Newtonian organizations are "downsized" and "streamlined." Gardens are "weeded" and plants are "pruned." Newtonian organizations fear "non-productivity" and reward instant results; gardens "lie fallow," anticipating "fertility" and "generativity" in nature's time.
Not "wrong " or "right," modeling spirits generate diverse thoughts and consequences. Same issues, dissimilar views, different expectations.
There is no economic "machine" subject to "controls," "leverage," "infrastructure," "parts," "sectors" or "sides." We cannot sensibly reduce millions of buy-sell decisions to sound-bite analyses. Metaphoric understanding of our eco-nomic ecosystems requires more.
"So what!?" you properly ask. Unfortunately, this "so what" is our baseline, most fundamental, essential economic/money perceptions. These perceptions touch every living being. If our metaphors fail to accurately reflect money and economic realities, they are neither adequately enabling nor enhancing understanding.
What if we talked "organisms" instead of "sectors?" Fractals, not parts? Or grounded our language in ecosystems and mutually strengthened interdependencies rather than machine's fragile linearities? What if money analogies engaged imaginations at levels of life forces and bodies social rather than Freud's considerably less tasteful analogies to human waste?
Quantum physics, biology/ecology and spirituality show promise. Spiral dynamics, integralism, chaordic theories and the arts have unlimited metaphoric possibilities. Can we generate new conceptual vocabularies? What are we learning and how can we apply it?
Either way, these are times of promise or threat. Machines are yesterday's news. Today's includes biology, quantum physics, expansive integral finance and metaphoric references awaiting birth. With a public unwilling to accept the inherent inhumanity of "survival of the fittest" or economies built on nonproductive "isms," these times seek mutual understanding and grasps of fragile human economies/systems.
Our language is vital. First we must notice how we talk. Second, we must process. Finally, we ask whether our metaphors deepen or cloud our understanding. Then we notice our results. This is good interior work for a 21st Century profession.
May our conversations facilitate vision, understanding and peace.
Richard B. Wagner, JD, CFP, is the principal of WorthLiving LLC, based in Denver.