It
is our perception and the meaning we construct to what we see that
defines the environment we exist within. Without our perception, the
environment has no definition and no meaning; the meaning originates
from our social relatedness and consciousness. We project our own
versions of reality onto the environment and make interpretations
through introspection, and this is what defines the nature of the
environment. Even the simplest environments are complex, something we
usually don’t consider, having multiple meanings for us to interpret and
understand. When it comes to our reality, our self and environment
cannot exist without the other. Our individual perspectives can only be
the partial truth.
Currently there is an increasing consensus and mutual understanding
between quantum mechanics and theology, particularly Eastern theology.
Each stream of thinking is coming to some accommodation with the other,
although this is not abetted by grave criticism from some quarters.
Nonetheless the meaning of our very existence and self identity,
awareness, and consciousness has become a very popular subject, not from
the 19th Century philosophical
perspectives, but from the spiritual viewpoint, free of institutional
religion. A crisis of faith and rapid political and socio-economic
structural transformations are taking place which is leaving the
classical ethical philosophies to the history books, as if they are
deemed not relevant to today’s post industrial societies. Obedience to
traditional authorities and institutions have waned in favour of
geographical and social mobility where urbanization, new emerging
technologies, media and peer opinion. Membership and identity is
anchored to different symbols, values, and institutions than was the
case twenty, thirty, and fifty years ago.
In a similar manner to cognitive science, quantum mechanics is on the
verge of new understanding of the universe, totally changing the way we
understand it. The Newtonian paradigm of a set order, place, and
independent existence, where objects are tangible, definable, solid,
existing, and where interaction with other objects was of secondary
importance has influenced our comprehension of conceptual reality.
Independent reality prevailed. However within the quantum world objects
exist in a relational manner to each other in a phenomenal reality, far
from being the static entities that Newtonian physics envisaged. This
relational manner infers interdependence for existence, rather than
independence.
These relational concepts are difficult to comprehend within
industrialized occidental society, where orientations have been towards
independence rather than interdependence, probably a paradigm that
blocked physicists’ awareness of quantum interdependencies for many
years. When relational principles are applied to the humans, we see the
inter-connectiveness of our body where all organs are somehow linked and
must work together to create continuous interactive processes or else we
will not exist as a person. Humanity itself lives within an
interconnected Earth that is able to seek self-balance, as if it were a
living entity. Humankind, the Earth, and the universe are interconnected
and only exist through our perception. Our realties are culturally
defined which connects us as a society. According to Daniel Goleman our
brain has developed where our interrelationships develop a brain to
brain link up, primarily through the communication of emotions. Even our
thinking and reasoning depends upon socially manifested language for
meaning. We are not independent of anything.
This complexity is contrary to how the brain tries to order things, as
our cognitive architecture is limited. The French philosopher Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin’s postulation that we are not human beings having a
spiritual existence; we are spiritual beings having a human existence
brings us into the metaphysical esoteric, which cannot be avoided in
such subject material. What we must ask here is whether we are really
getting closer to understanding the concept of our true self reality, or
are we just creating another paradigm to explain our identity in a
different way.
What is important to this argument is what is our “true nature”
and how does our “true nature” link to ethics and sustainability?
Is this a socio-cultural link? Or is this a link of universal nature? In
other words are there inner assumptions and values inherent within us or
are they completely socialized? How are they relevant to the
phenomenology of our thinking, opportunity, action, strategy, and the
universe of objects within our environment?
We must identify the phenomenon that blocks us from seeing our true
self, so we can understand the interrelationships between self, ethics,
sustainability, and opportunity and strategy. What gives us our ethical
outlook? Are our ethical bondages associated in any way with our true
nature? How have they been covered up by our society, civic and
religious values? And, if so, how do we handle them? Are we just encoded
biological robots, or is there something much more substantive in us?
What gives us our views about sustainability? Why do we believe in the
human mythology about our immortality, superiority of the human species,
and our ability to dominate nature? Is the realization of our “true
nature” going to change anything? Is our awareness important to
survival as we know it? Why do we create defence mechanisms to deny
these realities? Why do we continue to deny these realities that
conflict with the myths we live by?
The development of our cerebral cortex gave rise to our higher levels of
consciousness. This gave humankind many new brain functions with the
capacity for both social and environmental interaction. We became
thinking mammals that could take account of both the self and the
environment in our actions. This brings back the question of who are
we?
The concepts of “I” and “me” is a constructed identity and
all of our behaviour is construed within this identity. This is the
false self that we live within which performs the role of a macro-defence
guarding mechanism maintaining our survival, and suppressing the innate
qualities of our true self. However this comes at great cost. The
identity that we create to protect ourselves becomes our identity, and
we don’t even know it.
When we can escape the influence of our emotions, and this requires a
massive effort focusing our attention, we begin through our innate
empathy to develop an understanding of our self, others, and the
environment. The intensity of “I” and “me” sublimes into
the background with our emotions. The boundaries become blurred and we
start coming in touch with part of our self that we are not normally
aware of. For example, a ‘macho’ male may find doors to his
feminine side, a hardnosed accountant may develop compassion for others
in need that he or she previously didn’t realize were in need, and a
person may come to the realization that they are hurting people with
their behaviour. These are all insights into other realities that we
don’t normally see. Eventually under all of our emotions we find a
simple state of humility, awe at life around us, and a feeling of joy.
This is where we can see connections like never before. We see the world
as a connected entity, connected by stories, interactions, proximity,
phenomena, and being. When we buy a pair of shoes from a shop assistant
in New York, Sydney, or London, we see the life of the person as a human
that has meaning. We see the organization he or she works for, the
immigrant workers who work behind the store, their stories,
disappointments and aspirations. We see the people assembling the shoes
in factories in far off lands, their life and challenges, their
children, and the schools they attend. We see the farmers grazing the
cattle that will end up as leather for the shoes will use. This is all
part of an interdependent chain of activity and being. This creates
meaning. We are connected as one system.
If we accept these interconnections, interrelationships, and
interdependencies, we have a collective unconscious. Jung went
further and posed that there is a collective unconscious as a
prehistoric collection of information, instincts, myths, stories,
images, universal symbols that are universally understood across all
cultures. The ‘collective unconscious’ embeds all our ancestral
experience and concepts of religion and morality. This inherited content
is passed from generation to generation and is part of a transcendental
reality, linking mind to mind and mind to nature. All people are born
with this reservoir of our experience as a species. Although we are not
conscious of it, this collective past influences our present behaviour.
Some experiences that may come from the ‘collective unconscious’
include, love at first sight, déjà vu experiences, immediate
recognition of some symbols, reactions to music (like the drum beat),
and near death experiences.
To Jung this proved some connection with all nature through the ‘collective
unconscious’. Jung likens the external world to one of illusion,
something similar to the world of Maya in Hindu theology.
Our egos (jivatman) are individual souls which are actually
extensions of the one and only Atman, universal energy or God who
allows an independent identity to manifest itself in part of himself.
Through this we are all connected, independent, but interdependent. When
we die we realize the illusion that we actually existed as we are part
of God.
These ideas were considered esoteric at the time but are becoming
integrated into the concepts of quantum mechanics today. If we disagree
with Jung, we can believe in institutionalized religion, a supreme being
and our supreme place on Earth. Another alternative is that we are
biological robots with brains that function in a similar manner to a
computer with schemata as programs. When we die, the brain goes dead and
our identity is lost, just like machine-code being erased from the RAM
when a computer is switched off.
A realization of the humility of our true self will bring a profound
realization of our interdependence with each other and the world around
us. This decreases our sense of “I am” and “me”,
increasing our concern for all life. If we stare at the planets in the
night sky and try to imagine the distances from Earth involved, we soon
realize how insignificant we really are. We are just one person in the
whole universe, so how can I focus on ‘me’ without harming the
whole. We have no worldly justification for our self centeredness, yet
our emotionally attached self is usually painfully connected to the
emotions and desires that we have learned to have from our social
constructions. This colours our sense of humility, takes away our
awareness, sense of fairness to others and our innate sense of morality.
Our abstractions have evolved to a paradigm where everything is
commoditized to the extent where relationships can be seen as a trade of
favours, affection, support, sex, and service in exchange for the
fulfilment of personal needs and wants by others. Value to the
individual and others is the denominator and definer of relationships.
Our tendency as individuals is to make decisions that tend to benefit
the self over decisions that fulfil ethical obligations to others. Again
there is a conflict between ‘what is best for me?’ and ‘what
is the right thing to do?’ which is usually answered according to
the constructs of our self. Everyday decisions often have paradoxes due
to their particular situational circumstances that are not covered by
civic and legal codes. For example a salesperson desperately requiring a
large order to achieve his or her budget, may accept an order from a
customer knowing that his or her firm doesn’t have the capacity to
supply it, which would put the customer to great inconvenience. In such
cases only decisions based upon our “true nature” without the
influence of emotions will be able to govern ethical conduct. The
ultimate test is whether we feel comfortable, where the answer will most
often depend upon the level of self one is anchored to [66]. Most issues
are complex situations, not easily addressed by ethical rules, thus
relying on our intuition for solutions.
Some people don’t realize we are doing destructive things that hurt
others. Sometimes this hurt can lead to grave and serious illness. If we
switch our self from the usual “I am” to a different viewpoint,
i.e., the feeling of being superior, equal, or inferior to another,
from one of these viewpoints we can generate new sets of emotions.
For example, if we take a superior view point to others we may generate
intensive highhandedness. If we view others as equals we may generate
feelings of jealousy and competitiveness, and if we view others from an
inferior position, we may generate feelings of jealousy and envy. This
helps us see the perspectives of our false sense of ourselves and the
source of our behaviours. If we can substitute humility for our emotions
(humility does not mean subservience or inferiority), we can see our
relationships without the emotional intensities that existed before. We
can see our inter-connectiveness, how our actions hurt people, and how
we stray from our innate morality.
It’s easy for us to be destructive. It’s easy for us to be complacent.
It’s easy for us to follow society and go with the flow. What is
difficult is to accept who we are, and from the humility of our self be
creative. Humankind is good at being destructive and maintaining what
is, as it feels secure. One of our deepest desires is to feel secure and
this is what society and belongingness provides. Our innate sense of
humility has been covered up by our primal sense of greed.
On the scale of civilization, many nations have amassed more resources
than they really need. This drives the economic system where greed
translates into borrowing and consumption. All done because this is what
society expects and we are shaped and nurtured by what society
collectively values. As Garrett Hardin postulated, justice, liberation
and natural self determination, serve to cover up the true motives of
greed, envy, and power.
Our economics paradigm is partly based on our greed, rational in the
sense of being efficient. Therefore the cheapest and most economical way
of doing things is the most desirable. As resources don’t necessarily
reflect their true costs and the cost of waste doesn’t as yet form any
part of the accounting system, our current methods of exploiting
resources, farming, and manufacturing will always be unsustainable.
Mines, logging, conventional mono-cropping systems, massive centralized
urban development creating mega-cities, are affecting life as we know
it, changing both the balances of the eco-system and the psycho-system
of humanity. Our consumption has great costs whether we like it or not.
Production and consumption are expressions of power. We have the power
to utilize the resources of the Earth and produce what we want. This
marking of the environment is not much different than cats marking their
territories with their urine. Our behaviour is just sophisticated animal
behaviour. We don’t know any better as we are socially programmed to act
this way.
Technology has enabled the exponential growth of consumption. Through
technology we have been able to extract more resources from our
biosphere and let go of the wastes back into the troposphere with the
blessings of institutionalized religion which deemed mankind the master
of all species on the Earth. The digging up of our resources, amassing
them for ourselves, and dumping the wastes after our consumption is just
the reality created by our primal and material self on a global scale.
And just as our primal and material self operates, all this was done
without much thinking as a collective being. Rather this is being done
through our ignorance and reptilian greed – disconnected from our
reasoning. Our cerebral cortex is still dominated by our reptilian brain
which keeps us territorial animals, greedy to amass more resources for
select groups, without the ability to see consequences of our actions.
Our discoveries, knowledge, development have all been undertaken in the
fear of survival and in the fulfilment of our collective ego to show how
great we are over others, with the narrative of “we are superior to
you”.
Our existence through socialization and religion on Earth has been
arrogant, when we are actually only one of many passing species calling
the Earth our home. Humans have been on the earth for about 100,000
years, only a very short time in relation to the age of the universe,
which is approximately 4,000 billion years old. Civilization only
developed around 4,000 years ago, yet over the last 200 years, the
biosphere has been threatened in a profound way, unprecedented by any
other species over the last billion years.
Nature has created almost two million species of which humankind are
only one of them. The earth has been inhabited by an additional 7.8
million species which don’t exist today. Humankind depends upon the
other species and environment for survival, yet humankind has developed
it’s own arrogance and ignorance of the environment, enforced by
collective beliefs, which are reinforced by culture, religion, morals,
and laws. It is the system of current ethics and beliefs that are
restricting us, as life on Earth is sustainable, but we are not. This
narrow ego-centric sense of who we are is only a social construction
that has been at the centre of our humanity, holding back progress. For
example, up until the Seventeenth Century, we thought that the Sun,
Moon, and planets of our solar system all revolved around the Earth.
We actually own nothing. “I am” and “me” is only a passing
entity that is custodian of an illusion. We share the Earth, can never
control it, we can temporarily occupy it, but the moment we think we own
it, our awareness falls into one of the domains of our self that deludes
our perceptions and sense of morality. A custodian rather than an owner
has a responsibility of mutual respect to share the resources of the
Earth and consider the other custodians. Taking would be on the basis of
need rather than want. Therefore our ethics and responsibilities are not
civic, are not philosophical, are not doctrine, are not dogma, they are
part of our innate true nature.
Our emotions enable us to take specific paths within a universe full of
multiple possibilities of reality. It is here that our emotions override
our innate sense of morality taking us away from the potential universe
that our true self could prevail within. As emotions are universal to
different cultures common archetypes of greed, indulgence, envy,
jealousy, need for power and control, etc., take us down a universe of
reality that is parallel but different from a universe of innate
humility. The universe is a state of mind and through the dominating
archetypes of emotion, they become physical ones with phenomenon
occurring according to the laws of the archetype governing it. We are
locked through socialized psychic constitutions with certain sets of
emotions that endlessly go around and around creating the same history,
without any possibility of seeing that we are hurting others.
It is the archetypes that we see the world through that gives meaning to
the world. This defines our own reality and potential future
possibilities. The values we put on things are the “truths” – all
reality is our construction. As Jung postulated, mankind is the second
creator of the world and gives it objective existence.
Towards New Ethics and Sustainability
The problem with the above arguments about ethics and our
responsibilities towards sustainability is that the ideas of self
humility are too far away from the mainstream of world philosophical
thought. This was unlike the American Indian, Australian Aboriginal, and
New Zealand Maori civilizations that saw their role in life to act as
custodian of the land for future generations. These were sustainable
civilizations that only demised because of invasion and massacre. The
contemporary world is caught up in the narrative of economic development
and progress.
The ego-centric focus on “I” and “me” prevents humanity
even understanding what the true problems really are. Current liberal
ethics that most societies are based upon have little room for personal
enlightenment. Institutionalized religion sees personal enlightenment as
an affront to traditional theology and is therefore not condoned. Our
personal sense of sustainability is confused with the myths that
religion has given us, deeming ourselves as the master of all species,
where in fact we are just one of the species and caretaker of the earth
for the next generation. Through our technical progress we feel that we
can control nature, which we can’t, so when we realize that we are not
immortal and don’t control nature, we either become spiritual beings,
work hard to build a legacy to surpass our own death, or become
psychotic trying to deny the truth.
Environmental destruction simply continues because it creates profits
for those in control of the resources and the global markets that demand
them. Powerful organizations both control and depend upon this. As we
saw with the 2008 bail outs of US corporations, they are a protected
species, not just embedded within the fabric of capitalism, but they are
capitalism itself. We have also seen that central planning does no
better of a job than the capitalist model, and the capitalist model
itself is under threat.
The capitalist system, although providing growth, has failed in
providing wellbeing and equity in most national scenarios and on a
global basis. Economies are facing grave macroeconomic imbalances that
are reflected in high rates of unemployment, massive budgeting deficits,
highly unstable currencies, balance of payments imbalances, and highly
volatile resource, commodity, and equity markets. In addition most
country’s resources have been exploited at rates that will see their
depletion within a relatively short time span. A by-product of the
current capitalist system is the increase of carbon and other
‘greenhouse’ gases released into the atmosphere and waterways to the
extent never seen before in the history of world evolution. This has
been accompanied by high rates of urbanization, the loss of traditional
ways of life, the declining rate of biodiversity on the planet, stress,
frustration, crime, mental illness and suicide. Absolute poverty in the
underdeveloped world is still in mammoth numbers and relative poverty is
on the rise in the developed world.
The prevailing nature of ego-centric organizations and the geo-political
divide and their conquering mentality is driving this destruction
even further. Our unsustainable practices are linked to the myths that
humankind has created to cope with our mortality and powerlessness. We
live with a “scorched Earth mentality”, with little concern for
the coming generations after us. Current solutions on the table
for solving climate, food, population, resource, and sustainability
issues are like what Ulrich Beck called “a bicycle brake on an
international jet”.
The restriction of plastic shopping bags, reduction of air conditioning
temperatures, and the use of biodiesel are measures that won’t make a
significant difference. These measures look and sound good on the
surface, and are measures governments and corporations are employing as
a fallacy to save the world. For every plastic shopping bag
saved, a tree is being illegally chopped down in a tropical rainforest
somewhere without any hesitation at all. More ecological problems are
caused by the primitive rather than industrialized practices.
Most popular literature on sustainability is devoid on the morality of
the issue and offer a functionalist and instrumentalist approach within
the narrative of branding, strategy, competitive advantage, and market.
They offer solutions to the symptoms rather than the root causes of the
problems.
There needs to be a paradigm change in our logic and narrative that can
transcend our rigid and culturally set ways of doing things to a new
level. The current ecological crisis is primarily a crisis of our own
ideas and approaches to the human-nature nexus. We have measured success
and wealth by what we have, therefore a new definition of wealth and
success is required. Our development must take account of both the
present and the future to meet our entire needs and keep the environment
in equilibrium. This means redefining the goals of humanity which would
result in new cultural and social traditions that can form the
foundations of a new society. This will involve replacing technological
dominating, reductionist, mechanistic orientation with an
anti-mechanistic orientation that promotes a new social order. Anything
else would be superficial, appeasing, and stopgap.
Ethics and sustainability cannot be treated as being independent of
everything else within our lives. These concerns must be integrated into
the person before they can be integrated into the organization. To think
otherwise would be a big mistake.
Our economic system is supported on the basis that human beings are
rational and calculate matters according to their own interests. This
translates into selfishness and greed where natural resources are
harvested and used wastefully, often in the most uncreative ways.
Likewise technology increases productivity and enables the production of
surpluses which can benefit many. If this waste did not exist and our
resources were distributed fairly, poverty would no longer exist today.
The problems of the world can be fixed by a matter of redistribution. In
addition, through proper practices more than double the population of
today can be fed through agriculture. By definition there can be no
sustainability without equity.
However in actual fact poverty is not the real problem, it’s only a
symptom. The real problem is the hijacking of our innate humility by our
emotions. Most attempts to solve world poverty have failed because they
have been motivated by fame and gain by many of the World’s
institutions. How many times have they tried? How many times have they
failed?
Leadership is a matter of morality, rather than a tool for looking after
sectional interests. Even our concept of freedom is based on
individualism. Liberal parliamentary democracies are adversarial in
nature where the winner takes all.
The world is always changing according to the doctrine of natural
selection. Natural selection is the basis of competition through the
Schumpeterian concept of creative destruction that has driven our
evolution and development. According to the doctrine of natural
selection the species struggle for survival culminates with only the
fittest surviving. However we are finding out plants, animals, and even
the biosphere works in cooperation rather than competition with other
entities to survive. We still live in a state of blissful ignorance; the
metaphor of Adam and Eve taking the forbidden fruit of sustainability.
Our current practices as a species have evolved out of our lack of
awareness and cultural ignorance of the consequences for survival. We
still have not developed the correct practices required for survival in
our global situation today. The shifting balance of power between
humankind and the Earth is a question of great importance. Natural
selection is about trial and error until a species determines the
current practices that are necessary for survival. Our constructed human
paradigms need to change.
To truly achieve this requires awareness. Seeing through our
dysfunctional behaviours needs awareness. Vision needs awareness, living
in the now and a balanced locus of control. This is vital in tapping our
psychic and physical energies.
We must also forget about our past stories of successes and failure so
we can look at any opportunities in unique ways, rather than the ways of
the past that emotionalize what we see. We must also eliminate the hopes
and excitement we might have for the future so that we can evaluate the
issues without allowing expectation to influence us.
The author doesn’t mean perfection, as perfection itself is just another
form of emotional defence. Perfection may stop learning, which is vital
to any opportunity, strategy, and organization. The goal should be
balance between all the competencies we have, rather than perfection in
any one area. It’s the journey we must value, not the end. Reaching the
end is just another delusion which puts finality to something, where it
may just be the beginning. Systems never have beginnings and ends.
Believing one has reached the end will stifle initiative, creativity,
and ingenuity in favour of complacency.
Intellect triggers rational consideration and adversarial debate about
issues which brings up our defences preventing feeling and intuition.
Mastery is not based on intelligence and knowledge. It’s about
experience and the feelings one derives. It’s possible to read
everything and gain instruction about how to drive a car. But until one
has actually sat in the car and tried to drive it, one will never
experience the feeling of what it is like to drive a car. Without
experience intelligence and knowledge has little use. Awareness is the
key to feeling. If we are not aware, we can never experience.
Intelligence and knowledge without awareness is just like a book on a
shelf. Without the knowledge from the book being used and felt, it is
primarily useless. Mastery is not about success, it is also about
failure and learning. True mastery is about persistence and
perseverance.
Once our awareness develops, we will start to see the multiple
perspectives the environment offers. Just like the line drawing of the
cube at the beginning of this chapter, everything has multiple
perspectives. However these multiple perspectives can bring
contradictions and confusion. Our intelligence and knowledge cannot
easily make sense or meaning out of it. Only our feelings from
experience and intuitive skills develop a perspective from which we can
make meaning. We have to learn that life is not based on fact, but
perspective. The major decisions made in business and war, have been
made from perspective, rather than the facts. Perspective defines our
reality and how we respond accordingly, which is counterintuitive to how
we have been made to believe we should think. We need awareness to have
true wisdom.
The simple act of listening shows how we sometimes wander through life
with a low level of awareness. How many times when someone is speaking
to you, are you preoccupied with other things? How often do we daydream
when others are speaking? How often do you believe that what you think
is right and what the other has to say is not worth listening to? How
often are you just waiting for an opportunity to espouse what you think?
How often are you just thinking of rebuttals, arguments against what a
person is saying rather than actually listening to the content of what
they are actually saying? How often are you making judgments about the
person speaking or what they are saying? How often are you looking for
an opportunity to disagree, agree, or run away? How often are you
evaluating and comparing what a person is saying against what you
believe? How often do you fail to seek clarification about something you
don’t understand? Do you try and control the interaction by trying to
dominate the conversation? Our listening habits usually show that our
level of personal awareness is low and we are influenced by so much of
our own emotion just in the act of listening to someone. This is at the
cost of seeing new perspectives and exercising our ability to empathize
with others.
The ability to listen effectively is a powerful tool in developing
awareness, empathy, humility, and consequently understand new
perspectives. Listening is much more than hearing, it involves being
attentive to what others say, observing emotion, behaviour and body
language, facial expressions, and fighting off our own internal
distractions that lessen of ability to listen. Listening requires much
more discipline, attention, and concentration than we expect. Think
about it, how much self discipline do we need to really effectively
listen to someone? Once we have achieved the discipline, attention, and
concentration really needed to listen, we realize how powerful a tool
listening is in understanding what a person has to say, and from where
emotionally a person is saying it. Listening skills can be developed and
refined through active and reflective listening techniques, where the
listener repeats, paraphrases and reflects upon what the speaker is
saying as a means of clarifying the message that the speaker is
intending to convey to us.
This is a personal struggle. When we are aware that our thinking is
slipping into the negative, focus on thinking uplifting thoughts, as the
brain can only process one thought at a time. In this way, through
disciplined practice, one can reduce the negativity within the mind, by
changing the thinking flow, in a similar way one changes slides on a
projector.
Our identity begins to evolve, becoming sustainable and able to flow
with the forces of change around us. We are aware of our own emotions
and what delusions they try to develop in us. Once we can see through
these delusions, our ego-centric tendencies begin giving way to a real
sense of humility. Our innate sense of morality emerges. We see the
crisis of meaning around us, the lack of morality, greed and
selfishness, capitalism for what it really is, and the unsustainable
ways of our society. We begin to question society’s dreams and replace
them with our own, gaining our personal freedom from the repression of
our society, our freedom to have and follow our own aspirations. This is
where our personal transformation takes place and we reincarnate or
regenerate into a new sense of self and orientation towards life.
It is only when we have this personal ability to change that we can work
through the pain of changing organizations. Leadership is about shifting
style to fit changing situations, although values and ethics will remain
as solid as a rock. Liberation is about awareness to see new ideas,
opportunities within a complex environment and have the confidence to
transcend our current state of mind through enacting upon our new
perceptions. The most probable ethical leadership qualities that will
have importance to management for perhaps the rest of this century may
include;
- A leader must have empathy to understand. However this
empathy must not be mechanical, it must be a way of being. People
need the quality of the leader’s presence in the ‘here and now’
committed wholeheartedly to the interaction.
- A leader should always have an ethical framework within his or her mindset
that looks at possibilities that maximize benefits for the Earth and welfare
of the people.
- These ethics should be applied consistently without any lapse. This may
often mean that many decisions may not make financial gain for the firm in
the short term. This may also mean that some decisions may not have a
clearly immediate ethical path to follow. This will be a quality that will
be extremely critical to the survival of firms in the future.
- A leader must perform his or her duties without fear or favour to
stakeholders. Decisions and appointments must be merit based, fair,
transparent, sincere, and not in any deceitful way to the public.
- A leader should never exploit others.
- A leader should ensure that his or her organization puts more resources
back into the community that it takes out.
- A leader must be close to his or her people, working alongside (if
possible), and interested in what is happening. Leading by example is the
most powerful way to win respect and change the assumptions, beliefs, and
values of a firm when needed.
- A leader should be very self disciplined and never lose their temper,
succumb to anger, or show their stress, etc., to others.
- A leader should not be motivated by personal gain and fame.
- A leader should show humility and not arrogance, and
- A leader should not be deluded by past successes and rest on their or the
company’s laurels.
Research has shown that high ethical standards on peoples’
behaviour has a high influence on the level of trust by potential customers,
suppliers, financiers, and employees, the public and business partners and as
such creates opportunities for a firm that may not have otherwise existed.
The mistake people make is that they may do these things once, when this must be
a continual process, a journey, not an end. Just look at the number of declining
Fortune List companies. Morality and sustainability are linked to
survival, and survival is linked to adaptation, which humans are loathed at
doing.
04.09.2012
