Nathan Warren’s Awareness-Driven Theory Prioritizes Life Over Profit

In a time when America’s economy is increasingly viewed as deeply entwined with ethical and environmental crises, Nathan Warren seeks to uproot capitalism as we know it, and deliver it to consciousness.

A Corporate Finance instructor at Oregon State University and owner of Harris Bridge Winery in Philomath, Warren believes the rules governing larger capitalist corporations need an update. His new organizational theory would dovetail science-forward tools that help organizations thrive, with accountability for impacts on employees, the environment, the community, and the consumers who support them – making corporations more sustainably profitable and responsible. The key, he says, is awareness.

Without awareness, Warren asserts that organizations have been operating blindly.

Warren’s Conscious Community Theory, or CCT postulates that today’s scientific knowledge and collection of tech tools can make businesses more aware than ever before of the world around them, from capturing subtle hints in today’s rapidly changing market, to better understanding the environmental impact of its operations.

Likewise, CCT maintains that companies now have better communication tools which would allow them to be utterly transparent – which Warren believes would increase corporate accountability.

In his view, some of the world’s largest and most innovative businesses are already evolving to use many of the principles of CCT – from Apple’s agile design and engineering teams to Google’s deep learning, artificial intelligence-driven healthcare diagnostic model work.

Telling components of Warren’s framework are his views that science needs a seat at the corporate boardroom table, and that the value of all life on planet Earth should be included in the quantification behind corporate decisions. Both of these changes would likely require legislation and multi-disciplinary inputs from economists, politicians, and business leaders in order to become meaningfully implemented in the US.

Mandating Awareness

For decades, Warren says scientists have been sounding the alarm to our business community about its impact on the world.

“Relatively powerless academic researchers and corporate whistleblowers are not the best ways to bring awareness to an organization,” he says.

Warren argues for expanding the role of the Chief Analytics Officer, or CAO, within an organization, and adding an Awareness Triad of observation, understanding, and learning – which is rooted in science – to the already established corporate Purpose Triad of mission, vision, and values.

“For example,” he says, “in CCT, all information flows up from the front line employees to the CAO, where it is analyzed for insights and opportunities. This awareness-led, bottom-up approach contrasts with the current profit focused, top-down model in which the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is the implementation arm of powerful Shareholders. CCT’s awareness-led approach results in a more adaptive, responsive organization.”

Warren postulates that employees, communities, science, and artificial intelligence can all serve as prized awareness structures.

“Humans are walking awareness structures, equipped with eyes and ears and data processing minds,” he says. “And yet most organizations driven by myopic money and power, overlook or even reject intelligence when it threatens profits. Shifting the focus to science and awareness can change this, beginning by asking employees who they are, what they value, and what they know. Every employee can help an organization reflect on the gaps between a corporation’s stated objectives and the reality on the front lines, it just requires leading with questions, and listening to the insights that come from your people.”

Warren puts it this way: “Aware and connected communities bring truth to power in the same way that open and free markets bring fairness to price, and democracy brings truth to politicians.”

What Warren Aims to Fix

“For over a century, heavily staffed accounting departments have been gleefully counting their company’s revenues and profits,” Warren explains. “Who is counting the costs that these companies incur to our shared environment and to our shared society? Our current balance sheets of assets and liabilities are incomplete when they fail to capture the unfunded liabilities that corporations are handing to the next generation of children.”

“Our ecosystem on planet earth is by far the biggest economy in existence,” he continues. “Collectively, it is worth almost infinitely more than our myopic monetary systems. Every participant in an ecosystem is important, and combined, all life in an ecosystem represents immense and irreplaceable value in the form of natural resources like clean water, lush forests, food, and a long list of other things that are vital for life on earth.”

Warren says that because we haven’t had to pay for any of this life, our monetary systems have failed to assign any value to it. “This results in corporate activities being labeled ‘profitable’ when they actually destroy much more real value than they create.”

“When everyone knows about toxic waste production or the use of dishonest practices, behavior changes. That is the power of information,” he says. “Before now, we didn’t have the combination of scientific knowledge, information systems, and global communication technology to confront this challenge as a global community of conscious, connected people. We now have all three, and so it’s time to get to work!”

Warren disagrees with business movements that claim “protecting the environment” requires expanding corporate purpose.“How arrogant have humans become when they think they’re going to ride in on a white horse and save a four billion year old planet with capitalist solutions? The solution is to expand human awareness, not human ego and purpose.

“Our earth is talking to us. Our coral reefs and forests, the salmon and whales, our anxious children, these are all talking to us, and we’re not listening. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough self-obsessed human stakeholders at the table, the problem is that none of them are listening.”

A CCT organization would remedy this by expanding awareness structures to gather information on everything from consumer needs to environmental impacts. This expanded awareness would replace the current emphasis on the purpose of profiteers and power brokers. “When the awareness of a need or opportunity presents itself,” says Warren, “the profit motives attached to that need are secondary, not primary.”

“This single, simple re-prioritization is so critically important to understand,” he continues. “The need becomes primary, and the profits become secondary. CCT would begin working for the needs of our community and our planet, and it would use a capitalist system to assist with the value exchanges involved. That simple re-prioritization – need first, money system second – will remove the existing power and profit-based distortions from the economy.”

Warren’s Views on Capitalism

“Capitalism is no more about your profits than love is about your orgasm,” Warren claims.

“Capitalism is about freedom and value in all directions at once, and love is about connection and life,” he maintains. “Millions of valuable concepts have been inspired into existence by capitalism, and many of the most valuable have been unprofitable. Unprofitability is a symptom, not a punishment.”

“The important questions to ask,” he says, “are what is capitalism and what is love? Once you begin to see past your own ego, your own purpose, your own profits, your own orgasm, you’ll discover that neither capitalism, nor love, are about you. They are about us, and how we thrive together in this shared life, on this beautiful planet. Both of these concepts help us see beyond our own limited paradigms and open ourselves to new people and new ideas. That’s consciousness, and consciousness is more about awareness than purpose.”

Warren poses one more vital question: “Should all life on Earth exist to support a system, or should all systems on Earth exist to support life? If we think that humans should support systems, then our businesses should prioritize profits. If we think that our systems should support life, then we need to feed those systems with the scientific information necessary to get them working for all of us, without the distortions of power and control.

“Without scientific knowledge and information about the needs of our living world, our businesses are just money machines.”

Warren presents on CCT…

Warren will present as a panelist for The Advocate’s CitySpeak event on Thursday, February 27, at 6:30 p.m. at the Corvallis-Benton County Library’s Main Meeting Room. The event will feature a second panel with NAACP President Angel Harris, exploring life in a brown body and local implicit bias. Free and open to the public, an audience Q&A will follow both panel discussions.

Warren’s next step is to initiate pilots of CCT outside of Oregon. Currently, there are several pilots underway around the state. If you would like to be considered for a pilot, contact Warren by phone at (541) 990-5919, or by email at nathan@harrisbridgevineyard. com. More information is also available through the CCT website at www.communitytheory.org.