The Structure of Synergy Applied to the NLP Community
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Whatever Happened to ‘Abundance’?
Did the Scarcity Meme Gobble it Up?
As you look out onto “the NLP community” does it strike you (as it does me) that we have an abundance of the Scarcity Model and a Scarcity of the Abundance Model? We talk about, and even presuppose, a Model of Abundance, and yet as a community we seem to live and act more according to a Model of Scarcity. What gives? How do we explain this? And even more important, what can we do about it in order to get Abundance Mentality more and more into our way of being in the world and recognized as the very spirit of NLP?
When NLP first burst upon the scene, Grinder and Bandler spoke about operating from a model of the world that presupposed abundance rather than scarcity. This attitude, in fact, set NLP apart from most of the other models of human beings and human functioning. Now I don’t know where precisely they picked this up from, but I would suspect they got it from Satir or Erickson with their abundant attitudes of possibility, optimism, options, and flexibility. And they may have also picked it up from Bateson who wrote extensively about systemic processes and the abounding emergence of new properties.
Now some theorists might want to argue that scarcity has deep roots, even “deep blood,” in our very “nature.” They might want to argue that we have evolved successfully by adapting to scarcity and so we inevitably default to a competitive Win/Lose style. Such genetic determinists would reason we fall back to Win/Lose competitiveness, beating out a competitor, operating from scarcity, etc. as part of our genetic heritage. Evolution has made win/lose, scarcity, competitiveness, etc. our “natural” default program.
Personally, I don’t believe that. It seems to me that at best, the idea of scarcity exists as a meme (a culturally transmitted idea) rather than a gene in our species (see Mark Furman’s articles on Memes, July and August, 1998). And if our race has experienced scarcity of resources and unmistakable universal experience of the Win/Lose mentality (as it surely has over the centuries and millennia), it only makes sense that a meme on the order of — “Survival of the Fittest,” “There’s only so much of the pie to go around,” “Every time someone wins, someone else loses,” etc. has developed as a model of the world. Aristotelian either-or thinking would have further supported this idea.
The Price We Pay for the Scarcity Meme
The idea of scarcity, as a basic model of the world, has further infected (as a toxic virus) many of the most important fields of human concern. In the area of negotiation and conflict resolution, it sets the frame that resolution will involve some kind of compromise or submission. In the area of economics, management, and leadership it leads to one-up-manship games, hostile take-over of companies, strikes, lock-outs, management-labor hostilities, “Wining by Intimidation,” etc.
Personally and interpersonally, scarcity seeds such ideas as “tightening the belt,” passing laws to limit growth, distrust that others will get too much, resentment when someone else “wins” or succeeds, competitiveness against colleagues in the same field for their promotions, refusal to share the newest ideas, refusal to quote or recommend colleagues, the lack of a collegial attitude, lawsuits for resolving conflicts, etc.
The high price for scarcity also includes a whole range of ego games that we play in a bid for gaining some advantage over others. This sets up antagonisms rather than co-operations, it sets up a critical attitude rather than a supportive one.
The Structure of Abundance
Suppose we decided to apply our own model (NLP) to understanding the presupposition of abundance. As we do this, we would undoubtedly begin by meta-modeling the terms abundance and scarcity.
When we examine the term abundance, what do we find? Certainly not a noun (a thing) or verb (action, process). We rather have a nominalization with an underlying hidden verb, “to abound.” Hence, “to experience an abounding of resources.”
As such, this process term speaks about a set of relationships and so we also have an Unspecified Relational Term.
What is abounding?
In what way does it abound?
From what (or whom) and to what (or whom) does it abound?
According to what standard and criteria does it “abound?”
And while we’re at it, we could similarly meta-model the term scarcity.