Comment on the Allegory - Human Potential

We humans have a great deal more potential than we use.

This is the third Comment on the Allegory of the Three Travelers
The first Comment is about Coming of Age
The second Comment is about Repairing the Vessel

We humans have a great deal more potential than we use.

We are clever creatures able to adapt to the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  Those circumstances, the pattern of interactions among the living things that share our place in the world, only requires a small part of our potential.  Perhaps each of us has a fantasy of a different pattern that allows us to flourish.

The way we have structured the world is that each human needs a job that pays money.  Each job requires a different set of skills but none requires all that we can be as human beings.  The most challenging jobs that pay the most are specialties.  They require the specialist to learn in great depth a narrow band of the spectrum of human knowledge.  Most jobs pay less and require less.

When our job is to know this special thing, we do not have time to experience for ourselves all the rest of the spectrum of human knowledge.  We accept as truth the ideas we receive about the rest of the spectrum.  We receive those truths from the groups we trust.  We can learn a lot about a person when we know from where they receive their truth.  Perhaps it is the National Rifle Association truth, or the Green Peace truth.

When the available jobs do not pay enough to get by, or there are no jobs available for many, we begin to create the second and third travelers.  And then those of us who have jobs see that they have to defend what they have and the cycle goes on and on.

At the Living Systems Institute we study how all the living things interacting within a place can obtain what they need to thrive.  That requires that we step out of our specialty and see how what we think we know fits within the pattern of everything.  The hardest part is the the 'conventional wisdom.'  The things we all know to be true.  If we are not out testing our assumption we will never discover our conceptual errors.

If we are not out testing our assumption we will never discover our conceptual errors.

If we are not testing our assumptions how will we know if there is a better way to organize things?

The opening proposition on the web site for the Living Systems Institute is, 'Imagine the kind of world you would like to live in.  Let's build that one.'  What I imagine is a world where every human being is given the safety and challenge to develop their full potential.  To move the world in that direction requires that our communities learn to heal nature and produce abundance.

If we truly care about the natural world and our fellow humans it is time to learn to heal nature and produce abundance.  We envision The Cook and the Gardener as an organization that will teach our community how to do that.  A successful  organization will challenge us to adapt what we know about organizing.  We will be creating a new pattern to which we must adapt as we go.

When we are successful the organization will accomplish these tasks:

1. We will become a keystone species supporting the processes of the many species participating in our community.
2. We will become a place for individuals to test their assumptions and learn new skills as they adapt to the changes we are creating in our community.
3. We will become skilled as an organization in producing an abundance of food, shelter, learning, health, belonging and purpose for our partners.
4. We will become skilled as an organization in delivering the benefits of healthy habitat and healthy food to our community.

This idea of an organization designed to develop the potential of its participants is not unique to the Living Systems Institute.  For authority on this approach I recommend the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey and in particular their 2016 publication, "An Everyone Culture".

What may be unique to the Living Systems Institute is the idea that the market is not the only way to produce the things our community needs to thrive.  There is a better way to produce what we want to be abundant.  We don't want to change the market or replace the market.  We want to add complexity.  We want to add an additional pattern of interactions that heals nature and produces abundance of the things we need to thrive.

The idea is to come together as a community to heal nature and produce abundance.  The idea is that we can do that by investing in the potential of the people participating.   The idea is that the participants can be challenged to create a healing and productive pattern of interactions and adapt to that new pattern as they go. 

One of the truths that you will hear about solving the difficult problems we face is that solution 'must be able to scale'.   The solution proposed here is not something that can be imposed at a planetary scale.  Rather, we think in terms of one community learning to heal nature and produce abundance for itself and then every other community in the world can learn to do the same . . . realizing the potential of their members . . . healing the vessel . . . and coming of age as a species.

We call an organization to realize human potential a Community Investment Enterprise.