John Lennon’s Dream: A World Free of Mental Boxes and Mental Fences

What divides humankind from one another are mental boxes and mental fences that have possessed and controlled millions (or billions) of minds. Before communication among us can redeem us from this tragedy, we need to develop the technology (and art) of managing mental models, instead of our mental models managing us.

In previous blogs, I have written about:

• L16- Concepts can block learning
• L21- On Michael Jackson, or our mental models of people we know
• Listening where mental models of people conflict
• Q16- Seeing world problems: building on Gregory Bateson
• Q7- We found the enemy: our own concepts!?

I love to listen to John Lennon’s (one of the Beatles) song, “Imagine.” His song always moves me to sadness seeing how people “kill and die for” their mental models, and how our concepts lead to “greed or hunger”. At the same time, listening to his song lifts my soul to a height my mind cannot verbalize. You can listen to the song via YouTube by pressing “Ctrl” while clicking HERE.

Here are the lyrics of this beautiful and soulful song:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon asks us to imagine an alternative world reality. He encourages us, saying “it isn’t hard to do.”

Can you imagine the world he is describing in his song? If you can — even for a brief moment as you savor the lyrics, the song and the man’s dream behind the song — then you have momentarily freed yourself from powerful mental models/fences that semi-consciously imprison the thinking and seeing, and that shape decisions and behaviors of millions of people in Planet Earth.

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JOHN LENNON

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Note that there are embedded links in this blog post. They show up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on any link to create a new tab to reach the webpages pointed to. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the use of the image in this blog post.

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Practical Exercise #15: Ingredients of Effective Group Action

Let us go through an exercise of constructing a mental model. To ensure that we follow the wisdom of Gregory Bateson (see previous blog post by clicking here: Q16), we will proceed in this manner: start with data from personal experiences -> discern pattern from the data -> construct mental model including concepts. This scientific methodology is called “grounded theory” because you don’t start at “Cloud 9″ but you instead start from the “ground” of experience in the real world.

From your own experiences, what are the ingredients of effective group action? (the question comes from the definition of “knowledge”; click here to see blog post F5)

Get a paper and pencil and please add to my list below:

physical energy
access to needed information
support from outside
teamwork
financial resources
tools
empowering policies
innovativeness
mental model
trust on one another
technology
information
shared concepts
skills
common goal
mutual support
good procedure
equipment
cash and incentives
good system
willingness
conducive workplace
(Please add to the list from your experiences.)

Next, let us cluster them together. Do you agree with this grouping? Are the members in each group similar enough to warrant the grouping? Do the groups make sense to you?

Then, we place labels on the clusters or groups:

VOILA! We now have CCLFI’s expanded KM framework! The entries in green are motivational factors that cut across the tangible and the three intangible forms (see blog post D11):

Recall:

• In F5 we learned that “knowledge” is capacity for effective action (I had written on this in the Overview chapter of a KM book published by the Asian Productivity Organization; click HERE).

• We saw that “know-what” (=knowledge) is not enough; it must be combined with “willing-to” (=motivation); I reported this in a KM conference last year at Kuala Lumpur (click HERE).
• In F1 we saw that the expanded KM framework overlaps with the intellectual capital framework (Click here to download paper to be published by EADI/IKM).
• We learned that intellectual capital has three (mostly intangible) components: human, structural and stakeholder capital, but we also saw that “stakeholder capital” and “customer capital” are too narrow, and must be broadened to “relationship capital” that also includes relationships within the organization (reported in our Singapore paper and also in my Overview chapter of the APO book).

A mental model is double-edged: a good one enables you to see the world better, but a bad one is like a blindfold or blinder that allows you to see only a distorted slice of the world.

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Q16- Seeing World Problems: Building(?) on Gregory Bateson

We have constructed mental models inside our heads about the world around us, about the people we know, about how things work. Mental models are our mental representations of the real world. Other words that mean much the same as “mental model“ are: assumption, mental box, belief, stereotype, concept, framework. According to Peter Senge, the ability to consciously manage our mental models is one of the five disciplines of a learning organization.

Some mental models work better than others. For example, two decades ago the Soviet Union’s mental model of a national economy is one run through central planning. After seventy years, they learned that central planning does not work. And so they replaced their mental model from central planning to market-based economy: instead of a handful of bureaucrats in Moscow making decisions on the national economy, over a hundred million Russian consumers are now making decisions on what will be produced, and at what quality and price.

According to Gregory Bateson, “The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks.”

It is everyone’s task to always revisit and revalidate one’s mental models. We may be contributing to creating or perpetuating problems, big or small; and we can prevent this if we always check our assumptions, concepts, mental boxes, beliefs, stereotypes, etc.

Take the word “private.” What is our concept of “private”?

How does our concept of “private” square with what has been observed and discovered by ecologists about how the real world works? Ecologists will tell you that:

• Wo/man is part of nature; s/he is part of the “web of life”
• Everything is inter-related; “no man is an island”
• An action or project will always have unexpected, undesired or unintended “side effects”
• Nature is not an unlimited “sink” or unlimited “source”; nature does not give a “free ride.”

A lady demographer friend made a remark I cannot forget: “the sex act is the most private act that can lead to a host of public consequences.” Of course, a baby born will result to a lifetime demand for food, oxygen, natural resources, living space, employment, schooling, public services, etc. contributing to public problems such as resource depletion, pollution, crowding, public expenditure, etc. and also to value creation through services, innovation, etc.

We need to re-examine how our concepts and beliefs square with how nature in fact works. What makes science a successful human endeavor is how scientists keep re-checking and improving their mental models to be ever better representations of the real world.

Failure to continuously learn and improve our mental models, concepts and beliefs will create or perpetuate more problems.

Look at these mental models:

• A private corporation may be operating a factory that discharges waste water into the sewage system (mental model: “Nature is an endless ‘sink’ “).
• A dictator or corrupt president, fearing the end of his power, puts his ill-gotten wealth in a secret bank account (mental model: “My and my family’s benefit above everything else”).
• She recommends disapproval of an office colleague’s proposal, ignoring its merits (mental model: “He cheated once; therefore he will cheat again”).
• A private individual flicks a cigarette stub by the roadside, starting a forest fire (mental model: “I can do whatever it damn pleases me to do”).
• A Hamas fighter’s mental model: “God will reward my martyrdom with paradise.”
• An Israeli soldier’s mental model: “God gave this land to me.”

According to Albert Einstein, “A problem cannot be solved using the same mindset that created it.”

What do you think?

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