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“There is a mysterious cycle in human events.
To some generations, much is given.
Of other generations, much is expected.
This Generation has a rendezvous with destiny.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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In 2009/10 I developed an idea called Project Global Generation which was an online education initiative for 4-8ish year olds. The idea was grounded in some behavioral trends I believed would guide this cohort of young people:

• Global generation: as a group inextricably linked to smart technology and the web they would tend to incorporate a more global view on issues (understanding, awareness, etc); I named them the Global generation
• Community individualism: as a group more aware of the entire world they would learn to optimize the importance of self and the importance of community (or being part of a collective, which impedes or inspires progress); I named this mindset Community Individualism

I am revisiting what I wrote in 2010 in this piece <the bulk of this is exactly as I wrote it in 2010> because I have become increasingly confident that ‘community individualism’ is at the core of many discussions taking place with regard to the future (of business, of society, of humans).

Which leads to me to where both of those above ideas began.

It actually began with the fact I do believe generations are cyclical (this is the 4th Turning analysis from Strauss & Howe) and a personal analysis of past generations in which I came to my own conclusion of what I believe the next generation will “look like.” To be clear. This is an attitudinal idea and not some marketing mumbo jumbo wherein I suggest targeting some age group with some simplistic platitudes. I do believe in generational cohorts shaped by events and experiences of which constitutes actual events as well as attitudinal aspects of other generations (shaped by what they experienced). Any discussion of generations almost has to incorporate some cyclical aspects from which you can see some similarities in etrms of experienced attitudes and differences based on actual event experiences. Oddly, despite naming the Global Generation before GenZ arrived on the scene I now find myself stuck in odd arguments of what GenZ is and is not. Why call it The Global Generation?  Globally there should be an exponential growth in creativity (toward environment as well as science and thinking) as the “global mind” seamlessly shares ideas and thinking. While I will never suggest this ‘global mind’ won’t have conflict, I do believe there will be unprecedented knowledge sharing (which should lead to some version of Enlightenment).

I call it the Global Generation because while I believe current generations are paving the way for the capability of sharing global innovation & thinking <and at certain times & places it is actually happening quite successfully> it will be the upcoming generation which will benefit – and be global in attitude & behavior.

Which leads me to “The Global Generation and Owning a Contradiction: Community Individualism.”

To make this idea be its most effective, the concept has to embrace the contradiction. Community, a pluralism type idea, and Individuality of choice, a strength in “one” to make a difference type idea. Therefore, this concept needs to enhance the sense of global community and encourage local individual choice to encourage belief that a global community is actually made from the strength of individual choices (and the global community respects local choices as long as it stays within an overall respect for life & environment construct).

The strength of this concept lies within the circular strength of the global/local relationship. The premise behind community individualism resides in one word: Convergence. Convergence of the right generation with the right mindset being in the right place with the right enabler tool.

The Global Generation, and this mindset, will occur as the synthesis of the convergence between an enabler (the web) and an attitude (the right generation). The Global Generation will arise from the momentum of smaller generational variables (the attitudes and beliefs of the boomers, genXers and Millennials) with the added impact of a technological innovation. I believe this generation will be Individual voices raised to a collective “global roar” of not social pluralism, but rather a values/principles based global pluralism.

The current older generations spiraling divisiveness (with its vocal extreme niches) will provide an opportunity for the Global Generation to attain a balanced belief profile (or assessing the truth).

To me, the Global Generation is a fulcrum generation (or call it a transitional one if you prefer) for future generations. In the existing generational environment, there is a growing abdication of individual responsibility as we fall back into a consensus mindset (this is reflected often in a growing concern or interest in community and localness). As events unfurl and the Global Generation has the opportunity to grow up within this environment, we should see a shift into “empowered individual responsibility” (of which we see signs of it creeping into the tail end of the Millennial generation).

Which leads me to say why Millennials are not the ‘global’ generation.

I don’t think Millennials CAN be truly global because of too many existing attitudes as well as technology is still advancing and they are still embracing the innovations. That said, here is why I believe it will be the generation following Millennials.

The Global Generation is the crossover, or transition, generation in the swing between “me-ness” and “we-ness”. I believe this generation will own a contradiction: Community individualism.

And they will bring about a cultural change in the way we perceive and use our natural environments and how we treat each other globally. To give them credit, Millennials and GenXers have set them up to be in this position.

• Why I believe this: Tapping into the Subcurrent

Just as Strauss and Howe outline generational cycles I believe there are also subcurrent cycles. The one most relevant to the Global Generation theory is that of cycles of community and individualism. And this cycle relationship creates a multi dimensional aspect by existing as a focus within a generation as well as a within a lifetime of a generation. What I mean by this is that on one dimension generations on a whole swing back and forth between a comfort in collective or community culture and individualism (or “me” focused). On another dimension or the dynamics of that same feeling within the life of a generation (meaning maybe it was all about me when I was younger but ‘me’ starts looking at ‘we’s’ and our collective experiences as elders).

Strauss and Howe articulate this concept much more intelligently, but I have dumbed it down for my purposes. Interestingly, as 4^th Turning outlines, this individual/community relationship actually converges to create a mindset/attitude within this post-millennial generation and appears to have an opportunity to balance them. This balance, should it be achieved, provides the potential for a global ‘values’ platform (value everyone’s different values) for the generation.

The post millennial generation (The Global Generation) will have been preceded by the two extremes of community and individualism.

• GenXers are the “me” generation. Focused on maintaining the strength of their individuality (maybe without the rebelliousness as they get older) borne of their youth. As they “grey” they will better understand the importance of community strength in addressing big issues, i.e., “maybe those big issues are better solved by the larger group then by us few extreme voices” but their individuality is at the core of their being.
• Millennials are the “we” community generation. Consensus and group dynamics and openness are attributes of this generation. Having seen the power of the group/community in their youth they will begin edging into understanding the voice of individuality as they ‘grey’.

Both prior generations will have explored global issues and both will have lived thru ignorant conflict (and felt there had to be something better). In addition, the continuing unrest & seeming imbalance globally <and in some cases regionally> will make the concept of balance a topical issue in Global Generation households (therefore it will be a known concept). The Global Generation will benefit from what the prior generations couldn’t figure out how to do on their own.

• Why I believe this: The converging aspects: the enabler and the enabled (vocalizing versus learning)

As suggested earlier, I believe the web is the key tool which will enable the Global Generation. Each prior generation has been progressively more understanding of the web as a knowledge platform and progressively better at maximizing the platform (I actually believe Millennials will probably demand some knowledge or accuracy standards as they get older and take on the reins of the web). GenXers will have seen the power of the individual voice or minority voice (both good and bad) and will be receptive to an accurate and accessible knowledge platform.

If you combine the physical asset (or infrastructure to support a global transfer or platform for knowledge and information) with the behavioral aspects of generational tendencies, you see the potential for a convergence where individual/country cycles converge to sync into one time and one place. Similar to a sun being blocked by the moon this may be a once in a long while convergence before spreading out again into individual orbits. It just appears to me that we have an opportunity to influence attitudes before everyone goes back to their “orbits”.

I believe it is clear the advent of the web globally (and by globally I mean access to all or the majority of local populations globally) has created a common platform that has never existed before. Lastly, while the internet will never create a turning <or have the ability to create a revolution> it certainly has the potential to influence/amplify “turnings” and impact ideological desires.

You can see even now how different generations are attempting to use the web to influence how people think and act. For example, the web has given voice to the minority or splinter groups, allowing voices of divisiveness (or maybe better said voices of the extreme positions) to be expressed and heard on a larger podium/stage. But this also presents an opportunity for the future and the Global Generation.

While other generations will use the web to ‘vocalize,’ I believe the evolving generation will use the web (or at least if someone uses it properly) to “learn”. This collaboration of attitudes, beliefs, mindsets & thinking enables a higher level of intimacy/empathy between cultures and globally dispersed local communities (or maybe, more specifically, individuals). We see this emerging even today (it just has not matured). Not surprisingly, new technology has transformed our worlds – empowering people with access to extensive circles of population as well as connecting in surprisingly personal and intimate ways.

Which leads me to say that I may be putting a lot of pressure on the internet as “the convergence factor” (or the enabler) to create this Global Generation.

Generations are typically impacted by innovations <think Electricity, the Engine, the Car, the TV, Dwarf grain and now the Web>. An innovation can exponentially affect an existing attitude. And innovations “lag” (immediate impact on early adopters who provide input to refine and ultimately majority adopts) so the timing works out to Global Generation being the knowledgeable majority.

So. The thought is that each generation has been progressively gaining more understanding of the web as a knowledge platform and progressively better at maximizing the platform.

An important aspect is that I also believe it will be the Millennials who will (eventually) demand some knowledge or accuracy standards as they get older and take on the reins of the current missing web standards. GenXers’ role will be that they have seen the power of the individual voice or minority voice (both good and bad) and will be receptive to an accurate and accessible knowledge platform.

Once again, the Global Generation will be able to take advantage of a prior generation’s preparation.

To be clear, Millennials will be open to a global community (which is the reason why I believe the Global Generation will be successful as they follow in their footsteps), but they will be the cohort that navigates the mosh pit of the cultural transition issues.

Which leads me to speculate on even the next generation, the post-Global Generation, and what I call the Enlightened Individuality Generation.

If I were to guess <sticking with the turnings and archetypes> I would guess the generation after the Global Generation would begin the “separation” aspects seeking clarification of geographical community versus global community. I believe the Aftermath of Convergence, or The Global Generation Legacy, will be how their mindset will affect behavior, i.e., Community Individualism leading to Enlightened Conflict.  This balance of community and individuality will permit this generation to better accept and respect the choices made by individuals globally and yet strengthen local communities (I actually believe that will be represented by strengthened country patriotism). The community aspect will definitely lead to some cultural or geographical driven conflict yet the respect for individual choices elsewhere will balance the conflict within a “values set of rules.” I believe all of this is a good healthy thing. Especially if the Global Generation has sought out and wrapped their arms around a common respect and a larger sense of tolerance or common “rules of the road” to conduct interaction – or conflict – as more distinct geographical individualism reemerges.

Which leads me to what does all this mean?

Assuming I am right alignment of all these factors creates a window of opportunity. Generations are not set by birth, but by accumulated experience over a lifetime. As Millennials will deal with all the crises we have and see, the Global Generation will deal with the aftermath. I also believe the uncertainty/angst we are current experiences will clarify some things, in particular the importance between ignorant conflict and enlightened conflict, for the Global Generation. Therefore, I imagine it comes down to what we want to do before the window closes and what we do to enhance “accumulate experience.” In my mind with the promise of this Global Generation we need to foster the intercultural dialogues, lessons, transferal of ideas and beliefs and feed a globalized intellectual curiosity and awareness.

In our thrust to be analytical, impartial and scientifically rigorous we may have lost the values based pluralism aspects for educating future generations to ensure the protection of humanity. The reality is that anyone in almost any country can see or meet through the internet with anyone anywhere and I believe this Global Generation will increasingly recognize the differences between us simply stepping stones in trying to get to the same place with similar dreams. Access to technology will create a situation where children globally will have access to similar information and knowledge (and will be communicating with each other in a fashion where country borders are irrelevant).

We need to ensure that generation in its youth is not overwhelmed by the enormity of the global problems and insure they understand their actions will have an impact.  This “understanding” encompasses environmental responsibility, social resilience, community connection and actionable knowledge towards a sustainable future (environmentally and societally).

In the end.

To be clear. I do not believe I, or anyone, could manage the moment of this scope, but it may be possible to influence the moment. In other words, take advantage of the convergence & confluence of factors and influence future behavior and mindsets before the alignment opportunity is closed and cultures begin vectoring out on their own.

At this convergence point in time this Global Generation will begin to truly understand, as a generation and not an underlying minority, it doesn’t matter who believes what, but that we all believe in the preservation of the Earth and its people so we can all continue live comfortably in the future without having to kill each other or kill our resources and that society is made up of individual choices with collective benefit in mind.

Children comprise approximately twenty per cent of the global population, but represent one hundred percent of our future. We should be seeking to create a Global Generation of resilient children who are motivated, have high self esteem and respect for others, basically, seek to foster an enlightened community individualism mindset. I believe in this time, and this place, this Global Generation has a rendezvous with destiny. Ponder.

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“Community is the fact that we work toward the same goal, that we accept our respective roles in order to reach it.

Values is the fact we trust each other.

And, culture?

Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit. That matters because most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”

Fredrick Backman

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“You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.”

Colin Powell

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Well. The relationship between secrets and culture and community is one which is fraught with contradictions, conflict and humanness.

I imagine this conflict is driven by the natural chafing between self-interest and community <I have called this community individualism & Enlightened Individualism in the past>.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We talk a lot about community and team and all of that good stuff. And we talk about it with good intentions. The problem is that true community demands some sacrifice.

Therein lies our big secrets.

On occasion we decide self-interest is more important than sacrifice.

Uhm.

This is a version of ‘what you can get away with.’

That phrase sounds horribly horrible. It suggests nefarious type behavior. But the truth of it is most of us see what we can get away with on some very personal day-to-day less-than-nefarious type stuff.

• We cut some corners.

• We maybe don’t tell people how we truly feel <or who we truly are>.

• We steal some post-it notes.

These are our little secrets.

We may even have some bigger personal secrets that we decide are just not things we want to share <these are not nefarious … just personal>.

Regardless.

For many of us our behavior arcs toward what we can get away with. That doesn’t mean it is completely unethical, or some abhorrent behavior, just that while norms set a ‘median’ standard guideline Life is constantly suggesting ‘but this one time you can get away with doing this.”

Which leads me back to the real issue.

The issue resides with the friction between culture and community and self. What I mean by that is the stronger & more powerful the cultural community norm is the bigger your secret becomes if you avoid the norms. This secret takes on exponential size if you start believing that the norms that are good for you are good and the ones that don’t match up with what you believe is your self-interest are bad.

You only accept the existence of the formal and informal cultural norm structure that constitutes accepted community construct, uhm, only as long as that suits your purposes.

Your big secret, therefore, doesn’t have to do with your own behavior, but rather in your non-belief ,if not overall disdain, for the community norms.

Which leads me to hate.

Why hate?

When you decide to see what you can get away with, you have to mentally divide community into “we” and “they.” And in doing so you make ‘we’ good <which suggests what you can get away with is on the side of good> and, conversely, you make ‘they’ bad.

This is a simplistic tactic for attempting to carry the burden of a big secret.

Hate is simple and hate can be an incredibly powerful empowering emotion.

Why?

In this scenario, using hate, the world becomes much easier to understand and less confusing, in the scheme of things, if you divide everything into friends & enemies, good & evil, right & wrong and a basic we & they.

This helps us because the world is strewn with conflict. Not just physical war, but of ideas, thoughts, beliefs and attitudes. Cultures, communities and classes are bombarded with conflict after conflict. And maybe because of the sheer amount of conflict one of the first things we do is pick sides. We choose a side to stand on because … well … it is easier. It is easier than thinking or, even more difficult, trying to hold parts of two ideas which appear in conflict in our heads at the same time. And once we have chosen a side we then go out and seek some information, or ‘facts’, to confirm not only what we believe but the side we have chosen – this permits us to maintain the status quo and chug along with Life as ‘normal.’

Oh. Yeah.

And then we proceed to do is demonize, or dehumanize, the other side. We diminish them. Make them, their thoughts & ideas, lesser than.

……. making “they” smaller ……..

I would suggest this all just makes you smaller as a person <carrying around a big secret>.

Which leads me to say that big secrets make small people.

Yeah. Unfortunately all of us become smaller with a big secret.

And this smallness is compounded by the unfortunate fact that you become even smaller when ‘we’ are the people who others HAVE to keep big secrets from because they believe, and know, we cannot handle them <or don’t believe in them>.

All secrets carry a weight to them.

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“To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden.”

Sam Harris

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In fact I could argue that all knowledge is a burden. It carries a weight of responsibility with regard to what you do with it, how you act because you have it, as well as how you think about you, and others, with it. Oh. Secrets ARE knowledge.

Having accepted knowledge you have made an agreement with it. I tend to believe we don’t think about this. We accept knowledge as … well … maybe like income earned – disposable income in fact. We worked for it, we earned it and it is now ours to spend as we choose.

But knowledge is actually more like freedom. It is an unalienable right, but it is also a privilege and therefore one assumes a responsibility to it.

Uhm.

And with responsibility comes burden. Which almost sounds odd in that something with ‘free’ in it also carries such a heavy burden. Maybe I should just suggest that nothing really comes for free, i.e., everything has something attached to it.

Knowledge?

Responsibility. The burden of responsibility. And that is a weight you carry. One which can be as light or as heavy as you make it. But. It is a weight nonetheless. One which you learn to carry well or carry poorly.

Knowledge tests our ability and our character with regard to how well we can carry this weight. It tests how strong we are .. once again … in ability and in character.

Having said that <and most likely having a number of people feeling a little uncomfortable thinking about knowledge that way>.

Secrets are a completely different level of a knowledge burden.

And secrets are tricky.

• Some are thrust upon you — unwanted but yet yours nonetheless.
• Some are gifted you — carefully shared by someone who believes the weight it carries is too much for themselves … alone.
• Some are just yours — built by you and carried by you.

But regardless of how you assume the responsibility of a secret; it is also knowledge. And therefore it also carries a burden, a responsibility, and a weight.

I don’t have the scale to weigh them, but my guess is that a knowledge secret exponentially weighs more than a traditional knowledge.

I also don’t have any research, but I also tend to believe, just like extra physical weight, as soon as we start feeling the extra weight of a secret … we seek to shed it.

Therein lies the true test of character.

Therein lies how big secrets can make small people.

All knowledge tests you. Secrets test you even more.

Knowledge, and secrets, take a strength of self to carry its weight.

The weight of responsibility of having the knowledge, the weight of freedom knowledge typically gives us and the weight of character that knowledge either makes you bigger or makes you smaller.

Whew.

That is a lot of extra weight we have accepted by taking on these secrets.

Which leads me to good.

As in good people doing good things. And as in good versus almost good.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that sometimes very thin line between good and almost-good can make a massive difference in life. That sometimes very thin line can decide whether your secret makes you bigger or smaller.

Look.

If you are clever enough, even if you embrace community, you can get away with a shitload of stuff. But cleverness does not eliminate the fact you gain a bigger secret burden with every action.

And you know what?

The “community” knows we struggle with this a individuals. In fact it has even created some ‘auxiliary precautions’ to help us avoid unnecessary secrets.

Huh?

This is James Madison’s Federalist Paper #51 or “if men were angels” argument:

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If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

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We are no angels as people.

Secrets bear that truth out.

And … well … we all carry secrets.

And … the bigger the secrets the smaller we become.

Ponder.

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“Culture is an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of the cosmic life. For different cultures to engage in interaction is to catalyze each other’s souls and foster mutual understanding.”

Daisaku Ikeda

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Let me get my main points out of the way:

• I believe, unequivocally, businesses should operate in ways that are conducive to a healthy planet and healthier society.
• I don’t believe businesses need to market such operations and initiative. In addition, i DON’T recommend they do so unless they are 100% committed to it. not 99%, 100%.
• Despite gobs of research suggesting young people (Millennials) prefer buying from businesses associated with sustainability & causes I don’t believe the majority would actually pay more nor do I believe it is a true deep-seated ‘preference’ (it is more about assuaging ‘guilt’ – read on for explanation).
• I believe business people confuse Purpose, purpose of a business, causes, environmental responsibility, and a myriad of well intended business actions all the time to the detriment of the action itself.

Anyway. Let me get to my points. There is a lot of research coming out suggesting the importance of Causes & Social Involvement <conflated with Purpose> in consumer choices and what they value. At its most base level this discussion is about cultural & societal concepts tied to future desires <and behavior> of people. It is kind of guessing <in an educated thoughtful way> how people will want to behave with regard to larger Planet-type issues and discussing what behavior will make them happy <from a Maslow type perspective> in the future <and the value associated with it>.

This is good type thinking, not simply mental masturbation.

By the way. Thinking about the future type stuff can be Jetsons type pie in the sky type thinking or it can be more pragmatic ‘rising generations with existing perceptions and how will they act in the future’ type thinking. I tend to be more pragmatic. I do so because it is fun. It is fun in that every every generation rising <young to old> rebel against the norms & ‘standards’ of the older more established generations and as we view ‘trends’ & research it becomes easy to confuse simple rebellion rhetoric and true desires that affect behavior.

Regardless. The windows exist and if you can identify the underlying attitudinal shifts you can be successful by offering things that tap into this attitude <and you can reap the benefits of their behavior>.

Let me get the contrarian conclusion out of the way:

• most people only care about Causes & planet to a point (despite what they say). The majority of young people say they care about Causes with regard to brand choice is out of guilt, not depth of caring. This is NOT to suggest social causes & caring about the planet & sustainability are not important, just that there is a gap between that importance to a individual and other things that matter when decide to make choices & do things. Altruism has limits to the everyday people and the everyday purchase.
• most people care about personal wealth & lifestyle. The majority of young people still want to accumulate money & things, they just don’t want to be seen as greedy as older generations. You would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to miss the attitude among the young that older generations are greedy. That’s easy. The hard part is that we old folk flippantly disregard this attitude as the naiveté of youth. Silly us old folk. The young DO recognize the value of accumulating wealth and the benefits that come along with it, they just don’t want to do it the same way. Conversely, it is silly to not recognize young people want shit – things, money & recognition (yes, they are capitalists too>.

No matter how we may want to couch attitudes in some trite platitudes — people will always want to be valued and fairly compensated for the value they provide. The future challenge is how to let the Reptilian brain ‘accumulate wealth’ and increase personal value all the while balanced with a moralistic <semi altruistic> belief that ‘I want to be fair’ <at its most hedonistic shallow level it would actually be ‘how can I become wealthy and not look like a greedy jerk’>.

Trendwatching in 2013 called it ‘guilt free consumption.’

I imagine the more positive slant on it is a revitalization of some sense of altruism or fairness while still consuming. People, especially younger people, are feeling conflicted between their desire to earn & spend and their aspiration to do the right thing. They are looking for products and services that will deliver value and quality while, at the same time, provide reassurance that their ‘accumulating’ is not seen as greedy or doing a level of ‘harm’ to the greater good <note: that ‘level’ is an individually driven assessment & typically not a societal standard>.

Trendwatching researchers suggested that consumers were experiencing guilt over how they spend, and on what they spend it on, which means they will look at how companies conduct their business, from where they source their products and whether they are engaged in socially-responsible initiatives.

Here is where the cynical me steps in.

The key to addressing consumer guilt is to identify the choices that cause the consumer the most concern and “absolve” them of the guilt.

Once again. This doesn’t mean ‘me’ desires go away. It, in its most simplistic sense, is suggesting a ‘guilt free’ aspect to the desire to accumulate wealth or things. Cynically, a person seeks an implied ‘balance’ —  a bargaining with a desire to accumulate.

In a non-cynical way someone has added a belief if that a ‘me’ can make more, earn more & and accumulate/have more and feel good about it if the ‘optimal end game’ is connected to a greater ‘we’ aspect <environment, society, sharing of that which is accumulated with less fortunate>. This mental bargaining is an attempt to alleviate the guilt that gnaws at the conscience of those who, mostly with good intent, want to do the best they can and accumulate the most wealth they can.

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“Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.”

Robert South

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Wealth & consuming is achieved with a balance of ‘what I could have had, but shared.’ This shared aspect shows an innate sacrifice of ‘me’, but not at the expense of success <or actualization>. Instead it shows a sharing of individual success. Successful wealth management <growth> shows ‘not too much’ by ‘I could have had more but I don’t.’

It also meets a Maslow thought: ‘I am successful – not everyone can be successful – therefore by being as good as I can be (which is better than many people) I am contributing to the greater good for those who cannot do what I can do.’

All the psychological mumbo jumbo aside. Guilt free accumulation, despite sounding like some moral relativism, actually does deliver a sense of fairness — fair to me and we. It’s not straight up altruism but its a version of individualistic altruism.

I called this basic attitudinal concept Community Individualism in 2010. And I still call it that. The seeds of this type of thinking have been planted and while it will most likely not prosper in current adult generations it will thrive in younger rising generations. It will be <at least in my eyes> the prevalent psychographic attitude every business will need to attend to in the future.

Hey. Interestingly if you google my ‘community individualism’ concept you will find a number of really well written articles and intellectual papers outlining the battle <tension> between ‘community’ and ‘individualism.’

I say interestingly for 2 reasons:

1. Because I believe there is an entire rising generation who is answering the battle for “us” <versus just ‘me’>. They are living it and have grasped it and are embodying how to be and do both. We <older folk> could not figure it out. They have.

2. I am the only one, I have found, who believes there is no tension, but rather an embracing, between community & individualism in this next younger generation.

Anyway. ‘Community Individualism’ or “Enlightened Individuality.” I will not bore you with everything I have written but give some relevant highlights to align everyone on my thinking.

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The post millennial generation (The Global Generation – others call it “Z”) will have been preceded by the two extremes of community and individualism. The worldwide web will enable a higher level of intimacy between cultures and globally dispersed local communities (or maybe, more specifically, individuals). We see this emerging even today (it just has not matured). Not surprisingly, this technology has transformed our worlds – empowering people with access to extensive circles of population as well as connecting in surprisingly personal and intimate ways.

My thoughts may seem extreme … but I believe the Millennial generation is “too far down the path” to be the Global Generation. They were the early adopters of a web based global community aspect and there will certainly be “cusp” generational citizens, but as a whole they are being bombarded with the vocal minority and don’t have the global counterbalance (I guess what I mean by that is I believe Millenials will still fall back on country cultural cycles as the subconscious place to go). Millennials will be open to a global community (which is the reason why I believe the Global Generation will be successful as they follow in their footsteps).

Remember.

Generations are not set by birth, but by accumulated experience over a lifetime. As Millennials will deal with a Crisis, the Global Generation will deal with the aftermath.

This balance of community and individuality will permit this generation to better accept and respect the choices made by individuals globally and yet strengthen local communities (I actually believe that will be represented by strengthened country patriotism). The community aspect will definitely lead to some cultural or geographical driven conflict yet the respect for individual choices elsewhere will balance the conflict within a “values set of rules.”

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All that said. As noted above I believe that while generations turn and attitudes evolve over time that the advent of the internet has truly enabled a new ‘mixing’ of an attitude and should enable new behavior. Interestingly the internet has not just changed behaviors, but also attitudes <in that we are now better able to judge others’ behaviors>.

Yeah. Transparency doesn’t just go in one direction <towards the bad guys … and ‘evil corporations’>.

And while the internet may appear to sharpen <or cocoon> opinions & beliefs it has actually made us more aware of issues and differences <whether we like or dislike the differences is a different issue>. It may have made us more defensive with regard to our own attitudes it has also encouraged us to go on the offensive to showcase our ‘moral cores.’

By the way.

This doesn’t mean a ‘flatter’ world. It means a more aware world. You can no longer just ‘be me’ and be invisible — me is now always visible.

This comes with some repercussions whether it’s protecting or projecting your image or character. The world today with its internet driven transparency forces us all to take a closer look at not only our behavior, but also what that behavior ‘begets’. Oh. This also includes what we purchase.

In the end.

Guilt free accumulation is an attitude <generating a type of behavior> that needs to be addressed if you are in business and want to innovate products & services … or just want to understand what attitudes which need to be tapped into in order to be successful.

Why should you believe me? I will end with what I started with … “an elevated expression of the inner voice which the different peoples of the Earth have heard in the depths of their being, a voice which conveys the vibrant compassion and wisdom of life.”

Listen closely.

Branding people may misuse the information and and others, like me, will caution the depth of this caring & inner voice.

But.

The inner voice of fairness is raising its voice to be heard. A lot of us older folk may try to shut it out, but the younger voices will be heard. And in being heard they will drive the behavior of the future.

Ignore this voice at your own peril. Ponder.

===

She said, ‘I’m so afraid.’ And I said, ‘why?,’ and she said, ‘Because I’m so profoundly happy. Happiness like this is frightening.’  I asked her why and she said, ‘They only let you be this happy if they’re preparing to take something from you.’

Khaled Hosseini

==

Well <part 1>. The conclusion from that quote may quite be “trust nobody” and act on that. That would be a bad conclusion.

Well <part 2>. We seem to be having a ‘trust crisis’ in the world these days. That is bad.

It is bad because the consequence of a trust crisis is that we trust nobody and in trusting nobody we then begin to make individual choices, actions and decisions based on that thinking.

That, my friends, constitutes a crisis.

Let me be clear on this issue.

A trust nobody attitude is for the weak.

A trust nobody attitude is not a sign of confidence in one self but rather a sign of lack of confidence.

A trust nobody attitude is a cowardly attitude.

Let me be clear on why.

The ripple effect of not trusting anybody bleeds into every aspect of Life and in doing so it bleeds in terms of action and inaction <or the slowing down of action>.

==

“But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.” 

Graham Greene

==

Let me be clear on a key distinction. There is a huge difference between trust nobody and question everything <and everyone>.

For example, I believe it was Pope Francis who said, talking about the world of business and its business leaders, “a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power.” when referring to business and business leaders.

This is not about trust nobody, but rather we should question everything <or be open to questioning>. He is simply suggesting not being naïve.

But. This does not mean ‘do not trust anybody.’

Look. We should question everything and anything worth questioning.

But that certainly doesn’t translate into trusting no one.

That said.

There is truly a relationship between questioning everything and trust because without trust not only do you begin thinking and acting more individually, you also begin to invest an inordinate amount of energy going down that endless rabbit hole called ‘questioning everything.’ This rabbit hole which seemingly offers logic and ‘reasons’ everywhere you look.

There appeared to be no logical reason. Oh. Logic is nothing more than a panacea to the ordinary people. More accurately … it is the tool by which the rulers, leaders, maintain the status quo. Every cause produces one or more effects. Every effect is the result of one or more causes. When you think of it that way … where is the logic? It is wherever you decide to find it.

In this ‘no trust/question everything’ rabbit hole we then use logic in some odd ways which inevitably serves as a crutch to the not trusting and we actually use logic to focus on one sliver of a conspiracy thought <sometimes a fact without context> to build non-trust.

Regardless.

I sensed this crisis beginning to peak in the early 2010’s and research began bearing out my sense.

Americans don’t trust each other anymore. We’re not talking about the loss of faith in big institutions such as the government, the church or Wall Street, which fluctuates with events. For four decades, a gut-level ingredient of democracy—trust in the other fellow—has been quietly draining away. These days, only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.

Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say “you can’t be too careful” in dealing with people.

In addition.

A study found that Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters. Less than one-third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards, drivers on the road, or people they meet when traveling.

Research also shows that the trust issue varies by culture and even geography, but I am not going to go into that kind of detail. Suffice it to say there is an interesting adverse trust creation between having a denser network of interactions which leads to more distrust of outsiders and, conversely,  those who have a weaker network of interactions which leads to a higher level of trust toward ‘outsiders.’

Wow.

In other words, the closer knit your personal life is, i.e., the more insular you are with friends & family, the more distrustful you are. Conversely, if you actually have fewer close friends and family you are more likely to be trustful.

Ponder that a moment.

Anyway. Does it matter that Americans <or any group of citizens> are suspicious of one another?

Yes.

In fact, behavioral research tells us why it matters: 

“The more trust people have, the more willing they are to make sacrifices to hold up their end to solve problems.”

Well. This is called ‘social trust’ and social trust produces good things.

It produces a society where it’s easier to compromise or make a deal.

It produces a society where people are willing to work with those who are different from them for the common good.

It actually produces <or promotes> economic growth.

Distrust, on the other hand, seems to encourage corruption. Conversely, it also encourages an absurd amount of energy trying to protect against corruption <or those who we decide we will not trust>. In other words, this trust issue gets us both coming and going. We invest more individual energy trying to get “what is ours” in a zero-sum world and invest more collective energy trying to build systems to make the untrustworthy less successful at corrupting the system.

At its lowest, most banal level, it diverts energy to counting change every time it is given to us and at the highest level it leads to the drawing up 100+ page legal contracts and building gated communities.

Regardless. Here is where ‘trust nobody’ gets really concerning. Some studies suggest it’s too late for most Americans alive today to become more trusting.

Research says the basis for a person’s lifetime trust levels is set by his or her mid-twenties and unlikely to change, other than in some unifying crisis … such as a world war.

The hope? <for those of us alive and do not want a world war>

People actually  get a little more trusting as they age <note: this factoid surprised me … I would have thought otherwise without research>.

That said. Beginning with the baby boomers, each generation has started off adulthood less trusting than those who came before them. And while ethical behavior, such as lying and cheating, are difficult to document over the decades it’s worth noting that the early, most trusting years of studies coincided with the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.

Trust dropped off in the more stable 1980s.

Which leads me to who should we blame?

Many social scientists blame 24-hour news coverage of distant violence – not in one’s actual neighborhood – for skewing people’s perceptions of crime <because crime has actually diminished over the same period of time>.

I would just say that all the media, all of them, in some way cannot be trusted not because they are biased <because they should offer a point of view> but rather because they are all now in the show business.

And then there is us – the people,

We blame our president for everything <but it is not possible for all our problems to be his fault>.

We hate and blame our politicians <but we created them and give them their positions>.

We hate Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Hannity, Rachel Maddow <but we created and watch them>.

We hate the churches <and mosques> and yet believe our religions to the point of being helpless sheep.

Ah. Which brings me to religion and trust.

Organized religion does bring some underpinnings of shared sensemaking which does enable some levels of collective trust so it is true there can be a correlation between dwindling ties to religion and trust. That said. It seems to me that we have lost what religion is all about and in doing so have lost trust in religion. We have twisted it into something so dangerously inflexible it becomes a tool to, well, judge others, shame others <and sometimes ourselves>, to separate people rather than gather, be righteously pretentious and, maybe the worse, to control. It has become a tool in an “us versus them” narrative. Well. It seems to me that we now use religion for the exact opposite reason it exists.

Aw shit. You know what I say to finding someone or something to blame?

Nuts to all that.

We need to take responsibility for our part in why trust is in crisis.

“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.” – Frank Crane

The fate of trust is in our own hands.

We will live a life of torment if we do not trust enough.

In the end.

Trust nobody?

That is the plight of fools and cowards.

You will slowly suffocate with every breath you take.

To trust is to live.

Ponder.

===

“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid.”

Søren Kierkegaard

===

Now that it appears the psycho-pathological liar, narcissistically crooked Trump will soon return to twitter to reintroduce his unique level of toxicity to the world I decided it was time to thank him.

Yeah. In his general absence from public rhetoric Trump has made me grateful for a variety of things.

I am reminded of the importance of competency.

I am reminded of the importance of dignity.

I am reminded of the value of integrity.

I am reminded of the importance of preparation.

I am reminded of the fact democracy is fragile.

I am reminded of the understanding that the freedom we enjoy in America is unique … and always embattled.

I am reminded of the importance of listening without judgement and judgement based on facts.

I am reminded of the fact that conspiracies have no factual basis and, yet, can be confused as such in a mainstream way.

I am reminded of the unfortunate truth that truth itself can be suffocated if:

1. a lie is big enough, or
2. the lies are relentless.

I am reminded of the ultimate truth: one person can make a difference … for good or for bad.

I am reminded of the importance of decency.

I am reminded of how strong a country is and how much bigger it is than one incredibly flawed & misguided individual.

I am grateful that Mr. Trump has reminded me of so many things I believe we had taken for granted.

And while I am grateful for so many things I found an awesome letter, written during his scorched earth morally vapid 2016 campaign, from someone online who is also grateful for a variety of things:

=====

Dear Mr Trump,

It’s taken me a while to realize this and to admit it, but I’m grateful to you.

For the past few months I’ve spent a good deal of time lamenting your campaign and the poison it has so effortlessly generated. I’ve watched our country imploding, our public discourse become polluted, our political climate grow ever more corrosive, and wrongly assumed you were to blame.

It’s only lately I’ve come to understand that you haven’t manufactured our current national ugliness—you’ve simply revealed it.

By saying the irresponsible, mean-spirited, ignorant things you say so freely and so frequently, you’ve given other like-minded people license to do the same.

You’ve opened up the floodgates for our corporate sewage to flow fully. People no longer conceal their vile mess, they now revel in it, they broadcast it and retweet it.

You’ve made bigotry and racism socially acceptable again and that has been a kind of twisted gift because it’s allowed me to really see people; not as they pretend to be on the surface—but in the very depths of their wounded, weaponized hearts.

Over and over as your campaign has persisted, your supporters would tell me that they like you because you “speak your mind”. It wasn’t until recently that I’ve realized that you speak their minds. You’ve given credence to their prejudices and made those prejudices go mainstream.

Thanks to the terrible ground you’ve broken, politicians, pastors, friends, and strangers, both in person and on social media now regularly out themselves as hateful, intolerant, and malicious—and they remind me just how close they are to me, just how deep the sickness in us runs, and just how far we have to go together.

You’ve emboldened people to be open about things they used to conceal for the sake of decorum, and though it turns my stomach, I know that this is the only way we can move forward; to have that cancerous stuff exposed fully so that it can be dealt with. Our progress as a nation is predicated on authentic dialogue, no matter how brutal and disheartening that dialogue is.

In other words, you’ve let us know what we’re really dealing with here and while it’s been rightly disturbing, it’s also been revelatory. That’s the thing about that kind of harsh light: you’re forced to see everything. Beauty and monstrosity equally illuminated.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think you’re the least qualified, least knowledgeable Presidential candidate we may ever have had participate this far into the process, and if you somehow were elected I’d fear gravely for the world my children would inherit—should it survive your Presidency at all. I believe you’re reckless, bitter, and completely reprehensible; the very worst kind of bully.

But whether you win or lose, you’ve already allowed me the blessing of Truth; about me, about you, about other candidates, about our nation.

And in the process you’ve also shown me that I am not alone in resisting you and this ugly thing you’ve revealed about us.

You’ve generated an equally loud, equally passionate response to it and this is where I find my hope these days.

I find it in those for whom equality isn’t just a cheap buzzword, it’s the most precious of hills to die on.

I find it in those people who refuse to be silent in the face of our impending shared regression.

I find it in those willing to be more bold in defending the inherent value of all people.

I find it in the growing army of those who will not tolerate hatred as a core American value.

I find it in those who reject violence as our default response to dissension.

I find it in the ever rising voice of people who will not let malice and bitterness represent them in the world.

Today I find my hope in those who, like me, will not be complicit in allowing bigotry and intolerance to become a source of national pride, because we’ve seen where that leads.

Yes, Mr Trump, you’ve unearthed our hidden sickness and you’ve allowed it to go viral.

You brought every awful thing about us out into the open.

And for this—I thank you.

=================

While I am constantly mortified by what Trump did to the presidential process, the presidency itself, democracy, America’s position in the world, and our constitutional rights & freedoms, I tend to believe one of the most egregious actions he did was by doing all of that lying  and destroying any semblance of the overall standard of respectful discourse a civilized society typically has.

But.

I am grateful he has come along and reminded us of  all these things by showing us what the bottom of the barrel looks like.

I am grateful for his avalanche of lies and half-truths, manipulations and peddling of fear because it reminds us all that truth and hope is actually a brighter vision.

I am grateful because his promise to recover the past in simplistic tripe it is ultimately shown as the fiction offered by ‘merchants of clever cheats.’

I am grateful he offers a simple formula “to make your target audience feel good by offering up what is a fantasy to them, but a horrendous injustice to others” because it permits those who know how to articulate the true complexity of reality to speak up.

And, mostly, I am grateful because you cannot solve a problem until you actually recognize a problem. And while he himself is a problem to be solved <which I assume Time itself will deal with> he has uncovered all the problems I have listed above which we should now put our big boy & girl pants on .. and solve.

I have said for years now with regard to Trump that there is really only one word to describe him and whatever he does – carnage. His only plan is to destroy everything in his way. and in his wake, as he sits in his lonely penthouse, i.e., carnage.

I even warned people that when he was finally gone from public office that the next president will be faced with dealing with that carnage.

And I actually thank him for this too.

Yeah. I do.

This will force a new generation of leaders to stand up, speak out and rebuild from the carnage.

This will force a new generation of leaders to, well, lead.

This will force a new generation of leaders to take what was broken and build anew.

This will force a new generation of leaders to embrace a belief that we are actually stronger together rather than apart, a group of people aligned is stronger than an individual focused on self interest and working together is essential to progress.

The strength of a country is defined in how it deals with its worst moments. Trump represents the worst, represented the worst and in his wake he left us with the worst. I say that because, well, he is coming back. Twitter is a megaphone for all his shit.

In closing.

Just a reminder of some Trump trash.

30,573 lies over his 4 year presidency. I begin there to head off any false equivalence, “all politicians lie”, because Trump was in a liar zone of his own.

Also.

-Trump university a sham and a scam and stole money from people

-regularly performed verbal fellatio on Putin

-Russia/ Putin considered him an Useful Idiot

-filed bankruptcy 6 times; sucks at running businesses

-indebted to Russian/ Chinese banks since US banks ceased lending to him

-couldn’t even turn profit running a casino; run out of town in Atlantic City

-claimed tax returns can’t be released due to IRS audit

-lied; IRS claims no rules against releasing tax returns

-lied about being a billionaire, value of his properties and wealth

-sued thousands of times for stiffing small businesses/ contractors/ workers

-said his own sacrifice on par with those of Gold Star families

-dodged draft by claiming bone spurs

-cannot remember which foot afflicted with bone spurs

-McCain was only a war hero because he was captured

-mocks NY Times reporter who has epilepsy

-gonna build a wall and Mexico will pay

-chummy with racists, White nationalists, KKK

-raised dumb sons who are chummy with White nationalists

-refused to repudiate David Duke/ KKK contingent of supporters

-surrounds himself with unhinged far-right advisors

-birther-in-chief

-directed campaign funds to his own businesses

-uses campaign media coverage as free infomercial for his new hotel/properties

-tells blatant lies and denies lies even with video evidence

-often flip-flops within hours or on same day

-needs handlers to keep him from saying crazy things

-has thin skin, keeps Nixon-like tabs on perceived enemies

-said maybe US shouldn’t honor NATO treaties

-said we should have stolen Iraq/ ME oil after Iraq War

-sued for housing discrimination against Blacks, lost but denies guilt

-lied about weight and height so as not be tagged as obese

-used charity money as slush fund to settle lawsuit judgements

-used charity money to buy tacky painting of himself

-said his ’80s man-whoring was his personal Vietnam

-cray cray right-wing Supreme Court appointees affect policy for next 30 years

-disparaged top Generals as dumb and embarrassing

-knows more about ISIS than the Generals

-possible sociopathic/ psychopathic/ narcissistic personality disorder

-posed as own publicist; bragged about imaginary sex life with celebrities

-borderline anti-vaxxer: lied about a child getting autism 1 week after being vaccinated

-constantly says global warming a hoax; denied it in debate

In the end.

Giving Trump a megaphone when he is a con man, fake, pathological liar, amoral bully, incoherent word salad deliverer, seems like it is not a good idea for society in general. But. Thank you Mr. Trump for reminding me to get my head back in the game.

===

“We cannot departmentalize our thinking. We cannot think of economic principles and ethical principles. Underneath all our thinking, there are certain fundamental principles to be applied to all our problems.”

Mary Parker Follett

======

Ethical creation is the intersection between what one thinks and what one does in the pursuit of value creation. It is that liminal space in which a person, who has received stimulus – knowledge, business objectives, management direction, resource availability, etc. – and they are ready to make a decision or choice. Maybe its better said to suggest it is the space between sensemaking and choice making (apologies to Daniel Schmachtenberger because I believe this mangles his much deeper thinking on these topics). It is where what you end up creating is shaped by, well, what one views as right or wrong. The reason I see its importance residing between value creation and progress/velocity is because if an organization crafts a concept with high value, absent of ethical creation, and it moves on to the next phase and gains its likely velocity the concept shifts into high gear only amplifying its lowest aspect – lack of ethical value. In other words, velocity amplifies value whether it is created ethically or not.

To me this means the business of the future needs to embrace the idea that value creation has external consequences simply beyond sales, revenue and profit. With ethical value embedded its value carries an intrinsic benefit almost immeasurable in value. To be honest, most businesses never notice the absence of ethical value nor even recognize any value in ethical creation. To quote Futurama: “when you do it right, nobody notices.” Yet. Unnoticed, it has an impact in the home, community and society. Ethical creation is structural lift in which the value will not be found in dollars & cents, but rather a more ethical society which will end up seeking more ethical products & services as a reflection of who & what they are.

Now.

Let me be clear. I have never been a fan of Business Values statements or any simplistic desire to define ‘good behavior.’ My belief has always been to establish some principles and let people do the right things and they will invariably bend their behavior toward doing the rights things. My belief certainly lends itself more toward McGregor’s “Y” than his “X” in combination with Mary Parker Follett’s view on values and morality:

—

“Morality is never static; it advances as life advances. You cannot hang your ideals up on pegs and take down #2 for certain emergencies and #4 for others. The true test of our morality is not the rigidity with which we adhere to standards, but the loyalty we show to the life which constructs standards.”

Mary Parker Follett

—

Regardless. This does not mean ethics and ethical behavior should be ignored. In fact. I believe one of the outcomes of a well-implemented future business model is better ethical behavior.

So, let’s talk about “well implemented.”

From a human perspective I will not invest any energy explaining people’s desire to act ethically other than to say I believe 98% (I made that % up) of people in the workplace, left to their own devices, would act more ethically than most businesses act now. That alone would be progress.

This leads me to technology because algorithms play a significant role in the future organization business model.

While ethical creation is unequivocally a byproduct of human actions and behavior it would be absurd to neglect the role technology has in influencing or impacting human actions. As Marshall McLuhan said decades ago “a technology creates an environment” from which people will inevitably takes cues to think and do.

Yes. Technology plays a role. It plays a role because it amplifies. It is here that I will suggest that morality, ethics and empathy needs technology. Yes. I just said that. The destiny of all those things are dependent upon technology. If that is so then I imagine I could say society’s fate resides in the hands of technology. That may seem backwards in that all of these things reside in humans, not technology. Well. They do, but technology will either flatten, amplify or even extend the reach of all. I am certainly not suggesting that technology will guarantee morality or ethical behavior, but I would suggest improving ethical-ness of technology increases the likelihood that morality and ethical behavior becomes more pervasive (expansive) all of which are integral to a healthy culture.

That said. I will speak of technology’s role on ethics and ethical creations as an indirect consequence. At the core of the business model idea is conceptual thinking and at the core of conceptual thinking is better pattern recognition, better critical thinking/assessment and better knowledge (the more you learn the more ‘wise’ you get). The outcome of all of this is actually better behavior. It offers a person a broader perspective of things and consequences of not only what they do but what they think. It is the thinking version of “in and of society.”

There are dozens of thinktanks tackling the issue on ‘coding with conscience”.

• ** note: my personal favorite is The Ethics Centre in Australia. Simon Longstaff discusses ethics in this podcast with Mike Walsh: Ethics in the Age of Smart Machines  and the Ethics Centre  ‘Ethical By Design: Principles For Good Technology’ manifesto is a good place to begin the discussion

That said. Where I differ from many of these thinktanks is that they focus on the design and I am dubious this resolves the issues. Why?:

• Software is designed by humans who will all have some bias which will either overfit the code to some ‘ethical design’ or underfit based on the same criteria. In other words, any ethical design guardrails will be imperfect
• Imperfect code tends to amplify at scale
• Tools are designed to measure what the tools are designed to measure. In other words, well intended design is not crafted to measure bad intentional usage
• Algorithms focus on symmetrical resolutions and people are asymmetrical behavior machines or, as Brian Christian said: “When computers guess they are alarmingly confident.”

Ethics are not absolutes. Your ethics, or values, may not be mine <so maybe we should seek empathy toward other’s feelings and beliefs>. Yet. We must demand our algorithms have some absolutes in order to kill off the bad or evil we know exists. Maybe technology should be seeking what someone called “approximately moral.” This can be done in the actual outputting software (inputs to people), but it is possibly even more important in the ‘constraints’ software – the spies spying on the algorithm spies.

It is the latter point which I believe ethical technology’s hope resides. The spies spying on the algorithms. Just as diabetics have wearable tools to adjust blood sugar in real time, technology should have tools developed to attack and adjust the, well, tools. On a grander scheme, the internet as a whole, this certainly looks like a daunting task. On a smaller scheme, say a business level, it appears less daunting. Business behavior can be defined in ways to insure parameters on unethical use of knowledge and in actual practice.

I also believe the starting point for technology ethics is simpler than we tend to make it. Back in 2010 I designed an online global educational initiative directed toward 3-8 year olds and in it I suggested the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a reasonable foundation. Interestingly, in Flynn Coleman’s fabulous 2019 book, A Human Algorithm, she suggested the same thing:

“.. using established international human rights declarations as our model for how to preserve human rights as we incorporate intelligent technology is a good starting point.”

I like this because technology includes not just software design, algorithms, but data usage as well as all artificial intelligence, all of which should be seeking to not only not infringe upon people’s rights but actually seek to augment positive behavior (morality).

Others will focus on how to demand accountability for software design, I will focus on how an organizational Knowledge Sharing software system, through algorithms, can encourage ethical behavior because, inevitably, if I am suggesting technology augments people than we should seek to augment their better business angels, i.e., responsibility, accountability and empathy with regard to consequences of choices & doing something outside the auspices of the actual business and creator.

To be clear. No algorithm will ever solve any human ethical dilemma. Period.

But an algorithm can certainly influence how one thinks about that ethical dilemma. This does not absolve software engineers of moral responsibility, it simply does not ignore the fact people are responsible for sensemaking, choice making and the consequences of things they actually do.

In other words, everyone at every level has a responsibility and of everyone is ethical, or acts within an agreed upon ethical framework, that in totality we increase the probability that ethical decisions are made and ethical doing is achieved.

I admit. I get tired of all the negative discussion with regard to artificial intelligence. I believe, developed well and used well, it feeds positive progress – not just for business, but for humans and humanity.

It seems like people don’t speak often enough about the positives of algorithms and what they can make (isolated crowd or tribe aspects) it can actually unmake. It is possible to take apart larger unhealthy ideologies, or beliefs, so that new more healthy ideologies or ways of thinking can be constructed. Algorithms can be used in a variety of ways and if we elected to create a conceptual thinking community/organizational/societal mindset embracing ethical creation at its core, it can be done – even in a competitive finite ideology world.

That said. I view a checks & balance system as not only a check on bad use of AI, but rather also an iterative positive progress mechanism. I envision a looped ethical creation system to constantly check, and place constraints, on unintended negative consequences or unethical output or use which actually frees up the type of conceptual thinking that benefits people, business & society simultaneously.

I believe this is a reasonable way to think about this mostly because:

• One need not be prescient to envision future unethical behavior
• One capable of envisioning future unethical behavior has the ability to design to manage/constrain it
• One only needs to see constraint design as an ongoing progress commitment

• ** note: “Don’t fear superintelligent AI”: Grady Booch, Tedtalk

—

“I do not think we have psychological and ethical and economic problems. We have human problems with psychological, ethical, and economic aspects.”

Mary Parker Follett

—

Ethical creation, therefore, is never dependent upon one check, but rather people, humanity, AI, output and results, are looped and iterative in terms of its feedback. I believe this thought demands some emphasis because humans really do not have a chance against the onslaught of algorithms. They are often smarter than us but, more importantly, all are embedded with behavioral trigger mechanisms to tap into our mental models to encourage us to do whatever it is they desire us to do.

• ** note: what if, for businesses who seek a more measurable evaluation of ethical creation, an algorithm were designed to measure activity based on a score developed from Triple Bottom Line, Freer Spreckley, components? I envision an open source measurement feedback code which can be slightly adapted to each business’ focus/vision/purpose. For example a business focused on environmental responsibility will weight those components in its Ethical Creation value assessment versus a business which desires to focus on use of specific material resources.

I do believe the key to ethics in technology is to recognize it as a connective decision or initiative and not a specific task initiative.

I say this because I envision the conceptual thinker of the future will be connected not only to those in the group, but the organization, the cloud (knowledge and data of other unmade, ethical or unethical, humans) as well as community and society (as one’s concepts become reality). Things made cannot be unmade from an ethical standpoint – they ripple out almost infinitely. Let me say it another way. Buyer beware is unacceptable in a future business world grounded in algorithms. It cannot be.

Somewhere within my writings I have reminded everyone that the cloud, and access to knowledge, doesn’t make people smarter. While the cloud represents an almost limitless pool of ever growing knowledge and data I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the cloud, in and of itself, can be just as stupid, if not stupider, than any one individual. More knowledge, used poorly, simply makes one stupider rather than smarter. The collective knowledge is only as good as who uses it. This is also true of ethics.

Individuals, and small groups of people, within an institution (augmented by the cloud collective knowledge) get more ethical iteratively (even if they misuse knowledge because they learn from mistakes). Conceptually they actually get more ethical than the cloud due to understanding of context.

Now.

Let me remind everyone of a slightly contrarian assessment with regard to morality I said earlier before I move on to business being in, and of, society: Morality needs technology. Yes. I said that. Technology is not going away so discussing morality in the absence of technology is a fool’s task. This means, without technology continuing to progress, morality will bend toward bad rather than good. A static technology machine will most likely degrade humanity rather than improve it – morality included. If I could ever argue for ethics in technology, this paragraph would be it. Think about ethics and morality as you ponder Marshall McLuhan’s words” “we shape our technology and our technology shapes us.”

In the end (part 1: technology).

Ethics in technology is a given. We should stop discussing and start doing. The one thing business could teach the technology ethics people is that it will never be perfect and success is rarely found in what is initially created or offered, but rather how well what is developed improves as it faces new unforeseen contexts. Embedding ethics INTO software development, algorithms and technology, at minimum, embeds ethics into value creation at a structural level. From that point on, ethical creation is in the hands of the conceptual thinkers – the people.

In the end (part 2: people)

“Ethical is a polysemous word in that it can refer to process, outcomes, and values. The process refers to the internal procedures that are adopted by the firm to guide decision making on product/service design and development choices. The values aspect refers to the value set that is both adopted by the organization and those of the public within which the product/service might be deployed. This can include values such as transparency, equity, fairness, privacy, among others. The outcomes refer to desirable properties in the outputs from the system such as equalized odds across demographics and other fairness metrics.”

State of AI Ethics, Montreal AI Ethics Institute

We can discuss ethics and technology until we are blue in the face, but I will always, inevitably, come down to people. People doing the right things. Creating the right things in the right way. It was, once again, Mary Parker Follett who can guide us toward the right future using her own words as she described ‘Right’:

1. We do not follow right, we create right;
2. There is no private conscience;
3. My duty is never to “others” but the whole.

“Morality is not the refraining from doing certain things – it is a constructive force” (Mary Parker Follett). Far too often we view morality and ethics as limiting. We should not. ethical creation is freeing and a constructive force. We should stop thinking of principles as things meant to tell people what to do or how to act or even manipulate them, but rather to offer touchstones for agreed upon behavior that benefits value creation – to the individual (ethically and in meaningfulness), the community and society.

Give people some guidance for how to act in choice making situations or ethical dilemmas, not because they determine outcomes but to use as an energy to guide all elements as they face ‘the law of the situation’ (contextually what I best in that time and place which will endure in a positive way in terms of consequences).

Ethical creation for business should be a given. Ethical creation benefits people, business, home, community and society. Ethical creation increases value as it progresses and gains velocity. And, maybe most importantly, ethical creation, well done, actually embeds meaning, and meaningfulness into the people actually creating the value.

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“Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice.”

Karl Marx: Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868)

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“Chance favors the connected mind.”

Steven Johnson

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The truth is in today’s shopping world a business, and its brands, maximize its value not through consistency, but coherence. This creates a somewhat tenuous inner connection of things wherein nothing can collapse; except within more of itself. What I mean by that is there is no one thing that creates the value, but a number of things linked which can shrink in on itself without nurturing. What this means is to nurture one must find ‘selective consistency’ (the structural value embedded within) and tie it to agility (the ability to be malleable to accommodate individual buyer preferences). This is where a Human Algorithm (or algorithms driven by a behavioral data lake) offers a unique opportunity. We often don’t think of a behavioral data hub or AI design as part of experiential value consistency, but we should. Often the core is not a shared strategy, but a shared engine.  And, yes, through that distinctive engine you can create a distinctive “shareable” brand asset. It was Mark Ritson who suggested every brand should have codes or distinctive assets which create links to customers of a brand. He mostly suggested so with consumer brands, but we would suggest it is even more important in B2B in that it creates mental availability AND value association. What it does is create simple Mental availability, grounded in value offered, as a key driver for success to customers.

Which leads us to Data has always been a tool, now it’s a brand asset.

Data has always been a competitive tool in B2B. CPG companies effectively used data for years to increase facings, gain shelf positioning, negotiate promoting in store and acquire orders with grocers & retailers. Car manufacturers did the same with dealers and, well, wander an aisle of any retail outlet and you will most likely find a manufacturer, or owner of some brands, who dominate that aisle simply by use of data. That said. For decades large businesses with multiple brands have struggled with how to embed the manufacturer brand value within each of the individual brands. In the past we would see “manufacturer coupon events” on an annual basis where companies like P&G or Nabisco or almost any CPG company would have huge ads with coupons for all the brands in their purview or maybe there would be an insert showcasing all the brands. The hope was that at least once a year each of the brands would get a one-time structural value lift through association. Technology has changed all that. Now data is the glue and the fact that all the brands within a CPG portfolio can combine all their shopping, and shopper, data in a behavioral hub permits each of the brands to gain some agility in the marketplace (through knowledge) and, yet, maintain some linkage to all the other brands. What technology did was hone the tool and what algorithms did was made it an efficacy weapon – targeted efficiency and effective shopping experience tool. A mature behavioral data hub wielded with a well-designed algorithm offered a holding company the ability to not only tie their brand portfolio together strategically, but also enabled an enhanced value structure to all brands. What we mean by enhanced value is a historically coherent data transaction accumulation created a solid foundation to apply learning from one product/service transaction journey to another – lateral, or adjacent, thinking in algorithm form. It stops stratifying behavior – siloed bounded behavior – and enables incremental iterative progress from one brand to another.

This is brand coherence and the data hub offers some structural value lift. It permits individual brands to scale tied to core value. The database becomes a multiplier advantage to each individual brand. Correspondingly, it becomes a multiplier in value to the distributor/seller as it offers coherent positive experiences, of value, across multiple brands.

Which leads us to the reality that businesses with a full portfolio of brands are always in a tug of war between “I” and “We.”

At the core of this tug of war is, strategically, the agility of a brand alone to capitalize in its market segment versus collective power of portfolio to offer some structural value. Philosophically, this is self-interest versus collective interest (and, yes, a brand within a portfolio pursuing its own self interest can do so to the detriment of the greater portfolio whole). This tug of war is common and natural in that brands inevitably deem distinction, and/or differentiation, as the key to maximizing value in a specific segment. This is true, yet, this tug of war runs the risk that the parts ‘grow’ to the detriment of the whole. The intent of any brand portfolio owner should be to find ways, or a way, to raise the value of the ‘whole’ so that all the parts rise in value WHILE permitting individual brand agility. This is structural value creation, but more importantly it means each brand/product can pursue self-interest (agility in niche), but the center holds offering value to all.

Which leads us to experience coherence through a Human Algorithm.

When we experience something in the physical world, we absorb a wealth of information in front of us to help build a picture and form an impression of what we perceive, taking in the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures. A Human Algorithm needs to sense the preferences for all those things to create the optimal shopping experience. Often this is created through what someone ‘feels’ which is where a robust behavioral data hub offers its greatest value advantage in two ways:

• Transactional coherence.

Cadence. Every shopping experience has a cadence. A rhythm it seems to work to. Now. It isn’t just one cadence, but a coherence of cadences. What we mean by that is there are patterns embedded within patterns and each shopping experience has a subtly different cadence of its own. The effective AI design cadence accommodates each sub-cadence. It is like a dance similar to one of those huge ballroom things where partners get exchanged at different points in the dance. It isn’t always seamless but, yet, the dance (viewed from overhead) has a sense of coherence and cadence.

Anyway. Everyone just should accept the reality that every shopping experience has a cadence driven by the shopper, but also is a reflection of how the system works. It is, in essence, what we generally feel. The danger resides in the failure to acknowledge this ‘vibe’ is a complex mix of pacing and cadence dynamics – fast, easy, slow and thoughtful. Even a Porsche engine has slow moving, even solid, pieces in combination with pieces moving at rates almost invisible to the eye. To be clear. Cadence is difficult to ‘see’, but with a mature behavioral hub and well design AI interaction system cadence occurs. Cadence is latent value.

Gravity. Every shopping journey has gravity. What we mean by that is left to its own devices a shopper will end up on the ground. A great shopping experience is one in which the AI sees and senses the shopper gravity in order to (a) fly or (b) simply keep things from crashing, i.e., end up in a place where preferences & expectations are not optimal. Here is the tricky part. This center of gravity is good important because, in its conserving energy, it keeps all the expended energy from flying off into chaos, albeit it can also be bad important in that it sacrifices progress in doing. Gravity keeps the shopping experience grounded, but the danger resides in that the experience only has the feeling of speed and achievements and all the while it’s just one huge hamster wheel, i.e., the shopper is spinning their wheels getting nowhere to their desired outcome.

To be clear. Gravity is difficult to ‘sense’, but with a mature behavioral hub and well-designed AI interaction system gravity is effectively navigated. Gravity, well navigated, is latent value.

• Structural coherence.

Each of the things highlighted above point out the transactional experience, but what about shared experience among all brands when a behavioral hub undergirds all brands and all transactional journeys?

Well, going back to cadence, a shared behavioral hub has a cadence; a rhythm. That shared rhythm among all brands creates a subtle consistency offering coherence to all brands interacting with the hub. We would be remiss if we didn’t point out that this cadence expands out to the retailer and, over time, shoppers also gain a sense of “what it is like to interact with them” which is part of overall value and creates a subtle shared value experience throughout all brands.

As for gravity, successfully navigating gravity translates into shopping experience progress – which is often overlooked in the value equation when assessing ‘buy satisfaction.’ As noted upfront, people don’t buy experiences, they buy value, and the experience is simply an accumulation of value interactions. Once again, navigating this gravity expands out to a retailer as in “they didn’t rush me” or “they let me explore some of my preferences without wasting too much of my time” or any number of valued ‘customer respect’ touchpoint moments. It is a subtle shared value experience among all brands.

Which brings us to subtle little things translate into non-subtle larger experience.

The purpose of coherence should serve the purpose of the business – to benefit people. In benefiting people everything in the experience gains value. In other words, subtle, well applied, creates experience coherence which increases final transaction optimal value <if not highest value possible>. Human Algorithms subtly shadow people offering value behind the scenes, but that value outcome appears in real tangible achievements – higher sales, higher velocity of sales, higher satisfaction.

Which brings us to subtly improving everything.

The reason this depth of discussion over algorithms and AI is important is because in an algorithm driven business world everything has a goal in mind, but the consequences are often unseen. Business goals are usually innovations and sales/revenue/profit, but in the pursuit of those there are a variety of externalities created or affected that inevitably are not only of importance to the economic effects of AI but to societal effects. AI is inherently an iterative innovation itself and one that triggers cascades of complementary innovations. Each of those things have externality effects to, well, humans .. either by creating opportunities or closing doors on opportunities – both of which have real world consequences to the lives of humans. This entire paragraph is a rationale for why subtly improving everything is important – either thru intent or in reality. And because this piece is about coherence that is where we will end. Subtly improving everything maintains some inherent ‘goodness’ coherence which will fundamentally engage some sense of coherence for everyone and everything. In a world in which people are feeling increasingly uncertain and everything feels increasingly fragmented, this coherence action will prove invaluable not just to some business who embraces it, but to society as a whole.

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“The corporate ideology of the 1920’s contended that the consumer society would meet and neutralize the political opposition to capitalism. Utilizing the promise of material wellbeing, conscripting the notion of industrial democracy, capitalizing on the degeneration of traditional local authorities, corporate America associated itself with the tasks of the most critical forces within society – its opposition – while at the same time attempting to tame those forces.”

Captains of Consciousness

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‘In complex ways that no model will ever capture, the system feeds back on itself, magnifying slight variances, communicating throughout its networks becoming disturbed and unstable—and prohibiting prediction, ever. Iteration launches a system on a journey that visits both chaos and order.’

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“Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least slow down change. But organizations are organized with the intent to destabilize. Because its function is to put knowledge to work – on tools, processes and products; on work; on knowledge itself – it must be organized for constant change.”

Peter Drucker

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Businesses, at their hearts of hearts, contrary to what Peter Drucker said, are stratifying conserving institutions. To be clear I believe Drucker said this as an aspirational statement and a belief in it is what makes a business effective WITHIN society <the juxtaposition of a non-conserving always evolving entity and a conserving societal infrastructure creates the successful tug of war necessary for a society-in-progress>. That said. Businesses shouldn’t be conserving in nature, but they have become institutions in and of themselves and inherently, increasingly, embracing of conserving rather than ‘constant change’. Time after time, decision after decision, most business institutions have elected to stratify their business and how they went about their business. I purposefully use stratification as a code word for – efficiency, replication, best practices, shared value & whatever characteristic of something exhibiting tightly consistent attitudes and behaviors within a tightly defined system. That said. Stratification encourages a type of bounded awareness, bias & compartmentalized thinking/belief systems which increases the tendency to exclude relevant information from common decision-making by placing arbitrary (or institutionally intentionally crafted) boundaries around the definition of the task/issue at hand. Bounded awareness enables systems failures at worst and, at minimum, creates the lack of highest potential of a system. That said. What bounded awareness does do is create a resilient functional replicable mediocrity which, in turn, prevents most people within the institution as seeing the institution as nothing more than an effective functional entity (not a moral one). To be clear, I am not suggesting functional and moral are oppositional in nature just that within the Will of an Institution one can become subservient to the other, i.e., functional effectiveness to reach the objective is the driving force in behavior within which the moral constraints get stretched to accommodate the functional necessities. In other words, winning the game supersedes interest in how you play the game. Now. You can debate me on the edges, but at the core I am speaking some harsh truth about businesses and particularly larger business institutions <albeit many mom & pops take on some characterizations because they view stratification as the way to solidify efficiency and ‘culture’ that enables that efficiency>. Business institutions, generally speaking, embraces replication above all as the path to sustaining success and resilience in dynamic markets <albeit that is flawed logic>.

Which leads me to the will of an institution and the institutional will.

Institutions are inherently constructs of ideas. And while there is a difference between the Will of an Institution and the Institutional Will what binds them together is ideas, or, the ideas that ground that particular institution’s idea of ‘the business of doing business’. That said. The Will of an Institution is driven by the idea of how it believes it makes its money. I purposefully use ‘believe’ because the wealth/profit outcome is typically a consequence of a set of beliefs or ideas, on how that wealth/profit is created. What that means is set aside ‘Purpose’ and even culture and get down to the brass tacks of how it makes its money and this includes desired behavior of people to make that money.

• ** note: It may be a mistake on my part but I see behaviors as not culture, but rather indicative of culture. And I see culture as reflective of what a business permits/encourages. That said. Because this is business, I believe business is principally about ‘doing.’ Therefore, culture is always grounded in what you do, how you do it, how you speak about doing it and the coherence/symmetry between systems, humans, Will of the Institutional and, well, doing. That may sound a bit simplistic but doing begets profits and while profits may corrupt the mindset it will inevitably be the doing that will corrupt the culture.

This is important in that it leads into the Institutional Will – this is the ‘will’ of the institution to forge whatever mindset, attitudes and behaviors necessary to match the Will of the Institution. Once again, this is typically a process of stratifying ideas within the organization. This is usually done by ‘imposing its will’ <thru a variety of carrots & sticks>, but most major companies seek that the Will of the Institution be inculcated through all aspects of the business – process, intentions, attitudes, behaviors and even language. This can edge into cult-like or expand out to a more positive autonomy acting in coherent fashion. Circling back please note I began with ‘mindset.’ I point that out because one of the more insidious aspects of Institutional Will is propagating an ‘accepted mindset’ as part of culture <who we are as a business> which inevitably becomes code for who belongs and who doesn’t.

To be clear. The fundamental truth of business is that Institutions are powers and they decide how they want to wield that power AS they wield their ideas like blunt axes. We would be naïve if we didn’t understand that the most basic moral principle that governs any institution – a business, a government, a religious organization, a university – is its own survival. Since ultimately an institution, regardless of its claims of benevolence or at least compassion/empathy toward employees, must perpetuate its own survival. Therefore, the Will of the Institution means everyone who lives within its sphere of influence must actually “commit themselves to the survival of the institution.” Fundamentally each person with a relationship to an institution is expected, at least to some degree, to sacrifice himself or herself to the perpetuation of that institution, i.e., the idea, and ideas, OF that institution.

This suggests that organizations, traditions, corporations, nations, and all other powers, while ideally should serve humans and humanity by providing various social structures, will stratify their dynamics to the pursuit of survival and the Will OF the institution – not humans & humanity.

The Will of the Institution, if willed into existence, insinuates itself in the place of, as an example, God or faith in some form or fashion, or – eschewing religion analogies – any grander narrative vision, thereby subverting the thinking and actions of each moral being toward the Will of the Institution. The justification of humans within the institution is defined, or determined, by their commitment (or surrendering of) their “life” <I use this term in an expansive way> literally sacrificing themselves during work to the survival interest, grandeur, and vanity of the institution. This has even larger repercussions in a world in which work isn’t just an 8-hour day, but also expands out to a 24/7 ‘hustle culture attitude.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this is the antithesis of the belief that capitalism, or business institutions, rather than people/humanity being served BY the powers of the institutions <benefit from> they actually find themselves in servitude to the institutions.  The reality is most people within the existing systems do not flourish or optimize their potential because the institutions, while expounding on their virtues to & of humans, sell themselves as providers of meaning, hope, life and security – but in exchange for nothing less than worship/servitude while engaging in a relentless suppression of intrinsic individual purpose and meaning. Ultimately, the institutions have created a system which seeks to deceive people into thinking and acting as if the moral worth or justification of the person themselves is defined and determined by commitment or surrender TO the Will of the Institution. This inevitably leads to two types of corruption:

• Corruption of self: your own ethical compass and even self-interests have become diverted to that of the institution. That does not always translate into ‘not being in your self-interest’ or even poor ethical decision-making, it’s just that your self-determination toward the good has been corrupted through some subservience to another ‘greater’ good.
• Corruption in the Institution: institutional corruption exists when the institution formalizes and stratify a set of policies and practices that inevitably weaken the fabric of society. Even if no law is broken society actually begins to institutionalize that corruption as a ‘way of doing and being’ thereby distorting, corrupting, the fabric of good societal attitudes and behaviors.

In the end I imagine the Will of the Institution as what do I want to subvert mindsets to grasp in order to make the institution prosper and Institutional Will is what framework, with disincentives/incentives attached, I want to put people in to ensure the Will of the Institution is met. And while it is behavior it actually comes down to principles of behavior – the principles are important because within principles the organization careens between “how you play the game matters” versus simply “winning the game is all that matters”. Which leads me to say that I cannot think of one business which doesn’t have a ‘game’. You either play the game they want you to play or you start gaming the system to subvert it to your own self-interest. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that many informal networks are created by likeminded people seeking to ‘game the system’ (sometimes to the benefit of the business and sometimes not).

Which leads me to the economy <within which an institution attempts to survive>.

Simply stating that the economy is simply the process by which society is materially provisioned is a meaningless statement unless one states how that process is identified in relation to psychological and behavioral aspects of the people. Broadly speaking it is a choice between the perspective of business considering the economics of development & survival versus as a socioculturalist <kind of a different version of socioeconomics> which is how the institution shapes the weave of society, in my words, the social contract. Regardless of where you begin your thinking inevitably there is a fundamental truth: the economy at all levels of material existence is a social process of interaction between people and their environment.

I believe it was Marvin Harris who posited ‘the economy has no Surplus’. What this means is that institutions, by themselves, will very rarely develop any surplus for a society. And what that means is consumer sustenance is an irrelevant demand reference point and satisfying scarce means is by no means the way to measure satisfaction. Criteria, once again in a very cold hearted view, is simply exploitation of the market to meet the Will of the Institution and its ‘wants’ <above its needs>.

To be clear. This is class exploitation with no real objective existence other than the institutional wants, what a business desires, not what people need. This puts the Will of the Institution on a slippery slope of societal relativism. Societal needs is not the priority or a function of a business, but rather the world is defined by the producer’s decision with regard to people’s livelihood and the business’s profits. I say this so starkly to say society’s economic destiny is played out in relation to the institutional pressure, or business pressure, applied to household economies <not the reverse>.

I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest here that ‘supply’ doesn’t just have to do with resources or even output, but also knowledge. Most institutions parse out knowledge almost believing if it is in too much surplus it clogs of the machine of productivity. They see intelligence as domination and therefore distribute knowledge as a means of power dynamics or to suit the will of the institution AND implement the institutional will.

Anyway. This type of thinking about economics and the Will of an Institution hearkens back to Marx’s belief of infrastructural determinism which refers to the mode of production as consisting of forces of production and relations of production. Once again, I lean back into stratified systems in that, within such a system, the forces of production dictate the relations of production. In other words, the Will of the Institution dictates the Institutional Will and how it is applied toward any sociocultural dynamics of an organization.

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“We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.”

Derrick Bell

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Which leads me to self-interest versus collective good. I have no doubt, absent any system, while people certainly have self-interest, they will continuously act within a mental framework of being part of a larger collective (society) kind of like a natural system of reciprocity.

The issue is we are not absent of a system and to the degree the system is stratified into, well, pick your group <subordinate/ordinate, economics, political, etc.> is the degree in which reciprocal exchange is prevented. This suggests that the power of the individual has limits within a system. In other words, an individual’s desire for reciprocal exchange may lack the necessary strength to reshape the system or the society. As a consequence, the stratified system increases the likelihood of conformity in behavior desired by the institutional system, not the natural inclinations of the individual <as well as human dissatisfaction driven by unsatisfactory exchange between parties>. And by declining the exchange of reciprocity the entire concept of societal reciprocity gets the oxygen sucked out of it and suffocates. Yes. Circling back to my earlier corruption point, responsibility at least partially rests upon the people within the institution who unknowingly permit corrupt, or corrupting, institutions to perpetuate. The path to changing it almost always begins with awareness and informed understanding, but almost ends with a wicked path where one has to run a brutal gauntlet of Institutional Will in order to change the system.

Which leads me to informal structures <networks>.

Informal systems create learned responses which play an important role in the evolution of not only social life, but culture. Now. “Culture” is a tricky word, but the truth is there is nothing that mysterious about culture. It does not come about into existence through some design, but rather it emerges as a by-product of the evolution found within multiple complex human connections and connectivity.

What this mean is a balance must be struck between the continuity and discontinuity of emergent forms and processes. Or sometimes I have suggested that effective emergence is actually a successful combination of divergence AND convergence <ponder that>. I sometimes believe we significantly underestimate how much culture is an emergent property. Culture emerges from a combinatorial effect of accepted behavioral innovations that are valued.

                          ** note: culture is not simply behaviors, yet, an organization’s behaviors reflect its culture. There are things a person will do, and things he/she will not do. It’s that complicated, and simple. The Will of the Institution typically creates the parameters for the doing/not doing. In other words, culture is typically driven by a combination of organizational business priorities (growth/profit/etc.), “how the game is played” (is how one plays the game subservient to winning) and rewards/incentives.

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I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this is actually a looped relationship in which when the valuable becomes of no-value the culture will discontinue <or continue ineffectively if the Institutional Will is brought to bear on the continued use of no-value behaviors>. I hesitate to call this ‘behavioral reproductivity’ but it seems to represent culture and the idea of divergence + convergence + emergence. Circling back to my first point on stratification, informal networks that enable cultures within the Will of an Institutions tend to do so by enhancing values through social economics or even just simply meeting Institutional wants. I say that last point simply to point out these are socioeconomic consequences of a centralized industrial mode of production and productivity <under the guise of Institutional Will>.

Which leads me to Institutional Will and control.

Most institutions do not like informal networks despite the fact informal networks are most likely to be just the things making the Institution itself successful. While I could list a variety of reasons business institutions do not like them let me settle on this. The fact that social+functional groups (informal networks) drawn from a vast variety of a population, i.e., diverse, have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to acquire every conceivable aspect of the world cultural inventory. In other words, they accumulate the diversity into a formidable sub-culture – one that could easily challenge the ‘desired culture’ as stated by the Will of the Institution. Well. That is if the Institution were to permit it to be so. While, in principle, culture can change and evolve independent of simple ‘survival feedback’ the reality is within an Institution, and its Will, the evolution can be created (purposefully) by institutional feedback. Reflecting on that feedback thought probably accounts for many of the control-ish attributes we see in institutions today and a general reductionist attitude toward, well, everything. The point of Institutional Will is, and will almost always be, driving response alternatives to the smallest possible number of things compatible with the Will of the Institution <which they will suggest is ‘meeting desired culture’ objectives>. Yes. Institutional desires actually are a constraint on natural behavioral scale. In other words, the institution seeks to constrain a range of possible behavioral responses thereby suffocating the emergent aspects, by crushing the divergent aspects in the equation, so everything is ‘finely’ convergent.

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“It is the moment when what was chaos is now seen as having a center of gravity. There is a shape where a moment ago there was none.”

Peter Elbow

Which leads me to unifying.

Unifying is different than uniting. We may not like to talk about it, but leadership comes from the bottom up. What I mean by that is ‘unifying’ is when people, and small groups of people, emerge in a common purpose with similar goals. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this concept is terrifying to most senior leadership wherein the power resides in the people, not the ‘leader’ or even the system. Which leads me to, on the other hand, unity is a socially constructed process in which social systems coalesce around some common abiding truths. What this means to an Institution is that these ‘truths’ are not constructed by some leader (or politician), but rather represent an agreement, maybe a collaboration, on an idea or ideas <of which values, if ideas or principles behaviors, can be included>. It’s not consensus or even an agreement, but it is an acceptance. I sometimes call this a coalition of the interested. Why interested? Well. Vision, Purpose, BHAG or any of the traditional leadership tricks are actually worthless unless people are interested in them. The only way to circumvent existing construct, and systems, is to actually have people interested in something enough that the existing system becomes irrelevant and they create a new system to support what they are interested in. as a corollary, the only way to activate an existing construct, to its fullest potential, is to actually have people interested in something enough that the existing system IS relevant to them. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out 90+% of the time Institutional Will has little interest in what the employees are interested in, but rather what the Will of the Institution is interested in.

That said, within an institution this unifying can happen in a variety of ways, but today I am discussing how it doesn’t happen. This is kind of a derivative of my piece called “Decentralization and Stop Signs” in which I point out that encouraging autonomy is more about placing stop signs in appropriate places. I mention that because if the Institutional Will is intended to free people, not cage them, it is a combination of removing stop signs <an unnatural action for most institutions> as well as placing some stop signs in places they do not naturally think of placing them. When done well it creates layers which limit the fear of destabilization or debilitating consequences. That said. One has to accept the unevenness and lack of single organizational pacing to accept the benefits of this type of layered system. I shared this thought about unifying because in today’s business world the Will of the Institution is mostly directed to ‘unity’ in some unhealthy ways for individuals, but to the benefit of the business institution <or so they believe>. Suffice it to say most businesses do not seek unifying, but rather seek unity and believe freedom can only exist if the cages, the freedom is given within, are secure enough to insure the Will of the Institution.

Which leads me to people.

Everything I have written to this point can sound bleak, but the future is not determined. The Will of the Institutions, the cages they have constructed, that dominate the business world are not absolute and the direction they seek, the Institutional Will, is not inevitable. The Will of the Institution is inevitably dependent upon a willing, or consenting, or compliant, conformity of people who support it. Without this support, no matter how blunt or strong the Institutional Will, it cannot go on. If enough people refuse to support the Will of the Institution and create a new path, there is actually hope for a new and better way. Just as we are all citizens which constitute a nation, we are all also citizens of an institution and, in fact, we are all leaders – if we elect to be. The truth is the community, the workers, hold the power whether they know it or not. I say this to focus our attention to power and authority in the individual, their values, rights, and responsibilities. I state this purposefully as a counter to an existing Will of the Institution universe in which we find ourselves more led than free, more consumers/workers than participants, more fearful/reactive than engaged/aspirational. Far too often we turn over our power and authority to others in the belief that they will always act in our interest and in doing so we have shrunk our vision not only of what could be, but also as humans with self determination of our fates and spiritual being.

“We have shrunk our vision. We have covered up our sensitivities in a drastic way. I will call everything multivalent because we find ourselves in a realm that after 5 billion years has not stopped unclothing itself and revealing yet another splendor. And, yet, in our conviction that we know what it is, namely, material to make into throwaway products, we are destroying it. we are destroying it because we are not aware of its infinite depths.”

Brian Swimme

To be fair to people, The Institution brings all the power in its Will to shrink us <under the guise of expanding us, i.e., “your growth”>. While the Will of the Institution and the Institutional Will seems to intersect with people, it does so with some fairly flawed beliefs. Generally speaking, institutions see people as of finite, not of infinite, depth. They seek to mine the finiteness through, well, its will. I imagine the first step in breaking the hold of its Will against us is to recognize the infiniteness within us and stop accepting a finite life.

Which leads me to where we can go from here.

Most people are simply going along with the Will of the Institution or being forced to go along for the ride <and, yes, many people do not have a choice>. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people attempting to create alternative institutions but, well, embedded institutions hold on to power with ragged claws – they are conserving institutions. It has been said that great evil requires great resistance. I am not suggesting all Wills of all Institutions are evil, but I am suggesting they may not be in the best interest of the people. Just as with almost anything societally meaningful, this institutional shift will demand the best of people. But maybe the important point is to recognize our need to overcome motivated blindness. What I mean by that is Institutional Will can often be brought to bear through reward/incentive mechanisms thereby motivating blindness to the less-than-ethical or undesirable everyday behaviors necessary to meet the Will of the Institution. We need to open our eyes, become self-aware and decide to do something.

“Moral commitment alone and organization alone do not build breadth. Shared delight, heavy laden with creative signs of a coming alternative future—this is what invites the many, encourages them to stand up in new solidarity to powers that rule by their spectacles of terror.”

Mark Lewis Taylor

The reality comes down to this; choose to stay as we are or to take responsibility for our business world and become willing to take action. Our “no” to this hollow business existence should be based upon our “yes” to a substantive meaningful working life which helps create a meaningful society.

Lastly, because I am a Hope person, I believe that resisting the existing Will of the Institutions and systems that destroy the earth and crush the meaning out of people and its subsequent poverty of social values & value, hope will arise. As we withdraw our consent to these powers, practicing noncooperation while finding or creating meaning-generating alternatives, what has seemed impossible becomes possible because we are willing to pay the price to make it so. But we need to play, or, as someone said, “only when we ourselves enter the game and bind our own life inextricably to the game’s outcome does hope arrive.”

Today’s business world driven by the existing common Will of the Institution, imposed by Institutional Will, is crushing society one person, one employee, at a time. Its time to push back and crush its Will and recreate it in a more positive form.

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Authors’ Note:

This is a purposefully bleak view of business institutions and I can already hear the cacophony of voices highlighting exceptions and aspects where less bleak things are happening. The point of this piece is to make people think about those exceptions, as exceptions, and think about how dimensions of this bleak ideology are embedded with almost every global institution and many non-global businesses. Lastly, I am a cynical optimist who believes in HumanKind, but I find it helpful to paint the bleakness so as to never underestimate the challenge upon those of us who seek a better business world.

A special thanks to Fiona Tribe who read this in draft and made me think a bit harder on some things.

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“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
Thomas Paine

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“We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources.”
Theodore Roosevelt

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Theranos and that Holmes woman.

Throw the entire book at her, everything in it, send her to jail. For a long time.

Hear me out.

There are a bunch of us who talk about creating a better business world. Our topics run the gamut – community, culture, autonomy, bla, bla, bla. Nowhere do I see us railing on the shit leaders who do shitty things and the consequences for their shitty behavior. Why does it matter? Well. If there are no consequences, what are we telling the next generation of workers?

That’s numero uno.

Second is if you like being a business person, like working, believe your job is in some form or fashion is a reflection of you, well, then you should want to hang anyone who depreciates your existence – and that is what they are doing.

Third. Theranos is a particularly egregious business case. It wasn’t just about defrauding investors and lying about the business, it was actually going to harm people. What the fuck. Pay a fine? Guilty of some money issues? Go fuck yourself. Throw the book at her, with everything. Not all egregious activity is created equal, hers is like a business spinal tap 12.

This isn’t just about her.

That WeWork douchebag? Yeah. He needs some consequences. He was only a business Spinal Tap 7, but he deserves some other consequences than a gazillion dollar buyout payday.

Zuckerberg? Well. He hasn’t broken any laws; he just makes business people look like to be successful you have to be a shitbag. I’d just slap him with the book you slammed Theranos Holmes with and suggest because Facebook is the largest country in the world when he does suffer some consequences his will be library-sized.

In general, I believe people who have money who have made their money by being a shitbag shouldn’t be able to walk away with a lot of money. Period. If you are worth 100 million dollars and pony up a 10 million dollar fine, well, you still have a good 90 million tucked away. That’s bullshit. Its bullshit because the person who has a million-dollar business and gets fucked by these people and loses everything has to start with scratch, zero, zilch, when they start again. Its nuts and its wrong.

So that’s why I want them to throw the book at her. Make her pay and not because I want to make her an example, but because she was a business shit who just didn’t fuck over investors and other businesses, she fucked with people’s live <not just their livelihoods>.

Lastly.

She should never be allowed to run a business again. I am not suggesting she can’t work, just not permitted to run a business. Maybe forever is too long, but say she can’t for 20 years. Why? She lost her business leadership card. Period. And you know what? I’d treat all these business shitbags the same way. Be a shit and lose your business card so maybe you have to “reskill” or whatever bullshit we suggest the ‘common worker’ has to do when they lose their job.

She’s a shit amongst other shit business people and they should all have the book thrown at them. business has to make accountability count because if we don’t, well, then there will be a shitload of business shots who don’t give a shit about being accountable. And that is not only bad for business, its bad for everyone.

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“The combination of technology and capitalism has given us a world that really feels out of control.”

Jonathon Franzen

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 “Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.”

Martin Luther King 1967

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Why am I writing my umpteenth article on capitalism?

I keep seeing research in the United States that says something like 50% of people under the age of 30 do not believe in capitalism.

Ok. Let’s get this out of the way:

Capitalism is good.

Capitalism is not bad.

But that does not mean there isn’t always a tension between good and bad in the soul and system of capitalism. It is an incredible wealth-creating & life bettering mechanism and, yet, left to its own devices can run off the tracks <morally and financially>. Capitalism needs guard rails or, as some smart guy called it,“embedded countervailing power.” It needs guard rails because humans will be humans.

When business is good, human beings become greedy.

When business is bad, human beings become fearful.

And I would like to remind everyone that culture is created by, uhm, human beings. I say that not to be a smart ass but to suggest there is a real culture war in America, maybe the world, and it is occurring in the business world. I purposefully use ‘culture’ because it has to do with some ethics or moral fortitude, some personal responsibility and some pragmatic hope for the future. In fact, if we fix how capitalism works <systemic & infrastructure aspects>, the net result is addressing income inequality, wage stagnation and overall economic prosperity as well as some individual “self-stuff” like meaning and mattering <kind of all the big societal issues we tend to discuss>.

Anyway.

A moment on the role of government.

It is both a fallacy to believe Government is not the problem nor believe they are the solution. We have a mixed economy < I stole that term from Foreign Policy magazine>.

Capitalism is not supposed to be a system which is about maximizing corporate profit at the expense of the citizenry. Therefore, effective governance curbs greed objectives & regulates capitalism so that it bends the arc of the system to encourage the good things it is supposed to do <innovate & bring prosperity to many> and doesn’t do the bad things <be driven solely by greed & self interest>.

Let’s be clear.

America is not based on an unfettered capitalism nor has it ever been <nor was it ever meant to be by the founding fathers>. It is a managed capitalism system <always has been — I say that to head off any of the ‘government is too involved’ today talking heads>.

Government attempts, sometimes better than other times, to put reins on humans within a capitalistic society.  Let’s say it’s something like giving enough range for wild horses to run free, but not to trample the gardens and lawns of the surrounding areas. This ‘fettered’ managed capitalism idea is not perfect. It ebbs and flows and morphs into different shapes as time passes, but it IS an effective economic and political system.

I would suggest that, while polarizing, capitalism is balanced – when balanced.

That said. A better version of capitalism really is not dependent upon governance and laws <and putting banks out of business>, but rather personal decisions, choices & responsibility.  Yes. I just suggested <again> that people, not the system, will define the better version of capitalism. Adam Smith suggested the three pillars of a society are: prudence, looking after oneself as best as one is able; justice, keeping the law of the land; and beneficence, caring for others and society where there is need. Yeah. Adam Smith deceived in the collective interest beyond self interest.

Clearly our main issue is not how to survive on true scarcity <that is not a perceived scarcity or a “less than” scarcity> but rather how to live well with plenty.

To date we have chased double digit growth and higher GDP all the while seeking higher material happiness <sometimes confused with higher standard of living>.

We have become societally insatiable. In other words, we cannot have enough and are reaching what Hirsch called “the social limits of growth“.

This funny Maslow chart reflects that as additional personal needs are fulfilled it induces new needs <which we, as humans, constantly improve ourselves in order to further attain these ‘self actualization’ activities>.  Think about this from a non-funny sustenance perspective in growing from poverty to non poverty <but the dimension perspective will always reside in the human mind>. This is also called ‘hedonic adaptation.’

Yes. Capitalism has certainly vastly improved our lives and our means to live. But it has also fed this insatiability.

Some guy named Sandel wrote in “what money can’t buy … the moral limits of markets:”

• the more things money can buy the more the lack of it hurts.
• buying and selling can change the way a good is perceived (he used “giving children money as incentive to read a book may make reading a chore rather than a simple pleasure”).

This all leads to an overall attitude that endless <and double digit> growth is essential to maintain and improve our quality of life. While I will not go into the detailed debate … that is simply not true <this is the typical efficiency versus effectiveness argument>.

Now. All that said. The issue is really about the attitudes & attributes we are attaching to capitalism.

As I share some thoughts to try and address the young’s lack of belief in capitalism I will lead with two things:

• Communism promises to make everyone equally rich and instead makes everyone equally poor.
  

• Youth thinks it invents the world. Maturity respects the world it finds.

Suffice it to say that Capitalism is becoming some evil entity in the minds of many young people. In addition, aspects of other ideologies <communism being one> are being used relatively flippantly as ‘better than’ what is occurring within capitalism. I actually believe it is a lack of understanding, but it is also quite possible there is a deeper lack of faith with capitalism.

If you step back you can see why the young <and the shallow thinkers> feel this way:

• Real unemployment is nearly in double digits and young people are struggling to gain a positive financial foothold.
• On average, according to Gallup, Americans believe that 50 cents of every dollar the federal government spends is wasted. Democrats, who are supposed to believe in big government, guess that 41 cents of every federal dollar is wasted. Republicans think it is 54 cents, and independents put the number at 55 cents in the dollar.
• A poll found that most Americans would rather their government did less. Some 57% said it was doing too many things that were better left to individuals and businesses. Only 38% thought it should do more.

And many people have genuine complaints. Many working-class men have lost their jobs. Those who are still employed have seen their wages stagnate/decrease. And overall they don’t trust government not to make it worse.

This is a sad state of affairs <for government who CAN make shit happen> because regulations can positively address stagnation & inequality without intervening in entrepreneurial decisions or in the price/profit mechanism. The harsh black & white truth no one wants to say is that regulation is what makes free markets, well, free <free markets cannot sustain themselves and constraints actually benefit fresh ideas>.

Anyway.

I have been thinking about capitalism for a while nudging my mind toward discussing morals and character <society & culture>. In doing so I found it interesting to think about Schumpeter when addressing the youth capitalism challenge.

• what Joseph Schumpeter called ‘the cultural contradictions’ of Capitalism

One of the cultural contradictions <I believe he outlined 5> was Rationality. In that Capitalism encourages rationality in behavior and that culture creates, and demands, a natural conflict by insisting on some ‘irrational’ behavior. Rationality comes to life as the “maximization” of particular interests of individuals and groups. This same rationalization concept then bleeds into both personal lives <family & home> and ultimately becomes embodied in some form or fashion into cultural forms. Children become quasi economic assets <or their rearing incorporates rational ‘maximization’ theory embedded in capitalism>. At its extreme, maximization bleeds into soulless wealth and extreme consumption thereby substituting saving and societal salvation. Oddly, but fairly, Schumpeter suggests consumption wins against accumulation. This leads to a certain diminishing of the desirability of incomes above a certain level. At the same time, however, when the breaks of certain values associated with ethical or religious tradition fail <called the sophrosyne: Greek philosophical term meaning healthy-mindedness and from there self-control or moderation guided by knowledge and balance. Roman poet Juvenal later interpreted sophrosyne as “mens sana in corpore sano” – “a healthy mind in a healthy body”> individuals and groups come into natural conflict with capitalism. The basic human instinct is one of core values <in some degree within everyone> and therefore the natural contradiction forces some balance within capitalism.

This means that the irrational components of behavior are critical for capitalism to emerge and withstand rational arguments especially when based on long term considerations.

But. That said.

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“This is the genius and the Achilles’ heel of American culture. We … have a strong belief in self-determination and agency, even when our expectations fly in the face of reality,”

Katherine Newman, who studies social mobility

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Capitalism in America is not functioning efficiently for a variety of reasons, but that doesn’t make it bad.

Which leads me to the issue of Confused capitalism … or being confused by capitalism.

No matter how altruistic and non-materialistic you may be the psychological issue is simple — as we sit perched on a stool at the bar of society where we can scan the room and see the danger of those who have nothing or little … as well as those who have the most <and lots of most>.

If the majority of us begin to look like we are either nearing the dangerously ‘nothing people’ or, contrarily, appear to be too distant from those who ‘have the most’ <no matter what your exact status is> we get nervous if not angry. Materialism, culturally, is therefore naturally cyclical in that it will always seek to balance itself or find some equilibrium. For we always ‘want’, but most of us want it to be within the realm of ‘hopeful that we can get more’ … without appearing too greedy. Hence that is fairness <in an irrational sense>.

In other words.

Give me a chance for something more than I have and give me more and I won’t be too greedy.

While everyone can debate the role of money with regard to people’s happiness it is true that economic health does make people happier <more secure, more comfortable, more sustenance>.

This actually means that free-market capitalism is not devoted to integrity and a reliance on trust but rather economic growth. And this suggests the people need to be regulated.

Why do we balk at regulation?

The US has always been a wide-open, free-wheeling country, with a high tolerance for big winners and big losers as the price of equal opportunity in a dynamic society. Even though the US brand of capitalism has rougher edges than other democracies, most citizens inherently believe it is worth the trade-off for growth and mobility. Yet, at the same time, while we like the free wheeling we also recognize that we are going through some type of crisis, therefore, it just becomes a discussion on what type of crisis.

Some think it is a crisis of capitalism. <I don’t>

Others think the crisis is moral. <I do>

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“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”

Bertrand Russell

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First there is attitude. What is maybe a disregard for societal fairness versus what could be construed as individual ‘winning’ or ‘what I deserve.’ A lot has been written about the effects of globalization during the past generation. Much less has been said about the change in social norms that globalization enabled. Many people, particularly people in power positions, took the vast transformation of the economy as an excuse to rewrite the rules that used to govern their behavior. I say that because while there will always be isolated small groups of lawbreakers in high places what truly destroys morale is a systemic corner-cutting, rule-bending, self interest behavior type of construct.

I have thought about how and why this happens.

It starts early.

As young children we start off with a healthy core of greatness, but before long it gets covered in layers of doubt, fear and guilt. Often this is caused by people we trust most like parents, teachers and managers who put us down in subtle and less subtle ways. It’s as though people were flicking bits of mud at us until our core of greatness is totally covered. Even worse, we flick mud at ourselves by accepting smaller versions of ourselves through negative self-talk and poor thinking; and we become a tiny fraction of the potential that once existed.

Once potential is curbed we seek to find success in other ways sometimes circumventing “what is right” to make small excusable steps in our behavior to attain ‘small personal successes.”

Second is our propensity to consume <and its self perpetuation>.

Our propensity to consume without thought for the planet, the poor or even the person next door is a sign that greed and fear are the motives of the moment <or self interest trump collective interest in a zero sum world>. Freedom certainly creates problems (inequalities most notably), but it also solves them.

But the central aspect of freedom advanced by these thinkers was the market, or what Adam Smith had described as the propensity to truck, barter and exchange. In this area, freedom allowed dispersed individuals—disposing of their own resources and choosing for themselves what they want to buy—to generate a level of prosperity that has had no precedent in human history. And the pricing system that emerges from the market—that is, from the push and pull of supply and demand—provides the indispensable knowledge needed to guide the economy.

So. All that said.

I would tell young people that Capitalism is not the issue.

It is the people within the system <and young people can fix that by entering the system>. The system can work just fine it is simply being abused at the moment. Capitalism needs to be managed to be more oriented to the long term and socially more responsible.

Interestingly, Richard Branson has formed an initiative to do just this. I found it amusing that initially he sought to have a board of Business Elders — but there were too few candidates from the business world of sufficiently unimpeachable character to staff it <insert ‘oh my’ here>.

Anyway <to conclude part 1>.

Since World War II in particular, America has been on a consumption surge/binge. While wages have certainly stagnated, family disposable income has grown, life standards have improved, health has improved and overall quality of life has improved <and showed a continuous growth>. Unfortunately, at the same time, while families busily lived their lives they also had access to the finest inventory of toys capitalism could provide. Each generation was doing better than the one before, life was good and standard of living acquired a layer of ‘non essentials’ as part of how the people lived a successful & happy life.

At the same time. Televisions starting bringing news, influential people talking and capitalism toys into the family living room. Television allowed busy families the opportunity to be exposed to complex issues through professionally crafted sound bites and talking points. People were now becoming more informed from a larger perspective, not just local perspective, and we ushered in the inevitable “keeping up with the Joneses” aspect.

What we face is the natural rising tide of ‘better than before’ facing the ebb and flow of time. The ebbing waters are not appreciated by those who drink from the current place. Is it greed for most people? No. It is simply a desire for the status quo – “better is a right not a privilege.” Therein lies the social & cultural task at hand. Ponder.

Anyway <to conclude part 2>.

Doing something.

Me? I write and post on my blog. And speak about it wherever and whenever I can <especially to young people>.

It is easy to talk about it because it seems like if we take a moment and reflect on the problems in the world today we might easily come to the conclusion that it is mainly due to deterioration of our morality compass.

It seems like everywhere we see people filled with greed and intent on self-gratification. It seems like people are always willing to compromise on values/morality to make personal gains. That means we need to start talking about values and create some sort of awakening in the minds of people.

Will everyone do it? Of course not. But someone has to go first. Someone has to become the catalyst for change.

Why not the youth? We should encourage them to enter the system and build what they desire from the inside out rather than simply breaking the system as unfixable. Ponder.