Bernie Neville:

teaching: http://www.cejournal.org/GRD/neville.htm

corporations: http://www.gebser.org/publications/IntegrativeExplorationFiles/Neville.Structures.pdf

exerpt:

Sampson uses the Jungian term shadow to refer to the unacknowledged totalitarianism of the company in this instance. At the personal level, the Jungian shadow contains all the aspects of our personality that do not fit in with our self–image. Jung means this to include the positive aspects (such as creativity and altruism) that we are not able to acknowledge in ourselves, as well as the negative aspects, but in popular usage the shadow is often identified with the negative. The shadow is experienced collectively as well as personally.
…

The seventies and eighties saw the rise on a global scale of another
narrative, that of economic rationalism. Once again we found a story
about the world presented as a universal truth. The self–evident truth
this time was the centrality of the unregulated marketplace as the final
arbiter of values. We saw an economic theory being turned into an
unchallengeable truth that was applicable in every field, including
human relationships, health, education and welfare. Where
organizations adopted this view of the world or had it forced on them we saw market value taking the place of all other ways of valuing, not only in the organization’s relation to its products and processes but also in its relation to its people.
. . .

Many corporations have a dominant narrative, a dominant fantasy, but it is balanced by other complementary narratives. In earlier, simpler societies individuals and organizations could conduct their lives within a single narrative. That option no longer seems to be available. When leaders or their magicians try to impose a single story and image on an organization, they are more likely to generate confusion and demoralisation than constructive energy.
. . .

What we can now observe is the confusion of corporations
inhabiting a world where there is a growing sense that the political,
environmental, social, economic and health problems that the late
modern–industrial age was so confident of solving are not only too
complex to solve but too complex even to think about. It is in this state of confusion and instability that Gebser sought for signs that a new way of experiencing and dealing with the world might be evolving.
. . .

| Finally, it seems to me that the empirical data doesn’t much support
| the hypothesis that larger polities are more or less efficient than
| smaller ones, though it does seem to support the idea that larger
| corporations are less efficient. I wonder why.

http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm

The Innovator’s Dilemma
When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
By Clayton M. Christensen
ISBN: 0-87584-585-1

excerpt:

“But the problem established firms seem unable to confront successfully is that of downward vision and mobility, in terms of the trajectory map. Finding new applications and markets for these new products seems to be a capability that each of these firms exhibited once, upon entry, and then apparently lost. It was as if the leading firms were held captive by their customers, enabling attacking entrant firms to topple the incumbent industry leaders each time a disruptive technology emerged. Why this happened, and is still happening, is the subject of the next chapter. ”

—

additional background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

Critique: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1628049,00.asp

—

My personal (non-expert) opinion is that large corporations become inefficient because they do not have cultures that incentivize waste prevention (maintain robust internal criticism/accountability). At some point, the creativity and drive of the founders of the business is lost to bureaucratic groupthink. Instead of hiring risky, edgy characters, the impersonal nature of the HR department kicks in, and “safe” people, with standardized, certified educations from equally risk-averse, status-quo supporting colleges and universities are hired instead. “Mavericks” are marginalized unless they somehow support the conformist bureaucratic logic of “large institutional” status quo.

I guess the public sector, born of large political organization (the governing classes) is by nature insulated from creativity (or any other “threat” to its groupthink), so it is always inefficient, no matter the scale? In most cases, any public sector worker that tries to increase efficiency will be ruthlessly attacked for daring to question the status quo. Dysfunctional/sociopathic personality types tend to rise up in public sector “management”, and they excel at controlling and punishing any nonconformists that examine assumptions, critique management “vision” fads, or dare to speak of the original concept of civil service: duty to a higher, common purpose.

All purpose in public sector organization management culture has been reduced to faking the ideas and methods of Corporatist plutocracy so as to justify bloated salaries: endless, pointless exercises in social networking (as opposed to actual competence in business processes).

Bye!

Utopians, perhaps having a sense of doom about doom, are probably as guilty of hero complexes as the doomsters? lol.

Anyways ……

Classic liberalism is necessary, but in a postmodern world, not sufficient.

(its truths should be honored, and the major problems that come from utopians abandoning those truths {the cause of doom} should be seen realistically.)

Postmodernism, having deconstructed the absolutisms and “spiritual flatland” that results from modernism, and replaced it it with pluralism and relativism, fell into deep narcissism and nihilism (inquisitorial political correctness, intolerance in the name of tolerance, etc.).

Non-postmoderns (traditionalists, libertrians, conservatives), horrified at the prospect of being pushed into a cultural abyss of selfishness and meaninglessness (or new age mystical mush), supported reactionary counter movements, such as neoconservatism. Which created other problems.

The “strict daddy” paradigm of conservatism was “at war” with the “nurturing mommy” paradigm of postmodernism (the PC/Left).

In the chaos and “psychic fragmentation” (Vlaclav Havel) that resulted, the old moral order of modernism started disintegrating, and social institutions began to be unable, or unwilling, to fight off the tendency toward dysfunctionality (corruption, incompetence).

Corporatism’s swift rise (which is premised on a soulless form of “power” {greed/ego} that flows from reducing all categories of human meaning into “money”) is a function of the paradigm regression that set in as a result of the state of chaos.

http://attackthesystem.com/free-enterprise-the-antidote-to-corporate-plutocracy/

So, expect a lot of nastiness to continue between the two “paradigms” as each paradigm’s failures continue to deepen, and are blamed on the “other side’s” opposition. Already whole media industries are based on the lies and distraction from common purpose that flows out of the resulting hyperpartisanship.

As “transformative” movements continue to grow, a nasty shadow will follow them that will require “healing”. As Professor Bernie Neville has stated, a study of the psychological archetypes in ancient greek mythology reveals that Hermes, the God of transformation, was also a slippery character (“trickster” – the god of lies and deception).

If a paradigm based on “something other” develops that is better, meaning that it can address the “coherence needs” of a globalizing, but psychically fragmented world, then it seems reasonable that a reform movement that transcends existing national boundries (and existing cultural/paradigm boundries) would naturally tend to reorient toward global “loyalties”.

One example of how people are thinking about “something better” is the transpartisan politics movement, which was partly inspired by the integral thought movement (Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, Clare Graves, Ken Wilber).

Integralism honors the truths of the preceeding paradigms, while transcending thier limitations and psychic baggage. It proposes that the fragmented elements of human consciousness be “healed” and be seen as parts of a larger whole.

Obviously, if holistic/integral culture can find pragmatic solutions to problems like ecology, poverty and warfare, the basis for thinking that national and cultural and paradigmatic “divisions” are the source of “bad stuff” will increase.

Bye!

* Robin seems to be a DOOM enthusiast. The world must be at risk for heroes to be able to save it – or to signal to others how much they care about saving their associates. So, he sees a potential for future disasters (such as an evil totalitarian state) more than most.

* The potential for universal cooperation would undo the competitive ideas that much western economics is based on. It would mean that much of what people learn in economics classes is no longer applicable. Robin does not seem to favour that.

If a government is sufficiently despotic, wouldn’t it use nuclear weapons (or the threat of a nuclear strike) to put down an insurrection?

Perhaps, and I should also note that a World government does not remove the threat of the use of nuclear weapons by extremist groups who can mange to get their hands on them.

But while both events would result in a massive loss of life, neither poses the threat of essentially ending civilization as we know it, as a war between two or more nations with large nuclear stockpiles is conceivably capable of doing. Note that I did not say a world government would end nuclear war, only large scale nuclear war.,

Such a union may not eliminate national boundaries for purposes such as restricting migration.