For centuries, outside the business context, we have heard about the power and virtue of love. Within most religious and spiritual traditions, there is a cornerstone reference to love. Psychologists extol its importance for human flourishing. Artists and philosophers explore its depths.
Given this, here is my question: If just about every person on the planet has at some point spoken about the centrality of love to well-being, why do we hear so little about it in the context of work? It seems we have collectively agreed that this universal “good” is somehow not appropriate in the place where we spend the bulk of our waking hours.
This seems a thoroughly crazy expectation; thus I have been conducting research with Linda Robson to explore this phenomenon.
The good news is that love isn’t as absent from our organizations as one might think.…Conversely, I would ask whether it is really possible to power an organization without love. It really isn't.
Action is based on motivation and motivation is based on incentive. Negative motivation is based on negative incentive, usually fear in the context of management. Positive motivation is based on positive incentive. The question is then the quality of the incentive. The range is from ego-centered lust, as in lust for power and lust for money, to unconditional all-inclusive love.
Harvard Business Review
Can You Really Power an Organization with Love?
Duncan Coombe | Adjunct Professor of Organizational Behavior and Leadership at IMD Business Schoo, and co-author of Care to Dare
Love is like an electric current. It keeps flowing from the consciousness, continuously, like a current. If you cannot feel it, it is only because you have never been shown how. That does not mean it isn’t there. It is there: - it is keeping you alive; you have the capability. But you have to feel it. It does not come from the mind or else people would learn about it in school. It comes from the human heart; wells up inside and overflows from the human heart, when the heart is open. It is an energy, just like light is an energy. It comes from an Ocean of energy, that has no shore. That is why it too, is inside of you. It seeks no reward and is without attachment. It can never be bound. It is the part of you that is free. Without it, you wouldn’t even be able to deny it; or say that everything else is more important. The energy of the heart is superior to the energy of the mind, which is superior to the energy of the emotions, which is superior to the energy of the physical body – but together, all together – these energies make a human being, human. This energy, is made human. That is a good plan. Without love, you are missing the most important piece and wandering, looking for it, in something, somewhere. But it is under your pillow. The mind creates and lives out a nightmare; the heart says ‘peace is your essence’. We get to choose.
ReplyDeleteThere are hate movements that are based on love. Ever hear a white nationalist profess their love for their race?
ReplyDeleteExcuse me .... hate movements are based on an absence of love.
ReplyDeleteAnd love (as far as I have been able to experience it) doesn’t care whether you are black brown red yellow white or blue with tangerine polka dots, let alone nationalist. :-) !! It sees a human being, not a political concept of a human being.
Only love exists. Love has a range that is broad and deep, from charge, along the range of apparent opposites, to universal unconditional love, which is absolute. This is the range of experience.
ReplyDeleteAlong the range of opposites there are the apparent opposites of attraction and repulsion, desire and aversion, and love and hate, for example, as well as love and lust.
Even hate, which is the opposite of love, is a form of love, for a hater loves to hate and finds (temporary) satisfaction in it.
Lust is a lesser form of love.
The quest is driven by restless love.
Rest is only found in unconditional universal love.
"I love my race, the white race."
ReplyDelete"I love my country."
They are using the word, what do they really mean by it?
People do things in the name of love that they wouldn't do to strangers.
"We get to choose"
ReplyDeleteFree will jr?
So what is you guy's view? A stochastic universe with humans making free will choices within this stochastic universe? Humans making free will choices in responding to random events? That is what is going on?
ReplyDeleteFor me, there is nothing random in this universe.
ReplyDeleteFor me, love is not a word or a concept. You can like your cat, your job or your nation but you cannot love your cat, your job or your nation. The word explanation for this is: - In the same way as water goes back to the ocean, a stone falls back to earth, a flame shoots up to the Sun, love can only return to its source. The heart is singular, completely focused. That is something that I know. The reality is an experience.
We are playing on the same court, with the same ball (our lives), but just trying to pop it into a different basket – that’s all. We choose, and I am not going to say which choice is the right one for anyone other than me, because I do not know. You know. But the choice exists because the heart exists. That is something else I know. Other than that, we are exactly the same.
Matt and Bob, you play (et al) an excellent game up your end of the court. I learn from everyone here.
Free will?
ReplyDeleteEvolution of love.
So what is you guy's view? A stochastic universe with humans making free will choices within this stochastic universe? Humans making free will choices in responding to random events? That is what is going on?
ReplyDeleteUndecidable question for those in gross consciousness that can only apprehend the gross world. Not enough information. This is the situation with most "philosophical" questions. The level of experience is just not available for those in gross consciousness, which includes most people.
IN the prevailing level of collective consciousness, humans do the best they can and that is stochastic.
Or they could look at what those in purportedly more expanded levels of consciousness have had to say for hints to pursue.But in the final analysis, gross consciousness is limited to experience of the only the gross world.
And of course, it is love that expands the consciousness. People think to expand the consciousness they must pack more and more knowledge into the mind. That just makes the mind more occupied; develops the power of concentration and contemplation. Good for bridge design and medical procedures; understanding what is going on in the world. Also perfectly capable of creating the empire of chaos. We choose.
ReplyDeleteBut it is when you take that same power of concentration and contemplation and turn inside, leave all of the sensory input behind and allow the mind to settle and become still, find the ‘door to the heart’ within you and enter in, that you discover what love is. It is in a realm of its own; nothing to do with the outside world. It is energy, a flame, an electric current that reaches back to its source. In the truest sense of the word, it is your ‘self’. Then the consciousness can begin to expand and experience.
This same energy of love can then be used to ‘inform’ the mind; ‘light’ and ‘lighten’ ‘expand’ the mind; and the mind can then be used to create forms in the world. Mind is lost without it. Without knowledge of the self, the ‘I’ wanders. The mind lives on vapour; the heart lives on substance. We do not know it, but every day, in every way, with each little thought and action, we choose our direction, and search out our way. Choice is an incredible power that we have; just like a little plant chooses which way to grow, drawing nutrients and water from the earth, warmth, to pop its head up into the clear air and sunlight.
"For me, there is nothing random in this universe."
ReplyDeleteWell jr then not surprising you exhibit interest in the MMT ... MMT is very deterministic imo...
You are on the "right" side in this war imo...
"Good for bridge design and medical procedures; understanding what is going on in the world. Also perfectly capable of creating the empire of chaos. We choose."
ReplyDeleteIt's not a choice it's competency... What are you saying if there is a bridge collapse or a botched surgery that was the "choice" of the engineer or Doctor?????
Trump is claiming he is competent while claiming his opponents are not... Pointing to the evidence to support his assertions here... Email, Libya, employment, infrastructure, trade deficit etc
You guys see a f-ing conspiracy around every corner, these people are simply not competent to be in the jobs they are in...
You guys see a f-ing conspiracy around every corner, these people are simply not competent to be in the jobs they are in..
ReplyDelete1. Most people at this level are not competent for the job they are in. Peter Principle
2. There is no empirically-based rule for determining competence. It's a judgement call. The assumption in a liberal democracy that the majority exhibits the wisdom of crowds, which is similar to the assumption that markets result in rational optimality.
3. Candidates are not bound by party platforms or campaign promises, so how they will choose to govern is largely unknown to the electorate.
4. No human being is capable of being a competent POTUS anyway because the job requirements exceed the capacity of any single human being that is operating with ordinary human consciousness, knowledge, and skill. As the "decider" POTUS has to choose among experts with the ultimate criterion being "good judgment." But no one can foresee the consequences of action because the future is uncertain and all choices have knock-on effects, e.g., owing to feedback.
The actual criterion on which decisions are made is interests, and that would be group interests.
Matt: "It's not a choice it's competency... What are you saying if there is a bridge collapse or a botched surgery that was the "choice" of the engineer or Doctor?????"
ReplyDeleteI think what I was saying Matt, was that developing a power of concentration and contemplation (plus a ‘zoom’ faculty, in, out) in the mind is good for ‘competency’. Obviously, competent people screw up sometimes too. Lose concentration and ‘bham – they hit a tree’. Others, less competent, luck their way through.
For me, I don’t see conspiracy everywhere – I see human nature. The track record over the last 200,000 years is that we manage to screw things up, royally. I am not a great believer in human competence. Human evolution is on a carrier wave, largely unassisted by us.
One of the biggest obstacles seems to be personality reaction or interference: - often blinds people to the issues and facts. It’s a broad domain that I am lumping under ‘human nature’. So, competency involves a human component of being able to rise above our own short comings too. Our greatest handicap it seems to me. Hopefully you will be able to prove me wrong!! :-)
For me, in human nature the choice is between the ‘two wolves’ (good and bad – which one we feed). This choice impacts competency also.
As an aside, it is really hard to design a bridge that will fall down because of the self-supporting nature of an arch – but there are a few engineers who have managed it!