Category Archives: Life

Evolved People or Real-Life Zombies?

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In Our Machine Masters, New York Times columnist David Brooks imagined two futures for us in the age of artificial intelligence: a humanistic scenario in which, freed from mental drudgery, people focus on personal and moral faculties: being likable, industrious, trustworthy and affectionate. In the age of AI, “…we’re not human because we have big brains. We’re human because we have social skills, emotional capacities and moral intuitions.”

Or, in Brook’s utilitarian scenario, people become less idiosyncratic. The machines replace us as decision-makers. We conform and do what the machines tell us to do without question. Kevin Kelly wrote in Wired magazine: “As we invent more species of AI, we will be forced to surrender more of what is supposedly unique about humans. The greatest benefit of the arrival of artificial intelligence is that AIs will help define humanity. We need AIs to tell us who we are.”

Will we flourish in this new world of artificial intelligence or will we become real-life zombies? Or will we just muddle along?

In 2005, I wrote an essay on the Singularity: A superior humanity—artificially created. Genetics, robotics and nanotechnology fed by the exponentially increasing power and speed of information technology intertwine and multiply one another in symbiotic relationships.

As entities with greater than human intelligence are created, most intelligence of the planet will become nonbiological and changes in all other aspects of life will accelerate dramatically—including the more rapid creation of even more intelligent entities on a shorter time scale.

Will these technologies free us of the mundane, help us live longer and healthier lives, and extend our human capabilities? Will we solve all problems and become God? Scientist Ray Kurzweil: “We see exponentially greater love.”

Or will we turn into genetically programmed and soulless beings, our minds filled with information downloaded from computers, living out predetermined lives in service of the machines with no ability to control our own destinies and with those things that make us indefinably human altered, ruptured, or destroyed?

We cannot stop or control this development. If we push development underground it will only free the technology from ethical and moral considerations. The technology and its impact on our lives and the potential impact on the human soul will not be stopped.

For 300 years humanists have railed against the mechanistic world view and the unintended consequences of a philosophy that dehumanizes people. The critical challenge of our lifetime may well be to use explosive technical development to preserve and enhance our humanity rather than to have humanity neutered or destroyed by the mindless acceleration of technology without thought as to the unintended consequences.

Instead of being led by technology, we can lead technology. To do so we must accelerate our maturity as people and communities and bring forth a creative renaissance of relationships that will transform life on this planet. We must embrace the technology that threatens our humanity and outfox the creative dark side of human nature with the creative light of our humanity. The spiritual must transcend the technical; people must transcend machines.

 

 

 

 

What Am I Feeling?

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I sat in the circle of patients and family members on a dreaded family day in the alcohol treatment center. Spouses were there to tell the addict how their behavior had hurt, harmed, and humiliated the people they said they loved. The counselor’s attention turned my way, despite my efforts to hide in plain sight. “How are you feeling,” he asked. I didn’t know what I felt. I knew I felt something because I could feel the energy churning within me. But I could not identify or describe the feeling or separate the cluster of emotions.

Alexithymia is the inability of a person to identify and articulate feelings. Dr. Ronald F. Levant wrote in Masculinity Reconstructed “Men don’t realize it, but to live life incapable of feeling and expressing emotion is to live life in isolation—alienated not only from those they love but also from themselves.” The day I sat in that circle with other alcoholics and our loved ones, I felt alone and alienated from the people around me and estranged from my feelings and also from my values. Under my calm and stoic exterior, a volcano boiled. Men are taught to not feel most emotions. Our humanness should not be a defect.

The group worked on me, gently as I recall. They asked questions and I responded quietly. A nurse seated on my right began to cry. She reacted to something I said, and she told a story of how she felt when a child. I watched, like I was outside of myself, as my right hand reached out and covered her hand as she spoke. Her authenticity made me feel accepted and understood. I knew her in a moment–we connected.

I felt a surge of joy and optimism. I looked at the counselor and said, “Can I hug my wife?” The counselor said, “You can do whatever you want to do.” I got up, walked across the circle and hugged my wife. What happened was like an out-of-body experience–my first spontaneous action in a long time. I came alive. I reconnected with myself and with others; I would never again lose that capacity, and from that moment on intimacy would be as important to me as achievement was.

My treatment experiences, now more than 40 years ago, began my journey into the complex world of emotions. I set out to learn how to manage my emotional world well. I make no claims to have yet reached that goal.

I read that baby boys are born more expressive than baby girls but mothers, fathers, and peer groups along with the unwritten rules of the larger culture soon begin to teach boys to repress emotions–especially “softer” feelings–to deny pain, and to cover their emotions with toughness and a stoic demeanor. Not experiencing their emotions robs men of their aliveness and traps them in a mechanistic set of habits, assumptions, and false beliefs about masculinity.

My primary goal in life is to feel alive. To feel alive, I need to feel the wide range of emotions that life offers—the sad feeling that brings tears, the tender and caring ones that show vulnerability, the angry and scared feelings that motivate us, and the high energy emotions of excitement and enthusiasm and all feelings in-between.

If men want to feel alive, we first must learn to feel.

I Feel Scared and Inadequate

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I was in the midst of leading a transformational change effort at the Star Tribune newspaper. I looked down the hall from my office door and saw a company consultant. I had met with him a few times to keep him abreast of our company-leading work with employee engagement.

I called out to him with a stern voice. He came toward me with a concerned look on his face. I said, “I have a bone to pick with you. You never told me at the beginning of this change effort that I would feel scared and inadequate so much of the time.” He laughed and said, “At least you are aware of it and are learning.”

That exchange took place more than 20 years ago, and I still feel scared and inadequate often. Actually, I often choose to feel scared and inadequate.  I chose to be a continuous learner and left the corporate world to use myself as my own learning laboratory and to reinvent and renew my life often, which I have done for the past 20 years.

Feeling scared and inadequate often goes with the territory of a life journey unique to each person. We imagine the path we will take, make our own rules and determine our own travel plan. We set out and learn that we must plan, act, reflect, and adapt often. We come to understand our journey is an organic process: messy, inefficient, and filled with unexpected twists and turns. We encounter surprise challenges and meet mentors along the way. We have no guarantees of where our journey will take us. We need to be brave on the odyssey that never ends.

I made major changes in all aspects of my life in the years after I went out on my own. I realized that my feelings of fear, anxiety, and inadequacy were shallow reactions to immediate realities and concerns and that at a deeper and more fundamental level I felt the confidence born of living true to my values, purpose, and vision for my life. Somehow I knew I would be okay and I always was. I’ve grown more comfortable being uncomfortable. Feeling uncomfortable is required to live a good life.

Today, I am at a different stage of life: I am learning to live well in new circumstances and I have goals and things to adapt to. But I am experienced. I will learn, adapt, and stay true to myself as best I can and trust everything will be just fine.

Moral Courage

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A man wrote me:

The seduction of the hiring process convinced me I had arrived in an organization that would embrace my methods. A place I thought my heart and talents could finally grow and flourish. I offered too much of myself unprotected and was “wacked” into reality.

I watched as the president of the company berated, humiliated, and then fired a good and stable sales representative. He did this in front of all the employees of the company. I sat and squirmed in my seat, metaphorically visualizing the owner shooting a hostage in the head to instill fear and ultimate control over the rest of us. The president noticed my discomfort. He asked, in a threatening manner, if I wanted to stay with the company. I felt compelled to quit on the spot, which I did. I managed to speak my mind a little as I left. I am now home, unemployed and recovering. (I wrote this man’s story in an essay entitled, Bearing Witness).

This story exemplifies moral courage: doing what you believe is right in the face of loss, criticism, rejection, or retaliation.

Over 18 years in many leadership and change agent roles at the Star Tribune newspaper and 13 years as a consultant to leaders of dysfunctional organizations, people tested my commitment to my values many times. The decision to stand up for my values was sometimes painful, and I wrestled with self-doubt at times. But I had vowed to live a value driven life, and I believed in value driven leadership. The values my parents had taught me were deepened and solidified as a young Secret Service agent where I experienced the might of ethics, excellence, and purpose and as a lost soul in a tough alcohol treatment center where I came to believe that my life depended on a value driven life.

I abhor rankism, dishonesty, disrespect, unfairness, mediocrity, and irresponsibility. I value respect, justice, fairness, integrity, excellence, and responsibility. I never thought of myself as having moral courage: I tried to be a good person and leader and fought through my anxiety and fears to do what I believed was right the best way I knew how.

Acting from our values often comes at a cost. I know well the fear of losing a job, and the loss of status and relationships along with humiliation and marginalization. It takes courage to stand alone in danger, to defy the unwritten rules, to illuminate the dark side, and to go against the cultural grain.

Why take the risks of moral courage at all? I do it to support values and to live an honest and authentic life and to do what I can to make the world  healthier and more ethical. And to stand up for those with less power and to go against the villains of our world. I do it so I can like myself. Aristotle said we become brave by doing brave acts. Think of moral courage as a muscle that grows stronger with use.

Robert Greenleaf, author of Servant Leadership, wrote that the problem in the world is not the evil, lazy, crazy, immature, disrespectful, and irresponsible people. They have been with us forever. The problem is the good people who have gone to sleep. We live surrounded by the need for moral courage to stand up to abuse, injustice, dishonesty, willful ignorance, the ism’s of the world, and the lack of compassion.

Moral courage may be the most needed courage in the 21st century and the mark of personal maturity and true leadership.

 

 

 

The Story of Abuse Larger Than Adrian Peterson

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I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Last week it was Adrian Peterson all day every day on the local talk radio shows and in every newspaper sports column in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The sensationalized celebrity football player who whipped and injured his four-year-old child with a switch didn’t have a chance. On and on they went with pious demonization. Appropriate shock, anger, and thoughtful consideration were overwhelmed by the explosion of shadowy energy that brought him from adulation to contempt in a moment.

Many dynamics played themselves out without reflection in the rush to judge and be done with it all: abuse, parenting, Texas justice, corporal punishment, cultural differences, the tearing down of heroic athletes, and the dissemination of illegally obtained police reports and invasive photos of the child.

Finally they drove him out-of-town.

I didn’t think a criminal indictment was necessary: Peterson cooperated with authorities without an attorney present. He voluntarily testified before a grand jury. Based on what we know right now, I think he needs help to unlearn what he experienced as a child more than he needs constant public humiliation. Appropriate shock and anger were understandable and necessary. But a humbled Peterson also deserved our empathy and compassion–not our self-righteous vilification. He will make a plea deal or go to trial before a jury of his peers in Texas. His punishment will be insignificant. I don’t care about his punishment; I care that he demonstrates that he’s learned better ways to discipline children, and I care about his future behavior.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about the tragic death of four-year-old Eric Dean professionally chronicled by Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl. Eric’s stepmother murdered him. Over many months before his death, people reported 15 instances of child abuse to Pope County, MN child protective services. Only one was investigated and wrongly dismissed. Citizens of Minnesota expressed their outrage but not to the level of the star athlete.

How could that be?

A violent and soul-destroying story underreported as much as the Peterson story was overblown goes on without end every day in the midst of those so upset last week.

Some Minnesota facts:

  • In 2013, men murdered 25 women in Minnesota in domestic abuse situations.
  • Women murdered seven men.
  • People made over 18,000 domestic violence calls to 911 in Minneapolis alone in 2009.
  • Child services in Minnesota does not investigate 71% of reports of child abuse.

Some national statistics:

  • A man batters a woman every nine seconds in the US.
  • An intimate partner has assaulted 25% of US women.
  • Police spend 1/3rd of their time responding to domestic violence disturbance calls.
  • Women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner.

Emotional, physical, and sexual abuse permeates our society. I never consulted in an organization where emotional abuse wasn’t prevalent. In addition to domestic abuse, some athletes—professional and amateur–bully those perceived to be “soft,” demonize gays and lesbians, and demand silence and conformity in the locker room. Reporters often observe this behavior and their silence colludes with the abuse. Newspapers report ugly stories of bullying and abuse in our schools. And what’s left to say about the Catholic Church? Abuse surrounds us.

Have we become desensitized to what is around us? Do we only react to what is new and sensational?

We need to wake up and see the reality of abuse as it is—not just the celebrity cases that poke our dark sides and gin up dumbed-down anger that is dangerous and unhealthy. Then we need to take on the challenges and with an anger transformed to a relentless determination eliminate abuse of all kinds in our lives, neighborhoods, workplaces, and national personality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking to Students about Emotional Abuse

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Wahpeton Daily Post

Wahpeton, MD & Breckenridge, MN

Posted: Thursday, November 8, 2007 12:00 am

By Jennifer Johnson, Daily News

Emotional abuse begins as a control issue and can spiral into physical abuse. Tom and Melanie Heuerman visited North Dakota State College of Science Wednesday to speak to students on how abuse affects everyday life.

Tom Heuerman, Ph.D., is currently a consultant who has devoted the past 14 years of his life to coaching the impact of abuse. Melanie Heuerman is the administrative officer for the U.S. Department of Justice in Fargo, and also volunteers her time at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo-Moorhead.

“At one time or another, and sometimes more frequently, all of us have been made to feel like ‘nobody’s’ in our life,” Tom Heuerman said, speaking to roughly 50 students in the Plains and Prairie Room. “That includes the most successful and least successful of us.”

Tom Heuerman is a former agent in the U.S. Service and worked for 18 years at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. When he was 52, he received a Ph.D. in leadership and organizational change. In his experience working under corporate management, he found that the male-female dynamic in relationships can be applied to the workplace.

“I’ve never been in an organization where you can’t find abuse,” he said.

Emotional abuse can cause tremendous damage in a work environment, such as money loss, poor employee work efficiency and high turnover. Part of his desire is to help those in the corporate world and in schools to recognize the multiple forms of emotional abuse and the measures individuals can take to prevent it.

Emotional abuse is characterized by body language, words and actions that can hurt or frighten others. While a number of adjectives are associated to each element of abuse, such as rejection, humiliation, anxiety and withdrawal, there is only one element consistent in all definitions.

“It’s an ongoing process,” Tom Heuerman said, “But the core point of the relationship (for abusers) is to hurt and frighten for the purpose of control.”

Other forms of abuse include maltreatment of pets, which is sometimes a precursor to abusing people, and in family settings, an example might be one parent treating a child nicely to emphasize their anger at the other partner.

Abusers tend to be predictable, manipulative and charming, which is a method used to draw the victim in. They have a tendency to always give excuses during arguments and blame others for their troubles.

As a result, victims of abuse typically lose all sense of self, living their life in fear and deny their own needs to avoid furthering it. They suffer from low self-esteem, depression or start abusing drugs. When someone feels consistently put down, ignored, or that their partner is withholding approval or appreciation, these can all be signs indicating an abusive relationship. And while men experience abuse in their life, the great majority of victims are women.

In 2006, roughly 2,800 people passed through the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo, Melanie Heuerman said. One thousand six hundred of those victims reported domestic violence and the remaining 1,200 were sexually assaulted.

“In a small community like ours, to hear that there were 1,200 sexual assaults in the Fargo-Moorhead area, that’s a lot,” she said.

One issue that specifically faces women is economic exploitation, where they earn a portion of the family income but it is either taken away or they have little say in where it is pooled. But whether men or women suffer from emotional abuse, the scars run deep and cause the greatest harm.

Tom Heuerman told the male students to stand up for women and get involved.

“The greatest problem is indifference,” he said. “Unless we start holding ourselves absolutely accountable, organizations like the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center will only help the wounded. We have to get on the other side of it.”

The Dark Side of the Public Reaction to Ray Rice & Adrian Peterson

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Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

Aristotle

I too am bothered by the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson stories. My wife and I completed 40 hours of training as volunteer speakers at the Fargo/Moorhead Rape and Abuse Crisis Center. Our eyes were opened to the pervasiveness and destructiveness of abuse in our society. We did many projects for the Center, and I did many hours of consulting at no cost. I wrote several commentaries on emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Rice and Peterson will pay a dear price for their actions.

I am also bothered by what feels like excessive, misplaced, and poorly expressed anger in some newspaper columnists, readers who comment on articles, and radio talk-show hosts and their callers. They come across as politically correct, self-righteous, harshly judgmental, and self-promoting:  “The more I damn Rice and Peterson, the better person I am.” Their rush to judge and to punish without due process, information, understanding of context, or a sense of proportion scares me. I have thought, “This is what a lynch mob is like.” I’ve been guilty of these things too.

Some feel upset that the team management didn’t instantly punish Peterson as they want him to be punished. People should break away from their paternalistic relationship with organizations and quit looking to owners and executives to meet their need to strike out.

These folks and the good people who remain silent might channel some of their anger in more constructive ways: People who condemn Peterson and the Viking’s management should live true to their own values, put their anger to constructive use, and do what they can to model their convictions: don’t go, watch, or listen to Viking games. Don’t buy team merchandise. Columnists might illuminate abuse and educate readers. Talk-show hosts could turn the spotlight on the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that surrounds us just below the surface of our awareness.

All should get angry at the vast abuse that permeates our society, not just the celebrity cases.

And everyone should speak up when they witness abuse in the family, neighborhood, and workplace.

The Silence of Our Friends

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In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

From  the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

The [ Todd] Hoffner saga went viral nationally in the wake of the sex scandal at Penn State involving a former assistant coach. Child pornography charges were filed against Hoffner, and then dismissed when a judge determined the pictures simply showed children at innocent play. But instead of reinstating him, school officials fired him, a decision reversed only when Hoffner won a sweeping arbitrator’s ruling last spring after he had accepted the coaching job at Minot State.

Hoffner found no such support among school officials, who just months before his problems had lavished him with praise — and a raise — after a 2011 season that ended with a bowl victory. Hoffner and his wife said they still cannot explain why key school officials were so quick to abandon them.

Hoffner was (and is now again) the head football coach at Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN.

At times of difficulty in our lives, we find out who our real friends are and, I believe, the realization is almost always painful.

Within a conformity-required university administration?

I’d imagine that Hoffner’s “friends” were friends only as long as the university president “liked” Hoffner. Who would be brave enough to go against the university president and his witch hunt of Hoffner? Who would dare be seen with Hoffner? Who would believe in him even as the injustices accumulated and became obvious?

Rare indeed would be such a courageous friend.

In Hoffner’s case, it was easier to remain silent in the face of injustice than to risk loss by speaking out. And in remaining silent, people lost a part of themselves.

Ray Rice and The Abuse of Women (3)

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Baltimore Ravens football star, Ray Rice, was recently suspended by the NFL for two games after a video showed him dragging his unconscious girl friend (now his wife) out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

Last Monday (Sept. 8, 2014) the Ravens fired Ray Rice and the NFL placed him on indefinite suspension after a new video showed Rice punching and knocking out his girlfriend moments before he dragged her unconscious body out of the elevator.

I wondered how, in the first video, did the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens think she became unconscious and unresponsive?

This is the third of several pieces I wrote over the past decade about abuse.

ABUSE: AN ISSUE FOR MEN

I would like abusers to imagine the pain and anguish they inflict and feel even one-tenth of that for themselves.

Abuse Victim

 Melanie, my wife, and I recently completed 48 hours of training at the local rape and abuse crisis center. We will volunteer our time and speak to groups about emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

The schedule was grueling: two evenings a week for a month and two Saturdays. Approximately 20 people made the big commitment and will volunteer as advocates who take crisis calls during off hours, court watchers who keep track of cases in the legal system, and public speakers.

The training sessions were emotionally difficult for me. Speakers taught us about incest; stalking; cyber-sex; date rape; pedophilia; emotional, physical, and sexual abuse; and the many difficulties victims face with themselves, within families, in the legal system, and in our society, which often prefers to deny such horrible things. As I listened to the monstrous things men do to women and children, I felt ashamed to be a man.

A woman described how her father sexually abused her from age 9-15. Then her 12-year-old daughter spoke about how a foster child had sexually assaulted her when she was three years old. I admired their courage and appreciated the gift of their experiences.

I felt sadness and sorrow for the women and children abused by men. I felt outraged at the men who do such things. What went wrong with so many men? My father treated my mother with great respect. I feel contempt for men who abuse women in any way.

I felt disgust as I watched a video simulation of a father who manipulated his young daughter to have sex with him and called it love. What went wrong inside of a father to be able to violate his child’s trust in such a depraved way?

I watched another video of a simulated rape. I felt revulsion as I watched the bestial man degrade and violate a young woman who will live the horror of him for a lifetime. I thought of the almost daily news stories of rape and murder of young women by soul-dead men.

I loathed the young minister as he described proudly how he manipulated and abused children and talked his way out of trouble over and over again. He not only robbed the young children of their innocence, he made them out to be liars and robbed them of their voices. I find it difficult to think of such men as anything but evil as they do such anti-human things to others.

I asked a counselor what one thing she would change in the make-up of the abusers of all types if she could. She answered, “Empathy.” None of the abusers can feel for themselves what they do to others.

Many abusive men have good jobs—even leadership positions. They look normal. Many work hard to create a public image of success, citizenship, and community involvement. They put forth a false image. They don’t live their crafted image of goodness. Abusive men use their creativity for negative purposes, to control and inflict pain–they hurt others. Abusers want power and control over others. Abusers of every stripe exude entitlement and selfishness. They see others as possessions they own.

Men own the issue of abuse of women and children: men do the vast majority of abusive actions, men model for boys at home, at school, at work, and on the athletic fields. Other men watch silently.

Many police officers look the other way; many lawyers enable abusive men or abuse others themselves. Many judges remain ignorant of the dynamics of abuse and, as a result, make unjust decisions.

I see two challenges:

  • Hold abusers accountable.

I call on policemen, lawyers, and judges to learn about abuse and the dynamics of abusive men. The ignorant bear some measure of responsibility for what happen to women and children. Some of you think you don’t need to learn. Trust me, you do need to learn. I was a Secret Service Agent, a senior business executive, and an organizational consultant. I needed to learn. So do you.

Judges and lawyers who work in family law should be required to be educated about abuse and the dynamics of abusers. Without that education, they can be manipulated easily and unwittingly collude with the abuser. The local rape and abuse crisis center will be happy to help them. Lundy Bancroft’s books: “Why Does He Do That” and “The Batterer as Parent” should be required reading for every attorney and judge who work in family law.

Judges, lawyers, and policemen need to model respectful behavior and root the legal system of abusers. Often, as in all systems, the unethical and abusive people in the justice system go unchallenged. Members of the legal system who do not bear witness bear responsibility.

Robert Greenleaf, author of the seminal work on leadership, “Servant Leadership,” wrote that the insane, the irresponsible, the immature (and, I might add, the abusers), have been with us forever. The problem is the good people who go to sleep and do not stand up and bear witness for human suffering of every kind. When we refuse to look abuse in the face, we make a big mistake—we cooperate with abuse when we do not confront it.

We need to stand up courageously, whatever our walk of life, and hold abusers accountable: in the home, at the school, on the athletic field, throughout the workplace, and in the courts.

  • Raise boys differently.

We created the men of today. We need a new model for men. Head coach Biff Poggi and assistant Joe Ehrmann, a former NFL football star turned minister and volunteer coach, taught the players on the Gilman high school (Maryland) football team a new model of masculinity. They call their program of football and developing young men “Building Men for Others.” (See Ehrmann’s book, “Season of Life.”)

 Joe Ehrmann:

 I have spent almost the last twenty years as a minister. Most of my work is in the inner city of Baltimore, dealing with issues of poverty and systemic racism and family disintegration. I would say that in order to make America a more just and fair society, I would boil it down to the single greatest crisis. And that primary, critical issue is a concept of what it means to be a man. If we don’t fix our understanding, and get some proper definition of masculinity and manhood, I don’t think we can address other issues.

 Joe Ehrmann again:

 Masculinity, first and foremost, ought to be defined in terms of relationships. It ought to be taught in terms of the capacity to love and to be loved. If you look over your life at the end of it…life wouldn’t be measured in terms of success based on what you’ve acquired or achieved or what you own. The only think that’s really going to matter is the relationships that you had. It’s gonna come down to this: What kind of father were you? What kind of husband were you? What kind of coach or teammate were you? What kind of son were you? What kind of brother were you? What kind of friend were you? Success comes in terms of relationships.

 And I think of the second criterion—the only other criterion for masculinity—is that all of us ought to have some kind of cause, some kind of purpose in our lives that’s bigger than our own individual hopes, dreams, wants, and desires. At the end of our life, we ought to be able to look back over it from our deathbed and know that somehow the world was a better place because we lived, we loved, we were other-centered, other-focused.

How did the Gilman High School football team perform under their guidance? They had back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1998 and 1999 that put them at the top of state rankings. Poggi and Ehrmann measured success in two ways: by wins and losses and by the amount of ministry they’ve done with their kids to prepare them for lives of meaning and value to others.

Women also need to help raise little boys differently: teach them to define success by their relationships, commitment to something greater than themselves, and by their courage to stand up to injustice in all its forms. Women can also teach young girls to speak up about men’s violence. Then abusers will have no where to hide.

What affects one single woman out there…affects families, affects neighborhoods, affects the city, affects all of us. John Harrington, St. Paul, Minnesota Police Chief

What will you do to make a difference in the lives of women and children around you?

Ray Rice and The Abuse of Women (2)

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Baltimore Ravens football star, Ray Rice, was recently suspended by the NFL for two games after a video showed him dragging his unconscious girl friend (now his wife) out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

Yesterday the Ravens fired Ray Rice and the NFL placed him on indefinite suspension after a new video showed Rice punching and knocking out his girlfriend moments before he dragged her unconscious body out of the elevator.

I wondered how, in the first video, did the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens think she became unconscious and unresponsive?

This is the second of several pieces I wrote over the past decade about abuse.

 

 EMOTIONAL ABUSE: I SEE MYSELF

 We separated for one week but he kept calling and crying on the phone. He begged and pleaded and promised to change. I could not take the pressure and told him he could return. He did not change.

Victim of Emotional Abuse

 

My wife and I spoke about emotional abuse to approximately 85 college students recently.

Millions of women (and some men) live with repeated verbal assaults, humiliation, sexual coercion, and other forms of psychological abuse, often accompanied by economic exploitation. I’ve worked in organizations for 40 years as a leader and consultant, and I’ve never been in an organization that didn’t have abuse as part of its dark side.

Yet few of the students had heard the term “emotional abuse.” It remains one of society’s dirty, dark secrets. Our communities that dehumanize women and children in scores of ways daily need to illuminate their many dark shadows.

We defined emotional abuse as the chronic use of words and acts (including body language) that devalue and frighten another person for the purpose of control. Emotional abusers rule the lives of victims through the power of words and actions and the constant implicit threat of physical assault.

Emotional abuse always precedes physical abuse. Not all emotional abusers become physical.

  1. Scott Peck, M.D. defined evil as the use of power to harm the spirit of another to maintain one’s sick self. Emotional abuse is clearly evil behavior. Each of us can decide for ourselves if we think abusers are evil people.

Consummate name-callers, abusers criticize constantly—nothing is ever good enough. They yell, scream, and drive the victim’s friends away to isolate her. They eavesdrop on phone conversations, censor mail, and expect instant responses to pages, cell phone calls, and instant messages. They control with lies, confusion, and contradictions; they make a person feel crazy. They lurk and they stalk. One abuser said to a victim: “I had to keep you down. I was afraid you would outshine me.”

Emotional abusers belittle the feelings of their victims, denigrate women as a group calling them crazy, emotional, or stupid. They withhold approval, appreciation, and affection to punish their victims. They put down their victims in public, take them out socially and then ignore them, and they prevent victims from working, going to school, or leaving the house alone. They control the money, make all the decisions, and require their permission to do or have anything. They are little gods unworthy of the power they abuse.

If married they might destroy, sell, or give away things the victim (or both of them) own, prevent the victim from seeing her family, threaten to hurt family or friends, punish or keep things from the children when angry at the victim. They often treat the children more nicely than usual when angry at their victim, blame the victim for any problems, real or imagined, with the children, and may abuse pets to hurt their primary victim.

They may accuse their victim of having affairs. If a victim is physically or sexually abused, they say she asked for it, deserved it, or liked it. They may threaten to tell their victim’s employer or family that she is a lesbian to get her fired or to have her children taken away from them.

They then deny that their behavior is abusive or minimize it by calling their victim crazy or stupid or telling her that she made it up. One abuser told his wife often: “You just don’t know how bad you are.”

Victims of emotional abuse live in fear and repeatedly alter thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to avoid further abuse. They lose themselves. Emotional abuse, like brain washing, systematically wears away at the victim’s self-confidence, sense of self-worth, and trust in their own perceptions. Whether abused by constant berating and belittling, by intimidation, or under the guise of “guidance, teaching, or advice,” the results remain the same: the victim of the abuse loses all sense of self and lives in confusion. The scars of emotional abuse may be far deeper and more lasting than physical wounds.

The ongoing pattern of abuse follows a cycle:

  1. Tension building: tension increases, breakdown of communication, the victim feels a need to placate the abuser,
  2. Incident: verbal and emotional abuse, anger, blaming, arguing, threats, and intimidation,
  3. Reconciliation: the abuser apologizes, gives excuses, blames the victim, denies the abuse occurred, or says it wasn’t as bad as the victim claims (abusers tend to forget their abuse while victims remember it forever),
  4. Calm: the incident is “forgotten”, no abuse is taking place.

And the cycle begins again.

The long-term effects on victims: Isolation from others, low self-esteem, depression, emotional problems, illness, alcohol or drug use, and withdrawal.

After our presentation, a man talked to me. He said, “I see myself in the traits of abusers.” What did he see?

  1. Abusers tend to have explosive tempers triggered by minor frustrations and arguments when their egos are threatened,
  2. They are possessive and jealous: “I own you. Where were you? Who were you with? What did you do?”
  3. Abusers tend to think highly of themselves: arrogant, entitled, superior, and selfish—everything is always about them, and they always come first.
  4. Abusers have a great capacity for self-deception: they play the victim, always have an excuse and deniability for their acts. They blame others for what goes wrong in their lives. They deny and distort their behavior and cannot give an accurate picture of themselves or of their partner.
  5. They manipulate: they lie always, can be charming in public, and can convince others of their innocence–family, friends, judges, and lawyers get fooled by them everyday—you must look at their behavior over time to see their patterns.

A woman who says she is abused, almost always is.

Emotional abusers learn their behavior, and the man who could see himself in the traits of the abuser spoke for many men who have learned to abuse their power to control others in brutal ways—at home, at work, and in the community.

Abusers don’t change easily or willingly. Author Lundy Bancroft (“Why Does He Do That?) wrote:

There are no shortcuts to change, no magical overnight transformations, no easy ways out. Change is difficult, uncomfortable work. The project is not hopeless—if the man is willing to work hard—but it is complex and painstaking. The challenge for an abused woman is to learn how to tell whether her partner is serious about overcoming his abusiveness.

 The initial impetus to change is always extrinsic rather than self-motivated. The majority of abusive men do not make deep and lasting changes even in a high-quality abuser program

My father taught me to respect all people. I’ve worked as a Secret Service agent, business executive in tough union environments, and a consultant in many anti-human organizations: real men don’t abuse anyone, especially women. Only cowards abuse and bully others.

Good citizens—too often indifferent—need to stand up for our mothers, daughters, sisters, neighbors, co-workers, and friends who are victims and hold abusers accountable for their behavior; they victimize each of us.

Indifference to disrespect is a community’s greatest sin.

RECOMMENDED READING:

“Men Who Hate Women & The women Who Love Them” by Susan Forward, Ph.D.

“Who Does He Do That?” by Lundy Bancroft