this blog is my attempt to think through culture change. it's also a door into discussion, and it's open -- open to many minds and much change! only our collaborative mental motion can provide the momentum that pushes the movement, changes the culture.
2. what is contemporary american life?
work a lot. play a little. shop a lot. enjoy a little. in short, contemporary american life is little life. instead it's a whole lot of excess. we want too much, buy too much, and waste too much -- and aren't satisfied enough! this phenomenon, commonly called the progress paradox, seems to especially affect young people. our generation is wealthier, has more modern conveniences, and is better educated than those of the past but we lack basic human requirements: stable close relationships, a sense of community, a feeling of safety, a simple path to adulthood and the workplace (twenge 136).
3. what is contemporary american life? reconsidered.
the vision of innovation, which our country was founded on, is still here -- it's just well-hidden. it resides within a subtle yet growing subculture dubbed "cultural creatives." since the 1960s, 26 percent of american adults – 50 million people – have made a comprehensive shift in their worldview, values, and way of life ( ray 4). though such millions currently lack a strong group identity, they continue to catalyze several kinds of cultural change, thus improving both their own lives and larger society. they're creating such change by, quite basically, leading ordinary lives in extraordinary ways. because they care about life they pay attention to it; and because they pay attention to it they question it over and over. there are slightly fewer cultural creatives age 18 to 24 simply because young adults are still summing up what their values are. our generation is looking for a different way of life but we need more guidance.
4. then what's the problem?
though many americans want change, they don't talk about it. as one everyday american notes, "we’re allowed to talk about the wrong things in our culture. we’re silent about the things that matter the deepest to us. we’re public about our hairdos, clothing, cars, and that stuff. i think it ought to be reversed” (ray 56). likewise, futurist robert nelson points out, "we have no theory to guide us. whether it’s in economics or health care or education, confusion is growing. it's not yet visible enough in most places to be a clear signal, but one of the ways i read it is in the general cynicism of society. i think most of us know about this turmoil, and we’re afraid to talk about it. in a sense, we’ve got a funny kind of open secret, where we all know that we’ve got some very hard moral, intellectual, spiritual homework to do together, but nobody wants to say so” (ray 56). only by saying so, however, can culture really change
furthermore, we're timid about considering and pursuing what we really want -- in fact, we hardly know what that is. while we value the individual, we ironically neglect to give it real, critical attention. instead, we allow contemporary culture to convince us that as long as we follow its rules, we're great and life is grand. for many, it's safest to subscribe to society's idea of material success. arguably, however, this is running the real risk -- the risk of dehumanizing our very selves to a point of thingness.
to avoid such dehumanization, we need to talk the talk -- need to assert, "what do you really want out of life? let's think and talk about it. let's figure this out together. i'll help you to help yourself -- to see that positive change is always possible." i've never heard such words; that's the problem. part of the solution, however, is that i just said them myself.
5. what's the solution?
put simply, america needs a collective shift in consciousness. put otherwise, however, it needs you, me, and everyone we know to change our minds -- to really change our minds. this is hard but so worth it. doing so entails first acknowledging personal, cultural, and even global uncertainties. as futurist john naisbitt states, "we are living in the time of the parenthesis, the time between eras... a great and yeasty time, filled with opportunity.” but it is so, he adds, only on two critical conditions: if “we can make uncertainty our friend” and “if we can only get a clear sense, a clear conception, a clear vision of the road ahead" (ray 235). at first this claim seems a contradiction. ray and anderson, however, clarify that "when the road before you leads through a dark wood, the entry point for the future is uncertainty itself. the sign on the threshold reads 'this way is unknown'" (236). to fully cross this threshold, we must find the right forum and format for discussing questions, implementing innovation. more immediately, however, we must act on our individual and collective consciousness.
6. how do i start?
you start acting on your consciousness by stopping -- by stopping automatic action. as mentioned earlier, humans are not things. we are not mindless nor are we mechanistic. we are, however, creatures of habit. right now it seems we have more bad habits than good ones. we work too much, and we veg too much. we shop too much, and we waste too much. but excess, quite fortunately, has an easy antidote: pay attention!
paying attention to what we do and how it makes us feel often is called the practice of "mindfulness." very rarely do we consciously focus on the present moment. as journalist carrie mclaren puts it, "it's the human tendency to operate on autopilot, whether by stereotyping; performing mechanically, by rote; or simply not paying attention. although exceedingly common, few people... realize the extent to which they live mindlessly" (mclaren). this realization alone, however, is half the work. indeed, the practice of mindfulness most basically entails 1) recognizing that our focus is not on the present moment, and 2) returning to the present moment.
by paying attention to present moments, we realize that our true wants are also our true needs. we don't really want a 60-hour work week, piles of products, and waste out the wazoo. we've only thought this because we've been taught this. mindfulness, however, helps us to learn that "getting the most out of life" has little to do with "getting" anything. life maximization, it turns out, best occurs through moderation. together, mindfulness and moderation enable deliberation, or well-intentioned living. as psychologists kirk brown and richard ryan explain, "consciousness, when brought to bear on present realities, can introduce an element of self-direction in what would otherwise be non-consciously regulated, controlled behavior" (115). such practices, in other words, enable us to direct ourselves away from mainstream culture's detrimental flow and, instead, to find our own flow -- a flow that brings us towards more and more life.
7. how do i go with the flow?
the notion of "flow" was first proposed by the prolific psychologist mihaly csikszentmihalyi. this experience entails, "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. the ego falls away. time flies. every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost" (geirland).
flow can occur in all sorts of experiences, at work or play, but usually involves specific components:
-- we have clear goals.
-- we have immediate feedback.
-- challenge is balanced by our skills.
-- there are no distractions.
-- our action and awareness are merged.
-- we lose our self-consciousness.
-- normal time disappears.
-- the process has its own meaning (csikszentmihalyi creativity 111-113)
only a minority of us, however, currently experience flow regularly. the point here, however, is that we need to make flow happen -- we need to find it, and then find it over and over again. as csikszentmihalyi explains, "when a person cannot build a self based on flow, he or she tries to build a self with the help of material goals and material experiences. these include competitive striving for wealth and power and seeking pleasure in its various forms, such as passive leisure and consumer behavior" (kasser 101). such materialist strivings are associated with lower levels of life satisfaction and self-esteem (102). plus, passive leisure and consumer behavior are hardly pleasurable; csikszentmihalyi claims that people very rarely report flow in disengaging activities -- even if they're commonly considered "relaxing" ("finding"). still, however, we continue to settle -- continue to convince ourselves that video games, idle gossip, and sprees after sprees keep us happy enough ("finding").
but happy enough? what happened to more than enough? what happened to excess? "just enough" isn't an american typicality. why don't we want, like everything else, an abundance of quality experiences -- of life at its finest? because finding flow requires effort -- an effort we fail to exert because we don't realize how essential it really is.
8. is this about me and we?
flow is both a personal and transpersonal practice; it starts from, yet reaches beyond, the individual. currently, we tend to stay within ourselves. exclusively. and elusively. ironically, we can't fully understand ourselves unless we get outside ourselves.
getting outside oneself actually equates to expanding oneself. as paul ray and sherry anderson remark, "giving and receiving is not simply about individuals. it is about community: in latin, cum and munis, 'giving together.' in a real community, people share their personal life experiences" (306).
to better share our experiences, however, we need a language that catalyzes culture change -- a way of communicating that doesn't just relay information, but also wisdom.
we all have wisdom, and we all have words. for either to really mean anything, however, they must flow -- flow between me and we and beyond. this is conversation, good conversation. csikszentmihalyi, in fact, calls it "social flow." as he explains, "a successful interaction involves finding some compatibility between our goals and those of the other person or persons, and becoming willing to invest attention... when these conditions are met, it is possible to experience the flow that comes from optimal interaction... a good conversation is like a jam session in jazz, where one starts with conventional elements and then introduces spontaneous variations that create an exciting new composition" ("finding").
so yes, this is about me and we. isolated individuals and idle chatter simply aren't enough -- aren't even "american" in the true, progressive sense of the word. we, you and i, need an innovative flow of wisdom. as csikzentmihalyi states, "the evolution of consciousness requires that we... create ideas, feelings, relationships, and objects that did not exist before" (kasser 94). we need, then, communities of creative conversation -- cafes of culture change.
9. how do we talk the talk?
all great cultures have had a vital informal public life (oldenburg xi). this life thrived in "third places" where people could gather, put aside the concerns of work and home, and enjoy good company and conversation (oldenburg). such third places -- including cafes, gardens, pubs, piazzas, etc. -- beheld a certain type of space: open space.
open space, in this sense, is more psychological than physical. it's a way of thinking and talking that expands peoples' sense -- and consequent realization -- of possibility. as writer and activist ann weiser explains, "there's a role for open space meetings because whatever the world is changing into has never been here before, and the only wisdom we have about how to be in it is fuzzy, unclear, and uncertain. what is clearest in us is likely to be the old forms, the old wisdom, with defined outlines and familiar words. so we need a style for coming together that lets us honor and listen to what is new in each of us. we need to give each other time to find what is new and unclear and uncertain, and slowly put it into words, words that will sound strange at first as we forge new understandings."
indeed, many people are already forging new understandings via collaborative conversations. multiple national and international organizations, for example, host commonplace gatherings with the specific purpose of progressive dialog. better yet, these organizations also teach people how to incorporate such dialog into their daily lives -- into their most mundane yet momentous interactions. as juanita brown, co-founder of the world cafe, asserts, "it is still my deepest belief that it is through conversations around questions that matter that powerful capacities for evolving caring community, collaborative learning, and committed action are engaged -- at work, in communities, and at home" (2). conversations that cause change, most basically, are those that create open space -- in whichever place!
such conversations often catalyze new revelations commonly called "collective wisdom." as writer and management consultant margaret wheatley notes, "it is the realm of collective intelligence, of the wisdom we possess as a group that is unavailable to us as individuals. this wisdom emerges as we get more and more connected with each other, as we move from conversation to conversation, carrying the ideas from one conversation to another, looking for patterns, suddenly surprised by an insight we all share. there's a good scientific explanation for this, because this is how all of life works... we humans got confused and lost sight of this remarkable process by which individual actions, when connected, lead to much greater capacity" (brown xii).
conversation is a part of our human nature -- and so is questioning. according to theobald, "our society is still coming up with super-sophisticated answers to super-obsolete questions: the task today is to discover the new questions" (theobald). likewise writer suzi gablik points out, "the question is no longer how did we get here and why? but where can we possibly go, and how?" (ray 236). new questions enable new possibilities, and new possibilities enable new culture. indeed, the first place we can go, gablik continues, "is toward sustaining a new culture" -- a culture of questioning (ray 236).
to get more life, thus, we must ask for more life; we must ask each other, over and over, with an ever-open openness. this is talking the talk.
10. how do we walk the talk?
talking is walking. conversation is a form of action, a creation of change. as veteran conversationalist anne dosher asserts, "every societal change process i knew of started with an informal conversation in which men and women - young or old - were witnessed and 'heard into speech,' sharing their dreams and hopes for making a difference around something they cared about. in being truly seen and heard, people were transformed and discovered their mutual commitment to act. that small group then went on to invite other groups into the conversation and the change became more and more real" (brown 213). if good, conversation is not only an action in itself; it's also a catalyst for more action! as brown notes of the world cafe, "we're discovering that when people care about the questions they are working on and when their conversations are truly alive, participants naturally want to organize themselves to do whatever has to be done, discovering who cares about what and who will take accountability for next steps" (38).
who will take accountability for next steps? who will join the cultural creatives in walking the talk -- in being the change? indeed, the most important effect of conversation, according to ann weis, is this one: "that we let each other be more than we have already been. that's how newness emerges, in us, and in the world" (weiser). likewise, writer and activist zaid hassan emphasizes that "to be is to act and to act is to be. there can be no polarization and no split between being and acting. we cannot pretend that by simply ‘being’ we are not acting, in most cases our ‘being’ serves to prop up the dominant system" ("subverting"). if we don't find our own flow, for example, the current of mainstream culture is guaranteed to catch us. it'll carry us into more and more mindlessness, materialism, and resource waste.
today's generation, at the very least, knows we don't want that. we're living in a time of transition -- a time of especially great uncertainty. writing of social change in "such a scheme," activist bill mckibben notes, "it barely matters where people begin, and in a certain sense it doesn’t matter what they accomplish at any given time... what’s crucial is the process, the momentum" (211). change is already everywhere. the first question, thus, is a matter of when. when will young americans claim culture change -- assert their want, need, and will for more life? we're already considering it; already discussing it; and we're already, in subtle yet significant ways, being it. still, however, let's be it MORE -- as the new americans, let's think, talk, and BE MORE CHANGE.
No comments:
Post a Comment