Gerald Hüther - Individualisierte Gemeinschaften - Teil 2 #4

It's a synergy community that is forming there. Fantastic. You have another book. In the last two years, you have written two or three books. One of them was about this topic of lovelessness. And from that, an initiative was created. This is the other initiative that I mean lovingly now. What is the concern of this initiative? In reality, it goes even further back. Because the book I wrote once was called What we are and what we could be. A long time ago. And in that book, I made it pretty clear that we can never unfold ourselves as long as we maintain a kind of interaction with each other, where one makes the other the object. So where parents or supervisors or teachers or whoever, also sellers, their customers, become the object of their expectations, their goals, their intentions, their teachings, their assessments and then also make their measures. This is a given in our society. It has something to do with this hierarchical order structure from which we come. That was the basic principle, so to speak. But it cannot be a human being whose living and applied potentials unfold if he is made the object and treated like a refrigerator or a car. So people want to be seen, people want to have the opportunity to experience that they are welcome to be included in a community, that they are welcome to be part of it and that they also find tasks there where they can contribute, where they are important, where that is appreciated by others. Otherwise, no one will bother. Otherwise, one tries to endure the whole life. And then it becomes a hamster wheel and then they all hang in it in this hamster wheel and are dead unhappy. But a lot of people earn from it. So at that time, the idea in this book, and I have explained it nicely, is to help people to understand that you are not allowed to make the other person an object. And if you stop doing that, everything would be fine. Because as soon as you stop involving the other person in such object roles and he can develop out of it, then the unfolding begins again. Unfolding is the natural process of life. Everything unfolds out there. You just have to look again what is going on in spring. And if people are not trapped, blocked or somehow run around with special solutions that prevent the unfolding, it unfolds. That's how we came into the world. Until we had to have a correspondingly unpleasant experience and then it blocked us. And then I described it that way and then I realized that people don't understand that. When I talk about object and subject, to make it ridiculous, they say and is a predicate. They think I'm talking about grammar. So that broke my heart a little bit, because I'm trying so hard and it's not understood at all. And then I said, okay, then I have to touch it differently. Then I define what the subject is. What defines me as a subject so that I can feel it? And for that we have a wonderful term in German, it's called dignity. If I were someone who is aware of his own dignity, I would not allow someone to treat me like an object. And I would not treat other people like objects either. So I tried it this way. There is also a book called Dignity. And then a small movement has already emerged, which, by the way, is relatively large. I think they already have over 300 such groups. They are called dignity compass groups. In many cities there are these dignity compass groups. They meet, help each other, so to speak, to strengthen their own dignity. And then maybe to contribute a little bit to the local communities so that some institutions do not hurt the dignity of the people as much as is unfortunately still the case. And then I noticed that many people cannot start with the term dignity because they think it is something like ethics and morality. So something in general, hanging over it. Abstract, yes. But dignity is really nothing, it is not a social agreement like dignity and morals and values and something like that. So like morality and ethics, but dignity is really something that I can only give myself by making sure that it is not hurt. And then I realized that they don't understand it again. They put it in this pot where all the values ​​are in it and there is also dignity in it. And then I thought, okay, now I have to reach for the last resort. So I'm making this a little ridiculous now. This is a search process and I like to describe it so that the entrepreneurs for whom you do something like this, see how such a scientist feels so that in the end he somehow arrives somewhere where it might work. But it doesn't always work the same way. You can lie a hundred times right, but it still doesn't work on the market. And then I realized, hey, there is another way to find yourself again as a subject and that is by lovingly dealing with yourself. You can just try. And that works great. Now people know what is meant. So this challenge, you could do something that is good for you, so that you feel good again in your skin, leads to them asking themselves, what is good for me? And then they realize, it was good for me when I moved a little physically, because it was good for me when I didn't have to suppress my needs any longer, namely the need to be together with other people, to design something, maybe to walk around in the forest for days. Whatever it is, in the moment when you do what is good for you again, you are no longer a needy person. And the needy, the many needy, they all stand out because they need other people to compensate for their neediness. This also includes the egoists. An egoist without others is completely abandoned. An egoist all alone in the forest is lost. But someone who tries to be loving to himself, he doesn't need anyone else. That works best in the forest. That works, incidentally, even in prison. Even as a prisoner you can still ask yourself, do I turn my head against the wall all day, or do I sit on the bridge and see what is still possible under these somewhat restricted conditions. To come back into your own power, so to speak. Yes, and that makes people very strong, because they are reconciling their two basic needs, by reconnecting with themselves again, by their own design possibilities and autonomy, by deciding what they want to do this evening. And this way they come into their own power. It is as if they suddenly get a kind of energy boost, because before that a lot of energy was wasted with all kinds of things. And then they can, instead of wanting something from others, give something to others. That is an incredibly interesting term for me. An entrepreneur or an executive, who wants something from his employees, is a needy person. He should be someone who has so much himself that he can give something away. And then it could be that they themselves also come into the situation that they become donators and not always just run around as a needy person. It is a completely... It is like putting a lever around. And of course it depends a lot on whether such a leadership has this ability. But what I have observed is that when you find someone who really leads a department or maybe a whole company, also sometimes in start-ups, who are actually the boss, and you wonder how great the employees treat him, and how hard they work for him, and how they all contribute and support each other. And then you look at this boss, and you usually find out that he is very loving towards the employees. So he is considerate, careful, he doesn't treat them like objects. And if you then look at why he can do that, then you realize that he can do that because he treats himself lovingly. I have never met anyone who is loving to others if he has not taken care of himself first and can be loving to himself. There are an infinite number of people who want to save the world, but who don't even listen to their own body signals. The whole eroticism, everything has come out of their hands. But they are now on the road, but not with themselves, but outside. Yes, yes. This is also the realization that we have had for over 20 years at Galop, at this engagement study, we have almost constantly the same results. 15% are in their potential and 85% there is still something going on. And insofar... A lot was actually going on, yes. It's a misfortune that we are running with such minimal force. And it's a miracle that it's still going on. Above all, it's no wonder that nothing changes. Why doesn't anything change? What is the main cause? Is it really so that people don't treat themselves lovingly? I wouldn't call it that in business either. You don't have to call it that. First of all, you can say respectful or something else. But at least one thing where the other one notices, you mean to him. And where the other one notices, you support him. You usually recognize it by the fact that this is someone who treats himself lovingly. He can invite, encourage and inspire other people. Meanwhile, someone who cannot treat himself lovingly, he always has to command others around him. He always has to be right and he has to teach and evaluate them. And of course that's unfavorable. Now I always have this beautiful picture of you. You always take this metaphor with the data highway in your brain. And now we have gotten used to certain things. For example, in the hierarchy, to lead our sheep like a shepherd. And now this topic of complexity and indeterminacy is coming to us more and more. And now these shepherds are no longer able to shape the change as people of change. And I always call this transition beekeeping. Bees are self-organized peoples. And if I now try to transfer my competence, which I have learned from the shepherd, to my flock of bees, then it will be difficult. And now the question is exactly with this data highway as a shepherd, which I have in my head, how do I manage it with, as you said before, small tramps. Those were these small initiatives. But how do I manage it together with my colleagues? To actually create a successful environment, a successful relationship culture. How can I start? I have to start with myself. I think that's the first realization, right? Yes, but always keep in mind that you are always part of a social system. You don't exist as a single being. And if we then have formed our idea in such a way that we think people are like sheep and it would take a leader, a shepherd, then you have ended up in the wrong movie. Because people are not shepherds. You can turn them into shepherds. But that's a whole new podcast, we have to do it somewhere else. You can turn them into shepherds, but they are not shepherds. They are also not animals that organize themselves in social associations like bees or ants. So we are not state-forming insect. And naked mules are mammals and also make states, but we are not them either. And we are also not butterfly swarms or fish swarms. So all these images that we have for a community are completely inconceivable for people. The real feature of the exhibition, and that's what the primates invented, and you probably need a certain amount of brain for that, what our feature as primates is, is called individualized community. That means we form communities in which each individual member is included. There are wonderful experiments where monkeys were always fed with dirty potatoes until an older lady monkey came up with the idea to wash these potatoes in water. And after 14 days the whole group, and from then on for all generations, never again ate dirty potatoes. That is, one invents something and now it spreads. That is culture and that is what defines us humans. And we owe everything we are to that. And so we have been in these individualized communities for 90,000 years, if we say that our species has existed for about 100,000 years. We have been there for 90,000 years. It was extremely successful until we were so successful that we became more and more and then left us behind. So we became cessive and then suddenly not everything was as important anymore. The farmer was important for the nutrition of everyone and the goat breeder too. And then they, so to speak, regularly fell into the leadership role. I think they didn't have to adapt to that at all, but the horse reader and the fur puller and the trap setter, they were suddenly no longer in demand. And the herb woman. Nice to have, one would say today, but central to the survival of the community was the farmer and the cattle breeder. And since then we have hierarchical orders. They also worked quite well. They lead to the fact that they are always like that. They emerged in various forms all over the world and always have the same consequence, namely that people get tired, who are further down, who want to go up. How do you get up best? By discovering something that others can use, by offering something, by bringing something new into the community. But now under the pressure of the competition. I have to be better than my competitors, I have to work harder, I have to have a better idea. And if you do that for 10,000 years, more or less everywhere in the world, then a world is created, which in the end is so complex due to the many inventions that people have made. This is the beautiful new VUCA world. Globalized, digitalized and everything is dependent on everything. And one thing is no longer possible in this world. And the companies are the first to have noticed that. Hierarchy is no longer possible. Because this world is so changeable and so agile and volatile that you can't get on with such an old structure from top to bottom. Now there is unrest in society. Also in companies. Because if the hierarchy no longer works or is dismantled, there is nothing else that gives this community a certain order. And then there is this call for a new leadership in society. They call for Mr. Trump or some other authoritarian people who claim they knew how it was going and could do everything. But that doesn't work permanently either. And that's why the right answer to this problem we're facing and what we haven't learned to solve properly until today is if you have to abolish leadership because it no longer works, then society needs, then people who have been led by a person so far need something else that leads them. And that's what I always call inner attitude. That's what I call a common concern of a community. If a community had a common concern, this common concern would be this magnet on which they all align their respective contributions. And that would also lead to everyone placing their individual and particular interests at the back. Because achieving the common concern is more important than having the right again now. And in this transition, we are socially and globally and haven't managed to do that yet. Because of course it's very difficult when you suddenly give people the opportunity to decide for themselves about their lives and how they want to work, how they want to learn. But these are people who have never learned to decide for themselves about their lives and who come from a school system where they never had the opportunity to decide what was going on. With people like that, you can't build up these individualized communities. They stand around helplessly and say, now lead me! With entrepreneurs who say, if you don't tell me what to do, I don't know. I need this. They have become dependent. They are helplessly wandering around like chickens on the chicken coop and are now calling for someone to lead them. And that is of course totally crazy. And is that exactly the cause of this data highway? Yes, because I have experienced it all these years and I have behaved the way people still behave, although it is simply more of a strategy.