Whole-Economic-Human: The Next Marketplace Paradigm
ByRational-Economic-Man has been the dominant marketplace paradigm since the dawn of the industrial age. It describes men (no women) who, given the circumstances of their times, make choices that optimize their chances to obtain precisely what they desire in the way of wealth. And it’s true that economic systems have emerged out of this paradigm to create more wealth for more people than any previous idea or image in history.
But no human construct is eternal. Regardless of its creative power and, as with all paradigms, rational-economic-man has reached a limit and must be transcended.
So what must be transcended? And what is the power and promise of what we are calling the Whole-Economic-Human?
To transcend does not mean to abandon or sever all ties with what has been. It means to preserve what continues to work, to jettison what doesn’t, and to open to the discovery waiting in the future. When a paradigm reaches its generative limit, it begins to turn in on itself leaving behind a path of destruction where there formerly had been genuine creative inspiration.
With regard to the rational-economic-man metaphor—
- its singular focus is on males
- its isolation of rationality as the primary if not only dependable faculty of assessment
- its critical lack of awareness of and concern for the impact of its choices on communities and the planet at large
- the aggression inherent in winner-take-all competition, and
- its myopic reliance of academic, mathematic formulae that expel the very real, day-to-day non-rational behaviors of human beings in the marketplace
are elements that must be left behind.
And perhaps the most damaging result of this paradigm is the emotional and spiritual distance it brought into being, the disconnection it fostered between human beings in the day-to-day commerce that we all must engage in to keep well and alive.
How is the Whole-Economic-Human metaphor different?
It is all about intimacy—the intimacy of interconnectedness and interdependence.Just as all the organs of a human body are intimately dependent upon each other so that when one malfunctions or becomes diseased the others are unavoidably affected, so it is with how we conduct our commercial transactions.
For example, when Bernard Maddoff recently created his ponzi scheme worth billions his impact was not isolated to those who have been directly damaged by his deceit. His reach extended well beyond those immediately involved. He created fear, and rage, and cynicism, and paranoia. He impacted the emotional life of the community, which in this case the community is most of Western Civilization, decreasing the trust in and value of the economic system among people at large, and most especially among those who are suspicious of wealth and are ready to opt for conspiracies that render them victims of power.
The Whole-Economic-Human makes choices from an alert consciousness—with awareness of the co-creative life that joins us all together—as well as from a sincere conscience—reflecting the care and respect for the feeling-filled human beings with whom he or she transacts business.
Co-creativity, care, consideration, and community are among the meaningful qualities that are at the foundation of an ethical commerce, a commerce that is dedicated to advancing the well-being of the whole human—feminine, masculine, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, rational, and non-rational.
As we said in Thursday’s post, being alive as a Whole-Economic-Human integrates mindspace, heartspace, bodyspace, soulspace, and co-creativespace, a mutli-dimensional economic person who strives to fulfill his or her self-interest only as it is situated within the intimacy of community—without which no self-interest could ever survive let alone thrive.
To deepen your appreciation of co-creativity, care, consideration, and community, be sure to get your copy of our new book The Heart of Marketing: Love Your Customers and They Will Love You Back (Morgan James Publishing, May 2009
Because It’s All in the Whole Connection,
Judith & Jim
Nice set of ideas. But please don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Read Robert Axelrod’s excellent (and accessible) book, What none of the game theorists point out (even in introductory books) is that any reward, whether it be money, intimacy, or stars in your heavenly crown, can be plugged into a game matrix. In fact, one may assign (personal) values to wealth, intimacy, achievement, and relationships and then devise a game for “rational economic actors” that will predict quite well what somebody will do when the matrix accurately reflects their personal values.
Economics, however, definitely needs a makeover. Money is imaginary, yet economics mostly boils down to studying how to increase this imaginary substance while neglecting the very real things that are most important, but cannot be quantified. I just finished a class on economics. It amazed me that while the very learned professor acknowledged that GDP wasn’t a very good measure of anything (except how fast this imaginary substance call “money” changes hands), he then proceeded to teach as if GDP were something real and desirable.
I look forward to reading more.
Hi John,
What a pleasure to hear from you and with so intelligent a response. And thanks for the compliments.
I have not read Axelrod’s book s o I cannot speak to it.
My concern with game theory is that it is almost always take place in an unnatural environment — i.e. a prefabricated, academic, experiment-structured environment — and I say almost because I don’t know if any situation wherein a spontaneous exchange between “actors” is truly spontaneous as it might occur outside the game theorists lab.
So the problem is does it really reflect what actually can take place out in the world and the marketplace. In the current debate over waterboarding, for example, those who support it point to the Army’s training use of it in order to pre-condition soldiers, should they be captured, what they might expect. This is the same experiment structured environment because the soldiers are NOT in enemy hands, they know they will not die, they know it’s being done for their own good. All well and good. But when happens when the enemy really wants to kill you and may even if you give them what they want?
I’m not suggesting the training should be stopped, just contextualized and not generalized as a true measure of what to expect.
Our objective is to infuse into the overarching description of commerce elements that are real in the non-experimental world: feelings, fears, hopes, envy, delight — all that which makes us the human that we are and is at play, mostly unconsciously when we go out into the world and especially when we go out into the market place.
Just go to this Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory
about rational choice theory and you’ll find formulas that look more like physics formulas than something representing about day-to-day human beings.
As academic economic theory elevates these formulae to such a high a status then their view of the marketplace is equally as abstract and devoid of what actually happens in actual real lives.
As ex therapists our framework is the internal life of sellers and buyers. That is as much a part of economics as anything, perhaps even more important than formulae, and traditional economics keeps the inner life of people as far at a distance as it can.
It’s time for a joining.
Because It’s All in the Connection,
Judith and Jim
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