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3.10.2007

Swamp thing morphs into a meadow!

Push systems cannot pull for the learners, customers, communities or the environment. Push systems need particular kinds of people to perpetuate their pushing. They need pawns who like to be pushed (asking to be kidnapped) and some other people to do the pushing (curmudgeons).

Those of us who favor pulling -- have tried to pull for the push systems. We have given the pushers the time and space to outgrow their insistence on doing harm. We've supported their coming to realizations about the effects they're having and the other choices they could consider. We've tried our best: to not push back and to not become part of their problem.

Push systems take advantage of anyone who favors pulling, permission, participation and process. Pushers exploit our show of compassion, generosity, trust and respect. Push system get bigger at our expense -- as if size is the prize. Push systems cannot protect and defend: quality, intrinsic value, conversation or community. Push systems are aristocratic and devastating to the middle classes and political moderates. They undermine the rights of "we the people". Pushing their content, products and formal structures of command & control -- breeds more massive appetites for mass consumption and mass hysteria. Pushing brings about big problems, big consequences, big damage and big breakdowns.

As we've been finding well marked exits from the obese push systems, a heart-warming change has begun to occur. The push systems appear to be self-destructing. The established order is composting itself. The push systems have found a way to poison themselves. They are getting a taste of their own medicine. There is justice in their violation of human and environmental rights. The push systems are becoming a plague unto themselves.

Push systems breakdown when everyone on the inside becomes a pusher. There are no more pawns to be pushed around. Every transaction becomes a pushing match, an argument or a contest of wills. Trust evaporates and litigation fills in every gap. Learners, customers, and communities have begun to push back for the sake of pushing and showing off. The denizens on the inside are deeply cynical and disenchanted. They have disengaged from buying in and selling out to the machine. A consensual nightmare is being manufactured by the push systems final phase of existence. Darkness is overtaking their wicked designs on human lives and planetary ecologies.

The former pawns in the push system have become narcissistic. The once-passive players are discovering how much they can cheat without getting caught. They are testing the limits and finding the loopholes in those pervasive systems of command and control. They have become as self-centered as the machines that raised them into digital savages. These former pawns appear "anti-social and manipulative" to the push systems which are inherently anti-social and manipulative. The narcissists are playing along in school and employment -- as if it's a stupid game stuck at the entry level with no incentives for growing, changing, learning or creating.

The push systems cannot go on like this. The swamp thing will naturally be replaced by a meadow. The long-established, command & control systems will fall by the wayside. The obsolete institutions will rot into a rich top soil that nurtures the growth of the next phase of planetary, political, economic and community developments. Vibrant villages of pull systems will fill in the vacancies and flourish in the uncertain times. Quality, value creation and conversations will emerge as "the way we do things from now on". Those antiquated, aristocratic regimes and corporate governances will lose their constituencies, market share and mandate. This is simply how change comes about perfectly.

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