this is a man's world ( and it's going right down the drain..)

Few people doubt that we are facing a major shift in society- a quantum jump or so to say. Everybody feel that things can’t really go on like they do but somehow there doesn’t seem to be a clue how to jump. Too much at stake and not enough instability jet. So we seem to fall what in Spiral Dynamics (http://www.spiraldynamics.com/book/LESMsmry.html) is described as a Meme trap- frantically doing more of the same to dig our hole deeper instead of jumping.

There are whole fringes of population who have so far surfed on the waves of doom who perfectly know that the times of abundance won’t be forever but: Hey, while we’re at it lets surf on the edge and take what we can. Investors and financial experts who should have learned a substantial lesson are back to business as usual and sometimes make you wonder if they really believe in what they say or are just hoping that it will transform into self fulfilling prophesies by way of spreading the word.

One thing that isn’t integrated into spiral dynamics ( no wonder because it wasn’t the meme of the time- Graves did his theory in 1946, and science hadn’t come up with the discovery of neuroscience and hormonal biology) is the subtle interaction of feminine and masculine memes.

What are masculine and feminine memes? Mainly stereotypes of behavior and thinking often triggered by hormones and enhanced by circumstances of culture of the two complementary parts of the higher forms of life- males and females.

The idea of a male is of a fighter, aggressive and astute( physically or verbally), assertive, who will conquer and defend his territory and his social position. From a caveman’s point of view this made evolutionary sense: in order to survive you had to defend your horde against other tribes and compete for the chance to reproduce . Nature favored their analytical skills, strength and expert intelligence, that is the capacity to learn from past experiences. The hormone favouring such behavior and present in larger quantities in males is testosterone

The idea of a female is that of reproduction/ creation ( beauty being closely linked to fertility) and of care and of culture/ social nets. In the stone age, fertility, health and care for the newborn as well as social cohesion were essential for the survival of the horde. Nature favored empathy, feelings driven and intuitive intelligence, that is the capacity to decode signs in an unconscious automatized way. The hormone favouring bonding and empathy and present in greater quantities in females is Oxytocin.

The stone age is a long way off our times and in between there have been changes of memes in history. With agriculture it seems that female memes became more important, cities tended to more male memes of hierarchy .

Christianism established a dominancy of male memes in Christian societies which was mainly not due to its origins but to its instrumentalisation and interpretation in the early centuries .

The dominant meme of the last century is that of mercantilism- money rules the world. The idea of trade and exchange in itself seems rather a female meme because it is based on social contacts. The idea of the conquest of markets, of the competition for profit on the contrary definitely belongs to the masculine memes. We can even ask if mercantile aggressivity and business success aren’t a substitute for the need for war in order to conquer, secure territories and supply and to clarify hierarchy. ( Or in a more cynical way: if commercial wars didn’t add a modern variety to the age old game of war).

Through commerce and communication these values of economic and individual success, of gaining markets and self esteem have spread throughout the world and its attributes of success are commonly accepted and valued as such even in cultures that officially condemn its originators.

In line with the increasing virtuality of communication the conquest of markets and new territories has become a game that isn’t won not in the production halls of companies all over the world but on the virtual floors of financial markets. Where in former times the expected future profit and the part of profit that was given to shareholders ruled the prices at the financial markets, theses are today more and more influenced by probabilities of price rises or falls and bets on these. And that is the trap of the meme of our time. In a world dominated by male memes, decision makers dig their own holes in reinforcing the male side .

Back to Spiral dynamics: More of the same digs a hole and makes the system unable to do the necessary quantum leap- ie do things radically different. When we observe financial markets- which have become the backbone of our society- we notice that decisions are made on more and more complex mathematical models ( which apart from their inventors most specialists don’t understand) based on complicated calculations of probabilities and extrapolation of past experiences. Except that in the end all decisions are based on humans and behavioral science teaches us some new insights:

1. After the fall we distinctly remember that ‘we knew it all along’- memory is proven to cheat on us to give us the impression that we can master hazard

2. The more complex a system is the more elements in it carry small risks. The sum of a multitude of small risks isn’t a small risk.

3. Humans tend to use up the capital of increased safety, when risks are reduced in taking up more risks ( Taxidrivers with ABS brake systems drove more dangerously, consuming the increased safety)

Translated into the financial system this means that any complex combination can carry a systemic risk that can crush the whole construction. Any attempt to secure the system will lead to increased recklessness that will consume the advantage. People, especially those who are convinced by their own intelligence will carry own in believing that they can forsee and master pending doom.

I’m not even mentioning the fact that complexity and innovation continuously recombined possibilities in this world into new situations that cannot be compared to former ones- extrapolating for entirely new circumstances isn’t only of no avail but a system that is based on extrapolating will only look out for known clues and discard those it considers of being without any importance. Which is a typical problem of hierarchies.

If the usual male-meme procedure of analysis and planning how to get from point A to point B based on expert intelligence is obsolete what is there as alternative? What can enable us to make the necessary quantum leap?