Engines of Power: Managing in the Age of Connection
Abstract
Only humans are universally endowed with a spiritual dimension, central to which is an eternal quest to end “existential” sorrow and unhappiness. Humans everywhere also consciously create and manage their collective enterprises. In this the central quest is material, to provide for the inevitable needs of existence itself, to ward off material sorrow and unhappiness. Management is thus a sister to spirituality in being uniquely and universally human. The connection between spirituality and management lies in the insight that both are centrally about empowerment. Spirituality is about conquering inner demons by the power of the mind. Management is about conquering the demons and demands of individual and collective existence itself, through the power of collective effort. This paper suggests that the turmoil of 2011 is evidence of a paradigm shift already underway, rather than a temporary “crisis” to be overcome by civic society. The emergence of this global consciousness flows from three engines of connectedness that have been building up steam for many generations and have now converged. The Material, Social and Spiritual domains that have hitherto been alienated from each other are in fact manifestations of One great cycle of energy and power. Integration in the sciences under the umbrella of evolution has revealed man's inseparability from Nature. The explosive growth of social onnectivity of the last three decades has brought forth a radical democratization of the power of organization, a power till recently accessible only to the already powerful.
Meanwhile large numbers of people everywhere are turning inwards in their thirst for spiritual comfort, as it becomes increasingly clear that neither fame nor fortune can deliver Peace. If organizations and institutions and laws are re-envisioned from the ground up under this overarching umbrella of empowerment, the moral bankruptcy of the status quo – in the private sphere and the public square -- could perhaps be halted, and reversed.
