Spirit in Action
Emerging Consciousness and Economics - Said Dawlabani
MEMEnomics: The Next-generation Economics System by Said Dawlabani explores an evolving, growing, & maturing of values systems, leading us to a better future, in spite of and fueled by the crises we go through. A further adaptation of the Spiral Dynamics theories of Don Beck, Memenomics may well be the lens to light our way forward.
- Broadcast on:
- 12 Jan 2014
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today for Spirit in Action, we're going to be dealing with crucial and enlightening ideas about economics. My guest is Said Dalabani, author of Memonomics, the next generation economic system. And you'll learn about a way to think about the realm of economics that I doubt you've ever explored before. In many ways, Memonomics is a hopeful doorway into a better future powered by the continual growth and evolution of individuals and our culture. Said Dalabani joins us from San Diego, California by phone. Said, I'm very pleased to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thank you very much, Mark. It's great to be with you. Just before we got on the air, we were talking about the linguistic roots and the meaning of your name. So let's tell the folks, what does Said Dalabani mean? Well, first name Said is an Arabic name. Said in Arabic means happy. And Dalabani means wheel maker. And so the joke in high school was, here comes the happy wheel maker. So glad to be with you, Mark. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you. So are you saying that Dalabani is also an Arabic derived name? My ancestors are from Turkey. So Dalabani is a Turkish name, but it also has an Arabic meaning as well. So the base of the name is ancient Arabic. My family goes back generations to Turkey, and then my great grandfather moved to Lebanon at the end of World War I. So some of the family immigrated over to the states in Europe and South America. Some of us, like my great grandfather, decided to settle in little Christian Catholic down Lebanon for a couple of generations. And then that's when my dad decided that after the Lebanese Civil War that it was the time to take his young boys. It was supposed to be all doctors taking and moving to the states where there's greater opportunity than having to waste away in a country that was facing a really bad civil war at the time. So we all moved in the 70s, originally settled in Boston, and then after that, you know, my brothers moved around on the east coast. They're both in Jersey now. They're doctors, and I'm out here in California doing what I'm doing. So your father wanted you all to be doctors, but instead you're in the area of economics. Where'd you go wrong? Well Mark, I was the black sheep in the family. I sort of was in pre-med in my first year of college. Sort of organic chemistry put an end to that pursuit. But at one point in my career, I made quite a number of good investments from my brothers in real state who are living off of that and are very thankful that I wasn't in medicine. So yeah, I got into real state and sort of never looked back. And, you know, when I stopped building homes about five or six years ago, I decided to give this thing that I've been working with for the last decade or so to really give it a shot. And so I started working closely with Dr. Don Beck, who really is one of the foremost authorities on this value systems theory that I use in my book, Humanomics. He actually asked me to do a presentation about how the housing market came about through that prison with value systems. And so I spoke about that for about an hour. This was about seven years ago. And then he, at the end of my presentation, he asked me if I was building homes. And I said, "Well, nonetheless, I want to make a huge loss." And he goes, "Well, if I were you, I'd drop everything you're doing and start writing a book about this." And this is how I really got into talking about, really brought back the days of my long-term economics in college. Although I was a business major, my level was the macroeconomic principles to find the second level of the value systems approach to economics, just put the icing on the cake for me. And I just had a wonderful time doing the research for this book, Mark, and really reframing the entire economic field through this evolutionary model called the value systems model, which I sort of reframed called with Humanomics. Humanomics is what we're looking at right now. Don Beck advanced the idea of spiral dynamics. And he, I guess, follows on Claire Graves. So there seems to be here an evolution of ideas and models going on. I guess it was in college that you first got involved with Don Beck and the ideas of spiral dynamics. Well, not really. I met Dr. Beck through the work that he was doing with my life at the Center for Human Emergence, Middle East. She had met him about 12 years ago with a seminar that he was offering. And she at the time was looking for a different perspective on how to approach peace in the Middle East. And she'd been a student of Ken Wilbur, the integral philosopher, if you've heard of him. One of his training seminars, he was referring to Don Beck as someone who was still active in offering seminars and training in the value systems approach. So she attended one of his seminars and long story short. They started working together within a year after meeting, and they started this initiative called the Diltowstein Initiative, which really brought this value systems framework to a new perspective on how to see peace in the Middle East. I became the COO of the Center for Human Emergence Middle East in an effort to help them sort through the legal, financial and administrative stuff of what they were doing and to also provide background support for their efforts. And that's how I really got introduced to the value systems in the spiral dynamics framework, and it really was by too a coincidence that I started attending some of the training seminars and to just hear Beck and my wife Elza talk about their work in the Middle East at different seminars be presentations at the UN or just actual training seminars and inspired dynamics as a academic field. And from there just went on to me developing this economics framework and it's been a wonderful journey. I want to tell our listeners right away that there is just no way to even half adequately cover all that I want to talk about today. So I'll remind you all that you'll find bonus excerpts from this interview at northernspiritradio.org. You know, Said, I really feel tempted to jump in about 10 directions at once and delving into this. So how about I bring up something that's totally superfluous first. Just how fortunate do you feel to have the support of such a heavy hitter and well-known name is Deepak Chopra to put his endorsement on your work right on the cover of your book? Wow. Quite a bit, Mark. It was wonderful to see this sage and scientist breeze through the book and say, wow, this is the kind of framework that is missing from the economic consciousness today. Deepak has worked closely with Don Beck and my wife Elza. They're all members of something that Deepak established called the evolutionary leaders. And there are members of about 50 people, global constellation of people looking to effect change the right way. And so the first site of the book and knowing that Dr. Beck wrote before to it, Deepak looked at it and said, this is exactly what the word needs and was gladly willing to endorse the work. So I feel very fortunate. It's a very small world when it comes to these things, Mark, and I consider myself very fortunate to be in the position that I'm in. I had you here today, Said, for spirit and action because of the hopeful future and way forward that you visualize for us through mnemonomics, a resolution of the kind of polarized political and economic thinking that has really stalemated our forward progress. Are you hopeful at this point? Quite a bit, Mark. It's not a matter of whether the current economic situation that we're in now is going to come to an end or not. It's just a matter of when. The whole issue of what I call the current economic contraction that we're in, this was all a byproduct of misguided policies for close to two and a half decades or so. Although it might be moving very slowly for it to re align with what I call the original purpose of capitalism, it might take a little while longer. So I just tell people listening to the show that to have hope that there are better things that are coming on the horizon. And this is what I discussed in the last third of my book, I call it the platform functional capitalism. It would all depend on how quickly we elect political representatives who have that big picture view of where this country needs to be, not, you know, for the next election cycle or where the CEOs of this particular company or that particular company want to see us in the next quarter or the close of the market. We're looking at political and business leaders who really see two or three decades down the line and have a real conscious clarity where this country needs to be in the future. And not someone who's concerned with just contemporary issues that are going to put it into a decisive battle on taking five and increasing the polarization that we're in. So yes, I am optimistic it's just a matter of how soon do we get people, people like Elizabeth Warren, people like Paul Volcker, people who really see through the ineffectiveness of current politics, people who see through the ineffectiveness or the manipulation gains of the current economic system and look down the line 20, 30 years and be able to predict with their knowledge and experience is China and the rest of the world is going to be ahead of us. Is this disparity that continues to increase in the income gap? Is this going to lead to something that is going to make us a second and third world country? These are the kind of things that you have to have the future vision to the three decades and look back and say, wow, this is where we're heading, we'd better do something about this now. And so the sooner we elect politicians like that, what I call smart government, the sooner we elect representatives like that, the sooner this economic engine will go back on the right track. Again, folks, we're talking today about mimanomics, the next generation economic system. And you mentioned in the book, Said, that you saw the 2008 economic contraction coming. I'm hoping to discover your street cred here because back then, hopefully you took steps to prepare for the contraction. I think you were selling real estate in the lead up to it. So what did you do to prepare for the crash? And why didn't you call me up and let me know about it ahead of time? That's what all my clients ask, Mark. And sadly, you know, when you sound the alarm, the sky is falling and everybody else thinks you're crazy. You know, no one listens to you. Everybody thinks that you're just out of touch with the most recent trend. Well, as far as trends are concerned, Mark, you know, in 2008, I mean, the last permit that I pulled on the last track that we did from the time that we broke ground to the construction was complete, the market moved up 43% on the prices of these houses. I mean, I was glad to make the money, but deep inside my consciousness, I knew that, you know, for the sake of my own kids, I knew if things continue the way they were going, within three years, they can't possibly afford owning a house, even if they made $150,000 to $100,000 a year. One of my framers, one of my crappeters, who I haven't seen in probably five years, pulls up to one of my construction sites. And this guy, you know, I paid him on Thursday and he was broke by the weekend, so, you know, he'd asked to borrow on, you know, I guess his paycheck on Tuesday, constantly broke. You know, that is like the value system of that red system, that it just is very typical in the contracting business. Well, when he pulls up in a Hummer to tell you that he's building million dollar homes and, you know, shortly behind him pulls up a flatbed Hummer with lumber in it. And you know that this guy had really no capacities to be a home builder, you know that there's something wrong with the system. It wasn't his fault that he was involved in the things that he was involved in. This guy was building homes in an area that you had to go through some mobile homes to get to million dollar homes. Something that any home builder with any knowledge of economy under normal conditions will not even consider building $50,000 homes, leave a million dollar homes. A long and short of it is what happened with capital markets, what happened with the way banks lent money, was something that this country had never seen before. You know, suddenly between 2000 and 2004, these banks had so much money, they didn't know what to do with. And so they were giving it out to anybody who was asking, regardless of whether they can pay it back or not, regardless of whether they had experience building homes and picking locations. And all the regimented metrics that a normal bank would put you through, all of a sudden in that period of four years, all these metrics went out the window. And suddenly you see people you've known for years, who are subcontractors, who really didn't have capacities to undertake these big things, are getting into things that they have no clue how to get out of if the market dried up. So this is when I decided that this is the end of it, and I decided that no more permits, I wasn't going to put on any more land and shortly thereafter, it all came crashing down. So you knew the economic system was going to crash without knowing which specific banks were going to lead the crash? The notion that anybody with a social security number and a pulse was able to borrow a million dollars to build homes, Mark, was a very scary notion. That is not an indication of the skills of the builder. This is an indication that the problem is a structural problem. The problem is from the lending institution. The problem is from too much capital that is not representative of productive output of what the economy should be representing. In order to understand this, we'd better get an idea of what me monomics is. And again, this is building on the work of Don Beck, and before that of Claire Graves, in some ways, it reminds me somewhat of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which has physiological needs, like breathing, needing at the bottom, and then rising levels of safety, of love, esteem, and then at the top, self-actualization. Where does me monomics come from, and why don't you give us a quick overview of the theory? Sure, sure. So what Professor Graves put together once in a theory of human values, more elaborately, it was called the emergent levels of existence theory. And what Graves uncovered is that the human existence happened in stages, and that as we solve our problems at one level of existence, we naturally emerge into a higher level of existence, and that that kind of emergence alternates between what we call individualistic cultural systems and communal cultural systems. And so he uncovered a total of eight value systems that the human experience can belong to. The first level of existence is the survival level. And so once we solve our problems of survival, once we develop skills on how, and this is historic as well as contemporary, but once we solve our problems of survival, we automatically emerge into the next level of existence, which is a tribalistic level of existence. Once we solve the problems of the tribalistic level of existence, we emerge into the powerful, egocentric, heroic values level system. And then once we solve the problem, but tax the system with those individualistic values to the point that it causes really the system to stop functioning, we emerge to the next level. And that fourth level is the level of absolute order. It is the level of the one true way. It is where the Chinese economic system is today. It is about level of the central command and control. And again, once culture starts experiencing problems with that system, we abandon it and we move on to the next level of existence, which is the system that most of the West is in now, which is the fifth level of existence, the orange system that I refer to in my book, which is the level of enterprising and strategic values. At the fifth level, we seek to solve the problems of existence through the scientific prison. We look to uncover the secrets of life, so to speak, through a quantitative process. And once that system becomes burdensome, we exited and go to a higher level of existence, and that is the sixth level of existence of egalitarian values. Now, the egalitarian value system is the highest system in the first tier of values. This is where we look to deepen our understanding of the human experience. We look to deepen our understanding of really what the purpose of capitalism in society is. So that's the last level of existence in the first tier. The first tier is referred to by both the grades and back as a system of subsistence ethics, and then we start emerging into a whole new tier of value systems called second tier values, and that starts with the seventh level system that's called the integrated big picture view of what humanity is all about. This is where I designed what I call the platform for functional capitalism from. This is the level of existence that has the big picture view. This is the one that looks at the lower systems or the systems that have come before it and says, well, you know, these don't necessarily have to be competing ideas. Each value system that has come before has its own merits, has its own values, and so the seventh level system comes in and makes all the lower systems functional and plugs them on to a functional motherboard that really serves the greater purpose of humanity. And so I designed that last third of the book from that perspective. It is informed by the values that have emerged from the researchers with grades and depth and one of the high uncovered research that I've done from my book and placed it into that last part of the book on how to design an economic system that is futuristic in nature. So how do you do the research to determine these levels and these characteristics? Is it all on the intuitive level or are there concrete things that we can talk about? How can you actually tell when a level is currently existing or when a transition to a different level is taking place and what the life conditions are that bring about these levels? That's a great question, Mark, and the thing about this approach that we use is that it's based more on a cultural value approach than it is on actual quantitative measure of economic output. When we look to see what the values of each level of existence are and how the value systems framework fits into the economic experience, you know, the economic history of this country and sort of fill in the missing gaps on what the system needs and what's causing it to collapse or beyond healthy. So to a great extent, it is not as scientific as macroeconomics is. By the very nature of macroeconomics, it really relegates the entire field to that fifth level system that doesn't have much of a regard to the things that higher values look for. You know, those values at the sixth level of existence that seek to deepen the human understanding, that is a very subjective quality that is not a part of the economic consciousness today, not at least in the United States. In places like Europe, it very much is a part of that consciousness. They look to make egalitarian values a part of their cultural fabric. We don't look at that yet. So the approach that I use is more from a cultural perspective on what matters to the overall health of the culture, but an actual, econometric type of approach that most economists use. Does that mean that economists, given their current self-definition, their tools and techniques that they currently use, that they're not likely to be drawn to the memeonomic way of seeing things? Right. It's unfortunately, again, that consciousness isn't there. Most of what's emerging now in the field of economics mark is the field of evolutionary economics and behavioral economics in specific. The presumption behind all economic studies that deal with consumption is that the consumer always behaves in a rational way and they build an entire economic system, if you will, based on those assumptions. Well, you know, certain assumptions, you know, these are assumptions that are particular in economic models, particularly to the West, that is proven to be a lot of people behind. So there has to be something different, whether there'll be measurements for these things or not, I don't know. But you're beginning to see different things. You're beginning to see things like the prosperity index. You're beginning to see things like the happiness index, whether those things will make it to the economic mainstream or not, I highly doubt. But there are actually a more accurate measure of the happiness and satisfaction in a particular society than actual economic metrics. Now, you already mentioned that our U.S. society in much of the developed world is primarily at the orange level of memeonomics. So I think you'd better connect the names and descriptions of the levels and the associated colors going on up the scale. Right. So, you know, it gets a little bit confusing here with the use of, you know, first the colors and then the levels, and then not every level has a memeonomic cycle. The first cycle that corresponds to an actual level of human existence that I have researched that's in my book is the third level of existence, what I call the "fiefdoms of power cycle" that started in the States with the end of the Civil War onto about the middle of the Great Depression. The capitalist values during that period mark were known for the heroic, feudalistic values that really built this country. You get the, you know, the Carnegie's, the Rockefeller's, the JP Morgan's. You can count on one hand a number of people who built this country. That started producing problems towards the 1910s and 1920s that couldn't be solved with the regulatory values that existed at the time. It existed at the time in that system, which led to that system's collapse and the rise of what I call the "preteriotic prosperity cycle." The beginning of that phase began with the new deal philosophy, institutions that came with FDR that we still have today. The FDIC, the SEC, all these institutions were created as a reaction to the abuses of the "fiefdoms of power cycle." But as often is the case with a lot of these value systems, towards the end of that cycle, the heavy burden of that regulatory structure made the capitalist system too burdened for the function. Sometime in the late '60s, the highest tax bracket was somewhere around 72%. Well, when you tax individuals and corporations at tax rates that high, you're leaving very little for innovation so that "preteriotic prosperity cycle" sort of collapsed under its own weight. Giving rise to that next cycle that was ushered in with Reagan's first term, I call that the only money matters cycle, that orange fifth level system that is based on free enterprise, that is based on the values of strategic manipulation. It is an individualistic value system. It is strategic by nature. It's scientific by nature. But what we did wrong there is we systemically deregulated all of industry. Everything in our economy was deregulated, leaving the regulatory structure very weak. And again, as we entered the new millennium, the economy needed regulation. The regulatory structure was so diminished that it didn't know where regulation was needed. In 2008, when banks went up to Capitol Hill asking for a bailout, part Congress had no clue whether what they were telling them was a truth or not. So they went along with whatever they believed they were telling them was right. Out of that system that is going through the phase of collapse and entropy now, we're seeing the birth of the new system that is empowered by a mandate I call the democratization of information cycle. This is the green system or the sixth level system that seeks the egalitarian values. The deepening of the human values, the democratization is a very egalitarian term. But in capitalism, that really can't last very long. It's a very critical phase in the transition of capitalism because it really deepens our understanding. It gives this clarity on what the purpose of capitalism is in the human experience. But once we get to that understanding, we will move on to the next system and exit the entire first year of values and go to that system that I'm talking about in the last part of my book, the seventh level functional values system. And can you connect those levels historically with world development? I mean, in the book, you concentrate mostly on the last 100 years or so in the US, which is at the blue level at the beginning. It goes to orange, starts up to green and upwards from there. But there is a very broad economic history of the world, which is probably below all those levels. Can you flush that out for us? Okay, so Mark, the first level called the base level, and that is really just the basic survival instinctual level of existence. Historically, it existed over 30,000 years ago. Again, the manifestation of these values is historic and contemporary at the same time. So these are all systems that still exist within us, within culture today. And once we solve those survival values, those challenges that we face for survival, so historically, once we found an answer to how to cultivate the land better, or how to develop better tools to kill the beast and can have food, once we solve those problems of survival, we automatically move to the second level of survival. That second level, or that second value system, is a color-coded purple. The color purple is the value of tribalistic values. This is the values of kinship. This is where we obey the desires of the spirits. We show allegiances to the chief and the elders. There is no individuality at this level. Everyone is subsumed into a small group thinking, and then as time goes by, some individuals in that group get tired of that group thinking. Some of the brighter individuals in that group seek to break out of the group, and so out of that, we emerge into the third level of values, which is the color red. So in economics, the first cycle that I talk about begins with red. Anything before that was low-level production in agriculture and simple production. You know, we didn't even have economic metrics for that back then. So my first memanonic cycle starts with that third red level, and we talked about it and how the U.S. experienced it through the era between the end of Civil War and the beginning or the middle of the Great Depression. So we exited that system in the middle of the Great Depression. Out of that third system, we went into the fourth level system. The fourth level system has a color blue, and its theme is to live a purposeful life. Its basic theme is the one true way. This is the way of patriotism. This is the way of the Catholic Church, the Marine Corps. It's the level of laws and regulations. It is the level of where discipline builds character, and we experience those economic values from the era in the middle of the Great Depression all the way out to the maybe mid to late 70s. When that system became too burdensome, again, we shift towards the individualistic system where individuals and corporations with a first Reagan administration pretty much giving businesses and individuals the go to emerge us into the new individualistic values again, we emerge into the fifth level system. The fifth level system has a color orange, and it is that a strategic value system where we look to quantify everything that is possibly quantifiable in life. Dr. Beck calls this value system the one that manipulates resources, the one that is by nature is a reductionist value system. People often ask, "Why isn't your work a part of the economic mainstream?" The big answer to that, Mark, is that the economic mainstream is a part of that fifth system that is reductionist by nature. If the data doesn't fit the criteria they've already established, they don't research it, they don't look into it, and they analyze the problem with leaving out quite a bit of the problems that challenge society when you're only looking at it from that perspective of that orange or level system. As individuals in that system attacks society, the system either collapses or some individuals begin to create the shift towards another communal value system that is at a higher level, and that is the sixth level system. The sixth level system has the color green, and that is not a reference to green technology or anything like that, it's just pure coincidence. The green reference is to that sixth level system that is egalitarian and seeks to deepen the human experience, seeks to distribute resources to everybody in society. It made its appearance in the '90s in the United States with the advent of the Internet. It is a system that seeks the democratization of information, and after it's done with that, which will be quite a bit of time, we will naturally transition out of the last level, which is the last level in the first tier of values. We transition from that system on to the seventh level system. Now, grades identified a total of eight levels mark, so the last two levels in the seventh and the eighth level are a part of the second tier system that much of the work that we do and much of the work involving the integral philosophy movement deals with those levels and what the values of those levels and their manifestations are all about. Well, now we're getting to the real excitement here, so I'll remind everybody that you're listening to Spirit in Action, a Northern Spirit radio production on the web at northernspiritradio.org, rich with eight and a half years of our programs for free listening and download, links to and further info on our guests. There are also bonus excerpts sometimes, like today when we can't fit the entire interview in the broadcast. There's also a place to post comments. We love that to a communication, and there's a place to donate to Northern Spirit radio. Your help is so deeply appreciated. But also and foremost, remember to support your local community radio station. What a wonderful and unique slice of news and music these stations bring to you. So support them with your time and money and help us make sure that we include your community in our broadcast by contacting us with possible guests. Find the contact info on northernspiritradio.org. Said Dalabani is here today. His book is Memonomics, The Next Generation Economics. And we've just been through the levels that Said spells out in some detail in the book. Again, the colors associated with each level, bottom to top, our beige, purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow, ending up with turquoise at the top. The problem I have with this color system, Said, is that my favorite color is purple and it's way down at the bottom. So where does this color coding come from? They come out of Dr. Beck's creative genius mind. No rhyme or reason other than maybe a way to distinguish a hierarchy. He was fortunate enough to spend about a decade with Dr. Gray before he passed on. And Dr. Gray shared within the resistance that our culture had in the '60s and '70s towards anything that had a hierarchy in it. So to have called it first, second, third, all the way through the eighth level would have created that hierarchy. And because of our emergence into that green value but doesn't want to see a hierarchy, it will get dismissed before even people know what the science behind it is all about. So the color scheme was more of a reference to a value level without placement into a hierarchy and just referred to it as a color instead of a low. As I mentioned, your book concentrates almost exclusively on economic development within the USA. Most of it was in the last hundred years. Why didn't you include more of Europe, and Asia, and Africa, et cetera, in your examples of levels and estimation of where we are? My research mark was specifically geared towards the economy in the United States. That was by intention. And the reason for that is that I really have this conviction that most advanced economies in the world that follow the Anglo-Saxon model of development sort of followed the lead of what the United States economy does. So in analyzing the values of the economic value system of the United States, in a sense, I'm painting a pretty good picture of what economic values around the world would look like. Now having said that, I would say that the Northern and Western Europe, definitely the Western Europe is ahead of us on the curve in as far as cultural values are concerned. Western Europe is more into the green values, and they're looking to exit that, and they don't know how. While the United States is in the orange values, and we're moving to exit that, and we know how we're going to exit it into green, which is represented by the knowledge economy and capitalism. And then you get the rest of the world. The emerging economies are still in that red-blue stage trying to really create an original form of that orange system. They're trying to create their own innovation. So far they've copied it, and if you copy something, it's not in its original form. So they're struggling in creating their own form of that innovative, fit-level system. And then you get the economies that are fully reliant on extractive industries. You get the OPEC countries that are primarily in the purple red value system. They use capitalism, but it's a surface manifestation. There is very little original innovation in the Middle East. You know, Israel is the exception, but you get very little innovation that we use today that is being generated by all these wealthy countries that claim they're building the highest skyscraper in the world. They have things that are just surface manifestations, and you scratch the surface and you find out that it's really money that's making them do this. It's not indigenous innovation that they created on their own. So using this framework gives you an outer picture of what economic values around the world are. Then you have to go in and really address specific countries and segment by segment through every country to determine where they really are in their value systems center of gravity, if you will. My favorite part of the book, Said, is the last 130 or 140 pages where you get pretty concrete and you name names. One of the main topics was the evolution of corporations, as exemplified by corporations like Apple or Google and Whole Foods. Could you talk a bit about the changing identity of corporations over the decades and where we might be headed? Yeah, Mark, one of the bigger chapters in the last part of my book talks about how to define the new sustainable corporations from the value systems perspective to look at current trends and see how responsible companies are emerging. The responsible companies of the future sort of fall into two distinct categories. One of them holds an example of the disruptive innovation that we're experiencing on the hand of the knowledge economy, on the hand of that digital age that's causing disruption. And that company is Google, and I go into really specific details of fortunate enough to do enough research, but also to know a close friend who knows the ins and outs of how companies like Google function. And they're really based on that disruptive innovation model. All you need to do is really look at the algorithm for their advertising model. It is really giving Madison Heaven a run for its money. It's not based on smoke and mirrors. You create a $100,000 magazine campaign ad and hope that you hit a miss. The Google model, it's based on how many websites are pointing to your ad. And based on that, the algorithm works in a way that it adjusts how much it gets charged. So that is the functionality of the heart of this new model that is being brought about by the knowledge economy. Everything that Google has done in the past is based on that functionality, so to speak, from the way they established their ad campaign algorithms on to the way they offered their IPO. It was based on a Dutch auction model that allowed more of investors like you would meet a buy as opposed to Wall Street bankers to buy. And you look at the price of a stock now. It has gone up over a thousand percent from where it was. Compare that to how Facebook went about offering their IPO. They used a traditional Wall Street model. And last time I checked, their stock price has not recovered from its initial debut. So those are the two comparisons between the two different models. The model of the future is just as financially rewarding, if not more rewarding, than what we have now, but it is functional in the long term. So the other thing about Google is also how they go about acquiring other companies. They don't do it to the traditional channels that a typical Wall Street banker would do it. They approach whoever created a new innovation that might become a part of the platform. They approach them with the notion that they want to include their knowledge, their talents into that platform that Google is. So not only do they buy whatever innovations they created in the company that has the pounds on these innovations, they offer these individuals with jobs. In a sense, making this whole thing more of a functional type of capitalist platform that really reverts the reward to the people who know how to orchestrate these advances in technologies that are now being evaluated at multiples of what their income is. The other model that I use in my book about sustainable corporations is the model that is outlined in the conscious capitalism movement. John Matthew of Whole Foods first wrote about the concept of the conscious capitalism about 10 years ago, and what that does, Mark, is it moves the current corporate philosophy, if you will, from the stockholder being the primary beneficiary to a stakeholder model. So it moves the primary purpose of a corporation to provide stockholder returns to a set of stakeholders that are distributed among culture. So the stakeholders that the conscious capitalism movement has are not just the stockholders, stockholders are only one of five elements of the stakeholder model. The other four are the employee, the suppliers, in the case of Whole Foods, the food chain itself, and then ultimately the last stakeholder is the health of the planet itself. So when you plug in those different stakeholders as equal beneficiaries of the corporate model, suddenly that fixation to just cater to the stockholders removed, and all of a sudden you have a much wider, a much more responsible view on what the purpose of capitalism is. And it is to serve a planet that is in peril. It is to serve employees who, in the case of Whole Foods, are very well rewarded. Most of the stock options in the Whole Foods model go to employees. Very little goes to upper management. Whole Foods has the model of the top paid executives, in this case the CEO, can't earn more than 17 times in an average employee. Those are the kind of values that need to be brought into the rest of the American corporations that becomes a sustainable model on its own and those values perpetuate themselves. Even though I do see the good in these more evolved businesses you're talking about, I sometimes have to doubt the inevitability of the evolution involved. For example, you include Whole Foods getting closer to this evolved, integrated, well-being motivation for business. And yet we ran into the case recently where we heard that the head of Whole Foods was putting his weight against an organic labeling law. I think it was in California, which seems very out of character for someone who's supposed to epitomize the idea of business concerned about the welfare of all involved, including the customers who, I think, want labeling. I think the issue you're talking about, Mark, has to do with the GMO. I'm not sure how to interpret that whole thing, except that I know that John Mackie, the president and co-founder of Whole Foods, he's an open systems individual. If it might have been an oversight, he will come back and revisit that issue. The thing that this model really shows is that when you talk about how we want a future corporation to look like, that doesn't happen in a vacuum. Corporations have to confront a term that you use often in this interview here that is a big part of the model that we use. They have to confront where life conditions are. Life conditions today are that NGOs are really a part of a thing that ensures the mass production of food. They've gotten that publicity since it goes more and more people are becoming aware of it. So a sustainable model that really has to answer to being a publicly held corporation can't just start from that seventh level system. It has to meet life conditions where they are and where they are is a toxic form of that orange level system that it has to fix. In the case of Whole Foods, but I think the model at its core is still very solid. It's not just Whole Foods that uses it. There are a lot of corporations that ascribe to the values behind the conscious capitalism movement. Southwest Airlines is a part of the conscious capitalism movement. More streams are a part of that. Panera Bread is a part of that. So as more and more companies become aware of these values, it becomes more of a thing that makes sense. Their returns are better. Their stock prices have fared better in the long term than the average S&P over the last 10 years. So overall, it just looks better, but it has to meet life conditions where they are unknown. So therefore, there will be some stumbling blocks before it emerges as a fully sustainable model. One of the very important elements for me to search out as I talk to my spirit and action guests is the spiritual or perhaps religious motivations in what they do. And me monomics and its roots in spiral dynamics, value systems, these seem like spiritual evolution to me, spiritual growth. What can you say about spirituality as it relates to your outlook or of the spiritual viewpoint of Don Beck or Claire Graves and the role that it has in this theory and in this work? Well, yeah. If you talk to either Professor Gray or Professor Beck, you won't guess that they have anything spiritual in their background. And so the framework was missing the, you know, it's a bio-psycho-social system, but it was missing the bio-psycho-spiritual system. And I think the spiritual aspect of the model, you know, has been overlooked. But for me, personally, Mark, it was a conscious decision for me to really pursue the things that this theory preaches. My wife and I are meditators. We follow in Eastern tradition. We're vegetarian. We have that turquoise consciousness that we would like for everybody to really adopt and come from it as how they view where humanity is heading. So to me, it is a spiritual calling to really continue doing this kind of work to continue to bring awareness to alternative models to where culture is now for the betterment of humanity in the long term. That does confirm for me, Said, something that I picked out, kind of between the lines of the rigorous analysis of me monomics. I'm wondering if there are some more specifics that you'd be willing to share, because I think you must have experienced some of the kind of growth in values and consciousness in your personal life, which is parallel with those of the stages of the theory that you teach us in the book. Well, my great-grand uncle was a Syrian Orthodox bishop in Turkey. So after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, he helped a lot of Christians get re-established in Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon throughout the Middle East. His story sort of informed many generations of Dallenees on what our purpose and life is. And so it was always that, you know, live up to the standard that Bishop Dallene is set for what it means to be Christian. So, you know, some from that background, but more recently, you know, I met my wife, Elza, and she, you know, both of our second marriages. We met at a time when, you know, I was really seeking answers in life. It was after my first divorce. It was really after I've achieved all the success that I need to achieve, and I was searched for God. And, you know, ironically, we met on the internet. She emailed me. I had one of those, "Hey, well, love," or whatever it was back in the late '90s. I had an ad there, and she emailed me, and I said, "Well, you know, I've just gone through divorce, and I'm waiting for my house to sell, and I'm going to travel to Turkey to find my great-grand uncle's roots and find spirituality." And she answered back, saying, "Well, you know, God is in Turkey, but he's also here in Miami." So, once you come down and visit it, I thought she was working for a virtual guru who taught light and sound meditation of the sattmat tradition. And so, you know, we met, and she introduced me to spirituality from a completely different perspective, and I just loved it. It was as if all the answers that, you know, my value system at the time had challenged, suddenly the answers were being provided, and it was a great embracing of what life is all about. Well, I'm really glad that you're finding fruitful answers on the personal level, as well as the valuable and hopeful answers you're offering us on the economics level side. These concepts and tools are so important for our country and for the whole world in terms of finding our way forward, finding our next step on the journey of our progress and growth. We've been speaking, folks, with Said Dalamani, author of Memonomics, the next-generation economic system, and you can find Said on the web at Memonomics.com, or simply follow the link from NorthernSpiritRadio.org. And because we couldn't fit the whole interview in this broadcast, you'll also find bonus excerpts from it out at nordinspiritradio.org. Thank you, Said, so much for sharing your expertise, your research, your thoughts, your growth, and for joining me today for Spirit in Action. This was a wonderful mark. Thank you so much. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of NorthernSpiritRadio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You
MEMEnomics: The Next-generation Economics System by Said Dawlabani explores an evolving, growing, & maturing of values systems, leading us to a better future, in spite of and fueled by the crises we go through. A further adaptation of the Spiral Dynamics theories of Don Beck, Memenomics may well be the lens to light our way forward.