Symbiotic Economics: Unity in Diversity
03/October/2007 09:45 Filed in: Weekly Column
3 October 2007; Volume 9, Issue 33
PDF copy
My enterprise models, both organization and economic, are drawn directly from creation, or nature if you prefer that term. They are observable to anyone and can be described by use of descriptive observational science. That science centers within the field of ecology, “the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment.”
What you find first and foremost in natural ecology is the tremendous diversity of life on this planet. Animals and all sorts of critters, big, small, and microscopic. The same can be said of the plants, they just don’t move around, so most of the time they are easier to study. As diverse as the natural world appears there is still an unique unity that seems to tie everything together in a very complex way.
Spend a day or even an afternoon alone in creation, just observing what is taking place around you, and it can have a deep impact on your life, if you truly allow yourself to be confronted with the natural diversity, the unity, and reality of time not in a hurry. If you spend the time worrying about your job, or what you are going to have for dinner, nothing will probably happen, unless you are hit by a falling tree in your haste to get back into an environment in which you are more in control of the circumstances.
Lack of discernible control of the environment does not mean that the wilderness is a laissez faire place. As Jefferson said so well in the Declaration of Independence, everything is in the control of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This leads directly to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Notice Jefferson does not say the “fruits of happiness” or some such term that means true happiness is ever really obtained on this earth.
The most striking parallel is that the apparent “unity and diversity” in the natural world is the same term that theologians use to describe the Christian Triune God, or Trinity. Is that just an unusual coincidence, or is creation that way by design? The Bible clearly states that, this unity in diversity in nature is that way because it was created that way. Furthermore, it states that the world was formed through language, or the spoken word, something that in this world is within the realm of humanity and not a characteristic of any other life form. To say that other animals communicate with one another, and this in someway points to the evolution of language in the human animal, is a leap of faith, well beyond any concept of true human wisdom.
The Bible clearly states that mankind, male and female, were created in the image of God. You can accept that as reality, and possibly enjoy your trip through this gift of life. Or you can reject it and fight your way through this pilgrimage trying to overcome the reality of all creation and it’s natural laws. That battle you will not win, for the great equalizer in this present age is death, and then comes something. Perfection, as defined as heaven? Created perfect eternal chaos, as described as hell? Or nothingness?
Symbiotic economics, is really the concept of applying the liquidity present in natural diversity, in a way to best manage the human ecology of the model we call enterprise. Therefore, symbiotic economics is a subcategory of what I teach as Business Ecology. Commerce interestingly, is something also unique to the human species.
Last Thursday, natural life’s liquidity decided to fall from the sky. Probably a little over an inch in the first few hours after sunrise, and then perhaps another half an inch or so, during the rest of the day. This was the first real rain since I arrived on site so it took some adjustment as to what to do.
The decision was to listen to F. A. Hayek’s, “Road to Serfdom” which I had recorded from the cassette book version while still in Seattle. This book we have mentioned previously, and is supposedly the basis by which Milton Friedman and others at the University of Chicago designed the economics package for the Reagan Revolution.
Searching the bibliography of “Capitalism 3.0 by Peter Barnes, I found nothing of the serfdom road or any literature of that University of Chicago genre. ”Road to Serfdom” however, is supposedly the book that the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher used to dismantle the British government monopolies instituting market principles in their wake. Whether you agree with Thatcher’s work depends upon your political beliefs, but that is just the reported relationship. Hayek dedicated his book to socialists of all persuasions.
Hayek described himself as a 19th century liberal. That liberal term has now been hijacked by former left wing socialists, as well as perhaps the best description of his beliefs, progressive. He did not view himself as a conservative, because in his view conservatives were only interested in preserving the status quo. I found it interesting that Hayek, had distinctions for left wing socialists, right wing socialists, and monopolists. In a modern introduction by Hayek himself, he offered no modern distinction for his earlier era liberal ideas.
In the context of the book and subsequent economic realities in America, I was flabbergasted on how we could go from Hayek to this present day. Even with the United States propensity to use only native intellect, and a passion for bigness, the present economic reality, looks like flying pigs and speaking dolphins, as a distorted sense of reality. Is the 21st century American economic system, an evolutionary development, natural entropy, or a designed wonder of right wing socialism? Using Hayek’s criteria, post modern America seems to fit in the camp of right wing socialism, with a large number of monopolists thrown in.
As my Chem-Nuclear right wing - liberal compatriot, Mike described me as a left wing - conservative, we both shared a very strong belief in the value of free markets and small business. Small business today is just rhetoric, brushed off when required for the political election, and the example seated in the gallery of the President’s “State of the Union Address.” As far as free market competition in things that really count, like gasoline, you have the choice between companies with two to four names, merged cartel remnants of a once national, now international oil industry.
In that light, I think one should define the political base of the current Bush administration as the “Religious Right Socialists,” and the “International Monopolists.” So when you voted for a compassionate conservative, you again had a redefinition of terms. To use the President Clinton legacy, “It all depends upon what your definition of what a compassionate conservative is, is.” As a result a compassionate conservative carries about as much clout as Clinton’s legacy.
The real crux of the problem for America (and really the rest of the world), as we near a new Presidential election cycle, is where’s the choice? You can choose between an new fashioned liberal, formerly a left wing socialist, or a new fashioned conservative, formerly a right wing socialist, monopolist. To quote a current political book title, Do we have the “Audacity of Hope” for a real choice that can appeal to people of a centralist understanding of political reality? This is where the truth of a poster I saw in a local store, which points succinctly, “Throw all the bums out.”
The crux of the socialism problem, right or left, is it sounds so good, until the reality sets in. Someone has to be the design team, as our critique of Capitalism 3.0 pointed out. You really cannot have true social equality, private property, free markets, and a viable community enjoying a vast commons, unless there are some man made rules which govern all the above and a whole host of other plans. If you are part of that planning elite, you will do quite well materially and in other ways, if not part of that group, it is not their problem.
Pretty soon, instead of a free society based upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or the French revolution’s, liberty, equality, and fraternity, you have a class system based directly on social standing and to a lesser degree race. Proletariat, bourgeois, aristocracy, intelligentsia, are some of the antiquated terms. Today similar terms are more politically correct, but still make one man superior to another, and as a general rule men, superior to women. That is the reality of man trying to plan, perhaps for all the right reasons, the affairs of men.
Unity in diversity, how do you achieve it? It’s only natural after all. The great enterprise and economic plan for now and for eternity is naturally based. It begins simply with one absolute. That one absolute is the absolute antithesis of post modern western culture: “There is a God, and you are not Him!” A week or so, without all the imported comforts of home in the true wilderness, and you will learn that lesson, or you will perish. Only with God as the author of reality can exist social equality, private property, competitive markets, common community, and religious freedom for all, not just Christians. That is what the founding fathers of America knew, and what post modern America has lost, forgotten, or abolished as unenlightened.
That absolute truth, in a natural nutshell, is why the great American heartland and rural areas around the world have been abandoned by the social elite. This is true for two reasons:
1. A social elite class demands others by which they may prove and obtain their cultural worth. When you put people together within a man designed infrastructure, the “best” will always rise to the top, simply because they have access to the ladder. Some have inherited the ladder, some are cunning enough to find their way to that position and are willing to make the sacrifices required to make that climb.
2. In the heartland your worth is obtained not by who you are, but what you can contribute. Sometimes that is by natural ability, sometimes through education, formal and informal. Most of the time it is a combination of all of the above. Climbing the social ladder is not that important of a skill, because if there is one at all, it is quite short compared to the urbane alternative.
In a distinctly similar nut, rural people, especially the youth seek to abandon the countryside for two similar reasons.
1. The opportunities to become part of the social elite is a draw, even though that elite may only fit your definition of an opportunity, especially when that attraction has significant monetary remuneration and may require less physical effort and more mental processes.
2. In rural areas you are continually confronted with that unity in diversity of natural law and nature’s God. The reason that the heartland is filled with the election color red states instead of blue states is that to remain in the rural area, you must be at least somewhat comfortable with religious values that are truly conservative, and anti-socialistic. Modern liberals are truly a rare species, where as 19th century liberals, which really have no modern definition that hasn’t been hijacked by the socialist, are not all that uncommon.
In the eyes of ancient Biblical Babel and the post modern personality, it all looks nuts, an impossible gulf to cross, and there is no reason to even attempt the journey. It is not however impossible and is even desirable, both socially and in terms of personal worth, to allow God to be God and you to be human. Building on the absolute of God’s existence, within Christianity you find the answer to true personal worth. You are unique as a human personality, within a diverse community of other people, and within a natural creation.
Within that creation, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you can be justified as holy before God. God has adopted you legally, according to His absolutes, as a child of His, and coheir of Christ’s inheritance. In that respect it is God’s indicative fiduciary responsibility to bring that gift into eternal reality. It is your imperative duty to act, not just as steward of God’s creation, but with the legal responsibility of a trustee. (The trustee concept borrowed from Barnes.)
In closing, a short story.
Over the years I have talked with a lot of people about rural centers with a wide variety of missions. It was a long time ago, when I met with a member of the Board of Directors, of one of these centers that dealt with troubled adolescents and young adults.
The story was about a very attractive teenage girl who had been sexually abused most of her life. Some of the details were repugnant beyond understanding. In the camp most of the rooms were shared two to a room. This young woman had a room all to herself, because of her behavior, another person really could not share the same space. The camp had tried everything they knew how to do to help, but to no avail. They just left her alone and tried as best they could to be supportive of this extremely troubled person. After a protracted period of time in this condition, one day when the caretaker looked in to check on the girl, they found the room clean and orderly and the girl herself bathed and well kept. On her wall was a hand written poster with these words “I am important, because God don’t make no junk.” She had read the words somewhere in all the literature the camp had given her and had previously found uninteresting.
Over time the girl continued to adjust to this new absolute, God doesn’t make any person as junk, no matter what the world may do, or try to do to you, in God’s eyes even the most broken and distraught person is uniquely understood and loved beyond our understanding.
That understanding and love right now is the beginning of unity and diversity within the human family. God has taken clay and molded into an unique eternal personality, total reflecting the glory of God’s unity in diversity in human form. That is the only basis by which a lasting social order can be created, the worldly wise in their own eyes just have to get out of the way and let it happen.
PDF copy
My enterprise models, both organization and economic, are drawn directly from creation, or nature if you prefer that term. They are observable to anyone and can be described by use of descriptive observational science. That science centers within the field of ecology, “the branch of biology concerned with the relations between organisms and their environment.”
What you find first and foremost in natural ecology is the tremendous diversity of life on this planet. Animals and all sorts of critters, big, small, and microscopic. The same can be said of the plants, they just don’t move around, so most of the time they are easier to study. As diverse as the natural world appears there is still an unique unity that seems to tie everything together in a very complex way.
Spend a day or even an afternoon alone in creation, just observing what is taking place around you, and it can have a deep impact on your life, if you truly allow yourself to be confronted with the natural diversity, the unity, and reality of time not in a hurry. If you spend the time worrying about your job, or what you are going to have for dinner, nothing will probably happen, unless you are hit by a falling tree in your haste to get back into an environment in which you are more in control of the circumstances.
Lack of discernible control of the environment does not mean that the wilderness is a laissez faire place. As Jefferson said so well in the Declaration of Independence, everything is in the control of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This leads directly to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Notice Jefferson does not say the “fruits of happiness” or some such term that means true happiness is ever really obtained on this earth.
The most striking parallel is that the apparent “unity and diversity” in the natural world is the same term that theologians use to describe the Christian Triune God, or Trinity. Is that just an unusual coincidence, or is creation that way by design? The Bible clearly states that, this unity in diversity in nature is that way because it was created that way. Furthermore, it states that the world was formed through language, or the spoken word, something that in this world is within the realm of humanity and not a characteristic of any other life form. To say that other animals communicate with one another, and this in someway points to the evolution of language in the human animal, is a leap of faith, well beyond any concept of true human wisdom.
The Bible clearly states that mankind, male and female, were created in the image of God. You can accept that as reality, and possibly enjoy your trip through this gift of life. Or you can reject it and fight your way through this pilgrimage trying to overcome the reality of all creation and it’s natural laws. That battle you will not win, for the great equalizer in this present age is death, and then comes something. Perfection, as defined as heaven? Created perfect eternal chaos, as described as hell? Or nothingness?
Symbiotic economics, is really the concept of applying the liquidity present in natural diversity, in a way to best manage the human ecology of the model we call enterprise. Therefore, symbiotic economics is a subcategory of what I teach as Business Ecology. Commerce interestingly, is something also unique to the human species.
Last Thursday, natural life’s liquidity decided to fall from the sky. Probably a little over an inch in the first few hours after sunrise, and then perhaps another half an inch or so, during the rest of the day. This was the first real rain since I arrived on site so it took some adjustment as to what to do.
The decision was to listen to F. A. Hayek’s, “Road to Serfdom” which I had recorded from the cassette book version while still in Seattle. This book we have mentioned previously, and is supposedly the basis by which Milton Friedman and others at the University of Chicago designed the economics package for the Reagan Revolution.
Searching the bibliography of “Capitalism 3.0 by Peter Barnes, I found nothing of the serfdom road or any literature of that University of Chicago genre. ”Road to Serfdom” however, is supposedly the book that the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher used to dismantle the British government monopolies instituting market principles in their wake. Whether you agree with Thatcher’s work depends upon your political beliefs, but that is just the reported relationship. Hayek dedicated his book to socialists of all persuasions.
Hayek described himself as a 19th century liberal. That liberal term has now been hijacked by former left wing socialists, as well as perhaps the best description of his beliefs, progressive. He did not view himself as a conservative, because in his view conservatives were only interested in preserving the status quo. I found it interesting that Hayek, had distinctions for left wing socialists, right wing socialists, and monopolists. In a modern introduction by Hayek himself, he offered no modern distinction for his earlier era liberal ideas.
In the context of the book and subsequent economic realities in America, I was flabbergasted on how we could go from Hayek to this present day. Even with the United States propensity to use only native intellect, and a passion for bigness, the present economic reality, looks like flying pigs and speaking dolphins, as a distorted sense of reality. Is the 21st century American economic system, an evolutionary development, natural entropy, or a designed wonder of right wing socialism? Using Hayek’s criteria, post modern America seems to fit in the camp of right wing socialism, with a large number of monopolists thrown in.
As my Chem-Nuclear right wing - liberal compatriot, Mike described me as a left wing - conservative, we both shared a very strong belief in the value of free markets and small business. Small business today is just rhetoric, brushed off when required for the political election, and the example seated in the gallery of the President’s “State of the Union Address.” As far as free market competition in things that really count, like gasoline, you have the choice between companies with two to four names, merged cartel remnants of a once national, now international oil industry.
In that light, I think one should define the political base of the current Bush administration as the “Religious Right Socialists,” and the “International Monopolists.” So when you voted for a compassionate conservative, you again had a redefinition of terms. To use the President Clinton legacy, “It all depends upon what your definition of what a compassionate conservative is, is.” As a result a compassionate conservative carries about as much clout as Clinton’s legacy.
The real crux of the problem for America (and really the rest of the world), as we near a new Presidential election cycle, is where’s the choice? You can choose between an new fashioned liberal, formerly a left wing socialist, or a new fashioned conservative, formerly a right wing socialist, monopolist. To quote a current political book title, Do we have the “Audacity of Hope” for a real choice that can appeal to people of a centralist understanding of political reality? This is where the truth of a poster I saw in a local store, which points succinctly, “Throw all the bums out.”
The crux of the socialism problem, right or left, is it sounds so good, until the reality sets in. Someone has to be the design team, as our critique of Capitalism 3.0 pointed out. You really cannot have true social equality, private property, free markets, and a viable community enjoying a vast commons, unless there are some man made rules which govern all the above and a whole host of other plans. If you are part of that planning elite, you will do quite well materially and in other ways, if not part of that group, it is not their problem.
Pretty soon, instead of a free society based upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or the French revolution’s, liberty, equality, and fraternity, you have a class system based directly on social standing and to a lesser degree race. Proletariat, bourgeois, aristocracy, intelligentsia, are some of the antiquated terms. Today similar terms are more politically correct, but still make one man superior to another, and as a general rule men, superior to women. That is the reality of man trying to plan, perhaps for all the right reasons, the affairs of men.
Unity in diversity, how do you achieve it? It’s only natural after all. The great enterprise and economic plan for now and for eternity is naturally based. It begins simply with one absolute. That one absolute is the absolute antithesis of post modern western culture: “There is a God, and you are not Him!” A week or so, without all the imported comforts of home in the true wilderness, and you will learn that lesson, or you will perish. Only with God as the author of reality can exist social equality, private property, competitive markets, common community, and religious freedom for all, not just Christians. That is what the founding fathers of America knew, and what post modern America has lost, forgotten, or abolished as unenlightened.
That absolute truth, in a natural nutshell, is why the great American heartland and rural areas around the world have been abandoned by the social elite. This is true for two reasons:
1. A social elite class demands others by which they may prove and obtain their cultural worth. When you put people together within a man designed infrastructure, the “best” will always rise to the top, simply because they have access to the ladder. Some have inherited the ladder, some are cunning enough to find their way to that position and are willing to make the sacrifices required to make that climb.
2. In the heartland your worth is obtained not by who you are, but what you can contribute. Sometimes that is by natural ability, sometimes through education, formal and informal. Most of the time it is a combination of all of the above. Climbing the social ladder is not that important of a skill, because if there is one at all, it is quite short compared to the urbane alternative.
In a distinctly similar nut, rural people, especially the youth seek to abandon the countryside for two similar reasons.
1. The opportunities to become part of the social elite is a draw, even though that elite may only fit your definition of an opportunity, especially when that attraction has significant monetary remuneration and may require less physical effort and more mental processes.
2. In rural areas you are continually confronted with that unity in diversity of natural law and nature’s God. The reason that the heartland is filled with the election color red states instead of blue states is that to remain in the rural area, you must be at least somewhat comfortable with religious values that are truly conservative, and anti-socialistic. Modern liberals are truly a rare species, where as 19th century liberals, which really have no modern definition that hasn’t been hijacked by the socialist, are not all that uncommon.
In the eyes of ancient Biblical Babel and the post modern personality, it all looks nuts, an impossible gulf to cross, and there is no reason to even attempt the journey. It is not however impossible and is even desirable, both socially and in terms of personal worth, to allow God to be God and you to be human. Building on the absolute of God’s existence, within Christianity you find the answer to true personal worth. You are unique as a human personality, within a diverse community of other people, and within a natural creation.
Within that creation, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you can be justified as holy before God. God has adopted you legally, according to His absolutes, as a child of His, and coheir of Christ’s inheritance. In that respect it is God’s indicative fiduciary responsibility to bring that gift into eternal reality. It is your imperative duty to act, not just as steward of God’s creation, but with the legal responsibility of a trustee. (The trustee concept borrowed from Barnes.)
In closing, a short story.
Over the years I have talked with a lot of people about rural centers with a wide variety of missions. It was a long time ago, when I met with a member of the Board of Directors, of one of these centers that dealt with troubled adolescents and young adults.
The story was about a very attractive teenage girl who had been sexually abused most of her life. Some of the details were repugnant beyond understanding. In the camp most of the rooms were shared two to a room. This young woman had a room all to herself, because of her behavior, another person really could not share the same space. The camp had tried everything they knew how to do to help, but to no avail. They just left her alone and tried as best they could to be supportive of this extremely troubled person. After a protracted period of time in this condition, one day when the caretaker looked in to check on the girl, they found the room clean and orderly and the girl herself bathed and well kept. On her wall was a hand written poster with these words “I am important, because God don’t make no junk.” She had read the words somewhere in all the literature the camp had given her and had previously found uninteresting.
Over time the girl continued to adjust to this new absolute, God doesn’t make any person as junk, no matter what the world may do, or try to do to you, in God’s eyes even the most broken and distraught person is uniquely understood and loved beyond our understanding.
That understanding and love right now is the beginning of unity and diversity within the human family. God has taken clay and molded into an unique eternal personality, total reflecting the glory of God’s unity in diversity in human form. That is the only basis by which a lasting social order can be created, the worldly wise in their own eyes just have to get out of the way and let it happen.