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About Muddling Through

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

A parliament is a Place where People Talk (Parler, French). There are many places where people talk. They talk at home, in a café, at their work. People talk everywhere.

Most of the time people talk to find out what they are talking about.

In a Parliament people talk about the Actions of Government.

In the Netherlands 150 elected people talk with one person of the Government. Because 150 people are unable to talk with one person most of them listen, sleep or are away. Only when they have to vote and the vote is important they are there. They are also there when they are on Television.

The 150 people are divided in 75+N en 75-N. N is >1 and gives them a majority. The 75-N are called the Opposition. It is their task to ask nasty questions. There are many small parties and to create a majority many parties are involved.

To create a majority many parties have to compromise. The effect of this compromise is that nobody is doing what he really wants to do. To do what they really want to do they use the complexity of the government system. Actions are hidden behind a huge wall of marketing fog.

The Opposition hopes that one day a representative of Government (called a Minister) will make a mistake and they can send him away.

When N+1 people of the others also disagree all the Executives have to leave. If this happens they try to find 75+N people and take over the management of Government.

What are they talking about? They talk about Laws, Plans and the Performance of the Government.

About the 5 P’s

I defined a Cycle-based Approach based on the 5 P’s Possibility, Plan, Performance, Protection and Potential.

The 5 P’s are related to the 5 (!) Seasons and other Cyclic models. The People in Parliament are Playing a Game and according to Will McWhinney they are playing The Analytic Game. The Analytic Game can be played in two ways called Make (Plans are implemented in Reality (Performance)) and Test (The Performance is compared with the Plans).

Outside the Government others are playing other Games like the Game of the Market (Performance vs Potential) or the Game of Politics (Plan vs Potential).

I have to tell you that I am in favor of the Infinite Game. The purpose of the Infinite Game is to continue Playing the Game of Life. The Game of the Market, the Analytical Game and the Political Games are Finite Games. Somebody Wins and many Loose.

When you want to play the Analytical Game and you are in Opposition you have to play the Game of Testing. Testing is a very well developed Game in Western Society. To Test you have to know more about the Method. A Method is ‘a Way of working”. In Government you HAVE TO (!!! A RULE) use a Method called Prince2

When you are using Prince2 it is rather simple to Oppose. The Project is equipped with a Quality System and the Quality System is there to Avoid and Report Exceptions. The exceptions could be discussed in Parliament. This never happens.

The big secret is that almost nobody in Government is using Prince2. Government is not applying its own Rules. It is unable to apply his own rules because The Bureaucracy is not a Project Management System it is a Political System.

Every Minister is controlling a Department and the Departments of the Government are highly overlapping. They fight and most of the time the Minister is unable to understand what is happening behind the Scene. Because of the Fight of the many Departments Projects Fail. Not only the Departments are overlapping. There are also many overlaps with local Authorities and of course the other Games that are played (The Market).

When everything is overlapping you know it is a waste of time to apply a Project Management approach. It is not Practical. You use a part of the method or (better) your Experience. Using something that Suits Your Purpose was called “Muddling Through” by Charles Edward Lindblom (The Science of Muddling Through, 1959).

“Muddling Through” is a “Method” where you try to Find Your Way through the Ever Changing Landscape of Many projects. Step by Step you move through the Mud where projects are suddenly started and suddenly stopped. Where priorities are set and suddenly change. Where money is provided and suddenly is gone. In the Mud you are able to move two steps ahead. Later you have to move one step back. When the result is one step ahead you are happy. When the result is one step back you smile and start all over again. Sometimes a Miracle happens and a project is successfull.

Because the Bureaucracy is not using Prince2 many of the Projects in Government FAIL. Parliament is accustomed to this. When Projects Fail the Minister is often not aware of the real reasons. In Parliament he tells the Story his Department has written for him.

The Representatives in Parliament know this. When you are part of the 75+N you Protect the Executive. When you are part of the 75-N it is easy to attack the Executive but you know that it want help at all because the Executive is Protected.

Parliament was created in the Trias Politica to be a Counterforce to the Executive Power representing the People. In reality the 75+N are a representative of the Executive. Only the Minority represents the People and they are without any Power. Even the Majority is without Power because they are unable to manage the “Muddling Through”.

It is not difficult to see why the People that Elected the members of Parliament to control the Executive Power don’t believe in the System.

I want to tell you my secret. I also don’t believe in a Project Management Approach. It only works when You have Total Control. You have Total Control when Everybody is Supporting You. This happens when everybody believes in a Common Enemy (or Friend). When you use the Method of the Common Enemy and convince people that when you don’t fight the Common Enemy you are a Coward you have a lot in common with a Fascist. They created common Enemies. Democracy was created to avoid this.

Big Changes need the Support of the Majority of the People but at this moment the Wheel of Time is in the State of Individuality. This is the real reason why there is such a big overlap. Everybody wants to do it on his Own Way.

Individuality shows itself in two ways Egoism and Holism, trying to find the Whole again.

Politicians could start to focus on the Whole instead of the Detail.

They could stop protecting the Minister and help him.

They could also stop to ask Nasty Questions when they already know the Answers.

Dialogue is about finding out what you are really talking about.

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About the End of the EG, the End of the Dutch Political Parties and the Death of Pim Fortuyn

Monday, October 29th, 2007

It all started in 1996. In this year I was asked to become a member of the HP Corporate Advisory Board, the ESPRIT Advisory Board and the W3C-Advisory Board. Suddenly I started to talk with very high level executives about the Future.

ESPRIT is a huge program of the European Union. It invests money in Research all over Europe. Every four years the priorities are formulated and I was asked by the Dutch Government to be the Dutch representative.

The panel was constructed by combining Country and Branch. I was the Netherlands and Banking. Another member came from the UK and was an expert in the Future of Medicine. We were asked to give a presentation about our expertise. Later all the presentations would be merged in next sessions.

It was a big surprise to the managers of ESPRIT that we were telling more or less the same story. Finding a shared view always took many discussions but we finished in one day.

I asked my manager if I could visit my colleagues of the panel to dig deeper in what they were telling. At that time I was responsible for Corporate Search. I had to define the Future Strategy of the Bank. After some explaining he agreed and I traveled Europe.

What we found out was that behind the scene a new shared foundation was visible. Every Industry was moving to a Center and out of the Center completely new Industries would emerge.

In 1996 I wrote the first English document I ever produced. It was about the Future of Banking. A few citations:

“By definition, the bank has always been a facilitator of trading processes”. It means that the bank must try to penetrate more deeply into the sales and production processes of the suppliers”, “the role of the intermediary will have to be investigated, and the positioning of the bank at the user-interface of the client (in the first instance, private client) defined. What is more, it is recommended that we do not sell only our own products. In the private client market, the struggle will revolve around the user-interface and ‘convenience’. Customers must be captured, seduced and retained. The ‘convenience’ is created when the ‘network organization’ (bank + retailer + producer, if there is one) finds ways of relieving the customer of certain troublesome matters“.

The document was discussed on many levels in the Company. To my big surprise the majority of the senior managers found the document interesting but in essence they did not believe “this” would ever happen. Banking would stay the same “for Ever”. It was a nice Vision but it was not based on Reality. I produced many other Presentations and Documents to show what was happening. I even build a Demonstrator together with Scientists of the Erasmus University (Eurides, Ron Lee & Yao Tan). It used Deontic Logic. The Demonstrator was financed by the EG ESPRIT Fund.

A year later I left the bank. My first job was to create a lobby office of ABN AMRO in Brussels. My ESPRIT-contacts proved to be of great help.

The new emerging foundation came back in many activities between 1997 and today. In March 2006 I finally saw the Light. To share my insight I wrote a document called “The Moving Boundary” (Dutch, De bewegende grens). Suddenly I saw that we were not only moving to a new foundation but that the foundation, the Center, was “On The Move itself”. I used a new Prediction of the Dutch Cultural Planning Bureau (SCP) to prove my point.

The SCP showed that five (!) factors were the main drivers. They called the drivers Individualization, Intensivation, Globalization, Automation and Informal-isation. I mapped the five factors on the Model of Will McWhinney and hoped one of the five factors would disappear. At that time I believed in four World Views.

Suddenly I saw that the factor Informal-sation was related to a Center. This center is pushed by four forces Equality, Diversity, Uniqueness and Cooperation. They are trying to find Balance. Until that time the Centre is moving in many directions. Every time we think we have found something to “Hold On” it moves.

I found out that we are moving from the time of the OR to the time of the AND. Before the Center started to move we had a Choice.

We could be in favor of Equality (Conservative, Christian Democrats), Uniqueness (Liberal) or Cooperation/Solidarity (Socialist) but the old boundaries are disappearing.

The Old Parties are holding hands in the Political Democratic Centre of The Hague but also Centralized Democracy is not a concept that is there to stay.

The AND-process in politics showed itself for the first time in 2002. A completely new party led by Pim Fortuyn took over Dutch Politics like an Earthquake. Unfortunately Pim Fortuin was killed just before the Elections. Many people believe it was a Political Crime.

The Netherlands are still in a very incomprehensible process of political restructuring. New parties grow and die. Old parties are splitting and restructuring.

The central structure of the EG is falling. Many “old time” politicians are playing strange games to show that people of Europe like what is happening in Brussels. They all know they are unable to hold the European Center.

The same is happening with NATO and the UN.

The Center is Moving!

Much later I discovered the Final Secret.

The Center is now moving at random but is trying to Jump to a new Level.

The Jump can be a Fall or a Rise.

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How the US could Move Out of the Drama Triangle: About Games People Play

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

George Lakoff wrote very interesting books about Metaphors. At this moment Lakoff his main subject is US politics. In an article called the Metaphors of Terror he analyzes the “framing” of the US Government in his “battle” against Terrorism that started at 9/11.

“The initial framing was as a “crime” with “victims” and “perpetrators” to be “brought to justice” and “punished.” The crime frame entails law, courts, lawyers, trials, sentencing, appeals, and so on”. Later “crime” changed to “war” with “casualties,” “enemies,” “military action,” “war powers,” and so on. Later “Evil” was added. “To stand up to evil you have to be morally strong. If you’re weak, you let evil triumph, so that weakness is a form of evil in itself, as is promoting weakness. Evil is inherent, an essential trait, that determines how you will act in the world. Evil people do evil things“.

The most important change in the framing is the move to Religion. I think and many people with me this was a very dangerous move. It revived the time of the Crusades. The move to Religion correlates with the strong influence of the Conservative Religious movement in the US. They were already for a long time in the “Crusade Mode”.

Lakoff shows that the role of the parent in childhood determinates the distinction between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans are in favor of the Strict Father (or Parent). Democrats like the Nurturing Father.

Parents were born as Children. Children often take over the behavior of the parents when they raise their own children even when the children did not like this behavior at all. The first reason is copying but there is more at stake.

When you look at Interpersonal Theory (Why a Slave needs a Master) the Strict Father is high in Agency (the Self) and the Nurturing Father combines Agency and Communion (The Other). He is able to create an “internal” bridge. The Strict Parent is unable to commune. He is unable to give intimacy, warmth, closeness, social support and love to the Child. The child is “left Alone“.

The Child has to start his life high in Communion. It needs to be Taken Care of. When the Parents are unable to give Intimacy the Child cannot receive Intimacy when he is an Adult. He or She is unable to create a stable relationship of Compassion.He or She moves from relationship to relationship or when he/she is living in a Strictly Moral Environment sustains a relationship that is not “Taking Care” of the Children. History repeats itself.

The next move in Life is the state of the Senses (Communion/Agency). This state ends in the Ego-State (Puberty). Many people don’t want to leave this state because they don’t like the Responsibilities that are connected to the next State.

When they become a Parent they have to move. They can move to the Nurturing State (Communion, Self AND Other) or to the Strict Parent State (Agency, Self). If they don’t know how to Commune there is only one state possible, The Strict Parent. Again History Repeats itself.

The Adult State is the State in the Middle or the Center (Balance, Harmony, Conscioussness). It can be reached when people Take the Time to Reflect (Look Inside).

At this moment almost everything we do is directed at the opposite, Look Outside (TV, Movie, Games, …). The Media take so much time that many people have no time left to “Observe” or “Step Out of” their own situation.

Children and Adults are always Playing Games. One of the psychologists that has analyzed Adult Games is Eric Berne. He created Transactional Analysis.

Berne presented his theories in two popular books: Games People Play (1964) and What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (1975). The most famous book was I’m OK, You’re OK (1969) written by Berne’s longtime friend Thomas Anthony Harris.

Will McWhinney analyzed Two Persons games. Berne discovered also three person games (Triangles).

One of the most dysfunctional triangular games is The Drama Triangle (Stephen Karpman).

Each point on the triangle represents a common and ineffective response to conflict, one more likely to prolong disharmony than to end it. Participants in the Drama Triangle create misery for themselves and others.

Each player in this particular mind game begins by assuming one of three archetypical roles: Victim, Rescuer, or Persecutor.

  • Victims are helpless and hopeless. They deny responsibility for their negative circumstances, and deny possession of the power to change them.
  • Rescuers are constantly applying short-term repairs to a Victim’s problems, while neglecting their own needs.
  • Persecutors blame the Victims and criticize the enabling behavior of Rescuers, without providing guidance, assistance or a solution to the underlying problem

The ‘switch’ is then when one of these having allowed stable roles to become established, suddenly switches role. The victim becomes a persecutor, and throws the previous persecutor into the victim role, or the rescuer suddenly switches to become a persecutor (“You never appreciate me helping you!”).

It is not difficult to see that the Persecutor plays the Strict Father Role. Most of the time the Mother plays the Victim and the Child acts as the Rescuer (The Nurturing Child).

Later the Model of Berne was extended into a Five Factor model (The Tokyo University Egogram). It contains the Nurturing Parent, the Critical Parent (Strict Father), the Adult, Adapted Child (Victim) and the Natural Child (Nurturing Child).

According to my insights A Five Factor Model is a complete model. According to Berne the Adult is “in the Now”. This proves to me that this part could be called Consciousness.

Now it is time to move back to US Politics.

I am convinced The US is Playing Roles in a very complicated Drama Triangle. In this triangle all the players are constantly switching roles.

The Role of the Victims is played by the PEOPLE of the Islamic Countries. The US is constantly switching between the role of the Rescuer AND the Persecutor (“You never appreciate me helping you!”).

The US as a Rescuer implements Short-Term Repairs, ”Capitalism”. Capitalism destroyes Islamic Culture based on the Nurturing Father metaphor (Family, Taking Care of the Other) . Kapitalism stimulates Individualism (Ego). It dis-connects people from a Whole.

Not everybody in the Islamic Countries applies the Nurturing Father Metaphor. The Islamic Conservative Religious Movement has a lot in common with the US Conservative Religious Movement. They are the people that want to fight the Holy War again. I don’t think both of them really see that the (poor) People are always the victims.

As a Rescuer the US helps Islamic Strict Fathers (Iraq, Saddam Hoessein) but it also acts as a Persecutor when it destroyes the same Strict Fathers. The US helped Saddam Hoessein and later destroyed him. They also helped the Taliban and is now destroying them.

All the time the People that lived in these countries were and are the real Victims. Some of them Move into a very Special Victim State, they Kill ThemSelves (Suicide Bommers). When you want to Kill Your Self you are really desperatly asking for Communion.

The People in the Islamic Countries believe that when you Offer Your Self you will reach the Ultimate Place of Communion, Heaven. The Strict Islamic Fathers confirm this believe. The Nurturing Fathers in the Islamic Community (The Mystics, Sufi) tell another Story. The believe just like the Mystics in the West (The Essenes) that the Love for the Other is crucial.

Could it be that US never left the Puberty State?

If this is the Case it Explains a Lot to me. It Explains the Enormous Amount of food People Eat and the need to Add Sugar. It explains the US Porno Cult. It explains the most Crazy City on Earth: Las Vegas where every building is A Game in an Adventure-Game. It explains The Cowboy Culture and it explains the Excessive Waste of Energy. It also explains the Exageration: Big Cars, Big Buildings, Being the Best and the Biggest.

It also shows the Way Forward.

The US has to accept that is now an ADULT Country and has to accept the Responsibility of this State.

It could start by accepting US Culture as a FUSE between many cultures that came out of The East (India), Africa (Slaves), Europe, East America (mainly Mexico) and of course its Indian Heritage (Harmony and Nature).

The US could except that its Own Culture is a Self-Reference of the World Culture.

Is it Possible to Leave a Drama Triangle?

When we use the Five Factor Model and move to China we are able to find a solution. The most important strategy in Chinese martial arts is to Refuse to Support your Attacker.

The first step is to Move into the Center. In terms of the TA Model “Become Aware”.

Use your consciousness. Resist the Temptation to play an Exaggerated and Complementary role to a Victim, Rescuer or Persecutor.

Understand that you are not fighting a Person (A CAUSE) but you are in a State (EGO).

The force you are fighting is trying to move you out of the state of Awareness.

In the Centre you can help the other with giving them awareness and performing Enlightened actions (Out of the Heart).

If we move back to US Policy we have to find where the Consciouss of the US can be found.

The Consciousness can be found in the Press.

The Consciousness can be found in its History.

The Consciousness can be found in Law and Justice.

The Consciousness can be found in the Congress.

The Consciousness can be found in the UnConsciousness (Dreams).

The Consciousness can be found in the Arts and Music (Culture).

One of these has to Move to the Centre and Resist the Temptation to Support the Attacker (Ego).

The last thing I want to tell is that I love the people of the US. I travelled the country from East to West and from North to South. Almost everybody I spoke did not like what the System was doing. They wanted a change but they did not know how. The feeling that the System has taken over Control is something that many people in the West (also the Netherlands) are feeling. They feel extremely Powerless.

The only thing we can do is support all the people all over the World that are from the Heart. The Times are Always Changing and at a certain moment the Age of Aquaris (Love will Steer the Stars) will certainly come. It is just a matter of time.

LINKS

About Addiction and Burn-out

About Inter-personal Psychology 

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