Humanizing our Enemy Images

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Ian Curtin

I was writing a short piece the other day about how we create enemy images: how we find someone or something outside ourselves to blame when things don’t go our way. Or how we may define our identity in opposition to another person or group we don’t like or are conditioned to think of as less than or inferior.

Seeing other people through a critical lens of “not me” creates the groundwork for developing our enemy images.

So – I started to reflect on the enemy images I grew up with. I date myself, but at the time, World War II epics were playing in the theatres and on television. These North American movies provided human stories of the Allied characters while the Axis powers (Germany, Japan and Italy) were relegated to superficial images, which reinforced that they were the enemy.

I was provided with all the labels and images I needed to conclude that they were not like us and that our side was good and true, while the other side was evil. Consequently, labels like “Kraut” and “Jap” became part of our children’s play. My young mind hadn’t the wherewithal to question the images placed before me in the guise of entertainment, and I unconsciously accepted these enemy images as “truth”.

Last year, my father shared with me a memory of war that spoke to the inhuman behaviour of “our side”. Such a recollection would not have been accepted in a movie script of that period.

Today, however, challenges to my early enemy images are starting to emerge.

I’ve recently seen a number of movies speaking to the humanity of the enemy during that horrific war. For example, a German movie entitled Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) presents the true story of Sophia Magdalena Scholl, a courageous activist in the underground German student resistance group, The White Rose. The film re-creates the last six days of Sophie’s life when she is about to be executed for taking a stand against the Third Reich during a time of violent oppression and censorship in Germany.

Her inspiring words as she prepared for her death are a challenge to all of us when we must respond to injustice. “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”

What fascinated me about this movie was the humanity with which it was presented. It’s a simple story about young students, not unlike those presented in movies about Vietnam War resisters. However, I was deeply moved by the courage it took for these students to remain true to their principles even when they knew the dire consequences they faced, which went far beyond anything imposed on North American protesters. I searched for such a humanizing movie produced on this side of the Atlantic and found nothing.

My only wish for the future is that such humane and balanced portrayals of war don’t take six decades to find their way into our collective awareness. I certainly take heart that the Internet is making it much easier for such stories to emerge just when we most need them to stop the formation of these enemy images.

The only way to diffuse our enemy images is to humanize those we label “enemy”.

And our first step is to get ourselves to a place where we can see the other side as a human “being”. This means we must first humanize ourselves through empathy, curiosity and self-acceptance. That way we can discover what’s in it for us when we marginalize an aspect of ourselves and project it onto others so they can be the “enemy” we don’t want to deal with.

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Self Compassionate Reflections on Moral Judgements

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Ian Curtin

This is a lovely piece written by Charles Behling, an educator focused on social justice.  What I particularly admire is his evident compassion for himself and others when considering issues involving moral judgments. It is so easy to slip into judgment of the “evil” other without checking how the very same process might reside within ourselves. When I asked Charles whether I could share this, he without hesitation said yes. He is a true Elder in my books. He wants to share what he has learned through experience.

 

 

By Charles Behling

I’m 71, which is old, I guess.  Except that I don’t feel it.  And the “wisdom of age,” whatever that is, certainly hasn’t kicked in yet.

I first responded to David Brooks’ invitation to write with real interest.  Then, I got cold feet.  I think the problem for me is his suggestion that we “grade” aspects of our lives.  My grades would be sort of a gentleman’s “C” (I mean, by definition, most of us are average, right?), and that thought produced in me an ego/depressive/guilt festival. That’s a very familiar festival for me.

Then, the fact of those bad feelings, and my indulgence of them, reminded me of one of the things I’ve learned, and think might be worth sharing:  Life is best lived, not graded. Of course, we screw things up, but most of the time that doesn’t much matter.  And when it does matter—a lot—it is often not something that we could have avoided anyway, given circumstances and our level of knowing at the time. The question is what to do after the mistake, not what the mistake says about our worth.

Now, in giving this advice, I am very aware that I do not live it.  I worry and fret and get ruled by my ego.  But, I have at least learned that none of that is helpful, even though I continue doing it.

I grew up in rural South Carolina, and I learned love and kindness from my family and neighbors.  I also learned to be blind to, and to support, the cruelty and evil that we otherwise good people engaged in: racial oppression and segregation.

Later in life, the contradictions between the goodness and horror of my home led me to a career in “education for social justice.”  That became my life’s calling, and it provided me with meaning and purpose.  I became a professor and a psychologist.

Recently, I have engaged in a wonderful (really, really!!!) program in California called “Learning as Leadership.” That’s a long story, but let me give a pitch for it.   learnaslead.com.  I guarantee you’ll learn more from them about living that you will from reading essays like the one I’m writing now.

Anyway, LAL (that’s their acronym) challenged me to define what I believe is my main goal in life.  What I came up with is something like this: “To create, with others, the safety that permits us to be our full selves.”  That’s cheesy, but you get the picture.

My work as a social diversity/justice educator is, I believe, consistent with that goal.  Justice, for me, is a society where we are free to be ourselves, and we are respected for that, and we are not deprived of opportunities or oppressed because of who we are.

Coming out of a childhood where I, and the people I loved, defended an environment that was unjust and unsafe has given me passion and vision for my profession.  Importantly, it has also given me compassion for the perpetrators of evil, as well as for their victims.  From my own experience of supporting racial segregation, I have learned that wrong-doing is usually a product of ignorance and psychological fear—to see it merely moralistically is simplistic and unproductive.

Now, here comes one of the sources of the bad “grades” of my life. The values and insights which have guided my work are hard for me to practice with the people who are closest to me.  I’m often pretty good at the office, but at home with my family, I am much more likely to judge, blame, criticize, separate.  In other words, where it matters most, I am most prone to create situations that are unsafe.  And, that includes my judgment and harassment of myself.

When I am able to see my deficiencies at home as examples of fallibility, not merely moral failings, I am more able to do better, and to give myself the safety to express the love I feel.  But, what I teach at work, I forget at home.

So it goes.  And maybe that is one of the lessons I am still trying to learn in my life:   Live life, don’t judge it.  Think of other people, not of my own self worth.  It’s ego involvement that separates me from living.

I used to be religious. I’m not anymore.  But if I still believed in God, I think that the thing he would be most pissed with me about is my refusal to accept the gift of life unconditionally.  I have been so lucky in my life; I have been given so much; and yet I have questioned and graded and resisted the gifts.  I still do those things, but at least I have learned that, in doing so, I turn my back on grace.

 

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Small Steps: Stories of Becoming a Change Agent

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Ian Curtin

I recently spoke at a conference on green building initiatives about being a sustainable change agent. And because I was encouraging people to consider their own personal journey in becoming a change agent, I again spent time considering my own. How had
I come to take this path anyway?

At the beginning of my working life when I joined the labour movement, I realized I carried the idea that I wasn’t a likely candidate for being a change agent. I didn’t have any role models in my family, and I wasn’t aware of any significant events that would lead me to this vocation. If anything, I was in reaction to family issues. It has been through
much reflection that I have understood the roots of my activism and seen the many steps that have led to the present. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide, “Yes, change agent, that’s what I want to be when I grow up.” There were steps, many steps, along the way. Mostly I had responded in the moment to the context in which I found myself. If there was one defining choice I kept making (and keep making), however, it was to leap into the unknown and do it anyway. This is the story of that first choice.

One morning, when I was in Grade 6, my teacher told me that I, along with one of the most popular boys in the school, would be candidates for becoming “House” leaders. It was an important role in the school and I was surprised. The other boy was what you might call a Goliath. I was definitely more David material.

Who would be the leader and who would be the assistant was to be decided by a vote of my fellow six graders after lunch. On my way home that noon hour, I was filled with two strong and competing responses. The first was a warm feeling that my teachers had selected me. It seemed like a fluke, yet I didn’t care. My home life had been filled with negativity and an ongoing atmosphere of anxiety and despair, so I keenly felt the rush of being seen and selected for something good. The second was my fear of the humiliation that was sure to come when the outcome of the vote was revealed. (The other boy was so popular, I wasn’t even sure my best friend would vote for me).  I was already vigilant about protecting myself at home against further humiliation. But this was public humiliation. I knew I didn’t stand a chance of being chosen for the top position, and the pain that I knew accompanied humiliation was something I avoided whenever possible. As I walked home that day, I realized I had a choice: find a way to avoid the vote altogether or hold onto the unknown that this unforeseen event offered. I chose the latter.

I didn’t know then that this was one of my many steps towards social activism. Even the steps that followed didn’t add up to the title “change agent.” I was simply being guided by some kind of internal compass. I went with it. I chose to find out what kind of person I could become.

My reflections on the roots of my activism have been important. Each time I gather up another thread of my life, it helps me connect to my passion, my sense of meaning and an understanding of my growth and preparation to fully embody this role. It strengthens my resolve on bad days, helping me gauge the effort needed to overcome the personal barriers I continually face. Reflecting on my story has helped me keep perspective on what I can and cannot offer as well as maintain my patience and sense of self as I leap off into
another unknown. It also helps me understand the hesitation and ambivalence of others who are looking at the activist path and deciding whether to make that same leap.

There have been many setbacks, yet I continue to connect with my yearning to help co-create a better world. My passion for this work has continued to build over the years and I have come to see social activism as a wonderful road to travel. It has offered me tremendous opportunities for connection and experiencing the potential I have within me. It has also been a road full of ambiguity, despair, frustration, and what appear to be insurmountable challenges.

If you are going to choose the unknown of social activism, I suggest heading out on this journey with a strong sense of your personal story. Consider the experiences in your life that have led you to take steps toward becoming a change agent. What are its roots? Discovering them will give you clarity and strengthen your commitment.

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Our Collective Blind Spots Wreak Havoc on the World

Posted on February 8, 2011 by Ian Curtin

Nelson Mandela is one of my heroes. The 92-year-old former president of South Africa and Nobel laureate has used his own self-knowledge and compassion to avert major bloodshed in his country. His compassionate understanding of what was in the hearts and minds of his opponents guided his actions. He was able to maintain his vision and integrity while navigating through the many pressures leadership brings. And given the extreme challenges he endured throughout his life, I am sure his personal mastery came with hard work and hard learning.

I believe Nelson Mandela learned to be congruent between his inner self and his actions for change in the world.

Inner work takes courage. It takes guts to get out of the cycle of reactive righteousness, hopelessness and burn-out, that we, in our social change roles, often fall prey to. It takes commitment to develop the intra-personal, relational, self-care and spiritual skills that can make social change effective and sustainable.

Keep Your Eyes Closed

During 2011, I would like to see more of us exploring the importance of congruence between our inner selves and our actions in the outer world. Why? Because I believe as change agents we must first know a great deal about how change works within ourselves – how we take on or discard new values and beliefs – before we go about our work of encouraging others to change. Without some clear understanding of how we work as individuals, how can we be sure our efforts for change are going to be effective? I have spent over 25 years developing greater awareness within myself. I know first-hand how difficult it has been to shift my deeply held values and beliefs and to become aware of my blind spots: how I consciously use my rank and power, how I marginalize others, how my ego works, my communications style; the list goes on. Becoming aware of my own human frailties and limited perceptions has required a deep love for both myself and our world.

We have plenty of feedback these days that our collective blind spots continue to wreak havoc on our world. And our ability to live compassionately continues to elude us. I believe the current level of personal consciousness in the world is the central challenge in dealing with our global dilemmas: climate change, species extinction, genocide, widening gap between have and have not, etc.

The time for more focus on what continues to drive us towards the brink of extinction is now.

Check out the Inner Activist program initiative. It is designed to contribute to a collectively more relational and loving way of being, sorely needed to address the major challenges of our time.  Specifically, the program’s intention is to offer in-depth training programs that encourage relational leadership skills and that value our diverse natures and natural equality. These are core competencies for social change agents.  Congruence between one’s inner experience and one’s actions for change in the external world is essential for inspirational social change.

The inaugural Inner Activist program commences this June and the Inner Essential eCourse is available on-line now for only a $1.00 per week. Both these programs are designed to help change makers, social entrepreneurs, leaders and activists, be radically more effective in their life-serving work. They don’t claim to have the answers, but they do have some powerful questions, dedicated and skilled faculty and experiential techniques to deepen the work of social change agents. Check out this inovative resource.

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Ideal Mission Statements Often Result In Cynicism

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Ian Curtin

Traps on the Way to Ideals

  

Words like “world-class”, “achieving excellence”, “exceptional”, “unparalleled customer service”, can be found in many mission statements. The ideal organization may sound like what you want to describe in your mission statement, but the price you pay may be steep. Cynicism, misunderstanding, apathy – these may be unintended consequences of describing your ideal aspirations. It may be that when a mission statement does not have the buy-in of employees, it is because the statement is unclear or poorly communicated. While this can be so, I believe employees often understand the statement only too well. They see the large gap between the ideal the organization is reaching for and the actual organization they live in day-to-day. Their lack of buy-in may be one of the symptoms of creating an unachievable and unrealistic mission statement. Your employees may be in a cycle of striving and failing that can lead to a variety of forms of organizational malaise. Each person’s reaction to the gap is unique. They may continually strive for the goal leading to burnout or illness. Others may choose cynicism, apathy or inertia while some might be angry enough to engage in sabotage. Whatever their choice, unachievable mission statements might not be accomplishing what they are intended for – unifying employees behind a statement that defines their collective purpose of working together. Instead, the result could fracture the collective energy available for accomplishing the ‘mission’.  

In the diagram presented below, when we strive for an ideal state and fall short, we often try to remedy this by exerting greater levels of command and control. When unreachable ideals are what we are striving for, this cycle inevitably repeats itself requiring even more command and control. At some point, the cycle starts to wear people down. Symptoms of organizational malaise begin to appear. Competing factions, cynicism, apathy, illness, maybe even sabotage can occur. The mission statement is no longer a source of motivation. It is either ignored, or becomes a source of derision and even ridicule. While the intention of the statement might have been to follow the ‘path of glory’, it may be leading employees to conclude the leaders of the organization are out of touch with the reality of their world. They conclude the ideals in the mission can never be achieved.    

So what is the way out of this dilemma? I suggest taking a second look at your mission statement with a view to greater acceptance and compassion for what the organization is actually like. Becoming aware and acknowledging the actual organization and developing some humour about how things really are can result in greater acceptance by everyone. Reducing the gap between the ideal and actual organization to a size that is manageable encourages staff to view their own capabilities more realistically. By encouraging a compassionate culture, you are building an organization that can engage in the work of transformation without getting caught in the web of organizational malaise.    

So what should the mission statement contain. At some level, what it says is not as important as how it gets created. Collaboration is key! Ensure the development and evolution of this statement includes the participation of those who have to carry it out. Include space for human frailty by emphasizing the need for on-going dialogue about your mission. Encourage awareness and acknowledgement of what’s working and not working. Model compassionate acceptance when mistakes are made. And keep things simple. Easy to remember and repeatable statements are more readily accessible to your employees and board members in their daily work. In just a few sentences, a mission statement needs to communicate the essence of your organization to your employees, stakeholders and to the public.    

What is important about your mission statement is that one guiding set of ideas is articulated, understood and supported by everyone in the organization. The consequences of irrelevant or ignored mission statements is summarized quite eloquently by Lewis Carroll through the words of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which way you go.” So if you are going to take the time and energy to create a meaningful mission statement, be aware that if you ask people to jump across too large a gap, don’t be surprised if a number of folks decide to stay behind!    

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Sustainability: This Word is Used so Much, Its Sustainability is Threatened

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Ian Curtin

Sustainability! Now here’s a used and abused word that appears all the time these days. Everyone is covering themselves in it. For example, I noticed the other day that the Tar Sand folks are suggesting they use less water to make a litre of oil than it takes to make a cup of coffee. Ergo, I should conclude that if they are only using what I use every day, it can’t be that bad – unless I want to see myself as engaging in unsustainable behaviour.

But wait a minute. They want me to use their criteria for defining what sustainability is.

And this is the thing for me these days – sustainability arguments, rationales, conclusions, promotions, etc., are coming at me in all shapes and forms. Everyone is telling me their version of sustainable. It is not a dialogue. And this onslaught is having a numbing affect on me. I can’t process it all. I don’t have the time or the expertise to explore each claim.

What is becoming clearer for me is this. If I don’t get my own set of sustainability ideas, I am going to continue to be pulled around by other people’s concepts of sustainability. Part of building sustainability involves looking within myself and asking, “How am I going to manifest sustainability in my life and contribute to communities working for greater sustainability?”

So I am busy these days trying to get my own sustainability consciousness up to snuff. And there are a number of fronts to consider. I struggle with keeping balance in my life so my health and emotional well being are sustained. (I will save these ever present ego and diversion challenges for another post.)

Then there are my daily decisions about consumption which impact not only me, but my community and the world. And it is here that I realize my inner experience serves me well in helping to guide my decisions. My first challenge is to avoid my inner critic which is all too ready to question and judge myself. It goes something like, am doing enough, am I too selfish, etc. And when I go down this path, I lose my momentum to do anything. I just get overwhelmed.

So instead, I connect with what is alive in me. My desire for my grandchildren to live a long and healthy life is high up on my list. My wish for more equitable distribution of our world’s resources is also up there right alongside my desire to live in harmony with the natural world and honouring other species’ right to life. When I connect with these needs and values, the daily decisions around sustainable consumption become easier to make and the external shrapnel just falls away. I seem to know more about sustainability than I though and if I continue to check inside myself and connect with compassionate needs for myself and others, these guides are like a good north star. They help to bring me home.

Note: First published on www.inneractivist.com

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Collaboration: Not a Linear Process

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Ian Curtin

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

Nelson Mandela

With my best intentions in place, my hope for collaboration with others has easily slid through my fingers. In those times, my allies look like enemies and I feel the threads of burnout pulling at me. And my mind chatter is telling me I am going to have to do this myself if it is ever to get done.

I think all of us have entered into collaborations in hope that our passion for life could be expressed in community – that we could contribute in a creative and supportive environment. And many times we get disappointed – each experience reinforcing “our story” that people can’t seem to get along and…

It will only get done if I do it myself.

At the root of these failures is the temptation to be right about our world view. We let it trump the potential for working through differences with others so we can find new ground upon which to strengthen our collaborations.

So where do things start to go sideways?

By now I know the drill. I am drawn to others when I sense the potential of shared values, beliefs and the possible fulfillment of my hopes and dreams in community with others. We enter into collaboration with a set of expectations and intentions. Likely, we have not fully shared our assumptions and expectations, sometimes not at all. We may not even be conscious of our own motivations. However, even without full information about ourselves and others, we plunge in. This is often the foundation we have created to build our collaboration that we hope will achieve an end we are passionate about.

All good…so far.

The initial period can be full of excitement and wonder as we begin to learn about our new partner and expand on our original hopes and dreams. This is easy to do since we have little or no experience with them. They are essentially a blank canvass. So we paint on this new relationship canvass with “romantic” notions about who they are, what their intentions appear to be, my chance to bring my “royal jelly” to the table and what we can do together.

However, inevitably something shows up that contains a “pinch” for us.

Some discomfort during an interaction. The first few times we might minimize this by telling ourselves one of us is just having a bad day. Or we can ignore or deny it. There are a myriad of responses that drive us to smooth over these bumps in the road so we can return to our “romantic” version of our new collaboration.

The problem is that signs of significant difference just keep getting larger and eventually my usual techniques for avoiding going deeper into how the actual relationship is unfolding aren’t working. I am somewhat conscious of the problem because it keeps popping into my head randomly. And there are predictable stages to my mounting concern.

  • It sneaks into my conversations with people
  • I find myself starting to gossip about the other person or organization
  • I choose my words carefully when talking to them, or I just avoid talking to them altogether
  • And I start to imagine the end of this relationship and start considering plan B

My back door out of the relationship is starting to open. I may not even take a moment to grieve the potential loss of this collaboration as I may be way to busy fixing the mess left behind and/or creating more work for myself so the loss isn’t seen or experienced by myself or others.

That is how I burn out.

Over the years, I have tired of this cycle. I also have more inner essential tools to move into my curiosity and compassion for others. My staying power or resilience is way up and I have more room for difference. I find myself increasingly making plans to talk about what is up for me and having a deep intention to find out how the other person is thinking and feeling. Something has moved inside me that no longer has to be right. The temptation is there for sure, but I feel a deeper commitment to wanting the relationship first.

You’ve probably had the experience of hanging in with a friend or collaboration partner and finding out a lot of things you didn’t know. This fuller understanding often opens new potential on which your friendship or collaboration can move forward. You’ve taken all the little steps inside you to side step any defences you use to protect your values and beliefs.

My steps include:

  • One – I laugh at my mind when it tells me I am absolutely right about this or that.
  • Two – I stay longer in the anxiety I feel when significant difference is present.
  • Three – And most importantly, I feel my commitment to working with others to change how we live on this planet.

None of us can change the world alone. My heart knows this better than my head.

So, I pick up the phone, or find some way to connect with the differences I am experiencing in my colleagues, friends or family. I don’t have to do it “right”, I just have to be honest about my thoughts and feelings and keep my heartful intentions front and centre as I offer what I think to be true for me in the moment, knowing that in the next moment, that is likely to change.

Collaboration is not a linear process. The twists and turns provide rich learning. We can all use practice in expanding our consciousness by including more perspectives in our work and play. We need more leaders who compassionately seek to work through collaborations and ensure no one is marginalized.

Note: First posted on www.inneractivist.com

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