For stakeholder capitalism to work, doesn’t civilization need to first ? Might both already flourish around us, if not for human arrogance in the way of seeing it?

In coaching leaders toward purpose and impact, there is always the assumption that we are starting upon an elevated launching pad frequently referred to as “the advanced civilization of humanity”. The one civilization this planet currently has to offer, all its knowledge and wisdom as our foundation.

Recently, on a patch of moss-covered ground in a redwood grove somewhere east of Mendocino, CA, I dropped this assumption to hopefully be decomposed and feed a greater truth.

I was seeing there may be more advanced, true (based on dictionary definition), and aspirational civilizations on this planet to launch new leaders, companies, and economic systems from. Or perhaps more accurately said, launch towards.

I’m warn all who venture further, a discovery ahead may be, that despite a lifetime of assumption, you may not live in civilization. And what may sting even more, you may not be as civil a leader as you currently regard yourself.

I’ll come clean and confess, both were discoveries I made: I do not live in civilization, and I am not as civil a leader as I regarded myself to be.

Some standard definitions for context:

“Civilization ~ The stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced. Similar: advancement, progress, enlightenment, edification (moral and intellectual), refinement, sophistication.”

Its root:

“Civil ~ polite and effective communication, collaboration, as well as respect for others, integrity, timeliness, dependability, and worth ethic.”

My wife and I had just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary by setting off to find a new location for what we call, “Act 3”. A place where we’d be able to vigorously continue life, community, and vocations, but ideally a setting and latitude more future-climate-proof, more epically beautiful, cleaner air, water and land, and very, very far away from the unbearable buzz of LA’s current leaf-blower infestation. We drove north of Los Angeles toward the coastlines of northern California, Oregon, and Washington, in search of the setting for “Act 3”.

Armed with the vision of a couple energy-neutral pre-fabs for ourselves and leadership retreats, sitting on an adequate plot of land with adequate well, we had walked on some beautiful possibilities in the midst of sequoias, oaks, redwoods, meadows and crashing swell.

As we returned to LA, Route 1 grew two digits into the 101, and with it thousands of cars, the signature orange haze of LA, the endless “We Deliver” cannabis billboards, and then as if on queue, right in front of us, a sustained angry leaning on horns with middle fingers fired furiously into the air. I remember saying to myself, “Well, we’re back in civilization.” A cliched statement I had uttered countless other times. But this time, given the last two weeks of “Act 3” wandering, I recognized a possibly giant and ridiculously apparent lie in that conditioned utterance.

Yes, we were back. But was this civilization?

Just one day earlier, I had strolled through a particularly majestic, almost mystical, grove of redwoods. My hands caressed bark after bark. At first my eyes followed their seeming impossible trajectories skyward marveling at the incomprehensible wonder contained in their combination of beauty and ancientness. Deep in the grove, in the unbearable richness of the silence, there is an energy that was palpable entering me and then emanating from my chest outward. My eyes looked down. My feet stood on a hidden but entirely wondrous world that until the last few years, I had totally missed. My ongoing obsession with the work of Suzanne Simard, Paul Stamets, and Peter Wohlleben, gave me the ability to see beyond my feet and the moss encrusted surface of the ground. I imagined the inconceivably immense and complex network of roots and connective mycorrhizal fungi underneath me and the multitude of actual (proven) conversations being had between all the trees through cooperation the mycorrhizal fungal network reaching out to the roots of all these giants as far as I could see.

(SFX: a psychedelic morse-code) The trees: “Hey everyone, there’s a sapling about 36 lengths of us from my location, unfortunately in the shade under an old oak, that needs carbon, who’s got spare?” “Hey, I confirmed that from our birch brothers to the north, did anyone check with the Mother Tree?” “Mother Tree here. I polled the grove. It looks like I have the most surplus currently so I’ll connect with the 18 trees between us and get some carbon to the sapling.” “You’re awesome, Mother Tree.” “I know — I’m the the Mother Tree. JK.”

And suddenly, beyond the tree conversations I was having fun personifying, I realized I was standing in the middle of a community of next-level civility (“…polite and effective communication, collaboration, as well as respect for others, integrity, timeliness, dependability, and worth ethic..”). A civility necessary for a reimagined stakeholder economic model, embodied and thriving as its very highest ideal: Eons of meticulous evolution blossoming in these epic behemoths to generate beautiful and bountiful lives through constant communication, collaboration, and communion, created with assistance from the miracle of interspecies cooperation, generation after generation after generation. THIS, where I am now standing, is TRUE civilization. It exists! Therefore with it, a modeling of values and systems to the greatest detail upon which also a new economy and its leadership could be based. These tree groves offering it far more so than the concrete groves I had temporarily displaced myself from.

It became blindingly crystalline to me how tree civility and tree civilization were way more true to the intention of meaning in those words, than what I had been calling “civilization”:

1. Tree society gives unconditionally. On a hot day they provide shade and fruit equally to all beings — whether they be mammal, reptile, insect, black-skinned, white-skinned, brown-skinned, fur-skinned, right, left, liberal, conservative, activist, Capitol marauding supremacist, police officer, nun, serial killer, girl scout, logger, treehugger, etc. They just give and leave the vaporous ideas of good, bad, right, wrong, merit, and worth to others.
2. The old and dying trees are revered and heard. Sensing their eventual demise, they intentionally pass almost half of their nutrients to local younger trees in the process of their decaying departure, the rest going to the soil to help seedlings become saplings.
3. Tree groves, because they are communities of true advancement, take self-care to the highest degree. They only consume the very best and freshest the universe has to offer: nutrients straight from the soil, water fresh from the clouds, CO2 fresh from the air, photons fresh from the sun. And so trees are able to give to other beings (even those who aren’t exactly like them, or “share their values”) the very healthiest the universe has to offer: the healthiest fruit, seeds, leaves, nectar, sap, and, oh yes, the one getting a lot of attention because the concrete groves are still learning civilization — pure, wonderful, oxygen.
4. Trees don’t live a zero-sum paradigm, but a paradigm of “if we don’t thrive, I don’t thrive”. When one tree is under attack by insects, it lets all the other trees know, regardless of species, so they can excrete a defense substance to repel the intruders and prevent all others from suffering the same fate.
5. And yet, they do not experience the “against-ness” which is the number one plague in the concrete groves today. Even when excreting a substance to repel the beetles trying to eat them alive, the trees bare no against-ness for the beetles, they bare just for-ness of each other’s health and wellbeing. That works well for the trees. In our concrete groves if one is for something we feel we need to be against what we perceive as its opposition, to the point where we are no longer acting to solve what we are for but only to hurt what we are against. This does not work well for us humans. Look around. I remember the story of a particular “tree-sitter” — those who would bravely climb and dwell high on ancient redwoods to protect groves from cutting — upon returning to earth victorious after over 700 days over one hundred feet high, being swamped by reporters and hearing one yell,“You must be so happy — you beat the logging company! You really showed them!”, so they abruptly stopped the media mob’s yelling and replied, “Oh no. You have it wrong. I have nothing against the logging company. I am just for the trees.”
6. There is no resource inequality in the tree grove. As dramatized in my ad hoc humanized tree conversation above, the moment any deficiency among them comes into their awareness, it is remedied through a redistribution of the collective wealth of that particular resource. There are no “tent cities” on the outskirts of redwood groves. If, like in the concrete groves, only 10% of the trees tried to keep 70% of all the grove’s resources, there would be no forests. There would be no trees. There may be no life as we know it. Perhaps that is what is happening now in the concrete groves.
7. There is no force or coercion in the tree grove, instead there is only cooperation and collaboration. While the mycorrhizal fungi, an entirely different phylum altogether, is passing on valuable information and nutrients from tree root to tree root, the trees are passing back to the fungi a specially created sugar substance for them to thrive on given photosynthesis is impossible for them.

Paul Stamets, in speaking from his amazing work on tree and fungi cooperation, actually provides a perfect encapsulation and definition of true civilization, and with it foundations of a thriving economic system:

“I want to redefine Darwinian theory. It is not the survival of the fittest. It’s the extension of generosity of surplus to other members in the ecological community to build biodiversity. So it’s not the individual that survives, it’s the community that cooperates that survives.”

Perfect.

And so as I hit the 101 and entered the San Fernando Valley with the orange air that palpably stings your eyes, I utter, “Well, we’re back in civilization.” But, I know now that is a lie I tell myself. We’re not. We’re back in something thinking it’s civilization. Hopefully learning to be that. I can know, because I had just walked through what was an indescribably caring, communicative, cooperative, healthy, thriving, intelligent, and truly advanced civilization where all are beyond civil to each other, everything works perfectly, and peace is exquisite and palpable .

Which brought me to the next, possibly more devastating, thought: given I’m a dweller, maker, and sometimes leader in the concrete grove, what does that say about me? If it turns out the concrete grove actually does not meet the criteria (whether that be Websters or the redwoods’) to earn “civilization” status, then do I personally meet the criteria as a leader of being “civil”. I chose to quickly rate myself with what had become my new understanding and bar of true civility — the trees. I rated myself on a scale from 1–5 (low to high) on the basic values and actions modeled by the trees:

1. Do I provide and share my natural gifts (ie the shade and fruits of the trees) unconditionally? Rating = 2. The painful truth is, while I am making inroads in this area, , the more consistent truth is that unlike the trees I still label and categorize my universe on fictitious scales and base my generosity of spirit, care, resources and time, on whether those scales have them in alignment with my own transient “left/progressive” ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. Not the true attributes of top level 21st century leader. While I serve clients with love who may be on “the other side of the aisle” than me, and also do volunteer work to serve lifers in prison with love who may have committed horrific crimes, it is sporadic behavior at best for me. I am nowhere near as advanced as the trees who give you all they can give regardless of who/what you are, 24/7, nonstop, as a way of being.
2. Do I revere the elders who came before me and receive all they have to offer me? Rating = 2. As someone who is actually more in that demographic than I like to consent to, I am shocked at how little I reach out to those with long and amazing tenures here on earth to both receive their wisdom and experience, and then give back to them in gratitude. Leaders today need to live and model that.
3. Do I distribute resources around me to where I sense need is? Rating = 3. Average. I could do better. I’m nowhere near a tree yet, but working on it daily to be the kind of leader a new economy will require.
4. Am I capable of, and do I practice, acting and advocating for what I am for, without needing to be against or make wrong those who don’t share my “for-ness”? Rating = 4. I have been working hard on this particular issue in myself for 15 years and sense I have made progress given how much more I anger people on “both sides” who can judge being “for” and acting on that behalf but not being “against” as a kind of betrayal. Leaders in a new imagined civilization and economy will need to lead companies, people, colleagues, clients with this capability at “5”.
5. Do I treat my body as the miracle of nature it is, consuming only the universe’s best, purest, and freshest? Rating = 0. Yep, off the scale in the wrong direction. Diet Coke. Enough said. Let’s move on.
6. Am I in a constant state of interdependent flow where coercion and force have been replaced with cooperation and collaboration, to both abundantly receive and then give for the highest good all of us? Rating = 2.5. Below average. I have worked hard to detach from old patriarchal leadership standards of coercion and force and do my best to open to allowing, including, cooperation, and co-creation. While I might get decent marks for the giving part of that, I get dismal marks for the receiving and/or asking-for-what-I-need part of it. That actually may seem noble, but it isn’t noble at all, it’s selfish: The tree grove teaches me that it needs to receive and suck in as much as it can from the ground and the sky if it is to adequately give to others the gifts of its fruit and breath.

My total leadership rating in civility on a scale from 1–5:

2.25

Not quite ivy-league. “Room to grow” as the redwoods would encouragingly chuckle without an ounce of concrete grove judgement.

But in all of this is the greatest news in the world.

Truly, the greatest news we could have right now:

We may not be civilization yet, and therefore able to fully support a thriving stakeholder-based economy, but there are true and advanced civilizations all around us providing a free demonstration of the values, behaviors, cohabitation, collaboration and cooperation, non-judgment, seamless self-care, unconditional giving, radical generosity, divine intelligence, and the mutual love and respect of all, that provide us with very detailed directions on creating and living true civilization. Civilization that will work for us like it does them. How awesome is that?

While coaching a client (founder of an social enterprise that oddly enough is creating a cultural mechanism with a tree grove-like system for economic equality), and discussing the idea of seeing things as they are, beyond the label/thought we’ve shrunk them into, he shared something amazing:

“Yes, we were talking about this the other day, and someone brought up how we do that with trees. We just see “a tree” and walk by. Whereas if there were no trees ever on earth, and some Valley biotech startup invented this thing that called “the tree”, this amazing thing where you stick a little oval in the ground and soon there’s this giant, majestic, beautiful being pulling excess carbon in, pushing oxygen out in the air, making free food for everyone, can work anywhere, energy is 100% renewable solar, and self-replicates — it would be regarded as the greatest invention in history, and people would come from all over the world just to see it.”

Done.

The tree and its groves are here.

Now all we have to do is not just walk by, perhaps drop a little human arrogance, pick up some beginner’s mind, see and hear for real, take good notes, teach tree in schools, teach tree in leadership development, and before you know it, voila, we’re an actual civilization with an economy that works for all.

Soon I’ll be heading up to be with amongst the redwoods again, and I may utter as I first step onto the thin fabric of moss that transects the under and the over of the perfectly functioning grove,

“Well, we’re back in civilization.”

And I will be absolutely accurate.