In Paradise, man is an animal. As he does not possess any consciousness of his imperfection, he is perfect.

Outside Paradise, he is conscious of his imperfection and thus distinguishes himself from animals. This consciousness continuously gives him stimuli, resulting in the history of mankind as a permanent succession of intention, its shaping into a vision or a model and subsequent translation into action.

Man cannot be perfect but he can develop his own perception of himself and the world: that is visualization. This external and internal visualization differs from that of everyone else; it is the very fabric of the individual.

If consciousness of imperfection is used with the express aim of describing and defining perfection, which one is not, this creates an ideal. This tends to incite us – in vain – to strive to achieve it, and this futility is often experienced as guilt.

The juxtaposition of imperfection and the image or vision of something perfect generates morals which in the form of dictates generate dogmas, the concept of sin – a religion is born.

Likewise, dogmatic religion must fight against individual visualization; if everyone has his own picture of things, dogmatic religion loses the very basis of its existence. “Thou shall not create thy own image!” – of course, apart from the one that dogmatists prescribe. The dogmatic image or vision is inevitably more abstract than the abundance of visualized images that arise freely and naturally.

It is however a phenomenon of great beauty that the whole host of freely created, visualized images, of the perception of both the internal and the external world, shows interrelations between the images of individuals; similarities and clusters, which are like crossroads of value and significance in the whole of the flowing universe.

The result is a state of consciousness along the lines of “I am not alone”; a long shot from the dictates of compulsory belonging – to a chosen people, to any one particular religion or any ism.

Everywhere there are transition points and hybrids in between these two forms of affinity, the freely experienced form and the compulsory one. No one is completely free as he perceives himself to be imperfect; on the other hand, no one can be made to conform completely.

Since time immemorial we have been organizing ourselves in groups, clans, families, states, companies often based on the principles of division of labor. Like their members, all these forms are imperfect which consequently triggers constant change in an attempt to improve on the situation – change in forms of organization, forms of co-existence and interaction and frequently of counteraction. This change is generally initiated by those with greater power.

At the onset of industrialization, powerful figures succeeded in making an incredibly clever move. Prior to that, in fact for thousands of years, there had been various degrees of dependence, for example serfdom, slavery. What was now new was an abstract form of work, of working for others, of conferring a kind of religious character on work against wages that led these people to strive for dependence willingly (following a rather tedious phase of adaptation) and gradually start to measure their own value in terms of having work or not – and that is still the same today.

Although this dependence was initially based on the sense of belonging to one big family, people were proud of working “at Bosch” or “at Daimler”; but in time, companies and organizations have become more and more abstract and global. Today there is generally only a small minority of people (Gallup estimates approx. 15%) who are proud of their working lot and satisfied with the same. The fact that this small minority is the locomotive, that it drives our economic performance ahead, is well-known without it being regarded as scandalous. The notorious excuse of the imperfection of organizations can no longer be used in this case. I call this an unexplained state of emergency, a state of wordy speechlessness? People do not understand, love and recognize what they are doing. There has never been a religion that has provided its members with so little emotional affinity as today’s “work”.

If millions of people do something every single day, the sense of which is not revealed to them, should this state of affairs not be considered “inhuman”?

In many places the attempt is currently being made to motivate employees using models or visions with a top-down approach. Models and visions are nothing new and include both the propaganda models and visions of fascism and communism, as well as saints and figures from archetypal fairy stories and myths who are worshipped as ideals, including ritual dances. And this now extends to the thinking patterns of executive boards.

I feel this is where the crux of all our future can be found. If we could succeed in developing a truly new form of models and visions that addresses people in this day and age, in the form of personnel development that pays due respect to the dignity of individuals, that releases them from being a mere cog in the vast machinery of power, then this would allow us to develop neglected potential of people to say YES.

The consequences, even in economic terms, are hardly conceivable.

We have the opportunity of initiating a dialog between the power of our inner images that are slumbering within us with comprehensible intentions and goals of a company or organization. The opportunity of exercising great patience to discover common thoughts and interests, in a dialog between imperfect people and groups who have almost forgotten how to listen, how to understand.
We have the opportunity of taking up the thoughts of David Bohm, of conducting dialogs in order to understand others without getting caught up in a back and forth of self-opinionated arguments. Those willing to listen set up a micro culture, a micro cosm of a greater culture in which all have a share in everything. This may seem difficult, but we should assume that it is feasible.

The task of creating models for this purpose is one in which it is worth participating.