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We have so much going for us
Two of us are at the front of a small meeting room, unrolling a sheet of plain white paper, 20 feet long, and taping it to the wall. in a few minutes, a group of people will arrive to begin a workshop.
Soon we’ll be asking them: What do you see in the world, what do you see in your world, that gives you confidence in the future?
The first time I asked this question, a little more than a decade ago, I was afraid I’d be up there in front of a silent room. And indeed, the question has proven to be surprisingly challenging to answer. For most people, it seems to come out of the blue.
When I ask the question of this group, they hesitate before speaking. After a few moments, I hear a tentative voice. "How about women? the ascent of women into positions of power?" I write these words in the middle of the paper on the wall.
Another pause before the next idea is offered. I write it up: "advances in medicine."
Someone else observes that there seems to be renewed interest in the spiritual dimension of life. Then someone says, "the invention of the Internet."
"Wait a minute," another interrupts. "the Internet is creating some big problems. Sure, it lets us communicate with people far away, but we spend way too much time in front of our computers and not enough time in the real world. What about the damage it’s doing?"
I’ve heard this question before. I know it’s likely to be in the back of everyone’s mind: "isn’t there a downside to every upside?"
"If you look for it, you can find something wrong with just about anything," I suggest. "right now, we’re trying something different: intentionally focusing on finding things of value. That’s what can fuel the future. So let’s experiment and suspend our ability to discern the downside, just for the moment." (We’ll soon see why this choice is so crucial.)
And I write "the invention of the Internet" on the wall.
As often happens, addressing the what-about-the-down-side question unleashes the group’s creativity. Someone expands on the Internet, observing that communications technology has enhanced freedom of speech.
The earlier remark about the ascent of women prompts a comment about "more acceptance of human diversity."
The pace picks up as one person’s idea sparks another’s. The paper begins to fill and an astonishing range of assets and forces is revealed.
Increased awareness of the importance of the natural environment.
The spread of ideals such as democracy and universal public education.
Widespread voluntarism.
The commitment people make to care for children.
Our ability to laugh.
I can feel the energy in the room rise as we begin to see a different world than the one portrayed on the evening news. A different world than we often talk about in casual conversations at home, at work, even at the kids’ softball game, when so often the talk gravitates to what’s wrong and how bad things are.
At the end of the day, I stay after the group has left, looking at the work we’ve put on the wall. I’m moved by how we’ve begun to develop our collective ability to see all we have going for us–the tailwinds the world offers.
And I wonder why those tailwinds are often out of our view. Why does the question I asked the group seem so unusual?
The "woe are we" conversation
A few years ago I was having lunch by myself in a restaurant. At the table next to me a couple of young men were talking (all right, they were grumbling) about their work. Behind me the same kind of conversation was going on. It dawned on me that these folks had tacitly agreed that this was the way they would talk to each other.
It was what I’ve come to call the "woe are we" conversation.
It’s an interesting social convention: We often connect with each other by talking about what’s wrong, what we don’t want, how awful things are. This habitual pattern of conversation is as comfortable as an old pair of shoes. We could just as easily talk about what we want, and what we have going for us that will get us there. But it’s not the socially accepted thing to do.
Those simple habits of thought and talk create a culture.
I’d go so far as to propose that we’ve created a social agreement–a silent, unexamined assumption–that we must talk about problems and limitations because they are what’s real. Although this belief usually remains unspoken, it shapes our thoughts and dominates our language: In American slang, "let’s get real," often means "let’s talk about what’s wrong." Often implied is how helpless we are to change anything.
The strength of this convention was brought home to me recently when a gentleman reputed to be the most powerful in Bermuda hosted a working lunch for people involved in social sector causes in that island nation. The gathering was carefully designed to draw attention to tailwinds and assets, especially those that support people in contributing to society and making a difference with their lives.
As the meeting drew to a close, I stood in front of the group for a question and answer session. The first question came from one of the former premiers of the country.
"How long have you been here, Jim? Have you read the local paper?"
A couple more questions revealed what was behind his polite query. He wanted me to acknowledge the downside of paradise. He wanted to make sure we didn’t sweep the issues under the carpet.
I certainly was aware of this account of life on the island. But as far as I’m concerned, asking "What about the problems?" is beside the point. It’s simply a routine, a habit (you might call it the default setting we return to time and again), even for people like this gentleman who are known for their "can-do" attitude.
(A woman sitting next to the former premier reminded him of how often he takes a different stance. "I know you," she said. "And for heaven’s sake, you count the number of times in a day that you say ‘yes.’")
We can follow the norm and investigate thoroughly the phenomena that we call problems, if we want to do that. We can also spend time on debates about whether it’s "fair" or "truthful" to focus on assets instead of taking a so-called impartial view of the world.
I prefer to take a more practical approach and leave such philosophizing to others. The way I see it, we have a strategic decision to make: Based on everything we know about human beings, what is the best fuel for the bold, sustained action that will realize potentials?
Do we get farther if we focus on problems or if we pay attention to assets? As you’ll see, there are good reasons to bet on the latter.
Why is it that we’re so occupied with problems?
One sunny Sunday morning several years ago, I flew into Perth, Western Australia. It was a working trip, so I had with me several suitcases, including a 70-pound trunk filled with books and papers.
At the airport taxi stand, I started to apologize to the driver for burdening him with such a quantity of luggage. A huge smile on his face, he scooped up my heavy cases and deftly hoisted the trunk onto the roof of his cab.
Delighted with the sunshine and his friendly, upbeat demeanor, I thought I’d found utopia. On the ride into town, catching a glimpse of Perth’s famous black swans on the river, I asked my new friend what he liked most about living in Perth.
"Well, it’s not as bad as a lot of other places."
"How’s that?" I asked, more than a little baffled by his response.
"There isn’t as much crime. There isn’t as much pollution. There isn’t as much poverty. It’s not as bad as a lot of other places. Yeah, that’s what I like best about living here."
Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.
Even today, I still find it curious that problems are so central to our awareness.
It seems to begin very early in our lives. Researchers put small tape recorders on the backs of 5-year-olds. They found that today’s children are growing up in homes where as much as 90 percent of the conversation is about how bad things are, what was done wrong, who is to blame, and what not to do.
As we become adults, the deficit mindset is reinforced as we are swept into the intellectual climate of critique that has expanded in the last several decades. We are taught valuable lessons in how to be critical and analytical, to deconstruct, expose, debunk.
This worldview is fortified by deep and pervasive cultural and intellectual traditions.
The idea of original sin, according to defrocked priest Matthew Fox, has dominated Western culture for more than a thousand years, providing a foundational belief for many. (It wasn’t always so. Fox tells us that creation itself–the original blessing–was at the heart of Christianity until St. Augustine in the fourth century.) A friend who is a devout Catholic has told me of the prayer before communion that begins "Lord, I am not worthy" (words he has boldly replaced with "Lord, I am worthy, for I was made in Your image").
Today, such long-held beliefs have been supplemented by modern social science, which has provided a generous supply of new models of human deficit.
Here’s one example: In the space of just a few decades, professional diagnostic terms–depression, attention deficit disorder, codependency, addiction–have spread widely in popular culture. This language, and the disease-oriented framework it reflects, have come to dominate how we think and talk about our inner lives. We may even have learned how to be mentally ill.
With all of this energy devoted to a deficit-oriented worldview, is it any wonder so many of us grow up believing that problems are at the center of our lives? Or even that people don’t have problems, they are problems, and that life itself is a problem to be solved?
Our attention to problems is understandable. It may be that we’re born with our brains hard-wired that way. After all, our ancestors had to be acutely aware of danger in order to survive.
On top of any innate tendencies, we also wire our brains through our daily actions. We human beings are intensely social creatures. We learn by watching and copying what other people do. Researchers who study how our brains work are finding that this learning happens through the operation of special brain cells called mirror neurons. These cells perform a most amazing function: When you sit perfectly still and watch someone else do something, your mirror neurons fire exactly as if you were doing the action yourself. You can literally feel what the other person is going through.
This astonishing discovery starts to explain why we tend to take on the feelings, language, and beliefs of those around us–why we follow along when our lunch companions complain about how bad things are. The study of mirror neurons is beginning to provide a biological understanding of empathy, human connection, learning, and even the transmission of culture.
There’s more. A constantly repeated behavior creates and reinforces pathways in the basal ganglia, the part of the brain where habits live. When we habitually focus on problems, we may actually change our own brains in ways that make it more likely we’ll continue to pay attention to problems.
With all this going on inside our brains, it starts to sound like it might be a large task to rewire ourselves in another direction. The encouraging news, it seems to me, is that it is possible. After all, if we’ve learned our problem-oriented culture by imitating other people, we can learn (and teach) new behaviors in the same way. And new habits can replace old ones.
But it’s reasonable to ask at the outset: Why make the effort?
After all, there is a certain liberation in being critical and cutting right to the problem. And better to be a staunch social critic than a feeble apologist for an unjust status quo–if we see those as the only available options.
Yet as we’ll see, we pay a high price when we let criticism become the dominant way we look at the world. I believe it is time to reconsider the utility of the deficit-based stance, just as we’ve worked to rise above other aspects of human behavior that have outlived their usefulness.
Closet idealism
Beneath the critical veneer of modern life lies a deep hidden reservoir of idealism.
Every time we criticize the way things are, we indirectly signal our desire for a better world. Every statement about what’s wrong is actually an unarticulated hope. Every social critic wants the world to be a better place.
Yet it takes courage to depart from the standard conversations of complaint.
"To be gloomy is to be serious," writes William Safire. "to be joyful is seen as frivolous or deceptive."
My colleague and friend Anne Nickerson echoes this insight. Anne heads a family foundation in Sheridan, Wyoming, a dynamic community of 15,000 people. She says she used to feel timid about expressing her aspirations in meetings with others in the community.
"I didn’t want to look silly," she admits. "Sometimes people can make you feel that way."
After organizing a community-wide dialogue that used the principles in this book, Anne realized how many people had the same high hopes for the community as she did. She vowed to speak up with confidence, instead of holding back on her thoughts and ideas. As a pathway, the people who Anne had gathered created a Center for Vital Community, a permanent, daily convening point for conversations of consequence and action.
Anne’s sense that others share her high aspirations for society is supported by the research of Paul Ray, who has described an emerging worldview held by a growing segment of the population that he calls "cultural creatives." These people share values that range from personal authenticity to ecological sustainability. They’re optimistic and altruistic. They’re looking for more meaningful lives and working to create a better future.
Ray believes that the more than 50 million cultural creatives in the United States, and nearly 100 million in the European Union, have already begun to create a new culture. And yet they are largely invisible, even to one another. Each individual thinks they’re alone in their beliefs. At most, they know a few friends who share their views. They don’t talk about their values in public because they feel out of step with social norms. Like Anne, they don’t want to be embarrassed or put down. So they remain unaware of their numbers and their potential power.
For Americans who came of age during the social upheavals of the 1960s and 70s, this new culture may simply represent a return to their roots. A few years ago, I facilitated a board retreat for an organization that wanted to elevate its contribution to society. At the beginning of our time together, a board member questioned the idealism inherent in the approach I was suggesting.
I made a point of sitting with him at lunch, and learned that he had served in the Peace Corps as a young man. So often, the flame of idealism and activism that burned so brightly in youth is waiting for the embers, still faintly glowing, to be fanned back to life.
By the end of the day, and without my ever answering his objections, he said to the group, "I began the day as the greatest skeptic of these ideas. I end it as the greatest champion of them." Sometimes a bit of reflection is all it takes to remind ourselves of our deepest beliefs.
It’s time to acknowledge how many others share our hopes and dreams. Heaven forbid, they might even be closet idealists.