Ratgeber für MicroUnternehmen

Models, Nature

Every human being has many fundamental beliefs about the world. These Beliefs underlie an individual's attitudes and from these attitudes stem behaviours and actions and our consciousness. These individual consciousnesses are reflected in our families our immediate communities, our cities, counties, state and nations. If the World seems to be turmoil, this is no more than a reflection of the aggregate Human consciousness.

These beliefs are formed throughout life. Unfortunately, old beliefs are not easily discarded when supersede by a new belief but may conflict with newer beliefs. Certain beliefs may even be instinctive, as human beings seem to have an instinctive distrust of anything different as a part of our survival instincts. This distrust of differences may underlie racism and xenophobia.

As an example of such beliefs, most people have what is known as "victim-consciousness", where their default response is to see themselves as victims of circumstances and the actions of others. This is a based on a learned belief dating from the first few months of life after birth, when the person is indeed helpless and dependant on others for survival. Beliefs normally take time to become rooted in the psyche, but traumatic incidents can result in the immediate formation of a deep-seated belief. Phobias may stem from such traumatic incidents.

People relate to each other and the environment through models, which are abstractions of that environment based on the personal belief system about that environment. A person who has a positive model of a particular situation would tend to interpret events positively, where the same events might be interpreted negatively by someone with a different model. We tend to fit events into the model, where the model is taken as a given fact We tend to use our own models when interpreting others' motivations, so someone whose model makes him motivated by financial reward, may attempt to use financial rewards to motivate people such as college professors, who may be more motivated by prestige.

It is therefore important for a manager to understand the personal models, his own and others, when drafting an interpersonal strategy. In order to understand what models others are using, factors such as culture, religion and upbringing all play a part. Racial or national stereotypes do have a certain validity, but they should be guides during an initial assessment to point to likely models rather used as hard and fast rules. We are all influenced by our cultures, because they form an important part of how our beliefs are formed and influenced by the beliefs of our communities. This is how a stereotype is formed, common beliefs driving common attitudes and behaviours or responses.

When one comes to consider Man's attitude to Nature, it is clear that a model in which Nature must be dominated was (and still is) very common. An attitude where Nature should ne nurtured is also quite evident in our society.

When evaluating models it helps to step outside the model - although we can never step outside all models - they are an intrinsic part of our thinking process. Mathematics is a way of modelling certain aspects of our realities. But try to be impartial. When one does this is that underlying both these models concerning Nature is the belief that we are apart from Nature, whereas reflection would show that we must be a part of Nature. This should influence our model, although, as previously said, old models beliefs are very hard to dispose of once formed, and may often be the basis of our immediate response, only replaced on sober reflection. Animals do not seem to model Nature in the same way, rather accepting it and working within the constraints that have existed from time immemorial.

Mat21