One of the two REX Fellows, Marti Spiegelman, is gifted in connecting executives to greater consciousness. Marti and I collaborate often, including a workshop we’re developing that melds the ideas of the Relationship Economy with indigenous technologies of consciousness. It’s a fun journey.
In this sequence of three short video conversations (go to the post’s page for all three), we take on the topic of ownership, as we tend to see and use it in Western society, and contrast it with the ancient notion of membership, as it has been passed to us through time from more ancient peoples.
We start with Marti introducing the idea of relational consciousness, which I then compare to the notion of the Ownership Society, a popular policy meme.
(Please click through to the full post; two more videos follow.)
The second clip has Marti describing three basic principles of consciousness from the Quechua and Aymara traditions of South America: munay, ayni and ayllu. Following these principles connects you to community and nourishes The Commons (a term many of us have unfortunately forgotten).
Marti takes us into the third and last clip by linear mind, which likes oppositions, with relational mind, which likes connections. We tie those concepts back to membership and ownership, grounding them in techie and new-era ideas like music in the cloud and resource sharing.
It struck to my mind when i came to know the similar root of economy and ecology: eco. Also great to know the term Relational Intelligence.
I believe that the illusion of ownership occurs due to the hierarchial system in any organization which assigns greater power to the person in the upper section of the pyramid, but the truth is that the edifice is the base itself which is also the section which consists of the majority.
I think the term membership is more appropriate to describe the nature of any organization but the problem occurs when the rules of ‘democratic gemotry’ shaping the pyramids makes it more steep or the opposite of it. That is how the use of power gets converted into abuse of power and it can be stratum concentric and the extreme case can cause dictatorship.
The problem arises with defining the rules and deciding who to contribute in what extent. That is the core issue.