The Authentic Organization

As I see it, social and personal change comes about through an honest and transparent commitment to two sides of an endless contradiction: The world as it is and the world as we wish it were. We can’t trade one for the other. We have to embrace both in order to make change.

That is why I believe one of the great enemies of authenticity is something that we might call Faux Realism. You are very likely familiar with it. It’s the so-called realism that gets brought up when someone doesn’t support a course of action suggested by your ideals. That’s not realistic, they say. Face reality. Be pragmatic.

Well, yes, by all means. But our desires for a better world - for ourselves, for the people we love, and for all the world - are just as real as the conditions that make it hard to achieve those desires. Again, it’s bridging the contradiction that matters.

I came across an example of this faux realism today in an article on myths of personal finance, written by an online marketer named Andy Hagans. (I have no doubt that his work is very popular. People want money, after all.) I’ve already written to him about this, so I’m not talking out of school, however, I won’t link to his piece because that ends up just driving traffic to him.

The piece is pretty mainstream. It’s no more poisonous than most of the stuff people watch on television every day. That, unfortunately, is part of the problem. I’ll quote one part that is particularly illustrative, entitled Myth #2 “Rich people are scum.”

Or greedy, selfish, uncaring, or whatever. It’s just that the scummy rich are more played up in the media because it sells newspapers. Of course, the rich didn’t get that way by giving away their money. At least not until they are ultra-rich like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and others who have donated to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One principle you could live by is this: you can’t help the poor if you are yourself poor. Idealism is romantic, but reality is more sobering. This is a variation of the belief that “money is the root of all evil.” What the Bible really says is that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (Timothy 6:10). These are two wholly different things, but the misinterpretation causes some people, even whole societies, to shun money. Become wealthy, then start your own prosperity project and give away wealth to good causes of your choosing.

The statement “It’s just that the scummy rich are more played up in the media because it sells newspapers.”? is certainly not consistent with my experience. Most of the stories about awful events are generally crimes of violence committed largely by people who are not rich. (Reporting on such violence has increased dramatically, even as the actual rates of violent crime have decreased.) And in regard to those who are rich, papers and magazines seem generally pretty fawning to me.

He asserts “One principle you could live by is this: you can’t help the poor if you are yourself poor.” I really dislike this one. I doubt if the author has ever done poverty advocacy work. Aside from the notion that you help people by giving money away, he ignores all the other ways in which people help each other. (As far as I’m concerned, the greatest gift we have to give each other is time. It’s also the most precious and it’s inherently leveling.) The author ignores the success of early labor organizers, civil rights organizers, ACORN, and countless others. Most of the great work on behalf of the poor has not, in fact, been done by the rich.

The author perpetuates the notion that good works have to wait until we’re rich. Since most people are never rich, that means most people will simply grasp at it all their lives and put off making a difference in the world, if they were to follow his advice. That’s life-wasting poison.

Ironically, later on he promotes the book Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. For years, I taught a workshop called Making a Living, Making a Difference so I have some experience with this subject. What’s more is that I facilitated support groups and counseled people over time (I still do), so I saw what happened when people actually followed different advice. My conclusion is that only the “do what you love part” is correct. Yes, it will make you happier, all other things being equal. But money and virtuous work have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The great challenge is to find a way to get paid for doing what we love, not just to do what we love and hope we get paid.

This brings us back to bridging contradictions. Instead of dismissive, poisonous, so-called realism, bridging contradictions is what authentic work is all about.