Praise for
“MEMEnomics is a brilliant book based on the economics of abundance, prosperity, and the cultivation of healthy ecosystems for sustainable business practices. It takes a big-picture view on economic integration that is guided by the conscious vision of a holistically interdependent planet. Said E. Dawlabani does a brilliant job in placing current economic activity into an evolutionary model that helps reshape the thinking of visionary business leaders of the future. I highly recommend this book.”
Deepak Chopra
New York Times best-selling author
Co-author of Super Brain: Unleashing the Explosive Power of Your
Mind to Maximize Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Well-Being
“I was asked to share my thoughts on some of the most important books on the future of capitalism. Here is number 1: MEMEnomics: The Next-Generation Economic System—It is a rich and illuminating re-thinking of evolutionary economics by an outstanding American-Lebanese thinker. Said E. Dawlabani is a meta-economist and a key practitioner of the emerging science of value systems. This book is a must-read for those looking to understand systemic change.”
Jean Houston, PhD
Best-selling author
Founding member of the Human Potential Movement
“Leaders in the private and public sectors worldwide will benefit greatly from reading and studying MEMEnomics. I have followed the works of Dr. Clare Graves (met him in 1981) and Dr. Don Beck since I was CEO of Southwest Airlines. Dr. Beck gave me valuable personal guidance in the growth of Southwest and in the financial transformation of Braniff International. Now, Said Dawlabani has taken all of their research and proven results and moved to the next generation of economics. This is powerful information and a flight plan to take your organization to the next level. If you want to be on the leading edge of transformation, here is your opportunity.”
Howard Putnam
Former CEO Southwest Airlines and Braniff International
Author, The Winds of Turbulence
Speaker Hall of Fame
“As Editor of Kosmos Journal I have selected MEMEnomics as one of two recommended books in our current journal. In addition to a pioneering effort to place economics within a memetic continuum, it is valuable as a text on the whole field of economics as it has developed through time. This will be a classic in the new field of Memenomics and should be accessible to all university students. It is a major contribution to the field of transformational economics as we search for new ways of sharing resources in a new economy.”
Nancy Roof
Editor, Kosmos Journal
“We are in a world of crisis. Earth is experiencing the Sixth Great Mass Extinction of life, an event science attributes to civilization living out of alignment with the wisdom of Nature. Modeling our existence and behavior on the outdated Darwinian philosophy of ‘survival of the fittest,’ while ignoring our responsibility to the whole of humanity and our supporting environment, threatens our existence.
In MEMEnomics, cultural creative Said E. Dawlabani provides a resource to help us safely navigate this dark passage to a healthier future. Dawlabani, a macroeconomics expert, exploits the frontier science of biomimicry to offer a pioneering value-system’s approach to modeling the conscious evolution of business. I highly recommend MEMEnomics as an important contribution that presents a compelling and sustainable economic model to guide the future of human evolution and help save our biosphere.”
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD
Cell biologist and best-selling author of The Biology of Belief
Author of The Honeymoon Effect: The Science of Creating Heaven on Earth
Co-author of Spontaneous Evolution
“Creating a world that works for all requires understanding the complex kaleidoscope of human value systems across our country and our planet. In no arena is this more important than in the world of business and economics. Said Elias Dawlabani has opened the door to this crucial topic with a groundbreaking conversation about the stages of development of people and societies, and the emerging economic systems needed to fit the life conditions we face. As we learn to apply next-generation thinking we can create a thriving future for humanity. Read this book—and join the conversation about healthy change.”
Cindy Wigglesworth
Author, SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence
President, Deep Change, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 by Said Elias Dawlabani
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
This edition published by SelectBooks, Inc.
For information address SelectBooks, Inc., New York, New York.
First Edition
ISBN 978-1-59079-996-3
ISBN: 9781590791318
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dawlabani, Said Elias.
Memenomics : the next-generation economic system / Said Elias Dawlabani ;
foreword by Don E. Beck, PhD. -- First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “Economist and founder of The Memenomics Group presents the
emerging science of Memenomics that redefines cultural evolution by
examining the long-term effects of economic policy on society through the
prism of value systems, reframing economics through a whole-systems’
approach to economic development to provide an integral view of the future
of capitalism”--Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-59079-996-3 (hardbound : alk. paper)
1. Economics--Sociological aspects. 2. Capitalism--Social aspects. 3.
Economic development--Social aspects. 4. Values. I. Title.
HM548.D38 2013
306.3--dc23
2013008910
Interior book design and production by Janice Benight
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
TO MY DAUGHTERS, CHLOE AND QUINN,
AND TO MY PARENTS, JAMILEH AND ELIAS.
TO MY COLLEAGUE AND FRIEND, DON BECK, WHOSE GENIUS
HAS INSPIRED ME EVERYDAY FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS.
AND TO MY BRILLIANT AND LOVING PARTNER, ELZA,
WHO SHOWED ME THE WAY TO THE NEVER-ENDING QUEST.
Foreword
PART ONE
MEMEnomics
A Whole Systems View On the Evolution of Economies
Introduction
1 THE LAST SON OF ENLIGHTENMENT
A New Day of Infamy
The Rise of a Global Leader
Environment Shaping Ideology
The Long Shadow of Objectivism
The Hero who saved America
The Final Curtain
2 THE VALUE-SYSTEM PARADIGM FOR THE ECONOMY
A Brief History of the Emerging Science of Value Systems
Spiral Dynamics: The Theory that explains the Levels of Existence
The Eight Levels of Existence
The Double-Helix Nature of the Framework
Characteristics Common to All Value Systems
The First-Tier Systems
BIEGE: The First-Level System
PURPLE: The Second-Level System
RED: The Third-Level System
BLUE: The Fourth-Level System
ORANGE: The Fifth-Level System
GREEN: The Sixth-Level System
The Second-Tier Systems
YELLOW: The Seventh-Level System
TURQUOISE: The Eighth-Level System
Subsistence vMEMEs in Charge of Economic Policies
3 THE MEMENOMICS THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Memenomic Cycles
The Tech-LC Gap
Aesthetic vs. Systemic Change
4 THE ROLE OF MONEY IN EMERGENCE OF CULTURES
Money and the Tribal Order
The Emperor’s Coin
The Gold of Nations
Rise of the Dollar
Inflation: The First Historic Threat to the Monetary Order vMEME
The New Fed, Debaucher of Currency
The End of Money as We Know It
PART TWO
History of the Value of a Subsistence Economy
5 THE FIRST AND SECOND MEMENOMIC CYCLES:
The Fiefdoms of Power and the Patriotic Prosperity Memes
The Fiefdoms of Power Meme
FDR’s Visionary New Deal
The 1950s: Building the Middle Class Memes
The New Frontier and the Great Society
The Heavy Costs of Visionary Mandates and the End of an Era
Fertile Grounds for Ideological Shifts
6 THE THIRD MEMENOMIC CYCLE:
The “Only Money Matters” Meme
Taming the Beast
The Final Pieces of the Puzzle
Finance vs. Production
Setting the Conditions for the Perfect vMEME Storm
In the Eye of the vMemetic Storm
Bailout: The Final Phase of the Current System
7 IN SEARCH OF A NEW PARADIGM
The Fourth Memenomic Cycle: The Democratization of Information Meme
PART THREE
The Platform for Functional Capitalism
8 VALUE SYSTEMS AND FUNCTIONAL FLOW
The Exhausted Economic Values of the First Tier
Human Nature Prepares for a Momentous Leap
The Systemic vMEME Revisited
Superordinate Goal of the Fifth Memenomic Cycle
Smart Government of the Future
Seventh-Level Leadership in the Media
Seventh-Level Ecosystem
Natural Design and Functional Flow
9 EMBRACING THE VALUES OF THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY: ƒ(KNOWLEDGE)
The Post-Industrial Society Revisited: An Infrastructure of Knowledge
Scarcity vs. Abundance Economics
Distributed Innovation (DI), the Foundation of a Yellow Economy
The New Entrepreneurship Meme
10 THE CASE FOR FUNCTIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEMS: ƒ(FINANCE)
Realigning Money
Designing a Seventh-Level Currency
Central Banks of the Seventh-Level System
Second-Tier Capital Markets
11 DESIGNING FOR THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING: ƒ(MANUFACTURING)
The Manufacturing Sector and Value Systems
Second-Tier Manufacturing
Renewable Energy and the Future of Manufacturing
Additive Manufacturing: A Distributed Innovation Model
12 DEFINING THE SUSTAINABLE CORPORATION FROM STOCKHOLDER TO STAKEHOLDERS: ƒ(CORP)
The Corporate vMEME Struggle
The Current Functional Misalignment
The Functional Seventh-Level CEO
The Evolution of Ownership
Google’s Systemic Disruption
The Different Whole-Systems Approach of Whole Foods
The Corporation of the Future
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Books about subjects like economics are rarely written from the perspective of human or cultural evolution. Seldom, if ever, does a reader come across a narrative with pioneering methods that reframe a specialized discipline through a wide-cultural whole systems approach. This is precisely what Said E. Dawlabani has done in the book Memenomics: The Next-Generation Economic System. This is a book that reframes the issues of competing economic and political ideologies and places them into an evolutionary new paradigm. This is a book about change done right.
It is no secret that today we are dealing with a great political divide that threatens many of our democratic institutions. Right and left ideologies have becomes polarized camps that seem to be worlds apart. If we were to do a content analysis of all the speeches, books, and articles from the last few years, and consider the arguments presented in academic or think tank settings on these issues, we would see several clear and distinct patterns. Capitalism is great or greedy. Socialism is humane or harmful. The rich are that way because they worked hard or simply won life’s lottery. The poor are that way because they are undisciplined or oppressed by the rich. Economic redistribution will level the playing field or dumb-down global intelligences. Which is it?
Most of these conventional discussions center around competing economic models, open political access, mandated equality of opportunity and results, and a host of other external, top-down solutions. Arguments have grown in emotional intensity around the size and distribution of government budgets. Money becomes the magic elixir that will cure all ills. New rules and regulations will transform hearts and minds or anger those who believe in the invisible hand of the free market. Everybody benefits from the largess of big government, as it bails out bigger and bigger “too big to fail” enterprise and uses taxes to fund social work schemes. And, of course, the knowledge economy will bring brilliant technological innovations to the most remote village in Africa, with or without electricity. Right.
There is a formidable challenge that awaits thinkers who are shaping the future of humanity—one of monumental proportions that will call on our collective ability to create political and economic systems that can best handle the complex conditions confronting life on our planet. When the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith penned his views on the evolution of human morality and trade over two centuries ago, he captured the hearts and minds of people the world over. But today, after guiding the free enterprise system to unimaginable heights, his teachings are being questioned at their core. Current global economic and governing systems can no longer run on fixed or rigid ideologies regardless of how virtuous or inspiring they were in the past.
Today, the hubris of command intelligence that prescribes to fixed structures in economic and political leadership is waning and models empowered by open systems and distributed intelligence are on the rise. As economic activity languishes from one recession to the next the search for more sophisticated leadership models is intensifying. The diversity of human systems cannot afford to rely on contrived designs by the entrenched elite as a sole approach. This old paradigm of trickle down knowledge and policy formulation represents industrial age values that shaped both political and economic life for centuries, but have become increasingly obsolete in the last few decades. These relics of values past continue to be the dominant source of solutions that are proving to be less effective with every passing day.
In order for new leadership to emerge to answer our challenges, new paradigms must be created. Today, a new paradigm for leadership is being born and the conceptual revelations on how to design for the future of political and economic complexity are beginning to take hold. In order for a new model to succeed it has to be able to explain more variables, account for more contingencies, and solve more problems than the one it will ultimately replace. Since life is constantly changing, this emerging paradigm must be an open system rather than a closed state. It must subsume that all previous ideologies are legitimate for different times, circumstances and developmental stages. It must also possess the distributed intelligence that gathers information from the deep reaches of every corner of society in order to design effective long-term solutions. Those solutions must be equally relevant for individuals, organizations and society at large. They must accommodate the full texture of human cultural differences as they evolve over time while addressing multiple bottom-lines on issues regarding standards of living and the quality of life.
Today we stand on the cusp of much advancement in the fields of physical and biological sciences and should learn how to incorporate complexities from these systems into the field of social sciences. Areas of study in biomimicry and evolutionary biology are providing a rich reservoir of knowledge that helps us design for a future that follows natural order to accommodate complexity. Governing systems of the future will be rich with designs that mimic nature where power is distributed to the highest degree of function. Decision-making processes will be empowered by the confluence of knowledge that rises up, policies that trickle down, and values and intelligences that move in every direction based on the function they need to satisfy. Economics has to examine concepts such as human and cultural emergence and Complex Adaptive Systems as ways to create a diversified approach towards reframing global economic challenges.
The field of complexity in social science has been around for decades. My late colleague and friend Dr. Clare W. Graves first mapped the levels of human existence and pioneered methodologies that deal with the understanding of the bio-psycho-social stages of development. His research lent much to the understanding of complex adaptive systems in culture. A considerable part of my post academic career has been focused on the development of Grave’s research into models that help governments and businesses throughout the world in breaking through logjams and managing the complexities that lie ahead. From South Africa to the Middle East and Iceland we have proven that meaningful change is possible if policymakers are informed by the unique, DNA-like construct of societal complexity if seen through a prism we call value-systems. Many decades after Graves laid down his framework of understanding culture at the large scale, research in the field of life sciences along with the information revolution are proving that culture mimics life in its construct and that simple fixed ideologies will no longer provide the sole solutions for a future full of complexity.
Nowhere are these ideas brought to contemporary life applications better than in this book. The work that Said E. Dawlabani has penned here is nothing short of a genius adaptation of the Gravesian technology to the field of evolutionary economics. His approach and analysis, combined with his deep understanding of this theory, make him a contemporary Third Generation Gravesian presence on the economics stage today. He was among the first to challenge the conventional thinking of economists past and present prior to the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. He has continued to methodically articulate the reasons the current expression of capitalism is in decline and why a far higher form of economic order needs to emerge. Since human existence spirals in an upward trajectory towards higher levels of expression, Said’s approach to defining economic emergence is among the freshest approaches I’ve seen. He is a member of a worldwide constellation of thinkers who are influencing the conscious evolution of a new worldview. Based on our decades of research and worldwide applications of this integral bio-psycho-social theory of human development we know that this approach works. We know that cultures, as well as countries, are formed by the emergence of value systems or social stages in response to life conditions. Such complex adaptive intelligences form the glue that bonds a group together, defines who they are as a people, and reflects the place on the planet they inhabit.
These cultural stages of development have formed over time into unique mixtures and blends of instructional and survival codes, myths of origin, artistic forms, life styles, and senses of community. While they are all legitimate expressions of the human experience, they are not “equal” in their capacities to deal with complex problems in society and herein lies the challenge that prevents politically correct leadership from designing effective solutions. Yet these detectable social stages within cultures are not deterministic scripts that lock us into choices against our will. Nor are they inevitable steps on a predetermined staircase, or magically appearing like crop circle structures in our collective psyche. Cultures should not be seen as rigid types, having permanent traits.
Instead, they are core adaptive intelligences that ebb and flow, progress and regress, with the capacity to lay on new levels of sophistication when conditions warrant. Much like an onion, they form layers on layers on layers. There is no final state, no ultimate destination, and no utopian paradise. Each stage is but a prelude to the next, then the next, and the next. Each emerging social stage or cultural wave contains a more expansive horizon, a more complex organizing principle with newly calibrated priorities, mindsets, and specific bottom-lines. All of the previously acquired social stages remain in the composite value system to determine the unique texture of a given culture, country, or society. Once a new social stage appears in a culture, it will spread its instructional codes and life priority messages throughout that culture’s surface-level expressions: religion, economic and political arrangements, psychological and anthropological theories, and views of human nature, our future destiny, globalization, and even architectural patterns and sports preferences.
Here’s the key idea behind this new paradigm for dealing with complexity that will help define the future of leadership that is so eloquently described in this book: We all live in flow states; there is always new wine, always old wine skins. We, indeed, find ourselves pursuing a never-ending quest and that is true in how politics and economics emerge. Different societies, cultures and subcultures, as well as entire nations are at different levels of psycho-cultural emergence, as displayed within these evolutionary levels of complexity. So many of the same issues that confronted us on the West Bank can be found in South Central Los Angeles. One can experience the animistic worldview on Bourbon Street as well as with the Zulu tribes we worked with in South Africa. Matters brought before city council in Minneapolis are not unlike the debates in front of governing bodies in the Netherlands.
So-called Third World societies are dealing, for the most part, with issues relative to challenges within their developmental zones, thus the outcome is higher rates of violence and poverty. Economic and political leadership models designed for these stages of developments cannot be the same as the First World. Staying alive, finding safety, and dealing with feudal age conditions matter most. Challenges facing Second World societies are also different. They are characterized by authoritarian one-party states, whether from the right or the left. It makes no difference. They too, must have different models to best accommodate their cultural transition from these developmental stages.
So-called First World nations and groupings have achieved the highest levels of affluence known to man, with lower birth rates and more expansive use of technology. While centered in values that are strategic, free-market driven, and individualistic, they believe this is the final state, the “end of history.” While that seems to be the dominant belief today, new value systems are emerging in the post “postmodern” age. Yet we have not fully developed the language to intelligently articulate anything beyond First World. Further, there is a serious question as to whether the billions of people who are now exiting Second and Third World life styles can anticipate the same level of affluence as what they see on satellite TV and through social media. And what will happen to the environment if every Chinese family had a two-car garage?
As Said contends so movingly in this book, the answers to so many of these questions become less overwhelming once solutions start being framed through a stratified approach that considers different remedies for different stages of emergence. Under this model, flow state perspectives replace final state paralysis. Simplistic car-wash solutions evolve to a richer understanding of people, uniqueness in situations, and inevitable steps and stages in human emergence. Rigid rules, a product of fixed state ideologies, will be supplanted by fluctuating algorithms that engage a world full of variables, life cycles, wild cards, and other complex dynamics that lie at the core of life itself. There are no guarantees, no eternal road maps, no inevitable destinations, no blue print etched in permanent ink. Yet there are equations, formulas, big data, analytics, fractals, consequences, flows, and processes. Each new solution will, over time, create new problems. Human motivations will change as our life conditions get better, or get worse. There are systems within us rather than types of us—stratified decision-making stacks that constantly rearrange themselves in terms of priorities and a sense of urgency. Different cultures and subcultures become recognized as organic entities that lay on new levels of complexity as changes in life conditions warrant.
This new paradigm for human and cultural emergence is beautifully detailed in this book. Memenomics makes the case for how artificially imposed systems in economics become closed and toxic. By using processes that were pioneered through five decade of research and global applications Said repeatedly makes the case for why the future of economics must consider a values-systems approach if the field should emerge into a whole-systems form of leadership in the future. Through technologies such as Natural Design and life cycles of values systems, Said pioneers a fresh reframing of economic history that uncovers the blockages of trickle-down approaches of the past. He then offers remedies that set a new standard for sustainable practices, ones that are based on functional platforms designed to address the needs of people and cultures at their particular level of economic emergence. This book is a brilliant primer on the application of the values-systems theory to economics. It is a field guide for anyone looking to establish a cultural values-systems understanding not only to economics but also to the applications of the theory of Spiral Dynamics and the seminal work of Clare W. Graves. It represents the evolution of the Gravesian model into a field that rarely considers the different needs and motivations of the different stages of human and societal development.
Finally, a word of caution. The real intent of this approach to leadership is to shape both interior and exterior dynamics—the expansion of capacities in the brain as well as in culture, politics, and economics. Its purpose is to expedite the natural principles that appear to drive societal transformation. These dynamics rely heavily on self-organizing principles and processes rather than ones that are mechanistic or artificially mandated or commanded. With the help of the knowledge economy and social media, the change we seek under this model has begun. It is messy, chaotic, often violence-prone, and uncertain with false starts, regressions, quantum leaps, advances, and retreats. This change is systemic and integral and by nature is designed to dredge out imbedded practices, expose corruption, and make full transparency the norm. It drains stagnant backwaters, unblocks tributaries, navigates white water rapids, and maintains the ongoing movement of ideas, energy, and the human spirit through time and space that are becoming increasingly condensed with every passing day. It is in the proper management of that tension between chaos and order spiraling upwards on an endless human journey that we become co-creators with The Prime Directive in crafting the human story.
—Don E. Beck, PhD
Founder, Global Centers for Human Emergence
Coauthor of Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change
Denton, Texas
PART ONE
MEMEnomics
The Whole-Systems View of the Evolution of Economies
It is claimed that Albert Einstein said: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Anyone who is familiar with the current political and economic divide in this country knows we are facing problems of significant proportions that the old system cannot solve. Innovative ideas don’t see the light of day as they become polarized into the two political camps of the left or the right. We elect politicians who promise change, yet the political machinery renders their visions obsolete. In frustration, we elect new politicians and send them to the same politically divided system expecting different results. Opposing economic and political ideologies are driving a deep wedge into the fabric of American culture, but things don’t have to be that way. What if the current political and economic stalemate could be reframed through a theory that attempts to “explain everything”? One that has been used to help South Africa transition from Apartheid, inspire the Palestinian people to build the infrastructure of their future state, and inform the designers of the new Icelandic constitution? These are some of the successes that global change- agents have been able to achieve by applying the same theoretical framework on which the memenomics framework is based.
The impetus behind the concepts that are laid out in this book comes from the seminal work of two prominent developmental psychologists, Clare W. Graves and Don Edward Beck. Graves, who was a contemporary of Abraham Maslow, authored the theory known in its abbreviated form as the theory of human existence. In this theory, Graves laid out his views that differed from those of his contemporaries about the very nature of the development of the mature human being. While others contented that a mature human or a mature culture is a desired final state of existence, Graves argued that it is embedded in human nature not to have a final state. He described the human journey as an endless quest and that human values shape culture, and culture in turn shapes human values. It is the coupling of these two factors into what Graves termed as a “double helix” model where psychological human capacities can recalibrate higher or lower levels in response to changing life conditions, which is culture or the social part of the model. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the humanistic psychology movement at the time, he firmly believed that society, or social factors, play a critical role in how humans and cultures evolve. He was the first academic researcher to incorporate the “social” aspect of human development into a model that became identified as the “bio-psycho-social” model of human and social development.
Beck met Graves in 1974 and left his tenured academic career as a professor to pursue Graves’s application of his research. In 1996, along with Christopher Cowan, he authored a book titled Spiral Dynamics that became the most authoritative container of Graves’s methodologies and research. Spiral Dynamics is the theory that Beck and Cowan created, of which I have been a student for the last decade. This is not only because of the theory’s appeal. It is also because I have been one of the luckiest people in the world to work closely with the brilliant mind of Don E. Beck.
Memenomics is a composite of two words. The first is “meme,” which is a term originally coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. It rhymes with gene and just like a gene that carries the codes that define human characteristics, a meme carries the codes that define cultural characteristics. The second word is based on “economics.” It is the coming together of the two fields, economics and memetics that form this new and innovative area for study that is presented in this book. Memenomics is based on natural evolutionary concepts that define individuals, institutions, and cultures as value systems memes or vMEMEs and offers economic solutions that are congruent with these memetic codes.
Memes involving music, fads, fashion, and so forth, will be explained in more detail in an upcoming chapter. Memes define our lives. As they become classified into cultural groupings such as religion, philosophy, politics, and sports, they come together to form a values-system meme or vMEME. Graves was the first person to use the term values-system to refer to the varying preferences and priorities that humans have in their lives depending on their level of development. Over many decades of research Graves identified eight levels of value systems. Beck and Cowan gave the term a more contemporary name by calling it a vMEME. Their work also expanded on the definition of the “double helix” aspect of the model into two distinct principals: the first is the human capacity to create vMEMEs, and the second is the life conditions that awaken vMEMEs. A more detailed discussion of these two important aspects of this framework will take place in chapter 2. Throughout the book, the terms value systems and vMEMEs are a reference to the bio-psycho-social stage of development of a person or a culture. Regardless of which term is used, the important distinction that is made in this book is that the decision-making process of leaders is a quantifiable one based on which value-system a decision maker belongs to, since each of these eight known levels of human existence has its own rules and views about which governing systems are the best to use to run social and economic systems. This is how Memenomics reframes the past, present, and future debate regarding economic policy.
The reader will repeatedly see my use of the term “human emergence.” The genesis of this term should be explained since it has direct relevance to the very nature of the Graves/Beck conceptual framework and to that of memenomics. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, while Graves’s academic contemporaries were busy defining the steps needed for a human or a culture to reach a mature or utopian state, his research was pointing away from this direction. Graves believed that there is no end state and that what might be a utopian existence today might not be that in a decade. To him, the human growth phenomenon was a leaf-like enfoldment on an endless journey towards higher levels of maturity, personality, and culture.1 He called his theory the “Emergent, Cyclical, Levels of Existence of human behavior” and referred to it as ECLET. Below is a transcription of Graves’s own words from a 1974 conference, in which he distinguished the use of the term “emergence” as an endless natural process to describe his unique approach in explaining human nature:
I call this theory today the emergent, cyclical levels of existence theory of human behavior. Now, I call it that because certain things have come out of the data with time that require that particular terminology. One is the psychology of man seems to be ever emerging which is a point of view which is extremely different from what you have in so many psychologies of man where they talk about trying to move man toward The mature human being, The healthy personality. Or they try to move a society toward becoming a utopian society, and my data doesn’t support that kind of thinking at all. My data says that there is no such thing as a mature society or the psychologically mature human being. It says that he infinitely changes. So the idea of “Emergence” came out of that.2
In several conversations I had with Beck about the genesis of the term, he agreed that the elegance through which Graves’s data presented itself is more akin to an “enfoldment” of human development, than the evolution of it. According to Beck, the two additional factors that might have lead Graves to use the term emergence was Graves witnessing the academic and the institutional resistance that his colleague Maslow experienced in using terms such as “hierarchy” and “evolution.” The 1960s and 1970s were times of egalitarian values and anything that used these two terms was frowned upon. In the late 1990s Beck established the first Center for Human Emergence (CHE) with the following mission: “The Center for Human Emergence will help facilitate the conscious emergence of the human species using a synthesis of profound breakthroughs in human knowledge and capabilities, encompassing natural pattern coherence, mega-integration, unification, expanded whole mind capacity, deep intelligence and consciousness”3
Today, there are more the a dozen CHEs around the world whose primary mission is to reframe human and cultural challenges through the prism of values systems and provide solutions that are naturally resilient.
My inspiration to write this book came from my decade-long work with Dr. Beck who is one of the pioneers of the values-systems approach to solving problems. As a renowned geopolitical advisor, Dr. Beck has left his mark around the globe from his hometown of Dallas to Johannesburg, London, and Ramallah, and everywhere in between. By applying this framework to real life applications I learned much of the intelligence behind the principles of Spiral Dynamics and large-scale change. My first experience with the applications of values systems to economics came at The Center for Human Emergence Middle East (CHE-ME) where as COO I helped its founders, Dr. Beck and my wife, Elza Maalouf, design the economic development elements of the Build Palestine Initiative. The culture that was created under Beck’s leadership at the CHE-ME instilled a completely different approach to our research and design than the ones commonly used by Western think tanks, consultants, and the endless number of NGOs. Elza, who is the CEO of the CHE-ME, is writing a book about these methodologies that are based on a Spiral Dynamics concept called Natural Design. This is a large-scale systems change model of the Graves/Beck framework that naturally aligns people, resources, institutions, and processes to serve a superordinate goal that speaks to all the stakeholders in the culture. Much of the last part of this book will use these Natural Design processes to create a unique, culturally fit and resilient economy of the future.
What added to my resolve to write this book, were the tools that I acquired from this framework that I applied in my professional field as a real estate developer and investment advisor. The ability to perform “thin-slicing” on culture was a tool that helped me anticipate the housing crash and the subsequent financial crisis. At the end of 2005, to the surprise of my colleagues, I wound down development operations while they continued building homes. By the end of 2008 the housing bubble had left most builders in the country restructuring their debt or seeking outright bankruptcy protection. By the time the financial crisis was in full swing I was urged by a small circle of friends, including Don Beck, to let the world in on how this whole-systems approach to economic values can provide effective tools in predicting economic change and designing for a sustainable future.
In 2008 and 2009 I authored several papers that offered a memetic analysis on the causes of the financial crisis.4 It is that paradigm shift of seeing the world through the stratified lenses of value systems as presented through the theory of Spiral Dynamics and the Graves methodology that I wish to bring to the perception of the reader. It is my hope that policymakers dealing with all aspects of our geopolitical challenges and not just economic policy bring this emerging science that recognizes various value systems that exist in the world into their decision-making framework.
I describe memenomics as the study of the long-term effects of economic policy on culture as seen through the eyes of the emerging science of value systems. The theory is about using a whole-systems approach to viewing and solving economic challenges. I have applied its concepts and principles in the field, and I have been teaching it at graduate transformational leadership programs for several years. It starts where evolutionary economics ends and borrows from all economic principles, but is not a part of the economics mainstream. An entire chapter is dedicated to detailing the main principles on which the memenomics framework is built. This is where complexity theory meets economic policy.
The concepts presented here are not about faulting certain aspects of economic theory and practice or the premise of one ideology over the other. It will not help a reader in the process of choosing certain stocks or aid a brokerage house in enhancing its hedge fund strategies. It’s more about creating a paradigm shift away from the theoretical silos and the empirical nature of economics to the wider view of the role that modern day commerce plays in the emergence or stagnation of humanity. Over five thousand books have been written since the 2008 financial crisis that offer different views on the failure of past economic policy and what to do going forward. Some offer strategies on how to take advantage of the recessionary aftermath, while others look to point the finger of blame at whoever is in the cross hairs of their beliefs and value systems. Competing thought-leaders make compelling cases for why we should return to Keynesian economics and have government play a greater role in directing economic policy, while others want to revive the virtues of the Reaganomics era of laissez-faire capitalism. There is no single book on the market today that offers an evolutionary perspective on macroeconomics. This book is at the confluence of contemporary ideas on emergence, complex systems, and sustainable economic policies.
In Memenomics I explain from a unique perspective the role that cultural value systems play in defining the success or failure of economic policy. Through better knowledge of this emerging science that examines psychology on a large scale, the behaviors and ideologies emanating from certain value systems are easily detected and put through a new prism that determines their potential for either long-term sustainability or short-term exploitation.
The theory of memenomics peels away the layers of econo-speak and returns the core of this discipline to its origin as a social science. It creates ways for the reader to understand how government economic policies can be made wiser and how government itself can “run smarter.” It shows how business can be made to have healthier practices and how to design for a future economy from a unique value-systems perspective. By reframing the issues through the prism of memenomics, a far more integral view emerges about the hierarchical nature of human development, which then opens the space to reframe human behavior and cultural development at a far deeper level. This is a unique approach that enables the reader to see the different value preferences of the vast numbers of people who roam the planet based on their level of development and offers a differentiated way to handle their needs that is naturally sustainable.
The first part of the book introduces the concept and the history of value systems and the different uses of its principles around the world in order to gain insights into why this approach is different. The first chapter chronicles the life of one of the most powerful men in modern-day capitalism. It follows the career of the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, and examines the forces that shaped his life through a prism that sets the tone for the book. It describes his early childhood and his rise to power, as he became one of the most influential global leaders, and the final days of his career when he acknowledged the fallacy of his ideologies and the demise of his once pioneering worldview. On A New Day of Infamy the maestro of global commerce admits to faulty thinking that exposes vulnerabilities in the direction capitalism has taken over four decades, which becomes the catalyst that sparks the search for a new paradigm. This sets the stage for the reader to understand that the Enlightenment Era, a vMemetic code of one of the value-systems levels, was just a stop along our journey of human emergence in an endless quest towards higher values. It opens the doorway to begin thinking in terms of evolving systems that alter in response to a changing reality instead of being frozen in ideologies beholden to values fixed in time.
The second chapter details the main principals behind the emerging science of value-systems on which the concept of memenomics is built. Based on a bio-psycho-social approach to measuring human values, it describes how cultures emerge and why. The history of this conceptual framework is relayed, as well as the background of the reasons I developed my ideas that support the theory of Clare Graves, that was described by the Canadian publication Maclean’s Magazine as the theory that explains everything.5 It briefly introduces the groundbreaking research of Clare W. Graves whose seminal work represented the most ambitious effort by an academic on the mapping of human existence. The reader is then introduced to the theory of Spiral Dynamics developed by Graves’s successors, Don Edward Beck and Christopher Cowan. Through my decade-long work experience with Beck, I reintroduce parts of the theory in this chapter that apply to value systems in economics. I then describe the eight known levels of human existence with distinct value systems and the characteristics unique to each level, such as social and economic preferences, life priorities, ways of thinking, and many other characteristics. The reader can gain understanding of what research now confirms: value systems exist as structures in the brain, as well as on psychological belief systems and behaviors and levels of existence within culture. There are examples in the chapter of different economic value systems around the world with analysis that demonstrate how we’ve been approaching economic development from what Graves called “subsistence values” which sets forth the urgent need to alter our approach.
The third chapter explains what memenomics is and presents the methodologies used through this approach. It explains why they are different from what most economists use in their approaches and why advancements even in the field of evolutionary economics fall short of providing a whole-systems approach to solving economic problems. It clarifies the difference between economic cycles and memenomic cycles and describes the different phases of a cycle. In this way, it can be understood how visionary ideas are born and come to define our culture for decades and how they mature, decline, and eventually decay, and become a part of the DNA of future cycles. The chapter also provides a new way for viewing technological cycles and how they affect human emergence. Finally, we look at the nature of change through the prism of value systems that enable the reader to acquire the knowledge needed to distinguish between aesthetic change and systemic change and know when and how to design for each.
The fourth chapter concludes the first part of the book by looking at the vMemetic role that money historically played in the emergence of cultures. Before the appearance of any of the Abrahamic religions, which are codes of the fourth-level value system, something emerged much earlier in human history that made us abandon our impulsive hunter-gatherer existence and adopt more tempered values. This became the codification of trade into monetary systems of exchange. This chapter looks at the history of money through a value-systems lens in order to establish its functional role as an agent of the fourth-level value system. As we examine its evolution from its earliest form as grain to its current status as a fiat currency, we get a critical vMEME perspective on the challenges facing Western economies today. This time is indeed different, not just because of what econometrics tell us, but because we have perverted the historic representative of productive output. This chapter gives many examples to make clear the consequences we must face when we corrupt one of the oldest and most common vMemetic codes of the fourth-level value system: Money.
In the second part of the book the economic history of the United States is reinterpreted through the memenomics framework. Analysis of the competing value systems is made as history is reframed through a concept of memenomic cycles. Normal economic cycles and super economic cycles have framed the debate of modern economics, but memenomic cycles show us the unique nature of human values as they evolve in levels and waves to provide new tools for the reader to understand how and why complex economic ideologies rise and fall. Once this whole-systems approach is understood, the reader will have a new understanding of how events like the financial crisis of 2008 are the necessary transcendence of a lower value expression in order for the evolution of capitalism to continue on its endless quest along the upward spiral of human existence.
While there are eight known levels of existence or vMEMEs that are the eight levels of value systems under the Graves/Beck model, this book focuses on the economic life cycles of only five of these levels. These historic periods I call memenomic cycles take place within the time frame that five of the eight known levels dominated our values and beliefs. The first two value systems don’t have much of an economic system that is relevant to today’s economy and are therefore not discussed. The first value system is of early human survival, which had no economic system to speak of. The second is the tribal value system that represents simple agrarian trade, which has a minor influence on today’s complex global economy. The third vMEME, which started with the spread of the values of “Empire” and ended with the beginning of the “mass production and allocation” of the Industrial Revolution, represents our entry into modern-day economics. This end phase of the third known level of existence, the egocentric value system, defined the adolescent stages of modern economics in the United States. This is the era that represents the first significant economic activity in cultural evolution that I call the first memenomic cycle.
Since the end of the Civil War the United States has been through three memenomic cycles. Chapter five examines the first two cycles. We will briefly look at the economic codes of the third-level value system that defined the first cycle that I call the Fiefdoms of Power meme. It is symbolized by the rise to power of feudal and egocentric values that were prevalent from the end of the Civil War to the onset of the Great Depression. The years from the 1930s to the 1970s are reframed through the theories of memenomics as the