Judgmental People Are Bad… Uh, Never Mind!

A big thank you everyone who has been commenting on my post The Violence of Law.  The exchange has been more rich than I ever could have imagined.  The discussion got me thinking that the topic of Judgemental Thinking deserves some attention unto itself, so here goes.

We’re all familiar with the saying “history repeats itself“.  It’s usually spoken with a tragic shake of the head, and followed by a change of topic.  History does repeat itself whenever a “gang” forms around a cause and creates judgements that define what is right and wrong.  The gang punishes wrong behaviour as a primary strategy for maintaining the peace.  The tragic irony is that what begins out of a good thing (the needs behind the cause) turns into a new oppressive force that is equally as damaging to real peace as the problems that gave rise to the cause in the first place.

Marshall Rosenberg puts it in very simple terms.  We are all born into a world that only knows one language, the language of judgement and either/or thinking.  We learn to cope with the world using this language and so it becomes part of our unconscious programming.  It is our habitual and most comfortable strategy for dealing with conflict, so deeply ingrained that we don’t even realize we’re going it all the time.

We can come to see how this language of judgement is in fact the biggest perpetrator of oppression in our world.  So what to do about it?  I was thinking that we could start a gang in which judgemental people are bad, and see what happens.  Every time someone is punished for being judgmental, the punishers would have to be punished as well.  You would hope that before long, the hypocrisy becomes obvious and people start looking for a better way.

The best alternative that I’ve heard of is empathy.  So the first thing you do is empathize with those people who are judgemental.  This may sound odd, but if you can see that behind the judgement is a need, you don’t take it personally or judge them back.  You can probe for their need and let empathy do it’s magic and dissolve the barriers.  I know, it sounds like something only Jesus or Buddha would be capable of, right?  Well, it really just takes practice.  That’s what NVC tries to help people learn.

It’s crucially important that anyone who really wants to create social change understands the cost of using the habitual strategy of judgement.  There are gangs everywhere, busy repeating history.  They can’t see this because they are either unaware of the habit of judgmental thinking, or unaware of the harm that it does long term.  It’s very hard to see this in the moment when you are feeling anger about unmet needs, but when you step back far enough, you can see how history repeats itself.  You can see how reacting out of anger makes you an oppressor.  The cost is enormous.

So for many of us (like me) it starts at a personal level of dealing with your own anger.  Identify your own needs that the anger is related to, and know that those needs are valid and important.  Then see the other person’s actions as a tragic expression of their own unmet needs.  This way, you escape the either/or thinking that usually accompanies anger:  “Either what that person did was wrong, or my needs are invalid.”

Nobody is at fault for being stuck in this habitual way of reacting.  It’s just how we learned to cope, and it takes awhile to change our habits.  So when I say that judgemental people are bad, will you cut me some slack?

Are We Tampering With Evolution?

Now that H1N1 vaccinations are underway, many of us are considering whether or not we should get vaccinated.  There are those who think it’s our moral duty to get vaccinated since we may be putting the lives of others at risk.  There are also those who feel that this may just be a large scale money making agenda on the part of the pharmaceutical industry.  Whatever the case, there is definitely a lot of fear going around.

I’d like to propose we take a step back and look at the big picture.  Humans have survived for tens, hundreds of thousands of years without anything such as vaccinations.  How is it that within the last several decades, we have come to see something so artificial as being essential to our survival?

In the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, we are presented with a portrait of the human race from an evolutionary perspective.  The story goes that about ten thousand years ago, a group of humans called the takers began attempting to conquer nature.  These takers had forgotten that in fact they were part of nature and inseparable from it.  The leavers are those humans who continued to live in acceptance of their role as equals amongst the rest of nature.  The story leaves the reader with the grim conclusion that our human race is headed for disaster ever so rapidly, fueled by this fundamental flaw in our perception that we are not animals and that we are somehow superior to the rest of nature.

Indeed, we observe that in nature everything balances itself out.  If we have made nature our enemy then we are setting ourselves up for a battle we can never win.  We ARE nature.  If we tamper with ourselves, we are tampering with nature.  We are tampering with evolution itself.

The scary part is that if you think about it, the successful evolution of our species requires that the strong survive.  This is how humans have evolved to become what we are today.  So what makes us think that all of a sudden, now we have to start tampering with our evolution?  If people are surviving and reproducing who might otherwise have died without vaccination, are we setting ourselves up to become ever more dependent on vaccinations for our continued survival?  By contradicting the “will of nature” that some people must die so that the strong can survive, are we weakening ourselves as a species?  Is it becoming that our only strength is in our ability to manipulate nature?  If so, we could be facing a much bigger issue of responsibility than most people would care to think about, let alone deal with.

What if instead of focusing all our efforts on outrunning death, we took steps towards learning how to better accept it?  After all, it is our fear of death that gives the pharmaceutical industry so much power.  Buddhism has long taught the virtues of accepting death, and in general accepting the external things that you cannot change.

Author and teacher Caroline Myss points out in many ways how Americans have developed a sense of entitlement that is completely unrealistic.  In her recent interview with Laurie Nadel, she points out how as a culture we have completely forgotten about the need for sacrifice.  I couldn’t agree more.  I see this as in fact one of many side effects of the fact that we have forgotten that we are part of nature.  It’s as though we think we are “special” and somehow different from the rest of nature.  We are entitled to our 52 inch TVs, and our vaccines to keep us alive so that we can keep watching them.

I am not getting myself vaccinated.  I trust that if I die, it is for the greater good.  I am okay with death.  Besides, I am going to die sooner or later.  In the meantime, I’m going to spend my time and energy on the stuff that makes life truly worth living.

The Violence of Law

The legal system is a violent strategy for getting needs met.  This may seem like some kind of extreme anarchist point of view, but it is not.  It is an observation that comes from a new perspective that has evolved for me over the past year.  I’d like to share the journey that let me to this insight, as it has deeply affected my own approach to business, politics, and life in general.

In my previous blog post on Need-Based Decision Making, I touched briefly on some of the concepts of Non Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and the Decider protocol by Jim and Michele McCarthy.  Both present the intriguing possibility that we can resolve conflicts harmoniously and to the greater benefit of all.  Jim and Michele present the concept of alignment as a key ingredient to achieve resolution and build shared vision in teams.  Alignment happens between people naturally when they are engaged and connected.  People are engaged and connected whey they openly disclose what they want, think, and feel.  Another way of looking at it is that when people are aligned, they understand and relate to each other based on the needs that are present.

Marshall Rosenberg uses the term need to indicate something universal to all people.  He uses the term strategy to indicate something that people pursue in order to get a need met.  He urges us to recognize that all conflict arises out of strategies that do not meet the needs of others.  By focusing on the needs present, we can escape the illusion of an “enemy image” that is created by our imagination when others reject our strategies or impose their own strategy that doesn’t meet our needs.  The problem is that people naturally cling to their strategies, because they don’t know of any other way to get their needs met.  When you can see this, the enemy image dissolves and you begin to relate with the new assumption that others are nothing less than good people… with poor strategies.  Instead of judging others, we can approach them with a more compassionate, resolution-oriented demeanor.  Marshall Rosenberg uses the term “violent” to refer to any strategy or response that alienates us from the needs present, either our own or the needs of others.  Sadly, this definitition fits with a vast majority of the legal system.

I have been thinking about how so many of the laws that govern our nations are in fact violent strategies to get common needs met. Every law is put in place to control an otherwise chaotic situation, right?  Well, here’s the thing:  The “chaos” is really just what happens when people are free to pursue any strategy they want for getting their needs met.  You can take that freedom away by imposing laws, but you cannot take the need away, and if you try it will just go underground where it’s more dangerous.  So the chaos is still there, and the problem is still there.  So often we see the law-enforcement strategy backfire with increasingly rebellious behaviour… and it’s no wonder – we have cut off the connection by taking away the other’s freedom.  We have used power and force to control instead of having the wisdom to trust and hold the space for respectful resolution.

Just the other day, a friend of mine was viewing an apartment to rent.  The previous tenant had been evicted and immediately proceeded to vandalize the unit in protest.  It was a complete disaster when my friend saw it.  Holes in the walls and urine on the carpet.  Although it was very poor behaviour for the tenant to do this, it is a probable reaction to feeling cut off from the world, victimized, and powerless.  This incident may have been avoided if the landlord had a more rich personal connection with the tenant based in mutual respect of the needs present.  So many landlords today don’t care about the needs of their tenants at all, or even who they are as human beings beyond a signature on a monthly post-dated cheque.  Acknowledging who they are as human beings would bring up all kinds of uncomfortable feelings of real guilt about perpetuating class oppression… so landords choose not to get too close or think about such matters.  This type of oppression is a very violent strategy and is in fact, the first real crime committed.  But in our not-so-evolved society, it’s perfectly legal to take advantage of others financially.

Law is a strategy.  It’s a strategy for getting some very important needs met, of course, such as safety, health, justice, and equal opportunity.  Other strategies exist that are far more effective overall.  I am not suggesting that we should do away with all laws.  I am suggesting that laws should not replace a real resolution process.  When conflict arises, we need to connect and work to understand the needs present.  Even the most violent people have needs behind their actions, which they themselves may not even be aware of.  When people act violently, they are victims of their own ignorance about how wonderful it is to be connected.  The real problem is not criminals.  It’s that in our society we are lacking a value system that embraces the universality of human needs.  Instead of a costly legal system, what we need is a new vision for a society that strives to discover, teach, and model effective strategies for sustaining connection and reaching resolution.

As I mentioned in The Generosity Shift, we as a culture are in the process of discovering how fulfilling it is to help others to get their needs met.  Could it be that the feeling of being in balance and connection with all other beings is more fulfilling and wonderful than the privelege of being able to dominate others through oppressive means?  How has it gone so far that we consider it perfectly normal to sue someone “just because we can”?  It’s time to realize how we are all being seduced by the power that we get out of the legal system, and come back to our senses.  We are all brothers and sisters here and we are all connected.  We are meant to be living in mutual respect and dignity.  When larger catastrophes strike, we will all need each other, even those who once were our enemies.

The Generosity Shift

An idea has been growing on me.  It’s the idea that humanity is undergoing a gradual transition away from the collective belief that we are fundamentally selfish in nature.  Let me say that in another way.  More of us are realizing that it feels great to give and that giving, in fact, is one of our innate human needs.  Selfishness is nothing but a poor strategy.  There’s nothing wrong with selfishness, it’s just sub-optimal!  This perspective can, for me at least, transcend the entrenched dualistic perspective of capitalism versus communism, amongst other things.  This has relevance now, as we wonder whether our Western culture really has it all figured out.

In my previous entry Hug an Investor, I made a decent case for the theory that he who is the most selfish is the most deprived.  The theory goes that the selfish person cannot see this.  They think it’s all about winning and they think they’re in the lead, but suffer from all kinds of emotional problems.  We can see the truth of this clearly today but it’s not what we expected one thousand or even one hundred years ago when we were obsessed with conquest.

In the 60’s, many Westerners claimed their freedom from societal views that were previously unquestioned.  No longer would the “powers that be” dictate our values.  This freedom was a healthy rebellion tightly coupled with a sense of unconscious entitlement.  As freedom becomes less of a pressing concern in the coming generation, the problems created by entitlement are taking center stage.  We are learning now, whether we like it or not, to surrender control and seek a lifestyle of empathy and respect for other beings.  We could not do this without our freedom, of course.  Freedom is what makes true giving so exquisitely beautiful.

The realization of our own need to contribute to others translates into increased trust that others will consider our needs too.  This is vastly superior to strategies that are life-alienating, such as law and authority structures that operate by chain-of-command.  When everyone understands that life is just a lot of creatures on a planet with the same universal feelings and needs, we can do away with life-alienating strategies that kill freedom and impose control in order to guarantee that needs are predictably met.  By paying more attention to each others needs and living in deep respect of nature, we let go of contolling and limiting the freedom of others, and we allow room for the mystery of the unknown to participate in our lives.

Those people who live in generosity make this mystery real.  Yup, the generous people of the world are the unsung heroes who make trust a worthy strategy.  It’s a tough world today, and sometimes you have to watch your back while trying to change it.  Once you’ve changed the world, watching your back won’t be necessary, so trust me, it’s worth it.  This is the real deal folks!

Who’s in?

Will You Pretend With Me?

Will you pretend with me?

Let’s pretend that our whole world is undergoing a gradual shift.
We are shifting to see all things more integrated, with more Integrity.

Let’s pretend that in our lifetimes, we will see the day when our
workplace is an extension of our virtues, a sacred part of the whole.

Let’s pretend that this shift is happening RIGHT NOW, and that it begins
with virtues like Love, Presence, Integrity, Self-Care, Fun, Wisdom, Joy, Generosity, and Faith.

Let’s pretend the societal norms that have seemed so powerful
and oppressive all our lives are nothing but a stale creation
of old value systems that are in transition towards death.

Let’s pretend that we are more powerful together than we are alone
and that the universe is abundant with support for a noble cause fought together.

Let’s pretend that a noble cause awaits each of us right now
and is actually much bigger than any of us would dare to pretend.

The “Pretend Pattern” is presented in the book Software For Your Head, by Jim and Michele McCarthy.  It “identifies the importance of experimenting with beliefs and performing thought experiments as a way to discover effectiveness”.

I wrote this poem for a “web of commitment” ceremony held today, at my first McCarthy Boot Camp.

Need-Based Decision Making

Today I had a really good conversation with my parents (who are visiting for the holidays) and I arrived at what I believe to be some interesting insights about the decision making process at work.  Specifically, how it relates to communicating needs effectively.

I was explaining the decider protocol by Jim and Michele McCarthy, and how it works.  David (my step-dad) is a cabinet maker and works alone.  In addition to my job programming video games, I also work alone on the side doing stained glass.  I was curious to explore how decisions get made when working alone versus working with a team, so I asked David how he makes decisions alone.  I wanted to compare his input with my own experience of working alone on stained glass and to working with a team as a programmer.  This led me to some interesting observations:

1. The necessity of making decisions exists regardless of whether one works alone or with a team.  The only difference is that when working alone, the decider process takes place within a single head, so unanimity is a given.
2. On the way to achieving great results, one always encounters conflicting needs.  For example, the need to do things efficiently versus the need to achieve a high quality.  Making decisions often requires resolving these conflicting needs.
3. When working alone, a single person owns both of the needs, whereas in a team, there are often situations where person A owns need A and person B owns need B.  Either way, Both needs are important to the overall success.
4. One’s emotions tend to get activated when one’s needs are at stake.  In this emotionally activated state, one is less likely to be receptive to the needs of others.

I’m hoping these observations can lead to an understanding of why unanimous decision making can be so difficult to achieve in teams.  When David is working alone and encounters a difficult situation, he recognizes the validity of all the needs present, and applies creativity.  This is consistent with what I have found with stained glass as well.  Once you realize that you’re in a pickle, and you ACCEPT the situation for what it is, creativity happens naturally and a good idea comes along that can get you out of the pickle and satisfy BOTH needs.  Sometimes it comes right away, sometimes in the shower the next morning.  But it always comes.

In teams, people can get stuck in the emotional resistance to accepting the validity of needs that conflict with their own.  This blocks the flow of creativity that would happen naturally, if only people would listen and accept the situation for what it is and stop trying to make arguments that invalidate each others’ needs!  When this situation continues for long enough, it can grow into a bureaucracy.  Bureaucracies are need-alienating structures that make it permissible for people to stop caring about the needs of others altogether.

So what’s the secret to getting people to dissolve bureaucracies, hear each others’ needs and approach conflict with creativity?  As always, I’m very curious to hear what you think.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Hug an Investor

After reading responses to my previous blog entry on the topic of “the tower”, and speaking with others on this topic in more detail, I noticed two things.  One, that everyone immediately knew what I was talking about from personal experience, and two, that this phenomenon is just as applicable to groups as it is to individuals.  Harold’s comment got me thinking that the current financial crisis in the U.S. is nothing but a collective tower experience.  Could it be so?

For a moment, let’s take this lens we’ve constructed and focus it on corporations, specifically.  These critters have become rather important to our livelihood, so it seems.  People invest tremendous amounts of energy into keeping these large companies growing, because supposedly, our survival depends on it.  Well, sorry to break the news to you folks, but human beings have survived for thousands of years without corporations.  The corporate structure is a completely new thing, and yet we fear its collapse as though our very existence depended on it.  What’s going on here, exactly?

Marshall Rosenberg

Marshall Rosenberg would probably say that we are confusing our needs with our strategies.  Strategies come and go and vary from culture to culture, while human needs are unchanging and universal to all cultures.  So let’s suppose that the corporate structure of our culture is nothing but a strategy for getting our human needs met.  What are those needs exactly?

Well, there are the needs of the customers who use the products or services that a company provides, and then there are the needs of the company’s employees.  Employees need to be creative with integrity and contribute something to the world, and they also need to earn money to purchase everything else they need.

For example, the guy who works at the dog food company uses his income to get his hair cut, and the girl who works at the hair salon uses her income to pay for her dog’s food.  Both of them are getting their needs met while contributing something to the needs of the other.  Pretty simple equation if you think about it.  Everyone is both a contributor and a consumer, and everyone gets back more or less what they put out.  So what’s all this fuss about the economy then?  Certainly, people won’t stop needing to feed their dogs and cut their hair.  What gives?

Investor Madness Explained

Well, bear with me here, folks.  There’s one rather important party that we left out and they are the reason why businesses become companies become corporations.  We left out the investors.  The strategy of the investors is to make money from other people’s efforts, without having to actually do any work themselves.  This way, they aren’t restricted by the equation of getting back only as much as they put out.  Limitless abundance awaits anyone who’s willing to play this game.  Now, as clever as this strategy sounds, what are the needs of the investors?  The same as everyone else, of course.  They are humans, after all.  They have a need to make money to purchase everything else they need.  PASS.  They have a need to be creative with integrity and contribute something to the world.  FAIL.

Now we can go down the path of condemning the investors for being greedy, and we could say that greed is the whole problem and it serves those lazy bottom feeders right that they’re the ones losing out in this economic crisis.  But first, let’s observe that in the most extreme cases, these people are probably feeling the most empty inside, and they probably can’t figure out why.  Maybe they don’t even realize it, because they’ve never felt what it’s like to be creative with integrity.  They have simply done everything that they thought they were supposed to do to be successful and happy.  Nobody helped them as young people to understand what their real human needs are and how to live a balanced life as an adult.

So hug an investor today, folks.  Hug the next one you see.  If you are an investor and this is your primary income, then hug yourself right now (and then seek help).  We’ve got work to do, people!  The world is gonna look like a different place when we’re finished.  There will still be companies and teams of people who work together, but without the pressure from investors to grow for the sake of profit alone, there won’t be much reason to have enormous, bloated, and inefficient corporations.  While jobs may be lost during periods of transition, people won’t be afraid because they’ll know that as long as there are other human beings on this planet, there will never be any shortage of needs to be fulfilled, and there will never be any shortage of opportunities to be creative with integrity and contribute to fulfilling the needs of others.

The following video interview with Marshall Rosenberg is what got me inspired to start thinking about my own job in a totally different light.  He talks about corporations and how they can be transformed to better serve humanity.  If you are in a hurry, fast forward to 9:00 and 13:15 for the good parts.

The Blog Begins…

Jeremy Walker

Why it has taken me until December of 2008 to start a blog is a subject of curiosity to me, so let’s start there.  Perhaps it’s because I knew that maintaining a blog would consume more time and attention, so delaying it as long as possible was a strategy to accommodate my need to maintain the illusion that I have control over the rest of my life.  So how is that going, you ask?  Well, by observing the fact that I am now beginning this blog, it follows that I must have either A) finally managed to maintain sufficient control over my life, or B) finally gave up trying to have control.

The strategy of control is always a losing battle, isn’t it?  It’s the kind of folly we all recognize in ourselves and laugh about (even write blogs about), and yet continue to repeat in our lives, over and over again.  Jim and Michele McCarthy call this The Hypocritic Oath.  Jim says that if something is worth preaching about, then it’s not worth doing, or if something is worth doing, then it’s not worth preaching about.  Isn’t it so?  Well then, what would it look like to actually do something about this matter of trying to control life?

Surfing The Tao

During the time that I spent in Hawaii, I had time to observe many things that I don’t normally take time to observe in my life.  One of those things that I observed was that surfing is way more than just a sport.  It’s a lifestyle, a source of wisdom, a path of Tao.  Nobody told me this, I could just feel it.  Why those surfers are so blissed out must have something to do with whatever it is they’re tapped into out there.  I could feel that it was bigger than the sport, that it was something that took over their whole life.  What could it it be?

Well I thought I’d find out for myself.  So I got out there on the waves (with a boogie board, not a surf board, mind you), and it took me several days before I could begin to feel it.   It came to me indirectly, during those gaps of time where the waves die out and you just have to wait for the next good set to come.  You can never predict when they will come, but they always do.  One moment you’re on a wave, the next moment you’re not.  The whole sport depends entirely on the unpredictability of the ocean, whose formidable power can be yours for a few seconds, and is then taken away.  You have some control, but the real power belongs to the ocean, not you.  I think this works as a metaphor for all of life, don’t you?  Everything that truly makes life worth living has the same quality of being beyond our control.  Nowhere is this universal truth more consistently apparent than while surfing.  If you forget for even a moment who the power belongs to, you’re done for, brah!

The Tower (tarot card)

One perspective on the path of Tao is that it acts as a regulator that minimizes or prevents the need for such nasty archetypal forces as The Tower in our lives.  A couple years ago, I had several Tarot readings over the course of several months where The Tower showed up again and again.  It wasn’t exactly the nicest feeling to have to admit to myself what it was telling me.  I would have had an easier journey through that part of my life if I had been more willing to let go of control and allow things to unfold naturally.  In retrospect, I can see that it’s always fear that leads us to build towers in the first place, so overcoming fear may seem optional but really it’s just the when and the how that is optional.

I have many more inspirations brewing, and I hope this blog will only get more interesting as time goes on.  Some of you have told me that you’ve really enjoyed my writing and I should do more of it.  Well here we are… the magnificent end of my very first blog post!