International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration
Volume 10, Issue 2, January 2024, Pages 28-40
A Social Contract with Humans and Nature Center Stage
DOI: 10.18775/ijmsba.1849-5664-5419.2014.102.1003
URL: https://doi.org/10.18775/ijmsba.1849-5664-5419.2014.102.1003
Leonidas A. Papakonstantinidis1, Vivan Storlund2.1 University of Peloponnese, Department of Business Administration and Organizations, Kalamata, GR, Academician (IMA Academy)
2 Independent Researcher, Doctor of Law Amsterdam
Abstract: A small number of the world population, 1 %, is getting richer while an increasing number, the 99 %, are getting poorer. This is by now an undisputed fact. Behind this scenario, we have major societal trends since the 1970s; globalisation, flexibilisation of working life standards, the introduction of neoliberal economic policies, as well as the introduction of digital technologies. These changes have, in a variety of ways, adversely affected the playing field among different sectors and groups in society. To this should be added the longstanding trend of depleting natural resources, which should urgently be reversed to secure continued existence on Mother Earth. The present neoliberal policies are destroying the conditions for democracy Arran Gare says, illustrating it with the situation in the USA. Between 1989 and 2018, the top 1% of Americans increased their wealth by $21 trillion, from $8.4 trillion to $29.5 trillion, while the bottom 50% lost $900 billion, from owning $0.7 trillion to being indebted by $0.2 trillion. As to the global ecological crisis, Gare asserts that those analyzing the root causes fail to address questions of political philosophy for finding a way out, and equally so, the failure of ethical and political philosophers to effectively engage with the deep assumptions, power structures and dynamics that actually operate in the current world‐order. Gare contends that this marginalization of political philosophy, for whatever reason, has made it impossible to mobilize humanity to overcome this crisis of civilization. (Arran Gare, Rethinking Political Philosophy through Ecology and Ecopoiesis, 2023). These developments require a profound change of policies = a new social contract. With Leonidas A. Papakonstantinidis’ Political win-win-win model, we will explore pitfalls and obstacles as well as means of striving toward a consensus, which a new social contract requires. The win-win-win model offers strategic potential by combining different research fields such as game theory and behavioral science, the choice problem, the decision making problem, the ultimate game etc. It addresses the challenges of blending empathy and conflict to move the playing field toward an equilibrium. In addition, contemporary perceptions are enriched by drawing upon thinkers who in the past have addressed related problems, mainly Thomas Paine, Aristotle, and Plato.
Keywords: The win-win-win papakonstantinidis model, New social contract, The bargaining problem, Global equilibrium
1. Introduction
1.1 The Win-Win-Win Method
Thanks to practices like Nonviolent Communication, we now know that underlying and beyond “surface” rewards we usually find a realm of fundamental needs, like security, community, pleasure, food, health, and so on. Nearly everyone has such deeper general needs which can, luckily, be fulfilled in many different ways. Because of that, personal satisfaction can include others, like the happiness we may feel at a loved one’s success. The realm of universal needs provides a field within which win-win outcomes can readily be found with or even without compromise. But beyond that, we can imagine “winning” involving deeper forms of benefit. Consider the value of meaning and contribution as well as spiritual realization. We find here a class of benefits that can be fully pursued without anyone losing. Which brings us to the next dimension:
The Width (or Breadth) Dimension: Who wins? How many win?
Thinking about self, others, communities, whole systems, the web of life.
Win-win focuses on both self and other winning. Win-win-win expands that in ways that could refer to…
- third or fourth parties winning who are also directly involved in the situation,
- interested parties who aren’t directly involved gaining benefits, perhaps including the whole community, the larger organization, faraway peoples, the world as a whole, and so on
- entities benefiting who may not even be human; they may be animals or plants, or bioregions and ecosystems, or mountains, air and water….
We can imagine win-win-win broad benefits stretching into all those realms.
Due to the interconnectedness of life, any one, two, or more entities, groups, or systems can win in ways that negatively or positively impact other entities, groups, or systems. The more they all win, and the broader the benefits, the more we can legitimately talk about win-win-win. And we may well pause here to reflect on who may be losing to enable others to win. Privilege, power, and systemic dynamics often come up when we think about that.
We can ask: “Are the benefits of winning happening for entities present now and/or in the future – and/or even those in the past, such as our ancestors (as in, who writes and benefits from the histories)?” We can also ask: “Are these benefits short-term, long-term, or even ongoing?”
Sustainability theory and Indigenous cultures ask us to consider how to meet our needs while making it possible for future generations to meet their needs. These questions and considerations bring to mind the other two dimensions of winning: What kinds of long-term needs are we talking about and which future generations? Are we including the future generations of bats and microorganisms and riverbeds as well as people?
The expansion of awareness, knowledge of hidden systemic impacts, and the practice of Big Empathy (empathizing through barriers of space and time and systemic complexity) are challenges and resources for aspiring to achieve truly win-win-win outcomes.
2. Literature Review
There’s nobody here but just us holons!
So, when we consider win-win-win, the third win COULD refer to all the larger and/or smaller wholes involved in the winning. Consider the dynamic tensions we often encounter between the individual and the collective in human life, or between the organism and the ecosystem in natural systems. Can we use the term win-win-win to mean “We’re seeking to take into account the benefits (and/or costs) accruing to ALL the parties in this situation? AND we also seek to consider the benefits (and/or costs) accruing to the entities and systems that THOSE entities are involved with or which are involved with them, more or less, at greater and smaller scales”?
With this understanding of win-win-win, we are, in fact, considering what matters to the whole web of life – or as much of it as we can manage. We’re starting with the situation we’re focusing on here and now and considering how everyone and everything is related to it and thus may win or lose because of what happens with it. With this perspective, a very big challenge emerges: To what extent and in what ways does the well-being of a particular system – a family, a community, an organization, a way of doing things – depend on the well-being of its constituents? And to what extent does the well-being of the whole impact the well-being of its constituents?
The relationships and trade-offs involved in this are often complex – sometimes problematic and sometimes full of possibilities. But they are always important, especially when we’re facing choices between nuanced long-term well-being and shallow short-term benefits.
These understandings are central to issues of sustainability, regenerativity, and the relationship of our civilizational design to the quality of life of all the human and natural lives and systems involved with it. In the most existential case, it raises the grain on the trade-offs between “stuff” (our extractive consumer economy) and “extinction”, while opening up examination of every dimension of life between those extremes.
A tour d’horizon of today's predicaments
The report of the Club of Rome presents a comprehensive proposal for acting on the great challenges we face to save Mother Earth and all its inhabitants. In 1972 the report of the Club of Rome, The Limit to Growth, A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind was published. (Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jörgen Randers, William W. Behrens III) Operating at the level of root coses, the report introduces the notion of equilibrium. “Equilibrium means a state of balance or equality between opposing forces. In the dynamic terms of the world model, the opposing forces are those causing population and capital stock to increase (high desired family size, low birth control effectiveness, high rate of capital investment) and those causing population and capital stock to decrease (lack of food, pollution, high rate of depreciation or obsolescence)”. In the word "capital" they include services, as well as both industrial and agricultural capital. “Thus the most basic definition of global equilibrium is that population and capital are essentially stable with the forces tending to increase or decrease them in a carefully controlled balance.” (1972: p. 171)
Deonella H. Meadows et al. observe that one of the most commonly accepted myths today is the promise that a continuation of our present patterns of growth will lead to human equality. They demonstrate in their book that present patterns of population and capital growth are actually increasing the gap between the rich and the poor on a worldwide basis, and that the ultimate result of a continued attempt to grow according to the present pattern will be a disastrous collapse. (p. 178) We are by no means the first people in man's written history to propose some sort of nongrowing state for human society, they say. Several philosophers, economists, and biologists have discussed such a state and called it by many different names, with as many different meanings. (p. 170)
What would life be like in an equilibrium state? they ask. Would innovation be stifled? Would society be locked into the patterns of inequality and injustice we see in the world today? In their view, a society released (p.174) from struggling with the many problems caused by growth could have more energy and ingenuity available for solving other problems. They show in the report, that the evolution of a society that favours innovation and technological development, a society based on equality and justice, is far more likely to evolve in a state of global equilibrium than the state of growth we are experiencing today.
In their equilibrium state, population and capital are the only variables that need to be constant. Any human activity that does not require a large flow of irreplaceable resources or produce severe environmental degradation might continue to grow indefinitely. In particular, those pursuits that many people would list as the most desirable and satisfying activities of man - education, art, music, religion, basic scientific research, athletics, and social interactions - could flourish. This focus would definitely reverse the neoliberal trend where such human activities often are considered economic trade-offs.
The Club of Rome’s report should be a compulsory read for anyone contemplating how to go about the problems we face today. In addition to the two variables, population and capital that The Club of Rome’s limits to growth operate with, a number of other variables also need to be considered for drawing up a new social contract.
Dissatisfaction on multiple fronts
Minouche Shafik has in her book What We Owe Each Other, A New Social Contract (p. 3). summarized multiple constellations and views that feed dissatisfaction concerning attention and resource allocation that she describes as follows; animosities among some rural areas and small town versus cities, some native populations versus immigrants. Further, some members of once-dominant races that resent other ethnicities demanding equal treatment as well as some men that feel threatened by newly empowered women and policies such as quotas and targets that disadvantage them. A proportion of the young are increasingly vocal about the elderly, who they believe consume a growing share of resources in health care and pensions while leaving them with a legacy of debt and environmental destruction. Some older people, again, feel the young are not sufficiently grateful for past sacrifices made on their behalf.
In her book, Shafik uses a social contract as a lens to get at the root causes of this disappointment. She presents a comprehensive and nuanced approach that recognizes the primacy of expectations and mutuality, the efficiency and value in collective provision and risk sharing, the importance of adapting to a changed world if we are not to witness a destructive fracturing of the mutual trust on which citizenship and society are based (emphasis added). How much does society owe an individual and what does an individual owe in return? Shafik asks. And further, in this time of great change, how might those mutual obligations need to adapt? Shafik’s message is that the answers to these questions would appear to be at the heart of solving many of the political, economic and social challenges facing the world today. (Shafik, Minouche. What We Owe Each Other (p. 3). And how did we get to this point? This is something the Dutch economist and politician Pieter Omzigt reflects on in his book A New Social Contract (2021, in Dutch) He combines the roles of an economist and member of the Dutch Parliament (Tweede Kamer, House of Commons)
This is how he sets out his considerations about why we need a new social contract: Unnoticed, a number of our institutions have slowly eroded, part of the social bond has disappeared and various implicit agreements between government, citizens, companies and civil society have come to an end. This did not happen explicitly, with a resounding bang; it was not a preconceived master plan. It happened in small steps. Traditional tasks of government and society have been neglected over time. Public housing became a housing market. In that housing market, it is difficult, if not impossible, for first-time buyers to get a place. They cannot buy at a reasonable price and cannot rent at a reasonable price. The workers, people who do the real work in factories and hospitals, in offices and barracks, in shops, schools and nursing homes, are no longer properly at the center of policy. Politics has become an increasingly smaller independent caste, less and less rooted in, and part of, society. Political parties were always power machines as well as movements. They are increasingly becoming mere power machines (Omzigt, 2021)
Pieter Omzigt observes that his book does not present any perfect solutions, no finely cut gems. Rather, they are rough natural stone blocks, on which to shape and build a new social contract. The contract is not only about citizens and the government but also about big companies, which are disconnected from national societies. It is about social institutions that have become detached from their core task, from the mission for which they exist. It is about the design of our politics and institutions, which have lost their authority and clout, often also due to their own failures. There are solutions, Omzigt insists. A country that managed to overcome water, that was - and is - a leading trading nation with a strong pioneering spirit, must and can overcome these problems. Together, we can and must obtain a new balance with stronger, reliable and powerful institutions. Omzigt urges, let us work toward a constitutional state where mistakes are sometimes made and things go wrong, but where citizens can obtain justice and where the needs of ordinary people are central: care, housing, a solid education, a job, a clean living environment, a place of and for families.
A growing precariat paves the way for modern slavery
With the flexibilisation of working life standards, a growing precariat has emerged which at its extreme has resulted in modern slavery. Katarina Schwarz observes that this has occurred although the past centuries have seen rapid improvements in health, alleviation of poverty, increased literacy, and decrease in violence. Notwithstanding, Schwarz reports that 50 million persons globally today still live in modern slavery, the largest group ever in human history. In her research, she explores how we can free the oppressed of our world. Schwarz is leading a research consultancy for the United Nations University Center for Policy Research, where they consider the intersections between modern slavery and sustainable development. This research connects antislavery programming with development outcomes. Based on this research, the project team is constructing new blueprints for anti-slavery law and policy enactment, reform, and implementation around the world in cooperation with government legislators and practitioners aimed at laying the legal foundations for a future free from slavery.
3. Research Methodology
3.1 The Research Agenda - How to Go About It?
The Club of Rome presented a significant challenge to the research community. The major trends that have led to an increasingly unequal society is a one-sided focus on economic growth and profit that has taken precedence over human and environmental concerns. It is in the political process that the problems should be remedied, and a major challenge is the need for an altogether new political culture, one that unites rather than divides. But here, the academic community should be in the forefront looking itself in the mirror. The history of ideas is a history of a fight between different worldviews, just like wars, determining who are the winners, thus, whose views count, and who are losers, having thereby no voice. This is largely extended to different sectors of society, particularly so in working life, where employers and workers act as opposite and competing forces, yet, they are both parties in a joint venture, representing two sides of the same coin. And, in addition, as a society, we are all stakeholders in how working life is run.
A new social contract is now called for in many quarters, starting from the United Nations.
- The UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “The response to the pandemic, and to the widespread discontent that preceded it, must be based on a New Social Contract and a New Global Deal that create equal opportunities for all and respect the rights and freedoms of all.”
- For UNESCO, the core of its work on renewing education is to steer reflection to forge a new social contract for education that can shape the future, meeting the needs of humanity and the planet. 2021 UNESCO report, “Reimaging Our Futures Together, a new social contract for education”.
- The International Labour Organisation, ILO, “The world needs a new social contract”, the ILO’s new Director-General, Gilbert F. Houngbo, has told members of the ILO’s Governing Body at the opening session of their last meeting of 2022.
- The World Bank. A World Bank report proposes a set of three policy principles that, considered jointly, could help level the playing field and redesign a stable social contract by
-moving toward equal protection of all workers, no matter their type of employment, while promoting labor markets’ flexibility;
- seeking universality in the provision of social assistance, social insurance, and basic quality services; and
- supporting progressivity in a broad tax base that complements labor income taxation with the taxation of capital.
It would appear that corresponding statements are lacking by EU leaders, as a wide body of organisations on 11 July 2023 called for actions with the message that A broken social contract is threatening our democracies. “ We, civil society organisations, trade unions, social economy enterprises, think tanks and other stakeholders, call on European Ministers for Environment and Energy, as well as other EU and national level decisionmakers, to complement the implementation of urgently needed, ambitious environmental and climate policies with robust social policies that protect marginalised people primarily and the regions suffering disproportionately from the transition, whilst guaranteeing access to high-quality essential services for all. We call on them to show bold and forward-thinking political leadership by prioritising the promotion of climate action and social justice as one coherent and mutually reinforcing agenda.”
To the aspirations expressed by these bodies, we wish to contribute by considering how to go about the competing interests that are inherent in a social contract. Leonidas A. Papakonstantinidis POLITICAL WIN-WIN-WIN model is a well-suited model to analyze the various constellations that arise when striving toward a society aimed at equilibrium. Starting from the conflict situation, as the situations where there is a common interest as well as conflict between adversaries: negotiations, war and threats of war, criminal deterrence, extortion, tacit bargaining, it proposes en-lightening similarities between, for instance, manoeuvring in limited war and in a traffic jam; deterring the Russians and one's own children; the modern strategy of terror and the ancient institution of hostages (Schelling 1960).
Based on Schelling's (1960) ideas we choose the hawk and dove game because it is the simplest negotiation environment with inequity distribution in equilibrium:
- to determine the relationship of 3-win with empathy in every human behaviour. This plot (if any) seems to be the generating cause of any behaviour in any bazaar between two and much more in three negotiators. The contribution of the third is of crucial importance, while the negotiation between four and above weakens the negotiation because it allows for collusion (Theocharis 1960)something that the three-person negotiation does not allow.
- to facilitate to clarify the relation (if any) between ‘tacit knowledge’ and empathy and sympathy in any bargain.
- to create a coherent base of arguments toward proving the influence of empathy over a preferences scale.
- also, to find relations between social preferences – and bargaining behaviour (see Papakonstantinidis 2020).
The Hawk-Dove Game
Given that the resource is given the value V, the damage from losing a fight is given cost C:, here illustrated by the Hawk-Dove Game
Payoff Matrix for Hawk-Dove Game
| meets Hawk | meets Dove | |
| if Hawk | V/2 - C/2 | V |
| if Dove | 0 | V/2 |
- If a Hawk meets a Dove, he gets the full resource V to himself.
- If a Hawk meets a Hawk, half the time he wins, half the time he loses. So, his average outcome is then V/2-C/2.
- If a Dove meets a Hawk, he will back off and get nothing - 0.
- If a Dove meets a Dove, both share the resource and get V/2.
The actual payoff, however, depends on the probability of meeting a Hawk or Dove, which, in turn, is a representation of the percentage of Hawks and Doves in the population when a particular contest takes place. This, in turn, is determined by the results of all of the previous contests. If the cost of losing C is greater than the value of winning V (the normal situation in the natural world) the mathematics ends in an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), a mix of the two strategies where the population of Hawks is V/C. The population regresses to this equilibrium point if any new Hawks or Doves make a temporary perturbation in the population. We will return to the win-win-win model after having explored some further settings that need to be considered when striving toward an equilibrium state.
A global basic income - the first step toward an equilibrium state
In periods of profound societal change, a universal basic income is often referred to as a remedy against growing social inequalities. An early proponent for a universal basic income was Thomas Paine in his pamphlet Agrarian Justice in 1797. His arguments are still as valid in the early 2000s as they were in the late 1700s, so here is a lengthy account of his arguments.
“To preserve the benefits of what is called civilized life, and to remedy at the same time the evil which it has produced, ought to be considered as one of the first objects of reformed legislation.” Paine says. Paine’s views share features with Rousseaus' thinking. Like Rousseau, Paine refers to the natural state of society as a contrast to the societal ills he wants to remedy. To understand what the state of society ought to be, Paine says, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. “There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe.” Paine makes the pertinent observation that poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It does not exist in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science, and manufactures.
Paine concludes that the first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period. The earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and would have continued to be, the common property of the human race, Paine insists. In that state, every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.
Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. Like Locke, he states that it has given a tenfold value. But, contrary to Locke, he insists that the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.
His solution is that a national fund should be created, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age. For the financial aspects of Paine’s plan see his pamphlet Agrarian Justice.
Paine proposes that the payments should be made to every person, rich or poor. It is best to make it so, he says, to prevent invidious distinctions. It is also right it should be so, because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above property he may have created, or inherited from those who did. Persons who do not choose to receive it can throw it into the common fund.
And here Paine has an important qualification, “It is not charity but a right, not bounty but justice, that I am pleading for. The present state of civilization is as odious as it is unjust. It is absolutely the opposite of what it should be, and it is necessary that a revolution should be made in it. The contrast of affluence and wretchedness continually meeting and offending the eye, is like dead and living bodies chained together. Though I care as little about riches as any man, I am a friend to riches because they are capable of good.” (Paine, Thomas 1779). Considering that the members of the Club of Rome emphasized the role of human activities as opposed to economic profit in a state in equilibrium, here is Virginia Woolf’s testimony to the vital role of economic security in her book A Room of One’s Own. Although she does not talk about a basic income, basic security is, nevertheless, the fundamental function of a basic income. In the early 1900s women still lacked a voice, which meant a life of struggle if they wanted to pursue artistic activities, such as writing. Not even entering a university library was without a challenge. When the woman in Woolf’s story entered a university library she was stopped by “a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.” (Woolf, p. 9)
Virginia Woolf’s words, a room of one’s own meant a lock on the door giving a woman the power to think for herself. In addition to the room, Woolf insisted on five hundred a year, which she saw as the power to contemplate. On the latter point, she was speaking of her own experience, as she had inherited such a sum. She asserts that “Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own”. (p. 106)
A value choice
Back to the report of the Club of Rome. The levels of capital and population and the ratio of the two are set in accordance with the values of the society. They may be deliberately revised and slowly adjusted as the advance of technology creates new options.
Technological advances would be both necessary and welcome in the equilibrium state. As for the incentive that would encourage men to produce such technological advances, what better incentive could there be than the knowledge that a new idea would be translated into a visible improvement in the quality of life? This would be an alternative to mankind's long record of new inventions that have resulted in crowding, deterioration of the environment, and greater social inequality because greater productivity has been absorbed by population and capital growth. There is no reason why higher productivity could not be translated into a higher standard of living or more leisure or more pleasant surroundings for everyone, if these goals replace growth as the primary value of society. (emphasis added, pp. 1977, 178)
The authors of the Club of Rome’s report conclude their findings with the observation that they, at this point, can say very little about the practical, day-by- day steps that might be taken to reach a desirable, sustainable state of global equilibrium. Neither the world model nor their thoughts have been developed in sufficient detail to understand all the implications of the transition from growth to equilibrium. They call for much more discussion, more extensive analysis, and many new ideas contributed by many different people. If we have stimulated each reader of this book to begin pondering how such a transition might be carried out, we have accomplished our immediate goal, they conclude. (180)
The report is closed with the observation that mankind has all that is physically necessary to create a totally new form of human society - one that would be built to last for generations. There are two missing ingredients, though, they say, a realistic, long-term goal that can guide mankind to the equilibrium society and the human will to achieve that goal. Without such a goal and a commitment to it, short-term concerns will generate the exponential growth that drives the world system toward the limits of the earth and ultimate collapse. With that goal and that commitment, mankind would be ready now to begin a controlled, orderly transition from growth to global equilibrium. (Page 184).
How to achieve a win-win-win constellation:
- and how it evolved
If we confine our study to the theory of strategy, we seriously restrict ourselves by the assumption of rational behaviour - not just of intelligent behaviour, but of behaviour motivated by a conscious calculation of advantages, a calculation that in turn is leased on an explicit and internally consistent value system. We thus limit the applicability of any results we reach. If our interest is the study of actual behaviour, the results we reach under this constraint may prove to be either a good approximation of reality or a caricature. Any abstraction runs a risk of this sort, and we have to be prepared to use judgment with any results we reach. We refer to the “Kac Ring” in the problem of macroscopic irreversibility.
In 1959, mathematician Mark Kac introduced a model, called the Kac ring, in order to elucidate the classical solution of Boltzmann to the problem of macroscopic irreversibility. However, the model is far from being a realistic representation of something. How can it be of any help here? In philosophy of science, it is often argued that models can provide explanations of the phenomenon they are said to approximate, in virtue of the truth they contain, and in spite of the idealizations they are made of. On this view, idealisations are not supposed to contribute to any explaining, and should not affect the global representational function of the model. But the Kac ring is a toy model that is only made of idealizations, and is still used trustworthily to understand the treatment of irreversible phenomena in statistical mechanics.
In a world of separate self-interested people, groups, and companies engaged in win-lose competition, the idea of win-win solutions (derived from game theory scenarios where “both sides” win) was a revolutionary leap forward. It opened the door to move beyond rivalry to cooperation, compassion, and a shared search for shared benefits. Thus the Papakonstantinidis win-win-win model was developed: “The very few people who I found talking about win-win-win in my web search seemed to use it to indicate a generic leap beyond “both sides” winning (win-win) to “a lot of sides winning”.
Good enough. But I found myself wanting more than mere quantity from this win-win-win phrase. I want an expanded sense of who’s playing and what the winning is all about. So, I dived into a broader examination of what constitutes a win or a loss – and who loses when others win, even when there are many winners.” That resulted in a model of three dimensions of winning. Each of the dimensions can and should be explored much further than the glimpse offered here, but they can be seen as starting points for such a more holistic inquiry about what constitutes “benefit” and how to think about winning.”
The Depth Dimension: What does “winning” look like?
Thinking about wants, needs, and well-being.
Most people think of winning as involving rewards like money, status, or some other socially recognized benefit – or perhaps getting some specific thing we personally desire. Those motivate us to compete, so we can win.
The Holistic Dimension – “Holons” Winning
Thinking about the ubiquitous intimate weave of wholes and parts.
All the “3 dimensions” actually have a fourth dimension that’s generated by the fact that every whole is also a part of one or more greater wholes – and every part is a whole in its own right. Take a minute to “get” this idea….
It means that everything that we’ve talked about so far could be considered through the idea that it’s all about how everything is both a whole and a part. The term “holon” covers that ground. We – and everyone and everything around us – can be viewed as holons, meaning that we and they are not only whole entities, ourselves, but also parts of numerous larger wholes.
FOR EXAMPLE: I’m a whole person while being simultaneously part of my family, my community, and the planet’s carbon cycle. AND my family, my community and the carbon cycle are themselves not only whole entities I can relate to, but they are part of larger realities and dynamic wholes, including the whole planet. This way of seeing the world covers everything.
3.2 The Ancient Greek Philosophy - the “holon” The 3D Holistic Win-Win-Win
The ancient notion of the holon contains in itself the elements of a social contract. So, to enlarge contemporary perceptions of what is required for a new social contract we will here dive into Ancient Greek perceptions.
Aristotle
Holistic living is an approach in which the mind, body, and soul (win-win-win) are taken care of to maintain a balance from within. It is an awareness mindset to take care of yourself intentionally. The principle of this approach is derived from Aristotle’s wise saying: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Aristotle wrote two ethical treatises: the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics. He does not himself use either of these titles, although in the Politics (1295a36) he refers back to one of them—probably the Eudemian Ethics—as “ta êthika”—his writings about character. The words “Eudemian” and “Nicomachean” were added later, perhaps because the former was edited by his friend, Eudemus, and the latter by his son, Nicomachus. In any case, these two works cover more or less the same ground: they begin with a discussion of eudaimonia (“happiness”, “flourishing”), and turn to an examination of the nature of aretê (“virtue”, “excellence”) and the character traits that human beings need in order to live life at its best. Both treatises examine the conditions in which praise or blame are appropriate, and the nature of pleasure and friendship. Near the end of each work, we find a brief discussion of the proper relationship between human beings and the divine.
Though the general point of view expressed in each work is the same, there are many subtle differences in organization and content as well. Clearly, one is a re-working of the other, and although no single piece of evidence shows conclusively what their order is, it is widely assumed that the Nicomachean Ethics is a later and improved version of the Eudemian Ethics. (Not all of the Eudemian Ethics was revised: its Books IV, V, and VI re-appear as V, VI, VII of the Nicomachean Ethics.) Perhaps the most telling indication of this ordering is that in several instances the Nicomachean Ethics develops a theme about which its Eudemian cousin is silent. Only the Nicomachean Ethics discusses the close relationship between ethical inquiry and politics; only the Nicomachean Ethics critically examines Solon’s paradoxical dictum that no man should be counted happy until he is dead; and only the Nicomachean Ethics gives a series of arguments for the superiority of the philosophical life to the political life. Focus will in the following be placed on the Nicomachean Ethics.
A third treatise, called the Magna Moralia (the “Big Ethics”) is included in complete editions of Aristotle’s works, but its authorship is disputed by scholars. It ranges over topics discussed more fully in the other two works and its point of view is similar to theirs. (Why, being briefer, is it named the Magna Moralia? Because each of the two papyrus rolls into which it is divided is unusually long. Just as a big mouse can be a small animal, two big chapters can make a small book. This work was evidently named “big” with reference to its parts, not the whole.) A few authors in antiquity refer to a work with this name and attribute it to Aristotle, but it is not mentioned by several authorities, such as Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, whom we would expect to have known of it. Some scholars hold that it is Aristotle’s earliest course on ethics—perhaps his own lecture notes or those of a student; others regard it as a post-Aristotelian compilation or adaption of one or both of his genuine ethical treatises.
Although Aristotle is deeply indebted to Plato’s moral philosophy, particularly Plato’s central insight that moral thinking must be integrated with our emotions and appetites and that the preparation for such unity of character should begin with childhood education, the systematic character of Aristotle’s discussion of these themes was a remarkable innovation. No one had written ethical treatises before Aristotle. Plato’s Republic, for example, does not treat ethics as a distinct subject matter; nor does it offer a systematic examination of the nature of happiness, virtue, voluntariness, pleasure, or friendship. To be sure, we can find in Plato’s works important discussions of these phenomena, but they are not brought together and unified as they are in Aristotle’s ethical writings.
3.3 The Human Good and the Function Argument
The principal idea with which Aristotle begins is that there are differences of opinion about what is best for human beings and that to profit from ethical inquiry we must resolve this disagreement. He insists that ethics is not a theoretical discipline: we are asking what the good for human beings is not simply because we want to have knowledge, but because we will be better able to achieve our good if we develop a fuller understanding of what it is to flourish. In raising this question—what is the good?—Aristotle is not looking for a list of items that are good. He assumes that such a list can be compiled rather easily; most would agree, for example, that it is good to have friends, to experience pleasure, to be healthy, to be honoured, and to have such virtues as courage at least to some degree. The difficult and controversial question arises when we ask whether certain of these goods are more desirable than others. Aristotle’s search for the good is a search for the highest good, and he assumes that the highest good, whatever it turns out to be, has three characteristics: it is desirable for itself, it is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and all other goods are desirable for its sake.
Aristotle thinks everyone will agree that the terms “eudaimonia” (“happiness”) and “eu zên” (“living well”) designate such an end. The Greek term “eudaimon” is composed of two parts: “eu” means “well” and “daimon” means “divinity” or “spirit”. To be eudaimon is therefore to be living in a way that is well-favored by a god. But Aristotle never calls attention to this etymology in his ethical writings, and it seems to have little influence on his thinking. He regards “eudaimon” as a mere substitute for eu zên (“living well”). These terms play an evaluative role, and are not simply descriptions of someone’s state of mind.
No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal; rather, being eudaimon is the highest end, and all subordinate goals—health, wealth, and other such resources—are sought because they promote well-being, not because they are what well-being consists in. But unless we can determine which good or goods happiness consists in, it is of little use to acknowledge that it is the highest end. To resolve this issue, Aristotle asks what the ergon (“function”, “task”, “work”) of a human being is, and argues that it consists in activity of the rational part of the soul in accordance with virtue (1097b22–1098a20). One important component of this argument is expressed in terms of the distinctions he makes in his psychological and biological works. The soul is analyzed into a connected series of capacities: the nutritive soul is responsible for growth and reproduction, the locomotive soul for motion, the perceptive soul for perception, and so on. The biological fact Aristotle makes use of is that human beings are the only species that has not only these lower capacities but a rational soul as well. The good of a human being must have something to do with being human; and what sets humanity off from other species, giving us the potential to live a better life, is our capacity to guide ourselves by using reason. If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; or, to be more precise, using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists of. Doing anything well requires virtue or excellence, and therefore living well consists of activities caused by the rational soul in accordance with virtue or excellence.
Aristotle’s conclusion about the nature of happiness is in a sense uniquely his own. No other writer or thinker had said precisely what he says about what it is to live well. But at the same time, his view is not too distant from a common idea. As he himself points out, one traditional conception of happiness identifies it with virtue (1098b30–1). Aristotle’s theory should be construed as a refinement of this position. He says, not that happiness is virtue, but that it is virtuous activity. Living well consists in doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition. It consists of those lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of the rational part of the soul.
At the same time, Aristotle makes it clear that in order to be happy one must possess other goods as well—such goods as friends, wealth, and power. And one’s happiness is endangered if one is severely lacking in certain advantages—if, for example, one is extremely ugly, or has lost children or good friends through death (1099a31–b6). But why so? If one’s ultimate end should simply be virtuous activity, then why should it make any difference to one’s happiness whether one has or lacks these other types of good? Aristotle’s reply is that one’s virtuous activity will be to some extent diminished or defective, if one lacks an adequate supply of other goods (1153b17–19). Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, and what little he can accomplish will not be of great merit. To some extent, then, living well requires good fortune; happenstance can rob even the most excellent human beings of happiness. Nonetheless, Aristotle insists, that the highest good, virtuous activity, is not something that comes to us by chance. Although we must be fortunate enough to have parents and fellow citizens who help us become virtuous, we ourselves share much of the responsibility for acquiring and exercising the virtues.
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Soul | Mind |
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Empathy
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Communitarianism
Environmental protection
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3.4 Plato's Definition of “Holism” in Therapy
A contemporary definition of “holism” states that it is “the theory that certain wholes are greater than the sum of their parts, the opposite of atomism. In medicine, it is the treating of the whole person, rather than just the symptoms of a disease”. We can notice in the above definition two elements.
The first one deals with the whole as superior to a mere sum of parts. The second one speaks specifically about the entirety of the human being in medical thinking. On the opposite side, the term “atomism” means “a theoretical approach that regards something as interpretable through analysis into distinct, separable, and independent elementary components, the opposite of holism”.
Although contemporary medicine seems to lean towards atomist thinking, Plato held a more holistic view about what was beneficial for a person or a community. This view was still popular in his time and culture. Setting aside the enormous differences in medical scientific knowledge between current day practices and the medicine in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., the philosophy Plato held about the human being was intriguing. We argue that many passages in the Dialogs demonstrate a holistic approach. For instance, in Charmides, Plato shows us the important relationship between the part and the whole. In order to cure Charmides’ headache, Socrates states that one cannot look for a cure destined to the part without a cure for the whole “This Thracian said that the Greeks were right in advising as I told you just now: “”but Zalmoxis,” he said, “our king, who is a god, says that as you ought not to attempt to cure eyes without a head, or a head without body, so you should not treat a body without a soul”; and this was the reason why most maladies evaded the physicians of Greece—that they neglected the whole, on which they ought to spend their pains, for if this were out of order, it would have been impossible for the part to be in order”.
In the Republic Plato mentions a connecting order with respect to parts of the soul and parts of the body. This is illustrative for holism in platonic thinking: “But, to produce health is to establish the elements in a body in the natural relation of dominating and being dominated by one another, while to cause disease is to bring it about that one rules or is ruled by the other, contrary to nature. - Yes, that is so. - And is it not likewise the production of justice in the soul to establish its principles in the natural relation of controlling and being controlled by one another, while injustice is to cause the one to rule or be ruled by the other, contrary to nature? - Exactly so, he said. - Virtue, then, as it seems, would be a kind of health”.
In the Laws, Plato teaches about different global lifestyles, suggesting that disease and lack of virtue are somehow connected: “The lives of us men must all be regarded as naturally bound up in these feelings, and what kinds of lives we naturally desire is what we must distinguish, but if we assert that we desire anything else, we only say so through ignorance and inexperience of the lives as they really are. What, then, and how many are the lives in which a man—when he has chosen the desirable and voluntary in preference to the undesirable and the involuntary, and has made it into a private law for himself, by choosing what is at once both congenial and pleasant and most good and noble—may live as happily as man can? Let us pronounce that one of them is the temperate life, one the wise, one the brave, and let us class the healthy life as one; and to these let us oppose four others—the foolish, the cowardly, the licentious and the diseased”.
We can see that, in Plato’s view, healing was almost never meant to be some isolated intervention. We can also notice that, partially, Plato did not hold the views of ancient religious medicine which connected all health states with maleficent spirits. Plato shows that one could not heal the part without healing the whole. This was the case for body parts, soul parts or city parts. Plato’s obvious holistic approach can entirely change the semantics of what we understand by “patient” in the Dialogs. On the other hand, what constitutes health and justice is an appropriate order or hierarchy of those parts that constitute the whole to be healed. Last but not least, health and virtue go hand in hand: one cannot expect to restore health without restoring virtue in the entire individual.
4. Results
4.1 Today’s Challenge
The ancient Greek perceptions share features with the prerequisites for a state in equilibrium. We thus need to move from the dominating neoliberal views with their focus on capital to one where humans are center stage. The win-win-win model does this by focussing on human conduct. Empathy and conflict need to be addressed in our effort to move the playing field toward an equilibrium, enriched by the perspectives offered by Thoams Paine, Aristotle and Plato. A central question is whether the win-win-win Papakonstantinidis model (2002) as a conflict strategy can coexist with empathy as a pure behavioural condition aimed at improving bargaining power?
Empathy encompasses a broad range of emotional states, including caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other. It can also be understood as having the separateness of defining oneself.
It involves:
- the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner and the capacity for this as well.
- the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it. (see Merriam-Webster)
4.2 Sympathy vs. Empathy
Sympathy and empathy are closely related words, bound by shared origins and the similar circumstances in which each is applicable, yet they are not synonymous. For one thing, sympathy is considerably older than empathy, having existed in our language for several hundred years before its cousin was introduced, and its greater age is reflected in a wider breadth of meaning. Sympathy may refer to ‘feelings of loyalty’ or ‘unity or harmony in action or effect’, meanings not shared by empathy. In the contexts where the two words do overlap, sympathy implies sharing (or having the capacity to share) the feelings of another, while empathy tends to be used to mean imagining, or having the capacity to imagine, feelings that one does not actually have (Papakonstantinidis 2020).
Some believe that empathy involves the ability to match another's emotions, while others believe that empathy involves being tender hearted toward another person (Ibid.). Having empathy can include having the understanding that there are many factors that go into decision-making and cognitive thought processes. Past experiences have an influence on the decision making of today. Under-standing this allows a person to have empathy for individuals who sometimes make illogical decisions about a problem that most individuals would respond with an obvious response. Broken homes, childhood trauma, lack of parenting and many other factors can influence the connections in the brain which a person uses to make decisions in the future (Ibid.).
Martin Hoffman studied the development of empathy. According to him, everyone is born with the capability of feeling empathy. His theory (2000) of moral psychology and development is primarily focused on empathy and empathic distress, but also includes classic conditioning, cognitive reasoning, and principles.
4.3 The Way Ahead
The Club of Rome observed that there are two missing ingredients to guide mankind to the equilibrium society; a realistic, long-term goal and the human will to achieve that goal. With our focus here, we hope to have contributed with means to the goal that the most desirable and satisfying activities of mankind could flourish: education, art, music, religion, basic scientific research, athletics, and social interactions.
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