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Rogers postulated a theory about the universe having a Formative Tendency—a natural inclination towards organisation and structure through differentiation and integration.
Building on this idea, he proposed that all living organisms possess an actualizing tendency. Rogers developed this theory after observing potatoes in a dark cellar sending out pale, futile sprouts in an attempt to reach a light that simply wasn't there.
To Rogers, this illustrated an innate drive to enhance and maintain the organism—a movement towards wholeness and integration rather than coercion or self-control. From this, he eventually derived the concept of self-actualization: the belief that human beings possess an inherent tendency to actualize the self (whatever that might ultimately mean).
Like any good theory, this one raises almost as many questions as it answers. For example:
- Is self-actualization culturally or environmentally specific?
- Is it always positive? (Spoiler: not necessarily.)
Interesting though those questions are, they're not the ones I find myself returning to. The questions that have occupied my imagination recently are rather different.
Do Organizations Have an Actualizing Tendency?
Rogers primarily refers to living organisms when discussing the actualizing tendency. But could the same principle also apply to organisations?
The obvious answer is, "Yes, of course." Organisations are, after all, made up of people. Perhaps what we observe is simply the collective expression of thousands of individual actualizing tendencies working together. Businesses striving to survive in the competitive "business jungle" would certainly seem to support that idea.
But that explanation has never quite satisfied me.
Consider organisations that aren't driven primarily by competition or profit—charities, NGOs, public services. These organisations can still behave aggressively when the "organism" is under threat. For example:
- Health authorities covering up neglect instead of addressing it openly.
- Police forces obstructing investigations to protect individuals within their ranks.
In these situations, organisations can appear to prioritise their own survival to such an extent that they forget their accountability and even their raison d'être.
Of course, there is a perfectly ordinary explanation. Perhaps what appears to be organisational self-preservation is nothing more than the collective self-interest of the individuals within it. Enough people begin protecting the institution and, eventually, the institution appears to be protecting itself.
But I can't help wondering whether that's the whole story.
Could there be a kind of phantom consciousness at work?
Not consciousness in the science-fiction sense, but something emergent. Something that exists only when enough human beings begin working together towards a shared purpose.
Does an organisation eventually become something more than the sum of its members? Does an ethereal "hive mind" emerge—a living organism of its own—that strives to maintain and enhance itself? And if so, does that organism possess its own form of actualizing tendency, quietly driving the organisation towards survival and self-enhancement, sometimes at the expense of the very purpose for which it was created?
Is the Actualizing Tendency Divinity at Work?
Rogers' progression from the formative tendency to the actualizing tendency, and finally to self-actualization, touches on a question that has fascinated me since childhood.
Why do living things strive to enhance themselves at all?
Plants. Animals. Human beings.
Why not simply settle for what they are?
The idea that this is purely an evolutionary urge has always felt slightly unsatisfying to me.
Take Rogers' potatoes in the dark cellar. They send out futile sprouts, groping towards a light they'll never find, seeking soil they'll never grow in, and yearning for rain and sun they'll never feel. Rogers describes this as a biological urge—a continuation of the evolutionary drive.
Yet I can't stop coming back to one question.
Why?
Why do they continue reaching for something they will never find?
Why not choose inaction?
Why not simply settle for what they already have?
Entropy vs. Actualizing Tendency
What fascinates me even more is that this seems to run directly against one of the universe's most fundamental tendencies.
Left to itself, the universe appears to drift towards entropy—a gradual movement towards disorder, chaos, and breakdown.
Yet living organisms appear to do precisely the opposite.
They organise.
They repair.
They adapt.
They strive.
Which leaves me with perhaps the biggest question of all.
Who—or what—told them to strive?
Is this urge simply a biological mechanism, as Rogers believed? Or is there something more? A spark of divinity? An intrinsic universal force? Or perhaps something else entirely that we simply don't yet have the language to describe?
I don't pretend to have an answer.
But I do think it's one of the most fascinating questions Rogers' work leaves behind.
If this resonates with something you're going through, John offers a free 30-minute initial consultation to talk it through, or you can read more about fees and how sessions work.
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