LENS LECTURE 5 (edited OWT transcript) September, 1974
THE CURRENT MOMENT Column I
The Resurgent Sign:
We've been talking about that word "resurgence." In the context of the first evening when we spelled out that business of resurgence, we were talking in broad abstract terms about global sociality. This morning we want to come back to the discussion of resurgence in terms of the local situation, the local implications of the shift in our times and why, in a very practical way, this is the time for which all of us have been waiting. The global situation and the local manifestations revolve around these 12 pillars, or 12 definitudes of resurgence. I want to suggest that it is around these 12, and I don't ask you to agree with me, but I believe around these 12 pillars only, that resurgence is being built in our time. I wonder if it is not true that at any point in history when creative vitality broke loose, it was those 12 pillars that were central to the building of resurgence. We said something like this, that resurgence is about rebalancing the social processes, that is, resurgence is about reempowering the political dynamic in society. Resurgence is about redirecting the economic dynamic in society. Resurgence is about revitalizing the cultural dynamic in society. Resurgence is about overcoming the individual malaise present as a result of the fact that we showed up in an imbalanced society. Specifically, resurgence is about overcoming the individual malaise that has to do with significant engagement. In our time the structures of society are such that man senses himself as not being able to engage adequately in the decision making and the creative processes of society is without symbols and without community.
Voting, for example, doesn't seem to cut it in terms of an adequate way to participate in society, therefore, you end up with extremely low percentages at the polls. Resurgence is about overcoming the individual malaise in that it has to do with vocation. Once again man senses that the kind of dreams he held for engaging his life creatively as a single thrust somehow didn't quite come off the way he had planned. Somehow his picture of his life as one creative thrust in history has not become a practical reality, and a kind of malaise, therefore, attends that. Resurgence is about overcoming the individual malaise that has to do with the collapse in meaning or the collapse in values. In the midst of the relativity of the twentieth century you "decide" about things in a vacuum and nobody can effectively call you into question. There are all-kinds of examples of the collapse in values. Look at the family, for instance.
Resurgence is about the recovery of the ontological deeps; that is to say, resurgence is about the recovery of phasiality, or the recovery of the sense of journey through life. Life can be engaged creatively art every point, not simply between the ages of 20 and 60 or 30 and GO, but that there is a creative possibility at every moment in life. It is possible to picture one's life not as peaking at the age of 40 and then just flattening out into a sort of vegetable garden at the end, but that , indeed, at every moment of life there are glorious possibilities. Resurgence is about recovering authentic sexuality. That is to say, in every moment when society has been healthy you had creative tension between an adventuring, risking dynamic and a conserving, creating dynamic which have taken the given and created something brand new out of it. Where you did not have that adventuring dynamic and that conserving dynamic in society, and the healthy kind of tension going on between, then you did not have maleness ari`1 fema1eness. Save you have a recovery of the tension between those two dynamics in Society, it is not a creative society. Resurgence is about the recovery of authentic sexuality. It is about the recovery of a rationality that makes sense out of the mundane moments of life, which are virtually all the moments of life.
Finally, resurgence has to do with the re-appropriation
of the transparency of life, the re-appropriation of the deeps of life,
or coming once again to grips with the fact that man show up, simply as
a caring human being. Not that he ought to care, should care, but simply,
that he does care for the whole world. If he would only stand present to
them, shore are a million different kinds of experiences in his life which
call forth that care from him. The care that is finally care for the whole
world. Standing in the midst of the pain of that care, he has the possibility
of creating himself as a caring human being and operating out of that creation
of himself. That is what radical integrity is about. Resurgence, or the
recovery of fulfillment in life, is finally about expending one's life
in the midst of that caring.
The Creative Response:
The key to the resurgence of the 20th Century is the recovery of social methods by which everyone can participate in that resurgence. In the universe of relativity of our rime a problem solving method is required which begins with the actual situation rather than a fixed set of goals; a method of corporate action is needed which relates everyone to the total task rather than relating through a hierarchy; a corporate motivity method is necessary which offers creative expenditure through linking the problem solving and the action rather than offering rewards for one or the other. An effective demonstration of the methods will show their interrelated and dynamic nature.
The Effectivity Crisis:
In the midst of coming of age in a rather radical way in our time there is a kind of crisis. I don't mean anything negative by that word. It is a crisis in effectivity in the business community. I think it occurs in four ways. First, there is a crisis emerging in what I want to call effective production, where there are a thousand different bottle necks. I looked at out own plan where a 1000 different bottle necks have occurred over the last few years in terms of effectively doing the production job. We fell a year behind, about a month ago, in the production of a whole new switching system (don't tell anybody that), simply because of 1000 different bottlenecks that could not be worked out relative to doing an effective job of producing a new switching system. You can find that in many other places. While production is going on at an unbelievable rate, it does not have the kind of effectivity it could have. Secondly, there is a crisis in terms of effective labor, effective workmanship. People are falling asleep on the job. That is one way of talking about it. There is a kind of subtle rebellion going on among labor these days that is different from the rebellion of the twenties which was more overt. It is more subtle. Someone took a poll of blue collar workers and came up with results something like this: Fifty percent of the workers who were talked to felt as though they weren't really being used in their job, that they could be far more productive. No reason why they weren't, they just weren't. Just a kind of falling asleep. Inhouse retirement, has become a catch phrase around our plant especially among the engineers. That kind of crisis relative to labor is just going on. I think it is going to become more overt. Now it is rather subtle. One of the ways that crisis in labor is going to become overt is that you are going to find janitors and the man on the assembly line beginning to realize that he, indeed, has some good ideas. One of these days he is going to demand more than a suggestion box to get his good ideas out. That is another point at which a crisis is beginning to emerge effective labor. Then there is the crisis in terms of effective polity structures. We are experiencing in the business community today as well as in the rest of society a new relational kind of web. It is beginning to dawn on the man at the top in the hierarchical structure, that when he shouts an order it doesn't always get obeyed. His orders don't always filter down through the hierarchy and get enacted the way they once did. Something else is going on. Creative responses are happening. The kind of management group create: at Tappon gives me another clue to the fact that we are aware there is a new relational web taking place within the polity structure of the company. The adequate response to that has not yet been invented, therefore the crisis in terms of effective polity.
Activity Syndrome:
The Emerging Consensus:
This course has been taught several times in nearly every major city of the q1obe. A large number of proposals of the kind we have written have been created. The same kind of work on a more massive scale has beer, done by groups of 500 or 1000 people in an intensive month's work. So we can see somewhat of consensus relative to the future of society beginning to emerge from a sampling of people across the globe. There are five arenas in which those proposals are emerging. First of all, there are those calling for something like a secularized mythology, a story of what life is about in its deeps, a new humanized education which not only emphasizes skills, but also wisdom to equip a person to live fully his entire life to participate effectively in society in terms of decision making as well as the skills that equip one to simply have a job. Thirdly, one in the arena of primal community. There needs to be some way in which a community once again recovers its function of relating the individual to the entire society which seems to have been lost today. Fourthly, there is a localized polity, one way to say that is "grass roots participation." A way for average local man to have his decisions, his own insights considered relative to the way the city or nation is going. Then something like a globalized economics; that is an economic system in which the benefits of that system are distributed in such a fashion that the benefits of that were made available to the entire society. It is rather amazing that today, for the first time in all of history, we have accomplished the feat of one third of the people not going to bed hungry. That is an amazing accomplishment on the part of the business community. Now the question is being asked, what would it take for the other two thirds not to go to bed hungry? You can begin to relate the proposals we have written to these in a broad fashion. This seems to be the consensus emerging in our time.
THE SOCIAL CHANGE Column 11
The Strategic Analysis:
Now the question, if you really intend to get anything done in society, "How in the world could that actually become a reality?" Our old "ways and means" don't work effectively. Perhaps we are not so much doing things wrong as doing the wrong things (however well). Our need is for viable proposals and viable means of implementation. Assuming the proposals, how in the world could these proposals effectively be implemented. Real creativity is required in asking what are the practical tactics that would indeed allow the proposals to be implemented?
We haven't really begun the hard work yet. That is to come this morning in terms of actually figuring out how something could happen here. That are the tactics that are required? You simply don't attack head on "a new educational system." You are looking for some other way of coming at it that would be more effective. Maybe an illustration, or an image would be helpful. I understand that in the Alps that snow builds up on the side of the mountain. It is possible to stand at a particular point relative to that bank of snow and give a "whistle" or a shout and if you are at the right point with the right frequency, at the right moment, you can get that bank of snow to begin to reverberate with the whistle and finally the whole thing comes sliding down. That is what you are looking for in society. Where in society can you stand and whistle, that is, carry out some particular action and occasion an avalanche of change that's simply been waiting to happen? Where in society are those tactical whistle points?
The Whistle Point Tactics:
You are looking for the means of effecting changes in society. And you can talk about that not just in terms of all of society, you can talk about one plant where if I acted there I would be relative effective. That has its ramifications and we want to come to that in just a moment. That is really what we are going to do this morning. We are going to ask ourselves how we use the whistle points in society were tactical action would indeed occasion an avalanche of change. Work is already going on there, and in the way of a report, we are going to talk about that just a little bit. There are arenas of activity, arenas of whistle point activity, that are beginning to emerge. A diagram may help to talk about that. In society, if something is actually going to happen, there first of all have to be a series of actions that have impact. You are simply talking about waking people up to what is going on on society. And something like a training system, that is a retooling of people in society in such a fashion that every man can finally participate actively in that society; something like a problem-solving system, a research system have that kind of impact. By "research system" I do not mean something airyfairy, ivory tower) or ethereal, I mean practical problem solving and practical research. Another series of actions come under the category of demonstration systems. Take a given community, one school in that community, and make that a glorious example of what education should be about, rather than working on all 15 schools at once. Taking one and turning it into something that is really effective. That is a demonstration system. Simply to show that an awakened body of people with some kinds of skills can do something creative; talking about solutions to problems in their own situation; and what is it that possibilities might actually look like. A picture is worth a 1000 words. Then you have to have some kind of series of operating presuppositions, some kind of story out of which you are operating, in society, something that talks about what it is indeed like to live in the 20th century. That process enables self motivation, I think. Once you have an awakened body of people in any given society, with some kind of picture of what they could actually dg come way for concrete engagement to occur, come channel of concrete engagement. then one is motivated to release his potential.
The Guild Dynamic:
One of the things that is required relative to locating and using whistle points in society has to do with a group of people i.e. who will be the catalyst in that society? Who are at the heart of a tactical scheme that would affect real change in society? I am going to use words like guild, it is an old word, it has been used in many other societies. It points to catalytic activity in any society wherever you are in your business, in your community, in the nation, the world. Wherever you see some kind of activity going on that is an intentional move into the future, there you see the guild dynamic. I want to talk about the guild as a dynamic rather than a body of people. It is a dynamic that is present in any part of society, even in your own family. Wherever you see something going on in the "family" that is pointing creatively to the future, there you see the guild dynamic. Sometimes it is your wife, sometimes it is your son, that carries out the kind of all guild dynamic. Your son comes in and says, "You've been arguing about that for the last five years, either settle it or stop it. "That is the guild dynamic. Wherever you see a creative, intentional move into !he future, that is what I'm talking about. It is the catalytic dynamic that I'm describing. It is the caring dynamic in society, is another way of tally about it. Caretakers of humanness, if you wont a poetic phrase. Or to say it another way, it is a strange dynamic is society, takes a rather strange posture, I think, it stands in two camps and yet transcends both, that is to say that the guild dynamic is the dynamic in society which stand with one foot planted in the disestablishment dynamic in society that is that dynamic that is screaming t at certain points at what is going on in society, and with one foot planted in society with the proestablishment, that is that portion of society that is simply maintaining the structures. It stands with one foot in both of those camps and transcends both camps to make a creative move into the future.
They are the people who "give a damn" with some qualitative givers. They care about man in community and the future. They have a cause, are committed to it, participate in it and they can be are duplicated. That is the posture of the guild dynamic in society. It is an extremely local dynamic, I r1uess, would be another kind of characteristic you could give to it You are tall<inr1 here about particular, local catalytic action. I was in a chemistry class one time and the professor got a great big vial of clear liquid and got another vial of equally clear liquid and put one little drop into that vial of clear liquid and the whole thing turned red and jelled. That kind of catalytic action is the guild dynamic in society. It has shown up at many points in history. Even the word itself is an old old word. It showed up in ancient India many many years ago. They had guilds. One was a guild (they had two kinds) or a series of guilds who were responsible for taking care of the community, just to see that people got buried and that sort of thing. And then there was a series of guilds that had to do with crafts. That was simply to insure quality in the productive system in that society. The same thing interestingly enough showed up centuries later in Europe, where you had guilds, who were interested in the function of the community, craft guilds, concerned with the skills of the particular craftsmen in society. In ancient China it showed un. What Confucius created was a rather fantastic vision of what could happen in China and not himself appointed as the advisor to the court system in China which was the basic system of government of China. And for 20 years, day in and day out ho would sit and advise the ruling body of China on his vision of how China should operate. And they were interested you know, but didn't carry anything but. At the end of 20 years nothing was different in China. All that good advice in the courts of China and nothing had happened. Confucius looked back at the 1ast 20 years and decided that 20 years was long enough to try that particular tactic and being a very clever man, he took a look at what was going on in China and developed a tactical system not out of some abstraction not out of what actually was going on in society. That is the way that actual tactics always get built. And the real situation in China was that people couldn't read and write. He picked up on the fact that people couldn't read and write but indeed desired that skill and he got himself a body of people who could read and write and trained them in his practical vision of what China would look like. You've heard of a Confucius saying - he sent those guys out to live in the villages of China for the rest of their lives to be the people who read and wrote for the ones who could not in the villages, and you could imagine the kind of demand that it was to get all the stuff that they wanted written. They were literally in contact with every one in the village and so in the process of reading and writing they spun out some stories of what China could look like. And lo and behold a brand new China not created. They were the literati in China, but it was the guild dynamic going on. Context, commitment, participation and replication made the guild dynamic come alive. You can give other examples of that I suspect. The labor unions in their inception in the early part of this century were I think an authentic sniff after the guild dynamic. The service clubs, too. The guilding dynamic is tactical among other things. One who is a part of the guild dynamic really only has one question and that is how? How! (could "x" actually happen). The tactician is what I'm talking about now. What does that look like tomorrow in the office? Here is where you and I might have our greatest concern. I know I certainly do. What would it look like to have an effective impact system where you have an awakened body of people who were indeed serious about their work? How can that actually happen? Here you are talking simply about waking people up. And they are longing to be waked up.
The Local Guild:
The guild is primarily a local dynamic. In its local form it consists of three dynamics including the task forces, the P.S.U., and the leadership core. The task force is the action dimension of the local guild organizing the necessary work forces around both long and short range tasks. This is the point for involvement of the greatest number of people in the guild dynamic.
The visioning and task planning is done in the P.S.U. involving a variety of personnel generally across hierarchical and organizational lines. Its success is dependent upon a clearly delineated and relevant arena of planning approached through the use of workable problemsolving and corporateness methods.
The leadership core of the local guild gives direction and discipline to the task force and P.S.U.'s.
The Local Implementation Column III
The Local Dynamics: (business or local community)
This discussion of tactical systems and of the guild dynamic is directly applicable to the business situation. As previous discussions have revealed, the company situation is illuminated by the model of the Economic, Political, and Cultural processes and their interrelationships. The imbalances in the process and the trends which are revealed also directly describe the company situation. The dominance of the "technical" wisdom process, for example, shows up in the mindset which says almost automatically that retraining is the solution to the quality problems on the assembly line. To the extent that a business does not take these dynamics into account, its operation will be less than effective in the long range.
The Direct Strategy:
This means that the analysis of society in terms of the pressure points or of key locations in the social process for action also applies to business context. In the economic dimension, "anticipated needs" is indicating a need for an adequate economic philosophy to the level of such detail as pay scales and wage incentives. The "knowledge access" process points to concern for communication flow, while "bureaucratic systems" and "deliberative systems" are concerned with a bureaucratic structure in which all can participate and decision making schemes which allow the articulation of the actual consensus of the membership of the company. In the cultural processes the "inclusive myths" point to the need for a story about the role of the company in the civilizing process and of what it means to be a participant in that particular company, "Social Plurality" indicates the necessity for recreating patterns of responsibility for the future of the office in the context of the question "what is life all about"? with formal methods available to everyone. Individual style is the issue in "basic roles" while the formation of authentic team life is at stake in "community groupings". These 9 arenas form the locus of concern if at our moment effective operation is to be accomplished.
The Indirect Tactics:
Tools like brainstorming and gestalting being able to think clearly through particular problems. I really wonder if one day the back part of McGuffy Reader is not going to be a section of brainstorming, and gestalting and even the triangles I don't know about that. Some practical tools for actually solving problems and that comes fairly close to my own situation . We have a __________ shop, 20 people there, we decided that we were going to have that body of people participate in the decision making of that shop in order to solve some of the problems that they probably knew more about than anyone else. The first thing that we had to do was find a way to get from them what they knew about what was going on and then get it organized in some way that they could really make some decisions about it. You had to give them the tools to do that. You can't simply have them "rap" about it. It would take 10 years coming at it like that. What you are talking about is a very practical methodology or system that is required. Some kind of research system. Here you are simply talking about problem solving systems, getting bodies of people together and seriously sitting down, and in a systematic, methodical way working through effectively the problems that face your "production" process and consensing on proposals relative to same. Then some demonstration system. You are not going to get motivation relative to these kinds of things going on unless you can very quickly point and say that is what I mean there it is. People are going to lose interest unless you have something that you can hold up rather immediately as a sign of possibility. You take al I of your energy and pour it in to a particular shop and turn that shop into a glorious operation, a glorious picture of how a real shop could operate, and you will continue to maintain motivation of everyone else around to follow suit. Not necessarily to copy it, but to continue to struggles through what it would look like for them to operate as a real shop. That thing at GM. I f you are going to build a story about a body of people who practically solved their own problem when no one else could you create motivation for somebody else to do the same thing. That is what I'm talking about. Some sign that you can hold up and say, "look, see what is possible."_ To bring forth a sign of Possibility rather than taking your enemy and spreading it throughout the entire 20 shops which you might be tempted to doputting a little bit into each one where it dies. Pick one spot and develop a signal there and the rest will follow suit. That is what you are talking about with a demonstration system.
There is some kind of "story" required. The company is not going to succeed finally and not be effective finally in terms of its potential unless it has a story about what it is doing in the globe. It has to have a story that is related to the globe. A worker has to see that what he is doing is significant - and it must be a practical story, not some fairy tale. You know, Bell System where I happen to work has a lot of made up fairy tales. You know, about how great a company it is in society, and it has evoked a large amount of cynicism. I suspect most any company can evoke that from its employees. You know that these grandiose stories that have been coming out in the media to company publications have been passed around a lot. Some story that actually talks about what that company is about relative to the world is what you are calling for there. Something that allows the worker to actually see that he is creatively participating in society. You get this kind of thing going and how that is a sign and how the companies might operate, or even how other communities might operate and you have a rather powerful story about what that worker is doing at the plant in the actual situation. And then some effective means of engaging these who decide that they ought to be engaged in that creative process and here you are talking corporateness. Effective means of operating corporately.
Simply learning how to operate a team in such fashion that that team operates effectively as a corporate body and not just as a series of individuals thrown together because their names show up together on the same piece of paper. Some way that they can sit down as a body of people and work through carefully the plans that they intend to carry out and work through carefully the specific actions that would be required, and work through equally carefully the assir3nments that they are going to make to various individuals. That is the point, I think, that we fall down most ~ ten, in terms of the operation of the teams that I'm on, or the task forces. There is little corporateness relative to plan, less corporateness relative to the actual actions that it would take to pull it off, and assignments are made in about the last two minutes. We need a story that allows us to be committed to be corporate. We need some way of effectively having "accountability" relative to individual and team assignments. Some way of maintaining an effective accountability structure for assignments that have been given. I suppose that you are like I am, on at least 10 different task forces none of which is really getting the kind of job done that you had hoped.
Western Electric's solution to the problem of bureaucracy where you couldn't get anything done because of the bureaucratic structure was to take someone from this bureaucratic structure and someone from this bureaucratic structure and someone over here and put them all together crossing all the hierarchical lines. '.de have now about 25,000 task forces with only 1,200 people to solve all the problems and none of the problems is really being solved. We don't know how to operate as a team. We don't know how to operate corporately, nor how to be effectively accountable. You have to put a kind of emphasis on both, I think, if you are going to have significant engagement in really effective "production" in The plant.
How, to come back again to the question of what is going to be the catalyst to enable this to take place. Where do you locate the guild dynamic within the plant to be an effective catalyst? And I suspect here you would just sit down and list a set of criteria of what you would be about relative to that guilding dynamic. First of all, you know, that it is going to cut across organizational lines. This is not the President and his directors, likely. flore than likely it is the President and a manager and a section chief, or whatever backed by a story as to what the whole corporateness is about so as to be free to work on the particular. Not because it would be nice to have different levels involved but because they know things that are going on in the plant that nobody else does.
To heck with the kind of liberal idea that it would be nice to have the Janitor involved, it is necessary that you get his ideas. And what is going on today is that he realizes or i$ beginning to realize that it is necessary to get his ideas in. That kind of cross structuring, I think, is one quality of your story and you could go on from there. You would have to go on to say what would real tactical action look like in society. (or particularly in terms of the plant). That is what has come out of the kind of proposals and work on tactics what we have been doing this weekend. In a way that is in the form of reports on work that has been done by several other groups that did the same thing that we are going to be doing shortly. My other question then, is what kind of decision does it take to bring that into being. What is the practical decision that is required if one is to be the guilding dynamic in the plant, or this dynamic in society.
The Guild Network:
The guild operating within the local situation must necessarily see itself in some way connected to a larger network if its local action is to be effective in the long range. The network enables comprehensiveness in the local, provides a mode of wisdom interchange, and is a vehicle for engaging issues which can only be resolved with the participation of many separate locals. Its structure is not a central office designed to superimpose structure upon local guilds, but rather a tying together of guilds for the sake of enabling the local and focusing their power on a common vision. A necessary part of the network is some clustering of guilds in a given locality for the sake of common planning and sustenance.
The Historical Question Column IV
The Invisible College:
The decision is being made. You are not alone, If you choose to put yourself out in a rather strange and unique position. Many people are making that decision today. Kenneth Boulding talks about the dynamic in society that he calls the invisible college. He says there is a body of people across the globe who don't even know each other who have decided that something fresh is going to come into being. They are plant managers, they are businessmen of all kinds, they are presidents of nations, etc. etc. a body of people who have made a new kind of decision that something is going to come into being. He calls them the invisible college. I call them guildsmen. And who knows, maybe John Kennedy was a part of the invisible college, maybe Cordon Blanchard with that thing that he had going there at the U.N. or Dr. Wiejner at F1.1.T., etc. etc. There is a dynamic going on in society today that Boulding calls the invisible college. I find that sort of helpful. Let's try to get an image of what it would mean to make that decision; to be a part of that guilding dynamic. It is a decision to use one's eyes like most can but do not. Let me tell another story to illustrate that. There is on Desert which is extremely dry and barren a body of people who inhabit that desert and they have a particular kind of ability. They can walk about on the desert floor with nothing there but sand and they can spot a tiny thread and they will follow that thread, no body else can see it except them, they will follow that thread for several feet sometimes until it finally disappears in the sand. They put their hand where it disappears in the sand and they find a pocket of water. That is how they survive on that desert. To be a part of that dynamic is a decision to use our eyes as others don't. I mean to see what no one else does. It is the decision to be on a journey which is a peculiar one. It is a journey with all of history and a strange thing happens to a man when he decides he is going to journey with all of history. To live his life in relationship to all of history. First of all, all his antsyness, all of his immediacies 90 away. No longer is it a `1uestion of will I see immediately the results of my action. Wouldn't it be something to have a group of people working for you, managers and so on who didn't have to do everythinn in such a fashion that tomorrow each saw all the results, but could begin to think in forms of the long range sweep and what they do together?? The Long March is a helpful image. The decision to simply appropriate the fact that you like everybody else, showed up a caring human being in society. Simply to see that that is true is more what that decision is about.
The World Care:
And you know, the facet that you care for society is not a rational process, it is not something: like well, I care a little bit over here, a little bit over there. Finally I can list a whole 1,000 things that I care about. It is that I care about my new "global" community. We were watching T.V. and all at once you have a kind of concern that just won't let go of you. (Maybe on India). Maybe it hasn't happened to you, but something`, like it has. Everyman has experienced a million different things that have called forth his care which is really care for the entire world. And you experience a kind of fear, I think, just really a stark fear, at that, and a kind of guilt, you know, like how in the world could I ever do anything about that? Or guilt that you haven't done anything. And a kind of selfdoubt that you could ever really do any thing about it, I mean, weakling that you are. And finally you're just cold, I mean, you're just cold to anything in society, you just don't care, you couldn't care less. What is going on in society is illustrative of that "experience". And out of that kind of experience of coldness relative to what is going on in the world relative to any kind of care whatsoever, you decide to create the warmth. And you decide to create that warmth in a particular directionand you can only create it in certain directions not in every direction. You decide where you and your action are going to be finally placed. It is a created warmth. You simply decide the direction in which that warmth is going to go. To stand in that kind of painful awareness and invent the response that you arc going to be and after all that is all you are. When you see Cary Tomlinson you see his response to the situation he is in. That is who I am. You invent the response to the situation and that defines you. To stand in the midst of the pain of care for the entire world and invent the response that you are going to make at every moment is what radical integrity is about. Wouldn't it be something, as a matter of fact, I'd want to suggest, that history once again is not going to come off finally save we have, once again recovered radical integrity in our business. Save you have a group of managers who know what it means to create out of the pain of the real situation and not get some invented universe and decide the kind of response they are going to invent, business is not going to become effective. It is not a new thing to talk about it is simply what is going on in life. (I want to suggest, don't necessarily ask you to agree with that).
The Local Focus:
Now the question comes, how in the world can that action really be effective in the whole world. Finally you have to get back to the local. I want to suggest something like this. If you are concerned for something coming off in the world, you go back to the plant and you pull off something relative to the new polity system, that would be a sign of what effective polity would be among the nations. or you pull off a sign of what real education could look like. I think, business is going to pick up more and more the education role in society and just present a fine example of what real education would look like in society.
The Destinal Engagement:
There is how finally you begin, I think, to deal with the issues of the g1obe, you have on your hands and create a sign.
Strange thing is that that is the kind of thing that you
and I have been waiting for all of our lives. I think that is true. That
within life is a kind of yearning for something like that. I think that
is true of every man that this is the kind of expenditure that you have
been waiting for. 0ne time in history it was necessary to create a dynamic
called family and history invented an image to motivate people to do that
create families. At another time, more recently, it was necessary
to become productive people and history invented an image to motivate people
to do that and the image of that was the working manbusiness man
and it worked. Now something else is called for in history that is not
to say no to the family and to the businessman. But something else is called
for at this point in history and history is going to create an image that
frees people to motivate themselves. I don't know what the image is going
to be -- maybe "history man". That doesn't strike me as quite
powerful enough. These are amazing times. The amazing thing about what
is going on today is not that you can keep a person alive by transplanting
his heart, the amazing thing is our clarity on the practical possibility
of participating in the future.