The Two Tables Model 
 
Imagine that all your goals and dreams for this life are in an imaginary box. This box rests on a table whose four legs represent the stability of your health, your mental health, your key personal relationships, and your ethical/spiritual integrity. If even one of these legs is compromised, the leg breaks, the table tips, and your goals and dreams—and maybe your life—are in trouble. For instance, you can’t achieve most of your goals and dreams if you don’t take care of your body and it breaks down.

Most people recognize the importance of maintaining these four legs. But this table is on another, much larger, table. This table’s four legs are the environment, the economy, the community, and your political system. Instability in any of these four life-support systems can cause suffering or death.[1]  

      
 
One important aspect of this model is that most people think of the environment and the political world, as “out there,” as something distant. In other words, many people unconsciously hold the following “Four Circles” model of the world: 

 
This model nicely places you at the center. It also nicely “insulates” you from the world by interposing your family and community. According to the model, people tend to first take care of themselves; then their family and friends; and then perhaps some part of their community. This may be their church community, or some disadvantaged group. In this model, the “world” is distant. The world is what you see on the TV news. The world is extra credit; it’s what you work on if you are Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr.

But in the Two Tables Model, the environment and the economy and the other parts of the world are not “out there”—they are beneath us. We depend on them. In this sense the Two Tables model is more accurate than the Four Circles. Referring to the model, I tell people, “The bottom half of your goals and dreams is a stable world.” I also say that people who take care of the upper table and not the bottom are like castle defenders who guard the top part of the castle, but leave the lower gates undefended. Or they are like a family that has a two-story wooden house who paint and care for the top floor of their house, but leave the ground floor to rot.

They can also be compared to people who elegantly dress the top half of their bodies, but don’t know how much or how little they are their wearing below. The Scottish proverb “Fur coat and no knickers” describes this situation—but here the consequences are much worse than embarrassment.

One very important implication of the Two Tables Model is that it inaugurates the fifth generation of time management . Stephen Covey in his book Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People saw the fourth generation as maintaining a balance between producing whatever you wanted and sustaining and improving the capacity to produce some more. The fifth generation provides a further level of optimization. Put simply, for long-range optimization one must balance attainment of goals and dreams with the maintenance and development of all our mutual life-support systems, not just those that directly support production. Two important outcomes of this are: First, that self-improvement books must now fully explore the impact of their advice on the reader’s life-support systems or be considered inadequate. Second, organizations and individuals can no longer consider helping systems such as the environment and community as charity but must consider these efforts as an indissoluble part of their goals.  

Therefore, what many people think of as charity (volunteering) or civic action (politics) can be thought of as doing your share to maintain the world. It can also be thought of as insurance for you and your children’s future welfare. That’s because people who don’t have their basic needs met have many reasons to become terrorists or soldiers: They have lots of rage, hatred and envy; they have little to lose; and they are often grateful to anyone who will give them even a little food, attention and respect.

What I’m trying to say is “pay a little now, or you’ll have to pay a lot more later.” For instance, if you don’t take care of your teeth, you will pay more in pain and dentist bills. If you don’t make “deposits” into your personal relationships, you won’t be able to “withdraw” as much support later, and the relationship may go bankrupt. And if you don’t “pay” people in need, you may pay later with destruction or theft of your property, or pay with your life or your children’s lives. Pay now or pay later, but later the price may be excruciatingly high.

While there’s still value to the “Four Circles” way of looking at the world, the Two Tables way of looking at the world can help people realize that the bottom half of their goals and dreams is a stable world. Once people understand this, they will be more likely to use superprograms for themselves and others.


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[1] Those with a technical background will recognize that the Two Tables Model is an application of Systems Theory. So it’s not a purely original idea like superprograms. But I feel it is invaluable because it makes something as complex and universal as Systems Theory, and makes it something that an eleven-year-old can understand