Amerika

The alternative to allowing someone else to just wash a civilization over all of us is that all of us can actually decide on how it’s going to go. And as with any survival effort, there needs to be a goal.

The television program The Ultimate Survivor states that its “goal” is to teach viewers how to survive while inside each episode, the “goal” is to reach civilization. But what should civilization’s goal be?

Clearly the program expects it to be “organized refuge” which is different to what nature could provide. This shows us that the organizations designed by man and those designed by nature are opposites, which means the human organization needs modification to fit into its environment.

Whatever the human organization is, it must be maintained, it must be (re)designed, it must be imperfect and must take care of its own waste.  Thus if it looks like being organized takes a lot of effort, it sure does, but the benefit is enormous, hence civilization.

But then some commentators might point out that not all organizations are effective or even may be over-organized. The answer to that is that over- or under-organized groups are in a condition that is actually not organized, thereby requiring effort (again) to get organized.

But what are the current goals of organizations in general? An easy method to find out is to track where most M.B.A. graduates work. They work in the financial sector and they will tell you that their main objective is to increase shareholder value.  In other words, the goal is simply more money. This is also (and especially) not aligned with nature.

One of the longest running monarchies in the World is the English House of Windsor. They may have changed the name, but still, their opinion on what their goal was/is would be important. What is known is that the monarch stated somewhere that “family” is most important. On the other hand, when the monarch meets with a foreign leader, she generally asks: Is your country “stable”?

It would appear that a civilization based on “stable families” is a more natural approach, but would that be a goal? After all, if that was a goal, what would the measuring criteria be and who will measure it? Unless of course we leave that up to each family within a set of limitations, for example: A family can never be bigger than 5 members (on average) measured across 5 generations.

This puts the topic of population on the table, where humans do not have predators hence they over populate the earth. Some insight into the condition of man has identified however, that the predator is in each one of us. Each person can psychologically consume himself, but can also save himself.

The natural solution is to kill off the “predators” but since that is not possible humans will have to find a middle path. In terms of a civilization “predators” are deemed a risk and should be managed as such. This means that families do not really need to be “controlled” while risk management is in place.

Stable families are therefore not a civilizational goal, but it could be an enabler.

The following reference on Organizational Goals apply where one extract is as follows:

For example: Many organizations mention environmentally friendly behaviour as a goal of the organization. However in a study of organizations actually including environmental friendly behaviour as an organizational goal, very few had corresponding operative goals, i.e. very few delineated how such behaviour would be implemented in the different departments of the organization.

Additional examples: Most prisons have rehabilitation of prisoners, preparing them for re-integrations into society as their official goal, however in practice, most of their operative procedures involve aspects of custodial care. For many voluntary organizations, especially in these days of funding cutbacks, the community service which is their official mandate or goal takes secondary precedence to the fundraising activities which will ensure their survival.

There is undoubtedly a disconnect between “goals” and survival. Goals are used to create a “favorable” impression whereas money rule the roost because money determines survival in the market. Another way to view this is that, like Hillary Clinton, all of our organizations have public goals which guarantee social success by making people feel favorably toward the organization, but these are balanced and often obliterated by the need to accomplish private goals, which are the socially unpopular things a company must do like increase revenue, fire idiots, and cut back on loafing.

Another reference explains the difference between goals and objectives. One extract applies as follows:

Goals and objectives provide organizations with a blueprint that determines a course of action and aids them in preparing for future changes. A goal can be defined as a future state that an organization or individual strives to achieve. For each goal that an organization sets, it also sets objectives. An objective is a short-term target with measurable results. Without clearly-defined goals and objectives, organizations will have trouble coordinating activities and forecasting future events.

In other words, without real goals — those oriented toward survival, and not social success or appearance — organizations will not be able to forecast future events. This is very interesting because it demonstrates that the future is not unknown. Therefore, pursuing a disconnected goal will lead to the wrong future.

An individual or even a smallish group can survive in the bushes for quite some time, but having gone to all the trouble of setting up an organization that benefits said “group” to a large extent, what goal will ensure the survival of that organization? After all, the organization does not die when its founder/group dies.

Organizations that “survive” follow a proper blueprint that “determines a course of action and aids them in preparing for future changes.” It follows that a “blueprint” is the goal where successful blueprints will cause those organizations to survive.

Those that do not survive must go bankrupt, in other words they must not be allowed to self-perpetuate in their “dark” state. Once they go bankrupt, their debt should be taken over by successful organizations that are able to effectively recover those assets. If not, those assets should be allocated as waste and managed accordingly.

There is actually a company that provides “blueprints” to those that struggle. Its flyers state that following this method “charts a clear path to you desired goal, visually and measurably.” They also reference Jim Collins’ work where the “Twenty Mile March” is a typical doctrine representing that blueprint successful organizations use.

Blueprints guarantee survival. Think of antelope on the plains: the group follows a natural blueprint, or pattern of behavior over time, that limits its exposure to predators. The method works even if individuals are weakened by hunger or disease.

Human organizations need a similar adaptive blueprint which takes into account the necessary aspects of organizations in nature and shapes them for human needs. This means rejecting the idea that individuals are so powerful they can deny the pattern that protects the group.

The blueprint in The Ultimate Survivor demonstrates that even powerful individuals are made weak by a bad blueprint. While we depend on exceptional people and they are more trustworthy than rules, some patterns just work.

It is not surprising that the term “culture” is used for both bacteria and human organizations. Human organizations arise through an accumulation of methods that have worked in the past. They grow organically as a result.

Over time, however, their original blueprint no longer applies because the civilization has beaten back nature and chaos. What then? A new blueprint must be formed, and this requires adapting the patterns of nature.

Tags: adaptation, adaptive blueprints, dark organization, human organization