Second part of the article taken from chapter 0 of Dr. Sara Gambelli's thesis, entitled:
"Biotransenergetics in the Corporate: the Transpersonal vision in Organizations, towards a paradigm leap"
Companies: twilight zones of evolution
What happens in organizations? Is the daily life of women and men within companies the most accentuated and radical expression of these phenomena? In companies, the innovative drive, the dynamism impressed with force by the technological and digital transformation and by global competition mean that the perception of uncertainty, instability and speed is raised to power.
Today's companies are an exciting place for daily adventure, for individual and collective enterprise, they are spaces for the expression of skills and talents, they are the territories of continuous experimentation and practiced innovation. But they are also contexts of "punishment" where you work a lot and the reason why you do it is easily lost dramatically. You feel caught in a vortex in which if you do not guarantee a performance and motivational standard adequate to the strategic plans designed at the top, there will be someone who will do it in your place.
In the last 10 years, organizations have become the most advanced terrain, a sort of permanent laboratory of a real anthropological mutation. At all managerial and non-managerial levels, people are called to pursue high challenging objectives to be fully performing and brilliant; in addition, they must maintain their skills and be mentally agile and open: more and more training courses in design thinking and agile technologies are required.
Thanks to their digital devices everyone is and must be connected 24 hours a day, which means that they are all perpetually available. Every day, including holidays, it is necessary to manage a large number of e-mails, WhatsApp messages, participate in calls with colleagues around the world based on different time zones. You work in the office, home, in the car or on the train during transfers.
The general perception is that the amount of things to do is far greater than the time and energy available. People tend to live in a state of incessant worry about the possibility of actually making it, often accompanied by a sense of guilt for their own inadequacy.
But there is also a widespread sense of excitement similar to that of the carnival rides. The most common answer to the question "how are you doing?" which? "I'm very tired!" We hardly ever stop because now that is the beginning and even the holidays are often characterized by complex trips to organize a long list of more or less playful activities to check off.
If we consider that in 2015 the people employed in companies in Italy were about 16 million (without considering non-profit associations, public administrations) and that according to demographic data, about 60 million citizens live in Italy, it is easy to consider that this slice of the population it constitutes almost 30% of the total.
Peter Russell speaks of crepuscular zones of evolution to mean those territories where a new order begins to manifest itself which however has not yet fully emerged. The author is a theoretical physicist and experimental psychologist, who belongs to that group of scientists - including David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Bruce Lipton, Candace Pert, Gregg Braden - who investigate new ways of development of Western science, in connection with the Eastern mysticism and modern physics.
Russell compares the wave-particle dualism, a typical paradox of quantum physics, to the evolutionary stage of our society: just as the elementary particle is on the border between energy and matter, it is matter emerging from energy, an intermediate stage. In the same phase he finds himself living life and self-reflective consciousness that is tuning into “new” areas, for example connected with the field of Gaia. In Russell's words: "humanity currently exhibits characteristics of both levels: we are independent conscious units, sometimes coming together to compete as an integrated whole for a common purpose."
Dawn of a Paradigm Shift
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn, one of the most influential philosophers of the 1962th century, published his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, XNUMX). On the basis of fifteen years of intensive study of the history of science, he has shown that the development of knowledge of the universe in various scientific disciplines is not a process of gradual accumulation of data and the formulation of increasingly accurate theories, as is usually assumed. Instead, it exhibits a clearly cyclical nature with specific stages and characteristic dynamics, which can be understood and even predicted.
The central concept of Kuhn's theory, which makes this possible, is that of a paradigm.
Paradeigma from the Greek: para beyond deiknyo monster, or from the ancient Greek paràdeigma, which means exemplary, example. The meaning of paradigm in the dictionary is' fundamental and fully representative model, prototype. Reference model '.
A paradigm can be defined as a constellation of beliefs, values and techniques shared by members of the scientific community in a particular historical period. He regulates scientists' thinking and research activities until some of his basic hypotheses are seriously challenged by new observations.
This leads to a crisis and the emergence of suggestions for radically new ways of seeing and interpreting phenomena that the old paradigm cannot explain. Eventually, one of these alternatives meets the requirements necessary to become the new paradigm that then dominates thought in the next period in the history of science.
The most famous historical examples of paradigm shifts have been the replacement of the Ptolemaic geocentric system by the heliocentric system of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo; the overthrow of Becher's phlogiston theory in chemistry by Lavoisier and Dalton; and the conceptual cataclysms in physics in the first three decades of the twentieth century that undermined the hegemony of Newtonian physics and gave birth to theories of relativity and quantum physics.
The paradigm shifts tend to come as a great surprise to the traditional academic community, as its members tend to confuse the main paradigms for an accurate and definitive description of reality. So in 1900 shortly before the advent of quantum-relativistic physics, Lord Kelvin allegedly stated in a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains are increasingly precise measurements. "
Over the past fifty years, various avenues of modern consciousness research have revealed a wide range of "anomalous" phenomena - experiences and observations that have undermined some of the generally accepted claims of modern psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy regarding the nature and dimensions of the psyche. human, the origins of emotional and psychosomatic disorders and effective therapeutic mechanisms. Many of these observations are so radical that they question the basic metaphysical assumptions of materialistic science regarding the nature of reality and human beings and the relationship between consciousness and matter.
Apparently, for almost half a century many have been wondering about the need for a paradigm shift, motivated by the emergence of a new vision of reality, a change in what is outside (and inside?), a fundamental shift in the thoughts, perceptions and values of societies and cultures around the world. Because they are the ones that form a particular vision and 'fill' the reference paradigm with meanings and signifiers.
In his chapter 'the inversion of the tide' Capra strongly argues that in our age it is evident that the various experts in scientific fields or subjects on a rational basis are no longer able to answer some questions and reflections that have arisen in their field of application. This happens from politics, sociology, to physics, where the new discoveries of quantum have challenged the mechanistic and Newtonian conceptions.
The historian of science Thomas Kuhn addresses the issue of paradigm shift and questions the neo-positivist epistemology according to which science proceeds cumulatively, i.e. through a constant acquisition of new knowledge and inclusion of previous theories within those current. Kuhn instead points out that there is a discontinuous nature of the development of science, between periods of normal science and periods of extraordinary science.
"Precisely because the birth of a new theory involves the break with a tradition of scientific practice and introduces a new practice that will take place according to different rules and within a different universe of discourse, it is likely that it takes place only when one has the feeling that the previous tradition has gone irremediably astray ”.
Capra in his famous text "The turning point" also tells of the need for a new paradigm, a new vision of reality, a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values ".
To return to Russell, he brings us to a consideration: since humanity is walking in a twilight zone, we understand why it is so intricate to free ourselves from the web of the economic, social, political, ecological and moral crisis of human history.
To use his expression, “emerge through the emergency”, could we ask ourselves the meaning of considering organizations as an excellent playground to start implementing this change, this paradigm shift?
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Occupational and Organizational Psychologist, Yoga Teacher and Psychotherapist with a transpersonal biotransenergetic approach. For years you have been working as a consultant in the Human Resources area on training projects for the development of managerial skills and on potential assessment interventions, in Italy and abroad. The passion for this work stems from the awareness of being able to paint scenarios of personal evolution even before professional, developing relationships, synergies and the ability to change oneself, so that all the rest can be transformed all of a sudden. Implementing it in the organizational context allows to obtain a high degree of transformation, which passes through creativity and enthusiasm for the results achieved.
Read the first part of this article by clicking HERE!
(Balance between productivity and presence)
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