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Hidden Resource Management in the Next Economy: Transforming our Individual Potential into Global Reality

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Emily Kate Rigge Ph.D. A collective awakening: acknowledging our hidden resources Mankind is at the threshold of a new era. The rapid technological and scientific growth that has marked our lifetimes, distinguishing us from generations of human beings over many millennia, has swept all of us up in its exciting energy and momentum. None of us needs convincing that we are experiencing a momentous event in the history of our species. The technology revolution has ‘globalised’ us. Whether we like it or not we are no longer just individuals in individual lives. We are individuals who also participate in a global or collective reality that transcends the boundaries of our physical experiences. Our nascent awareness of this collective reality and our ‘holistic’ (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) participation in it is challenging us to redefine our perception of ourselves. Our awakening to a global dimension of ourselves that was previously hidden from us is causing us to ask many questions, some of them very uncomfortable and disconcerting.

The aim of this article is to bring a few of these questions to the light of our collective consciousness. Foremost among them is the question, How can we better manage our individual and collective resources to achieve greater happiness and a better quality of life for all the members of our global family? Implicit in this question is the assumption that the ‘Next Economy’ must take account of all our human needs. In the original sense of the word ‘economy’ (the judicious management of the household), we must all become efficient ‘economists’ or managers of our collective household. The title of this chapter refers to the management of our ‘hidden’ resources in the Next Economy. What exactly is hidden from us and why is the question that I would like to explore in this discussion. In order to bear fruit, this exploration requires a certain mindset or approach. The first game-rule is that the quest for our hidden resources be a playful, only semi-serious affair. The second is that all prejudices and preconceived ideas be placed to one side for the duration of the game. The aim of the game is to free up our collective mind(s) and make way for creative inspiration in the business of running our lives and running our world. The awe-inspiring, belief-defying achievements of humanity over the last century in particular, but also of ingenious individuals throughout the course of history, are a constant reminder to us that we are a fascinatingly resourceful species. Our resourcefulness often goes unnoticed by us despite the fact that it lies under our very noses. One only has to think of the ‘miraculous’ feats of sportsmen and women, of the extraordinary capacities of people to survive and save others in life-threatening situations, or of the simple everyday miracle of childbirth to realise that in the right conditions we have characteristics that could be described as more-than-human. Despite these inherent more-than-human qualities (and we should not forget here the transcendental power of love which is manifested in an infinite number of ways in our daily lives), we often live our lives as if this transcendental dimension did not exist. We become so caught up in the minutiae of our daily experiences, so overwhelmed by the juggling acts and races against time, so influenced by our tendency to see the negative side of things, that the sparkle of super-human creativity in us slips out of our line of vision. Generally speaking we are a little bit like the new generation of extra-powerful computers: we have 100% power, but only 5% user know-how. Most of us, even the most creative and productive among us, would be quick to admit that it often feels as if life is in control of us, rather than us in control of it. While we are beginning to conceive and implement the notion of ‘personal life management’ – that is, the idea of getting a grip on our lives and steering them in a particular direction (the life- and executive-coaching boom, in

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the US and the UK, in particular is evidence of this), we have still to apply this idea to our collective life together. Our first task in discovering our collective hidden resources, therefore, is to look up and take official note of our collective existence together. Our second task is to acknowledge the need for some ‘collective resource management’.

Many people today, seeing how injudiciously wealth is distributed around the world and the less-than-efficient management of our world’s natural and human resources, which are often exploited blindly and selfishly by ‘rogue agents’ (be they governments, businesses or other groups and individuals), have done precisely this. Many thousands, perhaps millions of individuals are today working towards the goal of a better managed world. We are still lacking, however, a collective framework for this goal. In order for the efforts of the many thousands out there working for a better world to be harnessed and employed effectively, we have to ask another fundamental question: Where are we going? A collective direction: creating a vision As any good business manager knows, unless you have a clear vision of the future and of what it is you are trying to achieve, your hard work and efforts may lead you nowhere. More and more people are beginning to employ this business-grown idea to their personal lives because they have realised that, like a successful business, they have to know what it is they want for themselves in the future – what kind of career, what kind of life – in order to make it happen. This effective form of strategic planning has yet to take root at the collective level. Collectively speaking, we are still wandering around in a bit of a daze. The speed of our technological growth has stunned us and left us sitting on a powerful vehicle with no clear idea of what we are meant to do with it. Someone has just come up with the idea of looking at the map, but the accuracy and validity of the map itself has been brought into question. We know that ‘globalisation’ is a crucial tool in our self-development as a species, but we are still a bit suspicious of it and in any case we are not sure quite how we are meant to use it.

So where are we going? One of the greatest visionaries of the last century – the ideas of all of whom are invaluable, hidden (often untapped) resources – Albert Einstein, put it like this:

The big political doings of our time are so disheartening that in our generation one feels quite alone. It is as if people had lost the passion for justice and dignity and no longer treasured what better generations have won by extraordinary sacrifices… After all, the foundation of all human values is morality. To have recognised this clearly in primitive times is the unique greatness of our Moses. In contrast, look at the people today! (Dukas & Hoffman, 1979, p. 16)1

Einstein’s extraordinary contribution to our understanding of the world we live in was made possible, it seems, by his ability to do what he loved because he loved it, and not because he had to earn a living. He explains,

I, too, was originally supposed to become an engineer. But I found the idea intolerable of having to apply the inventive faculty to matters that make everyday life even more elaborate – and all just for dreary money-making. Thinking for its own sake, as in music!… When I have no special problem to occupy my mind, I love to reconstruct proofs of mathematical and physical theorems that have long been known to me. There is no goal in this, merely an opportunity to indulge in the pleasant occupation of thinking. (p. 17)2

1 Letter to his sister Maja, dated 31 August 1935. 2 Letter to his friend Heinrich Zangger in the spring of 1918.

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Two important principles emerge from these quotations. The first is that (very generally speaking) we have lost sight of the ‘moral’ bond that links us together as human beings. All too often in our collective (and often individual) affairs we think only of functional issues such as how to make money, how to be ‘successful’ in the conventional sense of financial wealth and fame. In doing so, we fail to realise that in the context of the bigger picture, our long-term well-being and happiness depends on the long-term well-being and happiness of all the other members of our global family, and, crucially, on the survival and well-being of the delicately-balanced eco-system that supports our human endeavours.

As we have now discovered in rather a brutal manner, if someone dumps industrial waste into the environment in New Zealand, sooner or later the poisonous and devastating effects will be felt by all of us. Similarly, if a group of Muslims in Afghanistan feel disenchanted with modernity, all of us may end up on the receiving end of their anger.3 Contrary to only recently-challenged beliefs, the arbitrary boundaries that separate us into different nation-states are in fact hollow and invisible when it comes to real-life events. Our natural and unavoidable inter-dependency is nicely epitomised by the global market: if one of us crashes, the rest are likely to follow.

The second principle that emerges from Einstein’s comments is that the greatest sense of fulfilment and satisfaction, and probably enough material wealth to keep us happy, comes from doing what we, as individuals, do best and love the most.4 Ironically, therefore, focusing on what we are passionate about is more likely to bring about the ‘abundance’ (and this need not just be money) we seek. Tying these two themes together we can say that when we take a wider perspective on life and heed the natural moral imperative in us to contribute to humanity’s long-term well-being, we increase the chances of experiencing the happiness and fulfilment that we yearn for.

To summarise this point, then, it seems that we have arrived at a cross-roads in our evolution as human beings. We are beginning to understand that our pursuit of material and technological ‘success’ (including the ‘material’, as opposed to transcendental, feeling of being obliged to do the job we do) per se may only lead us down the unsatisfying path of war between nations (September 11 can be said to symbolise this ‘disenchantment with modernity’ scenario) and the destruction of our planet.5 As long as we remain entrenched in our own individual, separatist (nation-states, races, religions and individual people) mind-sets we will not be able to transcend our cultural differences or adequately acknowledge the severity of the pressures currently being endured by the environment that sustains us. If, however, at this crucial point in history, we come to our senses as a species and shake ourselves out of our separatist complacency, we have the chance of envisioning and bringing into reality a different, far more positive scenario for our future. A collective framework: the Next Economy This positive scenario – the framework for the Next Economy – rests on the notion of sustainability: we are obliged, if we want to survive, to find ways of growing and developing that sustains our planet and our essential human needs (material and transcendental). Both of these tasks – sustaining the planet that sustains us, sustaining our deeper needs – require a shift in mind-set or mentality. We

3 See Dipak R. Pant, “Un nuovo scenario nelle relazioni internazionali” in Varese Focus, Gallarate (VA), Italy: Unione degli Industriali della Provincia di Varese, ottobre 2001. (www.varesefocus.it). 4 Statistics show that happiness is not proportionate to the amount of wealth we possess. See Krugman, P., "Pursuing Happiness" (The New York Times on the web, 29 March 2000). 5 The unrestrained pursuit of upward-spiralling economic growth untempered by a concern for its impact on human beings and the planet exacerbates the differences between cultures and nations, making intercultural dialogue and understanding even more difficult to achieve than it is anyway. The frustration of the poor, marginalised Arab world in the face of Western material and political ‘success’ is a case in point: “‘This part of the world is just so sick of being so marginalised, so irrelevant,” said the Stanford-educated owner of an e-business in Dubai after September 11. ‘The world moves on, and we never catch up. And now we’re moving backwards. We’re exhausted’” (Dickey, C., “A Muslim Cry for Democracy” (Newsweek, Special Davos Edition, December 2001-Februrary 2002).

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can no longer afford to take a purely materialist outlook in our lives. Simply earning a living doing something we do not enjoy is not enough. Living solely for ourselves without contributing to the well-being of others and our environment does not fulfil us. Instead we must learn to widen the focus of our ways of perceiving to include the more intangible, often hidden, aspects of ourselves: the emotions, the mind, the spirit. This is what is meant by a holistic approach to life. Once we have this holistic context, we can reinstate the physical and material dimension of life in such a way that new meaning and value is attributed to it through its rightful connection with the other dimensions.

If the notion of sustainability is the framework for the Next Economy, it is the Next Economy itself which provides the framework for our collective coming-to-awareness regarding the direction of the evolution of our species. As the word ‘Next’ implies, the Next Economy is about thinking the future into the present. It involves visualising what we want to experience together, clarifying the goals we need to achieve in order to get there and designing the strategies that will enable us to achieve our goals. While we have seen time and time again that the hard ‘political’ approach to an integrated world (in the wider sense of war or negotiation between governments and peoples motivated by self-interest) often provokes more antagonism than cooperation, we have witnessed in the last decades the success of an ‘economic’ approach to globalisation. Like the story of the competition between the sun and the wind to see who could make the man take off his coat, the forceful blowing of the wind (politics) only served to make the man wrap his coat around him even more tightly. The sun (economics) had a more cunning approach. He radiated his warmth so effectively that without the slightest bit of force, the man of his own volition took off his coat and stowed it under his arm. Like the sun, global business, with its ‘spontaneous’ creation of a world market that everyone wishes to participate in, has the advantage of being able to charm the world into lowering its barriers and working together for a better future.6

How, then, do we bring the Next Economy into being? There are two points to be made here, both of which revolve around a paradox. The first is that paradoxically it is the individual who will bring about the collective coming-to-awareness of humanity. The second is that again, paradoxically, it is by going about our business ordinarily and doing what seems and feels right to us that our collective coming-to-awareness will take place. In other words, all our individual efforts will somehow, mysteriously or magically, be drawn into the collective effort to bring about the best possible scenario for our future.

Both of these points come together in the important notion of responsibility. The reason that mankind is likely to choose the most positive scenario for its future when standing at the crossroads it has now reached is that without a sense of responsibility (towards oneself, towards others, towards the holistic context of human life), it makes no sense to be human. Being human means being responsible, and the further down the path of irresponsibility we travel, the more uncomfortable and unfulfilling life will become until we realise the obvious: only by being responsible are we able to be truly happy. The bottom line here is that only the individual can take responsibility for his or her actions. There is no magic recipe for our success as a species; it comes down to realising that the only way we are going to be able to change things is by changing them in our own individual lives. If each and every one of us were to make humanity’s collective well-being (including our own) our goal by choosing a profession that contributes to a better world and living our daily lives according to the sound moral principles that our human nature dictates, the problems we currently face as a species could already be well under control. So it is not the resources we are lacking, but the awareness to recognise them, the wisdom to know what to do with them and the intention to make the best possible use of them. 6 The terms ‘political’ and ‘economic’ are used metaphorically, not literally. It is clear that in order for the ‘economic’ approach, as it is conceived here, to work, governments, institutions and industry need to work together in a shared framework with a shared vision.

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Tapping our hidden resources: a vision of the Next Economy For a deeper understanding of the two ‘paradoxical’ points made above – the power of the individual in the process of sustainable globalisation and the ‘inevitability’ of the success of mankind’s most positive scenario – we must turn to another great visionary of the last century: the American thinker R. Buckminster Fuller. Less well known that Einstein, Buckminster Fuller nevertheless gained world-wide recognition during his lifetime for his role as a philosopher, inventor, designer and mathematician, all of which earned him the title of ‘the planet’s friendly genius’. In his book Critical Path (1981) he describes his life as an experiment “to discover what, if anything, the little, penniless, unknown individual, with dependent wife and child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that would be inherently impossible for great nations or great corporate enterprises to do” (p. xxxvii). This experiment is based on the premise or belief that “humanity’s fitness for continuance in the cosmic scheme no longer depends on the validity of political, religious, economic or social organisations, […but on] the intuitive wisdom of each and every individual” (p. xi). As he puts it at the end of his Introduction, “on personal integrity hangs humanity’s fate” (p. xxxviii).

Buckminster Fuller’s aim in carrying out his experiment was to find ways of using the material and technological resources at humanity’s disposal so that all human beings could benefit from them in a fundamentally sustainable manner:

I planned to employ the ever-increasing and -improving scientific knowledge and technology to produce ever more effective human life-improving results with ever less investment of weight of materials, ergs of energy, seconds of time per each measurable level of improved artifact performance. I was hopeful of finally doing so much with so little as to implement comprehensive and economically sustainable physical success for all humanity, thereby to eliminate the need for lethally biased politics and their ultimate recourse to hot or cold warring. (p. 140)

His strategy for achieving this aim was to challenge humanity’s beliefs about its own situation and capabilities and help it (indirectly through his inventions, but more directly through his writing) change its mind-set or approach to life. He identified the negative beliefs rooted in the Malthusian and Darwinian thinking of those in positions of power as the thorn in humanity’s side impeding it from materialising the wealth of resources in its possession:

In the reality of physical resource and knowledge potential we have four billion billionaires on our planet, the probating and delivery of whose legacy, as amassed by the more-with-lessing contributions and loving sacrifices of all humans in history, has been postponed by the game of making money with money by those who as yet misinformedly operate on the 1810 Malthusian assumption that “humanity is multiplying its population at a geometric rate while increasing its life-support foods, etc., only at an arithmetic rate” – ergo, the money-makers assume there is nowhere nearly enough life support for all. Malthus said the majority of humans are designed to suffer and die far short of their potential life-span. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” dictum has combined with that of Malthus to persuade the ‘haves’ to be intelligently selfish and to legally fortify their ‘haveness’ position against the ‘have-nots’. (p.213)

Buckminster Fuller calls the challenge to these negative beliefs the ‘design revolution’, which refers not only to the design of energy-use efficient artifacts, but to the design of the minds that produce them. He calls for the ‘inadvertent, unregretted abandonment and permanent obsolescence of socially and economically undesirable viewpoints, customs and practices’ (p. 199). To be more precise, however, Buckminster Fuller says that it is the design of energy-use efficient artifacts that will spontaneously, inadvertently occasion the mind-design revolution.

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Underpinning this claim (and his thinking in general) is Buckminster Fuller’s scientific/philosophical principle of ‘precession’, which he describes as “the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion’. In its strictly scientific sense, precession explains the movement of the earth around the sun: “despite the 180-degree gravitational pull of the in-motion Sun upon the in-motion Earth, precession makes Earth orbit around the Sun in a direction that is at ninety degrees – i.e., at a right angle – to the direction of the Sun’s gravitational pull upon Earth” (p. 142). Buckminster Fuller’s creative and humorous account of how the natural law of precession applies to human beings is worth quoting here in full:

The successful regeneration of life growth on our planet Earth is ecologically accomplished always and only as the precessional – right-angled – ‘side effect’ of the biological species’ chromosomically programmed individual-survival preoccupations – the honeybees are chromosomically programmed to enter the flower blossoms in search of honey. Seemingly inadvertently (but realistically-precessionally) this occasions the bees’ bumbling tails becoming dusted with pollen (at ninety degrees to each bee’s linear axis and flight path), whereafter the bees’ further bumbling entries into other flowers inadvertently dusts off, pollenizes, and cross-fertilizes those flowers at right angles (precessionally) to the bees’ operational axis – so, too, do all the mobile creatures of Earth cross-fertilize all the different rooted botanicals in one or another precessional (right-angled), inadvertent way. Humans, as honey-money-seeking bees, do many of nature’s tasks only inadvertently. They initially produce swords with metal-forging-developed capability, which capability is later used to make steel into farm ploughs. Humans – in politically organized, group-fear-mandated acquisition of weaponry – have inadvertently developed so-much-more-performance-with-so-much-less material, effort and time investment per each technological task accomplished as now inadvertently to have established a level of technological capability which, if applied exclusively to peaceful purposes, can provide a sustainable high standard of living for all humanity, which accomplished makes war and all weaponry obsolete. (pp. 142-43).

In Critical Path Buckminster Fuller puts the invisible, precessional design revolution of ‘continually learning how to do more with the same’ or ‘more with less’ resources into a context more appropriate to its practical implementation. He calls this context ‘World Game’. The aim of the World Game, he says, is to move from the production of killingry weapons to livingry artifacts (p. 203), to establish one accounting system for the one family of humans aboard Spaceship Earth in place of sovereign nations (p. 202), and to redefine the concept of wealth in terms of the extent to which all of humanity’s resources are used for the benefit of all of its members. The aim of the World Game is to

‘Tak[e] care’ of humans means to provide them with ‘pleasingly,’ healthily, satisfactorily stabilised environmental conditions under all of nature’s known potential variables while adequately feeding them, giving them medical care, increasing their degree of freedom, and increasing their technological options. (pp. 212-213)

The greatest problem that Buckminster Fuller foresaw for the players of the World Game was how to “accommodate the initiatives of millions of humans who, freed from muscle- and nerve-reflexing jobs, find their inventory of past experiences and their minds integrating synergetically to envision ever-greater advantages to be realized for humanity” (p.225). Following the principle of precession, however, he had no doubt that this age of ‘regenerative inventing’ would be realised and that human beings would fulfil their role as “local Universe information-gatherers and local problem-solvers in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe”.

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Taking a transcendental perspective One of the themes that runs throughout Buckminster Fuller’s works is that of a cosmic force strategically planning – above our heads, but also through our very thoughts and actions – and guiding our human evolution. As he puts it in Critical Path, “cosmic evolution is […] irrevocably intent upon making omni-integrated humanity omnisuccessful” (p. xvii). Sometimes, as we have seen in the case of the principle of precession, he refers to this cosmic force as nature. Other times he is more explicit about its transcendental (as well as imminent) nature: “Cosmic evolution is omniscient God comprehensively articulate” (p. xxxviii). As I suggested earlier in this article, the effective management of our ‘hidden’ resources within the context of a Next Economy based on the notion of sustainability requires us to take a fresh look at ourselves as a species and re-evaluate our perception of who and what we are. The prospect of a ‘dead-end’ along the path of purely materialistic development has faced us with the question of what the alternative to materialism is. Here we run up against what could be described as a collective emotional block, at least as far as the industrialised West is concerned (and it is the industrialised West that in many respects holds the fate of the species and the planet in its hands). This emotional block consists in the difficulty with which the official bastions of power and authority in Western society (from ‘Politics’ to ‘Science’ and ‘Business’) approach what we could call ‘the transcendental dimension’ of human life. While the majority of individuals in Western society believe in God or some transcendental force, and many ‘official’ members of the rationally-minded bastions of authority take a transcendental perspective on human life, the fact remains that it is still officially unacceptable to openly present the transcendental perspective as rationally pertinent and justifiable. The result of this emotional block regarding the transcendental perspective is that the qualitative leap that evolution is asking us to take as we stand at the crossroads seems too perplexing and uncertain to be undertaken consciously. To put it another way, the Universe (the context that includes but transcends us) is asking a question in a language we have not yet learnt: the language of the heart/mind (as opposed to the language of the mind). In strategically working out the best way to improve the quality of our lives, aligning ourselves with nature and the universe, we would do well to draw on the wisdom of other non-Western visions of life, another hidden corner of our largely untapped human resources. As a ninety-year-old Shuar warrior and shaman put it, ‘Your heart is part of the universe. If you listen to your heart, you hear the Voice of the Universe. We call it the Voice of the Universe or the Voice of the Soul. It speaks to us all the time. We only have to listen’ (Perkins, 1997, p. 128).

Here we are brought back to Buckminster Fuller’s emphasis on the importance of the individual’s ‘intuitive wisdom’. The Universe seems to be telling us – through the disastrous effects of our heavy-handed, one-sided rational approach to life and many other collective and personal life experiences – that we have to redress the balance between the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sides of our nature (another valuable ‘Eastern’ concept). As well as science and technology, we need to cultivate the more human aspects of our knowledge and wisdom. We need to look more deeply into our cultural identities, into the creative ideas we produce and have produced over the centuries, into the more humanist, literary, artistic, personal areas of human experience. The message from the heart/mind seems to be that until we explore, understand and develop this part of us the key to the riddle of human experience will not fit in the lock. Integrating the transcendental perspective Interestingly enough, ‘Science’ and ‘Business’ are finding new and ever-more creative ways of integrating the transcendental perspective into its research and outlook. The principle of precession seems to be busily at work bumbling around in the midst of rational-minded disciplines. An excellent example of the emergence of a collective awareness based on a transcendental/imminent vision of reality is the relatively new discipline of Complexity. Speaking of the way in which the

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Internet has shaken up business practice and business minds with the complexity of its open-ended, interactive networks, thus challenging the business world to deal with constant, rapid change, John Henry Clippinger III frames the emergence of complexity theory in the context of a momentous, historical shift from materialism to a natural form of transcendentalism:

Yet as dramatic and pervasive as the impact of the Net is, it is only symptomatic of a deeper change in the primary scientific and technological ideas that define our culture and commerce. We are rapidly shedding the ideas of the Enlightenment that have long underscored our scientific, cultural, political, and economic institutions. Fundamental advances in physics, with a credible promise of a Theory of Everything (T.O.E.), and genetic engineering, with the real prospect of evolving new super-species, coupled with significant advances in computer science and artificial life have irrevocably changed how we think of ourselves and our futures. Fortunately, accompanying these changes is a new framework, known variously as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) or Self-Organising Systems, that has abstracted the fundamental principles governing complex physical, biological, symbolic and digital systems. Unlike the mechanistic or engineering-based principles of the Enlightenment, CAS explanations draw upon the traditions of ecology and evolutionary biology. It is part of a broader trend to regard virtually all forms of organisation – genetic, biological, cognitive, ecological, cultural and economic – as subject to universal Darwinian principles of natural selection. (Clippinger, 1999, pp. xxi-xxii)

What is particularly interesting here is the author’s emphasis on the shift of mindset and perception that the change in the scientific/business landscape has produced: “We are indeed at the cusp of a ‘paradigm shift’ of the most profound and pervasive extent, in not only Western culture but global culture. We are seeing ourselves anew, and neither our economies, cultures, institutions or even biological compositions will be the same. Buckle up” (p. xxiv). In a twist that highlights the remarkable creativity of the human mind, the Darwinian principle singled out by Buckminster Fuller as an obstacle to human evolution is here transformed into a feature of the principle of precession. The softer touch of a more holistic approach to life, even in science and business, manifests in a variety of ways in this anthology, The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise. Throughout the chapters, there is constant reference to the ‘invisible hand’ of market capitalism, which is viewed by the authors as a manifestation of precession as it is understood by Buckminster Fuller. As Clippinger puts it, “Nature does not ‘design’ an outcome and yet is capable of creating the most complex, magnificent, and adaptive forms of organisation” (p. 3)7. The invisible hand of market capitalism also makes its soft touch felt in the notion of the intuitive wisdom of the individual. In the words of another contributor to the anthology, speaking of the economy,

The result is not chaos but an economy of complexity: an economy that is created by the minds of its agents – consumers, managers, decision makers. This economy is cognitive, not physical, and the theories that deal with it must recognise its cognitive nature. It is an economy that sits better with our perceptions of the actual world, and the problems it poses to its decision makers challenge their intuitive reasoning as much as their formal reasoning. (p. 45)8

The individual is presented in this text as the key to optimal evolution: through his or her individually intuited actions, movements and actions are generated that transcend the sum of the 7 In his chapter, “Order from the Bottom Up: Complex Adaptive Systems and Their Management”. 8 W. Brian Arthur, ‘The End of Economic Uncertainty”.

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individual parts. This notion is described in CAS (Complex Adaptive Systems) vocabulary as ‘aggregation’: “Aggregation refers to the notion that from the interactions of individual agents, properties and behaviours can emerge that are distinct from, and larger or more complex than, the mere sum of the individuals’ actions” (p. 102).9 Another author describes the concept of nature working through the individual as ‘agent-based optimization’: “Adam Smith argued that if people were acting on their own behalf individually, a collectively optimal solution would naturally emerge. This simple statement evokes the elegance of agent-based optimization, which suits so well the complexity of today’s world” (p. 199). Culture as a catalyst for the Next Economy One of the dominant themes of the Biology of Business, which is reflected in the above quotation, is that of perspective and perception. As Science has learnt, notably through its pursuit of quantum physics, the human mind changes the reality it perceives by its very existence and mode of perception. As Paul Davies, Professor of Natural Sciences at Adelaide University, explains, Science is discovering that human consciousness plays an integral part in the ‘creation’ of reality:

The new physics, by contrast, restores mind to a central position in nature. The quantum theory, as it is usually interpreted, is meaningless without introducing an observer of some sort. The act of observation in quantum physics is not just an incidental feature, a means of accessing information already existing in the external world; the observer enters the subatomic reality in a fundamental way and the equations of quantum physics explicitly encode the act of observation in their description. An observation brings about a distinct transformation in the physical situation […]. Common sense may have collapsed in the face of the new physics, but the universe that is being uncovered by these advances has found once more a place for man in the great scheme of things. (Davies, 1984, pp. 39-40) 10

When applied to ordinary life, this scientific discovery translates into the notion that what we as individuals think and believe, the very way in which we approach and experience life determines to some extent the kind of experience we in turn receive ‘from’ life. We all experience life, therefore, according to the colour of the ‘glasses’ or mindset that we wear. This in itself, is not a difficult theory to prove. If you get up in a bad mood you are likely to have a bad day, because your interpretation of everything that happens is coloured by how you feel. If, on the other hand, you are in love, the world and everyone in it will appear to you in the proverbial rose tint.

Our ‘economy’ – the shared reality of our human family – is, as W. Brian Arthur puts it, created by the minds of its agents. This view is becoming increasingly widespread among professional students of human nature. In Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (Harrison & Huntington, 2000) the theme of human perception and perspective is explored by a group of economists and anthropologists asking the question ‘To what extent do cultural factors shape economic and political development?’ (p. xiv). Culture, in this context, is defined “in purely subjective terms as the values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society” (p. xv). The dominant view that emerges from this anthology is that the economic success of a country depends on the thoughts and beliefs of its people. In the words of Michael Porter in his contribution, “Attitudes, Values, Beliefs, and the Microeconomics of Prosperity”: “What people believe about what it takes to be prosperous has much to do with how they behave. And beliefs become reflected in attitudes and values”. (p. 23)

9 Manville, B., “Complex Adaptive Knowledge Management: A Case From McKinsey & Company”. 10 See also his books, God and The New Physics, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning and The Cosmic Blueprint: Order and Complexity at the Edge of Chaos for an example of the ‘transcendental perspective’ in science.

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In this anthology as in the other texts the individual is conceived as playing a key role in economic success and successful human evolution:

The principle engine of economic development is the work and creativity of individuals […]. To trust the individual, to have faith in the individual, is one of the elements of a value system that favours development […]. Implicit in the trusting society is the willingness to accept the risk that the individual will make choices contrary to the desires of government. If this risk is not accepted and the individual is subjected to a network of controls, the society loses the essential engine of economic development, namely, the aspiration of each of us to live and think as we wish, to be who we are, to transform ourselves into unique beings. (p. 48)11

A comment made in the foreword to the anthology draws out the wider implications of this theme of the power of the individual:

In a 1992 study of the relationship between culture and development, Robert Klitgaard posed the question: ‘If culture is important and people have studied culture for a century or more, why don’t we have well-developed theories, practical guidelines, close professional links between those who study culture and those who make and manage development policy?’ (p. xvi)

Culture itself here can be taken to represent the significance of the perspective that the individual takes on the world, both as an individual human being and part of an ‘individual’ nation. In order for this neglected cultural perspective to be acknowledged at a collective level and woven into the practical implementations of policies for human evolution, the individual policymakers (meaning anyone in a position of responsibility and influence) must take a stand and fix their sights firmly on the kind of human evolution that is the most desirable for all of us. As a part of this conscious acceptance of responsibility for our future, the policymakers (and ultimately this includes all of us) must also align their everyday approach to life with the notion of sustainable human progress. There is no point aiming for ‘high quality’ (holistic well-being) in our collective long-term goals if the details of our everyday lives are lacking in integrity, honesty and compassion. The Next Economy: the ‘silent design revolution’ So what is the Next Economy? The Next Economy is a silent ‘design’ revolution against the more brutal face of capitalism that has made its mark on the world in the last decades. It champions a new kind of capitalism (a still somewhat hidden facet of the existing capitalism) that uses its resources – the resources of nature – responsibly and compassionately. It is a collaboration of human efforts that springs spontaneously from the willingness of the individual (person, company, nation) to create a better world for everyone.

The Next Economy is not an objective, tangible reality – yet. At the moment it is still a dream of humanity that is dancing on the ‘edge’ or seam that separates, and connects, the realm of imagination and the realm of ‘real’ life. It is up to us as inter-connected individuals to make the dream of sustainable human progress a reality by taking responsibility for the direction of our lives and for the way we live on a daily basis. If the Old Economy was defined by the concept of hardware, and the New Economy by the concept of software, the Next Economy will be defined by the notion of ‘humanware’.12 Only by exploring ourselves and knowing our inner universe(s) (the

11 Grondona, M., “A Cultural Typology of Economic Development”. 12 Special thanks to Prof. Dipak. R. Pant, Ph.D. for his inspiring ideas, including this notion of ‘humanware’ as the basis of the Next Economy. The term and concept of ‘Next Economy’ as it appears in this article has been used by Prof. Pant in many of his articles and presentations and in his undergraduate courses in Applied Anthropology and Comparative

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injunction of the Delphic Oracle) will we be able to discover and harness the rich mine of untapped resources lying just beneath the surface of our conscious awareness.

Economics at the Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC), Varese, Italy, where he runs the Unit for Studies in Innovation for Sustainability.

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References Buckminster Fuller, R., Critical Path (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1981) Chertow, M.R., & Esty, D.C., eds., Thinking Ecologically: The Next Generation of Environmental Policy (New Haven/London: Yale Univ. Press, 1997) Clippinger III, J.H., ed., The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997) Davies, P., Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (London: Penguin Books, 1984) Dickey, C., “A Muslim Cry for Democracy” in: Newsweek, Special Davos Edition, Dec 2001-Feb 2002 Einstein, A., The Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives (Dukas & Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979) Harrison, L.E. & Huntington, S.P., eds., Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York, Basic Books/Perseus, 2000) Krugman, P., "Pursuing Happiness", The New York Times on the web, 29 March 2000 Perkins, J., ShapeShifting: Shamanic Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation (Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1997) Rigge, E. K., “The Concept of the Hidden God in the Works of Michel de Montaigne and Pierre Charron” (Doctoral thesis, University College London, 1999)