The Covid-19 pandemic exposed a strange and ugly side of our societies, one that was selfish to the point of being self-destructive. Our leaders begged people to put on masks and take vaccines, if not for themselves but to protect others around them. The assumption being that people will be moved to do something because it involved something bigger than themselves.
As it turns out, people didn’t care. Some, because they were raised in cultures that centred on individualism. Others, because they were dealing with so many other threats to their lives that Covid-19 just didn’t make it to the top.
Whatever the reasons may be, it showed us how problematic it is when we only think in the short-term and within the limits of our individual self. We refuse to take a vaccine that could protect our neighbour or a stranger we share a subway ride with. We hoard vials of vaccines when we could have shared them with poor countries and prevented the virus from spreading there.
Our short-term individualism is preventing us from moving past this pandemic. Had our societies been shaped by collective thinking, perhaps we would have already put the pandemic behind us. And maybe even climate change. Is there a way to shape our thinking to tackle the enormity of challenges ahead of us?
This week in The Global Tiller, we explore the philosophy of BEyond Near Term Orientation or Bento — a new framework to look at our self-interest in multiple dimensions to help us think more collectively.
At its core, Bentoism expands self-interest into a wider scale, one that extends from 'me’ to 'us’ and from 'now' to the 'future'. "This wider view of our self-interest includes what we want right now. But other rational perspectives are here too. Our future selves. The people we care about. The future of our children and everybody else’s children too." All these spaces or dimensions impact us and are, therefore, in our self-interest.
This philosophy stems from a realisation that our choices cannot always be dictated by what is good for me now. Writer and entrepreneur Yancey Strickler, the man who introduced this framework, came up with it while looking for alternatives to the 'financial maximisation' motive —“the belief that in any decision, the right choice is whichever option makes the most of money.”
To practice Bentoism, he offers a two-by-two graph to map our self-interest. Starting from an individual’s immediate self-interest, it moves upwards in both directions to include future self-interest, both for an individual and for the society. As a result, we are able to view our decisions in light of what impact they have on our future selves and on the future of our society. In theory, this framework has the potential to even reveal when our actions and decisions are not in line with what we want to achieve in the future.
The Bento is not restricted to our individual thinking either. It could just as easily be used at the organisational level or even at a societal level. In this podcast, Strickler reflects on how institutions, such as religious congregations and the justice system, can be considered as part of the 'now us' thinking of the society whereas the 'future us' thinking space is occupied by institutions, such as the education system.
When framed in this way, it is interesting to see how we value these different institutions. For example, countries that are spending more on collecting weapons than they are on educational programs, are stuck in the 'Now me' quadrant of the Bento. If a country visualises a future that has no poverty, let’s say, then it will need to take actions now that shift money from military spending to social programs.
Admittedly, Bentoism is a consequence of the realities shaping capitalist societies. There are many other places in the world where the thinking is not as narrowed. But since the global economic order is dominated by capitalism for now, it may be worth exploring this framework to set a path for ourselves and for our communities that’s in our true self-interest.
If you are inspired to draw a Bento map for yourself, do share it with us.
Until next week, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
If you’d like to read our previous issues, you can access our archives here.
…and now what?
At Pacific Ventury, our mission is to help organisations and individuals better understand the world, humanity and tomorrow. We do this because we believe that by becoming aware of the world they live in, people and organisations can become more intentional actors in their communities to tackle the challenges to come.
We are happy to see that many others are joining the bandwagon. Recently, Jon Henes, a former restructuring partner at Kirkland & Ellis, has launched C Street Advisory, a consultancy that offers CEOs and boardrooms advice on business, politics and social justice.
People as well as organisations are understanding that they can’t stay confined within what is strictly business anymore. They need to get their skin in the game. If big oil corporations, the likes of Shell, are starting to sell oil fields, it’s because they are aware of the need to shift their vision: their market and the source of their profits. When you realise that your growth, your opportunities and your overall survival is woven with the fate of many, then there’s no other way than to join the bandwagon.
And that’s the beauty of Bentoism.
Recently, this concept has been taken even further by Ours For the Making and its founder, James Young. He proposed to expand the timeline beyond now and the future by adding 'heritage' (what we’ve received from those before us) and 'prosperity' (what we’ll leave for those after us). By doing so, he expanded our appreciation and our understanding of everything prior to and beyond our lifespan.
He goes even further by proposing to add another layer to the Bento box. If there’s 'me' and there’s 'us', there must also be an 'all': the planet and all the living and non-living things on it. Our interdependency goes beyond our shared humanity, it is tied to our shared home, this "pale blue dot" we call Earth.
One way to foster this interdependency is to utilise our empathy. Empathic leadership is the implementation, at the level of decision making, of this fundamental human skill. Based on three key and simple ingredients — love, curiosity and doubt — it’s a step towards an appreciation of leadership on a broader scale, as Bentoism inspires us to do. This should evolve into existential leadership, blossoming out of empathic leadership and designed to tackle the coming challenges, challenges that go beyond anything we’ve ever had to face.
This doesn’t call for one leader to rule them all. Existential leadership, inspired by this broader Bento framework, requires everyone to be a leader at all times by doing what is good without waiting for someone to tell them. It requires us to be a leader for all the times to come by developing and committing to a vision that will serve a purpose way beyond our lifetime. It calls on us to be able to transcend our concept of community by being able to include and step up for all.
The task could seem Herculean but it has to be done collectively. As 'leaderless' movements take off around the world, perhaps leadership is evolving into a sum of all our leadership abilities that goes beyond individualism for us to create a new narrative: a collective one, one of all living things working together to survive and save our canoe, our raft, our spaceship…definitely a call for inspiration, an Inspiration4 all.
Philippe - Founder - Pacific Ventury