Great contribution Terri. I would like to cite all of it but the last bit
is the part to build on:
==========start============
An aside: How do the rest of you answer the question, why is wealth
important? Not just a surface kind of answer, like for organizational
survival or paying the family bills, but the more essential answer? Maybe
I'm wrong, but I'd guess most of you would answer similarly: that
organizational survival is important in order to provide jobs for people;
jobs are important so that people can care for themselves, their families,
their communities, the earth. Or to contribute something meaningful to
others. Or to cultivate personal talents and abilities. Or to otherwise
live life more fully. How different might our workplaces be if we kept
these assumptions, as goals, in front of us--NOT replacing wealth, but
atleast alongside it?
I sometimes think we sell ourselves short by keeping money as the bottom
line. I'll step off my soapbox now . . .
=========end of quote========
I wonder if we make another assumption that equates wealth to money. Can we
make a distinction of the two?. For me 'wealth' includes communities,
environments, learning, 'intelligence', talents and abilities etc. I am
tempted to think of it as any low entropy that we value. Money is
ultimately a convenient means of exchange that has crowded out rather too
much of the collective social meaning space [And no I am not saying do
without it or denying that I enjoy having it].
Wealth is important to me because it is what stops life being nasty brutish
and short. Fossil resources converted into money, pleasant as they may be,
do not occur to me as much of a basis for wealth in the future. More from
your or anyone else's soabox would be welcome.
If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com
--Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>