What Really Matters

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Having a more interesting life, a life that disturbs complacency, a life that pulls us out of the comfortable and thereby demands a larger spiritual engagement than we planned or that feels comfortable is what matters most. James Hollis in What Matters Most

In his recent column, Building Better Secularists, New York Times Columnist David Brooks wrote that secular writers…”are so eager to make the case for their creed, they are minimizing the struggle required to live by it.”

Brook’s list of tasks a secularist would have to perform to live secularism well:

• Religious people inherit their creeds; secularists have to come up with their own convictions,
• Religious people inherit a community with rituals and practices that bind people together; secular people have to create their own communities and come up with their own practices to give them meaning,
• Religious people are directed to drop worldly concerns one day a week or for specified periods of time; Secular people have to create their own times of solitude to reflect on their spirituality, and
• Religious people are motivated by the love of God and their desire to please him; Secularists have to find their own motivation that will bring forth sacrifice and service.

Brooks concluded that secularists place unprecedented moral burdens upon themselves and risk drift and a loss of meaning in their own lives.

Paternalism is a belief system that requires that wisdom, knowledge and creativity come to people from others with greater power and authority. Most people grow up in paternalistic families surrounded by paternalistic clergy, bosses, coaches and teachers whose dictates they conform to. “Don’t think, just do what I tell you to do” is the spoken and unspoken command.

When young adults leave home, the organization often replaces the parent as the paternalistic force in their lives. Conformity is the first rule of organizations and institutions. Sometime around the middle of their lives, they may begin to rebel against such paternalism and enter the scary domain of thinking for themselves where they begin to doubt, question and challenge all those authority figures as they begin the process of becoming a mature person. Such a journey into a life of authenticity is difficult: a courageous and emotional odyssey of exploration to find who we really are—not who someone else tells us to be.

Religion and secularism aside, Brook’s burdens are everyone’s responsibility to ponder in life.

I do not want to mindlessly and without question follow creeds created by other imperfect men long ago; I want my life to be my own learning laboratory. I want to discover and articulate my own purpose for my life and the values I will live true to.

I don’t want to be put into a community by others and inherit its rituals and practices—rules and practices I must follow to be accepted; I need people but I want to choose my own community and seek counsel and fellowship from those who ring true to me.

I don’t want to act spiritual one day a week; I want to live my spirit daily, however imperfectly.

To be motivated by love and the desire to do good works is noble but so many seem to be motivated by fear, guilt, obligation and public appearances. I am motivated by the deep personal engagement I’ve had with myself over four decades pondering these and many other issues and questions of life (I’ve only scratched the surface). The higher emotions that motivate me, the passion that drives me and the aliveness I feel flow from that work as I seek the moral life.

I believe Brook’s burdens are among the lifetime work of an authentic life.

James Hollis: “…to have taken one’s journey through this dark, bigger, luminous, wondrous universe, to have risked being who we really are, is, finally what matters most.”

How Many Suffer for Us?

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New York Times Columnist David Brooks:

Maybe you’re familiar with Ursula Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” It’s about a sweet and peaceful city with lovely parks and delightful music.

The people in the city are genuinely happy. They enjoy their handsome buildings and a “magnificent” farmers’ market.

Le Guin describes a festival day with delicious beer and horse races: “An old woman, small, fat, and laughing, is passing out flowers from a basket, and tall young men wear her flowers in their shining hair. A child of nine or ten sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute.”

It is an idyllic, magical place.

But then Le Guin describes one more feature of Omelas. In the basement of one of the buildings, there is a small broom-closet-sized room with a locked door and no windows. A small child is locked inside the room. It looks about 6, but, actually, the child is nearly 10. “It is feebleminded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition and neglect.”

Occasionally, the door opens and people look in. The child used to cry out, “Please let me out. I will be good!” But the people never answered and now the child just whimpers. It is terribly thin, lives on a half-bowl of cornmeal a day and must sit in its own excrement.

“They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas,” Le Guin writes. “Some of them have come to see it; others are content merely to know it is there. They all know it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children … depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.”

That is the social contract in Omelas. One child suffers horribly so that the rest can be happy. If the child were let free or comforted, Omelas would be destroyed. Most people feel horrible for the child, and some parents hold their kids tighter, and then they return to their happiness.

But some go to see the child in the room and then keep walking. They don’t want to be part of that social contract. “They leave Omelas; they walk ahead into the darkness and they do not come back.”

How many in the world suffer and have endured deprivation and humiliation for the riches enjoyed by a relatively few of the planets inhabitants?

How many hundreds of worthy cultures have died because of the greed and addiction of one dominant culture? (See Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael.)

How is it that the majority of American school children (K-12) live below the poverty level with many or even most doomed to lifetimes in the shadows of the American Dream?

How do we keep others in the basements of our organizations and institutions as each day we live out dysfunctional cultures?

Have my values, empathy and compassion become shriveled and desensitized and become the basement of my soul?

We are each innocent and guilty.

Few, if any, can simply walk away from the world view and culture we were born into and that envelops us and reaches far beyond our ability to control. Life today is too complex, unconscious and intertwined for us to escape.

We can, however, strive to be as mindful as possible of the harm we do to others by living the way we do. We can do what we can to illuminate the basements of our way of life. We may not be able to escape the systems of our lives but we can take small steps every day to see those systems clearly and move to the edges of them.

We can at least begin to learn how to live.

A Life-Affirming Community

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In and through community lies the salvation of the world. Nothing is more important. Yet it is virtually impossible to describe community meaningfully to someone who has never experienced it-and most of us have never had an experience of true community.
M. Scott Peck, M. D.

Perhaps John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, provided as good a definition of community as anyone. Shortly before his fellow colonists set foot on land in 1630, he said: We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.

A story of a community from unexpected people:

The leader had suffered from depression most of his life. He continued to smoke, even as cigarettes killed him. He wrestled with his ego and his need for approval. He lived in poverty most of his life. But what a group he created. His honesty about his flaws provided the humility to lead.

Today, the organization has groups in every town and city in the United States, and in more than 140 countries of the world, with more than two million members worldwide. Each local group —more than 100,000 — functions with autonomy and has little formal structure. New groups begin and old ones die regularly. The enterprise has no budgets, buildings, or machines. Members make voluntary financial contributions. This “unorganized” body’s marketing plan attracts instead of promotes.

The organization has a powerful sense of purpose and shared values and principles to guide choices. No one gets away with self-delusion for long. Leadership emerges and shifts. All feel included and no member gets fired or laid off. Everyone values everyone else equally.

Every member accepts personal responsibility and accountability. They become humble experts at personal mastery and members do not take their success for granted. Meetings consist of myth, story, and ritual, and in every meeting members discuss the shared values, purpose and vision. All members feel significant and passion abounds. Spirit and commitment emerge from equality, creativity and shared decision-making.

We call this community Alcoholics Anonymous.

The leader was Bill Wilson: a hopeless, defeated and hospitalized alcoholic who faced imminent death. His elemental need to live rose from the deepest depths of his soul. A powerful spiritual experience reordered his psyche. After his transformation, he never drank alcohol again in his remaining 36 years. Out of his despair, he began a worldwide movement that has saved unknown millions of lives. Minds and lives changed. Aldous Huxley called Wilson “the greatest social architect of the twentieth century.” The deepest personal despair imaginable preceded his greatest possibilities and achievements.

Bill Wilson believed AA’s success had to do with the willingness of members to place the welfare of others above their own desires. AA exemplifies a humble and committed attitude of the mind and heart that, unlike most organizational change efforts, survived its leader and sustains itself.

When AA began, alcoholism was thought to be caused by character flaws or personality defects. We know that to be wrong today. Alcoholism is a disease and recovery can be defined as learning how to manage a chronic illness. This change of definition can renew AA, as all organizations must renew themselves, and expand its strengths.

Scott Peck wrote, “The most successful community in this nation-probably in the whole world-is Alcoholics Anonymous.”

How ironic that the lost souls of the world teach us how to live.

Happiness at Work

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On-site exercise equipment. Paid volunteer time. A wall of baking tools you can borrow. These may sound like the perks some flush tech companies extend to their engineers.

Can leaders and organizations make people happy at work?

I learned that being in the happiness business led only to frustration and disappointment. Happiness is too elusive an idea.

I learned that it was better as a leader to create conditions where employees could come to work and feel valued, involved, and informed and have their talents and passions utilized–if they wanted to.

That way, employees felt alive in pursuit of noble goals and profits grew along with happiness.

Lake Powell and Page, AZ

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Wauweap Marina, Page, AZ

Wauweap Marina, Page, AZ

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Lake Powell

Lake Powell

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Rainbow Bridge

Rainbow Bridge

Lower Antelope Canyon

Lower Antelope Canyon

Lower Antelope Canyon

Lower Antelope Canyon

Parents: Raise Your Children to be Artists & Entrepreneurs

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From the book, Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz:

That is the great question about bureaucracies. Why are the best people so often mired in the middle, while nonentities become the leaders? Because what gets you up the ladder isn’t excellence: it is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Being smooth at cocktail parties, playing office politics, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Getting along by going along. Not sticking your neck out for the sake of your principles—not having any principles. Neither believing in the system nor thinking to question it. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that you have nothing inside you at all.

This description of life within a bureaucracy describes the dark side of life in organizations about as well as any I’ve seen. Most people accept the primary rules of organizations. They conform and comply and go along to get along. As a result, they fall far short of being the person and the employee they might be. They settle for institutionalized mediocrity rather than risk rejection in the pursuit of excellence.

A few people fight against the rules. Determined to live their values, they strive for excellence and tell the truth to power. It’s hard to be excellent when everyone around you is mediocre. It is hard to be authentic when everyone around you isn’t. It’s hard to be value-driven when everyone around you leaves their principles at the door. But such heroic modeling of what people could be in an organization can be achieved—at least for a time. And at the risk of being attacked, demonized, scapegoated, marginalized and all the other nasty things people do to others to make everyone be the same.

But why would we want to fight such unnecessary battles—not winnable in the end–if we understood life in organizations before we got too invested in an organization or profession? Why not teach our kids to work outside of organizations? And if they have to work in an organization, teach them the values and skills to be able to withstand the pressures to sell out on themselves. And teach them to always have an exit card: a place to go if things don’t work out.

It is, I think, better to abandon anti-human systems than to try to change them.

 

 

Please Disturb Us (and the Mall of America drop the charges against demonstration organizers this week)

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Shortly before Christmas, organizers of a group protesting the treatment of black men scheduled a demonstration at the local monument to consumption: The Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. The Mall is private property and authorities said no to the request to demonstrate inside. Demonstrators said they would demonstrate there anyway to bring attention to their cause.

Authorities tried to use the threat of force and mass arrests to deter the demonstrators. Sandra Johnson, Bloomington city attorney, threatened charges of disorderly conduct, trespassing and even inciting a riot for orchestrating a peaceful demonstration meaningful to everyone. That made matters worse.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 people gathered in the mall’s rotunda and sang songs and chanted slogans. Twenty-five people were arrested by police in riot gear.

After the demonstration, the Bloomington city attorney—with an advanced degree in over-reaction–continued to talk tough: “You want to get at the ringleaders,” she said threatening to use social media to identify the leaders so they could be prosecuted. I thought: “Good luck with that.” She also wants to force demonstration leaders to pay for police overtime and the business losses to Mall establishments.

Johnson comes off as a prosecutor who sees life’s choices as either/or, black/white and right/wrong with non-conforming citizens as enemies to demonize and dehumanize and force into compliance instead of seeing life as it is with shades of gray, of both/and thinking and with people as human beings to respect and involve. People who use power to mindlessly force order and conformity scare me far more than demonstrators for justice do.

Sometimes power and force are necessary. Sometimes demonstrators should be arrested and charged—but not as an automatic default response without creative thoughtfulness. In this case, a more creative win/win approach might have worked better, felt better, and built community instead of fragmenting groups. But the either/or of win/lose is always easier than the both/and of win/win.

The status quo of America—how police treat black men is part of the status quo–is not sustainable and trying to return to a romanticized past, as some want to do, is suicidal. Our nation must embrace a wiser, more evolved and inclusive vision for the future if we want a vibrant country for future generations.

A significant percentage of Americans sleepwalk through life. They mindlessly rush through the day unaware of the many serious issues that harm people. While they nap, America declines. The good people who have gone to sleep need to be aggravated and awakened—even if their shopping gets disrupted for an hour or two.

We might not think the treatment of black men by police officers is our issue. Take a moment to read Charles Blow’s painful and powerful piece in the January 12, 2015 New York Times about the shooting and death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by police officers in Cleveland, Ohio recently. The callous disregard for the humanity of this child and his sister is immoral and is everyone’s responsibility.

We need a perspective on demonstrations and demonstrators that is broader and deeper, wiser and more insightful and more appreciative of those courageous and conscious people who care enough to give of themselves to fight injustice in whatever form it takes: racism, poverty, inequality, civil rights, immigration, or climate change. An assault on human dignity, in whatever form, is an attack on each of us and all should join in and speak up against such actions—not try to silent the voices of justice.

I hope the primary election process for 2015-2016 will be a season of peaceful protests by Americans young and old that awaken our awareness. I hope we understand that justice towers in importance over the demand for rigid and blind order and conformity and the suppression of free speech. I hope that authorities will learn and experiment with new ways to manage demonstrations. I hope people who have gone to sleep will be disturbed enough to wake up and vote for candidates and issues that improve life for all of us, not just a few of us

When demonstrators disturb us and offend our views, we should examine our views.