Fifteen years ago my then-significant other named Pearl and I had loaded the back of the pickup truck camper for an extended trip to Baja California. We were located along Highway One an hour north of San Francisco along a tightly winding road. After situating everything we could possibly need in a primitive desert environment such as Baja by the means of car-camping in the back of the pickup truck, we set out at a leisurely pace for a ten hour drive to San Diego to my brother's house.
It wasn't slow enough. Or perhaps we hadn't tied in the water container well enough. Or perhaps we were too excited about who else we were about to visit on the way there. At any rate, as the driver I swung a little wide on one of the turns and over-corrected a little too fast...and the 5 gallon water container dumped it's contents on our bed.
My significant other pointed to a steep driveway to pull off the road. With the nose of the car pointing up, most of the water went out the back of the tailgate so didn't spend more than thirty seconds soaking the back of the truck. We got out of the car and re-tied the water container after mostly emptying it.
Back in the car and driving down the road, we admonished ourselves for filling up the water dispenser before we left, and not tying it down properly so it fell over.
"Hey," I looked at my significant other and said, "SPLOOSH!" and I started laughing.
"Sploosh? What is Sploosh?" he ranted. "How can it be so funny that our bed and stuff in the back is soaked!"
"Sploosh!" I explained. "We're driving for the next ten hours in the desert with the windows open, blowing hot air on our bed for hours."
Later, we found ourselves halfway down Baja to "Bahia de Los Angeles" on the Sea of Cortez side of Baja. I had become more than a little worried because somehow, despite having a really cool calculator-calendar, Pearl had mis-calculated the amount of gas required to get home. (He had an excuse, which was he had just quit smoking and wasn't in his right mind.) We talked about calling my brother for a rescue when we got closer to the Tiajuana border, or leave our truck and getting just ourselves back to San Diego and going back for the truck...or something. In the meantime we figured it wasn't any different if we continued our camping trip; only the change of heading home the most direct route.
A little closer to the border, I was cleaning out the car near Bahia Conception to repack after camping for our last week, intending to get the dust out of the car. Hidden under the driver's seat footwell mats by the previous owner, I found three stained old travelers checks that totaled three hundred dollars.
"Hey, check this out! As I brandished the checks. "Apparently, a fateful redemption."
"Oh yeah," Pearl quipped. "Sploosh!"
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Scapegoats
Blame is an interesting activity that is worthy of study. When there is something wrong, it's very curious why people first have the urge to go looking for someone else who can be the reason for their problems.Have to admit, this same thought of being a victim often happens when I must look for something that I have misplaced. What really happened was that I found a "secure" spot for it in a remotely "safe" location. In an attempt to foil possible theft, I hid the item from myself! Nobody stole it from me. But this is what I begin to fear as I frantically look for it.
No wonder people look for scapegoats. Someone to blame is so convenient to have around.
Sophie Lhoste Are polite relationships draining your energy?
Read: http://bit.ly/co9kuH
Reading this article leaves me to wonder how those energy vampires feel about people who label them.
Beyond the judgmental conclusions of name-calling, what do loving people constructively do about this situation? Couldn't people who complain and label just learn more gracefully and tactfully to ask for what they need or want as a questionable point continues to happen routinely? Why do we need to resort to name-calling to demonize others for allowing some room to adjust to each others evolving needs?
I'm asking these questions because I really want answers. A mark of true friendship is to be able to hear other points of view without imagining it is an attack. I don't intend to deliver my opinions veiled as questions. I want to let the spin cycle come to a close before we open the oven to see if the souffle fell. Divorce seems to be a rite of passage, rather than a last resort. People are too quick to come to a conclusion that writes off others. They could look for new ideas about how to deal with a new situation that is unfamiliar.
Let's think for a moment from the point of view of these people you want to blame for taking your energy.
What would they say they are doing to deal with how you are acting?
The first platitude that makes sense is "live and let live."
Can it be OK to say: "if you can't say something constructive, don't say anything"...?
What about the tolerance and compassion of, "OK, whatever floats your boat"!
Isn't it supportive to indicate," I'm gonna leave it up to you to call me when your available again."
Is it a requirement that those closest to us should ALWAYS read our minds so they can provide exactly the support we need in the moments they determine that we must have it?
Isn't that a bit self-involved to expect from the mere humans who happen to have already been loving us?
Why should every moment, every support, every activity be so much drama that we must come to a resolved conclusion about What It Is and arbitrarily determined we should cut off the relationships that we have decided must be "draining us"?
It's the empty spaces that get left up to us to provide content. Leave some dead air for a change and have it all be OK. Assume love. Those people who used to love you might want you to be happy, but are they could be innocently clueless about what you want them to do because you're not being all that articulate. Get a little more proactive and indicate what is appropriate and constructive. Just...take a nap or go for a walk; play with the pet or the kids. Nobody is sucking you dry, just stop expecting there is a trade or tacit agreement of exchange as you give.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Animal Portraits!
Friday, July 09, 2010
Language for Perception
How do you perceive? Well, you just do it. That's an inadequate answer, so I decided to do some thinking about this.
Perhaps the way I teach people to observe themselves would be relevant to making up a language for perception. It's my business to be teaching people to perceive what they take for granted by teaching Alexander Technique. I use the often ignored kinesthetic sense as a medium, rather than the visual or auditory...but maybe we can cross-pollinate with it. Maybe we can use the same process and apply it to perception in general - say, the visual sense.
In Alexander Technique classes, students walk across the room and try to describe how they are walking. They can't, usually. So I introduce them to categories to form some questions for themselves. These categories function like thinking tools to organize and focus their point of view.
The categories are:
Once they have these categories, their ability to describe what they're experiencing for themselves gets unleashed. Their new ability to observe and describe what is happening works so well they can later design, on the fly, inventive ways for getting past some pretty serious self-imposed limitations.
So perhaps we could do this with perception in general. We could make general categories to help people ask themselves specific questions. Answering these questions would give us new perceptual information out of what we usually take for granted.
We're talking about the raw perception, not the content. So - how we direct attention to say, the visual sense with these categories? If I were to apply the same categories I just mentioned, I'd get something like:
Anyone else want to try one or more of these four categories about perception that I made up and apply them to help generate a new language for perception?
This is using your Thinking Skill bag of tricks!
Perhaps the way I teach people to observe themselves would be relevant to making up a language for perception. It's my business to be teaching people to perceive what they take for granted by teaching Alexander Technique. I use the often ignored kinesthetic sense as a medium, rather than the visual or auditory...but maybe we can cross-pollinate with it. Maybe we can use the same process and apply it to perception in general - say, the visual sense.
In Alexander Technique classes, students walk across the room and try to describe how they are walking. They can't, usually. So I introduce them to categories to form some questions for themselves. These categories function like thinking tools to organize and focus their point of view.
The categories are:
- timing
- sequence
- quality
- direction
- relationship
Once they have these categories, their ability to describe what they're experiencing for themselves gets unleashed. Their new ability to observe and describe what is happening works so well they can later design, on the fly, inventive ways for getting past some pretty serious self-imposed limitations.
So perhaps we could do this with perception in general. We could make general categories to help people ask themselves specific questions. Answering these questions would give us new perceptual information out of what we usually take for granted.
We're talking about the raw perception, not the content. So - how we direct attention to say, the visual sense with these categories? If I were to apply the same categories I just mentioned, I'd get something like:
- Quality: attention can be focused, like a searchlight, or diffuse like an overhead light.
- Timing: depending on when you pay attention, different things will be happening. A frozen image will show you stuff that you would miss in a movie, for instance. Bits and pieces do not have the same effect as the whole. Timing will influence the figure-ground relationship of what you can see. If you're moving fast while traveling, you'll have a whole different experience compared to moving slowly.
- Sequence: chains of paying attention to one thing after another bring different results; and mixing up sequences actually has an associative emotional effect. It's easy to mistake sequence for cause and effect.
- Direction: Where we are oriented contributes to Point Of View. POV and motive about what you want others to do, react and agree with you will color how you describe what you see.
Anyone else want to try one or more of these four categories about perception that I made up and apply them to help generate a new language for perception?
This is using your Thinking Skill bag of tricks!
Friday, July 02, 2010
Love and Respect - Mixed
Respect can be so often offered as a deal or a trade - but I guess that can also be true about love. Many people attempt to negotiate tacitly while professing to be offering "love."
Marriage, for many people, just allows everything about the relationship be implied rather than specified. Have always regarded marriage as a lazy person's way to say, "Hey, rather than negotiate and really make agreements specifically that we're going to keep with each other, let's get married and that umbrella will take care of the whole conversation about our agreements." Once the situation of defining what, exactly, the agreements really are, things can fall apart...because people who didn't know how to talk to each other tried to use marriage for the substitute of not having a clue how to make agreements.
In a sense, many marriages are all about expectations about how the husband or wife role is "supposed" to go, as if it's a slot or a job. If the couple's cultural assumptions match, then all is well. Most often in this era, these cultural assumptions do not match. In addition, cultural assumptions about love often do not match people's own needs because the times have changed.
Professing love, many people are really only making a deal without knowing what they are actually getting or giving. Of course, people can get disappointed if the deal is not suitable - but I'm not sure if it's actually love that they're getting or giving. There's really nothing wrong with making a deal. In a sense, a deal is an agreement.
It seems to me that respect contains quite a bit more sanity than the passions of love. so many people destroy their relationship by allowing the small indulgences to determine the course of how they "please" each other. Rather than showing the petty, dark and small side and allowing it to "run" the relationship, respect allows the positive, constructive side to be the driver.
Passion - looking at the root of that word is really interesting in the origin and history of the word "passion." Rather than an intense striving sort of meaning the word has come to mean in today's culture, it turns out that "passion" is related more to "pass." It is a surrendered state, an allowing sort of action. The word passion comes from meaning of "passive."
So it's not just that there is love or not love, but what sort of love there is, what sort of respect there is. Quality is everything in love - and in respect!
Respect can be had out of fear as well as love. Of course, there is a twisted sort of love that is also mixed in with fear or power to wound which would be a variation of "respect" in parent/child love when control or authority is an issue.
Many emotions may be mixed in with each other. As long as it is partly "love," does that mean all of it still Love? I think not.
For instance, love mixed with blame or a sense of cause and effect or consequence gives an impression that the other person is causing love to occur. One of the interesting characteristics of love is that it is something like a fountain of one's own.
It is common to be notoriously inarticulate when it comes to misunderstanding or mis-naming one's own emotions. Many people use the more general term "love" when a better word for what they are doing might be "care," "admiration," "compassion," "desire," "attraction," "infatuation," "absorption," "attention," "adulation," etc.
This is true for other emotions as well. Pride without fear is a desire for excellence. - (a quote from a friend of mine named Chuck Lewis, author of "You're Gonna Love It!" - a book on selling for artists.) Pride mixed with fear - it is one of the seven deadly sins of self-involved arrogance. A big difference exists between the two.
If that's true, why is anything with a little love mixed into it called the real thing?
Does this idea that emotions can be mixtures make you curious the next time you think you think that you know what emotion you're feeling?
Tell me about it...
Marriage, for many people, just allows everything about the relationship be implied rather than specified. Have always regarded marriage as a lazy person's way to say, "Hey, rather than negotiate and really make agreements specifically that we're going to keep with each other, let's get married and that umbrella will take care of the whole conversation about our agreements." Once the situation of defining what, exactly, the agreements really are, things can fall apart...because people who didn't know how to talk to each other tried to use marriage for the substitute of not having a clue how to make agreements.
In a sense, many marriages are all about expectations about how the husband or wife role is "supposed" to go, as if it's a slot or a job. If the couple's cultural assumptions match, then all is well. Most often in this era, these cultural assumptions do not match. In addition, cultural assumptions about love often do not match people's own needs because the times have changed.
Professing love, many people are really only making a deal without knowing what they are actually getting or giving. Of course, people can get disappointed if the deal is not suitable - but I'm not sure if it's actually love that they're getting or giving. There's really nothing wrong with making a deal. In a sense, a deal is an agreement.
It seems to me that respect contains quite a bit more sanity than the passions of love. so many people destroy their relationship by allowing the small indulgences to determine the course of how they "please" each other. Rather than showing the petty, dark and small side and allowing it to "run" the relationship, respect allows the positive, constructive side to be the driver.
Passion - looking at the root of that word is really interesting in the origin and history of the word "passion." Rather than an intense striving sort of meaning the word has come to mean in today's culture, it turns out that "passion" is related more to "pass." It is a surrendered state, an allowing sort of action. The word passion comes from meaning of "passive."
So it's not just that there is love or not love, but what sort of love there is, what sort of respect there is. Quality is everything in love - and in respect!
Respect can be had out of fear as well as love. Of course, there is a twisted sort of love that is also mixed in with fear or power to wound which would be a variation of "respect" in parent/child love when control or authority is an issue.
Many emotions may be mixed in with each other. As long as it is partly "love," does that mean all of it still Love? I think not.
For instance, love mixed with blame or a sense of cause and effect or consequence gives an impression that the other person is causing love to occur. One of the interesting characteristics of love is that it is something like a fountain of one's own.
It is common to be notoriously inarticulate when it comes to misunderstanding or mis-naming one's own emotions. Many people use the more general term "love" when a better word for what they are doing might be "care," "admiration," "compassion," "desire," "attraction," "infatuation," "absorption," "attention," "adulation," etc.
This is true for other emotions as well. Pride without fear is a desire for excellence. - (a quote from a friend of mine named Chuck Lewis, author of "You're Gonna Love It!" - a book on selling for artists.) Pride mixed with fear - it is one of the seven deadly sins of self-involved arrogance. A big difference exists between the two.
If that's true, why is anything with a little love mixed into it called the real thing?
Does this idea that emotions can be mixtures make you curious the next time you think you think that you know what emotion you're feeling?
Tell me about it...
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Back-firing, Suggestions?
I have many talents, but many of them seem to be back-firing on me at once. My headlights went ON when I discovered creative thinking as a teen. Since then I've been experiencing what I've read is quite common that many inventors run into head-on as they attempt to present their new ideas to others.
Proselytizers are icky - that's how many creative people interpret and respond to my enthusiasm when I bother to show it. They don't understand why I have suggestions for them. (Only Barbara Sher's Idea Party crowd really gets it.) My magic power is a high-idea talent generator that keeps the ideas coming when everyone else is spent.
Evidently, there is a cost to doing what is new. People can't imagine what motivates, so they assign the motive they can imagine. Most people are not very imaginative. Most commonly they become quite concerned with self-preservation while they freak out.
Of course, you're different. You're imaginative! You love to think!
Here are three situations where my brilliant creative thinking is causing chaos rather than solutions. Please offer your suggestions and bright ideas!
1. My ideas and experience of Alexander Technique are random acts of senseless beauty here:
In the situation of being able to come up with many ideas for their benefit, people mistakenly assume that I have some sort of investment in controlling them by telling them how and what else it is possible. This doesn't happen on the internet, because I don't know who they are, where they are or if they take my ideas for a ride or not and I've put a great deal of thought behind making it simple. This is great deal why I put so much of my energy into writing about creative thinking and writing about Alexander Technique. This takes up a great deal of my time without me getting much personal benefit back from it. But it's fulfilling on many levels because at least my intent is clear to others. So I spend 'way too much time doing it online - how can that be more productive time?
My way of teaching Alexander Technique in private lessons doesn't happen with the right timing for people. When I show someone how to get free of restrictions, (and what else is possible once you get free,) it's sometimes too effective hands-on. But teaching that way it takes too long and makes students dependent. So I make it more simple and "hands-off" so students can do it themselves from the very beginning. Then it's too simple and repetitive so they trivialize the usefulness of the information. (Obviously, there's a fine line between simply accessible and a topic being so conceptual that it becomes watered down and useless.) What would you prefer? Hands off or hands on? Or what else? Could you suggest a way to solve both these issues at once?
2. Relationships
If I know the person intimately, I'm a great observer with a long memory who can compensate for time of arrival. So I can describe for them what patterns of behavior I see them doing over this long period of time, (patterns that they have determined are in their way from before they met me.) So when I give them a way out, they tell me I have an investment in changing them and fight me because I handed them this observation and gave them keys to significant improvement. So, I let them fly on their own and they fall down, because someone who was "trying to change them" for their own selfish convenience wouldn't allow that freedom. Them identifying my care-taking as "twisted co-dependence" meant I could not express my care for them at all! Perhaps because I predicted their fall after seeing the pattern, they get rid of me because I "caused" them to fall, (the "kill the messenger" approach.) I regard this as being part of a pattern that is bound to re-occur because it's inherent in the caretaker/care taking role. This issue is surely to evolve if I hook up with a partner who will eventually need care - or I will eventually need help.
3. Social Change
Other people who don't know me very well imagine I'm really weird to broadcast my bright and wild ideas that shows them what else they can do (to be more imaginative about relationships, for instance.) If I show the benefit of my own inner understanding of myself, (my lack of jealousy, for instance,) they react by being afraid of me. The feedback I've heard about that is I am flaunting my maturity and insight... toward various negative effects only limited by their lack of imagination. In one case, my motive, (according to one person,) was supposedly to make a splash and incite controversy as if discussing the idea was going to result in me doing the idea personally. (Not my intent. But I can see how most people personally identify with their ideas. So at least I can understand where this assumption originates.)
OK - any ideas on one or all of these three? You can blog a long-winded answer, leave a comment, give a tweet on #ideaparty or call me up on the phone and talk to me... if you have my number. I'll add them to future posts...
Proselytizers are icky - that's how many creative people interpret and respond to my enthusiasm when I bother to show it. They don't understand why I have suggestions for them. (Only Barbara Sher's Idea Party crowd really gets it.) My magic power is a high-idea talent generator that keeps the ideas coming when everyone else is spent.
Evidently, there is a cost to doing what is new. People can't imagine what motivates, so they assign the motive they can imagine. Most people are not very imaginative. Most commonly they become quite concerned with self-preservation while they freak out.
Of course, you're different. You're imaginative! You love to think!
Here are three situations where my brilliant creative thinking is causing chaos rather than solutions. Please offer your suggestions and bright ideas!
1. My ideas and experience of Alexander Technique are random acts of senseless beauty here:
In the situation of being able to come up with many ideas for their benefit, people mistakenly assume that I have some sort of investment in controlling them by telling them how and what else it is possible. This doesn't happen on the internet, because I don't know who they are, where they are or if they take my ideas for a ride or not and I've put a great deal of thought behind making it simple. This is great deal why I put so much of my energy into writing about creative thinking and writing about Alexander Technique. This takes up a great deal of my time without me getting much personal benefit back from it. But it's fulfilling on many levels because at least my intent is clear to others. So I spend 'way too much time doing it online - how can that be more productive time?
My way of teaching Alexander Technique in private lessons doesn't happen with the right timing for people. When I show someone how to get free of restrictions, (and what else is possible once you get free,) it's sometimes too effective hands-on. But teaching that way it takes too long and makes students dependent. So I make it more simple and "hands-off" so students can do it themselves from the very beginning. Then it's too simple and repetitive so they trivialize the usefulness of the information. (Obviously, there's a fine line between simply accessible and a topic being so conceptual that it becomes watered down and useless.) What would you prefer? Hands off or hands on? Or what else? Could you suggest a way to solve both these issues at once?
2. Relationships
If I know the person intimately, I'm a great observer with a long memory who can compensate for time of arrival. So I can describe for them what patterns of behavior I see them doing over this long period of time, (patterns that they have determined are in their way from before they met me.) So when I give them a way out, they tell me I have an investment in changing them and fight me because I handed them this observation and gave them keys to significant improvement. So, I let them fly on their own and they fall down, because someone who was "trying to change them" for their own selfish convenience wouldn't allow that freedom. Them identifying my care-taking as "twisted co-dependence" meant I could not express my care for them at all! Perhaps because I predicted their fall after seeing the pattern, they get rid of me because I "caused" them to fall, (the "kill the messenger" approach.) I regard this as being part of a pattern that is bound to re-occur because it's inherent in the caretaker/care taking role. This issue is surely to evolve if I hook up with a partner who will eventually need care - or I will eventually need help.
3. Social Change
Other people who don't know me very well imagine I'm really weird to broadcast my bright and wild ideas that shows them what else they can do (to be more imaginative about relationships, for instance.) If I show the benefit of my own inner understanding of myself, (my lack of jealousy, for instance,) they react by being afraid of me. The feedback I've heard about that is I am flaunting my maturity and insight... toward various negative effects only limited by their lack of imagination. In one case, my motive, (according to one person,) was supposedly to make a splash and incite controversy as if discussing the idea was going to result in me doing the idea personally. (Not my intent. But I can see how most people personally identify with their ideas. So at least I can understand where this assumption originates.)
OK - any ideas on one or all of these three? You can blog a long-winded answer, leave a comment, give a tweet on #ideaparty or call me up on the phone and talk to me... if you have my number. I'll add them to future posts...
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Any Questions?
A kid and a Jehovah Witness came to my door last week. Before they started in with their religious invitations, I engaged the youngster in learning to juggle. He was a kid of around ten years old. Because I'd given him something of value in learning juggling, the kid wanted to give me a booklet that was a digest of their bible. I took it and read some of it.
In this condensed Bible there was an admonition where followers were urged to burn the books of "evil" false prophets such as Tarot card readers, psychics, astrologers, etc. It got me thinking how threatening it is to religions to have competition to their cornering the market on interpreting answers to spiritual questions. Probably nowadays, anyone who dispenses advice and wisdom based on their personal experience is going to be threatening to a church. Made me wonder what definition of "evil" this threat would actually include. Pretty much whenever you decide certain people are "evil," it's only a matter of time before many more people end up in that same category.
I thought of all the people in social networking who are urged to "brand themselves" and be the number one special version of the dispenser of value gained by their followers. In a flash of inspiration, I saw every social networker on Twitter as having their own religion...and respective followers... How would threatened religions and churches burn e-books...?
In the time of Christ there must have been quite a few people out preaching "Truth." Probably there were lots of swindlers who were looking for followers who would pay them money to support their efforts, just as there seem to be now. In that era to perform the miracle of raising the dead, all you had to do is have the skill of recognizing someone in a coma who is might wake up eventually.
That Bible held up as the "word of God" was written by "psychics" who probably did not have much means to advertise - but they could write. Just getting materials to write something down must have been challenging. Probably being someone who knew how to read and write was something you had to keep secret, because people in that era were threatened by it. Creativity was probably low on the list of those cultures deliberately designed to control huge classes of people. Urban myths about anyone, translated numerous times and painstakingly hand-written and copied by those who could READ - it must have been such a privileged, rare gift to be literate in that era. Maybe all those stories in the Bible were about many people, and they all got lumped together into being about one person. (Bait and switch was a common historical tactic of religions.)
Now anyone can have their blog printed on demand. Anyone can dispense "wisdom" and write their own Bible. No wonder religions are being threatened.
Some people believe words have a firm, factual reality in themselves. They think words "mean what they mean." But this is not true. Words shift and flicker depending on context and expression, just as symbols do. This is what makes poetry and the symbols of religion and belief interesting.
Many people have an ability to think, but their ability to express their thinking may not reach the listener or reader for many mutual reasons. The topic or context may be incomplete or indistinct. Or the communicator's natural style of thinking may be so different from our own that it is difficult to figure out the communicator's intent. What is their associative pathway from point to point and how can I follow? It may be tricky to follow thinking paths - especially if thinking is original thinking.
In this way creative thinking is similar to religion - in that really original ideas must be carefully interpreted for the listener.
So often religious bureaucracy seems to want to control how people think because they invest in being the interpreter for the public of their respective "holy scripture." Religious leaders want to be the ONLY interpreter for the believers, claiming "all others are wrong or evil."
Each time they read or listen, each person is reconstructing meaning from reading what someone else has written or said. Someone who has written is pointing at...something about what they intend to say. Their skill and familiarity with their language use is a factor, in addition to their ability to think - but also their ability to articulate and guess at the assumptions of their listener. They try to answer the virtual question: "What would the listener want to know?"
It is up the person listening or reading to fill in the blanks, follow the traces or indicators while the listener reconstructs the thinking pathways of the communicator. In this way, listening is almost a spiritual practice. It is a spiritual question when a person seeks a way to express that which cannot be directly expressed. Spiritual, intuitive, or virtual questions often beg for symbols and indirect ways to express their messages and intent.
Of course, the way you frame a question structures and points to the answer. Have any questions now? Hope so.
In this condensed Bible there was an admonition where followers were urged to burn the books of "evil" false prophets such as Tarot card readers, psychics, astrologers, etc. It got me thinking how threatening it is to religions to have competition to their cornering the market on interpreting answers to spiritual questions. Probably nowadays, anyone who dispenses advice and wisdom based on their personal experience is going to be threatening to a church. Made me wonder what definition of "evil" this threat would actually include. Pretty much whenever you decide certain people are "evil," it's only a matter of time before many more people end up in that same category.
I thought of all the people in social networking who are urged to "brand themselves" and be the number one special version of the dispenser of value gained by their followers. In a flash of inspiration, I saw every social networker on Twitter as having their own religion...and respective followers... How would threatened religions and churches burn e-books...?
In the time of Christ there must have been quite a few people out preaching "Truth." Probably there were lots of swindlers who were looking for followers who would pay them money to support their efforts, just as there seem to be now. In that era to perform the miracle of raising the dead, all you had to do is have the skill of recognizing someone in a coma who is might wake up eventually.That Bible held up as the "word of God" was written by "psychics" who probably did not have much means to advertise - but they could write. Just getting materials to write something down must have been challenging. Probably being someone who knew how to read and write was something you had to keep secret, because people in that era were threatened by it. Creativity was probably low on the list of those cultures deliberately designed to control huge classes of people. Urban myths about anyone, translated numerous times and painstakingly hand-written and copied by those who could READ - it must have been such a privileged, rare gift to be literate in that era. Maybe all those stories in the Bible were about many people, and they all got lumped together into being about one person. (Bait and switch was a common historical tactic of religions.)
Now anyone can have their blog printed on demand. Anyone can dispense "wisdom" and write their own Bible. No wonder religions are being threatened.
Some people believe words have a firm, factual reality in themselves. They think words "mean what they mean." But this is not true. Words shift and flicker depending on context and expression, just as symbols do. This is what makes poetry and the symbols of religion and belief interesting.
Many people have an ability to think, but their ability to express their thinking may not reach the listener or reader for many mutual reasons. The topic or context may be incomplete or indistinct. Or the communicator's natural style of thinking may be so different from our own that it is difficult to figure out the communicator's intent. What is their associative pathway from point to point and how can I follow? It may be tricky to follow thinking paths - especially if thinking is original thinking.
In this way creative thinking is similar to religion - in that really original ideas must be carefully interpreted for the listener.
So often religious bureaucracy seems to want to control how people think because they invest in being the interpreter for the public of their respective "holy scripture." Religious leaders want to be the ONLY interpreter for the believers, claiming "all others are wrong or evil."
Each time they read or listen, each person is reconstructing meaning from reading what someone else has written or said. Someone who has written is pointing at...something about what they intend to say. Their skill and familiarity with their language use is a factor, in addition to their ability to think - but also their ability to articulate and guess at the assumptions of their listener. They try to answer the virtual question: "What would the listener want to know?"
It is up the person listening or reading to fill in the blanks, follow the traces or indicators while the listener reconstructs the thinking pathways of the communicator. In this way, listening is almost a spiritual practice. It is a spiritual question when a person seeks a way to express that which cannot be directly expressed. Spiritual, intuitive, or virtual questions often beg for symbols and indirect ways to express their messages and intent.
Of course, the way you frame a question structures and points to the answer. Have any questions now? Hope so.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Outside Language
People seem to have a really hard time thinking for themselves. They're not practiced at thinking on demand at all, especially when asked to think about what is missing. You really can't demand that others "think stuff outside of the box" and then not come up with at least one example right on the spot of what that is all about.
The most interesting idea is to use language to point out how it's possible to think beyond language.
The easiest example is to get out the video camera and film people walking. Then ask them to describe what they actually did as they walked. Or ask people to demonstrate a skill and teach it to someone else in a way other than how they learned it. Some more examples... point out why art exists - because people can't describe the making of art in words. Or ask music fans to describe, in words, what musicians do that allows them to improvise with each other. Ask movie fans how come a series of movie scenes makes people get startled or what really happened in the movie scenes before the whole movie theater just sucked in their breath simultaneously, or offered some other group reaction. ...They can't do it! Only those who work in those fields are conscious of these "nuts and bolts." Even these professionals who do these things don't know HOW they do them well enough to articulate how it works in words.
Many people are able to demonstrate something successfully, but they can't describe what they are doing without sounding trite, inane and fumbling. As a collective culture, we're just not used to observing for ourselves and using our own words to describe what we are experiencing.
Why isn't self-observation taught as a foundation skill?
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - that language structures thought ability - is not merely limited to mere specific word definition. It's also related to how words are put together. It points out the perceptual assumptions within the sentence structure of language also traps us.
For instance, important to English sentence structure is the direct object. This has the whole culture being quite concerned with who is doing what to whom. We are constantly thinking about how much someone is lying, (not whether they are lying or not!) Everyone is constantly having to ask themselves, "What percentage of what so and so says should be believed?" Since the direct object is so important in our language, Westerners so often focus on what we can do to something outside of ourselves. It's all about who does what to whom, who gets whose way and who has to wait and for how long they wait - and does the one who waits EVER get what they might want or need?
This why people are so concerned with status in our Indo-European culture. It's impossible to open your mouth or write without adding to the cultural trance of defining the nature of reality. People are constantly in the position of attempting to determine how much another person is lying, teasing or joking and what their motives are.
Really, how does someone understand what another person MEANS to say? People are confronted by descriptions about what the world "is" constantly - every advertisement, every newscast, every piece of gossip, every narration of the nature of the world, every description, every lesson, every comment - any utterance that involves the possibility of word choice.
All of these constructs of words involve a unique point of view. As a listener, we must reconstruct a workable meaning out of what we hear. Nothing IS what it IS. Everything is "open to interpretation! We all must do this in spite of having little or no knowledge, appreciation, sympathy, empathy or compassion for that other person's point of view and/or experiences. We must guess at all of these or communicate directly.
For instance, although there are many lip-serviced references to an inter-woven body-mind connection, we still combine two words to discuss the feature - and the word is a noun, rather than a verb. In English at least, we are still cramming the concept of psycho-physical into our old mold of the two being separate - even though it it common that our culture now acknowledges that bodies and minds are inseparable in one person.
OK, I'll stop ranting now. Tell me what you think.
The most interesting idea is to use language to point out how it's possible to think beyond language.
The easiest example is to get out the video camera and film people walking. Then ask them to describe what they actually did as they walked. Or ask people to demonstrate a skill and teach it to someone else in a way other than how they learned it. Some more examples... point out why art exists - because people can't describe the making of art in words. Or ask music fans to describe, in words, what musicians do that allows them to improvise with each other. Ask movie fans how come a series of movie scenes makes people get startled or what really happened in the movie scenes before the whole movie theater just sucked in their breath simultaneously, or offered some other group reaction. ...They can't do it! Only those who work in those fields are conscious of these "nuts and bolts." Even these professionals who do these things don't know HOW they do them well enough to articulate how it works in words.
Many people are able to demonstrate something successfully, but they can't describe what they are doing without sounding trite, inane and fumbling. As a collective culture, we're just not used to observing for ourselves and using our own words to describe what we are experiencing.
Why isn't self-observation taught as a foundation skill?
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - that language structures thought ability - is not merely limited to mere specific word definition. It's also related to how words are put together. It points out the perceptual assumptions within the sentence structure of language also traps us.
For instance, important to English sentence structure is the direct object. This has the whole culture being quite concerned with who is doing what to whom. We are constantly thinking about how much someone is lying, (not whether they are lying or not!) Everyone is constantly having to ask themselves, "What percentage of what so and so says should be believed?" Since the direct object is so important in our language, Westerners so often focus on what we can do to something outside of ourselves. It's all about who does what to whom, who gets whose way and who has to wait and for how long they wait - and does the one who waits EVER get what they might want or need?
This why people are so concerned with status in our Indo-European culture. It's impossible to open your mouth or write without adding to the cultural trance of defining the nature of reality. People are constantly in the position of attempting to determine how much another person is lying, teasing or joking and what their motives are.
Really, how does someone understand what another person MEANS to say? People are confronted by descriptions about what the world "is" constantly - every advertisement, every newscast, every piece of gossip, every narration of the nature of the world, every description, every lesson, every comment - any utterance that involves the possibility of word choice.
All of these constructs of words involve a unique point of view. As a listener, we must reconstruct a workable meaning out of what we hear. Nothing IS what it IS. Everything is "open to interpretation! We all must do this in spite of having little or no knowledge, appreciation, sympathy, empathy or compassion for that other person's point of view and/or experiences. We must guess at all of these or communicate directly.
For instance, although there are many lip-serviced references to an inter-woven body-mind connection, we still combine two words to discuss the feature - and the word is a noun, rather than a verb. In English at least, we are still cramming the concept of psycho-physical into our old mold of the two being separate - even though it it common that our culture now acknowledges that bodies and minds are inseparable in one person.
OK, I'll stop ranting now. Tell me what you think.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thinking While Angry
I have taught myself to creatively problem solve while angry. It was a very strange skill to learn, not a skill which I'd recommend to others. Better to not to get to this level in your ability to have to manage anger in the first place!
Twenty years ago, I had a relationship going with a person who was quite skilled in being manipulative. When I entered into the relationship, I observed that he also possessed ethics on when and where to apply his considerable skills in argumentation and debate. Ten years into the relationship, he eventually used his superior memory recall and debate skills to fight with me - something which I did not anticipate would ever happen. I had to firmly establish my boundaries and keep them in place as he decided that all things we had established and agreed upon previously were renegotiable. It was a trying time, but I managed it.
He came to expect me to do so. Had I not groomed the ability to creatively problem solve possible options of what to do next in spite of being angry, our relationship would have ended immediately. As it became clear later that staying in the relationship had become a toss-up whether it was good or bad for me personally, I was relieved when the relationship fell apart for practical reasons. I'm sure that the demands for training the skill to be able to problem solve while angry mitigated unpleasant reactions and effects; but perhaps it also prolonged the inevitable conflicts that later ended the relationship.
A more common situation where this skill would be useful to model would be during the parenting of teens - who again, would come to believe that everything should be renegotiated.
There were some prerequisite skills to make this ability possible. These were the ability to stop, pause or interrupt one's own habitual reaction. This can be best practiced when one is not in the throes of an intense emotion. It requires quite a bit of practice concerning the ability to surrender one's goal. There is a short window of time, (a quarter-second,) available to veto an action. You are already preparing to act as soon as you think of doing so, long before you realize you "want" to do something. It's quite telling when people around you believe you have first gotten angry - usually this is quite a bit further back before you realize it yourself.
Because of this lack of awareness, it's very difficult to veto a reaction that has already begun. This skill implies sophisticated exploration of expectations. Also useful during the learning process are pointedly specific observations of how a specific person's anger routinely works.
I learned this skill through the study of Alexander Technique. I'm not sure there is any other forum to learn such a thing, but I imagine anger management class would have these elements. Most commonly, this skill is usually described negatively as "poor impulse control." As far as I know, there is not any place suggested where "good impulse control" is taught - other than very early in life by parental guidance.
There is recently a field of study that seems to teach this skill specifically, but it's tailored toward adults. It's in the negotiation field, ( "Appreciative Inquiry,") the field of mediation or arbitration. Also, at www.newconversations.net there are free e-books on communication tools that seem quite useful. Some interesting books on this are classics in negotiation by Ury and Fisher. It's a series that started with "Getting to Yes." "Getting Past No, dealing with difficult people" More recently Fisher wrote a book with a guy named Shapiro dealing with how to manage emotions during negotiation called "Beyond Reason, using emotions as you negotiate."
Most of these contain stories and philosophy, but some of them provide practice suggestions. It's those offerings of practice that are most effective.
In an ongoing relationship, it is a good thing to make the general agreement that only one person in an argument is allowed to be "out of control." Obviously, it's best for the longevity of the relationship if safe expression of anger can happen as this role is rotated. It has been documented that women in particular suffer quite a bit in their health more than men if they do not speak up and make their "not very nice" concerns known.
I did hear about a study where four year olds were told that if they waited to eat something yummy, they could have twice as much of it when the grownups returned. Or they could eat the smaller portion that was in front of them now. The study afterwards followed the kids as they grew up who managed to wait compared to those who did not. It was found the ability to wait possibly resulted in a significant difference in general achievement.
My own mother was also a great model for how to deal with anger. She and my sister used to fight when I was a kid. By the time I became a teen, she had learned a few things about anger. She told me that people do not bother to get angry if they are not concerned about the relationship. She also modeled "cleaner" ways to fight. She never brought up "the kitchen sink" i.e: unrelated issues. She never tried to wound intentionally, retaliate or say things she might regret later. She would never accused me of being stupid and managed to resist telling me to do what she did not want me to do. But she would yell when she was upset, "I thought you're smart enough to think ahead about how your actions affect others." Her words were quite carefully selected. This instead of the classic name-calling angry routine of: "You thoughtless, selfish, cruel complainer. Why should what you want come first?"
She also made it quite clear to me that people who are out of control while angry say things they don't mean. She said this is mostly because people get scared - fear is a big component of anger. She gave me ways to calm myself down when I got angry and left me the time and place to do so. Then she modeled the ability to talk out the concerns that made us want to get angry with each other, once we were calmed down enough to figure out what we really thought and wanted.
So it was this fortunate, firm foundation, along with learning Alexander Technique, that led me to be able to manage to learn later to creatively problem solve and actually think while angry. I believe it's a rare thing. It should be more common.
Twenty years ago, I had a relationship going with a person who was quite skilled in being manipulative. When I entered into the relationship, I observed that he also possessed ethics on when and where to apply his considerable skills in argumentation and debate. Ten years into the relationship, he eventually used his superior memory recall and debate skills to fight with me - something which I did not anticipate would ever happen. I had to firmly establish my boundaries and keep them in place as he decided that all things we had established and agreed upon previously were renegotiable. It was a trying time, but I managed it.
He came to expect me to do so. Had I not groomed the ability to creatively problem solve possible options of what to do next in spite of being angry, our relationship would have ended immediately. As it became clear later that staying in the relationship had become a toss-up whether it was good or bad for me personally, I was relieved when the relationship fell apart for practical reasons. I'm sure that the demands for training the skill to be able to problem solve while angry mitigated unpleasant reactions and effects; but perhaps it also prolonged the inevitable conflicts that later ended the relationship.
A more common situation where this skill would be useful to model would be during the parenting of teens - who again, would come to believe that everything should be renegotiated.
There were some prerequisite skills to make this ability possible. These were the ability to stop, pause or interrupt one's own habitual reaction. This can be best practiced when one is not in the throes of an intense emotion. It requires quite a bit of practice concerning the ability to surrender one's goal. There is a short window of time, (a quarter-second,) available to veto an action. You are already preparing to act as soon as you think of doing so, long before you realize you "want" to do something. It's quite telling when people around you believe you have first gotten angry - usually this is quite a bit further back before you realize it yourself.
Because of this lack of awareness, it's very difficult to veto a reaction that has already begun. This skill implies sophisticated exploration of expectations. Also useful during the learning process are pointedly specific observations of how a specific person's anger routinely works.
I learned this skill through the study of Alexander Technique. I'm not sure there is any other forum to learn such a thing, but I imagine anger management class would have these elements. Most commonly, this skill is usually described negatively as "poor impulse control." As far as I know, there is not any place suggested where "good impulse control" is taught - other than very early in life by parental guidance.
There is recently a field of study that seems to teach this skill specifically, but it's tailored toward adults. It's in the negotiation field, ( "Appreciative Inquiry,") the field of mediation or arbitration. Also, at www.newconversations.net there are free e-books on communication tools that seem quite useful. Some interesting books on this are classics in negotiation by Ury and Fisher. It's a series that started with "Getting to Yes." "Getting Past No, dealing with difficult people" More recently Fisher wrote a book with a guy named Shapiro dealing with how to manage emotions during negotiation called "Beyond Reason, using emotions as you negotiate."
Most of these contain stories and philosophy, but some of them provide practice suggestions. It's those offerings of practice that are most effective.
In an ongoing relationship, it is a good thing to make the general agreement that only one person in an argument is allowed to be "out of control." Obviously, it's best for the longevity of the relationship if safe expression of anger can happen as this role is rotated. It has been documented that women in particular suffer quite a bit in their health more than men if they do not speak up and make their "not very nice" concerns known.
I did hear about a study where four year olds were told that if they waited to eat something yummy, they could have twice as much of it when the grownups returned. Or they could eat the smaller portion that was in front of them now. The study afterwards followed the kids as they grew up who managed to wait compared to those who did not. It was found the ability to wait possibly resulted in a significant difference in general achievement.
My own mother was also a great model for how to deal with anger. She and my sister used to fight when I was a kid. By the time I became a teen, she had learned a few things about anger. She told me that people do not bother to get angry if they are not concerned about the relationship. She also modeled "cleaner" ways to fight. She never brought up "the kitchen sink" i.e: unrelated issues. She never tried to wound intentionally, retaliate or say things she might regret later. She would never accused me of being stupid and managed to resist telling me to do what she did not want me to do. But she would yell when she was upset, "I thought you're smart enough to think ahead about how your actions affect others." Her words were quite carefully selected. This instead of the classic name-calling angry routine of: "You thoughtless, selfish, cruel complainer. Why should what you want come first?"
She also made it quite clear to me that people who are out of control while angry say things they don't mean. She said this is mostly because people get scared - fear is a big component of anger. She gave me ways to calm myself down when I got angry and left me the time and place to do so. Then she modeled the ability to talk out the concerns that made us want to get angry with each other, once we were calmed down enough to figure out what we really thought and wanted.
So it was this fortunate, firm foundation, along with learning Alexander Technique, that led me to be able to manage to learn later to creatively problem solve and actually think while angry. I believe it's a rare thing. It should be more common.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Favorite Pet?
Do you have a favorite pet?
Here's an example of a photo I was shown to be able to draw a likeness of this kitty named "Josie." You can see the drawing I made. What do you think?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Lucky
This is a drawing I made of a very lucky tabby kitty cat named Grover. He was rescued out of the engine of a car after he got tangled up when the car started. His people were nice enough to put Grover back together. Now they have a kitty who winks at them a lot.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Drawing Kitties
Black cats are often passed by in shelters in favor of other kitties who are more brightly colored ...because they're black, I guess.
Besides being tricky to take a photo of a black cat, they're also tricky to make a drawing of too.
The nicest kitty I know is black. Her name is Jasmine. She's the second black cat I have met with that name. What makes Jasmine such a nice kitty is that she never gets mad at her person when she goes away. Instead, Jasmine gets mad at the person who "took" her person away for ten whole days. (The only person she ever bit!)
This kitty has never scratched or bit anyone. I'd tell you her name, but I don't know how it's spelled. Minjka? I hear that this kitty I have drawn a picture of here is a one-person kitty. This person gets to have this kitty sleep on their bed and happily snuggle up to them and purr. But this kitty really doesn't want anyone to know she exists, because - well, you know how faithful a dog can be. This cat is faithful like a dog.
Wish I could purr.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Give and Take Collection
One of my ideas about blogging on so many subjects has been that themes would emerge by themselves. As I saw this happening, I reasoned that I could sift out the posts related to a certain theme and use them to start a targeted blog subject. A new subject seems to have emerged!
Having written so extensively on this subject, I have decided that I should collect these posts into a separate blog that specializes in this subject alone. This post is a collection of the various posts on this subject, collected for your pleasure.
I've decided to collect these into the subject of a new blog - to be announced. I've been exploring this phenomena for some time now. I have previously written about the different aspects of the problem quite a bit, as you can see here.
The subject of giving and taking is important. It's going to get to be a big factor as the baby boomers get to the point where they need to accept care gracefully during aging. For that reason alone, this issue could become a really important one to discuss.
Would you subscribe to a blog on just this subject as a way to allow yourself to free up the acts of gracefully accepting and learning about well-placed giving?
Here's where I ask questions about the different style of how gifts are offered, http://is.gd/5JfL6 asked around the gift-giving fervor of Christmas time.
Tacit Obligation http://is.gd/bMfhY
If someone has difficulty accepting, many times if you can vary the style of how the gift is offered, it will result in making it easier for them to accept. Making light of it's value is sometimes effective, because the best situation between giver and "givee" is when the thing is of great value to the givee and is easy for the giver to offer. But sometimes an action carries much more weight than anything they might say about it. Thus, accepting a gift incites obligation that may be only tacitly guessed. Why can't people accept a gift? A mystery part of a person is not sure what is the (sub)culturally tacit agreement about this gift; talking about it probably won't help.
Random Acts http://is.gd/bMeST
Some people feel a need to remove themselves from the act, so that the receiver has no idea where the gift came from. It becomes impersonal. Thus we have all of the organizations that specialize in accepting tax charitable gifts and doing the messing actual giving to others.
Giving Back The proper way to "give back" is not always to do the exact same gesture, because needs are different. The mistake many people make in selecting what to give is they assume their value system of what is valuable is identical to the givee. This is not true. Being able to put oneself in the shoes of the givee is a thoughtful, compassionate act. So this is often a good reason to reject the offer of help - because what is being offered is misplaced and not of value from the point of view of the givee.
Gifts That Fit http://is.gd/bMeDi
In the small town of Bolinas, CA, we have a "freebox" where mainly articles of clothing are dropped off to be made available to anyone who wants them. The proper way to give back for the value of what you have gotten from it is to clean and organize the Freebox. Many people focus on the stuff itself; they mistake that the proper way to reciprocate is to bring more "stuff." Actually, having a place to bring your stuff to get rid of it is also a significant benefit. So the proper way to reciprocate is more like assuming the role temporarily of a "shop-keeper." A person who wanted to reciprocate would make the good stuff available to those who stop by looking to get something, (like pairing up shoes,) glean out the trash and every once in awhile, clear out the Freebox of all of it's donations so it's empty again to accept more stuff.
Allowing Benefits of Being The Giver http://is.gd/bMeMk
The Hawaiian spirit of Aloha is a wonderful template. It observes that you must allow someone to give, even if what is being offered is not of value to the givee. Being able to give is a human right, and by gracefully accepting, you are allowing this pleasure of giving to be exercised.
Consequences of Acceptance Generally with people who have trouble accepting being given to, it's important to ask what the accepting of gifts symbolizes. To some people, accepting what is offered is a "one-down" position in a competitive sense. To others, they are fearful that accepting the gift will make them obligated to play the role eternally. They fear they're going to lose their independence as they learn to rely on the gift being provided routinely, and will act to prevent the source going away.
Independence Declarations Causing a Split I've also seen repeatedly a situation that seemed to be a direct result of mistaking the roles and pleasures giving and receiving. The situation was where a partner was forced to accept help because of a temporary injury. Evidently after recovery, the person who had been injured wanted to reject help from their partner to re-establish their independence and self-respect. ANY help was rejected entirely, so often and completely that even the "normal" pleasures of doing things for one's sweetie symbolized infantile dependence to the person who was in the process of recovering. If this was not purposefully addressed, it caused a breakup!
Respect http://is.gd/aTqdM
Giving and receiving seems to be connected to how respect is shown. In our culture, you must choose between respect and having rapport. Here's a post where I explored it's application in how respect is signified in the context of speaking in a group interaction. It's curious how listeners are valued socially, (which is a receptive role) when in the situation where the gift is tangible - suddenly the giver becomes the authority.
Suspicious of Greed It's also curious that when someone is in a situation of getting or having gotten a personal benefit, somehow what they offer or receive is suddenly suspect, because there's now a "invested interest." This is what happens when a person is really passionate about a belief in how something works for them and wants to communicate the benefit of their experience to others - everything they say about what they are passionate about is suddenly considered in that light or frame. They're proselytizers, rather than merely sharing their experience. I'm not sure why people believe that someone who is enthusiastic about something is self-involved or selfish. I would imagine the love of something would be an even higher recommendation of it!
Bonding http://is.gd/aTspT
Some people take the giver/givee challenge to the point of refusing to establish the bond of a relationship entirely. I talk about that here: There are many rituals of establishing a bond as there are subcultures.
Entitlement http://is.gd/aTtf1
Here's another post where I talk about the anger that results when the givee decides they are "entitled" to what the givers are offering before they're getting it. This talks about greed.
Compliments http://is.gd/aTsR9
Complimenting is also an interesting way of giving back that some people feel strange about accepting. Of course, it's a benefit to find out that what you do easily is notable for others - because it signifies what could be a valuable talent. Some people automatically reject them out of hand as an expression of the deadly sin of pride or ego. Some people regard compliments of the possession of an item as a way to ask for the thing to be offered by the person who has it. Here's a story about why I believe that complimenting is an important thing to do. In my culture, handing out a compliment implies the person was (like a puppy) explicitly seeking your approval, which may or not be true. Rejecting the gift implies that you would prefer to give yourself the approval. There are many other values signified by accepting a compliment that have people have reacted negatively to it.
Having written so extensively on this subject, I have decided that I should collect these posts into a separate blog that specializes in this subject alone. This post is a collection of the various posts on this subject, collected for your pleasure.
I've decided to collect these into the subject of a new blog - to be announced. I've been exploring this phenomena for some time now. I have previously written about the different aspects of the problem quite a bit, as you can see here.
The subject of giving and taking is important. It's going to get to be a big factor as the baby boomers get to the point where they need to accept care gracefully during aging. For that reason alone, this issue could become a really important one to discuss.
Would you subscribe to a blog on just this subject as a way to allow yourself to free up the acts of gracefully accepting and learning about well-placed giving?
Here's where I ask questions about the different style of how gifts are offered, http://is.gd/5JfL6 asked around the gift-giving fervor of Christmas time.
Tacit Obligation http://is.gd/bMfhY
If someone has difficulty accepting, many times if you can vary the style of how the gift is offered, it will result in making it easier for them to accept. Making light of it's value is sometimes effective, because the best situation between giver and "givee" is when the thing is of great value to the givee and is easy for the giver to offer. But sometimes an action carries much more weight than anything they might say about it. Thus, accepting a gift incites obligation that may be only tacitly guessed. Why can't people accept a gift? A mystery part of a person is not sure what is the (sub)culturally tacit agreement about this gift; talking about it probably won't help.
Random Acts http://is.gd/bMeST
Some people feel a need to remove themselves from the act, so that the receiver has no idea where the gift came from. It becomes impersonal. Thus we have all of the organizations that specialize in accepting tax charitable gifts and doing the messing actual giving to others.
Giving Back The proper way to "give back" is not always to do the exact same gesture, because needs are different. The mistake many people make in selecting what to give is they assume their value system of what is valuable is identical to the givee. This is not true. Being able to put oneself in the shoes of the givee is a thoughtful, compassionate act. So this is often a good reason to reject the offer of help - because what is being offered is misplaced and not of value from the point of view of the givee.
Gifts That Fit http://is.gd/bMeDi
In the small town of Bolinas, CA, we have a "freebox" where mainly articles of clothing are dropped off to be made available to anyone who wants them. The proper way to give back for the value of what you have gotten from it is to clean and organize the Freebox. Many people focus on the stuff itself; they mistake that the proper way to reciprocate is to bring more "stuff." Actually, having a place to bring your stuff to get rid of it is also a significant benefit. So the proper way to reciprocate is more like assuming the role temporarily of a "shop-keeper." A person who wanted to reciprocate would make the good stuff available to those who stop by looking to get something, (like pairing up shoes,) glean out the trash and every once in awhile, clear out the Freebox of all of it's donations so it's empty again to accept more stuff.
Allowing Benefits of Being The Giver http://is.gd/bMeMk
The Hawaiian spirit of Aloha is a wonderful template. It observes that you must allow someone to give, even if what is being offered is not of value to the givee. Being able to give is a human right, and by gracefully accepting, you are allowing this pleasure of giving to be exercised.
Consequences of Acceptance Generally with people who have trouble accepting being given to, it's important to ask what the accepting of gifts symbolizes. To some people, accepting what is offered is a "one-down" position in a competitive sense. To others, they are fearful that accepting the gift will make them obligated to play the role eternally. They fear they're going to lose their independence as they learn to rely on the gift being provided routinely, and will act to prevent the source going away.
Independence Declarations Causing a Split I've also seen repeatedly a situation that seemed to be a direct result of mistaking the roles and pleasures giving and receiving. The situation was where a partner was forced to accept help because of a temporary injury. Evidently after recovery, the person who had been injured wanted to reject help from their partner to re-establish their independence and self-respect. ANY help was rejected entirely, so often and completely that even the "normal" pleasures of doing things for one's sweetie symbolized infantile dependence to the person who was in the process of recovering. If this was not purposefully addressed, it caused a breakup!
Respect http://is.gd/aTqdM
Giving and receiving seems to be connected to how respect is shown. In our culture, you must choose between respect and having rapport. Here's a post where I explored it's application in how respect is signified in the context of speaking in a group interaction. It's curious how listeners are valued socially, (which is a receptive role) when in the situation where the gift is tangible - suddenly the giver becomes the authority.
Suspicious of Greed It's also curious that when someone is in a situation of getting or having gotten a personal benefit, somehow what they offer or receive is suddenly suspect, because there's now a "invested interest." This is what happens when a person is really passionate about a belief in how something works for them and wants to communicate the benefit of their experience to others - everything they say about what they are passionate about is suddenly considered in that light or frame. They're proselytizers, rather than merely sharing their experience. I'm not sure why people believe that someone who is enthusiastic about something is self-involved or selfish. I would imagine the love of something would be an even higher recommendation of it!
Bonding http://is.gd/aTspT
Some people take the giver/givee challenge to the point of refusing to establish the bond of a relationship entirely. I talk about that here: There are many rituals of establishing a bond as there are subcultures.
Entitlement http://is.gd/aTtf1
Here's another post where I talk about the anger that results when the givee decides they are "entitled" to what the givers are offering before they're getting it. This talks about greed.
Compliments http://is.gd/aTsR9
Complimenting is also an interesting way of giving back that some people feel strange about accepting. Of course, it's a benefit to find out that what you do easily is notable for others - because it signifies what could be a valuable talent. Some people automatically reject them out of hand as an expression of the deadly sin of pride or ego. Some people regard compliments of the possession of an item as a way to ask for the thing to be offered by the person who has it. Here's a story about why I believe that complimenting is an important thing to do. In my culture, handing out a compliment implies the person was (like a puppy) explicitly seeking your approval, which may or not be true. Rejecting the gift implies that you would prefer to give yourself the approval. There are many other values signified by accepting a compliment that have people have reacted negatively to it.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Surpassing Expectations
"What is it about your environment, history and values that encourages you to surpass limiting social expectations?" It's a very interesting question to ask in polite conversation of any grownup. Asking it in a non-specific way leaves the answer open.
Curious answers occur. When you ask the question of a woman, you must take the replies with a grain of salt. Women tend to "tell troubles" to bond with other women. To understand much more of how all this happens and more about what the issues are concerning women and those who do not match the current social trends in their conversational style, I recommend the very conversational but content-rich books written by linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, PhD - especially her book "Talking 9 to 5."
It took me a great deal of thought about this question to find the answers for myself. There were three pivotal experiences for me.
What made the biggest difference motivating me to think for myself first happened when I was only five years old. My idol, which was my elder brother of eight years, gave me a snake for a pet - sanctioned by my parents. It was 1959, and in that era, snakes suffered from many social misconceptions about their nature. At a crucial stage when I was going to transfer my family's authority toward the authority of school & a greater social world...Here were these serious mis-matches about snakes that I knew was completely urban legend. People I did not know or trust mistakenly thought snakes were dangerous, contradicting what I knew to be true according to my family and the San Diego Zoo. This experience encouraged me to think for myself and put out effort to learn the true nature of things before I accepted societal norms. It inoculated me against cigarettes as well as sent me to college, because I decided at five that you could be free of fear if you knew more of the facts.
Of course, the most obvious solution to change the minds of young people would be world travel. Becoming an exchange student during middle or high school is the most socially acceptable way, but spending at least six months in another culture works just as well. Once you have been a young person in a radically different environment, you return and realize how self-absorbed your peers are. Not to mention how regional fashion codes really are.
The other pivotal issue was attractiveness and the social authority that went along with it. It upset me that, according to society, women were expected to be helplessly manipulative to get things done. The social fact that an attractive female asking for a "favor" gets it from a male who has temporarily lost his reasoning - this bothered me.
For me as a young girl, there seemed no way to "opt out" of that game gracefully. I did not want the power men handed me; they wanted me to deny or accept their attention. Because of the accident of birth making me coincidentally attractive, I had to deal with this issue early on. Only later I realized that this was a social reality for almost every girl. (If you're a straight guy reading this, imagine if you had to deal daily with attention from people you did not want - from other guys, for instance. This is the environment young women find themselves.)
What eventually remedied this issue for me was learning about body language. After this education, it was indisputable that how I behaved was evident for anyone to see. What sort of a person I was, my values, showed beyond my physical features. A person's character is expressed in their walk, how they move, where their attention goes & the quality of attention used. After learning about body language, I had to accept there were, in me, obvious additional desirable qualities of character. That they were there in addition to matching social definitions of beauty - well, I could accept the attention I was getting now. The attention was my fault, instead of purely an accident of nature.
So I would recommend to teach body language as part of a relationship communication class as a solution for the common desire for membership and bonding - in high school or earlier. (For me, studying Alexander Technique in a classroom situation worked.)
There are many reasons why there is a sudden drop in confidence when girls (and boys) reach middle school age. They realize how they do not match the social norms, and there is the tendency to envy what they are not. This is when girls first must grapple with social questions about how they are going to deal with sexual attention. A desire to for membership and to belong becomes important, as well as trying on what roles might suffice to deal with this big question.
The last pivotal experience for me was when I discovered creative thinking skills. Not just the result of thinking creatively by making things artistic, or modeling creative people I admired. I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of how to do problem solving in a situation of decision-making.
Creative thinking skills taught me HOW to think for myself. Wanting to think for yourself in spite of societal norms and actually doing this thinking constructively are two very different things. Edward de Bono has a series of proven simple but effective creative and strategic thinking skills designed for middle school aged students and older. Again - not What to think - but How. Young people have refreshing bull-pucky detectors. These natural talents can be fostered into effective and constructive rebellion. In fact, the more rebellious, the better this education works to help you go your own way more intentionally...against the crowd.
Probably nobody is going to take my word for it. But if creative thinking skills and relationship classes were taught in high school (instead of so much of what is ridiculous mind-reading for "correct" information that is taught now,) society would experience a big jump in social responsibility from all young people.
Stereotyping and trying to be "right" affects everyone.
Curious answers occur. When you ask the question of a woman, you must take the replies with a grain of salt. Women tend to "tell troubles" to bond with other women. To understand much more of how all this happens and more about what the issues are concerning women and those who do not match the current social trends in their conversational style, I recommend the very conversational but content-rich books written by linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, PhD - especially her book "Talking 9 to 5."
It took me a great deal of thought about this question to find the answers for myself. There were three pivotal experiences for me.
What made the biggest difference motivating me to think for myself first happened when I was only five years old. My idol, which was my elder brother of eight years, gave me a snake for a pet - sanctioned by my parents. It was 1959, and in that era, snakes suffered from many social misconceptions about their nature. At a crucial stage when I was going to transfer my family's authority toward the authority of school & a greater social world...Here were these serious mis-matches about snakes that I knew was completely urban legend. People I did not know or trust mistakenly thought snakes were dangerous, contradicting what I knew to be true according to my family and the San Diego Zoo. This experience encouraged me to think for myself and put out effort to learn the true nature of things before I accepted societal norms. It inoculated me against cigarettes as well as sent me to college, because I decided at five that you could be free of fear if you knew more of the facts.
Of course, the most obvious solution to change the minds of young people would be world travel. Becoming an exchange student during middle or high school is the most socially acceptable way, but spending at least six months in another culture works just as well. Once you have been a young person in a radically different environment, you return and realize how self-absorbed your peers are. Not to mention how regional fashion codes really are.
The other pivotal issue was attractiveness and the social authority that went along with it. It upset me that, according to society, women were expected to be helplessly manipulative to get things done. The social fact that an attractive female asking for a "favor" gets it from a male who has temporarily lost his reasoning - this bothered me.
For me as a young girl, there seemed no way to "opt out" of that game gracefully. I did not want the power men handed me; they wanted me to deny or accept their attention. Because of the accident of birth making me coincidentally attractive, I had to deal with this issue early on. Only later I realized that this was a social reality for almost every girl. (If you're a straight guy reading this, imagine if you had to deal daily with attention from people you did not want - from other guys, for instance. This is the environment young women find themselves.)
What eventually remedied this issue for me was learning about body language. After this education, it was indisputable that how I behaved was evident for anyone to see. What sort of a person I was, my values, showed beyond my physical features. A person's character is expressed in their walk, how they move, where their attention goes & the quality of attention used. After learning about body language, I had to accept there were, in me, obvious additional desirable qualities of character. That they were there in addition to matching social definitions of beauty - well, I could accept the attention I was getting now. The attention was my fault, instead of purely an accident of nature.
So I would recommend to teach body language as part of a relationship communication class as a solution for the common desire for membership and bonding - in high school or earlier. (For me, studying Alexander Technique in a classroom situation worked.)
There are many reasons why there is a sudden drop in confidence when girls (and boys) reach middle school age. They realize how they do not match the social norms, and there is the tendency to envy what they are not. This is when girls first must grapple with social questions about how they are going to deal with sexual attention. A desire to for membership and to belong becomes important, as well as trying on what roles might suffice to deal with this big question.
The last pivotal experience for me was when I discovered creative thinking skills. Not just the result of thinking creatively by making things artistic, or modeling creative people I admired. I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of how to do problem solving in a situation of decision-making.
Creative thinking skills taught me HOW to think for myself. Wanting to think for yourself in spite of societal norms and actually doing this thinking constructively are two very different things. Edward de Bono has a series of proven simple but effective creative and strategic thinking skills designed for middle school aged students and older. Again - not What to think - but How. Young people have refreshing bull-pucky detectors. These natural talents can be fostered into effective and constructive rebellion. In fact, the more rebellious, the better this education works to help you go your own way more intentionally...against the crowd.
Probably nobody is going to take my word for it. But if creative thinking skills and relationship classes were taught in high school (instead of so much of what is ridiculous mind-reading for "correct" information that is taught now,) society would experience a big jump in social responsibility from all young people.
Stereotyping and trying to be "right" affects everyone.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Lifesaving
Was on a remote beach by the RCA towers in California, in a time before cell phones, on the first sunny weekend in April after a storm. Was watching someone hang-glide, while the guy was trying to land on the beach. Because I was watching and knew something about gliding trajectory, I could predict the hang glider was going to touch down crotch-deep in the surf. Not good. Because nobody else seemed to be watching, I got up and ran all the way down the (naked) beach to help out before the guy landed. Before I arrived, the guy was immediately pulled out by 6-7 ft waves. Couldn't figure out how to unwrap the guy from the lines when he would pop up, so I had to swim away, knowing that he could get caught underwater as he was pulled further out by the high surf and his glider maybe got hung up on the nearby reef.
When I was out in the high surf after freeing the hang glider's hands, I looked back at the nine people lined up on the beach watching us. If at that point I had thought about what this experience was going to mean to me, if I had personally known the hang glider, if I had reacted with outrage at those nine observers, I might have drowned. My ethics had been (up until that point) to help without thought to my own needs. At the time, I realized that I was out far enough off shore in heavy & rough, cold surf without a way to cut the guy free from his glider. Saving myself was now the new priority, so there were not two people drowning. So I swam away.
The nine others watching imagined I must have known the guy. They concluded the only reason I swam away was that I didn't have a knife. So they sent their best swimmer who knew life-saving techniques out - with a knife. Once I stumbled onto shore, my admonition that this was not the movies and just one person doesn't have to be The Hero, everyone else who could swim jumped into the water to help out too.
The hang glider guy was saved from drowning. Standing there looking at him as a wet cocoon by the fire people were building to warm him up, I realized how often I had tried to save people I loved in my own life, and how close I was to being pulled under in those situations too. It had profoundly affected me to turn around on that hang glider, knowing that I could do nothing more about saving him. It was quite a gift for me to know the real boundary between saving someone else and saving myself.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pay with regret that my "life-lesson" had resulted in a death. If I had not jumped in, the trained life-saver wouldn't have thought to ask among others on the beach for a knife.
I never did find out the hang glider's name. I just walked home down the beach, exhausted and happy that he was alive.
When I was out in the high surf after freeing the hang glider's hands, I looked back at the nine people lined up on the beach watching us. If at that point I had thought about what this experience was going to mean to me, if I had personally known the hang glider, if I had reacted with outrage at those nine observers, I might have drowned. My ethics had been (up until that point) to help without thought to my own needs. At the time, I realized that I was out far enough off shore in heavy & rough, cold surf without a way to cut the guy free from his glider. Saving myself was now the new priority, so there were not two people drowning. So I swam away.
The nine others watching imagined I must have known the guy. They concluded the only reason I swam away was that I didn't have a knife. So they sent their best swimmer who knew life-saving techniques out - with a knife. Once I stumbled onto shore, my admonition that this was not the movies and just one person doesn't have to be The Hero, everyone else who could swim jumped into the water to help out too.
The hang glider guy was saved from drowning. Standing there looking at him as a wet cocoon by the fire people were building to warm him up, I realized how often I had tried to save people I loved in my own life, and how close I was to being pulled under in those situations too. It had profoundly affected me to turn around on that hang glider, knowing that I could do nothing more about saving him. It was quite a gift for me to know the real boundary between saving someone else and saving myself.
Fortunately, I didn't have to pay with regret that my "life-lesson" had resulted in a death. If I had not jumped in, the trained life-saver wouldn't have thought to ask among others on the beach for a knife.
I never did find out the hang glider's name. I just walked home down the beach, exhausted and happy that he was alive.
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