THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM:
Or, How Americans Are Learning to Have More Interesting Conversations

A Talk at the Literary Society of Youngstown
November 14, 2008

Last week, America lost one of its most popular and controversial authors — Michael Crichton. He was best known for his suspenseful technological thrillers, like “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park.” But for me he’s best remembered as a media critic rather than a novelist. Fifteen years ago, I heard him give a talk at the National Press Club in Washington that I thought was almost as riveting as his “Jurassic Park” books. Speaking before the Washington press corps, he declared that the conventional mass media would be gone within ten years — “vanished without a trace,” as he put it. He likened the mass media to the dinosaurs he wrote about in his books and said that radio, television, and newspapers were “on the road to extinction.”

Michael Crichton was a bit theatrical by temperament and had a flair for making headlines. But what he told the press that day wasn’t idle media-bashing or doomsday forecasting. Most of us journalists recognized intuitively that he was correct. Or at least partially correct. His timeline was off, but not his diagnosis.

Here we are fifteen years later. The mass media are still around, but there’s no longer any doubt that the news industry is in deep trouble. I could talk at some length about the problems facing the profession, but I’ll name just a few. Take, for example, the fact that the number of corporations that control a majority of the media companies in the U.S. — and by that I mean newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, music, videos, wire services, and photo agencies — has shrunk over the past 25 years from fifty to just five: Robert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Walt Disney Company, Viacom, NBC Universal, and Time Warner.

In essence, big corporations have taken over what used to be small and independent news organizations. These conglomerates are run chiefly in the interests of profitability, not good journalism. There is nothing wrong with turning a profit, but over the past decade or two a bottom-line mentality has contaminated the industry and overwhelmed the logic of news reporting. The most obvious sign of this is that newsrooms have been forced to cut editorial staff at the same time as they’ve demanded increased output from reporters. Today the average reporter spends about one-third of the time on a story that he or she spent twenty years ago. Needless to say, if you take time away from reporters, you’re taking away their most important working asset. They simply can’t do their jobs properly.

In this commercialized world, journalists are no longer active gatherers of news, going out and finding stories, making contacts, and checking facts. Instead, they are processers of second-hand information, often the sort that comes over the wire from Reuters and the Associated Press — or, worse, from the PR industry. Increasingly, they churn out news without taking the time to check it and without asking themselves whether it’s even newsworthy in the first place. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the coverage of the entertainment world where courtesy photos and news releases are routinely dressed up and passed off as bona fide journalism.

Another problem that I’ve written about is a certain disdain for the public that has become increasingly apparent in recent years. Robert Darnton, a great and brilliant writer who used to work for the New York Times, has written wonderfully about how young reporters are socialized by the culture of the newsroom. He recalls how young reporters at the Times were urged to write their stories with an image in their mind of a twelve-year-old girl. That was the ideal “image person,” as communications theorists call it — the imaginary person for whom a story is pitched. Why a twelve-year-old girl? Because news should be presented and contexualized in a way that can be understood by even the most unsophisticated reader. But needless to say, when reporters imagine their readers as children their stories speak down to the reader. That’s what we see a lot of today: the news is not edifying us so much as dumbing us down.

This is also reflected in a subtle paternalism where journalists see themselves as “guardians” of the truth. They insist on protecting the public from what they consider dangerous or foolish ideas. They do this in very crafty ways. Sometimes it takes the form of a kind of chic cynicism. A story about an influential author or management consultant will carry the word “guru” in the headline, for example. What rational person would identify with a guru? Sometimes it takes the form of a point-counterpoint reportorial style where all views are immediately canceled out by competing views, leaving the reader unsure what to think. Another insidious approach is to describe a trend or idea, always and only, by its most kooky adherent or the most misguided experiments carried out in its name. A story about a popular author of self-help books, for example, will begin by describing all the groupies who show up at her talks, instead of attempting to represent her ideas in a coherent and meaningful way.

I think these approaches stem from a professional ethos — a largely unquestioned set of assumptions — that most journalists share. It’s typically passed down from teachers and mentors, and reinforced over coffee, at the water cooler, in meetings. The problem is that the reader, TV viewer, or radio listener has no real place in this worldview.

I remember a conversation with the editor of a major newspaper in the Midwest. He told me that in his conversations with editors and reporters, the average reader was often referred to, in his words, “as either a consumer whom we have to please in some way, or an idiot we can ignore.” What this tells us is that mainstream journalists aren’t really interested in engaging in a meaningful dialogue with the public. They prefer to simply fire salvos of information at people.

And not surprisingly, people are fed up. Opinion polls consistently show that reporters are held in very low esteem by ordinary Americans, somewhere just a notch or two above lawyers and used car salesmen. A poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times found that sixty percent of respondents thought that journalists had nothing in common with them. Only 26 percent said the press looks out for ordinary people. Journalism used to have a certain mystique. The trench-coated, hard-drinking reporter was at least a man of the people. But that era is gone.

When Michael Crichton predicted that the media would vanish without a trace, he wasn’t just talking about how news has become corporatized, or how reporters are engaging in “churnalism,” or how the public has come to distrust — and even hate — the media. What he was saying was that the mass media would disappear because they’re becoming irrelevant. And that’s what we’re seeing today.

A vivid description of just how bad things have become appeared in the New York Times this past week. In the words of reporter David Carr:

It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline…. On Tuesday, the Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force — up to 3,000 people. Clearly, the sky is falling. The question now is how many people will be left to cover it. It goes on. The day before, the Tribune Company had declared that it would reduce the newsroom of the Los Angeles Times by 75 more people, leaving it approximately half the size it was just seven years ago. The Star-Ledger of Newark, the 15th-largest paper in the country, which was threatened with closing, will apparently survive, but only after it was announced that the editorial staff would be reduced by 40 percent. And two weeks ago, TV Guide, one of the famous brand names in magazines, was sold for one dollar, less than the price of a single copy.

Now I realize we’re in an economic crisis, one that’s affecting the news business every bit as much as the housing industry, the banking industry, and the auto industry. But what we’re seeing today isn’t a temporary ratings or circulation decline on account of the economy. It reflects a seismic shift that’s taking place in the media world — a fundamental reordering of the industry.

And it’s not pretty. Circulation figures are falling. Ad revenues are down. Magazines are folding. Newspapers are closing. Reporters are losing their jobs. And those who are managing to hold on are running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. So, for example, long-time reporters are retooling in order to compete with bloggers on the Internet who are half their age and willing to work for a quarter of the pay. They’re working longer hours with fewer resources and less support. So it’s a tough time.

But I’m hopeful, even in the face of somewhat grim statistics. For all the despair about the death of newspapers, the decline of radio, and the imminent death of local TV news, there is a transformation taking place. I see it as the rise of a new kind of journalism, one that will benefit us both as individuals and as a culture, at least in the long run. I don’t have a name for it. But I can tell you it revolves around something rather prosaic, namely conversation — the exchange of ideas, information, and personal stories that allow us to create shared meaning and common purpose. The next stage in the evolution of journalism, I believe, is one that revolves around the act of a conversation.

We’re rapidly moving into a time when the most interesting news comes to us not as reports or stories so much as dialogues, forums, and even threads. This isn’t just the result of new technologies which have pulled the rug out from under the news industry. It’s also the result of people wanting to participate in the making of meaning, of people wanting to weigh in and help shape the conversation. We’re no longer content to just take news sitting down, so to speak. We want to be a part of it. We want to respond, to engage, to act on what we’re hearing, seeing, and reading.

In the old days, news used to be in the business of delivering information to people. That was its primary function — and a very important one. But today, information is all around us. The Internet, satellites, cell phones, and other technologies have transformed our relationship to it. In a matter of seconds, you can find out just about anything you want, no matter where you happen to be on the planet. What this means is that news-as-information is no longer adequate. Today we require something more of journalists.

Most people in the news business understand this. They recognize that their most important function is no longer just to deliver information but to organize and make sense of it. In recent years, the news media have come to focus increasingly on analysis and commentary as a way of offering context and making news useful to people. But here’s the problem: ultimately, information is only useful to people to the extent that they themselves are engaged in making sense of it.

Good teachers know this well. When they stand in front of the classroom and lecture at their students, retention tends to be fairly low. But when they engage their students in dialogue and group inquiry, they tend to stay focused and actively involved. There is a term for this approach to teaching: the Socratic method, or Socratic dialogue. It traces back 2,500 years to the philosophers of ancient Greece. The Greeks may not have invented dialogue, but they introduced the idea that individuals couldn’t be intelligent on their own, that it was only by reasoning with others that they could uncover the truth for themselves. The Greeks understood that if two or more people were unsure about a question, they could accomplish something together they couldn’t do on their own. By questioning and probing each other, carefully dissecting and analyzing ideas, finding the inconsistencies, never attacking or insulting but always searching for what they could accept between them, they could gradually attain deeper level of understanding and insight.

This idea has powerful implications, especially for journalists today struggling to make news relevant, interesting, and, ultimately, meaningful to people. What it suggests is that they need to engage people in a conversation — that news has limited value if it’s presented to people ready-made. It must be participatory to be meaningful.

E.B. White famously said: “Democracy is a letter to the editor.” Well, today it’s never been easier to to talk back to the media. Practically every news story on the Internet now carries, in addition to a byline, an e-mail address to the writer of the story. But that’s just the beginning. We’re now seeing the emergence of a new media ecosystem, where online communities can discuss — and extend — the stories created by mainstream media. The Internet has changed the entire landscape. Ordinary people can now engage in participatory journalism, grassroots reporting, annotative reporting, commentary, and fact-checking — all of which the mainstream media then feed upon — developing them as a pool of tips, sources and story ideas.

Now that anyone can be a reporter or commentator on the Internet we’re seeing the emergence of a two-way exchange. People are no longer relegated to being passive recipients of stories and information, but can engage with it and making it work for them and their communities. The journalist now becomes a “forum leader,” or a mediator rather than a gatekeeper or interpreter. 

The rise of this kind of journalism on the Internet is a fascinating development because it resembles conversation again, much like the original journalism that took place in public squares and coffee houses a century ago. The underlying principles of the new journalism remain the same as they were then, but the technology is different.

Speaking of the public square, the mass media have been the one of the main culprits in the breakdown of the American community. We’ve become isolated from one another, from our neighbors, and from our communities. Instead of engaging with people in authentic face-to-face conversations, we sit around and watch TV. We watch pundits sparring on TV shows that claim to be news programs but are in fact little more than entertainment dressed up as serious journalism.

I believe, with a qualified optimism, that these same media can play a critical role in the restoration of community. I see a time in the not too distant future when the media will be imbued with goals and values that can reweave the strands of our social fabric. And, when that day comes, the content of news will look very different. There will be less sex and violence and more inspiring and positive examples. There will be less observation and entertainment, more interaction and participation. Less hand-wringing and blaming and more shouldering of responsibility. Fewer false choices and more true alternatives. More discussion and debate. More context, more spirit, more wisdom. But in order to fulfill this promise, the media need to learn to bring us together. They have to become the matchmakers, the conveners, and the community salon-keepers.

I’m hopeful. I’m already seeing the early signs of such a shift. And if the conventional media don’t survive — as Michael Crichton predicted back in 1993 — it’s not the end of the world. We’ll have a lot more peace of mind, for one thing. And for another, we’ll have to learn how to talk to people face-to-face again. That’s becoming a lost art, but one that’s sorely needed today.

Thank you very much.
 

When Richard Rodriguez entered first grade at Sacred Heart School in Sacramento, California, his English vocabulary consisted of barely fifty words. All his classmates were white. He kept quiet, listening to the sounds of middle-class American speech, and feeling alone. After school he would return home to the pleasing, soothing sounds of his family’s Spanish.

When his English showed little sign of improvement, the nuns at his school asked Rodriguez’s parents to speak more English at home. Eager to help their son, his mother and father complied. “Ahora, speak to us en inglés,” they would say. Their effort to bring him into the linguistic mainstream had far-reaching results. Rodriguez went on to earn a degree in English at Stanford and one in philosophy at Columbia. He then pursued a doctorate in English Renaissance literature at Berkeley and spent a year in London on a Fulbright scholarship.

Though Rodriguez had his sights set on a career in academia, in 1976 he abruptly went his own way, supporting himself through freelance writing and various temporary jobs. He spent the next five years coming to terms with how education had irrevocably altered his life. His first book The Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, published in 1982, was a searching account of his journey from being a “socially disadvantaged child” to becoming a fully assimilated American, from the Spanish-speaking world of his family to the wider, presumably freer, public world of English. But the journey was not without costs: his American identity was only achieved after a painful separation from his past, his family, and his culture. “Americans like to talk about the importance of family values,” says Rodriguez. “But America isn’t a country of family values; Mexico is a country of family values. This is a country of people who leave home.”

While the book received widespread critical acclaim and won several literary awards, it also stirred resentment because of Rodriguez’s strong stands against bilingual education and affirmative action. Some Mexican Americans called him pocho — traitor — accusing him of betraying himself and his people. Others called him a “coconut” — brown on the outside, white on the inside. He calls himself “a comic victim of two cultures.”

Rodriguez explored the dilemmas of ethnicity and cultural identity more directly in his second book, Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father. “The best metaphor of America remains the dreadful metaphor [of] the Melting Pot,” he wrote. The America that he described is a new cross-fertilizing culture, a culture of half-breeds, blurred boundaries, and bizarre extremes.

I spoke with Rodriguez about the dilemma’s of cultural identity and the “browning” of America in an interview that has been widely published over the last ten years. It appears in a new book, The Little Brown Reader, edited by Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet, and William E. Cain. It has also been given new life by The Sun magazine in a section online called “Favorites from the Archives.”

• Read the interview
• Listen to an audio clip
• The Sun: Favorites from the Archives

As hippie-mystic John Perry Barlow has pointed out, the Internet has a lot in common with the 19th century American West. It’s vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, hard to navigate, and up for grabs. Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new ideas about liberty.

If you can appreciate the beauty and logic of this metaphor, you would no doubt appreciate what some innovative scientists and philosophers have to say about the evolutionary potential of social networking. The digital revolution, they say, has a lot to tell us about not only the emerging society of the 21st century but also the farther reaches of human consciousness.

One of the most compelling metaphors comes from physicist and philosopher Peter Russell who sees globe-spanning computer networks as part of an embryonic “global brain.” Extrapolating from recent theories in the fields of physics and geobiology, he maintains that the planet itself is a living system and that each person on it is a cell in a kind of global nervous system. As a species, he says, we’re advancing to the point where it will be possible for our minds to link together to create a collective human consciousness.

This shift represents “our next evolutionary leap,” he told me in an interview. Breakthroughs in telecommunications and computer networks are pointing us in that direction. “The interlinking of humanity that began with the emergence of language has now progressed to the point where information can be transmitted to anyone, anywhere, at the speed of light. Billions of messages continually shuttle back and forth, in an ever-growing web of communication, linking the billions of minds of humanity together into a single system.”

The global brain metaphor may strike some as more of a poetic vision than a realistic possibility. But when I asked evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris about this, she said that metaphors have an important place in science. To speak of atoms as little solar systems or as whirlpools of energy is to invoke metaphors, she pointed out. “Metaphor simply means that you take something that is familiar to you and use it as a pictograph or an image of what you are trying to describe that you don’t yet understand well.”

Sahtouris believes that Western science in the throes of a sweeping transition “from mechanics to organics.” In her book Gaia: The Human Journey from Chaos to Cosmos, she talks about the need for a more holistic perspective that recognizes nature not as a giant clockwork mechanism, as the Enlightenment thinkers conceived it, but as a self-organizing living system.

The beauty of the web, in her view, is that it exemplifies many of the characteristics of a dynamic living system. It’s based on equality, reciprocity, diversity, and local autonomy. One example of this, she told me, is “the way each part pays its bills and lets people from all other parts use its territory.” The Internet “has the potential for being the largest, most democratic living system humanity has ever created.”

When I asked Deepak Chopra how he sees the promise of social networking, he offered a more metaphysical perspective. In his view, the net is as a perfect metaphor for the “mechanics of creation.” As he put it, the basic conclusion of contemporary quantum theory is that the raw material of the world is, in effect, non-material. Many of our new technologies owe their existence to this fact. The invention of computers, fax machines, radio, and satellites were all made possible by understanding that the atom — once thought to be the basic unit of matter — is not a solid entity at all, but a “hierarchy of states of information and energy in a void of all possible states of information and energy.”

Put in its simplest terms, this means that so-called “objective” reality is not objective at all, but “a radically ambiguous and ceaselessly flowing quantum soup,” in Chopra’s words. This “field of all possibilities” is directly affected by impulses of energy and information. That is to say, thoughts are the raw material of the universe and therefore fundamentally shape reality.

New technologies such as the Internet and virtual reality furnish us with an excellent metaphor, he says, because they demonstrate “that reality is ‘virtual’ before it gets precipitated into a space-time event.”

While traditional scientists and other die-hard skeptics wave aside the idea that thoughts shape reality, there’s a growing acceptance of this view on many fronts. It’s part of a profound change of consciousness occurring in our culture, as bestselling author Marianne Williamson puts it. “You don’t have to be a spiritual seeker in California, you can be a businessman in Connecticut dealing with the revolution in computers. In other words, no matter what area of life and endeavor we’re in, we’re seeing the signs of a sea change,” she says. No one is denying that we’re moving into a new era in politics, in business, or in science, so “why should we deny that it’s a new era in terms of all human consciousness?”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent the better part of forty years studying the phenomenology of happiness. What makes life genuinely satisfying, he says, is the experience of “flow” — that state of optimal awareness in which our concentration is intently focused and we’re fully absorbed in what we’re doing. 

During flow experiences, our body, mind, and consciousness become ordered and harmoniously directed, feelings of indecision and anxiety disappear, and self-consciousness falls away. Athletes speak of this state as “being in the zone” and mystics sometimes liken it to being in a rapture.

Complex and challenging tasks, such as mountain-climbing, painting, playing an instrument, figure-skating, or solving a difficult business problem, are especially conducive to flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi. These activities engage, concentrate, and absorb the body and mind to such an extent that we lose our awareness of time.

In Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, which is perhaps the most concise summary of his research on happiness, Csikszentmihalyi says that flow tends to occur when our skills are fully activated in meeting a specific challenge.

Optimal experiences usually involve a fine balance between our ability to act, and the available opportunities for action, he says. “A typical day is full of anxiety and boredom. Flow experiences provide flashes of intense living against this dull background.”

The concept of flow is an interesting and evocative idea, and it certainly has a good deal of explanatory power — which is much needed in psychology, a field that has traditionally spent far too much time focusing on distress and pathology. In developing this notion of flow, Csikszentmihalyi himself has created quite a name for himself (which is no mean feat given that his name is virtually unpronouncable).

A good deal of his success can be attributed to the way he has uncoupled “optimal experience” from the murky domain of religion and mystical experience and in the process given states of heightened consciousness a kind of academic respectability. This is a significant achievement. But does it go far enough? Probably not. By the standards of the contemplative traditions, especially those of Eastern philosophy, his exploration of optimal experience might be best described as, well, a prelude to a beginning.

Excerpt from Finding Flow:

It is the full involvement of flow, rather than happiness, that makes for excellence in life. When we are in flow, we are not happy, because to experience happiness we must focus on our inner states, and that would take away attention from the task at hand. If a rock climber takes time out to feel happy while negotiating a difficult move, he might fall to the bottom of the mountain. The surgeon can’t afford to feel happy during a demanding operation, or a musician while playing a challenging score. Only after the task is completed do we have the leisure to look back on what has happened, and then we are flooded with gratitude for the excellence of that experience — then, in retrospect, we are happy. But one can be happy without experiencing flow. We can be happy experiencing the passive pleasure of a rested body, a warm sunshine, the contentment of a serene relationship. These are also moments to treasure, but this kind of happiness is very vulnerable and dependent on favorable external circumstances. The happiness that follows flow is of our own making, and it leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness.

Read more:

• My review of The Evolving Self by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• YouTube Clip: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the Flow of Goodness

It’s a sad fact that while most of us spend a sizeable part of our lives communicating with others — in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, in committee meetings, via e-mail and social networks — we seem more separate and disconnected than ever.

Genuine understanding seems to be the exception rather than the norm in everyday communication. We speak at each other, or past each other. We speak different conceptual languages, hold different values, embody different ways of seeing the world.

Much of the time, we’re not even listening to each other at all. The dialogue is a monologue. We fire salvos of information across the Internet, or shoot each other text messages, or blog or Twitter or Plurk about ourselves. But is anyone paying attention? And if they are, do they catch our drift?

The trouble with much of what passes for communication today is that it’s all crosstalk. It’s a din, not a dialogue.

The noisy chatter reflects the fact that we don’t really know how to engage one another in authentic conversations. We simply haven’t learned the skills of listening closely to each other, of engaging in meaningful exchanges, and of finding shared sources of meaning. We lack the know-how and the tools.

As we move into times of accelerating change and deepening uncertainty, we need to get smart about how to talk to one another. We need to be able to overcome differences, find common ground, build meaning and purpose, and set directions together. We need to be able to think together as groups, as teams, as committees, as communities, and as citizens.

The way to do that is through dialogue. The word dialogue is often contrasted with monologue, as if it were a two-way, rather than than a one-way, process. But that’s misleading. Dialogue is a contraction from the Greek words for through and words. It suggests an activity aimed at eliciting meaning.

The Greeks may not have invented dialogue, but they introduced the idea that individuals are not intelligent on their own, that it’s only by reasoning together that they are able to uncover the truth for themselves. The Greeks understood that if two or more people are unsure about a question, they can accomplish something together they can’t do on their own. By questioning and probing each other, carefully dissecting and analyzing ideas, finding the inconsistencies, never attacking or insulting but always searching for what they can accept between them, they can gradually attain deeper understanding and insight.

That’s what dialogue is: a form of discussion aimed at fostering mutual insight and common purpose. The process involves listening with empathy, searching for common ground, exploring new ideas and perspectives, and bringing unexamined assumptions into the open.

When done well, the benefits can be extraordinary. Long-standing stereotypes can be dissolved, mistrust overcome, and visions shaped and grounded in a shared sense of purpose. People previously at odds with one another can come into alignment on objectives and strategies. New perspectives and insights can be gained, new levels of creativity stimulated, and bonds of community strengthened.

While dialogue is often confused with other forms of discourse, it belongs in a distinctive category of its own. Unlike debate, it doesn’t involve arguing for a point of view, defending a set of assumptions, or critiquing the positions of others. Unlike negotiation or consensus-building, it’s not a method of reaching agreement or arriving at decisions. And unlike discussion, it can only emerge when participants trust and respect each other, suspend their judgments, and listen deeply to all points of view.

The process is also distinct from deliberation which is not so much a mode of communication as a form of thought and reflection that can take place in any kind of conversation. Such dialogue is aimed at finding the best course of action. Deliberative questions take the form “What should we do?” The purpose is not so much to solve a problem or resolve an issue as to explore the most promising avenues for action.

The process of dialogue is more important than ever today for a number of reasons. For one thing, the confrontation between different cultural traditions and worldviews requires some process by which people can communicate across differences. For another, the fragmentation of society into a myriad of subcultures based on profession, status, race, ethnicity, political loyalty, etc., make it necessary that people find a pathway to common ground. A third reason is that traditional authority structures are falling away.

Dialogue is the most effective response to these developments because, on the one hand, it allows people to span their differences and forge shared frames of reference and, on the other, it gives those formerly excluded from decision-making an opportunity to participate in the process of finding common ground and establishing priorities for action.

But dialogue is not always easy or straightforward. It can run aground in a thousand subtle ways. Effective dialogue requires that all the participants have equal standing, that they listen with respect and empathy, and that ideas and assumptions explored openly and without judgment.

Effective dialogue typically follows some basic ground rules:

• The focus is on common interests, not divisive ones
• The dialogue and decision-making processes are separated
• Assumptions that can lead to distortions of certain points of view are clarified and brought into the open
• People are encouraged to reveal their own insights and assumptions before speculating on those of others
• Concrete examples are used to raise general issues
• The process focuses on conflicts between value systems, not people
• When appropriate, participants are encouraged to express emotions accompanying strongly held values
• Participants err on the side of including people who disagree
• They encourage relationships in order to humanize transactions
• They minimize the level of mistrust before pursuing practical objectives.

The late physicist David Bohm developed what is widely regarded as the most useful model of dialogue. He saw it as a method for developing what he called a “higher social intelligence.” Nothing is more important, in my view. In the past, it may have been enough to get by on personal intelligence alone. But it’s no longer enough to be brilliant on our own (if such a thing is even possible). Our pressing problems today require that we get smart together, that we harness our best collective thinking and put it to work in the world.

Read more:

• Thinking Together — In this essay, I discuss my experience using deliberation, a form of dialogue aimed at finding the best solution to an issue or set of problems.
• Collaboration and Community — In this paper, originally commissioned by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, I look at the theory and practice of civic collaboration (of which dialogue and deliberation is a crucial component).
• Bohm Dialogue — A collection of papers and articles about the dialogue process developed by physicist David Bohm.
• Wholeness Regained: Revisiting Bohm’s Dialogue — An excellent article by Lee Nichol that addresses the tension between the inner work of the individual and the collective process of the group.

I believe the single most important step we can take toward leading happier and more fulfilling lives is to develop a spiritual practice. By that I mean some regular activity or set of rituals that quiet the mind and bring us into harmony with ourselves.

Spiritual practices take many forms, from meditation and prayer to yoga and chanting. It doesn’t even have to be explicitly spiritual — it might simply be a quiet activity like knitting, gardening, or walking in the woods. Or perhaps immersing ourselves in poetry, music, or the beauty of nature.

It’s not the content of the practice that matters so much as what it evokes in us in the process. A strong and healthy practice is one that allows us to find our inner center and bring us into alignment with our highest truth and sense of purpose.

But there can be no doubt that serious and systematic practices — especially those that engage the body and mind, such as yoga, qigong, tai chi, and Unity in Motion, or those that involve regular meditation over a period of months or years, such as zazen or vipassana — can bring about dramatic changes in people’s lives. Among other things, they can lead to physical health and vitality, clarity of mind, and a profound inner peace.

Many people find their way into their practice through some personal crisis, such as an illness or the loss of a loved one. But the value of a serious and sustained practice is not therapeutic so much as developmental. In other words, it’s not about healing past traumas or alleviating personal suffering so much as actualizing our highest capacities as human beings.

But even that is misleading becase ultimately a spiritual practice is not about self-improvement at all. In the beginning, a serious spiritual practice can enrich and expand our lives in a progressive, step-by-step fashion, one stage of advancement following the other. But when we begin to close in on the higher reaches of our human potential — the cessation of suffering and the gaining of direct insight into who we are and the nature of ultimate reality — then we come up against the limits of self-improvement.

While we can certainly attain great heights following a step-by-step program of personal growth, it will only take us so far. But we can’t “work our way” through the final gate by the elimination of our own imperfections, no matter how “perfect” we may have become. Enlightenment, wisdom, salvation, spiritual liberation, self-realization — whatever we call it — can never be attained through a process of self-improvement since taking the final step means going beyond the self.

The pursuit of happiness, if it means anything at all, means finding that path toward inner freedom and self-transcendence.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON ON SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Marianne Williamson is one of America’s most prominent spiritual teachers and the author of several bestselling books, including A Return to Love, A Woman’s Worth, Healing the Soul of America, and, most recently, The Age of Miracles. I asked her about the practical steps we can take toward awakening the spirit in everyday life.

Scott London: A point you make in your talks is that we need to move beyond spirituality as a set of ideas or beliefs and incorporate it into our daily lives. How do we do that?

Marianne Williamson: Through serious spiritual practice. In the Kabbala, it says that we receive the light in order to impart the light, and thus we repair the world. You receive the light through what you read, through what you hear in meditation, or through some spiritual practice. I believe we are shown the path that is right as soon as we ask for it. Then we must live in the world and in some way express what we have learned. We are likely to feel better when we go to bed tonight if we have an internal sense that we spent our lives meaningfully today.

London: Is that really the ultimate goal, feeling better?

Williamson: Yes, living meaningfully is what brings joy. Increasing meaning and joy on the planet is the ultimate goal because within that space all evil is cast out. People who are joyful from a center of meaning and righteousness do not molest, do not rape, do not violate, do not abuse, do not war, do not fear.

London: What do you have in mind when you say “serious spiritual practice”?

Williamson: Whatever comes into your life, whether it is A Course in Miracles, Transcendental Meditation, prayer, meditation, or service. I believe that ultimately it all comes down to whether we seek conscious contact with God on a daily basis through prayer and meditation. You can know everything that the books have to say, but ultimately it boils down to whether we do the inner work of devotion and surrender, whether we can put aside our own agendas and allow the spirit to move through us.

Gandhi famously said that “you must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Few people embody that idea as well as Jerome Threlkeld, a young activist and community leader from Flint, Michigan.

In a city reeling from the collapse of the American auto industry, Jerome is a champion of hope and possibility. He works with church groups, neighborhood associations, after school programs, youth groups and others to build trust, stimulate dialogue, and strengthen people’s capacity to participate and make their voices heard.

The struggle, he says, is to turn people’s anger and hopelessness into a strength — to help them draw on their deepest inner resources to work for a better tomorrow. He sees himself not as a thermometer, but as a thermostat.

“A thermometer reads the temperature in a room,” he tells me. “But a thermostat can change it. It can cool it down or heat it up. I see myself as a thermostat, someone whose purpose it is to change the atmosphere wherever I happen to be.”

Jerome understands that leaders, at their best, elevate and inspire. Their purpose is to create opportunities for their people to succeed, not only for themselves, but for their organizations and communities.

Today it’s widely recognized that we use only a fraction of our human capacities even though we carry within us an almost unlimited power to learn, develop, expand and evolve. Michael Murphy has devoted the better part of five decades charting our human potentialities. He co-founded the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in the early 1960s and has authored many books, including the evergreen Golf in the Kingdom. His 1993 book The Future of the Body — an encyclopedic study of what he calls “metanormal capacities” — traces the history of extra-sensory perception, superabundant vitality, extraordinary movement abilities, universal love, and other abilities which he believes are accessible to all of us. He took that a step further in The Life We Are Given, co-authored with George Leonard, which outlines a groundbreaking program for systematically effecting personal change and transformation. I asked him about some of the practical ways we can remove the blocks that stand in the way of achieving more, remembering more, and drawing on more of our inner resources.

*

Scott London: You say that ”we live only part of the life we are given.” What do you mean by that?

Michael Murphy: There is more and more evidence today that all of us have enormous unused potentials. For example, a big article in the American Psychologist entitled “Expert Performance” reviewed dozens of studies about abilities that were once thought to be genetically determined, such as perfect pitch, or the ability to remember strings of numbers on a single hearing, or various athletic skills. These studies have shown that with training everybody can learn perfect pitch, can learn to extend their short-term memory, and can expand their athletic abilities. And those are just physical abilities. There are also emotional capacities, cognitive skills, and spiritual abilities. Every single human attribute gives rise to the extraordinary — among men and women, young and old, in all cultures.

London: How do they “give rise to” these extraordinary abilities?

Murphy: For example, we can extend all of our senses. Some wine tasters can make 10,000 discriminations, and there are perfume testers who can make 30,000 discriminations. People can train their eyesight to far greater acuity than was once thought possible. There is enormous evidence that there is extra-sensory perception, as well. You can train remote viewing, as they did at the Stanford Research Institute.

That is just perception. You can extend that to other attributes as well, such as our ability to love. We can learn to love by the practice of love. Or our relation to pain and pleasure. Anybody who has been to these pain clinics can learn to control pain. We can also learn to induce states of pleasure.

There are so many ways to categorize our human faculties. But no matter how you map it, whatever attribute you look at, there is a body of research that shows it can be cultivated and that it can become extraordinary.

London: You’ve analyzed records from the Roman Catholic Church that show that worship and contemplation often produced extraordinary experiences.

Murphy: Yes, Roman Catholicism, more than any other religious tradition, has tried to sift out the evidence for these extraordinary abilities. They put their saints on trial in the canonization proceedings and put witnesses on oath. It’s a mortal sin to lie to the Congregation of Rights that do these investigations.

What they have dug up is the fact that there have been about 300 Roman Catholic women and a few men who have had the marks of Jesus Christ on their hands and feet, marks that simulate those of Christ’s crucifixion. Typically these things either ache or bleed every Friday or perhaps every Good Friday.

There are other kinds of stigmata, as well. In the Muslim world, there are the two saints who have had the battle wounds of Mohammed appear on their back.

In these cases, the mind identifies with or conceives of a particular bodily image and translates it with enormous specificity into the flesh. This is, again, another example of mind over matter, of the influence of imagery on the body.

The Roman Catholic tradition has sifted this body of data most carefully. But the biggest catalog of these powers exists in Hindu and Buddhist lore, where they are called “siddhis.” Charisms and siddhis are great pointers to what I see as our untapped greater potential. I’m convinced there are thousands of these abilities.

London: You also talk about sports as an area of human transcendence. In fact, in an article you called sports an “American equivalent of Yoga.”

Murphy: Yes, I’ve written a couple of books about that. The more you look into high skills in sport, the more you realize that mind enters. A lot of top athletes develop their physical skills, but they can’t compete with certain other athletes who have a great mental game. In golf, for example, Ben Hogan had great physical skills, but he also had a great mental game. The same with Jack Nicklaus. But there were other golfers whose swings were just as good — even more beautiful — but they didn’t have the mental discipline, the mental strength, that Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan had.

This is true in every sport. So these sports become a mind/body discipline. And that is what Yoga is — a lifelong mind/body practice to attain religious illumination. In sport, it’s aimed at attaining particular skills. What is interesting, however, is that these sports spontaneously give rise to what are nothing less than quasi-mystical illuminations.

London: A wonderful example of this is Lee Evans who in 1968 took the world record in the 400-meter dash.

Murphy: That’s right. I was privileged to know Lee and I actually ran with him in some senior track meets. He was hypnotized by his coach Bud Winter, who is perhaps the greatest sprint coach in American history. On the night before he ran 43.86 in Mexico city, he rehearsed every single stride of that race, over and over, under hypnosis. He went through every single stride, over and over. So when he went out to run, his mind was there. And with the mind comes this energetic framework, this aura, if you will.

London: You’ve also used sports as a point of departure for exploring the mysticism of everyday life.

Murphy: Yes, I think these experiences are actually more common than we think, but we are brainwashed by our language. Everyone I know has peculiar gifts that hardly anyone else has. For example, think of your friends. There are certain people, for example, who seem to have this extraordinary ability to just take a glance at someone and know an amazing amount about them. I know a salesman who, just by selling, has learned to scope people out, like a hunter. My son seems to know the content of every movie out there and I don’t think he reads the newspapers all that much. How is it that he knows? And I’ve quizzed him on this many times and he doesn’t know. I could go on.

London: Tell me about your recent work developing a program for systematically developing our human potentialities.

Murphy: People are looking for lifelong, comprehensive practices outside the domain of strict gurus and cults and dogma. I think we have to create new kinds of institutions. In that spirit, George Leonard and I have created a new center outside San Francisco for lifelong integral practice. It will look a little bit like a health club, but on the other hand it will look like a learning center, a seminar center. But you join as a member. Then you can design your own program within this school. I think there has to be more of this kind of “social invention.”

London: I was struck by the fact that your program uses affirmations. How do they work?

Murphy: In our pilot program, we had two eleven-month segments. There were 30 people in each segment practicing a variety of disciplines which we refer to as Integral Transformative Practice — practices for the body, mind, heart and soul. We asked everyone in the programs to make a variety of affirmations and to commit to themselves to practicing to realize them.

One set of affirmations involved change in the realm of the “ordinary” — change that no ordinary doctor would have a problem explaining. You might want to be a half an inch or an inch taller, for example. By good posture and a rolfing massage you can get an inch over time. Most people agree that we slump down as we get older.

We also asked them to make “extraordinary” affirmations. So one lady who was 5′ 1″ made an affirmation that she would grow three inches. We suggested to her that three inches was going too fast. But she said no, she would try that. After three months, indeed she was already consistently three-quarters of an inch taller — but full of aches and pains in her body. At that point, she took our advice to slow down. But she did end the program consistently an inch taller.

Another person who was threatened with a cataract operation made the affirmation that she would have crystal-clear vision. She went into remission and her cataracts disappeared. That is quite a remarkable change.

We also had everybody affirm that they would be vital, balanced, and healthy. In the second year, we wanted to have something measurable because we ran various experiments with the group in the spirit of science. So we wanted everyone to change their lean body mass — to turn a lot of fat into muscle. So many good things happen when you do that, you just get healthier and feel better. So the group made that affirmation. As it turned out, the group averaged a 12.6 reduction of body-fat in relation to total weight. So that was quite a remarkable result because this was a pretty good-shaped group to begin with.

London: In this case, you were having them exercise, I take it — not just doing affirmations?

Murphy: Right. The affirmations were one of the linchpins of the program. So much modern psychology since Freud has been based more on self-awareness and self-acceptance, self-disclosure, opening up — all important for growth — but I feel there has been a neglect (at least in my part of the world, and through Esalen Institute) of what I would call will, or volition, and affirmations are triggering that. I think the reason it has been neglected is that so many of us in the 1960s, when we entered into these practices, were escaping from the strictures of our upbringing, of our schools, churches, families. So anything that smacked of should or will was anathema. (Fritz Pearls, the great gestalt psychologist at Esalen, said he was against all “shouldism.”) So sometimes we tossed the baby out with the bathwater.

It came into modern psychology, certainly in its popular forms, through the 12-step programs, where you make affirmations to improve the quality of your life, to take responsibility, to lick your drinking or gambling problem, your drug addiction, or whatever. So the use of affirmations has been there and has been developed.

I continue to be amazed at the power of affirmations not only to cure our afflictions, but to increase our capacities. In sports, again, people affirm that they are going to break a record, they are going to surpass a time, or whatever. The power of it is amazing.

London: You had a community of people who were all engaged in this program together. It’s often been said that people can do great things together that they can’t do on their own. Did you find that to be true?

Murphy: There is the power of entrainment. You go out for a run, for example, and you may not feel like running, but if you get with a group of peers who are in shape and starting to run, they can carry you along. When you sing in a choir and you’re just off but the choir is going for it and suddenly your voice just gets carried along. Or when you’re with a very high-spirited person and you’re a little down, that energy can really pick you up.

Humans are contagious to one another. In a group, a team, a community like ours, that influence is going back and forth — again, for bad or good. It’s also working through social cues. We mimic one another. We imitate one another. Then there is reinforcement. We reinforce or punish one another.

London: In my own spiritual practice, I’ve certainly found it helpful to have others to who are engaged in it with me.

Murphy: Yes. Boy, does it help to have people to practice with. They asked the Buddha, “What is the secret of enlightenment?” He said, seek out the sangha, the fellowship. Practice with someone.

It’s hard. You are doing this long-term practice for these changes and there are all those days you don’t feel like doing it. There are days when you do and days when you don’t. But if you have a community, it helps to lift you up.

London: There are also some downsides to practicing as part of a group. Sometimes a community of practitioners can become insular, closed-minded, or too dependent on a leader. Have you found that to be a problem?

Murphy: We made an agreement with everyone in these groups that they were ultimately responsible for their program. I believe personal autonomy has got to be respected from the beginning, at the middle, and in the end. Those of us who are presenting the program actually don’t believe very much in the guru model. I think it was appropriate in another age when life was simpler. But today we have all become so complex, and life itself has become so complex, that one guru can’t be our guide in all things. I mean, we can’t expect someone who teaches us meditation to guide us in our financial affairs, or help us complete our income taxes. That is just asking too much. And that is the problem with a lot of cults and gurus.

So we were committed to this principle of autonomy, as well as community. I think the two can be completely compatible. When we create support groups for practice, I do think we need to honor the principle of personal freedom and autonomy. I think that is one of the new things in our age that we are sensitive to more than ever before in world history. It’s been part of the long social evolution of the human race. Democracy is essential, and we need it not just in government but in our long-term practice groups. We need democracy. We need mentorship. We don’t need guruvada.

London: You’re very optimistic about our capacities to grow and evolve. How do you respond to those who point out that the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history and that we’re looking at the flowering of human pathology — exemplified by atom bombs, terrorism, and environmental devastation — not the flowering of human consciousness?

Murphy: I don’t pretend to be a futurist. All I say is, we can improve our lives, the lives of those around us, and the whole wide world by exploring our hidden potentials. We’re learning more and more about them. And they can be applied to social action. I believe we can turn things around.

More:

• Integral Transformative Practice International
• FORA.tv with George Leonard and Michael Murphy
• The Future of the Body by Michael Murphy

The German philosopher Hegel gave us what is still perhaps the most compelling model of how societies change and evolve. His theory of dialectical progression suggested that cultures evolve in much the same way as ideas or outlooks do. The prevailing concept — or thesis as he called it — over time gives rise to its opposite, its antithesis. The interaction of these perspectives eventually leads to a new concept, or synthesis. The synthesis in turn becomes the thesis of a new triad.

It’s easy to see how this dynamic plays out in politics, for example, where the pendulum seems to swing between liberal and conservative views in an orderly fashion and where the interplay between the two regularly gives rise to fresh and original amalgamations.

Some years ago, social scientist Daniel Yankelovich offered an interesting twist on this idea, one based not on theory but observation. In his long career monitoring social trends in the United States, he found that society tends to lurch, often mindlessly, in a new direction. After a period of resistance and reaction, an integration eventually takes place. He called this pattern “lurch and learn.”

In the 1960s, for example, young people lurched away from the prevailing notion of duty to the search for pleasure. In a similar way, there was a lurch away from work to leisure. “The reaction of young people to their father’s nose-to-the-grindstone way of life was to see in leisure the possibilities of genuine self-fulfillment,” he explained in a 1996 talk. “After that lurch, they gradually found that the kind of self-fulfillment they were seeking often could be fulfilled better through a certain kind of work than through leisure.”

This idea goes a long way toward explaining how new ideas meet profound resistance before being assimilated into the dominant cultural worldview. Those who articulate innovative ideas move the prevailing outlook in a new direction. First, these ideas are ridiculed, as Arthur Schopenhauer famously said, then they are violently resisted. Finally they are accepted as self-evident.

Read more:

• My transcript of Daniel Yankelovich’s talk, with selected passages highlighted for easy reference, is available here.
• Daniel Yankelovich’s personal website

The history of science shows that breakthrough lies not in discovering new facts so much as discovering new ways of thinking about and making sense of them.

More:

• Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is still the best work on the subject
• Arthur Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers is another favorite because of its forceful argument and gorgeous prose.

For many of us, the word revolution conjures up images of political violence and social breakdown, of insurgent militias and defiant chants, of street barricades made from overturned vehicles and ragged mobs armed with makeshift weapons. For better or worse, the idea of revolution often goes hand-in-hand with images of stormed palaces, random violence against the innocent, and decapitated heads on pikes.

For those still coming of age, the word no doubt has kinder and more benign connotations — the “velvet” transition toward free-market economics, perhaps, or the end of institutionalized racism. Today, the word revolution has also become synonymous with the idea of progress and technological advance. It has become a strained synonym for innovation and breakthrough, as in the “digital revolution,” the “communications revolution,” or the “biotechnology” revolution.

But there is another kind of revolution, one that is less apparent but far more profound. It is the sort that begins at the level of perceptions, ideas, and values. We don’t know much about such revolutions, because they tend to proceed quietly within the minds of individuals for a long time before manifesting outwardly in the culture at large. They are silent, invisible, and relatively rare in human history.

Writing a century and a half ago, Alexis de Tocqueville captured this in a vivid way. “Time, events, or the unaided action of the mind will sometimes undermine or destroy an opinion without any outward signs of change,” he observed. “No conspiracy has been formed to make war on it, but its followers one by one noiselessly secede. As its opponents remain mute or only interchange their thoughts by stealth, they are themselves unaware for a long period that a great revolution has actually been effected.”

Instigating a good old-fashioned revolution is comparatively easy compared to bringing about this kind of “noiseless secession” from the prevailing worldview. It’s easy because the key ingredient of a traditional revolution is anger, bitterness, and opposition to a perceived enemy or system. A bit of public outrage, coupled with a revolutionary group and a charismatic leader, is not an especially complicated formula for change.

The trouble, of course, is that if and when such an effort succeeds, the leaders typically lack the experience and the constructive attitudes needed to create and maintain a new social order. The negativity then turns inward and breeds divisiveness, in-fighting, and ultimately counter-revolutions. As history clearly shows, most revolutions become self-defeating and even dangerous since the struggle against “the enemy” becomes an end in itself.

The question we have to ask ourselves today is whether it’s possible to start a revolution the other way around, whether it’s possible to have a general shift in mood and action first. Such a revolution would build on values and perceptions, not bullets and bombs. It would be constructive, not contentious. It would emphasize design, not criticism. It would be self-organized, not centrally planned. It would take its cues from imagination and vision, not opposition to the status quo.

I believe this kind of movement is possible. In fact, we’re already seeing signs of it all around us. This silent revolution gathers into its framework a wide range of innovative ideas drawn from across a host of disciplines — from science and technology to psychology and education — and its leaders can be found all over the world. They make up what might be called an invisible network — a global underground of individuals from different cultures and backgrounds who are committed to a more humane and sustainable world, who embody a value-system based on compassion, kindness and respect for diversity, and who see the fulfilment of our highest capacities as human beings as the single most important goal as we look to the future.

The revolution comes as a response to breakdowns on many fronts — the environmental crisis, the deepening divide between the world’s richest and poorest, the crisis of confidence in institutions, and the bankruptcy of once-dominant ideologies and systems of belief, such as communism and free-market economics. But the revolution is not a reaction to crisis so much as a reflection of an emergent culture rising to take the place of the one we have now. It is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

I must confess that for almost two decades now, I’ve devoted much of my professional life to seeking out these quiet revolutionaries — to learning from them and to trying to articulate and disseminate their ideas in as clear and compelling a way as I can. In the early days, I had some trouble identifying these instigators. I used to think all good ideas were equal. It was only later that I understood that ideas and intentions go hand in hand. The mark of a good idea, I learned, is that it’s backed by a good intention. I don’t mean the kind of good intention we pay lip-service to; I mean the kind that is born from a faith in human virtue and possibility, from an animating vision of a better world.

The German philosopher Hegel once remarked that great revolutions are always preceded by “a still and secret revolution in the spirit of the age.” This revolution is “as hard to discern as to describe in words.” Those who fail to recognize it as it gathers strength, he said, are always astonished by the sweeping changes left in its wake. That’s what we are in the throes of today — a still and secret revolution, one that will ultimately change how we see ourselves, how we define our collective purpose, and how we take care of ourselves, each other, and the planet.

What motivates people to work on behalf of the common good? In a study I’m leading for the Harwood Institute, I’ve been exploring this question with community leaders from across the country — civic entrepreneurs working to reduce homelessness, address poverty, work with inmates, clean up the environment, and generally strengthen our communities. A word that comes up again and again in our conversations is stewardship. They tell me that a sense of caring and responsibility for the commons is at the center of what they do.

This was an unexpected finding. To better understand this idea, I turned to Peter Block’s valuable 1993 book, Stewardship, still one of the best management books I’ve seen on enlightened leadership practices. The book is aimed primarily at business leaders, but it also applies directly to those working to improve our neighborhoods and communities.

Stewardship, as Block defines, means to hold something in trust for another. Traditionally, it was a way of protecting a kingdom in the absence of its ruler, or a way of governing for the sake of an underage king. According to Block, stewardship serves as a metaphor for a different way of thinking about leadership, organizations and communities. It suggests that people are most effective when they participate as caretakers or stewards, when they put service before self-interest, and when they operate from a sense of ownership and accountability.

It’s a bold vision, one that contrasts sharply with the conventional view of leadership. “The governance system we have inherited and continue to create is based on sovereignty and a form of intimate colonialism,” Block writes. “We govern our organizations by valuing, above all else, consistency, control, and predictability.” But this top-driven, patriarchal approach to management comes at a high price. Without the spirit of democracy, organizations become places of helplessness and compliance, places that stifle creative expression and ultimately fail to create product, guarantee quality or serve customers.

According to Block, the best hope for reforming our organizations lies in reshaping the politics of our work lives — how we each define purpose, hold power, and balance wealth. In practical terms, this involves nine principles:

1. Maximizing the choices for those closest to the work
2. Eliminating management classes by reintegrating the managing and the doing of the work — ”no one would be able to make a living simply planning, watching, controlling, or evaluating the actions of others”
3. Allowing measurements and controls to serve the core workers by means of, among other things, team and peer agreements
4. Yielding on consistency across groups and supporting local solutions
5. Making service the highest priority
6. Deglorifying management job titles and demystifying staff functions
7. Eliminating secrecy in the organization
8. Demanding a firm commitment from each participant with the recognition that freedom and accountability “are in every case joined at the hip”
9. Redistributing wealth since “reward systems need to tie everyone’s fortunes to the success of the team, unit, and larger organization”

Block explores the challenges standing in the way of reform at some length. Much of the difficulty, he points out, stems from our deep-seated assumptions about the role of leadership. Leaders maintain that they are needed to “set the vision” and to assume ultimate responsibility, while followers often look to superiors to take care of them. “We cannot be leaders without followers, and we cannot be good parents unless we have good children,” he observes. “This dependent mindset justifies and rationalizes patriarchy and keeps it breathing.”

Shifting away from patriarchy must begin with an understanding of how we have helped to create it in the first place. Therefore it requires not only structural and policy changes but also a new way of thinking for each member of the organization. Reform efforts implemented from the top down are guaranteed to fail. “We do not need common vision, least of all one articulated by a small group at the top. We need common mission, a common membership contract, but not a process to induce common values.”

At bottom, Block says, stewardship and self-governance go hand-in-hand. Our workplace is a microcosm of democracy. What we do there “makes a difference. This is where democracy will revive itself, not in the voting booth. Our own unit becomes the place where the economic war will be won and democracy rediscovered.”