As an organizational psychologist, I believe my ultimate purpose in the marketplace is to equip and empower leaders to maximize the value and benefit of their organization to its community and all involved stakeholders. This vision is part of a larger movement taking place throughout the world.
Positive psychology and conscious capitalism are also significant parts of this new age. In this New Enlightenment, all three focus on the positive value of people and things around us rather than the negative forces that oppose us. It’s a huge paradigm shift. It is overcoming the negativity of a Freudian worldview and his conflicted personality model.
Freud was deeply influenced by the medical model in which you diagnose a disease and fix it. It was the foundation for his personality model. I’ll keep an explanation of this model short and oversimplified for the sake of this article:
In his model, the Id is the deep instinctual nature of needs; primarily sexuality and appetite, but also relational. These needs strive for immediate gratification. The ego must fulfill these needs in a socially acceptable manner, or at least figure a way to fulfill those needs without retribution. The Superego is the internalized moral standards and ideals; our learned sense of right and wrong. Needless to say, the potential for conflict between these competing components is unavoidable. The acceptance of this self-fulfilling model essentially left generations deeply conflicted and desperately jumping for the apple of wholeness that was rarely reached.
The tragedy for conscious capitalists is that it places us into the role of superego –the opposer of the id and policeman of the ego. It very powerfully, but subliminally, relegates us to an impotent idealism opposing the tsunami of carnal compulsions. Nothing could be further from the truth so we need a more accurate model of human behavior that empowers us to not be “impotently against” external forces, but “victoriously for” people, planet, and profit.
A better model lies hidden right before our eyes. It is in the Great Commandment. It simply states that we are to love God and one another with all our “soul, heart, mind, and strength.” Jesus was not being redundant; He was describing what I call the true “blueprint of our inner man”. In it, the soul is the id, the heart and mind is the ego, and the strength is essentially our determined will to fulfill the needs of the inner man. They all work together to make decisions for its survival.
So far this just sounds like an expansion of Freud, but the departure comes when Freud describes the superego as just an extension or part of this survivor personality. Freud completely distorts and undermines a more powerful nature within us. This other nature is completely independent from, in opposition to, and yet more powerful than Freud’s conflicted, single nature model. It also has a soul, heart, mind, and strength, but unlike Freud’s survivor based model, this nature is compelled to be a benefit to others.
In this dual natured model, we not only have a survivor nature, we have what I call a ”noble nature”. It is literally the “life giving spirit” within us.
The “survivor nature” is driven by fear and the need to get. The noble nature is not only completely separate; it is free from fear and the need to survive. The soul, or instinctual motivation of this nature is the need to be a benefit to others. Unlike Freud’s superego, this nature is not naively idealistic nor purely altruistic; rather, it is absolutely confident that being a benefit to others is not only better than surviving; it is the assurance of thriving. It lives a life of “enlightened self-interest”.
The more clearly we can recognize and define that noble nature within us, the more confident we become in living from that nature and overcoming the compulsions of our survivor nature. We cease from being victims and become victorious. We are no longer dictated by circumstances and events, but are empowered by a nature that overcomes them. We cease from striving for nobility; we are noble, it’s our very nature.
Conscious capitalism is birthed from this noble nature. It need not judge, condemn, or compete with those trapped in a Freudian picture of the world. It ‘s free to model the victorious life by living it; by proudly displaying and sharing the lifestyle of being motivated by being a benefit to our world and not in competition with it. It’s not socialism, it’s not communism. It’s noble capitalism; rooted in freedom to individually excel and act for the common good. It’s coming together to help each one discover his/her priceless value and helping them express it in a way that builds up one another, the community around us, and the world we live in. That’s the noble nature of conscious capitalism and those who practice it live a truly victorious and abundant life.
Positive psychology and conscious capitalism are also significant parts of this new age. In this New Enlightenment, all three focus on the positive value of people and things around us rather than the negative forces that oppose us. It’s a huge paradigm shift. It is overcoming the negativity of a Freudian worldview and his conflicted personality model.
Freud was deeply influenced by the medical model in which you diagnose a disease and fix it. It was the foundation for his personality model. I’ll keep an explanation of this model short and oversimplified for the sake of this article:
In his model, the Id is the deep instinctual nature of needs; primarily sexuality and appetite, but also relational. These needs strive for immediate gratification. The ego must fulfill these needs in a socially acceptable manner, or at least figure a way to fulfill those needs without retribution. The Superego is the internalized moral standards and ideals; our learned sense of right and wrong. Needless to say, the potential for conflict between these competing components is unavoidable. The acceptance of this self-fulfilling model essentially left generations deeply conflicted and desperately jumping for the apple of wholeness that was rarely reached.
The tragedy for conscious capitalists is that it places us into the role of superego –the opposer of the id and policeman of the ego. It very powerfully, but subliminally, relegates us to an impotent idealism opposing the tsunami of carnal compulsions. Nothing could be further from the truth so we need a more accurate model of human behavior that empowers us to not be “impotently against” external forces, but “victoriously for” people, planet, and profit.
A better model lies hidden right before our eyes. It is in the Great Commandment. It simply states that we are to love God and one another with all our “soul, heart, mind, and strength.” Jesus was not being redundant; He was describing what I call the true “blueprint of our inner man”. In it, the soul is the id, the heart and mind is the ego, and the strength is essentially our determined will to fulfill the needs of the inner man. They all work together to make decisions for its survival.
So far this just sounds like an expansion of Freud, but the departure comes when Freud describes the superego as just an extension or part of this survivor personality. Freud completely distorts and undermines a more powerful nature within us. This other nature is completely independent from, in opposition to, and yet more powerful than Freud’s conflicted, single nature model. It also has a soul, heart, mind, and strength, but unlike Freud’s survivor based model, this nature is compelled to be a benefit to others.
In this dual natured model, we not only have a survivor nature, we have what I call a ”noble nature”. It is literally the “life giving spirit” within us.
The “survivor nature” is driven by fear and the need to get. The noble nature is not only completely separate; it is free from fear and the need to survive. The soul, or instinctual motivation of this nature is the need to be a benefit to others. Unlike Freud’s superego, this nature is not naively idealistic nor purely altruistic; rather, it is absolutely confident that being a benefit to others is not only better than surviving; it is the assurance of thriving. It lives a life of “enlightened self-interest”.
The more clearly we can recognize and define that noble nature within us, the more confident we become in living from that nature and overcoming the compulsions of our survivor nature. We cease from being victims and become victorious. We are no longer dictated by circumstances and events, but are empowered by a nature that overcomes them. We cease from striving for nobility; we are noble, it’s our very nature.
Conscious capitalism is birthed from this noble nature. It need not judge, condemn, or compete with those trapped in a Freudian picture of the world. It ‘s free to model the victorious life by living it; by proudly displaying and sharing the lifestyle of being motivated by being a benefit to our world and not in competition with it. It’s not socialism, it’s not communism. It’s noble capitalism; rooted in freedom to individually excel and act for the common good. It’s coming together to help each one discover his/her priceless value and helping them express it in a way that builds up one another, the community around us, and the world we live in. That’s the noble nature of conscious capitalism and those who practice it live a truly victorious and abundant life.
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