“The authoritarians tell a simple story about how to restore order — it comes from cultural homogeneity and the iron fist of the strongman. Democrats have a harder challenge — to show how order can be woven amid diversity, openness and the full flowering of individuals. But Democrats need to name the moral values and practices that will restore social order.” David Brooks
Practices and behaviors are simply manifest values. That’s true on an individual level as well as an organizational and global level.
What we are seeing in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a blatantly egregious example of how “war culture values” play out on the global stage. Unfortunately, these values are not unique to Russia or China. They are manifesting in less dramatic ways across the world, including the US. In this post, I will describe what those values are AND what antidotes could reverse the war culture disease spreading throughout the world. Without these antidotes the potential to cause harm go far beyond the consequences of not using available antidotes to the COVID pandemic.
DOMINANT HIERARCHY: Putin and Xi exemplify the value of dominant hierarchy. This value manifests by consolidating power at the top for purposes of control, oppression and exploitation. Unfortunately, Putin and Xi are only two examples of authoritarians across the globe. We see others emerging in Europe, Latin American, Africa, and North America. The antidote for hierarchy is harmony. Moving from hierarchy (control) to harmony can start by welcoming differences, lifting people up, opening to fresh perspectives, and honoring multiple paths to wisdom. These are the behaviors manifested when you value harmony over hierarchy.
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS: Most people have come to believe that they have very little agency in their lives. They outsource that agency to nationalism or religion and are conditioned to believe that they are simply a product of their environment. Many people value helplessness because it removes the responsibilities of thinking for yourself and being proactive. The antidote for helplessness is creativity. Moving from helplessness to creativity can start by establishing more agency in your life, tapping into ancient spiritual wisdom and bringing more of yourself to each moment. These practices enliven you. When you stop, pause, recover, and reflect, you will get a glimpse what it feels like to take charge of your life – to value agency and creativity above helplessness.
LIMITING LABELS: Oh how easy it is to put people in a diminishing and dehumanizing box. We see this phenomenon happen with medical diagnoses and military training programs – the enemy is less than human, they are “other.” The antidote for labelling is exploring more deeply the sources of your expression. Moving from labelling to more deeply exploring can start by examining the relationship you have with whatever baggage you are carrying, experiencing the limits of labels, and by noticing more precisely how you relate and react to yourself and to others. When you shift your focus from “fixing” others to “freeing” yourself, you may discover a vibrancy that shines through any internal or external label you may have embraced for yourself or placed on others.
MECHANISTIC MOTIONS: I once wrote a poem entitled Man the Machine in which I satirized how mechanically people move through life. At the time, after I had just returned from the Vietnam War, it felt to me like I was watching a bunch of wind-up toys going through the banal routines of life, ignoring the state-sponsored mass murder that was happening on the other side of the globe. The antidote to mechanistic motions is a deeper appreciation of not only what’s going on in your own body and each of your joints, but also what’s happening in the rest of the world. Making the shift from moving mechanically to appreciating deeply can start by melting down barriers; filling up your senses by tasting, touching, seeing, smelling, and hearing; and by feeling an all-encompassing sense of being grounded and boundless at the same time.
ANACHRONISTIC THINKING: For some people, returning to the past is a compelling call. Why wouldn’t it be if that past included privilege, status, and control. The communists in China and Russia yearn for the days of Stalin and Mao. White supremacists still wish they had dominant status and freedom to exploit. The antidote for anachronistic thinking is possibilistic relating. Making that shift can begin by finding newness and freshness in each moment, by seeking out kindred relationships, and by opening to continuous renewal. THIS is more than an idea, a belief, a faith, an assertion or an intuition – it is the possibility for re-invention and re-imagining a better future.
REDUCTIONISTIC THINKING: Life is so much easier when you have simplistic solutions to every problem. Feeling threatened? Go to war. Feeling marginalized? Blame the elites. Feeling unsafe? Deport all immigrants. The antidote to simplistic reductionism is spiritual expansionism. Making that shift can begin by continually remembering to notice, feel, appreciate and enjoy THIS moment with fresh sensibility and tuned-in consciousness. What’s even more challenging is to let go of your scientific, reductionistic conditioning and allow yourself to expand your spiritual sensitivities. My QiGong Master taught me 20 years ago to open and close, to push and pull, to lift chi up and pull chi down. I have experienced the heaviness of a “chi ball” in my hands. I have experienced the warmth of healing energy flowing in, down, and through my body. I know that being expansive is far more fulfilling than being reductive. On a less esoteric level, another antidote to reductionistic thinking is systems thinking – seeing the whole as encompassing all the individual parts.
MEDIOCRITY: Get along, go along. Hey, good enough. Accepting lower standards for how we relate. Measuring ourselves by averages. These are all manifestations of the value of mediocrity. The antidote to mediocrity is excellence. You can begin to make that shift by following some simple practices to enhance your health, by deciding what’s profoundly important to you, by tapping into higher knowledge, and by aspiring to excellence.
SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS. The people who go to war are usually convinced they are absolutely right and that their views are superior. They are filled with certainty and untroubled by doubt. Holding onto that value is the most certain way to end up in conflict. The antidote to righteousness is humility. Making that shift can begin by extending your psychological understanding; noticing more precisely your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors; realizing there are very few absolutes or clear rights or wrongs in any complex situation.
DUMB NUMBNESS. Why would anyone cherish dumb numbness as a value. Actually, there are several reasons: by shriveling, protecting, defending, and guarding against any challenging thought that might disrupt your heart and mind, it is much easier to simply shut out the world by being willfully blind and ignorant. Going through life like a turtle – safely encased with protective armor and focused only on the ground in front of you – is much easier than going through life like a peacock – flying your colors and making yourself completely exposed and vulnerable. The antidote to dumb numbness is smart wokeness. Yup, I used the word. Making this shift can begin by getting in closer touch with your sources of wisdom, your higher purpose, and your personal values. By so doing, you will be able to gauge more clearly the impact you are having on creating a culture of healing, awakening, and thriving by asking of and listening to multiple voices and sources of information. You will more deeply understand the importance of science vs. belief by staying open to changing conditions and compensating for extraneous variance. You will acknowledge truth and own your role. You will see the benefits of a spiritual process that will enable you not only to turn and connect with what’s most important and fulfilling, but also to humbly ask for revelation and ever more discernment. You will experience the intangible and immaterial as well as the physical and intellectual realities of your life. In essence, you will be making the shift from a quantitative resolution to a qualitative evolution.
RIGIDITY. In a war culture, people adhere fiercely to their beliefs. They are not open to different points of view – or evidence for that matter. They move in lock step behind their given ideology. The antidote for rigidity is fluidity. You can begin to make this shift by welcoming suppleness into your life, by seeing life as a dance instead of a forced march, and by turning toward a higher purpose. By making this shift you may begin to recover the original fluidity you experienced as a baby and, instead of constantly feeling drained of energy from one source or another, you will start to create energy through effortless movement. You may increase your awareness of what’s coming in and what’s going out, what’s expanding and what’s contracting, what is opening and what is closing, and how the feminine and masculine are being manifested by you. By attending to your attending, you may heighten awareness; by becoming more aware of your awareness, you may reach higher levels of consciousness. You may even experience an ease, flow, and grace that you haven’t experienced before.
All of the values above are endemic in a war culture. All of the suggested antidotes are essential to creating a more peaceful and productive future. Imagine a world guided by the values of harmony, creativity, exploration, appreciation, humility, and fluidity. While I can’t think of any culture in which those are the predominant values, I have been working with an organization over the past several years that comes close to embodying most of those values. The organization, as I have written about in the past, is the Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (GTRLC). This organization is guided by the values of excellence, leadership, inclusiveness, generosity, teamwork, respect, open communications, integrity and proactivity. For the GTRLC, these are not just words on the wall. Each value matters profoundly to every member of the staff and every member of the board. They are committed to acting in ways that reflect those values. And they do great work.
Why do I use the GTRLC as an example in an article in which I’m taking about war cultures and the required antidotes? Easy. Our environment is under assault. Humans have been waging war on it for the past 100,000 years. GTRLC is one of several organizations that have formed to confront the culture that is devastating our planet, AND it is a particularly successful one. Each of its values are manifested by agreed-upon behaviors that are regularly measured and reviewed.
While there are no easy answers for shifting the war culture in our world to a more peaceful and productive one, the GTRLC gives me hope that it is still possible. I believe this organization and others like it can serve as models for organizations and governments around the world to make the shifts required to save our planet from wars and environmental disasters. Hopefully, the world will step up to David Brooks challenge: to show how order can be woven amid diversity, openness and the full flowering of individuals by naming the moral values and practices that will restore social order. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
May it be so indeed Ricky! Thank you