Otto Scharmer, from ego to eco

The following are from his blog post. The bullet point headings are below with my comments on some of them following. See the link for his detailed explanations.

10 insights on the ego-2-eco economy revolution

(1) The root cause of today’s global crises originates between our ears — in our outdated paradigms of economic thought.

(2) The blind spot of modern economic thought can be summarized with a single word: consciousness.

(3) The evolution of the economy and of modern economic thought mirrors the footprints of an evolving human consciousness.

(4) To paraphrase Einstein, the problem with today’s capitalism is that we are trying “to solve problems with the same consciousness that created them.”

(5) Helping stakeholder systems shift their way of operating from ego-system to eco-system awareness is the central leadership challenge of our time.


(6) The shift from ego-system to eco-system awareness requires a journey that involves walking in the shoes of other stakeholders and attending to the three instruments of inner knowing: open mind, open heart, and open will.

(7) Addressing the current global crisis at its root calls for a 4.0 update of the economic operating system through reframing eight “acupuncture points” of the global economic system.

(8) Shifting the system to 4.0 requires a threefold revolution.

(9) We need new types of innovation infrastructures in order to build collective leadership capacities on a massive scale.

(10) The shift from an ego-system to an eco-system economy requires a global movement that needs to be supported by a new leadership school. That school should create collaborative platforms across sectors, systems, and generations and work through integrating science, art, and the practice of profound, awareness-based change.

My comments:

In #1 there are 3 areas where the self is divided from primary sources of life: ecological, social and spiritual. We are divided from nature, culture and ourselves. The first two list the usual suspects, but our spiritual divide is not from God, the origin, or reality as such but "between the current self [...] and the emerging future self." Interesting definition of the spiritual akin to some thread ruminations.

In figure 1 he correlates the spiritual divide with our current governance systems not giving voice to the people (aka fascist oligarchy) and private property rights. That's right, these are his spiritual issues. And that all of the above disconnects originate in our economic paradigms.

We'll see ahead that the solutions, like with Rifkin, are in Scharmer's emerging commons era and eco-system awareness. Although Scharmer doesn't see a new economic system as yet emerging and proposes his own. He'd do well to read Rifkin and catch up on what is already in full swing, and sympathetic to Scharmer's ideas.

In #3 he correlates the history of consciousness with economic paradigms. You can see how this in some ways parallels Rifkin's stages of ideological, psychological and ecological, though not exactly. Hierarchical central planning correlates with socialism and mercantilism. The competitive free market economy with self-interest, although he calls this decentralized planning, I guess in distinction with the kind of State socialism of the past. Next is the social market economy that takes other stakeholders into account, more like green or conscious capitalism. Finally is the commons, where all stakeholders including the ecosystem are considered. Like Rifkin he sees that depending on culture and context, all of the above co-exist in combination. But there is a general tendency for there to be an increasing complex progression as well, where the more complex enfolds the lesser.

In footnote 1 Scharmer notes that the above relates only to modern economic systems. Hence not inclusive of Rifkin's mythologocal hunter/gathers. Schamer says that modern economies share some similarities with the pre-modern, but there are also differences. He accounts for them in his U theory, in some ways similar to my notion of the fold.

#4 makes a point consistent in with Rifkin's holistic/ecological thinking, in that we cannot solve current problems with the kind of thinking that silos information into specialized boxes, i.e., typical analytical thinking with its incessant classification. We must uncover the ecological relations between specializations and classes. In other words, we must move from false (purely abstract) to real (embodied) reasoning.

I don't agree much with #5, as he thinks the way to transition from ego to eco is getting the leaders of ego orgs to change consciousness. The emerging commons does not have this top-down approach and is quite effective in enacting this transition via the lateral P2P approach. I sense that like the AQALifried, much of his financial support is based on selling his model to business leaders and thus the emphasis on transforming leadership first. It seems to be a holdover of the ego stage in this particular line.

#7 lists some of the solutions from the eco paradigm. I disagree that we need to redirect speculative capital to eco-social renewal, if by that term he means big bank capital investment. In Rifkin we see crowdfunding as one source of alternative investment capital, not the same as speculative capital.

Figure 3 shows to what we are moving in the spiritual areas noted above in figure 1, toward awareness based collective action and commons based ownership.

In #8 he talks about how we must transform through the process of inversion, meaning "turning inside-out and outside-in" deeper or dormant capacities. Again similar to my fold hypothesis.

#9 is key in that we need far more than a change of consciousness; we need new tech and infrastructure to manifest it, we he calls "creating spaces." These spaces (generative enclosures) include not just material tech but social and spiritual spaces and practices. He cautions that just theorizing about higher consciousness without creating correlative spaces-practices is moot and self-defeating. We can see the kind of spiritual infrastructure he means by the previous posts.

#10 again focuses on creating a leadership school to implement the needed changes. While I'd agree with what such a school teaches, just focusing on 'leaders' in the current system is counter to the entire commons ethos. Such educational alternatives already exist but for each of us to be both leaders and followers depending on the eco-context. The 'great leader' myth is part of the old school.