ENSLAVEMENT AS FEAR OF CHANGE
Agency, Choice and Resilience
Yago Abeledo: Joanne, welcome to this blog where we seek to find creative ways to deconstruct slavery in today’s world. I believe this complex reality of enslavement is the result of unprocessed traumatic experiences throughout history. The experience of trauma paralyses growth as we fear change. American author and management consultant Margaret Wheatley says, “Strangely, we assert that it’s a particular characteristic of the human species to resist change, even though we’re surrounded by tens of millions of other species that demonstrate wonderful capacities to grow, adapt, and change.” There is potential for wisdom, awe and humility as we encounter life’s unstoppable resiliency. I believe deeply that enslavement results from an inability to understand what energy is and how it connects us.
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| Deepak Chopra |
Joanne Lauterjung Kelly: Thank you, Yago, It’s an honor to have this conversation with you, in the company of such distinguished practitioners and creative thinkers. I appreciate the amazing variety of voices you’ve assembled here, and have learned so much from reading the interviews.
Yago: Joanne, you have been strongly
influenced by American writer and mythologist, Joseph Campbell, who speaks
about living “waste land lives.” He
says his impression is that many of his friends are baffled; they’re wandering
in the waste land without any sense of where the water is - the “source that makes things green.” I
believe hidden in Western society has a very different kind of enslavement.
Could you share with us your thoughts on this waste land, and your own journey toward
this source of growth and nourishment?
Joanne: Yes, I think this waste land
has a lot to do with a Western definition of success that focuses on achieving
a certain level of material comfort. When the emphasis is on consumption rather
than creation, we lose sight of what nourishes us, what makes things green.
Water needs to flow, but we work so hard to contain it and then it becomes
stagnant.
When you talk about Western society and
enslavement, I think about a system that encourages us to reward a few people
at the top of the economic ladder at the cost of not getting our own needs met.
The thing is, we help create and maintain this system with every purchase we
make, either consciously or unconsciously. But there are some who are opting out
of this system. There are great examples all across North America of
co-housing, cooperatives, and intentional communities trying to escape the waste
land.
In terms of those with power to shape and
maintain the system, I think they’re enslaved in a spiritual waste land. It’s
easy to forget that oppressors are traumatized by their actions against others.
I don’t believe you can do harm to someone else and not do serious damage to
your soul in the process. So when we talk about historic, or inherited, trauma,
this applies to descendants of colonizers as well.
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| Brené Brown |
According to Brené Brown, a professor of social work at the University of Houston, adults in the U.S. right now are the most in-debt, obese, addicted and medicated in history. So what good is all that privilege if we’re unhealthy and unhappy? This is a kind of enslavement to a reward system that goes against our best interests.
Yago: Thanks for introducing your
personal experience and understanding of the American society. Now I would like
to process with you the different qualities of the Spirit as presented by
Deepak Chopra. We stand on the threshold of an important time in Conflict Transformation where we are exploring what John Paul Lederach calls "the below and the beyond."
Chopra says the
Spirit uses attention and intention for transformation. Ten years ago you were
in a near-fatal accident, and in your forties you reflected deeply about the
meaning of life and your role in the world. You don’t have children and asked, “If I am not going to bring a person, a
being, into this world, then what am I going to give birth to?” You began
to live your life more intentionally. Could you share with us how attention and
intention have transformed your life to this point?
Joanne: Well the accident was
certainly a wake-up call. I was newly married, which was a good thing, but I
wasn’t happy in my job, I wasn’t healthy and I felt directionless in life. I
knew things weren’t in alignment, but didn’t quite know what to do about that. I
decided to go paragliding for my 40th birthday in an attempt to face
my fears as I got older. I went tandem with an instructor and after about 20
minutes (which was spectacular, I have to say), our sail partially collapsed,
and down we went – falling about 160 feet, through the trees and onto a
mountain. Miraculously, neither one of us suffered any head or spinal injuries,
but we broke quite a few bones.
I had a transformational moment when we
first landed. I had trouble breathing, and thought that my lung had been
punctured. I was convinced that that was it – I only had a little while to
live. I laid there, staring up through the trees at the sky and thought, “Well, there are worse ways to go.” I
was completely and utterly at peace. For the first, and only, time in my life I
let go of absolutely everything. I let go because I thought I had no other
choice. It was a glorious feeling, this feeling of surrender and inner calm.
I’m no longer afraid of death, but that experience left me longing to capture
that feeling again. I’ve come close through meditation, but haven’t managed to
surrender as fully. I suppose the gift in this longing has been to constantly
work at letting go and not hold on to things for very long. A challenging
process, even given the best childhood.
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| Kurt Lewin |
At the heart of transformation is change of
some kind. Change in thought patterns, change in perceptions, change in
attitude, change in behaviour. Often an imposed change triggers a choice to
make other changes. Or sometimes we dig in and refuse to change. I think a
willingness to enter into, or engage with, what Lewin calls “secure
disequilibrium”, that state of uncertainty and of not knowing, requires trust
and a perception of safety. When we willingly embrace what feels like chaos we
pull ourselves into the present moment, and find the source of clarity and
reality in what is, as it is, rather than our wishes, fears or projections.
Much easier said than done, of course!
Yago: As you say, it looks to me
that many of the problems that enslave us are due to our inability to engage
meaningfully with reality, with what is happening right here and now. Deepak Chopra insightfully
describes the energy of Spirit as timeless, defenceless, ego-less, and in
constant search for communion. These original characteristics of the Spirit get
twisted around and lost during times of conflict. How would you relate
enslavement with this inability to deal with the here and now?
Joanne: Going back to the idea of
trust and perceived safety, I think this colors everything. At the core of
slavery is the dehumanization of other human beings and a denial of our
interconnectedness. The ego wants separateness, to be unique and different,
which is often achieved by creating competition and dividing that
interconnectedness into categories and rankings. We may call this human nature,
but we’ve also been given the ability to see and analyze the ego from another,
less selfish and universal perspective. So which aspect of our nature will win
out?
For me, a paradox of this competitive
perspective is that it tends to make us less able to deal with reality. It
makes us more fearful and more inclined to perceive threat.
Yago: The intelligence of Spirit is non-linear, contextual,
relational, intuitive, inspiring, holistic, nourishing, wise, and does not
behave in a win/lose manner. In 2002 you underwent a type of therapy called Eye
Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR for short. EMDR trainer, Dr.
William Zangwill, says “There’s a lot of
research that demonstrates that we process intellectual material in a different
part of the brain than we process emotional material. So what happens is we can
know something in one part of the brain and we can believe it totally, but in a
different part of our brain we can still have a very strong and negative
emotional reaction.” Joanne, could you tell us what brought you to this
therapy and how did you benefited from it?
Joanne: Any big, traumatic event
triggers unresolved issues, and I was searching for a way to work on these
issues, and to put the accident into perspective. A friend recommended EMDR,
and I read a book about it before I found a practitioner, and it seemed like a
good choice for me. I’m not an expert on EMDR, but I’ll explain it as best I
can. EMDR uses a variety of side-to-side eye and body movements that help the
right and left hemispheres of the brain communicate with each other in order to
move traumatic memories from the “reptilian brain” (the hypothalamus and limbic
system), where traumatic experiences are kept in a constant loop, to our
frontal cortex where we’re able to process events and file them away. EMDR is
different from talk therapy in that there’s a lot of internal work that
happens, and the therapist checks in from time and time.
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| Danna Hicks |
Another tool I like
to work with for self-awareness is the Johari Window. It has four quadrants
looking at our public selves, our private selves, our blind spots and the
unknown. My husband and I have a joke between us, that whenever one of us is
avoiding something we call it “ostrich-ing” – sticking our head in the sand, like
an ostrich, thinking that if we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. I have to get
to a place where I’m willing to contemplate my blinds spots and the unknown in
order to have a strategy for how I’ll deal with those things. We can’t know and
see everything all the time, we’ll always have blind spots and the unknown. But
we can bolster our resilience to trust that we can cope with difficult times.
Yago: The Spirit learns from its own experience, keeps endlessly evolving, is
unpredictable, full of creativity… and manifests its whole self in any
single part (“holographic”). These amazing characteristics of the Spirit open
our eyes to self-awareness as something that’s innate. Now, the holographic
dimension of the universe challenges and endlessly expands our search for
identity. What can you say about this?
Joanne: I think what Irish social psychologist Diarmuid O’Murchu said in your interview with him sums it up nicely, that the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts. This also ties in with what Margaret Wheatley writes about, and this shift we’re going through from a Newtonian
perspective with its focus on the components of a system, to the quantum
physics view that the whole is comprised of exchanges of energy, and the
components of a system can change depending on these exchanges. So trying to
label and characterize parts of a system is elusive, because their nature will
change depending on other things going on.
Having lived a life that was, for the most
part, “outside the box” and where my basic needs were met, it’s easy for me to
think of identity is such a fluid way. But that’s also part of the privilege I
carry. In Myanmar I’m considered an “expat” which implies I have a choice to
live where I want to live, whereas refugees or immigrants don’t have that
luxury. They’re driven by a need to leave an untenable situation. I think the
fluidity with which we’re able to look at identity is in proportion to the
level of safety and security we feel, and the extent to which our basic needs
are met.
This is a big question! I’m not sure I
answered it. I think I’ll have to reflect on it some more.
Yago: American
author and lecturer, Ken Wilber, talks about these multiple
intelligences: cognitive, interpersonal, psychosexual, emotional and moral. You
say that at the heart of theorizing, it’s important to have emotional
intelligence (the awareness of self and others). How important is the
incorporation of multiple intelligences in the peacebuilding field?
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| Howard Gardner |
I believe understanding that we all have
different learning styles and different ways of “knowing” is key in
peacebuilding. How can we properly assess a situation if we’re not looking at
all those factors? Our effectiveness hinges on our ability to communicate
effectively, connect and build good relationships, design programs that address
multiple learning styles, and take into consideration how these are all
affected by cultural norms and beliefs. But this isn’t unique to peacebuilding.
These are important regardless of what field you’re in.
Since 2009 I’ve been incorporating
arts-based techniques for dialogue and teaching into my facilitation work, and
the one context that’s been the most difficult is academia. From my experience,
I would say this context greatly privileges highly verbal, linear thinkers. If
you make it to the graduate level of education, odds are that you rely heavily
on your cognitive abilities, rather than sensory or emotional intelligence. And
this preference for linear thinking tends to weeds out nonlinear, creative
thinkers which has implications for research, publishing and those higher level
managers and leaders whose decisions affect many, many people. Of course, there
are those rare individuals who straddle both worlds pretty successfully (there
are lots of arts and music PhDs out there), but they still have to play by the
rules of the dominant culture. I have to
wonder, what kinds of ideas and perspectives are we missing by asking creative
people to abide by the dominant paradigm, rather than asking those in the
dominant paradigm to see the world through a creative, nonlinear lens?
The problems of the world need all the creativity
we can muster, and to be more fluid and less categorical. We need a balance,
and we need all kinds of thinking. But the scales are tipped so far in the West
towards this rational, linear thinking, and we’re exporting that approach
throughout the world through business and development. Donor-driven
accountability measures are sometimes more concerned with efficiency and
timelines, than relationships and creativity or nurturing entrepreneurial
efforts. A cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work – just because something worked
in one culture doesn’t mean it will be effective in another. We need to nurture
local creativity and entrepreneurship so that communities can come up with
their own visions and solutions.
Yago: I believe in the need of
being more fluid and less categorical. This supposes dying to oneself and engaging
into the flow of life as it manifests first of all in our bodies. In that line,
you also say that with emotional intelligence you need a certain level of comfort
with risk-taking and vulnerability. We have to develop the capacity of
listening to our bodies, especially to shame. What
can you say about that? How much have you been influenced by Brené Brown?
Brené Brown’s work has helped me see my own
shame “traps” and lessons learned early in life, as well as the ways shame
shapes popular culture. I think sarcasm, for example, is a form of shaming and
is very prevalent in American movies and TV. And there’s such a strong link
between Brené Brown’s work and Donna Hicks’ research on dignity violations,
because at the heart of many dignity violations is shame. If I publicly
humiliate you or, sometimes worse, ignore you, I’ve basically said that I’m not
interested in a relationship with you, you’re not worthy of my time and
attention. Maybe you don’t care, or maybe this wounds you deeply. But denying
the connection that I believe we already share violates the dignity of those
we’re cutting off.
There’s a great article Brené Brown wrote
for the Houston Chronical in 2007 about finding voice in the wake of the
controversy with the Dixie Chicks, where radio DJs were saying they should just
shut up and sing. She writes that the price we pay to stay silent is losing our
authenticity, and asks how we can be authentic when we’re working so hard to
make everyone around feel comfortable and not threatened. This resonated
greatly with me because I grew up with strong messages to stay silent. Healthy
debate and discussion were not encouraged, and there’s a lot of shame that goes
with that. Brené Brown’s work is helpful and insightful in drawing that link to
shame and vulnerability, and it asks us to come to terms with managing those
feelings so we can get on with being our authentic selves.
Joanne: I believe there’s strength
in vulnerability, by letting go of the ego and arriving at the interconnected
“I”. The ego wants privacy, to be separate, to control what others know about
us. If we acknowledge our interconnectedness, then we need to acknowledge that
we’re more alike than we are unalike, in all our insecurities and flaws – what
we refer to as “warts and all”. I find
that comforting because along with shame and silence is the fear that I’m different,
I’m not normal somehow, I don’t deserve love and attention.
U.S. culture glorifies celebrity, and
there’s this idea that there’s a limited supply of love, talent and attention
to go around. You have to scratch and claw your way to the top, to get your
share. I call this “supply side emotions” and I think it’s a complete myth.
There’s more than enough to go around, and we do each other a disservice by
imposing this competitive atmosphere onto everything we do. I applaud people
who’ve worked hard to master something – a sport, singing, playing an
instrument. But we’ve “professionalized” sports and music to the point where
people stop being active or singing or playing an instrument because they’ll
never win American Idol or an Olympic Medal.
Yago: Another characteristic of the
Spirit is that it manifests itself in seasons, circles and rhythms, vibrating
at different levels/frequencies. You have recently reflected on the role of
Music in Conflict Transformation. Norwegian
political science professor, Sabrina Petra Ramet, says: “Music is not merely a
cultural or diversionary phenomenon. It is also a political phenomenon. Its
medium is suggestion. Its point of contact is the imagination. Its voice is
that of the muse. All of this makes music an unexpectedly powerful force for
social and political change.” Why Music, what is it
that music brings that’s unlike any other approach to transforming conflict?
Joanne: Sabrina Petra Ramet’s quote
comes from her book, Rocking the State,
in which she looks at how music shaped politics in Eastern Europe and Russia
after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rock music was used as a form of dissent,
an expression of longing for identity and free speech. Pete Seeger’s folk music
defined a generation in the U.S. and promoted a message of peace. There are
refugee and Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps in Africa where people dance and sing every day, despite
losing everything. Music can be an amazing source of resilience, identity,
connection and expression.
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| Music's power to unify can be used to empower or manipulate. |
What gives music its power is that it actually
alters the frequencies around us, and vibration has a powerful effect on us
physically. An operatic soprano can shatter a glass because she sings a note at
a particular frequency that disturbs the frequency of the molecules in the
glass, and it shatters.
Yago: Very interesting! Now, in
looking at the physiological effects of music you discovered some specific
brain functions and body responses to music that addresses the healing power to
music. Could you share with us your findings?
Joanne: I used to work for an
organization that offered music therapy, and learned that music therapy offers
a wide range of benefits. It’s used in hospitals to alleviate pain, counteract
depression or fear, and help patients regain movement in physical therapy. It’s
used in nursing homes to help people maintain physical, mental and social
functioning. And it’s used with people of all ages to teach communication and
problem-solving skills, and improve physical coordination. I’ve seen autistic
kids light up and communicate during music therapy in ways they don’t the rest
of the time.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks and cognitive psychologist
Daniel Levitin have both written about the physiological effects of music. One
of the studies I found fascinating was research that shows that after losing
the function of a limb for an extended time, music can be used to re-map the
signals in the brain so the person can regain use of that limb. Another
interesting study, especially for those of us who love to sing in choirs, is
that communal singing releases oxytocin in the brain, sometimes called the “love
hormone”, which has a comforting effect. Studies also show that even a brief
exposure to music lessons as children creates more efficient neural circuits in
our brain. So the research is pretty compelling.
Yago: Another very interesting role
of music is its capacity to build communities. You say that your experience
with music and community building have been very rich and rewarding. Could you
share your experience on this regard? What examples of ethnic groups around the
world use this capacity to integrate music in community building?
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| Joanne singing at SPI 2013 |
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| Mbuti Pygmy Chanting |
There are so many examples of cultures
around the world that use music to build community. In fact, I think most
cultures do this. It’s in the West, where we’ve professionalized and commodified
music, that the emphasis has shifted away from community building. We’ve lost
the participatory nature of music. Going to a concert and having a shared
experience is a form of community building, but by being only consumers of
music we’re missing out on the benefits of playing music and creating it for
ourselves, and with each other. A hundred years ago, in the West, after a meal
everyone would go to the parlour room, someone would play the piano and
everyone would sing. Once the radio came along, and then later TV, we shifted
to listening and watching more than creating. This is slowly changing, though –
the pendulum is swinging back. There are cities in the U.S. that are seeing a
resurgence of young people playing folk music. I think people are hungry for a
shared experience and there are music, dance and community theatre groups in
lots of cities now.
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| Drumming at SPI 2013 |
Yago: You say that in many cultures
around the world music and spirituality are one and the same. How does music
in-spire (in the Spirit) us?
Joanne: Most religions have music
as a core part of their worship: the Muslim call to prayer, Jewish cantors,
Christian hymns, Buddhist chants. There’s usually something musical in most
rituals because it is so powerful. And most places of worship (cathedrals,
mosques, temples) are typically very resonant spaces that accentuate the
vibrations of the music, or the sound of someone’s voice.
For me, what’s inspiring is a sense of
one-ness, of unity with something bigger than myself. Playing Bembe, for
example, I was in communion with the other players, with everything around us,
with Spirit. I think about this invisible blanket of energy around us, and
going back to the soprano that can shatter a glass by hitting a note with a
certain frequency. Playing music in community means we’re all vibrating at the
same frequency, and I find that really comforting. In your interview with counsellor and professor Annmarie Early, she talks
about “the resonant rightness of atunement” which I think is a really lovely
way to put it. Allowing ourselves to be in sync with ourselves, others and
Spirit.
There’s also this idea of what peacebuilding professor and author John Paul Lederach speaks of as confluence – different aspects of paradoxical
understanding or insight that flow alongside each other. The most common rhythm
in Africa, one that really defines most African music, is actually two
different meters played at the same time. Meter in music refers to the number
of beats in a measure, for example a waltz is in three, and lots of Western
music is in four, Irish jigs are in six, and the Balkans have lots of odd
rhythms in seven, eleven sometimes fifteen. In Africa many songs are in six and four at the same time, and that gives the music a rhythmic complexity that
really makes you want to dance. And it works because there are places where the
different meters line up in a predictable way, and places where they don’t line
up that adds complexity and interest. I think this is a great metaphor for how
we can find the places where we align, allow the places where we don’t to
simply be and maintain some humility that we’ll never understand it all.
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| John Paul Lederach |
Yago: You talk about John Paul
Lederach, a few years ago you had the privilege to be engaged in his SPI
course, “The Moral Imagination”. This course helped you make sense of many of your
intuitions. You say that music enables us to access our creativity and
imagination to allow us to see things in new ways. How fundamental is it for
human beings to have access to creativity and imagination? How can music help
us in this regard?
Joanne: John Paul’s class, which
was co-taught with the wonderful and talented Herm Weaver, was such a turning
point for me, and a confirmation of things I’d felt but couldn’t articulate. In
your interview with John Paul he talks about listening for poetry in everyday
language. We’re encouraged to be reflective practitioners at the Center for
Justice and Peacebuilding, and John Paul really lives that – he has an artist’s
sensitivity and willingness to go “below and beyond”.
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| Jazz |
As kids we used to lie on our backs and
describe what animals or shapes we saw in the clouds. Kids are naturally
imaginative, and I think it’s why it’s great to be around kids. They remind us
of processes that keep our brains elastic and able to dream and visualize.
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| Kong Nai |
Yago: I see that music can also be experienced
as a tool for resiliency, helping us to navigate difficult times. Could you share
with us the role of techniques such as visualization and Appreciative Inquiry
in building resilience?
Joanne: Let me start with Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry is based on the theory that systems
change in the direction in which they inquire. So if you look at what’s
working, rather than only focusing on what’s not working, you’ll cultivate more
of what’s good and right in the system. One of the supporting theories of
Appreciative Inquiry is called positive affect – that positive feelings lead
people to be more flexible, creative, integrative, open to information and
efficient in their thinking. All of which leads to more resilience, the ability
to cope with adversity, and helps people develop an increased preference for
variety and to accept a broader range of behaviour. This is a strengths-based
approach, and is not meant to be an alternative for looking critically at
what’s not working, but rather a choice in moving forward to focus on what we
want more of. What we focus on increases, so let’s give time and energy to
what’s working so we can have more of that.
Regarding visualization, there’s a great
story about the American boxer, Mohammed Ali. An interviewer once asked him how
he prepares for fights, and if he visualizes winning. For a while there was an
emphasis in sports psychology on positive visualization – just visualize
crossing the finish line, or making the perfect shot. Ali said he didn’t do any
of that. Instead he visualized taking the blows. He visualized himself dealing
with adversity, and was known for his stamina and ability to keep fighting for
a long time. Now, I’m not a fan of boxing, but I like this story because it’s
such a great reminder to prepare ourselves for the long road ahead, and to
visualize ourselves coping with whatever comes along.
Appreciative Inquiry says to look for
what’s working, and Ali’s approach is about visualizing how we cope with
difficulties. Both of which are key for building resilience. Not only do we
function in relationship with others, meanings and events, we also function in
relationship with the structures we create inside ourselves, our
self-perceptions. We are greatly influenced by the degree to
which we’re able to be flexible, inventive, and/or critical towards structures
that influence our sense of agency (the degree to
which we are aware of the choices we make and the control we have of our
actions), both internally and externally. In using a strengths-based
approach, people are often surprised at how much resilience they actually have,
and at the degree to which they are able to exercise some sense of agency. For
example, I recently interviewed a group of refugees who began our conversation
with statements of helplessness and victimization. But later in the
conversation, when I asked about ways they stay strong during difficult times,
they had lots of examples of choices they made to stay strong and connected,
and get through the hard times. At the end, one of them said, “We never talk
about these things, but we should.” They were exercising more agency than they
realized.
Yago: It is quite obvious that in
today’s Western society media can manipulate
reality, and tends to focus on what is not working. You talk about the idea of
“heliotropism,” the ability to grow positively towards what is good and right.
You would like to create a blog called HelioVision to offer
an alternative, and feature stories of what IS working. Could you expand
on your vision?
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| Sunflowers grow to face the sun throughout the day. |
I’m not sure if the world needs yet another
blog, but my idea is to research and highlight stories of what’s working. The
further I get into peacebuilding work, the more I see great examples of
successful initiatives that change and empower lives for the better, but I
rarely see those in the media. There are a handful of publications that have
this same focus – Yes! Magazine and The Utne Reader come to mind. I’m sure
there are more. But I’m constantly on the lookout for these kinds of stories,
and the link between creativity and adaptability. I think this is an area in
need of advocacy.
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| Victor Frankl |
Joanne: Viktor Frankl wrote that we
can’t avoid suffering but we can choose how we deal with it. Even after the
Nazis had taken everything away from him, he still said they couldn’t take away
his ability to think. Now, I can’t begin to understand what it felt like to be
in his shoes, but I find inspiration in his ability to still make meaning out
of horrific circumstance, and his words speak to
the power of thought and the reality we create in our minds.
Yago: Deepak Chopra keeps saying
that another quality of the Spirit is that expresses in different states of
awareness like deep sleep, dreams, waking state, glimpsing the soul, cosmic,
divine and unity consciousness. Could you share with us how agency and
awareness applies to resiliency?
Joanne: Well, it’s just a theory I’m
exploring, but I think there’s a strong link between perception of agency and
resilience. I haven’t done any follow-up yet with the group of immigrants I
spoke with, but my sense was that having greater awareness of the agency they
were exercising challenged the idea that they’re helpless and that, “There can
be no peace on earth until Jesus returns.” In most of the literature I read,
agency is often referred to in Western terms and carries an assumption that
agency is to be valued above all else. I don’t agree with that, but I do think
once we recognize our interconnectedness, and that our actions have an impact
on the whole, we temper agency for the sake of agency with a responsibility to
each other to both share and receive.
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| Joanne Lauterjang and David Brubaker |
Yago: Another key characteristic of the Spirit is that it is constantly undergoing transformation. You have just been co-teaching with Eastern Mennonite Unversity professor David Brubaker the course on Developing Healthy Organizations. Margaret J. Wheatley’s book “Leadership and the New Science” was a core component of this course. Could you share how meaningfully new discoveries in science are challenging our ever-transforming organizational thinking?
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| "Chaos Theory" (Yago, Dublin, 2013) |
Yago: In this line, Joseph Campbell
invites us to go beyond traditional concepts. He says that this is not only for
our own lives, but because life is different from the way it was and the rules
of the past are restrictive of the life process. The moment life process stops,
it starts drying up (…) That’s what hell is: the place of people who could not “yield their ego system to allow the grace
of a transpersonal power to move them.” You have always been very
interested in how we perceive the world. How do we communicate has always fascinated
you. Could you share with us the importance of words/concepts in communication?
What is the role of communication in an ever-changing world?
Joanne: Well, going back to
Margaret Wheatley’s book, one of the gifts from quantum physics is the realization
that what makes up our world is the exchange of energy, not the things
themselves. A chair is a chair because of how the molecules in it are
interacting with each other. So it’s about the communication and exchanges
going on. What appears to be “empty” space is actually an invisible blanket of
constant energy and activity. If we were tuned into that all the time, we’d be
completely overwhelmed, so our brains are selective about what we
perceive. These exchanges are all forms
of communication, and it’s a complicated process. I have a thought and I decide
I want to communicate that thought to you. I choose my words based on the
language I speak, the vocabulary I know, the interpretation I have of what I
want to say, which is colored by my history and life experiences, and then I
also take into consideration what I know about you and how I think you’ll
interpret my words. Then you hear what I say, apply your own history and life
experiences and come up with your interpretation. And with each of those steps comes
the opportunity to either get it right, or get it wrong, or miss the mark. Add to all that the nonverbal cues we’re
sending and receiving. UCLA psychology professor
Albert Mehrabian did some studies in the 1960s on
the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal communication, and found
that about 90% of what we interpret is based on non-verbal cues: 60% is body
language, and 30% is tone of voice. Only 10% are the actual words used. I think
this is why, when we travel, we can often communicate if we don’t know the
language – we have to rely more on non-verbal clues, and we make gestures or
draw pictures. And imagine the potential for misunderstanding in e-mails once
you’ve stripped out body language and tone of voice from communicating. This is
why more and more people are using emoticons online – to make up for the
missing information.
Yago: In a previous interview on
this blog, David Brubaker invites us to see not only the “agents of change” in
organizations, but to also welcome the crucial role of the “agents of
stability”. At the same time, another characteristic of the Spirit, as
enumerated by Deepak Chopra, is to be self-protective with a capacity to
maintain balance. He uses the example of the human body as a system that seeks to find balance. What could you tell us about this need in
reality to find constant balance?
Joanne: The
themes of creation and destruction are ancient concepts, and nature is full of
examples of this. I think the Industrial Revolution ushered in an era where we
have expectations of stability and predictability that go against a natural ebb
and flow. Not that I don’t appreciate some of the conveniences and medical
advances that came about, but the mind set that we can control everything is
having a devastating effect on the environment. And because of this mind set,
we tend to reward agents of stability within organizations. But the agents of
change provide creativity and important feedback about what’s going on that’s
not being talked about.
This is the yin and yang of life, and it
reminds me of something Joseph Campbell said in an interview with Michael Toms.
He talked about how Christianity has sought to banish the dark side, whereas
many indigenous and Eastern faiths believe you tame it by acknowledging it. You
give it respect in order to keep balance between the light and the dark.
There’s an acceptance of this balance – that both exist. For example, I grew up
being told, in the 1970s, that race shouldn’t matter, and that the color of
someone’s skin has nothing to do with their abilities - or who they are as a person. And on one
hand, my mother was right – race shouldn’t
matter. But it does – very much so. So by trying to banish this dark side of
U.S. culture, and not talk about it, I was blindsided growing up to the depth
and strength of racism and hadn’t developed the language to talk about it.
I find it puzzling that, with so much
diversity in nature, we humans have such a strong tendency to homogenize
things, to want to be like everyone else, or make everyone else be like us.
Where does the fear of what’s different come from? Diversity and mutations are
what enable plants to thrive over time, so where did we get this attachment to
predictability and stability?
 |
| Jeff Foster |
Joanne: I
love that line, that the war between darkness and light never actually began.
There is no war – it’s all a dance, a communion like Father Berry says. I’ve
found aikido principles very helpful in understanding
this. Aikido is based on the idea of blending with the energy coming
towards us, rather than meeting it with resistance. When a force in one
direction is met with equal force in the opposite direction, you get the
strongest clash possible. But when force in one direction is met with equal
force in the same direction, when we go with the flow, we’re now in a position
to modify it from “within”. In other words, if I allow myself to completely
empathize with what someone’s telling me, if I join their energy I enter into
their perspective. From there I can make a more informed decision about
redirecting the energy. This has been a very helpful perspective for me, when I
can remember it, in responding to anger or what I perceived to be a threatening
force coming at me. Of course, overwhelming, violent force is not something we
can blend with, but the discipline of aikido is to remain present and alert in
order to respond non-violently whenever possible, and in staying present we can
more accurately assess the situation.
 |
| Joseph Campbell |
Joanne: Well, I
think this is extremely difficult. We are who we are because of our lived
experience, as well as inherited trauma or privilege or perspective from our
families and ancestors. I agree that what is happening right now is most
important, but I think we need to understand and acknowledge what’s led up to
this point. It’s part of the process of allowing things to become more complex
before we can look for the patterns in what’s happening now. I think the more fluid we can become in looking back,
being in the moment, and looking forward, the broader perspective we’ll have in
coming up with ideas about what to do next.
Yago: How do you envision the role
of the arts in peacebuilding?
Joanne: It’s been helpful for me to
think of it in three different categories: self-expression, engagement and
healing. Self-expression includes artists who want to convey a message or
expression of peace, or seek to promote non-violence. The arts can also be used
to help people engage with one another and create a different kind of dialogue.
For example, teens can often better express themselves creatively because they
haven’t necessarily developed the language or perspective to articulate their
thoughts and feelings. If you bring people together from different cultures,
expressing complex thoughts or deep feelings is often easier visually or
creatively because that’s not typically the vocabulary we learn in a second
language. Lastly, music and art therapy can help promote healing by introducing
new forms of expression to process trauma.
Not only do the arts provide tools for
program design, but I think they also help prevent practitioner burn-out.
Self-care in the field is a rare thing; it’s easy to put our own needs aside
when helping those whose needs are so immediate. But weaving arts activities
into practice can also make the practice healing for the practitioner.
Another area where the arts play a big
role, is in ritual. Lisa Schirch, professor and
founder of 3P Human Security, writes about the power of ritual in her
book, Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding.
She talks about how ritual can help with difficult or painful transitions by
creating a container for expression and meaning. Often what differentiates ritual
from our everyday activities is the intentional use of an aesthetic experience
– music, incense, lighting, beautiful objects.
Yago: You have been weaving
arts-based methodologies into your consulting and facilitation work since 2008.
Last year you had the chance to design and facilitate a workshop in Fiji on
creative dialogue for civic education efforts. Could you share with us your experience
and the challenges faced?
 |
| Creative Constitution Submissions Workshop at Fiji |
We had 26 trainers attend the
workshop and went over three different arts-based techniques looking at three
themes of reconciliation that I’d gotten from John Paul and Angela Lederach’s
book, When Blood and Bones Cry Out: creative writing (looking at the issue of
‘home’), Theatre of the Oppressed (looking at ‘safety’) and colláge/visual art
(looking at ‘having voice’). The main challenge was mainly the quick timeframe and getting the word out. Because there were so many other trainings going on related to the constitution process, and because the concept of using the arts as dialogue is something new, it took a lot of one-on-one conversations with people to explain what it was we’d be doing and how it could be helpful for them in their work. But other than that, people took to it very quickly. There’s such a strong tradition of storytelling that’s very alive in Fiji, and the participants were incredibly receptive to the exercises. I’ve since heard back from a couple attendees who used the techniques in their civic education outreach, and they were really pleased with how things turned out. I think they could see the potential of introducing a new “vocabulary” into dialogue around an issue that’s controversial.
 |
| Engaged Pedagogy |
Joanne: Well,
earlier I was talking about how the West privileges left-brained, linear
thinkers, and that’s certainly true in higher education. For that reason, I
think how these kinds of activities are introduced is important, and students
should be able opt in to this type of class. Having a conversation on the first
day about honouring and accommodating different learning styles is also
important so that everyone understands why these activities are being used. The
goal of weaving arts-based methodologies into a theory class was an ambitious
one. For me, one of the main take-aways from that experience was the importance
of taking time to design a course from the ground up, looking at how
experiential learning weaves in with the core concepts. Debriefing activities
is extremely important so that the link back to the curriculum is explicit and
understood.
 |
| Engaged Pedagogy during Theory class at CJP |
Yago: Joanne, let us end this inspiring
interview talking about compassion. British theologian Karen Armstrong has had
a great influence on you. She calls herself a “free-lance monotheist”. She and
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu created the Charter of Compassion. How
has Karen Armstrong inspired you, and what can you tell us about the Charter for Compassion?
 |
| Karen Armstrong |
Joanne: Yes, Karen Armstrong is a
prolific writer on faith and religion, and a scholar, and what I admire about
her is her tenacity and desire to keep learning. She was a nun in her 20s, then
left the convent and wanted nothing to do with religion for 30 years. When she
did her research for her book, A History of God, she not only saw
commonalities, but also the futility of trying to put faith into words. She
says, “What we say about God can never measure up to the indescribable
reality.” I developed a fondness for mysticism when I lived in Turkey and
learned about Rumi and the Dervishes, so her words speak to me about that
quality of mysticism, that acceptance and humility that faith requires a leap
of faith, a willingness to believe even though there is no way to prove it, or
words to describe it. The important question for me is, how does faith
translate into behavior?
And thank you for mentioning the Charter
for Compassion. It’s something not a lot of people are aware of, and I think
it’s a call for us all to live with integrity and “walk our talk” – all of us:
governments, businesses, civil society groups, families, and individuals.
Compassion needs to go in all directions – top-down, bottom-up, middle-out.
When I was working in Fiji, there was a lot of suspicion about anyone who chose
to work with the military. Guilt by association, I suppose. But striving to
understanding does not equal condoning, and again going back to Donna Hick’s
work on dignity, I believe denying the humanity of oppressors keeps them locked
in their behavior and choices. The motivation for the Charter came from Karen
Armstrong’s belief that our chief task in the world today is to build a global
society that acknowledges every faith, every religion and that we all, faithful
and faith-less, should make a contribution towards living together.
Yago: Joanne, thanks a lot for your
wonderful witness. Indeed you have shared with us your amazing journey of
processing life. Also your courageous and original engagement in the peacebuilding field.
Many will benefit from your words.
Joanne: Thank you so much for this
wonderful opportunity to dive deeply into these issues. Your blog is indeed a
gift to us all, and I look forward to future interviews. I wish you peace and
blessings on your journey.
