Tremendously moved, I decided to do my part in spreading this sobering news and vital perspective. One of those who received my email was a young nurse, newly certified for working in the Intensive Care Unit. Below is her response (slightly modified for confidentiality).
Her story brought me to tears of joy and gratitude when I first read it. May there be ever more nurses with the training, the courage, and above all the heart exemplified by this unheralded young hero.
_____
Response by a young “Intensive Care Unit (ICU)” nurse:
Thank you so much for this timely article. Only two months ago I participated in an "End of Life and Palliative Care in the ICU" class, where I was genuinely moved/tormented by the suffering my fellow nurses and I are surrounded with in the ICU.
A peaceful, gentle death is so valuable — and so rare.
I recently cared for a young adult cancer patient at the end of her life. She came to the ICU after having a bone marrow transplant to deal with the "pre-leukemia" she had developed, owing to an aggressive chemo regimen initiated several years earlier for her breast cancer.
By now, her whole body had deteriorated to such an extent that she required a mask that forced air into her lungs in order to oxygenate. She spent two weeks in our hospital’s ICU, with her lungs progressively worsening.
All the nurses knew she was not going to leave our unit. But her oncologist kept telling her to “fight it out!”
Finally, and this was on my shift, with her parents at her side, “Gloria” (the name I'll use) finally said that she just wanted the pain to go away.
Suddenly, everything changed.
I had just brought into her room her evening meds — literally thousands of dollars worth of antibiotics and anti-rejection medications. None of it mattered anymore.
I took down all the unnecessary tubing, started a morphine drip and administered Glycopyrrolate (which dries secretions and softens the "death rattle").
This felt massive to me. I remember this mix of emotions: sadness, relief, and an overwhelming sense that I was a part of something huge. I still cannot wrap my head around it.
I was able to help transition one profoundly suffering human being from a regimen of “Come on! Power through! Endure, endure, endure!” to, “It’s okay, Gloria. You fought so, so hard. Now close your eyes, let your pain fade, and rest.”
It was beautiful.
Gloria died the following day — not on my shift, but I felt so happy that I had been able to share the transition with her and her parents.
To think of everything we had put this woman through in hopes of an inaccessible cure is just ... sickening.
Medicine has gotten to the point where we've gone as far and as invasive as we can go. I wish people — both we professionals and the public at large — would begin to prioritize a dignified death above all.
Family members need to know that there is far more beauty in spending quality time (rather than simply a quantity of time in the hospital) with their unalterably disabled and ultimately incurable loved ones.
Sadly, when family members must make medical decisions, too often those decisions are influenced by a subconscious need to palliate our own emotional suffering. As well, an irrational fear that we will otherwise be guilty (or at least will feel guilty) spurs good people to say “yes” to absolutely every intervention that forestalls death.
Though I wish everyone could die at home surrounded by love and comfort, I know it is the nature of those battling cancer to often push themselves far past their ability to survive the journey home.
It is my duty to honor this incredible fight and allow them to pass peacefully, without pain — and to let them know that accepting death is the greatest victory.
Compared to our 13.7 billion year history, not much changes in a single year, right? While that’s true, we can place the changes we’ve seen in the context of an evolutionary perspective - that grand saga of life, which has given us our world.
On the grandest scale, the Universe continues to expand. The most distant galaxies are rushing away from us at a blistering speed of over 100,000 miles every second, putting them 3 trillion miles farther from us than just a year ago. And while we don’t know of any life outside of Earth yet, we have discovered many hundreds of extrasolar planets, most of them discovered in 2011 by the Kepler mission. Much closer to home, our Sun has become more active, ramping up into the coming solar maximum, and sparking huge Northern Lights this past October 25th.
Our Earth is a planet that has brains, eyes, and the internet, and is a planet that has intentionally launched parts of itself into space. In November, the most advanced probe to Mars ever made (the Curiosity rover) lifted off flawlessly, showing our continued advancement. Also advancing, our global connections have greatly increased with at least tens of millions of new internet connections and new wireless hotspots in 2011 (if we have millions of both in just Great Britain, the worldwide total is easily in the tens of millions). Whether or not this qualifies as a global brain yet is another topic for another day, but our progress is rapid, and who knows what the results will be in the future? One possible result of our interconnections so far has been the 2011 Arab Spring. Another has been the information explosion, with as much text written every few days now as humans had written in their entire history up to 2003, and more text written in 2011 than in any other year in our history. Hopefully this information processing will help us handle the problems of the future, both expected and unexpected.
And we moved toward some of those problems in 2011 as well. With 134 million new babies born in 2011, the world population continued to increase. That many births means more mouths to feed, as well as a billion or more new mutations in our gene pool – most being neutral, some harmful, and some beneficial. (Estimates of the mutation rate per generation in humans varies widely,
so I used a very conservative number of around 10. Some evidence
suggests average mutation rates well over 100 mutations per birth.) With natural selection reduced by our technology, the harmful ones are more likely to increase healthcare costs, and the beneficial ones may fail to spread to everyone. It will be another challenge for future generations to figure out the best way to handle this constant mutational drumbeat. That issue won’t really need to be faced for a while, especially compared to our unsustainable energy habits. In 2011 we burned enough fossil fuel to add about 10 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere, carbon that has been buried underground for millions of years, and now will contribute to global climate change. Similarly, the rapid extinctions we are causing continue, with both headline losses like the Western Black Rhino, and the loss of at least hundreds of species in 2011, many before they could even be named by science. Religious based hatred continued in many incidents, including the slaughter of dozens of teens in Norway by a person who wished to “return Europe to its Christian roots”. Worst of all, I suspect that the majority of humans on our planet are unaware of the threat all of these are posing to our future generations, among so many other threats as well.
There are also reasons for hope. The information explosion mentioned earlier may bring the powerful force of our collective creativity to bear on these problems, before they are insurmountable. The Arab Spring may have helped millions of people move from tyranny towards democracy. The occupy movement in the United States may be partly driven by concern for future generations, and in 2011, the level of human concern for future generations appears to already exceed that at any point in our history. Our circles of care continue to expand in many areas, one of which was shown by the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Human action in 2011 also gave us a higher use of sustainable energy sources, like wind and solar, than has ever been seen.
Of course, this review of our evolution toward a just, peaceful and sustainable world surely misses a lot, even the most important points. In addition to the events I simply forgot to mention, many of the most important events of 2011 are likely unreported in the news. For instance, did millions of teens begin to see our place in this Great Story, and their role in crafting the future, in 2011? Were there elementary kids who learned the basics of science in 2011 who will go on to use that understanding to find a cure for cancer, or a new solar cell technology decades from now? We can’t know, but we can trust that this pulse of life, which has overcome even deadlier threats in the past, continues to surge now, in us, at the start of 2012. May we each do what we can to live up to our potential, for ourselves and for future generations.
Though I mentioned some resources for Evolutionary Parenting in my previous blog post, I never meant to suggest that it is easy – it’s not (heck, good parenting of any kind isn’t easy). Like so much in life, however, that extra intentional effort is very rewarding.
Right now, at the beginning of December, many of us are indeed spending effort – preparing for the holidays. But which holidays? From the many available, nearly all of us are celebrating the holiday our parents taught us, perhaps including minor tweaks from our lives or our spouses. That’s not a surprise, given that holidays are one of the most common ways that values are passed on to the next generation, answering our human need for both celebration and meaning.
Why “No Holidays” Is Not an Option
Our involvement in holidays, in terms of both time and money spent on the kids, is especially clear for many of us at this time of year – showing that we care about them. After all, it is where we spend our time and money that shows what we really care about. Children know this. They see us with more unvarnished honesty than we may realize, constantly learning from what we actually do, nearly heedless of what we say. Children see through hypocrisy like a picture window, especially as they get older.
So, what then are we teaching them with our chosen holidays, which speak to our children more loudly than anything we tell them? What is all our holiday effort working to build? Because honesty is one of the most important aspects of good parenting, my wife and I carefully chose which holidays to celebrate, and how to celebrate them. Like a culture’s origin story, a culture’s holidays also must be both meaningful and real (or believable). Real, for a holiday, includes being both fun and factual. Holidays that aren’t fun backfire, leading to resentment that only teaches avoidance or antipathy towards the parents as well as whatever idea is otherwise intended. Conversely, a holiday that is fun, but has no basis in reality or fails to teach good values, is little more than rank consumerism, teaching children greed and gluttony. Does that sound like some holidays we have in America today? Is it a surprise that so many Americans have grown up to be greedy, gluttonous, and empty of deep values, having learned exactly what they were taught?
What can be done? Jettisoning all traditional holidays without replacing them is like having holidays that aren’t fun – especially when all your children’s friends are having a blast with those traditional holidays. Do we have any choice other than empty holidays based on consumerism and superstition?
The answer is yes. We do have another option, one which draws on the love, creativity, and effectiveness present in today’s parents – we can craft holidays that are meaningful, real and fun. How that’s done will vary from family to family, and so what follows are just the solutions that Heather and I have found to work well for our family. These may be a useful starting point, but ultimately it is up to each parent to find their family’s solution themselves. For many, some adjustments to their old holidays may be all that is needed, and any holiday solution must be sustainable in today’s modern culture. Too radical a departure will become an effort to maintain over the years, especially if they are celebrated on significantly different dates from traditional holidays, and are thus more likely to be abandoned over time. The rest of this already long blog post describes our family celebration.
The Cleland-Host Family Approach to Holidays Around the Winter Solstice
Obviously, our whole year of family holidays is beyond the scope of a blog post, so this will cover only the Winter Solstice, which is December 22nd this year. In this darkest time of the year, the returning light and the hope that light brings has been enough to make this time sacred for literally millions of your Ancestors for thousands of years. Our modern understanding of the Universe gives us many other ideas to celebrate as well, and we have chosen stars (our Sun and other stars) as a central theme of our family Winter Solstice celebration. Included in that theme are also supernovae, the stardust that makes our world (and us), the winter season, and connection to all humans that comes from realizing that ancient people on all continents celebrated the Winter Solstice millennia ago. The Winter Solstice is, after all, the reason for the season – both meteorologically as well as culturally!
Holidays (and family cultures) must also have practices. Our traditions for the Winter Solstice are similar in many ways to practices our kids see their friends doing. They include a decorated Solstice Tree (with a star on top). Solstice lights are strung indoors and out (we point out to the kids that the different colors of the lights are like the different colors of the stars, and talk about star colors and types). Stockings are hung, as well as decorations with stars, evergreens, and snow. We open a door in an “Advent” calendar every day, counting down the days to Solstice with small surprises, and tell the stories of stardust and of Kabibonokka (the north wind) over eggnog and cookies made in the shapes of stars, snowflakes, and evergreens. See here for related resources.
This all of course culminates on the Winter Solstice itself. After weeks of anticipation, we eat a decorated ice cream Yule Log on the night before Solstice, pointing out that our bodies’ metabolism will be burning that Yule log all night. The next morning, the kids usually wake up before sunrise, and are allowed to go through their (now filled) Solstice stockings. Soon, we gather up the kids in the dark blue of morning, trekking out to see the Sun return, victorious after its long decline. The rising Sun is greeted with songs and poems, and then we take some time as a family to enjoy wherever we are — which is often the Lake Huron shoreline, as our home is in Midland, Michigan.
The kids are jumping with excitement by the time we return home, reminded that love from the Universe can make wonderful things happen. They rush out to our family’s sacred space, a stone circle in our wooded backyard, to find gifts for all. The gifts are brought into the house and opened one at a time, to start a sacred day with no work, instead having a party, visits with extended family, or other family time. If asked, we truthfully answer questions about how the gifts got out there, if those questions are supported by evidence and good reason. We never lie to the children, and they know that. When a child uses their own reason to discover that we put the gifts there, we point out that what we told them first was true, because we parents are part of the Universe, and that they are not allowed to tell their siblings, who must also figure it out themselves. So far, only our oldest child has figured it out, though his brother came very close last year, and I expect him to figure it out easily any day now.
How ever you choose to celebrate the season, our family extends the warmest wishes to you.
One of the most important parts of an evolutionary worldview is a commitment to future generations. Why? Because an evolutionary worldview includes the realization that we are all a part of the grand saga of life, the Great Story of the Universe, the diary of that irrepressible pulse of life, surging in us all.
This realization shows us the immensity of the story behind us, and therefore, the immensity of the story ahead of us. But what will that story be? We see from the past that it could contain a lot of horror, and a lot of good, and everything in between. To know that our great grandchildren (or those of our relatives) for seven generations and more will live in the world we give them makes this much more than idle speculation, transforming it into a drive to give back to the Universe and to life itself by doing what we can to help.
For those of us who are parents, this means working to raise our children as well as possible, giving them the tools that will help the future of all, and doing so with joy. Our children are humans, and understanding the needs of (and threats to) human children requires an understanding of the evolutionary history that made them. This is why Evolutionary Parenting includes both the connection to our evolutionary past, as well as the sense of purpose supplied by our awareness of future generations.
Talking about all those evolutionary needs and threats would take many books, so for this blog post, I’ll start with one small part of a family culture, and that is our human need for a meaningful, trusted story of how we got here. For dozens of millennia, humans in cultures around the globe grew with stories of how we got here that gave their lives meaning, richness and a sense of roots, so it’s no surprise that we humans have evolved to need such stories when we are children. To fulfill this need, a story must be meaningful – in that we must attach meaning to it, and not see it as irrelevant or “just dry facts”. It must also be believable – in that it needs to be supported by the facts as well as we know them. In other words, it has to be real. If the story fails either of these requirements, then children (and adults) cannot get all of the benefits we need from it as humans.
We are living in a time when nearly all of us are denying our children (and ourselves!) this basic human requirement. Scientific discoveries have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the old creation myths, like the Native American story of Nanabozho or the Genesis story, aren’t literally true (they might still be meaningful, but are no longer believable), while the story that is believable, the evidence-based Universe Story, is rarely taught in a meaningful, inspiring way. Only a story that is both meaningful AND believable can fulfill this basic human need.
Others are recognizing this cultural loss as well. As Nancy Ellen Abrams states:
Without a meaningful, believable story that explains the world we actually live in, people have no idea how to think about the big picture. And without a big picture, we are very small people.
And over a half century ago, Maria Montessori told us that:
…by offering the child the story of the universe, we give him something a thousand times more infinite and mysterious to reconstruct with his imagination, a drama no fable can reveal."
I’ve lost count of the times when, in teaching creation myths to children, they seem uncaring, especially after asking, repeatedly “but is that what really happened?”. They are already too smart to care much for stories that are known to be false. Yet, it still took me a while to realize how much children want the honest truth. Seeing myself and other adults take a long time enthusiastically embrace the Universe Story drives home the fact that we have learned our culture all too well. This is why it takes time and commitment to raise our children with the meaningful and believable history that they desperately need. Even after only a few years of doing so, I’ve already started to see the wonder and joy in my children at having a meaningful and believable origin story – a coherent, empowering cosmology.
We can give them the meaningful and believable story that they need. To do so, we only need to realize how deeply meaningful and enriching the factual Story of the Universe, as discovered by science, truly is. We only need to allow its meaning to shine through – and a moment’s reflection shows how wonderful it really is. That wonder and joy of finally reconnecting to the Universe, the same feeling our Ancestors for millennia felt, is within our grasp again. It changed my life, and others as well. Some of our stories can be read here.
Luckily, none of us have to reinvent the wheel and try to do this from scratch. There are resources available online here. For most of us, we’ll be learning at the same time, with the whole family traveling much of the path together. I hope to discuss some of the ways we’ve found to work well in our family in future blog posts.
Evolutionary Parenting, today, is uncommon at best. But I suspect that in the future it will be as commonplace as teaching children to read and write. From seeing its effect on my life and the lives of others, I think it is just as important as even those basic skills, especially for living in the chaotic world our children will face.
That essay offers profound insights and trends for twenty- and thirty-somethings to keep in mind when buying a home in this new and volatile era. I view the signs of change as truly hope-filled. Nonetheless, as we peel away the layers of causality, we boomers are forced to see ourselves as the reason for much of the economic decline. Now it is our job to ensure that the lessons of this sixty-year history that we have lived through are not lost on the generations that follow.
Note: Please take a few minutes to read Leinberger's Op-Ed piece. Then return to this blog to consider two additional points I wish to make.
* * *
First, a little background: My husband, Michael Dowd, and I have lived entirely on the road for ten years, occupying for a few days to a few weeks the guest rooms (or sometimes, vacation homes) of Americans affiliated with the churches and nonprofit groups that delight in the message we deliver as “America’s evolutionary evangelists”. Accordingly, we have, in a sense, been sampling and eavesdropping on the lifestyle of Americans our age and older — that is, couples whose kids are grown and out of the house, and who are wealthy enough to live in a home that has a spare room (sometimes an entire wing) for guests. We have carved out an odd career and lifestyle that utterly depends on the generosity of others: we live almost entirely in homes that we ourselves could never afford.
Thanks to this amazing opportunity to sample middle-class American homes and standards of living, I now offer two insights that perhaps will help Gen X, Gen Y, and the Millennials avoid the mistakes that we boomers have made — mistakes we have made mostly as a group, not because we are especially foolish or self-centered as individuals.
Mistake number 1: MIS-JUDGING WHAT MAKES FOR QUALITY OF LIFE
Time and again, surveys have shown that people who choose a home for the wonderful nature-filled yard (but a long distance from anything), find themselves oppressed by a long commute or isolated because it takes too long to drive anywhere to extra-curricular events (for themselves or their lonely kids), especially in inclement weather.
Even though I am a nature fanatic (and feel like the luckiest person alive when my husband and I are offered a month or more hospitality at someone’s vacation home in one of the unbelievably large number of astonishingly beautiful nooks in North America), I have also delighted in getting a chance to live a few days at a time in high quality urban and established suburban settings. Michael and I have often been hosted by folks who have been living in the same neighborhood for 30 or 40 years — the traditional suburbs of the 50s and 60s. Though the homes we have been invited into would have been regarded as the wealthier neighborhoods decades back, today those homes don’t have enough square-footage, bathrooms, and garage space to be attractive to the “wealthy” anymore. The reasons for my fondness of these older “inner suburbs” are four-fold:
It is just a walk or short drive to the store and post office and other venues.
There are actual sidewalks in the neighborhood; one doesn’t have to walk in the street (nor drive kids a long distance to play with other kids).
The trees (whether or not they were large to begin with) are now extravagant and represent a far greater diversity of species, even slow-growing oaks, than one finds in new developments that are turning into ghost towns in farmlands-turned-exurbs.
The homes tend to be smaller and hence fully used; untouched dining rooms and living rooms are rare, as are energy-extravagant cathedral ceilings.
My point is this: older neighborhoods are not only still thriving; for many reasons (as presented in Leinberger’s Op-Ed piece) these are the locales that youngers should think about moving into themselves.
Mistake number 2: INVESTING FOR RETIREMENT
My second point is not one that was covered in the recommended Op-Ed piece. Indeed, I haven’t encountered anybody else writing on the housing collapse or Wall Street madness from quite this angle. Here is my take:
Boomers invested in extra homes (especially, homes larger than most of us would want to retire into), as we expected to resell those homes for a large profit. Boomers also invested in the stock market because of a new phenomenon initiated by our parents’ generation: old folks no longer expected (nor wanted) to move in with their adult offspring. When we boomers were kids, we ourselves (or at least some of our friends) had grandparents living with us in our home. That was normal in the 50s and 60s. The grandparents did not save a huge sum for retirement, and few got pensions. Back then, grandma got a bedroom to herself and was expected to help out with the kids and cooking some meals. Her social security check was fully adequate for covering her share of the mortgage (for that extra room) and she certainly earned her food costs by the help she gave in the kitchen and with the kids.
In my case, my father’s parents lived with us in, what would have been, the master bedroom. They had a private attached bath and their bed folded into a sofa during the day. They had a little cookstove and refrigerator and tiny “kitchen” table in their room too, and their TV set was on top of the clothes dresser.
That is not the future we boomers intend for ourselves. Also, we expect to live a lot longer after retirement than our grandparents did — and to spend those years taking excursions, golfing, shuttling between our regular home and our vacation home — indeed, intending to live rather extravagantly because many of us have been working just too darned hard. At least, that was our plan before our stocks, real estate, and 401k accounts tanked.
In contrast, our grandparents never even considered those activities. They were happy (at least as happy as anyone expected to be in those days) staying close to home, feeling useful for the next generations, perhaps tending a small vegetable garden.
Of course, changing demographics and the fact that few boomers can expect their adult children to be living anywhere near where they were raised (nor to remain in that locale for long) will make it nearly impossible for grandma or grandpa boomer to happily move in with our adult children. Long-time friends and community groups would have to be left behind — and maybe repeatedly as the kids keep following jobs, mates, and dreams around the country.
All this means that, unlike my grandparents’ generation, most of my peers have assumed that they have to save a quarter million dollars or more before they can safely retire. That is a quarter million dollars per couple that must be “invested” somewhere over the course of decades that it is stashed away. Once upon a time, one simply put money into a savings account. But boomers viewed savings accounts as a loss — no profit there, and with interest rates lagging behind the rate of inflation. The only two places to invest, really, were the stock market and real estate — hence the crash of both of those institutions.
The result of this extraordinary drive to “invest” for retirement was this: huge sums of money were taken out of the real economy and stashed in the casino called Wall Street and in vacant lands and overbuilt housing called real estate. That money was not available for spending on the next generations. Instead, we let the infrastructure that we share communally (roads, bridges, parks, sewers) decline. We pulled state and federal taxes out of the subsidies that we formerly invested in colleges. Instead, we forced the younger generations to pay enormous sums for higher education and thus to be saddled with debt. Consciously or not, we allowed the marvelous infrastructure that we inherited from the Eisenhower era to rust away. Not to worry: “Be, here, now!” Remember?
CONCLUSION: The point of this essay is to let the younger generations know that it is not just Wall Street that screwed them over, but a massive shift in how ordinary Americans came to use and invest their earnings. It is my generation and the one older that made it possible for Wall Street financiers to become garishly wealthy doing nothing of use (and in the case of derivatives, doing much harm). It is my generation that invested in land and new homes that we knew we would not want to retire into, and that would be flagrant energy guzzlers (both in home heating and in gasoline for commutes and errands). I think we had an inkling that our kids could not afford, nor would they want, to live in such wastefulness. But all we needed to do was to resell that McMansion in five or eight years to someone else of our generation who was looking not for a home but for an investment — an investment for retirement.
MY DREAM: My dream is not that Grandma Boomer and Grandpa Boomer turn the pages of history back and go move in with the kids and grandkids. Those days are over for the reason I mentioned earlier: the kids keep moving from city to city and state to state. Rather, I’d like to see two new forms of high-density, low square-footage housing that 20-somethings just starting out and retiring boomers would occupy. (Noise from stereos would not be a problem, as earbuds would be required and no loud parties by anyone choosing those special, low-rent digs.) We olders would choose to occupy such housing not only because our investments failed, but because paring down to simple living would bring a joy to life that we haven’t known since the 60s and the 70s.
Such lost-cost housing developments, of course, must be located near a greenway or park in walking distance, and a grocery a short walk or taxi or bus ride away. There must be sidewalks; there must be trees. Neither we olders nor the youngers just starting out would have to own a car. We wouldn’t mourn a lost opportunity to golf or to cruise. We would be happily engaged in our patch of community garden, volunteering in local schools, joining birdwatching groups in the parks, mentoring the twenty-somethings, and finding real community with peers just around the corner or across the street.
Imagine this: we would be able to pretty much live on our Social Security checks, just like our grandparents did. And no generation, ever again, would be tricked into “saving for retirement” in ways that impoverish and threaten the health and wellbeing of those who follow.
Famed biologist Lynn Margulis died on November 22 at the age of 73. Lynn was one of the most creative scientists of our time. She was always pushing the edge of orthodoxy and sometimes she was right in a big way (i.e., the evolution of eukaryotes via endosymbiosis).
It would be difficult to overstate the positive impact of Lynn's work on our understanding of life, but also on my life personally, and Connie's too.
In 1989 I became the first (and only) student to be allowed to audit Lynn's "Environmental Evolution" course at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. This proved to be a significant turning point in my life.
For the final exam, I was asked to publicly present the essence of my mentor Thomas Berry's work in just five minutes. This was one of the most empowering assignments I was ever given, and it ultimately led me to devote my life to teaching and preaching "The Great Story."
Here's a powerful short YouTube clip of Terence McKenna goring the ox of postmodern relativism and non-evidential New Age woo in a clear, humorous, mild mannered, and supremely effective way. It just doesn't get any better! Thanks to PZ Myers.
The following is cross-posted here. Short URL: http://bit.ly/nO5Ljy
Dear Friends,
My sleep was cut short last night by waking up worried at 3:30 a.m. PST about NYC Mayor Bloomberg's ultimatum that the Occupy Wall Street protesters leave Zuccotti Park - aka Liberty Square - at 7 a.m. EST so the park could be cleaned. I won't share the nightmare scenarios my mind concocted, but I finally got up and was profoundly relieved to find that the intervention had been "postponed". The Mayor's office said that park owner Brookfield Properties "believes they can work out an arrangement with the protesters that will ensure the park remains clean, safe, available for public use and that the situation is respectful of residents and businesses downtown, and we will continue to monitor the situation." When it was announced, the massive crowd of protesters went joyfully wild.
Apparently a number of factors made a difference: massive protest from many quarters (including Canadians protesting to Brookfield, which is a Canadian company); the occupiers thoroughly and very visibly scrubbing down their already quite clean site during the night; a LOT of supporters showed up overnight; and they were visibly preparing for a lockdown resistance - explaining on their site how to lock arms, bike lock themselves to things, etc. Many observers (including me) suspect Bloomberg's "clean the park" project was a thinly disguised attempt to end or cripple the occupation, but at least he recognized what a mess it would make - in SO many ways - to proceed.
So these determined interesting folks have made it over one more dramatic hurdle in their quest for a better world.
Several days ago I sent free copies of my two books (Priority Mail) to the Occupy Wall Street library. I'm happy they escaped the "cleaning" intervention. I encourage any other authors on this list to consider donating copies of their works. The ideas of people interested in co-intelligence should be made available to the protestors. The address is
The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038
While proceeding with work on my new book on empowered public wisdom, I continue to be fascinated by the ever-expanding Occupy movement. I find myself spending about half my time tracking it and its impact. It is quite a remarkable phenomenon. In this posting, I'm especially interested in their process.
Here's what's in this message:
First, I offer some fascinating charts about the inequities that inspired the protests in the first place and Senator Bernie Sanders recommendations of demands that would start ameliorating them - as well as news of some 1%ers supporting the 99%ers. Then I share a few key Occupy resource sites, including ones that will be linking up Occupy activities around the world this Saturday, Oct 15 into a "global agora" and "global general assembly".
Following that is an article describing what's happening at Occupation Wall Street site, with unusual insight into their "working groups". I find it intriguing to contemplate the similarities between OWS's use of working groups and the self-organized sessions in an Open Space conference. I wonder what other processes could be adopted for special use in this movement...
Then I share three interesting ways professional facilitators and coaches are engaging with the Occupy movement: Tree Bressen offers hot points on consensus process. Coaching Visionaries helps people decide on their best role in the movement. And Tim Bonnemann has initiated research into the Occupy movement's group processes.
After those items, I share a video taken of a General Assembly in Occupy Atlanta where the group discusses whether to hear from civil rights legend Congressman John Lewis who has come to address them - and he ends up leaving. I share the commentary by the conservative group that filmed it, and then offer my own commentary.
Finally, I offer reflections on the shadow side of such ambitious transformational work, and its evolutionary role in learning what we need to learn to actually succeed at creating the world we want.
It is all incredibly rich, filled with problems and promise. If you are (or are thinking of getting) involved in the Occupy movement, consider using the Coaching Visionaries questionnaire to explore your thoughts and feelings. It just might shed light on other areas of your life, as well - and with a bit of adaptation, it could be reconfigured to help you do just that.
Blessings on this and all the other Journeys.
Coheartedly,
~ Tom
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Occupy Wall Street: More popular than you think
Truly remarkable bar graphs showing what the actual distribution of wealth is in the United States, what Americans think it is, and what they think it should be. A mind-boggle... bursting with potential...
To get down into the nitty gritty detail of the economic inequity over the last half century, see this fascinating slide show of 41 charts collected by Business Insider
Global Virtual Assembly for sharing and networking results of local General Assemblies
Over 900 events in more than 80 countries - including more than 100 in the US - scheduled for Saturday, October 15 http://15october.net/48h-global-virtual-assembly/
Working Groups as Open Space http://bit.ly/qUjIfW
Inside Occupy Wall Street: A Journalist-Participant Describes What Life Is Really Like (Complicated and Inspiring) at Zuccotti Park
I was inspired to write this especially in support of the current Occupy movement, which has bunches of people participating in consensus decision-making who may not be experienced. A two-page quick handout can't replace a training, but it can help in the meantime. Please forward it to anyone you think would find it useful. Feedback welcome.
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From Coaching Visionaries, a group of professional coaches:
http://www.visionaries.co
We are currently creating this website to support the growth of the vision of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
If you'd like to be informed once it is ready, please join the Facebook group or send an email to CoachingVisionaries@gmail.com.
Coaching Visionaries is a coalition of Certified Professional Coaches that has come together to join forces with Occupy Wall Street to support the community in envisioning a better future for us all, and calling that vision forth into the world. We are here to assist you in strengthening your already-powerful voice, maintaining a peaceful community, and growing a global movement built on a foundation of solidarity and hope.
We are working one-on-one with individuals, and we are also available to join specific working groups to help you dream a bigger vision and find concrete ways to achieve the vision that is being born from this community. We can also help you connect to your own deeper self to find the strength and courage necessary to discover your own unique role within this process.
What is Coaching and How Does it Work?
Coaching is a partnership that maximizes human potential. When you work with a coach, you will not be advised as to what to do or how to do it. Your coach helps you look deeper within yourself to find your own solutions to the issues that are important to you. You start by presenting what you'd like the coach to help you with, and then the coach will ask you questions that allow you to navigate your own way to the answers that are true for you. We commit to holding a space of non-judgment and unlimited possibility in which you can feel safe to explore the outer limits of what is possible.
The coaches with Coaching Visionaries come from a perspective of aligning with your whole self. We adhere to the importance of the Mind-Body-Spirit connection. Another way of looking at this is that we work with you to engage both sides of your brain - the rational and logical left brain as well as the creative and visionary right brain.
Who is this for?
We are here for Occupy Wall Street. Any issue that is connected to the vision or challenges of this movement are welcome to be brought to us for coaching:
Are you interested in participating but not sure what your role should be?
Are you on a working group that is facing difficulties of any kind?
Were you arrested or witnessed violence and need support?
Are you a facilitator and need a fresh perspective on how to organize?
What is YOUR role in Occupy Wall Street? Why are you here?
This is an excellent question for you to address with a coach. We'd like to empower you to step fully into an active role in this process that excites you and draws on your unique talents. Occupy Wall Street needs your gifts and strengths!
If you'd like to explore your purpose in connection with the movement, please answer the questions below and then bring your answers to a coach.
Q U E S T I O N N A I R E -- Finding Your Purpose in Occupy Wall Street
If you'd like to talk to a coach about how you can become involved in the movement in the most powerful way possible for you, please take a few minutes to answer the following questions and then bring them to a coach.
What really excites you and gets you fired up about Occupy Wall Street? What is most important about what is going on here? Is there anything that you dislike about it that you would like to see change in some way?
What matters most to you in life? Include what makes you laugh, feel alive, motivates you to move and change, gives meaning to your life.
What are your core strengths and qualities? What strengths and qualities do you want to call out in yourself by being involved in Occupy Wall Street? How can your involvement in Occupy Wall Street help you grow as an individual?
How do you envision a role or possibility for yourself within the movement? Think outside the box with this one. Get creative!!!
What is a time from your life where you did something you were very proud of, or where you felt very connected to your core self?
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from Tim Bonnemann, Founder and CEO, Intellitics, Inc.
As an exercise in Dialogue and Deliberation research, I'd like to collect first-hand reports from local Occupy sites on any of the following topics:
* Group methods, meeting formats (what types are being used, how well do they fit)
* Facilitation/moderation (how good is the quality, what are the challenges)
* Group decision making, incl. consensus (how robust and efficient is the process, what works or not, what are the challenges)
* "Dialogic atmosphere" (for context, please see my blog post here: http://www.intellitics.com/blog/2011/10/13/tree-bressen-the-top-10-most-common-mistakes-in-consensus-process/)
* Briefing materials (what quick guides, handbooks or other training materials for process/facilitation etc. are being used)
If you've been to any of the protest sites and noticed anything interesting in this area, please share your notes! tim@intellitics.com
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Occupy Atlanta Silences Civil Rights Hero John Lewis!
COMMENT BY THE VIDEOGRAPHERS: Many curious citizens and media outlets came to the first Occupy Atlanta event, and were visible shocked and confused by the consistent Marxism employed by the group. People abandoned their individuality and liberty to be absorbed into a hypnotizing collective. The facilitator made it clear that he was not a "leader" and that everyone was completely equal; words often spoken by leftists, but in this case they actually applied their philosophy. Into this surreal and oppressive environment, Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero and icon of American leftism, came to speak as has so often done at left-wing rallies and events in Atlanta. He is practically worshiped in Democrat circles, and was visibly stunned to see these Marxists turn him away. It was reminiscent of previous Marxist revolutions in history when those who ignorantly supported the revolutionaries are, over time, purged and rejected for the "good of the collective", when their usefulness has expired.
COMMENT BY TOM ATLEE: It is fascinating to view this event through the videographers' eyes. Their perspective is so different from mine that it offers a great opportunity to reflect on how powerfully our filters shape our perceptions.
So here's my response to them: I find the filmmakers' idea that the collective overwhelmed the individual to be absurd. In consensus an individual can block the process - and did - forcing a reconsideration. The reference to "hypnotism" seems to be a misunderstanding of the repetitions required to help the whole crowd hear what's going on when there is inadequate amplification equipment. But if they are used to (and like) a leader making decisions or to hot debates filled with mutual interruptions, I can see how they would go crazy watching this laborious consensus process.
And now here's what I saw and how I interpret it:
Congressman John Lewis walked into an unfamiliar culture. Not only is that culture different from what he is used to, it is still figuring out what it is and how it works. One thing it knows is that it believes in equity. What it doesn't know yet is how to apply that value most usefully. After all, John Lewis fought all his life for equity, and probably has tremendous gifts of insight and experience to share with the occupiers. But he showed up apparently unscheduled, expecting to be given the priority consideration that he, as a political celebrity, is used to.
The occupiers were divided about whether he - or anyone - should be given the special privilege of stepping into the middle of the group's agenda to be heard. Since they were using consensus process, everyone needed to agree to turn away from their agenda and listen to John Lewis, or else the group would have to continue on with the agenda. From hand signals during the meeting it seemed that most people in the crowd wanted to both hear John Lewis and continue with their agenda. They finally decided to hear him at the end of the agenda. At which point he left. I'm not sure whether he left because he felt disrespected or dismayed or because he is, after all, a Congressman and has a busy schedule, and can't wait for the crowd to finish everything else they're considering before they listen to him. It is clear he never signed up for consensus process, probably has little experience with it, and doesn't really understand what's involved.
So did consensus work? Did it come up with a wise solution? In this case, not necessarily. One the one hand, it displayed the group's determination to live in an environment where everyone is treated equally - and to decide as a group what they are going to do without being unduly influenced by the larger culture's dynamics of privilege. On the other hand, it clearly left a significant minority (which in this case happened to include many African Americans) unsatisfied with what was happening - which is exactly what the process is designed to avoid. However, consensus is not designed for making extremely urgent decisions; it just takes too long.
So what to do? My own long-term suggestion would be for the process working group to come to terms with this limitation of consensus and begin consciously observing when it becomes a problem and developing ways to address each type of urgent situation they observe. In this case, what was lost was an opportunity to learn from and be inspired by John Lewis. One approach would be to have those in the group that wanted to engage with John Lewis, quickly form a John Lewis working group and go to a different part of the occupation site to talk with him - and then bring their learnings back to the larger group when he leaves. However, then they would not have been able to participate in the General Assembly decisions. They would have to trust the group. There may be better solutions, but you get the idea. Choices often involve trade-offs and if we want to use consensus we have to acknowledge its limits, face the trade-offs involved, and create options to deal with them.
My biggest overall response to this video is poignant compassion for these people wrestling with the challenges of creating a new culture AND a fervent hope that they constantly reflect on their experience and refuse to stagnate in any particular box, even the radical box of consensus process. Co-creation - and the need to do it consciously - never stops...
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From Riyana-Rebecca Sang <rebeccasangasong@yahoo.com>
...the Occupy Together groups are starting to have to face the
reality that it is downright difficult to reach our ideal of bringing
together people from all walks of life, with disparate belief systems,
communication styles, education and cultural backgrounds, etc. into one
force that can challenge those in power and lead to laws and policies that
serve a united majority and our sweet garden planet home rather than the
rich minority....
In conversations on the margins of the crowds, people
admit sheepishly about feeling left out for being the vegan, the queer, the
heterosexual, the anarchist punk, the suburban mom, the elder with decades
of experience, the young kid stepping out into the world of activism for the
first time. These moments are the shadows of unity – moments that show us
the growing edges of where we need to go and teach us the tools that we need
to develop in order to get there....
We all want the deep work of great change but we are never actually
prepared for how hard its going to be, or how our personal shadows can snake
through even the most conscious intentions to ambush us from behind. And
that’s how its supposed to be. We can imagine what it would feel like to be
our biggest, brightest selves, and we can envision what this world would be
like if we could truly come together to heal, protect, and nourish our
communities and ecosystems, but it’s the dirty, difficult work of wading
through the shadows that gives us the skills, capacities, and tools to
manifest them and get to the next level. We may have a sense of the what,
but the how comes with the journey, developed through the growing pains of
evolution. Part of that growth process is shining a bright light into the
shadows, not to dis-spell their darkness, but to see what is there and what
we can learn from diving deep into them.
A review of Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean's The Magic of Reality
by Michael Dowd
Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean have made my holiday shopping this year easy. Indeed, if I could pick but one book as required reading for every adolescent and adult in the world, it would be The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True.
Why am I so evangelistic about this book? Because it expands and deepens the powerful open letter that Richard wrote in the mid-1990s to his (at the time) ten-year-old daughter Juliet, “Good and Bad Reasons for Believing.” Now, just about anyone on the cusp of puberty and beyond can learn about their deep ancestry, why there are so many animals, what causes earthquakes, what powers the sun and the stars, why rainstorms sometimes produce rainbows, and even “why bad things happen.” Who can read this book and fail to see science as one of humanity’s shining achievements!
Early in chapter 1, which is titled “What Is Reality? What Is Magic?,” Dawkins lays out in a few simple paragraphs a key distinction: “Magic is a slippery word: It is commonly used in three different ways… I’ll call the first one ‘supernatural magic,’ the second one ‘stage magic,’ and the third one (which is my favorite meaning, and the one I intend in my title) ‘poetic magic’.”
Crucially, perhaps because youth are his intended audience, Dawkins maintains a tone throughout that is in no way derisive of anyone’s mythic story — including the mythic story that has been deployed for far too long in Western culture to prevent school children from learning that all creatures are their cousins and that it is a fact of chemistry that they are made of star stuff.
I do believe that, if read far and wide, this book could go a long way toward curing our species of its current collective insanity. Consider this recent statement by my fellow religious naturalist and noted philosopher of religion, Loyal Rue:
"The most profound insight in the history of humankind is that we should seek to live in accord with reality. Indeed, living in harmony with reality may be accepted as a formal definition of wisdom. If we live at odds with reality (foolishly), then we will be doomed. But if we live in proper relationship with reality (wisely), we shall be saved. Humans everywhere, and at all times, have had at least a tacit understanding of this fundamental principle. What we are less in agreement about is how we should think about reality and what we should do to bring ourselves into harmony with it.”
The Magic of Reality is a stunning example of our best collective intelligence about the nature of reality and how we’ve come to know (rather than merely believe) that science provides a more accurate map of “what’s real” and “what’s important” (or, how things are and which things matter) than ancient mythic maps could hope to achieve. I would argue that nothing is more necessary at this time in history than for people of all ages, backgrounds, and beliefs to grasp the importance of distinguishing mythic and meaningful stories of reality from the measurable and meaningful truth of reality.
After all, isn’t the ability to distinguish one’s inner, subjective world from the outer, objective world pretty much the defining mark of sanity? When a person cannot consistently do this, we say that he or she has become a danger to self and others. When a large and media savvy segment of an entire culture insists on selectively using (and selectively ignoring) the discoveries of science, the danger is vastly compounded.
Clearly and compellingly helping readers draw a distinction between myth and reality (while valuing both) is what The Magic of Reality does so brilliantly—and beautifully! Richard Dawkins’ steady prose and helpful metaphors combine with Dave McKean’s stunning illustrations to make this volume a feast for head and heart.
As I’ve written and spoken about many times during the past two years (for example, see my “Thank God for the New Atheists” sermon that was simultaneously published in Skeptic magazine and Australasian Science), I consider Richard Dawkins and many of his New Atheist colleagues to be modern-day prophets. Traditionally, prophets were not so much foreseers or foretellers. They were men and women who spoke boldly and unflinchingly on behalf of reality. Their message (couched in religious terms, of course) was essentially this: “Here’s what’s real, folks—and here’s what’s emerging. We need to get right with reality, or perish.”
In the same way that the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin helped spark the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago, I see Richard Dawkins and David McKean’s book helping 21st century religious folk to break free of idolatry of the written word and thereby spark an Evidential Reformation.
It is on this point that I depart from Dawkins in a major way. I truly do wish for reform of all the world’s religious heritages—not annihilation. And I wish for reform not just because reform is a more practical and realistic approach for smoothing out the harsh edges of literalistic religious zealotry. Rather, I work for reform because religions, historically, have had an important cultural evolutionary role to play.
Following evolutionist David Sloan Wilson (author of Darwin’s Cathedral and Evolution for Everyone), I understand that religions evolved, in part, to make possible vastly larger scales of cooperation than kin selection and reciprocal altruism tend to produce on their own. Religions that could evoke individual sacrifice in the interest of shared goals were those that helped their societies defend territory, conquer the less fortunate, and adequately provision generations to come.
Thus, in a heretical way perhaps, I regard Richard Dawkins as not only a gift to our species but as the boot in the butt my own Christian tradition requires to stay relevant—and to have anything useful at all to pass on to the young people who increasingly listen, globally, more to each other than to their immediate elders.
It is now up to those very same young people to make The Magic of Reality go viral!
The following is cross-posted from my main blog site, here. (See comments posted there too.)
It is slowly dawning on me that I've seen events very similar to Occupy Wall Street.
The first time was on the Great Peace March in 1986 which started out from Los Angeles as a hierarchical mega-PR event with 1200 people and tons of equipment. It suddenly and traumatically went bankrupt in the Mojave Desert two weeks later. 800 marchers went home. 400 marchers didn't. It took them (us) two weeks sitting around an BMX track in Barstow to reorganize with no formal leaders (but tons of ambient leadership) and little support (but tons of vulnerability that soon attracted grassroots support). As we re-started our 3000-mile trek with 400 people, it turned into a 9 month miracle of self-organization (I mean, where DO you put 400 people each night 15 or so miles further down the road?!!), out of which came my first experiences of and ideas about collective intelligence, which led to my life work today. The lives of hundreds of other people were transformed by that March, whose emergent troubadours sang "echoes of our care will last forever..". The folks at Occupy Wall Street are doing a similar experiment in passion-driven self-organization.
The other comparable events I've seen were run by Open Space and World Cafe - especially Open Space. Remember?: The two legs of Open Space are "passion" and "responsibility", which combine into that remarkable guidance formulated by Peggy Holman as "Take responsibility for what you love as an act of service." Are we seeing that in Occupy Wall Street, or what?! Then there's "It starts whenever it starts." "Whoever comes is the right people." "Whatever happens is the only thing that could have" and "When it is over, its over." In Open Space there are two exploratory plenary sharings each day. For most of the day, though, there's no preordained agenda - only people gathering in groups to do what they want to do together. Or being "butterflies" (going off on their own, often stumbling into random conversations) or "bumble-bees" (going from group to group, cross pollinating). No one is "in charge".
The whole thing holds together because those who are present share a passion. In Occupy Wall Street, the shared passion is a desire to reclaim human life and community from "Wall Street" - the greed-based, hierarchical corporate-financial system that has colonized and degraded our minds, lives, politics, economics, world, and future. That passion has a thousand manifestations, which are the polyphonous "issues" that swarm around Liberty Square like bees in a meadow.
So I realized: OF COURSE Occupy Wall Street doesn't have "demands." Demonstrations and protests have demands. But although O.W.S. LOOKS like a protest and a demonstration (and occasionally turns into one), it is actually something more, something else: It is a passionate community of inquiry acting itself out as an archetypal improvisational street theater performance embodying, in one hand, people's longings for the world as it could be and, in the other, their intense frustrations with the world as it is. These longings and frustrations reside in the whole society, not just in the occupiers.
The occupiers are behaving and reaching out in ways that release and activate those suppressed transformational energies all over the country and world. (Arny and Amy Mindell call such archetypal energies "timespirits" after "Zeitgeist", the spirit of the times.) To think of Occupation Wall Street as primarily a demonstration or protest misses the profound novelty and power of what they are doing. All of us - they and we - are figuring out what it is they are doing as they do it. They are kinda building the road as they travel.
That the whole thing wasn't consciously built according to any plan - that it EMERGED - is both its power and its limitation. We would do well to think about how to combine such powerful spontaneity with transformational processes (like Open Space and World Cafe) that use self-organization to help spread evocative energy from a dynamic center like Occupy Wall Street out into the society, transmuting that society's latent frustrations and longings into a force that can shift the energy of the whole System towards Life. I sense a new form of activism, of citizenship, of aliveness being born here. Each of us gets to ask what role we want to play in that flowing, creative Mystery. And the roles we inevitably play inevitably become part of the inevitable river as the ice inevitably melts...
"Being Stressed Out As a Spiritual Practice?!" Say, what?
You’re probably thinking: “Wow, I’m way, waaaaaay more spiritual than I ever thought. If being stressed out is a spiritual practice, then I’m right up there with the Dalai Lama!”
Or perhaps (more likely) you're thinking: “You’re joking, right?”
No, I’m serious! But let me back up for a minute.
We know that biologically, during evolution, good things (like eyes, brains, etc.) are selected for only if they are needed at the time. After all, if a creature can survive OK without the latest mutation, then it will do so, and the latest mutation won’t spread across the population. Hence, everything I appreciate, like being able to walk, think and see, are all the results of huge amounts of struggle, without which we’d all still be pond scum. Like that ‘80’s workout slogan, “No pain, no gain”.
And look at what we are blessed with! Powerful bodies made of incomparable molecular 'machines', eyes, the most advanced brain known of in the Universe, and more – each the result of an unthinkable amount of hardship – or it simply would not have been selected for.
When one deeply appreciates this mountain of struggle we all stand upon, our daily difficulties take on new meaning. Challenges (ours and our ancestor's), as bad as they may be in the moment, are what gave all of us much of what we value most! If I sat around and did nothing in a cushy life, I’d feel that I’d let those Ancestors down, that I wasn’t a worthy recipient of the wondrous gifts they bequeathed me.
So whenever I feel pressure or difficulty, I know that it's very much like that which allowed me to be, and that pressure can help me grow. I couldn’t feel it without some taste of stress. In fact, our lives today have a lot less stress than existed in many of those past lives! Few of us, after all, are just hoping to be breathing tomorrow, which at times in the past was really in doubt on a regular basis. So, though I don’t intentionally try to get unneeded stress, I remind myself that every drop of stress I get is a gateway to deeper appreciation of every good thing in the world today.
Yes, being stressed out is indeed a spiritual practice, if I choose to make it so.
Also, I hear clubs are notoriously full of scantily clad lady folk.
*Now Larry is really paying attention*
To further complicate the issue, my girlfriend has been out of town for the past two weeks. So speaking frankly, Larry (and Shane!) have been missing her ... a lot!
What is a testosterone-filled young man supposed to do in this situation?
Science has shown that when a man’s primary partner is away, his testosterone levels elevate, as does his sperm count. Evolution would have it so, apparently, because in the ancient (maybe not so ancient) past, this was prime time for a man to possibly land an EPC. That’s code for, what biologists routinely call, “extra-pair copulation.”
Higher testosterone = think more about sex and take more risks.
Hmmm . . .
Fortunately, armed with this knowledge, I can now know what challenges to expect, and I can pre-decide how to deal with them.
I am committed to not cheating. However, I also have a deep appreciation and reverence for the power of my instincts, especially when alcohol is involved and inhibitions are thereby lowered and judgment is clouded.
So what did I do?
With Larry whispering inside my head, trying to fulfill his ancient yearnings, I decided to create a game of sorts. It would be a game to see just how impeccable I could be in my actions, and a game to honor my girlfriend. Undoubtedly also, this game would strengthen the “muscles” of my prefrontal cortex that must be trained and exercised to do the “harder thing” — harder meaning, going against our primal instincts (sorry, Larry!).
The day before Larry and I were scheduled to go clubbing, I called up a trusted friend and explained the game:
“I want to commit to only having 3 drinks and also acting in such a way that if there was a video camera on me, and my girlfriend was going to see the tape the next day, she would be proud of my behavior — and feel very honored by me.”
I also shared this game with my girlfriend — which was not at all a scary thing to do. Ever since she and I took time together to read about the basics of our evolved male and female brains (see the links below), I have been able to authentically share what most of us guys assume we just have to keep hidden: that we do notice hot women, and that our Larrys do perk up. (See my earlier post, when I introduced “Larry” as my own playful name for the lustful part of my brain that harks back to when humanity’s ancient ancestor was still a reptile.)
Actually, I didn’t just explain the game to Meredith. Once she got the gist, she and I started joking around about all the hot women that would attract Larry’s attention, but that I, trustworthy Shane, would not be flirting with.
The night was a breeze (and still a ton of fun!). I danced with my female friends, I had my three drinks, and I completely honored my girlfriend and our relationship.
Would I have been fine had I not been playing this game? Absolutely. It was never about “keeping the reins” on out-of-control habits. It was simply a way of honoring my instincts and honoring what's most important to me, which is the trust in my relationship.
If you are a man who has struggled with straying or flirting outside of your relationship — and if you are committed to faithful monogamy — I encourage you to learn about your brain’s evolutionary machinery. Then you can choose to practice honoring its deeply rooted desires, as well as your higher values and commitments.
When you can authentically love those deep drives, without succumbing to their every whim, (and your partner can too), be prepared to enjoy a “lightness of being” and playfulness that's unlike anything else! _______________________
NOTE: Links to some of Meredith's and my favorite resources on this subject:
by Michael Dowd “We will never achieve a just and sustainably lifegiving future on the resources of the existing religious traditions, and we can’t get there without them.” ~ Thomas Berry
The 21st century will be seen historically as humanity’s rite of passage. We’re growing up as a species, going through the very same process we’ve all gone through as we mature. As children we’re guided by beliefs and we think the world was made for us. As adults, we’re guided by knowledge and we live our lives (at least in part) as a contribution to others and the world. Indeed, for healthy adults, self-giving is actually one of life’s greatest satisfactions. As well, most of us needed no special training or incentives to begin questioning the beliefs we were spoon-fed as children – just the usual dose of hormones and peer focus that signals adolescence.
These two transformations, from beliefs to knowledge and from self-focus to contribution, are precisely what we’re now collectively experiencing. I call this species-wide rite of passage the “Evidential Reformation,” and I believe it is destined to transform not only the science-and-religion debate and how religious traditions relate to one another, but, even more importantly, how humans relate to the larger body of life of which we are part and upon which we depend.
A Big History Perspective on Religion Through Time
Big history, also known as the epic of evolution, is our common creation narrative. It is the first origin story in the history of humanity that is globally produced, derived entirely from evidence, and will soon be taught to high school students around the world (see here, here, and the YouTube clip at the end of this post).
In our “childhood” as a species – as tribes, then villages, then chiefdoms and kingdoms, then city-states and early nations – our main source of guidance came from religious beliefs. Shared allegiance to a particular religion that bridged even ethnic and linguistic differences was a crucial factor in the rise of civilizations across the globe. Consider: our instinctual heritage as social mammals will suffice for fostering cooperation at the scale of a clan. (Biologists call these instinctive forms of cooperation kin selection and reciprocal altruism.) Mutually advantageous trade then facilitated greater circles of cooperation. But for 10,000 or more human beings to be induced to cooperate: for that, you need religion – a singular, shared, unquestioned religion, and probably one that doles out harsh consequences (including ostracism) for apostates.
A multitude of religions arose independently of course, because in any bioregion where fierce competition for territory or resources arose, there would have been a survival advantage to groups that could forge cross-clan alliances for mutual defense. As well, there are two functional issues that all cultures need to address: what’s real and what’s important. (In a six-minute YouTube video based on his book, Religion Is Not About God, philosopher of religion Loyal Rue refers to these two functions as “how things are” and “which things matter.”) These two functional issues will be answered differently based upon where and when you live and upon the happenstance of interpretive imagination of one’s ancestors. Each “wisdom tradition” thus reflects regional collective intelligence encoded mythically. That is, the regional collective intelligence is encoded in pre-scientific language that reflects a people’s daytime and nighttime experience. (See here for a discussion of “Day and Night Language,” which was a central concept in my book, Thank God for Evolution.)
In our “adolescence” as a species (which was a threshold crossed as the modern era swept the globe), we began to question the beliefs, interpretations, and meanings we had inherited. The birth of this new form of collective intelligence, global collective intelligence, occurred when access to powerful new technologies (beginning with the telescope) ramped up our ability to discern how things are. We then faced the frightening truth that ancient understandings were not, in fact, the best maps of what is real. This challenging process is still facing much of the world, as traditional religious beliefs are increasingly found to be obsolete and simply no longer credible when interpreted literally.
Some individuals thrilled to the prospect of participating in this threshold event: of valuing measurable observation, rationality, and collectively encouraged skepticism and testing as the preferred means for discerning what’s real and what’s important. In the 19th century these “natural philosophers” became known as “scientists.”
The two institutions responsible for ensuring that the self-interest of individuals and groups are aligned – namely, governance and religion – were impacted differently by the rise of modern science. Democratic forms of governance were the first to embrace evidence as authoritative. Religions are only now beginning to catch up and to not only experience the terror but also taste the thrill of what the Evidential Reformation offers.
Like any rite of passage, once one voluntarily steps through the threshold there is no integrous and healthy way of going back. So of course there are shrill voices of protest and deep institutional inertia.
But ultimately, this shift will happen. One by one, segment by segment, the great religions of the world will pass through the threshold – else they will wither and the new generations will leave them entirely behind.
“Idolatry of the Written Word” as Today’s Greatest Impediment
What the Evidential Reformation offers for religion is centrally this: Science reveals “God’s word” for humanity today – that is, what’s real and what’s important, or how things are and which things matter – far more accurately than the Bible or Qur’an could ever hope to. And Moses, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the Prophet Mohammad would surely be among the first to applaud this trend were they alive today.
Yet, until faith leaders become a whole lot bolder in proclaiming to their flocks the goodness and necessity of this shift, religious people will remain blind and deaf to what God (Reality personified) is revealing today through scientific, historic, and cross-cultural evidence. And that means that God/Reality will continue using the New Atheists to mock unchanging religious beliefs and those who espouse such beliefs.
The main hindrance to religious people wholeheartedly embracing evidence as divine communication – divine guidance (i.e., how Reality reveals itself) – has been what I have long been characterizing as idolatry of the written word(also here). Idolatry of the written word occurred anywhere in the world where ancient oral stories (which surely evolved for millennia as conditions and needs changed) became frozen into unchanging scripture – scripture that was then deemed as the foundational (even the sole) locus for discerning priorities, values, right thinking, and right behavior.
This shift from oral storytelling to unchanging scripture as the way wisdom, morality, and a sense of the sacred (supreme value) is generationally passed forward set the stage (albeit centuries later) for a profound and now exponentially expanding mismatch. This mismatch is between globally shared and empirically tested updates of (once-again) evolving wisdom versus what religious people still preference as “God’s Word”.
Idolatry of the written word has thus led to what could be considered “demonic beliefs.” I do not hesitate to use such harsh language because any and all beliefs that cause good people to do bad things and to vote in evil ways (ways that are shortsighted, self-centered, and harmful to future generations) are demonic. And who among us does not see where such beliefs have led to a kind of collective insanity? The only cure, as far as I can tell, is for religious leaders to accept – indeed, to celebrate – that scientific, historic, and cross-cultural evidence are the actual venues through which Reality/God is speaking and guiding humanity today. Fortunately, this shift is happening rapidly…and seems likely to be fleshed out in just another generation or two.
I do not decry or disvalue this aspect of religious history. Indeed, I accept that idolatry of the written word could not have been avoided. Without the shift to literacy, humanity would never have been able to access the fruits of modernity: the rule of law, exponentially growing knowledge, cumulative technological and medical advances, and a widening sense of one’s “in-group” and compassionate treatment thereof.
Nonetheless, the negative social consequences of this form of idolatry have been quite severe – and threaten to become even more terrifying and destructive as deadly weapons come in ever smaller packages. It is thus time to prophetically speak out against continued favoring of ancient scriptural ‘authority’ over our best collective understandings of facts and values today. Said another way, the Church, currently shipwrecked (also here) on the immovable rock of “biblical authority”, can still be saved, but only by embracing “the authority of evidence”. Reality would have it no other way.
Our Way Forward: Aligning Self-Interest with Species-Wide & Global Interests
One of the most significant and hopeful insights to emerge from the early days of the Evidential Reformation is a re-envisioning of what “self-interest” really is. Self-interest actually exists at all biological and cultural levels – not just at the obvious, individual level. Indeed, the key to ever-increasing social complexity in the human realm over the past 10,000 years has been the aligning of self-interest at multiple levels. It could even be argued that nothing is more important for ensuring a just and thriving future than aligning the natural self-interest of individuals, corporations, and nation-states with the wellbeing of the body of life as a whole. The outcome of this shift would be to make competition co-operative, self-interest nontoxic, and society wise.
One could thus conclude that humanity’s “Great Work” in the 21st century is to co-create global and bioregional governance such that individuals and groups that benefit the common good benefit themselves, while individuals and groups that disregard or harm the common good are taxed, penalized, or face moral strictures.
By organizing and managing ourselves so that the impact of parts on the whole, for good or ill, are reflected back to the parts, we shall create a system through which individuals, corporations, and nations are incentivized to do what is just and ecological – while simultaneously being incentivized to not do what is unjust or un-ecological. This aligning of self-interest at multiple scales would ensure that what is perceived as the cheaper, easier, more convenient thing to do is also the right thing to do, rather than the harmful thing, as it is now. This re-incentivizing of societal goods and services to comport with human nature (as it really is, not as we wish it would be) would also help all elements of society to access and make decisions based on humanity’s collective intelligence (also here and here).
The promise of the Evidential Reformation, as I see it, is this: As the world’s great religious traditions come to honor and celebrate evidence as divine guidance, and big history as our common creation story, they will begin to wield their moral authority in ways that assist, rather than resist, the passage of our species out of the desert of destructive and unsustainable adolescence and into the promised land of contributing and fulfilled maturity.
Note by Michael Dowd: A week ago a colleague sent me a link to an obscure blog that had “gone viral”:
