John Lennon, Stephen Bannon and A Middle Way

The current turmoil in our country is not essentially about ‘us versus them’ but rather ‘us versus us.’ As Jochen Bittner points out in his op-ed piece in the February 23^rd edition of the New York Times, both America and Europe are engaged in an internal ‘clash of ideologies.’   He presents a vivid, and I think helpful, way of understanding some aspects of this conflict:

That clash pops up…is fundamentally about what world the citizens of the West would rather live in. Call it a “Lennon world” versus a “Bannon world.” Neither is sustainable.

The Lennon world is that of the liberal cosmopolitans, summed up in the John Lennon song “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no countries,” he sings, “a brotherhood of man.” The Bannon world is the opposite: a place of walls and rules, run by uncompromising strongmen.

We will see this conflict played out in the French elections in May and the German elections in September. Bittner, who is German, presents a brief quote from Chancellor Angela Merkel in her first interview after her decision to stand for re-election:

The question is, ‘What can I do for the cohesion of such a polarized society?’

This is our question as well. Simply shouting louder than our opponents is not a solution. Bittner points us in the same direction that the Buddha did: the middle way.

This middle way should not be confused with a watered down compromise position. This middle way or third way, must somehow include and go beyond the wisdom inherent in all the previous positions. In order to do this, we need to continue to listen and appreciate parts of the world we have not noticed before.

We are all responsible for finding and creating this new way and it must begin with each of us. Waiting for ‘them’ to change, is a recipe for stalemate and stagnation. If we are truly committed to healing the polarization in our society, we have to be willing to change more than anyone else. This change is not a giving in, but actively seeking out that which we do not yet understand and then behaving in new ways.

Gandhi had it right when he said: “We must be the change we seek.”

Working With the Inner Elephant

It’s early. Four thirty a.m.   I’m awake in the dark and can’t go back to sleep. Yesterday, I could barely wake up. This morning, I find myself in a state of unpleasant arousal. I’m pretty sure the minor building repairs we discussed last night are not going to lead to the ruin of the Temple, but my elephant is worried. This elephant is my new metaphor for the part of me that is not subject to the command and control of my reasoning mind. I think I’ll call him Herkimer.

Jonathan Haidt gave him to me.

Herkimer is often a very pleasant fellow. He’s well-meaning, but he worries a lot and he’s incredibly stubborn. When he begins to worry, my carefully reasoned reassurances are not only ineffective, they actually seem to goad him into more anxiety. Listen to this conversation from this morning:

David: ‘This stuff is not a big deal. I’ll make some phone calls today to get the ball rolling. We’ll get some people over to take care of these issues.’

Herk: ’You probably won’t remember to make the calls. You don’t have time and even if you do make the calls, you probably won’t reach anyone. And even if you reach someone, it will be weeks before you can schedule someone to come over and even look at this stuff. You’ve been aware of these things for a while and have done nothing. What’s wrong with you?’

Herkimer doesn’t mean to be mean. But when he starts off in a direction, he doesn’t like to be disturbed or manipulated into changing course. Reasoning with him when he’s in a bad mood is not only ineffective, it usually seems to make matters worse. (see above) On the plus side, Herkimer is quite admirable in the faith of his conviction and his refusal to give up. He is also wonderfully creative in generating arguments to justify whatever direction he happens to be headed.

So how do you work with an elephant in a bad mood? I’m reminded of the advice to professional consultants who go in to try to help organizations: ‘Don’t try to stop an elephant from sitting down.’ A wonderful image of the limited power we have over organizations, the world, and our inner elephants.

So I guess I’ll just walk alongside Herkimer for a little while. He’s just in a bad mood. I know how that is. Sometimes I worry too.

I’ll just get up and make a cup of tea. Then I’ll make a list of the different projects and the small steps I could take later today. After that I’ll sit in the old plush chair by the window and write for a little bit.

It’s early, so I don’t have to rush.

Talk to the Elephant

“If you want to change people’s minds, you’ve got to talk to their elephants.”

adult african elephant isolated on white

While this may seem self-evident to some, a bit of context may be helpful for the rest of us. The elephant is from Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 book THE RIGHTEOUS MIND: WHY GOOD PEOPLE ARE DIVIDED BY POLITICS AND RELIGION which my daughter recently sent me and told me to read. I’m just a few chapters in and I’m finding both insightful and timely.

Haidt is a social psychologist who studies moral reasoning; how we come to believe what we do. Haidt writes that some philosophers and psychologists have thought that reason is the final arbiter; we come to our beliefs through a process of thought and observation. Thomas Jefferson believed that we are balanced between reason and emotion, each operating in its appropriate sphere. While Hume held that emotions are the ruler and thoughts just explain.

Haidt reports that the studies done in the past twenty years are pretty conclusive that Hume was closest to the truth. We form an opinion as a kind of intuition and then we use our conscious analytic mind to explain and justify what we already believe. People with higher I.Q.’s don’t appear to be any more thoughtful in examining their beliefs, they are just more articulate and lengthy in defending their position.

This is where Haidt brings in his elephant:

…the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness, but that actually govern most of our behavior.  

Haidt goes on to say that this explains why rational arguments, no matter how passionately expressed, rarely change someone else’s point of view. The rider of our rational thoughts mostly serves the elephant of our largely unconscious mental processes.  The rider is rarely conscious of the elephant and functions more like a lawyer whose job it is, not to examine the truth, but to justify the position of the client, the unconscious elephant of belief.

‘Talking to the elephant’ is about coming to understand the deeper forces that are behind the stated positions. Haidt goes on to say: “When does the elephant listen to reason? The main way that we change our minds on moral issues is by interacting with other people.” As humans, it is only when we feel heard and understood that we may be willing to let our guard down enough to consider what we had not yet considered.

This is not to say that there are not some things that need to be defended whatever the mindset of the perpetrators, it’s just that there’s a longer game as well. How do we move beyond the position of opposition, to finding a new sense of united purpose? How do we all learn to examine our positions and open our minds to what we have not yet considered?

Small Steps Together

We had a ‘huddle’ here at the Temple last night. This is one of the actions coming out of the Women’s March that encourages small local groups to gather to envision a future together and to commit to specific action steps.

This gathering was simply one of the thousands of locally organized groups across the country that are doing just this. Rather than instructions from some centralized authority, these groups are the democratic response to what many of us see as the breakdown of our democratic processes.

Many of us are waking up from a long slumber to realize that our society is not what we thought it was and that we are needed to participate in ways we have conveniently avoided.

My two take-aways from our huddle: 1) clarify what it is you want rather than just focus on what you don’t want and 2) take action that energizes you.

This first point is one of the central perspectives of the coaching work I do with leaders and others. Clarifying where we are going creates an energy that supports our actions right now. We don’t have to know exactly what it is that we want. But we do have to name something that is important enough for us to be willing to be uncomfortable for. What is it you want to stand for? How do you want the country to look in four years?

The vision that arose for me came out of my discouragement on election night to see how consistent the gap is between the central and rural parts of our country and the urban and costal parts. We live in a country that is blue on the coasts and in small dots of urban areas and red everywhere else. So my vision is that in four years, the patterns is not so strong – that there is more of a dialogue between these two perspectives – that us urban intellectual types have a deeper understanding of what life is like outside of our bubble and that the rural heartland types are included in the conversation and feel that they are part of a country that is diverse and evolving.

My second inspiration from the huddle was remembering the importance of choosing our actions based not on what we think we ‘should’ do, but on using our skills and talents in a way that energizes us. This sounds like a privileged perspective, choosing what we do and don’t do, but it is also true. All of us, no matter what our circumstances have to chose what to pay attention to and what to do.

When we try to do everything, we exhaust ourselves in our necessary failure. Many people these days are saying this is a marathon, not a sprint. Our current situation that will be resolved or even dramatically changed by one march or one action. To counteract the forces of Trump’s disregard for the constitution and his calls to isolationism and blame, we need to be engaged for the foreseeable future. Since very few of the Republicans in Congress seem ready to hold Trump accountable to the laws and common civilities of our democracy, we must step forward.

So I have committed to keep writing, to call my more conservative sister and to organizing two workshop/discussions here at the Temple. What is your vision for our country? And what small steps are you willing to take to move in that direction?

Honoring the Truth of Both Sides

On the immigration issue, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, reminds us that the way forward is not to determine who is right, but rather to appreciate the truth in both the conservative and the liberal approaches. The conservative approach honors the challenges of immigration while the liberal view appreciates the value and moral imperative of immigration.

When people with different customs, languages and world-views come into our communities, it reduces our level of social capital. We no longer have the automatic bonds of trust that come from common assumptions and behaviors. We have to work harder to see how our new neighbors are like us. The unconscious signals and meanings, so important to our sense of being at home with each other, have to be consciously recreated.

Over the past few years, Melissa and I have had the opportunity to travel in Europe, Scandinavia and Central America. We love these trips where we get to see other parts of the world and get a flavor of the local cultures and customs. We also have the privilege of leading meditation retreats when we travel. On these retreats, we get to see these differences melt away as we investigate the deeper currents of what it really means to be alive.

And as wonderful as our travel is, I must confess to a deep sense of relief when we come back home. Driving down Pleasant Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, I am flooded with a sense of familiarity. I am at home here and some deep part of my brain can relaxes. I don’t have to work as hard. Without thinking, I understand the signals and meanings of daily life.

One of the shocks of this election was the vivid awareness of the many people in this country who clearly don’t feel at home in the same America as I do. The cultural conversations about the unconscious power of racism, classism, misogyny and hetero-normative gender oppression make sense to me and feel to be essentially American. For many others, these conversations are simply for the urban intellectuals who sip skinny soy lattes and profit through the exclusion of everyone who does not live on the coasts or in a city.

It is the sense of alienation, disenfranchisement and fear that we need to address, even as we fight our new President to retain the foundations of our democratic institutions and our common sense of the verifiable realities that we share.

Immigration is a challenging issue for us all. I know very few people that say we should have completely open borders. There is a cost to immigration. There are dangers in bringing new people into our country. Even for those of us who see how much our country has benefitted from the energy, skills and vision of new citizens from foreign lands, must also publicaly acknowledge these costs and challenges.