Noetic Business

What do churches, governments and business have in common?

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:32:23 +0000

You can always tell who has the most powerful influence on society, based on who the tallest buildings belong to.

From the Middle Ages, it was the church or mosque. The Lincoln Cathedral in England, completed in 1311, stood at 524 ft. The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca has the world’s tallest minaret at 689 ft.

The Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, United Kingdom

Then followed a period when government buildings were the tallest. In 1899 the US Congress passed the Heights of Buildings Act, limiting any new building in Washington to a height of 110 ft, while the Washington Monument stands at 555 ft and the United States Capitol at 289 ft.

The United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., USA

Today, the tallest buildings are skyscrapers, erected by banks, big business and other capitalists (think of London’s Canary Wharf and New York). The current tallest building in the world is Khalifa Tower in Dubai, standing at 2,723 ft. Taipei 101 enjoyed tallest building status from 2004 till 2010, at 1,671 ft.

The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Wielding unparalleled wealth and power, for-profit companies are a key factor in the equations that decide the human future. States and governments can at best regulate their activities, and their power to do even that is limited. When the public sector sets up too many regulations, private sector multinationals simply move elsewhere. Business is powerful, and it makes no sense to criticize business the way Occupy Wall Street protesters are doing. What does make sense is to use the power and influence that business has to make our world a better place.

And so that’s why we’re so passionate about Noetic Business – it really does have the power to change the world, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter. We hope you’ll join us in quitting the criticism of Big Business, and let’s together give them something new to think about. Be a part of making a significant shift in the way business is done. Join our crowdfunding campaign at http://bit.ly/noetic-biz.

Progress to Date

Thu, 10 May 2012 09:12:47 +0000

Here’s a history of developments with Noetic Business, so you can get a feel for what has transpired recently.

08 May 2012 – profound discussion with Pauline Crawford, a ‘gender issues’ arbitrator who is well connected with Barclays top management. Perhaps opportunity for a case study?
08 May 2012 – discussion with Susan Mears, book agent, in which she was delighted to represent the title
23 April 2012 – launched crowd-funding campaign to test various messages to see which one works best.
20 April 2012 – phone conversation with Marilyn, in which she said she was leaving IONS to take her message into the corporate world; said timing couldn’t be better and agreed to author the chapter
16 April 2012 – invited Marilyn to author a chapter on Noetic Science
13 April 2012 – invited to submit book proposal.
26 March 2012 – met Denis Fourie, Lobbyist, in Johannesburg. He has previously run a company for high net worth individuals and may be interested in becoming involved with a similar business model.
Later in 2010 – met Marilyn Schlitz, CEO of IONS, in London and discussed why Noetic Science wasn’t used in business.
22 March 2010 – registered domain name after reading a number of books on Noetic Science. A light-bulb moment occurred when I realized these topics were not readily discussed in boardrooms.

A Copernican Revolution in Human Assumptions

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:27:42 +0000

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Early in our lives, most of us accepted the belief that our world is not flat, but a sphere; this we now take for granted. As yet, however, we have not discovered that the human being has more than three dimensions. Copernicus took the existing concept of the world, that it was flat and fixed in space, and posed an alternative – that the spherical earth moved around the sun. The objective world as seen by human eyes did not change as a result of his statement, but the human assumption about the world was turned inside out. Nothing changed; yet, everything changed.

I am suggesting a second Copernican type revolution in which each person is shown absolute respect and love, is valued as sheer being for his/her own uniqueness, and learns with every experience to have this same respect and value for others. If we are ever to play again we will have to hate competition for some better reason than that we fear to lose a game, respect or glory. We have got to desire something more than trophies and money. In play there is only one side! The genius of play is that while one is resolving one’s own esthetic tensions in a way proper to one’s own organism, one is at the same time engaging in a way of being that anyone else can share and not simply from their own background or culture or species.

One does not become a player by putting on a pair of running shoes and a sweat suit; being able to play is much more a matter of world-view. Play proceeds based on the following assumptions:

Living is an on-going experiment with the universe.
Play is a process of trust in the unknown.
There are no such things as smart and dumb people.
Humans begin life with a will to play and learn.
Life is not a mystery to be solved, but one to be experienced.
Our inborn natural state is ecstatic wonder.
The universe is not chaotic.
Human learning and play do not obey commandments in the same way that people obey laws.
Play is synergy.
Play is beginner’s mind.
Life is to be played by heart.
The universe is nothing to be afraid of.
Play is not a matter of effort but of grace.
Everything I play with, plays with me.

The genuine play encounter is not radical in intent, but rather in its effect. The player is not trying to change anybody else. In engaging the world in one’s own private play, one finds new shared meaning. Play liberates by creating indeterminacy and surprise. The courage of the player is to enter into such undetermined possibilities and follow them out. In doing so the player pierces the paradox of being both an individual and a unity at the same time.

Play is faith not belief; it does not compel or require a “because”. Play is, “being seized, being gripped by a pattern of meaning, a pattern of meaning that affects one’s life pattern, that becomes a paradigm for the way one sees the world” (Miller, 1970, p.168). Play-faith asks that we expand ourselves trustingly into the nonlogical, “into the truly fantastic” (Becker, 1973, p.201). The average man becomes immortal by continuing to be a fragment of a hero-figure. In play, however, one realises that such immortality is an illusion, for one can play with immortals at any instant. Play allows and demands merging in the power of another and the development of one’s own personal power at the same time.

But what of the practicality of play? Is there anyone as practical as a trusting, graceful person who is inspired by a precise sense of one’s place among others? Is there anything as practical as a spontaneous urge to share in daily life? Is there anything as practical as seeing, feeling and experiencing the world as it really is – delightful and devastating, terrific and terrifying, awe inspiring and inspired by awe?

References

Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972.

Becker, Ernest. The Structure of Evil. New York: The Tree Press, 1968.

Becker, Ernest. The Birth and Death of Meaning. New York: The Free Press, 1971.

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press, 1973.

Franck, Frederick. The Zen of Seeing. New York: Vintage, 1973.

Leboyer, Frederick. Birth Without Violence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

Miller, David L. Gods and Games: Toward a Theology of Play. New York: World Pub. Co., 1970

Montagu, Ashley. Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1971.

Nabokov, Peter. “Running, Power, and Secrecy at Taos,” American West. (Sept./Oct., 1982), Vol. 19, pp. 20-29.

Pearce, Joseph C. Exploring The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. New York: Pocket Books, 1974.

Pearce, Joseph C. The Magical Child. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977.

Schwenk. Theodor. Sensitive Chaos. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. London: Penguin Books, 1928.

When Play Turns to Conquest 2

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:38:46 +0000

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The following is a common experience in American homes. They players may change, but the sequence does not. Father comes home from work feeling guilty for not giving his son enough time on the previous weekend. So father asks son to rough-house with him for a few minutes. This “asking” is given and received more as a command than a request. His son is reluctant because their bouts of play always seem to end with anger or pain. On the other hand, the son knows from past experience that if he were not to play his father would call him a name like “chicken” or would otherwise make him feel small.

Father changes his clothes and reappears in the den. He punches his son and “play” begins. They punch and roll and grab. At one point, the father pins the boy down by the shoulders and does not let him up. At first the boy smiles and wiggles, then strains and struggles, finally in desperation he hits his father’s arm. His father is surprised and angered by this show of aggression for no apparent reason. He responds by putting more pressure into his pin. His son, unable to physically respond, cries. The father gets up in a flurry of anger yelling at his son that, “if he is going to dish it out, he has to take it like a man!”

This father-son “play” is really a contest. There are a number of misunderstandings and mis-communications. First, the father does not really want to play; he is doing it to fulfil a felt obligation to soothe his guilt. Secondly, the child is demanded to do something, play, which he can only do spontaneously. The son is given a yes-no request to which he can only respond with a yes. Neither father nor son wants to play, but both are afraid to communicate this to the other. Both must try to be spontaneous. All this has taken place before they have even begun to play.

When the actual rough and tumble play begins, neither is relaxed. Both carry the tensions of their past experience as well as those engendered by the double messages. These tensions show up in muscles and nerves.

Then comes the pin. In continuing the pin, the father ignores both his son’s verbal and kinaesthetic messages. This mis-communication increases the boy’s frustration. As a consequence he responds in kind – contest for contest. The flow angers the father, after all he was only “playing”. In his response to what he sees as unprovoked aggression, the father becomes a contestant – one who wins! As with many times before, the child’s crying ends the contest. He is punished for this. The child is incompetent because he cannot respond to his father’s messages, and insolent for his desperate reaction.

At each point in this interaction the son makes decisions that seem to be common sense, only to find subsequently that his father’s response to his “right” moves make them wrong. Over a period of time the father-son “play” becomes increasingly competitive contests in which the experience is pain and negation of self.

The rendering of play into games and contests is a logical and coherent part of a particular kind of world-view which applauds the defeat of neighbours, hangs on its walls the trophies of killing, builds for its children playgrounds of asphalt, concrete and steel, and induces the fear of losing in its children. We have chosen winning, whatever its price, over sharing.

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The Making of Play Into Contest

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:33:22 +0000

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By making play into contest our culture has failed to do its universal job, to give each person what they need most – a way of self-value derived from shared symbol systems and their consequent mutual actions. Play is nature’s way of triumphing over culture. What is crucial to a contest is the process of destroying and replacing the patterns of play with the more socially valued structures of contest. Play as contest fits neatly into our common sense; contests have become habitual, rational, defensible and necessary. The contests which are substituted for the play of our first ten minutes of post-natal life are such an integral part of our socialisation that they seem to be natural and instinctive. “The result is that people willingly propagate whole cultural systems that hold them in bondage, and since everyone plays in the same hero-game, no one can see through the farce” (Becker, 1971, p. 86.

Play as a competitive form of behaviour has become a basic tenet of American life. All of our contests and games are “played”. In translating play as contest, we have given the labels, definitions and relationships of one form of behavior to another without recognising that they are significantly different concepts and forms of behavior.

We have lost much in our misunderstanding. Having labelled play as contest, we not only altered our conceptions and behavior, but we have made it exceedingly difficult to accept or experience anything different from our existing definition. As we grow into the “real” world of adulthood our play-faith changes to doubt, which we seek to resolve by learning the rules of the game. We learn to play the game and follow the Duchess’ Law, “a gain for you means a loss for me and the more you have of something the less of it I have.”

The Duchess’ Law is the basis of contest; its essence is that something is at stake. This something is defined as winning or as not losing and is variously measured by trophies, money or prestige. In contests the bonding of play becomes a binding in which the self is bound to ceaseless struggle for continual self-affirmation.

Contests have their own code of ethics to which uncritical allegiance must be given to remain in the game. To further the aim of the contest whole persons must interact with each other according to pre-established roles. Friendships, trust, and caring are based not on human interaction but on which side one is on. Contests measure people, and it is the measurements not the individuals that matter. It is the statistically determinate part of one’s identity by which one becomes judged. The whole person is subsumed in these numbers or worse assumed to be identical with the numbers. One of the results is that a contestant can be an extremely lonely figure even in a team event.

The foundation of relationships in contests is that in order to experience oneself as winner one has to suppress one’s awareness of your contingency, your state of radical need for losers. Winning requires losers. Once success is achieved, it must again be achieved at a higher level; at every level the rate of losers to winners increases. We are left with an absolutely horrendous rate of losers to winners. But this is acceptable, since this is the way success is measured.

Since losers vastly outnumber winners, most people must seek a sense of self-value through the activities of the few winners. In order not to lose our sense of meaning and in order not to be thrown back upon our own meagre resources, we cling to and identify with others. Losers, as well as spectators in contests serve to reflect the image of the winner at twice its normal size. Losers are mirrors for winners. The looking glass is essential for contests. One must not tell the terrible truth of this relationship; for as Virginia Woolf has pointed out, with the telling of the truth, “the figure in the looking glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished” (Woolf, 1928, p. 37).

As a mirror the average person can participate in the glory and power of the hero. But sooner or later, even the hero is exposed to what Becker has called the “life-death lie”; strength wanes and the hero falls, is replaced and forgotten. For it is only the winning that we respect. The toll that we pay is frightful. The problem of degradation is a social as well as a personal one. We have destroyed play simply because we have refused to implement social forms which would liberate people. If we are to treat one another as whole beings then we must help that wholeness to unfold. Otherwise we deal with others as parts, as contestants.

The heroes’ failure, as well as their success, readily passes to a group. The spectator and even the losers often depend on the hero-winner for their sense of self. If the hero is threatened or weak, so we become. As a result, we lash out with anger in an attempt to re-balance ourselves. Our aggression toward the hero’s failure is an attempt at self-preservation. This identification with the contestant’s winning and losing in its extreme becomes what Don Juan called “pimping,” living one’s life in compliance with and for the gratification of others (Pearce, 1974, p.76). The contests feed upon the energies of each new generation, making new records, new thrills, new vicarious adventures sucking up their skills and personalities to further its own forms.

Why is a contest gathering in America one of the most meaningless, lifeless and generally pathetic experiences to which the sensitive observer can be subject? Simply because it is fundamentally degrading for humans to be reduced to roles and numbers – replaceable and tradable commodities. Contests are agglomerations of splinter individuals obliged to shun real human interaction, “not because they are ethically callous, but simply because there is no mutual design into which to fit the problems.

While we seem to reinforce the process of degradation, some societies seem to struggle against these processes. In those societies which we tend to call primitive, humans are beings, “with whom one adds meaning to life in the many rituals which mark its mystery” (Becker, 1968, p.276). What we fail to grant to one another, our own mystery, is carefully allowed in other societies. The sacred relay races at the autumn harvest festival every September at Taos Pueblo exemplifies, “competition that becomes unification in its unfolding” (Nabokov, 1982, p.23). These races simply defy our categories and are beyond our explanation – and this is where the Taos Pueblos want it. As one Taos runner responded when asked about his participation, “I could only tell you something superficial… When you talk about it, it loses power. It’s deep, very, very deep.” (Nabokov, 1982, p.29). In his book, The Man Who Killed The Deer, Frank Waters described this race as, “a race of the individual against the limits of his own flesh, and it is the unending race of all humanity with the wonder of creation. No man wins. No man loses.” (Nabokov, 1982, p.28.)

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To Play is to Learn by Heart

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:24:10 +0000

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We begin life as a sphere gently and firmly nestled in solution within another sphere. The harmonious concord of all possibilities brings forth in nine months a person. Each of us is created in nature’s “impressionable medium par excellence” (Schwenk, 1976, p.65). This is our first matrix, offering a source of possibility, a source of energy, and a safe place (Pearce, 1977, p.16). Thus, begins our harmonious rhythmic play. This is what Pearce (1977, p.51) refers to as bonding, “a non-verbal form of psychological communication, an intuitive rapport that operates outside of or beyond ordinary rational, linear ways of thinking and perceiving.”

In infancy we retain a great deal of this bonding or play. Our interactions with our surroundings remain spontaneous. As we did in the uterus, we play with our environment; fingers and toes reach, touch, feel, thrust and recoil with the air. We are playing and learning by heart. This is the “quantum jump”, ‘not towards the outside, but towards the specifically human centre of the heart” (Franc, 1974, p.86). It is an intimate personal rhythm in which every movement is an unbroken flow of controlled abandon and trust, at once available to everyone and your very own.

Don Quixote and Dr. D.T. Suzuki, W. Heisenberg and Alice have known that there are realities which transcend and go beyond the ability of language to describe or explain. Paradoxes are characteristic of forms of reality. The non-sensical wording of a Zen koan, the dual nature of electromagnetic radiation, the reality of Wonderland, and the disciplined chaos of play are impossible to penetrate with logical reasoning. These are processes “designed” to stop thinking. The paradox has to be grasped in terms of another awareness; once this occurs, there ceases to be a paradox!

What mystics have always known and physicists have recognised only recently still remains hidden from the view of the social scientists: there are experiences which are not comparable to our ordinary environment and are thus beyond the ability of our language to describe. The problem for us is to feel comfortable with the notion that paradoxes belong to the intrinsic nature not only of atomic physics and Zen but also of play in our own lives.

The most important step in this process is being open to the possibility that our questions may not be reachable by logical reasoning. Paradox points to a truth that cannot be found directly, but obliquely. Once experienced, we can smile and put a question mark after the supposedly firm reality of our logical categories and irrefutable, sophisticated reason.

The simple yet difficult truth of these paradoxical situations is that a change in viewpoint dissolves the paradox. The realities of atomic physics, Jesus, Buddha and play are both true and untrue.

In play, one re-experiences the paradox which occurred at birth, life is both intoxicating and panicky. The transmigration from the womb through the four inches of birth canal is the most hazardous journey a human being ever takes (Montague, 1971, p. 45). It is also the most creative. At birth the universe whispers life into our bodies with the secret, “Aha, this is play! Life is a blessing in disguise.” This is not a teaching that one tries to memorise, rather one knows it “by heart”.

To play is to experience the power paradox that intense intentional effort becomes powerful only when one totally surrenders and does not try. Humans in a competitive world find their rights guaranteed by no power greater than their own. Play guarantees no power greater than your own, but since there is no struggle for power no one loses any power. Play is a sharing of power. What Becker (1973, p. 155) said was impossible, to merge in the power of another and develop one’s own personal power is not only possible, but delightful.

Play is an act of insurrection in a dehumanised world. There are no memorised rules nor referees. Play is openness beyond the ideas of right or wrong. There is nothing to prove to anyone. Play’s ultimate power is a relationship between oneself and the universe; it is private and alone, solitary like the last leaf on a tree. It is union, simply complex, humanly accidental, grounded change; a moebius strip that leads back to its beginning – you.

The message, “this is Play,” is crucial for it establishes that the behaviours that are to follow are of a certain type. The play relationship is based on trust which, in turn, is based on being able to accurately interpret each player’s messages while simultaneously counting on them to accurately respond to your own messages. Normally, we tend to think of our ability to communicate as improving with age. This is not the case with the messages of play. It is in our infancy that our understanding of play messages is at its peak.

The play message, or frame of reference is paradoxical. In this way play is similar to dreams. Implicit in a dream is the framing statement, “this is a dream, and as such it is not literally true”. But while dreaming, the events of the dream are experienced as true. Thus, the dream is both true and untrue. The same is true of play. The framing statement that generates play might read like this, “these actions, in which we now engage, do not denote what would be denoted by those actions which these actions denote” (Bateson, 1972, p.180).

Within play there is non-verbal agreement that the actions of play stand for other actions, as in fighting, but in play they do not denote what they would in fighting. In other words, the playful punch does not denote what would be denoted by the punch for which it stands, and the punch does not take place. Thus, in this play a group of children are involved in a form of non-verbal communication which all pretty much understand; not only do they not quite mean what they are doing, but they all understand that they do not mean it.

The real messages that are exchanged in play include: “I trust you.” “Even though my hand is clenched, I will not hurt you.”

“I can be me with you.” “I can start and stop whenever I want and so can you.”

Self-handicapping is one consequence of the joint understanding of play messages. This is not often evident to the non-player as it is known through touch and experience. It is being able to blend one’s strength, size, or power with the graduated risk-taking ability of each of the other players. Play proceeds on the basis of intuitive understanding and mutual sensitivity. Once this happens our muscles and nerves will sense not only our own play-risk boundaries but also those of others.

The balance, fluidity and inter-relatedness of play is exemplified by an ancient Chinese legend. Fa Tsang demonstrated the basic principle of Hua-yen to the Empress of China. He set up, according to legend, mirrors at the eight compass points, at their nadir and the zenith. He then put a lighted candle in the centre. Each of the ten mirrors reflects the candle. Each mirror reflects not only the candle but the reflections of the candle in all of the other mirrors. Each one of the nine is in the one individually and totalistically. If the reflection in one mirror is disturbed, all reflections are affected. Such is the case with players.

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Play to Win & Every Victory is a Funeral

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:12:03 +0000

The following article was written by guest contributor, Fred Donaldson, a former professor, play specialist, author, aikidoist, and internationally recognized for his ongoing play research with children and wild animals. He is the author of the Pulitzer nominated book, Playing by Heart and authored numerous articles on original play.

O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D., © Lindenschule

An eloquent reaffirmation of the human need for play by a writer who makes the following observation concerning our contemporary culture: “The rendering of play into games and contests is a logical and coherent part of a particular kind of world-view which applauds the defeat of neighbours, hangs on its walls the trophies of killing, builds for its children playgrounds of asphalt, concrete and steel, and induces the fear of losing in its children. We have chosen winning, whatever its price, over sharing.”

Remember the way you played when you were young? Out all day, too busy to go home and eat. Coming home too dirty to be let in the front door. So involved in your world of play that you never heard your parents’ first, second, or third call to dinner: finding a secret place to hide, to be alone, to be with “friends” who live in secret places, to dream.

Long ago, at an age when wishing still worked, we began a journey. It is the journey of Christ and the Cowardly Lion, of Siddartha and the Tin Man, of Bilbo Baggins and Alice. Our journey remains largely unfinished. It has been abruptly and sadly aborted, waiting to be re-discovered and brought back to life.

Wherever and however people live, we have moments when the existence of the world seems wonder-full, beyond everything we have been taught is real. This is an human condition that no amount of social science can describe or cover-up. We have all experienced such moments, although for most of us they remain only as memories.

The openings to these magic places are as varied and wondrous as life itself. The entrance may be the looking glass, tollbooth or wardrobe of fable or fairy-tale; the Crucifixion or enlightenment at break of day; or a gentle smile. Play is such a magic place.

We are faced with an intriguing question. What happened to play in our lives? It is amazing that something that is seen to be such an important and integral part of childhood is gone, usually without a trace, by adolescence. Play goes the way of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Puff the Magic Dragon. Like teddy bears and sleepers, play is something that we are supposed to “grow out of”. But what do we grow into?

The purpose of this paper is to examine how little we understand the play that we grow out of, and to look at the nature of contests which we substitute for play, and to propose a second Copernican Revolution in our way of thinking and playing.

A major problem in writing about play is that virtually everyone thinks that they know what play is. There seems to be a cultural assumption that there is universal and self-evident agreement and insight about the nature of play and its role in our lives. For most of us our assumptions about play appear so obvious that we are not conscious of them. In an attempt to explain play, social and biological scientists have tried to prove its usefulness. Psychologists show that play:

allows a child to experiment with the world;
provides opportunities for a child to develop a strong ego;
provides a safe outlet for aggression;
develops competency;
uses up surplus energy;
reduces psychic tension

Sociologists and anthropologists add that play:

develops co-operation and, conversely, competition;
introduces a child to aspects of their culture;
provides practice for later social functioning.

Our approach to play is reflected in three common phrases. We are admonished to “play fair” and “play by the rules” and at the same time we are commanded to “play to win” and “play for keeps”. These messages sound logical, reasonable and benevolent. But from the viewpoint of play they are redundant, contradictory and degrading. The first two phrases are tautologies. Rules and fairness are not forces external to play, but are immanent in play’s harmony. Such messages require conscious control of spontaneous behaviour. The rules and fairness of which adults speak are not those of play but of contest. To “play to win” or “play for keeps” is impossible. Winning and playing are not only different behaviours but different views of the world. Play is for fun; winning is for keeps.

It is not just that childhood players and adult contestants view play in different ways; they experience two separate realities. The adult view may be summed up as, “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.” But the child playing says, “If I hadn’t believed it with all my heart, I wouldn’t have played it.”

Early in childhood, usually before age ten, play gives way more and more to the contest reality of the adult world. Play, then, is no longer a relationship between children and their reality. Children’s interactions with reality are increasingly buffered by values, words and assumptions which are based on fear and anxiety. We carry this fear in our muscles and nerves the rest of our lives without even knowing it. When the essence of play becomes a ritual it is changed from a relation to an event. Family-play outings, for example, are often preceded by such planning, anticipation and obligation that all are aware of the implicit command, “everyone is going to have fun, no matter what!”

Communication about play can often be a frustrating and ambiguous misunderstanding. “Go outside and play,” really means get out of my hair. “I’ll play with you in just a minute,” can mean anything from ten minutes to an hour to tomorrow to never. “Do it just once more,” really means keep on playing until I want to stop. The following parent child dialogue is another example:

Parent: “What did you do today?”

Child: “I played outside.”

Parent: “But, what did you do?”

Child: “I just played.”

Parent: “Did you do anything special?”

Child: “Nothin’, just play, Can I go now?”

Much of the communication about play is an exchange of messages which are not registered nor really understood by either party. The result of this mis-communication is a mis-translation of play in language, form and spirit. In turn our cultural assumptions both reflect and are dependent upon this mis-translation. Some of the cultural assumptions that affect our view of play are:

The unknown is to be feared.
Humans need structure.
Life, nature and relationships are measurable, controllable and predictable.
The role of the human is to conquer and control an hostile environment.
Life is a zero-sum game in which individuals compete for scarce resources; one person’s gain is another’s loss.
Competition, not co-operation, is the essence of life and therefore natural.
People are redundant and replaceable.
Intuition and feeling are not to be trusted.

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What is the consequence of printing money that nobody wants?

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:32:13 +0000

Date: April 30, 2012 – Guest post by Tim Price, Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London. The post is provided as another example of the madness happening around us – all the more reason for a new business model: Noetic Business.

Flushing money down the toilet

In a week that saw Britain slide into its first double-dip recession since 1975, we quite fittingly also saw evidence of the sort of insular bigotry and protectionist narrow-mindedness that one associates with that same ugly, painful decade, when Barry Sheerman, Member of Parliament, said:

“I’m getting increasingly worried about the free movement of people across Europe. It’s a very competitive world out there, and my constituents resent that.”

The signs of unravelling are not confined to British shores. French voters in the presidential elections shocked markets by

(a) favouring the socialist Francois Hollande; and
(b) giving almost a fifth of their votes to the far-right extremist Marine Le Pen.

Meanwhile in another turn of the sovereign debt screw, Spain was downgraded toward reality. And the Dutch government collapsed altogether.

Amazingly, the people of Europe just don’t seem that keen on austerity. Yet it’s worth asking– why hasn’t the recession of today produced the same sense of crisis from the 1970s?

Chris Dillow of the Guardian newspaper suggests that average real wages are much higher now, so although standards of living are falling, they’re falling from a much higher level that softens the pain (even though the real pain of austerity hasn’t even really arrived yet).

But there is one outcome from the 1970s that is genuinely to be feared… the risk of which seems to be rising every day, if it has not indeed already arrived: Stagflation.

Stagflation– the utterly painful combination of stagnating growth and steep inflation that marked the 1970s– and will be the natural side effect of extended central bank quantitative easing during a period of widespread deleveraging.

In other words, stagflation is the consequence of printing money that nobody wants.

Moreover, an outbreak of serious stagflation will decimate conventionally managed debt and equity portfolios. And given that most people invest with the crowd, with conventional investments or conventionally managed portfolios, stagflation will wipe the savings and livelihoods from untold masses.

But, we live in strange times– times, for example, that reward bankers handsomely for bankrupting the economy. This is why the likes of so many politicians and financial commentators are able to insist with impunity that central bankers should ‘keep printing more money’ despite never having provided a scintilla of evidence that such tactics work.

Case in point– in a letter to the Financial Times from April 26, 2012, economist Roger Alford remarked:

“The utterly disparate time horizons and the very different experience and skills required… make it virtually impossible for any one person to have the experience and depth of understanding to provide effective leadership [as head of a major central bank].”

Intellectually constrained by his faux science “profession”, Mr. Alford does not take this argument to its logical conclusion: if the institution is so difficult to govern and the role so difficult to effect, why have it in the first place ?

We know the answer to this question. Central banks exist to protect the banking system and to finance the government’s debts at all costs… even if it means bankrupting the taxpayer and productive economy.

Yet the urgent need for austerity and an insoluble sovereign debt crisis make for uneasy bedfellows.

By definition, we cannot shrink our way back to the sort of growth required to service the West’s accumulated debts. Something has to give.

That something will ultimately be social and political disorder on a continent-wide basis, particularly as the taxpayer becomes increasingly frustrated in his obligations to fund the rapidly growing and untenable costs of Big Government.

Such disorder is almost universally feared– by politicians, by markets, by institutions. As the London-based marcoeconomic research consultancy Capital Economics recently commented:

“The last thing that the markets need right now is increased political uncertainty at the heart of Europe at a time when the economic outlook is already bleak…”

The only reasonable response to this is: tough. If social and political disorder is what it takes to shift an unsustainable status quo in which vampire banks and clueless bureaucrats suck the life out of the productive economy, bring it on.

Tim Price
Director of Investment
PFP Wealth Management
Sovereign Man Contributor

Why change the corporate world?

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:46:44 +0000

Because if you want to change the world you focus on changing Big Business.

There’s a growing belief that changing the way business is done is a lost cause – Big Business will NEVER change, the skeptics all say. And besides, there are tons of charities and philanthropists doing really good work already – surely their efforts are enough?

The problem is that most of these well-intentioned folk are merely addressing the symptoms of our problems – no-one is actually addressing the causes of our problems, because very few are able to grasp the complexity of the underlying causes. Big Business is an exception.

Think about what types of organizations are most influential in society. Here’s an extract from the book to explain:

“One can always tell who has the most powerful influence on society, based on who the tallest buildings belong to. From the Middle Ages, it was the church or mosque. The Lincoln Cathedral in England, completed in 1311, stood at 524 ft. The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca has the world’s tallest minaret at 689 ft.