The adversary world is a game of with losers and winners. This is a world of fighting and flighting—of pain and dying. To win in this game someone must lose. Winning is always at the cost of another. All humans living in the adversarial world are struggling to avoid losing—struggling to avoid being hurt.
CONFLICT —def—> The struggle to avoid loss—the struggle to avoid being hurt.
Here humans must fight and flee to stay alive, and they do. Always ready at a moments notice to go tooth and nail to avoid losing—to avoid death. Losers/winners is the harshest of games. Winning is always at the cost of another’s life. The loser tends to resist with all of his might occasionally prevailing by killing or wounding his attacker. So both parties can lose, turning the game—losers/winners into losers/losers. If we analyze adversary relationships, we discover that individuals are less after the relationship. (1+1)<2. In the adversarial world where the loser forfeits his life (1+1)=1. Or in the end game of losers/losers, both adversaries may die in battle, then (1+1)=0.
Barry Carter
When we look at the underlying norms and thinking that employment and our entire Industrial Age systems rest upon, we find a win/lose norm. The controlled economy and other Industrial Age systems were not the start of win/lose norms and systems. Serfdom, slavery and monarchy of the Agricultural Age were also based upon win/lose norms and prior to this so to was tribal life and customs. Controlled economies are merely the latest in a series of perhaps progressively improving win/lose systems.
The inherent win/lose nature of slavery and serfdom is self-evident, however, how is a controlled economy inherently a win/lose system? Any economy that must be controlled to maintain order is one based upon fear not love. The former Soviet Union controlled its economy because it feared what free humans would do without control, likewise so do companies. Only systems and actions that come from a love paradigm can be win-win. Actions and systems from an authoritarian control or fear paradigm are inherently based upon win/lose and scarcity.
The heart of the controlled economy is its win/lose compensation system. Controlled economies operate based upon standardized compensation – salaries and wages. Regardless of the value one adds the controlled economy pays the same within a relatively narrow range. With standardized compensation the more you make the less the organization makes and vise-versa. I must lose in order for you to win and vise-versa.
The controlled economy is based upon adversarial human relationships. At a tangible level we see a win/lose system as CEO’s salaries explode while they layoff record numbers of people. Managers and the company makes more by holding down wages and salaries; the more the employee makes the less the company makes and vise-versa. The more vacation and benefits the employee gets the more it cost the company. There is also win/lose competition for limited positions. The primary job of most managers is to get more work out of people for less money. Unions who represent employees (a check and balance bureaucracy) have the job of getting more money and benefits for employee at the owner’s expense. Externally controlled economies compete with other controlled economies for survival, customers, growth, resources and prestige.
Most of the rest of society is geared towards socializing people to survive in this win/lose system. Wealth creation is at the center and all other institutions must evolve to match it because it is the system that produces the stuff (food, shelter, money, etc) that allows us to survive. It, therefore, takes top priority. With our scarcity paradigm of finite wealth and our win/lose wealth creation system virtually all of our social systems, as well as thinking, support this win/lose norm.
Win/lose is so pervasive in our civilization that we aren’t even aware that we live in a win/lose norm. We are like the fish who, when asked what it’s like to live in water, say, “What water?”
We’ve even made win/lose activity fun. Win/lose competitive sports, for example, are presently one of our most enjoyable activities and few things in society have as much popular support. Competition is so much a part of our civilization that it is invisible and thought of as the only way things can work. Even those diligently working to build the new win-win civilization dogmatically resist seeing competitive sports as win/lose activity. However, any human activity where one person loses in order for another to win must fall into the win/lose category. Competitive sports serve an important role in a fear based win/lose civilization. They socialize us with the driving motivation to win and to lose gracefully. Losing gracefully is as critical as winning, since a win/lose civilization cannot advance if the losers are poor losers and become destructive when losing.
All one has to do is watch the faces of both teams after an important competitive event, to understand what is being taught. The losing side, in pain and anguish, is taught to suck it up, swallow the pain of losing, lose with grace and come back and try harder next time. However, watching the jubilation of one team at the expense of the other team’s pain and anguish tells us that something is gravely wrong with this system. We see the same looks on the faces of two opposing groups at war as one is defeated and one wins or two opposing gangs. Likewise with a criminal and victim when a huge sum of money has been stolen.
What other lessons are taught with competitive sport; focus on ourselves regardless of the pain others are in, make others feel the way we do not want to feel, do it unto them before they do it unto us, get your needs met at other people’s expense, don’t care about the feelings of the other person. When we see gangs, criminal and thugs operating by these same rules, regarding others in society, for some reason we are appalled. We ask in surprise and denial, “Where did they learn such values?”
As children we start with cartoons that are biased toward a win/lose reality. There are good guys and bad guys seeking to win and to cause the other side to lose. The first thing a child does when watching a new cartoon is to figure out who the good guy and bad guy is. Without this reference the story has little meaning. In criminal justice both opposing sides are focused on winning for their side and causing the other side to lose. Only a small percentage of the effort is focused on the truth. In representative government, the politician’s top priority and primary focus is on winning the next election and causing the opposing politician to lose. How the politician votes is dependent upon whether it will help him win and his opponent lose in the next election. He or she is not primarily focused on doing the right thing for the situation.
We take all of the above and the rest of our win/lose civilization as absolute and the only way things can work. However, this is not the only way things can work, especially as we move into an Information Age. The win/lose controlled economy paradigm is but one paradigm. As knowledge decentralizes power to the individual in society win/lose human relations can no longer be sustained as the evidence all around us is beginning to show. There is simply too much power in the hands of individuals, in an Information Age, for a win/lose civilization to be practical. The losers in an Information Age are gaining the power to cause the winners to lose, with the result being lose/lose as we see with terrorism, gangs and hate groups.
The 911 operator answers the phone. There is a frantic lady barely understandable screaming. “They’re in my house.”
The operator says, “Slow down, I can’t understand you, what’s the problem?”
Caller: “They’re killing my kids.”
Pop-pop goes a gun in the background.
Operator: “Who’s killing your kids? Gang members?”
Caller: “Please get someone over here.”
Again pop-pop.
Caller: “Oh no, oh no please don’t kill me, please, please don’t kill me–no, no please let me live.”
The caller begs for her life for thirty seconds before the gang members spare her, however, her three children ages ten, seven and five are dead; killed execution style shot in the back of the head. This is a true story and we see rising violence like this increasingly on the news and television daily, and it is only one symptom of our dying Industrial Age civilization.
What does the death of these three children and increasing violence and disorder have to do wealth creation and the Information Age transition? Everything! As our wealth creation system becomes more dysfunctional the social chaos will continue to increase. This is because all of our institutions are interconnected into one cohesive whole. When we analyze crime and violence by looking at it separately from everything else in society we see no connection. When we synthesize and look at how all of our social systems and norms fit we see that it is all interconnected. We must see the connections before we will solve our Industrial Age problems. The book Infinite Wealth is intended to help you see from the Information Age paradigm and help the connections crystallize before our eyes.
Copyright 2000 by Barry Carter
About Barry Carter.
Infinite Wealth is available at the author’s website, and can be purchased in bookstores everywhere including Amazon and Barnes & Nobel.
There is also an abbreviated free online version, which has been reposed at Future Positive: 1) The Rise of a Win Win Civilization 2) A Personal Journey of Discovery 3) Why Corporations Don’t Work 4) The Emancipation of Capitalism 5) Mass Privatization: Organizing in the Information Age 6) Decentralized Wealth Creation 7) The Infinite Wealth Potential of Liberated Humans 8) The Mandate for Win-Win Wealth Creation 9) Breakpoint: Why You Must Act Now 10) SYNOCRACY: True Democracy Through Synergy 11) THE SHIFT: Awaking to a Win-Win World 12) The Synthesis of a Win-Win World and 13)Vision for a Synergic Transition.