Assumption 5: Abundance or Ecological Limits

Building on Assumption 4, and the reality of abundance and creativity in many realms in our shared lives, we need to consider the other side of the coin. In so many ways, we human beings have grown up experiencing areas of abundance that we take for granted. As a child, I knew without thinking about it that one could spit (or whatever) in the pool and the great volume of water would so dissolve it as to make it of no consequence to fellow swimmers, or even to me. An empty soft drink bottle could be tossed in the trash and it would disappear forever. I could drink tap water, or turn on the lawn sprinklers, and if I forgot to turn them off it was OK; water was clean and free. No one worried about it. One could read the newspaper every day, and then throw it away. It was trash.

In movies or on the TV, one sometimes saw clips of people in India bathing in the Ganges, or depositing the ashes of a newly cremated and consecrated corpse into the river. I wondered how close one was to the other, but the people there did not seem concerned. The Ganges flows endlessly, and all is carried away.

One seldom thought much about breathing, even when a relative's tobacco smoke involved us in the involuntary practice of sharing the smoke. The occasional bout of asthma was ascribed to allergies or childhood stress, and most people pretty much grew out of it eventually. If not, there were medicines available form the magical cornucopia that opened for us at the doctor's office.

Gasoline was never cheap at whatever age or time or country as one pulled up to the pump and filled up. Well, it was not free, and one needed to come up with gas money one way or the other, but it was seldom a big issue. One very seldom thought, "Oh, I can't take that trip; it's too expensive to buy the gas for it." As teens we often chipped in for gas money for whoever was driving us to the all-night party. But no one said, "I can't go, I don't have money for the gas." It was only slightly more expensive than tap water, which flowed endlessly and so reliably we never gave it a thought.

And new homes were built in tracts, by the hundreds--plenty of space for them, out on the edge of town, on those orange orchards that were purchased and converted to more useful (and lucrative) purposes. Rivers were dammed and diverted to provide the drinking water and lawn sprinkling that was required by the good life.

Agriculture, too, was a booming business. Labor-saving machinery extended and accelerated the human capability for tilling and harvesting, and the wonders of chemistry provided effective pesticides for protecting the crop. The government, too, made sure agriculture and petroleum extraction thrived, by providing subsidies out of tax revenues, so there was plenty of food, and gasoline.

Abundance--unquestioned, endless availability. Economic growth was good for everyone and supported by all. Progress is good, and it gets its proponents elected.

Fast-forward to the present: In riots protesting rising food prices in several countries in West Africa recently, several demonstrators were shot. In Australia, the protracted drought has severely reduced the harvest of foods. In some countries, farmers are starting to carry guns to protect the food on their fields from robbers.

The demand for foodstuffs has been increasing dramatically in high-population countries like India and China. The price of wheat and rice has recently increased dramatically. So many people have been buying up grains before the price goes up that stores like Costco are now limiting the number of sacks of rice one can buy. Oxfam America is warning of severe food shortages and the need to rescue people all over the world from hunger.

Are you sweating yet?

But don't worry; we are dealing with these problems. Or are we? We are certainly making progress on similar crisis issues like energy and climate-change. There is significant public support for reducing our petroleum dependence by using corn to produce ethanol. We can grow our own fuels, no? There are only a few problems with this quick fix: Ethanol production from corn uses more net energy and pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than petroleum-based fuel. And the diversion of corn from food uses to fuel uses is increasing its price, and the price of other grains, on the world market. So we have a perfect, though tragic, example of a problem (food shortages) that is caused by a solution (switch to ethanol).

The cascading consequences that currently include food riots remind us of Assumption 2: People will come up with rational solutions that work. Under conditions of emerging crisis and stress, this becomes Reality 2: Unconscious Reactiveness, which ends up making things worse, and feeds the crisis conditions. This is a bad vicious circle.

In 1972, Donella Meadows and others published The Limits to Growth, which was variously welcomed, criticized or dismissed by various experts. It explored the possible interdependence among global variables such as: world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The authors suggested the possibility of a sustainable interaction pattern that could be achieved by altering growth trends among the five variables.

More than 35 years later, this kind of analysis is being given serious consideration by some. The possibility of moving toward an acknowledgment of ecological limits, and a collaborative, intentional self-control on a global scale provides a glimmer of hope for life on the planet.

Assumption 4: Scarcity or Abundance, version 2

Most people have grandparents who lived through the Great Depression of the 30s in the US. Those were hard times. There was no work, stocks became worthless, and banks were useless. Everybody was broke. People lined up at soup lines. After the economy finally recovered, especially after World War II, those people who had lived through the Depression still worried about losing their jobs, losing their money, losing their security.

Many carried the expectation of scarcity within them; they saved their money, and were careful about expenditures. It was the next generation who drove the post-war economic boom years, in the 50s and 60s. Two generations were in the same economy, but their perceptions and behavior were different--the first was oriented to scarcity, the second to abundance. Many folks in the Depression generation were so scared--or scarred--from that experience that they continued to be frugal and to worry about their expenditures for the rest of their lives.

I was a grad student at UCLA during the Kennedy administration when the US military discovered Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba. The President gave the Soviets an ultimatum: get the missiles out, or expect a nuclear attack from the US. Everybody I knew was extremely concerned about what was going to happen. One of the most tangible behaviors I became aware of was that people hoarded food. Shelves on supermarkets were nearly bare. One couldn't find bags of sugar or other staples anywhere. Everyone expected a military catastrophe, which would create scarcity, so they hoarded basic foods, and created what everyone feared: scarcity.

It was also during the 60s that the hippy generation began exploring new ways of perceiving the world, and new ways of traveling through it. The limits of perception and awareness were pushed back through music, psychedelics, and communal living. This social exploration and creative innovation floated on the exuberance of a growing economy. The context of abundance encouraged a turn toward relaxed social strictures and an abhorrence of conflict. Make love, not war.

Today, as the price of food and the fuel to transport it are increasing, there is a growing experience of scarcity again. The world is running out of oil. Solar and wind energy are not yet online, and nuclear energy comes with the one troubling problem: there's no good way to throw out or store the deadly nuclear waste.

What we do have is a growing abundance of human beings on the planet. We do all need to eat, drink, stay warm or cool as needed, and get from here to there using mostly petroleum-based transportation. And together we're pumping more and more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, changing our world's climate and melting our polar ice caps. We're accelerating down a road that leads to a brick wall.

But more and more of us are paying attention to this emerging problem, and are using our individual and social creativity to find ways to deal with it and to put those solutions in place. The Web site for Wiser Earth lists links to 108,647 organizations that are currently working toward the interdependent goals of social justice and ecological wellbeing. We are tapping into what is most abundant in the world--human creativity and good will toward fellow human beings and toward all living beings on the planet.

As we do, we are discovering an emerging global consciousness, beyond our collective individual consciousness; one that has the abundant energy, creativity, and commitment to bring back sanity to our world and to maintain the one life-boat we're all in--or as Buckminster Fuller called it, our Spaceship Earth.

Assumption 3: Competition or Collaboration

Any sports fan knows that there is nothing like competition to bring out the best in an athlete or a team. In the heat of the struggle, participants' performance surges beyond their own expectations. Spectators, too, become very involved in the experience and often believe that their enthusiastic cheers are crucial to the athletes' triumph. A true fan won't think about seeing the game later on tape or broadcast playback; they must cheer their team while the struggle is on, so they can help.

In business organizations, market share is a key measure of success. Apple may have a single-digit share of the PC market, but it's increasing, and users of Macs, iPods and iPhones are proud to be part of that struggle. Similarly, brand loyalty is actively encouraged in cosmetics, athletic shoes, automobiles, and credit cards. It's us versus them, and we're better.

Sometimes, though, the competitive spirit emerges inappropriately and counter-productively. Executives in charge of different product divisions within a company vie for investment capital to develop or promote their own product. The allocation may favor the most enthusiastic and compelling advocate, but in the end the over-all company profits may suffer.

We understand this well in the context of a basketball team: the flashy player may make more baskets than the others, but the team as a whole may lose the game. Our team is competing with their team, but if we compete within the team, we lose the game. So we need to cooperate within the team in order to compete successfully with the other team.

Athletic teams and businesses competing for market share are in a win-lose environment. Mathematicians who work with this call this a zero-sum game. One and minus one equals zero. If they lose, we win. But there is another type of game structure, which they refer to in less elegant terms: The non-zero sum game. If we both work together in an appropriate and relevant way, we can both win.

Our pre-historical ancestors knew that they must compete with other predators in order to eat. They also learned that they could work together and get a big prize--coordinate their spears and bring down the mastodon. The knowledge of both strategies--competition and cooperation--is carried deeply within our instinctual psyche and shared culture.

But the experience of each is very different. Competition is adrenaline-based and exciting. Cooperation is deliberative and interdependent. It requires more patience, tolerance for frustration, and awareness of the big picture.

In a role-play activity I have used, two teams are instructed to discuss whose company will get the chance to buy a special crop of Valencia oranges, until they reach a decision. If they don't reach a decision within a prescribed time, neither team will get the crop, and it will be sold elsewhere. Most groups bog down in heated debate, growing more polarized, guarded, and narrow. Eventually, some teams disclose enough about their "private" instructions to discover that one company needs the oranges to make a highly prized juice for market. The other company needs the oranges for their excellent zest, which they will use in a gourmet baking formula.

Their understanding of the game they're involved in thus magically shifts from win-lose to win-win. The newly-discovered option emerges as if by magic--beyond their preconceived assumptions. What enables that shift is an attitude of curiosity and openness, courageous self-disclosure about your own interest, and respectful inquiry about the other's. The creative conclusion then becomes easy and self-evident.

Yes, some situations really are zero-sum games. But many are not, unless we assume they are. Our expectations, themselves, can create antagonism and polarization. Win-lose behavior then often leads to lose-lose outcomes. But if we pay attention, invite collaborative inquiry, and generate inclusive options, we are able to discover the amazing truth: we can all win.