Original Intent
Spectrum Learning Associates was a model of modern
enterprise, both with respect to the diversity of its integrated line of
products and services, as well as in relation to its organizational
structure. Many business schools and textbooks used SLA as a
paradigmatic case study of how to run a corporation.
An increasing number of universities, colleges, technical
institutes, high schools, and early learning facilities had adopted its
varied curricula packages and also were implementing its teaching
model. In addition, the company was constantly developing an array
of software and technological innovations which complemented and
enhanced its written materials on a variety of levels.
Bonus programs, stock options, and other kinds of incentive
arrangements had spurred the company to a steady increase in sales
over the last decade. Furthermore, an open and flexible style of
communication that encouraged employees to make a significant
number of decisions without having to consult higher levels of
management had, thereby, stimulated production, research and
company morale.
With so many positive indicators synergistically combining
together, why was Joe Wilson concerned? The answer was as
straightforward as it was difficult to convey to ears and hearts that
weren’t receptive to what he had to say.
Simply stated, the problem, as Joe saw it, was that the company
had lost it sense of purpose and, in the process, confusion had crept
into the work place. Sales, profits, dividends, and productivity were
all up, but the original spirit of the company had been jettisoned
somewhere along the line.
Among other things, Joe believed that increased productivity
didn’t automatically translate into an increase in quality – either with
respect to products, services, or workmanship. When the company
first started, there had been a company-wide commitment to
excellence.
Now, people were far less concerned with the quality of
craftsmanship and workmanship than they were with promotions,
pay increases, and rewards -- with little consideration being given to
whether the nature of the products and services being offered
actually provided customers with what the latter needed, rather than
what some wunderkind in advertising tried to convince the public it
needed or wanted. Indeed, more and more, hype had replaced any
inclination on the part of management to search for the truth and
provide customers with accurate information about whether, or not,
the company’s products and services could deliver as advertised.
Furthermore, things were moving in another disturbing
direction. Although, originally, the organization had emphasized the
importance of being good corporate neighbors, over the last three-to
four years Joe had witnessed a variety of scandals unfold involving
practices that were not only adversely affecting the quality of life
within the communities where different branches of the company
resided, but these practices were generating a large number of
potential ecological problems as well.
Strategies had been devised by a troika of lawyers, accountants,
and board members to either escape paying taxes altogether or which
sought to create various forms of financial, legal, political, and
economic intimidation on communities if the latter did not give the
company an array of tax, union, and environmental concessions.
Such tactics might make sense at the annual meeting of stockholders
where the amount of dividends received was the altar at which many
of them worshiped, but given that the company had been founded
largely on the idea of being in the business of helping people and
communities improve the quality of their lives rather than just
profits, Joe could only shake his head with sadness in relation to the
Zeitgeist which pervaded the company now.
In addition, many of the latest technological breakthroughs
which were being touted by the company, unfortunately, seemed to
have a dark side to them. Not only was the physical environment at
risk, but, equally importantly – perhaps, more so -- the mental,
moral, and spiritual environments of customers was being threatened
by the shoddiness of the principles, techniques, methods, and ideas
which were at the heart of the SLA approach to learning and
education.
The people in charge of research were enthusiastically committed
to all manner of information processing technology. However, almost
none of them had any idea of how to identify wisdom amidst the
wealth of data which their technology could crunch.
They had lots of theories. They lacked knowledge about what
relation their theories had to reality.
‘Cutting-edge’, ‘innovative’ and ‘heuristic’ were the corporate
buzz words. Truth didn’t seem to be in its vocabulary.
Finally, although, in some ways, employee morale was at an all
time high because of the high degree of local autonomy which
characterized the company’s management style, nonetheless, at the
same time, there was an increasing amount of conflict, tension, and
destructive competitiveness to which Joe had been witness, as
employees often played a zero-sum game with one another – that is,
there could only be one winner -- and as a result, themes of self-
interest and selfishness often wafted through the company corridors
and offices like a toxic cloud of smog.
Petty-minded company politics also often spoiled the
atmosphere. All too many individuals would think nothing of
sabotaging fellow employees if this would lead to career
advancement.
The more Joe thought about the problems facing the company,
the more he got depressed. Moreover, to add insult to injury, very
few people seemed to have any interest in trying to critically analyze
the situation – they were too caught up in careers, power, social
status, and bonuses.
Originally, the company had come into existence in order to help
students develop the skills and understanding necessary to become
better human beings – human beings who were committed to the
communities in which they lived, as well as to the other communities
that populated the larger world surrounding them. Issues of truth,
morality, character, identity, self-realization, and justice had been of
paramount importance.
Now, at the urging of his company -- at least in its latest form --
truth was being replaced by information. Morality was being
supplanted by preoccupation with values. Character was being
converted into personality. Identity had become engulfed by psycho-
babble. Self-realization was being transformed into its antithesis –
namely, ego-enhancement, and justice was virtually brain-dead and
on life-support thanks to the kind of interpretive framework his
company was promoting through its text materials and software
programs dealing with the Constitution.
As Joe sat at one of the tables in the cafeteria, mulling over the
manner in which his workplace had strayed far from the original
intent of the company’s founder, another, parallel issue occurred to
him. Just as his company was being guided by a set of principles that
was something other than the vision with which the company had
begun, so, too, many religions seemed to have deviated significantly
from their original teachings.
More and more, Joe felt spirituality had been hi-jacked by
theology, dogma, indoctrination, rigidity, exclusion, and enmity. Yet,
love knows no theology. There is no dogma to kindness and
generosity. Indoctrination cannot lead to understanding the truth, let
alone being able to freely choose it. There is nothing rigid about
forgiveness, tolerance, or patience. Empathy and compassion are
inclusive, not exclusive. And, what does peace or beneficence have to
do with enmity?
Like many of the employees of his company, Joe believed that all
too many religious people had become preoccupied with issues of
reward and punishment, heaven and hell, and not enough with
commitment to excellence or to the manner in which quality of life,
for both the individual and the community, was rooted in service to
God and Creation, rather than in a system of bonus incentive
arrangements. In fact, if one’s worship of Divinity were dependent
on the receiving of a reward in exchange for worship, then, really,
what was being sought – the reward or Divinity, and if the former is
the answer, then, what does that say about the precise nature of one’s
worship -- that is, who and what were being worshiped and why?
Furthermore, like his company, many religions – at least in their
modern format -- no longer appeared to be good corporate
neighbors. They often didn’t seem to care about what destruction
they brought upon the people and communities they were supposed
to serve, or about whom they hurt as long as their opinions, agendas,
politics, and prejudices prevailed, while the accursed heretics and
infidels – that is, anyone who didn’t believe as they did – were
smitten down by those who fancied themselves to be agents of the
Divine, despite a disconcerting absence of evidence to support this
allegation, other than their own self-serving testimony.
Joe believed spirituality had started out as a way of helping
people struggle toward experientially realizing the closeness of their
relationship to Divinity, as well as bringing to fruition the unique
spiritual potential which had been bequeathed to each human being.
Spirituality, he felt, originally had been intended to provide people
with a way to improve the quality of their lives, both individually and
collectively, by emphasizing the importance of qualities such as: love,
forgiveness, kindness, generosity, sincerity, honesty, humility, self-
sacrifice, tolerance, forbearance, patience, courage, modesty,
persistence, and beneficence.
Joe didn’t see how there could be any legitimate room for
theology, dogma, indoctrination, rigidity, exclusion, and enmity in
any of this, and, yet, just as his company had slipped from its
moorings over the years, so, too, spirituality seemed to have been cut
adrift from the principles which, traditionally, had anchored it. Now,
self-centeredness, cut-throat competitiveness, and zero-sum games
appeared to dominate the interaction among many religious
traditions, just as such things ruled Joe’s company.
He suspected the decline in his company’s moral profile was just
one of the many problematic ramifications that had arisen because
of the way all too many people were pursuing religion as currently
conceived, rather than as originally intended. He believed the same
was probably true of many other facets of life – from politics to
family life to education.
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