CHAPTER 3 – THE COLLABORATION PARADIGM
With a little hindsight, I can see that I have long been willing to question assumptions.
My career decision was inspired by what was, at the time, a rather simple or naive belief that so
many of the jobs available for people didn’t have to be as boring, meaningless, and/or unhealthy
as they in fact were. Without being fully aware of it at the time, I was questioning the dominant
paradigm’s premise that lousy jobs were an inherent and inevitable feature of the world’s
economic system. Whether that premise is intentionally self-serving for those at the top of this
system or just poor logic, it is clear to me now that the nature of work, the model of
organizations in which work takes place, and the structure of the political economic system in
which organizations function are all instead the direct result of the dominant paradigm’s starting
assumptions grounded in its theory of reality.
A few years later, I found myself challenging a different set of assumptions, this time
more deliberately and self-consciously. I was raised in a strong Christian home, as my father is
a Presbyterian minister. Having been taught twentieth-century evangelical Christianity’s
“theory of reality” from the very beginning of my life, these beliefs were well-ingrained by the
time I reached young adulthood. I accepted their validity and incorporated them into my own
worldview, and had made an explicit commitment to try to put the implications of these beliefs
into practice in my life. But as my doctoral training helped me develop my analytical
capabilities, I subjected my own beliefs to a constant assessment of their validity. Ultimately, I
realized that there were some logical inconsistencies in the Christian theory of reality. No
longer able to believe that these inconsistencies simply reflected human inability to understand
fully “the mind of God,” I came to the conclusion that the assumptions of Christianity must be
wrong. While the miracle of life was sufficiently compelling evidence to support my continued
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belief in an omniscient, omnipresent, and loving Creator, I let go of all other assumptions
associated with any kind of religious worldview.
In essence, the Christian perspective regarding the nature of reality goes something like
this. God made humans because he loves us, and he provided the rest of creation for our use
and benefit, for us to have dominion over. Although we have free will to do as we please, God
has indicated that he wants us to obey him and follow his will. He has identified a number of
actions that we are supposed to refrain from engaging in, such that we sin if we choose to behave
in this manner. Since every human is saddled with inherent sinfulness, we inevitably act
sinfully at some point in our lives. Unfortunately, God has specified that there is a price to be
paid for our sins, namely, eternity in hell. Thus, all sinners – every human being – is in the
unenviable position of facing God’s eternal judgment. The good news, however – the gospel of
Christianity – is that God loves us enough to have sent his son Jesus into the world, whose death
essentially “pays the price” for any human who repents from sinfulness and claims God’s grace
as reflected in the gift of his son’s life. Humans who consciously make this choice – “accepting
Jesus into their hearts” – are thus saved from damnation and insure instead that their soul spends
eternity in heaven with God. While this decision is supposed to bring “the abundant life” even
here on Earth, the fact is that the struggle to live a good Christian life in a culture that constantly
tempts our inherent sinful nature is not always pleasant for those striving to live out their
commitment.
For me, the problem with this Christian theory of reality is the incompatibility between
the premise of a loving God and the premise that this same God created a world in which the
“default option,” so to speak, is that human souls – once they have completed their physical life
– will spend eternity in hell, separated from God. This basic incompatibility reflects a number
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of other inconsistencies or illogical qualities. For example, Christianity asserts that God created
us in his own image, but then also believes that all humans are inherently sinful. To skirt the
problem of how or why God would have made us sinful if he were in fact making us in his own
image, Christianity relies on the explanation provided by the creation story in the ancient
Hebrew scriptures. Here, the sinfulness of humankind is due to Eve’s disobedience in eating the
forbidden fruit, followed by Adam’s subsequent accommodation to her temptation to do the
same. On one hand, this story of “original sin” is extremely hard to believe given evidence
regarding the evolution of life, which undermines the presupposition of a “first man and woman”
that were the progenitors of the entire human race. On the other hand, the notion that God
forbids us to do anything – the premise that he defines some actions as sinful and commands us
to not to engage in these actions lest we suffer eternal damnation – is logically if not spiritually
inconsistent with the belief (maintained in the new paradigm) that we are created with free will
to do as we choose.1
The aspect of the Christian theory that I have the most difficulty with is the notion that a
loving God knowingly and willfully creates people to put into this dilemma. I reached a point
where I concluded that a truly loving Creator would not deliberately design such a system,
creating people who are inherently sinful, putting them into a world in which they are guaranteed
to sin, and then punishing them with eternal damnation (separation from the Creator and thus
from love). From the Christian perspective, God’s rules for humanity (which we have no choice
but to live by) specify that people are doomed to suffer the “fire and brimstone” consequences of
their sin unless they become “born again” and followers of Jesus. Only these followers will get
admitted into heaven, while all others will have to spend eternity in hell. In their zeal to help
“save” everyone else from this tragic fate, Christians have long demonstrated their willingness to
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exert considerable effort to spread the gospel throughout the world, with the intent of insuring
that everyone on the planet adopts and practices the Christian faith.
Ultimately, this objective has provided justification for some of the worst atrocities of
human civilization throughout the last two millennia. These include the conquering of foreign
lands and forced subjugation of indigenous peoples so as to convert them to Christianity; ruthless
“inquisitions” and “witchhunts” in which practitioners of other belief systems were tortured and
killed as heretics; the extortion of money from poor people as necessary penance for their sins,
used to fill the coffers of the church and line the pockets of its leaders; and a culture heavily
oriented towards inducing guilt and/or implementing laws as a primary mechanism for
preventing supposedly sinful behavior. While the actions of Christendom over the years
provide some people with sufficient reason to disavow the religion, the bottom line for me was
that I couldn’t continue to believe in a God who would choose to create such a cruel and
miserable system.
Christianity has, throughout the modern era, lost much of its primacy as the basis for the
dominant paradigm’s theory of reality. However, the belief in a limited or constrained human
being has not fully waned. The Christian belief in human flaws resulting from our inherent
sinful nature has largely been replaced by a scientific belief in human flaws resulting from our
inherent animal nature. With evolution replacing the creation story as the most likely genesis of
the human species, we have to come to believe that “hard-wired” into the human being is a
natural instinct towards aggression and predation, competition and destruction. While science
generated an alternative explanation of the underlying problem, the modern theory of reality has
simply maintained the starting assumption that humans are, by nature, selfish and predestined to
be harmful to others. Rather than holding the validity of this assumption up for careful scrutiny,
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proponents of the dominant paradigm are all too willing to rely on selective perception and
interpretation of anecdotal evidence regarding common human behavior patterns as “proof” that
this assumption is actually a fact. By discounting all the goodness, altruism, and cooperative
behavior displayed by humans around the world, the dominant paradigm disregards considerable
counter-evidence to this premise. In that sense, the modern theory of reality is just as limiting
and just as dysfunctional as the religious theory of reality that preceded it.
Grounded in a pessimistic perspective regarding human nature, the dominant paradigm
reflects a number of basic beliefs which in turn have given rise to a set of primary institutions
that are taking global society down a path of development that leads to an unsustainable future
(cf. Clark, 1995; Gladwin, Kennelly, & Krause, 1995). As we enter the new millennium, the
global political economic system is clearly unstable. The intractable problems associated with
population growth, unequal distributions of wealth, resource depletion, environmental
destruction, and mass urbanization, combined with the threat of economic collapse, irresponsible
use of weapons of mass destruction, and/or technological crises, have generated a world that
seems almost ready to disintegrate into anarchy and chaos. My thesis here is that these
problems are the natural consequences of the dynamics inherent in the existing system. To the
extent this is true, potential “solutions” based on the starting assumptions of this system have no
hope of resolving the problems.
It is therefore necessary, I would argue, to rethink our starting assumptions so that we can
identify new, creative institutions and solutions that reverse the trend towards global destruction
and instead enable human civilization to pursue a path of development and evolution that
improves the quality of life for ourselves and for future generations (Anand & Sen, 1992; Olson,
1995). Rather than passively suffering the consequences of the global deterioration that
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continues unabated all around us, humanity must proactively choose to adopt a new cultural
paradigm that yields dramatically new approaches for addressing the fundamental needs and
problems of the global community. The new theory of reality articulated in the previous chapter
presents a very different story regarding the relationship between the Creator and the created,
between human nature and the universe to which we are intimately connected. It provides the
necessary foundation on which could be based the re-creation of the various institutions that
shape the development and evolution of human civilization. Only if we transform our dominant
institutions do we have any hope of insuring a sustainable future.
Successful transformation in this direction could be facilitated by the explicit
identification of the alternative “starting assumptions” which comprise the collaboration
paradigm. In this chapter, I articulate a set of these assumptions, contrasting them with the
parallel assumptions of the dominant competition paradigm. I have divided these assumptions
into four categories, namely, the fundamental orientations, primary objectives, core premises,
and underlying motivation, which are identified in Table 1. Two general comments about these
assumptions are worth noting here. First, each set – the old and the new – constitutes an
interconnected, internally consistent set of beliefs. In other words, the basic tenets of either
paradigm reinforce each other to support a way of thinking that is logically coherent. From
“within” either worldview, therefore, the other set of assumptions looks entirely unrealistic
and/or unreasonable. Second, the collaboration paradigm assumptions are not to be thought of
as the “opposites” of the competition paradigm assumptions. More often than not they reflect
the integration of the competition paradigm assumptions and their opposites; in other words, the
new assumptions transcend the old in the sense that the new also include the old. This
holarchical quality reflects the nested “systems within systems” feature of the universe and the
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pattern of evolution it reflects (Harman, 1998; Wilber, 1996). The fact that the collaboration
paradigm
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_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Table 1
The Transformation in Progress
The Competition Paradigm
to
The Collaboration Paradigm
Two fundamental orientations:
competition
–>
collaboration
control
–>
freedom
economic growth
–>
improved quality of life
consumerism
–>
conscious evolution
scientism
–>
metaphysics
individualism
–>
connectivism
rationality
–>
creativity
patriarchy
–>
equalitarianism
–>
love
Fueled by two primary objectives:
Based on four core premises:
Driven by an underlying motivation:
fear
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
transcends the competition paradigm further suggests that this transformation is congruent with
the evolution of consciousness unfolding on the planet.
Fundamental Orientations
There are two fundamental orientations in the competition paradigm. Not surprisingly,
one of these is competition. This reflects the basic assumption that competition is the dominant
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orientation in living systems, i.e., that life itself is an ongoing competition for scarce resources
and, hence, for survival. This competitive orientation is believed to exist within as well as
between species, at any point in time as well as across the eons of evolution. Competition, in
essence, is seen as an inherent and inevitable condition of existence. As a result, we have
designed our various institutions to take this competition into account. Collectively, our
political economic institutions promote competition, regulate it, address its negative
consequences, and make some of it illegal. Underlying all of these approaches is the basic
belief that competition is a “given” and thus we should take advantage of it where we can and
restrict it where it is problematic.
This leads naturally to the second fundamental orientation. Since competition is often
harmful, to the individuals involved as well as to the broader collective, it becomes imperative to
control the forms of competition that are believed to bring undue harm. Control – through rules
and punishment – is the most apparent method to use to prevent people from competing unfairly
and hurting others in the process. Control is then viewed more generally in the competition
paradigm as the most effective mechanism through which to limit, reduce, or eliminate behaviors
and activities considered to be harmful, sinful, or immoral. In other words, reliance on various
control tactics constitutes the primary means of preventing people from doing anything viewed
as inappropriate by those in charge of the control system. While the authority to decide what to
control is vested in the state, religious institutions have, over the years, exerted considerable
influence on our collective definitions of what should be promoted and what should be
prohibited.
Ultimately, this orientation towards competition and control permeates families, schools,
organizations, and governments around the world. In each of these institutions, competition
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among individuals is implicitly and/or explicitly encouraged, with the successful competitors
rewarded with more love, better grades, higher profits, and greater power. The process of
socialization through childhood and adolescence is designed to instill the competitive mindset
necessary for success as an adult, and it is in this sense that the dominant paradigm actually
creates the selfish, competitive behavior it claims is inherent and inevitable. Likewise, parents,
teachers, managers, and politicians implement a whole host of control mechanisms intended to
constrain the undesirable behavior of children, students, subordinates, and citizens. Since much
of this problematic behavior is exhibited by those people who are “losers” in the competition
sponsored by these institutions, all this control quite naturally breeds further rebellion and
alienation among those who already feel like they’ve gotten the short end of the stick. Their
dysfunctional behavior leads in turn to a broader array of social problems that justify the
implementation of additional control mechanisms designed to repress the problems and mitigate
their effects on society. The “us versus them” mentality generated by these dynamics
exacerbates the competitive orientation among people as they strive to salvage whatever
self-esteem and material well-being they can within the constraints of a harsh, uncaring,
“dog-eat-dog” world.
The first fundamental orientation in the new paradigm is, of course, collaboration,
reflecting the basic premise – validated by the evidence supporting the new theory of reality –
that all living systems are inherently collaborative. While the existence of competitive behavior
is not denied in the new paradigm, competition is recognized as contributing to the dynamic
equilibrium of an essentially collaborative, self-regulating system. In other words, competition
is acceptable in the new paradigm to the extent that it contributes to the development of a
collaborative society. At a minimum, competitive activities are legitimate only if all
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participants are involved voluntarily and they all agree that the rules of competition are fair for
everyone involved. In contemporary society, sporting competition generally meets these criteria
while economic competition doesn’t.
To support this orientation, institutions in the collaboration paradigm should be designed,
first and foremost, to promote collaborative rather than competitive behavior. Interactions of all
kinds should be oriented towards win-win outcomes whenever possible, rather than incorporating
the win-lose dynamics of a competitive orientation. This notion of a win-win mentality is at the
heart of a collaborative orientation, reflecting a number of key components of new paradigm
thinking. It replaces the “either/or” dualistic mindset of the modern, mechanistic paradigm with
the recognition that a “both/and” perspective is more congruent with quantum reality. It
acknowledges the existence of a benevolent, continuously creative universe in which scarcity is a
result of our socially-constructed reality rather than a property inherent in the universe and/or life
itself. It rests on the belief, well-documented in practice, that considerable synergy is possible
among individuals who work together in pursuit of their individual and collective interests. By
operating in a collaborative, win-win mode, people can synergistically increase “the size of the
pie,” enabling individuals to enhance their own personal well-being in the context of helping
others – and the planet at-large – improve theirs. This prospect of simultaneously improving
individual and collective well-being seems to be the rationale supporting free-market capitalism.
Unfortunately, the competitive assumptions underlying this system fundamentally undermine its
ability to deliver on the promise of enhanced well-being for everyone and everything, since
competitive dynamics inevitably result in losers.
Since the social sciences have clearly determined that human behavior is readily shaped
by the incentives and constraints embedded in the environment, creating collaborative
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institutions would undoubtedly increase the occurrence of collaborative behavior and reduce the
level of problematic competitive behavior generated by competition-oriented institutions. This
in turn would enable us to replace our dominant orientation towards control with a renewed
emphasis on freedom. The notion of individual rights emerged with the Enlightenment to
enable individuals to stake out a claim of “private” space against the intrusive control of the state
and religious institutions. These rights were meant to expand the amount of personal freedom
individuals could enjoy. While this “dignity of modernity” (Wilber, 1998) has in fact greatly
expanded the range of personal freedom in society, our freedom remains constrained by the
various controls embedded in the institutions and implemented by the leaders of a dominant
paradigm rooted in the dominator culture underlying western civilization. These controls, as
indicated above, appear necessary because of the presumed competitive and selfish orientation of
individuals and society, an orientation promoted by these same institutions and leaders.
By promoting collaboration and reducing competition, a collaborative society could be
designed to promote even greater freedom in terms of potential and acceptable human behavior.
Expansion of freedom is worrisome to those in charge of any kind of control system, and
contemporary political leaders exert considerable effort to restrict any personal behaviors they
define as harmful, immoral, or counterproductive. Certainly, restrictions against activities that
would bring harm to others are recognized as necessary and useful in the collaboration paradigm.
However, since free will is recognized in the new theory of reality as a fundamental property of
life, there is no legitimate basis for preventing people from doing anything that brings them
happiness while not bringing harm to others. As human activity becomes more collaborative
and oriented toward win-win outcomes, the level of harmful behavior generated by a win-lose
orientation will decrease. There will be less need to restrict others’ behavior and instead people
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can be encouraged to seek their own happiness however they see fit, in the context of not
bringing harm to others. In this way, individual freedom is taken much more seriously in the
collaborative paradigm than it is in the dominant paradigm.
Primary Objectives
The first primary objective in the dominant paradigm is economic growth. This
objective is based on the assumption that improvement in the economic or material standard of
living of individuals and communities is the most important or direct means of enhancing quality
of life. In other words, “progress” for human civilization is viewed as being achieved almost
exclusively through economic development. With economic growth thus widely viewed as the
key indicator, if not definition, of our collective well-being, the world's political economy is
designed to promote such growth. The fall of communism has resulted in nearly universal
consensus among the nations of the world that free-market capitalism is clearly the best system
through which to achieve economic growth and attendant societal improvement. Thus, the
policy agenda of the “developed” world is to open up the markets of “developing” countries in
order to expand the operations of multinational corporations into these countries and thus spur
further economic development.
This growth objective in turn drives the actions of nations, communities, organizations,
and individuals. At each of these levels, actors in the political economy are encouraged to
compete for a greater share of the pool of material resources and wealth available for use in
human civilization. The resources themselves are believed to be scarce, thus requiring a
competitive marketplace through which to allocate or distribute them efficiently. In contrast, a
somewhat paradoxical premise is that the efficient transformation of natural resources into
myriad products and services available for human consumption will increase the overall level of
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wealth in the world. However, since the distribution of this wealth is also determined through
the competition-based political economy, those with the most power and money are able to
secure for themselves a disproportionate share of the wealth created by the system, exacerbating
an already unequal distribution of the world’s basic necessities.
The system’s unquenchable thirst for continued economic growth also remains the
primary objective despite mounting evidence that it is causing irreparable damage to human and
natural environments and threatening global sustainability. Growing collective recognition of
the costs of unbridled growth has resulted in the emergence of various constraints designed to
mitigate the problems and thus protect our collective well-being. However, the creation and
implementation of these constraints is a difficult, costly, and largely ineffective process because,
ultimately, the competitive paradigm honors and rewards self-interested accumulation of money,
resources, and power more than it does the promotion and protection of the shared interests
resulting from our collective interdependence.
The second primary objective in the competition paradigm is consumerism, which can be
thought of as the aggregate set of ideas and activities associated with the development,
production, marketing, purchase, and use of consumer goods and services. Consumerism is the
primary modality through which economic growth can occur, and thus is a necessary counterpart
to the growth objective. As a result, the most important roles individuals play in the dominant
paradigm are as producers and as consumers. As consumers, we are encouraged by the
corporate media-delivered mass-marketing system of the free-market economy to maximize our
purchases and expenditures and to increase our debt to do so. As producers, on the other hand,
individuals are treated as job-seekers whose pay and benefits are viewed as the reward for
contributing to the process of economic growth. Unfortunately, the incentives of capitalism are
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designed to keep wages as low as possible so as to improve bottom-line indicators of profit and
growth. This profit is then distributed to the suppliers of financial capital, those same
institutions (and the individuals who own them) which provide the consumer credit that supports
the “demand” side of the equation needed to spur economic growth. Essentially, people become
simply the means through which to pursue the growth objective and thus insure the continued
wealth accumulation and power maintenance of the richest people on the planet.
All in all, the borrow, spend, and grow pattern generated by the dominant political
economy constitutes a rather vicious cycle for individuals, organizations, and nations. At the
national level, the financial crises exhibited by developing countries around the world are due in
large part to the high levels of debt they have incurred by borrowing from financial institutions in
developed countries in an effort to stimulate economic growth. Organizations are caught up in
an increasingly competitive economy in which they have to sell more and more in order to
acquire the capital needed to expand operations so as to help insure their ongoing profitability
and ultimate survival. Individuals become slaves to their jobs in order to afford the large
mortgages and/or credit card payments that pay for the material objects and personal services
which the dominant paradigm extols as the primary determinants of a high quality of life. What
is apparently overlooked in the whole process, however, is that any competitive system has
losers as well as winners, costs as well as benefits. By definition, not every nation,
organization, or person can win, and not all “growth” improves societal well-being.
Unfortunately, under current economic policies and accounting methods, resources allocated to
addressing the personal and social costs of competition are simply tallied as additional economic
growth.
The first primary objective in the collaboration paradigm is the improvement of quality of
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life. In contrast to the dominant paradigm’s limited focus on economic growth, however,
quality of life is defined and assessed in terms of the full range of criteria that are important to
people. Rather than assuming that economic or material needs and interests are the dominant if
not exclusive basis of human well-being and development, the new paradigm recognizes the
importance of explicit attention to the needs and interests of the whole person, i.e., body, mind,
heart, and soul. As a result, the competition paradigm’s myopic overemphasis on consumer
goods and services as the primary determinant of quality of life is replaced by a collective focus
on insuring that everyone can maintain a minimum standard of well-being in each of these areas.
Furthermore, the activities of human civilization should be oriented towards promoting
the widespread and equitable distribution of such non-economic “goods” as peace, justice,
beauty, health, and happiness. All of these conditions are viewed in the new paradigm as
critical to our individual and collective quality of life, and thus a collaborative society would be
designed to generate improvements in all of these areas, for all the world’s peoples.
Interestingly, these key dimensions and determinants of quality of life are not “scarce resources,”
and they can only be maximized through collaborative efforts among individuals and
communities. Thus, a competition-based system for pursuing improved quality of life defined
in these terms is both unnecessary and counterproductive. In fact, it is the competition for
material resources that leads directly to war, injustice, destruction, poverty, and misery, the very
conditions that prevent many of the world’s peoples from obtaining a better quality of life.
The second primary objective of the collaboration paradigm – the means through which
the overall quality of life for human society can be enhanced – is conscious evolution
(McWaters, 1982; Hubbard, 1998). Conscious evolution can be broadly defined as an
intentional process of growth and development by individuals, communities, and civilization as a
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whole. In the dominant paradigm, evolution is believed to take place through a process in
which variations or mutations occur randomly, with some of these “selected” and maintained as
a function of their better fit with existing environmental conditions. In other words, evolution is
seen as resulting from a competitive process in which the “survival of the fittest” determines the
course of our collective development. Evolution, from this perspective, is thus essentially
beyond our control. It is something that happens to us, rather than being something we
intentionally choose. In the existing political economy, then, society evolves as a function of
the workings of the “invisible hand” of the market as shaped by governmental interventions that
attempt to guide it in one direction or another. In the collaboration paradigm, we recognize that
we can no longer afford to simply let “progress” be defined in terms of the arbitrary
consequences that result from these impersonal forces and unintentional decisions. Instead, an
emphasis on conscious evolution requires that we explicitly, deliberately, and collectively choose
the path of development and direction of evolution for human society.
Grounded in the new paradigm premise that the evolution of life is towards higher levels
of consciousness, the objective of conscious evolution also suggests that society should place a
higher priority than we currently do on facilitating the development of consciousness,
individually and collectively. To support this objective, our dominant institutions should be
redesigned to encourage and enable this process. At a minimum, this will require a shift in
attention away from economic growth towards activities that contribute more directly to human
growth and development defined much more holistically. A further logical conclusion is that
education, rather than the production and consumption of goods and services, becomes the most
critical activity in the collaboration paradigm. However, whereas the existing education system
is primarily oriented towards developing the skills required to be a successful contributor to a
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consumerism-based political economy, education will be more broadly defined in the new
paradigm as those processes which contribute to the human pursuit of self-actualization.
Given the new paradigm’s emphasis on individual freedom, a collaborative society
should be designed so as to enable people to self-actualize in their own terms. This means that
everyone should have the basic right to pursue pleasure and apply their creative expression
howsoever they choose, as long as it doesn’t bring harm to others. It also requires that everyone
should have a meaningful opportunity to improve themselves however they wish, and implies
that everyone should be able to pursue happiness and well-being in ways they find meaningful
and valuable. The description of human nature embedded in the new theory of reality suggests
that self-actualization will be more readily achieved when people are able to make a significant
contribution to the well-being of others. Thus, a collaborative society would be oriented
towards maximizing individual freedom to enhance personal well-being while serving the public
good in ways that are consciously and collectively recognized as useful. This would replace the
dominant paradigm’s tendency to coerce individuals into a life of trivial or meaningless work
that minimizes their ability and/or opportunity to self-actualize and that primarily serves the
interests of the corporate elite. It would be supported by the adoption of a lifestyle of
“voluntary simplicity” (Elgin, 1993b), which reflects the notion that quality of life is actually
diminished by the work-and-spend pattern inherent in the consumerism mentality.
Core Premises
Four core premises generate and reinforce the dominant paradigm's emphasis on
competition and control, economic growth and consumerism. The first of these is scientism.
Scientism can be thought of as the assumption that the “rules of science,” i.e., the basic beliefs
defining the nature and focus of legitimate scientific endeavor, are inherently valid and generate
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ultimate truth. In the dominant paradigm, knowledge is, for the most part, only accepted as true
or real if it has been gained through the scientific process. But this process is based on
additional starting assumptions which create inherent biases that limit its scope and thus
circumscribe our collective definition of reality.
First, the general purpose of science is to understand the universe, which is accomplished
by identifying patterns in the activity of the subject of study (cf. Stewart, 1995), making the
subject more predictable and thus, ultimately, more controllable. A key aspect of this effort is
the identification of cause-effect relationships through an iterative process of generating
hypotheses and testing them with data. Second, the only legitimate data are those which can be
measured, which basically means that the only evidence accepted by science is that which can be
obtained through the five senses (including technological “extensions”). In essence, this limits
the focus of legitimate scientific study to the material world, which means in turn that only the
material world is defined as real in the competition paradigm. Third, the scientific process is
grounded in a mechanistic worldview, in which scientific efforts to explain the nature of reality
reflect reductionist thinking, i.e., the notion that “wholes” are best understood only in terms of
their “parts.” Reductionism in turn leads to fragmentation, i.e., the whole is divided into smaller
and smaller parts for more and more specialized study. Fourth, science is inherently skeptical
and thus conservative, in that new ideas, theories, and explanations are not accepted as valid until
they have been adequately confirmed through testing and/or the accumulation of data.
The basic assumptions of science, then, support a paradigm oriented towards control,
materialism, differentiation, and resistance to change. In the collaboration paradigm, however,
these biases inherent in the assumptions of science are recognized, allowing our collective
definition of reality to be expanded to a metaphysical understanding of the universe. Ironically,
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science itself is discovering that its basic assumptions are no longer valid. First, the key notion
of cause-and-effect is brought into question. Quantum physics has determined that sub-atomic
reality demonstrates the principle of nonlocality (Capra, 1991). This means that the behavior of
any part of the universal energy field is determined by its instantaneous, nonlocal connections to
the whole field. Because these connections are immediate and thus transcend the presumed
constraints of time and space, they defy the notion of cause-and-effect that undergirds scientific
explanations of the nature of reality. Second, scientific evidence underpinning the new theory
of reality points to the essential unity of material reality and consciousness. Coupled with the
new theory of reality’s premise of a spectrum of consciousness and a great chain of being, this
evidence supports the conclusion that non-material realms of existence are real. In other words,
the new paradigm assumes the existence of a higher, spiritual realm that is inherently
interconnected with the material world.
Third, and congruent with this expanded definition of reality, the mechanistic worldview
of the competition paradigm is recognized as an inadequate model for understanding the
universe. A shift away from reductionism and fragmentation is being generated by scientific
findings associated with the areas of systems theory, complexity theory, and chaos theory (e.g.,
Gleick, 1987; Lewin, 1992; Von Bertalanffy, 1968). The knowledge generated by these new
fields of study is leading the scientific community to the realization that holistic analyses of
integrated systems are necessary to understand them effectively. Ultimately, the scientific and
mathematical breakthroughs derived from these and other fields of inquiry provide much of the
scientific foundation for the new theory of reality. Understanding and acceptance of this new
scientific perspective have been diffusing slowly, of course, given scientists’ tendency towards
skepticism and only gradual acceptance of incremental shifts in thinking. But as the emerging
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theory and accumulating evidence become sufficiently compelling, the resistance caused by
science’s inherent conservatism will be overcome and the new paradigm can be collectively
acknowledged as legitimate. In this way, science itself is laying the foundation for the evolution
in collective consciousness necessary for human civilization’s transformation to the collaboration
paradigm.
The second core premise of the competition paradigm is individualism, which reflects a
number of more specific beliefs about the nature of reality. First, the individual human being is
presumed to be the highest form of life in the universe, with the possible exception of some kind
of Divine Being, whose existence is disputed in the competition paradigm. While “faith” in God
is still widespread, the paradigmatic shift from the premodern religious paradigm to the modern
scientific paradigm resulted in considerable doubt about the existence of spiritual phenomena in
general, and especially the existence of some kind of intelligent “higher power” responsible for
the creation of the universe and all of life. Second, individualism incorporates the notion that
humans are willful and intentional beings with the freedom to decide their own course of action,
with the further assumption that humans use this free will, first and foremost, to pursue their own
self-interest. A third facet of individualism is that humans (and all other sentient beings) are
presumed to be separate and distinct entities and thus independent of each other, unless or until
they choose otherwise. This reflects modernity’s bias towards fragmentation and
differentiation, which itself was an important step forward in the evolution of our collective
consciousness at the time it occurred (Elgin, 1993a).
The beliefs embedded in the premise of individualism have a number of relevant
consequences. The inherent connections and interdependencies among individuals or between
humans and other entities are frequently ignored, and human collectives and multi-entity
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ecosystems are not viewed as living systems. Furthermore, self-interest is viewed as
conceptually distinct from, if not opposed to, collective-interest, with greater importance
attached to the former than to the latter. Likewise, human interests carry greater weight than
those of all other life forms, such that everything else on the planet is viewed in instrumental
terms, i.e., as existing primarily to be used for human purposes rather than having its own
inherent worth. Ultimately, pursuit of human self-interest is given the highest priority in the
competition paradigm, and the world's institutional context is designed to promote and reward
this behavior. This results too readily in a disregard for the collective interest, or at least the
lack of any felt responsibility on the part of the individual to help take care of or even improve
collective well-being. In fact, the dominant paradigm argues that human civilization will
maximize its collective well-being if everyone pursues their own personal self-interest. Once
again, then, it is reasonable to conclude that the selfish behavior characteristic of the dominant
paradigm is better viewed as a natural consequence of its starting assumptions, i.e., a
self-fulfilling prophecy, rather than as evidence that these premises are valid.
The individualistic assumption of the competition paradigm is replaced in the
collaboration paradigm by the premise of connectivism, which holds that the entire universe is
inherently interconnected and interdependent. As indicated in the discussion of the new theory
of reality, the validity of this premise is supported by evidence from a wide range of natural
sciences, which demonstrate it to be true of the underlying universal energy field as well as of
living systems at all levels of analysis from molecular to planetary. The connectivist
assumption incorporates a number of specific beliefs that run counter to those associated with the
individualistic orientation of the dominant paradigm. First, while humans are recognized as
existing at a higher level of consciousness than other entities on the planet, this does not translate
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into the notion that we have an inherent right to use and abuse anything and everything for our
own selfish purposes. Rather than the biblical notion that humans were created to have
dominion over the world, a connectivist assumption leads to the conclusion that we should act
instead as stewards of the interconnected system of life that makes our planetary home a
beautiful and awe-inspiring place. In other words, connectivism requires that we recognize that
we are but one component of a complex planetary ecosystem, and that our actions with regard to
all the other components dictate the quality of life for the system as a whole.
Whereas individualism reinforces self-interested human behavior that neglects the
well-being of the collective, connectivism is based on the notion that individual and collective
interests are ultimately inseparable. Recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence
of all things leads to the logical conclusion that the well-being of any “part “ is ultimately and
intimately dependent on the well-being of the “whole,” and thus that self-interest cannot be
viewed accurately as independent from collective-interest. From this perspective, it is clear that
tending to collective well-being is a necessary prerequisite, if not a sufficient condition, for
providing a context in which all individuals can effectively pursue their own self-interest. The
competition paradigm presupposes that individual and collective interests are at odds with each
other, and that individuals’ natural tendency is to utilize their free will to pursue their own
self-interests even at the expense of the collective good. In contrast, the collaboration paradigm,
based on the view of human nature reflected in the new theory of reality, assumes that
individuals are willing and able to make decisions and take actions that factor in the needs and
interests of other individuals and the collective as a whole (cf. Etzioni, 1988).2 The connectivist
assumption of the new paradigm reflects the belief that the psychological, emotional, and
spiritual connections among individuals in human systems (e.g., groups, organizations,
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communities) are real and important, which in turn reinforces human behavior oriented towards
maintaining or enhancing those connections rather than ignoring or destroying them.
Ultimately, the separate and independent self of the competition paradigm is reconceptualized as
an individual-in-community.3
The third core premise of the competition paradigm is rationality, which can be broadly
defined as the reliance on human reasoning as the appropriate basis for analysis and assessment.
This premise holds that a rational approach is the normative model for reaching judgment or
making decisions. In practice, the concept of rationality has taken on a number of interrelated
connotations that further shape its meaning and thus constrain its use. First, rationality reflects
an emphasis on data-based analysis, with data defined (consistent with the rules of science) as
measurable, quantifiable information. Second, the concept of rationality has become intimately
tied to the premise that individuals are primarily self-interested. In fact, rationality is frequently
defined as the pursuit of self-interest, which leads to the conclusion that other-oriented behavior
is either irrational or non-existent. Taken together, these two facets of the rationality
assumption lead to the notion of a rational decision-maker choosing a course of action to
maximize self-interest based on a cost-benefit analysis of data presented in terms of a common
metric, which is typically the monetary value of each potential alternative. This
operationalization of rationality serves as the normative foundation for the design of the political,
economic, and organizational systems which are the dominant institutions of the competition
paradigm. A critical consequence is that these systems function through top-down
decision-making processes that overemphasize the efficiency criterion, i.e., maximizing the
benefit-to-cost ratio, relative to other important criteria such as the fairness, ethicality, or
aesthetics of these decisions.
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A third connotation of rationality is that it refers to an objective or dispassionate analysis,
which further implies that emotions and other subjective factors should be omitted from the
analysis because they are, presumably, nonrational or even irrational. Of course, this ignores
the fact that the goals driving a rational decision-making process, derived from self-interest,
reflect the decision-maker’s needs or desires, which are inherently subjective and frequently
emotional. Finally, since analytical reasoning is essentially a “left-brain” intellectual process,
“right-brain” activities such as the use of intuition are discounted and thus not viewed as making
a legitimate contribution to the decision-making process. As a result, the process of education
used in most of the formal educational institutions throughout the world is almost exclusively
oriented towards the development of analytic skills rather than the development of intuition and
non-analytic modes of thinking. Given the value of intuition as a link to higher levels of
consciousness, the dominant paradigm’s normative overemphasis of the rationality assumption
actually serves to inhibit access to the insights and wisdom needed to facilitate our collective
evolution and thus a transformation to the collaboration paradigm.
Creativity replaces rationality as the normative orientation in the collaboration paradigm.
Since considerable research makes it clear that decision-making by individuals, groups, and
organizations is typically not rational (e.g., Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1972; Etzioni, 1988; Janis,
1971; Lindblom, 1959; Pfeffer, 1977a; Staw, 1980), the normative status of the rational model in
practice is already questionable. The rational model, in other words, is more of an “espoused
theory” than a “theory-in-use” (Argyris, 1977). Yet reliance on institutional mechanisms
designed to promote rationality have the effect, unintended or not, of underestimating the value
of creativity and thus inhibiting its occurrence. The new theory of reality holds that the energy
of the universe is inherently creative, and thus that humans also have an inherent drive to express
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their creativity. Whereas this drive is all too often squelched by the top-down control structures
and processes characterizing typical educational, business, and government organizations,
institutional redesign in the collaboration paradigm will be oriented towards enhancing
individuals’ freedom and ability to explore and improve their own creative capacities.
To release human creative potential, however, the various limitations of the rationality
assumption must be overcome. First, creativity will be enhanced by greater development of and
reliance on intuition and right-brain cognitive functioning in general. Creative activity
frequently results from an intuitive idea that makes subsequent rational analysis feasible and
meaningful (Adams, 1979; Agor, 1984). Since intuitive capacity can be developed, educational
activities should be designed to promote such development (Ray & Myers, 1989). Second, a
full range of costs and benefits, especially those that cannot be translated into monetary values,
should be incorporated into collective decision-making processes. While efficiency need not
become irrelevant as a criterion, other subjective or non-quantifiable values such as beauty,
justice, and integrity should be taken into account as well. Third, the creativity premise requires
that the values and interests of everyone affected by a given decision must be addressed in an
effort to reach a consensus decision that is satisfactory to all concerned. The process of striving
for consensus often requires, and frequently generates, creative solutions to the problem at hand
(Shuster, 1990). Thus, consensus decision-making should replace top-down decision-making
processes that are inherently biased towards the interests of those with the most power.
Ultimately, a key advantage to organizations of emphasizing creativity rather than rationality is
that it enables them to become more innovative, which is replacing efficiency as the dominant
criterion for organizational success and survival (Alter & Hage, 1993).
The fourth core premise of the competition paradigm is patriarchy. A patriarchy is a
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cultural system in which men have more power and control than women. This is probably the
most pervasive of the dominant paradigm assumptions, reflected in the fact that men hold most
of the positions of power, and thus have control over most of the material resources, in every
country in the world. More deeply, however, patriarchy reflects the fact that the dominant
paradigm and its key orientations and assumptions are based on a male-oriented or masculine
worldview. This is because men have been the source of almost all of the ideas on which this
paradigm is based, and they have designed the key institutions and generated the rules and norms
that shape human thinking and behavior in contemporary society. In many ways, the
dysfunctions of the dominant paradigm in its entirety derive from the fact that it is heavily
skewed towards masculine and away from feminine ways of perceiving the world and behaving
in it.4 A masculine worldview gives rise to the assumptions of rationality, individualism, and
scientism; it supports the dominant orientations towards competition and control; and it generates
the primary objective of economic growth through consumerism. If more women had been able
to exert greater influence in the interpretation of history, in the philosophical debates defining the
foundation of society’s knowledge, and in the creation of the institutions guiding our collective
behavior, it is reasonable to conclude that human civilization, and the dominant paradigm, would
be quite different than it is today.
The patriarchal nature of the competition paradigm is reinforced by the assumption that
the inequality between men and women inherent in a patriarchy is natural, inevitable, and/or
desirable. This notion is based on the premise that human civilization has always reflected this
imbalance, and thus generates the further belief that it always will. The most common
assumption as to why men have more power and control than women is because men are
physically stronger, which has enabled them to exert and maintain their power and control at
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will. Pervasive subordination and degradation of women has been and continues to be a natural
consequence of the patriarchal assumption. While the overt subjugation of women by men has
been tempered in progressive, contemporary cultures, a more subtle bias against women remains
institutionalized even in most western countries. Even in places where “women’s rights” and
“equality of the sexes” have been taken reasonably seriously, men remain in control and the
dominant institutions remain grounded in masculine assumptions. Furthermore, congruent with
all the other dynamics of a competition-based paradigm, there is an overt or covert battle for
power or control inherent in the interpersonal interactions between men and women. With men
striving to maintain their dominance and women striving to even the odds, it is no wonder that
“the battle between the sexes” makes it difficult for men and women to relate to each other
effectively.
In the collaboration paradigm, patriarchy gives way to the premise of equalitarianism.
Whereas patriarchy reflects the assumption that one group of humans has the right to exert
control over another group of humans, equalitarianism reflects the assumption that all humans
are created equal. In the collaboration paradigm, men and women are recognized as equal
partners in the development and maintenance of an effective human civilization. This, of
course, is the key characteristic of the “partnership” cultural model discussed previously in the
context of the new theory of reality (Eisler, 1987).5 Since humans have already demonstrated
their capacity to build and thrive in an equalitarian culture, the new paradigm assumes that it
would be possible for humans to choose to do so again. For this reason, the competition
paradigm’s assumption that patriarchy is inevitable can also be rejected as invalid. Ultimately,
the shift from a patriarchal, dominator society to an equalitarian, partnership society is likely to
happen naturally as women gain a greater collective voice in the public dialogue through which
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society’s goals, norms, and ideological foundations are shaped and communicated to the world.
This transition is facilitated by the fact that the implicit justification for male domination
over women is also being delegitimized. With human civilization moving into the Information
Age, knowledge and intelligence rather than physical strength and traditional privilege are
recognized as providing the most legitimate bases for power and authority. Women are not at
an inherent disadvantage under these conditions, and a more feminine perspective or orientation
may even provide some significant advantages (cf. Goleman, 1995). As more and more women
move into positions of power and influence in society, a foundation is slowly being developed on
which to build a civilization wherein men and women can live, work, and play together as equal
partners. This emphasis on equalitarianism also serves to delegitimate institutionalized
inequalities among different groups of humans more generally. It subverts the rationale for
maintaining systems of control in which a group with greater power is able to dictate the
conditions of life for those with less power, and thus expands the opportunity for empowerment
and meaningful participation in the process of defining the collective good. With fewer
resources devoted to competing for power and maintaining control, and with the synergistic
effects of working together collaboratively, people will be able to devote more of their time and
energy to improving the quality of their lives, applying their creativity in ways that make them
happy, and evolving to higher levels of consciousness.
Underlying Motivation
The competition paradigm constitutes a constellation of assumptions that are embodied in
a set of institutions that give rise to the collective patterns of behavior which determine the very
conditions of our day-to-day existence. Underlying this paradigmatic worldview is a dominant
motivational force, the basic “thought” which creates our reality. The dominant paradigm, with
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its fundamental orientation towards competition and control, is driven by fear. Fear is reflected
in the basic beliefs that the most important resources are scarce, and that our efforts to acquire
these resources are threatened by the existence of competitors whose pursuit of the same
resources serves as an inevitable impediment to our ability to accomplish our own objectives.
These fears have shaped the dominant interpretation of the nature of life and the evolutionary
process, just as they have shaped the formation of our primary political and economic systems.
Rooted in these fear-based assumptions, the political systems in the world’s representative
democracies have been designed to generate adversarial dynamics which ultimately impede
effective decision-making that best serves the interests of the collective. Free-market economics
likewise is grounded in the fears of scarcity and competition, and induces behavior oriented
towards enhancing self-interest at the expense of competitors and, if need be, the collective good.
The control systems utilized in all these institutions tend to be based on fear, i.e., of punishment,
of failure, etc., and thus they generate fear and competition among those who are subject to the
controls. In this way, competition and control are both rooted in fear and in turn give rise to
fear, in a mutually reinforcing cycle.
Fear in the dominant paradigm is also associated with our collective uncertainty
regarding the nature of “life after death.” Because of its materialist assumptions, science has
essentially chosen to ignore the issue by failing to undertake a thorough, sanctioned investigation
into the question of whether or not there is some form of life that continues after physical death.
In the face of scientific skepticism regarding the existence of a spiritual realm and the absence of
scientific evidence to support any such claims, the dominant paradigm remains decidedly
undecided about what happens to the “self” after the body dies. This paradigmatic uncertainty
results in a considerable amount of existential “fear of the unknown” that is translated in
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contemporary society into a fear of death. This fear is exacerbated by the remnants of
premodern religious beliefs regarding the nature of our spiritual afterlife. Each of the world’s
religions articulates its own version of what happens to us after physical death and provides a
context for explaining the basic purpose of human life. The major religions in the dominant
paradigm too readily reflect a tendency to instill fear in their followers through the premises that
they are sinful or unworthy, that their sinfulness or unworthiness requires some kind of
punishment or payment, and that the nature of their life-after-death is determined by their actions
and decisions as a human.
Despite the fact that the validity of these beliefs is not acknowledged by the dominant
paradigm, many individuals have a deep conviction that their own religious beliefs and practices
are valid and true. A psychological explanation might suggest that humans are inclined to adopt
religious beliefs because the dominant paradigm’s avoidance of and uncertainty regarding these
issues causes some degree of cognitive discomfort; basically, the notion is that humans tend to
prefer certainty over uncertainty, assumption over ambiguity. However, another explanation for
the power of religious belief is that it legitimates the very personal and very real spiritual
experiences of people all around the world, in every culture and every religion. The dominant
paradigm, reflecting the assumptions of science, discounts the validity of the spiritual realm and
thus of spiritual experience. Yet individuals continue to believe in a spiritual reality because
they experience that reality in their own lives, and religions provide a frame of reference with
which they can understand these spiritual experiences. The problem arises when a particular
frame of reference is viewed as the one and only true perspective. History is replete with
examples of religious adherents competing for whose definition of reality is best, most righteous,
or most just. When a particular religion is backed by the power of the state, it provides
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justification – historically and currently – for such activities as holy wars, inquisitions,
witch-burnings, the conquering of foreign lands and the enslavement of their peoples, the
domination of women by men, a punitive legal system, restrictions on the expression of
sexuality, and laws or social norms against behavior deemed immoral. Reflecting the dominant
paradigm’s orientation towards competition and control, fear is easily recognized as the
motivating force behind such actions.
The collaboration paradigm is supported by, and created through, the underlying
motivation of love. Love truly is at the heart of it all. According to the new theory of reality,
the Source of the creative energy of the universe is Love itself. Likewise, it is recognized in the
new paradigm that the true nature of human beings is to love. If there is a single common theme
to all the world’s religions and spiritual traditions, it is that the best way to reach the “kingdom
of God” or achieve spiritual enlightenment is to walk a path of love. According to the Ageless
Wisdom, our failure as humans to act out of love is not because we are inherently selfish or
sinful, but rather because we misperceive the true nature of reality. By perceiving ourselves as
separate and distinct from the Source and from each other, we generate our own fears, for
example, of being alone, disconnected, and/or unloved. Fear makes it difficult to act out of
love, since fear can be thought of as the absence of love. While hate and love are often viewed
as opposites, it is more accurate to recognize that fear generates hate, as it does all of the
dysfunctional emotions and behavior found in human civilization. Basically, then, while
humans are inherently loving beings, we fail to be loving to the extent that our thinking and
feeling is grounded in fear.
The fears generated by the dominant paradigm’s limited and incomplete understanding of
the nature of reality can subside once the collaboration paradigm is collectively recognized as a
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more viable and valuable worldview. By overcoming old misperceptions, the new theory of
reality and its attendant assumptions provide the foundation for a cultural revision that will
promote love rather than fear and thus enable individuals to become more loving rather than
remaining overly fearful. Through a process of conscious evolution, humans will be able to
choose, individually and collectively, to pursue higher levels of consciousness so as to align
ourselves more fully with our true loving nature. This will manifest itself in a desire to act in
ways that benefit others, recognizing that, by so doing, we are also creating a world that we will
find more enjoyable and fulfilling as well. By adopting a collaborative rather than competitive
stance toward those with whom we interact, it will be possible to develop more effective
solutions to the various kinds of problems we encounter. For example, rather than dealing with
problems by trying to punish and control those who presumably cause them, a love-based
approach would attempt to facilitate their development so that they prefer engaging in more
constructive activities – those that enhance their own and others’ quality of life – rather than
causing problems and acting dysfunctionally.
While love for others fuels our desire to interact collaboratively, love for self drives us
toward self-actualization. Religions in the dominant paradigm too readily teach that self-denial
is necessary to live morally or to grow spiritually. In the collaboration paradigm,
self-actualization is recognized as the inherent birthright of every human being. In other words,
society should be designed so that everyone has maximum freedom and ability to realize their
“greatest and grandest version of Who They Are” (cf. Walsch, 1995). Who we are, according to
the new theory of reality, is loving, creative, eternal beings bestowed with the free will to express
our true nature in whatever ways bring joy to ourselves and others. By incorporating this
knowledge into our daily lives, we can begin to let go of the fears that too frequently drive our
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decisions and actions. We can realize that everything which happens in our lives provides us
with a new opportunity to learn how to be more loving and thus to evolve to higher levels of
consciousness. This understanding enables us to worry less about the possibility of pain,
misfortune, and death and to live our lives with greater confidence that even the occurrence of
these is a necessary and valuable part of our timeless spiritual journey. It encourages us to focus
less on the acquisition of material wealth driven by a fear of scarcity and to devote more
attention to creating abundant possibilities for self-realization. It demands that we stop being
afraid of and thus competing with each other, and learn instead to collaborate for the greater
well-being of the interconnected, interdependent human race and the planet as a whole. Moving
away from fear and towards love thus empowers us to create the conditions of a new society, the
new reality that awaits us in the collaboration paradigm.
Conclusion
The fundamental orientations, primary objectives, core premises, and underlying
motivation of each of these two contrasting paradigms constitute an interconnected, internally
consistent set of beliefs. In each case, these basic beliefs are mutually reinforcing and thus
create a logically coherent worldview. In the competition paradigm, science defines reality
exclusively in material terms, discounting the spiritual nature of the universe and of human
beings. People are perceived instead as self-interested individuals who rationally pursue
material well-being, giving rise to our collective emphasis on economic growth through unabated
production and consumption of material goods and services. The dominant paradigm’s
emphasis on material reality and rejection of spiritual reality generate fears -- of scarcity, of
failure, of other people, of being alone, of losing control, and of death -- that naturally result in a
competitive orientation among people as individuals, groups, and nations. This competitive
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stance further reflects the masculine worldview associated with a patriarchal system, which
legitimates the pursuit of power and in turn the willingness of those with more power to exert
control over those with less.
The new theory of reality’s picture of an inherently interconnected, multi-dimensional
universe lays the necessary foundation for a completely different paradigmatic worldview. By
acknowledging that physical existence is subsumed in a broader metaphysical reality, the new
paradigm holds forth a vision of creative men and women working together to facilitate the
development of consciousness and to improve individual and collective quality of life. Humans
are recognized as inherently spiritual beings whose love of self, love of others, and love of the
world generate a collaborative orientation in which behavior that brings harm to others is
recognized as undesirable and thus illegitimate. Collaboration is further supported by an
equalitarian ideal which leads to the conclusion that each person, community, and culture should
have maximum freedom to pursue well-being defined in their own terms, and that everyone has
The bottom line, then, is that once human civilization recognizes – collectively, publicly
– that the planet constitutes a single, unified, interdependent system, we will realize the necessity
and value of collaborating to promote our individual and collective well-being rather than
competing with each other – as individuals, organizations, interest groups, ethnic communities,
and nations – to get whatever we can for ourselves. In other words, the new paradigm provides
the ideological justification for adopting the “win-win” orientation necessary for a collaborative
society, replacing the “win-lose” mentality generated by the competition paradigm’s emphasis on
pursuit of self-interest at others’ expense. This shift from competitive, win-lose dynamics to
collaborative, win-win dynamics constitutes the essence of the change required to enact this
paradigmatic transformation and insure the long-term survival of the human species. It also
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provides a clear indication of how the collaboration paradigm literally transcends the competition
paradigm.
As indicated earlier, an important feature of the new paradigm is that its assumptions are
better thought of not as the opposites of the old paradigm assumptions but rather as the
integration of the old assumptions and their opposites. Considering the four core premises,
religious belief is often identified as the opposite of scientific knowledge, yet the integration of
science and spirituality results in the metaphysical assumptions of the new paradigm.
Collectivism is typically viewed as the opposite of individualism, but connectivism integrates the
latter’s emphasis on individual free will with the former’s emphasis on the collective good.
Intuition and emotion are readily seen as the opposite of rationality, yet creativity requires an
integration of both left-brain and right-brain cognitive processes. A matriarchy would be the
opposite of a patriarchy, but equalitarianism integrates these two cultural models by honoring
and empowering both masculinity and femininity and forging an equal partnership between men
and women. To adopt the collaboration paradigm, therefore, it is not necessary to deny the
value and validity of scientific progress, individual self-interest, rational analysis, or masculine
energy. We simply have to recognize the equal value and validity of spiritual growth,
community well-being, intuitive insights, and feminine energy, and thus transcend the limitations
that naturally result from giving primacy to only one half of the whole.
To put this another way, an important feature of the new paradigm is a shift away from
“either/or” thinking towards reliance on “both/and” thinking. A prominent analytical approach
in the dominant paradigm is to identify apparent contrasts and then assume that only one or the
other can be valid or true. For example, it was very difficult for early quantum physicists to
accept the fact that light was not either a particle or a wave but was in fact both. Either/or
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thinking is oriented towards identifying dichotomies and then assuming that they are mutually
exclusive or incompatible with each other. In contrast, the both/and thinking that is the
hallmark of the new paradigm accepts the possibility of apparent paradoxes, the mutual validity
of seemingly incompatible perspectives. Both scientific and spiritual truths are valid, both
individuals and collectives are important, both logical analysis and intuitive insights are
constructive, and both masculinity and femininity are valuable. In a similar vein, the new
paradigm recognizes the necessity of defining quality of life both economically and in terms of
other criteria that are important to people. Its emphasis on freedom is grounded in a belief that
the rights of both the majority and the minority are legitimate and must be protected. And its
focus on collaboration reflects the value of interacting in ways that help achieve the objectives of
both self and other. Such interactions, at all levels of analysis, would constitute a direct and
rather straightforward operationalization of the both/and, win-win collaborative orientation
which serves as the foundation of the new paradigm.
My experience over the last two years presenting these ideas in various forums and
formats indicates that, with very few exceptions, almost everyone thinks that the collaboration
paradigm represents an idealistic, overly optimistic vision regarding the potential future of
humanity. A few people here and there seem to take offense at the suggestion that we should let
go of our competitive ways (especially when I am referring to the competitive economic system),
as if being less competitive would somehow cause more problems for humanity! Most people
see the value or attractiveness of a more collaborative world, but seem to conclude that the
chances of human civilization ever functioning more collaboratively are so limited that it is not
even worth trying to create the necessary changes. And of course, people frequently point out
the risk inherent in trying to act collaboratively in a competitive system. The rules of
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competition are set up so that those who try to collaborate are easily taken advantage of and thus
end up losers in the competitive game.
Skepticism about the feasibility of becoming a collaborative society tends to manifest
itself in two primary objections to the new theory of reality. First, most people remain
convinced that human beings are, by nature, self-interested, and since the either/or thinking of
the dominant paradigm presupposes self-interest to be in conflict with the interests of others or of
the collective as a whole, the notion that people would actually choose to act in ways that
promote others’ interests seems naive or foolish. Basically, it boils down to the claim that
humans cannot or will not act collaboratively enough to allow the collaboration paradigm to
work, because they are too self-interested and competitive. Thus, rather than designing
institutions that would encourage and reward collaboration, these skeptics support the design of
institutions that promote “good” competition and control “bad” competition. Ultimately, these
institutions and the society they generate result in two primary constraints on individuals’ ability
to successfully pursue their self-interests.
The first constraint is that people must allocate considerable time, energy, and resources
to the task of competing with others and defending themselves against those who would bring
them harm. Resources devoted to the competitive process itself are not available for use to
improve one’s own well-being more directly. The second constraint is derived from the various
control mechanisms that legitimate authority creates in an effort to prevent people from doing
things that those authorities have determined bring harm to themselves, to others, or to the
collective as a whole. Many of these laws, rules, and procedures are valuable and do in fact
serve to protect individual and collective rights. However, many others are designed to promote
the interests of the rich and powerful individuals who hold, or can exert considerable influence
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on, most of the positions of legitimate authority in society. Others still are designed to dictate a
definition of morality that those in control believe should be imposed on everyone. Given these
significant constraints on individual freedom to pursue self-interest, and taking into account how
little time and energy most people devote to doing what really makes them happy, any argument
that the competition paradigm provides the best system for maximizing self-interest is ultimately
rather hollow.
The collaborative paradigm does not contradict the assumption that people are
self-interested. However, it simply requires us to believe that people are both self-interested
and other-interested. Given the amount of collaborative, other-oriented activity that human
beings demonstrate on a daily basis, this collaborative assumption seems much more credible
than the competitive assumption. Furthermore, the collaborative paradigm would have us
recognize that individual interests are not always incompatible with, and frequently are
congruent with, collective interests. Whereas the competition paradigm focuses too heavily on
promoting self-interest at the expense of others’ well-being (consistent with its win-lose
orientation), the collaboration paradigm recognizes that self-interest can be more effectively
maximized in the context of tending to the collective good. The single constraint imposed in the
collaboration paradigm is that, in pursuing their self-interest, everyone should always avoid
doing harm to another. As long as we agree not to harm other people, we can have maximum
freedom to enhance our well-being defined in our own terms. Ultimately, the amount of
constraint this puts on our ability to pursue self-interest is much less than that which results from
the two general constraints prevalent in the competition paradigm.
The second primary reason people discount the viability of the collaborative paradigm is
that they believe that everything of value on the planet exists in a limited or finite amount, and
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thus the whole of human civilization constitutes one immense struggle for access to, control of,
and power over these resources. They argue that the world is a competitive place, people are
and should be competitive, and those who compete most effectively should receive the greatest
reward. In other words, they view the world as one big “zero-sum game,” or at least as
consisting of an ongoing series of zero-sum transactions. The world's dominant political and
economic institutions are certainly based on this orientation. Accumulation of wealth, and
acquisition of the power this requires and/or brings, are the primary pursuits of the global
political economy. Of course, since it is a competitive game, there are winners and there are
losers, and the losers in our existing political economy suffer such inhumane injustices as
poverty, disease, homelessness, ethnic cleansing, and the destruction of their cultures and their
natural environment. The winners accumulate massive quantities of material comforts, but have
to find ways to try to protect themselves from the various problems – crime, violence, and
terrorism, for example – that inevitably arise among the alienated losers. The collective
well-being of society suffers from these problems as well as from the allocation of resources
needed to prevent, resolve, or respond to them. Ultimately, the well-being of each individual in
society is diminished by the existence of these collective concerns.
The collaborative paradigm views the world in terms of positive-sum, win-win situations,
rather than the zero-sum, win-lose mentality of the competitors. The objective in a
collaborative, win-win orientation is to try to insure that everyone is a winner. Two advantages
of this approach are readily apparent. First, since time, energy, and resources do not have to be
devoted to the process of competition itself (and to deal with the problems it causes), there is
more of everything to allocate directly towards producing positive outcomes for everyone.
Second, the desire to identify win-win solutions frequently results in a synergy that actually
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expands the “pool of benefits” to be allocated. This contrasts with the competitive mode, in
which the best outcome to be achieved is some kind of compromise (except for the rare
circumstances when someone has enough power to gain a total victory). A compromise
solution, by definition, insures that no one gets everything they want. For this reason,
collaborative, synergistic outcomes have greater individual and collective utility than
competitive, compromise outcomes. Basically, the bottom line is that collective rationality –
rationality regarding what is best for the system as a whole – dictates that collaboration is
preferable to competition.6
What those who are skeptical about the collaboration paradigm fail to realize, apparently,
is that their arguments against its validity and viability are nothing but reassertions of their
starting assumptions. The dominant paradigm is generally accepted as an accurate if not
indisputable description of the nature of reality, and the whole point of the collaboration
paradigm is to challenge the validity of these dominant assumptions. To argue that humans and
all living systems are inherently competitive and unable to be collaborative is the very
assumption that I am challenging. To counter this challenge by reasserting the starting
assumptions of the dominant paradigm is tautological, tantamount to a competitor’s defiant and
dogmatic claim that “my assumptions are better than yours.” Because each worldview
constitutes a logically coherent set of beliefs, it is not surprising that those holding dominant
paradigm assumptions will see the new paradigm assumptions as idealistic and unrealistic.
However, the issue at stake here truly is which set of assumptions is preferable as the basis for
the design of society. My purpose here is to put this question up for discussion, rather than
blindly holding on to one set of assumptions without holding them up for careful scrutiny. The
intent of this book, of course, is to explain why the collaboration paradigm constitutes a better
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alternative for human civilization in the new millennium.
It might be useful to summarize the essence of this argument so far. In Chapter 1, I
pointed out that human society is a socially constructed reality. What exists as reality for any
given group of people is rooted in a shared definition of the way things are, which in turn guides
their decisions about the way things should be. By designing institutions congruent with those
basic assumptions and values, humans generate the practices and patterns of behavior that
constitute the day-to-day conditions of their existence. Since this everyday reality is consistent
with the starting assumptions, it appears to provide ample evidence in support of the validity of
these assumptions. What is neglected in this process, however, is the recognition that there is a
self-fulfilling prophecy involved, in that the initial beliefs and expectations are a direct cause of
the evidence, rather than simply an explanation for it.
A look back on human history makes it abundantly clear that humans have undergone
fundamental and comprehensive transformations in their paradigmatic worldview. Early on in
these transformations, new assumptions are ridiculed and condemned by those adhering to the
established worldview. Ultimately, however, these “radical” ideas from many fields of human
knowledge -- philosophy, science, the arts -- begin to converge into common themes, supporting
and reinforcing each other to lay the foundation for a new, revolutionary worldview. As a result
of these transformations, human civilization undergoes dramatic shifts in its practices and
patterns. The most recent of these transformations was the shift from the premodern religious
paradigm to the modern Enlightenment paradigm. The basic assumptions of the modern
paradigm have in fact generated a reality which appears to most observers as evidence that
modern assumptions are accurate. However, I have argued that the assumption and conclusion
of this paradigm -- that competitive human behavior exists because humans are inherently
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self-interested and competitive -- actually reflects the fundamental attribution error, in which
behavior caused by the situation is misinterpreted as being caused by factors intrinsic to the
actors in that situation.
Realizing that paradigms do undergo transformation, I am suggesting that global human
civilization is currently in the midst of another one. Support for this premise comes from a
broad array of ideas and evidence from multiple fields of knowledge that is converging around a
number of common themes. In Chapter 2, I integrated this information into a new theory of
reality that expands upon the more limited theory of reality which serves as the foundation for
the dominant paradigm. Rather than contradicting the old theory, the new theory of reality
transcends the old in that it also includes the old. This holarchical pattern – higher systems that
transcend and include lower systems – is recognized in the new theory of reality as a basic
quality of all of life, including the process of evolution on the planet. Physical evolution is
viewed in the new theory as one facet of the more fundamental evolution of consciousness, with
consciousness itself evolving in a similar holarchical pattern. Prior paradigmatic advances in
human civilization are thus understood as reflecting the deeper evolutionary process that is
carrying the human species forward to higher levels of consciousness. The fact that the
emerging paradigm transcends the existing paradigm indicates that this transformation is indeed
congruent with the evolution of consciousness unfolding on the planet.
In order to complete this step successfully, human beings are going to have to make a
deliberate choice to move forward. According to Elgin’s (1993a) insightful analysis, human
civilization is turning a corner on its evolutionary trajectory. Whereas the evolution of human
consciousness has, to this point, been oriented towards differentiating “self” from the underlying
energy field, we now have to begin our return to conscious awareness of our intimate integration
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with the Source. Put another way, humans are near completion of the development of
self-reflective consciousness at the individual level, and now we must develop self-reflective
consciousness at the collective level. Self-reflective consciousness gives us the capacity to learn
and adapt, i.e., to gauge the effects of our behavior in terms of our objectives and modify it
accordingly, and to change our goals and values if they no longer serve our basic needs. The
deepest kind of learning, however, comes when we can reflect on our underlying assumptions to
assess whether they are serving our needs, and when we can discard them if we recognize that
they aren’t.
In this chapter, I have contrasted two alternative sets of assumptions so as to enable a
reflective assessment of their relative merits. The dominant assumptions are readily accepted as
valid and true, the taken-for-granted definition of the way things are, and thus many people are
reluctant to seriously entertain any suggestions to the contrary. However, the new theory of
reality and its supporting evidence indicate that these assumptions are not valid, not because they
are wrong so much as because they are limited and thus inadequate. The collaboration
paradigm assumptions provide a more complete and thus more adequate worldview, and this is
one important criterion for assessing them as preferable to the competition paradigm
assumptions. In addition, the new assumptions seem preferable in that they point the way to a
better, more positive vision for human civilization than the one generated by the old
assumptions. Whereas the competition paradigm can be diagnosed as the cause of most of the
problems plaguing human civilization, the collaboration paradigm provides the foundation for
developing solutions to these problems.
A key premise of the new theory of reality is that we have reached a choice point in our
evolutionary journey, and that we must consciously choose the path of our future evolution. To
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take our next step forward, we simply have to realize and admit that all of life is inherently
interconnected and interdependent, that we are all in this together. In this way, the new
paradigm represents a shift from individual to collective consciousness, from a focus on
differentiation to an emphasis on integration. The integrative nature of the new paradigm is
reflected in the four core premises, each of which addresses a different facet of our
interconnectedness. The integration of scientific truth and spiritual wisdom uncovers the
interconnectedness of the universe. The integration of individual and collective well-being
clarifies the interconnectedness of human civilization. The integration of rationality and
intuition reflects the interconnectedness of levels of consciousness. And the integration of
masculinity and femininity speaks to the interconnectedness of human lives.
Solving the problems that confront human civilization as a whole will require that
individuals, organizations, communities, and nations work together to identify and implement the
most desirable solutions to these problems. Since these problems are the direct result of the
competitive dynamics generated by the old paradigm, solutions grounded in this paradigm’s
assumptions are not going to eliminate the problems.7 To move to the collaboration paradigm,
therefore, it is clearly not enough to merely change our starting assumptions. We must
implement changes in society that are congruent with the new worldview. While it is relatively
easy to begin to make changes in one’s own personal thoughts and actions, it is much harder to
bring about change in the key institutions of society. Unfortunately, since these institutions
shape the thinking and behavior of human beings, it will not be possible to bring about a
collaborative society without significant institutional reform. If, however, we redesign our
institutions to reflect the principles of collaboration, the assumptions and values reinforced by
society would generate collaborative behavior. This in turn would greatly increase the
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likelihood and feasibility of individuals acting so as to pursue their own self-actualization while
also contributing to the collective good. As more individuals adopt that strategy, society
simultaneously becomes more collaborative.
Towards that end, the remainder of my story focuses primarily on the kinds of
institutional changes needed to facilitate the transformation to the collaboration paradigm. I
first address the issue of organizational change, since that is the institution I know best, and I
outline a new model of collaborative organization. Then I consider the kinds of changes
required in the global economic system to enable the development of a collaborative society.
Finally, I discuss the political realm and propose a new governance mechanism through which to
make the political economic and social policy decisions that influence our collective well-being.
In all three areas, I point out concrete changes that could be, and are being, implemented in an
effort to mitigate the dysfunctions of the competition-based system and move towards more
collaborative ideals. If the new theory of reality and the collaboration assumptions are accepted
as legitimate, the recommendations outlined in the following pages will seem reasonable and
necessary. If skepticism remains, then remember, it’s just a story!
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