Like a lot of South Africans, I am deep soaked in Righteous Indignation. I like that I have the capacity to get very angry, and am not willing to let that go. Yet, I also struggle with how ineffective and energy sapping regular rage can be. Overwrestling with how I think the world should be. A close friend, who had seen my anger, asked me how it was consistent with practicing to be a yogi.
“Dharma” is partly understood as our purpose for being here. One of yoga’s key texts is the “Bhagavad Gita”. Ironically, for those who think yoga is just about bending and stretching, it is a story about war and a conversation between Arjuna and Krishna about “why should I fight?”. If everything is connected, an illusion, and it is so hard to make a difference as an individual... why bother?
There is a point. Actions do matter, and have consequences. We do have responsibilities and obligations. We are building this world together. Part of that is learning about the reality of how we coordinate actions and consequences. That starts with a deep acceptance of the way the world is, because everything can only move from where it is.
I am a very imperfect yogi. Full of aches and pains, and questions. Most of what I write is coaching myself to remember to come back to the basics within the complexity. Returning towards proper exercise, proper breathing, proper diet, proper relaxation and proper mental health. Practicing Tim Minchin style “micro-ambition”... small, achievable, goals that add up. There is a constant wrestle, and chipping away requires repetitive reminding that our actions matter.
Waves, both positive and negative, keep coming. They are not malicious. They just are. The waves have nothing to do with who you are. Stillness comes from how we see these waves and whether they have the power to knock us off course. Stillness comes from finding a way to create meaning DESPITE the noise, through patience and time.
Detachment isn’t finding a cave and not participating in society. It is partly about the conversation you have with yourself in your head. I have a friend who said to me, “You talk about yoga and are a yoga teacher, but I have seen you more wound up and angry than anyone else I know.” My inner conversation is often full of righteous indignation.
The struggle over wanting to care, but both not having the capacity to care about everything, and not having the skill, knowledge, ability, network, influence, or resources to do anything about a lot of what I think should be different.
Like many others, and definitely many other South Africans, I intentionally carry personal, historical, and global problems with me. If someone is stressed at the table next to me, I will soak that up. Like if you are sitting next to people breaking up in a public place. For most of us, the last few years of news and politics have been really difficult to process.
Do you stay involved? Do you detach by turning off your connection to the internet? Do you detach by not having conversations with other people? Do you detach by creating an alternative reality bubble?
I am okay with getting angry. Living with the full range of emotions we were given. Anger can be useful if applied in the right settings with the appropriate delivery. It’s a part of caring. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy. When someone has absolutely no interest in you whatsoever, that can cut straight to the soul. Hate normally comes from a place where there is emotion and connection.
Part of financial resilience is emotional resilience. We aren’t Spock-like detached rational human beings. We are connected to the world in an emotional way, which we need to acknowledge and learn from.
Too many lotteries still determine our success or otherwise. “The Veil
of Ignorance” is the idea that the rules should be determined before these dice
are thrown, when you theoretically know nothing of your natural abilities or
your place in society. I have never been good at “knowing my place”. Never good
at the struggle between accepting things the way they are, because that is the
pragmatic approach, and raging when they are not as “they should be”. One of the
cornerstones of my worldview is growing up in Apartheid. An ugly philosophy
founded on a seemingly positive idea of “self-determination”. Meritocracy is a
similarly seemingly positive idea. The problem is the magic of compounding. The
“same merit” applied to different resources results in a different outcome. It
is impossible to see squiggles and not words once you learn to read. We
remember names we have heard before. We recognise skills we possess. We acknowledge
knowledge we know. We are human. We are ignorant. We are connected. Sometimes
to move forward, you have to unlearn. To put aside what you think you see. And
see.
The way we experience the world is, at best, an overlay on reality. A tool to engage with something we don't have the tools to fully understand. The Yogis call this Maya, and the Enlightenment calls this a World View. If we have learnt anything from the unintended consequences of historic Civilising Missions and Revolutions, it is that "Burning things down" normally results in chaos, wars result in us putting basic emotional intelligence aside, and ideology results in spirals and loops of turmoil. If we are hooked on Drama and Rage, we won't see the links between our worlds. We won't be able to communicate. We need to rediscover tolerance. Have fewer opinions that don't leave space for those who disagree. As the speed of change increases, the quality of our breathing needs to improve.
There are two opposing ideas around Safe Spaces. One is that it is a place where people hide you from being triggered. Full of cuddles. The opposite is that it is a place where people find your triggers. Where you learn to be stronger than them.
I carry a fair amount of anger around with me. I can be very confrontational. This is not the way a lot of people know me. That is because it is not a side I like.
I like calm Trev. Yogi Trev. I like the version of me that listens, asks questions, and tolerates ideas that are very different to mine. I like warmth and good humour.
But.
I am still someone who will put myself in between a bully and someone else. I am still fairly easy to tease, if I misinterpret it as a jibe rather than banter. I think there is a difference. I tease a bunch of my friends, and they tease me. That is normally because things are fundamentally okay between us. The humour can tease out the truth.
I still have a Saviour Complex. A Justice Warrior Complex. I still absolutely hate feeling unfairly judged or misunderstood. Shut down, cut off, or pushed to the side.
With some of my closer friends, I let my guard down in the second version of the Safe Space. I let myself get angry. I put aside the Emotional Intelligence tools that you learn in order to make your way through the world. I genuinely don't like myself in those spaces. It is obviously very much a part of who I am though.
Those safe spaces scare me a little. They make me think that maybe that is 'who I really am'.
I don't consciously believe there is a 'who I really am'. I think we are a collection of habits, emotions, reflex responses and stories we tell ourselves. Our ability to forget and to imagine allows us to decide who we are. If we are willing to put the work into understanding what drives us. Anger drives me.
Brett, you and I both come from incredibly similar backgrounds. We are also both extroverts and very keen to have a positive impact on the world. Then come the demons to wrestle. Poems like 'White Man's Burden' by the author of the Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling. Cringe. The History of the 'Civilising Missions' of Colonialism as a modern version of the failed Crusades. I look around the world and see deep structural challenges and pain. In my core, I feel compelled to do something about. Yet something shouts back. White, English-speaking, Men like you and I have a lot to answer for. Is it our place to be at the front of discussions?
Great question, Trevor and i think this is one of those very thin lines we need to tread carefully. White people doing nothing is problematic for sure. White people trying to do everything or feeling like they need to swoop in and save the day [white saviour complex is a term for a reason] is seriously unhelpful too. So what's a white middle-aged guy to do? i think, at the very least, that our role is to do the work that needs to be done with white middle-aged men. Call our own to action and to change and where necessary help explain concepts like white privilege and being an ally and sharing some of the lessons we have hopefully been learning as we have started to change. It is a sad reality that many white men will only listen to white men and so another place where we possibly have positive influence is to be able to draw that crowd and then hand over the mic to a black/coloured/indian person. How best do we leverage the white male privilege and influence we have without it being a power move is something to wrestle with i believe?
(3/10) Trev:
I am busy reading a book called 'Factfulness' by Han Rosling. It is a really powerful reminder of how much the world has changed in our lifetimes. It talks about the Drama Instinct, and our need to divide things into categories (Rich/Poor, Developing/Developed, Racist/Not Racist, Us/Them) and create a gap. I worry that in our atonement, we end up focussing on and highlighting real, but increasingly extreme, problems. We feed them. We (cough) elect them. Partnered with that, I am reading 'Trying not to Try' by Edward Slingerland on the Chinese idea of Wu Wei - action through inaction. I have always been what we called at Westville Boys' High a 'Try Hard'. Sometimes I think we end up falling over ourselves in our desperation to be agents of change. To hold that mic in the first place to be able to hand over.
(4/10) Brett:
i think in South Africa we have had too long a time of white people on the whole not contributing much to the betterment of our country. i don't think it takes any action or effort to locate the privilege we have or the mic - i think what is key is what we do with what we have. i also believe that most significant change will come through relationships and if we all just focused on developing deeper authentic relationships with people who didn't look like us then the majority of that other stuff will naturally be taken care of from the foundation or platform of friendship and family. i think i disagree with you on the not-trying part - i don't think white people in South Africa right now need to be given more license to not do stuff. (5/10) Trev:
Yes, the stuff I am reading about certainly doesn't sit well with how we were brought up. We are wired on action and rolling your sleeves up. On 'doing stuff'. It is interesting watching the miracle happening around the world, but particularly in China and India, over the last 30 years. As people are empowered through the removal of obstacles. The type of action I am suggesting isn't doing nothing. It is more opening our eyes and curiosity to the things that are going well, and feeding them. Often 'giving back' from a Privileged position feels hierarchical and condescending. I will include the cartoon you shared, which you then asked for a discussion around, which led to this exchange. I 100% agree it starts with developing more relationships. Most relationships I have seen that thrive have a degree of peer-to-peer respect and (wink, wink) Common Change. The irony implicit in Wu Wei is that 'not trying' opens up spontaneity and more effective action, because of the natural flow of things. Instead of fighting.
(6/10) Brett:
i completely agree that developing more relationships is the way to go and if the focus is on that then you can probably eliminate a lot of the trying. The white people i think of when i talk about those who have not made effort have particularly not made it in the area of relationships and so they tend to live in largely white bubbles and black/coloured/indian people tend to be the people who serve them [be it homes or petrol or groceries] which is problematic if that is the only narrative because then you don't have to teach your children how to be prejudiced at all because the lesson is being modelled day in and day out. i do still think because of the extent of the inequality in South Africa that action has to be a part of moving forwards even beyond relationships [or around the foundation of relationships]. It is not enough to say let's be better from now when the difference it still so glaringly stark. How does your thinking relate to this aspect of life? (7/10) Trev:
I just think we end up focusing on the dramatic and missing the miraculous shift of the normal. So the Purple Cow gets the attention. The type of situation you describe was absolutely normal growing up. I had no people who weren't Germanic in my class until I was 12. I was lucky to have parents who taught me about what was going on, and to live in a relatively liberal place. Even then, Westville was by no means an exception to the Apartheid Bubble in terms of prejudice. Westville today has come on in leaps and bounds. It is not the same place. The 'gap' between Black and White has disappeared, and there are now heaps and heaps of positive examples of the kinds of conversations that need having. There is still a gap between the averages, but not a hole without real people. Just think of the variety of views in our Social Media conversations. I am not saying the example you highlight is okay. It isn't. I am not asking you to change what you are doing (I got in trouble after our last conversation on anger). I still do a lot of fighting and focusing on the things that aren't right. I just think perhaps we need to be pausing, celebrating, and remembering just what a miracle we have born witness to over the course of our lives.
We focus on the Remarkable, not the average
(8/10) Brett
Well, that is where i would strongly suggest we inject the Both/And over the Either/Or which if i have learned anything over the last four years - and hopefully i have - is the biggest of them all. We tend towards extremes or to putting up boundaries or insisting on labels and so much of that stuff is problematic. Yes, in many cases the gap between black and white has disappeared but also in many cases it hasn't [maybe particularly in Cape Town where we have a bad rep for that sort of thing and well earned] and so we need to celebrate the victories and continue to shout the stories of those doing incredible things [people, communities, organisations] and this i feel could use way more airplay. But at the same time, we need to continue to hold the light in front of those who haven't seen it yet and continue to call them to the table. Have we strayed a little bit from our starting point which seemed to be an acknowledgment that there is work to be done, but when it needs to be done, where is our place as white people in that? What is the Both/And to that question i wonder? (9/10) Trev I think we can BOTH recognise that there is work to be done AND celebrate the progress that has been made. We can BOTH have a positive impact AND not fall to our 'gap instinct' of having to create an us and them to understand things. As the walls of Apartheid have fallen, perhaps our eyes need updating from 1994 to 2018. Much like the Africa of the 'Do they know it's Christmas time at all' from 1984 needs updating in the minds of those in the United Kingdom. I don't think we need to be panicking and shouting to make real change. That can be true at the same time as not believing that the extremes are justified. To return to the start... I think the lessons of 'Civilising Missions' of the past and unintended consequences mean we should always be armed with a mirror, a feedback loop, and the knowledge that we are probably wrong in the way we see things. We don't need to be passive. Curiosity and love aren't passive... and we both know a dude who lived 2000 years ago who was both. (10/10) Brett:
i really just wanted to say 'Yes!' as my final comment but people would suspect it wasn't me. i love the idea of being "armed with a mirror, a feedback loop, and the knowledge that we are probably wrong in the way we see things" and also that "curiosity and love aren't passive". i have the strongest belief that whether people believe Jesus was God or not, we can learn so very much from the way He lived and the things He said. If there was ever someone who so completely got it. But He was known to shout and throw things when necessary and so again i will invoke the Both/And and suggest that perhaps one of the biggest challenges we face is figuring out the timing and audience for both. Jesus tended to humble [humiliate?] those who felt like they had it or knew it or were it. The woke crowd of His day perhaps? So maybe the biggest lesson out of all this is that we can leave the Saviouring to Jesus and seek to live out our curiosity and love unashamedly, while not giving in to who the world suggests should and shouldn't be loved.
Social Activism and Money Making have common ground. They are both essentially focused on Problem Solving. One is focused on what is wrong with the world, and the other finds value propositions. This is not right and I can fix it. The challenge is both are based on discontent, and neither will ever be finished. There will always be injustice in the world. There will always be needs and desires that mean what you have isn't enough. If you strip that discontent, the fear is that you lose action. You lose the incentive for change. I believe it is possible to choose a different set of incentives. To detach from the madness. Not because you don't care, or can't see the problems. In caring for the things you love, and in protecting the beauty that already exists, there is action. It is just quieter. Silence echoes.
When I was 25, I was still living in a student style shared house. The back garden needed mowing, but I was a cheapskate. I am still a cheapskate. Instead of buying a lawn mower, I bought a machete. I left the machete on the kitchen table. At that time, a group of friends and I were very into poker. The more you play poker, the more likely you are to learn that anything that has a remote possibility of happening, will happen regularly. If you play regularly. When only one card in a deck of 52 will make you lose, and that is the card that comes. This is called a 'Bad Beat'. I didn't need a lawnmower, because friends who had Bad Beats would take turns on the back garden. Until they (and I) learnt the lesson that you should never put the things that really matter at risk. Only sit at the table with what you are prepared to lose. Even a 'Bad Beat' is just another hand.
The Chinese have a saying, 'If you want revenge, dig two graves'. Vengeance is a logical emotion. It is often justified. Robert Solomon argues that the Biblical 'Eye for an Eye' was not as barbaric as it now sounds. Prior to that, if someone attacked you - you let all disproportionate hell loose on them. 'Eye for an Eye' was asking for restraint. The problem is, there is seldom agreement on the perfect proportions for justice. The eye of the beholder. So you end up in a spiral of righteous justification when each round of justice requires a response. Someone has to break the loop. Even though revenge is justified, it is not likely to lead to a better situation. Don't throw everything you love away to prove a point. Don't become your enemy in the attempt to defeat them.
I am someone who cares deeply. Often too deeply. Spanish for 'don't worry' is 'No te preoccupes'. The German is 'Mach dir keine Sorgen'. French, 'Ne t'inquiète pas'. Preoccupation, making cares, and creating disquiet.
In the rage machine that is the connected world we live in, it is hard to see injustice, harm, pain, or things not as they should be, and not reach for the pitchfork. To fight every battle. Less something I have two cents to offer on, this is the main thing I am working on at the moment. I have intense Righteous Anger. I would like to be tolerant, but things do get to me. I have also yet to see a single person respond positively to someone attacking them from a 'Moral Highground'.
People don't change their World View in leaps. We can't. Even when we leave a country, religion, bad relationship, town, school, boss, or company... we take stuff with us. No moment exists in isolation. Without taking the time to understand where someone has come from, you will go nowhere with them. Everything starts and ends with relationships. Unless you can see the good, you will never change the bad.
The only starting point is where things are.
That is why I am working on being okay with things as they are. Not okay in a way that 'injustice, harm, pain' etc. don't motivate me. Okay in that I can see the beauty despite that. So I don't get pre-occupied. So I don't lose my quiet.
I am working on my daily practice. Five things. Five simple things. Exercising properly. Breathing properly. Relaxing properly. Eating properly. All with the intention of being able to think properly, and be able to come at the chaos from a place of calm.
With a body, mind, and heart that are not distracted.
What unites most of the relationships of friends, family, and random strangers I meet is the little niggles. An 18-year-old chooses a partner based on looks, a 30-year-old based on how they pack the dishwasher (the saying goes). Spending lots of intimate time with people naturally leads to a little dance developing. Steps we learn in response to irritation, moods, or just routine differences of opinion. My view is that you need to tend your buffer. There is no point in dealing with difficulties if you don't start from a foundation of kindness and respect. You need to like each other. In my experience, we take feedback best (particularly of the harsher variety) from people we have confidence are on our side. Feedback we know is intended to help because it is on the margin. It edges us forward rather than breaking us down. Start with kindness and respect.
I grew up with the story of Jesus overturning the tables in the temple as a parable around righteous indignation. That occasionally it is right to lose your temper. I am a big believer in tolerance. That rules should be clear, but based on consent rather than enforcement. I like rules that can then effectively disappear while people are creative within them. When people understand, and like, the agreements that they have made with each other. A friend observed that within my tolerance, I do get very angry. I do get triggered. I do have a deep seated belief in right and wrong. I find this tough to hear as I like the idea of being tolerant, and work at it. Yet bubbling under there is a raging bull. He also observed that growing up in Apartheid South Africa could have led to this scarred view of needing to stand up to power. The law was wrong. The law wasn't to be tolerated. It certainly wasn't consensual. I would love to let the bull chill.
All advice is autobiographical. Advice reveals more about the person giving the advice, than it does about the receiver. We are only able to see the world from our own perspective. This kind of feedback is incredibly powerful. Criticism becomes a double-edged request for help from someone struggling with the same thing. You're that. Like me. We are normally irritated most, by the things that matter most to us. As a little chap, I was argumentative, easy to rattle, and passionate about finding the truth. I have worked hard at getting better at listening, banter, staying calm and tolerating/valuing alternative ways of seeing the same thing. I still lapse into battle-mode, and so battle-mode irritates me in others. That irritation is a mirror.
The suspension of disbelief allows us to enjoy the story. Stories are better with some leaps, gaps, and mysteries, that allow us to stretch truth to reveal truth. They stir emotions that may connect ideas we hadn't seen a path between. There is too much going on around the world to wrap our heads around. We are all ignorant. We just choose our bundles of ignorance differently. To build relationships, we need to allow a Bull Quota. Instead of searching for ways to tear down an argument, first try find out why that person thinks those beliefs are worth holding. The why may survive the barbs that kick off our righteous anger.
There is a difference between working because you have to, and working because you want to. Some people are able to find jobs that combine what they are good at, what they love, and what pays well. The dream job.
What we are good at is relative. Roger Federer has only one French Open title because he happened to play at the same time as the greatest clay tennis player of all time. Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player of all time, and yet he was only 'good enough' to lift that trophy once (so far).
There is also feedback between what we are good at, and what we love. Emotional creatures that we are, what we end up loving depends on the feedback we get. Ken Robinson talks about how almost all 5 year olds love art, but only a handful of 15 year olds. We are trained out of our love of creativity because we are compared to others.
What pays well is very fickle. Price is determined by two factors - Supply and Demand. It has nothing to do with inherent value. That is a completely personal thing. Value depends on the perception of the the person and what they themselves hold dear. Price is just a clearing mechanism. A salary is the price of your labour. If there are lots of people who do what you do, that price goes down. If more people want want you do, and the number of people who can do what you do doesn't change, the price goes up. Pretty cold.
Is water only valuable when there is none?
Supply and Demand are powerful in a world of scarcity. A world without enough. The Great Enrichment of the last 100 years has seen the world get far richer. The measure for extreme poverty is people living on less than $1.90 a day. In 1981, more than half the world's population lived in extreme poverty. Today, that figure is less than 14% (See Our World in Data - World Poverty). In a world with freedom of movement for goods and capital, the work has shifted to where the poor are. Material poverty is being obliterated. To a lot of people, none of this matters! More and more people are getting angry because their cog value has stayed the same or gotten lower. This has happened because more and more people can do what they can do. We treat capital and goods better than we treat people. We want Single Markets, but we don't like the idea of a Global Community. We don't want to do the work of overcoming our prejudices. We still live in a world of Global Apartheid, so instead of people moving to where the work is, the work moves to where the people are. This means there is no community building. There are restrictions on the kind of face to face interactions which make people care about each other. All people see is their jobs leaving and they get angry. When I dream of a post work world, it is not a dream of a world without exertion, effort, stress, productivity or meaningful engagement. It is a world with new economics. One where we have completely let go of the idea of salary as a measure of worth. Where we have completely let go of the idea of progress being an increasing salary. We are approaching a world of abundance. Flow and Relationships become the new measures. Measures you can't count. Measures you can't compare. Measures that feed community rather than anger.
There is a lot of talk around Safe Spaces at the moment, but two very different ideas of what that means. My understanding of the first way, is that we need to choose our words very carefully. Words are powerful and trigger emotional responses. We may be unaware of the effect of what we are saying because other people have had different experiences. A Safe Space is an area where someone will not feel judged, and will not be made to feel uncomfortable. Some describe it as a place that feels like home.
The second idea of a Safe Space is quite the opposite. It is similar to the idea of 'holding space'. Heather Plett wrote a wonderful post suggesting ways to be there for people you care about. Holding space for them. An awareness that people are processing all sorts of rubbish. We don't really know what we think or feel. We try things out. We get angry. We say things we don't mean. We say things we know we don't mean just to see what happens. We test boundaries. We scream. We fall apart. A Safe Space is one where this can happen and we know the people will still be there afterwards. We will have gone to the toilet to get rid of our rubbish feelings.
For me school was a very controlled bubble. At one stage a group of us started pushing the boundaries in a school newspaper. We were quickly reined back in by the censors. University on the other hand was a place where we were (mostly) the censors. We tested the boundaries of everything we held dear. There is a difference between things said in jest and things that are malicious. The Free Speech Board was often silent, but would burst into reams of debate. There were songs that were all sorts of bad. Not everyone agreed with pushing boundaries, and there were vocal supporters of both sides.
Rational, considerate, patient, inclusive discussion is clearly the aim. The ooze I was moaning about yesterday does get in the way. As Stuart said, if you never Ooze because you have developed super powers of control, you may be a super villain. Occasional ooze is very human. I am also all for opinions I find offensive being given a little air time. It means I know where they are. We should encourage crazies to speak. We can only tease out our own craziness in the open. Otherwise it just festers.
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