For after the election, based on a talk about my book, A Wider Lens: How To See Your Life Differently
“The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving” –Rebecca Solnit
“Remember that harmony is inextricably bound up with the conflict from which it sprang” —Terry Dobson
Given the existing polarization and the recent extreme adversarial election in America, it is ever more apparent how little we know of each other, especially when we share the basic needs that sustain us. What common attributes do we possess across the different contexts and institutions of our lives? How do we cope? How do we love and work? How is it to be with Me? What future desires and differences do we aspire to? How do we perceive and act toward conflict?
We tend to perpetuate polarization when we engage in and sustain adversarial dynamics. Gregory Bateson described it as schismogenesis, which means creating division. It can take symmetrical forms or behavioral patterns, such as the arms race or a couple accusing each other of who is to blame for their unhappiness. This can result in escalating outcomes as each side attempts to improve their advantage. It can also occur when one person or group puts another in a complementary submissive pattern, such as bullying and being demeaning. Either way, it produces injurious double bind (being between a rock and a hard place)consequences.
What we can learn from these stifling paradoxes is to embrace conflict. To do so depends on an emerging curiosity, where the eventual tending to the needs of others is paramount. It's a continuous process of using a wider lens to encourage collaborative learning, unlearning, exploring, and improvisation. These are challenging times with much at stake for future generations; social anxiety is at its highest level in years. It affects all ages and seeps into our everyday cultural institutions.
We need to be mindful. A commonly held belief about being mindful is to have a "beginner's mind," especially when dealing with conflicts. This is no easy task, given that we are experiencing a multitude of increasingly adversarial standoffs threatening us and our world. Most individuals try to avoid conflict or, at the least, view it negatively. Like the weather, everyone talks about it but seldom agrees on how to deal with it. The beginner's mind is meant to initially understand how nature works, which, in essence, is the yin/yang process of creativity where conflict is neither good nor bad; it just is.
Any artist will attest to that special moment when a piece of art takes form, a result of tension and insight. Michelangelo described how he saw a beautiful statue in the dirty slab of marble he carted to his studio. This is because the map is not the territory; like a word is not the thing it describes, what exists in real life is quite different from how we think of it. One must courageously embrace the aesthetic terrain, the human metaphor for nature, full of many wonderful outcomes resulting from conflict. To do so is an embodiment of all that is simultaneously beautiful and messy.
I have been a student of Aikido, a martial art based on peace and harmony, for over thirty years. Most recently, I have been involved with Nora Bateson, president of the International Bateson Institute, and her wonderful process of Warm Data, “which is information about the interrelationships that integrate elements of a complex system.” Both forums recognize that personal change requires one to be mindfully present by participating in what possibilities may arise to feel more interdependent with all aspects of one's life. Here, we can acquire the wisdom of knowing nature's “complexity,” which is defined as something being “interwoven” and which cannot be undone but continues to change.
What I learned on the Aikido mat during classes and participating in Warm Data has helped me in my everyday interactions and to know that despair is the other side of joy. Both these experiences continue to teach me the value of mutual learning (or “blending”), which supports interdependency and dealing with conflict. With Warm Data, it is the interactive sharing to see how life coalesces toward vitality in unseen ways. I still use many Aikido principles in my practice as a psychotherapist to help others find harmony. George Leonard, who was a former president of the Association of Humanistic Psychology and an Aikido Sensei (Teacher), recommended a simple mindful process when you are in conflict. He described it as “taking a hit in life.
Painting “Here and Now” by Natasha Rabin (C)
Firstly, he suggested experiencing and acknowledging what we are feeling. Secondly, ground yourself and breathe deeply as you bring your attention to the place right below your navel. Thirdly, become aware of the additional energy/Ki/Chi (defined as our life force in Japanese and Chinese) that you now have available due to the circumstances of taking a hit. Lastly, think of all your newly assembled energy as part of the universal Ki/Chi and how to use it wisely.
Dealing with conflict
There are many options in life to deal with the ongoing opposing forces and energy that come our way. The Buddhist doctrine of “suffering” exemplifies a perspective that the world does not always work the way we would want it to. If two people are walking toward each other on a narrow sidewalk, one must give way to make room to pass the other. It is usually the least hassled way that prevails. “Blending our energies in harmony, ” according to Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido,” is a way to reconcile the world.”
In his book Aikido in Everyday Life, Terry Dobson, who was one of the first Americans to study in Japan with Morihei Ueshiba, describes different responses to conflict. We can fight back, withdraw, parley, do nothing, or use deception. The problem, according to him, is that we must manage our feelings to make a good choice. This is where widening one’s lens helps one perceive all situations and how each context interfaces with other contexts. Success in this endeavor “will lie in finding your center and retaining it or regaining it if it gets lost.”
Terry wrote a wonderful essay that was republished in the original Chicken Soup for the Soul, edited by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor, where he describes being on a tram in Japan and seeing a man bullying others. His first reaction was to get ready to use his martial arts skills to subdue this fellow. However, as he started to approach the agitator, an elderly man sitting on the tram yelled for the bully to come over to him. When the elderly man asks what is bothering him, the bully begins to cry, explaining that his wife had just passed away and he lost his job. Terry leaves the bus, sees the old man hugging and comforting this fellow, and contemplates the many options to merge and blend with others.
Rethinking conflict
“Warm Data is driven by a process that is described as “symmathesy,” which generates “mutual learning through the process of interaction between multiple variables in a living entity.” When shared narratives are contextualized, we can create the opportunity to improvise and experience evolving possibilities for many concerns. The outcome is that these possibilities offer a segue to seeing our interdependency as it exists in nature yet is seldom respected. It is a systemic learning process that understands how the whole is more than the sum of its parts, counter to the prevalent cause-and-effect thinking that is at the root of our adversarial problems. Rather than trying to fix the different parts of our world in isolation, which doesn’t allow them to be in relationships, it encourages understanding how each context is simultaneously part of wider or “transcontextual” levels. For example, depression can be seen in its complexity, which is interconnected to economics, employment, lifestyle, social support, etc., rather than an isolated label.
As we approach the holiday season in this era of extreme polarization, or for that matter, any time of the year, there will be many reminders and encouragements of peace and goodwill. Will joy to the world prevail, or will business, as usual, continue after the holiday season? During the First World War, the war to end all wars, a Christmas truce allowed soldiers from both sides to share moments of being together to celebrate the essence of what that holiday embodied. They exchanged gifts and stories of their lives and families, only to go back into their trenches and resume the horrors of the bloodiest war the world had ever witnessed at that moment in history.
What produces such cataclysms and horrors? Is it the unequal distribution of the resources that sustains us or the lack of empathy and caring for the whole of humankind without gender, race, and identity discrimination? In the days immediately after 9/ 11, there seemed to be no division of loyalties. I was able to cross the street near my office, met by an almost surreal kindness and caring that before was a life-threatening event met with yelling and middle-finger-pointing.
In surveys seeking to understand conflict, most say they are uncomfortable with it. Yet, nature evolves and allows the emergence of life’s wonders from conflict that is mutually shared in a win-win manner. Aestheticism and creativity grow from the grist and energy of conflict and differences.
It seems that when we humans, regardless of our differences, stop and share in a mutual manner each other’s needs, desires, and different contexts of life, there is an innate rhythm within us that savors collaboration. Greg O’Connor, the author of The Elements of Aikido, clearly articulates this as a way that conflict “…takes us to our shared humanity and gives us viable alternative tools of handling life’s challenges.” I believe we all know deeply and profoundly that by seeing things in context — even with the ever-present awareness of polarization— there is the mitigating essence that offers us a transition, a liminal moment to create interdependency, harmony, and the opportunity to sustain it.
Collaboration is a shift in perspective; it allows for a process in which any two individuals in the universe can find their relationship by “tuning in to” and “being with” rather than “doing things to each other.” It is time to listen and care for each other through non-adversarial forums that go beyond imposed fragmentation and pseudo-separateness. What is the pattern that produces polarization and imposed opposites? How can we not share concerns and attempt to enlighten those who feel they have nothing to lose? Is there an opportunity to listen and synchronize through the common emotional and physical survival needs? In what ways can mutual learning enhance our relationships? How can we avoid the injuries of environmental, cultural, and racial discord? How can we strive to tend to and care for each other?
Here are a few questions that may prime your motivation to alter beliefs about conflict and move toward harmony:
· Have you ever been in a conflict situation where the outcome could have been less injurious had you considered other options?
· How can you create a wider lens and resolve situations of profound differences?
· How would creating win-win alternatives influence your day-to-day interactions?
· In what ways would viewing conflict and differences as a means for mutual learning produce harmony that can influence your daily and others in your community?
· How can you transform being victorious from a personal accomplishment and make it beneficial for everyone in your life?
· In what ways would listening and sharing how we all have similarities despite our political and religious views make a difference in your life?
Thank you for reading this; comments or dialogue are appreciated. www.drkennethsilvestri.com