The Critical Need for a New Embodied Form of Leadership

"The Monkey and The Orange"

by Richard Boyd, Body Mind Psychotherapist and Organisational Consultant, Perth, Western Australia

Copyright 2010

Overview

The traditional models of cultural leadership have been seen to largely breakdown in Western society over the last 40 years. The decline in the role of the church as setting the moral tone for leadership has been discredited, and the emergence of business and sporting persons as leadership role models has in recent times pointed to the acceptance of the cultural more of the "I or Me" versus the long stated ideal of leadership as being for the "Us or We".

We are now in a time of human history where the indulgence of "I" is threatening the very existence of man being able to sustain himself with a quality of life moving forward. Many of the consequences we are now being forced to confront in both society and in our environments can be seen to be rooted in the preoccupation with "I or Me". Unless a paradigm shift occurs in the next 20 years, science now predicts the future for all life on our planet will be severely degraded at best, and possibly extinction for some at worst.

The way forward from this crisis must come from a new model of embodied leadership, which truly leads the way from the "I or Me" to the "Us or We". This must become embodied within all of us at the individual and family level, and moving forward to all cultural and political groupings that make up society. This paper discusses how the selfish behaviours which manifest within both leaders and their organizations, has as part of its roots, a personal grasping that arises from a crisis of people who are disconnected with themselves, others, and their environment, and who live only for themselves.

This article addresses and outlines the seriousness of this defining issue of our age.  It crystallizes the damaging effects of our behaviour at the personal and group levels, and how our models of personal, business and political leadership are failing us.

A second companion article, entitled "Present and Grounded - Embodied Leadership and Sacred Activism", articulates the destructive nature of people who "live in their heads". The paper addresses this problem, and some of the principles that must be assimilated and embodied for a new model of leadership to emerge, and which reconnects people to themselves, others, and their environment. I argue that such a change will be needed which will change the face of society, like few changes before have, or needed to have before. Unless a profound shift takes place, we will all be fearfully stuck to grasping onto our old destructive lifestyles as the world we know continues to degrade around us at our peril.

Introduction

In many temples in Asia it used to be possible to see the most profound teachings about the nature of our human condition. In one example, a monk would lead a monkey onto a small platform and sit it down, facing the assembly of monks, lay people, and visitors. Another monk would bring a clear glass vase and place it next to the monkey. The monkey would take mild interest in the vase but be otherwise unmoved. Then the monk would bring an orange and show it to the monkey who would instantly get excited and try to grab the orange. The orange was then placed into the glass vase which was a heavy piece of glass. The monkey could reach in the neck of the vase and then extract his empty hand with the vase designed with just enough room for this action to occur.

The monkey was finally allowed to thrust its hand into the jar and grab the orange, and then try to pull its hand out of the jar. The problem was that now its hand which was grasping the orange, could not be extracted from the throat of the vase. The hand holding the orange was too big to be extracted from the vase. The monkey looked upon this situation with puzzlement and made various attempts to work a solution to the problem. The one constant was that the monkey refused to let go of the orange, as its attachment to it was too strong. After a while the monkey just sat with its arm stuck down the throat of the vase and did nothing. The attachment to the orange just made the monkey sit there and be entirely stuck, unable on one hand to move away from the vase which was too heavy to drag, and unwilling to let go of the orange to which it was stubbornly attached.

The monk asked us after about a half an hour to come back tomorrow at the same time. We broke off from the assembly and went about our business. The next day we assembled again and to our surprise we saw the monkey still sitting there with the situation unchanged, for it was still grasping the orange but you could see its own personal situation was deteriorating; the monkey looked distressed and weary. The monk then gave a talk about how if left like this the monkey would choose death over life, and would continue grasping the orange due to its ignorant attachment to the orange, until only a collapse from lack of food and water would relax his grasp, just as he slipped firstly into unconsciousness and then a likely death. The monk was then able to show the monkey a new orange and attract him to grasp this with another hand. Only at this point would the monkey consider letting go of the other orange in order to fully be able to consume the accessible orange now placed before him.

This teaching has never been more relevant to the human race than now at this point in our history. We collectively faced a parallel set of environmental, social, legal, economic, work and personal lifestyle challenges that threaten to overwhelm our collective ability to function as an inclusive and cohesive society. The roots of these long term and generationally caused problems lie principally in the long held paradigm in western society of thinking about Me" or "I" as the principle basis for engaging with life. What's more, this style of thinking has permeated the foundations of western economic activity in line with the traditional democratic notions of a free market economy, and the Adam Smith theories of economic self regulation via competition and resource consumption.

The leadership culture that has evolved over the last 200 years in western society has also served to reward and recognize power as an attractive and desirable outcome of those who serve in leadership roles in government and business. This manifestation of power was originally contained within a wider cultural framework of accepted morals and beliefs, often derived from the powerful presence of religion or the church in society. Since the 1960's social commentators agree that the power of the church in society has declined at the same time as the power of the individual, and the need for individual self actualization, has increased. The problem has been, and is demonstrated more than ever before today, that the decline in the various embodied principles of love, compassion, and ethical behaviours that consider the "We" or "Us", did not make the transition into the movement of self realization that best summed up the "swinging sixties".

The snowball effect of the swing towards the focus on the "Me" or "I" has been increasingly felt since that time. Some commentators describe this phenomenon as the rise of the culture of Narcissism where the "me" is the only consideration, and there is little or no empathy, compassion or felt obligation to "we" or to others in general. In the area of leadership and business the effects can be seen on an increasingly daily basis. A recent scan of the newspapers highlights this point. In the area of sport where society increasingly labels its top athletes as "leaders" and "role models" one is seeing the effects of the "Me" mentality quite profoundly.

The sporting scandal for 2009 is the alleged multiple sexual affairs of golfing icon Tiger Woods. The revelations which unravelled in the public domain, have cost him his marriage, multi-million dollar sporting and product endorsements, and his image in the eyes of some. What drives a top sporting and public figure to risk all with a series of alleged and admitted sexual indiscretions? Some commentators have stated that the public will "forgive" him and await his return to the peak of his golfing achievements, and that his image may even be enhanced!!.

This global scandal mirrors a downfall in another way of Australian icon sporting figures. There was the drugs scandal in football and the minimisation of a drug problem by popular role model and leader Ben Cousins of the West Coast Eagles. Ben has a legacy of associations and alleged behaviours which various people have tried to minimize scrutiny about, including association with known underworld figures, avoiding a booze bus, and then being sacked due to a drug problem that affected his role as a leader, role model, and even performer within his chosen sport of football.

Take the case of cricketer Shane Warne, whose alleged off-field indiscretions initially cost him his marriage, his potential chance at the Australian Cricket Captaincy, and some lucrative commercial endorsements. His attitude was at the time not universally seen to be humble or contrite, and some thought he could be perceived as having demonstrated actions of minimization and avoidance at scrutiny of his actions, yet it has cost him dearly. However the public forgives him despite these "flaws" and he is as popular as ever.

Just like the monkey, our sporting heroes are often seen in the papers as a result of having grasped onto their "orange" of their self indulgent behaviours and the accompanying minimization and denial of their occurrence or effects, until they lost critical aspects of their life, such as leadership, public status, team membership, and captaincy roles or potential to be such. One way of viewing all this is that "the monkey" in them could not let go of their attachment to what they decided they wanted, even when they started to suffer from this choice. At the individual level, the rise of narcissism both as a personality disorder and as an attitude of the "me or I" phenomena, explains one potential driver of these sorts of behaviours. Refer to my article on narcissism entitled "Narcissists: Living Without Feeling", for an explanation of this type of personality.

In the area of religion, events have been taking a turn for the worse. The Catholic church has been hurt by generations of its servants acting out abusive behaviours on vulnerable people, often minors, put under their care. The recent scandal in Ireland with a key Vatican enquiry resulting in its clergy now being exposed for multi-generational widespread sexual abuse of its followers and children, is just the latest country belatedly facing up to  this horrendous reality. The denial, minimization, and ongoing cover-ups has been a large part in the subsequent demise of the church in society as a legitimate source of moral high ground, opinion, and embodied leadership, notes this latest report into church abuses(O'Neill:2010).

At the same time there is an increasing growth of a minority of radicalized Muslim religion followers who have taken a very rigid and righteous stance with their beliefs to the point where they denounce, look down on, and would actively overthrow anyone who differs from their one true belief. When questioned they are either defiant, avoid scrutiny, minimize their actions by claiming they are being misquoted or persecuted. There have been active elements of their radical collective leadership in Australia, who embody this negative and inflammatory leadership for the Muslim faith in a very public and loud way.

The opposition within the mainstream Muslim community to these extreme views has been so far at best muted and not loudly public or united, which creates its own set of problems in terms of perception of where others stand on these key issues. "The monkey" in us all can grasp onto self righteousness and rigid self justification just as much as grasping onto anything else material or image oriented. The Catholic church has suffered enormously in its loss of influence in society due to its actions and inactions, and the jury is out on the long term effects of the minority Muslim extremist position, other than the radical minority have already created suspicion, prejudice and fear in the hearts of many non-Muslims who increasingly view the whole Muslim community with distrust and rejection.

On the business front there has been a profound shift in the ethics of leadership over the last 20 years in Australia. The rise in remuneration for the senior leaders of public and private companies  has outstripped that of the employees by up to 150 times in the space of 10 years, notes Australian social commentator Hugh Mackay(2008:12). The recent 2010 Productivity Commission report on executive pay has confirmed this disturbing largesse by noting CEO pay was 110 times that of the Australian average, even in the face of the most recent global financial crisis(Maiden:2010).

The cited defence or reason is the globalization argument which states that we must pay world's best remuneration for our leaders to attract the best people to these roles. This is claimed as an effect of globalization. This is largely an untested theory both in terms of the leaders wanting to relocate out of Australia, and their proven ability to lead in international settings. Telstra's most recently departing CEO was the American, Sol Trujillo who earned $30 million over 4 years, and yet left Australia with his management style having created tension with the Australian public, the Federal Government, fellow directors, employees, and shareholders. Telstra was considered an under-performer during his reign yet he reaped bonuses on top of his generous base pay.

The counterbalance is that Australian managers are highly regarded internationally and so we need to pay to retain them(Maiden:2009). The real issue becomes the ethics of such pay settings which often are either not set against clear performance benchmarks, or those which are largely based on economic factors only(Mackay:2008). The other problem is that the governance role of Boards in setting and enforcing such contracts is poor, as demonstrated by the Australian Shareholders Association which actively highlights such failings with listed companies at Annual General Meetings(AGM'S). As the voting blocs for publicly listed companies are often Equity Trusts, large investment groups, and institutional entities, if the fundamental share performance is seen to be delivered, it can be argued that they are mute when it comes to senior management "indiscretions"(Probyn:2008).

A wider malaise exists under the issue of executive bonuses and remuneration in Australia. According to Dean Paatsch (Rochfort:2008), of RiskMetrics, a Corporate Governance Advisory firm, there exists loopholes that allow publicly listed company boards to award huge payments without shareholder approval. Rochfort in his article also notes that Stuart Wilson, the chief executive of The Australian Shareholders Association,  notes that up until the 2008 Stock market crash that "During the good years there was a mantra from company boards that companies were paying good money because they were performing well , and that executives would go elsewhere if not paid comparative salaries to overseas counterparts. It is only now that these motherhood statements have been undone".

This does not mean that executives are prepared to voluntarily let go of the salary and bonus "orange" for the good of themselves or their company shareholders.

The decline in profits, share price, and other metrics supposedly tied to such bonuses are not having the effect of such bonus structures being prepared, put forward, and approved in the face of poor metric results, or shareholder voting for rejection of such recommendations. Both Rochfort(2008:19) and Adele Ferguson(2008:27) report a number of major companies such as Boral, Transurban, Suncorp Metway, and Valad Property Group all proposed bonus and salary increase proposals in 2008 in the face of poor results, which have been met with opposition by shareholders.

Shareholder rejection has not in all instances led to the boards refusing to adopt the schemes proposed, as Ferguson notes that "The current crisis is largely due to a failure  of boards to align the metrics by which  they have rewarded executives and individuals  in critical roles with the behaviours and outcomes they expected from those roles".  Shareholder voting outcomes do not carry legal weight in Australia(Main:2010). The "I/me" grasping is exposed by the implication of the self serving behaviours that have put companies, public, and shareholders second to the greed of the leadership teams own remuneration.    

In their acclaimed book, "The Spirit Level", by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, they mount a compelling argument that income inequality is the cause of most social problems by undermining a sense of community which in turns harms everyone from the poorest to the richest as a result. They argue that human beings have egalitarian natures beyond basic survival needs. The advent of the Industrial revolution and more recently the Post-Industrial or Age of Globalisation has set us against each other, forever competing with each other as we strive for material possessions. As a result we produce winners and losers at an individual and family level, where we judge ourselves and others in such as way as to produce suffering and shame, and move away from our "natures" where sharing and compassion bring true happiness. Organisations have become narcissistic and promoting of the win-lose model of life in this context.

Public companies can be seen to be run to a hybrid form of the "I" principle, where "I" is the senior management team coupled to the shareholders who basically control the effective tenure of these senior positions. This creates a form of symbiotic collusion where the focus is on the short term bottom line, from reporting timelines to the Australian Stock Exchange, to AGM's, to keeping the share price ticking along to their contractual performance benchmarks. The employee can be seen to be viewed as a cost in this view, rather than as a resource. This is easily seen where the basic practices of well paid senior executives follows a predictable and myopic view of their business by practicing cost cutting via redundancy and restructures, outsourcing, selling off "non-core" assets or operations, and engaging "consultants" who employ prescriptive, template driven models that may or may not be later seen to be situationally correct for that organisation.

The increasing use of legal tactics to forestall or wear down any party that would threaten their activities, or bring accountability to unconscionable behaviour, is an emerging and alarming tactic that shows a pre-meditated disregard for anyone but the leader or leadership team.  The case of Hardies Industries is a recent classic case in point. Hardies was aware for many years that it had an overhanging legal liability in regards to its asbestos products(Probyn:2008). As Australian members of the public starting to contract illness and sue for damages, court action found that the Board of Hardies set out to avoid its corporate responsibilities by firstly relocating offshore to a Netherlands Head Office base where legal recourse would be more difficult, and in turn their efforts to placate the Australian public with a compensation fund was found to be in breach of disclosure, care and diligence, with misleading representations as to what amount was actually on offer(there was a 1.3 billion shortfall uncovered).

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission(ASIC) has found that 10 former executives set out on a course of action that has resulted in personal civil claims against numerous executives, with the notice of criminal charges to follow(Editorial:2009). Court actions are not yet complete or decided in all aspects of this case.  Hardies has more recently decided to relocate its headquarters to Ireland where corporate governance laws and tax rates suit Hardie's corporate objectives and manoeuvrings.

These victories by ASIC, on top of similar recent civil charges against HIH chairman Ray Williams, and HIH director Rodney Adler, are rare successes. Both ASIC and the ATO have been reported as stating that increasingly corporations are employing significant legal resources against these bodies to "wear them down" with appeals up the legal chain to the High Court, lasting years, and testing the funding, resources, and resolve of these bodies that must enforce civil and criminal sanction where leaders have no moral compass or boundaries in their approach to running companies(Mackay:2008). The sting in the tail in these types of cases is that these senior officers are often forced to stand down only in the face of public outcry and determined sanction by investigating parties, but are rewarded with a "golden handshake" when doing so. Again this is explained away as being a corporate entitlement and so must be condoned, which in itself points to a morally bankrupt culture of leadership and business governance at play.

Another aspect of the "I" phenomenon is the increasing practice of private equity takeovers in Australia. In 2008, before the global economic meltdown occurred, the federal government via the Reserve Bank had warned that this activity could raise corporate debt levels in Australia to such a level as to undermine long term economic expansion, as well as disrupt stable business operations as the tired old economic "pruning" takes place afterwards, with outsourcing, downsizing, reduced quality services etc(Australian Newspaper:2008). The Treasurer remarked then that it is for "non-economic" reasons that these takeovers are occurring. Economic commentators such as David Uren are noting how what were once unacceptable risks were then in 2008 being absorbed and taken on, which hindsight showed us in 2009 that later pain was vested to shareholders of whichever script entity owns the leveraged bought out utility. The real driver for this activity is arguably the profit that individuals such as major shareholders who agree to the deal(Tony O'Reilly was targeted in 2008 to make $600 million as a major shareholder in a proposed Qantas buyout that never took place), as well as the entities like Macquarie Bank that structure and execute such deals for large fees.

The outcome for employees, public services, and longer term shareholders is uncertain, but generally seen as negatively impacted. The planned 2008 Qantas deal was partly justified  on possible outcomes such as outsourcing plane fleet servicing, downsize workers, and "review' its regional services, with the buyout consortium only offering a non-obliging form of document as to its responsibility to such stakeholders moving forward. The few would have profited while a long term Worlds best practice airline with a safety record second to none, may because of distorted economic activity, have had its operations degraded due to actions and decisions remote from best practice considerations.

These decisions speak of a lack of "We" in the fundamental minds of the entities that scour the marketplace for fee generation activities, unaccountable for post takeover negative side effects or outcomes for employees, shareholders, the economy or the public. The 2009 global economic meltdown is a direct consequence of activities driven from such greedy and self serving business drivers, and from the financial sector being driven from greed (Fox:2010).

The Westpoint debacle potentially points to another variation of the entrenched "I" behaviours. Westpoint was a group of property development and property trust investment companies, which has been put into liquidation, partly due to the intervention of ASIC. ASIC has since alleged that WestPoint was an entity in which through large director fees, mismanagement, excessive property development costs, and other factors, traded when insolvent, and collapsed with over $300 million of shareholder funds now short of the asset base of the collapsed company.  ASIC claims to have found offshore accounts, illegal practices, and has even alleged nearly 130 lawsuits that the company was funding on behalf of the founder Norm Carey, against ex-wives, business partners, ex-employees, and other people he had "issues with".

One commentator has described Westpoint as more of a personal empire than as a publicly run company. Norm Carey and ASIC are now currently embroiled in legal disputes into his affairs, and his conduct as the founder and Director of Westpoint, which are now in liquidation. The direct actions of the leadership team of this company await scrutiny in a number of court related actions and they may yet be exonerated of these claims. The shareholders in the various Mezzanine companies and schemes are in a lottery as to what, if any of their funds will be returned from this business collapse.

The grasping behaviours of the "I" mindset are also highlighted by shareholders, Directors and promoters of some wealth creation organizations who have recently gone into liquidation. Using examples of Westpoint, and Storm Financial, who were Australian companies promoting wealth creation either through property unit trusts, or superannuation and share leveraging schemes. It is alleged in hindsight that the promoted schemes did not produce the anticipated tangible results and returns, and that customers over-extended themselves in exposure through the greed of an anticipated higher return on unit prices, property and share values(Collett:2009). A middle layer of promoters existed which investigations by liquidators have uncovered  alleged payments of excessive trailing commissions in luring clients into investing in these schemes. The conclusions by liquidators and analysts is to note a common driven greed to milk these schemes to what could never possibly be a sustainable future for all parties concerned.     

A glimpse of these scenarios and the alleged attitudes and behaviours of some of those involved, show how the grasping, self serving behaviours are both to be found in all industry sectors, in government and private sector, and at all levels of leadership within the wider community.

The recent scandals in Western Australia regarding state level politicians, public servants, and advisors, show how entrenched the people who are meant to serve others, are quite prepared to serve themselves. The Corruption and Crime Commission(CCC) has alleged and published findings that ex-politicians have corrupted the public service and political parties in Western Australia, through their roles as lobbyists, and advisors. These ex-politicians alleged to have been paid by businesses to secure favourable outcomes to processes and decisions that were overseen and executed by the state public service, controlled by Government ministers. The CCC produced phone taps and recordings which if taken in the tabled context suggest and detail a litany of what could be interpreted as corrupt behaviour, that nearly every witness at first tried to deny, until caught out by taped phone calls and other evidence.

In 2008, four Western Australian government ministers, and several public servants resigned. In 2010 the state of NSW has seen an ongoing spate of ministerial resignations. In all cases the alleged motivation for the alleged morally indefensible or corrupt action was alleged to have been done for personal gain, either monetary, or promotion, or influence. These actions have been at the expense of others, and the consequence now has been the end of careers, possible legal sanction, and the state of Western Australia and New South Wales being exposed to being ridiculed, or even potentially sued by those who claimed to have suffered loss due to the alleged inactions or activities that took place.

Indeed, apart from the religious ideology that drives some people towards entrenched behaviours, the rest of those actions, such as those symbolically highlighted above, were motivated by the pursuit of self gratification and self interest, and self reward. The lack of consideration, or conscience towards the "We or Us", or others, is obvious. It is best summed up by Sir Anthony Atkinson, a world authority on income inequality, who in February 2007, presented the findings that the top 10 per cent of earners in most OECD countries, including Australia, have been the biggest beneficiaries of globalization, and are now able to live a life quite different from the rest of us which was not the case even as recent as in 1984.

He goes on further to state that it was a "winner takes all" mentality and outcome, with the lowest 20 per cent of the population either not having improved its position since 1984, or it having got worst. The recent Global Financial Crisis has impacted the poor even more than the richest in terms of life outcomes. At the same time the super-rich have started to separate from their communities via the creation of gated enclave communities where domestic servants, and the use of alternative resources to the rest of the community has served to isolate them from the wider community.

The concern here is that this elite group normally comprises the core group or pool of societal and business leadership. Their dislocation cannot but serve to render them desensitive to the community they are supposed to be serving. The lack of empathy for others is a known outcome from the dislocation from the environments and issues being faced by others. Narcissism and self serving behaviours are known to become established when a lack of empathy for others becomes a reality.

In his book, "Fault Line: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy", Professor Raghuram Rajan argues that there is no political will to improve education to raise the standard of living for the masses, and instead politicians appeal to short term interests of constituents by promoting consumerism instead. He points to this short term distraction tactic of politicians as being behind much of the recent Global Financial Crisis. Instead of going down the hard long term road of trying to educate our populations and rid them of poverty through education and awareness, we made credit for houses, cars and gadgets easily available when the poorest had no long term basis on which to be able to pay for this easy access to cheap credit.

The mechanism for this behaviour is a telling example of undoing a lesson learned, and then having to learn it again, albeit at a much larger scale. The last great Depression in the 1930's led to the USA enacting the Glass-Steagall Divide bill, which basically created clear guidelines and a firewall between high risk "investment banks", and regular consumer "commercial banks". This prevented private capitalists being able to cross over and take consumer banks, backed by Government guarantees and funding, on hugely risky business activity that could see bankruptcy and loss of the small guys' savings, and then for the government backer needing to bail out the private sector entrepreneurs. This firewall successfully regulated and created a stable society and financial system for 60 years. In the late 1980's and 1990's Wall Street and the Financial sector continually lobbied politicians to remove this firewall, and as explained earlier, unlock credit to the poor and less educated masses.

In the end the Clinton Administration repealed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, and from then on the stage was set for the next Great Financial crisis, which would this time threaten the world, as globalization now made the mixing or co-mingling of banking activities, a spreading phenomenon of the western world. We had to repeat the lesson now unlearnt. The words "Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it" ring all too horribly true in this context. Self grasping greed drove this pre-meditated set of behaviours, with Wall Street being the main beneficiary of this greed driven strategy.

Rajun notes that The Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac loan books were full of toxic loans to people who were never financially educated or whose incomes were able to be able to pay off these materialistic carrots dangled in front of them. These people were sold a lie and encouraged to "have it all". Everyone got greedy, consumed more, and a few well educated and savvy professionals and organizations milked the system till it imploded. The unsustainable nature of this course of action created temporary but illusory hopes with increased jobs and materialistic gadgets and objects for all, but the collapse has seen these taken away, or now sitting idle, or to be demolished as in the case of swathes of half finished Developer building estates in materialistically obsessed countries like Ireland.

Rajan argues that the end-result is some countries are closer to bankruptcy than ever before, taxes are rising, social policy benefits and services are being slashed, all which affect more of the poor masses who are saddled with personal bankruptcy or lifetime debt burdens on assets now worth a fraction of what they paid for them. The privileged few who architected and understood the dynamics of this debt madness, are in many cases now seen to be owing Banks many millions of dollars in easy credit loaned monies for assets also worthless. The difference is they still retain much garnered wealth which they are using to engage legal teams to fight off bankruptcy, or do a "new deal" which enriches them again via a tokenistic settlement to creditors and banks, who in turn are getting bailouts from governments which means the taxpayer must end up paying for the rich debtor bailouts over many years.

The rich get richer, there is no effective accountability and the average person feels powerless and victimized by events beyond their control. Wealth re-distribution via corruption is abhorrent as instead of the wealth flowing downwards ala as advocated in The Spirit Level philosophy, the author notes it will serve to increase the gap between the rich and the poor, but this time the poor will be personally saddled with not just their own debts, but also the reduced governmental safety net of services as a result of massive government bailouts of the rich and the immoral practices of Banks, Financial Services organizations, and individuals. Acclaimed writer Naom Chovsky notes that the seeds of such immoral behaviour remain as the lessons unlearnt or penalties unenforced and which now sow the seeds of future sins.

The window for the chance of reform may have already passed, notes Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, a respected Head of Economics at Boston University. He believes that the recently passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill by the Obama Administration is highly compromised and fails to address the systemic problems that created the sub-prime fiasco, nor does it contain statutes which will arrest the greed and self-serving nature of Wall Street. This bill was supposed to be a replacement for the Glass-Steagall Act which contained the lessons learnt from the Great Depression. He notes the power and influence of Wall street exercised on the Obama Administration via lobbyists which have castrated this new bill. The new bill does not impose limits on Leverage nor on bank size, and derivatives will still exist in the same way but for being channelled through a Central Exchange whose powers of intervention are limited. The Bill in its final form also dropped key baselines for capital requirements needed at banks, and does not proscribe limits on the type of derivatives permissible, beyond vague classification such as being "investment grade".

Economists such as Rajan, Kotlikoff, and others see the real risk is that instead of re-introducing the Glass-Steagall Act in a slightly updated form, the powerful vested business and Wall Street interests now have a Bill that allows President Obama to portray an image to voters of being tough on Wall Street, when in fact the opposite is true. They argue that nothing has changed in the minds of the key business leadership figures of these profit driven enterprises, and that Gordon Gekko's "greed is good" is well and alive and just waiting for a chance to be expressed again. Funnily enough Gordon Gekko is about to appear on our screens again as the prophetic title "Greed Never Sleeps". The critics of the new legislation argue the fact that the Glass-Steagall Act was tight and only amounted to 17 pages of statute that prevented well paid lawyers being able to create loopholes in the legislation. The new Obama bill is a massive 2,319 pages of legislation which will create opportunities for loopholes, legal defences when future culprits are finally brought to court, and these inconsistencies will allow immoral and unintentional consequences and avoidance of legal sanction to arise.

The bottom line is that the "means to the end" is no longer important, with the examples given showing how increasingly the lack of moral values is creating a new attitude of "any means to get to the end". More disconcerting is that the end is increasingly tied to the "I" via materialism. It is a key tenet of all the great philosophical and religious schools of thought, except that perhaps of the Greek school of materialism by Democrats, that attachment to external material objects is an outcome from a lack of an inner life. This materialism or consumerism is a key trait of modern society, aided and abetted by the science of marketing, and the retailing industries in their various forms. Who you are today is more and more linked to what you materially possess, more than ever before.

So we produce more in response to this demand, and consume more based on the seduction of marketing themes that promote beauty, health and importance as being tied to objects external to us which at the same time are based on perfectionistic ideals that judge most of us now as being inferior. This spiralling process has led man to the edge of an abyss. Al Gore summed up the dilemma of man with his aptly titled documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth". In a society that distracts itself with objects, and that acts as if its actions do not lead to consequences that "I" might have to face, the Global Warming issue is one that has dragged us all kicking and screaming out of a self indulgent denial, into a brief period or window of opportunity amidst this crisis. The planet cannot be avoided, fooled, delayed by legal tactics, nor can one shift to a place where we can completely avoid facing the consequences for our actions over generations.

A 2010 "Global Biodiversity Outlook" report by the United Nations makes alarming reading. Its summary states that the natural processes that sustain human life, such as crop production and clean water, are facing a high risk of "rapid degeneration and collapse" because of the record extinction rate of animal and plant species. Extinction rates have exponentially climbed up to 1000 times that of the historical average rate, and the interdependent contribution of these species to critical life sustaining processes was in many cases not mapped nor fully understood. The damage to these critical life sustaining processes is apparent and accelerating, without anyone knowing at what point these become irreversible. The report states emphatically that we cannot as humanity live or conduct ourselves in our current consumeristic way as "business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet".

The most alarming aspect of this report is that the United Nations has found that there is no will to change on behalf of its member countries and their governments. The report found that a key target to halt species extinction rates by 2010 was not reached by any of the 193 signatory countries to the binding UN Biodiversity Treaty, including Australia. The report states there is no collective will to change. The "I" of member countries, their governments, institutions and populations are still determined to conduct themselves with "business as usual" attitudes. This fatal approach to our planet and ourselves is reinforced by the failure in 2009 for the same group of countries to set Global Warming binding agreements on emissions. In effect it represents the same "business as usual" attitude in the face of increasing evidence of mass scale planetary changes, and a convenient black and white attitude of pointing to a lack of "empirical" evidence to what is a "grey" complex and systemic issue that cannot be judged or looked at in strictly quantifiable perspectives. 

However the risk for mankind is that like the monkey, we may collectively choose to sit still, grasp our "oranges" of material consumption, self obsessed lifestyles, and not let go when faced with a great deterioration of the quality of life, or even of dying due to not being able to let go of the "oranges". As it stands now I am not convinced our current leaders intend to change in the way that is needed. The behaviours being exhibited by the current leaders across the spectrum of society are too rooted in the "I or Me" paradigm to lead the way to a paradigm shift of "Us or We" that would cease the destructive practices that create this self obsessed society. The Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009 has been judged as an abject failure due to the self grasping positions and behaviours of a few key nations. Our imperative is to force societal change to an inclusive, empathic society that understands the interconnectedness of all things, and which embodies a set of morals that guides and leads others to making a similar transition. This is not occurring at a mass consciousness level and science informs us that the time to make this shift is rapidly running out.

In 2003, the New Scientist magazine published a special report by a team of eminent scientists that gave 5 possible scenarios which if any of these came to fruition, would spell the end of life for humans on this planet as we know it. The sobering conclusion of this report was twofold. Firstly, all 5 scenarios are currently activated within the world in 2003, but not yet critical. Secondly the current processes and views used by man to deal with threats will not succeed with these challenges in the critical 5-10 year timeframe or window that the scientists conclude we collectively have to get on top of each of these issues. In 2010 all 5 issues are still active, and the clock is ticking, and the monkey is still grasping his orange. The global warming issue is the greatest long term threat in this list of 5 threats. When one considers the way mankind is facing up to(or not) this issue, one can appreciate the solemn truth of the scientists observations about traditional processes and views failing us.

The Global Warming issue went from a marginalized, ridiculed, fringe green movement fancy, to front row and centre in one year thanks to Al Gore. The denial and minimization continues however as all the major industrialized countries argue about the science, the impact, the timing, the significance, and the need for action that would impact their "economies" in the face of this crisis. The United Nations Reports on Global Warming by a panel of 150 inter governmental scientists has twice seen involved scientists accusing the scientists from USA and the oil producing economies of trying to minimise the wording, statistics, conclusions, and the scientific input on these reports.

The predicted impacts of Global Warming such as massive weather extremes, like the 2010 unforeseen floods that have devastated Pakistan, have seen critics of Global Warming, in the face of being unable to deny the event happened, to then fall back on the argument of "prove it is linked to global warming". This is a form of denial as science cannot produce empirical evidence for all its own claims, yet this argument is a powerful one used to suppress advocates of new ideas in many contexts, as it justified as being the "only" basis on which decisions on change can be based. Not only is this a flawed argument, but it effectively stalls for time which is like the monkey sitting still and not being prepared to release the orange of the old ways of living.

In Australia we have seen prominent economist Ross Garnault publish his report on the economic implications for Australia, based on the most recent science of global warming. His conclusion is that it will cost more if we do nothing to avert the worst scenario of global warming, than if we bite the bullet and act now with measures which include carbon credit pricing into industry through an emissions trading scheme(Wright et al: 2008). The response of Australian political and business leaders has been conservative and possibly understating the seriousness of the problem.

Heather Ridout, speaking for the Australian Industry Group(Wright et al: 2008), has warned that a million jobs could be lost if Australia gets the Carbon Trading scheme wrong. The Federal Liberal and Labour parties, and others, have adopted the proposal that Australia do nothing until other key nations take the same first step. In a sense this promotes gridlock, as who will take the first step and adopt the leadership stance while the available time window to react and prevent the worst scenario emerging, shrinks each passing year. In the face of Ross Garnaults and others scientific and economic conclusions that the price to pay later will be worse than what we will pay now, still we risk grasping onto the "orange" of short term outcomes and await our fate.    

The bottom line of all that is mentioned here is that collectively we now have futurists, scientists, researchers, and commentators all calling for change. Some scientists are stating the earth is now engaged in its 6th mass extinction, and that a critical loss of biodiversity, quality of life, and possibly a loss of up to three quarters of human life, is now an emerging risk(Corwin:2009). Others, such as Timothy Clack(2009), point out that the next great world war will be fought over survival issues, and the preservation of access to key basic resources such as water and food. The 20th century saw 188 million people killed through war and organized violence(Clack:2009). This trend is growing in numbers century by century. The futurists, commentators, and researchers are broadly arguing that the collective leadership models of society are failing us in confronting some key grasping behaviours that underpin much of our global destructive habits. The abuses at the corporate level can be seen as a symptom of this trend.

The key will be for all of us if we like the monkey will just sit still, live our lives in the ways we have traditionally done so, not just in our own lives, but just as our parents and ancestors have done so since the Industrial Revolution of the 1800's. We may only have 10 to 20 years to make the choice to change, and to shape the effects of that change. Science empirically has shown us that change is taking place around us, due to us, but not in ways and producing effects that will serve us, or sustain us in numbers on this planet with a quality of life. The remaining window of opportunity is whether we can release our own individual and collective "oranges" of greed and self grasping and self-serving behaviours and agendas, and start to do life from a new place and a new mindset. In terms of what the new paradigm needs to look like, read my companion article Grounded and Present - Embodied Leadership and Sacred Activism, and heed the wake-up call that many are now yelling out to all of us.

Contact Richard Boyd to find out more how he can help you to help us all in this most critical stage of our planet's evolution. 

Tel: +61-8-93702341
Email: r.boyd@corporateenergetics.com.au
Website: www.corporateenergetics.com.au

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