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TOWARDS THE TRANSFORMATION AGE

Journal of World Futures, Jan. 2002

Abstract: This article explores the emergence, systematization, and maturation of a transformation economy as the information economy eventually wanes in prominence. The author speculates as to the principles, patterns, and possibilities of this emerging economic sphere and some ways that it will retool and revision previous economic spheres. He points to the most probable arenas for wealth concentration as the transformation economy moves from fragmentation to systematization. Finally, he explores the shift from an accumulation paradigm of money to a stewardship paradigm, which those who profit from the soul economy will increasingly be called to exemplify.

The flow of information in today’s world has moved from a trickle to a flood and the pace only promises to quicken. Already, a global economic infrastructure links people into a massive network economy that recognizes no national boundaries. We are a mere few decades into an age that most refer to as the Information Age, an age governed by the systematizing of intelligence. What can be digitized can be transmitted. What can be transmitted can be analyzed. What can be analyzed can be used as fodder for learning, whether by a computer or a human. Web "bots" will learn our preferences and habits, offering customized advice on future purchases. Supermarket tracking will create precise inventory as products are sold from the shelves and that information is shuttled to national distribution centers. Processors in automobile engines will produce data for factory techs to design still more efficient engines. Penny microprocessors -- slivers of discount intelligence -- will weave into the fabric of our lives. Intelligent design will be unleashed on a massive scale.

The question looms, as the Information Age accelerates, of what lies beyond it? What happens as the transfer and manipulation of information becomes increasingly streamlined? What happens when each of us is seamlessly interlinked with the collected intelligence of all humanity? What will we do then? The thesis of this article is that the Information Age is not a final end state but a transition into yet another economic era designed to serve still higher human needs. Put simply, we are in an era in which the products and possibilities of the mind predominate, but we are nearing an era when the services and experiences of the soul will predominate.

The commodification of a new economic sphere generates new game rules and often displaces or reconfigures many occupations of the previous era. The Luddites sensed this in the early 19th century when they smashed mechanized looms and the primitive machinery of the early Industrial era. The same process is repeating as we transition into the information economy, which slowly has designed out of existence many industrial era occupations. On one level this can be seen as painful or distressing. On another, though, it is liberating. The maturation of an economic sphere frees an increasing number of people to explore, pioneer, and develop new and higher spheres. Precious few people in the course of history have made their livelihood from the flow of ideas: a handful of scientists, philosophers, and teachers. Now, however, intelligence and technical expertise are passports into the economic elite.

Historically, the percentage of workers employed in a dominant economic sphere follows a rough bell curve, driven by technological change. At the tail end of the hunter-gatherer era, a few people began to farm as a way of sustaining their lives. Gradually, the numbers increased until something on the order of 80% of Homo sapiens were engaged in different facets of agriculture. The Industrial Age led this number to drop precipitously until today, when a mere few percent of the U.S. work force produces enough food for the rest. This pattern repeated in manufacturing: the percentage of people engaged soared temporarily before losing ground as machinery and computers became increasingly sophisticated. The same will inevitably happen with the information economy. Today’s rapid upsurge of information sphere employment will eventually be followed by a downsurge as the means of information exchange and analysis become increasingly sophisticated. Oracle’s recent boast of saving $1 billion dollars by adopting and streamlining all aspects of its business with its own database products foreshadows the eventual downsurge in the information economy. Most of that billion dollar savings came because Oracle could produce its product with fewer and fewer employees. The more sophisticated technology becomes, the fewer people will be needed as workers in that sphere. A handful of talented software engineers can produce computing resources for billions. The "bit" economy will thus be usurped, but never replaced, just as the "atom" economy has gradually been usurped but not replaced. What, then, will gain preeminence?

My prediction is that the post-Information Age will be called the Transformation Age, not because it will be the dawning of an idyllic utopia but because an increasing amount of economic value exchange will shift to concerns of growth, human potential, spiritual practice, and life-enriching experiences. Much of our language for the transformation economy currently revolves around "healing," a loaded word that connotes a pathology that must be removed to restore "normality." Transformation, however, includes healing, but goes beyond it into the highest expressions of our human nature, which is ultimately interconnected with our divine nature. Transformation involves creative expression as well as powerful experiences. It deals in the currency of the heart and often speaks the language of insight, intuition, adventure, and energy. Already we see signs of this post-Information Age culture emerging with energy medicine, growth seminars, hands-on healing, extreme sports, adventure travel, meditation practice, martial arts senseis, therapists, bodyworkers, retreat centers, and the movement towards voluntary simplicity. New occupations, specialties, and disciplines emerge almost daily in this growing transformation economy even though it has really only begun to gather steam during the last thirty years.

For most of human history, the vast majority of spiritual teachers existed outside of the economy proper, living on donated food and goods or their own savings, or even subsisting in remote wilderness. In the exceptional cases where "soul-workers" meddled in the economy, the result was often exploitative. Martin Luther’s rebellion against Catholic orthodoxy resulted from the inappropriate mingling of the spheres of soul and money; priests offered indulgences as a means to curry Godly favor. The priests and the Church capitalized on fear, which is not the same as delivering transformation.

Business and soul have thus been estranged throughout most of history. Lest we begin to think, however, that spiritual teaching and soul development of various kinds are best left out of the economic equation, we should examine the effect of commodifying the exchange of information. Books, newspapers, movies, computers, networks, scientific journals, newsletters, and universities have birthed a rich and diverse world of ideas that is accessible to nearly every citizen. In the not-distant past, the noosphere (sphere of ideas) was the playground for a privileged elite. Few made any real money from this realm. By incorporating the noosphere into the economy, however, we have witnessed a massive democratization of ideas and knowledge with an unprecedented increase in innovation. Commodifying the noosphere was thus a profound step towards human betterment.

The systematization of an economic sphere results in its democratization. As we begin to see the commodification of soul-services on a larger scale then, the healing and transformational work now mainly available to an elite class will increasingly be affordable and accessible to the masses. Being a yoga teacher or Feldenkrais practitioner or Diamond Heart teacher will be a natural and acceptable career path, just as studying to be a lawyer or a doctor is today.

Downward Causation & Ephemeralization
When each major economic revolution gets underway, it begins to retool and reinvent aspects of previous economic orders. As the transformation economy gathers steam, it will change how all occupations view their work. We see one example of this in medicine. For most of the reign of modern medicine, doctors have been seen as paragons of scientific rationality -- analyzing symptoms, developing drugs, and prescribing treatments -- and have thus largely been members of the information economy. They took specialized knowledge, gained through long schooling and experience, and applied it rationally to human disease. This medical model, which approximates the way a mechanic views a car engine, is waning. Replacing it is a model usually called holistic or integrative medicine, meaning medicine that addresses all dimensions of the patient. Doctors are shifting from being expert technicians to being expert healers. Issues of personal development, human contact, emotional health, spirituality, and compassion are increasingly central. Medical expertise, surgical prowess, and an armamentarium of drugs will always be a component of medical practice, but these will be subsumed by a larger vision catalyzed by the emerging transformation economy.

As a rough model, then, we see a realignment of economic spheres based upon downward causation from later-emerging spheres. A farmer’s agricultural work was first changed in a drastic way by farm machinery produced in the Industrial Age. His life has subsequently been changed by innovations of the Information Age such as computer monitoring of soil, bioengineering of better crops, and scientific studies to optimize production. Today’s farmer has become far more than a manual laborer. He is a scientist and technician of food production. What will happen, then, as we commodify the theosphere? Will the farmer again go through a major revisioning of his lifework and daily duties? If history is a reliable indicator, the answer is "yes."

Another interesting dimension of the emergence of higher spheres is that each emergent order becomes more ephemeral or "de-massified." The noosphere economy rests on intellectual property and a host of intangibles. Software code, for example, is protected by intellectual property laws precisely because it is so easy to copy and distribute. The same is true of movies, CD’s, slogans, novels, advertising, genetically engineered potatoes, architectural renderings, web design, and a host of other intellectual products and services. Intellectual piracy is as important to guard against in the Information Age as buccaneer-style piracy was in the past, for it disrupts the fabric of economic exchange.

When we start dealing with the commodification of the theosphere, however, we are faced with even more difficult tasks of how to protect against what we could call, for lack of a better term, "spiritual piracy." Transformation is not always perceivable to an outside party. The products of transformation are even more ephemeral than those of the information era. A student might pay for dozens of weekend retreats and feel much more centered, whole, and aware and we still would have difficulty measuring it. This leads to the valid question of how to ascertain when there have been abuses of the terms of transformation exchange. A dynamic that might look like an abuse of power to a Western mind may be quite acceptable within the constraints of a guru-disciple relationship in India. On what basis will we hold people accountable? What constitutes true psycho-spiritual assistance? How do we measure the transformation economy? What are its products?

We have to use vague terms like "presence," "wisdom," "beauty," "awareness," "compassion," "intuition," "sacredness," "healing," "aliveness," "passion," and "clarity" to refer to the end results of transformation. These terms speak to undeniable qualities of our life as we experience it, yet they are inherently difficult to quantify. Perhaps the easiest way to describe the "product" of transformation is to say that the moment-to-moment quality of our lives is richer and deeper. This shift in quality can then inform and slowly transform the way we approach even the most mundane tasks. Applied to our farming example, the transformation economy will provide new tools of consciousness and awareness, turning the farmer’s work into an expression of his higher nature. He might receive guidance in meditation for how best to rotate crops. He might plant his land in conjunction with analysis of its feng shui. He might refuse to engage in factory-farming with animals or pesticide-spraying for spiritual reasons He might engage his activities more prayerfully in a way that affects the vibrancy and health of the crops. A tractor and a computer will remain a part of the equation, but his occupation will have changed considerably.

Towards the Transformation Age (part 2)
Journal of World Futures, Jan. 2002

Principles of the transformation economy
Each economic sphere has a unique set of patterns and principles and what follows are some that I believe will emerge in the transformation economy:

1. The transformation economy will be multiplicative in its effects. If a student works with an effective teacher of transformation and does indeed grow to encompass a wider, more integrated and compassionate identity, this will have beneficial effects on all those with whom she comes into contact. This might be called the "ripple economy" in which benefit for one benefits others who have not participated in the exchange. This is partially true in the information economy, though the effect will be more pervasive in the transformation economy. Transformation erodes the separative identity favored by the industrial economy and even the "hyperlinked" identity of the information economy and moves us gradually towards an interpenetrating or even unitive identity. The feeling of being totally separate beings dwindles and thus what benefits one person easily benefits all others with whom she comes into contact.

2. The transformation economy will blur the line between seller and consumer. A teacher who is "selling" techniques of transformation or consultation time may also be providing those listening with the means to earn their livelihood. In this respect, the transformation economy will resemble food chains in nature in which we are all part of a web of interrelated consumption. Again, this is an intensification of trends already underway in the information economy.

3. The transformation economy will develop more extensive rules, licensure, and transformational centers to standardize the criteria for being a transformational service provider and improve the quality of service. Just as universities have been the dynamo of the information economy, there will emerge a more systematic network of growth centers and programs that fuel the transformation economy. The Esalen Institute pioneered a sort of "university for the soul," unaligned with any particular religious or philosophical system. Eventually, similar centers will exist throughout society and the procedures of licensure and study will become more systematized. Intuitives, for example, might be required to study classical psychology, work with energy healers, and pass a licensure board that rates the sophistication and quality of the information they give to clients. Many transformational schools already have their own quality controls, like the system of testing in martial arts, or licensure in clinical psychology or certification in bodywork. To truly commercialize the theosphere in a beneficial way, though, such standards will emerge in a variety of fields and be linked in a manner quite similar to the degree system. A Transformation Consultant might receive a graduate Tr.D. after demonstrating adequacy in a host of related disciplines, much like we do with M.D.’s now.

4. The transformation economy will be labor intensive without being natural resource intensive. As an individual’s "lower" needs are sufficiently satiated, money becomes available to work with a plethora of teachers, healers, artists, and specialists. The adventure of transformation often becomes sufficiently interesting and compelling so that the client spends less money on the products of the lower economic spheres. We see this already in the movement towards voluntary simplicity. Saints, yogis, and sages have been renowned for renunciance. While some of this reflects an unnecessary splitting of spiritual and economic worlds, it nonetheless shows that once soul-needs begin to come to the fore, there may well be a dramatic decrease in the amount of time, money, and resources needed to satisfy the lower spheres.

5. The transformation economy will be holoarchical. To be simplistic, a high degree of hierarchy is key to an industrial economy and a high degree of heterarchy is key to an network economy. The Web, though it has a few necessary hierarchical protocols to hold it all together, is highly heterarchical and as such it is the perfect vehicle for the flowering of the network economy. Holoarchy will be the watchword of the transformation economy, for it will recognize that wisdom, depth, and personal evolution are not distributed equally. We are not all peers in the realm of soul; some people are teachers by virtue of their greater compassion, insight, experience, clarity, fullness, or joy. Holoarchy recognizes this is a fluid state of affairs and that even the highest teachers are themselves part of a still greater Whole. Holoarchy in the transformation economy will ensure quality control.

6. The transformation economy will be influenced by the language of energy. This trend is taken to laughable extremes at times, with constant talk of one’s "vibes," but it is true that many experiences of the theosphere are best captured in the language of energy. The exploration of subtle energy fields, human and otherwise, will be a major focus of investigation, which will effect all other realms of economic exchange. Do certain farming procedures produce fruit that looks more attractive but is energetically denuded? Do certain electrical appliances create fields that disturb the human energy field? How can musical experiences more fully resonate into the fields of a listener? Someday, we will have a much more articulate and precise vocabulary to deal with the layers of interpenetrating subtle fields that sheath our soul and connect us with the world and each other, but for now we are stuck with plain old "energy," or "ki."

7. The transformation economy will be ecologically oriented. As our economic measures become less captivated by industrial era fascinations such as productivity, we can reorient towards measures of quality of life. Awakenings of the soul are intimately connected to a growing respect for the biosphere. Since neither the transformation nor the information economies depend upon intensive biological resource use, we can begin to scale back on wholesale destruction of our ecosystems. To believe that such scaling back is possible by going backwards to a pre-industrial era is naive; industrial age mechanisms are already in place to ensure efficient pillaging of the earth’s resources. Only an advance forward into new economic spheres will rein in the plundering of the biosphere. Two examples: first, transformation often results in a migration towards a vegetarian diet, which is far less resource intensive than a meat-based diet. Second, transformed people are more likely to use their information age skills, such as in engineering or medical expertise, for human betterment. I foresee a time when centers for world science and engineering are created. Those called to such work will patent the products for all humankind and thus accelerate beneficial technology transfer to developing countries.

8. The transformation economy will bring more retirees back into productive work. The success of modern hygiene, diet, and medicine has created a ballooning group of retirees, many of whom would be happy to be involved in something that serves others. The most vigorous and enthusiastic elders are often found in transformational circles. B.K.S. Iyengar just celebrated his 80th birthday and is the world’s foremost yoga teacher. George Leonard is an exuberant Aikido sensei at 77. Laura Huxley heads a foundation for teens and children at 85. Examples abound of elders who have not only thrived well into their supposed retirement years, but even increased their positive impact. Because the transformation economy is dependent on wisdom rather than mere knowledge, many people retiring from a career in the information economy could work their way into the transformation economy, where they could be productively engaged as therapists, mentors, guides, or teachers well into traditional retirement years.

9. The transformation economy will be measured more by growth in individual and collective consciousness than by growth in gross domestic product. Scales of psychospiritual development are available that could systematize this measurement with some accuracy.

10. The transformation economy will accelerate general cultural evolution, for it will build growth into the fabric of economic exchange. Indeed, the bedrock value assessment for the consumer of transformation is a measure of change. Effective healers, teachers, or guides are the ones who are most inspiring or conducive to positive change. Rather than representing a mere shift in commodities, this will represent a change in the evolutionary process itself. More and more people will, in effect, be selling evolution. If the network economy can produce the globalization of all human knowledge in such a short period of time, the transformation economy will, once certain thresholds are surmounted, snowball into something truly amazing.

11. The maturation of the transformation economy will lead to a rethinking and revisioning of most cultural institutions. Our Democratic-Republican, corporation-dominated version of democracy will be transcended in some fashion. The divorce of economic measures (price points on products and stocks) from the total environmental, cultural, and creative impact of companies will be erased so that capitalism - if that is even what it is called - will become more conscious, transparent, and holistic. Economic incentives and safeguards will promote synergies and maximum resource efficiency. Education, in turn, will be more than just a process of instilling facts, desirable beliefs, and critical thinking capabilities. It will address the education of the whole child and the whole adult.

Future Tycoons
One of the major retoolings that the transformation economy offers is a deeper understanding of what money represents and how best to interact with it. Gradually, the accumulation model of money - including the reactive inverse of simply giving it away - will be supplanted by a stewardship model. This will take place as a result of transformational work’s tendency to reduce the strong sense of separation between oneself and others. True transformation leads to a blossoming of generosity and an increase in compassion for a greater circle than just one’s family or friends. What is the point of material accumulation to create memorials to one’s illusory separate self? Status symbols reflect self-centeredness and as that wanes, so too does the accumulative paradigm. However, this does not mean denying the flow of money into one’s life. It means becoming responsible and conscious stewards for any money that does flow in. People will increasingly ask, "How can this money fuel creative, dynamic, evolutionary change in myself, others, and the world?" The challenge will be to manage it for the greatest good rather than accumulate it.

Thus, true transformation "moguls" will be different than anything we’ve seen historically. Generally, the richest people have not been the most enlightened or compassionate. Their behavior has mostly stemmed from the accumulation paradigm and its need for egoic glorification. Only occasionally have wealthy individuals truly exemplified stewardship principles. This will change though. As the transformation economy begins to produce vast wealth for those who build the infrastructure and platform on which the new order rests, we will begin to see positive feedback loops as those transformed individuals are given stewardship over larger chunks of the economic order. Strategies to pool this "conscious capital" will be devised to maximize its transformative impact. The conscious capital community will become an economic force to be reckoned with.

So, let’s say that we feel capable of the clarity, wisdom, and responsibility necessary for stewardship of large amounts of money. In other words, we feel called to be a Transformation Tycoon. Where might we position ourselves? A cursory glance at economic history yields an interesting pattern of tycoons. Extreme wealth has accumulated mainly in the hands of those people who have created or exploited the primary resources undergirding an emerging economic age during the time when structures emerge that weave isolated efforts into more cohesive wholes.

As the Industrial Age gathered steam around the turn of the century, those who profited the most controlled the oil, gas, steel, and rail industries. These industries were foundational for most of the other activities of the industrial era. To manufacture anything in large quantities requires power (fossil fuels), machines (primarily made of steel), and transportation (mostly rail or sea back then). In this way, those who created and controlled the foundational industries got a percentage of almost every transaction of the era. John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie became two of the richest men, relative to their time, the world has ever seen.

Many men became rich on particular products or inventions, but none could rival this extreme concentration of wealth until a later development: mass, discount stores. As the Industrial Age matured, the sheer number of consumer goods became staggering. Fortunes were made on specific products, but it was with the development of mass consumer stores that we see the next wave of extreme wealth. Sam Walton’s Wal-Marts systematized the distribution and concentration of consumer goods on a massive scale and he could thus amass a fortune based on a small percentage of an extraordinary number of transactions.

The Information Age has created a new club of super-tycoons, the most prominent of whom are software giants like Bill Gates, media moguls like Rupert Murdoch or Ted Turner, Internet pioneers like Jeffrey Bezos, financial titans like Warren Buffet, and computer hardware manufacturers like Michael Dell of Dell Computers. Again we see the same pattern in which the richest people have placed themselves in a position where they make a small profit off a large percentage of transactions that are foundational to a new age of commerce. The richest people in this last transition either created the hardware -- Industrial era machinery made of atoms -- for the new economy, or the information architecture -- including financial transactions, media, and computer code -- that actually allows it to run.

One rule of thumb, then, is that as a new economic age emerges, extreme wealth is generated at two levels. First, some aspect of the economic base of the previous age creates a reliable platform on which the new economic order can rest. Second, the new economy "proper" creates its own wealth, especially those people who provide the core activity system on which the new economy runs, such as Microsoft did with computer code. People who receive a small percentage on a large volume of the transactions at either level will become extremely wealthy.

In the transformation economy, then, extreme wealth should be generated in two areas: first, in the creation of the information economy platform on which the transformation economy will be built and second, on the systematized delivery of transformation itself. Both phases are already in evidence now, albeit in embryonic form as far as the larger economy is concerned. The Internet is the place to look for both of these developments. Since the platform for the transformation economy will be the networked exchange of information, the first bonanza of the transformation economy will come with the creation of one super-website, a virtual community to serve as a global clearinghouse of information for transformation service providers and their customers. This global clearinghouse of information will undoubtedly start as an insignificant company, much like Microsoft was in the first ten years of its existence, but once it "ramps up," it will solidify an almost impregnable position as the number-one site for people to advertise workshops, connect with teachers, read about new transformative modalities, and make friends in the larger community. With the long-range potential for information exchange on the order of tens of billions of transactions/year, such a web site could be profitable even at the rate of a penny per transaction, most of which would derive from ancillary business. Sub-communities will form within the larger community and with an increase in member-generated content, the site will quickly become unreplicable. Once loyalty builds, it will be impossible to dislodge, much as Microsoft occupies a nearly impregnable place in the software industry. Currently, dozens of companies are competing with each other in this domain, which will lead to rapid consolidation once a critical threshhold in the transformation economy is reached.

The second major area of wealth generation in the transformation economy will derive from the systematized delivery of transformation itself. Currently, the founders of schools of transformational work are often hard-pressed to make a living. A handful live quite well. Only a few have gotten rich, although this may well be changing with people like Deepak Chopra or Caroline Myss. Most of the large-scale wealth we have seen in the theosphere has been generated by abuses of power, indoctrination, and cultish behavior. One issue is the problem of scale: a single teacher can only work effectively and intimately with a certain number of students. Since transformation is the goal, rather than old-fashioned education, the mere delivery of information is not enough. The real wealth will come with the creation of licensing and training bodies for the workers of the transformation economy as well as systematized delivery programs that provide transformation services to all who seek them in a high quality but reasonably priced fashion. This will again most likely involve an Internet platform, but only as a component of a much more systematic effort including workshops, training programs, convergent media, and local transformational centers.

As this process accelerates, it will lead to a retooling of previous institutions. Churches, for instance, may morph into transformational centers. YMCAs may increasingly incorporate soul work. Corporations will see growth seminars and spiritual practices as central to productivity and organizational health. Hospitals will integrate these services more fully into their patient care.

As transformation work becomes more systematized, a degree system will arise. Graduates will, in order to keep their licensure, return for something like Continuing Transformation Units -- a way to ensure that a particular teacher or practitioner has continued their work of personal and spiritual growth and can be recommended. Serious wealth in the transformation age will also be generated for companies that systematize this process and therefore get a small percentage of all transformational transactions. For instance, if someone advertises as a transformational counselor, certified by an international company, she may be required to pay a yearly registration fee and attend a week-long seminar once every two years. A profit of even $200/year on each transformational worker becomes very substantial when we look at numbers like 30 million such workers as the transformation economy grows. Ancillary business will also be enormous. In this way, a small percentage of all transformational transactions will go to the company or companies that insure quality control in the industry as a whole. Such a company will provide standards for reliability and authenticity, which is almost entirely lacking in today’s transformational sub-culture.

Summary
To be playful, we are in the midst of a shift from the Age of the Robber-Barons to the Age of the Geeks and are seeing the first signs of the age to follow, the Age of the Gurus. Robber-barons love dominance hierarchies and excel in manipulating scarce atoms to their personal advantage. Their economic principles derive from scarcity, supply and demand, and organizational size. They are the capitalists of the material world. Geeks love heterarchy and independence. They excel in intelligence and allowing data to flow into ever-wider orbits of connection, communication, and analysis. Their world is ruled by increasing returns, opportunity, and creativity. They are the capitalists of ideas. Gurus (the healthy ones) love holoarchy and excel in triggering transformation in students or clients, which ripples outwards in ever-expanding waves. Their world is ruled by abundance, compassion, and spirituality. They will be the capitalists of the soul.

Though we are wise to enforce safeguards in the emerging transformation economy against the abuse of spiritual power or spiritual piracy, I believe that bringing the theosphere more fully into the economy will produce the most radical revolution this planet has ever seen - a democratization of the best tools of transformation from every wisdom tradition. As such, it is not to be feared but encouraged. Those who build the scaffolding to support a mature transformation economy will become very wealthy, but will be called upon to exemplify enlightened stewardship in the management of that wealth. And the combination of these two things will constitute a true revolution.

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