Engagement is Critical for Business, Creativity and Life

Power and creativity, they go hand-in-hand.

The modern symbol of economic creativity is the skyscraper. It is a monument to numbers. An office tower. Dedicated to creating the life of business, numbers. This was the power of the image of the World Trade Center.

Work is supposed to be an act of creativity. From that, a worker gets a sense of power from his/her efforts of creation. An act of life creating life.

But work for so many, work is drudgery. There is little act of creativity that comes from within. It is labor. Mental labor. Dry rationalism converted into activity. But for what? Our survival depends on getting the numbers, money, for the boss and for one's paycheck. Survival is about creating numbers.

A self-actualized human is supposed to be able to control his/her world. It is his act of creativity, his power. But domesticated humans, urban, modern, whether in a factory or a suit, is bound by the work environment limiting human creativity. Citizens have to find it some other way to feel 'fully human.'

We live in the factory model of survival. It really hasn't changed with the advent of the service and information economy. Its all about sales, managing people, taking care of your cog in the wheel of the business machine to produce numbers. Creativity is severely limited. Creativity from within and for the benefit of the system.

It is no wonder that entertainment is the United States' second largest industry, and perhaps largest export. It is creativity, but interestingly, it is limited work; a project of short duration to create an illusion on the silver screen, television or iPod. All the hard work, the building of sets, etc., evaporate after it is converted to celuloid. The illusion is created by thousands of hands through carpenters, computer animators, sound engineers, camera people, the list is endless.

It is the industry whose work plugs into non-factory life. Reality is dull. 'Go to work, say the words, get the money, go home.' How did you control reality? Did you create something? Never mind. The movie is on. It will give us a better story.

People hate their jobs if there is no creativity involved. The factory model of work limits the worker's involvement in the whole process of creation. They feel disconnected, limited in power and connection to what they are doing. The major crisis in many industries now is workers' 'engagement' in their jobs. They just don't care, because the work is so limited, boring, disengaged from the faculties that promote engagement in a real human being. How do you purchase the worker's heart to make them actually care about that customer, that overdue invoice, that pile of paper that has to be filed? How do you get them enthused about... nothing, really.

Many people find work that satisfies them, of course. Despite having to work the graveyard shift, firefighters take satisfaction in saving a life and a home. And our society is all about 'setting goals' and 'achieving' them. Accomplishment as creativity in whatever its form.

Citizens need a balanced life. Perhaps work is not satisfying, but family life and community service, or the woodworking shop in the cellar, compensate for the lack of soul found in getting the money to survive.

And the shopping mall suffices for a sense of power, being able to purchase seductive, perfect, beautiful things created by machines. Home makeovers are so popular with women because it gives them some of that sense. Marriage is said to be hard work, but rarely soul work. Creating the attractive body at the gym engages our energies toward a worthy goal.

Creating pleasureable meaning in itself is now more important than the relationship of creating with our work, connected with the material world outside of us. Reality is what we can see and control.

But the reality of the meaning we create is truly what concerns the managers and magazines of our lives. Getting people to care about authority's agenda is crucial. Morale is an engine of productivity, so the illusion of the importance of one's work must be created in the imagination of the workers. We don't want them to think they are only putting cardboard boxes on a shelf. They are 'helping the customer,' creating profits for themselves, and achieving goals to make them feel proud. Expand the meaning when the truth of the actual mechanics of your monotonous labor is really too much to bear as a living, breathing, thinking, creative human organism.

We have to look for the 'bottom line' at the end of the day. Did all our efforts add up to some meaning that is significant to us? It is difficult in many positions, because the nature of business is the constant grind to produce numbers. It doesn't matter what you did yesterday. And it doesn't matter if you are good at what you do. Corporate restructuring, the cult of 'change,' could put one on the unemployment line because of some executive's grand new scheme to increase profits and stay competitive.

It is a tough calculation to feel whole in our society. Everything has to be managed. The meaning of what we do has to be massaged to make it worthwhile for us. We are a 'values' culture, a mathematical term, having to think about what we have done to create the justification to ourselves. Our relationship to our work has to be negotiated in our minds. There is nothing inherently connected between work, creativity and power that satisfies us without having to think about it. Its head work, not heart work.

Power is money. A C.E.O. is powerful because of the mysterious ability to control the massive factors in a huge corporation. Humans, markets, finance, distribution systems, product, forecasting, there are so many things that he/she must keep in motion in the proper proportions to create that one number, the quarterly profit. Its a management thing. Was it really creative? Or was it mathematics? Putting together limited human job categories to create the 'whole' number.

A corporation is an idea that everyone buys into. They believe that the thoughts will convert into the reality, and that will eventually produce a paycheck. The hierarchical structure, the corporate culture, the mission statement, everyone playing their role in the faith that it keeps the wheels going for the whole intellectual construct of the business that converts inert matter (or just numbers) into enough extra money to pay the workers and a dividend. If everyone stopped believing in the imagination, the theology of the business structure, the human relationship rules and roles, the organization would fall apart. We create the mutual myth and agree to have faith in it, acting upon the belief, and see the results. Managing people is the key factor in all managers' equations. Its an art between systems, conformity and the wiles of human emotions.

But it can fall apart in a day. Look at Enron. A multi-billion dollar corporation that collapsed in one day because the logic in the numbers was faulty, so the actual work being done evaporated. Reality is nothing without the numbers. The myth of coordinated human effort dissolved without the numbers.

This is the negotiation of the modern human in his/her quest for the numbers to survive. Nothing is secure. It is almost like religion, the myth of the threat and promise that everyone buys into and forms their meaning around. Faith in the system of work.

What does our creativity produce? Is it real? Our faith in numbers, especially money, is the driving force behind what we do. The work is secondary, even if we enjoy what we are doing. The economic 'environment' can send a hurricane and destroy our work home.

We aim for retirement so we can escape 'the system,' and enjoy life, the American dream of having enough money so that we can be 'free.' Escape from the survival system, the economic environment, the human environment that we have created for our survival. We want out of the prison, the control of our lives that tells us when to wake up, where to go and what to do.

This is the basis of the artificial world we have created. Its quite comfortable, but it divides every activity to be managed by ourselves within someone else's system. It requires a lot of thinking, a lot of negotiation and prioritizing to create our happiness equation. Then we can go sight-seeing, play games, look at DisneyWorld, or get a sun tan to help us relax.

What we do has a residual effect on us. Farmers must be up at dawn to milk the cows and help the calfing. The experience seeps into their souls, their connection with their work. Life is a continual motion machine. Urban living involves working without life, outside of humans, disconnected with the life and raw material of nature, of the source. That is what seeps into our souls. The constant calculation, negotiation and activity to satisfy power's need for numbers.

What do we really own? Everything is contingent. It is ironic that our culture is based on 'possession.' Ideas are copyrighted, genes of individual humans are being patented by corporations, which effectively 'owns' the sequence of who you are, communal property has eroded as government has sold-off or 'outsourced' what our taxes pay for. Little is free anymore. We even have to pay to see 'nature' in our national parks, eventhough our taxes have already 'paid' for this wilderness. Everything becomes a transaction. Vagrants cannot even stay on the streets, the last 'commons' there is. What do we really 'own' that is not entailed to some credit card or liable to be seized for non-payment of city taxes. Our consumer society is habituated into creating waste out of perfectly useable goods, as our basements fill up and the new fashions come in to the stores. Life is contingent. Nothing is solid. Even ownership is devalued and contingent on further payment.

What we create, what gives us our power from our hearts, is severely restricted in modern society. Few objects in our homes have been hand-made. It is purchased. This is how we define the daily reality that we take for granted.

The environmental scare that is sweeping the media is all about preserving our way of life. But what are we preserving? Our comfort. Our security. Our survival. But not our creativity. Not the power of our heart, 'who' we are. We are disconnected from our creative heart like we are from our work and nature. People want to preserve their freedom. Money is freedom, a number in our thoughts.

Our thoughts are the most important thing. The imagination that creates the meaning of who we are without being oppressed by someone else's dictates. We struggle to keep the world at bay to make life happy, but the distractions of modern life never truly let us bore down to the core of what is really going on.

Creativity is power.

What comes from deep within us? What is merely pieced together from what we have purchased? It is the difference between the life of the equation, variables pieced together to form an outcome, and the spiritual energy of who we really are if society could recognize 'reality' outside of this urban survival system we call a 'culture.' We are economic humans. Ideas, fashion, and objects are disposable. We float on the meaning of the artificial environment we have created, fearing that if it were taken away, we would be left with 'nothing.'

We are a culture of deep disconnection. Our minds break down and analyze each constituent part. And then we piece the reality back together in the meaning that we want. Nature is now the environment, a mechanism we can control. Work is now a treadmill. Creativity is the avenue for commerce. Power is divorced from creation, and is now the manager of it, defining the myth of how reality is transformed into mathematics. This is our reality now. Humans alone in an inanimate universe, trying to create their dream without realizing what is truly asleep in them. Individualism indeed. Alone indeed.

Engagement is thought to be 'mind over matter.' What matters?