Right Use of the Power of  Internet Technology 

What a surprise!  Technology, meant to save us time and effort, has opened up vast new worlds and possibilities that both astound and addict.  In the last few years we have gained the ability to use our power to have an expanded effect through social-media marketing.  We have the ability now to find, re-connect, and stay in touch with a huge number of friends, causes, and organizations through the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter.  We can sit together in a restaurant and get an instant answer to any questions through Google.  We can make greatly enhanced presentations through PowerPoint.  We could go on.  Unfortunately, our sense of how best to relate to others in this new technological world has yet to be formed.  Joseph Firmage * speaks of this revolution in its broadest context:  “The greatest revolutions science and technology have presented to us across history point to a fundamental revolution of the human spirit and ethic equally profound waiting in the wings.”  We are the ones who must activate this spirit and ethic.  (*Quoted and adapted with permission.)

We can help ourselves stay in balance and effective in our high-tech world by first looking at the ways in which our relationships are off balance.

In this regard, here are a few questions to ask: 

• Do I spend too much time on the Internet?
• Does my Internet usage have an addictive quality?
• Do I find my relationships through the Internet are shallower than my in-person relationships?
• Do I get overly hyped up?
• Do I feel duty bound to respond to emails immediately even when the subject may require time for processing and being creative?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you’ll need to find solutions to bring you back into a healthy balance.  Here are several possibilities.

• Budget and then schedule your time on the Internet.  Use a timer if that helps.  When it goes off, stop even if you aren’t done.
• Separate your emails into categories and deal with each separately.
• Because all emails look the same (same font and size), it’s easy for them to seem equally important.  Recognize this phenomenon as a kind of visual tyranny.
• Make sure to balance your in-person relationships with your virtual ones.

Our local daily, the Boulder Daily Camera, on Feb 10, 2013, reprinted an article by Joanna Weiss from the Boston Globe titled “Your Boring Facebook Friends.”  According to Ms. Weiss, some 67% of adult Americans use Facebook.  However, a February 2013 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 61% of the users have taken a Facebook vacation “[because they were] too busy or just [weren't] interested [or felt] it [their usage] was a waste of time.”  Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew project, concluded that “people are [now] making little mental calculations about how much time [they] want to devote to this, [and] the quality . . . of the material [they] get from [their] friends.”  So, according to the article, we may be beginning to find a less compulsive, more mature relationship with Internet technologies based on our need for self-care and real-time, higher-quality in-person relationships with our families and friends.  Right use of electronic power is complex.  As in all uses of power, the best is mixed with the worst, the vicious and the virtuous, and we are being challenged to find our way in a world of resources that gives us access to tremendous quantities of free information as well as annoys us with hacking and the difficulty of discerning the true from the false.  Humanity hasn’t dealt with these particular issues before.  Applying an ethic of caring about and taking action for the common good is one helpful way through.

THE RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS TO APOLOGIZE

Bruce Weinstein is “The Ethics Guy.”  I’ve been subscribing to his newsletter for a while.  He has great articles and is a wise man and good writer.  You can sign up for his newsletter yourself at www.TheEthicsGuy.com.  To introduce you to him, here is his blog from January 29th, 2013.  Thanks, Bruce, for what you are doing to make ethics more real and heartful. C.B.

A running gag in the 1970s sitcom Happy Days was Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli’s inability to admit a mistake. The first two words, “I was,” came out fine, but it was that third one, “wrong,” that always tripped him up. Try as he might (and boy, did he try), the Fonz simply could not proclaim error. “I was wrrrr-rrr-rrr” was about the closest he could get. Decades later, many of us are still laughing at how Fonzie exemplified this all-too-human foible.

As the Fonz reminds us, having the courage to admit we’ve screwed up is one of the hardest things to do. But is simply saying “I was wrong” sufficient? As Lance Armstrong launches what some are calling his “apology tour,” beginning with an Oprah Winfrey interview, it’s worth considering what it means to give a meaningful apology and what sorts of apologies are close to worthless. Let’s also take a look at the best ways to receive an apology.

Giving and receiving apologies the right way isn’t a matter of etiquette; it’s a crucial component of ethical intelligence.

How *Not* to Apologize

1. Say that “mistakes were made.” This classic dodge is a favorite of business leaders and politicians alike. Although its use in government isn’t limited to one political party, the phrase is most famously associated with Ronald Reagan’s 1987 State of the Union address, in which the president used it to refer to the Iran-Contra scandal.

“Mistakes were made” is rightly referred to as a “non-apology apology” because this phrase is in the passive voice and thereby absolves the speaker of any responsibility. Its use by a leader is ethically unintelligent because a critical component of leadership is accountability. Stating that “mistakes were made” is simply another way of saying, “Bad things happened on my watch. But other people did them, and I can’t be blamed.”

2. Change the subject. Refusing to address a problem that one has caused makes psychological sense. After all, who wants to admit that he or she is flawed in some way? Those who feel that admitting error is a sign of weakness are likely to change the subject when confronted with mistakes they made. It’s not an ethically intelligent move, however, because it fails to acknowledge the reality that we are, in fact, less than perfect. A leader shows respect to the people he or she is leading by informing them of things they need to know, which often (but not always) includes an acknowledgment that the leader has erred in some way.

3. Drag your feet. Remember when U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod was abruptly fired after Andrew Breitbart circulated an edited video of Sherrod that made her appear racist? Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack eventually apologized to Sherrod and took full responsibility for having exercised poor judgment by dismissing her. Sherrod accepted the apology and said that it made her feel better. But she also stated that it “took too long” to come, and she ultimately chose not to accept the White House’s offer to be reinstated. Vilsack deserves credit for owning up to his serious mistake and attempting to right a wrong that he had committed, but for the person on the receiving end of the injustice, he should have done this sooner. It’s not enough to give someone his or her due; one must do so in time. (Full disclosure: Shirley Sherrod and I are both received fellowships from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and were in the program at the same time.)

4. Deny there is a problem. Burying your head in the sand in response to a blunder is ethically unintelligent because there is such a thing as reality. Your mistake is still a mistake, whether or not you’re able to accept this fact. Both it and the consequences that followed from it occurred, whether or not you want to believe this is true.

5. Blame someone else. The worst oil spill in history started when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Although the rig was licensed by BP, the company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, initially had this to say about his company’s accountability: “The responsibility for safety on the drilling rig is Transocean [sic]. It is their rig, their equipment, their people, their systems, their safety processes.” BP eventually accepted the blame for the catastrophe, but not before a mountain of evidence made it impossible for them to deny their culpability. For years to come, this will no doubt be the platinum standard for how not to apologize for one’s mistakes.

How to Apologize with Ethical Intelligence

When you mess up in some way, an apology is the very least that can rightly be expected of you. However, some forms of wrongful conduct are so serious that a mere “I’m sorry” isn’t enough of a response. With this in mind, here are some guidelines for making ethically intelligent apologies.

1. Admit your mistake quickly and take personal responsibility for it. Don’t say “We made a mistake” when you mean “I made a mistake.” Even if you’re not the head of your organization, the buck should still stop with you.

2. Apologize first to the person you have wronged. That is the person who matters most.

3. Speak from the heart. An insincere apology is as bad as no apology at all. People can tell when you really mean it, even if you think you’re a good actor and can fool everyone. If you don’t think you’re wrong, don’t apologize — but be prepared to defend your position.

4. Realize that sorry is just a word. For that word to be meaningful, you must do your level best to avoid repeating the mistake. This means coming up with a strategy and sticking to it.

5. Know that a meaningful apology is a sign of integrity, not weakness. Anyone can blame others, or deny that he or she did anything wrong, or lie about what really happened. Only a strong, self-possessed person can own up to his or her mistakes, and only such a person commands true respect.

6. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you can’t do something well on your own, invite others to work with you on the problem. If the problem is beyond your grasp, consider asking someone else to take it on, if it is appropriate for you to do so.

How to Respond to Apologies with Ethical Intelligence

1. If someone has done something wrong and apologizes to you, accept the apology graciously.

2. You are justified in expecting a person to avoid repeating the behavior that required an apology in the first place.

3. Depending on the situation, you might need to make clear to the other person what the consequences will be if he or she makes the mistake again.

4. “Three strikes and you’re out” is fine for baseball, but in other areas, it may take only one strike for someone to be justifiably banished from being a player. Some mistakes are so serious that you should not grant a second chance. For relatively minor slipups, however, or if the task at hand is unusually difficult, it may make sense to allow more than three opportunities to get it right.

5. If the person who apologized continues making the same mistake over and over, you might have to say, perhaps regrettably, “I can’t in good conscience give you another opportunity to slip up,” no matter how much that person continues to apologize.

The 1970 film “Love Story” (written by Erich Segal, directed by Arthur Hiller) featured the memorable, if perplexing, line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Even if this were true, there are many other areas where we do have to say we’re sorry — and mean it. The challenge for all of us is to admit we’ve made a mistake, to do our best to ensure we don’t do it again, and to forgive others who sincerely regret their own poor judgment. No one is perfect, but most of us do have the capacity to right our own wrongs and to accept the imperfections in others.

I moved to the south almost 30 years ago now, but I’m a mid-westerner by birth and raising. Southern charm has been a mystery to me, as I carry that stubborn farm-country love of the day-to-day ordinariness of life. Even so, exploring new territory is always enriching, and helps me appreciate and deepen my awareness of the gifts my roots offer. When [in the Right Use of Power Workshop and Facilitator's Training with Cedar] we began exploring leadership styles in terms of the directions, it felt immediately apparent that the south was the most mysterious place for me, and was going to be rich to explore.

I know the west deeply, as I am a harmony-seeker by nature and started developing my empathy skills almost from birth. I don’t even have to talk most times to bring a little more safety and acceptance to a group or a conversation. And when I started getting bullied and ostracized in school around 4^th grade, I turned to learning and understanding information as a safe haven and a way to relate, at least to my teachers. During my school years the east became a place of power and joy for me.

It took longer for me to feel comfortable in the north, but through years of practicing of mindfulness and compassion, I have gotten comfortable flying up to the higher places to get a sense of perspective and vision. I know the comfort of seeing even suffering within the larger context of evolution and interconnectedness. I so appreciate the way that integrating whatever my present experience might be into the field of the north deepens my connection to my most central and core values.

But the south, well, that’s been a more complex mix for me. I played the role of the “family star” as well as the lost child in my family, the fifth of five children, born when my closest sibling was getting ready to start school. She was the scapegoat, the one who tended to tell the truth and stir things up when the rest of us seemed able to act as if everything was just fine. So my mom needed a little relief and reassurance when I came along. When I showed up as a warm and relational child, she made that into something extraordinary and special. I got put on the proverbial pedestal, proof that our family was good and maybe even special, and that she as our mother was dedicated and had done her work. This was confusing for me, because I could feel that this identity of mine was more about my mother than about me, and I also saw how much pain it caused my sister. She adored me, and she needed and longed for the positive attention that I got from mom.

To add another layer to the confusion around bringing my self into groups, around 4^th or 5^th grade, the bullying started at school. Over the course of the next several years, I came to feel like an outsider, despised and rejected. Any attention on me turned scary and dangerous, so I developed an invisibility cloak and hid myself whenever it felt as if I might get singled out. My siblings had all left home by this time, but my mother was still treating me as if I was destined to be a saint. That’s an exaggeration, but only a slight one. I had a lot of martyr fantasies during those years—wouldn’t it be great to save the world and die in the process so I didn’t have to endure any more rejection?

I have often felt that I survived this time through experiencing a deep and powerful sense of belonging in the natural world. I would go to the woods, which were abundant and beautiful where we lived in central Indiana, to feel comforted and loved exactly as I was, an ordinary and yet integral part of the whole. There I felt “in right relationship” with All That Is. That allowed me to keep some balance in my sense of myself, at least when I was alone.

I was also reading voraciously, exploring other cultures and worlds in my imagination. In my inner world, I was able to shine and own my gifts and still have an integral place in society. In day-to-day reality, my sense of self was confused and chaotic. I couldn’t figure out how to both be my own unique self and also fit it and be “normal.”

This all got easier when I got into adulthood, and when I became a therapist; I found a place where I fit perfectly. When I took my third job, teaching and presenting professionally was expected, and I started on a journey which brought me richly into contact with my history and with the south. I found that as long as I was teaching material that I loved and felt passionately about, I could show up in a fully alive way and use my relational skills to get my audience excited and involved. If I tried to teach the same thing the same way more than once or twice, it would start to feel wooden and dead. When I had to present things that I had taught before, I had to really work to keep it alive.

A number of years ago, I was walking in the woods debriefing myself after a workshop I had just given. It had gone well, but I wasn’t feeling good. I knew that I had gotten the participants “on board,” and I suddenly realized that it felt as if I had gotten them all on the train of my energy and then pulled them along with me. I was exhausted. I had spent all of my energy pulling that train. I also had a clear felt sense that if they thought about my workshop later they would remember how much they enjoyed my presentation, but they might not remember anything specific about the actual content I had presented. That didn’t feel good. I wanted them to love the material as much as I did. I decided then that I couldn’t expend that much energy trying to pull people into the workshop, and that I could only teach material that I knew was rich enough to stand for itself even if I was less magnetic. I would have to learn to relax more when teaching.

Then at the RUP training this weekend, I realized that part of my difficulty with the south is my inner restraints around showing up relaxed, as just myself, because it felt so unsafe to do that as a child. My work now is to stay in that edge, not moving into making it safe by being so magnetic that people will like me, and not making it safe by disappearing. I can practice showing up and sharing myself from a more gentle, easy way.

I have a feeling that’s going to be a lot more fun, and that there will also be more rich learning to gain along the way. I love the image of the spiral, that we keep going around the same central themes, deepening our sense of meaning and raising our level of awareness and enjoyment of the complexities of life. So, here’s to my journey around the themes of the South!

Note from Cedar:  Let’s see what RUP programs Connie develops and presents!

Note from Cedar:  This is the best piece on guns that I have seen.  Greg can be reached at Greg@GregJohanson.net

February 16, 2013

Copy of Open Letter to Members of the Oregon Congressional Delegation:

Sensible gun control, not the confiscation of guns in homes for hunting or self-defense, is necessary and long overdue given the level of violence in our country and the loss of so many innocent lives.  Since we have over 300 million guns already available, there will be inevitable continued carnage, but we must begin to set a new cultural tone of concern for the safety of our citizens, especially children.

Opponents to such measures site the Second Amendment as the authorization for unlimited freedom of gun ownership, often with little evidence they have actually read it.  Such rhetoric needs to be countered by looking carefully at the amendment itself.  It states:  “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Strikingly, the first words say “well regulated” as opposed to “non-regulated.”  Then the amendment unmistakably indicates the right to bear arms refers to an individual’s service in a “militia,” not service to an individual.  A militia is traditionally a body of citizen soldiers who drill occasionally to maintain readiness, but only serve full time in emergency situations when federal forces require them.  People who want to participate in a militia should theoretically join their State National Guard.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution allowed Congress to create and support an army and navy for the common defense, and be able to call forth a militia when needed to suppress insurrections, enforce the laws of the union, and help fight invaders as necessary.  The founding fathers plainly wanted to implement a democratic nation of laws as opposed to dissident bands of insurrectionists who might decide they don’t like something.

It should be noted that prior to the Civil War abolitionists argued they could resist the government with guns due to the oppression of slavery.  When gun rights advocates today, over 200 years into our Republic, say they must have guns to resist government oppression, to what are they referring?  Either they imagine something they do not like emerging from a Constitutional democratic process where they were outvoted, or they imagine some foreign force has taken over the government.  This means such a force has defeated the greatest Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and National Guard on earth.  Then they, as a militia of disconnected, uncoordinated individuals, imagine they will somehow rise to save the day.  Does this mindset really want to be seriously put forth?  If so, we should have a debate that ends in a convincing final vote.

There has been ongoing debate in the 20th and 21st centuries over whether the Second Amendment refers to the collective right to arm local militias or protects an individual’s  right to bear arms.  It wasn’t until as recently as 2008 (District of Columbia v. Heller) that an activist Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense of the home.  In his written dissent, joined by justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer,

Justice John Paul Stevens argued, “When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.  So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated,” and “had the Framers wished to expand the meaning of the phrase ‘bear arms’ to encompass civilian possession and use, they could have done so by the addition of phrases such as ‘for the defense of themselves’”.

In any case, it is clear that there has been no long standing undisputed constitutional tradition that says unrestricted individual gun ownership is a first principle that trumps all other considerations.  The position of current NRA leadership, unsupported by its membership, that we need more guns everywhere for everyone in the hope that the good guys will outgun the bad guys at the OK Corral is not credible, to say nothing of patently dangerous.

In terms of danger, the Court in its Heller decision decided that the “adjective ‘well-regulated’ implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.”  I could definitely vote for “the imposition of proper discipline and training.”  I want people with weapons, especially assault rifles to be trained.  It is not sufficient that one learns how to aim and shoot a firearm.  Those in the armed services and police are trained in “Shoot.  Don’t shoot” situations.  If someone yells “GUN!!” in a crowded movie, business, or classroom, and 10 people stand up with drawn weapons, who should be shot?  If one comes upon a shootout on a street corner, who is the victim or aggressor one should defend or shoot?  If shots ring out in a mall and 100 people un-holster their concealed weapons, who knows how to sort out the good guys from the bad guys, and who gets shot by tragic mistake in the process?  If a 20 year old youth approaches a school with an unconcealed weapon, what teacher or principal, who has never had to take a human life, will be able to immediately discern whether to take the first fatal shot or wait to see if the boy is simply exercising his Second Amendment right to bear arms?

Unfortunately, the Court decided that requiring people to take the proper training so that they were constitutionally well-regulated would be “a serious public inconvenience.”  Given all this, however, the Court asserted:  “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.  It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose:  For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues.”  Justice Antony Scalia, who was in the majority on Heller, wrote:  “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

Again, there is an historic and constitutional tradition of reasonable gun regulation and control.  The individual is not the final authoritative arbiter of what he needs to defend himself.  Society can mandate one does not need a 50 caliber machine gun, anti-tank grenade launchers, flame throwers, and an F-16 to defend a family.  Let us pass levelheaded gun control measures that will surely not prevent the trauma of every tragic shooting to come, but will declare we are not simply a society of individuals with rights, but those who live in community with responsibilities for the common good also.

For those who argue ideologically, impervious to any logical input, that universal background checks leads to universal registration, which leads to universal confiscation, which leads to universal destruction, we should allow them to have their say in the debate, and then crush such paranoid nonsense in an overwhelming majority vote.

No legislator representing the American people should be cowered or swayed by minority positions invoking an uninformed Second Amendment imperialism.  Please carry out your job of proper and respectful gun regulation knowing you have solid constitutional and citizen support.

Sincerely,

Greg Johanson

Recently, a co-worker left me with a question.  “I was with a colleague and friend the other day and she is still haunted by a traumatic misuse of power from several years ago.  She quit the non-profit organization we both worked for over this situation.  She wanted to know if it was too late to do anything about it.  This conversation set me to thinking about what you can do with unresolved things from the past.   What do you suggest?”

This is too big a question to speak to in its largest context that includes unresolved hurt and trauma of all sorts, from family to community to organizational to cultural to global issues.  However, I would like to offer a useful and personal process for looking at some choices. It is based on my model for ethical decision-making called the Power Spiral.  In this model, there are four dimensions of right use of power to consider:  Information/Presence, Compassion/Awareness, Connectedness/Accountability, and Skillfulness/Wisdom.  The purpose is to discern what action(s) right now would be the wisest use of your power and influence.

In the Information and Presence dimension:

•     Why is this issue re-surfacing now?

• What is your present understanding, from an objective point of view, of what happened on the part of both you and the other(s)?
• Are there other sources of additional and relevant information?
• Is there an ethics code or organizational guidelines that would be appropriate or useful to consult?

In the Compassion and Awareness dimension:

• What specifically do you feel sad and upset about?
• What might get in the way of resolution or repair in this process?
• From a place of compassion for all concerned, what does your heart say?

In the Connectedness and Accountability dimension:

• Is the person who caused the harmed available for personal contact?
• What would you need for repair of the situation?
• What actions feel right or are you willing to take?

In the Skillfulness and Wisdom dimension:

• How can you most skillfully do the actions that you are willing to take?
• How and when will you let go?
• What resources for support are available to you?

You may do this process alone, but likely more effective would be to invite a friend or colleague to be a listening and supportive presence while you think and feel your way through.

On a table or on the floor, put a brief statement of the situation you want to resolve in the center.  Then place four pieces of paper with one of these words on each:  INFORMATION, COMPASSION, CONNECTEDNESS, and SKILLFULNESS in four directions around the center statement of the problem.

Now imagine you have special glasses that help you see through the perspective of each dimension, as you respond to the questions for each dimension.   Let yourself receive what each dimension offers you, especially surprises or new feelings or new possibilities.  I suggest you literally move to each direction so you can more easily embody each perspective.

When you have completed this reflective process, take a moment to get in touch with your heart and your center or higher self and see if anything else comes to you.

The co-worker who brought me this question took this process to her colleague and friend and guided her through the four perspectives.  Here’s what happened.

       •    From the Information perspective, she understood that, although there was an organizational ethics code, the misuse of power was a potent but subtle one that wasn’t specifically listed in the code.  She also saw how old this event was and that there wasn’t actually much value in bringing it back to the organization.  “Too much water over the dam.” 

      •    In the Compassion perspective, she felt how deeply she was “stuck” with the hurt and that it was she, herself, who might get it the way of healing because of being somehow attached to the pain.  She also found, to her surprise, that she could feel the beginnings of her capacity to forgive.

      •    From the Connectedness dimension, she didn’t know if the person who wounded her was available for contact, but she felt it was worth giving it a try.  She decided to contact her with the overall goal of some amount of healing.  What she wanted to ask for was acknowledgement of her feelings, an understanding of what the other’s intentions were, an apology, and a sense of completion.

      •    In the Skillfulness dimension, she decided that the wisest way to proceed would be to send an email simply asking if he would be available to talk or email about a painful situation from the past that she would like to understand more about and feel complete with.  If the person responded positively, she would re-connect with heart and strength, keeping in mind that her goal was healing and letting go, not blame or punishment.  If he was not available or did not respond, she would sit down with a friend and create a letting go process.   

 I hope you will find this useful.

“We need an ethic of compassion more desperately than ever before.” —Karen Armstrong, reflecting on the unanimous agreement of religious faiths on the primacy of compassion

“We are not here to save the world, we are here to love and serve the world and in that love and in that service, the world may or may not be saved.” —Gurumai

“The final piece of reaching for authentic power is releasing your own to a higher form of wisdom.” —Gary Zukov

“Pain and suffering, they are a mystery. Kindness and love, they are a mystery. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering.” —Barbara Kingsolver

Weaving ethics with soul work and with world service is a natural outgrowth of understanding ethics as right use of the power of love and the power of influence.

There are several colored threads to this weaving:

• The development of skillfulness and wisdom in the benevolent use of power combined with the force of love requires personal and relationship work at the level of soul.

• One of the characteristics of health and well-being is altruistic desire and action.

• Clients, as their well-being improves, may need guidance and support in putting their compassion and benevolence into action in the world.

• The growth and expression of compassion is as primary as self-esteem in happiness and health.

Adding to her statement above, Karen Armstrong says: “The early prophets did not preach the discipline of empathy because it sounded edifying, but because experience showed that it worked. They discovered that greed and selfishness were the cause of our personal misery. When we gave them up, we were happier. Egotism imprisoned us in an inferior version of ourselves and impeded our enlightenment.” Fascinatingly, recent research by Moll and Jordan Grafman who are neuroscientists at the National Institute of Health, (from an article by Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, May 28, 2007) has shown that taking action in the best interests of others is coded in the brain. In a study in which they scanned the “brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves,” the results showed that “when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges, but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.” There is a surviving and thriving impulse and advantage for those who develop and use their capacities for social intelligence. This social intelligence is accessed through the social engagement nervous system.

Compassion, not selectively for those who are similar—for that is easy—but for those who are different, even ‘enemies,’ is what brings, not only greater happiness and spiritual development, but also peaceful relations and the sustaining prosperity that comes from mutual aid. Compassion for all simply works better than aggression. Right use of power comes from compassion for all, rather than from fearful aggression.

Because it feels good, because it makes us happier, because it improves relationships, because it makes the world a better place—for all these reasons, we need to support the soul development of compassion for all, including ourselves.

Personal story: My psychotherapy client sat down, took a moment and said, “I don’t think there’s anything to work on today.” “Maybe so. Why don’t you take a little time quietly with yourself and see if your unconscious offers something up to us out of the inner space you create, and if not, you could just leave for today.” After about 5 minutes, Margie said, “There is something kind of peeking out. It’s an impulse to do something to help on a world level.” “That sounds like health. You’ve been healing and empowering yourself. The desire for altruism is an organic thing. What’s it like when you experience this impulse peeking out?” “It’s like I feel like a child…very small, looking up at all these big, powerful people in high government positions.” “Overwhelmed and insignificant?” “Yes, and very naïve. Like, I’ve been in such a small little world, isolated. I guess I’ve been trying to keep my life manageable and safe.” “So you’re scared when you open up to a larger world.” “Yes, and then I have all these questions….How do I find reliable sources of information…I’m so uninformed. How do I not get overwhelmed by all the pain and disasters? How do I find some way to help that would be effective and not too painful or draining?” “Lots of good questions.” “Too big, I can’t sustain this impulse…it just goes away. How can we help our clients and ourselves channel the natural impulse for altruism?

Ethical use of power begins in empathy and altruistic pleasure. We are born with a basic moral compass, based in empathy and the natural desire to take action on behalf of others. This is most obvious in the outpouring of care for a family member or a situation in which one is directly involved. Simple moral decisions activate a straightforward brain response. The Snyders (Martha, Ross, and Mary Helen in The Young Child as Person) have spent a lifetime studying young children as persons. They have consistently found that children have an inborn pre-disposition for justice and caring. “Unless they have been dehumanized by adults….children reveal the capacity to be empathically attuned to each other, to co-create a ‘justice culture,’ to support fairness, safety and the restoration of relationship, and to be naturally interested in what works for the well-being of all.” This is what we would expect from our brain wiring.

Of course, when this brain wiring in the frontal lobes is damaged or inoperative, people suffer from a complete lack of empathy and conscience, clinically labeled psychopathy. (Robert Hercz, internet article Psychopaths Among Us.) While not all who meet the definition of psychopath are violent, they live with a lack of the normal empathy and conscience that guides behavior. Dr. Robert Hare has done research on the nature of psychopathy and developed an instrument called the Psychopathy Checklist which is used to measure psychopathy. Using this instrument, he estimates that 1% of Canadians, exhibit psychopathic behavior. Most of these people are not violent, but about 20% of the inmates in Canadian prisons satisfy the Hare definition of a psychopath and they are responsible for over half of all violent crime. When in leadership positions, and they are there, these people are particularly difficult if not impossible to deal with.

Our brains are hard-wired for empathic responses toward the well-being of others. There is global agreement about basic human rights, in theory at least, elucidated in detail in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are virtues common to descriptions of what qualities are important to being a good person in the core teachings of major world religions. Linda Kavelin and Dan Popov (The Family Virtues Guide) identified 52 of these through studying the texts of the world’s great religions. Karen Armstrong (author of The Spiral Staircase, Knopf, 2004) recently proposed the creation of a Contract for Compassion to be signed by the leaders of world religions.” Global agreement on top values of honesty, responsibility, respect, and fairness exists.” (Rushworth Kidder, Shared Values for a Troubled World: Conversations with Men and Women of Conscience) Clear situations where there is a choice to alleviate suffering, like picking up a hurt child, giving money to support victims of a fire, sharing food with someone who is hungry, activate a straightforward brain response.

Other situations are more complex and activate competing brain center activity, like abortion, euthanasia, population control, use of global resources. Here’s where the life-long process of moral and ethical development goes deeper. Our frame for ethical behavior must include and yet transcend rules and guidelines, crime and punishment, and the unending stream of violence for violence in the name of justice. We must take the more difficult route of discerning and serving the common good, using strength as needed and always with compassion, and refining and empowering the processes of resolution and repair when harm is caused.

As a recent participant in Cedar’s enlightening, non-threatening, interactive, and fun RUP workshop in Boulder, Colorado (August 2012), I suddenly remembered an incident that helped me realize the impact of my actions. It took place eight years ago when I was teaching Spanish to K-8 students in a private School in Dallas, Texas.

My intention to teach them the Spanish language was drastically changed when, during the first day of class after I had translated their real names into Spanish, I asked the older children (grades 6-8) why it was important for them to learn Spanish.

I got many good responses like being able to speak Spanish when traveling to Spanish-speaking countries, making better money by knowing a second language, being able to relate better to a Spanish boy or girl friend, living in Spain, understanding the Hispanic soap-operas available on Dallas TV, etc. Nevertheless, I will always remember the “arrogant” response given by “Miguel” (Michael), who made most of his fellow students break out into uncontrollable laughter, especially Sabrina who obviously enjoyed Miguel’s remark the most.

Miguel said, “I would like to learn Spanish to be able to boss those stupid Mexicans around better. That’s my only reason for learning that silly Latino language.” For a moment I felt puzzled by the emotional reaction his unexpected and challenging remark caused in me. Most of his peers meanwhile seemed to welcome and enjoy his answer. As for me, I thought and felt at that moment that teaching them Spanish would be a mission impossible and most likely fruitless, especially for “Miguel.”

However, recovering quickly by the grace of my better angels and after a brief moment of tense silence, I said, “Very well. If some of you share the same reason as Michael for why you want to learn Spanish, I’ll teach you about the Latino and Mexican Cultures first. Then, I would like to hear if you still want to boss Latinos around, because, let me tell you–we already have a lot of Anglo bosses for Latinos, and many of those bosses are negative. So, after you learn more about the Latinos and their struggles, I’ll check in with you again about what kind of boss you’d like to be for them.”

I thus decided to focus my teaching on the Latino/Mexican Cultures with less focus on the language. I thought and felt that if I helped them to like and understand these cultures, they might become interested in learning the language as well. I supplemented my lectures with videos, films, stories, excerpts from Latino literature, and photos on the history of Latinos in the United States. I remember the time they saw the movie “El Norte” that dramatically explained why many Central American and Mexican immigrants continued coming to United States. I also showed videos on the Cesar Chavez struggle to defend the cause of Hispanic migrant farm workers in California. The students saw the birth deformities caused in the children of these farmers from exposure to pesticides used on the vegetables, fruits, and other fresh foods that these young people only saw in the supermarkets. Most of my students had been unaware of the negative impact on the lives of fellow human beings, including children like themselves, that this fresh produce had cost. Then something extraordinary happened.

I remember how Miguel walked up to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Professor, I do not want to be a boss anymore to Mexicans and Latinos. I want to be their friend. I’m sorry about what I said before. I didn’t know what I was saying.” I couldn’t do more than accept his apology by giving him a discreet hug. Then I said, “Now, Miguel, I think you can be a good boss for these people.” The class responded with a friendly laugh.

The story did not finish there, however. A few months ago, I went to an ice-cream parlor on a hot summer day in Dallas. As I as making my selection, one of the summer employees, a beautiful young woman with intense blue eyes, greeted me with a friendly smile and in well-pronounced Spanish said, “Hola, Profesor Prieto! En que le puedo servir?” (“Hi, Professor Prieto. What can I get for you?”) I was surprised and asked, “How did you know my last name?” She replied again in Spanish, “Yo soy una de sus pasadas estudiantes de Español. Usted me inspiró la profesión que estoy a punto de terminar en la Universidad de San Antonio en Estudios Latino-Americanos con una concentración en Español. Yo soy Sabrina, la niña que se burló mucho en su clase.” (“I was one of your students in your Spanish class years ago. You inspired me to take up Latin-American studies with a major in Spanish. I’m about to complete my program at the University in San Antonio. I’m Sabrina, the girl who used to joke around in your class all the time.”)

We talked for a little while. Then, as I said goodbye, I wished her much success in her profession. A little shocked and surprised, I also felt light and was pleased and happy about the unintended impact of that happy accident eight years earlier when somehow as a teacher I had been patient, kept a cool head, and had used my power well. Long live the Right Use of Power! Gracias, Cedrita (Thank you, Cedar!) and thanks to my better angels.

Hello Parents,

I wanted to give each of your children an award today.

Last week there was an incident in which three kids were involved in throwing a sandwich and crackers into the neighbor’s yard.  So I spent this morning in my version of reparative justice.

We started the morning in a circle. We spoke about respect. Actually, they spoke. I just had to listen and reflect.   They came out with three layers of respect: toward self (keeping oneself safe), others, and community.

Then I had them do an exercise I invented last night, called “who pooped in the garden?” I pretended to be an outraged mama who has found poop in the garden.  (I knew I’d be in their good graces if I could get poop in there somehow).  We first went around the circle and each person had to come up with an outlandish excuse for why it wasn’t their fault. Then we went around a second time with a ridiculous, outlandish reason for why it was indeed their fault, and all their fault… thereby letting them experience in extreme our tendency to either avoid responsibility with defensiveness, or to be overly responsible.  The third time we went around I asked them to choose either lack of responsibility for the action (by saying, “I didn’t do it, but I’m sorry it happened”) or responsibility (by saying, “I did it.  I am sorry.  How can I fix it?”).

That was just nothing short of amazing–HILARIOUS and creative, and by the third round completely centered.  Most of the kids chose not to be responsible, but they knew either one was fair game, and that it was a learning activity.  I was blown away.

Then I said that there was something that happened last week that we needed to repair and invited the involved kids to step into an inner circle.  I didn’t even have to name them.  They came into the center.  I asked the kids in the outer circle to have their hands on their hearts as a symbol of our community commitment to love them through this.  I asked each of the three to speak their truth.  They did this, taking turns, in what seemed like milliseconds.  They spoke clearly and concisely from a deep and knowing place.  Again I was blown away.  No blaming, no defense, no story, just clear ownership.

I am always experimenting with different types of process and just did not expect them to respond so amazingly.  My friend Katrina once said that children are just brilliant if we allow them to be.   I wish I had filmed the whole thing.

I spoke with them about the dynamics of repair in the body, in particular how fracture sites are stronger and thicker after repair, and that any repair we do has to leave the relationship in a better place than we found it.

We then all got up and went next door. The three kids apologized to the neighbor sincerely, naming their actions accurately and mindfully, stood still and strong while he expressed his anger, and then his appreciation for their clear and truthful apology.  The whole group worked for an hour in their yard pulling weeds and raking leaves.  I hand fed them mango every 15 minutes to remind them (without words) of the loving sweetness they were engaging in.   (They realized I think what hard work it is to create order and beauty).

They ate and ate and drank and drank and played and played peacefully the rest of the day. I am just so proud of them.  And so honored to witness such light.

Rohini

Image: www.startrek.com

I recently stumbled across this great article on leadership by Alex Knapp. Here is a summary:

Captain Jean-Luc Picard is the model of a great 24th-century Starfleet captain. On his watch, the crew of the Enterprise successfully defended humanity against the judgement of the Q-Continuum, defeated the Borg, prevented the Romulans from installing a puppet government in the Klingon Empire, and encountered countless new species.

Here are five lessons in leadership that you can take away from Picard’s voyages as you take your organization on its journey to boldly go where no one has gone before.

1. Speak to people in the language they understand.

 “In my experience, communication is a matter of patience and imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure.”

2. When you’re overwhelmed, ask for help.

“You wanted to frighten us. We’re frightened. You wanted to show us we were inadequate. For the moment, I grant that. You wanted me to say ‘I need you.’? I NEED you!”

3. Always value ethical actions over expedient ones.

“There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders.”

4. Challenge your team to help them grow.

“Lieutenant, you are a member of this crew, and you will not go into hiding whenever a Klingon vessel uncloaks!”

5. Don’t play it safe – seize opportunities in front of you.

“Seize the time… – live now! Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”

Five lessons, right in line with what we teach in our Right Use of Power programs–tried and true, even into the cosmic future!