Stages of Change: Contemplate to Clarity

I've been thinking about how to get people started in meditation/contemplation in a way that encourages consistent motivation. I like that this endeavor affects me directly too. In David Rock's book, QUIET LEADERSHIP, the relevant chapter is called "Dance Toward Insight". He uses the term "reflection", but this is generally the same as contemplation. In hectic lives, this important sort of introspective state often gets lost in the hubbub.

Rock makes the point (p106) that illumination is most often preceded by turning one's attention away from external stimuli towards what is occurring internally. Eugene Gendlin (focusing.org) has interesting and applicable commentary on this as well, a few good descriptions of HOW to do that when one chooses to. How many times when we are looking for some breakthrough insight do we just try to run faster or do more? The flipside of this mistake is to believe that trying to stop all internal "chatter" or thinking will result in what we're looking for. Somewhere between a silent meditative state and a hectic mode of pushing forward lies this fertile ground for contemplation and insight.

In my experience, practicing focused meditation has helped me be able to actually step away from the hectic mentality when I've wanted to, but it's not quite the same as brainstorming or contemplation either. While a focused or balanced state of meditation removes my sense of being connected to or limited by whatever problems are current, it doesn't necessarily help me solve those problems or connect to other people. It just creates the space to allow those possibilities.

I believe that most people are less interested in meditation than they are in solutions, insights, and the inspiration that insights bring. If this is the case, then figuring out how contemplation works to remove mental-emotional obstacles to insight fits easily with a "Stages of Change" model of progress. The Stages of Change model developed by Prochaska and DiClemente provides one way of situating how contemplation and insight relates to meditation. In comparison to an easy and profound stillness, contemplation fits with a sense of desired progress and inspiration. Particular types of contemplation can focus on removing the particular emotional obstacles and misleading beliefs that stand between us and an invigorating sense of motivation or passion.

Familiarizing oneself with internal awareness and insight makes us less likely to be impulsive and sporadic in our sense of inspiration and seems to be a key component of feeling alive and brilliant as opposed to feeling confused and worn down or strung out. With the right personal technology, we can learn how to removes obstacles, embrace clarity, and apply that sense of meditative clarity to whatever we do.

Easing into Meditation

I'm very curious about how different people get started with meditation. There's the crowd that has some sort of significant existential drive or need, and when they come across a certain philosophy or tradition, or when they find the right people, they jump right in. Then there is another group that seems to ease into it a little more.

I began taking meditation seriously about ten years ago when I had cancer, and my interest with what can happen has shifted all over the map since then. About four of those years have been influenced by significant back pain and spasms, and one with a significant focus on rehabilitation. I first picked up a copy of ZEN MIND, BEGINNER'S MIND and a book on dream yoga. I was fascinated by the idea of working on personal progress while I slept.

For the past eight or nine years, learning more about dream yoga has taken a back seat to other types of meditation, philosophy, psychology, travel, etc., but I've recently started feeling mindful during dreams. This is different than the feelings of lucidity and creativity that were predominant ten years ago. These dreams are similarly characterized by situations that are interesting or challenging, but rather than trying to benefit from imaginatively utilizing the magical-fluid-bright feelings and actions that dreams allow, I've recently been very careful, focused, and realistic about these dream situations.

Last night, a hillside where I was hiking began slipping away from under my feet. "Normally", I'd just fly wherever I wanted to. Instead, in this dream, I took a real interest in the rocks closest to me as well as looking at what occurred with the hillside overall. The closer a focus I took on what was happening near me, the less everything shifted. Eventually, the hillside solidified into a steep cliff face. Rather than trying to avoid being swept along in a landslide, I faced the challenge of carefully climbing off the ledge I was on.

These recent dream seem novel or new for a few reasons. The first is that the sense of time has changed. I focus now for what seems to be a very long time. In the past, when I tried to retain this degree of focus, I'd wake up from the effort. The second is the creativity and magical quality. Rather than imaginatively escaping or succeeding, I've been focusing closely on taking realistic steps. The third is that this all seems easier and more natural than getting into the more imaginative options I've dreamed before--but it feels no less fascinating than flying, intentionally changing the speed and direction of dreamtime, reading the minds of other characters (that one makes me laugh!), etc.

All in all, I still can't say I have a disciplined or consistent meditation practice but I'm not sure I'd want to. So many different things can come out of what we do with our imaginations, intentions, attention, and abilities that I think I mostly just continue to marvel at the variety and feel of what occurs. With back spasms as a consistent part of my history, it has often been easier to get focused while lying down. This has given me a slightly different experience than most beginning meditators who have done much of their practice while sitting, walking, or standing. While that has increased my awareness of how easy it is to get sleepy, it has also proven to me the value of engaging your muscles for a straight-but-relaxed posture and for learning how to remain focused when I feel very energetic AND when I have low energy.

I may have a different emphasis than many people I've met on what makes a meditation session feel "good" or "better" than the sessions that seem like they don't go anywhere in and of themselves. Anyway, I am glad to have communicated some of the differences between my own experiences and others'. It seems impressed into my body and mind just how unique everyone is, each path as well, and it is becoming simpler if not easier to notice this unique quality as well as unique aspects of each different moment.

It is very interesting to notice how the barriers between dreaming and waking states seem to break down--dreaming becoming more realistic and focused, waking being more fluid and bright. It seems that having an open heart and a degree of comfort or security in this present relationship has helped create a context for further explorations. There is the feeling that I am "knocking on the door" to awareness in the deep sleep state and that the profundity and stability of this state is often "knocking on the door" of my consciousness fairly regularly when I am awake. More than looking for one form of measurement of actualization or another, it is really just fun to notice all these changes.

Virtual Mindfulness II

I've been reading Thomas Friedman's THE WORLD IS FLAT. In the chapter on everyone in the world being potential paparazzi now ("What Happens When We All Have Dog's Hearing?"), Friedman passes on the phrase "continuous partial attention". This describes what it is like for those of us who are always plugged into the Internet, talking on a cellphone, listening to an Ipod, etc. In this chapter, he lists some of the difficulties and problems involved with interactive virtual technology.

I am personally fascinated with the possibilities. With longterm meditation, it is often an explicit goal to develop continuous attention. I am curious about how being often connected to media affects the ways in which experience streams. It seems to me that sleep is a reasonable check on the continuity of partial attention. By that I mean that if we don't get any deep sleep, we noticeably suffer for it, we'll avoid continuous partial attention if we can be aware that lack of sleep is a significant cause of stress. But a significant amount of time spent with near-continuous partial attention could end up with helping mindfulness IF a sufficient amount of mindfulness training is included in one's life.

In dreaming, as I noted before, attention seems to be more fluid, more amorphous, more flexible. The same occurs when we are continuously paying partial attention. It can be harder or less likely to be mindful during dreaming, but if one practices, mindfulness eventually leaks over into (or shows up during) dreaming. In other words, mindfulness can be experienced in relatively discrete or "solid" moments, but it can also stream or flow. I don't think that near-continuous partial attention necessarily has a negative effect on one's likelihood of being mindful or on one's development of consistent mindfulness. But to be mindful in multi-tasking, we do have to be mindful of this fluidity. This is a different definition or expression of mindfulness than what is often given I suppose.

With dream yoga, the purpose is to take intention and mindfulness into the dreaming state. Once we are practiced or familiar with being mindful when we are dreaming, we are also more likely to be able to be aware during deep sleep. I'd say that being mindful in the normal waking state is similar to being mindful in chunks, like mindfulness as a solid. Mindful dreaming is like mindfulness as a liquid. The experiences that I'd say are like mindfulness in deep sleep are like mindful awareness as limitless or formless space. I'm not sure it is even possible to have partial attention in this sort of state. It does seem that familiarity with a fluidity of awareness prepares one for being able to notice this more subtle spacious awareness.

While the mindfulness itself is not different in various states, the overall experience changes. One of the things I notice as I spend time at my keyboard looking at a monitor is that it is often quite easy to slip out of awareness of my body. While this is not mindfulness, when I am intentionally aware of this slippage or flow, neither is it necessarily unmindful. While the body is an important object for mindfulness practice, feeling not limited to one's physical body is an important part of various states of oneness. It seems to me that we might give up something in oneness or stabilization of attention but gain something in flow. Just as normal waking consciousness needs a little tweaking to include mindfulness, near-continuous partial attention may not need much more than a little tweaking to include different types of personal actualization.

While this virtual universe is definitely a threat to tradition--if people want to perceive it as a threat--I don't think that virtual reality is a threat to mindfulness training.

Psychological Economy

I put up a new essay on attention and a psychological economy. Basically, the point is that we can be better about where we invest our attention, and improving what we do with our intention and attention has broader effects. The essay "Wisdom" is somewhat supportive, fleshes out the topic a little more, and I'll eventually write another companion essay called something like "Personal Mindfulness" and get that posted as well. There are some real and unnecessary problems that arise from trying to make mindfulness an abstract concept or trying to begin from doctrine rather than personal experience. A personal grasp on and exploration of mindfulness is important when one actually begins paying attention to psychological economy.


The Psychological Economy: American Zen in a Wonderful World

Personal Mindfulness

For Kristin (She's My Baby)

Referring to the "third collection" I wrote about in the essay "Self Identity and Globalization", Kristin asked me what to do with that third level of self identity. At the time, I was new to thinking about the idea and hadn't really worked out what to do with it, hadn't worked out how recognizing the importance of seeing these different levels or connections really functioned. The real question here is, "How does my history affect where I am in the world right now in such a way that continues to encourage the fulfilling development of my uniquely human potential?" The different parts of the question are important because the way they break down and interact is the answer to this question in the same way that most enduring questions about humanity are answered by delving directly into that humanity.

I'm writing this out this way because I like her unique humanness.

I've talked about the first collection or level as nature--genetics. That's part of our history, part of what ties each of us to humanity as a whole. We usually experience the second collection or level as personality, personal history and also personal description or what tends to be thought of when people say "self identity". (But our selves are so much more than nature, nurture, and history.) We don't really feel vitally alive if we don't get into how that history, how those first two levels of self-identification, affect a sense of fulfilling development. So a big part of that is mindfulness, paying attention to where I am right now, the people and world around me. We can't avoid our way into happiness. If people are going to be happy and feel alive, they have to pay attention. That's how it is. "In such a way", then, means: engagingly, mindfully, vitally, with passion and curiosity, etc. Most people do not connect mindfulness--paying close attention to ANYTHING--as being so closely connected to a sense of vitality, but it is. When we avoid noticing ANYTHING, we shade our selves, our psyches, we diminish the light of our attention. There is no good enough reason to diminish your own spirit. None.

The rest of the process is really about how all the parts of this question tie together. If paying attention to everything about me and everything around me helps me feel alive, how does it continue to support fulfilling development? Because lots of people are paying attention to a lot of stuff but they aren't necessarily very happy about it or fulfilled by it. So we need something more than JUST mindfulness. Since we're thinking beings, it can help to understand. The third level is all about process, fluidity, growth. So the ways that we can describe our history in chunks don't really describe us as living beings. The challenge is to find out how we can flow, feeling connected but not constrained by connection. Because we can only think about so many things at once, it's helpful to have some sort of focus. That's part of why I wrote the essay "Six Aspects". When we are unhappy about something, we can look at where we are and ask ourselves: which of these aspects do I need to be incorporating more directly or completely to be satisfied with what I am doing right now? What am I not seeing in others? There is ALWAYS something that can be done, something more to see. But when people don't learn to think of themselves beyond the first two levels, they can't necessarily see what it is they can do. When we can't know ourselves beyond the first two levels, we think of ourselves as sort of pieced-together-objects and it's hard to fit together the ways people describe us or the ways we describe ourselves with our lived experience. The third level is all about what we do but also what we see, what we are capable of imagining, discovering in ourselves and others, creating, and sharing. We create social reality by what we do; there is no one else to blame whether people want to praise a god or not.

In other words, to have even somewhat accurate self-descriptions, we HAVE TO include our potential, we have to include how we are not only from our families and cultures but how we are fantastic examples of humanity which our families and cultures cannot fully appreciate. Because more growth is always possible, it is impossible to know ourselves by only looking backwards. And because we can't be certain of what will happen in the future, to have accurate self-identities, we have to include a sense of knowing openness. I know that I can grow, I feel it, I am sure of it even though I don't know how I will grow. This is equally important as my genetics and my history, my culture, etc. But most people don't give it equal attention.

The last collection or level has to do with moving beyond the limitations not only found in my personality or my past but those found in humanity as it is currently. If every single person always has room to grow and things they can do in each moment to choose and feel that growth, then the same must be true for us as a whole. In the same way that we don't know the future about our individual growth for sure, we don't know the direction of human growth for sure, but we will not be able to feed into it very strongly if we do not feel openness about humanity. Every religion I've come across has described what I see as openness or potential. Every meditator has felt this openness or potential. We just don't always know how to bring that potential into reality right now, we don't always know how to bring openness into our interactions with one another all the time. But it's possible.

Until now, people as a whole have not seen this possibility as clearly (that's not it--I should say "as comprehensively") as we see it now. So we have all these ways of hinting at potential without necessarily having expert ways of bringing it out. But because we bump elbows and everything else with more people more often than has ever occurred in history, in our past, we run into more of our own possible actions than ever before has occurred. We get new ideas and new feelings from the abundant diversity of interactions IF WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO FEEL OPENNESS. Now, if we don't include intention and agency in how we bump elbows, we can allow genetics and history to set the course, to affect how we interact with one another and how we think of ourselves. But I, for one, believe in the human spirit that history shows as well as the human spirit that has yet to unfold. I am absolutely certain that we have not yet fulfilled our potential, reached our limits, come to understand ourselves. We are shot through with openness from beginning to end. This openness, this space for development and change, characterizes who we are as human probably more than any other single aspect. This has been described as adaptability, as if we are simply the most cunning creatures around. From a first or second-level perspective that is a good enough description. How do I know that description by itself isn't accurate? "Good enough" isn't good enough for me. That's how I am. How are you?

Rest, Relaxation, Balance, Equanimity

I've been thinking about the difference between ease and profundity. It seems like a lot of these things are often thought about as nouns but they also fit as verbs, especially when people intentionally DO them. Rest is something that we get or have naturally enough, like when we feel tired and sleep, but we can also choose to rest.

I think "rest" and "relaxation" fit together, that rest is often unintentional (but welcome) while relaxing can be understood as something we do on purpose, intentionally. Balance and equanimity might be different from one another in a similar way. When we feel like things are going pretty well, we might feel balanced without putting effort or intention into it; when push comes to shove, in order to keep that feeling of balance, we may need to engage an intentional sense of equanimity. At the very least, there is a difference between when we feel balanced or competent or in control without putting any thought into it and those moments where we feel stressed in some way.

It seems that balance is supported by general types of health--good sleep, diet, exercise, relationships, etc. A more intentional sense of equanimity seems to involve some degree of identification with profundity, like the feeling that when shit hits the fan, we might still feel solid, stable, deep. This profundity or the equanimity that seems connected to it feels different to me than strength (especially meaning strength of will). I would say that the equanimity and profundity can occur in awareness with intention that does not require forceful effort whereas strength of will involves both intention and effort.

While strength of will or amount of effort may be comparative, I don't know that equanimity involves comparison. Like being a lady. When you feel equanimity, there may be no reason for saying so or making a claim. When people feel a sense of comparison and superiority or inferiority, they seem lacking in psychological balance and equanimity to me. It strikes me that most people's assumptions involve comparison so thoughtlessly that this sense of inferiority in ourselves and others tends to be protected or courteously hidden (in conversation and interactions) rather than being seen as a sign of competitiveness (people who are unhappy about feeling inferior are unhappy about their own sense of comparison). We are all willing to see superiority as a sign of competitiveness. But I wonder that we have not generally done the same with inferiority. It seems to me that, when equanimity is included, inferiority is neither good or bad in any sense as much as it is simply unnecessary. Anyone judging it as good or bad may still be competing.

I guess that my point today is that if we cannot see inferiority when it occurs and for what it is, it will continue to remain as a weapon in the thought-police arsenal. As I intentionally realign myself more with equanimity, rather than seeming good and bad in various ways, arsenals more often seem simply unnecessary in most cases. When I find myself in a situation that is challenging enough to test my balance, I am more often just competing to win or embracing equanimity rather than giving attention to superiority/inferiority. The claims and feelings of superiority and inferiority matter less and less, while the competition hasn't necessarily changed at all. The point of winning, though, rather than being zero-sum and excluding losers, has something more to do with overall or inclusive progress. In such a case, it becomes harder to "lose" and the meaning of "win" changes. The "winners" end up leading progressive change in any given moment and the rest of the people end up following up with progressive change. Rather than losers in a zero-sum competition, then, we can often have a zero-loser equation involving inclusive progress. But someone will likely end up leading. This seems to happen more often when thought-policing and resentment/inferiority are not privileged in the equation.

Virtual Mindfulness

Mind streams. Even when we sleep, a bunch of stuff is going on in our brains. When we dream, we notice dreams have a certain amorphous or fluid quality. When we are awake, most of us have a running commentary that we often don't pay attention to, but it's there. Mind streams.

Digitized information flows stream as well. Sometimes we are not tuned in to various streams, so we aren't picking up anything meaningful. At other times, the information comes in faster than we can handle. This analogy between digitized technology and "information biology"--the ways our nervous systems and brains work--fascinates me.

Marx brought up the interesting relationship between humans and their modes of production. Essentially, we shape how we do things, and the ways we do things shape us in turn. In a little over one hundred years in America, we have moved from a primarily labor-based agricultural mode of production to industrialized to consumer-oriented to information production. We are currently working on moving into a more integrated-virtual sense of what is going on economically and socially.

As modes of production changed, training for jobs has changed, and management styles have changed. Management used to focus on getting the most out of unskilled agricultural laborers, then training workers to mechanical means and streamlining the mechanized processes, then to integrating a consumer focus, and most recently, the business writers are talking about "knowledge workers"--workers whose primary output has less to do with their physical activity and more to do with training and know-how. As modes of production have changed, workers' needs, demands, and desires have changed as well. What do knowledge workers need in order to do well? What increases functionality and innovativeness in brain functioning and productive output? It's fascinating in its complexity. How are you, your company, your nation doing with information biology and cultural technology (the insides of technological change)?

With information management, we are especially dealing in selection, organization, presentation, and communication. How we do that is important for knowledge workers, and this has been recognized from the beginning. With increasing virtual access and integration, not only are we dealing directly with massive amounts of information and people with similar areas of specialization to ourselves, but we increasingly have to integrate specialized work in one field or area with specialized information in another field. The human or cultural technology of collaboration is now being economically driven in advanced areas of the economy. So how do brains and people function best in collaboration?

While these massive amounts of increasing streams of information (various fields of expertise) can seem like intimidating Goliaths, the interaction changes when we stop trying to slay Goliath and learn how to work together. As an enemy, no one wants to fight the giant. But as collaborators, giants are good to have around. These streams of information that are fields of expertise are no more or less threatening or fruitful than what happens in your own mind constantly. The fact that we tend not to be aware of all that potential for good or harm does not make it more or less relevant. (What would it take to send you into a panic attack or a catatonic numbness? We don't usually fear these things, but most people don't understand them either. What could happen if you worked near optimal mental-feeling input and output every day of your life?)

I've diverged into at least two topics now--collaboration/communications and virtual mindfulness. Back to mindfulness. While mindfulness has been described in many ways, I prefer to see it as a quality of awareness that exhibits a balance between focus and relaxation. I disagree with the idea that mindfulness is the opposite of multi-tasking; focus is the opposite of multi-tasking, but mindfulness is not just focus. Mindfulness can be applied to one thing at a time. When this happens, it may feel like focus. But we also eventually become aware that mind streams, and it is quite possible to be mindful of that streaming. When we can remain focused on this stream as a singular thing, I would call that mindfulness as well. People often talk about being in "flow" or "in the zone", and this can happen more or less mindfully.

When people watch TV, they veg, not flow. That's fine, relaxation is good for everything that lives. But when we deal in interactive mediums, we have a sense of centeredness or self or purpose that allows a mix of passive receptivity and action. What's more, with digitized, electrical media like the Web, we can feel a little space from our own emotional reactions and comparisons with other people if we choose to. The ability to remain focused without a massive amount of effort--which usually happens when people are interested in what they're doing--is that balance between focus and relaxation that I mentioned. Usually, positive emotional energy feeds psychological performance, and avoiding negative psychological energy outputs can also feed performance.

The potential for virtual mindfulness to increase in a collaborative context is fascinating, and this could only happen with a massive amount of options. If there were less options, less information involved, people would spend less time focused on what interests them in the moment. What we do know, concerning innovative knowledge "production", is that people need a rich context to draw from and a sense of personal interest. When interest wanes, attention suffers, production suffers, people get bored or agitated.

In dealing with information coming over the Web, we recognize that it may be coming from a computer, a person like us or different in impressive ways, child molesters, hackers, nearly anyone. This encourages a certain deliberate point of view where we take the information basically at face value and decide whether we can create with it. Rather than face-to-face emotional reactivity and status/power comparisons, we can more easily try out a balanced point of view. Virtual reality becomes an interesting practice arena.

Intention's Centrality

Think about how influential search engines like Google are. My parents don't have much idea of what is available with tools like this, but when they use these tools for the few uses they can imagine, they're generally happy with the results. New options are created daily or almost daily, so much so that I can not say that I am much closer to using the full potential of all this available information even if I am ten times more adept, informed, and creative about it than my parents.

Mining the full potential of the Web is like trying to mine our full human potential. We each have more potential than we can much more than skim in a single lifetime. Think about how many languages you are capable of learning if you focused on them--there are hundreds or thousands of languages that any kid can learn but no one of us has the time for all of them. Besides languages, there are things like dancing that we could all be better at, sports, academics, etc. I will never be quite the car mechanic I might have been if I'd only focused on mechanics earlier in life, and if I start learning now, I will be able to keep learning about mechanics for the rest of my life. There are thousands or millions (or more) of such possibilities.

Because attention is limited, we have to choose somewhat where we want to focus, but our options are phenomenal. The teacher-to-student method of education involves a lot of discipline. Dominating types of discipline, as opposed to self-directed types of interested focus, create all sorts of negative aftereffects. The possibilities that were offered by TV (to Generation X) showed kids other things to focus on besides school-based curriculums. More recently, the possibilities offered by interactive mediums offer something other than passive or receptive options.

The same is true of "therapy". While it has often been modeled on human weakness (potential we have not fulfilled), much of this unfulfilled potential, much of the difficulties and motivational ambiguity people experience, comes from the aftereffects of dominance. In comparison to mutual innovation and the inspiration it creates, dominance is boring from a more powerful position and from a less powerful position. Dominance is a lot of work, and it continues to create a perceived need for more dominance by creating resentment and resistance. The same is true when we model our understanding of human beings on ideas of weakness or sickness (existential or medical); in such a case, we create a perceived need for therapy.

When people learn to dis-identify with domination methods and the aftereffects, they open up to innovation and inspiration. We replace what used to be called "delayed gratification" with intentional focus. When that happens, the purpose of education and what used to be thought of as "therapy" end up looking like a common "development of human potential".

Within the recognition that we (individually and globally) have more potential than we can bring out in one lifetime, we end up considering not only the breadth of choices, but also depth or profundity. When individual intention is included, we begin to recognize the importance of clarifying intention. By clarifying intention I mean learning intentional focus as well as liberating ourselves from the debilitating aftereffects and methods used in dominance idioms. In a hundred different ways, we learn to not only free our minds but also to interact in a clearly focused (inspired) manner with the world around us. When we all have the same information available, the quality of how we use it stands out as more important than the quantity each person has because quantity is relatively equal. In such a context, what you can do remains very important, but what you can intend to do becomes definitive. What WE can do is very important, but what WE intend to do is definitive. With these changes in technological mediums and increase in availability of information, we become increasingly known by our intentions. It becomes very important, then, to question how we can improve our ability to intend and the wisdom with which we develop and deploy this ability. Human development--with education and therapy as subsets of human development--become increasingly organized around intention and potential rather than around forms of dominance and aftereffects of dominance.

We increasingly interact in more informed ways through increasingly rich and diverse social networks. As overwhelming as this can seem, as we familiarize ourselves to the opportunities, we improve in applying our intention and energy to selecting and innovating opportunities. With a progressive psychology, we begin to more fully and adequately explore the possibility principle with mindful appreciation. Rather than lauding the ideological benefits, this sense of progress is experimentally verifiable through neurophysiology, economic growth, and political process.

Progressive Psychology

Just as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press radically changed the world, the World Wide Web is radically changing the world. The psychology that is currently taught, though, is still modeled on Gutenberg's printed medium even though efforts have been made to dress up that medium and its accompanying forms of thinking as something younger, hipper, and faster than what they actually are. It is impressive to see how ridiculous those well-intentioned efforts have often seemed to people my age and younger, and I look forward to being seen as ridiculous in similar ways by those younger or just more up-to-date than myself.

The major problem with changing primary mediums of exchange, including mediums of communication, is that the experience and social power is usually in the hands of elders while the familiarity with the new mediums is experienced by the up-and-coming punks of the next generation. Large scale innovation ends up being a messy but exciting business.

The biggest problem I've experienced in my education has been in wondering: how does all that move? How do you take all the archaic experience and let it live, let it found or base future endeavors rather than hold them back (like an oversized anchor)? How do we take these information chunks and not only let them stream, but swim that stream successfully? Essentially, the way psychology has been taught to me is like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. Well, most institutions are usually behind the times. (Some things don't change I suppose.)

Here's the outline of what might as well be called progressive psychology:

Information management through

stages of change

in a psychological economy embedded

within a stream of social reality based

in a changing physical environment.

Each of those phrases represents an important, distinct-yet-connected contributing aspect to a psychology that lives. The point in writing this out succinctly is to show that a general outline does not need to be phrased so that only experts can use it. It is possible, with a minimal amount of familiarity, to recognize what these aspects are and how they generally interact.

It's true that almost everything I needed to know I could have learned in kindergarten. But we all know that there are all kinds of fun to get into as adults that kindergarteners don't know anything about. The field of psychology is only now moving beyond its kindergarten stage. There is a lot out there ahead of us.


http://mertzian.googlepages.com/progressivepsychology

Translators of Human Potential

It's exciting to have a forum where I can mostly focus on excitement. I've always tried to learn about what I find most interesting at the time, and that has made my personal studies fascinating. Blogging allows the same with expression of ideas--rather than spewing whatever uninteresting stuff may be going on in any given day, I can write when I feel that good-vibes daemon and get to know myself as an excited person by looking at what I (choose to) post. I think it's easy enough to miss out on that aspect of ourselves, but it's helpful to see a bunch of this stuff together, this material that involves excitement for me.

In arguing with my cultural diversity and women's studies professors, and in speaking congenially with a few forward-thinking feminist scholars, the point kept coming up that identity politics are interesting but a real sticking point concerning personal and cultural progress. Part of what keeps coming around is that, as people lament the loss of culture and languages around the world, more and more is offered for us as individuals to interact with. The complexity that people were used to seeing in old-school identity politics terms (nations, ethnicities, gender, temperament, etc.) is increasingly recognized to be internal to various groups of people and individuals. In other words, instead of only comparing myself to women, I can get to know my "feminine" qualities to the extent that they're there and could be developed; then they become me and mine rather than "feminine". The same is true with my "Chinese" qualities, although we haven't really used that sort of word choice much. I really appreciate a certain amount of traditional Chinese values, a certain amount of social(ist) cohesion, and an interest in maintaining China's unique place in the world.

My generation was the first in the history of the world to basically have available in book form almost every religion, easily accessible since we were born. We assume that availability. Now, you don't have to go to another country, you don't even have to buy or borrow the books and lug them around in your backpack if you have access to a computer. The next couple of generations will witness a further degree of universal language development (software code and fiber optic communications along with digitization).

When societies bump into one another, cultures get exchanged like glances eye to eye and then bodily fluids as things heat up. Eventually, something new is created. For the last couple of centuries, this happened mostly in a colonial competition. Now, if we can avoid nuclear or world war, it happens economically and technically.

Just as one society may assimilate aspects of another when those aspects are shown to work better, companies do the same. With companies going multinational, or with multinational companies becoming more influential, the interactions of various aspects of differing cultures are no longer primarily resigned to diplomats and armies between potentially warring societies. The interactions are no longer so much about benefiting oneself AT ANY COST to the others involved. It's an important change that even the Bush Administration is capable of recognizing. Why have we not attacked or at least completely ostracized North Korea? It doesn't work.

With the general reluctance to destroy one's competitors that came about with the rise of liberal humanism, the competition changes. You no longer sneak in, commit genocide against your competitors, steal what you can and go home. There is no separate "home" to go back to, and we all know this now. If we shit the bed, there is nowhere else to go to sleep. This world is pretty much it, at least until we can learn to live on Mars. While the USSR and the USA were willing to line up against each other based on ideological differences, destruction was still a major part of the equation, but this competition made the choices obvious to us for the first time--we can destroy each other (and ourselves at the same time) or try something else. The same is true with terrorism. Just try destroying all terrorists and see how long that "war on terror" lasts. You create your enemy with every move you make in that sort of game. Yes, the terrorists create THEIR enemies the same violent way; terrorism is the flipside of perceived oppression, so it can result from genuine oppression or also from entitlement and resentment. It gets interesting when rich, entitled Saudi kids become terrorists and rich, entitled American kids become Presidents.

Violence is bad for business and also for intentional assimilation. It's harder to pick out the positive aspects of Islam when the Muslims you interact with are shouting and shooting (the same is true from the Muslim side). But, in order to do something other than engage in this tribal sort of silliness (and it is silly and unnecessary now more than tragic or horrible, although it is tragic and horrible too), it is necessary to recognize that your opponent/competitor MAY actually do something better than you already do, that they may know something you don't. I am willing to admit that the Muslim countries in this world may do some things better than I do (and it's reasonable to want to see proof).

Companies in competition more often seek to improve themselves than to destroy their competition outright (it's better to assimilate successful competitors than destroy them); this has only come about to the extent that innovations, once developed, will last whether the person or company who created them is destroyed or not. In other words, destruction is no longer the best business, and that is THE ONLY EFFECTIVE REASON for convincing people to limit their competition. There are plenty of other supporting claims, but this is the only one that has been effective throughout history. As long as destruction pays, people will destroy because it takes less creativity and effort to come up with a fuck-you response than getting to know foreigners. Getting to know foreigners can be uncomfortable and difficult, and the economy of psychological motivations comes into play. If I can get away with greater comfort for myself, even if it means destroying others, I just might do it; if I can't remain comfortable and benefit from their destruction, I may as well not--it's distasteful.

So business competition is less extreme or violent than that between colonial empires, but the same cultural assimilation occurs with companies as with adventurers. The amazing thing is that, the less I have to fear about others trying to destroy me, and the less attention I put into devising ways to destroy others, the more I focus on the business at hand. The business at hand has always been and will always be happiness.

The less attention that goes into destruction, the more attention can go into creative improvement. Multinational companies are learning cultural lessons that countries have learned and forgotten since time immemorial. It's better to be creative, easier to sell your products, if everyone involved benefits. In order for that to happen in a functioning, competitive, international marketplace, we have to find out how "creative destruction" applies to business and culture. The best way to understand the psychological economy that drives business interactions and cultural exchange is to understand how creative destruction affects oneself. The better one is able to understand how creative destruction applies to one's own attention and awareness, the more prepared one is to make personal, business, and diplomatic decisions in a globalized setting. At this point in history, every social and ecological setting is a globalized setting.

The flipside of creative destruction (knowing what to let go of and how to dismantle it) is population control. Without population control, every human society contributes to straight ecological destruction.

As people mirror societies and companies, and as different cultures become increasingly more available to individuals from beyond the geographical boundaries of those societies, individuals sample from and introject aspects of those various cultures. Two things happen. The first is that the individual or company or whatever (administration, maybe?) becomes more internationalist, less particularist, more global, more HUMAN, less xenophobic. The second is that the internal possibilities become more diverse. When that diversity is overwhelming, people oversimplify--making the choices seem superficial, stripping culture and experience of its richness--or they fuzz out from not being able to hold all that diversity in mind. But when that diversity can be embraced and engaged, it fills out so much of one's own rich, human potential--much of which is ignored or denied by one's culture of origin or prescribed gender, class values, etc. (prescribed limitations). When that happens, rather than being weirdos in our own cultures or groups, we end up being examples of some strange and fascinating human potential that is largely foreign to our group. We become translators of human potential. This is what every individual and society is--translators of human potential. What are you focused on?