The Synergy that Self-Actualizing Creates

When I first began my research into Maslow and the Human Potential Movement I did not know that Maslow was the person who introduced the concept of synergy. I also did not know where he got that concept. What I discovered was that he did not come up with it on his own, but that he popularized what he had learned from Ruth Benedict.

It was Ruth Benedict, as a pioneering anthropologist, who invented the concept of synergy to explain different cultures. It happened when she was exploring different cultures and seeking to create a comparative sociology. After trying numerous formulations, Ruth came up with the idea of synergy and from that created the distinction of low to high synergistic cultures.

“High social synergy is where institutions insure mutual advantage . . . and low social synergy occurs where the advantage of one individual becomes a victory over another.”

What is synergy? Synergy is what occurs when the cooperative action of discrete individuals or groups has the total effect that’s greater than the sum of the effects taken independently. The term itself , to work (ergon) together (syn), speaks of cooperation and collaboration. Benedict found that in secure, high synergy societies, wealth tends to get spread around so that it is siphoned off from the high places to the low places. Maslow discovered this also in his field research with the Blackfoot Indians of Alberta Canada.

As long as people live at the deficiency level, they see and use each other as objects of their own needs (Reflection #11). This undermines synergy. Synergy between people and groups arise when people can move to a higher motivational level, to the self-actualization level.

We can think about synergy individually within a person and collectively within a group. By creating a synergy within ourselves we are able to synergize our own energies and collaborate with others to create a collaborative culture or company.

What is the opposite of synergy? The opposite is conflict, dichotomy, and polarization. The opposite is linear either/or thinking rather than both/and systemic thinking. With linear thinking, the world becomes a set of polarities and human life and relationship becomes oriented to framing things in terms of duality and conflict:

• Selfish (Self) or Unselfish (Others)
• Work or Play
• Stingy or Generous
• Mind or Body
• Optimism or Pessimism
• Enthusiasm or Skepticism
• Reason or Emotion
• Impulse or Control
• Win or Lose
• Competitive or Cooperation
• Scarcity or Abundance
• Socialism or Democracy
• Innocence or Guilt
• Friend or Enemy

Does this list sound like the everyday conflicts and issues that we read about in the newspaper or see on the evening news? Are these still the issues that leaders and managers deal with in boardrooms? Are these the issues that couples and families still argue about?

What then is the solution? The solution is to rise above any continuum, recognize the either-or framing, and synergize a higher unifying frame. Ah, the meta-stating process! The problem with either-or linear thinking is how we perceive reality as a duality. We then dichotomize things using either-or framing to simplify things, yet this only poorly represents the territory.

What’s the solution to this? It is to make a meta-jump to a higher level where we can create a unifying frame, a synthesis of the polarities. Doing this gives us a chance at finding a unifying frame that more holistically integrates the different aspects of life. Then we can create a synergy inside of ourselves and within the conflicting differences in a community or society.

Synergy arises from a higher and more complex process, a meta-thinking process. Instead of either-or, we think systemically in terms of a multitude of contributing influences and variables. Now we think in terms of both-and, degrees of, extent of, and relative influence of various variables.

Benedict said that a culture can be synergic with human biological essence (with our lower and higher needs) or it can be antagonistic to it. Culture and biology are not in principle opposed to each other. Maslow asked, “Can we say that everyone yearns for the higher life, the spiritual, the B-values?” and answered it positively.

“It is a potential in every newborn baby until proven otherwise. It is unwise to give up the possibility of the meta-life completely, and in principle for any living persons.”

So in the process of self-actualizing, as we become our best selves, we transcend and resolve the dichotomies. Polarities disappear and many oppositions, thought to be intrinsic, merged and coalesced with each other to form unities. As we self-actualize we discover that the higher and the lower needs are not in opposition. We discover also as Maslow said, “A thousand philosophical dilemmas have no horns at all.” (Motivation and Personality, p. 41).

Regarding the dichotomy of work and play, Maslow wrote about the new synergy that arises in self-actualization.

“We can learn from self-actualizing people what the ideal attitude toward work might be under the most favorable circumstances. These highly evolved individuals assimilate their work into the identity into self, i.e., work actually becomes part of the self part of the individual’s definition of himself. Work can be psychotherapeutic, psychologic (making well people grow toward self- actualization). (1965 Maslow on Management).

This speaks about the synthesizing power of self-actualization and how the self-actualizing process operates as an integrative process of opposites and polarities.

“My subjects had put opposites together in such a way as to make me realize that regarding selfishness and unselfishness as contradictory and mutually exclusive is itself characteristic of a lower level of personality development. So also in my subjects were many other dichotomies resolved into unities, cognition vs. conation (heart vs. head, wish vs. fact) became cognition ‘structured with’ conation as instinct and reason came to the same conclusions. Duty became pleasure, and pleasure merged with duty. The distinction between work and play became shadowy. How could selfish hedonism be opposed to altruism, when altruism became selfishly pleasurable? Those most mature of all people were also strongly childlike. These same people, the strongest egos ever described and the most definitely individual, were also precisely the ones who could be most easily ego-less, self-transcending, and problem-centered.” (Ibid., pp. 139- 140)

“They are all integrators, able to bring separates and even opposites together into unity. We speak here of the ability to integrate and of the play back and forth between integration within the person, and his ability to integrate whatever it is he is doing in the world. To the extent that creativeness is constructive, synthesizing, unifying, and integrative, to that extent does it depend in part on the inner integration of the person.” (140)

As we self-actualize, the lessening of fear and the growing of acceptance enables us to integrate more. The self-actualizing process itself enables us to transcend and resolve such dualities that once created conflicts for us. This is one of the powers of self-actualization.

“It can be said of such a person with real meaningfulness that he is being his own kind of person, of being himself, of actualizing his real self. His work is his play and his play is his work. If a person loves his work and enjoys it more than any other activity in the whole world and is eager to get to it, to get back to it after any interruption, then how can we speak about “labor” in the sense of something one is forced to do against one’s wishes?”

“What sense is left to the concept “vacation?” For such individuals it is often observed that during their vacations, that is, during the periods in which they are totally free to choose whatever they wish to do and in which they have no external obligations to anyone else, that it is precisely in such periods that they devote themselves happily and totally to their ‘work.” Or, what does it mean “to have some fun,” to seek amusement? What is now the meaning of the world “entertainment?” How does such a person “rest?” What are his “duties” responsibilities, obligations?”

“A synergistic institution was one that arranged it so that a person pursuing his selfish ends was automatically helping other people thereby; and that a person trying to be altruistic and helping other people and being unselfish, was also automatically and willy-nilly helping along his own selfish advantages.”

“At this level of discourse the mutual exclusiveness between selfishness and unselfishness has also disappeared. What is good for us is good for everyone else, what is gratifying is praiseworthy, our appetites are ow trustworthy, rational, and wise, what we enjoy is good for us, seek our own (highest) good is also seeking the general good.” (318)