Tag Archives: cultural value systems

Is Democracy Destined to Fail, or is it Exiting its Adolescent Stages?

Recent scientific surveys conducted by Dr. Bjarni Jonsson reveal that almost 97% of people around the world believe that Democracy is a good way to govern. The same survey also revealed that almost 80% of people worldwide seem to have a deep mistrust in the system and its philosophy. This figure is likely at an all-time high and is not expected to moderate anytime soon.

What accounts for this discrepancy and does scientific research support the findings that Democracy is a failed experiment that needs to be replaced by a different system for governance. Would an alternative system need to be more authoritarian and restrictive, or would a deeper level of engagement and trust in Democracy help improve the virtues of governance. What if more of the world population and its leaders gain a better understanding of what needs to be done to guard the precious virtues of “government by the people?” What would be the mechanisms that need to be put in place to guarantee that all voices be heard?

Dr. Jonsson argues that Democracy as a fully functioning system for governance has not emerged yet, and what we call democracies is a big misunderstanding. He will be arguing his case for the different types of governance and what it will take for us to gain a better understanding of governing systems designed from the Emerging values of Humanity, what we in Spiral Dynamics call the values of the Second Tier.

Dr. Jonsson will present his views on these issues at the highly anticipated Spiral Dynamics Summit on the Future scheduled to take place in Dallas in April. Please click here for more details, and for a preview of the event. You can find out more about Dr. Jonsson and his work with the Icelandic National Assembly and the crucial role it played in reuniting Iceland after the devastating effects of the financial crisis of 2008. You can also look up Dr. Jonsson’s talks about “Crowd Visioning” on TEDx Stage.

“The primary focus of the Summit is to bring together the brightest global minds to help us better understand chaos and change in these times of uncertainty.”                                                                                

                                                                                                                    Dr. Don E. Beck

 

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MEMEnomics; The Next-Generation Economic System –The Book

Friends and colleagues, after more than 10 years of working closely with Dr. Don Beck, hundreds of presentations and training seminars, 5 years of research and three years of writing, I am happy to announce that my new book MEMEnomics; The Next-Generation Economic System was launched on September 30, 2013.

I am grateful to all my colleagues and thought leaders for supporting the framework for the sustainability philosophies outlined in the book. I am  humbled by the compliments it continues to receive  from both the integral consciousness community and the business community. I’m especially thankful for Don Beck of the Global Center for Human Emergence for writing the brilliant foreword,  to Deepak Chopra, the sage and the scientist for his beautiful words of endorsement, to Howard Putman, former CEO of Southwest Airlines for his Big Picture view of the book, to Jean Houston, one of the founders of the Human Potential Movement for her relentless support and for Dr. Bruce Lipton for acknowledging its evolutionary nature.

My gratitude also goes out to Economist Hazel Henderson, Founder of Ethical Markets for her endorsement, to Cindy Wigglesworth, author of SQ21  and to John Steiner and Margot King of the Tranpartisan Center in Boulder, CO for their support of our work over the years.  The enthusiasm the book is receiving echoes the need for better business values around the world. Its success is a celebration of the emerging values of business consciousness that give us all hope for the future.

memenomics jacket option ns edit 3- 8.5

Below is a publishers preview from amazon.com

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2013

Books about subjects like economics are rarely written from the perspective of human or cultural evolution. Seldom, if ever, does a reader come across a narrative with pioneering methods that reframe a specialized discipline through a wide-cultural whole systems approach. This is precisely what Said E. Dawlabani does in this revolutionary book, Memenomics: The Next-Generation Economic System. This is a book that reframes the issues of competing economic and political ideologies and places them into an evolutionary new paradigm. This is a book about change done right.

It is no secret that today we are dealing with a great political divide that threatens many of our democratic institutions. Right and left ideologies have becomes polarized camps that seem to be worlds apart. If we were to do a content analysis of all the speeches, books, and articles from the last few years, we would see several clear and distinct patterns which seem to point us in several different directions. There is a formidable challenge that awaits thinkers who are shaping the future of humanity. One of monumental proportions that will call on our collective ability to create political and economic systems that can best handle the complex conditions confronting life on our planet. When the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith penned his views on the evolution of human morality and trade over two centuries ago, he captured the hearts and minds of people the world over. But today, after guiding the free enterprise system to unimaginable heights, his teachings are being questioned at their core. Current global economic and governing systems can no longer run on fixed or rigid ideologies regardless of how virtuous or inspiring they were in the past. In order for new leadership to emerge to answer our challenges, new paradigms must be created.

One new paradigm for human and cultural emergence is beautifully detailed in this book. Memenomics makes the case for how artificially imposed systems in economics become closed and toxic. By using processes that were pioneered through five decade of research and global applications Said repeatedly makes the case for why the future of economics must consider a values-systems approach if the field should emerge into a whole-systems form of leadership in the future. Through technologies such as Natural Design and life cycles of values systems, Said pioneers a fresh reframing of economic history that uncovers the blockages of trickle-down approaches of the past. He then offers remedies that set a new standard for sustainable practices, ones that are based on functional platforms designed to address the needs of people and cultures at their particular level of economic emergence. This book is a brilliant primer on the application of the values-systems theory to economics. It is a field guide for anyone looking to establish a cultural values-systems understanding not only to economics but also to the applications of the theory of Spiral Dynamics and the seminal work of Clare W. Graves. It represents the evolution of the Gravesian model into a field that rarely considers the different needs and motivations of the different stages of human and societal development.

To buy the book on amazon, please click on this link

You can also read the Foreword, Introduction and Chapter One for free on Amazon Kindle Preview here 

I’m quite pleased with the success of the book. It has been consistently in the top 100 books on Economic Theory for the Kindle version.  Although the Library Journal doesn’t consider it a part of mainstream economics, it was never intended to be as such. Change, rarely, if ever comes from within the system; a view that this theoretical framework made clear over four decades ago.

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Did obsolete rules kill Aaron Swartz?

Does the death of Aaron Swartz, the 26 year-old founder of Reddit, and one of the developers of the RSS web feed format, represent the challenges we face in the early emergence of an economy of the  SYSTEMIC  value-system? Swartz was the typical representative of the healthy Egalitarian vMEME that characterizes the knowledge economy. It is based on the democratization of everything that has emerged in the information age. From the democratization of information itself, to the democratization of the means of production, this vMEME believed in informing and distributing resources equally. These are values based on economies of abundance where sharing, collaboration and open source define its core values. Its disruptive nature is making traditional Orange obsolete with every passing day.

In the last few years, Swartz tried to knock down more barriers to the old proprietary Strategic Enterprise vMEME  by hacking into MIT’s servers and downloading millions of academic papers making them available to the public. In a world where the Regulatory vMEME might have evolved with the times, this wouldn’t have been a problem, as these papers would have invited the input and collaboration of scientists and programmers through the phenomena of crowd sourcing and created new technologies for all of us to share. But, alas, the Justice Department didn’t see it that way, and vigorously pursued Swartz’s prosecution, which resulted in his suicide.

The obvious question is how do we design a new laws that can accommodate the coming complexity while at the same time still preserve old structures like copyright protections. How do we draw balance between proprietary discoveries and the drive to democratize everything that is digitizable?

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