Say hello to ecoism

“I love you”
Can you see the power and beauty of these words?
For some of us, it may be the most powerful and beautiful sentence one can ever say. So powerful that many people are frightened to pronounce it. So beautiful that everybody would love to receive it.

My point of view is that behind the power and the beauty of those words there is a fundamental recognition. The existence of two parts: me and you.

It is very important in our life to be able to recognize ourselves and the others. Without this recognition we cannot even think about “loving someone”.

And the recognition of ourselves and the others is something that we as humans develop very early in our life. Starting from two months of life, the child, as also Piaget has shown, progresses considerably in the ability to pay attention to the outside world and in particular to other people. And Rudolph Schaffer added that, around at the same age,

the child seems to “discover” the social partner, and for a few months he is intensely fascinated by social stimuli. The vis-à-vis interactions thus become particularly satisfying experiences for both child and parent.

But this recognition is just the static part of the story. It is just a picture.
This story is a movie and if we press “play” we can see that each exchange has also a verse. It moves from me to you or from you to me.

This is true for everything, not just for love.
Emotions, actions, gifts, ideas, thoughts, money, energy, attention. And in this exchange we can recognize egoistic or altruistic aims.
In the first case, the intention is to bring a benefit to myself. And it is not just materialistic, but it is true for all the examples we made above: I can take or give love, hate, desire, forgiveness, pleasure, envy, etc… for an egoistic aim.
In the second case, the intention is to bring value to the other side of the exchange. And again, it can be something tangible like money or a kiss, or intangible like an idea, a suggestion, an emotion. Whatever.

Now, there is one more important thing to say before making another step forward: in my point of view there is no judgment in an egoistic or altruistic act.
Acting egoistically is not negative or shameful, just like acting altruistically is not automatically positive or honorable.
That’s why I don’t think it even exists an “egoist” or an “altruist”, because everybody during the course of our life will act in both senses. And it is perfectly fine.

Let’s move on.
Acting egoistically or altruistically requires the recognition of two sides. But what happens if there are no more sides? What if there is no more “me” and “you”? What if me and you becomes one single thing?
What if me and my father identify with our family? What if me and my teammate identify with our team? What if me and my neighbor identify with our neighborhood?
These questions led me to the idea of ecoism.

Say hello to ecoism.

The concept of ecoism overtakes the concepts of egoism and altruism, because there are no more two parts.
When you and I realize to be the same thing, if I take something from you or I give something to you it doesn’t matter, it loses its meaning. I’m not taking from someone else but from myself, and I’m not giving to someone else but to myself. And when I say “myself” it is not anymore the “me” of the beginning, but it is a new “me” which includes “you”.

Actually, there are already studies that confirm how even before two months the child is involved in a state of full identification with the relationship with the caregiver and not on the two parts of this relationship. A condition that is well shown in the “separation-individuation theory of child development” of Margareth Mahler, that describes how a separated individual identity is something that requires a process and it is not present since the birth.

Does it mean that I have to renounce to who I am? At first look, it seems that through an ecoistic behavior we lose our identity but this is not possible, under no circumstances.

There are just many levels at which we can look at our identity. As Nora Bateson pointed out (here):

Where is the forest? Is it in the soil, insects, plants, animals, bacteria, or creeks? The forest exists in the relationships between all of these living things.

At a certain level our individual identity just assumes a different meaning and the way we usually look at it becomes irrelevant, even if it still exists at that level and keep influence the way we participate to the whole.

And even more, Nora Bateson in her “Small arcs of larger circles” says that

“Unity is not about oneness, it requires the process of uniting, which requires relationality”.

That’s why acting ecoistically requires to maintain our identity as individuals.

Just like the heart and the lungs of our body. If you look at them in a reductionist way you could say that the lungs, mainly made by epithelium and connective tissue, keep oxygen egoistically, and the heart, mainly made by muscle fibers, pumps blood altruistically. But if you look at them with a wider point of view (that of the entire body) their exchange acquires a completely new meaning while both of them are still anatomically separated and made by different tissues and functions.

The difference is in our approach: we can see the reality as made by parts or we can see it as a complex system made of complex systems.

So, what about love (and our organizations)?

Recognizing and using the new perspective of ecoism does not mean that we do not love anymore. It means that we love in another way, in which love is the subject and me and you are the enablers of this subject. And this opens a new scenario.

Through the lens of ecoism everything can assume a completely different meaning: emotions, thoughts, ideas, actions, projects, money, energy, attention, words, skills.

In the last three years I’ve seen important changes happening in the way people work together once adopted (consciously or unconsciously) an ecoistic approach and I’ll share considerations and stories in further contents, but they are nothing compared to the new territories we can discover together. For the deep and wide impact that this concept could have in our organizations, I am faithful that this journey will bring us to beautiful lands. That’s why I’d love to read your comments, suggestions, ideas, feedbacks, love, anger, fear, passion here below, starting and keeping this conversation alive together.

A first introduction about “ecoism” has been published in Cocooners #4. Read it here.