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.

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.

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.

*

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

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

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.

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.”

The statistic goes a long way toward explaining why advertising has become so heavily dominated by ads promising a better life. These days, a product, seminar or service has to hold out the hope of a vastly new and improved life to stand any chance to succeeding.

The publishing world is an especially egregious example of this. The industry is increasingly oriented toward how-to, self-help, and personal development literature (”The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Changing Your Life,” etc.).

To say that something has changed one’s life used to actually mean something. Today it has become so banal as to be practically meaningless.

The most radical act we can commit today, I believe, is to say: “I’m happy, I don’t need to change my life.” It represents a powerful shift of attitude, one that begins with acceptance of what is and opens up a space for appreciating what we do have. From there, it’s not hard to focus in on the qualities we love and want more of. What it does is focus our attention on what is right and good with the world, which ultimately creates more of the same.

When we refuse to accept the idea that there is something wrong with the present situation and that we need to change our lives, paradoxically we create a state of mind where positive changes are possible — perhaps even inevitable.

After finishing the book, I went on to read every book of Wilber’s that I could get my hands on. The love affair lasted several years. But by 1999 I found myself having increasing reservations about his method, and perhaps also about the man himself. I wrote about some of these in a review of his book One Taste that appeared in the Spring 2000 issue of Parabola Magazine (see my review here).

The questions I had revolved around the certitude with which he puts forth his views, the definiteness of his assertions. They were always explanatory rather than exploratory. I had thought someone with his intellectual gifts and spiritual insight would be more sensitive to complexity, to metaphor, paradox, mystery. If anything, I felt he did a violence to ideas that were, by definition, boundary-spanning — such as liberal political theory or ecopsychology or the role in psychology of myth — by forcing them into narrow categories that served his own theoretical interests. I was constantly amazed by his misrepresentations of great thinkers such as Huston Smith, Gerald Heard, Stan Grof and others. 

My initial euphoria upon discovering Wilber some years ago gave way to a deepening sadness that this was the man being heralded as one of today’s most original and significant philosophers. The notion that he represented some sort of “Einstein of the consciousness movement,” as somebody once said, struck me as preposterous.

Even so, I was excited when Wilber spearheaded the launch of Integral Naked, a website featuring audio interviews with brilliant and visionary thinkers, about five years ago. I was an enthusiastic early supporter of the site. But, again, my excitement gradually gave way to a sinking feeling that what Wilber and his friends had created was a little club of people calling themselves “integral thinkers” who used a common vocabulary but were in fact increasingly insulated from the world around them — not because they were uninterested or uninformed about the world at large but because they were convinced they had the best system or theory that could explain what was going on (exemplified by such grandiose book titles as A Theory of Everything and A Brief History of Everything). I eventually unsubscribed to Integral Naked. My reasons for pulling the plug are summarized in this open letter to the site.

In recent years, Wilber’s Integral Institute has become more firmly established and Integral Naked seems, from what I can tell, to be going strong. But Wilber’s critics have grown more numerous. And he himself seems increasingly insular and cantankerous. In a now infamous blog entry, Wilber embarrassed himself in front of the world, as his biographer Frank Visser put it, “by abusing and insulting those of his critics who did not ‘understand’ his work, and invited those who ‘did’ to come to his integral ’sanctuary.’ His main complaint was the low level of the criticism he had received so far, especially from Integral World authors.”

It was a depressing blog entry, to say the least, and perhaps also a cautionary tale about what happens when we go too far in defending our own intellectual constructs. Ideas at their best are meant to edify and inspire, not divide and isolate. When we find ourselves growing hard and brittle in defense of our own theories, then we have given our own constructs more power than they deserve.

Read more:

• My review of Ken Wilber’s One Taste
• Why I Unsubscribed From Integral Naked
• A Roundup of Criticism of the Work of Ken Wilber — From integralworld.net
• Wilber Watch — Frank Visser’s Blog

Over the course of two days, some 8,000 ideas were submitted. By the end of the weekend, the number had been narrowed down to 40. The proposals focused on addressing environmental sustainability, strengthening civil society, and generally promoting the common good. They included ideas for:

• A preventative health agency to be funded by a junk-food tax 
• Providing incentives to lure Australians to work in rural communities
• Delivering fresh fruit to schools once a week
• Making Australia the “greenest” economy in the world by 2020

The ideas summit — the first of what is hoped will become an annual event in Australia — is a beautiful example of how to encourage new ideas and innovative thinking.

Too often we expect bright ideas to emerge from corporate boardrooms, from forward-thinking political figures, or from the latest management books when, in fact, they tend to come from the grassroots. What we need are better ways to harness those ideas — by creating a context for conversations around pressing problems, helping people network, and ensuring that good ideas are given a propert hearing and some exposure in the media.

The Australians have shown that this isn’t an elusive ideal, but a smart and practical way of working for a better tomorrow.

Read more:

• Australia 2020 — Official website
• Australia ‘Ideas Summit’ Yields Wide-Ranging Proposals — From Huffington Post

Over the past six months, I’ve been talking with civic leaders from across the country about what it means to build community. The process has challenged some of my preconceptions. Community is not something you can build, they tell me. It’s a quality that has to be brought forward and actualized, in the same way a sculptor reveals a statue by chipping and hewing at the marble. Switching metaphors is important, they insist, because it’s only when we abandon the idea of “building” in favor of “sculpting” that we can see community where it already exists. You have to foster what’s already there, not attempt to create something from nothing. That’s the essential starting point for bringing about change and making a difference. 

The book explores the psychology of belief that governs the acceptance of new concepts and innovations in science. Kuhn showed that the history of science is not one of linear, rational progress moving toward ever more accurate and complete knowledge of an objective reality. Rather, it’s one of radical shifts of vision in which a multitude of nonrational and nonempirical factors come into play.

Kuhn showed that the theories of Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein were all self-contained and “incommensurable” with one another. There was no steady accumulation of truth in the form of objective knowledge about the physical universe. Instead each theory was a revolutionary break from the previous theory, resulting in the arbitrary replacement of one conceptual matrix, or worldview, by another. Once the matrix changed, the way science was done and applied was fundamentally different.

Kuhn used the word “paradigm” to describe this conceptual matrix. A paradigm, in his formulation, is a constellation of facts, theories, methods, and assumptions about reality that allows researchers to isolate data, elaborate theories, and solve problems. Aristotle’s “Physica,” Ptolemy’s “Almagest,” Newton’s “Principia” and Lavoisier’s “Chemistry” are examples of scientific classics that gave rise to new paradigms. Each of these works triggered a revolution, rendering irrelevant much of what came before them. The chief characteristic of a paradigm, Kuhn argued, is that it has its own set of rules and illuminates its own set of facts. Because it is self-validating, it tends to be resistant to change.

Kuhn pointed out that as long as a paradigm is successful at explaining observed phenomena and solving problems, it remains dominant. But as new phenomena begin to contradict it, the paradigm succumbs to increasing doubt. And as anomalies multiply, it is thrown into crisis. At this stage, what is needed is the articulation of a radically new theory or insight, such as Einstein’s theory of relativity, that can explain the apparent contradictions. In this way, long periods of “normal” science are followed by brief intellectual upheavals that reorder the basic theoretical assumptions of the field.

New paradigms rarely appear on the scene full-blown. Their early formulations are typically crude and incomplete. They are often the products not of deliberation or interpretation, but of “a relatively sudden and unstructured event like the gestalt switch,” Kuhn wrote. “Scientists then often speak of the ’scales falling from the eyes’ or of the ‘lightening flash’ that inundates a previously obscure puzzle, enabling its components to be seen in a new way that for the first time permits its solution.”

New paradigms are never immediately accepted by the scientific community. They may gain ground because of some dramatic and unforseen verification, or for personal or aesthetic reasons — they may appear “neater,” “simpler,” or “more elegant” than their older counterparts. But the choice between competing paradigms ultimately comes down to personal conviction since, as he put it, “the competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs.” While the new paradigm tends to be more successful in accounting for and predicting phenomena, there is ultimately no absolute standard for determining whether one paradigm is better than another.

Kuhn stressed that a new paradigm is almost always the work of a young person or someone new to the field. After a number of years in a certain discipline, a scientist tends to be too emotionally and habitually invested in the prevailing paradigm. Indeed, the established leaders of the older tradition may never accept the new view of reality. As Kuhn wrote, “Copernicanism made few converts for almost a century after Copernicus death. Newton’s work was not generally accepted, particularly on the Continent, for more than half a century after the ‘Principia’ appeared. Priestley never accepted the oxygen theory, nor Lord Kelvin the electromagnetic theory, and so on.” Adherents to the old paradigm usually go to their graves with their faith unshaken, Kuhn wryly noted. Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence, they stubbornly stick with the wrong but familiar.

The fact that Kuhn’s treatise — an academic essay on a fairly specialized subject, the psychological factors at work in the advancement of science — went on to win a wide audience is one of the great surprise stories in the history of ideas. But Kuhn had put his finger on something that was widely intuited, if not openly acknowledged or articulated, namely that change proceeds by upheaval. It’s not a smooth and gradual process. Transformations are violent because they necessitate the destruction and reordering of our most basic conceptual frameworks.

Not all of Kuhn’s conclusions have stood the test of time. For example, recent work has called into question the idea that scientific paradigms are “incommensurable” and that paradigm shifts are therefore essentially irrational events. For example, Canadian philosopher Paul Thagard says there is enough continuity in scientific revolutions to suggest that the process is not really arbitrary or non-linear. He likens a paradigm-shift to the process of learning a second language. (Read my review of Thagard’s book here)

But never mind. Kuhn’s basic insights stand and his service to our understanding of the psychology of change has been incalculable. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was described by Scientific American’s John Horgan as “the most influential treatise ever written on how science … proceeds.” Philosopher Richard Rorty called it “the most influential English-language philosophy book of the last half-century. It sold the most copies, made the greatest difference to our ways of thinking, and was the subject of the most intense and complex debates.” “For a quarter of a century,” Huston Smith wrote in 1982, it was “the most cited book on college campuses and … turned ‘paradigm’ into a household word.” The book, in other words, is an evergreen.

More from scottlondon.com:

• My review of Conceptual Revolutions by Paul Thagard
• My review of Paradigms in Progress by Hazel Henderson
• Literature review: Understanding Change: Strategies for Innovation and Renewal
• Audio clip: The New Science with Elisabet Sahtouris and Willis Harman (Requires RealPlayer)

People often define genius as a set of character traits or a way of being. Books instruct us how to think like Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci. But I see genius as the fulfillment of our true calling in life, as the flowering of our unique potential, whatever it happens to be. What good is thinking like an Einstein if you’re a Picasso or a Charlie Chaplin? Why act like a Mozart if you’re a Maya Lin or a Tiger Woods? Every genius inhabits a universe of his or her own making, so imitating the behavior of others is pointless.

As one might expect, much of what’s been published on the subject falls under the banner of management theory. It’s not surprising, perhaps, given that organizations live and die based on how well they navigate the rapids of change. There was also a good deal of research on the fascinating topic of social and cultural change.

But I was puzzled to learn that very little has been written about personal change. How do individuals grow, develop, and renew themselves? Books on psychology, personal development, and even spirituality deal with the subject at some depth, yes. But not that many address the important link between how individuals change and how that in turn affects organizations, communities, and larger social systems.

As we know, large-scale change happens one person at a time. Or does it? I’m not so sure. 

Early in my research I hit on the work of management consultant Margaret Wheatley. In her endlessly thought-provoking 1992 book, Leadership and the New Science, she observed that, consciously or not, organizations tend to model themselves on Isaac Newton’s 17th-century depiction of the universe as a giant machine in which the parts move and pull one another in predictable and immutable ways. The assumptions of mechanistic science still prevail today, she said, despite the fact that quantum physics, systems theory, and the mathematics of chaos have rendered many of its principles obsolete.

A typical example of this is the fact that by and large leaders manage by separating things into parts. They believe that influence occurs as a direct result of force exerted from one person to another. They engage in complex planning for a world they assume to be predictable. And they continually search for better methods of objectively perceiving and measuring the world. But each of these approaches stems from the outdated assumptions of mechanistic science.

According to Wheatley, tomorrow’s leaders need to draw wisdom from the new sciences which offer fresh perspectives on age-old management issues like control, structure, participation, planning, and prediction. For example, quantum physics teaches that the atom is made up not of solid billiard balls, as the old models suggest, but of electrons, photons, and mesons that sometimes act like particles and sometimes like waves. Thus, at the quantum level, absolute prediction and uniformity are impossible. What is possible to ascertain, however, are patterns, or potentialities. In chaos theory, these are called “fractals” — simple mathematical formulas that repeat and repeat on themselves to create infinite diversity.

Similarly, systems theory — an interdisciplinary field aimed at understanding dynamic, living systems — shows that complex structures have the capacity to self-organize. As Wheatley pointed out, the idea that order arises spontaneously, rather than through direction and control, points to different kind of universe than the one described by Newton and his contemporaries. “Not the fragile, fragmented world we attempt to hold together, but a universe rich in processes that support growth and coherence, individuality and community.”

I sat down with Wheatley and explored some of these topics. She told me that she and her fellow management consultants would sometimes confess to one another that they didn’t really know how to effect lasting change. It was still something of a mystery to them — even though they made their living trying to help leaders bring it about in organizations and communities.

Recently, Wheatley has been exploring another concept with rich implications for those of us who care about effecting large-scale change. She calls it “emergence.” Emergence is the process by which “separate, local efforts connect and strengthen their interactions and interdependencies. What emerges as these become stronger is a system of influence, a powerful cultural shift that then greatly influences behaviors and defines accepted practices.”

Wheatley challenges the simplistic notion that change happens one person at a time. The principle of emergence shows that broad changes in an organization or among a large group of people requires that there be networks of influence and communities of practice.

But this idea still side-steps what I take to be the fundamental question at the core of all efforts to create change: Are people willing to change in the first place? Are they prepared to be open to new inputs, insights and understandings? Are they open to being changed in the process of creating change? (Marshall Goldsmith offers his take on this question here.) This is the issue, I believe, that lies at the heart of whether change efforts thrive or wilt. And it’s a topic I will be exploring further in this space in weeks and months to come.

Listen:

• My interview with Margaret Wheatley (from the radio series Insight & Outlook):

[audio:http://www.scottlondon.com/insight/mp3/346_wheatley.mp3]

Read more:

• Understanding Change — A review of the literature
• The New Science of Leadership — My interview with Margaret Wheatley
• On emergence — From MargaretWheatley.com
• When People Don’t Want to Change — Marshall Goldsmith at Harvard Business Online