4–Seek Wisdom, Practice Love, Get Results: Happiness and Success Part 4
Written by Pete Bowen on September 17, 2020
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In our last blog, we talked about how happiness and fulfillment come from good, high-quality relationships.
In this piece, we’ll talk about the three basic ways to understand relationships, and find that covenant relationships give us the best chance for happiness and success.
Three Types of Relationships
Football, basketball and golf are all different paradigms for playing a sport. They all use the word “team”, but they mean different things by that word.
In football, there are offensive, defensive and special teams, each with 11 players. In basketball, there is one team of five on the court with players substituting in and out. Golf is generally an individual sport, but uses teams for international competitions.
The concept of team is different in each sport depending on the nature of the sport.
In the same way, in history there are three major paradigms for understanding life—a Wisdom Paradigm, Modern Paradigm and Postmodern Paradigm—and each has its own understanding of human relationships that differs based on the paradigm.
Each of these paradigms and their different understandings of relationship are present in our society today.
We’ll take a look at Modern contract relationships, Postmodern power relationships and Wisdom covenant relationships.
The more we know about each of these relationships types, the more we can engage the relationship that gives us the best chance for happiness and success—and avoid relationship types that are less effective.
Contract Relationships
In the 1500’s and 1600’s, Europe was devastated by religious wars that killed millions of people and bankrupted governments.
In response, Enlightenment thinkers of the time tried to come up with a new, modern way of understanding life that included a new understanding of human relationships.
They started with the idea that humans are radically free individuals in a state of nature—of constant war and anarchy—without basic, pre-existing relationships with others.
Individuals in this state of anarchy have lots of freedom to do whatever they want, but don’t have much security, because other people are free to do bad things to them.
The solution to this anarchy is that people come together in a social contract. They give up some of their freedom to the community or government and get security in return.
As the Modern Paradigm became a dominant way of understanding life, people began to think of all relationships as fundamentally contract relationships.
At their core, contract relationships are transactional and antagonistic.
Take the example of companies and employees.
In a contract relationship, employees want more money from the company for less work. Companies want more work from employees for less money. What is good for one is bad for the other.
Employees need jobs and companies need workers, so eventually they negotiate a contract. They establish a contractual relationship.
By definition, what’s good for the employee and good for the company are opposite. That means contract relationships are low-trust relationships.
Low-trust relationships driven by money get low levels of commitment from people. Low commitment results in low performance. That’s why contract relationships are low performance relationships.
Finally, low-trust, low-commitment relationships aren’t very stable. They are brittle. When you put them under pressure, they break.
In contractual relationships, you get the relationship you pay for.
Would you rather have friends who are with you because they love you or because you give them things?
Contract relationships are low-trust, low-performance, low-stability relationships.
Power-based Relationships
In the 1900’s, a new postmodern way of looking at life became increasingly influential in our society.
Postmodern thinking is grounded in the idea that many of the things we think are facts—like truth, morality and justice—are not facts, but simply the way we have been programmed by the powerful people in our society. They call these programmed ideas social constructs.
In postmodern thinking, everything is subjective, a matter of perspective, in the eye of the beholder. If there are no facts like objective truth, morality, or justice, then the only thing that matters in society is power.
In this postmodern approach, all relationships are power relationships—including your family and friends, and your work and community relationships.
Relationships may appear to be based in love, trust, transaction, mutually beneficial exchange, etc., but those appearances just hide the deeper reality that all relationships are grounded in nothing more than power.
Power gets exercised in a variety of ways including social pressure, bullying, money, manipulation, lying, narrative, threats, education, religion, etc.—whatever it takes to get the other person to do what you want.
Since this postmodern approach rejects objective morality, there is nothing wrong with threatening or lying to someone to get them to do what you want.
A leader that is good at lying and manipulation can lure unsuspecting people into trusting them and doing horrible things.
Fear is also a powerful tool to get people to do what you want. If someone threatens to kill your family, you will probably show a lot of commitment and high-performance.
In these ways, power-based relationships can be high-performance relationships. If the lies or fear can be maintained, power-based relationships can also be stable.
On the flip side, if the lies are discovered or the fear ends, there can be a powerful, even fatal backlash against the power-based leader. Power relationships can go from relative stability to collapse very quickly.
Many academic people—especially in the humanities—believe that all relationships are power relationships and teach that to students.
Power relationships can be relatively high-trust, high-performance and high-stability—until they collapse and aren’t. Power-based relationships treat people as things to be manipulated by whatever means necessary to get whatever you desire.
Covenant Relationships
While contract relationships start with the idea that people are radically free individuals in a state of nature, covenant relationships start with the idea that people are naturally in relationship with each other from the day they are born into families.
In covenant relationships, the good of the team and the good of the individual are the same. That is the opposite of modern contract relationships where what is good for the team is bad for the individual—and vice versa.
A team is only as good as the people on the team. The better the people are, the better the team is. So good covenant teams invest in their individual people to develop their skills, character, leadership and teamwork.
On the flip side, as an individual, the more you put into the team, the more you will develop your own skills, teamwork, character, and leadership. Improving these will help you build stronger relationships and make you more successful in all areas of your life—family, work and community.
The more the team invests in each person, the better the team gets. The more each person puts into the team, the better the person gets. In covenant relationships, the good of the team and person are the same.
Covenant relationships are not based on power or transaction. Covenant relationships are grounded in a promise—a covenant—between the community/team and each member.
The deepest covenant relationships are promises grounded in love for the other person.
When you put a covenant relationship under pressure, the people bond and the team gets tighter.
If you have been part of a championship sports or work team, or been in the US military, you have probably experienced covenant relationships. Everyone is close, trust is high, and the commitment is deep. No one is in it for the money. Everyone is in it because they care about it each other. People are willing to put their lives on the line for each other.
Covenant relationships are the highest-trust, highest-performing and most stable relationships possible. They are also the most fulfilling relationships.
Make all your relationships covenant relationships. It will give you the best chance for happiness and success in all areas of your life.
WRAP-UP
Happiness comes from good, covenant relationships.
In the next episode, we’ll talk about three virtues you can practice that will build the best covenant relationships possible.
Seek Wisdom, Practice Love and Get Results.
