Jamie,

You wrote:

 I was touched by the passion of your post. Clearly there are ideas here you cherish and which are worth propagating.

Timothy-> Thank you for taking the time to read and think about my very long post. I very much appreciate your thoughtful comments.

Jamie-> 1) Western civilization, and U.S. capitalist culture in particular, overemphasize individual independence. I wholeheartedly agree that this is the case, but I wonder if the myth of the rugged individualist is not more something that is constantly hyped (the myth itself serves capitalist/corporate interests) than actually believed by John Doe? I don't pretend to have my finger on the pulse of mainstream culture, but I don't know a single individual who doesn't acknowledge in many ways, every day, our social interdependence.

Timothy-> I would hope that at some level, modern humans would realize that as individuals they are INTERdependent. But, I think most don't. Our indoctrination into the values and beliefs of neutrality is much more complete than we imagine. While we might acknowledge a scientific or absolute INTERdependence, economically we really believe we are INdependent. Each of us economically responsible for ourselves. I pay my own way! I am my own man. I am a self made man.

While hurting others is highly discouraged, helping others is rarely encouraged. Our neutral focus is on products, and helping others is just another product. Generally, we ignore each other. The free market is a neutral, anonymous and completely impersonal place.
Because we believe in individual INdependence, people are supposed to take care of themselves. Good people don't need help. Only the lazy or defective need help. Because I take care of myself, I don't owe anyone any help. So it's always someone else's job to help others not ours. If my coworker gets fired it's not my problem. If there are hungry children in my community, it's not my problem. Neutral humans are indifferent. Neutral humans ignore. Today we have enormous and evergrowing levels of human poverty and suffering and starvation effecting hundreds of millions of humans worldwide. Millions of children die needlessly every year. Today, homelessness is an institution found in every city and town in America. Large numbers of humans live out their short lives completely ignored. Hundreds of children disappear every day from the streets of our cities and towns -- many without notice. Neutral governments are indifferent. Neutral governments ignore.

Human Indifference

Today hundreds of millions of adults and children throughout the world are suffering from abject poverty and starvation. Millions die from causes that could easily prevented or eliminated, but nothing is done. Their bodies are often not even buried. We have enormous conflict, economic inequity, violence, illness, starvation, suffering, and pain. As Medard Gabel[1] explains:

“Our global problems may seem insurmountable, even inconceivable to some. Globally between 13 and 18 million people die each year due to starvation or starvation-related causes. That is nearly as many people dying each day as Americans who died in the entire Vietnam War. More than 800 million people are malnourished in the world and routinely go without enough food to live in optimal health. Despite monumental strides in medical science which have improved the longevity and quality of life for the average human, large segments of the world’s population continue to suffer from preventable diseases and lack access to even basic health care. For example:

• Some 20% of the world’s children go without basic immunization, most of whom live in remote and often impoverished areas where infection is more likely to lead to death.
• Over 9 million children die each year from preventable causes, most of them from dehydration, routine infections, or one of several major diseases for which vaccines are available.
• Some 500,000 women die in childbirth each year while over 3 million infants die from dehydrating diseases that could be eliminated through breast feeding or Oral Rehydration Therapy, a simple and cheap mixture of clean water, sugar and salts.
• Over 17 million people die each year from curable infectious and parasitic diseases such as diarrhea, malaria and tuberculosis.
• Over 500 million people are infected with tropical diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, river blindness, and schistomiasis, all of which are now preventable.
• Over 18 million people are infected with the AIDS virus.
• More than a billion people lack access to any health care.
• There are 1.75 billion people without adequate drinking water.
• A billion people are without adequate housing, and 100 million are homeless.
• Nearly a billion people, mostly women, are illiterate, and about 130 million children at primary school age and 275 million at secondary level are not enrolled in school.
• There are over 53 million uprooted people or refugees in the world, 80% of which are women and children.
• There are over 110 million landmines scattered in 64 countries killing and maiming over 9,000 children, women and civilians of all ages each year, and over one million since 1975.

“The developing world is at least $618 billion in debt to the developed world and the gap between the rich and poor grows alarmingly larger each year. The richest 20% of the world now have 85% of the world’s income, while the poorest 20% share 1.4%.”

Another problem with the IGNORING values of Neutrality is that we also ignore our dependence of our planet and the life on that planet.

Ecological Crisis

Acid Rain, Ozone Depletion, Water and Air Pollution, Toxic Buildup, Strip Mining, Deforestation, Erosion & Topsoil Depletion; Greenhouse Effect, Ice Age, Nuclear Winter, Asteroids threatening the Planet. Gabel continues:

“On top of these outrageous conditions are layered the alarming environmental problems confronting the world:

• Around the planet, 26 billion tons of topsoil are being eroded per year from the world’s farmland. That’s 3 million tons per hour.
• Deserts advance at a rate of nearly 15 million acres per year.
• 10 million acres of rain forest are destroyed annually.
• Over 200 million tons of waste are added to the atmosphere each year.
• Over six billion tons of carbon from fossil fuel burning were added to the atmosphere last year.
• There is a 6 million square mile hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, and a 4.5 to 5% loss of ozone over the Northern Hemisphere.
• The planet has warmed at least 1° C in the last century, and given the annual carbon, CO2, CFC, and methane transmissions into the atmosphere, it will rise another 2.5° to 5.5° in the coming century.
• There are over 31,000 hazardous waste sites in the US alone, while in Europe, Estonia, and Lithuania acid rain has damaged over 122.6 million acres of forest.
• There are over 130,000 tons of known nuclear waste in the world, some of which will remain poisonous to the planet for another 100,000 years.

“And, last but not least, keeping the pressure on humanity to produce as much as possible from the Earth-driving the juggernaut described above-is the world’s population which is increasing by about 90 million people each year, or about the population of all of Mexico.”

Reference: [1] Medard Gabel, et al, What We Have and What We Want—Section 1: The World Problem State, World Game Institute, Philadelphia PA, 1997, <http://www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/what-b.html>

Jamie-> There is ongoing debate about "self-sufficiency" in the historical literature. Let me quote briefly from an essay by Vivienne Pollock entitled, "The Household Economy in Early Rural America and Ulster: The Question of Self-Sufficiency."*

 "Strong notions of self-sufficiency color perceptions of the rural past on both sides of the Atlantic. Time and again we are asked by various agencies to accept a historical reality in which money and markets played a minimal role...household self-sufficiency represented simplicity, integrity, and security... it was the hallmark of a vanished golden age...for example, Benjamin Franklin mused in 1772 about "the happiness of New England, where every man [sic] is a freeholder, has a vote in public affairs, lives in a tidy warm house, has plenty of good food and fuel, with whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture perhaps of his own family."

"In Ireland, on the other hand, perceived reliance on self-sufficiency became synonymous with economic retardation: for example, the observation...that Irish farmers "mainly produce for their own needs..." led one writer to remark that the "Ulster rural economy [lay] at an intermediate stage between primitive and developed economies." If one enjoyed self-sufficiency in America, one was emancipated and materially secure; if one endured it in Ulster, one was poor and structurally underdeveloped."

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* In "Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish." Ed. by H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood, Jr. 1997, The University of Alabama Press.

 Perhaps you know of serious scientific studies revealing to what degree this mythology is actually 'consumed' and acted upon by individuals in society at large?

Timothy-> No, I am unaware of any studies on this topic. But the belief in self-suffiency is very strong in our western culture and a natural out growth of the undelying assumptions of Neutrality.

 Jamie-> 2) Your characterization of adversity, neutrality and synergy seems to be at the core of your thinking, yet I am confused by your definitions of these categories. The examples you use clearly illustrate what I would call 'prototypical' cases of each category, but I cannot move away from your examples without feeling lost. For instance, in your example about the exchange of $5.00 cash for $5.00 (approximately) worth of 'food' from McDonalds you state that the clerk is interested in making the exchange and that this is a neutral exchange. My experience in McDonalds is that the clerk is actually much more interested in when her shift ends, and is only participating in this exchange in order to survive in this dehumanizing culture. In fact the clerk is most likely to be young, female and a person of color, thus beset by triple oppressions. Even if the clerk happens to be an adult white male, it seems to me there is at least a modicum of coercion in their participation in this exchange. In fact, I would like to hear your thoughts about neutrality and adversity as it applies to labor markets in general. In what sense is the worker's exchange for livelihood neutral? What exactly constitutes coercion?

Timothy-> Coercion is a feature of the adversary relationship. I define coercion as physical force or the threat of physical force. I will force you to lose or threat to force you to lose unless you act as I direct.

I define an adversary relationship to be any relationship wherein the participants are less happy, less effective and less productive than they would be without the relationship. An adversary choice is any choice that reduces the happiness, effectiveness, and productivity of the participants in the relationship. The sum of the whole relationship in terms of happiness, effectiveness, productivity, profitability, satisfaction, etc. is less than the sum of the parts -- less than the sum of the individual's ability to be happy, effective, productive, profitable, satisfied, etc. outside this relationship.

I define a neutral relationship to be any relationship wherein the participants are equally happy, equally effective, and equally productive as they would be without the relationship. A neutral choice is any choice that has no effect on the happiness, effectiveness, and productivity of the participants in the relationship. The sum of the whole relationship in terms of happiness, effectiveness, productivity, profitability, satisfaction, etc. is equal to the sum of parts -- equal to the individuals's ability to be happy, effective, productive, profitable, satisfied, etc. outside this relationship.

I define a synergic relationship to be any relationship wherein the participants are more happy, more effective, and more productive than they would be without the relationship. A synergic choice is any choice that increases the happiness, effectiveness, and productivity of the participants in the relationship. The sum of the whole relationship in terms of happiness, effectiveness, productivity, profitability, satisfaction, etc. is more than the sum of the parts -- more than the sum of the individual's ability to be happy, effective, productive, profitable, satisfied, etc. outside this relationship.

I think the apathy we see in the Neutral workplace is a natural outgrowth of being ignored. One wise human once said, "In most jobs today, I work just hard enough to keep from being fired and my boss pays me just enough to keep me from quitting."

That said, I believe that Neutrality is no longer working very well. Neutrality requires unlimited resources. This is what humans have had on planet Earth for many years.

Human Neutrality emerged in the old world with the creation of markets, but it was a partial Neutrality strongly dominated by the adversary systems still in place, and constrained by limited resources. For Neutrality to work, there must be unlimited resources. A more complete and purer form of human Neutrality was institutionalized by the American Revolution that founded the United States of America. The early colonists were in the right place at the right time.

 The right place was the empty continent of North America. Millions of acres of arable land and forests, filled with abundant water in millions of steams, rivers, and lakes and stocked with uncountable numbers of wildlife. This was further enriched with enormous reserves of iron, coal, copper, aluminum, zinc, lead, gold, silver, oil, and much more -- all available for the taking.

Today, with our population now exceeding 6 billion individuals and with our burning fossil fuels in our cars, trucks, trains, planes, and industrial engines, we are quickly running our of unlimited resources. We will have to give up neutrality for that reason alone.

 Jamie-> 3) I think your three categories, adversity, neutrality and synergy are interesting and powerful analytical tools. Taking these viewpoints highlights important aspects of social relations that are typically neglected by our policy makers, much to our detriment. But I would like to see some evidence that they correspond to historical epochs. It is artistically (rhetorically) neat to propose they constitute some sort of evolutionary chain, but my own point of view is not so Darwinian. It seems to me that people have been cultivating synergistic community relations as long as there have been people. I too would like to relegate adversity to a remote and barbaric past, and to believe in a brighter synergistic future where humans have replaced oppression with cooperation. But what I actually think is that people exhibit all these characteristics in greater or lesser degree at various times with different people throughout their lives.

Timothy-> I am in the process of writing a book that addresses this very question. Adversity dominated early human life until the advent of neutrality with the invention of money and the creation of markets. Then Adversity and Neutrality were always found together. Neutrality became dominant with the institutionalization of national markets in the 1600s, and the birth of the Unitied States of America in 1776.

Synergy has existed in small groups since the emergence of humanity. But, it has never been found in any group much larger than a tribe even to this day. Today, we find examples of synergy within families and small groups, but all larger organizations are dominated by Neutral-Adversary processing.

Jamie-> What we are in danger of loosing to the corporations is exactly the sense of community that has sustained the human endeavor throughout history. Unfortunately, if things continue in the direction our corporate masters and policy makers seem to intend, far from blossoming into synergy, I foresee us descending further and further into the twin pits of isolation and alienation, which, in my view, are the underpinnings of adversarial relations. Let's not wait for a new epoch! let's have synergy now! And let's remind people that we already know how to do this, that we have examples from history, that humans have been doing it all along.

Yes, I agree. Lets have synergy now! I think it is time for the synergic evolution.