On the “Greatest Social Experiment of All Time”
What can we learn from the human potential movement of yesterday and what are it’s modern implications and reincarnations?
They compared the internet as a tool for the millennials to what music was for the hippie era. Optimistically speaking, barring mention of doom and gloom science ficture future realities and current discussion around the NSA, the internet could also be called the greatest social experiment of all time. This current era, or the beginning of a new period of human civilization, the ‘Anthropocene,’ is in a technological black hole that has yet to figure out how to integrate such infrastructure into our lives. The beauty of this era, however, is the exciting new space of what this social experiment means for learning. After all, the words ‘social’ and ‘learning’ go hand-in-hand. Yet, for those searching for that utopian digital and analogue marriage carrying the development of ourselves and humanity forward, true social or “seeker technologies” are only now emerging. Which makes it an inveritably exciting time in the world of learning for individuals and institutions alike.
First, though, it’s time for a change in mindset. As it usually is with these things. In the underdeveloped field of psychological research on ambition, a recent study found ambition is only weakly connected with well-being and negatively associated with longevity. Furthermore, “the pursuit of materialistic values like money, possessions, and social status-the fruits of career successes-leads to lower well-being and more distress in individuals.” This is not to confuse the selfish self-love (i.e. narcissism) that comes with ambition with the self-encompassing love that comes from holding space for community and life in general, no matter how broken, battered down, imperfect, or unworthy one feels. Unless that person can recognize they hold one piece of a puzzle, a piece only they can hold, to solving an equally imperfect world starting back at them desperately needing their help.
While we often look for and create hero’s stories, we often forget it’s the hero, like Ruthie in the above-mentioned article, who is able to mobilize large crowds to change themselves and hold the necessary space for they themselves to be held. These are people, guided by human technologies of empathy and compassion, and not by technology itself. At least not in the traditional sense. These are people who have hacked their own personal culture in order to lead with the necessary 21st century literacies and authentic leadership to guide us into an emerging future. Furthermore, it’s these people who are developing the true “technologies” to do just that.
Hippies 2.0.
Young people are leaving Facebook in throngs, or at least some previous hope of the potential they envision a true global social network to look like. Meanwhile, social technologies like Art of Hosting, Presencing, Social Presencing Theatre, Holocracy, Non-violent communication, Human-centered design, and ancient wisdom traditions like Zen Buddhism are becoming integrated as “wisdom hacking” or community building tools for the individual to take a neo-shamanic leap into the underworld in order to surface and share insights within a system sniffing for new ways to adapt.
Re-writing the Cultural Narrative
In fact, one’s ability to understand their personal narrative and create new narratives for self, others, and systems is cornerstone to leadership and cultural development. In some fascinating and (fairly) new research from a gentleman by the name of Barrett Brown, he indicates “there is a range of worldviews, meaning-making structures, or action logics which adults have the potential to grow.” Seeking out over 500 candidates who fit into “late-stage action logics,” he was left with 13. All candidates (with the help of cutting edge work in developmental psychology) were measured and assessed upon, essentially, their level of consciousness. Brown wanted to understand how these individuals (otherwise known as “culture hackers”) designed and implemented large-scale sustainability initiatives; how they essentially hacked their cultural narratives to create system-wide change.
“Culture, like language, is an adaptive self-organizing complex system. Metaphorically, it is the operating system of an organization which cannot be changed by simply applying “best practices” or “new rules”. Ideas are agents within the cultural system. A culture hacker uses observation and empathy to sense cracks within the cultural system.A crack is something which feels uncomfortable. It feels like tension, perhaps a conflicting idea or assumption, which would be revealed by or could serve as a leverage for the hack.A culture hack is the minimal, artful intervention which, if successful, influences the culture of an organisation by making use of the crack. A hack consists of activities creating events that have the potential to change a prevalent idea or assumption, e.g. by introducing narratives telling a different truth.”
As Muriel Rukeyser once said: “the universe is made up of stories, not atoms.” It’s interesting that the above passage suggests the tactic of introducing narratives that tell a different truth, an alternative reality. It’s this tactic that connects the concept of what it means for a leader to compliment a life-long commitment to developing oneself, developing the necessary self-awareness through mindfulness and self-exploration, to doing the same for a larger system in which one is a part of. Hippies 2.0, culture or wisdom hackers, what all these titles have in common is seen in what our generation’s greatest asset, the internet, is able to give us. That which is a digital “overview effect” on what is truly our greatest asset, each other. And together, to begin working to change the status quo through the creation of new narratives and infrastructure suited for the digital age. In hopes, by doing so, to provide some sense of salvation to the black hole we and our technology currently slide through.
Self as system: the rise in the authentic leadership movement
“Systems theory encourages us to look at the whole and to see the interconnectedness of things. The emphasis is on adaptability and connectedness and leveraging the emergent qualities of a system as it self-organizes.” I believe constantly seeing how one’s personal narrative fits into the larger cultural narrative one is trying to create is the best way we can really understand how to see a system more holistically, and thereby influence it. The ability to be able to see, understand, and “hack” a system is where the concept of “authentic leadership” or mindfulness along with a growing trend in ancient and secular spirituality is what I believe is pushing such a change forward.
Stuart Crabb, Head of Learning at Facebook, when referring to his management team, has this to say about leadership. “We want them to be role models for being present. The education system rewards people for being super smart, but it doesn’t really develop wisdom.” On a recent call with a professor, I was told that young people in her class, 18-19 years old, intuitively want to develop and contribute their unique gifts in community. The concept of having a job is seen as something they may have, but it ultimately boils down to a new set of values that inform one’s personal definition of success and knowledge of what world one wants to live in to inform how one chooses to live their life.
“If you want to transform an organization it’s not about changing systems and processes so much as it’s about changing the hearts and minds of people,” says Weiss. “Mindfulness is one of the all-time most brilliant technologies for helping to alleviate human suffering and for bringing out our extraordinary potential as human beings.”
Cultivating such wisdom through expanding one’s consciousness through mindfulness (as the NYT portrayed the trend recently) and the rise in the the authentic leadership movement will be crucial to bridging new technologies and ways of learning, knowing, and being in the Anthropocene. I was recently told by one expert that the ‘people’ aspect in the corporate sustainability agenda is often overlooked, but is predicted to be quickly catching up with the planet and profit in the coming decade. In fact, that may be the only way to the create sustainable environmental and financial models so desperately needed. As the Australian School for Human Ecology so eloquently states: “what we need is to get along with one another and a means to regain a viable, enduring sense of community and belonging.”
Creating these spaces, these shared experiences where individuals can take off the masks often required of them and develop their potential in a variety of settings and contexts, is a key piece to the puzzle. Requiring entirely new and different forms of infrastructure for humans to learn and organize. Translating and integrating those shared experiences to the digital realm is the next frontier.
