Timothy Wilken
Humanity was right when we chose Neutrality over Adversity. But Neutrality is only a stage in the evolution of our species. Neutrality does not make us independent, it simply hides our INTERdependence in the anonymity of the fair market. Our human culture is evolving and becoming evermore complex, it is time now to move beyond Neutrality. It is time to embrace Synergy.
Synergic help
This is help obtained with trust. The givers of help are trusting those they help to help them in return. The givers of help trust that their gift of help will generate trust in those who receive their gifts and a desire to help the givers in return. Synergic help is when we help each other by working together. We make sure that whenever anyone helps us, they also benefit and find themselves helped in return. Synergic help then is that help attracted by giving help to others. It is help attracted by co-Operating with others—working together to solve mutual problems.
“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
“At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality.”
“Throw in your lot with us, and we will share a common purse.”
“The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”
This very old idea of giving and receiving, all but abandoned in our modern capitalistic world, is beginning to again draw the attention of those working for the Synergic Evolution.
Synergic scientists are telling us that life forms have needs and that to meet those needs they must take action. For an INTERdependent form of life, this requires givers and receivers. Without receivers there can be no givers.
Humans are an INTERdependent class of life. Givers and receivers are compliments. They complete each other.
When other individuals understand that by helping you, they will also be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they will win, they will support and celebrate your success.
Synergic relationships are helping and positive experiences. The giver of help experiences a win. When you help those that help you, you get high quality help. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Showing them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is high quality help.
Synergic INTERdependence—Co-Operation
Sometimes I trust others to give me help me and sometimes others trust me to give them help.
Examples of synergic help in today’s world are less common. This is because we currently have no synergic organizations and mechanisms to support them. Despite this, we do find examples of synergic help on a small scale among family and friends. Genevieve Vaughan explains:
“Nature offers her abundance free to satisfy the needs that nature and culture have created. Humans have altered this process by depleting the abundance, cornering what remains, and using it to manipulate other humans, keeping them on the edge of survival. This process derives from exchange, which is giving-in-order-to-receive, and is ego oriented, while the need satisfying process, when practiced by humans, is other oriented. Ö
“In contrast to patriarchal economic systems, the free satisfaction of needs is still visible in the relation between mothers and children, because children cannot “give back” anything in exchange for the nurturing they receive and they have to receive free goods and services from their caregivers.
“The free gifts of nature depend upon the capacity to receive of those who have the needs. The receivers’ capacities can be enhanced or diminished by the presence of absence of gifts during socialization. Indigenous peoples often allowed everyone free access to the abundance of their environment, and considered themselves stewards of nature’s gifts.”
I think the children give back love and in the best families they give back much more, but it may be years later. We also see synergic relationship in close partnerships and business groups. Synergic relationships often exist in start-up businesses, where the originators work together sharing in the risks and the rewards equally.
Synergic relationship becomes available to human individuals because of time-binding. Our ability to invent and to understand new ways of doing things creates a new possibility for co-Operation which does not exist in the world of the plants and animals.
Co-OPERATION —def—> Operating together to insure that both parties win, and that neither party loses. The negotiation to insure that both parties are helped, and that neither party is hurt.
Cooperation is an old word with lots of different meanings and feelings attached to it. Similar words are uniting, banding, combining, concurring, conjoining, and leaguing. Individuals who cooperate are affiliates, allies, associates, or confederates.
To some cooperation seems a losing word associated with socialism and communism. This is not what I mean. Co-Operation in synergic relationship means operating together to insure a win-win outcome. Co-Operation is the mechanism of action necessary whenever an individual desires to accomplish a task beyond his individual abilities.
Imagine, you and a friend are moving a heavy piece of furniture. Neither of you are strong enough to move the furniture by yourself. You decide to co-operate. You decide to operate together during the lifting. You would negotiate to insure that both of you win—to insure that both of you are helped.
The conversation might go like this, “Are you ready?” “OK.” “Ready, 1.. 2.. 3.. lift!”, and if things are going well that is fine, but if one end gets too heavy then synergic co-Operation requires that you also protect each other from loss. “Whoops! Set it down.”
This is the synergic veto. This is the true meaning of co-Operation. The negotiation to insure that both parties win, and the synergic veto to stop the action if either party is losing.
But most of today’s world is locked into Adversity and Neutrality. Our exchange of help dominated by the mechanisms of neutrality—monetary exchange and the fair market operating in the product tensegrity. The relationship between traders in the product tensegrity is only civil and often anonymous. In our illusion of independence, we do not value each other.
In the free market of Neutrality, our identities and personal relationships are unimportant. We purchase products anonymously, usually without knowing the seller’s name, or he ours. When I enter McDonalds to purchase my lunch, I see only the product, the hamburger stacked in the warmer. I ignore the clerk. I don’t know her name or her story. I see the hamburger, that’s what I want. The clerk behind the counter ignores me. She doesn’t know my name or my story. She sees my five dollars, that’s what she wants.
The store is clean and I feel safe. I expect the kitchen is clean and I will get a good product for a fair price. We will trade. We will speak the neutral words of the trading ritual. I never knowing her name, she never knowing mine. “May I help you?” “Thank you and have a nice day.” We trade.
When we begin to conceptualize a synergic future, we have to begin by thinking outside the box. We are moving into a new paradigm. This means that many of our assumptions are wrong. But the real difficulty is not so much with these wrong assumptions, at least we are aware of them. The bigger problem is those assumptions that are unknown or unspoken.
Humans are INTERdependent. They must exchange food, things, action and “knowing” in order to effectively meet their needs. What is changing is not the need for EXCHANGE. It is whether the exchange is adversary, neutral, or synergic.
To attract synergic help you must insure that whenever individuals invest their help with yours, they are also helped. Then they will want to reinvest with you. When others understand that when you win, they will win, they will support and celebrate your success. Synergic relationships are helping, positive experiences. The helper experiences a win. They are more after helping you than before. When you help those who help you, you get the most help. When you help those who help you, you get excellent help.
Synergic relationships are helpful. The parties in the relationship experience a gain. They operate together to insure that both parties win, and that neither party loses. They negotiate to insure that both parties are helped, and that neither party is hurt.
In synergic relationships, one individual plus another individual is more after their relationship than before: (1+1) >> 2. Synergic relationships are marked by no conflict, high effectiveness and enormous productivity. Now lets examine how the natural life tensegrity of Needs and Actions would operate in synergic INTERdependence.
Our goal then, is to develop a prototype for a synergic exchange. In a truly synergic exchange where all members are humans committed to win-win relationships, there is no need for accounting. You give to the synergic help exchange based on your talents and skills, donating whatever action, “knowing”, things, or food you can create. You take from the synergic help exchange whatever you need. Because all members are committed to having only win-win relationships, the system will work and there will be excess and abundance for all.
However, today we live in a world in transition. Most humans are not synergic. Many humans are not even neutral. The committed adversary will simply take from the synergic help exchange, by force or by fraud. They view the the synergic help exchange as just another victim. The committed neutralist will view the synergic help exchange as just another market.
This is the challenge before today’s synergic scientists and future positivists. How do we make a synergic help exchange? How do we create a synergic help exchange that works even with committed adversaries and committed neutralists?