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# 2020-02-26 - The Different Drum by M. Scott Peck
# The Different Drum by M. Scott Peck
# Introduction
In and through community lies the salvation of the world.
Nothing is more important. Yet it is virtually impossible to
describe community meaningfully to someone who has never experienced
it--and most of us have never had an experience of true community.
The problem is analogous to an attempt to describe the taste of
artichokes to someone who has never eaten one.
I am dubious, however, as to how far we can move toward global
community--which is the only way to achieve international
peace--until we learn the basic principles of community in our own
individual lives and personal spheres of influence.
Community neither comes naturally nor is it purchased cheaply.
Demanding rules must both be learned and followed. But there are
rules!
# Chapter 1, Stumbling into community
The word "radical" comes from the Latin radix, meaning "root"--the
same word from which we get "radish." The proper radical is one who
tries to get to the root of things, not to be distracted by
superficials, to see the woods for the trees. It is good to be a
radical. Anyone who thinks DEEPLY will be one. In the dictionary
the closest synonym to "radical" is "fundamentalist." Which only
makes sense. Someone who gets down to the root of things is someone
who gets down to the fundamentals. Yet in our North American culture
these words have come to have opposite meanings...
While on one hand we bandy about the word "community" in such a
shallow, meaningless way, many of us simultaneously long for the
"good old days" when frontier neighbors gathered together to build
one another's barns. [Or for the archaic revival of tribal
lifestyles.] We mourn the LOSS of community.
Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville traveled through our young United
States, and in 1835 he published what is still considered the
classical work on the American character. In his Democracy in
America, he described those "habits of the heart," or mores, that
gave citizens of the United States a unique new culture. The one
characteristic that impressed him most was our individualism. De
Tocqueville admired this character trait immensely. He very clearly
warned, however, that unless our individualism was continually and
strongly balanced by other habits, it would inevitably lead to
fragmentation of American society and social isolation of its
citizens.
* * *
Simply seek happiness, and you are not likely to find it. Seek to
create and love without regard for your happiness, and you will
likely be happy much of the time. Seeking joy in and of itself will
not bring it to you. Do the work of creating community, and you will
obtain it--although never exactly according to your schedule. Joy is
an uncapturable yet utterly predictable side effect of genuine
community.
# Chapter 2, Individuals and the fallacy of rugged individualism
Christian theologians have reached a well-nigh universal conclusion:
God loves variety.
... we never truly learn to think for ourselves or dare to be out of
step with the stereotypes. But in light of all we understand, this
failure to individuate is a failure to grow up and become fully
human. For we are called to be individuals. We are called to be
unique and different.
We are also called to power. In this individuation process we must
learn how to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to develop a
sense of autonomy and self-determination.
Furthermore, we are called to wholeness. We should use what gifts or
talents we are given to develop ourselves as fully as possible. ...
If we are to grow, we must work on the weak spots that prevent
growth. We are beckoned toward that self-sufficiency, that wholeness
required for independence of thought and action.
But all this is only one side of the story.
... the reality is that we can never be completely whole in and of
ourselves. We cannot be all things to ourselves and to others. We
cannot be perfect. ... the reality is that there is a point beyond
which our sense of self-determination not only becomes inaccurate and
prideful but increasingly self-defeating. Yet the reality is that we
are inevitably social creatures who desperately need each other not
merely for sustenance, not merely for company, but for any meaning to
our lives whatsoever. These, then, are the paradoxical seeds from
which community can grow.
So we are called to wholeness and simultaneously to recognition of
our incompleteness; called to power AND to acknowledge our weakness;
called to both individuation AND interdependence. Thus the
problem--indeed, the total failure--of the "ethic" of rugged
individualism is that it runs with only one side of the paradox,
incorporates only half of our humanity. It recognizes that we are
called to individuation, power, and wholeness. But it denies
entirely the other part of the human story: that we can never fully
get there and that we are, of necessity in our uniqueness, weak and
imperfect creatures who need each other.
This denial can be sustained only by pretense. Because we cannot
ever be totally adequate, self-sufficient, independent beings, the
ideal of rugged individualism encourages us to fake it. It
encourages us to hide our weaknesses and failures. It teaches us to
be utterly ashamed of our limitations. It drives us to attempt to be
superwomen and supermen not only in the eyes of others but also in
our own. It pushes us day in and day out to look as if we "had it
all together," as if we were without needs and in total control of
our lives. It relentlessly demands that we keep up appearances. It
also relentlessly isolates us from each other. And it makes genuine
community impossible.
Trapped in our tradition of rugged individualism, we are an
extraordinarily lonely people. So lonely, in fact, that many cannot
even acknowledge their loneliness to themselves, much less to others.
Look at the sad, frozen faces all around you and search in vain for
the souls hidden behind masks of makeup, masks of pretense, masks of
composure. ... We are desperately in need of a new ethic of "soft
individualism," an understanding of individualism which teaches that
we cannot be truly ourselves until we are able to share freely the
things we most have in common: our weaknesses, our incompleteness,
our imperfection, our inadequacy, our sins, our lack of wholeness and
self-sufficiency. ... It is the kind of individualism that
acknowledges our interdependence not merely in the intellectual
catchwords of the day but in the very depths of our hearts. It is
the kind of individualism that makes real community possible.
# Chapter 3, The true meaning of community
If we are going to use the word meaningfully we must restrict it to a
group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly
with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of
composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to
"rejoice together, mourn together," and to "delight in each other,
make others' conditions our own."
We can define or adequately explain only those things that are
smaller than we are. ... And there are certain questions about
electricity, despite its known physical laws, that even the most
advanced electrical engineer cannot answer. That is because
electricity is something larger than we are.
[But part of us, our nervous system, utilizes electricity. That
would seem to make electricity a sub-set of what we are.]
There are many such "things": God, goodness, love, evil, death,
consciousness, for instance. Being so large, they are many-faceted,
and the best we can do is describe or define one facet at a time.
Even so, we never seem quite able to plumb their depths fully.
Sooner or later we inevitably run into a core of mystery.
Community is another such phenomenon. Like electricity, it is
profoundly lawful. Yet there remains something about it that is
inherently mysterious, miraculous, unfathomable. Thus there is no
adequate one-sentence definition of genuine community.
The facets of community are interconnected, profoundly interrelated.
No one could exist without the other. They create each other, make
each other possible. What follows, then, is but one scheme for
isolating and naming the most salient characteristics of a true
community.
* Inclusivity, commitment, and consensus
* Realism
* Contemplation
* A safe place
* A laboratory for personal disarmament
* A group that can fight gracefully
* A group of all leaders
* A spirit
## Inclusivity, commitment, and consensus
The great enemy of community is exclusivity.
Inclusiveness is not an absolute. Long-term communities must
invariably struggle over the degree to which they are going to be
inclusive. ... Communities do not ask "How can we justify taking this
person in?" Instead the question is "It it at all justifiable to
keep this person out?"
Commitment--the willingness to coexist--is crucial. ... Exclusivity
appears in two forms: excluding others and excluding yourself. If
you conclude under your breath, "Well, this group just isn't for
me--they're too much this or too much that--and I'm just going to
quietly pick up my marbles and go home," it would be as destructive
to community as it would be to a marriage... Community, like
marriage, requires that we hang in there when the going gets a little
rough. ... Our individualism must be counterbalanced by commitment.
Decisions in genuine community are arrived at through consensus, in a
process that is not unlike a community of jurors, for whom consensual
decision making is mandated.
## Realism
We are accustomed to think of group behavior as often primitive.
"Mob psychology" is properly a vernacular expression. There is, in
fact, more than a quantum leap between an ordinary group and a
community; they are entirely different phenomena. And a real
community is, by definition, immune to mob psychology because of its
encouragement of individuality, its inclusion of a variety of points
of view. Mob psychology cannot occur in an environment in which
individuals are free to speak their minds and buck the trend.
An important aspect of the realism of community deserves mention:
humility. While rugged individualism predisposes one to arrogance,
the "soft" individualism of community leads to humility. Begin to
appreciate each others' gifts, and you begin to appreciate your own
limitations. Witness others share their brokenness, and you will
become able to accept your own inadequacy and imperfection. Be fully
aware of human variety, and you will recognize the interdependence of
humanity. As a group of people do these things--as they become a
community--they become more and more humble, not only as individuals
but also as a group--and hence more realistic. From which kind of
group would you expect a wise, realistic decision: an arrogant one,
or a humble one?
## Contemplation
Among the reasons that a community is humble and hence realistic is
that it is contemplative. It examines itself. It is self-aware.
"Know thyself" is a sure rule for humility.
The spirit of community once achieved is not then something forever
obtained. It is not something that can be bottled or preserved in
aspic. It is repeatedly lost.
No community can expect to be in perpetual good health. What a
genuine community does do, however, because it is a contemplative
body, is recognize its ill health when it occurs and quickly take
appropriate action to heal itself.
## A safe place
Once a group has achieved community, the single most common thing
members express is: "I feel safe here."
It is a rare feeling. Almost all of us have spent nearly all of our
lives feeling only partially safe, if at all. Seldom, if ever, in
any kind of group, have we felt wholly accepted and acceptable.
So another of the characteristics of community is that it is healing
and converting. Yet I have deliberately not listed that
characteristic by itself, lest the subtlety of it be misunderstood.
For the fact is that most of our human attempts to heal and convert
prevent community. Human beings have within them a natural yearning
and thrust toward health and wholeness and holiness. (All three
words are derived from the same root.) ... But put a human being in a
truly safe place, where those defenses and resistances are no longer
necessary, and the thrust toward health is liberated. When we are
safe, there is a natural tendency for us to heal and convert
ourselves.
Experienced psychotherapists usually come to recognize this truth.
... With experience, however, they realize that they do not have the
power to heal. But they also learn that it is within their power to
listen to the patient, to accept her or him, to establish a
"therapeutic relationship." So they focus not so much on healing as
on making their relationship a safe place where the patient is likely
to heal themself.
## A laboratory for personal disarmament
Vulnerability is a two-way street. Community requires the ability to
expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also
requires the capacity to be affected by the wounds of others, to be
wounded by their wounds.
[A laboratory can be defined as a place designed to be safe for
experiments.]
So it is in community: it is a safe place to experiment with new
types of behavior.
An experiment is designed to give us new EXPERIENCE from which we can
extract new wisdom. So it is that in experimenting with personally
disarming themselves, the members of a true community experientially
discover the rules of peacemaking and learn its virtues. It is a
personal experience so powerful that it can become the driving force
behind the quest for peace on a global scale.
## A group that can fight gracefully
In genuine community there are no sides. It is not always easy, but
by the time they reach community the members have learned how to give
up cliques and factions. They have learned how to listen to each
other and how not to reject each other. Sometimes consensus in
community is reached with miraculous rapidity. But at other times it
is arrived at only after lengthy struggle. Just because it is a safe
place does not mean community is a place without conflict. It is,
however, a place where conflict can be resolved without physical or
emotional bloodshed and with wisdom as well as grace. A community is
a group that can fight gracefully.
That this is so is hardly accidental. For community is an
amphitheater where the gladiators have laid down their weapons and
their armor, where they have become skilled at listening and
understanding, where they respect each others' gifts and accept each
others' limitations, where they celebrate their differences and bind
each others' wounds, where they are committed to a struggling
together rather than against each other. It is a most unusual
battleground indeed. But that is also why it is an unusually
effective ground for conflict resolution.
... there is a fantasy abroad. Simply stated, it goes like this: "If
we can resolve our conflicts, then someday we shall be able to live
together in community." Could it be that we have it totally
backward? And the real dream should be: "If we can live together in
community, then someday we shall be able to resolve our conflicts"?
## A group of all leaders
Communities have sometimes been referred to as leaderless groups. It
is more accurate, however, to say that a community is a group of all
leaders.
Because it is a safe place, compulsive leaders feel free in
community--often for the first time in their lives--to NOT lead. And
the customarily shy and reserved feel free to step forth with their
latent gifts of leadership. The result is that a community is an
ideal decision-making body. The expression "A camel is a horse
created by a committee" does not mean that group decisions are
inevitable clumsy and imperfect; it does mean that committees are
virtually never communities.
The flow of leadership in community is routine. It is a phenomenon
that has profound implications for anyone who would seek to improve
organizational decision making--in business, government, or
elsewhere. But it is not a quick trick or fix. Community must be
built first. Traditional hierarchical patterns have to be at least
temporarily set aside. Some kind of control must be relinquished.
## A spirit
Competitiveness is always exclusive; genuine community is inclusive.
If community has enemies, it has begun to lose the spirit of
community--if it ever had it in the first place.
The spirit of true community is the spirit of peace.
Nor will one question that it is a spirit of peace that prevails when
a group enters community. An utterly new quietness descends on the
group. People seem to speak more quietly; yet, strangely, their
voices seem to carry better through the room. There are periods of
silence, but it is never an uneasy silence. Indeed, the silence is
welcomed. It feels tranquil. Nothing is frantic anymore. The chaos
is over. It is as if noise had been replaced by music. The people
listen and can hear. It is peaceful.
The "atmosphere" of love and peace is so palpable that almost every
community member experiences it as a spirit. Hence, even the
agnostic and atheist members will generally report a
community-building workshop as a spiritual experience.
The wisdom of a true community often seems miraculous. This wisdom
can perhaps be explained in purely secular terms as a result of the
freedom of expression, the pluralistic talents, the consensual
decision making that occur in community. There are times, however,
when this wisdom seems to my religious eye to be more a matter of
divine spirit and possible divine intervention. This is one of the
reasons why the feeling of joy is such a frequent concomitant of the
spirit of community. The members feel that they have been
temporarily--at least partially--transported out of the mundane world
of ordinary preoccupations. For the moment it as if heaven and earth
had somehow met.
# Chapter 4, The genesis of community
## Crisis and community
Genuine communities of a sort frequently develop in response to
crisis. Strangers in the waiting room of an intensive-care ward
suddenly come to share each other's hopes and fears and joys and
griefs as their loved ones lie across the hall on the "critical list."
On a larger scale, in the course of a minute a distant earthquake
causes buildings to crumble and crush thousands of people to death in
Mexico City. Suddenly rich and poor alike are working together night
and day to rescue the injured and care for the homeless. Meanwhile
men and women of all nations open their pocketbooks and their hearts
to a people they have never seen, much less met, in a sudden
consciousness of our common humanity.
The problem is that once the crisis is over, so--virtually always--is
the community. The collective spirit goes out of the people as they
return to their ordinary individual lives, and community is lost.
There is a dreadful form of psychiatric disorder that compels its
victims to lead destructively histrionic lives. The far more common
curse, however, is for us human beings to fail to live our lives with
a proper sense of drama. Here those people with an active religious
bent have another advantage. Secular people have plain ups and downs
in their lives, while we religious get to have "spiritual crises." It
is much more dignified, or so it would seem, to have a spiritual
crisis than a depression. It is also often the more appropriate way
of looking at things. But, in fact, all psychological problems can
be seen as crises of the human spirit. In my practice of
psychotherapy, more often than not I have to work quite hard to teach
people a sense of their own importance and dramatic significance.
We do not have to manufacture crises in our lives; we have merely to
recognize that they exist. [Or...] We can keep pretending that this
is not so. We can continue refusing to face the crisis until the day
when we individually and collectively destroy ourselves and our
planet. We can avoid community until the end. Or we can wake up to
the drama of our lives and begin to take the steps necessary to save
them.
## Community by design
I began to conduct "community-building workshops" with frequency. I
have been able to reach a number of conclusions with such a degree of
certainty that I know them to be facts. The most basic are these:
* The process by which a group of human beings becomes a community
is a lawful process. Whenever a group functions in accord with
certain quite clear laws or rules it will become a genuine
community.
* The words "communicate" and "community," although verb and noun,
come from the same root. The principles of good communication are
the basic principles of community-building. And because people do
not naturally know how to communicate, because humans have not yet
learned how to talk with each other, they remain ignorant of the
laws or rules of genuine community.
* In certain situations people may unconsciously stumble onto the
rules of communication or community. That is what occurred in the
communities I have already described. Since the process is
unconscious, however, people do not consciously learn these rules
as a result and therefore immediately forget how to practice them.
* The rules of communication and community building can be simply
taught and learned with relative ease. This conscious learning
allows people to remember the rules and practice them at a later
date.
* Learning can be passive or experiential. Experiential learning
is more demanding but infinitely more effective. As with other
things, the rules of communication and community are best learned
experientially.
* The vast majority of people are capable of learning the rules of
communication and community-building and are willing to follow
them. In other words, if they know what they are doing, virtually
any group of people can form themselves into a genuine community.
# Chapter 5, Stages of community making
Communities, like individuals, are unique. Still we all share the
human condition. So it is that groups assembled deliberately to form
themselves into community routinely go through certain stages in the
process. These stages, in order, are:
* Pseudocommunity -- Forming
* Chaos -- Storming
* Emptiness -- Norming
* Community -- Performing
I do not insist that community development occur by formula. But in
the process of community-making by design, this is the natural, usual
order of things.
## Pseudocommunity
The first response of a group seeking to form a community is most
often to try to fake it. The members attempt to be an instant
community by being extremely pleasant with one another and avoiding
all disagreement. This attempt--this pretense of community-is what I
term "pseudocommunity." It never works.
The essential dynamic of pseudocommunity is conflict-avoidance.
Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding, true community is
conflict-resolving.
What is diagnostic of pseudocommunity is the minimization, the lack
of acknowledgment, or the ignoring of individual differences.
Another characteristic of pseudocommunity is that the members will
let one another get away with such blanket statements. ... To avoid
the risk of conflict they keep their feelings to themselves and even
nod in agreement, as if a speaker has uttered some universal truth.
Indeed, the pressure to skirt any kind of disagreement may be so
great that even the very experienced communicators in the group--who
know perfectly well that speaking in generalities is destructive to
genuine communication--may be inhibited from challenging what they
know is wrong.
[To nip pseudocommunity in the bud] Often all that is required is to
challenge the platitudes or generalizations.
Once individual differences are not only allowed but encouraged to
surface in some such way, the group almost immediately moves to the
second stage of community development: chaos.
## Chaos
The chaos always centers around well-intentioned but misguided
attempts to heal and convert.
Chaos is not just a state, it is an essential part of the process of
community building. Consequently, unlike pseudocommunity, it does
not simply go away as soon as the group becomes aware of it.
In the stage of chaos individual differences are, unlike those in
pseudocommunity, right out in the open. Only now, instead of trying
to hide or ignore them, the group is attempting to obliterate them.
The stage of chaos is a time of fighting and struggle. But that is
not its essence. Frequently, fully developed communities will be
required to fight and struggle. Only they have learned to do so
effectively. The struggle during chaos is chaotic. It is not merely
noisy, it is uncreative, unconstructive. If anything, chaos, like
pseudocommunity, is boring, as members continually swat at each other
to little or no effect. The struggle is going nowhere, accomplishing
nothing. It is no fun.
Since chaos is unpleasant, it is common for the members of a group in
this stage to attack not only each other but also their leader. "We
wouldn't be squabbling like this if we had effective leadership,"
they will say. "We deserve more direction than you've been giving
us..."
In response to the perceived vacuum of leadership during the chaotic
stage of community development, it is common for one or more members
of the group to attempt to replace the designated leader.
The problem with the emergence of such "secondary leaders" is not
their emergence but their proposed solutions. What they are
proposing, one way or another, is virtually always an "escape into
organization." It is true that organizing is a solution to chaos.
Indeed, that is the primary reason for organization: to minimize
chaos. The trouble is, however, that organization and community are
also incompatible. I am not an anarchist. But an organization is
able to nurture a measure of community within itself only to the
extent that it is willing to risk or tolerate a certain lack of
structure. As long as the goal is community-building, organization
as an attempted solution to chaos is an unworkable solution.
The proper resolution of chaos is not easy.
## Emptiness
"There are only two ways out of chaos," I will explain to a group
after it has spent a sufficient period of time squabbling and getting
nowhere. "One is into organization--but organization is never
community. The only other way is into and through emptiness."
It is no accident that groups are not generally eager to pick up on
my suggestion of emptiness. People are smart, and often in the
dimmer recesses of their consciousness they know more than they want
to know. As soon as I mention "emptiness," they have a presentiment
of what is to come. And they are in no hurry to accept it.
When the members of a group finally ask me to explain what I mean by
emptiness, I tell them simply that they need to empty themselves of
barriers to communication. And I am able to use their behavior
during chaos to point out to them specific things--feelings,
assumptions, ideas, and motives--that have so filled their minds as
to make them impervious as billiard balls. The process of emptying
themselves of these barriers is the key to the transition from
"rugged" to "soft" individualism. The most common barriers are:
* Expectations and Preconceptions
* Prejudice
* Ideology, Theology, and Solutions
* The Need to Heal, Convert, Fix, or Solve
* The Need to Control
## Expectations and Preconceptions
Community-building is an adventure, a going into the unknown. People
are routinely terrified of the emptiness of the unknown.
Consequently they fill their minds with generally false expectations
of what the experience will be like. In fact, we humans seldom go
into any situation without preconceptions. We then try to make the
experience conform to our expectations. Occasionally this is useful
behavior, but usually (and always in regard to community-building) it
is destructive.
## Prejudices
Prejudice, which is probably more often unconscious than conscious,
comes in two forms. One is the judgments we make about people
without any experience of them whatsoever... Even more common are
the judgments we make about people on the basis of very brief,
limited experience. One reason to distrust instant community is that
community-building requires time--the time to have sufficient
experience to become conscious of our prejudices and then to empty
ourselves of them.
## Ideology, Theology, and Solutions
It is not only such ideological and theological rigidities that we
need to discard, it is any idea that assumes the status of "the one
and only right way."
In speaking of this emptying process, however, I do not mean to imply
we should utterly forsake our sometimes hard-won sentiments and
understandings. A community-building workshop in Virginia several
years ago offered an example of the distinction between emptying and
obliteration. The group was the most dedicated band of converters I
have ever encountered. Everyone wanted to talk about God; everyone
had a different idea of God; and everyone was certain she or he knew
exactly who God was. It didn't take us long to get into chaos of
magnificent proportions. But thirty-six hours later, after the group
had made its miraculous transition from chaos to community, I told
them, "It's fascinating. Today you are still talking just as much
about God as you were yesterday. In that respect you haven't
changed. What has happened, however, is the way in which you talk.
Yesterday each of you was talking as if you had God in your back
pocket. Today you are all talking about God with humility and a
sense of humor."
## The Need to Heal, Convert, Fix, or Solve
During the stage of chaos, when the members of a group attempt to
heal or convert each other, they believe they are being loving. And
they are truly surprised by the chaos that results. After all, isn't
it the loving thing to do to relieve your neighbor of her suffering
or help him to see the light? Actually, however, almost all these
attempts to convert and heal are not only naive and ineffective but
quite self-centered and self-serving. It hurts me when my friend is
in pain. If I can do something to get rid of this pain I will feel
better. My most basic motive when I strive to heal is to feel good
myself. But there are several problems here. One is that my cure is
usually not my friend's. Indeed, offering someone my cure usually
only makes that person feel worse. So it was that all the advice
that Job's friends gave him in his time of affliction served only to
make him more miserable. The fact of the matter is that often the
most loving thing we can do when a friend is in pain is to SHARE that
pain--to be there even when we have nothing to offer except our
presence and even when being there is painful to ourselves.
The same is true with the attempt to convert.
## The Need to Control
The need to control--to ensure the desired outcome--is at least
partially rooted in the fear of failure. For me to empty myself of
my overcontrolling tendencies I must continually empty myself of this
fear. I must be willing to fail.
Just as the physical death of some individuals is rapid and gentle
while for others agonizing and protracted, so it is for the emotional
surrender of groups. Whether sudden or gradual, however, all the
groups in my experience have eventually succeeded in completing,
accomplishing, this death. They have all made it through emptiness,
through the time of sacrifice, into community. This is an
extraordinary testament to the human spirit. What it means is that
given the right circumstances and knowledge of the rules, on a
certain but very real level we human beings are able to die for each
other.
## Community
When its death has been completed, open and empty, the group enters
community. In this final stage a soft quietness descends. It is a
kind of peace. The room is bathed in peace. Then, quietly, a member
begins to talk about herself. She is being very vulnerable. She is
speaking of the deepest part of herself. The group hangs on each
word. No one realized she was capable of such eloquence.
When she is finished there is a hush. It goes on a long time. But
it does not seem long. There is no uneasiness in this silence.
Slowly, out of the silence, another member begins to talk. He too is
speaking very deeply, very personally, about himself. He is not
trying to heal or convert the first person. He's not even trying to
respond to her. It's not she but he who is the subject. Yet the
other members of the group do not sense he has ignored her. What
they feel is that it is as if he is laying himself down next to her
on an altar.
The silence returns.
A third member speaks. Perhaps it will be to respond to the previous
speaker, but there will be in this response no attempt to heal or
convert. It may be a joke, but it will not be at anyone's expense.
It may be a short poem that is almost magically appropriate. It
could be anything soft and gentle, but again it will be a gift.
Then the next member speaks. And as it goes on, there will be a
great deal of sadness and grief expressed; but there will also be
much laughter and joy. There will be tears in abundance. Sometimes
they will be tears of sadness, sometimes of joy. Sometimes,
simultaneously, they will be tears of both. And then something
almost more singular happens. An extraordinary amount of healing and
converting begins to occur--now that no one is trying to convert or
heal. And community has been born.
Or the task of community may be the difficult one of deciding whether
it will or will not maintain itself. This decision usually should
not be made quickly. In the joy of the moment members may make
commitments that they shortly discover they are unable to fulfill.
The consequences of long-term commitment are major and should not be
taken lightly.
Because I have spoken so glowingly of its virtues, it worries me that
some might conclude that life in community is easier or more
comfortable than ordinary existence. It is not. But it is certainly
more lively, more intense. The agony is actually greater, but so is
the joy. [Intensity junkies?]
It is like falling in love. When they enter community, people in a
very real sense do fall in love with one another en masse. They not
only feel like touching and hugging each other, they feel like
hugging everyone all at once. During the highest moments the energy
level is supernatural. It is ecstatic.
Great power, however, can sometimes hold potential danger. The
danger of the power of true community is never the creation of mob
psychology but of group sexuality. It is only natural when a group
of people fall in love with one another that enormous sexual energy
should be released. Usually this is not harmful, but it is wise for
communities to be aware of their great potential sexuality in order
that it does not get out of hand. It may need to be suppressed. It
should not, however, be repressed. And it is wise to remember that
the experience of other forms of love, "phila" and "agape" (brother
or sister love, and divine love) can be even deeper and more
rewarding than simple erotic or romantic bonding. The sexuality of
community is an expression of its joy, and its energy can be
channeled to useful and creative purpose.
# Chapter 7, Community maintenance
[Entropy happens.] To remain such, therefore, a community must
forever attend to its own health. While external service may be its
ultimate task, self-scrutiny and the other efforts required for
self-maintenance must remain its first priority.
Every living organism exists in tension. For there to be life there
must be tension. At the level of physiology, the process of this
ongoing tension is referred to as homeostasis. We humans hunger for
genuine community and will work hard to maintain it precisely because
it is the way to live most fully, most vibrantly. Being the most
alive of entities, true communities must consequently pay the price
of experiencing even more tension than other organizations.
The parameters over which tension will most frequently be experienced
as communities struggle to maintain themselves are:
* Size
* Structure
* Authority
* Inclusivity
* Intensity
* Commitment
* Individuality
* Task definition
* Ritual
Another crucial issue was worked out in the first two years. It was
natural for the early members to probe each other and interpret each
other's lives. But gradually the group discovered that some degree
of chaos was the invariable result. All by itself it came to the
wisdom that attempts to heal or convert were generally more
destructive than supportive. As it had come to define itself as a
group that did not party, so it defined itself quite quickly as "not
a therapy group." "We are just, merely and only, a support group," it
would tell new members. "It is our purpose to love, not to heal."
Since its virtues are so great, the maintenance of genuine community
over as long a time as possible is an ideal. However, it is an ideal
on general principle, which means it is not necessarily virtuous for
each and every community to attempt to be immortal. Communities,
like individual human beings, are organisms with different life
spans, some of which, as we shall see, are more proper than others.
The longevity of a community is no more adequate a measure of its
success than the length of an individual human life attests to its
fulfillment.
We human beings have often been referred to as social animals. But
we are not yet community creatures. We are impelled to relate with
each other for our survival. But we do not yet relate with the
inclusivity, realism, self-awareness, vulnerability, commitment,
openness, freedom, equality, and love of genuine community. It is
clearly no longer enough to be simply social animals, babbling
together at cocktail parties and brawling with each other in business
and over boundaries. It is our task--our essential, central, crucial
task--to transform ourselves from mere social creatures into
community creatures. It is the only way that human evolution will be
able to proceed.
# Chapter 8, Human nature
Perhaps the first step then, toward community on a grander scale lies
in the acceptance of the fact that we are not, nor can we ever be,
all the same.
Because each of us is unique, inevitably we live in a pluralistic
society, and we take pride in the United States as a pluralistic
society.
For the fact of the matter is that we Americans live together only in
RELATIVE peace. The relationship in this country between blacks and
whites and groups of various ethnic and national origins is generally
uneasy at best. The wealthy and the poor are seldom enamored of each
other.
Through community the problem of pluralism ceases to be a problem.
Community is a true alchemical process that transforms the dross of
our differences into golden harmony.
To understand more deeply how this happens, we must also understand
at the most radical level just why we human beings are so different
and, at the very same time, just what it is that we all have in
common. We must answer the question What is human nature?
To most people a myth is a tall tale, a story that is not true or
real. Increasingly, however, psychologists are coming to realize
that myths are myths precisely because they are true. Myths are
found in one form or another in culture after culture, age after age.
The reason for their permanence and universality is precisely that
they are embodiments of great truths.
Dragons are creatures of myth. Long before the fire-breathing
fantasies of today's comic books and television cartoons, Christian
monks throughout Europe were illuminating manuscripts with
painstaking illustrations of dragons. So were Taoist monks in China.
And Buddhist monks in Japan. And Hindus in India. And Muslims in
Arabia. Why? Why dragons? Why should these mythical beasts be so
extraordinarily ecumenical and international?
The reason is that dragons are symbols of human beings. And as
mythical symbols, they say something very important about the basic
truths of human nature. We are snakes with wings, worms that can
fly. Reptilelike, we slink close to the ground and are mixed in the
mud of our animal nature and the muck of our cultural prejudices.
Yet, like birds, we are also of the spirit, capable of soaring in the
heavens, transcending, at least for moments, our narrow-mindedness
and sinful proclivities. So it is that I sometimes tell my patients
that part of their task is to come to terms with their dragonhood, to
decide whether they want most to exercise the more slothful or more
spiritual aspects of their nature.
Even the simplest of myths is multifaceted, because, like dragons, we
are multifaceted beings. Indeed, this is the very reason for myths.
Our nature is so multifaceted and paradoxical that it cannot be
captured in words that represent single, simple categories. Myths
are required to contain and embrace the richness of human nature.
Because it is multifaceted and complex, simplistic definitions of
human nature not only fail to do its richness justice, they are
extremely dangerous. Any falsity is dangerous, and the
misapprehension of human nature particularly so, since such
misapprehensions is one of the foundations of war.
The reality of human nature is that we are--and always will
be--profoundly different, for the most salient feature of human
nature lies in its capacity to be molded by culture and experience in
extremely variable ways. Human nature is flexible; it is indeed
capable of change. But such a phrase fails to do justice to the
glory of human nature. Far better is the phrase "the capacity for
transformation." It is the capacity for transformation that is the
most essential characteristic of human nature. And again
paradoxically, this capacity is both the basic cause of war and the
basic cure for war.
Since human nature is so subtle and many-faceted, it cannot be
captured in a single definition.
This capacity we have to change--to transform--ourselves is so
extraordinary that at other times when asked "What is human nature?"
I facetiously respond that there is no such thing.
And nowhere is our capacity for transformation more evident than
through the successive stages of psychological growth from infancy,
through adolescence, to adulthood.
So it is not easy for us to change. But it is possible. And it is
our glory as human beings.
# Chapter 9, Patterns of transformation
The key to community is the acceptance--in fact, the celebration--of
our individual and cultural differences. This does not mean,
however, that as we struggle toward world community we need to
consider all individuals or all cultures and societies equally good
or mature. It is simply not true.
Thus we need labor under no compulsion to feel the same degree of
attraction to each and everyone--or the same degree of taste for
every culture. So Gale Webbe wrote in his classic work on the deeper
aspects of spiritual growth that the further one grows spiritually,
the more and more people one loves and the fewer and fewer people one
likes. This is because when we have become sufficiently adept at
recognizing our own flaws so as to cure them, we naturally become
adept at recognizing the flaws in others. We may not like the people
because of these flaws or immaturities, but the further we ourselves
grow, the more we become able to accept--to love--them, flaws and all.
Over the course of a decade of practicing psychotherapy a strange
pattern began to emerge. If people who were religious came to me in
pain and trouble, and if they became engaged in the therapeutic
process so as to go the whole route, they frequently left therapy as
atheists, agnostics, or at least skeptics. On the other hand, if
atheists, agnostics, or skeptics came to me in pain or difficulty and
became fully engaged, they frequently left therapy as deeply
religious people. Same therapy, same therapist, successful but
utterly different outcomes from a religious point of view. Again it
didn't compute--until I realized that we are not all in the same
place spiritually.
With that realization came another: there is a pattern of progression
through identifiable stages in human spiritual life. But here I will
talk about those stages only in general, for individuals are unique
and do not always fit neatly into any psychological or spiritual
pigeonhole.
With that caveat, let me list my own understanding of these stages
and the names I have chosen to give them:
* STAGE I: Chaotic, antisocial
* STAGE II: Formal, institutional
* STAGE III: Skeptic, individual
* STAGE IV: Mystic, communal
Most all young children and perhaps one in five adults fall into
Stage I. It is essentially a stage of undeveloped spirituality. I
call it because those adults who are in it seem generally incapable
of loving others. Although they may pretend to be loving (and think
of themselves that way), their relationships with their fellow human
beings are all essentially manipulative and self-serving. They
really don't give a hoot about anyone else. I call the stage chaotic
because these people are basically unprincipled. Being unprincipled,
there is nothing that governs them except their own will. And since
the will from moment to moment can go this way or that, there is a
lack of integrity to their being.
"Mysticism," a much-maligned word, is not an easy one to define. It
takes many forms. Yet through the ages, mystics of every shade of
religious belief have spoken of unity, of an underlying connectedness
between things: between men and women, between us and the other
creatures and even inanimate matter as well, a fitting together
according to an ordinarily invisible fabric underlying the cosmos.
Mysticism also obviously has to do with mystery. Mystics acknowledge
the enormity of the unknown, but rather than being frightened by it,
they seek to penetrate ever deeper into it that they may understand
more--even with the realization that the more they understand, the
greater the mystery will become. While Stage IV men and women will
enter religion in order to approach mystery, people in Stage II, to a
considerable extent, enter religion in order to escape from it.
The process of spiritual development I have described is highly
analogous to the development of community. Stage I people are
frequently pretenders; they pretend they are loving and pious,
covering up their lack of principles. The first, primitive stage of
group formation--pseudocommunity--is similarly characterized by
pretense.
Stage II people have begun the work of submitting themselves to
principle--the law. But they do not yet understand the spirit of the
law. Consequently they are legalistic, parochial, and dogmatic.
They are threatened by anyone who thinks differently from them, and
so regard it as their responsibility to convert or save the other 90
to 99 percent of humanity who are not "true believers." It is this
same style of functioning that characterizes the second stage of the
community process in which the group members, rather than accepting
one another try vehemently to fix one another. The chaos that
results is not unlike that existing among the various feuding
denominations or seen within or between the world's different
religions.
Stage III, a phase of questioning, is analogous to the crucial stage
of emptiness in community formation. In reaching for community the
members of a group must question themselves. "Is my particular
theology so certain--so true and complete--as to justify my
conclusion that these people are not saved?" they may ask. Or "Could
I have swallowed the party line in thinking that all religious people
are fanatics?" Indeed, such questioning is the required beginning of
the emptying process. Conversely, individuals remain stuck in Stage
III precisely because they do not doubt deeply enough. They must
begin to doubt even their own doubt.
Does this mean, then, that a true community is a group of all Stage
IV people? Paradoxically the answer is yes and no. It is no because
the individual members are hardly capable of growing so rapidly as to
totally discard their customary styles of thinking when they return
from the group to their usual worlds. But it is yes because in
community the members have learned how to behave in a Stage IV manner
in relation to one another. In other words, out of love and
commitment to the whole, virtually all of us are capable of
transcending our backgrounds and limitations. So it is that genuine
community is so much more than the sum of its parts. It is, in
truth, a mystical body.
Aldous Huxley labeled mysticism "the perennial philosophy" because
the mystical way of thinking and being has existed in all cultures
and all times since the dawn of recorded history. Although a small
minority, mystics of all religions the world over have demonstrated
an amazing commonality, unity. Unique though they might be in their
individual personhood, they have largely escaped free
from--transcended--those human differences that are cultural.
# Chapter 10, Emptiness
Meditation can probably best be defined as the process by which we
can empty our minds.
But why? It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. So it is that the
moment we become empty something comes into our emptiness. The
virtue of meditation is that whatever comes into emptiness is beyond
our control. It is the unforeseen, the unexpected, the new. And it
is only from the unforeseen, the unexpected, the new that we learn.
Throughout the ages mystics have also been known as "contemplatives."
Contemplation and meditation are intimately related. Contemplation
is a process by which we think about--mull over and reflect upon--the
unexpected things that happen to us in our moments of meditation and
emptiness. True contemplation, therefore, requires meditation. It
requires that we stop thinking before we are truly able to think with
any originality.
However, I use the word "contemplative" in the broader sense to refer
to a life style rich in reflection, meditation, and prayer. It is a
life style dedicated to maximum awareness.
In fact, it is not even necessary to believe in God. For God, should
you so choose, substitute the word "life." If you continually ask
questions of life and are continually willing to be open and empty
enough to hear life's answer and to ponder the meaning, you will be a
contemplative.
True communities are invariably contemplative: they are self-aware.
It is one of the primary characteristics of community.
The ultimate purpose of emptiness, then, is to make room. [Room for]
the different, the unexpected, the new, the better. Most
important... the Stranger, the other person. We cannot even let the
other person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We
can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.
The unconscious is always one step ahead of the conscious mind, and
it is therefore impossible ever to KNOW that you are doing the right
thing (since knowing is a function of consciousness). However, if
your will is steadfastly to the good, and if you are willing to
suffer FULLY when the good is ambiguous, your unconscious will always
be one step ahead of your conscious mind in the right direction. In
other words, you will do the right thing even though you will not
have the consolation of knowing at the time that it is the right
thing.
Those who seek certainty, or who claim certainty in their knowledge,
cannot tolerate ambiguity. The word "ambiguous" means "uncertain" or
"doubtful," or "capable of being understood in more than one way."
And because that means not knowing--perhaps not ever being able to
know--we have great trouble with ambiguity in our culture. It is not
until we move into Stage IV of our spiritual growth that we even
begin to become comfortable with ambiguity. We start to realize that
not everything is "black or white," that there are multiple
dimensions to things, often with contradictory meanings. So it is
that mystics of all cultures and religions speak in terms of
paradox--not in terms of "either/or" but in terms of "both/and." The
capacity to accept ambiguity and to think paradoxically is both one
of the qualities of emptiness and one of the requirements for
peacemaking.
# Chapter 11, Vulnerability
Openness requires of us vulnerability--the ability, even the
willingness, to be wounded. ... The point is that if you were
deliberately to put your arm into a grinding piece of machinery, you
would be an utter idiot. You would be damaged for naught. But if
you attempt to live your life without ever being hurt, you won't be
able to live at all, except perhaps in a very softly padded cell.
There is no way that we can live a rich life unless we are willing to
suffer repeatedly, experiencing depression and despair, fear and
anxiety, grief and sadness, anger and the agony of forgiving,
confusion and doubt, criticism and rejection. A life lacking these
emotional upheavals will not only be useless to ourselves, it will be
useless to others. We cannot heal without being willing to be hurt.
# Chapter 12, Integration and integrity
We psychologists use a verb that is the opposite of the verb "to
integrate": "to compartmentalize." By it we refer to the remarkable
capacity we human beings have to take matters that are properly
related to each other and put them in separate, airtight mental
compartments where they don't rub up against each other and cause us
any pain.
Integrity is never painless. It requires that we let matters rub up
against each other, that we fully experience the tension of
conflicting needs, demands, and interests, that we even be
emotionally torn apart by them.
Since integrity is never painless, so community is never painless.
Community continually urges both itself and its individual members
painfully, yet joyously, into ever deeper levels of integrity.
Five years later still, early in my psychiatry training, I was
taught: "What the patient does not say is more important than what he
or she does say."
My favorite light-bulb joke is "How many Zen Buddhists does it take
to change a light bulb?" The answer: "Two: one to change the light
bulb and one to NOT change the light bulb."
Lest this seem silly rather than profound to the Western
one-dimensional mind, let me say that I do not consider that this is
simply "my" book. I have written it only because other people have
NOT written it: publishers, editors, booksellers, farmers,
carpenters, and others--all of whose labor was required to enable me
to perform this particular labor.
Behavior is the key. [Written like a true psychiatrist.] There are
atheists who behave like Christian saints and properly professing
Christians who behave like criminals--who are criminals. No one knew
this any better than Jesus, who instructed us: "By their fruits you
shall know them."
A consequence of this reality is that, while all forms of thinking
should be tolerated, some forms of behavior should not be.
... the attempt to exclude individuals because of their beliefs,
however silly or primitive, is always destructive to community.
# Chapter 13, Community and communication
Communication takes many forms: written and oral or verbal and
nonverbal. Similarly, there are many standards by which we can judge
the effectiveness of communication. Is it clear or unclear, verbose
or precise, thorough or limited, prosaic or poetic? These are just a
few of the parameters for such judgment. There is one standard,
however, that takes precedence over all others: does communication
lead to greater or lesser understanding among human beings? If
communication improves the quality of the relationship between two or
more people, we must judge it from an overall standpoint to be
effective. On the other hand, if it creates confusion,
misunderstanding, distortions, suspicion, or antipathy in human
relations, we must conclude it to be ineffective...
The overall purpose of human communication is--or should
be--reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove
the walls and barriers of misunderstanding that unduly separate us
human beings from one another.
But the principal purpose of effective communication needs to be
borne in mind. If it is not, the communication becomes task-avoiding.
The rules of community-making are the rules for effective
communication. The essence of what occurs in a community-building
workshop, for instance, is that the participants learn these rules.
Since communication is the bedrock of all human relationships, the
principles of community have profound application to any situation in
which two or more people are gathered together.
Not only are there basic equations between community, communication,
and peace but also between them and the concepts of integration and
integrity.
# Chapter 14, Dimensions of the arms race
Unfortunately, the arms race is very much an institution. It has
buildings, bricks and mortar, and real estate aplenty. When I was in
the army, one of its basic training centers, Fort Leonard Wood, was
the fourth-largest city in Missouri. As for budget, the arms race
has the largest in the world... to which the citizens of the United
States contribute approximately a third. It is not only big
business, it is the biggest business, employing tens of millions of
men and women.
Recently I had the opportunity to reread a book written in 1961 by
the political scientist Mulford Sibley, Unilateral Initiatives and
Disarmament. We speak of "future shock" and "megatrends" and bemoan
the rapidity of social change. Yet every word of Sibley's book is as
appropriate to the situation today as it was when written. As far as
the arms race is concerned, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. There is something
about this lack of change that not only smacks of
institutionalization but also inherently smells foul, even malicious.
It is a quality of institutions that they tend to perpetuate
themselves regardless of their appropriateness. The arms race is not
just going to go away. If it is ever going to end, it is going to do
so only by being ACTIVELY TORN DOWN.
Peacemaking, therefore, requires a call to action.
Ultimately all that is required for peace is that we overcome our
lethargy and resistance to change. To do that, however, we much
encounter our first enemy: this sense of helplessness.
The strongest and most insidious root of the arms race is the
extraordinary lack of concern about it. This apathy in response to
gross insanity is itself multirooted, but perhaps the most
significant factor involved is the general sense of helplessness
among us.
-----
The root of helplessness that I believe to be the strongest is
ignorance or lack of knowledge. People feel most helpless in the
face of the arms race, I suspect, simply because they do not
understand it. And because they do not understand it, they cannot
see the way out. It is not well understood by most psychologists and
theologians because they lack the knowledge of politics and
economics. Worst of all, it is even less understood by the
politicians and business people who are primarily "in charge" of it
because they don't understand the psychology or theology involved.
And, finally, none of them has much understanding because most of
them lack the knowledge of community. With that knowledge, combined
with an understanding of the many interrelated factors that
perpetuate the arms race, we need no longer feel helpless. There is
a way out.
Narcissism is the psychological side of our survival instinct, and we
could not survive without it. Yet an unbridled narcissism--what
Erich Fromm called malignant narcissism--is the principle precursor
of either group or individual evil.
How to discern between healthy and unhealthy nationalism is a
critical task in our shrinking world. For the reality is that there
are some places on the globe where the development of nationalism
needs to be encouraged while simultaneously there are others where
further development of nationalism needs to be vigorously discouraged.
The key to the discernment between healthy and unhealthy nationalism
clearly, then, centers around this issue of identity development, in
which the notion of the self--the "I-entity"--as a separate entity is
an illusion. We are all, in reality, interdependent. Ultimately we
are called out of a national narcissism and away from purely local
identities toward a primary identity with humanity and a state of
global community. Still, one must possess something before it can be
given up. We cannot begin the work of forsaking our identity until
we have developed one in the first place. So it is that the proper
pattern for the development of nations is, first, growth into
nationalism, then growth out of and beyond nationalism. The
discernment between healthy and unhealthy nationalism, therefore,
requires that we have an accurate sense of where a nation is in its
historical course of development.
Beyond that, the tests for healthy as opposed to unhealthy
nationalism as much the same as those to distinguish between good and
bad thinking: What is missing? How integrated is it? How much has
the person consciously tried to include all the relative variables
into her or his thinking? [Basically, critical thinking skills.]
# Chapter 15, The Christian church in the United States
The arms race is against everything that Christianity supposedly
stands for. It stands for nationalism; Jesus practiced
internationalism. The arms race stands for hatred and enmity; Jesus
preached forgiveness. It stands for pride; Jesus said, "Blessed are
the poor in spirit." It is supported by the weapons manufacturers and
the bellicose; Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers." Its
central dynamic is the search for invulnerability; Jesus exemplified
vulnerability.
Why then has the Christian Church not fought against the arms race
from the beginning? What happened to Jesus?
How could the Church so easily have lost Jesus' legacy of community
and fallen away from his commandment that we love one another?
The answer is fear. To be a true Christian one must live
dangerously. The battle against evil is dangerous.
By what failure of Christian doctrine did Christianity become largely
empty ritual and no longer a way of life?
But I can with certainty answer it in relation to the Church in the
United States today. For it has become apparent to me that the vast
majority of churchgoing Christians in America are heretics. The
leading--indeed, traditional--heresy of the day I call
pseudodocetism. It is this predominant heresy that intellectually
allows the Church to fail to teach its followers to follow Jesus.
The majority of American Christians have had enough catechism or
confirmation classes to know the paradoxical Christian doctrine that
Jesus is both human and divine. What is meant by pseudodocetism,
however, is that they then put 99.5 percent of their money on his
divinity and 0.5 percent on his humanity. It is a most comfortable
disproportion. It puts Jesus way up there in the clouds, seated at
the right hand of the Father, in all his glory, 99.5 percent divine,
and it leaves us way down here on earth scratching out a very
ordinary existence according to worldly rules, 99.5 percent human.
Because that gulf is so great, American Christians are not seriously
encouraged to attempt to bridge it. When Jesus said all those things
about being the way and that we were to take up our cross and follow
him, and that we were to be like him and might even do greater things
that he did, he couldn't possibly have been serious, could he? I
mean, he was divine, and we're just human. So it is, through the
large-scale ignoring of Jesus' very real humanity, that we are
allowed to worship him in name without the obligation of following in
his footsteps. Pseudodocetism lets us off the hook.
# Chapter 16, The United States government
What politicians chiefly do in Washington, I came to learn, is fight.
And they fight hard. They also fight dirty. And, finally, they
mostly fight each other.
What they fight about mainly is money in the form of budgets. A
budget is a concretization of priorities. But... Most of it is to
preserve or enlarge one's own slice of the budgetary pie at the
expense of someone else's slice. Deals may be cut, but I have
otherwise never saw a budget worked out cooperatively. Cooperation
is not big in Washington.
Nor is communication. The very first thing I was taught on the job
was the number-one unwritten rule: "Be very careful whom you
communicate with..."
One of the few things that keeps our government even vaguely sane is
the practice called leaking. One may think it generally occurs when
a government official leaks some piece of information to the press.
That, of course, does happen and is important, but actually the major
part of leaking consists of leaks within the government itself--when
an official from one department sneaks across the territorial
boundaries to provide information to another department. Indeed,
there is a special name for this kind of leaking: "whistle blowing."
Within the system it is regarded as the most serious offense and its
commission is dangerous. The penalties can be severe.
Such is the overall pattern of communication within our government.
As communication goes, so goes community. ... There is no community
within the government. It is pervaded by an atmosphere of constant
competitiveness, hostility, and distrust.
"That's just the way the world works," the so-called realists would
proclaim. Indeed, they would argue that it is downright
constitutional. They [our founders] very deliberately built conflict
into the system.
No, the Constitution does not require us to have a government totally
at war with itself, a government devoid of cooperation, staffed by
the mindless at the bottom and the predators at the top.
... government executives behave as if their purpose in being
together in Washington is to fight with each other.
Yet that is not their purpose. Their task is to govern. And it
could be presumed that their task could better be accomplished if
they generally worked with rather than against one another. A group
bogged down in a task-avoidance assumption--in this case fighting--is
remarkably inefficient.
Since the time of the Roosevelts we have developed a macho image of
the president as a superman who can know everything, who can be
almost everywhere at once, who can be single-handedly in total
control of the entire ship of the state. An image is exactly what it
is, and it is utterly unreal. No wonder that in 1980 we finally had
to elect an actor to fill the role.
The macho image of the president as a kind of superman has been
created and maintained because the people have wanted it. We have
wanted a Big Daddy who has all the answers, who will take care of the
bully down the block, who will not only give us a safe and secure
home but one that is luxurious and where we will be protected from
all hard knocks. The American presidency is the reflection of the
task-avoidance assumption of dependency, a creation of our own
childhood fantasies.
I look forward to the day when, asked at a press conference something
such as "Mr. President [or Ms. President], what do you plan to do in
El Salvador?," our Chief Executive will be able to respond: "Frankly,
I don't yet know much about El Salvador. I've been studying it for
several months, but it's a complicated situation down there. The
people have a long history and a culture very different from our own.
To the best of my knowledge their situation doesn't seem to be
critical, so until we have a more complete understanding of things we
won't plan to do anything in El Salvador."
We are all confronted with the task of achieving maturity.
# Chapter 17, Empowerment
We know there are rules for good communication. These rules work.
Yet they are seldom either taught or practiced. Consequently most
people, including government, business, and religious leaders, do not
know how to relate to each other.
The rules of communication are best taught and only learned through
the practice of community-making.
What to do now?
Start communities.
Start one in your church. Start one in your school. Start one in
your neighborhood.
Start your own community.
It won't be easy. You'll be scared. You will often feel that you
don't know what you're doing. You'll have a difficult time
persuading people to join you. Many initially won't want to make the
commitment, and those who are willing to [they] will be as scared as
you. Once you get started it will be frustrating. There will be
chaos. Most will consider dropping out, and some probably will. But
hang in there. Push toward into emptiness. It will be painful.
There will be anger, anxiety, depression, even despair. But keep
going into the night. Don't stop halfway. It may seem like dying,
but push on. And then suddenly you will find yourself in the clear
air of the mountaintop, and you'll be laughing and crying and feeling
more alive than you have in years--maybe more alive than you've ever
been.
But don't feel you have to do anything. Remember that being takes
precedence over doing.
But as you search for people to join you, there are two guidelines.
One is to be wary of people who have a very big axe to grind. All of
us have our little axes, and it is proper that we should have pet
causes and projects. We do not have to give these up to form
community, but we do have to have the capacity to lay them aside,
"bracket" [contain] them or transcend them, when appropriate, in the
interests of community. A person who lacks the maturity for such
bracketing or transcending will not make a good candidate.
The other guideline is to seek out people who are different from you.
If you are a dove, try to find at least one hawk for your community.
You need hawks. Since birds of a feather tend to flock together, it
will not be easy to find women and men different from you. Only
remember that genuine community is inclusive and that if you are a
wealthy white Democrat, you have the most to learn from the poor, the
blacks and Chicanos, and the Republicans. You need their gifts to be
whole.
Once your community is established, there is yet another guideline:
remain inclusive.
One of the things a calling to be an individual of integrity means is
a calling to speak out, to be outspoken. We are called to overcome a
psychology of helplessness, of reticence. If we see a lie, we are
called to name it a lie. If we see insanity, we are called to name
it as such. Don't avoid the subject of the arms race at a party just
because it might be divisive. Yes, there are some who might find it
upsetting, but perhaps they need to be upset. There are others who
will respond to your outspokenness with gratitude for that leadership
that gives them the courage to speak out in turn.
author: Peck, M. Scott (Morgan Scott), 1936-2005
LOC: HT65 .P44 |