Manifesto of an Organism

© Trace Taylor (2016)

The word mission is defined as a vocation, a calling, or an objective. It is a common label word, a noun that acts as its own descriptor, weighted with visuals of movement like marching and service. Synonymous are expedition, journey, and undertaking. The foundation stone of any organization’s identity, regardless of classification, is its mission.

An organization is an assemblage, a nucleus, an organ, a body or group, a society organized with the intent to conduct. An organism, a system, an agency, a congress or consortium, each is synonyms. To efficiently conduct service and production in a system of circuitous energy exchange, a clear understanding of The Mission is required.

A young man working the counter at a coffee shop overheard a discussion between two trustees of a nonprofit. He jumped into the conversation telling the two trustees that he had just recently started his own nonprofit. One of the trustees expressed excitement and asked him what the mission of his initiative was.

The young man raised his hands upward like Atlas. “I want to be the world’s largest benefactor!”

To which the Trustee replied, “That’s fantastic, but what exactly are you going to do, and for what or who are you going to do it, and how will it benefit the global community?”

Defining The Mission is essential to entity manifestation. It orients mass in motion to course like Polaris and True North.

From a hyperphysical perspective, it could be surmised that an entire environment exists as an open expanding neural network with all components of the environment connected by way of transmissions, or rather, energy exchange (Nave). Consider the ocean and the land and their systemic positions within Earth’s environment. The same might be demonstrated with a brain in the skull of a body or by the nucleus in an atom. Organizations exist as expanding components of their environments and not as isolated systems.

The strategic selection of transmitters is next in the process of giving form to vision. Board members chosen from key positions in critical fields of expertise add their systems of support to the organization and provide council to the Chair in matters of law, finance, grants, the web, and social media marketing. For their investment of energy, they receive logo placements, honorable public mentions, and interconnections with several new networks. There may also be reciprocal benefits for their communities or organizations, perhaps a lower crime rate associated with the implementation of literacy initiatives and a higher employment rate associated with a decrease in costs related to crime.

Organizations file a 501c3 package with the federal government when they wish to be granted the tax-exempt status of a federally recognized nonprofit. This package requires every aspect of the nonprofit be defined and documented with a three-year plan for and a two-year history of conduction. The package also begs the inclusion of web sites, media coverages, testimonies, products, ownerships, collaterals, and collaborations. The more extensive and impressive the detail, the less chance of delay or rejection. Board members, and their positions within their communities, are key to the success of this filing.

The most obvious qualifying characteristic of a nonprofit as opposed to a for-profit organization is that profit is not supposed to be the driving mission. For this reason, many might consider the organization as something other than a business or that it is somehow disqualified from the creation of revenue streams. This is absolutely incorrect. While there may be grant money available, any organization needs to be, in some measure, self-supportive and so more leveraged for sustainability. That said, any profits need to be invested into the service of program.

Once filed, the 501c3 process takes six months to one year for federal approval. However, when this package is compiled meticulously and methodically, approval can be awarded after just one week. Community Leveraged Learning, Inc. is one such documented case. The package done correctly doubles as the business plan, complete with mission statement, financial analysis, a three-year pipeline of reciprocal initiatives, and one or more relevant bottom-lines.

Bottom-lines are specific desired outcomes that connect directly to The Mission and final totals of gain, profit, return, and the ultimate outcome or criterion. They can be other than monetary, though financials must be of concern for any organization that intends to achieve some measure of sustainability. A triple bottom-line might be Planet, People, Profit. A switch to more planet-friendly supplies and a plan that capitalizes on recycling and conservation addresses Planet. A starting wage of $15 per hour and a health benefits package addresses People, and an increase of annual revenues from 3 to 4 million addresses Profit.

Multiple bottom-lines should be concentric and reciprocal; that is, they should rely on and serve one another’s purposes and processes. Exemplified: byproducts of the shipping and receiving relationship can be recycled, reused, or repurposed to offset shipping and receiving expenses. This serves Planet and Profit. Taken a step further, if the organization also offers collegiate and technical education opportunities to interested individuals in the overlapping fields of relation, the organization maximizes its potential to impact all three bottom-lines. In exchange, the individuals would be expected to apply their education towards such ends.

Organically related parts of a production process form a system in which the parts– for example, different jobs– are not independent of each other, but instead are what they are because of their relationships to one another and to the system as a whole. “This is called an organic system, a totality, or an ‘organism’” per Thomas Weston in his paper Introduction to Marxist Dialectic.

An organization can be seen as a mass of concentric interconnected reciprocal systems assembled to support conduction. The energy exchange or activity at the earth’s core plays a role in the earth’s surface system, and the surface system impacts the core. Individuals rely upon each other and their families, organizations and societies, which in turn rely upon the individuals and each other.

When two or more individuals such as societies, organizations, people, or atoms react to or interact with one another, they are engaged in a relationship. The human body is a conductive organization of concentric reciprocal relationships, that is to say a system of energy exchange within a system of energy exchange. “From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat” (England, Wolchover).

If relationships can be seen as sets of connected and interactive and reactive components, and systems seen as the patterns of function between these components then it is reasonable to deduce that a nucleus, organization, or universe is the value of it’s parts or rather its internal systems of exchange. A shift in internal or external reciprocities is likely to result in systemic reactions such as mergers, department deletions, or reorganizations and or layoffs.

This first law of thermodynamics governs the microscopic motion of individual atoms in a chemical reaction (Weston), and could be understood to suggest that it is from the individuals, that the whole acquires its value. If this is in fact the case then it stands to reason that the individual must be represented in both the bottom-line and in the mission.

This same thermodynamic law suggests that nothing comes without cost, or rather that the universe functions on a system of energy exchange (Weston). An organization that fails its exchange with the individual creates an internal systemic deficiency that weakens the organization fiscally and physically. This deficiency can result in the organization’s inability to meet external demands of reciprocity.

The mass of a nucleus is always less than the sum of the individual masses that constitute it. It’s the combination of individual energies that hold the mass of a nucleus together (Nave). An organization is a construct of individual masses that contribute their energies to enable the whole. Therefore, an organization is best served when it invests in balanced reciprocal relationships with the individuals from which it is comprised.

Norman Foster, one of the most noted architects of the 21^st Century, explains in the documentary How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? that if a business does not function at every level as a school or training ground for the individual then it fails its community, and so fails as a business (Foster). An organization that infuses the individual infuses itself and its community.

An example of an ecological system perhaps more familiar is the bird that eats a bug that fed on a plant that fed off bacterial waste produced when the bacteria fed off bird feces dropped into the soil by a bird that fed on a bug. Now toss in bugs that eat bugs and birds that eat plants and bacteria that eat bacteria, bugs, or birds ad infinitum. The planet functions as a mass of concentric interconnected reciprocal systems of energy exchange, that is to say, reciprocity.

Reciprocity can be seen as a system of energy exchange between two or more members of a relationship for the sake of mutual benefit. Consider potlatches, highly celebrated intermittent giveaways of resource accumulations (energy), exercised and celebrated by indigenous groups across the Pacific Northwest, though variations can be found in the cultures of various other regions. Glory, prestige, and honor are directly tied to the giving; the greater and more valued the mass given, the more honor a group bestows on the giver (Harris).

The potlatch occurs within and between groups. This reciprocal system provides for the more in-need individuals and groups, both directly and indirectly, by limiting long-term hoarding of resources (Harris 26). Put more clichéd, it spreads the wealth around or rather it restores balance by correcting imbalance within an infrastructure.

If resources can be seen as energy and if energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it stands to reason that the hoarding of resources diminishes the percentage of energy available to the masses. If an organization is in fact valued from the combined energies of its individuals, then diminishing the resources, that is the energy of the individuals, weakens the whole. The less they have, the less they have to give, and so the less there is to take. Fair share wages promotes loyalty, longevity, and commitment. Health, education, and profit-sharing plans empower individuals who in turn empower the whole.

A reciprocal imbalance often results from or leads to deficient reciprocal responses throughout. When an imbalance of exchange occurs, other relationships or systems are drawn upon to contend with or accommodate the imbalance. Consider the loss of comfort in one leg after its long-term compensation for an opposite injured leg. Consider the toll on the hips and spine, the organs, the blood supply, and not least of all, the emotions and psyche. Imbalance costs infrastructure.

Exogamy is typically defined as a culturally enforced exercise of marrying outside one’s original group. It connects one group to another by means of marriage. These interconnections result in individuals having extended familial ties to more than one group. This maximizes the potential for mutual survival by combining resources and decreasing the threat of external conflict. Exogamous relationships work because reciprocity stabilizes infrastructure.

Any task that overlaps two or more systems, such as the cleanup of a lake that connects two towns (systems), might be done more effectively if both the private and public sectors of each town (system) work together to make the cleanup beneficial within both communities, perhaps with eco-tourism and eco-education programs. Collaboration between groups, businesses, departments, or individuals creates opportunities for the exchange of resources (energy). Exogamous relationships are absolutely necessary for the healthy conduction of any organization.

“From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat” (England, Wolchover). If as England also points out, that in the atom there exists an innate compulsion to construct, assemble and align in an effort to achieve the most efficient conduction, then ipso facto, so do organizations.

The mission of any organization must be based on the efficient and balanced exchange of energy (resources), both internally and externally via reciprocal relationships. This Mission serves to stabilize systems within and without. In so doing, the value of the organization increases due to its vital role in the environment, a role secured by its empowerment rather than diminishment of the individual.

Words Cited and Referenced:

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Harris, Marvin. Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, The Potlatch, Chapter 5, Section 3. University of California, Santa Barbara. 1974. Web.

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