Tea and Intolerance, Part Five: What Can Be Done

Aikido
Aikido World Headquarters, Tokyo, Japan; photo by Alan Briskin

I began this series of posts by addressing the question of what can be done in groups and collectives whose members value open and honest dialogue but are faced with individuals or sub groups who are adamant about their beliefs, dogmatic in their tone, and unrelenting in their positions.  I explored the Tea Party as a case in point and wondered how there might be a way to understand their appearance on the national stage from historical as well as psychological and social perspectives.  Most critically, I wondered if there is a way to step inside another’s shoes without having to agree with them, but still able to respect the larger framework and validity of their respective positions.

To my delight I began to receive answers from the universe of people, events, and projects I interacted with.  Here was my first revelation – that when one asks a question sincerely without too many preconceived answers, new possibilities begin to emerge. I began to notice that my attention, having been shaped by my interior question, began to have greater focus, subtlety, and agility.  I could pay attention longer to an issue rather than moving to a reductionist position.  I could sense nuances and texture to arguments that seemed at first blush right or wrong and I could move more easily through the ambiguity and complexity of the issues.  I was having reverse attention deficit disorder symptoms without the side effects of medication.  For entrepreneurs reading this, we should call it RADD and market it.

Second, by listening with this kind of attention, I began to see, hear, and grasp new facets of friends and colleagues, many of whom I’ve known for decades.

Rather than offering opinions about the particular events of the day, dramatized by the daily newscasts, our conversations deepened and had a broader sweep.  We began talking about the history of people in general who have lost power and considered how we all try in different ways to hold onto the past. The discussion was no longer about us and them, but about the human condition.  We also talked about the consequences when deeper values feel betrayed and anger and powerlessness enfold us.  In the USA, for example, there is a deeply held value that if one works hard, one can succeed and be rewarded without virtually any limit.  This is a critical, almost sacred belief.  It is a belief that for some felt violated by perceived government intrusion as well as by seeing executives who oversaw our financial collapse bailed out by government and then still reaping rewards.

For another colleague, the unfolding of events with the Tea Party was like a detective story with a reminder to follow the money.  Behind the movement that was televised was another movement of industries such as oil, gas, and coal that sought in the Tea Party a chance to protect themselves from government oversight and regulations emerging in the face of climate change.  Executives like the Koch brothers understood how to strategically invest in a political movement that provided their own industries cover.  Of course it helped that these executives did not believe in climate change or that government should regulate them or that current subsidies to their industries should be  altered. Their world view had more to do with self-interest and personal honor, qualities that are also deeply rooted in American society and viewed quite positively by many.

Finally, another colleague acknowledged that she has stopped watching the news altogether and that she found herself temporarily at an impasse.  Although she personally believes we cannot rid ourselves of those things we condemn, she still feels a meta intolerance for others she sees as incapable of dealing with complexity and who are also unwilling to engage in genuine dialogue.  For her, the experience of vitriolic rhetoric and an utter absence of curiosity to go beyond one’s existing opinions are akin to being exposed to toxins that bring tears and pain into her body.

Taking People Seriously, But Listening Differently

Beyond the new kinds of conversations I was having, my next revelation came in a exchange with a political colleague from a major California city who had been on the city’s school board for decades.  How, I asked incredulously, could he tolerate being on the school board for decades and actually seek reelection, voluntarily?  School boards are notorious for inviting the most extreme and unyielding arguments in the name of civic discussion. He took my question in respectfully, and with a knowing smile, which I appreciated.  He was silent for a bit, as if rummaging through his mind for how to respond to me both intellectually and emotionally.  He said to me, almost as if musing out loud, “I take people seriously, but not literally.”  And then after a pause he said, “What I notice is that most people take each other literally, but not seriously.”

Here was, at least in part, an answer to my question about working with diversity, including people who are adamant, certain of their positions, and aggressive in their expression.  It is possible to listen to others without being pulled into the literalness of their world view.  And at the same time, it is possible to consider another person’s opinions respectfully, giving them their due as human beings worthy of dignity. We are all worthy of having dignity.

To do this effectively, however, is a discipline that is more about what happens within us than simply practicing an external behavior.  We have to ask ourselves whether we actually do take others seriously, and if not, what internal recalibrations are possible. Humans can sense in others, imprecise as it may be, what is authentic and what is expedient.

This brings me back to the larger question of collective wisdom and folly. My colleague, who found herself at times caught in feelings of meta intolerance for others, is an exceptionally empathic person.  She is one of those rare individuals who senses into others, seeking to resonate with their feelings and thoughts.  Possibly this is how her thoughts came to rest on a subject quite important to me, the neuro psychology of group interaction and behavior.

She spoke of some of her recent readings in this area and noted that humans are wired for empathy as a function of our being social animals.  We need each other to survive.  At the same time, she said, we are wired to overestimate threat and cautious of letting our guard down.  This is also a survival mechanism.  The dilemma is in resolving these two facets of our human wiring and the danger is that we end up operating in a closed system of thought, suspended in a state of reactivity, and fearful of letting go of what we know.  Without being conscious of making a choice, we often choose to stay in a place of fear creating a vicious cycle that reinforces our closed system of thought while maintaining a closed in network of friends who think like we do.

The alternative is becoming conscious of our choices, which also means becoming responsible for our thoughts.  This does not mean, however, that we can mechanically choose what we want to think, willy nilly, as if choice was like shopping for sale items at Target.  Mindfulness of this kind requires a great deal of practice at just noticing what thoughts emerge, and what feeling associations go along with these thoughts.  If for example, I find myself thinking of people who annoy me, I can notice if that brings me feelings of pleasure because I feel superior to them or alternatively feelings of guilt, betrayal or anger.  I can learn to gently nudge my thoughts and feelings in different directions, to see what comes of it.  If for example, I notice that my stream of thoughts suggest I am feeling stuck or lonely or misunderstood, I can take a walk, read a book, or watch a movie and notice how the thoughts and associated feelings begin to morph.   The practice is not about forcing oneself to have different thoughts but more like an artist becoming acquainted with a new brush technique and seeking to master that technique for their artistic expression.  For myself, I have always been privy to dark thoughts but have learned to bring them into a greater context that includes empathic understanding.

The same is true for our work in groups.  We do not need to regulate our thoughts in an austere or judgmental manner.  By noticing how our thoughts emerge in relation to others, we are preparing ourselves to create new avenues of communication.  We can begin leaning into empathic responses without denying our cautionary ones.  We can listen for the symbolic and metaphorical meanings behind literal statements without ignoring that differences may exist.  And we can actually become more direct with others.  Why?  Because the subtle ways we patronize and condescend to each other is based on fear and control.

Respectful communication can include highlighting and even intensifying differences when both parties are genuinely engaged with each other.  This means, however, that we cannot simply be mouthpieces for others – whether that is a group we are affiliated with or a canon of beliefs we have become identified with.  We generate real dialogue when we stand in our own authentic space, acknowledge our own worldview, and then nudge ourselves and others into new perspectives, perspectives that incorporate multiple views but are slaves to none.

This is what is achieved through inquiry and what is meant by emergence, an emergence of new thought forms that build on the bones of our memory joined with the sensing of a desired future.  This way of being in groups is haunting us, reminescent of the earliest human who sat together gathered around a fire or those individuals over two millenia ago who first imagined the common space of the Athenian polis.  A future is wating to be born from us and through us, and its labor pains are being felt right now throughout the world.

Read all of this five-part series:

I:   Tea and Intolerance

II:  The Logic of the Ghost

III:  Serving the Ghosts of Defiance and Resentment

IV: The Authoritarian Personality in Us All

Tea and Intolerance, Part Four: The Authoritarian Personality in Us All

Africa

In the late 70’s, I learned about the research of Nevitt Sanford.  He was my professor and founder of the graduate school I attended.  He was also one of the authors of a landmark research project begun shortly after World War II that resulted in the publication of The Authoritarian Personality. Catalyzed by the Jewish holocaust in Germany, they set out to discover if there was some pattern of human personality that allowed for the receptivity to prejudice that could lead to de-humanization and ultimately mass violence. He was one of the most gentle, thoughtful, and kind academic leaders I have ever known.

The research, however, was quite controversial.

Illuminating at best, and suspicious science at worst (they used questionnaires to test for fascist tendencies and were heavily influenced by psychoanalytic language and Marxist concepts), the research nevertheless opened up my eyes to patterns of behavior that solved some perplexing questions I held.  How could a person be simultaneously conventional in their social attitudes yet extreme in their viewpoints?  Similarly, how could someone be both violently against what they perceived as control over themselves, yet seemingly willing to join others in denigrating and having power over others not in their perceived group?  I was particularly struck by their description of what they called surface resentment.  “We refer here,” they wrote more than sixty years ago “to people who accept stereotypes of prejudice from outside, as ready made formulae…in order to rationalize and – psychologically or actually – overcome overt difficulties of their own existence.”

Surface resentment is not the same as authoritarianism but it is a close enough cousin to be fanned by group passions. Weisberg in his column on the tea party writes that “nostalgia, resentment, and reality denial are all expressions of the same underlying anxiety about losing one’s place in the country, or of losing control of it to someone else.” In other words, a popular movement fanned by fears of economic, social, or status dislocation acts as a magnet on all surface resentments, especially for those who have felt ignored or pushed aside by multi culturalism, global movements in industry, and elites of various kinds who seem smug, arrogant, and disconnected from the difficulties of their own existence.  This is why even if active tea party supporters are largely made up of older married white men of European ancestry with a Christian background; there is plenty of room for others who harbor resentment. The feelings are at once frustration that no one is listening to them and anger that there is far too much sympathy for gays, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, and other out groups, far from the mainstream – or more insidiously replacing them as the mainstream.

Patrick Buchannan, the Republican candidate for President in 1992 and 1996 referred to this as “culture wars” and explicitly linked sympathy for these out groups with the nation’s decline. This week, the number one book on Amazon is The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Dinesh D’Souza, charging that Obama is driven by an anti-colonial ideology inherited from his African father and who seeks to diminish America’s strength, influence, and standard of living.  And in a sad competitive clash of stereotypes among out groups exposed to discrimination, the CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was fired on Oct. 1 for disparaging the Jewish comedian Jon Stewart as a bigot.  He argued that Stewart, like many middle class Jews and CNN staff, never faced real prejudices as he did having been born in Cuba and growing up in Florida – “I grew up not speaking English, dealing with real prejudice every day as a kid; watching my dad work in a factory, wash dishes, drive a truck, get spit on.”  For Sanchez, the surface resentment against people not like himself burst forward as he denigrated Stewart for among other things, surrounding himself only with people like himself.  We see in others the negative qualities that are so difficult to see in ourselves.  And the ghosts of our original colonial identity as subject to power and the history of our maturing into a power that dictated to others is now coming back to haunt us in a myriad of twists and turns.

And it is not just the men.  One female supporter of the tea party blogged that women are a critical part of the movement.  “These are fierce women. These are women who have passels of grandchildren, who are heads of their families, respected decision-makers and rulers of their roosts… I think back to the report… on the Glen Beck event and the army of moms with huge garbage bags directing the hundreds of thousands to pick up after themselves. This is how we feel about America right now. We’re done waiting for you to clean up your trash. Momma sees a mess and darn it, you’re going to clean it up and you’re going to do it RIGHT NOW while we supervise. Now get over here and put that trash in this bag!”  The metaphor is all about being in charge again, rulers of the roost, and about others who don’t pick up after themselves. Damn it, get in line.

I want to confess that on a personal level, I understand these various reactions to discomfort.  When events seem out of control, I want to feel in control and it is at these times I am most inclined to react from surface resentments and project negative motives, even stereotypes, onto others – especially on those who differ with me.

At a group level, however, these dynamics describe elements of what my coauthors and I came to call collective folly.  Collective folly is made up of two sides of the same coin.  On one side is the movement toward separation and fragmentation. Group members resist ideas, other group members, or other groups that are deemed “not me” or “not us.”  There is a tendency toward confirmation bias and the ignoring of divergent perspectives or data.  At its extreme, destructive polarization is the outcome.

On the other side of the coin is the movement toward false agreement and the façade of unity.  Group members appear to be unified, at least in what they are opposed to.  The consequence is conformity within the group even if the ideology of the group supports individual rights, libertarian ideas, progressive politics and other ideologies seemingly contradictory to conformity.  This movement masks a separation that already exists, among its members as well as outside itself, and consequently prevents the group from considering data and perspectives that could help it develop a more complete understanding of the reality it faces. At its extreme, unanticipated catastrophe can result.

What both sides of the coin have in common is a discomfort with complexity, paradox, ambiguity, and uncertainty.  Both movements of collective folly ignore or explicitly distance themselves from divergent views and perspectives.  The question is how do we confront these two movements of collective folly without being drawn into the very dynamics they describe.

Read the concluding essay in this five part series: What Can Be Done.

Tea and Intolerance, Part Three: Serving the Ghosts of Defiance and Resentment

“Rally Mohawks, bring out your axes!
Tell King George, we’ll pay no taxes…
On his foreign tea!”
~ Chant in the streets of Boston
on the night of the Boston tea party

Amid colorful signs and often in costume, the self identified tea baggers of today hold the celebratory energies of that revolutionary spirit.  At a rally in New York City, Lou Dobbs, amid chants of “Throw the bums out” channels the same defiant zeal as those who once threw the tea overboard and marched in the streets of Boston.  Exhorting the crowd to grasp their power in solidarity, he exclaims: “You are scaring the hell out of them.” He tells them  “You, my friends, are dangerous—and I love that about you.”  In translation, he is affirming that the ones in power (King George/Obama,) will not get our taxes for their foreign tea, be it a brew of tea leaves, health care reform or bank bail outs.

What distinguishes tea baggers from past right wing insurgencies, writes columnist Jacob Weisberg, is its “anarchist streak- its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent self expression; and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns.” Yes, and so it was with the 30 – 130 colonists who marched over to the docks thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians to cast out the tea; they too had no coherent program, they too showed their displeasure in belligerent self expression and they too had had enough of authority and rational discourse.  In fact they came directly from a large gathering in which they learned that no resolution had been found for what to do about the disputed tea.

It’s not that supporters of the tea party do not have a coherent program but rather that they share a belief that the details can be worked out later. 

One of the protesters at the New York rally notes he does not want to be considered scary, but rather someone who is here to fix things.  He is 56 and has lived with chronic pain for 17 years from a fall while doing construction.  From his perspective, he is barely getting by and blames the government in some way reminiscent of how the colonists must have felt at the hands of the British, powerless and frustrated.  Resentment toward those that represent authority or power over them pervades the tea party movement. And this is where hauntology takes on added significance.  Whenever there is a highly volatile mix of defiance and resentment, all the displaced ghosts of the past come rushing in.

Read Part IV of this five-part series: The Authoritarian Personality in Us All 

Tea and Intolerance, Part Two: The Logic of the Ghost

Moon

Recently, I became acquainted with the concept of hauntology – a philosophy of history originating with the philosopher Jacques Derrida.  It has been called the logic of ghosts because it upsets the easy progression of time as always moving forward in measured sequence and proposing instead that the present is simultaneously haunted by the past and the future.  It is the logic of the specter, the shade, the blurring of distinctions among conventional categories that keep us safe but also isolated.  Hauntology is the unsettling knowledge that our actions are neither cut off from history or immune to the forces of evolution.

From this perspective, the tea party takes on significance beyond its meaning in the moment.

All around this movement are shades of ghosts past and in particular the shade of those original Massachusetts colonists which gave the tea party its name.  On December 16, 1773, dozens of colonists made a statement against British rule by destroying tea that bore a tax imposed by Britain (similar to duties it charged in Britain) but not authorized by local representatives.  In New York and Philadelphia, the tea was sent back to Britain rather than pay duties and in Charleston, Virginia, the tea was left to rot because colonists refused to unload it.  But in Boston, there was an outright revolt with a group of colonists throwing the tea overboard.

The spectacular show of resistance served to unite the various British political parties and in a display of solidarity they forced the closing of the Boston harbor and instituted a series of laws called the Coercive Acts, referred to by the colonists as the Intolerable Acts.  And in turn, these coercive measures served to unite the colonists – for the most part.  Samuel Adams argued the actions of the group who threw the tea overboard were a principled stand and not a lawless mob; Benjamin Franklin thought there should be reimbursement for the destroyed tea.  At minimum, there was ambivalence among the colonists about the destruction of property, yet a seed of pride in their defiance.  It took over a half a century for the seed to grow into what today we refer routinely to as the “Boston Tea Party” instead of simply “the destruction of the tea.”  A party is far more celebratory than simply destroying things.

From most historical perspectives, the Boston tea party served to accelerate the political will to separate from Britain and led to the convening of the First Continental Congress which felt compelled to respond to the Coercive Acts.  Britain, already reeling in debt because of its sustained military engagements, would now face a new insurgency and the eventual unraveling of its Empire.  What was crystal clear at the time was that the “other” was in the wrong.

Read Part III of this five-part series: Serving the Ghosts of Defiance and Resentment

Threshold Guardian

Part One of the Tea Party series is already catalyzing response – witness this exchange begun on FaceBook by Michael Harkins with a reflection about the imagery that accompanies my post:

Michael said:
"Alan, you put into words many of my same thoughts. I must say I too enjoy the satire of Colbert, but also worry about the fragmentation of America. I can't help but wonder about the image you displayed with your thoughts. It appears to be …a threshold guardian. These images often barred the way to all but the bravest. To go past this point would take all the Hero's strength, wisdom, and luck. Is there a place we can go to iron out these differences? I hope we can get past the gnashing of teeth, and find a common ground, and start healing America."

I responded:
"Michael, I love your observations and I think the threshold guardian archetype is crucial. We become frightened by what we cannot yet see – which is a territory in which our differences can be mediated by a love that is larger than our mere opinions. It is very difficult for an individual to do this alone, to get pass the guardian without harm, but it becomes more possible with others."

Michael again:
"I also think with the exaggerated polarization in our society, the threshold guardian leaves no common ground. If we looked on the other side of the statue we’d see that this demon is a Janus with two faces, pointing in opposite directions, keeping us apart. No single individual can push the two halves apart to make a space, a temenos, a sanctuary, where we can share our thoughts and be unafraid. As you say, it will take many of us, and much love."

Your thoughts are welcome – on this theme of threshold and what might lie beyond it, or whatever else calls to you. Watch for Part 2 of the series, coming out October 25th…

Tea and Intolerance: Part One

Temple-guard One of the fundamental questions for those who believe in listening, respect, and tolerance for others is what to do with people who appear to us as dominating, certain of their positions, and intolerant of those who disagree with them.  A most recent example in the political sphere is the emergence of the tea party movement and the ambiguity of what they represent collectively – a group formed out of anger with simplistic prescriptions for what troubles us – our economy, our communities, and our very souls – or a spirited group of rabble rousers calling us to limit the size of government and renew our faith in god, country, and individual imitative.

What does the tea party represent for our collective wisdom or does it represent the annihilation of wisdom and the descent into chaos?

On the surface, the tea party can simply represent a long and documented American history of intolerance for immigrants, a strong strand of anti intellectualism, and a hyper identification with broad concepts such as freedom and liberty but without depth or subtlety.

In satirizing this pattern of thinking, the comedian Stephen Colbert stated, during testimony to Congress on immigration reform, that “My great grandfather did not travel over 4,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this country overrun by immigrants.”  And in a separate statement, playing on his character of an ultra right wing television host, Colbert promoted his March to Keep Fear Alive by declaring that “America, the Greatest Country God ever gave Man, was built on three bedrock principles: Freedom. Liberty. And Fear — that someone might take our Freedom and Liberty.”

I find much relief in Colbert’s satiric wit, an example how our cultural shadow can be illuminated through humor and how the fragmentation of thought – an immigrant relative used to illustrate his argument against immigration – can be recognized by transforming it into absurdity.

At a deeper level, however, I remain troubled by the implications of the movement and the further polarization it evokes.  The enthusiasm of the Obama election has given way, at least for the moment, to despair among many who supported him that the mid term elections will represent a retreat into apathy and fear.  From the right Obama is eviscerated for turning away from capitalism to socialism, for trillions of dollars of new Federal spending, and for wanting to raise taxes on individuals who have demonstrated success in the free market economy that is so dear to them. From the left he is chastised for not accomplishing enough with a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, for not articulating a new vision of economic progress that challenges the self interest of capitalism, for continued militarism, and for failing to back strongly enough what was viewed as game changing policies such as a public option in health care, a carbon tax, and a faster and more complete withdrawal from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And as absurd as it may seem, he is disparaged from all corners for not finding a way to bring us together.  I suspect the proper question is not “How is Obama doing?” so much as “How are we doing?”

It is in this larger context that the tea party operates, a polarized electorate creating the conditions for a group of people who feel certain, at least of their distaste of Obama and for what they believe he stands for.  And whether their number is three million or thirty million, a political window has opened for them to grow larger, feeding off of the discouragement of those who thought a new day was coming as well as on the desire of an opposition political party to ally itself with new energy.  Where does this lead – to collective wisdom or collective folly?

It is at this crossroads that my thinking veers off the conventional lanes of political discussion and goes looking for new perspectives.

Read Part II of this five-part series: The Logic of the Ghost