"empowerment" is a disempowering concept

[Harrison Owen]

At 01:51 PM 5/18/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>Releasing those kinds of labels (beautiful, ugly, good, bad, etc) has been
>one of SD's gifts to me.  It's created a real shift in my own head, and a
>deeper willingness than I had before to accept without judgement (or
>anywhere near as much judgement, anyway) the current state of affairs as I
>look (for example) at the vast majority of first world government, ngo and
>for-profit institutions, or (another example) at the way life works inside
>a country that is set up as a fundamentalist theocracy.
>
>Instead of seeing them in such negative terms (the Emperor's new clothes
>metaphor sums up my prior view), I've come to see them in terms of where
>they are on the Gravesian SD model.  And it's not that I don't take account
>of how soul-deadening life can be in an organization that is stuck in a
>command-control paradigm (I lived in a Dilbert world for 15 years!), or how
>terrible it can be for women (I have two daughters!) to live in a society
>that institutionally deprives them.

There is no question that structure and control, even under the Command And
Control model have a legitimate place in the human story, and as you point
out, both Wilber and Beck honor that place -- as would I. But Wilber for
sure, and Beck (I think) would also understand that each level in all
quadrants has its darkside, which can become (usually does become)
pathological. I have to say that a lot of the empowerment business comes
out of the dark side of a quite "legitimate" level of consciousness. This
gets a little complex, and if you want the details, see my books about
Spirit/Consciousness. The short take follows.

In a much simpler model, upon which Wilber based much of his earlier
thinking, derived from The  Great Chain of Being -- and from which I
borrowed shamelessly in writing The Power of Spirit and its earlier version
Spirit: Transformation and Development, there are five levels. Actually
there are 7, but the first is nothing, and the last is nothing -- leaving 5
that you can talk about.  In my words these levels for  the Individual are
Body, Mind, Intellect, Soul, and Spirit. Intellect is the point where we
develop ego. The good news is that we become a conscious identity. The bad
news is that we tend to get stuck on our ego. No question ego is a good
thing (to be honored), but getting stuck on ego is pretty disastrous. One
word for this disaster is arrogance

My journey led me to ask what were the organizational analogs to the
individual levels because I felt then, and feel now that organizations have
consciousness just like, and related to, individuals. This led me to speak
of 5 levels of organizational consciousness -- Reactive, Responsive,
Proactive, Interactive, and Inspired.

The critical levels individually and organizationally in terms of this
discussion  are Intellect/Proactive. The Proactive organization is what we
would usually consider (until very recently) the "well managed
organization." This is the home of the MBA, everything is done by the
numbers, and the mantra is Control, Control, Control. And if you are out of
control, you are typically out of a job. In all fairness, organizations at
the ProActive level are impressive: Productive to a fault, and well oiled
machines. They also have an Achilles Heal  which I experience as Corporate
Arrogance. And when I hear corporate policies to the effect -- We Empower
our People -- I hear arrogance talking.

Fortunately, at least in terms of my (and I believe Wilber's ) story we
don't have to settle for this. There is something new on the horizon --
which I have called The InterActive organization. At the moment, we are
sort of stuck in the middle. We know by experience that the old Proactive
organization, a good as it was is no longer fully functional, and in fact
has become quite destructive -- productive of what I call Soul Pollution.
The InterActive organization can sound awfully good -- it is a conscious
self-organization where power and control are always situational and not
positional, which goes a long way towards the elimination of arrogance. The
real problem is that you can't just wake up some morning and say "We are
going to be an InterActive Organization" -- because you are then right back
in the old trap -- Command and Control, Executive Dictate and all the rest.
Even worse, it becomes quite clear that the only way forward is to give up
the one thing we took to be the most important  Control, Control, Control
-- not because all that is bad -- but because we never had in the first
place, at least in the way we thought we did. Terrifying. We could be out
of a Job.

If you can't get there by command -- maybe you can just let it happen. And
this I think is the core of the experience every time Space is Opened.
Which is also why, i think, that Open Space is so often experienced as
"transformational" because it is. Not in the sense that we transform
anything -- but rather that what is happening anyhow is allowed to appear
in our consciousness. One manifestation of that is our sudden awareness
that the Old Emperor doesn't have a stitch on. And when we thought the
power came from that dude, it was all in our (and his) imagination. He had
no power to give us. We only had our own which we must claim. (or not).

So I can certainly honor our evolutionary history in all phases, if only
because the gifts of each phase (level) are still with us and still useful.
Even old Ego can not be gotten rid of -- but may be transcended.  However,
I feel zero compunction is calling a Spade a Spade. The notion that I
experience my own power only when the CEO empowers me is fundamentally
fraudulent. He/She can't give what he/she never had -- my power. Only I can
claim my power, and until that time -- so far as I am concerned -- the
Emperor remains resplendent in my mind.

Or at least that is my story.

Harrison

>Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, MD 20854 USA
phone 301-365-2093
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm

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