A Walk in the Park

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. — Lao Tzu

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. — Albert Einstein

In a message last year, I referenced an essay I wrote in 1996: Management of the Environment: Leadership ‘Spirit’ as Governance. It represented a path of connection with leadership and the natural world from which I had diverted in many ways. I reconnected with that path through hikes and walks in Acadia National Park in Maine.

Reading that essay again the other day, the following passage reminded me of the significance of the renewed path:

Institutions’ protective language of ‘objectivity’ merely creates an abstraction of the issues, alienating action further away from the stream, the woods or the sea and the imperative they represent. Governance within such an abstraction becomes a game of power of language rather than power of consciousness. Conflict thrives in such an environment.

Gregory Bateson traced the environmental conflict within such a system to ideas dominant since the Industrial Revolution:

“It’s us against other men. It’s us against the environment. It’s the individual (or the individual company, or the individual nation) that matters. We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that control. We live within an infinitely expanding ‘frontier’. Economic determinism is common sense. Technology will do it for us.” (Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972:500)

As I write this, several questions come to mind:

• Is it time to reassess ideas dominant since the Industrial Revolution?

• Are you and your organization disconnected or connected with your true purpose and path?

• Is there a connection between the first two questions?