ENDNOTES

Chapter 1

1. As Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Chapter 2

1. The atom bomb is a perfect example, but the present day analogue is genetic engineering. While this new technology is promoted because of its potential benefits for health care treatment, it is already being used to modify foods. This practice increases the profits of the corporations involved in this venture, but in the absence of any certain knowledge regarding what the long-term effects of these genetic modifications will be on people or the food supply.

Chapter 3

1. Mahatma Gandhi's opinion seems relevant here: “Nothing in history has been so disgraceful to the human intellect as the acceptance among us of the common doctrines of economics as a science” (quoted in Williamson, 1997: 147).

2. This is reflected most readily in the “get tough on crime” attitude popular among politicians as well as much of the general public. Rather than trying to identify and address the underlying issues that make crime such a common phenomenon, the preferred approach in this policy orientation is to write more laws, hire more police, build more prisons, and hand out tougher sentences. An unfortunate consequence of this orientation, according to Hawken (1997: 46), is that the US “has surpassed the former Soviet Union as the world’s largest penal colony. One out of 3 black males in their 20s is in the U.S. correctional system; close to 40 percent of young black men are growing up in poverty. Is there a correlation?” All in all, he reports, over five million men are in prison, waiting for trial, on probation, or on parole. Between 1990 and 1994, the prison industry grew at an annual rate of 34 percent, with crime and crime-related expenses constituting about seven percent of the economy. “There is no cost difference between incarceration and an Ivy League education,” Hawken points out; “the main difference is curriculum.”

3. Since the notion of masculine and feminine orientations can easily generate some controversy, the terms “yang” and “yin” could be utilized instead, to reflect the Taoist notion that these are the two essential and complementary forces or types of energy in the world.

Chapter 4

1. The holographic properties of the universe and of human consciousness were first identified by physicist David Bohm and neuroscientist Karl Pribram, respectively, who independently reached this conclusion as a way to make sense of otherwise inexplicable findings in their separate fields of study. Grof (1993) also addresses the notion of what he calls the “holotropic mind.”

2. While traveling between the Earth and the moon, astronaut Edgar Mitchell had a similar experience in which he perceived the inherent interconnectedness of the universe and all it contains. As a result of this life-changing experience, he founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences ( to support scientific investigation into the nature of consciousness.

3. In Conversations with God, Book 1, Walsch (1995: 39) documents God’s reaction to the idea that he (God) had laid down a number of rules regarding human behavior: “I have never set down a ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ a ‘do’ or a ‘don’t.’ To do so would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift – the opportunity to do as you please, and experience the results of that…To say that something – a thought, a word, an action – is ‘wrong’ would be as much as to tell you not to do it. To tell you not to do it would be to prohibit you. To prohibit you would be to restrict you…There are those who say that I have given you free will, yet these same people claim that if you do not obey Me, I will send you to hell. What kind of free will is that? Does this not make a mockery of God…?”

4. This conclusion comes from those with experience at a higher level of consciousness or in a non-material realm. For example, in his fascinating accounts of his numerous out-of-body experiences, Monroe (1971; 1984; 1995) identifies a variety of ways in which, in non-material realms of existence, thoughts directly influence one’s experiences. All he had to do was to think of a person or place (in the material world or in other non-material realms) and his disembodied consciousness would immediately “go” there.

5. McLaughlin and Davidson (1994: 145-146) elaborate on this notion as follows. “Thoughts can actually create an event. They form on the mental plane and work their way down vibrationally to the emotional, etheric, and then the physical planes. Through the collective thoughts of humanity, conflicting or harmonious forces are slowly made into patterns by new or existing thought-forms and projected onto the astral (emotional) plane. The astral forces then surround the thought-form and charge it with any existing emotions or confusions. These mental-astral forms then descend to the etheric place, where they are formed into a framework that creates a future event. This inner structure of electromagnetic force orchestrates the future event by attracting all actors and elements necessary for the fulfillment of the event.”

6. Miller's research on descriptions of the afterlife that come from diverse cultures in Asia, India, Indonesia, Brazil, West Africa, and the United States uncovered a sufficient number of common threads or universal themes across all cultures that she drew the following conclusion. “I found that most systems described spirits moving through detailed geographies. Even more exciting as I reflected on these journeys was the fact that despite their diverse cultural origins, most of them consist to a greater or lesser degree of four separate aspects, or stages...” (p. 25). These include Waiting (the first “stop” after death takes place, prior to moving on into a new reality), Judgment (of which four methods were detailed, namely, the tallying method, the karmic method, the evolutionary method, and the challenge method), Possibilities (where the possible goals of the journey are revealed, and when guides or guardians and both comforting and challenging beings are encountered), and Return (the reincarnation that occurs after every physical death).

7. When this premise is taken seriously, and the reports of near-death experiences are heeded rather than dismissed as some kind of mental fabrication, the insights gained regarding the nature of reality are quite intriguing. These individuals typically report having access to a broader range of perception and comprehension than they do in the material realm. Many indicate that greater knowledge and wisdom are available in the higher realm, and that the events and circumstances of the material world are much more readily understood from this spiritual perspective than they are under the limitations of normal human consciousness. For example, reports from individuals with near-death experiences frequently describe some type of “life review” through which they gain a deep and thorough understanding of the meaning and consequences of all the events and actions of their life (cf. Dennis, 1997; Eadie, 1992). This information (including the powerful emotional reactions that result) is apparently used as a learning experience, in some sense a “debriefing” of the previous life that is to be used as input into the soul’s preparation for its next incarnation (Browne, 2000). Since the actions taken in the previous life have karmic consequences – “karmic debts” to be paid, so to speak – these are also factored into the preparation for and planning of the next life.

8. Woodhouse (1996: 200-201) describes an experiment by Osis and McCormick (1980) as follows. The subject “was monitored in one room, asked to project himself to a room at the other end of the building, perceive a series of randomly generated images, and return with the information. The sequence of images were independently recorded, but not known to the researchers until after the experiment was completed...The images were designed to take shape as optical illusions only from the perspective of someone whose point of view was at the appropriate angle next to the box [into which they were projected]...[The subject] not only brought back information; in 197 trials conducted over twenty sessions, he correctly identified the target 114 times.”

9. Moody’s research included over 300 subjects who came to his Theater of the Mind in order to attempt to have an encounter with a specific deceased loved one. Moody created this theater to incorporate a set of conditions which historical literature indicates is associated with seeing such “visions” in some type of reflective surface (e.g., a mirror, a pool of water, etc.). In almost 50 percent of the cases in his research, the subject had some type of verbal communication with the deceased person. Roughly 25 percent of those seeking reunions didn’t have one until after they had left the theater, but then usually within twenty-four hours. About 25 percent of the subjects saw a different person than the one they had prepared to see. In about 10 percent of the cases, the apparition seemed to come out of the mirror and into the surrounding environment, after which subjects often reported that they had been touched or could feel the person standing next to them. And in another 10 percent of the cases, the subject reported going into the mirror and encountering the deceased person there. Earlier research by Moody (1975), the first by a medical doctor investigating near-death experiences, has also helped to establish the scientific legitimacy of this phenomenon.

Chapter 5

1. Existing research indicates that individuals, groups, and cultures vary in terms of their level of individualism, with some demonstrating a high degree of collectivism(Chatman & Barsade, 1995; Earley, 1993; Hofstede, 1980). Of course, consistent with the dominant paradigm’s perspective on this issue, the individualism-collectivism dimension used in this research reflects the notion that a person or culture is oriented either towards self or towards the collective.

2. Lerner (1996: 94) points out “that human beings are fundamentally in relationship. There is no such thing as a ‘self-made man.’ Nobody has ever taken care of himself or herself in the first year of life and survived. No inventor or innovator or entrepreneur has ever developed a plan or an idea without depending on the language, technology, labor, agriculture, and intellectual life that preceded over the course of one hundred centuries and through the efforts of millions of people before us” (italics in original). Language, knowledge, thought, and emotion are essentially social phenomena, and thus an individual cannot be accurately conceptualized as separate and distinct from the community in which she or he exists.

3. Eisler (1987: 206, Note 10) points out that she prefers the word equalitarian to the more conventional word egalitarian because the latter “has traditionally only described equality between men and men (as the works of Locke, Rousseau, and other ‘rights of man’ philosophers, as well as modern history, evidence). Equalitarian describes social relations in a partnership society where women and men (and ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’) are accorded equal value.”

4. Even game-theoretic analyses grounded in a competitive mindset indicate that a “tit-for-tat” strategy – competing when the other party competes, collaborating when the other party collaborates – is optimal when it is assumed that there will be future interactions (Axelrod, 1984). This is a reasonable assumption if one is modeling actual human behavior. Since the use of this strategy by everyone would result in either an entirely competitive or an entirely collaborative system, it indicates that individual and collective well-being would both be maximized if everyone agreed to collaborate.

Chapter 6

1. This point was exemplified in a speech by Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin addressing the collapse of the Asian financial markets and the potential strategies available for responding to this collapse (broadcast on C-SPAN2, Wednesday, January 21, 1998). In his speech and the follow-up question-and-answer session, Rubin established the following three points: 1) the world is sufficiently interconnected financially that the problems in Asia negatively affected everyone else as well; 2) there are no obvious solutions to these problems, and in fact, the problems are so complicated that the government’s top financial minds do not have a clear-cut direction in which to head; 3) even if the US government had a well-developed solution to implement, it would require the agreement of many other countries whose willingness to go along with the plan would be essential for its effectiveness.

2. According to Scott (1981: 69), Weber “viewed each bureaucratic element as constituting the solution to a problem or defect contained within the earlier administrative systems. Further, each element operates, not in isolation, but as part of a system of elements that, in combination, were expected to provide more effective and efficient administration. To capture both the notions of distinctive elements and their interrelation, Weber employed what is termed an ideal-type construct. This approach attempts to isolate those elements regarded as most characteristic of the phenomenon to be explored. The term ideal-type is somewhat misleading, since it does not refer to a normatively preferred type but rather to the construction of a simplified model that focuses attention on the most salient or distinctive features.” Writing in the early 1900’s, Weber’s guidelines for the rational and efficient bureaucratic form were congruent with the classical administrative principles identified by various other European and American theorists (e.g., Fayol, 1949 tr.; Gulick & Urwick, 1937).

Chapter 7

1. This notion is congruent with the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that “it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of right order for a large and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies” (Handy, 1990: 126). According to this principle, then, it is better – more effective and more ethical – for decisions to be made at lower rather than higher levels of a system. As Handy puts it, “To steal people’s decisions is wrong…Subsidiarity means giving away power” (1990: 126).

2. Procedural justice, the perceived fairness of the procedures or process through which a decision is made, can be contrasted with the notion of distributive justice, the perceived fairness of the outcomes of the decision. When people view the process as fair, they tend to be more satisfied with the outcome.

3. Cox et al. (1991) find, in particular, that white people and all-white groups display more competitive behavior than people of color and racially-diverse groups. This is seemingly due to the fact that non-white cultures tend to be more collectivist in nature, an orientation which is more conducive to the kind of cooperative behavior necessary for groups to perform effectively. Thus, team-based organizations could benefit in this way from the development of a diverse, multicultural workforce.

Chapter 8

1. For convenience, however, the word organization will sometimes be used in the following discussion.

2. Keeley, citing Kleinig (1978) and Taylor (1978: 49), defines harm as the impairment of a person’s basic interests and defines basic interests as “first, whatever is necessary for preserving an individual’s autonomy as a chooser of his own value system, and second, whatever is necessary for realizing those of a person’s ends and goals that are of fundamental importance in his or her self-chosen value system.”

3. This is more true in theory than in practice, however, since accounting practices can help disguise how much profit was made and since other indicators of an organization’s value, such as stock price or price/earnings ratio, are viewed by the financial community as a more direct measure of an organization’s worth.

4. An externality is an economic term that defines certain consequences of an organization's activity as being “outside” the organization. Based on this way of thinking, the problems associated with negative externalities naturally become the responsibility of someone other than the organization that produced them, although it is not always clear whose responsibility they become. Currently, it is the government’s responsibility to utilize various policy tools intended to motivate organizations to reduce or redress the negative externalities they generate. These tools, of course, are often not very effective, and thus organizations frequently produce negative externalities without being held accountable for them. While pollution is an obvious example, others include the savings and loan bailout that cost taxpayers billions of dollars, unemployment payments to workers laid off by companies streamlining their operations to increase profits, and the health care costs for millions of people who contract cancer from tobacco products. It is interesting to note that the campaign by federal and state governments to recoup some of these costs from the tobacco companies may be seen as a harbinger of greater public reluctance to allow corporations to generate such externalities without paying for the damage.

5. An attractor is a concept from chaos and complexity theory that refers, in essence, to a “point” around which chaotic activity takes place. The activity is chaotic, in the sense that it is inherently indeterminate and unpredictable, and yet it reflects an underlying order in that it tends to take place within a fixed range of activity defined as the attractor. Marion (1999: 22) points out that a chaotic attractor “is an obvious metaphor for social phenomena. It is stable but its trajectory never repeats itself; likewise, social behavior is stable but never quite repeats itself. The strange attractor has the capacity to change. It can grow or it can shrink to encompass a broader or narrower range of behaviors; it can alter its appearance; it can convert to a dramatically different attractor; and it can even fade away. Social behavior is similarly more inclusive at times, less inclusive at others.”