Bees and Flowers Part Two.

In my last post I quoted from a speech written by Robert Greenleaf where he wrote that the “bee fertilizes the flower it robs.” Greenleaf used this simple lesson from nature as a reminder that we human beings need to become more aware of how we interact with those around us and to make sure that we always leave something of greater value then what we take away.

I also came across the same honeybee and flower reminder in David Korten’s book The Great Turning: From Empire To Earth Community. Korten writes, “Every child is familiar with the example of the flower and the honeybee. The flower provides the honeybee with sweet, life-giving nectar, and the honeybee pollinates the flower to facilitate its reproduction. In this simple example, the relationship is directly reciprocal.” The premise of Korten’s book is that we need to change the focus of our societies based on building empires of hierarchy and instead develop communities that focus on cooperation and harmony with the natural world.

Although Korten does not mention the concept of servant leadership in his book, it is filled with ideas that mesh well with Robert Greenleaf’s. In the “Acknowledgements" section of the book he credits Meg Wheatley as one source of the framing ideas for his book. Wheatley has written much on servant leadership in her work. Korten’s writings on the history of empires reminded me of Greenleaf’s account of how our society became so bureaucratic in his essay “The Individual as Leader” from the book On Becoming A Servant Leader.

In the essay, Greenleaf explains how Moses was struggling to keep order among his followers and his father in-law Jethro advised him that the answer to his problems were to set up a bureaucracy to manage the work and workers. This was not the solution that would best serve the people, but it did make Moses’ job a lot easier. In the end, God was not happy with Moses performance and fired him from leading the people into the Promised Land.

Now back to the bees. I read an article in the paper today about how honeybees are suffering from what has been called “colony collapse disorder” where honeybees are dieing off in large numbers. It seems that in this case we are not giving much back to the honeybees. Could it be that the demise of the honeybee colonies is an indication that empire as an organizational principle might be coming to the end of its 5000-year or so reign? If it is, who is the prophet that will lead us to our promised land, and what will be the organizational principle to get us there? According to Korten, “we are the ones we have been waiting for” and Greenleaf’s concept of servant leadership is a likely path to take us there.