Workbook Report — 12/13/17

My friend and (excellent) pro bono writing coach, Mike Larsen, told me that many readers skim or skip the Preface and Introduction and go straight to Chapter One. So the opening chapter should contain strong material, and the first sentence and opening paragraphs should be particularly strong. With those thoughts in mind, I’ve moved much of the material that was in the Preface to Chapter One, influenced by some of Mike’s suggestions about specific content that he felt was most important and compelling.

Feedback is welcome on the new 2-½ page, 1100 word opening, which follows:

Transform the System with Compassion: A Workbook (Draft)

Chapter One

If we change ourselves, we can more effectively change the world. If we change the world, we can more effectively change ourselves.

It’s not either/or. Neither one of those tasks is more important than the other. One need not come before the other. It’s both/and. Each is equally important. They can be simultaneous. Intertwined, personal and social transformation strengthen each other. One recent example is the #MeToo rebellion against sexual harassment.

James Baldwin said:

A day will come when you trust you more than you do now and you will trust me more than you do now. We will trust each other…. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay.

Accepting death and other inherent limits to the human condition is one price we must pay. Humans can’t do everything they’d like. There’s no guarantee that children can grow up to be whatever they want to be if they work hard enough. Admitting mistakes is another price we must pay to nurture mutual trust. Apologizing can be even more difficult. To become better than we are, we also must overcome many damaging habits that society has embedded in us, such as arrogance, egotism, bias, and the lust for power.

In “Our Elites Still Don’t Get It,” David Brooks wrote:

The branches of individual rights are sprawling, but the roots of common obligation are withering away. Freedom without covenant becomes selfishness. And that’s what we see at the top of society, in our politics and the financial crisis. Freedom without connection becomes alienation. And that’s what we see at the bottom of society — frayed communities, broken families, opiate addiction. Freedom without a unifying national narrative becomes distrust, polarization and permanent political war…. Change has to come at the communal, emotional and moral level.

The problems we face are multiple. Big Money has too much power. Our society is creating rigid classes based on inherited inequality. Wages are stagnant. Technology is displacing workers. We’re losing the battle against global warming. The so-called “free market” is breaking loose from regulations that protect stability and promote the general welfare. Growing individualism isolates individuals and undermines community. More people have fewer friends with whom they discuss personal problems. Our culture is becoming more selfish and materialistic. The war on terror creates terrorists.

Elizabeth Warren brought the crowd to its feet at the 2012 Democratic Convention when she declared, “The system is rigged.” Donald Trump used the phrase to help win the White House. Bernie Sanders almost won the Democratic nomination with his criticisms of “the system.” The term appears frequently in pop culture.

This workbook argues that the System involves all of our institutions, our culture, and ourselves as individuals. All of those elements are interwoven. They reinforce one another and enable people to climb one social ladder or another. Those higher up look down on those below, and those lower down worship or resent those who are higher.

This rankism is an unjustified assertion of moral superiority. When that assertion is  internalized, it affects people at their core, their basic identity. Typically, it’s an acceptance of essential inferiority. Only one person is at the top of each ladder, and they don’t stay there long.

Few individuals treat each other as human beings who are essentially equal. Mutual respect is rare. You dominate or submit.

The comic strip character Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and it is us.” He had a point. Each of us shares responsibility for the state of the world. To deal with the System, we must work on ourselves as well as society.

The Transform the System Network proposes that Americans transform their nation into a compassionate community dedicated to the common good of all humanity, the environment, and life itself. If other nations do the same, we’ll be better able to cooperate to serve that purpose.

Whatever your political or religious beliefs, we invite you to participate in this project. We seek common ground, rooted in the belief that if we listen to our conscience and love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we can help each other become better, more engaged, more moral human beings. For most people, this effort involves being in tune with the Great Spirit, God, Creator, Christ, or Higher Power. But words are secondary. Words cannot capture the Mystery. What matters most is compassionate action.

If grassroots activists overcome our personal issues and improve our ability to work together, we can address the many crises we face, help America live up to its highest ideals, and help one another liberate our higher angels. By building a massive grassroots movement able to act together in unison, we can help America cultivate its creative seeds and discard the oppressive ones.

We can restructure our society to make it more democratic, with constructive criticism challenge selfishness, and with firm compassion restrain those who violate the rights of others. We can improve our mental and moral qualities — our character.

In Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World, Tina Rosenberg reports on how “from the affluent suburbs of Chicago to the impoverished shanties of rural India” mutual support teams have helped smokers stop smoking, teens fight AIDS, worshippers deepen their faith, activists overthrow dictators, addicts overcome addictions, and students learn calculus.

Such teams can help activists overcome their activist-related addictions, set aside counter-productive habits, and become more effective. Those teams can also help motivate politically inactive people to become more active.

This workbook offers an easy-to-learn method that small teams can use to support one another in those personal and political change efforts. That method is simple: once a month, when meetings begin, each member briefly reports, in confidence, about their personal and political change efforts. Many groups can easily incorporate that method into their activities.

That reporting can help hold members accountable to their commitment to self-development and political action. Knowing they’ll be asked to report on it, members will be more conscious of their commitment during the month.

Even though such reporting might take only sixty seconds a month, it can be oppressive and folks can resist the idea out of apprehension. To guard against the risk of oppression and alleviate that resistance, we suggest these guidelines:

  • Emphasize confidentiality.
  • Each member defines their own goals.
  • There’s no peer pressure to immediately correct any particular pattern of behavior.
  • Each participant can discuss anything.
  • Each one merely reports; there’s no “cross-talk.”
  • With consent, feedback and advice can be offered after the meeting adjourns.
  • Additional meetings can be scheduled to go into matters more deeply.

 

Workbook Report — 12/11/17

More good feedback has prompted me to make changes to the one-pager — which I see as both the first part of the Preface to “Transform the System with Compassion: A Workbook (Draft)” and a flyer for broad distribution.

If it all comes together, I still envision going to meetings and offices with copies of the flyer and the workbook to invite participation, which might lead to invitations to talk and discuss the issues more.

From down under in Australia, Yahya Abdal-Aziz questioned the focus on “the system.” That comment prompted me to add a new opening to explain that approach. Hopefully quoting Elizabeth Warren and James Baldwin also adds some passion.

Yahya’s comments and a comment from Jakob Possert, who’s from Austria, prompted me to try to use a global perspective more, and clarify that references to the U.S. are for the purpose of illustration.

Numerous comments on the widespread resistance to “revelatory reporting to groups” prompted me to quote Baldwin and Tina Rosenberg’s Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World. (I told her that book was the most important book I had read in a long time.) I’m also having a good dialog with Michael Nagler about the issue. I encourage you to read that important dialog, at the top of the report below.

The latest draft of the workbook will always be at https://goo.gl/dFtih1. The “one-pager” is the first part of the Preface down to the +++++ divider.

All of the feedback follows.

RE: “REPORT ON RESPONSES TO 11/26 DRAFT”

Michael Nagler:

Glad you’ve gotten good responses.  Are you aware of our experiment?  Should have mentioned it earlier.

Wade:

Thanks for the kind words. I like the format for the Hope Tank. Might the participants “check in” with a brief report on their personal and political change efforts before you discuss social and cultural concerns?

MN: Glad you’ve gotten good responses.  Are you aware of our experiment?  Should have mentioned it earlier.

WH: Thanks for the kind words. I like the format for the Hope Tank. Might the participants “check in” with a brief report on their personal and political change efforts before you discuss social and cultural concerns?

MN: We often check in, with whatever people want to share.  But of late we’ve been plunging right into the group discussion, continuing here and there with one another afterwards.

WH: Do you believe that checking in with brief reports on personal and political change efforts could be of value? If you did, you might help develop a model that could be replicated elsewhere, to widespread benefit.

MN: I’d want to make sure it wasn’t sounding like a test.  The people in our HT generally do some of that spontaneously.

WH:

I hear you. That’s an important point. The draft booklet included:

Each participant can discuss anything…. To maximize its effectiveness, any such project needs to avoid authoritarianism, as was reflected in Chairman Mao’s reeducation program in China and social rehab programs like Synanon in the Bay Area that were based on vicious “criticism-self-criticism.” One way to do that is to borrow from the Harm Reduction model, which asks individuals to define their own goals (rather than demanding total abstinence). Another method is to have individuals simply report on their self-development efforts, with no “cross-talk” from others.

What do you think of those guidelines?

On the one hand, intentionality, commitment, and accountability can help nurture self-development — in contrast to Sixties-style, do your own think individualism. As one correspondent reported, “I do admit I need to be more conscious of what you have clearly outlined in the list and likewise put it at the heart of what I am engaged in,” But on the other hand, a heavy hand can undermine self-empowerment.

A work in progress!

PS: Elsewhere, on the same issue, I’ve written, “Each member defines their own goals and activities. There is no peer pressure to immediately correct any particular pattern of behavior.”

RE: “WORKBOOK DRAFT”

Bob Morgan:

Good to have this concise piece.

Yahya Abdal-Aziz

Short and sweet!  Much more likely to be read, understood and acted upon than even a three-page version, let alone a ten-page one. 😉

PS  –  I don’t know whether, before now, I’ve mentioned my discomfort with your use of the term “the system”.  To me, it smacks inescapably of Marxist rhetoric, and it’s been my experience that that kind of talk immediately alienates people suspicious of far-left, militant and activist groups.  At least, that’s what it does here in Oz, and we were no never so rabidly anti-Communist as the American mainstream.  I wonder how Americans respond to the term – does it tend to stop some promising conversations in their tracks?  Something for you to consider.  Perhaps some other less ideological term, such as “society”, or even the name of your favourite nation (which I suspect may be “the US”!) could be more productive?  e.g. “Transform the US with compassion”.  Even your first discussion question would carry the change quite well: “What is the US?  Does it have a central purpose?  If so, what …”  (I know I’ve criticised some of your writing before for being perhaps too US-centred, but after all, “Charity [i.e. caring] begins at home”.  –  Over to you!  –  YA

Wade:

Good to hear. Thanks. Concerning “the system,” your comments prompted me to add a new opening to respond preemptively to those concerns, which are shared by others. It’s at https://goo.gl/1HjMFh  What do you think?…. Also, your comments prompt me to have the whole document focus as little as possible on the U.S….. Thanks again.

Bob Anschuetz:

From me a firm thumbs-up on your workbook outline–for both its content and presentation. Only one suggestion. I think all references to “the system,” whether within or without quotes, should be changed to “the System.” That’s because you use the word in a special sense, as developed in your booklet. You need to distinguish that special sense for the reader by, in effect, representing it by a “proper name”–which in turn requires an initial capital letter.

Gary Vondran:

 suggest moving in goal 4. “race” and lead with income…..insert to “race and gender.”  I feel income disparity is currently the #1 cause

of today’s society lack of compassion and reverse robinhood economics. Good work….print.

Wade:

Ah, yes. That’s a hotly debated topic these days. Myself, I’m inclined to believe they are equally important. But race generates more heat, so I’m inclined to keep it first to make a statement that we are attentive to the issue.

David Hartsough:

Good work. I like it. What do you mean by “appearance” of the social system?

Wade:

Thanks. Good to hear. I think “appearance” can be dropped, so the phrase only refers to structure and character. What I meant was “what it looks like.” But using it makes the sentence longer, and others may have the same question.

Mary Kay Magistad:

This is certainly more concise than the initial paper.  The challenge now, I guess, is to find people who function best when reporting to a team of people. That’s not my speed, so I’ll bow out at this point.

I’m strongly committed to social justice — it has informed much of what I’ve done as a journalist over 30 years, and many of my closest friends share that focus. But I prefer informal interaction over formal monthly meetings, so I’m not your target audience.

Still, I wish you success with it.

Wade:

I understand. Thanks again for your interest and helpful feedback.

Jakob Possert:

I like this one-pager. Especially I think it is good to have the questions there. The common basis for what holda these groups and from which they act should be question driven I think. I guess asking more explicitly where was the system in te beginning and where is it going (What kind of system do we want) would be an important question…. I would like to be part of such a group. I cannot promise much more, also I am not a US citizen.

Wade:

I like the phrase “question driven.” …  Your comment about “asking more explicitly where was the system in the beginning” prompted me to add “What is its history?”…. Not being a US citizen is no problem. In fact, a comment from Yahya in Australia prompted me to shift to a more global perspective!

Bob Anschuetz:
As you know, I’m in full support of your efforts, though I don’t see myself as a participant in either the organization or functioning of the community you envision. That being the case, you should probably remove me from your mailing list for further progress reports. I remain willing, however, to provide any text editing you think might be helpful, as long as the time available to do so is compatible with other obligations to which I may already be committed. By the way, regarding one editorial issue, I think your use of the term “the System,’ as you develop the concept in the booklet, is essential for understanding why it is necessary to build a “compassionate community” in the way you propose. For me, “the System” is not just Marxian boilerplate, but a description of the way things really are–as is becoming more evident every day in American society. And, to pick up on an earlier point, I would capitalize “System” in the phrase “the System” everywhere you use it. My sense is that, even if a reader is not yet familiar with your own understanding of the phrase, the archetypal capitalization, together with his own experience, will immediately hint at a meaning very close to the one you intend.

Transform the System Dialog

I just posted this to folks I’m working with on “Transform the System with Compassion:
A Workbook.”

Report on Responses to “A Mutual Support Community (11/26/17 Draft)

Sixteen people responded to the “A Mutual Support Community (11/26/17 Draft)” email, which  asked folks if they “want to help form, or join” a mutual support team. I’ve posted all of the responses and my responses here. Most of those responses were positive. Two were particularly encouraging.

Michael Carano, an activist who was recently elected to the City Council in Tallmadge, Ohio said, “I do admit I need to be more conscious of what you have clearly outlined in the list and likewise put it at the heart of what I am engaged in,” and reported that he will ask the Council “to ‘check in’ by briefly reporting on their personal change efforts.”

And Steve Gerritson, who’s on the executive committee of Clean Technology Alliance in Seattle, said:

Yes, we do talk about personal goals, successes, failures, and change efforts, although the discussions are not structured and participation is voluntary. But using your guidelines I think we might make a more systematic effort at it. I don’t want to scare anyone off, so we’ll probably have a discussion about the merits beforehand.

Myself, at a recent Love Army forum with about 10 people, I initiated an experiment with a reporting format that evolved into the format I’m now recommending. It seemed to go well. As part of the planning process at Glide Church where I’m active, I submitted the idea and await a response. One of the respondents who came to the November 18 workshop said he wants to help form or join a team. I look forward to talking with him about possibilities in San Francisco when his time frees up.

Partly due to the holidays, the school semester, travel plans, health issues, and geographical factors, other respondents don’t plan to experiment soon. Some would like to later.

But other respondents address a common resistance. Kitty Myers made an important point when she said, “For the invitation, I suggest a de-emphasis on personal revelation with that being on a potential area of growth for the groups as they coalesce into a comfortable source of support. One step at a time!” I replied, “I agree that groups often need to coalesce — establish trust — before engaging in personal revelation. However, I’d like to figure out how to nudge those who are ready to do so.” I also wonder whether there are ways we can nurture more trust more quickly.

In a similar vein, Dan Brook suggested that (confidential) personal reporting be a recommendation rather than a requirement. He also suggested that “the entire endeavor have the feeling of ‘inviting a type of commitment’ that is lightweight and based on agreement with the spirit of the goals, rather than any technical sense of agreement.”  And Mary Kay Magistad said she prefers “informal interaction” rather “reporting to a team of people.”

Those points strike at the heart of the matter: the need for intentionality and accountability. That’s why married couples, for example, affirm vows and religious communities affirm a written expression of their core beliefs. Those are “technical” agreements.

For decades I’ve heard activists promise to do personal work and informally support one another in those efforts. But I don’t see it happening. They let it slide. They align with Michael Carano when he said, “I do admit I need to be more conscious of what you have clearly outlined in the list and likewise put it at the heart of what I am engaged in.” And Steve Gerritson (see above) who said, “It may be that getting to the endpoint you desire is easier if the starting point is a little more focused…. [Our] discussions are not structured and participation is voluntary. But using your guidelines I think we might make a more systematic effort at it.”

WHY NOT commit to take 60 seconds once a month to report to several trusted friends about your efforts — and listen to them report about theirs? Knowing during the course of the month that you would be asked to give that report would serve to remind you to reflect and work on your personal development. It would help hold you accountable to your commitment.

In Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World, Tina Rosenberg reports on how, “from the affluent suburbs of Chicago to the impoverished shanties of rural India,” intentional mutual support groups have helped smokers stop smoking, teens in Africa fight AIDS, worshippers deepen their faith, activists overthrow dictators, addicts overcome addictions, and minority students learn calculus. I believe such groups could also help activists overcome their own activist-related addictions and become more effective.

Again, why not? James Baldwin said:

A day will come when you trust you more than you do now and you will trust me more than you do now. We will trust each other…. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet willing to pay.

What is that price? What are people afraid of? I’m not sure. I only have some sense of answers. But it seems we need to address that question directly, develop methods for relieving fear, and help one another “pay the price.”

As Mary Kay said, “The challenge now, I guess, is to find people who function best when reporting to a team of people.” Given how deeply individualism is embedded in this country, I don’t know how many such people we can find — people who also share a commitment to systemic social transformation. But I believe it’s important we try.

Once the workbook is finished and we circulate it widely, including personal visits to organizations, we may generate more interest in mutual support teams that operate within a transformative worldview. In the meantime, hopefully some of us will experiment with teams whose members report to one another about personal and political change efforts. The results of those experiments could then go into the hopper, along with reports from Michael and Steve. We shall see!

+++++

Also, to the “Report on the Feedback on the Draft Booklet  I’ve added a comment from Michael Nagler:

I confess, the most I can do is take a few minutes here and there to look through the document.  So two comments for now: 1) the section on ‘Nonviolence’ should be titled ‘Against the use of violence,’ or something to that effect.  It says nothing about nonviolence, and could reinforce serious misconceptions that nv isn’t real.  2) This sentence should have a dash inst. of a comma, otherwise ambiguous: “Systems thinkers avoid ideology, getting locked into visionary theorizing…” Hope that helps a little at least. Michael

And my response:

I prefer common usage. Merriam-Webster’s defines “violence” as:

    1. the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy
    2. an instance of violent treatment or procedure
  1. injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation : outrage
    1. : intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force the violence of the storm
    2. vehement feeling or expression : fervor; also : an instance of such action or feeling
    3. a clashing or jarring quality : discordance

And it defines “nonviolence” as:

  1. : abstention from violence as a matter of principle; also : the principle of such abstention
  2. :
    1. the quality or state of being nonviolent : avoidance of violence:
    2. nonviolent demonstrations for the purpose of securing political ends

I believe my use of those terms in the draft booklet is consistent with those definitions. When we refer to a particular form of nonviolent resistance, I believe we should use some other term, such as “philosophical nonviolence” or “Satyagraha.”… Thanks for the feedback and the copy-editing suggestion.