[Part 3 of a series including the following tentative headings:
permanence of freedom [Part 1]
growth paradigms [Part 2]
growth strategies [Part 3]
purpose and meaning [Part 4]
but there is growth, and there is growth… [Part 5]
expanding the paradigm] [Part 6]
[This is Part 3 of a six-part article on the topic of ‘Growth’. Parts 1, 2, 4, 5 & 6 are available here: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]]
Growth Strategies
Whereas our freedom and our natural impulses may allow for an ever-extending growth horizon, the boundaries created by conflict through the individual and corporate interpretation and implementation of growth strategies also provide society with the main outline for the description and prescription of human affiliated behaviour and therefore substantially restrict the scope of any sought-for liberty.
Such aspirational freedom and its associated growth can only be attained or regained through the conscious transcendence of self, through the abandonment of both the natural and developed (good and bad) habits and not through their preservation or continuation.
There exist other ways to approach business and relationship building, though, admittedly, they are not associated first-hand with commercial endeavours.
The higher (most effectual) form of intelligence, when employed over time, is able to recognise and choose self-denial, even loss, because in doing so, it concedes to its own consciousness that acknowledging the primacy of the 'growth back to liberty' design latent in the human spirit/mind composite is also a desirable outcome. Such intelligence displays the qualities of fearlessness and assurance in the process, promoting a primacy that does assume equity (rather than equality) [1] and that, because of this, chooses to give way rather than impose itself.
Whereas business identifies ‘risk-taking’ as one of its most important strategies, the practitioners of the higher or more effectual intelligence being proposed here, or even those – perhaps the majority among us – who do at times opt for this approach, will require what is called ‘courage’ to make such decisions.
Both risk-taking (short selling for example) and courage (an outright decision to lose or give away one’s right, ownership, or precedence otherwise identified with obtuseness and blunder) appear to address the same phenomenon: ‘the fear of potential loss’.
However, they differ in so far as the first one banks on a market movement redeemable within a foreseeable business cycle, while the second expects no material return on investment from its decision.
One of the many examples in point is the motor industry which was fully aware of the electric vehicle and other alternatives as early as the mid-nineteenth century. It also knew about the lethal effects of motor pollution since the mid-20th century. Car makers and authorities have known for decades that speed is one of the biggest causes of motor accidents around the world. They know that fossil fuels create dependence and major geopolitical speculation leading to poverty and death across the world.
Yet, we find ourselves incapable of shedding such habits: the ‘need for speed’, the abeyance in ‘unconsciousness’ we display when perpetrating and perpetuating environmentally and socially destructive activities, and the artificial need for wealth accumulation beyond necessity and common sense.
The higher intelligence can reaffirm the fact that real growth is generated by readying oneself to shed prior accoutrements, prior knowledge, erstwhile conceptions – even apparently good and successful ones – by opening itself up to the possibility of leaving these behind and surging or climbing, as the case may be, into the next stage of advancement.
Such intelligence could be compared to a rocket that crosses up into the thermosphere dropping to destruction the thrust engine that got it there, downwards into the lower mesosphere, after leaving behind its satellite payload in orbit. Or perhaps more appropriately, intelligence mirrors the movement of a plant pushing through soil upwards but also downwards into its roots (positive and negative phototropism and gravitropism), emerging without direct exposure to the sun yet ever dependent on its light and heat, developing its embryonic stem and leaf systems to produce flowers and fruit, all the way changing and simultaneously shedding the forms of its evolving nature to achieve the fulfilment of all its functions in the creation and production of independent, fertile, self-regenerating seed past the impasse of change, loss, and even death.
Light first (whether directly or indirectly through the soil and its constituents), as well as other environmental factors such as humidity, temperature, and soil quality are needed to achieve such cycle completion, but it is the light that governs and provides both mechanics and sustenance for the plant’s essential photosynthetic growth succession while signalling explicitly the direction of that self-same growth.
Similarly, the human mind may continually acknowledge the supremacy of whatever is abundant, unconfined, and ubiquitous (innovation) over and above the influence of memory and habit to enter into its next growth stage, synchronised to the freedom impulse it inherently senses and for which it has been embryonically built.
For the most part however, human consciousness is invested in the creation of growth strategies and techniques for addressing individual and societal existential conflict (physical/geographical, socio-cultural, business, and psychological) which recommend the gradual peeling off of layers of past actions – especially unsuccessful or bad ones [2] – and only make sense as practices that acknowledge the human dilemma (good vs evil) and the reality of growth towards liberty in exceptionally biased or one-sided ways.
These strategies, despite their popularity, seldom deliver actual growth for the individuals or entities involved. Or else, when delivering growth, the casualties engendered by such measurable results are summarily discarded and/or rarely assessed until they become too obvious and destructive to the enterprises themselves. [3] Since their aim is the ‘stripping off’ of self by the self (a clear conflict of interests), they remain constricted mental toolkits.
Freedom, as defined by the thought process underlying such self-focused, self-sufficient practices equates to a 'freedom from something' rather than 'freedom for/towards something'. [4] Their premise is the achievement of growth through contraction, restriction, negation, or out-and-out conflict (usually the case within business and other competitive spaces) rather than through the acceptance of nature and its associated mental and physical processes.
These practices work within the realm of illusion pointed to at the beginning of this essay [Part 1] (the relentless push to achieving ‘happiness’ and running from its opposite, whatever we may want to name it) rather than adjusting themselves to the actual pulse of nature evident in the unyielding energy that makes life and growth possible. They remain re-interpretations of the workings of nature adjusted to human technical planning and scheming rather than direct connections to the physically inherited or natural sources the world itself provides.
As techniques, they do not complement growth but curtail it by creating a different set of habits rather than encouraging advancement through an ultimate riddance from habit. [5]
Human strategies and techniques are not really helpful in uncovering the more intrinsic, deep-rooted fundamentals ultimately sought by humans which are 'purpose' and 'meaning', themselves belonging to the sphere of transcendence and the permanence of freedom outlined previously. [6]
[This is Part 3 of a six-part article on the topic of ‘Growth’. Parts 1, 2, 4, 5 & 6 are available here: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]]
[1] Both ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ are concepts that carry little if no actual connection to the lives lived on earth by sentient beings. However, ‘equity’ may be considered to be coexistent with ‘the permanence of freedom’ and, as such, better acknowledged as a guiding principle in identifying reality in its purest sense.
[2] Usually called ‘learning from our mistakes’.
[3] The examples are numerous and offer a terrible landscape of human incompetence, neglect, and downright criminal behaviour. Here are some 21st century examples just in the UK: - ‘Post Office Horizon scandal: Why hundreds were wrongly prosecuted’ (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56718036). – ‘Do public inquiries work? What comes after Grenfell and other UK disasters’ (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/06/do-public-inquiries-work-what-comes-after-grenfell-and-other-uk-disasters) – ‘Infected blood scandal: Background, impacts, inquiry outcomes and compensation’ (https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/infected-blood-scandal-background-impacts-interim-compensation-and-inquiry-outcomes/) – ‘Huddersfield in Yorkshire is the latest UK town exposed as having Asian sex gang’ (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6294939/Huddersfield-Asian-sex-gang-jailed-200-years.html)
[4] ‘Freedom from something’ necessarily limits or constricts the span of ‘the permanence of freedom’ our societies have called for and set themselves up to achieve, and, as such, may be considered a contradiction in terms within the conceptual framework they operate.
[5] Here, ‘getting rid of habit’ is understood to mean a synchronisation with the live habits provided universally by nature and not the re-invention of methods to utilise it.
[6] I first wrote this article in 2018 and published it on Academia.edu then; I have polished and added references to it since. Dr Phil’s interview with Vivek Ramaswami ‘Unscripted’ – references ‘Purpose’ and ‘Meaning’: