One way to anticipate the future of humankind is to view it from the perspective of expected changes in environmental-quality level. Because environmental quality is a function of the level of trust, the significant trend in history has been the formation of trust—the gradually increasing tendency of humans to trust themselves, to trust other people, to trust the social institutions we create, and to trust the processes of nature.
Let's look again at the description of the development of environmental quality in Tables V and VI. In one book in the series I expect to present an analysis of our past history and our fantasized future in terms of changes in the environmental-quality scale. Even a cursory psycho-historical examination shows wide swings in trust level and fear level, but with a gradual increase in overall level of trust over the centuries.
In some ways, we have seen an accompanying increase in fear levels, and certainly changes in the quality and nature of our fears. As our knowledge and experience increase, we become more globally aware of frightening possibilities in our environment: destructive explosions in population, global atomic and catastrophic war, a dehumanizing and machine-oriented super-technology, the excrete of our technology gradually destroying our life-giving natural environment. But happily our trust level increases at an even greater pace than our fears of apparent dangers.
The developments of recent years have for the first time in the history of humanity revealed the possibilities of a world-wide consciousness and concern, and of world-community actions that can emerge from global trust and at the same time increase it. As the many forms of communication increase at almost geometric rates at all levels, as our awareness of our economic and materialistic interdependence increases, as inter-governmental collaboration on projects such as population control, monetary stabilization, and space travel seems more feasible, it becomes possible, and perhaps even necessary, to move toward EQ-V levels of international interdependence and higher levels of world trust. It now appears at least possible that we may make world-wide, participatory decisions on such global issues as the emancipation of women, international trade, pollution of the atmosphere, reduction of arms, control of disease, and sharing of scientific data.
The basis for such international cooperation and trust will be possible only with widespread development of the four trust-mediating discovering processes. How realistic is it that such development will occur?
1. Personalization. The women's liberation movement is a powerful force in freeing women from the role prescriptions they have given themselves and that male-dominated institutions have assigned them. The general issue here is one of role freedom, emancipation from the process of treating oneself as a member of a class, an object, a role-taker. The learning for each of us is how to treat ourselves and others as unique individuals.
Not all current trends are in the direction of role freedom. For instance, to a certain extent the rise of professionalism is a force toward depersonalization. To be "professional" as a physician, athlete, teacher, or manager is to become objective not to let feelings get in the way of getting the job done, to fulfill the role (to do the job with competence as other professionals do it), to focus on the job and its functions rather than on the persons. Being professional in this sense is the opposite of being personal, which means to own and express non-objective feelings, to become free of the role, and to give priority to persons rather than to functions. The thrust toward professionalization is in part a search for dignity, meaning, power, and respect through the role one takes, and in part a defense against being perceived as inadequate. As a person becomes less fearful and defensive, he or she has less need for status, deference, and other role-derived states.
A continuing tension is the struggle to create a world society in which persons can find fulfilling work paying living and dignified wages. It is difficult to be fully a person when a man or woman is discriminated against, is hungry, lacks adequate medical care, is unemployed, is on welfare, or is on a job which is "managed" by a "superior" and where there is little self-determination or control over the worker's own destiny. Certainly the basic realms of fulfillment are spiritual and psychological and are a matter of inner trust. They are internal; but the basic inequities are external, in our economic, political, and social systems, and these create strong constraints against movement toward higher-quality environments.
2. Opening. Great gains are continually being made both in awareness of the importance of openness as a key dimension of organic living, and also in the practice of openness in most areas of our lives. Openness in our society is on the increase, and this openness is a key index of trust level.
An open society permits the free flow of data. Openness requires not only a free flow of feelings, perceptions, and opinions in personal, organizational, and governmental life, but also the open availability of government records, interest rates, test data, criminal charges, salary levels, credit ratings, information on food content, and a variety of other sets of data that influence our lives.
There is a growing awareness that openness is associated with mental health, interpersonal trust, group strength, community well-being, and the effectiveness of parenting, teaching, and managing.
3. Self-determination. We are witnessing significant advances in self-determination. We are discovering the depth and validity of mindbody wisdom, and we are beginning to accept more responsibility for our own health, sex preferences, sanity, job satisfaction, environment, feelings, joys, hurts, and salvation. In the fields of medicine, psychiatry, law, government, education, and religion there are deep-seated institutionalized norms encouraging personal responsibility for all aspects of life.
Studies in biofeedback and popularization of its concepts and techniques provide us with a new appreciation of how deeply the principles of self-management apply to even the supposedly "involuntary" processes of the body. The movement toward self-management is a key revolution in our society, and its effects are only beginning to be felt.
The new theories and methods relating to transcendence and altered states promise an even more revolutionary movement in the culture. We now know that it is possible for us to "manage" our own spirituality, our cosmic and nirvanic states, and our unconscious bases of creativity.
There is no need to pit the needs of the individual against the needs of society in a conflict viewed by many social theorists as inevitable and, in fact, basic to the social development of the race. We now realize that we can achieve a society in which such conflict is minimized, if not eliminated. We can create institutions in which members meet all of their needs fully without self-sacrifice, compromise, or self-denial. Individuals and institutions can move up the EQ scale toward higher levels of fulfillment. Surely, the higher we move on the EQ scale, the less conflict there is between personal and societal needs.
4. Interdependence. The discovery that necessary interdependence doesn't mean compromise, self-denial, or surrender of basic values, but that it does mean cooperation, enrichment of personal lives, and transcendence, takes away much of the fear of groups, of society, and of dependence on others. Inter-dependence is a poor term, but I have been unable to find an acceptable term for what I mean by the process. Perhaps "interbeing" is a better expression.
5. Interbeing in the home, the factory, the school, or the neighborhood means that people can be resources for each other. They can contribute to and enrich each other's lives and can provide stimulation, excitement, and creative energy for each other.
When the EQ level is I, II, or III in high-density populations, we find bureaucracy, tight controls, concentrations of ownership and power, centralization of key functions, hierarchization, competition— and low levels of trust and high levels of fear. As our society is developing the capacity to move into new EQ levels, we are learning to create and discover new forms of creative interdependence: new experiences of community, new forms of cooperation and transcendence, and new levels of interbeing.
I believe that we are in the beginning phases of a social revolution in which the significant trends in our present culture which will have the greatest impact on the future course of civilization are the following:
1. The Environment of Emergence.
The emergent form will be a practical and attainable model of group and institutional life, supplanting the participative model. The current model toward which practitioners, organizational-development consultants, theorists, and social engineers have been aiming is a "skilledleader-with-active-participants" form, EQ level V. The growing recognition that the participative model is but a transitional step, together with the increasing success of leaderless, emergent groups, is creating a cultural readiness for new practical images of social life. Once the impasse between EQ levels V and VI is broken, practical experiments with EQ levels VI through X will be legitimized. They will then occur more frequently, and the many obvious advantages of these models will become more widely apparent. This breakthrough will make possible a new age of creativity, productivity, ecstasy, and fulfillment. The belief that leadership is the primary determiner of social progress is perhaps the single greatest barrier to institutional and cultural growth and fulfillment.
2. The New Spirituality.
A new and emergent spirituality will be an integrative and centering force in all of human life. There is a growing dissatisfaction with naive realism, operationalism, behaviorism, 19th-century science, economic thinking, materialism, determinism, and power as the organizing and central processes of human living. A new and many-faceted kind of spirituality is growing out of this dissatisfaction and out of the new awareness of transcendent and altered states of being and consciousness. The person is seen to be more than an economic, physical, and mental being. This new consciousness has origins in the mysticism, magic, and spirituality of the past, but is actually a new force in the world. Spirituality has always been ground-in awe and wonder, mixed with fear and faith. The new spirituality, it seems to me, is born not so much out of fear and ignorance, but of a venture into new faith and trust. This new trust arises after science and materialism and naive realism have been tested—and have been found to produce near-miracles, but also to have real and recognizable limitations. Trust based on knowledge, following disillusionment and worldly experience, may indeed be more enduring and nourishing than a more tender trust based on faith that pre-existed the experience of evil and the dark sides of human history.
For me, spirituality is simply the expression of trust. It is trust and faith in myself and in others, and in the natural processes of life. These are deeply and enduringly embedded in the nature of the person. I have no interest in a precise or limiting definition of this state. I am simply referring to the awakening of processes and awareness’ that are something more than what is usually called bodily and mental.
3. Cooperative Living Styles.
New forms of cooperativeness and awareness of interdependence in social institutions will engender a new valuing of cooperation as an integrating force in all forms of living. Competitiveness seems to be necessary in the contest for survival when we live at lower EQ levels. It becomes less and less relevant, necessary, or even useful as the EQ level rises. Competition simply drops out as civilization advances, certainly as persons begin to transcend the ego needs at levels VIII and IX. Research suggests that all children have latent capacities for both competition and cooperation. As fear declines, as trust evolves, as higher-quality environments are created, cooperation becomes an inevitable and definitive aspect of fulfilling life.
In a fear/distrust society, competition is perhaps inevitable, perhaps necessary, and children, students, and workers are more often rewarded unwisely for being good competitors than for being cooperative. However, the destructive costs of competitiveness far outweigh the advantages. As trust levels in the society increase, competitiveness is reduced, and children, students, and workers are more frequently rewarded for being cooperative.
4. Viability of Trust Models.
New theories, images, and models of being will center on trust as the catalytic force in group, organizational, and societal living. Most of our theories, our images, and our models are created out of experiences in fear/distrust societies and organizations. The resultant process creates energies which maintain and even nourish fear and distrust. As we become increasingly aware of the significance of trust in all aspects of our lives and as we come to prize trust-related values and styles of life, viable new theory, images, and models will arise.
5. Decentralization of Form and Function.
A decentralization of government, organizations, and all forms of living will give rise to smaller organizations and smaller governmental units, with a growing sense of community and neighborhood. Some centralization will persist, of course, largely for reasons of efficiency and economy. But efficiency and economy are of little enduring value, except in scarcity and survival environments, where fear is high and trust is low. Just as many people have discovered that the large, centralized city is a poor environment for living, so we will be likely to discover that the large conglomerate and the large governmental unit are poor environments for living or for supplying products and services. We will discover what range of size of production and service units is likely to enhance enriched living. Smaller businesses and smaller states, provinces, or nations will evolve. Quality of life will come to have greater value than the efficiency of government or production.
6. The Caring Community.
A re-discovery of the meaning and attainability of community will make possible new caring, intimacy, and depth in all forms of living. We will discover and create communities for work and life that enhance the person, the open life, self-determination, and creative interdependence. People will create new forms of living that will give a feeling of community, of contact and connection, of freedom in intimacy, and of being valued by neighbors with whom they live and work. Just as the "discovery" of the small group in the 50's and 60's changed the flavor and tone of behavioral science, the discovery of community may well be the energy-releasing mode of the 90's.
7. De-specialization of Groups and Organizations.
New multi-purpose, non-specialized, wholized organizational communities will gradually replace the specialized, highly-differentiated, specific purpose, and class-membered organizations of the present. As role functions have become more clearly differentiated, groups and organizations have become equally differentiated, such that, particularly in the managerial and professional classes, a group or organization tends to emerge for each role and for each function. This process further reinforces the segmentation, fragmentation, and class structuring of our society, with a concomitant lack of inter-class and inter-role understanding and empathy. My prediction is that this trend will be reversed and that groups, communities, and organizations will come to have greater intra-unit diversity across lines of race, sex, occupation, and even interest. Social life will then be more wholized, with people relating to people in all their richness and diversity.
Ultimately this trend will give rise to the emergence of groups, communities, and organizations in which people learn, work, love, and worship. Thus we will have less need for separate institutions for learning, recreation, work, and worship. Distinctions among work and play and worship will be reduced. Life will be more wholized and rich in all its forms. These developments will accompany the re-discovery of community and will happen at a greater rate than now seems possible.
8. De-structuring of Life.
A decrease in all institutions, of discipline, control, "law and order", obedience, authority, rewards and punishment, and arbitrary structure, will de-institutionalize fear as a primary organizing and managing principle. As trust grows and as trust-related values increase, people will discover more creative ways of living and working together. With trust, people will learn to allow diversity, freedom, trial and error, and great individual differences in expressing humanness. Willingness to allow freedom for others comes in cycles and waves, intermittent periods of doubt and fear, followed by periods of trust and freedom. As trust grows, in the long course of history, willingness to permit others to have freedom increases more rapidly than do needs to discipline and control others.
9. De-professionalization of the Culture.
A decrease in the number of people involved in staff functions of organizations and government, and a decrease in the helping professions in organizational and in private life will accompany dramatic increases in norms of self-responsibility. The presently increasing trend toward more staff and helping functions is motivated by a growing awareness of multiple social needs, a movement into EQ-Level III benevolence, strong needs of people to help and to have professional status, disenchantment with "work" as it is currently "managed", and the over-abundance of money to afford such staff services in an affluent society.
We will discover and create new forms of community living and working—new environments that nurture self-responsibility, self-management, self-caring, proactive and holistic living, and people who nurture themselves. With increased trust, executives and workers will learn to communicate with each other rather than hire communications experts to do it for them; people will create their own healthy attitudes and bodies; they will treat each other with respect rather than hire security guards to protect their lives, property, and company secrets; and they will seek and create simpler solutions to people problems than the increasingly complex "personnel" functions that now exist.
"TORI" has become, for several thousand of us, a term describing a cooperative lifelong search for a better life for ourselves, a quest for a more wholizing life-view theory, and a framework for joining others in interdependent social action.
What of its future? Energies are being directed in several promising directions:
1. The Continuing Evolution of the Theory.
The theory in its continually-emerging state might be viewed as a folk-expression, co-authored through the interaction and processes of about 5,000 persons who have been participating for many years in the TORI community activities.
The writing of this book is but one expression of a quickening of theory-related forces in the TORI communities—focusing of energies, accelerated dialogue, clarification of differences, some visible breakthroughs in applying the theory, sharpening of empirically-testable substantive issues, some interest in hard research, an expansion in the number of university courses in TORI theory, the formation of teams planning publications in the TORI series—many signs that the theory itself is becoming more useful and central to the communities.
2. Research on the Theory and Its Applications.
The theory is stimulating a variety of formal and informal research studies. This research is to be summarized in a later volume in the TORI series.
Studies have been directed toward an understanding of some of the key dynamics related to trust level: persuasion, strategy orientation, role freedom, openness, defensive communication, and interdependence. A few of the studies have been planned to make explicit tests of assumptions from the main body of the theory. Several have attempted to measure the corollaries of trust level, operationally defined in a variety of ways. We have used a universal definition in this book; operationally, it is difficult to define trust. The concept of trust has interested a variety of researchers, for whom it is becoming a useful construct in theory construction and experimental research.
Other studies have assessed the effects of programs and experiences planned as applications of TORI theory: training and development activities, leaderless groups, TORI community experiences, human relations courses, holistic health programs, industrial applications, and educational efforts. The TORI community experience, for instance, has been found to be effective in producing significant changes in such outcomes as interdependence, perceived openness, self-described proactiveness, self-acceptance, and interpersonal effectiveness, and general health.
During the period between 1976 and 1990 a total of sixty-three TORI community members have been granted Ph.D. degrees based upon research on some hypothesis derived from TORI theory. Most of the degrees were granted by International College or William Lyon University. Reports of this research and other research in TORI communities will be made in a future volume in this TORI series of books.
3. Invention and Preparation of Resource Processes.
Members are experimenting with various processes that are resources for community development, communication and dialogue, evolution of theory, new forms of interbeing, team building, and trust formation. We are trying out environmental designs, decorative and functional clothing, dance, music, poetry, photography, organic writing, dream analysis, nonverbal "conferences", the use of cassettes to record and exchange verbal expression, community diaries, movies, open-phone systems, guidebooks, self-development materials, housing design, organic farming, books—whatever forms and processes that can be used in the nourishment of trust.
Community members place a high priority on direct interpersonal communication but are also experimenting with conventional written forms. Individual communities publish frequent newsletters; an international newsletter is issued on special occasions; a new journal will soon appear; and several experimental books are in various stages of preparation. Books or multimedia presentations are being prepared focusing upon applications of TORI theory to such activities as parenting and family building, counseling and psychotherapy, group development, managing and administration, organizational development, high trust communications, creating learning climates, psychohistory, and the design of trust-nurturing environments. The community membership includes persons working on resource-processes from a number of professional and vocational backgrounds including psychiatry, organizational development, occupational therapy, medicine, government, labor, law, social work, carpentry, farming, manufacturing, marketing, engineering, journalism, public relations, nursing, marriage counseling, dentistry, and various holistic health fields.
What is needed is the re-examination and very probably discarding of old assumptions about learning, growth, and the nature of "learning aids and resources". In spite of promising developments in the multimedia fields, the whole concept of the relationship between the learner and the resource processes is often based upon low-trust, persuasional, "teaching", and influence models. What is occurring is a new look at processes rather than at "materials". As I am writing this book I am becoming more and more aware of the dissonance between what I see as my own process and the medium I am using, and the difficulties that present themselves in trying to build a co-discovering relationship between you as the person experiencing the book and me as the person wishing a relationship between us. Part of my disquiet comes from limitations as a communicator, but a significant part comes from limitations possibly inherent in the medium itself. My discomfort is somewhat reduced by my knowledge that you as a reader will create your own experience.
4. Growth and Development of Persons and Organizations.
Many of the most active people in the TORI communities are professionals in personal, managerial, and organizational development, fields for which Trust Level theory is particularly relevant.
The four pilot group in the TORI Professional Development program mentioned in Chapter IV are part of a continuing experimental program aimed at discovering how TORI theory can be applied to the following aims:
Many of the programs being planned by the participants are in the fields of personal or organizational development. Factors seen, in preliminary analysis, to be especially powerful in such development are:
Much of the excitement among TORI theorists and practitioners comes through the processes of creating new forms of community and organization. This discovery occurs in many different ways. Our institutional invention efforts have had some mixture of the following ingredients:
TORI Associates, Inc., is discussed in Chapters 8 and 9 as an organizational prototype. The organization meets the five criteria listed above very well. The future of this experiment in multi-national community-in-depth is uncertain. Some see the community as of significance due to its having a spiritual and wholizing effect upon the lives of a few hundred dedicated people. The factors that seem to be positive strengths include the following:
The communities naturally meet with frustrations and disappointments. Not unexpectedly, some members get bored, impatient with inactivity, angry at other members, disenchanted with the whole theory, distrusting of others and of the "process" itself, resentful of others who don't do "their share", embarrassed by what some see as other's inelegant or vulgar behavior, or jealous of other's ability to make friends or meet their wants. The factors that are seen by some as negative or hindering include the following:
Being ahead of or out-of-step with a culture that has more conventional values.
Many members of the TORI International Community are interested in working in some interdependent way with others toward greater trust, peace, and human betterment. They rightfully feel that efforts that are made in a trust-producing way will have positive effects upon the world we live in.
We are now at a place both in the evolution of the theory and in the growth of the TORI organizations that readies us to work collaboratively with other organizations. We are interested in taking interdependent action and to begin by studying the nature of such action. We will take initiative in proposing this with organizations that meet some of the following criteria, which we believe will increase the likelihood of successful collaboration:
The collaborative venture is fulfilling and exciting for members of both of our organizations.
The collaborative organization shows probability of moving up the EQ scale and is willing to venture at higher EQ levels.
Many of our members belong to other organizations that meet most of these criteria and that have purposes similar to ours. They are aiming in some way at an increase in trust level or at improving trust-related conditions: better communication among professional members; greater availability of holistic health treatment; improvement in organizational development practitioner skills; improvement in all levels of education, or improvement of the standards of behavioral-science practice.
The following four organizations are examples of institutions that meet many of our nine criteria. Each organization attempts to create a synergistic interweaving among the three interdependent processes of research, training, and social change. Each provides an environment for creative interchange among the most liberal, humanistic, and innovative members of a particular field—those who are most willing to trust, to risk, to be vulnerable, and to explore the more venturesome areas of inquiry. Each of the organizations has members who also are active in TORI Associates.
Members of TORI Associates are at present actively involved in action programs with members of each of the above organizations. We would like to do whatever we can, as an organization, to increase the effectiveness of such collaboration. It is likely to be most effective when:
I feel uncomfortable when some other organization sets out to change an organization of which I am a member. I become even more uncomfortable when an organization that I'm in sets out to try to change someone else's organization. It is perhaps even more important that the real motivations be to improve both groups. Sometimes helping groups set out to "involve" others in co-planning when the underlying intent is to plan for the group being helped. Particularly with organizations that are formed by members of the helping professions, there is often a collaborative effort between two organizations which set out to change a third or target organization, group, or populations.
We want to experiment with ways of increasing inter-organizational trust. Some members of TORI Associates are very much interested in working on international trust, world peace, and international collaboration. We have active members in several countries who are initiating efforts in these directions.
Can we make significant changes in trust level in ourselves, in our families, in our work places, schools, and organizations? Can we do it globally? Are the changes we make in the occasional classroom, training group, or government program any more than minuscule drops in the oceanic ebb and flow of essentially unchanging nature and being? Is reality perceptual and projective? Can I really create me? Or my environment? Are our hopes of creating a holistic environment and a lasting peace practical or illusory?
I don't know, but I choose to trust that it can happen. I choose to live with hope of a better world. I do believe we can change it.
The time to begin is now. The future is in us, and it is bright. We are in a critical age in history—the crack in the cosmic egg. The world and the people in it are trustworthy. If we believe this, we are on the brink of a new era of creativity and peace. Whatever the level we attain, whatever the time it takes, the future is in the discovering—in the process. The pain and dread are real. The trust and love are real. I create it all. Heaven is the process.