One of Many: Out of Control and Into Order by Dee Hock

Out of Control and Into Order

(This is an exerpt from the new book One From Many, posted by permission of the author)

by Dee Hock

This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy . . . The only tragedy in life is being used by personally minded men for purposes that you recognize to be base . . . --George Bernard Shaw

The . . . day brought deep blue skies and magnificent sunshine. The private park we had been creating for more than a decade was never more beautiful; our splendid home on the hill never more enticing; the views over valley, village, forests and ocean never more stunning. As the family scattered across the 200 acres to enjoy their bit of paradise, I could not forget how I had labored through the years to plant thousands of trees. Even the fastest growing evergreens would not reach maturity in my lifetime.

Hundreds of nuts from huge black-walnut trees surrounding the small Utah cottage where I had been born had been sprouted in pots, then planted as saplings throughout the ranch. They would not reach full maturity for a century. Redwoods would take even longer. In my imagination, I could wander at will under the magnificent canopy they would make, though I would never live long enough to experience it. Nor would my children or grandchildren.

The thought that someone, someday, without ever knowing how it came about might actually experience what the land ought to be was more than enough to bring contentment to the effort.

In a very real sense, each of the black walnuts from the ancestral tree contained no more than the idea of a black walnut tree, waiting for the conditions by which it could sprout and slowly realize its becoming. If seeds of the concepts of organization that had been growing in Old Monkey and me were planted in enough minds and nurtured by enough spirits, could they someday intermingle with seeds of similar ideas planted by others and grow into a forest of societal change? What difference if it took a hundred years, or two hundred, or even three.

A paragraph from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, by W. N. Murray puts it best. The last two lines are often attributed to Goethe, the German poet, philosopher and scientist; one of the great spirits of the past few centuries.

Until one is committed there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. The moment one commits oneself, then providence moves too. Multitudes of things occur to help that which otherwise could never occur. A stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one's favor all manner of unforeseen accidents, meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come their way:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

Within a year and a half after the adventure began, it was devouring my life. It was like 1969 all over again, multiplied many fold. Invitations to speak poured in from a bewildering variety of organization in dozens of countries. Other foundations volunteered funds to help pay travel and other basic expenses. Two young university professors came forward to ask if they could devote a year of sabbatical leave to learn and to help. A young man of means offered to work for nothing for the same purpose. Groups of people came forward asking for help in using concepts within existing organizations and in forming wholly new ones. Magazine articles emerged, along with overtures to write books and make films.

It was impossible accept more than a few of the opportunities, or to know who was deeply interested, and who merely saw an opportunity to serve self interest. At one point it seemed prudent to form a not-for-profit organization in order to accept tax free grants from foundations and other gifts in order to build more capacity. It did not take long to realize I had no desire to head another organization, whether for profit, or not-for profit, though it took some time to be rid of the responsibility and let the organization find its own way, uninhibited by a reluctant leader.

It has ever been my belief that, in the deepest sense, one can never own anything until they can give it up, freely, completely, without regret or remorse. Only then, can it never be lost or taken from them. Four years into our new adventure, the ranch in its entirely, our dream home, every acre, every building, every tree, spring and pond, every piece of equipment, was put on the market and sold without regret or remorse. Thus, it became ours forever, and we were free to open our lives to the possibilities then emerging.

As the years passed, there was opportunity to explore the concepts of chaordic, self organization with thousands of people from hundreds of organizations in dozens of industries – health care, education, religion, energy, agriculture, forestry, philanthropy, software development, finance, ocean fisheries, welfare, the military, global warming and conservation. In every case, there was no lack of knowledge about either the problems or what to do about them. At bottom, the problem, the problem was the same. There was no existing organization, in fact, no concept of organization capable of linking together th immense complex of organizations and people necessary to getting it done.

In none, could the most compelling problems be solved at the local level. Nor at the regional, national, or even global level. They were too complex to be fully understood at any single point and evolving too rapidly for any mechanistic, centrally devised plan to have any hope of success, even if it could be devised. Any solution would require a complex of effective, interdependent actions at every level, conducted with cohesion and coherence, yet free of command and control.

This is best illustrated by part of a speech made to hundreds of such organizations, modified only to fit the specifics of their circumstances. The excerpt that follows was to hundreds of doctors at the annual convention of one of the largest medical associations in the United States. After sharing the Visa story and underlying concepts, a small story was told.

My work has led to a little known system of health of which you may not be aware. In this system, every individual has a lifetime, health-care account. The medical history of each individual is electronically encoded in a health transaction card. encrypted so that it is available nationwide only to qualified providers of medical services selected by the individual. Emergency facilities are equipped to override the encryption in the event an individual is incapacitated.

Each provider of health-care has electronic equipment custom designed for their practice, yet compatible with the overall information structure. Thus, ninety-five percent of the system is incrementally owned and operated by tens of thousands of health-care providers and vendors in free and open competition with one another. Yet, it functions as a unified whole through common standards and cooperatively owned elements, such as a central switch to which everyone has access. An ever-increasing amount of health information and care is provided through inexpensive, interactive voice-data-video equipment in the home and at an increasing number of community locations open to the public.

The system has accumulated an immense amount of on-line, de-identified, patient data, invaluable for analysis of health trends, preventive measures, development of new drugs and tracking of epidemics or terrorist attacks. An abundance of information is electronically available to patients so that they can make informed choices for maintenance of their health. The system provides insurers and funders an immense variety of data, allowing them to custom design authorization and payment procedures to balance costs, losses and the level of service in competition with one another. The value of the data alone provides more than enough income to operate the system and finance its evolution.

The system provides a lifetime, customer account into and through which money flows electronically from a variety of sources – insurance companies, government, employers, personal earnings and charitable institutions. Funds are fully invested, yet accessible for health care at times or for purposes determined by the account holder in accordance with the reasonable constraints of the provider of funds. Funds are accessed by the same electronic encoded card that carries patient medical data. Each medical transaction is instantly authorized prior to performance of services. Payment is electronically made when service is rendered at a cost of less than two pennies per transaction.

Government retains the authority to tax and redistribute income or otherwise set public policy in order to insure a minimum level of care to each person, but is not involved as a direct provider, owner or controller of the system. Individuals have responsibility for and control over their own health and care, as well as the money required for that purpose. They have access to reliable, low cost medical care around the clock, seven days a week, wherever they may be or care to go. They initiate all transactions. It is a customer-driven system.

There is no need to continue this description because some of you are no doubt wondering if you're being misled; whether the system really exists. Every element of what I just described exists right now, right here in the United States, as well as in many other countries. Everything required is state-of-the-art, off-the-shelf, hardware, soft ware and communication equipment plummeting in price. More is being engineered at ever reducing costs a pace far beyond our capacity to put it to productive use. Every element of the kind of organization and management required has been pioneered, has come into being in other fields and has produced the results described. There is nothing to be learned, invented or tested. It is all at hand, right here, right now!

Why then does such a system still lie dormant in the field of health? The answer is not complicated. Who would you trust to own and control such a system? The Federal Government? The American Medical Association? HMOs? State Government? Major insurance or drug companies? A stock corporation? ( Each question is inevitably met with a chorus of "no" from the audience).

If you think carefully about every existing form of organization, I doubt there is a person in the room who would trust any of them with the direction of such a system, and rightly so. Only with the evolution of a chaordic organization in which all relevant and affected parties have an equitable voice in governance; in which the whole does not control the parts and the parts do not control the whole; in which competition and cooperation are harmoniously blended; only then, will a universal, safe, low-cost system of health evolve.

You don't have a health care problem. You have an institutional problem, and until you deal with it, things will get progressively worse.

Can such a thing be done in the field of health? First, a few facts. Sitting in this room are hundreds of the most intelligent, highly educated people in our society. You are the most technologically sophisticated people in the world, certainly when it comes to medical intervention. Most of you are among the most caring people in the world, else why would you have entered your profession? Your work is the most liberally financed in our nation; publically, privately, charitably and individually. For more than a century, you and your predecessors, have been among the most highly respected, trusted people in the world.

Any one of you will set out virtually anywhere in the world with a small rectangle of blue, white and gold, poly- vinyl-chloride in your pocket with complete confidence that you will be transported, housed, fed, clothed, and entertained, with all the complex information that requires--currency conversions, language translations and financial settlements – handled within seconds with complete privacy and 99.99% accuracy.

How can it be that you cannot provide anything remotely comparable if I walk down the hall or across the street between medical practitioners, hospitals or laboratories, let alone have the temerity to become ill or involved in an accident in another town or country?

How can it be that you can understand and deal effectively with the most intricate, complex systemic structure that trillions of years of evolution could create, a human body, yet remain in the dark ages when it comes to organizing yourselves into an effective, systemic structure for the benefit of those you purport to serve, even when doing so would serve your interests equally well?

How can it be that you tolerate rising rates of preventible medical error resulting in death or serious injury that would cause you to rise up in arms were it to happen in any other segment of society?

I hope you will forgive me for raising such deeply troubling questions. They are not raised in criticism of you as an individual, medical practitioner, your medical association, or even health care as a whole. Lord knows, you need no more of that! I raise them because of powerful belief that deep within your seemingly intractable problems is an incredible opportunity; because embedded in your industry are values essential to a more liveable world; because you have the ability, resources and training to swiftly deal with your organizational problem and create something extraordinary.

Have you the will to do it? Or more correctly, for I am a patient, have we the will to do it? Now that is a very different question. A question only you can answer, for if it is to happen the leadership must come from within the healthcare industry, and from within those who come forward to take the lead in such a new order of things.

The message delivered to the medical association has been delivered many times to large groups of educators. After sharing with them the Visa story and the organizational concepts on which it is based, I pretend to have discovered in my travels around the world, an educational system with which they may not be familiar.

In this system, every individual, from birth, has a lifetime, electronic learning account into which money flows from a variety of sources including taxes, family, friends, employers, charitable institutions, lenders and scholarships. The funds are under the control of the individual or, if under age, parents or guardians, but can only be used for educational purposes established between the account holder and the sources of funds.

The funds are accessed by an electronic transaction card acceptable at any qualified provider of learning services. Every transaction can be electronically authorized and paid at any time agreed between the learner and provider of learning services whether in advance, periodically or upon completion of the service, at a cost of less than less than two cents per transaction..

Learners have the choice of all-inclusive, site-specific schooling, or construction of a unique education by combining courses, educators, classes and self-instruction delivered either electronically or personally, at the home, at computerized centers or at traditional, site-specific schools, or at any combination of the three. Learning services are purchased by each individual or through purchasing groups formed in voluntary concert with others. Prices generally move freely by supply and demand, although they can be set by public policy where essential.

Funds derived through government power of taxation are allocated in any manner determined by public policy to be fair and equitable, however, they are not centrally collected and redistributed with more than half burned up in bureaucratic processes, as is now the case. The taxpayer merely transfers that portion allocated to learners in their own family to their respective educational account. That part taxed from the more affluent, or from corporations to be provided to the less affluent, flows electronically from tax payer to the account of the nearest economically deprived learners. The cost of administration, collection and redistribution of resources and other bureaucratic paraphernalia has dropped from more than half of funds collected to less than ten percent. It is expected to decline to less than five.

The system provides a variety of measurements of achievement, some of which are objective, some subjective, and others based on tracking achievements of learners as they transition from schooling to lifetime work-learning and full participation in society. The system has become incredibly data rich, with every learner and their family having electronic access to the performance of all providers of learning services and the relative success of their students. Government, employers and providers of learning services now have available vast amounts of organized, undeniably accurate, common data with which to make decisions.

The account is negotiable at any authorized provider of learning services, whether K-12, undergraduate, graduate, vocational or employer. The account is not age specific, thus allowing the learner to proceed at their optimum pace and relieving them of the stigma of lockstep, age requirements. However, it is subject to minimum requirements for levels of achievement within prescribed periods as a condition of access to the funds.

Individuals are free to make decisions about whether to follow a purely academic path, or lifetime work-learning, whether through apprenticeship, military service, public service, self-employment or corporate enterprise. At any time, they are free to move between academic and work-learning taking their account with them. Funds from public sources gradually decline and are replaced by funds from employers as the learner makes a transition from adolescence to adult participation in their life's work. Comparable degrees are awarded, whether achieved through the traditional academic path or through public or private work-learning.

The enormously expensive, site-specific, warehousing of bodies for the purpose of learning and the huge bureaucracies that formerly digested nearly half the money destined for learning, have evolved into a flexible, integrated system resulting in a much higher valuation of learning and greater compensation to effective providers of it.

When audiences of educators are asked by show of hands to whether they think I am deceiving them, or whether such an educational system actually exists, the response is very much the same as that from audiences in the medical field. Once they realize that all requisite technology is state-of-the-art, off-the-shelf, communications, hardware and software; that every element of the kind of organization and management required has been pioneered, has come into being in other fields and has produced the results described, they rarely have difficulty understanding , at the intellectual level, that they have an organizational problem, not an educational problem. Nor do they have trouble understanding that no existing form of organization could or should be trusted with the ownership, governance and evolution education as they know it ought to be. Questions are usually insightful and intense, often, when time permits, lasting for hours.

The same has been experienced in hundreds of groups in dozens of fields where there have been opportunities for such an exchange. But, with few exceptions there is a problem. It runs headlong into their perspective; their mechanistic, internal model of reality, which prevents the change of consciousness that such new concepts of organization require. What most seem unable to do is accept it in the depths of their being; to get it in the bone.

In the years since the fork in the road appeared and Old Monkey pushed me down "the one less traveled by," we have long puzzled over the nature of leaders who have had a profound affect on the direction of society. Mother Teresa, Buddha, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Martin Luther King, Galileo, Lao Tzu, Newton, Thoreau –the list goes on and on, from every continent, in every field of endeavor, throughout history. Few came from positions of wealth and power. Few were born to families of fame or fortune. Few were great orators. None were elected to do what they did. None had permission. Most were met with contempt and derision. Yet, somehow, their lives had profound affect on the consciousness of mankind.

What they had in common was uncommon ability to get beyond how things were, how they are and how they might become and immerse themselves in how they ought to be. But, even that was not the essential thing that made their lives so compelling. It was their conviction that the world as they believed it ought to be already existed and the will to live their lives in accordance with that belief.

They did so not in pursuit of fame, money, power or personal gain, but because they could not do otherwise; because they had become what they ought to be. It gave their lives such authenticity that it drew others to them and gave what they then had to say compelling force and effect. The way they lived their lives educed similar behavior that lies buried in everyone, waiting to come forth. They went before to show the way.

The years since the fork in the road have provided an opportunity to explore a great many other societal problems and how chaordic concepts of organization might be applied to them. It would take another book to describe the multitude of opportunities that have appeared. Space permits but a few brief examples.

In the midst of the furor that led to complete energy deregulation in California, then other states, opening the field to the corporate plunder of Enron and a good many others, I was approached by an energy economist with a California state agency. He and others soon made me familiar with the enormously complex grid of suppliers, producers, generators, transporters, distributors, retailers, users and regulators that had evolved to supply our insatiable demand for energy.

It had all the characteristics of the bank card mess of the late sixties. The internal strife was immense, pitting one segment of the industry with another in constant conflict for dominance. Each segment had messiahs preaching one gospel or another – government monopoly, unrestrained competition, state regulation, vertical integration, local control, regional integration and a host of others – nearly all driven by greed and self interest. The system was breaking down and the needs and desires of individual energy users were lost in the maelstrom.

A small group of individuals came to understand that the situation was custom made for the kind of organization in which I deeply believed. An effort was made to bring others to the same realization. It was not to be. The old ways had not yet exhausted their credibility and new leaders did not emerge.

The demise of family farms and healthy, decentralized production of nutritionally sound food in the face of chemically produced, genetically altered, tasteless, nutritionally dangerous food is another opportunity; a situation that cries out for an organization within which family farms could both cooperate and compete as they build their own global brand and distribution system.

The enormously wasteful, ineffective complex of public and private producers of geo-data is another opportunity. Each hoards what they know and uses it selectively, at times, dishonestly, to advance the interests of their traditional organizations, rather than creating a transcendent organization within which they could both cooperate and compete, to synthesize knowledge of the earth in a dependable manner for the benefit of both people and planet. It cries out for a transcendent organization within which they could harmoniously blend competition and cooperation.

The world of philanthropy within which thousands of not-for-profit organizations spend more half their time, energy and money competing with one another for foundation grants. In many cases, such organizations burn up more than three quarters of their gifts from individuals soliciting more. The foundations that make the grants routinely spend eight to ten percent of the money they have available in processing grant requests. Thus, at least sixty percent of philanthropic resources are consumed in "the doing of the doing" and never get near the people for whom they intended to do good.

The not-for-profit, non governmental world of organizations is arguably the fastest growing segment of the economy. As a whole, it would dwarf Visa and all other organizations. Yet, it is completely fragmented and it's voice lost in the din of private-enterprise, propaganda. There are 10,000 not-for- profit, organizations working for the preservation of sea turtles alone. The world of philanthropy and non-governmental organizations cries out for an enabling organization within which cooperation and competition can be blended, resources efficiently used, values harmonized and unified voices emerge.

The list goes on and on; welfare, social security, global warming, ocean pollution, preservation of species, communications, software development, fisheries, each with a need for a concept of organization that enables independent, effective action as the smallest scale, right on down to the individual. One that also allows self organization and self governance to ensure effective action at any subsequent scale right on through to the global. An organization within which coherence, cohesion and order could emerge on which every part could rely without need for knowledge or control of others.

Nature has been organizing in that manner forever. Every individual is a living manifestation of it. Every brain engaged in reading this book is so organized. Society, ever so slowly, is beginning to understand. The collective mind of man may one day come to see that the mind, in and of itself, is the best model for the societal organizations it so assiduously works to create. When it does, and when it acts in accordance with that understanding, we may yet come to know what miracles are all about.

The Emergent Phenomenon

The ideas of the past, although half destroyed, being still powerful, and the ideas which are to replace them being still in process of formation, the modern age represents a period of transition and anarchy. — Gustave Le Bon

As Old Monkey and I traveled further down "the road less traveled by" we began to understand how little we really knew about what was happening. The concepts and ideas were not ours. They were emerging everywhere, in a variety of forms, described in countless ways. They had a life of their own. They belonged to evolution. The "I" that is not "me" was inexorably revealing its eternal nature; a "we" of such diversity and complexity that it is beyond knowing or even imagining, let alone controlling. But not beyond understanding. A phenomenon was emerging in which my life and Visa were but tiny fragments.

Visa is far from alone as a distributive, enabling organization. There are many others operating on every scale, many of which are global. The Internet is a magnificent example of self organization within which competition and cooperation are blended. It also epitomizes both intended and unintended consequences. Once the child of government intended for a limited purpose, it quickly escaped its boundaries and became something wholly unintended. Not unlike Visa, it has become a transcendent global enterprise in which no part knows the whole, the whole does not know all the parts, and none has any need to. Like Visa, it is not a model to be emulated, but one to be studied and improved upon, for it too has flaws.

The Internet grew so rapidly and in such unexpected ways that participants never had time to think through and create a governance structure in harmony with its architecture. Some effort has been made in that direction in the past few years, but with limited success. It has no effective means to deal with its own excesses, whether pornography, commercialization, spam, viruses, invasion of privacy or fraud.

The World Weather Watch is another example of a distributive, enabling organization which has no central ownership or control. It links together a global complex of weather stations, satellites, communications facilities and computers that enables every television station, radio station and newspaper to both cooperate and compete in providing ever more reliable weather reports and projections. Through its programs, member coordinate and implement standardization of measuring methods and techniques, common telecommunication procedures and the presentation of observed data and processing information in a manor which is understood by all, regardless of language. The information it provides is equally invaluable to airline traffic control systems, shipping lines and government disaster planning. Again, no part knows the whole, the whole does not know all the parts and none has any need to.

The air traffic control system is similarly structured. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 50 million aircraft departures each year, in every kind of weather, headed for hundreds of thousands of different airports scattered around the world. The system is equally available to the lone pilot of a tiny, single engine, home built aircraft, the captain of the largest jetliner, the captain of a Concorde super sonic jet, the pilot of a corporate jet, or any of the thousands of aircraft filling every niche in between. Yet it is virtually unheard of for an aircraft using the air traffic control system to land at the wrong airport.

No individual organization or government owns or controls the vast network of people, computers, communication lines and other resources that comprises the air traffic control system, yet trillions of dollars worth of aircraft and cargo are entrusted to it, and billions of people entrust it with their lives without hesitation.

Alcoholics Anonymous, the best system ever devised for dealing with the problem of alcoholism, is another example of chaordic organization. Every chapter of AA self organizes and manages its own affairs in accordance with a clear purpose and a dozen or so "traditions." The organization chart shows local groups on top and headquarters on the bottom . The headquarters is a core office with a small staff which does little more than provide literature, information, some level of communication and coordination of chapters. They are the keepers of the flame. As the fourth tradition states,

With respect to its own affairs, each A A group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted. And no group, regional committee or individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect AA as a whole without conferring with the trustees of the general service board. On such issues, our common welfare is paramount.

It is interesting to note the use of "should" and "ought," never "must," or "shall." Any individual who has a drinking problem is welcome at any chapter of AA at any time, but has no obligation to attend more often, or do more when in attendance than they choose.

In the commercial world, the Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa in the Basque county in Northern Spain is an excellent example of chaordic organization. The Mondragón system grew out of the vision of a young catholic priest, Don José Marìa Arizmendiarrieta. From a 1956 beginning as a tiny factory manufacturing paraffin stoves, it has grown into the leading industrial group in the Basque country and the seventh largest in Spain with 2003 sales of 9.655 million euros in its industrial and distribution activities, 9.247 euros of administered assets in its financial activity and a work force of 68,260. It is a cooperative business group of 218 companies and entities organized in three sectors, financial, industrial and distribution.

The entirely is unified by ten basic principles to which all parts subscribe. They are the genetic code of the enterprise which determines the nature of its growth and evolution.

Open membership.

Democratic organization.

Worker sovereignty

Instrumental, subordinate nature of capital.

Participation in management.

Wage solidarity.

Cooperating between cooperatives.

Social Transformation.

Universal nature.

Education.

These are not a public relations vision statement or code of ethics to be waved when convenient as a disguise for avarice and ambition. Each has been educed through an extensive, democratic process and thoughtfully elaborated in writing into a belief system which not only guides the form, governance and conduct of the participant organizations, but the lives of the people who are involved as well.

If you get chaordic organization of commercial organizations even half right, profit becomes a barking dog begging to be let in.

Does it work? The Mondragón system has consistently been among the most stable and profitable in Spain. If you get chaordic organization even half right in commercial organizations, profit becomes a barking dog begging to be

At the smallest end of the scale is primary example of chaordic societal organization; one with which everyone is familiar. The family. Every healthy family is chaordic by its very nature. It is there that the greatest exchange of non- monetary value takes place. The things we do because we care; for which we expect no recompense and keep no records. I know of no parents who use mathematics to make up a balance sheet to prove to themselves which child they love more. Nor do I know of any who use such techniques to make certain that no one receives more than they give, or gives more than they receive, or what the "profit" of their joint enterprise is, or how it should be distributed. Of course, there always have been and always be some families conducted on other principles. But few enlightened people would consider them healthy.

There is no need to go on with endless examples, Once one is accustomed to a chaordic way of thinking, consciousness changes and such organizations become manifest everywhere, if not wholly, at least partially. Once such perception arises, the world with all its problems begins to make sense, and what to do about it becomes less puzzling.

Everything with capacity for good has equal capacity for evil.

Enough of the more constructive possibilities of such organization. What about the dark side. One of my deepest beliefs is that everything with capacity for good has equal capacity for evil. Chaordic, self organization, is no different. It is emerging everywhere, good and bad, whether we are conscious of it or not.

A little more than three years ago, two highjacked aircraft were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. But for the courage of a few passengers, a fourth may well have destroyed the white house. Terrorism is one of the dark sides of chaordic organization. No one owns it. No one controls it. It has no global headquarters. Its adherents are driven by beliefs so powerful that many will voluntarily go to certain death for the opportunity to take a few hated people with them. When any part or terrorism is attacked, it dissipates, self organizes in different form, emerges with new adherents in unpredictable ways, more virulent than ever.

The same is true of the organization of the traffic in illegal drugs, gambling, prostitution and other forms of organized crime. It was no different with illegal traffic in alcohol in the U. S. during the days of prohibition.

A great many insurgents and a few armies have used self organization organization with great effect, as we learned (or failed to learn, as the case may be) in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and a host of other places. Efforts to suppress such organizations with industrial age, centralized, command-and-control organizations have been futile, just as they have been futile in attempting to deal with such chaordic problems as global warming, ocean pollution, deforestation, destruction of species and depletion of topsoil.

In our ruminations about great leaders, Old Monkey and I could not ignore powerful leaders who have induced abominable behavior, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and a host of others, now and throughout history. What they had in common is all to easy to see. Lust for power, wealth, fame and fortune, along with willingness to ruthlessly use force and barbarity to bend others to their will. What differentiates the despotic leader from the beneficent leader is values; the purpose and principles from which they derive their internal being; their consciousness; their internal model of reality. Corrupt leaders believe in a world as they want it to become, not as it ought to be, and that world is also in existence, buried in everyone, waiting to be aroused. In truth, they are not leaders. It is a travesty to call such people them leaders, for they compel, not educe behavior. They are not even managers, for they have gone so far down the dark side of management they are tyrants, pure and simple.

The more one explores both the bright and the dark side of the emergent phenomenon, the more the questions we must answer become apparent. Are we to cling to the archaic, increasingly irrelevant, industrial age, internal models of reality and the organizations and leadership they have spawned, or can we consciously understand the chaordic organizational patterns that have existed throughout nature since the beginning of time and are struggling to emerge in societal systems? Can we consciously create the conditions by which chaordic concepts grounded in beneficent purpose and principles can emerge and thrive, or are we to stand unconsciously by as barbarous purpose and violent principles dominate their emergence?

As they emerge, will they be as corrosive of the human spirit as the old forms, or more in harmony with it? Will they continue to increase the already obscene mal-distribution of wealth and power, or will they redress it? Will they be as destructive of the biosphere as the old forms, or will they support and enhance it? Old Monkey and I have no answer to such questions, but of some things we are certain.

Individual change of consciousness and a different internal model of reality is the bedrock, the foundation without which beneficent institutional change is impossible, and with which it is inevitable. To do so is not the prerogative of famous leaders. They are, for all their accomplishments and notoriety, accidents of time and circumstance.

The answer to these great millennial questions is resting in the heart and soul of every person alive today, especially the young, waiting to be beneficently educed or tyrannically aroused. What will be our consciousness; our perception; our values, our internal model of reality? Will it be chaordic, pacific, equitable and just, as it ought to be? Or will it be mechanistic, violent, inequitable and unjust, as it might become? What will be our becoming?

If there is a mature person alive today who is unwilling to examine their present consciousness; their internal model of reality; their perception of how they were, how they are, how they might become and how they ought to be, they are making a grave mistake. No one is without influence. Everyone has choices to make about where they will lead and where they will be led. No one is without power to choose wisely and well. After all, if you think you can't, why think?

If there is a person in management in any organization, commercial, political or social, who is unwilling to go beyond such self examination and look deeply into how their organization was, how it is, how it might become and how it ought to be, not only economically, but socially, ethically and morally, they are negating their humanity, abrogating their responsibility as a leader and making a grave mistake.

If there is a corporate CEO or senior executive officer who does not have some of their best people with adequate resources deeply exploring chaordic concepts of organization and leadership; who is not testing them in significant ways through a variety of projects, they are failing to lead; failing to go before and show the way. It is a grave mistake.

The same hold true of those who hold power within political, social and non-governmental organizations. For those in education, particularly at the college and university level, the failure to understand, explore and experiment with such concepts is not only a grave mistake, it is inexcusable.

Can such a massive change of consciousness occur? Of course it can! In the great sweep of history, it often has. Will it occur in time to ameliorate the epidemic of institutional failure that is everywhere apparent and minimize the resulting environmental and social carnage that is enveloping us all? Ah, that is another question entirely. As always, Old Monkey and I turn to the classics for guidance, for they have never let us down.

Aristotle argued that for a community to function properly all citizens should be within the sound of a single voice. He could not have dreamed that modern communication would make of the world but a single village composed of countless villages at hundreds of scales – from communities of four or five to a community of billions – and even beyond that to a community of trillions of life forms, all within the sound of a single voice..

Just as we are citizens of a city, province or nation by right of birth so, too, are we citizens of the world, for we were most certainly born there also. We are no less citizens of corporations, churches and countless other organizations by right of choice. If we do not develop new and better concepts of organization and leadership wherein persuasion prevails over power, reason over emotion, trust over suspicion, hope over fear, cooperation over coercion and liberty over tyranny, we shall never harness science or technology in the service of humanity, let alone in the service of all other creatures and the living earth on which we depend.

Instead, with the great levers of science and technology we shall socially, economically, politically, and physically, continue to tear this world apart. While that will bring bitter pain to us and shame to our ancestors, to our grandchildren, their children, and their children's children, it will be a legacy of agony and evil beyond comprehension. To the universe, it will be an event scarcely discernable, let alone worthy of note.

The American writer, Norman Cousins, put our dilemma succinctly two decades ago when he wrote,

A great technological ascent has taken place without any corresponding elevation of ideas. We have raised our station without raising our sights. We roam the heavens with the engines of hell--whatever mankind's success in intermediate organization, he has failed to make an organization of the whole. His finest energies have gone into interim projects. He has made a geographical entity of his world without a philosophy for ennobling it, a plan for conserving it or organizations for sustaining it.

In his book, Celebrations of Life, Rene Dubos, the world-renowned scientist and philosopher, wrote,

It is fortunate that practical necessities will compel local solutions to global problems - - - The ideal for our planet would seem to be not a world government, but a world order in which social units maintain their identity while interplaying with each other through rich communications networks.

In his book The Third Wave, futurist Alvin Toffler suggests that ahead lies "a matrix of organizations with common interests, densely interrelated like the neurons in a brain."

How are we to discover these new ideas of community, these new concepts of organization? One can find no better answer than the words of Camus:

Great ideas, come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say this hope lies in a nation, others, in a man. I believe rather that is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. Each and every one builds for all.

We are at that very point in time when a four-hundred-year-old age is rattling in its deathbed and another is struggling to be born. A shifting of culture, science, society and institutions enormously greater and swifter than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, lies the possibility of regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never seen. It is the path to a liveable future in the centuries ahead, as society evolves into ever-increasing diversity and complexity.

Unfortunately, ahead lies equal possibility of massive institutional failure, enormous social carnage and regression to that ultimate manifestation of newtonian, mechanistic concepts of organization, dictatorship, which, in turn, would have to collapse with even more carnage before new concepts of organization could emerge. It matters not a whit whether such regression to tyranny is in the hands of government, commercial or religious organizations.

Or have we – have we at long, long last – evolved to the point of sufficient wisdom, spirit and will to discover the concepts and conditions by which chaordic institutions can find their way into being? Institutions, which have inherent capacity for their own continual learning, order and adaptation; institutions in harmony with the human spirit; institutions with capacity to co-evolve harmoniously with one another, with all people, with all other living things, and with the earth itself, to the highest potential of each and all.

I simply do not know the answer to that question, but this I do know. At such times, it is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream: the failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.

We must try!

About the author

Dee Hock is founder and CEO emeritus of Visa International, now a $4 trillion enterprise cooperatively owned by more than 20,000 financial institutions world wide. He is a laureate of the business hall of fame and has been publicly identified as one of eight people who have most changed the way we live in the last half century. For the past twenty years he has been writing, lecturing and working to develop and implement new concepts of organization that more equitably distribute power and wealth, are more compatible with the human spirit, and are more in harmony with the biosphere. Contact him atdeehock@comcast.net.

Copyright ©Dee Hock, all rights reserved
Posted with permission of the author, April 2005, by New Horizons for Learning
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