With that tongue-in-cheek aside, I brush back a lot of
reticence about entering into this area of values. There is
no winning in values, there are only values positions, and
from there the reality flows into right and wrong
categories.
I don’t think I have to tell you HOW difficult it is to put
yourself on the line for your values. Most of us prefer to
remain behind the scenes, work within our own freedoms and
kabuki dance with life conditions.
So far,
a pretty good deal. We have watched the world–our
world–from a pretty good seat.
We’ve run this thing all the way to the top, and then some.
It’s all been a pretty good ride.
Can it keep going?
Most likely? NOT.
The current paradigm was constructed for a period of time in
our history when the population was 1.5 billion (1900s) and
oil bubbled out of the ground. It worked well for that time,
but the consequences are here now, showing us that the
paradigm has reached a point of diminishing returns.
The problem?
No one wants to give up their favorite piece of the pie — I
don’t either. So it’s not about that anymore, is it?
The promise.
Pay me now, or Pay him later?
The Fram thing… you remember that? Here’s the 30-second
commercial from 1981, believe it or not!
The paradox!
More is everywhere, and so should we?
|
Dr. Karen Wyatt is a family physician who has spent
much of her twenty-five-year career as a hospice
medical director caring for dying patients in their
homes. In this her new book, What
Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the
Stories of the Dying, which takes a look at
some of the most common reflections and insights
shared by individuals at the end of their lives.
After all, in the end it’s not what you
believe that matters—it’s how
you live your life.
|
I wondered about that last statement…
Is it really true that our beliefs don’t matter–our values
don’t matter–but only how we live our lives…?
Yet, isn’t our beliefs, your beliefs right now as you read
this little expose… aren’t they filtering this information,
biasing how you live your life?
It might seem there is a paradox in our lives about nature
and nurture, and it might seem that this paradox is
intuitive to some… to even you right now. Without
thinking or feeling too much, most of
what we believe to
be true, is most likely our perspective constructed out of
those beliefs; and the beliefs didn’t get there by
magic… we constructed them–with help of course. That
is what I’m going to suggest to you is counter-intuitive.
This counter intuitive notion of
how our beliefs got there and what caused them to be there
are both intuitive; in that
they got there through our experience. We didn’t inherit our
beliefs… or did we? This might be
counter-intuitive — against what our beliefs are that emerged
through our intuitive nature, and that our beliefs are fully
constructed in our experience without any inborn help,
right?
For most folks, playing around with counter-intuitive stuff
is just not something one wants to do. We would rather just
read on and believe when someone says: it’s not about what
you believe, but how you live your life, that seems
intuitive. It fits, but actually, it’s not a fit at all.
When all of us are on the way out (as in dying),
I imagine,
if we are still thinking and feeling at all, we might call
into question what we believed, and how believing that has
led to how we lived our lives, for sure.
In this little short story, what I’m going to suggest
to you now, is the paradox of looking at not just how we live
our lives, but what we believe that has us living our lives
the way we do.
In the paradox of the intuitive and the counter-intuitive,
life happens.
| “YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE THINGS BY FIGHTING THE
EXISTING REALITY. TO CHANGE SOMETHING, BUILD A NEW
MODEL THAT MAKES THE EXISTING REALTY OBSOLETE.”
– R. Buckminster Fuller |
How do our values help us live our lives?
I can NOT find a single system of development (which
includes values) that is not focused on "escalation" and
growth vertically. I remember back in the 1980s, Stephen
Covey’s admonition that "your ladder is against the wrong
wall."
In every values system I’ve ever seen, values are projected
as a hierarchical system; that more is better, that bigger
is better, that altitude is better for us.
To have greater perspective, to engage in "bigger" ideas, to
strive to become more… Even in my last webinar, someone
asked me "How do you do vertical development?" Here is a
slide from one of my favorite people, Dr. Susanne
Cook-Greuter, who is another person who champions vertical
development of ego complexity.
Really an intuitive notion,
WHO can possibly disagree with
that logic?
All of us have been entrained into a notion, which fits well
with our intuition about how the world is… and the world is
growing more complex every minute; and therefore the way,
the truth and the life–to borrow a paraphrase — is to grow
more complex too.
To be honest, I don’t value growth as a good thing
or a bad thing, it just is.
The question.
The question is, do we have to be, do, have, become, and
contribute alongside a world that has now grown
exponential in its complexity with even the ‘acceleration of
complexity’ nearing an exponential curve?
Look at this graphic, which shows some curves.
I’ve differentiated 6 different kinds of complexity and
demonstrated how they are in relation to each other,
figuratively, not literally because it can’t be measured,
just contrasted.
Content complexity has already gone hockey
stick (exponential curve).
Context
is close to going exponential as well.
Conditions
are accelerating, albeit more slowly (they behave more
non-linearly and discontinuously than drawn). Even
code, or algorithms that are emerging are
beginning to accelerate their growth out of linear code
development. Notice that
culture and
core remain in linear relationships, even
as the epigenetic actors (language (content), context, and
conditions) are accelerating out of linear modes?
This kind of change signals at least one thing.
Red Queen Effect. [wiki]
"The term is taken from the Red Queen’s
race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and
involves the Red Queen and Alice constantly running, yet
remaining in the same place.
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a
little, "you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you
run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing."
"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen.
"Now, here, you see,
…it takes all the running you can do, to
keep in the same place."
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run
at least twice as fast as that!"
The Red Queen Principle can be
stated thus:
In reference to an evolutionary system,
continuing adaptation is needed in order for a species to
maintain its relative fitness amongst the systems being
co-evolved with."
Do you see the rub here?
Can you see the paradox, and why
Blank Slate — you can be anything — has to be, or so
we think?
If we are created equal, and we come into the world free
from filters and biases, then in order to maintain fitness,
we have to run harder, because the adaptation we have to be
co-evolved with is leading us to do that, right?
That is the intuitive notion and it’s makes sense!
That because we grow, we SHOULD grow.
Hence all of the
intuitive systems out there, whether it be values, adult
development, technology, finance, automation, advertising,
or our environment; it MUST be that we have to adapt by
being, doing, having, becoming, and contributing more! Right?
WRONG!
It’s a paradox.
Intuition says we keep growing, adapting, changing, even if
we CAN’T, we should @BS (Blank Slate). That is the
psychology of the times and certainly what I have heard out
of every pundit’s mouth for the 3 decades I’ve been studying
these phenomena.
TIME OUT.The idea?
STOP YOUR PROGRESS?
Radical notion, or paradoxical, counter-intuitive values?
Bingo.
If you can just get this simple notion, paradoxically as it
might seem, blasphemous as it might be, then you will not
have an immune response @F-L-O-W.
Here’s what I mean.
What if you saw the world getting more complex at a more
rapid rate… even accelerating exponentially; and you said,
that is ok. But if trying to co-evolve with that world has more
risks than benefits, what might you believe?
How then would you live your life?
Your answer?
Ever thought about it?
Need to wait until you are heading home in this life to
ponder such a counter-intuitive notion, or idea?
Join me for my next short story on higher is not
happier? and vertical development of values may be intuitive,
but it’s not for us… as individuals; and how to know the
difference @F-L-O-W.
These short stories are brought to you by Mike
R. Jay, the world’s most innovative coach, and
self-proclaimed developmentalist. Mike’s new book
@F-L-O-W: Find, Design, Use TALENT to Emerge
Happiness & Success in a Post Modern World, is
available now.
In the book, Mike explains why Blank Slate, as
adopted by CORPORATE, and leveraged by "propaganda"
has conspired to create the life conditions we now
co-evolve with–all for good reason–and that the
risks and the benefits are now diminishing rapidly
with the escalation of complexity.
What was a good idea for its time, has now become
loaded with potential risks for mankind; buoyed by
limits to growth and irrational decision-making at
the highest levels of leadership; now leave you, me
and us at a crossroads.
Influenced by the best selling book The
Blank Slate: The Modern
Denial of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker in
2002, a decade later, Mike helps us understand what
to do about what has become the most dangerous
memeplex of our time.
He guides you @F-L-O-W to hold
an optimistic view of our individual futures based
on a way to "produce happiness" and consume less
success, while navigating the shallows between.
Mike cautions you about continuing our conditioned,
intuitive approach to reality, and how this memeplex
in play @BS will lead to accelerating losses of
happiness globally, while decreasing success
locally. He gives reasons why this is occurring
throughout the book.
In the book, Mike identifies 15 Primes, 12 of which
are outlined in detail in this first book, and shows
you the tools within each, which you apply one or
more combinations directly suited to your talents to
get off this RAT RACE of co-evolving with
complexity, and running harder to keep up.
Mike knows that the notions in the book are
counter-intuitive by nature, and that CORPORATE
wants us all to dig in and hold on, as we ride the
roller coaster of money and credit, in a meme-park of
growth and more.
While Mike contrasts the CORPORATE Memeplex @BS, he
doesn’t make it the scapegoat, because fingers
pointing there, leaves more fingers pointing at US,
literally and figuratively.
This book can be used by people who influence, for a
living, intellectuals and leaders. Just as they
have used the 1928 Bible of PR, called PROPAGANDA,
by Edward Bernays (offered free to members, btw) to
propagate @BS for the public good during the 1930s
to increase demand for wants, instead of needs; Mike
believes the same mechanics, with a different
object –happiness, not just success– can be used to
disperse the dangerous components of the memeplex to
decelerate complexity anxiety across the planet.
In a very practical manner, Mike demonstrates in the
book, what you can do as an individual and in the
collective to begin to replace the intuitive notion
that growth and more are the ONLY answers to our
co-evolution with complexity.
 Mike
provides a very specific roadmap for each of us to
use while navigating through the dissonance that
will emerge both now, near, and far as complexity
reigns, and life becomes so.
This is a novel approach that represents an obliquely
powerful way to decelerate @BS @F-L-O-W, and allows
for APPS to be constructed for this new
"paradigmatic operating system." If the book is not
enough, Mike has created a platform of guidance of
varying levels of experience which he and others use
to guide you in your own Journey @F-L-O-W. With more
than 25 years of professional coaching experience
around the world, Mike has benefited from the tens
of thousands of hours with clients, students and
peers and thanks them for their contributions to
this seminal work.
Mike welcomes comments and ideas on his
teleseminars, and all book owners get access to his
free FastStart @F-L-O-W, which these short stories
are a part. Welcome @F-L-O-W! |
The paradox of choice.
When we look at some of the ramifications of all of the
choices we can make, if we are not clear on why we make
those choices, or don’t; the how really doesn’t matter, as
it becomes part of the problem.
ValuSYNC
™ @F-L-O-W is a system of
values engineering to help us understand how our values
create a fishbowl which is important for us. However, we need to
be clear on our ends values, and our means values, and what
that means.
In order to get started in this process of being, having,
doing, becoming, and contributing @F-L-O-W, our FastStart
@F-L-O-W is suggested. In FastStart, we link you with the
book, why the book establishes a key (back)ground for the
figure of ValuSYNC @F-L-O-W.
You
may register for our FastStart @F-L-O-W program by
purchasing the book
@F-L-O-W now, or if you have already
purchased a book, your ‘Schedule of Events‘
Link in your Member Area has your FastStart @F-L-O-W Event
information.
