Western World Democracy, at work, is no longer a beautiful thing to behold. It is painful to experience. It can produce anger and despair when we are called to participate as voters or representatives. And people are so locked in their positions it has destroyed family holidays, community peace, and a sense of belonging. What got us here and what can get us out?
One core missing ingredient is this we are not educating human on how to think for ourselves and to think beyond polarization with no education on consideration of a third force offered in institutions. We cannot conceive of a third position or perspective that reconciles the competing two forces . We than each assume an entrenched stance on one side of the divide. We become attached to our party’s story line and rarely question it. There must be another way.
There is a way to learn to consider more in our adopted choices. But we have to educate and develop certain capacities in humans that are not only undeveloped anywhere in the Western culture, but we tend to work against these capacities being developed. Let’s start with what we need to learn and then apply it to democracy.
Three Human Capacities
Locus of Control
The first capacity we have innate in us from birth is internal locus of control, taking responsibility for our own thoughts, actions and effects. But since most parents raise their children being evaluators of our behavior, then become are praise givers, and mediators of behavior as we act. Growing up, we don’t develop our own judgment about how our thought lead to our actions; how actions cause effects around us for others, or reflect back on us in real time karma, or how we are affecting society or health of a planet. We are never taught to reflect on all this, examine this chain of outcomes, or how to set aims to improve our learning when we reflect.
The more we are instructed by third party delegation, and remain undeveloped in the process, the less we understand our role. When we forced to work in tasks and are at the mercy of others making decisions that affect us without our co-creation or leadership , the more we experience external locus of control taking hold, with the victimhood and blaming that goes with it.
We also design work systems with hierarchies, decision cascading, performance reviews of others, and 30 toxic practices I identified that undermine the three human capacities. Check out Chapter Five of The Regenerative Business. Most structures, systems and processes, stop developing of these three human capacities, training employees to follow orders and never think for themselves and take responsibility.
Scope of Considering- External
The second undeveloped but innate, capacity is external considering. It is about considering our effects on others and on ecosystems prior to taking action. Understanding their world, aspirations and even Essence. The underdeveloped capacity is obvious on observing the internal considering at work. In the internal considering form, it is solipsistic and self-referential with little ability to get beyond effects on ourselves of events, choices, and changes that are happening. We shut out, or at least cannot experience the effect on others.
We promote the slipping into internal considering in business and organizations by rating and grading individuals so they cannot see that all outcomes are the result of one or more set of thinking and action, not one person. Pay and progression is close-in to a person without a team’s self-assessment on their ability to affect and enrich lives of customers, consumers, stakeholders, society and Earth. We are not asked to make decisions, plan for, or measure individual or collective effects. Certainly, rarely does an executive teams advance their ableness to image the working of living system creating and transforming life. We consider all work as transactional, static, and fragmented into parts, not wholes. And labeling these invisible effects as externalities which usually equates to unknowable and not our problem.
The critical work to build this external considering capacity is to have constant, recurring, and deepening reflection in all processes. Particularly asking, “how do this specific choice we are making affect outcomes for others and social and planetary processes; how does this work carry forward into effects. Each org, team and individual make it a chosen impactful daily events like evaluation, and strategic decision-making. The organization embodies and embeds this developmental activity so that it feels eventually wrong not to do so. It is building the mental muscle to care. And motivation rises when external considering connects This simple but powerful exploration, without defaulting to measurable answers will lead the organization to find more systemic ways of working with external considering.
Purposeful Agency
Source of Agency—Humans have a role in the working of Living Systems. Not the director, strategist, not a servant to. Not us pursuing our own purpose. But one of producing conscious energy fields where decisions are made, actions are taken. Without the ability to exercise agency in this regard we are passive to life and put in incomplete effort to think about and take the best actions. And create a field for others to do so.
When we study and reflect on the working of Living Systems, and how social and planetary process interact within and among beings, we can out actions.
What it takes to develop it; We have to have frequent conversations to see all beings fragmented by issue. There is not systemic agency when we work by fragments, with generic answers across different places.
How we undermine it being developed in our culture”, This living systems connection requires stopping our missions and purposes which are formed and put on automatic. This usually done as a Nature study, looking at each part as an object to engage with (Awe) or as instrument in our life,(biomimicry or life sustaining) not as a Lifeshed at work or one where we have a role. Mission Driven and purpose-driven are programmatic and not Systems understanding when a system is at work.
Developing ourselves
It is likely obvious when I present it this way that each capacity needs to exist in each person, for society and personal lives to work. We don’t want to pick and choice and leave two or even one capacity undeveloped. We expect people to have agency that is based on external considering from a living ‘systems understanding. And for all individuals to learn to exercise responsibility for their choices and effects.
But segmenting the three capacities and assigning them to special groups is the thinking that divides up political parties and from which they take stands and argue. One Party is about Personal Responsibility preferrable never expecting anything from anyone else. One is about External Considering preferably from shared, dedicated, or collective sources. And the third is about Agency, preferably unimpeded by any rules or encumbrances. But they are treated as independent behaviors of one another, even as mutually exclusive. Liberaltarians, Republicans, and Democrats seem to have each staked out their territory and arguments supporting their case.
One party takes a strong stance on taking responsibility for yourself and never expecting others, except maybe family, to help you out when your own efforts, shortfalls or creativity let you down. There are no excuses. You are expected to have, without exception, internal locus of control, and take responsibility. That is not a bad personal development task to set for yourself, but harsh when it stands alone and apart from collective external considering with our actions and effects. How do we notice that our personal choices and actions have extended effects out in the world. If we did we would see how we contribute to Understand others through their eyes rather than our eye. The opposite of thinking about ourselves only is encourage.
The third perspective is a party is about agency, specifically to be autonomous ongoingly with our agency. No restraint is to be offered. The 3 human capacities cover three political parties. And are blind to the each needed and make up a whole.
Consider and dialogue to create and image of what a party platform would look like if stood for all three and wove them together to create whole human beings and governance that took all three into account.