Attitudes Matter

We can all likely recall a situation when we listened to an erudite speaker while being simultaneously put off by their attitude. When we sense arrogance, disdain, mean-spiritedness, etc. we naturally recoil. Numerous times I've heard or seen the words "Attitude is Everything" or "It's not how the world treats you, it's how you react to how the world treats you" or other similar aphorisms emphasizing attitudes.

One of the few listservs I remain on is the National Coalition on Dialogue and Deliberation, where more than 1,000 facilitators of group process lurk and share ideas about improving how we can make group work better for all. In a recent post about the Vermont Town Meetings one list member shared the story about an invocation that begins many of the town meetings these days. Normally given my a member of the religious community, one year in the town of Danford, VT, Toby Balivet, town attorney gave the following invocation which has since be adopted by many of the towns:


"We have come together in civil assembly, as a community, in a tradition that is older than our state itself. We come together to make decisions about our community. As we deliberate, let us advocate for our positions, but not at the expense of others. Let us remember that there is an immense gap between saying 'I am right' and saying 'I believe I am right.' And that our neighbors with whom we disagree are good people with hopes and dreams as true and as high as ours. And let us always remember that, in the end, caring for each other, in this community, is of far greater importance than any difference we may have."

I think this is the kind of attitude we must cultivate to make our way forward through  uncertain times. Inherent in it are humility, forgiveness, empathy, compassion and commitment to community. We need to take back the language that is so heavily loaded with competition, with winning, with power-over as opposed to power-with. Perhaps if we were to be bombarded with more positive social attitudes we might yet create communities that thrive for all. In Aldous Huxley's utopian novel, Island, in the background throughout the book could be heard the birds calling "Attention" and "Here and now" a reminder to the citizens to be mindful of what was before them at the moment. John Rowson in a November 2010 blog Mindfulness (4) "Huxley's Reminder Birds" extracts some of the description from the book.

 "Attention",  a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. "Attention",  it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. "Attention"  (...)
"Is that your bird?" Will asked.
She shook her head.
Mynahs are like the electric light", she said. "They don't belong to anybody."
Why does he say those things?
"Because somebody taught him", she answered patiently...
But why did they teach him those things? Why 'Attention'? Why 'Here and now?'
"Well ..." She searched for the right words in which to explain the self-evident to this strange imbecile. "That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now."
"And the mynahs fly about reminding you—is that it?"
She nodded. That, of course, was it. There was a silence.

Rowson also shares in that blog another quote that signifies the importance of developing a mindful attitude as the road to a better world.


As positive psychologist, [Mihaly] Czikzsentmihalyi once said: ‘Where attention goes, energy flows.'
 .
Attending to our attitudes more purposefully and with elements of the Vermont Town Meeting invocation may help us find our way towards a better world and personal happiness. I can't see it hurting either.




 

Needs, Wants, Justice, Discipline, Power and Love

Those concepts have been poking their shoots up through the disturbed soil of my consciousness frequently of late. The needs and wants dichotomy spurred on by moments spent with Gandhi's autobiography, wherein he shares his own wrestling match with this challenge and with my own increasing realization we live on a finite planet with a growing population experiencing growing inequality. If we look in even the slightest way critically at our culture's bombardment of  advertising, we can't miss the point of it is targeted at changing our perceived 'wants' into 'needs'. That we need the product, service, or experience to be happier or more fulfilled.

Gandhi's popular aphorism that 'The world has enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed' comes to mind. Gandhi was indeed a unique individual. Few of us humans have the combination of worldview, discipline, and sense of personal and moral strength that he developed over his lifetime. His autobiography written twenty years preceding his assassination unveils many of his internal wrestling matches, his failures, as well as his seeming ability for self-discipline. He also demanded very high standards for his family and associates to meet. Some of which he later regretted. His power to withstand outside forces and to stand strong against them was likely founded on his own power to control his own consciousness. This he exercised frequently with diet, sex, and learning. It appears that indeed his vigilant attempt to improve himself (as he perceived what needed improving) gave birth to an emergent strength in dealing with the outside world.

One can surely make an argument that if everyone lived like Gandhi, the planetary systems we rely on would not be unraveling like they are and that we could satisfy the basic needs of many more than we share this spinning sphere with currently.

David Miller, noted British political philosopher, addresses our responsibilities to the injustices in the world in his recent book National Responsibility and Global Justice. Miller argues that there is both a personal responsibility and a national responsibility to respond to 'what do we owe to the world's poor'? Without having poured through the whole book yet he appears to believe that while both levels of responsibility exist for us as citizens in this world of growing inequality, perhaps there is more responsibility at the nation state level that we should put our energies into. Thus pressuring our governments to change the rules of the game to root out the causes of that inequality and extreme poverty.

In the introduction to his recent book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change, Adam Kahane quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. final book that calls to that same magic potion of power and love.

“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, and economic change. . . . And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites— polar opposites— so that love is identified with the resignation of power, and power with the denial of love. Now we’ve got to get this thing right. What [we need to realize is] that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. . . . It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.” —Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?

This merger of power and love must, it seems to me as I write this, emerge from explorations of reflection and discipline. The reflections cannot simply be constructed from the rational logic of a highly disciplined mind and technique. They may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. My sense is that they must also emerge from a deep connection to the heart.

Our dominant education system and economic system have removed the heart from the equations. I suspect that is why even though US GDP has written steadily since WWII, but our level of happiness (and of heart health by the way) has declined. If we are to reverse this trajectory, we will need to bring the heart back to a full partner in our future. And that heart must be open not only to other humans, but the entire community of life. My own momentary reflection has me convinced this begins with some strengthening exercises of the kind that come from the practice of self discipline. Bad habits are hard to overcome. I'll try again today.



Meanwhile I've added Kahane's book to my reading list in hopes that it can steer me to 'The Theory and Practice of Social Change' more effectively.  If the 18 minute version of his October 2012 talk for RSA Animates "How to Change the Future" is any indication, he has much wisdom to share as we create our future together. Onward...



  

A Quiet Revolution?

Between the stories of sequester, austerity, drones, civil wars, gun violence, extreme weather, demise of species, accelerating inequality, corruption, violence against women, and on and on I get numbed. I want to retreat into my reading, my gardening, my enjoyment of good food, good beer, good friends, and good work. It just seems so hopeless in the face of it all. And of course this feeling has ebbed and flowed through the six plus decades of this life. But my new issue of Resurgence [see blogs from last week] arrived yesterday entitled A Quiet Revolution. I sampled a few pieces this morning. As usual they each captured something that I don't catch in many other reads.

Joanna Macy's "Hearing the Call" is a siren song to "The Great Turning", a term that she coined for the quiet revolution she believes has been under way for years and is growing. Early on she highlights Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest, in which he describes a Movement With No Name but with perhaps as many as 2 million organizations worldwide who are "hearing the call to widen the notions of their self-interest and act for the sake of life on Earth." Macy believes that "in this defining moment, countless choices are being made, habits relinquished, friendships forged, and gateways opened to unforeseen collaborations and capacities."

Macy's faith is not without some reflection on the forces that make that faith seem impossible to hold. "All of us are prey to the fear that it may be too late, and thus any effort is essentially hopeless. Any strategy we can mount seems so puny in comparison to the mighty systemic forces embedded in the military-industrial complex. The accelerating pace of destruction and contamination may already be taking us beyond those tipping points where the ecological and social systems unravel irreparably. Along with the Great Turning, the Great Unraveling is happening too, and there is no way to tell how the larger story will end."

Macy's unflinching commitment seems to be fused into her muscle and bone as she continues,

"So we learn again that hardest and most rewarding of lessons: how to make friends with uncertainty; how to pour your whole passion into a project when you can't be sure it's going to work. How to free yourself from dependence on seeing the results of your actions. These learnings are critical, for living systems are ever unfolding in new patterns and connections. There is no point from which to foresee with clarity the possibilities to emerge under future conditions."

Whew!!!

"Instead of any blueprint for the future, we have this moment. In lieu of a sure fire strategy to pull off the Great Turning, we can only fashion guidelines to help us keep going as best we can, and to stay on track with a simple faith in the goodness of life." She goes on to offer some guidelines for our consideration. The article unfortunately is not currently available without a subscription, but perhaps this whets your appetite to consider that investment in support of The Quiet Revolution.

But even if it doesn't, you can read Satish Kumar's "Soil, Soul, and Society" in the same issue wherein he lays out a worldview that he holds and lives to. These two gave my day a boost and pointed me forward. May they feed something you need