Practical Primal Philosphy IV: Intrinsic Resilience

Resilience refers to the property or ability that is able to “bounce back” or recover quickly from difficulties.  It can be applied widely to substances such as rubber and natural phenomena such as ecosystems as well as to institutions, societies and people. It is for example a widely recognised capability in psychology in which it refers to an individual's tendency to cope well with stress and adversity without showing negative side effects.

In a sense resilience is always “intrinsic”, or built-in. It does not require assistance or intervention to function although some external conditions will favour resilience whilst others will not. So what more are we adding to the concept of resilience when we call it “intrinsic”? The answer to this question has to do with boundaries.

“Resilience Engineering” for example represents a new way of thinking about some aspects of management. It acknowledges the new world of Primal Reporter in which networks and emergent complex interactions replace relatively simple chains of cause and effect. But Resilience Engineering is bounded by the very organisations that it manages: within our business and other organisations, it looks for ways to create processes that are robust, flexible and able to maintain the efficient use of resources in the face of disruptions or ongoing production and economic pressures. In other words Resilience Engineering shares boundaries with traditional conceptions of businesses and other organisations.

In a similar way, those who are concerned with our societies may seek to build more resilient societies that are better prepared for, and able to recover from, emergencies. Since societies are far larger and more complex than any individual organisation, this responsibility is shared widely between central and local government, emergency services, the private sector, civil society and individual communities. Hence social resilience transcends the boundaries of any specific organisation or indeed legal jurisdiction.

But for the “intrinsic” in resilience we need to go beyond even these social boundaries. Intrinsic resilience is concerned with whole world complexities. Responding to Climate Change is one such challenge for intrinsic resilience and it involves whole world complexities. The Poptech Climate Lab reports that by 2050 some 250 million people may be displaced by climate change. To put that in perspective, it means a ten-fold increase over the documented number of displaced persons we are witnessing at the moment – and that is a huge amount of disruption, stress and pain.

But climate change is not the only external pressure that we, mankind, has to face. Water, food and energy shortages no longer loom but are facts in today’s world. The forthcoming “Global Sustainable Development Report” from the United Nations (UN)  argues that we need to sustain Earth, biodiversity, ecosystems, ecosystem services, resources, environment, peace, cultures, groups and places. This is such a broad list that sustainable development can be taken to be going beyond any boundaries that we have previously had to deal with in businesses, societies, nations and international organisations.

Sustainable Development is a matter of concern for all of us. It will not be sufficient to let others make the necessary changes or to think that in the long-term all will be well. Indeed some kinds of change are gradual and we will no doubt adapt in time to proceed with fairly smooth and continuous change. But some of the other kinds of change that will come with climate change and unsustainable forms of development will be sudden and chaotic with widely spread impacts:

“Evidence points to a situation where periods of such abrupt change are likely to increase in frequency and magnitude. This challenges the adaptive capacity of societies.”

-       Stockholm Resilience Centre

So what can we do? The Stockholm Resilience Centre argues quite rightly that increased knowledge is important when coping with the stresses caused by climate change and other environmental impacts. But the centre is dealing with increasing resilience as a response to abrupt change: this contrasts most clearly with intrinsic resilience that does the same but in addition gets down to dealing with root causes.

The book Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability (Birkin & Polesie, World Scientific Press, 2011) is an exploration, both personal and objective, of the root causes of unsustainable development. It is particularly concerned with how dominant social systems such as capitalism and free-markets have distant roots in a kind of scientific understanding that has now been displaced. In essence, this mismatch between significant social institutions and new scientific realities provides an excellent explanation of the root causes of unsustainable development and climate change. The book offers alternatives to capitalism and free markets that will increase our intrinsic resilience in businesses, societies, the world at large and in ourselves.

It is however the “in ourselves” part of resilience that we wish to highlight here in this post. After all, it is ourselves, we extraordinary people, that invented capitalism, free-markets and the whole gamut of neo-classical economics that in some almost unimaginable way permits major institutions to damage and destroy whole classes of people and nature to the extent that Earth’s basic life support systems are themselves damaged.

So it is the attitudes and values of everyday, extraordinary people that we need to address at the heart of Intrinsic Resilience. To increase Intrinsic Resilience, we need to ask the question: “If we really want to make the transition to a world that is healthy, sustainable and just, what attitudes and values would we and our societies need to hold?”

This is no ephemeral question for attitudes and values determine who we are and what we do – and we need answers right now:

“For many of the world’s poorest communities, the adverse effects of climate change are no longer a future possibility; they are a present reality. The poverty, dislocation, health crises, resource conflicts, food insecurity and economic harm that climate change engenders threaten to undo many of the humanitarian and other global development gains of the past thirty years. Marginalized constituencies experience the effects of climate disruption worst and first. And among the most vulnerable are rural girls and women.” 

-       PopTech Climate Resilience Lab 

The World's poorest communities are the most vulnerable.

We do have answers. It is not lucky that answers are available; nor is it a coincidence that the answers involve “intrinsic” concepts. It is a sign of the times, a sign of new understandings based on new knowledge that are now emerging, the coming Primal Age or episteme that is the over-riding subject of this blog.

What are the answers? Well there is no easy answer in the sense of a quick solution that we input into the system and all is well. The changes required are far too big and complex for that to happen. The answers are ones that will changes us, we extraordinary people, and allow us to think, develop and act in ways that increase intrinsic resilience and create more robust, stable, equitable and healthier worlds in which all of life may flourish. The answers are ones that help us to overcome some of the restraints and narrowness of day-to-day life which can create a small and mean sense of who we are, what we need and what we do. The answers are ones that gives us greater riches even though we may own less! The answers are ones that increase our motivations and rewards by increasing our sense of who we are and what we can do. The answers change people.

Take a first step towards working out your own personal yet generic answers and read, think about and begin to apply the following:

Common Cause

The Case for Working with Values and Frames

Transition to Sustainable Business

PR identifies how the world is changing. The most fundamental change that PR identifies is one that lies at the foundation of our knowledge. This fundamental change determines how knowledge is made possible. This is in essence a very simple kind of change – BUT it is difficult to perceive and accept that so much can change as a result of so little!

Intrinsic Sustainable Development (ISD) (2011) is grounded in a change of “what makes knowledge possible”.  To explain this kind of change, ISD relies on the work of Michel Foucault (1970) who called the “possibility of knowledge” an EPISTEME.  Foucault described only three different epistemes in European history from Renaissance times to Classical and then the Modern. Foucault died in 1984 before any evidence of an emerging episteme to replace the Modern was available.

In ISD, an emerging episteme is identified and called “Primal”.  On a technical level, the change from the Modern to the Primal episteme is equivalent to going from abstract belief systems to empirically grounded science (or to be even more technical from an epistemology to an ontology). On a day to day level, this means that we shift from living according to overarching societal beliefs (in notably economics and free markets) to becoming part of the living world once more.

Such changes will have a huge impact on business. John Elkington (2013, p. 62) observes: “We need to redesign our, economies, politics and culture.” Elkington gave the world the “Triple Bottom Line” approach so that businesses would acknowledge their dependence upon achieving good social and environmental performances as well as economic. But in his review of “Corporation 2020: Transforming Business for Tomorrow’s World” (Sukhdev 2012), Elkington admits his approach has been wrong.

Elkington’s approach had been to tweak corporations, change their performance at the margins to improve social and environmental conditions without a change in business core values and activities.  But Elkington now sees this as the wrong approach and he writes “The challenge is now ecological, in a broader sense: we must reshape the context within which both the corporations and the investors operate…” (Elkington 2013, p. 62).

Reading “Corporation 2020: Transforming Business for Tomorrow’s World” (Sukhdev 2012) changed Elkington’s mind. Corporations 20:20 argues that we must as a matter of some urgency shift from a 1920’s corporate model of “free-market-capitalists” and “cost-externalising” to a 2020 corporate model with the following mission: 

            Corporation 20:20 MISSION

1. The purpose of the corporation is to harness private interests to serve the public interest.

2. Corporations shall accrue fair returns for shareholders, but not at the expense of the legitimate interests of other stakeholders.

3. Corporations shall operate sustainably, meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

4. Corporations shall distribute their wealth equitably among those who contribute to its creation.

5. Corporations shall be governed in a manner that is participatory, transparent, ethical, and accountable.

6. Corporations shall not infringe on the right of natural persons to govern themselves, nor infringe on other universal human rights.

For more about Corporation 20:20 visit their website here.

The Transition of Industry

Sustainable Business Models: what can change?

The book “Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability” (Birkin & Polesie 2011) is about the impact of an emerging episteme upon ourselves, society and business. Basically an episteme is what makes knowledge possible. It can seem disturbing, even frightening, to think that our world – our whole world – can change because of a change in the possibility of knowledge. But other people see this as liberating: an exciting opportunity to venture forth into new unexplored territories just as the explorers of old.

But consider too that the world does change for individuals and groups in accepted ways. Although PR does not subscribe to any revealed religious orthodoxy, consider how the members of a religious groups, even the humbling Methodists, may regard themselves as “reborn”, “renewed” or “saved” when they accept the Faith for this brings with it a new episteme – a new possibility for knowledge; caused in this case by the recognition that we live in a God-made world. In a way, Buddhism owes its whole existence to overcoming whatever “episteme” makes knowledge possible in an individual’s life – the Buddhist seeking enlightenment and freedom from this world is doing nothing less than overcoming the episteme by means of which a world is brought into existence. Finally, every page of the holy book of Islam, the Koran, exhorts followers to “know yourself” – excellent advice and you can think of this as getting to know the knowledge that that has created our view of ourselves and the world.

But you may ask what has this got to do with business?

The Philosophical Burger

Do you eat ready-made beef, chicken or pork burgers? If you do, then you are performing the impossible because these food items no longer exist.

“Burgers” are on the menu for millions of people each day and with a generic name this patty is real enough. But it is the named specific burger content, the beef, chicken, pork, rabbit etc., which raises the ontological questions: the precise concern is not about the existence of burgers but is about the existence or otherwise of beef, chicken, pork, rabbit or whatever burgers.

Is this trivial? Burgers provide nutrition in a world where people are starving. So what if your beef burger does contain horse meat, pork, chicken or other poultry, donkey, onion, wheat flour, water, beef fat, dehydrated meat powders, soya protein isolate, salt, onion powder, yeast, sugar, barley malt extract, garlic powder, white pepper extract, celery extract, onion extract, rusk, stabilisers (diphosphates and triphosphates) and beef fat? It tastes good!

Anyway who is naïve enough to expect a beef burger to contain just beef?

Get Real! –John Gray on Capitalism’s Delusions

John Nicholas Gray (1948 -) is a former London School of Economics and Political Science Professor. He is a well-published author of books and he contributes regularly to the UK national press including the Guardian newspaper.

John Gray promotes realistic thinking: “The meltdown of financial markets has done more than wipe out wealth on an unprecedented scale. It has also destroyed the neo-liberal belief in progress through ever expanding production and consumption, and an anxious search is under way for a replacement creed. Religious fundamentalism is one result of this quest, Green utopianism another. Intelligent improvisation – using technical fixes to reduce the human impact on the Earth, for example – is more likely to yield results that the search for solutions. But realistic thinking goes against the grain. It is easier to inhabit an imaginary future than deal with the intractable present.” (Gray 2009, p. xxv).

The above quotation was written in 2009 in a new preface to his book “False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism” which was first published in 1998. Gray’s 1998 prophetic vision on the delusions of global capitalism was proved to be correct one decade after publication.

In “False Dawn” Gray had argued that the effect of unrestricted international free enterprise will be socially and culturally destructive. It is also unsustainable. But Gray cannot be classified as a Green, as anti-growth, or as a return-to-nature thinker. Indeed Gray argues that a Green agenda, an anti-growth recognition of physical limits and a natural utopia are not tenable. He also argues not for sustainable development but for a “sustainable retreat”. (ibid.).

If Gray is against free enterprise, greens and sustainable development, what is it precisely that he does want?

Professor John Gray

John Gray wants realism; a knowledge and action undistorted by utopian ideals and beliefs. In particular he wants to rid the world of the propaganda that free markets are a natural state of human affairs. This is also a core argument of Primal Reporter.

 In “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals”, John Gray (2002) challenges what it means to be human. He thereby touches upon another key PR idea – that the world is changing, and a new world, or episteme (Foucault 1970), is emerging. The book “Intrinsic Sustainable Development: epistemes, science, business and sustainability” (Birkin and Polesie 2011) is about the emerging episteme.

By referring to a new world, we have not of course found a new geographical expanse to enter. However, it is arguable that PR’s new world is an even more momentous event than that. What makes our knowledge possible is changing; and this changes what we know of the world and of ourselves. In this way a whole new world is made available to explore and with that all the thrills and opportunities of pioneering and discovery. Professor John Gray is yet another a harbinger of this change.

References

Birkin, F.K., and Polesie, T.  Intrinsic Sustainable Development: Epistemes, Science, Business and Sustainability. Singapore, World Scientific Press.

Foucault, M. (1989[1970]). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London, Routledge.

Gray, J. (2002). Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. London, Granta.

Gray, J. (2009[1998]). False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. London, Granta.

We are not like animals – unfortunately!

Being Primal means that we acknowledge our shared ancestry with life on this planet – many thanks to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. But being Primal means then that we acknowledge our shared characteristics with other life on this planet:

“Primates matter. I don’t need to give you justifications describing their economic value or role in ecosystem services (although let’s not underestimate their importance as seed dispersers in tropical forests). Primates share so many of our characteristics – we see ourselves reflected in their gestures their facial expressions, their social interactions and the way they nurture their young. Primates hold a mirror up to the human race and that alone should be enough to justify our working to avoid their extinction.”

                Dr Abigail Entwhistle in “Relative Importance”, Fauna&Flora, 15, June 2012, p.4.

Primates are our closest relatives – and we are killing them off. We are killing not just the occasional bad or unlucky individual but we are killing them all. Imagine an individual from one particular species - Homo sapiens – killing all his or her relatives. That would be front-page news indeed and cries of shame would echo around the world. But as we kill off our closest relatives in nature, there is little outrage, few headlines, very few voices calling for justice to be done, no powerful police teams tackling this odious crime…. Why not?

“Primates are facing a crisis. This has been the case for the last 50 years at least, and the threats have not abated.”

                Ibid,. p. 5.

It is of course mankind who is killing its own closest relatives, the primates.

Mankind’s sense of justice and injustice is at times so self-absorbed, so self-reflecting and so human-self-privileging that it is classifiable as a kind of mental illness. Teenagers can sometimes be self-absorbed like this. In their struggle to find themselves in an adult world, teenagers can be too aware of their own pressing insights, limitations and predicaments and the demands of their own immediate situations that they often cannot see or relate to the plights of others – notably their parents. Of course not all teenagers are like this and there are many examples of “mature” teenagers who respect and work with their relations to the world outside of their own small selves.

Parents, schools and colleges are very skilled in helping young people discover their relations with the wider world that has created and nurtured them and which holds the key to their sustainable future. In a very real, everyday-living-sense, these wider relations include those that embed us and enable us to flourish – or wither - in the wider natural world.

If we linger a while with the idea of teenagers finding their way out of personal limitations and self-absorption, we can build a better understanding of one cause of mankind’s impact upon nature. Imagine if on a higher, more complex level, mankind is like a teenager – locked in an understanding that is far too self-absorbed and self-reflecting. Indeed if we look at one of – if not THE – controlling influences on mankind’s development, neo-classical economics and free-market ideology, then this teenage self-referencing and self-absorption is all too apparent.

The whole sophisticated, magnificent, influential and exceedingly powerful edifice that has created global corporations, financial institutions and free-markets that handle billions of dollars daily – is built upon rational choice theory – it is a system conceived by man, for man, in the service of man!!

The grown-up, mature, responsible world occupied by too many business leaders, financiers and politicians world-wide is at heart something akin to the same kind of self-absorbed, self-reflecting and self-privileging that it is at best a teenager trait; at worst a kind of mental illness. How else do you explain the fact that multi-millionaires who have far more money than they could possibly spend in several lifetimes dedicate themselves to making even more money – and not enjoying life with all their relations, human and non-human?

Baby orang-outang at Sepilok Orang-outang Rehabilitation Centre, Borneo, Malaysia

In 1967, Desmond Morris’s book The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal (Hardback: ISBN 0-07-043174-4; Reprint: ISBN 0-385-33430-3) caused a sensation. It was sensational stuff to compare mankind with apes and to argue that we are so intimately related.

Unfortunately this sensational news still has still not had the impact it should in some very major business, economic, financial and political circles. Too many leaders, first movers, developers and their followers still behave like teenagers – locked within the boundaries of their far-too-small-worlds of their own making (more accurately locked within logical belief systems – see the ISD book).

This is why we are killing nature on an industrial scale – this is why we are not unfortunately like those animals who have learned over aeons to live alongside each other.

China and the Primal Episteme

Chinese accounting students who wanted to learn how accountants in the West  deal with accounting for social, environmental and sustainable development aspects of company performance had a shock when they attended Frank Birkin's lecture at Jinan University, Guangzhou, on Saturday 27th. October 2012. Instead of showing them how to do it, Frank showed them how scientific knowledge of the world now indicates that ancient Chinese ways of thinking provide a better foundation for social, environmental and sustainable development accounting than does neo-classical economics and free market idealism.

It is strange that educated Chinese people are not aware just how important their cultural and philosophical inheritance is to the world as a whole. Prof Rob Gray had set the scene by challenging Western notions of what accounting ought to be and this opened minds to the possibility that accounting could be very different - not just a servant to capitalism and financial markets. With the possibility of different forms of accounting established in their minds, these young Chinese accounting students were only too pleased to learn from Frank that they - the Chinese people - could develop their own, more harmonious and sustainable forms of accounting for China ... and for the world.

A slide from Frank's presentation in Jinan University, Guangzhou.

Please email Frank if you would like to learn more about how ancient Chinese culture and Philosophy can help to make the world a better place. You may also enquire about his itineraries in the near future to see if he could make a presentation at your university or college.