Must We Struggle, Part 3: Human Nature? Culture? Or a Bit of Both?

Posted on February 26, 2010 by zoeweil

There are a number of organizations that assess national happiness. There’s even a book, The Geography of Bliss, which examines different cultures and the general contentment of their population. Often the U.S. doesn’t score very high on happiness indexes, despite the fact that we’re the richest country in the world and so many people want to emigrate here. And often poorer countries score surprisingly high. What’s up with this?

I wonder how much U.S. culture, with its restlessness, its relentless focus on achievement, competition, keeping up with the Joneses, and the pursuit of success, diminishes our ability to be content. Despite what I wrote in part 1 and part 2 of these “Must we struggle” posts, I wonder whether this quintessential American quality – to strive for success – leads us to be perennially discontented. I don’t assume this quality is unique to Americans, as competition and striving for achievement are human characteristics. But in the U.S. we’ve turned them into an art form, and they have been cultivated by waves of courageous and achievement-oriented immigrants who chose to brave uncertain futures and grave difficulties to come to these shores and make a go at a new life. These immigrants then raised children to embody these qualities, too. Is it any wonder we are a striving, competitive, independent-minded nation?

As one of those people who has to do something to be content and can’t bear to laze around doing “nothing” I marvel and wonder at the joy and generosity among many who have little. Often the richest, most indulged people give, proportionally, the least, while those with few material possessions and no cushion for the future give, proportionally, the most. The strivers can become hoarders, living in seemingly unwarranted fear.

While I believe that we humans evolved to struggle for life and happiness to some degree, something has become skewed and out of sorts, and this last post serves to question the previous ones. Sometimes there does seem to be a level of serenity among those who have enough without a pernicious obsession with gaining more and more to keep up with an ever-escalating standard of success. Rather than complacency, does this serenity come from living more often in the present moment, pursuing needs instead of endless wants, and having time to live, play, and interact within loving communities?

But I wonder, would I be content with such a life? Would those of you raised, as I was, with hyper-competitive, success-oriented ideals, be content with such a life?

Please share your thoughts.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Claude and Medea, and Above All, Be Kind

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Must We Struggle, Part 2: My Cat, My Dogs and Me

Posted on February 24, 2010 by zoeweil

In my last post, I wrote about William James, Star Trek, and the curious need to struggle toward achievement. I live with a cat named Sir Simon. He is content to sleep most of the day, move from one sunny spot to another as the day progresses, eat at designated times, and get petted as his mood dictates.

Periodically, I observe him and wish I could be content with such a life. I can’t even nap, let alone sleep 20 hours in the day, and I feel guilty lazing in bed on the weekend past a certain hour. It seems to me that my cat has never once experienced guilt and has barely a worry, yet I feel guilt daily and worry incessantly. I envy Sir Simon. I envy his ease of being, his lack of angst, his serenity.

In my last post, I left off wondering aloud what we would struggle to achieve were we to eradicate the great problems that afflict our world and were to live without greed, violence, oppression and cruelty toward others. I suspect many people reading this blog find this question perplexing. Plenty of people have no interest in “struggle” or “productivity,” per se , but rather pursue a livelihood in order to live comfortably and are content with the fruits of modern society. So perhaps it’s just me.

But I don’t think so. It seems that it’s at least partially in our nature – though not solely, as different cultural norms across the globe reveal – to seek and pursue goals and to find the sort of rest that makes my cat content dull, enervating, and ultimately depressing. Beyond our need to work to buy the products that keep us alive, I believe we need to work for our contentment and sense of accomplishment, just like my dog Elsie. Unlike Sir Simon, Elsie would go berserk without things to do, like train for treats, run after Ruby (another one of our dogs), and find smelly things to roll in and share. She delights in a job. Resting is fine, but only after a good workout.

An old friend once had a philosophy professor in college tell him not to “confuse complacency with serenity.” I wonder, is serenity more often a byproduct of work well done, goals achieved, and values embodied? Must we ultimately struggle to find serenity?

I welcome your thoughts.

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Claude and Medea, and Above All, Be Kind

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Must We Struggle, Part 1: William James & Star Trek

Posted on February 22, 2010 by zoeweil

I was reading an excerpt from philosopher and psychologist William James’ Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals reprinted in the February 2010 issue of The Sun magazine. I was not in the best of moods at the time, feeling down about the state of the world and about U.S. politics in particular.

James’ sunny description of a happy week he spent at Chautauqua in the company of “intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness” surprisingly didn’t lift my mood. As I read about the wonderful Chautauqua where people gathered in community, peacefully and industriously, I felt strangely uneasy. Perhaps that was because behind the positive description lay the seeds of what James would go on to write:

“I stayed for a week, held spellbound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear.

“And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying: ‘Ouf! What a relief! Now for something primordial and savage…to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring.”

Reading this, I, too, felt relief.

How strange. I spend my days trying to promote “goodness.” (Two of my books are titled, Above All, Be Kind and Most Good, Least Harm for crying out loud.) Yet I understood what James’ meant, and suddenly, I also understood what Captain Kirk meant in the Star Trek episode, “This Side of Paradise,” when he tried to convince his crew and a colony on an Eden-like planet (where a certain plant conferred bliss upon the inhabitants who lived harmoniously and happily) that humans are meant to struggle and “claw our way to the top.” As a young teenager, I balked at this. I yearned for such happiness myself, and seeing my idol, Mr. Spock, happy (for the first time in his life, as he says at the end of the episode) was deeply satisfying. In “This Side of Paradise,” Kirk managed to incite a riot among the blissed out crew and colonists (by blasting an irritating sound on the planet) that counteracted the effect of the plants. At once, the leader of the colony realized that they had “done nothing here.” He was seemingly grateful to be freed from bliss so that they could be productive.

In my teenage years, watching this episode many times, I neither understood nor agreed with the message. I mourned the loss of bliss. Now in my late forties, I understand the bland boredom that comes without a bit of struggle, without drive toward achievement and productivity. I understand what William James meant when he went on to write:

“The ideal was so completely victorious already that no sign of any previous battle remained, the place just resting on its oars. But what our human emotions seem to require is the sight of the struggle going on. The moment the fruits are merely eaten, things become ignoble. Sweat and effort, human nature strained to its uttermost and on the rack, yet getting through alive, and then turning its back on its success to pursue another more rare and arduous still – this is the sort of things the presence of which inspires us….”

But although I understand this now, I find it both perplexing and disconcerting. I have often said that I would like to put myself out of business; would like a world that did not have any need for my and others’ efforts at promoting compassion, peace, restoration and solutions to grave challenges. But if we achieve such a world, I do sometimes wonder what humanity will be like. Will we finally be content? Will we find paradise? Will we create the Eden we believe we fell from? What will a peaceful, sustainable world in which everyone’s basic needs are met and there is no more exploitation and oppression of others – human and nonhuman – look like in practice? What will we choose as our hurdles to jump, our heights to scale? Where will our drive to strive find its home? Can contentment exist with a lack of struggle?

In my next post, I’ll continue musing upon these questions, and in the meantime, I welcome your thoughts.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Claude and Medea

Image courtesy of eflon via Creative Commons.

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The White Tiger: Systemic Truths Revealed

Posted on February 19, 2010 by zoeweil

I recently finished the award-winning novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. The book is comprised of a series of letters written by an Indian entrepreneur, Balram Halwai (aka the white tiger), to the prime minister of China, about his rise from poverty to riches. Balram, a chauffeur to Ashok, confesses to murdering his employer, stealing his money, evading capture, and launching a successful taxi service. The book is clever, engaging, and although replete with stereotypes, quite thought-provoking.

I also found it deeply disturbing. There’s a way in which Ashok’s murder, ghastly and evil though it is, is understandable in the context of the story. Although Ashok treats Balram comparatively well, the master-servant relationship, played out over generations within their families, can be understood to inevitably lead to evil, as its oppressive and exploitative nature unwinds over time and through circumstances. Balram sees an opportunity to escape servitude and the bonds that have tied his poor family to Ashok ’s rich family for generations in an often cruel and persistently miserable and seemingly inescapable culture, and he seizes it, even though it means murdering his relatively humane employer.

This I could somehow “handle” in the context of the story, but Balram’s future entrepreneurial success is predicated not only on this one instant of revenge and evil, but also on persistent corruption. There is no possibility of redemptive good. Balram is only able to build his successful taxi business by perpetually bribing the police and ruining others’ businesses and opportunities.

And this is what was so distressing to me. Even if the protagonist were to have become financially solvent initially by way of education, or luck, or wits, or “Slumdog Millionaire” genius rather than murder, he would have ultimately failed without becoming fully corrupt. The system that Adiga revealed in his novel necessitated corruption.

This is a dystopian novel masked in apparent reality. Unlike some famous dystopian novels (e.g., Brave New World, 1984, We), Adiga had no need to fabricate a future world unlike our own. Rather, he uncovered all-too-real systemic truths that pervade economic globalization and many societies.

My hope is that this novel engages systems-changers rather than simply entertaining its fiction-reading audience.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Educate a Generation of Solutionaries By Transforming the Purpose of Schooling

Posted on February 18, 2010 by zoeweil

I just submitted the following to Change.org, entering their contest on the best idea for changing America. If you find this to be a good idea, I welcome your vote:

Currently, the primary goals of schooling are to graduate students who are verbally, mathematically and technologically literate and who are employable. We do not educate students to be conscientious choicemakers and engaged changemakers for a better world. Our idea is to transform the very purpose of schooling so that schools provide all students, in age appropriate ways, with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to be solutionaries for a better world through whatever careers they pursue. Students who learn about pressing global challenges; who are taught to apply foundational subjects such as math, science, language arts, and social studies toward creating practical solutions to today’s problems; who engage in school solutionary teams (rather than just debate teams), and who know that their schooling is designed to prepare them to contribute to a healthy society will solve pervasive and entrenched problems by transforming unjust and destructive systems through whatever careers they ultimately pursue. This generation of solutionaries will become engineers and politicians, healthcare practitioners and entrepreneurs, educators and police officers, architects and builders, farmers and lawyers, but they will bring to these fields new ideas and approaches that create better, wiser, and more restorative and just systems within them. Within a single generation, this idea could set the stage for the complete transformation of every system that is destructive, exploitative, or violent into ones that are sustainable, humane, and peaceful.

Zoe Weil, President of the Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Claude and Medea

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Re-meeting Marc: What We as Teachers Do Matters

Posted on February 17, 2010 by zoeweil

Many years ago I taught a week-long summer course out of my home to middle school students. There was a 13-year-old boy in that course who so profoundly impressed me. He was extremely bright, deeply compassionate, sensitive to others, open, reflective, and wise well beyond his years. I stayed in touch with him for about one more year, but then lost touch with him.

We reconnected on Facebook, and I invited him to come to my talk at the New York Open Center on February 6 (he’s now a lawyer living in New York). Seeing Marc – now a 30-year-old man – walk in the door was such a treat. He is as bright, wise, thoughtful, and compassionate as ever, and I could have talked to him all day.

When I introduced him to my mother (who also lives in New York and came to the talk), he mentioned that he became vegan at 13 because of what he learned in that course I taught all those years ago and said he’s still vegan to this day.

As an educator, it’s so rewarding to find out that you’ve mattered to another person, that your teaching has had an impact over the years. We teachers don’t often get such opportunities. When we do, we hopefully remind ourselves that this person before us represents many more we have taught over the years.

So, for all you teachers out there, remember that what you do matters. What you teach has the potential to have a lifelong impact.

Teach with all your heart and soul for a better future and know that there are Marcs out there whom you’ve inspired and helped to be great contributors to the world.

Zoe Weil
Author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Most Good, Least Harm

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Zoe Weil Guest Post on Eco Child’s Play: We Must Raise Compassionate, Conscientious Children

Posted on February 16, 2010 by zoeweil

Zoe has a guest post over at Eco Child’s Play, a blog focused on green parenting. Zoe’s post challenges parents to raise conscientious and compassionate children. Here’s an excerpt:

“We parents can resist cultural messages that are shallow and lack meaning and deep purpose, but it is no easy task. As if raising children weren’t hard enough, raising deeply humane children in a culture replete with materialism, endless competition, greed, either/or thinking and myopia, is profoundly challenging. We cannot do it without a deep personal commitment to modeling humane values, without a community of like-minded parents, without schools and teachers that support and reinforce our great purpose, and with endlessly blaring media messages that undermine our values at every turn.”

Read the entire post.

In March, the Institute for Humane Education is offering a month-long distance learning course for parents who want to raise compassionate, conscientious children. Raising a Humane Child starts March 1. Register now!

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MOGO Bookshelf: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”

Posted on February 15, 2010 by zoeweil

I’m a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, and over the weekend I read Outliers. I recommend it highly. The premise of Outliers is that those whom we consider amazing outliers –- famous athletes, successful business leaders, great musicians — whether the best Canadian hockey players, Bill Gates, or the Beatles –- owe their success not simply to their innate talent or genius, but to a confluence of luck and events that together pave the way for their eventual rise.

Essentially, we become masters when we’ve put in the time –- estimated at 10,000 hours for mastery of just about anything –- but that time comes not simply from our personal will to succeed, but from opportunities and possibilities that arise because of the most arbitrary of circumstances.

What is so wonderful to me about Outliers is that it dismantles the mythology of the “self-made man” while placing agency in a complex web we’re so unused to examining. It is a systems book, meaning it uncovers how certain systems facilitate (or block) the ability of people to succeed.

For me the book begins a deeper discussion, one I hope Malcolm Gladwell will address in a future book, that examines the systems we need to transform and create in order to enable all of us to live in ways that are meaningful, healthy, productive, and contributory.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Tino Sehgal and the Power of Conversation

Posted on February 12, 2010 by zoeweil

This past weekend I was in New York City offering a Most Good, Least Harm talk at the New York Open Center. Whenever I go to New York, I try to squeeze in a visit to at least one museum, and this time I went to the Guggenheim.

The Guggenheim Museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and is architecturally unique. The inside is essentially a long spiral ramp, surrounding a large open space, and topped with a dome to the sky. For the first time in its history, the rotunda was empty of art. Sort of.

On the floor of the rotunda lay a man and a woman, moving in slow motion, dance-like and without expression, in an endlessly evolving embrace.

As I walked up the ramp, a 10-year-old child introduced herself to me and asked if she could ask me a question. I said yes, and she queried, “What is progress?” We walked up the ramp for a bit as I answered her question as best I could, and she asked for an example, and then she stopped to tell a 20-something-year-old guy what I had said before departing. Then he began engaging me in conversation as well, and we moved quickly up the ramp talking about progress and various topics that evolved from that until he vanished suddenly behind a post and an older woman introduced herself and began talking about toys and then aliens. We walked slowly, pausing to just stop and talk, until we eventually reached the top where the “exhibit” ended.

This was the art. And the artist, Tino Sehgal titled it “This Progress.”

I decided to begin again. This time, another child met me and passed me on to another 20-something who disappeared and left me with another older person. Although I began hearing the same initial question, “What is progress?”, the conversations were unique.

The “exhibit” fascinated me, and I will be thinking about it for a long time. A museum and artist created a situation for conversation and connection and creativity. Observing the visitors, I noticed pairs and threes deeply engaged in discussion, all having begun with the question about progress, but all having gone in their own directions. I would have loved to eavesdrop on them all.

It was interesting to observe my own style as a visitor. As someone who writes and thinks about the broader topic of “progress” all the time, I found myself in a bit of a teaching mode with the child and 20-something. But with the older person, I shifted into an equal sharing of thoughts and ideas and basic human information exchange, learning and stretching through the interactions. This “exhibit” offered me a surprising mirror into myself.

When I left the museum, a woman from WNYC-FM was interviewing visitors. The Australian couple she was interviewing had met the child at the beginning, but somehow didn’t engage at the next level and so didn’t participate up the ramp. This made me realize that participation in the “exhibit” was entirely voluntary and required personal effort. No one would push you to engage in conversation if you didn’t respond initially. I wondered what this couple’s experience was like. Did they simply watch the writhing duo on the floor for awhile and leave?

The woman from the radio interviewed me next, and I enthusiastically described my experience. She said not everyone was so positive. One person she had interviewed described it as “bait and switch,” meaning you paid money for art but didn’t get art.

But for me, Tino Seghal offered me an opportunity to connect with others, explore ideas, self-reflect, and consider the concept of progress. I was a co-creator of the art, and the product wasn’t just the discussion but also the lingering aftermath of new ideas and questions and connection with people who had been strangers until we had taken the time, in this unstructured, yet structured way, to simply talk.

Perhaps progress begins when we genuinely engage in creative discussion with others of different ages and backgrounds, open to the experience of learning and being moved and challenged. That this took place in a museum is perfect. Don’t most of us go to museums to be moved and challenged and opened to new experiences?

How would you answer the question, “What is progress?” I welcome your thoughts.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

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Update on Complaining and Gratitude

Posted on February 10, 2010 by zoeweil

In my blog post, Ever-growing Expectations and the Roots of Complaint, I wrote this:

“Later this month I’ll be flying to Vancouver, B.C., for work. I’m planning to… reflect upon what I’ve received from the airline, airport, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and all the personnel and inventors and engineers who will have made my flights possible. If something goes wrong and I miss one of my two connecting flights or wind up spending hours in an airport due to inclement weather or experience some other hassle, I hope that I will be able to maintain my resolve not to complain and instead find ways to still marvel, be grateful, and give something back.”

Well, I wanted to write a post about how I did.

First, it wasn’t very hard to keep this commitment, initially, because despite the fact that I left Maine in a snowstorm, every flight ran on time, and I even had a whole row to myself between New York and Salt Lake City. I tried to contain my inner complainer a bit when the woman in the seat on the other side of the aisle was coughing the whole time, but since I was able to move to the window and create some distance I did fine keeping the complainer at bay. (I would add, though, that now I have a cough myself and need to fly to New York City on Friday, where I will likely annoy someone else if I’m still coughing — I promise to keep a lozenge in my mouth the entire time if necessary!)

The flights back home were equally uneventful. I was grateful. Especially in the Detroit Airport, which has the coolest light and music show that accompanies the moving walkway between Gates A and C and which always makes me smile.

I arrived in Bangor at 1 a.m. After digging out my car, I began my 45-minute drive home in freezing rain. The roads were bad, but not horribly so, so I went slowly and expected the drive would just take longer than usual. But by the time I reached the town of Dedham, the road had become a sheet of ice.

Before I go on, I should say that this particular stretch of road between Dedham and Ellsworth comes with bad memories. On our trip to the area to find a place to live shortly before we moved here, I ran out of gas on this stretch of road. On another late night drive home from the airport, my car lights failed, which was quite harrowing. A friend’s son says that this section of road is haunted, and even though I wouldn’t go that far, it’s a hilly, dark, and lonesome road through the mountains at night. And I should also say that shortly after moving to Maine, I skidded off a road (not this one) on black ice and over a 10 foot embankment, totaling my car, and so I’m particularly scared of icy roads.

I came to the one light on the stretch of road where there’s a gas station. I considered holing up in my car until morning rather than trying to go further, but the thought of such a cold night in the car without appropriate clothing chilled me, literally. So I climbed the hill past the gas station and realized my car was having trouble gaining any traction on the ice. At the crest of the hill was the Dedham School. I pulled in to call my husband. He offered to come get me, thinking I was probably overreacting because of my history on icy roads, but I told him no in no uncertain terms!

My hope lay ahead one more mile. At the very top of a bigger hill, nestled in the mountains and overlooking a beautiful Maine lake, lay the Lucerne Inn. I had no idea if they were open, and I knew I could go no further after that because the road precipitously descends beyond the inn, but I decided it was worth it to try to make it there.

I did!

I almost wiped out as I got out of the car because the parking lot was a sheet of ice as well (of course it was!), but I caught myself. Then I was provided with a warm room with a comfy bed. I was so profoundly grateful. Grateful the inn was open and that someone heard me knock at 1:45 in the morning. Grateful I could afford a night’s stay at a lovely inn. Grateful that Ihadn’t had to spend a cold night sitting in my car waiting for the roads to be safe.

So, I guess one could say that I succeeded in my goal not to complain when something went awry on the trip.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

Image courtesy of Morten Rand-Hendriksen via Creative Commons.

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