(H)uman (R)ights (O)fficer (or, “HERO,” for short)

Every company should have an HRO. There needs to be an office that oversees employee complaints and employee welfare. Employees would be involved in its power-structure so that there could be no compromise that the employees were not willing to accept. Healthcare, chemicals, taxes, a constructive employee community, ergonomics and fitness, all of these would fall under the care of the office of the HRO. The HRO would prevent Management from getting top-heavy, and would keep the staff from becoming insensitive to the overall needs of the company or enterprise. Profit-sharing and other such investment-and-return scenarios would probably be a natural outcome of a balanced and effective HRO. The HRO would be responsible for converting companies patterned after totalitarian or dictatorial political structures into a constitutional republic (isn’t it amazing that in a constitutional republic we still run economics like we were living in a dictatorship or an empire?). This way there would be insurance of the company functioning as a conscious and pro-active whole, with all the parts constantly coming into agreement to create a marvelous synergy.

The HRO’s power-base would be the creation of agreement between Management and Staff.  In fact, the boundary between management and staff would be eliminated and all would be considered participants in the enterprise republic.  Management positions would be determined by election, the criteria of qualifications established by the HRO-facilitated constitutional compact.  The founders of the enterprise would release ownership and receive return-on-investment benefits similar to those which copyright holders receive, for a like period of time.  The founders could become part of the management-staff constituency, if qualified and if desired.  A good idea doesn’t make you a good boss.

There should be no law imposing this structure.  It would be something that willing companies would create for themselves, recognizing the inherent value of such arrangements.

The Gold of Happiness

(written in response to the Chief Happiness Officers following blog entry: http://positivesharing.com/2007/05/is-happiness-the-most-an-ancient-debate-revisited/)

I think happiness is something we only really know in being happy.  One can, and I believe we often do, become so focused on the pursuit of happiness that we do not recognize it when we’re being it.  Happiness is often believed to depend upon certain conditions being met — is the individual who is in a state of unhappiness qualified to determine those conditions?  If happiness depends upon conditions “outside of one’s self,” can such happiness be worth anything?  Is a happiness that begins only when external conditions are met really happiness?  Will such happiness last?  How can a person who believes they will only be happy when x exists, a person who therefore is not happy unless x exists, know what happiness is and that x will bring it about?

Happiness is not a condition of things but a quality of being.  To be happy, one must be happy, or else one is not happy.  It’s just that simple.  There’s no magic or mystery — there’s just happiness, a real, actual, blissful quality of the living self.  It’s not so much “I will be happy when” as it is “I am happy.”  “Follow your bliss” doesn’t mean I am happy when I’m doing x.  It means I am happy and I am therefore doing x.  Maybe more truthfully, it means, “I am happy and so everything I do is an expression of my happiness.”

And yet we seek happiness — and this is a noble ambition.  And one should do all and everything  that one believes will realize happiness for one.  Somewhere along that journey one will find that “happiness has found me…” that it was always there, waiting for one to notice it and be it.

The pursuit of happiness is more the continual, or increasing, contemplation upon what is and what is not happiness; it’s the act of sifting one’s experience and refining awareness, like panning for gold — finally, one hears that tell-tale sound and one discovers already existing within one’s own consciousness, the gold of happiness.

It does seem as though physical and emotional pain can prevent one’s experience of happiness.  And yet, with competent guidance it appears it is possible even to transcend that impediment; perhaps not all the time, but eventually one may do so with greater facility, having for less time to identify with the maladies of mind and body by realizing a transcending identity, and the essential reality that happiness is not an effect but an inherent condition of one’s own being.

Developing that ability to transcend these “problems” and dwell in happiness may even heal them or diminish the severity of their manifestation.  Often it is the conditions and items which we feel “make us happy” that lead to physical or mental suffering (when they are not available or if we over-indulge in them).  Discovering that happiness is inherent and not dependent upon conditions or material things liberates one from them and may therefore lead to healing because we see we no longer need them and the offending cause is thus removed.

Happiness is like a bird that can only soar in freedom.  But it’s not freedom to live in particular conditions with access to particular goods and services; it’s freedom to be who and what one chooses inside one’s self, where happiness truly resides.

Who’s Smarter?

The Neanderthal next door lights a fire with two sticks and a strip of rawhide. I’m working to build a lighter and have all the parts and know-how, but it’s going to take longer. Who’s smarter?

The ego loves to set up false dichotomies like this and then choose sides. The solution to this dilemma is to walk right down the middle: learn from the Neanderthal how to build a fire with sticks and light such a fire for yourself so that, while you work on building your lighter, you can stay nice and warm!