PARTNERSHIP CULTURE

  Which is more adaptive for the group, to have one member make critical decisions and have the group obediently follow, or to have the many members each make their own decisions and follow their own decisions?  The answer is that it depends.  Generally it depends on how much knowledge is involved, what actions the group members need to take for the group to thrive in its environment (its economy) and defend itself from attackers (its defense).  Humans are very flexible in their cultural organization to meet the needs of the economy and defense.

    When it is more adaptive for a group to have a few members make critical decisions in the group, a vertical cultural organization develops with the deciders at the top and everyone below obediently following the decisions of the few.  An example is a Mountain Gorilla troop, where the alpha male decides when to move to a new feeding ground, and the whole troop obediently follows him.  None are left behind to fend for themselves.

     When it is more adaptive to have a vertical organization, and have the group be obedient to the leader, obedience is enforced by intimidation, fear and force, even punishment by death.  Violent enforcement of the members is the character of a dominator culture.  The dominators train and force the other group members to be obedient.  It is highly adaptive for example when the group is under attack from outside invaders.  One commander decides how best to fight the enemy, and all the other group members obediently follow the commander's orders. The group moves as one force, which is more powerful than any one attacker or a disorganized hoard of invaders. Dominance of the leader is enforced by strict military discipline. The Roman Legion is an example.

    When it is more adaptive for the group in its circumstances to have most of the individuals making their own decisions, a horizontal cultural organization will develop.   For example, when it becomes more adaptive for the mass of the people in a culture to be creative rather than to be obedient, then the culture changes from a vertically organized, top-down culture, where most of the critical decisions are made by a few at the top, to a horizontally organized culture where people are treated equally, encouraged to think for themselves, to be creative and to take risks.  Leadership decision-making is not so important.  Most of the critical decisions are made at the bottom.  Such a horizontal cultural organization is a partnership culture.  This change from many local dominator cultures to a global partnership culture is happening on Earth now.  The next section describes why.

KNOWLEDGE AND ECONOMIC NECESSITY.    Over the past 5,000 years, most humans have lived in an agricultural economy and in the past 200 years, many have lived in an industrial economy.  Both of these economies can be operated with relatively little knowledge.  The type of work required for these economies to thrive is repetitive and simple, although often hard and dangerous.  Such an economy works best, if the decisions about when and how to use the small amount of knowledge are made by a few deciders, and all the rest of the people obediently do as the few have decided.  The work of the many can be learned by apprenticeship, and is the same generation after generation.  This type of economy to be successful requires a culture in which the few make the decisions and the many obediently carry out those decisions.  This is the classic case for a vertically organized dominator culture.  Add to this economic advantage, the military advantage in an era of frequent war with different human groups trying to take resources and people from other human groups.  These factors strongly favor a vertical cultural organization for nearly every human culture on Earth.  It may be that the only long lasting culture that escaped this model for over a thousand years was the Minoan culture on the island of Crete.  It had no invaders.  It traded with people around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea through its active navy and commercial fleet, but was not threatened in its island home.  It concentrated on creating and producing goods for trade.  It had a horizontal, partnership culture, where men and women were equal and very creative, and being king was not much more important than the jobs other men and women had.  By far for the last 5,000 years most of the world has lived under vertically organized dominator cultures, with several classes or castes, and the common people or peasants forced to be obedient to their "betters".

    Now the world has changed to a global knowledge economy, because of the vast increase in knowledge in the latter half of the 20th century.  What happens when there is a huge increase in knowledge, so much that the few at the top can no longer understand it all, much less make effective decisions about the economy.  When humans can no longer decide, the decisions shift to the marketplace.  What happens when the new knowledge allows some producers to listen to what the consumers want, make it, market it, sell it, and listen again to improve it.  If you were a consumer, which would you buy, the same old thing they had last year, or the new improved model?  What if there was an entirely new way to do what you wanted faster and cheaper.  You would buy it.  That is how the market place responds to a great increase in knowledge.

    Once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back in again.  Those who learn how to make money by creating new knowledge and improved products people want, create still more new knowledge.  New knowledge becomes the source of new value in the marketplace and the economy becomes a knowledge economy.  Those who create the new knowledge and serve the customer best make the money.  Those who cannot quickly respond to the fast changing marketplace, become like dinosaurs, too big and slow to survive.  In the 1990's, big old corporations such as those that formed the American automobile industry, Sears and IBM lost large parts of their market share.  After 104 years as one of the 30 companies whose stock was part of the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, Sears was removed from the group, and replaced by new, fast moving companies such as the software giant, Microsoft.  The automobile companies were still struggling at the turn of the century, and IBM had bet the company on redefining itself from using proprietary architecture to open architecture.  The openness signaled that the knowledge economy had broken out of the grip of the old dominating big companies.  The global marketplace was too big and too powerful for them to survive by their old ways.  They had to become part of the new global knowledge economy, that nobody controlled to survive.

Mass Obedience Changes To Mass Creativity.      What happens to the culture that supports the economy, when the economy changes?  The culture changes to motivate the people to do what the new economy needs them most to do.  The new global knowledge economy has billions of consumers around the world with vastly different tastes, wants and needs.  Those who can create new ways to satisfy those tastes and needs, will make money in the new economy.  A few decison-makers at the top of the social ladder cannot do it.  They simply can't.  It's not even close.  However, there is a source of creativity to meet the need of the billions of people around the earth who are consumers, and that is the billions of people around the Earth who are creators.  The first requirement for the success of the global knowledge economy is the mass creativity of the billions of people around the Earth.

FROM VERTICAL TO HORIZONTAL    Mass creativity is not a "nice to have", it is a critical necessity.  The few cannot do it.  The many must do it.  Mass creativity is more important in the global knowledge economy than mass obedience.  The global knowledge economy requires a cultural change from vertical social organization to horizontal social organization, from many local dominator cultures to a global partnership culture.  It is sheer economic necessity.

 WHAT ABOUT DEFENSE?   If the global knowledge economy favors horizontal, partnership culture, what about defense?  The 20th century world was a dangerous place.  War, terrorism and violence were rampant throughout the century.  People expect this to continue into the new millennium, so they expect to have vertical, military organization, just to survive.  The global economy and the isolated Earth are the answer to this view of the past.

    The Internet has effectively eliminated distance between people all over the earth.  A person can communicate with another person half way around the world as quickly, almost instantaneously, as with a person half way down the block.  Television, radio ,fax, and video tape have brought the people of the world much closer together, so that they see and experience each other as people more often, instead as experiencing them as "them" across the ocean or over the mountain.  Experiencing daily the reasonableness of other ways of life mellows the insistence on one's own way as the only way.

    The internet has changed relations among people in other ways.  It has brought people together, so they know each other as people.  Most importantly, it has made trading partners of people who otherwise would not know the other exists.  If one goes to the search engines to find a wanted product, the suppliers may be in many different parts of the world.  These are now the people with whom you buy and sell.  You also chat with them, and get to know them.  You dare not offend them, because you may want to do business with them again.  Even your strongest competitors today, may be your best customers for your new product tomorrow.  You cannot afford to anger them or treat them disrespectfully.  You may need them.  Instead of looking at other people in far away places as holders of land and goods you want to take away from them, you look at such people as potential trading partners, who come into your office or your living room at home by the Internet.  You cannot afford to treat them as hostile enemies worthy of your hatred and destruction.  You must treat them with mutual respect.  The global economy requires this change in attitude.

 WE HAVE NO ENEMIES, ONLY NEIGHBORS.   We have no enemies.  We all live and buy and sell in one global community.  We are all neighbors who need each other sometimes.  War is unthinkable in such a world.  Hatred of people because they are different is foolish, shortsighted and immature.  Practical people know they must treat other people, next door and all over the Earth, with mutual respect.  It is the way of the world in the global knowledge civilization.

WE HAVE NO OUTSIDE INVADERS.   So far as we know we are alone in the universe as intelligent beings, capable of building a knowledge civilization.  That is why the knowledge civilization is called E V E, The First Flower of the Universe.   E V E will create a new space home, transfer billions of people and their machines and a copy of her knowledge base to a new knowledge civilization, the Second Flower, and set it off into space.  It too will be devoted to necessary peace, because of its intricate knowledge economy and the fragility of its machines.  It too will not be able to afford war.  All these necessarily peaceful knowledge civilizations will divide and reproduce, launching the era of the Flowers of the Universe.

THE IRRESISTIBLE WAVE SWEEPING THE WORLD TO PARTNERSHIP CULTURE.    The global knowledge economy requires mass creativity, vast variety and necessary peace, and has no enemies within or invaders from without.  Each of these by itself is a powerful motivation to have a partnership culture.  Together they form an irresistible wave that turns the world ship upside down, from the many local dominator cultures to a global partnership culture.

TURNING THE WORLD SHIP UPSIDE DOWN.   It is as though the world ship is a cruise liner with many decks on it, and a flat bottom.  The elite stay on the top decks.  The peasants stay in the decks below the water line.  When the wave hits, the world ship is pushed over so it is turned upside down in the water.  Now instead of having many decks, it only has the flat bottom.  All the people from elite to peasants must flee the ship, get into the water, and then climb up on the flat bottom, which now becomes a single deck on which all people live at the same level.

ESTABLISHING A DOMINATOR CULTURE  How is a new culture established when it did not exist in the area before?  How is a dominator culture established?  The dominator culture needs the people to be obedient to the few decision makers at the top.  It needs to control the people to make them obedient, rather than follow their natural impulses to make their own decisions and do what they want.  How do you gain control over the people, who have been making their own decisions?

STEP 1:  HAVE HALF THE PEOPLE CONTROL THE OTHER HALF.   The classic method is that first you get half the people to control the other half.  Now the problem is only half as big.  This is typically done in agricultural and industrial economies where the men have to do the heavy work in the economy, in the fields, mines and factories, by having the men control the women.  The women are confined to the home and rearing children, so they do not interfere in public discussions or public decisions.   The culture teaches that men are superior to women, that in marriage women must be obedient to men, and men will make the decisions in the family.

MARRIAGE IS A TRAINING GROUND FOR CITIZENSHIP.   Marriage in this culture is based on a dominance contract, where the husband is responsible for the wife's happiness, to provide and decide for her, and the wife does as she is told.  The husband is the dominant one in the marriage and the wife is the submissive one.  A major reward for the husband for living under this cultural system is that he gets sex when he wants, because he decides when to have sex with his wife, and she, as the submissive one, obediently complies.  The culture teaches that this is the normal way life is.  Both husband and wife learn the rules of the dominance contract, what the dominant one does and what the submissive one does.   Then the dominant husband goes out into the world and applies what he has learned.

STEP 2:  CONTROL THE DOMINANT HALF.     Then the dominant husband at home, goes out into the world and becomes the submissive worker, tax payer and soldier for the king, or government.  The culture has classes, so the lower classes will know that they are lower and will be submissive to their "betters" who know best how to decide for them. If the lower class person rebels, and is not obedient, he can expect to be disciplined by the "betters", just as he would discipline his wife if she were not obedient.  That is how the dominance contract works.  He learned it so well in marriage, he knows what to do and what to expect if he does not do it in the world as a citizen.

    Now the people on top have control of the men, who in turn have control of their wives and children, and the people on top control all the people in a dominator culture.   A recent example of this process may be seen in Afghanistan, where the Taliban government, using an extreme form of Islam, has intimidated the women in their country by putting all the women in black robes covering their bodies and faces, and largely confining them to their homes.  The men are strongly encouraged to make the decisions in their marriages, including when to have sex with their wives, and the military teaches them to be obedient to the government and religious leaders.  Much of this is justified to the people by the government due to the struggle of the warring factions, of which Taliban was one, and war or potential war with outsiders, as well as religious purity.  The result is a country under the tight control of the Taliban government in close collaboration with the Muslim leaders of of the dominant religion in the country.  Many other Islamic countries do not take this approach, but it is done now in Afghanistan, and has successfully delivered control of the people to the Taliban government leaders.

HOW DOES A DOMINATOR CULTURE CHANGE INTO A PARTNERSHIP CULTURE?   The change to a dominator culture begins with fear of invasion, the need for the people to be obedient to a few leaders and disrespect for women as inferior to men, who need men to decide for them.  The change to a partnership culture begins to occur, when the creativity of women in the economy is needed.  This is not simply the work of women that is needed, but the creativity of women as independent decisions makers and creative risk takers producing new value directly in the culture's economy.

STEP 1:   FREE HALF THE PEOPLE FROM THE DOMINANCE OF THE OTHER HALF.  When women are needed to be creative, independent decision makers participating fully in the economy, they cannot be submissive individuals who do not believe they can handle responsibility, or make competent decisions, who stay out of the economy, and mainly take care of the home and the children.  The husband who thinks he is doing what he is supposed to do according to the culture, who keeps his wife from getting an education or a job outside the home, is doing the opposite of what the new economy needs.  How does the culture change this?

RESPECT FOR WOMEN AS INDEPENDENT, COMPETENT DECISION MAKERS.   The change to a partnership culture begins with respect for women, as independent, competent decision makers, as good as men.  This is the beginning of the attitude shift to everyone being treated equally.  If this is true, there is no reason for a man to make most of the decisions for his wife, and the reason for the dominance contract in marriage fails.  In the United States fro example, there has been a 50 year change, since women worked successfully in factories in World War II, while many of the men went off to war on different continents.  Over this time more and more women have worked outside the home, earning money in the economy.  Dramatic cultural changes have occurred, so that at the turn of the millennium, it is well accepted that women work outside the home, and can do jobs as well as men.  Women were paid less than a man for the same job.  Pay for women has climbed steadily toward equality with men, as women are accepted as able to do the job as well as men, and as needing and deserving equal pay as much as men in the culture, since many women now earn all or much of the money for their homes.  Flexibility in careers and work has created many more opportunities for women to work at times when they can, and take care of children, when the children are young.  Men are doing much more of the house keeping and child care.  This new relationship in marriage reflects the new relationship of men and women in the economy.

THE SHARING CONTRACT.   This new relationship between men and women in marriage can be described as a sharing contract, where each partner is responsible for his or her own happiness, and the partners can be happier together than by themselves, for example in reaing children together, and growing together through old age.  Each one makes his or her own decisions, and if either one is not happy, it is that person's responsibility to do something about it, not the spouse's responsibility.

THE COMBINATION CONTRACT.   Most marriages, especially in a partnership culture are a combination of both the dominance contract and the sharing contract.  In some areas of decisions in the marriage, the husband will be dominant and the wife will be submissive.  In other areas the wife will be dominant and the husband will be submissive.  In still other areas, each will make his or her own decisions.  Each marriage is unique in its particular combination of these three ways of making decisions, and the combination changes over time as the partners change and grow, now one taking up responsibility in an area, later the other in that area.   A culture that has mostly fairly evenly divided combination contracts between dominance and sharing decision systems, is a long way toward being a partnership culture.  A marriage is a dance of harmony among these three ways of deciding between the two marriage partners.  The Golden Mean of everything in moderation is a good rule in such a marriage.  An example is the story of The Bride and Groom In the Castle of Dreams.

STEP 2:  FREE THE PEOPLE FROM THE FEW DECISION MAKERS IN BUSINESS, RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT.   In the dominator culture, people are taught not to think for themselves, but to obediently do as they are told.  In Business the few at the top decide what the company will do and how it will do it.  Then they develop elaborate training programs to teach the employees what to do.  Then they add a large layer of middle management, whose job it is to see that the employees are doing what the few at the top decided, and report to the top managers about this.  Decisions in the organization flow from the top down, and obedience to top level decisions is the measure of success in the company for the employee.  Obedient loyalty to the boss becomes more important than successful production.  In religion the few or the one in charge makes the decisions of how people are going to live their lives.   People are taught to go to the religious leaders for decisions about important decisions and events in their lives, such as birth, marriage and death.  They are taught not to think for themselves, but to do as they "should".  In government the top leaders feel an obligation to redistribute some of the wealth taken from the poor by taxing the rich and providing "cradle to grave security" for the poor.  This keeps the poor from causing a revolution in which the rich and their families are killed and their property confiscated.   Government believes it has this responsibility, and that if it does not take care of the common people, they will make terrible decisions in their lives.  They will have much better lives if the government decides for them.  If the government takes much of the people's money in taxes and teaches them that government is the only one that can solve the many crises in their lives, the people do not learn very well to think for themselves.  Such a population would not compete very well in the global knowledge economy.  The whole population would become a dinosaur that could not respond quickly enough or creatively enough to survive in the market place, and would go the way of Sears and the others that could not change.

    What is needed to compete successfully is precisely the opposite.  Instead of a population taught to be dependent on the government, what is needed is a population taught to be dependent on the market economy.  Instead of being a dependent, obedient citizen, the people need to be nurtured to be independent, creative citizens that solve their own problems.  The role of government changes from controlling provider to nurturing enabler.  The reason is that the people, not the government, must now make the decisions in the people's lives.  The people need to be massively creative for the culture to succeed in the global knowledge economy.  The government cannot be creative for them, nor can the rich.  The people must be creative themselves.  They are the only one that can do it.  The government needs to nurture the people to be independent, responsible creative, risk taking individuals, whose creativity and independence is nurtured, rewarded and respected, and who have the tools to successfully compete in the global knowledge economy.  The rich will provide most of the tools and capital intensive infrastructure for the global knowledge economy.  Government needs to help coordinate and establish standards when necessary, protect the infrastructure and the people from crime, and generally let the economy run smoothly.  Heavy handed government control is the death warrant of the global knowledge economy and therefore of the global knowledge civilization.   Only blind, selfish, dominator government can kill E V E , the First Flower of the Universe.  It is the duty of all the people of the Earth to see that this does not happen.  It is as if we hold the the first cell of life in our hand.  Will we nurture it to robust strength and reproduction, or crush it out of fear or greed.

    Fortunately government has so far respected the budding flower and has passed laws postponing taxation of the Internet transactions, until we can learn more how it works, and what it needs to thrive.  There is vast wealth to be made from the global knowledge economy, if the rich wisely learn how to nurture it and become partners with the people.  The rich provide the infrastructure, and make money in various ways including getting a small part of the new value as it flows through the system.  The people use the infrastructure, such as the Internet to be creative and do business with each other.  Billions of creators and consumers do transactions everyday all over the world.  The rich get richer on their part of the flow, and the poor get richer by selling their creativity.  Redistribution of wealth by government is not needed so much, because the knowledge economy initially distributes the wealth to the people.  They are not dependent on the rich for a wage.  They sell directly to one another.

    In religion there is a movement for a more direct relationship with the Divine, rather than going through the clergy.  The fastest growing religious groups in the world are those that emphasize a direct, supernatural relationship with the Divine.  In the global knowledge civilization one of the main roles of religion is to teach people how to have such a relationship, which provides individual, personal guidance for how they should live their lives.  The opportunities are so numerous and growing all the time, that one pattern does not fit all.  No longer can the culture say to a man, get a job in the field, factory or mine, get married, have children, and enjoy your wife and grandchildren in you old age.  No longer can the culture say to a woman, get married, have children, obey your husband, rear you children, and enjoy your husband and grandchildren in your old age.

    There are so many new opportunities of what you can do with your life, that you need a central goal for your life and guidance to make decisions and take actions that move you toward it, rather than away from it.  The goal is fulfillment as a whole person.  The guidance comes from inner friendship.  Marriage and family are still among the most fulfilling human life patterns.  Now they are part of a larger fulfillment that includes work, hobbies, volunteer work and especially the creative expression of what matters most to the individual and the group.  It must come from the creative individual.  It finds value in the group.

NURTURE, NOT CONTROL.   The lesson for the leaders of a culture that is becoming a partnership culture is to learn to let the people decide for themselves.  The key is to nurture the people, not control the people.  Government should not be very prominent in a partnership culture.  The kings job is not much different from other people's jobs.  The role of government is to quietly nurture things to run smoothly, nurture effective infrastructure, and let the people be responsible for themselves and do their creative work.  Those who learn how to nurture well, will be the government leaders.  Those who believe their job is to control the people and decide for them, will be turned out as arrogant upstarts, who don't know what they are doing or what the people need in the knowledge economy and its supporting partnership culture.   Nurture , not control, is the watchword for the partnership culture.  The sooner the best and brightest learn that being elite controllers is now counter productive to the economy and the civilization, and that their fulfillment as whole persons is in being creative in the global knowledge economy and using their considerable talents to successfully nurture the people to be successful creators and participants in the global knowledge economy, the sooner their power will devoted to the growth of the new civilization, rather than dragging it down by their 19th century thinking and outdated attempts at control for the benefit of the ignorant masses, defending them against the "robber baron" big corporations.  When they learn that their goal in life is nurture, not control, the whole world will be better off, and their brilliance will be used in the service of E V E , the First Flower of the Universe.