dual idenity. Their heterarchical role in decision and their hierarchical role in action.

 

The organizers using synergic consensus will determine how to structure their Ortegrities. There is no right or wrong way. The way that insures the maximum win and prohibits loss is the best way for a particular system. I expect Ortegrities will be as diverse as life forms.

The “organizer” does not direct the other members of his group. He would instead be responsible for coordinating their organization into an effective team.

The “organizer” begins by presenting the synergic task to the individuals within the heterarchy.

An Ortegrity divides itself into synergic groups in order to function. We can call these groups Decision-Action Tensegrities. Heterarchy is used when making decisions and hierarchy when carring out actions. Each Decision-Action Tensegrities has an “organizer” that functions as coordinator-leader. When the group is making decisions, he/she coordinates the heterarchy. When the group is taking action, he/she leads the hierarchy. Decision-Action Tensegrities can have two to twenty or more members.

StartUp Ortegrity

A StartUp Ortegrity begins when a single individual commits to using the synergic mechanism of the O.T. to accomplish some goal or set of goals that are beyond his/her abilities as an individual.

The primary organizer first sets about recruiting one or more other individuals to help him or her. The primary organizer will begin by sitting down in heterarchy with the primary group and define the primary task using synergic consensus and veto. The members of the primary Decision-Action Tensegrity all have equal responsibility and equal authority in reaching synergic consensus and defining the primary task.

They discuss things fully. Any member of the group can propose a change to improve or refine the primary task. Only those modifications which find support from all members of the group are implemented. Anyone can veto any proposal in order to prevent loss, or offer a modification to insure a greater win. Only those proposals unanimously agreed to carry.

Once the primary synergic task is defined and unanimously elected by the heterarcy, then a plan for synergic action must be developed using synergic negotiation. Now the members of the heterarchy will accept hierarchichal roles with individual responsibility and authority. If the primary synergic task is within the abilites of the primary Decision-Action Tensegrity to accomplish it,then they accomplish it operating in action-hierarchy. When they are done, they reconfigure back into decision-heterarchy to define their next synergic task.

If however, the synergic task is too large for the primary Decision-Action Tensegrity to accomplish, then part of the primary synergic task will be to make the Ortegrity larger. This is accomplished by having the primary members recruit and organize secondary D-A Tensegrities.

TopDown Self-Organization

Once all members have agreed to a primary plan of action, they then divide it into smaller secondary plans for distribution among themselves. This results in the self-assignment of tasks. The members of the primary tensegrity, then divide labor through the voluntarily formation of a action-hierarchy to implement the plan. Each “organizer”, the term “manager” is scraped altogether, then takes his task down to the secondary tensegrity which he is responsible for organizing.

The pattern of organization is from the top down. This is not the “other-directed” hierarchy of American Capitalism. The process of organization is from the top down, but the mechanism is “self directed” heterarchy. Only when synergic consensus has been achieved at the higher level can the organizational focus move down to a lower level.

Within the Ortegrity, most “organizers” will function at two levels of tensegrity. Within the primary tensegrity, they are “organized” by the primary “organizer” — the synergic alternative to a CEO. In addition these members are also the “coodinators” of their own secondary tensegrities which they are responsible for organizing.

Within the Ortegrity, those individuals operating at two levels are then both organized and organizers. As members of the primary tensegrity, they are organized by the “primary organizer” — the O’ (called the O prime) and they are also the organizers of their own secondary tensegrities. Each of these is therefore an “organized-organizer” — the O-O  (called the double O).

An organization can have any number of Decision-Action Tensegrities. These Decision-Action Tensegrities can be on different levels. Large organizations would include severay levels of Decision-Action Tensegrities. These different levels are referred to simply as first level, second level, third level and so on in synergic terminology.

Compound Tensegrities

The following illustration is of a base five, level two O.T.. Twenty five employees with one five-member primary DA-Tensegrity and five (five-member) secondary DA-Tensegrities.

 

The central * DA-Tensegrity is the primary Tensegrity. It divides the primary tasks of the company into secondary tasks, these are then carried down to the secondary Tensegrities for solution by the O-Os, “organized-organizers”. In this example the O’ functions as both primary organizer and one of the O-Os.

 
 

Ultimately Flexible

No known system of organization is more flexible and adaptive then Living systems. The Ortegrity is a pattern of life.

The Ortegrity is ultimately flexible. There can be two to twenty individuals within the base D-A Tensegrities. Bases can be regular — all with the same number of members or irregular — all with different numbers of members or any mixture of regular and irregular.

There can be any number of levels, and any number of branches on each level. The system is so powerful that twelve levels looks like enough for most of our needs.

The following chart is based on a base seven regular tensegrity. All DA-Tensegrities would have seven members.
 
 

LEVEL	# of base tensegrities	# of individuals
1	1	7
2	8	49
3	57	343
4	400	2401
5	2801	16,807
6	19,608	117,649
7	137,257	823,543
8	960,800	5,764,801
9	6,725,601	40,353,607
10	47,079,208	282,475,249
11	329,554,457	1,977,326,743
12	2,306,881,200	13,841,287,201

A level 12 Ortegrity would be adequate for organizing the entire humans species within a single organization. Recalling that the larger a tensegrity the more powerful it will is. Synergic science predicts this will also be true for human organizations structured as Ortegrities. Therefore, I would expect a trend towards very large organizations.

Imagine, what could be possible if the entire human species were a single organization. No conflict, no wars, no crimes. Is there anything we could not accomplish?

From the SynEARTH Archives. … Today, I define the ORTEGRITY, this is the third in the series that started with the Discovery in North Carolina of the Organizational Tensegrity, and was followed by my discussion of Heterarchy—The Secret of Japan, Inc..

Defining Ortegrity

Timothy Wilken, MD

Life’s pattern of organization is the tensegrity, it has been in use on earth for over three and one half billion years. The tensegrity is the basis of organizing all living systems including our own bodies. Up until now we humans have not understood the mechanism and therefore could not use this pattern to organize our marriages, our businesses, our organizations and institutions, our communities, or even the entire human species.

Humans who organize themselves using the pattern of tensegrity will find themselves orders of magnitude more efficient, more productive, more creative, more intelligent. More importantly they will be much more successful in pursuing their goals and desires.

Within this half century, we humans have developed ergometric science to help us improve our tool-making. Ergometric scientists tell us how to best design tools to fit the human form. By carefully measuring both the physiology and psychology of the human body, today’s scientists are seeking to determine the best designs for new tools. They know that the best tools are those that fit you like a well-tailored glove fits your hand.

Recently ergometric science has been much advanced by a breakthrough in our understanding of human intelligence. With the development of the “dual mind” model of human intelligence it is now possible to design tools that fit the human “mind-brain”. In other words, we can now ergometrically engineer tools to fit the way we humans think.

We humans are the toolmakers, and in our history we have made many tools — both simple and complex. The most complex and complicated of all our tools are our organizations — the corporations, institutions, militaries, and governments of earth. These are also the most important tools in all our lives, for they significantly influence both the quality and quantity of our lives. Of all the tools we might seek to ergometrically engineer to fit the human “mind-brain”, there exists no greater potential benefit for all humankind then by applying this science to our most complex tools — our human organizations.

One such tool has recently completed development, and is now available to organizations for immediate application. This first ergometrically designed tool for human organizations is called the Ortegrity. The Ortegrity is a “mind-brain” compatible system of organizing humans. It can be used by a small group of individuals or a giant corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees.

The Ortegrity is a “system of human organization that creates a conflict-free environment for decision making and action implementation”. This is an environment so ergometrically suited to human thinking that efficiency and productivity are predicted to increase 10 to 1000 times. Yes, that is 10 to 1000 times more efficient and productive.

The Ortegrity achieves its great power by creating an ideal psychological environment for human thinking. One important finding of recent mind-brain research, is “that whenever humans experience conflict they lose access to their full intelligence”. When humans are confronted with conflict, their mind-brains shift to a very primitive and highly reactive way of thinking called the survive mode. The survive mode  evolved in the jungle to insure physical survival. Its primary skills are fighting and fleeing. Its extremes are rage and terror. All humans thinking in the survive mode will find their intelligence to be severely limited. Access is lost to the faculties of reason and intuition. In severe conflict, many of us lose even our ability to speak. Unfortunately, the survive mode turns on with the slightest conflict, and instantaneously our intelligence begins to decrease. It is not simply on or off. It is more like the rheostat dimmer switch controlling a dinning room light. A little conflict will produce a little loss of intelligence, while a large conflict will produce a large loss of intelligence. If we remain in conflict for weeks, then we will operate at limited intelligence for weeks. And in full rage or terror, we humans access only a tiny fraction of our potential intelligence. Conflict is to organizations as friction is to machinery.

The power of the Ortegrity results then from its unique ability to create a conflict-free state. It is this conflict-free state that optimizes human intelligence and creativity. It is this conflict-free state that maximizes efficiency and productivity. It is this conflict-free state that increases the quality of work-life. It is the conflict-free state that allows all relationships between all members to become win-win.

In the difficult political-economic times ahead, organizations must learn to work smarter. Only by optimizing the human factor can they hope to survive. The Ortegrity promises to increase efficiency and productivity by 10 to 1000 times. It accomplishes this by increasing the intelligence and creativity of all members in the system. This is working “smartest”. The Ortegrity was designed to fit the human “mind-brain” like a well tailored glove fits your hand, it could change the way we all work and live in the future.

When living systems — the plants, the animals, and our own human bodies are compared to the best of man-made systems — the corporations, the institutions, our governments and militaries, Living systems are found to be one to three orders of magnitude more efficient and productive. By utilizing the Ortegrity, it appears possible to restructure human organizations so they are ten to one thousand times more efficient and productive.

Synergic Consensus

Synergic consensus is a much more powerful mechanism of decision than the majority rule of present day committees. All decisions with an Ortegrity system are made within Decision Heterarchy. A decision heterarchy is made up of a group of humans with common purpose. The minimum number is 2 the maximum number is presently unknown. I believe the ideal size may be ~six or seven individuals. The group is organized horizontally with all individuals sharing equal authority and equal responsibility.

We humans are most familiar with the committee system. It is very different than the Heterarchy. While they are both methods of organizing human individuals to make decisions for group action. Committees are filled with conflict and highly ineffective. In a committee no individual is held responsible for the actions taken by the group. And decision is made by majority ultimatum. A desenting minority member can support the action he voted against or leave the committee. Heterarchy of the Ortegrity, in contrast organizes individuals to have equal authority to decide on joint action with equal responsibility for the resultant that is produced by that action.

Synergic consensus occurs when a group of humans sitting in heterarchy negotiate to reach a decision in which they all win and in which no one loses. In a synergic heterarchy, all members sit on the same level as “equals”. No one has more authority than anyone else. Every one has equal responsibility and equal authority within the heterarchy. The assignment for the heterarchy is to find a plan of action so that all members win. It is the collective responsibility of the entire heterarchy to find this “best” solution. Anyone can propose a plan to accomplish the needs of the group. All problems related to accomplishing the needs would be discussed at length in the heterarchy.

The proposed action for solving a problem is examined by all members of the heterarchy. Anyone can suggest a modification, or even an alternative action to solve the problem. All members of the heterarchy serve as information sources for each other. The heterarchy continues in discussion until a plan of action is found that will work for everyone. When all are in agreement and only then can the plan be implemented. The plan insures that all members of the synergic heterarchy win. All members are required to veto any plan where they or anyone else would lose. But all vetoes are immediately followed by renegotiation to modify the plan so the loss can be eliminated.

Unanimous Agreement

Synergic consensus is unanimous agreement. I can hear the objections now. “That’s impossible, you will never get everyone in the group to agree.” “Decisions will never get made.” “It is hard enough to get a majority to agree.”

A Japanese business heterarchy is slower at making decisions than a single manager in an American business hierarcy. It takes longer for a group of individuals to discuss, negotiate, and come to agreement than it takes for a single American manager to decide all by himself. If the speed of making decisions is the only criteria for choosing a mechanism of decision making then the business tyrant — the rule by one is the clear standout.

However, the Japanese have shown us the disadvantages of other directed hierarchies. Majority rule committee is not a rapid decision making process. Individuals within a committee are seeking to gain the majority of support. This takes time — sometimes a lot of time. The focus is on lining up votes — working deals — in a word — politics. This process is anything but rapid. If all decisions in American businesses were made by majority rule, decision making would probably be even slower than in Japanese companies using heterarchical consensus.

Synergic consensus is only now becoming available to humanity. We do not yet know how fast it will be at making decisions. But, I predict that decision making by synergic consensus will prove faster than decision making by majority rule. Synergic consensus elimates conflict. Recall conflict is the stuggle to avoid loss. Conflict is at the very heart of majority rule decison making. The focus of synergic consensus is very different. The entire group knows from the outset that they cannot lose. They are focused on choosing a plan of action that serves the needs of all the members in the group — to choose a plan of action that causes no one to lose. The synergic veto is not invoked capriciously. The only basis for synergic veto is to prevent someone from losing. This is a mechanism to eliminate loss — to choose the very best plan of action for everyone. This may well speed up the process of decison making. In any event regardless of the speed of decision, implimentation will be rapid. There is no conflict. This is a major advantage.

The Synergic Veto

Synergic Mechanism accepts the Neutral value — To Prohibit Loss. Those humans using synergic mechanism desire just as strongly as those using neutral mechanism not to lose, but synergic mechanism is more. Both parties need to win. Let us recall our basic definition,

Co-OPERATION  — def — > Operating together to insure that both parties win and that neither party loses. The negotiation to insure that both parties are helped and neither party is hurt.

Co-Operation is the mechanism of action necessary whenever an individual desires to accomplish a task beyond his individual abilities. Imagine, you and a friend are moving a heavy piece of furniture. Neither of you are strong enough to move the furniture by yourself. You decide to co-operate — You decide to operate together during the lifting. You would negotiate to insure the win — to insure being helped.

The conversation might go like this: “Are you ready?”    “Ok.”    “Ready, 1.. 2.. 3.. lift!” and if things are going well that is fine, but if one end gets too heavy then Synergic Co-Operation prohibts loss… “Whoops! Set it down.” This is the synergic veto.

This is the true meaning of co-Operation — the negotiation to insure that both individuals win. And the synergic veto to stop the action if either party is losing. Losing is the only valid use for synergic veto. All synergists are required to immediately veto any action in which they or anyone else would be harmed — any action in which they or anyone else would lose.

No-win Scenarios

Remember, even when you use synergic mechanism you can’t always win. There will times when the contraints facing a synergic group are such that loss is unavoidable. Synergic mechanism strives to make this a rare situation, but loss will occur. If you can’t find a win-win scenario to clear a synergic veto, then synergic mechanism dictates the group must admit and accept the inevitability of loss. When a No-Win situation occurs, the synergic group shifts its focus to finding that action or solution that will minimize the loss. And then, whatever the loss is, it must be shared equally.

In synergy, we are one. In synergy are equal. In synergy we strive to win together. But if we are forced to lose, then we will lose together — this means we will all share equally in the loss.

Synergic Equality

The basic unit of synergic organization is a synergic group organized as heterarchy. All members of a synergic heterarchy are equal. They share equal responsibility for the actions chosen by the group. They share equal authority in the process of choosing those actions. When individuals work together in synergic relationship to a accomplish a common goal. They are considered as a single system.

When individuals work together in synergic relationship, new abilities, skills, talents, etc., emerge as a part of that relationship, that are not there when the individuals work separately. The individuals working in synergic group are more efficient, more productive, more creative, and more intelligent, than they are when working separately. The result of their synergy is that they create “more” together than they could create apart. This “more” is Haskell’s “Co-Operators’ surplus”.

When individuals work together in synergic relationship, they equally contribute to the synergic emergents, and will share equally in the Co-Operators’ surplus. Haskell’s “Co-Operators Surplus” is property and it is owned equally by all who synergized within the synergic group to create it. Within a synergic group all members commit to the Six Tenets of Synergic Equality.

1) In synergy, I am ONE with my associates.

2) In synergy, I am MORE with my asscociates than by myself.

3) In synergy, I am EQUAL to all my associates.

4) In synergy when we WIN, I will win MORE with my associates than by myself and I will share equally in the GAINS.

5) In synergy, when we LOSE, I will lose LESS with my associates than by myself and I will share equally in the LOSSES.

6) In synergy, we will win together or lose together, but we are TOGETHER.
 

SYNERGY — Working Together

In synergic relationship individuals continue negotiating to insure the win, In synergic relationship, all players are focused on winning. Everyone is seeking help. The game calls for only winners, there is no need for loss. Each player is expected and encouraged to veto any suggested plan wherein they would lose. It is of primary importance in synergic relationship to veto all loss positions. Failure to do so instantly shifts the relationship back to adversary, with the immediate return of conflict. In contrast, since there are no losers in synergic relationships, there is also no conflict. And because obtaining help by helping others attracts the highest quality help, real winners seeks synergic help. Seek always synergic help by making sure that those who help you also win. Be sure they understand how their helping you will also help them. Use the following approach to help you succeed.

Whenever you encounter conflict in a potential helper, they are struggling to avoid loss. This means they believe they will lose by helping you.

1) Analyze the relationship, if your potential helper is really losing, then modify the plan so they will win. To proceed without modifying your plan will only continue conflict and get you only the lowest quality help.

2) If the potential helper simply misunderstands, and in fact he really does win, then explain why he misunderstands, or fill in the information as to how he wins. When he knows he will win by helping you — he will immediately seek co-Operation.

TRUSTING — Synergic Attitude

The most powerful strategy one can use in our present world then is to seek synergic relationship. But survival requires you to avoid individuals comitted to adversary relationships. They too, are seeking to make you help them — the adversary way needs losers.

Synergists are sometimes mistaken by adversary players as weak adversaries. This is not the case. A good synergist immediately notices any loss, and will seek co-operation. If relationship where both parties win cannot be negotiated, then the synergist will break off a relationship with the committed adversary.

Synergists don’t fight or flight; they communicate and negotiate. They understand to fight or flight is to abandon the synergic way for instant conflict — for instant hurt — for instant loss. The synergic individual desires always to win. He seeks synergic relationship to increase his chances of winning.

Anytime, the synergist is not winning, he seeks to renegotiate. If he is unable to co-Operate, he chooses not to conflict. He simply ends the relationship with the least possible loss. He lives the attitude of the good synergist. I am a helper, and therefore I will help you, and trust you to help me. I will seek to help all my fellow humans, but my resources are limited, and in the long run, I must help those who help me.

Avoiding Ultimatums

Ultimatum is an adversary condition when the stronger forces the weaker to lose. This can occur between two individuals or between two nations. For example, let us assume that two individuals decide to help each other — that is they decide to work together — to form an “us”. These individuals will discover their individual preferences are constrained by their joint life. Because they share resources, they can’t both live in their favorite city, or in their favorite house, or own their favorite automobile, unless by chance they have identical favorites. The “us” is formed to gain the power and advantage of interdependence. Interdependence’s “division of labor” improves the standard of living for both, but the price for the higher standard of living is that the choices of both individuals are constrained by the needs and wants of the other.

In the adversary relationships, we experience this constraint as the ultimatum. The ultimatum is an opportunity to lose. You can lose-a-little or you can lose-a-lot, but you will lose.

Imagine, a husband comes home from work. He says to his wife,

“Well, I lost my job today. I have had it with the bay area. We are going to move to Los Angeles, there are good jobs there.” His wife counters, “But, I don’t like Los Angeles. The kids and I will lose, if we have to move to Los Angeles.” The husband plays the trump card. “Well you can either go to Los Angeles or you can get a divorce. Its up to you, but I’m moving to L.A.”

Which do you want? — a broken arm or a broken leg? Your choice is between losing-a-little by moving to a community you don’t like, or losing-a-lot by getting a divorce, but you are going to lose.

Seeking Bindings

Now constraint is placed on any group of individuals who choose to live or work together. This is a law of physics. Constraint does not go away in the synergic relationship. But it remains only a constraint, and not a compromise. In synergic relationship, you are never forced to lose. You, in fact, are encouraged and expected to veto all losses. The only path the two of you agree to walk is one in which you both win. In synergic relationship there is no loss. You may win-a-lot or you may win-a-little, but you will win.

The synergic alternative to the ultimatum is called the binding. It is the contract that results from the negotiation to insure the win — co-Operation. It is the contract establishing a relationship in which you both win in which you both are helped.

Imagine, our husband coming home who enjoys synergic relationship with his wife. “Honey, I got laid off today, I have really had it with the bay area. I just can’t stay here anymore. I feel like I’m losing.” “Well, where do you want to go?” “Los Angeles, I hear there are good jobs down there.” “No, the kids and I would lose in Los Angeles. How about Denver?” “Okay, I could live with that. Let me check the job market tomorrow.”

In synergic relationship there is no loss. You may win-a-lot or you may win-a-little, but you will win.

Life Utilizes Synergic Consensus

Today, mind and brain scientists have made enormous progress in understanding how the human brain works. There has been many surprises in these recent advances. But the biggest shocker is that the brain doesn’t decide what to do. Decision making is not controlled centrally in the brain. The mind-brain appears to act as a coordination and consensus system for meeting all the needs of the cells, tissues, and organs of the body. The brain doesn’t decide to eat. The cells of the body decide to eat, the brain coordinates their activity and carries out the consensus will.

Our human brain stores the gathered information from the body’s sensing of its environment, the brain presents opportunities for action reflective of both the sensing of environment and the needs and goals of the 40,000,000,000,000 cells it serves. The brain is not the leader of the body, it is the follower of the body. It is a system that matches needs of the body with its sensing of opportunities to meet these needs by action within the environment. The brain is a ‘synergic government’ that truly serves its constituents — the cells, tissues, and organs that make up the human body. The body is governed by unanimous consensus and has survived millions of years.

The apparent ‘I’ is not real. It is really a ‘we’. We humans have mistaken the self-organization of synergic consensus for the directed organization of an ego decider.

If the human body can using unanimous rule democracy and synergic consensus can organize and coordinate the actions of 40,000,000,000,000 cells so totally that we identify the whole organism as a single idividual, then we humans should be able to use these same mechanisms to organize our species and solve our human problems.

 

Wednesday, I reposted the Discovery in North Carolina of the Organizational Tensegrity article from the SynEARTH Archives. Today, I feature the followup in that original series. … Upon returning to California from my meeting with Dr. Coulter, I had a new focus. I knew a lot about Capitalism most of which I had learned as a student of Andrew J. Galambos. I was very clear about hierarchy. But I was a novice when it came to heterarchy. I immediately set out to find out as much about heterarchy as I could. In the early 1980’s, the best business organizations in the world were to be found in Japan. And, I soon discovered the secret of their success was their mastery of heterarchy.

HETERARCHY: The Secret of Japan, Inc.

Timothy Wilken, MD

In 1983, the major success of Japan, Inc. was serving to focus international attention on their ways of doing business. The Japanese were employing organizing strategies that produced the highest productivity and quality of work-life in the industrial world.

Their success appeared to threaten the viability of many American corporations. This threat was leading to the careful examination of the Japanese way by numerous individuals.

Their findings revealed the major focus of the Japanese was long-term and wholistic. This was in striking contrast to most American corporations where the focus was short-term and particulate.

As the world’s business corporations sought to compete and survive in the late 70s and early 80s, they sought the most powerful organizing strategies available. Who would be right — the Japanese, or the Americans?

Should businesses have wholistic concerns or particulate concerns? Did the recent major success of the Japanese prove they had the right system?

What about innovation, creativity, and originality? How do they fare under the Japanese way? Many American business leaders were forced to decide without really being able to predict the effect of their decisions.

William Ouchi is best known for his work, Theory Z, which was published in 1981 when American businesses were still scratching their collective heads in trying to understand the Japanese advantage. Dr. Ouchi pointed out that advantage, which was revealed to be a Japanese commitment to democratic leadership that resulted in increased quality, increased productivity and decreased costs while making workers at all levels full partners in business.  He contrasted the American and the Japanese ways in the following chart. 
 

Japanese	American
Wholistic Concern	Particulate Concern
Collective Decision Making	Individual Decision Making
Collective Responsibility	Individual Responsibility
Implicit Control Mechanisms	Explicit Control Mechanisms
Lifetime Employment	Short-term Employment
Non-Specialized Career Paths	Specialized Career Paths
Slow Evaluation & Promotion	Rapid Evaluation & Promotion

Economic Survival

And how long could American businesses afford to wait before deciding? Ouchi said, “it takes a minimum of two years to convert to a type z company, and some companies might require four or six years to see effects.”

The success of the Japanese could be explained by synergic system analysis. As I examined the two ways from the point of view of synergy science, I discovered the American way was dominated by hierarchy, while the Japanese way was heavily influenced by the heterarchy.

Other-Directed Management

Nearly all of America’s businesses employed other-directed management. Other-directed management is when “A” tells “B” what to do, and often how to do it as well.

Recall that hierarchy is a vertical system with many levels of organization. Those with greatest responsibility and authority occupy the higher levels. Hierarchy creates a feeling of difference or individuality. Individuals within the system see each other vertically, “He is over me.” “I work under John.” “He is way up in the company” “She is the lowest one on the totem pole.” All too often individuals within a hierarchy experience feelings of inferiority. This is not surprising in a system based on superior  and inferior levels. In humans, feelings of inferiority produce hostility. In the jungle, being inferior was often synonymous with death.

This adversary reality was also experienced in the cave, and the tribe, and the feudal state , and is experienced in nearly all the corporations, institutions, governments, and militaries of earth.

Recent mind-brain science reveals that hostility produces a ‘down shift’ within the human mind to a very primitive mode of thinking — the SURVIVE MODE. This “mode of thinking” originated in the jungle, and is the master of fighting and fleeing.

Since the inception of hierarchy its constant companion has always been conflict. This now seems to be its primary limitation. One significant contributor to conflict is other-directed management.

Some corporations are seeking to move away from other-directed management through use of “delegation of responsibility”. Here, managers are still told what to do, but not how to do it. They have more freedom to self-direct. But even within systems with “delegation of responsibility”, the price of failure is usually termination or at the very least stagnation of ones career. This produces fear of failure with resultant conflict.

Conflict — Preparing to Fight or Flight

The SURVIVE MODE of the human mind is the real “king” of the jungle. We humans are clearly the dominate form of life on this planet. We have successfully fought and fled  our way from the African savannah to the top of the modern corporate board room.

The survive mode is quite effective for physical conflict, with its extremes of rage and terror, but highly ineffective within modern organizations. The survive mode is our most primitive way of thinking. It was for survival emergencies in the jungle. Humans thinking in this mode are highly inefficient and non-productive, they lose access to almost all of what we call “human intelligence”. Any conflict can produce hostility within a human, and hostility always shifts humans into the survive mode.

Synergy science has identified conflict as the major obstacle to efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life within all organizations. While Hierarchy clearly has some major strengths, its problems with conflict create the greatest of liabilities. If human organizations are to survive into the 21st century, it is crucial that conflict be eliminated.

             conflict        :      friction
     ___________        _________
      organizations   :    machinery

Synergic system analysis reveals that the major secret of the Japanese way is the reduction of conflict they have achieved within their organizations.

Synergy Increases Efficiency

Synergic system analysis reveals that efficiency within a system is a direct variable of the type of relationship that exists between the parts that make up the whole system.

In other words, it is how these parts relate with one another that will absolutely determine the success of the whole system.

Recall that adversary relationships are bad for me, bad for you, or bad for both of us. Neutral relationships have no effect on you or me. But synergic relationships are good for you and good for me — WIN-WIN.

The synergic relationship maximizes efficiency. Neutral relationships significantly limit efficiency, and adversary relationships allow no possibility of efficiency.

Synergy science reveals that conflict is an indirect variable of efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life. Using win-win relationships within organization is like applying grease to machinery.

It is by making win-win relationships that we will form systems in which the sum of the whole system is much more than the sum of the parts. This “much more” results in what Haskell called the cooperator’s reward.

If we humans desire a share of the cooperator’s reward, then, we must learn to create win-win relationships between all the individuals within our organiztions and to reduce conflict where ever we may find it.

Eliminating Conflict

I pause here to mention one apparently different point of view. Recently some business writers have  been singing the praises of conflict. They advise “managers” to learn to creatively manage conflict, rather than to try to eliminate it.

However a closer examination reveals that these business writer’s define “managing conflict” as creating “win-win relationships”. Whereas synergy science defines the creation of “win-win relationships” as “eliminating conflict”. So whether we refer to the creation of “win-win relationships” as “eliminating conflict” or as simply “managing conflic”, we would all agree, it is good to create win-win relationships.

The Japanese clearly have some cultural advantages in creating win-win relationships. First of all, they are a very crowded people with over a hundred million individuals living within a geographic area no larger than a single one of our states. This crowding has produces a strong force toward a cooperative life style, and the Japanese do strongly seek consensus. They also are the only nation to have experienced nuclear war, this resulted in a people deeply committed to the cooperative way.

Some Americans seem to want to explain away the Japanese success by pointing to obscure genetic and cultural differences, as if in so doing they will somehow invalidate the Japanese success. Their success will not be invalidated. The Japanese success results not from obscure genetic and cultural traits, but from simply reducing the conflict within their organizations.

And the most powerful strategy presently known for reducing conflict is heterarchy.

The Japanese Way

The Japanese reduce conflict by using heterarchy in their systems. In many ways, the basic structure of Japanese business appears no less hierarchical than our own. However, the Japanese have introduced heterarchy into their systems in at least three significant forms.

First of all, the Japanese use “quality circles”. Management and workers all sit at the same level in advisory “heterarchies”. This allows the managers to be very aware of the attitudes of those who will be implementing decisions. Conflict can be discovered and eliminated effectively within the heterarchy. All participants of “quality circles” feel they are on a full and equal basis to discuss problems and recommend changes.

Secondly, while much of the Japanese work day is spent in hierarchical organization not unlike Americans, the Japanese business day does not end at 5 pm. The mandatory socializing which occurs every night after work is structured as heterarchy. This provides another opportunity to reduce conflict and many business decisions are made in this social setting.

And thirdly, while hierarchy prevails in terms of organizational responsibility, the Japanese manager adopts a more open heterarchical style. He welcomes his worker’s inputs, and encourages them to participate in the decision making process.

This is a move away from other-directed management towards more self-directed management. This is accompanied by an almost instantaneous decrease in conflict.

If we are to learn anything from the Japanese, it should be that reduction of conflict always produces a significant increase in efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life.

My study of Japanese business opened my eyes to the power of heterarchy. It is now obvious that all human organizations must master the power of the heterarchy. However, hierarchy is not the villain in this story. For American busnisesses to throw out hierarchy in a rush to embrace the Japanese way could be a worse mistake than to make no change at all. American busnesses are the masters at hierarchy, and here the Japanese can learn something from them.

The discovery of the Organizational Tensegrity reveals that human organizations require a system of organization that transcends both heterarchy and hierarchy.

At one and the same time the Organizational Tensegrity is neither a heterarchy nor a hierarchy, and simultaneously it is both a heterarchy and a hierarchy. There is a third alternative to either heterarchy or hierarchy.

The synergic way produces win-win relationships between all members of the system by transcending both heterarchy and hierarchy. This is the mechanism that allows the Organizational Tensegrity to eliminate all internal conflict.

Both-And

The Organizational Tensegrity can then be defined as that “complex organizational system that creates a balance of both heterarchy and hierarchy to produce win-win relationships among all members of the system and simultaneously eliminate all internal conflict”.

Synergy science teaches us the both-and point of view. Systems are not wholes. Systems are not parts. Systems are both wholes and parts. A human organization is not just a community, it is not just the individuals within the community. A human organization is both a community and the individuals within that community. We humans are usually misled by our great propensity to “either/or” thinking. This is not a question of “either heterarchy or hierarchy”.

An Organizational Tensegrity is highly flexible being able to move between heterarchy and hierarchy easily and frequently. This ability of the organizational tensegrity, to instantly shift between these two strategies, allows it to gain the strengths of both while avoiding their weaknesses altogether.

Heterarchy is best able to provide the needs of the whole — the needs of community, while hierarchy is best able to meet the goals of the parts — the goals of the individuals. And the win-win relationship serves as the binding that holds the system together.

Which way for Humanity? We humans find ourselves once again at the crossroads, which way shall we choose?

I believe our future does not lie in the Japanese way of heterarchy, nor in the American way of hierarchy. I believe it lies in the third alternative — the synergic way of the Organizational Tensegrity. In the years that have passed since I first described the organizational tensegrity, I have contracted the term to simply Ortegrity.

Japan’s Wrong Turn

Bill Totten

When Japan’s economy was booming in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Japan’s leaders had the following philosophy:

1. The PURPOSE or GOAL of a society is the happiness of its members; the purpose of goal of Japan then was the happiness of Japanese citizens.

2. Companies have two roles in society: (1) To provide products and services that contribute to citizens’ happiness, and (2) To provide jobs so citizens could pay for those products and services.

3. Profit should NOT be a company’s goal. Not even one of its goals! A company should only make enough profit to continue as a viable business; that is, to cover the R&D and plant & facility investments it needs to stay viable. If a company has a chance to make more profits than that, it should refrain from making them and, instead, either sell its products and services at lower prices, provide higher wages and benefits to its employees, or both.

That was the philosophy that made Japan Number 1, the philosophy of the Japanese Miracle, the philosophy that created the greatest economic growth (and social gains) in the history of this planet.

Most of those Japanese leaders, who received Confucian educations prior to 1945, had retired by around 1980 and were succeeded by people educated in the system imposed by General Douglas MacArthur’s Occupation after 1945. They have destroyed Japan’s Miracle, and are ruining Japan’s economy, with the same philosophy that has knocked the United States from its economic and social pinnacle down to third-world status:

1. Economic Darwinism (free competition): Society is a jungle where the strong have the right to take what they can from the weak. Government regulations hindering this should be relaxed or eliminated.

2. The role of companies is to make as much profit as possible as fast as possible. The main techniques are: (1) Advertise heavily to dupe citizens into excessive consumption and spending, and (2) Treat employees like coal, oil and other resources; get the maximum production from the lowest possible expenditure on resources; if your fellow citizens are too expensive, take your factories to places where you can hire cheaper human resources.

3. If speculating on stocks and bonds is a faster way to make big profits than researching and developing new products, then gamble your R&D budget on stocks and bonds. If speculating in land is a faster way to make big profits than increasing the productivity of workers, then gamble your plant & facility budget on land.

4. Use your profits to buy politicans who will reduce your taxes — reduce progressive taxes on high incomes; reduce corporate income taxes; create loopholes and tax breaks available only to rich people and large corporations who can afford expensive lawyers and accountants; reduce taxes on inheritances, land speculation, stock and bond speculation; and so on.

5. When this creates huge government deficits, do the following: (1) Make more money by loaning (at interest) the money the government needs to cover the deficits it created by reducing your taxes; (2) Brainwash the citizenry into ‘privatization’ of society’s assets — such as railroads, telephone companies, NASA. These, of course, became valuable because they were built with everyone’s tax money and protected my government monopolies. But when they’re privatized (sold off) only rich people and rich corporations can afford them. (3) Hector the government into reducing the deficits (resulting from cutting your taxes) remaining after ‘privatization’ by cutting services to the average citizen — that is, cutting spending on health, education, welfare and similar services. (4) Get the government to raise excise, social security, and other taxes that fall mostly on citizens who earn most of their incomes from working and must spend most of those incomes on consumption.

6. Use your advertising clout with Business Week, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and other media that get most of their revenues and profits from advertising to brainwash the general public into submitting docilely to this rape and plunder; if possible, convince them that it’s in their own best interests.

Japan’s MacArthur-educated colonials have used this philosophy since the early 1980s to plunder Japan’s economy.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School and Professor Emeritus of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Dr. N. Arthur Coulter is a synergic science pioneer. He began searching for a better way for humanity over 50 years ago. In 1983, we would meet and work together. By co-Operating, we would discovery the organizational tensegrity.

Discovery in North Carolina

Timothy Wilken, MD

Independent of me, another synergic scientist N. Arthur Coulter, Jr., MD had been seeking to develop an ideal system of organization for human beings. He defined ideal as that system that would maximize both freedom, and quality of life for all within the system. He was the author of SYNERGETICS: An Adventure in Human Development. I discovered him by purchasing his book based on its title from a science catalog. I was so impressed with his book that I took a chance and wrote him. We soon developed a long distance friendship.

Coulter was also searching for a better world. He had realized that with the dropping of the Atomic bomb on Japan, humanity had reached a crossroad. That our weapons were now of such power that they threatened us all with extinction. He concluded:

“What is needed is nothing less than a major evolution of the human mind, which would give the rational, humane part of the mind a much greater control over the emotional part.”

Coming out the Army at the end of 1945, Coulter switched his focus from Mathematics and entered Harvard Medical School. He said he needed to learn all he could about the human brain and mind. Thirty years later, he was Chairman of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. But whenever he wasn’t teaching medical students, his focus was on understanding human thinking and human relationships.

In March of 1983, I traveled from my home on the west coast of Northern California to meet with Dr. Coulter. From Chapel Hill, we traveled by car a small private retreat he had built on a lake in nearby Virginia. It was a beautiful and very quiet place ideal for thinking and corroboration. He called it Synergia.

The purpose of our meeting was two-fold, first to share our research findings about human relationships, behavior, and thinking, and then to design or at least establish criteria for designing a “conflict-free” organizational system for humankind. As synergic scientists, we both believed an ideal system would be based on win-win relationships.
 

As our discussions began, I felt sure the system would be a form of capitalism. I had studied theoretical capitalism for a number of years.

One captitalistic theorist, Andrew J. Galambos had proposed an advanced capitalistic system which was non-coercive. Its underlying premise was to eliminate and prohibit loss. Galambos’ proposed system did not insure win-win relationships, but it promised to eliminate losing relationships. Galambos’ system was a type of SuperNeutrality. It allowed win-draw, draw-win, draw-draw, or win-win. It was committed to the protection of property. But, the definition of property was expanded to include your life, freedom, ideas, and actions. Galambos’Capitalism was a much more powerful form than exists today. With its absolute prohibition of injuring others, it can be thought of as Moral Capitalism. Its tenets included the absolute protection of property, individual freedom, and total responsibility.

Galambos’s “SuperNeutrality — Moral Capitalism” retained many of Neutrality — Capitalism’s value systems. In 1983, I shared most of these values. However, even then I knew there was an even better way possible. I felt Galambos’s system could be modified into the synergic system we were seeking. I envisioned the ideal system would be a form of Synergic Capitalism — win-win capitalism.

As a synergy scientist, Coulter was sensitive to the wholistic view — a view he associated with theoretical socialism. He felt the needs of the species were more important than the needs of the individual. As the Star Trek character Spock said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

Unaware of Galambos’s work, Coulter assumed all capitalistic structures had to be based on win/lose dynamics, and therefore he was opposed to them on principle. Coulter envisioned a form of Synergic Socialism — win-win socialism.

Stalemate — Warring Ideologies

Socialism and capitalism are often polarizing words in our culture. And, Coulter and I also had our hidden assumptions. We discussed the issues long into that first night. And yet as adaptive and open as Coulter and I might hope to be, we were starting very far apart. 

Over breakfast the next morning, we both shared our concern over the risk of a stalemate. It seemed our starting premises were exclusionary. The ideal system couldn’t be both capitalistic and socialistic. Capitalistic — Socialism or Socialistic — Capitalism? It just didn’t work.

Above all else Coulter and I were committed to the scientific way. As scientists, we knew all beliefs were only models of how Nature works. That all models were only temporary, even the best were theoretically obsolete on the day they are made. All models would someday to be replaced with better ones. Newton’s model of Universe served us well for over two hundred years, but Einstein’s model of Universe replaced it all the same. Everyday somewhere on the planet a human being is discovering something new about Nature that will eventually change all of our opinions. We both agreed that all present political systems were adversary systems. That all present systems were and are coercive  systems. Our committment to synergy’s win-win principle required that Coulter and I be apolitical. We could not endorse any political system. Our interest in theoretical capitalism or theoretical socialism related only to their underlying patterns of organization.

We also agreed that finding the ideal organizing strategy for humankind was important if not critical. Neither of us wanted a statemate. We both committed to openly considering the other’s point of view, and further pledged a willingness to modify our positions based on the power of each other’s arguments. But after hours of discussion, I still believed the ideal system would be a form of synergic capitalism, and Coulter believed it must be some form of synergic socialism.

Korzybski’s General Semantics

We decided to formalize our discussions by utilizing the powerful communication science — General Semantics. Alfred Korzybski originated General Semantics to take the misunderstanding out of communication. He is quoted as saying:

“There can be no disagreements only misunderstandings. We are all looking at the same universe, in the end we must agree.”

I hoped Korzybski was right, and that Coulter and I would somehow discover we were only misunderstanding each other. But I had my doubts, capitalism and socialism — could they ever be resolved into a single system? No, it had to be either one or the other.

I hoped General Semantics would lead us to an answer. If it was to be socialism, then I was willing to change my position. But Coulter, would have to prove he had a better system.

After breakfast, I began by presenting the basic postulates underlying theoretical capitalism and its underlying relationship to hierarchical strategy, and then Coulter presented the basic postulates of theoretical socialism and its underlying relationship to heterarchical strategy. First I would teach him, then he would teach me. We alternated back and forth.

By late in the afternoon of our second day, we had both learned a lot. I was beginning to see the power and value of heterarchy, and Coulter was discovering the power and value of hierarchy. Both of us had held a number of false assumptions about the other’s position. However no real progress was made towards our ideal system. And, we still found ourselves butting heads over the terms capitalism and socialism. It seemed both of us carried strong emotional opinions about the terms in our unconscious. Our strong emotional attitudes seemed to block any hope for a solution in the little time we had available. If we didn’t change our focus, hope for any meaningful solution would be lost. Because our unconscious attitudes were sabotaging our efforts, we agreed to drop the terms capitalism and socialism completely from our discussion.

Beyond Capitalism & Socialism

Coulter and I both agreed that what was really important was to create a system that produced only win-win relationships. If we succeeded at that, then whether it was “capitalistic” or “socialistic” might not really matter. At this point, we agreed to change our focus to “hierarchy” and “heterarchy”. We began seeking a unique system that would transcend both capitalism and socialism — perhaps we could call it simply synergism.

I began by discussing the underlying structure of capitalism. I felt that even if the ideal system wasn’t capitalistic it would still have to retain hierarchy.

Hierarchy is a vertical system with many levels of organization. Those with greatest responsibility and authority occupy the higher levels. Hierarchy creates a feeling of difference or individuality. Individuals within the system see each other vertically, “He is over me.” “I work under John.” “He is way up in the company” “She is the lowest one on the totem pole.”

Hierarchy is humanity’s oldest organizing strategy. It was born in the jungle, was nurtured in the cave, grew up in the tribe, blossomed with feudalism, and today dominates nearly all the corporations, institutions, governments, and militaries of earth. Hierarchy is often experienced as the chain of command or pecking order. It is most formalized in military combat. 

In business organizations, hierarchy is often experienced as an extension of the personalities of those individuals who founded the company. The operating policies of the company are a reflection of the values of the individual founders. Individuals with similar values are often selected to continue the company. So we see the primary concerns of a hierarchy are the goals of those few individuals that control it.

This is why American companies have individual decision making, and individual responsibility. Hierarchy has a particulate focus because goals are particular to the individuals who create them.

Hierarchy’s focus on the individual does lead to the stimulation of individual innovation, creativity, and originality. This leads to the development of a few individual stars who tend to dominate the company. Individuality has its strengths — one of which is rapid decision making. One individual can always decide much quicker than a group. I highly valued the individual and felt reliance on the best individuals had to be good for the whole group. Now it was Coulter’s turn to speak for heterarchy.

Coulter was just as sure the ideal system must be a heterarchy. His commitment to heterarchy was supported by research findings which revealed human relationships are optimized when humans feel they are valued at the same level.

The primary organizing strategy of theoretical socialism is heterarchy, this is in sharp distinction to political socialism which is usually hierarchical.

Heterarchy is a very different breed of organizational strategy than hierarchy. It is a horizontal system with only one level of organization. All are equal within the heterarchy. Individuals within the system see each other as  being on the same level. “We are a team.” “Its like a family rather than a job.” “We all respect each other.”

Heterarchy is ideal for communication and discussion, because it  allows for the sharing of responsibility and authority within an informal environment. Task assignments following open discussions, produce more cooperative working relationships. In a setting where associates feel valued, openness and integrity emerge. Individuals often take much greater roles in the tasks of their departments. In this setting, there is less conflict, and this usually results in improvement in efficiency, productivity, and quality of work-life.

Heterarchy creates a feeling of oneness — a feeling of community. Members of a heterarchy strongly identify with the whole system. Morale and espirit de corps are optimized. Because heterarchy is highly inclusive, all feel that they are a part of the system. This is in strong counter distinction to hierarchy’s exclusiveness. Individuals within heterarchy tend to protect the system. Individuals within hierarchy often ignore the system, and sometimes even attack it. The wholistic focus of heterarchy is on the needs of the whole organization. This wholistic focus leads to collective decision making and collective responsibility.

Decision making in heterarchy is slower. It takes time to gain the consensus of all the individuals within the heterarchy. However, implementation is much more rapid because the attitudes of those responsible for implementation have been considered in the decision making process. This not only eliminates conflict, but also encourages all members to feel responsible for the successful implementation of the decision. Anyone who has ever built a house knows it is much less expensive to erase lines on a paper, than to demolish mortar, brick, and stone.

As we focused more tightly, our discussions intensified, and to our mutual surprise we began to discover much agreement. Both hierarchy and heterarchy were emerging as valid strategies. They could both be seen to have major utility. They were very different, but equally valid methods of organizing. Heterarchy seemed better for meeting the needs of the whole system, while hierarchy seemed better for accomplishing the goals of the individuals within the system.

Heterarchy reduces conflict by seeking consensus. This appears to be the secret of its success. This is also why we see slow decision making, but rapid implementation. Hierachy produces rapid decision making, but slow implementation. Individual decision making always occurs with minimal knowledge of the attitudes of those who will be responsible for implementation. This lack of awareness produces inevitable conflict which slows and limits the success of implementation.

Neither seemed universally superior, heterarchy worked best in some areas, but hierarchy clearly worked better in other areas. But despite our agreement, if our two positions were found to be equally valid, then which one should we use? Our discussion of heterarchy and hierarchy did not trigger the emotional reactions that discussing socialism and capitalism had, but we seemed no closer to our goal than we had the first day. Heterarchy and hierarchy seemed to be exclusionary as capitalism and socialism. It had to be either heterarchy or hierarchy, it could’t be both.

Exhausted, we decided to break. Coulter invited me to take a walk along the lake that bordered his property. For some minutes we walked in silence, both of our minds grateful for the rest. Eventually, we reached a pleasant spot beside the lake and we sat down.

A few sailboats could be seen on the lake chasing the spring breeze. The scene was pleasantly reassuring, no sign of the troubled world that had prompted our quest for a new way for humankind. I thought of all the years I had been seeking a better way. It seemed so long ago that this journey had started. Even as a child, I had believed in a world without conflict. Coulter too seemed quietly sad, he too had been searching for a long time. His journey had begun even before my birth. I lay back and closed my eyes. The noise of the water gently laping against the shoreline began to soothe my troubled mind.

Beyond Right & Wrong

Later, as we lay by the lake, Coulter told me of a powerful thinking tool he had developed:

“When I find I am confused, I test the idea by placing it in the following multiple-point-of-view rotary.

“The “idea” is right.
“The “idea” is wrong.
“The “idea” is neither right nor wrong.
“The “idea” is both right and wrong.

“First, I think of all the examples of when and where the idea is right, then of all the examples of when and where the idea is wrong. Then I look for examples where or when the idea doesn’t seem to apply, and finally I think of examples when the idea seems paradoxical — both right and wrong simultaneously. I have used this tool many times, and I have always understood the idea much better because of it.”

After resting a few more minutes we slowly walked back to his cabin. Following a break for supper, we resumed our discussions. We continued to learn from each other, but agreement seemed no nearer.

Alone, in my room preparing for bed, I took Coulter’s advice and jotted down his rotary.

Hierarchy is right.
Hierarchy is wrong.
Hierarchy is neither right nor wrong.
Hierarchy is both right and wrong.

Heterarchy is right.
Heterarchy is wrong.
Heterarchy is neither right nor wrong.
Heterarchy is both right and wrong.

As I lay down to sleep the rotary kept dancing in my head. Coming into our meeting, I had never felt so sure. How could so many things that seemed certain suddenly become so uncertain?

How could things be so right and so wrong all at the same time? What is the value of our science, if it can’t answer our questions?

And tomorrow, was our last day.

Last Day

The third morning, we began our discussions on mind-brain science. This has been a primary focus of both Coulter’s and my research for a number of years. Here we found an abundance of agreement. By midday we had reached a number of accords concerning human thinking. As we broke for lunch, we were pleased with this progress.

As this was scheduled to be our last day of meeting, we agreed to try for the ideal system once more after lunch. Coulter was still committed to heterarcy, but I had opened his eyes to hierarchy. Likewise my eyes were now open to heterarchy, although I still leaned toward hierarchy.

The night before I had completed outlining the operation of a hierarchy, so it was Coulter’s turn to talk. Coulter began to describe his ideal heterarchical system in terms of decision making and project execution.

Coulter’s voice modulated with excitement as he described the “heterarchy with  mission teams”. He had imagined a system of associates that were organized as a heterarchy. All members would sit on the same level as equals. No one would have more authority than anyone else. All problems and projects would be discussed at length in the heterarchy. All individuals would serve as information sources for each other, however participation was always voluntary.

Coulter leaned forward, “Now any individual would be free to declare a mission. Then other members of the heterarchy could examine the mission and participate on a negotiated basis in the creation of a mission team. If a declared mission found no voluntary allies, it would die for lack of support.”

“What would be the structure of the mission teams?”, I asked.

“The teams will be organized any way they like, remember it’s all voluntary. The individuals of the heterarchy will decide how they want to organize themselves, or even if they want to participate.

“Only those missions adequately supported by the heterarchy could occur. All involved would be voluntarily participating. Committment would be 100% . When a mission was over the team would return to the heterarchy.”

“Could the mission team be a hierarchy?”, I asked.

EUREKA

Coulter paused momentarily stunned. He seemed deep in thought, then he relaxed with a sigh and responded, “I had never really thought about the structure of the mission team. Yes, I think you are right. The structure of the mission team would be a hierarchy.” He paused again, deep in thought, then continued, “But with an important difference from many hierarchies because everything is voluntary.”

I realized he was describing negotiated hierarchy, a powerful form of hierarchy that served a vital role in Galambos’s non-coercive capitalism. As Coulter continued talking, I saw the heterarchy in my mind’s eye begin to move. First, there was the heterarchy, then one member of the heterarchy declared a mission. The heterarchy suddenly configures itself into a mission hierarchy — a negotiated hierarchy. During the mission it functions as a hierarchy. Each member standing where he agreed to stand, performing those tasks he volunteered to perform. The system was strongly self-organizing. Once the mission was completed, the hierarchy was abandoned the members return to the heterarchy.

Heterarchy becoming hierarchy becoming heterarchy becoming hierarchy becoming heterarchy becoming hierarchy and on and on and on………….

The model danced in my head. Always a heterarchy, occasionally a hierarchy. The heterarchy was the continuous pull — always pulling information. The hierarchy a discontinuous push — only occasionally pushing out a mission. Coulter was describing a tensegrity. A tensegrity made up of heterarchy and hierarchy.

Hierarchy is both right and wrong.
Heterarchy is both right and wrong.
Hierarchy is neither right nor wrong.
Heterarchy is neither right nor wrong.

In a flash, Coulter and I had got what we were after. I had been blind to heterarchy and he to hierarchy. But there it was, both strategies in one system. I had not come to North Carolina looking for tensegrities, and Coulter had never even heard of a tensegrity. And yet, his “heterarchy with mission teams” was in fact a tensegrity — a tensegrity with an equal balance of heterarchy and hierarchy.

There are no accidents in Nature and the tensegrity is no exception. This is the way we humans were meant to organize. Life’s most powerful organizing strategy for us is the organizational tensegrity.

To be continued …

Reposted from the Spiral Dynamics Integral website.

Spiral Dynamics

Don Edward Beck, Ph.D

The term “New World Order” itself not only became a fearful symbol of global domination by an elite few, but it also stoked paranoid fears of a new march of jack boots to the cadence of a single ideology. President Bush later softened the sentiment before the United Nations General Assembly with the words: “In short, we seek a pax universalis built upon shared understanding.” The time has now come to renew the search for the global operating principle and process.

This quest for the Next Global Mesh is based on such a pax universalis, an initiative that seeks after a “shared understandings” of how we, as a people, emerge through levels of complexity. While “order” conveys the idea of closed systems and regimentation, the term “mesh” suggests a new form of social integration based on the weaving together of the rich textures of human differences and bindings of constant change. The concept of “mesh” carries with it the capacity to absorb the awesome complexities that now confront global people as we enter the next decade, century, and millennium.

THE AGE OF FRAGMENTATION

Never before has the planet earth carried such a rich tapestry of human differences in the form of individuals and groups. The end of the Cold War brought the thawing of the bi-polar ice sheet that covered the entire planet as the deep ethnic cores began to bubble and boil once again. Decades of deconstructionism and egalitarianism in academic and popular cultural circles released the bent-up entities and interests that had been subdued by European-Western hierarchies of power and control. The microchip places an immense amount of influence in the choice making of single individuals. DNA analyses now make possible the specific identity of every person on the planet. Mass customization efforts are able to target each person, and even specify names on the inside of weekly magazines. It is as if the entire psychological history of our species from Day One is being replayed in real time and carried live on CNN. What an amazing time!

SIX BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT

Most people know the story of the “Six Blind Men and the Elephant.” One discovered the tail, another the trunk, while the others felt the leg, side, tusk, and ear. Each was totally convinced he had discovered the “truth” based on the direct experience. Of course, each observer was “right” about the elephant, but only about a part; none was able to sense the whole. This can also be said about the various political, economic, religious, educational, child-rearing, and technological theories of our own day. This also includes the various listings of worldviews or Weltanschauungen, or the numerous psychological packages, leadership initiatives, or managerial mandates that continue to be popular, or have been discarded in societal dust bins. The various and often heated debates heard at the United Nations, or in national assembles, senates, and parliaments, will, likewise, reflect these different views of “the elephant.” Rather than continue to pit the vast array of differences against one another in an adversarial manner, or suffer the consequences when the conflicts surface in the form of belligerence or warfare, might it not be useful to find a way to construct a synthesis that can explain why each emerged, where it is useful, and how it can contribute to the total Global Mesh?

IN QUEST OF THE WHOLE ELEPHANT

One of the stated goals of the 1999 State of the World FORUM is to launch the search for the paradigm that can best handle the complexity of conditions that confront human life on this planet. Conceptual revelations take hold when the new paradigm explains more variables, accounts for more contingencies, and solves more problems than the one it will ultimately replace. But, how can any of us know when we have detected such an operating system or conceptual framework? It might help to consider just what this new global arrangement must provide that the previous worldview models failed to accomplish. Consider this possible check-list:

1. Any new paradigm will need to be an open system rather than a closed state since conditions constantly change.
2. Any new paradigm must be consistent with current research into the deepest functions within the human brain.
3. Any new paradigm must subsume all previous paradigms as being legitimate for different times and circumstances.
4. Any new paradigm must be able to penetrate all areas of human life – biology, psychology, spirituality etc.
5. Any new paradigm must accommodate the full texture of human cultural differences as they evolve over time.
6. Any new paradigm must contain an effective mix of political and economic models calibrated to stages of emergence.
7. Any new paradigm should be able to anticipate different realities, future visions and contain its own sunset clause.
8. Any new paradigm must address multiple bottom-lines on issues regarding standards of living and the quality of life.
9. Any new paradigm should contain the DNA-like codes to reveal its assumptions in a clear, understandable manner.
10. Any new paradigm should be equally relevant to individuals, organizational groupings, and to society-at-large.

This search for the cohesive elements that can hold so many fragmented parts together in a new, 21^st Century alignment, and create the methodology and mechanisms for the continuation and enhancement of all human life on the planet, will require three essential components:

In short, we must discover the complex, evolutionary models that can provide the meshworks for our contemporary state of fragmentation, find a way to monitor and measure our progress, and then create new and innovative ways to address the difficult problems that continue to hinder our full emergence on the planet. No more prizes for forecasting the rain; only prizes for building the ark.

SPIRAL DYNAMICS: The New Paradigm for the Next Global Mesh

Spiral Dynamics is based on the seminal work of the late Professor Clare W. Graves, Union College, New York. He described what he called “Levels of Psychological Existence” as an emerging pattern and priority of worldviews, value systems, and complex adaptive intelligences that arise in response to Life Conditions. Thus, human nature is not finite. We are not frozen into types or traits. Cultures are not static entities, forever trapped in Flatland. As Graves explained it:

The human Spiral, then, consists of a coiled string of worldviews, each the product of its times and conditions. Yet, when a new worldview emerges, the older systems do not disappear. Rather, they remain subsumed in the total flow and not only add texture to the more complex ways of living, but remain “on call” in case the problems that awakened them to service reappear. So, there are systems within us, miniature worldviews each of which is calibrated for different problems of existence. Each new worldview is born out of chaos, in a nonlinear fashion, so there is no straight arrow of time back into history. Each worldview is a platform with its own unique paradigm and instructional codes for organizing society. Like a DNA script, the unique adaptive themes at each level will express themselves in terms of life-styles, economic, political, religious, and educational systems, and views of sex, marriage, working, the environment, and sports.

In our recent work we have fused the Graves Technology with the fledging science of memetics, noting that each of the worldviews is in fact a valuesMEME, a coding mechanism that inculcates every aspect of society. Graves work identified eight distinct worldviews or vMEMES, with the ninth on the horizon. Yet, all of the previously awakened systems still exist. These deep level tectonic-like psychological plates create surface level tensions as we ratchet through time.

QUICK SUMMARY STATEMENT OF WORLDVIEW (vMEME) CODES

Here’s the key idea. Different societies, cultures and subcultures, as well as entire nations are at different levels of psycho-cultural emergence, as displayed within these evolutionary levels of complexity. They have different centers of gravity. The previously awakened levels do not disappear. Rather, they stay active within the worldview stacks, thus impacting the nature and form of the more complex systems. Like the Russian dolls, there are systems within systems within systems. So, many of the same issues we confront on the West Bank (Red to Blue) can be found in South Central Los Angeles. One can experience the animistic (Purple) worldview on Bourbon Street as well as in Zaire. Matters brought before city council in Minneapolis (Orange to Green to Yellow) are not unlike the debates in front of governing bodies in the Netherlands. Countries and cultures are mosaics of multiple vMEME codes.

Third World societies are dealing, for the most part, with issues within the Level 1 through Level 3 zone, thus higher rates of violence and poverty. Staying alive, finding safety, and dealing with feudal age conditions matter most. Second World societies are characterized by authoritarian (Blue) one-party states, whether from the right or the left. Makes no difference. So called First World nations and groupings have achieved high levels of affluence, with lower birth rates, and more expansive use of technology. While centered in the strategic, free-market driven, and individual liberty focused perspective — all traits of the Level 5 (Orange) worldview — new vMEMETICS (Green, Yellow, and Turquoise) are emerging in the “post-modern” age. Yet, we have no language for anything beyond First World, believing that is the final state, the “end of history.” Further, there is a serious question as to whether the billions of people who are now exiting Second and Third World life styles can anticipate the same level of affluence as they see on First World (Orange) television screens. Now that expectations have been raised by visiting “Paree,” how do we expect to “keep them down on the farm?”

VITAL SIGNS MONITORSÖThe Tracking of Critical Worldview Indicators

We exist, as humans, in a wash of bacteria, viruses, genes, and memes. All four appear to be impacted by nonlinear events and possess the capacity to literally re-engineer their respective codes to adapt to changing conditions in the milieu. The Vital Signs Monitor is designed to track the life forces that influence our human experiences. Consider an operations-type room, with floor to ceiling video screens, where the critical indicators are displayed and overlaid on top of each other. Such a Monitor could register the pulse of aggregates of people, both at macro and micro levels, to search for the deepest trends, major vMEME conflicts in the making, serious sink-holes in development projects, and the general health and well-being of global people. This technology could provide global-focused decision-makers with the necessary information to translate into knowledge, then formulate actions necessary in shaping each Next Global Mesh.

Such a technology is being developed by John Petersen and his Arlington Institute, located in Arlington, Virginia. The intent of the Vital Signs Monitor, displayed within the Institute’s Fusion Center, is to track vMEMETIC flows and Stages of Change within the American society, with a current focus on the Y2K issue. The Arlington Institute is currently using national polling firms to detect our “EKG”-like social pulses. See www.arlingtoninstitute.org for more details. The Presidio in San Francisco could well become a global center for this scanning technology as a West Coast counterpart to the United Nations, a place dedicated to the exploration of these global dynamics. Silicon Valley companies could generate the advanced high technology that would enhance the entire process.

4Q/8L SOLUTIONS. . .All Quadrants/All Levels Views and Strategies

Ken Wilber has created a powerful, imaginative, and practical template to overlay on any situation to

The “All Levels” piece of his framework can be explained in terms of the eight vMEME or worldview layers and levels of complexity. The “All Quadrants” component consists of: IT – Individual Brain & Organism. I -Individual Self & Consciousness ITS – Collective Social System and Environment and WE Collective Culture and WorldView. Efforts which select a single Q, or operate on a mismatched L, could make things worse. Large scale efforts, such as cultural upliftment, must be All Q and All L.

GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS. vMEMES lie beneath 1^st through 4^th world (developed and developing) cultures so if the deeper codes are set right, progress will be made on the surface economic, social, and political problems. Syndicated columnist and foreign correspondent Georgie Anne Geyer has a good grasp of this reality. She clearly spots the lack of the Blue vMEME in Russia: “After 1,000 years of absolute faiths, Russian has none.” No wonder the West’s attempts to force free-market economic models (Orange) into Russia, came back as Red mafia crime. A new collective orthodoxy must emerge first, one that creates a renewed sense of “good authority.” Geyer lauds the wisdom of Tunisian leaders to reject the advice from USAID and pro-democracy (Green) lobbies that “insist that full democracy is a ‘must’ from the very beginning of a nations’ life.” They understand the need to ratchet through steps & stages of L by mobilizing all resources in Q, but around “authoritarian democracy” or “enlightened autocracy” models. Singapore was wise to establish a Blue authority climate to contain the hot ethnic (Purple & Red) cores. But, now, the country, while keeping a healthy Blue platform in place, will need to stress individual autonomy and achievement (Orange). Australia is trapped in an Orange vs. Green cross-fire, making it difficult to deal with the Aborigines or define a new sense of nationhood once the monarchy leaves town. Southeastern Europe continues to suffer from unresolved issues in the Purple, Red, and Blue zones, making Orange difficult to emerge. People simply cannot be until they are. And, all we can really do with an entire society is help it become what is next for it to become, so it can take yet another step toward a fuller and more comprehensive versions of “democracy.” Think of this as a “stratified democracy” process.

THIRD WAY POLITICS. Traditional Republican thought in the US is classic Blue (rule of law) and Orange (free- market economy). The Democrat Party joins Purple-Red “victims” with Green “rescuers,” setting up the bipolar, two party political impasse. A legitimate “third way” policy would place the Spiral right in the middle of the left-right wing political spectrum. One could then cobble elements from both wings and apply them at different levels within the developing Spiral. This is neither a centralist or compromise position, but an entirely new direction in national politics. Both Bill Clinton’s “vital center” champions and George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatives” lean in that direction but without an All Quadrants/All Levels perspective, they will not get there. The political thinkers who grasp this concept will dominate for decades to come. The focus shifts from horizontal position(s) on the Spiral – they are called “whorls” — to the “DNA” codes on the spine of the Spiral. Herein lies the essence of this Global Mesh strategy, one that deals with the the producer of worldviews, the dynamics that shape governance models, and the generator of complex, adaptive intelligences. I was asked during the South Africa’s search for a new constitution whether that emerging society should be a unitary state, a federal structure, or a confederation. I said “yes.” That country is the global microcosm.

DECISION-MAKING STRUCTURES. The design and implementation of successful All Quadrants/All Levels initiatives requires a new generation of decision-making formulas and processes. While each of the vMEMES has evolved its own form of problem resolution, the Yellow-Integral and Turquoise-Holistic worldviews contain the intelligences to macromanage the whole human Spiral. Ichak Adizes, in his corporate lifecycle framework, has devised what he calls CAPI – the coalescing of Authority, Power, and Influence so that all sit at the same table in sorting out complex issues. See http://www.adizes.com. In addition, the original Value Engineering discipline, created by Larry Miles at General Electric in the post WW II period, has now expanded into a Value Management format. Objectives are agreed upon, functions are identified, then prioritized, resulting in specific action plans. This model with various adaptations has been used successfully throughout the South African transformation, at both national and “coal-face” levels. Blue mandates, Orange win:win negotiations, and even Green consensus-driven models simply lack the complexity to handle such thorny problems in this Age of Fragmentation. A new pax universalis will require the best from within all of us.

Cometh the Time; Cometh the Thinking.

Leadership 2005

Margaret J. Wheatley

I’m sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21^st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.  Some of this was to be expected, because humans usually default to the known when confronted with the unknown.  Some of it was a surprise, because so many organizations had focused on innovation, quality, learning organizations, and human motivation.  How did they fail to learn that whenever you impose control on people and situations, you only succeed in turning people into non-creative, shut-down and cynical workers?

The destructive impact of command and control

The dominance of command and control is having devastating impacts.  There has been a dramatic increase in worker disengagement, few organizations are succeeding at solving problems, and leaders are being scapegoated and fired.

Most people associate command and control leadership with the military. Years ago, I worked for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff.  I, like most people, thought I’d see command and control leadership there.  The great irony is that the military learned long ago that, if you want to win, you have to engage the intelligence of everyone involved in the battle.  The Army had a visual reminder of this when, years ago, they developed new tanks and armored vehicles that traveled at unprecedented speeds of fifty miles an hour.   When first used in battle during the first Gulf War, several times troops took off on their own, speeding across the desert at high speed.  However, according to Army doctrine, tanks and armored vehicles must be accompanied by a third vehicle that literally is called the Command and Control vehicle.  This vehicle could only travel at twenty miles an hour.  (They corrected this problem.)

For me, this is a familiar image—people in the organization ready and willing to do good work, wanting to contribute their ideas, ready to take responsibility, and leaders holding them back, insisting that they wait for decisions or instructions.  The result is dispirited employees and leaders wondering why no one takes responsibility or gets engaged anymore.  In these troubled, uncertain times, we don’t need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone’s intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.

We know how to create smart, resilient organizations

We do know how to create workplaces that are flexible, smart, and resilient.  We have known for more than half a century that engaging people, and relying on self-managed teams, are far more productive than any other form of organizing.  In fact, productivity gains in self-managed work environments are at minimum thirty-five percent higher than in traditionally managed organizations.  And workers know this to be true when they insist that they can make smarter decisions than those delivered from on high.

With so much evidence supporting the benefits of participation, why isn’t every organization using self-managed teams to cope with turbulence?  Instead, organizations increasingly are cluttered with control mechanisms that paralyze employees and leaders alike.  Where have all these policies, procedures, protocols, laws, and regulations come from? And why do we keep creating more, even as we suffer from the terrible consequences of over-control? 

Even though worker capacity and motivation are destroyed when leaders choose power over productivity, it appears that bosses would rather be in control than have the organization work well.  And this drive for power is supported by the belief that the higher the risk, the more necessary it is to hold  power tightly.  What’s so dangerous about this belief is that just the opposite is true.  Successful organizations, including the Military, have learned that the higher the risk, the more necessary it is to engage everyone’s commitment and intelligence.  When leaders hold onto power and refuse to distribute decision-making, they create slow, unwieldy, Byzantine systems that only increase risk and irresponsibility. We never effectively control people or situations by these means, we only succeed in preventing intelligent, fast responses.

The personal impact on leaders’ morale and health is also devastating.  When leaders take back power, when they act as heroes and saviors, they end up exhausted, overwhelmed, and deeply stressed.  It is simply not possible to solve singlehandedly the organization’s problems; there are just too many of them!  One leader who led a high risk chemical plant spent three years creating a highly motivated, self-organizing workforce.  He described it this way: “Instead of just me worrying about the plant, I now have nine hundred people worrying.  And coming up with solutions I never could have imagined.”

Sometimes leaders fail to involve staff out of some warped notion of kindness.  They don’t include people, they don’t share their worries, because they don’t want to add to their stress.  But such well-meaning leaders only create more problems.  When leaders fail to engage people in finding solutions to problems that effect them, staff don’t thank the leader for not sharing the burden.  Instead, they withdraw, criticize, worry and gossip.  They interpret the leader’s exercise of power as a sign that he/she doesn’t trust them or their capacities.

Assessing changes in your leadership

With no time to reflect on how they might be changing, with no time to contemplate whether their present leadership is creating an effective and resilient organization, too many leaders drift into command and control, wondering why nothing seems to be working, angry that no one seems motivated any more.

If you are feeling stressed and pressured, please know that this is how most leaders feel these days.  Yet it is important that you take time to notice how your own leadership style has changed in response to the pressures of this uncertain time.  Otherwise you may end up disappointed and frustrated, leaving a legacy of failure rather than of real results.

Some questions to think about

Here are questions to help you notice if your leadership is slipping into command and control.  If you feel courageous, circulate these questions and talk about them with staff.

1. What’s changed in the way you make decisions?  Have you come to rely on the same group of advisors? Do you try to engage those who have a stake in the decision?
2. What’s happening to staff motivation?  How does it compare to a few years ago?
3. How often do you find yourself invoking rules, policies or regulations to get staff to do something?
4. How often do you respond to a problem by developing a new policy?
5. What information are you no longer sharing with staff?  Where are you more transparent?&
6. What’s the level of trust in your organization right now?  How does this compare to two to three years ago?
7. When people make mistakes, what happens?  Are staff encouraged to learn from their experience?  Or is there a search for someone to blame?
8. What’s the level of risk-taking in the organization?  How does this compare to two to three years ago?
9. How often have you reorganized in the past few years?  What have you learned from that?
10. How’s your personal energy and motivation these days?  How does this compare to a few years ago?

Her newest book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time, will be released in January 2005. Her book, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, (January 2002) proposes that real social change comes from the ageless process of people thinking together in conversation. Wheatley’s work also appears in two award-winning books, Leadership and the New Science (1992, 1999) and A Simpler Way (with Myron Kellner-Rogers, 1996,) plus several videos and articles.

She draws many of her ideas from new science and life’s ability to organize in self-organizing, systemic, and cooperative modes. And, increasingly her models for new organizations are drawn from her understanding of many different cultures and spiritual traditions. Her articles and work can be accessed at www.margaretwheatley.com, or 801-377-2996 in Utah, USA.