We continue with the twelfth in our series of excerpts from Barry Carter’s book Infinite Wealth. See: 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 and 11) THE SHIFT: Awaking to a Win-Win World
“The failure to strive for completeness is probably the most common failing in the thinking of all individuals. We focus our eyes on one small truth so hypnotically that we neglect all other truths.” –Sam Keen
Barry Carter
When we synthesize the metamorphosis of wealth-creation with the shift to True Democracy with the age wave historical precedence, as well as the changes occurring in spirituality, religion, psychology, human maturity and science, we see the rise of a new win-win world. It is a world of infinite wealth potential and abundance. It is a world of creating, creativity and infinite possibilities. It is a world where the more we help others, the more wealth we produce for ourselves.
Empathy, Wholeness and Win-Win
In the Win/Lose Era it was imperative that one focused on one’s own needs intently. A hunter in the hunter/gatherer age could not afford to empathize with the opponent, since a split second distraction could mean his own death. Today in sports or business you surely would not hesitate and wait on the competition, while empathizing and considering the pain of his loss, since it could cause you to lose. The result is a world filled with people seeking to win at other people’s expense—talking but with little ability to listen. It is a world filled with people feeling like victims when losing but unable to see the opponent as a victim when they are losing; seeing from narrow, limited and fragmented perspectives and not caring about and unable to see from other people’s perspectives.
A world of competition is one based upon good guys and bad guys, where “I” or “we” are the good guys and “he” or “they” are the bad guys. A win-win knowledge civilization cannot exist where people’s primary focus is on perceiving only from their own limited fragment of reality—where empathy is not the core of our actions. It cannot exist where people are focused on finding the “bad guy” in other people, so that they can see themselves as the “good guy;” it cannot exist where we see ourselves as victims who are owed something.
The ability to see win-win realities boils down to not merely seeing from other people’s perspective but embracing many other people’s perspectives. The late David Bohm, quantum physicist and author of The Undivided Universe says that all of existence is one undivided, interconnected whole. We, however, see ourselves as separate individuals. In reality, we are all part of one whole but seeing from different perspectives, with different paradigms, seeing different realities.
We debate our various views, trying to convince others that what we see is correct. However, we are all merely seeing incoherent fragments, of which, none are completely correct. Only by synthesizing all of our various, fragmented perspectives together do we stand a chance of understanding the synthesized whole. In Thought as a System Bohm says, “Our thoughts are incoherent, and the resulting counter-productiveness lies at the root of the world’s problems.” He asserts that communications must come through win-win-based dialogue and understanding as opposed to win/lose-based debate or discussion.
Covey’s habit number five is, “seek first to understand and then be understood.” The ability to see win-win is about tolerance and the assumption that other people are perceiving correctly, though differently. Win-win is a reality that is void of judgment and blame because we realize that others are merely seeing from different paradigms. Joel Barker, in Paradigms, says when he disagrees with someone he searches to determine the paradigm from which the other person is seeing, in order to find the source of disagreement.
Within our win/lose paradigm, individuals are not willing to understand others because there is little in it for them. A mass victimization world based upon win/lose competition always produces more losers than winners. Even the people who are winning feel like victims due to our fear-based socialization. In the win/lose world one thrives on getting one’s own point across and not on empathizing or listening to others. We live in a world filled with people starved to be heard and understood. Being an insecure victim leaves one’s own need to be heard unfulfilled. We, therefore, continually step on others, competing to be heard and understood.
Healing Our Separation through Connecting
As we prepare for a Win-Win Era, there is tremendous healing work going on in recovery programs, support groups, self-directed work teams, through psychotherapy and the like. These groups and methods are preparing us for an era of win-win wealth-creation. Programs like Re-Evaluation Counseling are based upon the concept that people already have the solutions to their own problems, they merely need to be heard and understood to be healed.
The support group or co-counselor empathetically listens to the individual and supports him as he discovers his own solutions. The co-counselor asks questions to help the individual “discharge,” heal, or re-map false neural connections or low intelligence habits patterns. This usually occurs as the individual discharges the pain by crying, throwing a temper tantrum, screaming, punching a pillow, and laughing or through some other emotional outlet. The key is having someone listen to one’s pain.
People on the television show “911 Rescue” almost always cry when they describe some painful event; a daughter being hit by a car; a son falling into an icy lake; a husband shot. It is very difficult not to cry and discharge the pain with so many people watching and empathetically listening to your situation. Most of these people likely never expected themselves to cry on national television. We are discovering that the simple act of listening to others, empathizing and, truly interconnecting with one another has the power to heal and increase emotional and spiritual intelligence. The underlying reason for this is that we are all part of one whole. By connecting with one another we begin to become whole and healed.
The mass victimization norm of the win/lose era thrived on not listening and not empathizing; focusing on one’s own condition and ignoring others; seeing only from our own perspectives. It would make sense that listening to others heals the reality created from not listening to others. To empathetically listen is to connect with another. It is to interconnect, to synthesize, to become one. Interconnectedness, synthesis and wholeness are the very essence of true spirituality as well as the new science of quantum physics (Zukav, 1979). Interconnectedness and synthesis are also the very essence of Mass Privatization and Mass Synocracy.
Quantum Physics and the Undivided Whole
Eastern religions are built on the notion that we humans, the universe and god are all part of one undivided, seamless, inseparable whole—one collective consciousness. Quantum physics today is pointing to this notion as reality. Physicist Walter Heitler, author of a standard textbook on light/matter interaction, says that in spite of its obvious partitions and boundaries, the world in actuality is a seamless and inseparable whole. Fritjof Capra, in the Tao of Physics, as well as Deepak Chopra in Creating Affluence add to this concept. David Bohm, author of The Undivided Universe, says, “one is led to a new notion of unbroken wholeness which denies the classical analyzability of the world into separate and independent parts. … The inseparable quantum interconnectedness of the whole universe is the fundamental reality.”
Einstein said, “the illusion that we are separate is an optical delusion of our senses.” Irwin Schroedinger, the quantum physicist who developed the wave equation in quantum physics says, “If we could just measure the sum total of the minds in the universe there would be just one.”
Information technology and the drive for interconnectedness from Mass Privatization-based wealth-creation is today putting humanity on a course for massive chaotic interconnectedness, at a tangible level. If as quantum physics says we are all interconnected at some deep level, then information technology is allowing us to interconnect in a basic and primitive but perhaps necessary way—building towards a more substantive spiritual interconnectedness. Information technology is so powerful today because it is allowing us to interconnect, to synthesize, better understand and become the one global economy and the one whole that we are. Perhaps information technology is a bridge necessary for those like ourselves obsessed with the need for empirical evidence of something before we will believe it.
Quantum Physics and the Wholeness of Wealth-Creation
Earlier in this chapter I spoke of our definition of wealth-creation being expanded. Another reason that it is expanding is because we are beginning to take a more holistic view of wealth-creation. When a company makes a profit by not paying the full cost of producing their product or service today, then perhaps no profit has been made and no wealth created. In fact, that company is living on welfare, expecting someone to pay his or her cost. It is win/lose wealth-creation and welfare when a company pollutes the environment, requiring future generations to pay the cost. If a manager intentionally negotiates a salary with a naive employee for $20,000 less that the fair market value then this is welfare. The manager is expecting something for nothing—a handout that has not been earned. The manager wants the employee to work for free part of her time. Though we say we hate welfare, for able-bodied people, it turns out that welfare it is the heart of competition and win/lose wealth-creation.
Our present view of profit and loss comes from a fragmented worldview based upon analysis, where profit only takes into account a narrow sliver of the whole—“my sliver.” Perhaps if we lived in a Newtonian, fragmented universe made of independent pieces this win/lose approach would be valid.
Quantum physics is showing that perhaps no wealth is created in many win/lose situations. This is because there could be a loss to the entire system when one person wins at another’s expense.
Reinforcing Feedback Loops and New Realities
When management thinks of employees as dumb, employees respond by reinforcing management’s expectations. Violence on television, movies and music reflects back and reinforce our reality and produces more violence. In school, classes are segregated by “perceived” intelligence. The “perceived” lower intelligence students are continually given the message that they are less intelligent, and then perform accordingly. This is known as the Pygmalion Effect.
Reinforcing feedback loops cause us to produce more of what we see in a sort of snowballing effect (Senge 1990). They lock us into the status quo. Here is what Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline says about feedback loops.
If you are in a reinforcing feedback system you may be blind to how small actions can grow into large consequences—for better or worse . . . . In reinforcing processes, a small change builds on itself. Whatever movement occurs is amplified, producing more movement in the same direction. A small action snowballs, with more and more and still more of the same, resembling compounding interest.
We see the win/lose reinforcing loops so strongly throughout society and the world that win/lose is thought by most people to be simply a law of nature. Competition is everywhere and permeates everything. We see this reality, we expect it and adapt to it, thereby perpetuating it. Since we expect it, we get more. The more we see, the more we are convinced that this is the only reality.
Reinforcing feedback loops are, however, what shall deliver us into the new win-win reality. Though we are overwhelmed with a win/lose reality, the win-win reinforcing feedback loops increase daily and at some point will reach breakpoint.
Reinforcing feedback loops are why Mass Privatization is so critical to the transition to a win-win world. Mass Privatization allows us to tangibly, directly and immediately see that we win by helping others win. Without aligned structures, the win-win paradigm will likely be difficult, if not impossible, for most people today to accept, just as it has been for thousands of years.
The Win-Win Reinforcing Feedback Loops
The customer and quality movements of the last twenty years are part of slowly building win-win reinforcing feedback loops. The shift to a buyer’s market, a customer-driven society and mass customization are small reinforcing loops growing larger. With the worker shift from subservient employee to empowered private worker we also see win-win feedback loops grow larger. Wal-Mart increases quality and service. Other suppliers, unable to meet customer needs, like Brendle’s, Kmart and Rose’s, struggle, restructure, close stores or file for bankruptcy. Win-win reinforcing feedback loops like this cannot be ignored. They slowly increase the size of the win-win snowball.
We also see win-win reinforcing feedback loops operating in the area of emotional and spiritual intelligence. This is in the personal and spiritual growth movements. There are networks of individuals, support groups, recovery groups, healing groups, self-knowledge groups, observing consciousness groups and many others. There are many people writing, studying, and communicating worldwide. People are coming together as never before to heal the pain of the past that cause us to see from our fear paradigm. They are working to increase emotional and spiritual intelligence to become more effective.
Information Technology and the Breakpoint to the Win-Win Era
Information technology is the primary power behind the growing win-win feedback loops as defined in more detail on the NeuroNet Web Site. It connects and empowers individuals and customers in society. Information Technology is providing tangible, visible and touchable evidence of the new and growing win-win civilization. As Deepak Chopra, Alvin Toffler, Peter Drucker and Tom Peters have all shown, knowledge is the driver of wealth-creation today. Knowledge is infinite and can be win-win power.
What is information technology but the basic raw tools of information processing and knowledge production, and knowledge flow? These tools today have become tangible creators of infinite wealth for all to see. Furthermore with interconnectedness being the essence of spirituality, we are witnessing the rise of the most powerful spiritual growth tools in history—information technology. Information technology is bringing humanity together, enabling synthesis, synergy and wholeness.
It is critical that we see information technology for what it is, because we practical humans need tangible and touchable evidence of something before we will believe and act upon it. Today we have win-win, infinite wealth and spiritual growth producing tools, growing at the speed of light directly before our eyes. In reference to the growth of information technology, John Naisbitt says the following in Global Paradox, “If we had similar progress in automotive technology, today you could buy a Lexus for about $2. It would travel at the speed of sound, and go about 600 miles on a thimble of gas.”
We see the infinite wealth potential of information technology as enterprises like Microsoft, which produces nothing but intangible ideas, with only 11,000 people, having a greater net worth than IBM and GM with hundreds of thousands of people and dozens of tangible factories and “things-based” products. We see the win/win characteristics of knowledge power with one third of Microsoft’s employees being millionaires.
Knowledge power, within a Mass Privatization enterprise, has enabled those like Amway to create more millionaires than any other organization in history. In the past several decades, information technology increased social freedom enormously for everyone. It has likely avoided many wars, as it brings the horrors of war directly into our living rooms with television, thus raising our consciousness. It has reduced corruption worldwide as it increases our awareness regarding the true nature of centralized power. It has reduced pollution, as we all become more aware of the harm we are doing to the environment through our actions.
It has increased awareness regarding police departments as a single video, such as the Rodney King tape, gives us all more understanding. It has saved thousands of dolphins’ lives. A single video, shot by one person, showing dolphins being killed in fishing nets, raises our consciousness. We stop buying tuna and the industries changes. It has permanently toppled dictatorships, replacing them with Industrial Age democracies. Mass Privatization enterprises will interconnect people and globally through the Information Superhighway. We will not as easily be able to wage war against those whom we consider friends, partners, suppliers and customers—those whom we have come to know, love and depend upon.
Information technology has begun to reflect back to us a new win-win reality that will allow us to continue creating that reality. We need to make a conscious effort to see information technology and the interconnectedness it offers as the key link in the transition from our win/lose past of scarcity, to a win-win future of abundance. It is not just a hard cold technology. It is a system connecting our minds, hearts and souls into the coherent whole of which we are apart. It is a relatively primitive, “hard-wired” forerunner of the much deeper “soft-wired” spiritual connections to come. Information technologies are our spiritual training wheels and Mass Privatization is our first bicycle, as we graduate from our tricycle.
As illustrated earlier in this book the Information Superhighway is being built from a host of various information technologies—virtual reality, Internet, holographs, etc. Mass Privatization partners, at some point, will in essence be having real person to person communication almost as though they have been physically transported to the same location.
As a critical mass of the Information Superhighway comes on line, Mass Privatization shall begin to blossom. The Information Superhighway and Mass Privatization are providing the motive and means to chaotically interconnect humanity on a massive scale. This interconnecting is moving us to a breakpoint in human maturity—a breakpoint to a world based upon love. To love someone is to come to care for, to understand, to know and to desire helping that person. Mass Privatization partners, suppliers and customers must interconnect and become interdependent on one another in meeting each other’s unique, fickle and customized needs. They must collaborate and come to know one another, they must empathize and synergize with one another; they must care about one another—they must act from love.
Information technology and the trend to Mass Privatization is providing the most powerful motive and means in history for individuals to love one another. It is empowering humanity to synergize on a global scale, to mature, to come to know itself—to become one.
Today humanity is like a large brain of six billion neurons with very few neural connections. With our sparse neural connections we are like the brain of a newborn baby. We have had dreams and nightmares while in the womb maturing. Information technology is just now allowing humanity to be born. We are about to allow the six billion neurons to connect through massive, chaotic and powerful neural networks that operate on chaos theory. These massive neural connections shall synergize, multiplying all of humanity’s intelligences by many orders of magnitude—including emotional, spiritual, creative, intuitive and intellectual intelligences.
Our Expectations Are Our Path Out of Hell
Using the Mass Privatization concept we have come on a very long trip to show the shift to a win-win world. In fact our journey started thousands of years ago. It is ironic that neither Mass Privatization nor the trip was ever necessary. Just as great spiritual leaders have told us we have always had access to a win-win world. Today science supports this notion. Science now tells us that we create our reality out of our expectations, beliefs and observations.
Win/Lose Era wealth-creation was more about attaining wealth at another’s expense, using low emotional and spiritual intelligence, than creating anything. The people doing the losing are victims. Victims are people whose control and power has been taken away. Victims then attempt to win by taking power and control away from someone else. Both the winners and losers, in the Win/Lose Era, all come from a fear-based victim paradigm.
True wealth-creation is about creating something where nothing before existed. Real wealth is created where people are empowered and can actualize dormant potential, thus creating wealth. Empowerment is about creating a desired future and transcending current realities. It is about creating and creativity. Empowerment and true wealth-creation are the opposite of the helpless victim paradigm.
Suppose through some strange new science we came to understand that we create our own reality. This would mean that there is no such thing as a victim. If we create our own reality then we have always been in full control of our destiny and under the control of no one else. It would mean that we have always been fully empowered but perhaps too immature to realize it. Science is proving that we do create our own reality—to be specific the science of quantum physics.
Neils Bohr, the Danish physicist, along with those like Albert Einstein, earlier in this century pioneered much of quantum theory. Perhaps no one has had more impact on the interpretations of the new physics than Bohr. The “Copenhagen interpretation” developed at Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute says 1) there is no deep reality and 2) we create our reality out of our observations (Herbert, 1985). The Copenhagen interpretation is not a minority view. The majority of physicists at least partly buy into in the Copenhagen interpretation.
As we enter a knowledge era, perhaps the greatest discovery of our times is that expectation, beliefs and observations create reality. There is no deep, objective reality out there to observe and adapt to. Reality depends upon our perspective and what we perceive. This is our path out of our win/lose hell.
For all of human history we have viewed ourselves as helpless victims at the whim of a harsh universe as well as those in power. We are now discovering that our negative expectations, which come from low emotional and spiritual intelligence, create our harsh win/lose reality. Win/lose competition and scarcity are not natural laws to which we must adapt. They are a reality created out of our immature beliefs. This means that by increasing our emotional and spiritual intelligence and changing our belief system we can create the reality and future we desire.
The next figure shows that virtually every segment of society has proven concepts that support the notion that we create our reality from our beliefs, expectations and observations. We see it with the Pygmalion Effect in psychology, the Hawthorne Effect in business, paradigms in science, stereotyping in sociology, visualization in sports, the Placebo Effect in medicine and far more.
As a college student, and for many years after, I was a strong proponent of facing reality directly and head on. Being competitive and driven, I believed that one should face reality directly no matter how painful because this was the way to adapt and best survive. I practiced enduring pain and thriving on it. I didn’t take aspirin for headaches. I didn’t have an air conditioner in my car. I’d yearly pick the coldest days in winter to take five-day solo canoe trips down the Stanton River in Virginia.
For hundreds of years we have thought that we could objectively observe the universe to determine reality and adapt to it for our benefit. From the victim paradigm we saw the things around us as happening to us, with us reacting to them. We saw ourselves as mere bystanders, separate from events, as they happened to us. Therefore, careful observation and analysis is what the science of the last few hundred years has been about. By observing and understanding we could then adapt to the environment, not knowing that we were merely adapting to a mirror image of our believes, expectations and observations.
Within the win/lose paradigm, I was correct in attempting to face reality no matter how painful. The world is hard and tough so I must be hard and tough. Within the larger win-win paradigm, I was incorrect. Today the evidence shows that facing a painful and harsh reality directly and head on, and adapting to it, is not the most practical method of thriving.
Facing reality or being practical merely serves to keep us trapped in a limited “practical” paradigm; today that paradigm is a practical win/lose hell. The more win/lose we see the more convinced we are that it the only reality. We then feel compelled to adapt to the win/lose reality in order to survive.
The captain of the slave ship that brought Kunta Kinte to America in the movie Roots opposed what he was doing but did it in the name of being practical. After all had to feed his family. Others on the ship never questioned what they were doing. Many, at some point in their lives had adapted and learned to like holding others in pain. Whether they liked it or acted in disdain their actions were in the name of being “practical.” Many of the Nazis in World War II did what they did out of being practical. They were merely following orders.
We are no different. We as prostituting employees do work that we do not believe in, which we dislike or even oppose just to fill our bellies for another day. When all is said and done we shall understand that “being practical” has been the curse that has kept humanity trapped in hell of thousands of years. We have not been able to see the forest for the “practical” trees directly before us. What quantum physics tells us is that the captain, the Nazis and we could and can step out of our practical “hell” any time we really “truly” desire.
As we synthesize quantum physics with changes in wealth, spirituality and psychology we find the key to the new Win-Win Era as well as the Win/Lose Era. We have always created our own reality, however, in the Win/lose Era the reality we created came from a fear-based victim paradigm of scarcity—low emotional and spiritual intelligence. Being practical and creating wealth within this paradigm kept us trapped in this paradigm.
We are finding that the higher one’s emotional and spiritual intelligence, the more capable one is of creating the reality he or she desires—transcending current realities. Someone working at the base of the hierarchy of needs is not likely to have very high emotional and spiritual intelligence, with limited ability to actualize his or her potential. He or she will, therefore, likely perceive that directly before herself as all of reality. Since it is ALL it must be finite and we must compete through fear for the finite ALL. When individuals see themselves as victims, they are driven to meet their own needs first or create wealth out of fear.
Today as humanity is maturing and its social systems, technology and knowledge reach a critical mass, it is all pushing humanity’s emotional and spiritual intelligence to new highs. Our higher emotional and spiritual intelligence will move us into a new worldview of personal responsibility and self-empowerment. It will force us out of our victim paradigm so that we can see that we are truly empowered and in charge of creating our own environment and destiny.
What’s the moral of this quantum physics story? We see what we believe or want to see. As the concept of paradigms tells us evidence that does not fit our paradigm is literally invisible. We cannot see it even if we look directly at it. If after reading this book you still are not seeing the shift to a win-win world, it does not matter. All that is necessary is that you believe it. When you believe it you will see it. What you see in the world is merely a reflection of your beliefs about yourself and the world—a reflection of your own self-esteem, maturity, self-actualization. You must ask yourself am I worthily of abundance, wealth and happiness? Are my children worthy of a life of abundance, wealth and happiness? If you see only a win/lose world it is because you have been hurt, you have shut down and have closed your mind to certain possibilities in an effort to prevent from getting hurt again. You have toughened, harden, become competitive, and adapted to a hard world—you have become a rock. But what is a rock. It is hard and tough but it is dead, not sensing very much!
Contrary to popular believe, where we idolize tough guys, it does not take much to become tough and hard, to be competitive, to shut down and not feel other’s pain. I know because I have been there and done that. The challenge is to transcend what we see as current reality. If nothing else perhaps the feedback loops to a win-win world can help you jump-start new win-win wealth-creation habits even if these habits initially are out of self-interest.
There is, however, a downside to the shift from win/lose. When we turn on the news each night, what are our expectations—death, violence, corruption, murder, terrorism and layoffs? We have an epidemic of win/lose expectations. Much of what we see is out-of-control win/lose. Expanded social freedoms are in the process of being thrust upon six billion, relative immature individuals through information technology. At the same time these individuals have no macro vision of what is occurring. If our expectations remain win/lose we are headed for the greatest chaotic hell that humanity has ever experienced. Unless we shift our expectations, we shall create this reality on a massive scale as win/lose devolves into mass lose/lose. As we near breakpoint, an expectation of win/lose as the norm is incompatible with human survival. How is it possible to change this expectation? The answer lies in our expectations and attitude.
Today, based upon quantum physics, it’s “win-win or no deal.” We must learn to see from many different perspectives in order to see win-win. We must today visualize the win-win and abundance before us. If we are to survive, we must visualize win-win and make it the expectation. Though the reinforcing loops for win-win are tiny, they are growing and we must look to find them.
Visualizing win-win based upon knowledge power and seeing the growing win-win feedback loops are the premiere challenges of our lifetime. We must have a powerful enough vision of a desired future to change our win/lose expectations. We must understand the concepts of quantum physics—the reality we see is merely a reflection of our thinking, not some independent, absolute reality. We cannot stay in our win/lose civilization. On the other hand, we cannot move to a win-win civilization without an intelligent vision.
Since we humans crave the “practical,” based upon empirical, observable evidence, we must see and use Mass Privatization and information technology as the human maturity stepping stones to a win-win world.
Copyright 2000 by Barry Carter
Next: Vision for a Synergic Transition
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.