Natural though it may be, the prevailing lack of organizational consciousness lies at the root of our failure of civics, our severe problem in diagnosing our systemic ills and implementing timely treatment. As I travel around the nation, I find the vast majority of its citizens to be very decent sorts. They generally like to take care of themselves. They are generally concerned about their neighbors and behave in a kindly fashion toward them. But, despite their bombardment by newspapers and TV, they are generally unconcerned about the broader social or systemic issues that affect them. They seem remarkably unaware of the exorbitant personal price they and their neighbors are paying to support the military-industrial complex or a health care system that is almost out of control. They may have opinions about such matters. But their opinions are usually thoughtless and uneducated. Their concern is shallow. They don't seem to feel any responsibility for the systems in which they are caught up, and they don't seem to want any responsibility. They want a mythical `'omeone' to take care of it for them. The system seems beyond them, something in which they are somehow not involved, something that is out of sight and out of mind.
Never was this made more painfully clear to me than in the spring of 1987. Jim Bakker, a prominent evangelist, and Gary Hart, a prominent politician, had recently been exposed as adulterers. I was leading an all-day seminar for four hundred participants in Chicago. Usually I give three different lectures at such events, but this time the sponsoring organization wanted to focus the whole day on just one of my lectures: 'Self-Love vs. Self-Esteem,' a talk that wrestles with the issues of individual sin, guilt, remorse, and contrition. It struck me as unbalanced to begin with this hour-long lecture, and then spend the entire rest of the day on questions and answers. So I decided to do something different. I announced to my audience that I would start with my customary talk and we'd spend the rest of the morning on it, but after lunch I would begin with a new talk that would focus the remainder of the day on issues of corporate guilt, sin, remorse, and contrition. By corporate sin, I explained, I meant the evil we do not as individuals alone, but as bodies of individuals together. We would be examining our collective responsibility for the sins of our business corporations, our churches, our government, and the many other organizations to which we belong as members of society.
The morning went splendidly, but the afternoon was another matter. At first I thought the audience's lack of responsiveness was merely the effect of a new talk for which I had not yet worked out enough appropriate light moments and jokes. Yet as we got into the question-and-answer period-usually a lively time-the atmosphere in the room grew heavier still. Was it because they had all had a large lunch? I wondered. But I discarded that thought as the mood became still more oppressive. Something was going seriously wrong, I realized, thinking frantically about what sort of intervention I might make to uncover the problem.
But I did not need one. A woman had her hand raised with seeming eagerness. I called on her. She stood up.'I just want to tell you, Dr Peck,' she said, 'how seriously disturbed I am by the way you have been blessing the sexual behavior of Jim Bakker and Gary Hart!' Two hundred people immediately broke out in applause of agreement with her. The group's anger was out in the open.
Not that I knew how to deal with that anger. 'Thank you,' I responded. 'Your statement obviously reflects the feelings of a great many in this room and makes it equally obvious I have been failing to communicate well. I am sorry if I have been unclear. Because I have never, for a moment, intended to bless their behavior or otherwise approve of it. What I have been trying to do-apparently rather poorly-whenever questions about their behavior have been raised is to wonder with you why we spend so much concern on the sexual acts of these few public individuals, for which we have no responsibility, and so little concern on such issues as the insanity of the arms race or the sickness of our unbalanced budget, for which we do have some responsibility.' Perhaps as many as a hundred applauded this response. Yes, the conflict was out in the open-with me on the minority side-but it was hardly resolvable. I had lost over half my audience. The rest of the afternoon was stormy and the day ended on a distinctly sour note.
The people who paid a significant sum to come and hear me on that day, like most of my audiences, were not an average cross-section of the American public. My audiences are generally college-educated, white-collar, upper-middle-class women and men. More specifically, the vast majority have not only had psychotherapy but also see themselves as being on a spiritual journey. Envisioning themselves growing toward something, most feel they still have a way to go and they acknowledge their imperfections. As relatively advanced spiritual travelers, they usually have a well-developed sense of their own sin and are familiar with personal guilt, remorse, and contrition. Furthermore, a large percentage are themselves in the `helping professions.' As physicians and nurses, pastors, psychotherapists, and social workers, they are not only accustomed to assisting others with their issues of sin, guilt, and forgiveness but have actually been trained to be sensitive to others and conscious of their needs. Yet when confronted with their involvement in diseased organizations, they were uninterested, petulant, and missed the point.
Yes, there is a hole in the mind. ( Our lack of social consciousness--this hole in the mind-has been the subject of several major books. See Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978). Also Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
The problem goes deeper and is far more extensive than our difficulty dealing with great social issues. Quite possibly, it is unrealistic to expect the average citizen to deeply concern himself with the complexities of the nation's health care system or the unhealthy dependence of the national economy upon the military-industrial complex. The key decisions will be made in Washington, and it is not surprising that, on this level, 'the system' should seem beyond him.
If you look at this man's organizational behavior, you will likely find that he takes pride in his job because he knows it well. He is interested in the lives of his coworkers on the assembly line and is usually happy to cover for them when necessary. But you are also likely to find that he has no interest in what goes on in the front office. He probably has no idea of the company's budget. He may be utterly unknowledgeable about the company pension plan in which he participates. He has little understanding of the production department, of which he is a member, and quite possibly never thinks of it in terms of a system.
It is this close-to-home organizational unconsciousness that causes far greater unnecessary psychospiritual disease and suffering than that caused by broad social problems. In Parts Two and Three, case after case will be examined in depth where the hole in the mind wreaks havoc at the grass-roots level of the family and in day-to-day business dealings. At this point, it will suffice to give two brief examples of unnecessary psychospiritual suffering-one in marriage and one in business-to glimpse how much destructive pain could be averted were we to elevate our organizational consciousness and learn even the simplest organizational principles.
Virtually everyone who joins an organization-whether by joining IBM or by joining another individual in matrimony-does so with two needs: to give something and get something. Obviously we want to get something. Money and status, for instance, are among the 'motivators' for people seeking organizational employment. And nowadays certainly most of us expect to receive love and affection when we marry. What may be less obvious is how much how almost desperately-we humans want to give as well as receive. Most of us have a profound need to be of genuine service to the agencies for which we work, to be truly useful, even essential, in our jobs. And how many of us are so hardhearted that we enter marriage without any desire to give, to bring delight and joy to our spouse, our beloved?
The problem comes when the organization doesn't have what we want to receive from it or doesn't want what we desire to give it. As I look back on our wedding day thirty three years ago, I realize I pledged my troth to Lily with two inchoate but very deep fantasies in mind. One was that in and through the institution--the organization-of our marriage I would be able to 'make' Lily happy. The other was that as a result of this union I would no longer suffer from loneliness. Our marriage has had unanticipated joys, but the disillusionment of the next two decades was intensely painful for both of us. There were a number of important 'things' that Lily wanted from me that I found myself eventually either unwilling or unable to give her. They ranged from mundane offerings of roses to theological agreement. And vice versa.
It gradually dawned on me that I could not fulfill my fantasy to make Lily happy. And as a consequence of our various mutual mis-matches, each of us has experienced times - frequently prolonged-of profound loneliness within our married relationship.
How much of our suffering might have been prevented, I wonder, if I had known from the outset the truth that it is generally not within one person's power to fully make another person happy in this life? A stable and reasonably healthy marriage can meet some terribly important human needs. Our committed relationship has provided both Lily and me with a very meaningful center to our lives. But it might have been much less painful had we not had to discover for ourselves that it is not within the nature of the institution of marriage to provide anything like a total surcease of loneliness.
The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a 'good' marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.
The absence of any overall formula for marriage would be obvious if we were educated about organizations. Read any textbook on organization theory, for instance, and if you do not get lost in the details, you will realize that the whole book is basically an elaboration of what is called 'contingency theory.' Contingency theory states simply that there is no one best structure for an organization-that the best type of structure will be contingent upon the particular organization's size and product or function. The text will go on to examine a whole variety of organizational structures and how, for better or worse, different types of structures fit different types of businesses.
Extracted from M Scott Peck's A World Waiting to be Born.
Never was this made more painfully clear to me than in the spring of 1987. Jim Bakker, a prominent evangelist, and Gary Hart, a prominent politician, had recently been exposed as adulterers. I was leading an all-day seminar for four hundred participants in Chicago. Usually I give three different lectures at such events, but this time the sponsoring organization wanted to focus the whole day on just one of my lectures: 'Self-Love vs. Self-Esteem,' a talk that wrestles with the issues of individual sin, guilt, remorse, and contrition. It struck me as unbalanced to begin with this hour-long lecture, and then spend the entire rest of the day on questions and answers. So I decided to do something different. I announced to my audience that I would start with my customary talk and we'd spend the rest of the morning on it, but after lunch I would begin with a new talk that would focus the remainder of the day on issues of corporate guilt, sin, remorse, and contrition. By corporate sin, I explained, I meant the evil we do not as individuals alone, but as bodies of individuals together. We would be examining our collective responsibility for the sins of our business corporations, our churches, our government, and the many other organizations to which we belong as members of society.
The morning went splendidly, but the afternoon was another matter. At first I thought the audience's lack of responsiveness was merely the effect of a new talk for which I had not yet worked out enough appropriate light moments and jokes. Yet as we got into the question-and-answer period-usually a lively time-the atmosphere in the room grew heavier still. Was it because they had all had a large lunch? I wondered. But I discarded that thought as the mood became still more oppressive. Something was going seriously wrong, I realized, thinking frantically about what sort of intervention I might make to uncover the problem.
But I did not need one. A woman had her hand raised with seeming eagerness. I called on her. She stood up.'I just want to tell you, Dr Peck,' she said, 'how seriously disturbed I am by the way you have been blessing the sexual behavior of Jim Bakker and Gary Hart!' Two hundred people immediately broke out in applause of agreement with her. The group's anger was out in the open.
Not that I knew how to deal with that anger. 'Thank you,' I responded. 'Your statement obviously reflects the feelings of a great many in this room and makes it equally obvious I have been failing to communicate well. I am sorry if I have been unclear. Because I have never, for a moment, intended to bless their behavior or otherwise approve of it. What I have been trying to do-apparently rather poorly-whenever questions about their behavior have been raised is to wonder with you why we spend so much concern on the sexual acts of these few public individuals, for which we have no responsibility, and so little concern on such issues as the insanity of the arms race or the sickness of our unbalanced budget, for which we do have some responsibility.' Perhaps as many as a hundred applauded this response. Yes, the conflict was out in the open-with me on the minority side-but it was hardly resolvable. I had lost over half my audience. The rest of the afternoon was stormy and the day ended on a distinctly sour note.
The people who paid a significant sum to come and hear me on that day, like most of my audiences, were not an average cross-section of the American public. My audiences are generally college-educated, white-collar, upper-middle-class women and men. More specifically, the vast majority have not only had psychotherapy but also see themselves as being on a spiritual journey. Envisioning themselves growing toward something, most feel they still have a way to go and they acknowledge their imperfections. As relatively advanced spiritual travelers, they usually have a well-developed sense of their own sin and are familiar with personal guilt, remorse, and contrition. Furthermore, a large percentage are themselves in the `helping professions.' As physicians and nurses, pastors, psychotherapists, and social workers, they are not only accustomed to assisting others with their issues of sin, guilt, and forgiveness but have actually been trained to be sensitive to others and conscious of their needs. Yet when confronted with their involvement in diseased organizations, they were uninterested, petulant, and missed the point.
Yes, there is a hole in the mind. ( Our lack of social consciousness--this hole in the mind-has been the subject of several major books. See Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978). Also Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
The problem goes deeper and is far more extensive than our difficulty dealing with great social issues. Quite possibly, it is unrealistic to expect the average citizen to deeply concern himself with the complexities of the nation's health care system or the unhealthy dependence of the national economy upon the military-industrial complex. The key decisions will be made in Washington, and it is not surprising that, on this level, 'the system' should seem beyond him.
If you look at this man's organizational behavior, you will likely find that he takes pride in his job because he knows it well. He is interested in the lives of his coworkers on the assembly line and is usually happy to cover for them when necessary. But you are also likely to find that he has no interest in what goes on in the front office. He probably has no idea of the company's budget. He may be utterly unknowledgeable about the company pension plan in which he participates. He has little understanding of the production department, of which he is a member, and quite possibly never thinks of it in terms of a system.
It is this close-to-home organizational unconsciousness that causes far greater unnecessary psychospiritual disease and suffering than that caused by broad social problems. In Parts Two and Three, case after case will be examined in depth where the hole in the mind wreaks havoc at the grass-roots level of the family and in day-to-day business dealings. At this point, it will suffice to give two brief examples of unnecessary psychospiritual suffering-one in marriage and one in business-to glimpse how much destructive pain could be averted were we to elevate our organizational consciousness and learn even the simplest organizational principles.
Virtually everyone who joins an organization-whether by joining IBM or by joining another individual in matrimony-does so with two needs: to give something and get something. Obviously we want to get something. Money and status, for instance, are among the 'motivators' for people seeking organizational employment. And nowadays certainly most of us expect to receive love and affection when we marry. What may be less obvious is how much how almost desperately-we humans want to give as well as receive. Most of us have a profound need to be of genuine service to the agencies for which we work, to be truly useful, even essential, in our jobs. And how many of us are so hardhearted that we enter marriage without any desire to give, to bring delight and joy to our spouse, our beloved?
The problem comes when the organization doesn't have what we want to receive from it or doesn't want what we desire to give it. As I look back on our wedding day thirty three years ago, I realize I pledged my troth to Lily with two inchoate but very deep fantasies in mind. One was that in and through the institution--the organization-of our marriage I would be able to 'make' Lily happy. The other was that as a result of this union I would no longer suffer from loneliness. Our marriage has had unanticipated joys, but the disillusionment of the next two decades was intensely painful for both of us. There were a number of important 'things' that Lily wanted from me that I found myself eventually either unwilling or unable to give her. They ranged from mundane offerings of roses to theological agreement. And vice versa.
It gradually dawned on me that I could not fulfill my fantasy to make Lily happy. And as a consequence of our various mutual mis-matches, each of us has experienced times - frequently prolonged-of profound loneliness within our married relationship.
How much of our suffering might have been prevented, I wonder, if I had known from the outset the truth that it is generally not within one person's power to fully make another person happy in this life? A stable and reasonably healthy marriage can meet some terribly important human needs. Our committed relationship has provided both Lily and me with a very meaningful center to our lives. But it might have been much less painful had we not had to discover for ourselves that it is not within the nature of the institution of marriage to provide anything like a total surcease of loneliness.
The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a 'good' marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.
The absence of any overall formula for marriage would be obvious if we were educated about organizations. Read any textbook on organization theory, for instance, and if you do not get lost in the details, you will realize that the whole book is basically an elaboration of what is called 'contingency theory.' Contingency theory states simply that there is no one best structure for an organization-that the best type of structure will be contingent upon the particular organization's size and product or function. The text will go on to examine a whole variety of organizational structures and how, for better or worse, different types of structures fit different types of businesses.
Extracted from M Scott Peck's A World Waiting to be Born.
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