I find myself feeling dangerous!

I think that compulsions are dangerous things, and I feel compelled to act … an act of what might possibly be thought of as sedition or treason, with the intent to foment revolution.

My body is bristling with it … I can feel it in the hackles raised on my neck, and I am aching for a fight.

 

Before I get lost with myself let me restate the charge …

I have been accused, or so it seems to me, to be resisting the interdiction to challenge some institutionalized ways of knowing. Specifically, an instruction of sorts about acting in alignment and accordance with a given model of interaction.

AN ARGUMENTATIVE STANCE:

I find that one of my ways of being … an ontological form so to speak … is to be in argument, in the most formal of ways of thinking about argument:

From From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

A process of reasoning, or a controversy made up of rational proofs; argumentation; discussion; disputation

From From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

A discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal

A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a truth or falsehood; the methodical process of logical reasoning

So it seems to me I have a long lineage of argument to point to as a valid way of and of seeking to know and knowing i.e.: of inquiry and discovery.

In part the revolution I might be seeking to foment is in challenging the willingness to accept that

• A) collaborative knowing is somehow more valid than subjective, individual, phenomenological knowing
• B) that having a deep sense of knowing that is resolute is less valid than one that is more permeable when it comes to pursing an inquiry into one’s own knowing
• C) that there are better and worse ways of knowing, e.g.: my challenge to a Euro-Centric way of knowing being refuted by virtue of making that challenge within a Euro-Centric institution
• D) that knowing is somehow separate from being, e.g.: “I am this thing I know.” as the causative, karmic statement

Before I go on, I must add none of what I am stating do I hold to be “true” in any way … other than as I experience it myself.

This idea that I can only know what I experience, and that my “knowing” does not necessarily represent any reality beyond my experience is essential to my stance and my argument.

So the things I state … that I am bristling at the challenge and ready for a fight … are based on my experience of events, and not the events themselves. I readily admit I cannot with any certainty know what those events were other than my experience of them … even if they had been recorded in high fidelity and high definition, e.g.: Dolby THX 5:1 Surround Sound and 8K, Ultra High-Definition (7680×4320) video!

Okay … with my charge restated I shall continue …

INCITING A (LEADERSHIP) REVOLUTION:

More precisely I seek to instigate what I think of as a large scale revolution … yea, not evolution but REVOLUTION … in leadership as we know it to be in most instances.

Leadership on the grand scale. Leadership as it exists in the institutions we inhabit and occupy day in and day out.

The institutions I refer to begin with the family, and leadership with those nuclear relationships. Then the extension of the institutions to include our communities and the schools, business and organizations they contain and that comprise them.

Reaching further I find I am compelled to point towards the large scale institutions and bureaucracies of governments and all they spawn and contain as well … the departments and the ministries.

I am indeed hot under the collar about such things … using the ontology of argument to fuel my inquiry so to speak.

It seems from the stance I find myself positioned in that leaders suffer from an institutionalized way of knowing … an insistence on being understood if not liked by others before they can or will lead, the desire for collaboration outweighing their commitment to lead.

Here I expect that some will find my stance objectionable, if not downright offensive.

How dare I suggest that the will to lead in a family, school, business or other institution could be or should be anything other than collaborative first and foremost.

“Doesn’t everyone have a right to a voice?” “

Doesn’t everyone have their right to their opinion?” “Shouldn’t we seek the input and advice of others before we act?”

I can hear these and other charges ringing forth at my suggestion that leadership may not be best served at all times by the collaboration so often sought by leaders in institutions today (or, mea culpa, so it seems to me … ). But my challenge to these charges is of equal fervor.

“Do we not seek our leaders to lead and not merely facilitate?”

Isn’t there an argument to be made that a biological imperative exists for a hierarchical structure in the formation of human systems?

(NOTE: Although I would argue that the hierarchy is best served and of most service when it is fluid, NOT non-existent.)

THE COST OF NOT LEADING:

I see the effect in the system-at-large for the void in leadership presenting symptomatically in many different ways:

• Unruly children who aren’t just rebellious (normal IMO during certain phases of development) … but somewhere between ornery and obnoxious to the point of outright violence against themselves and others
• Social system breakdowns with less opportunity available in the system-at-large for those not yet fully enfranchised and benefiting from the accumulation of wealth from generations past
• Civil and political unrest, locally and globally, about the direction of leadership as it is practiced at the top, with a sense that those not close enough to the top will be left behind entirely
• Outbreaks of violence against individuals – as in the battering of women and children … communities of people – as in racial and religious hate crimes … nations against nations – as in acts of war …

I feel the unrest in my own blood and bones … probably in part what I am bristling at just below the surface at all time, with the smallest slight or infraction in my direction setting me on edge or pushing me off it.

There is a rage that brewing against the lack of decisiveness from our leaders I think … at least that is what is percolating inside of me, always threatening to boil over.

Instead of owning the obligations and responsibilities of leadership, I see our leaders wanting to share their leadership, abdicating accountability to empathy.

I for one know that I cannot, nay will not, follow a leaders who is themselves indecisive … I want those who choose to occupy the chair of leadership to lead, to express a vision of their own that calls followers to them, and then to lead with a strong arm and even stronger heart.

I want to follow a leader with heart, in the mold of servant leaders from all times … those who willingly bear the weight of the crown and raise those around them upon their shoulders …  not  the leader who off-loads the burden of leadership and raises themselves up on the shoulders of others. 

The leader who will be a servant my learn to not to care enough to lead well … i.e.: not to care about what others think of them to be able to do what it takes to lead others beyond what they could lead themselves to undertaking and accomplishing. It is a lot to ask, but I ask nothing less.

BATTERING BONOBOS:

Even in the most loving and collaborative of primates, our cousins the bonobos, we find a strong hierarchical structure. In their case (the bonobos) it happens to be a matriarchal structure with the dominant females beating the males into submission if they get all uppity and dispute the given order of things.

The bonobos to be fair also use the granting of sexual favor to organize and create structure in their communities, once again under the auspices of the females who lead.

But … to be sure these are not “communal” or “collaborative” decisions made by all within the community, the dominant female bonobo leads with an iron fist when necessary, and does not brook insubordination with grace.

I use this example to help make my point as it is … We too, as primates, are sometimes potentially best served when we least tolerate equivocation … not always, but in measure.

I would argue that we, like the bonobos with whom we share so much of our DNA (greater than a 99% match in our genetic structures by some measures), have a deeply imprinted archetype to recognize a hierarchy in the system.

THE ARCHETYPE OF THE KING/QUEEN:

We deeply seek the pleasure of the King or Queen, to have them beam their grace down upon us.

The ancient act of kneeling before nobility in an act of submission born of subjugation may be renewed and rejuvenated by the action of submission born of choice.

By choosing to place ourself in relation to other subordinately we may receive what grace they can and choose to cast upon us. This grace may be an act of love, or teaching, or discipline or wisdom.

If the act is one of grace, and of our choosing, it may not matter in form to still bestow the benefit. Again, I can imagine the protestations in the the milieu I inhabit with my fellows.

“SUBMISSION … kneeling before another!!!! How dare he be so insubordinate as to even suggest that to me!”

The hypocrisy of the speech act all but invisible to the proclaimer.

It seems we have built a society so fearful of command or control as to have thrown out the baby and drunk the bathwater of our own beliefs in equality, plurality and tolerance … even when these things may least serve us, our causes or our kind.

When the presence of the King or Queen is missing it is just as severely felt by us as when they are fully and most regally present to us. I believe that in part the challenge to the perturbations of my argument are a response to the missing Kings and Queens in our collective psyche, and the deep desire for their presence in our lives.

NOTE: It may be worth pointing out that in my observation and experience both the King and the Queen are necessary for us to perceive and experience ourselves as whole and complete.

 

 

It might be useful here to restate my purpose as I did the charges against my stance I experienced them …

My interest is in inquiring into the heart and soul of change, what it is … NOT the process of change … but , its ontology.

To organize my inquiry I have chosen as well a focus, the idea or concept of leadership such as it is that I think of it, one might say the phenomenology of leadership as an ontological entity … i.e.: “What does it mean to be a leader and/or to lead?”

The question in English seems to provoke an inquiry into action, i.e.: the doing of leadership, yet I seek to resist this direction and to aim my inquiry at the nature of leadership and leading as a state of being.

I want to explore the premise that who a leader is being is what is most perceived by those they lead. (Of course, this presumes that leadership is about leading people and not processes – a presumption I fully own up to in the pursuit of my inquiry.)

THE LIQUID OF LEADERSHIP:

It seems that in pursing the line of inquisition I have followed what has emerged in part is what I think of as the liquid nature of leadership in human systems, in much the same way information is liquid.

The “liquid” of leadership, i.e.: the state of being of the leader, permeates the system equally despite the distance from the leader that those in the system reside in relation to them.

This last point is essential in the exploration I have undertaken … it is NOT a given by any means, but one that continues to demand my attention over and over again.

The leader’s presence (or lack thereof) is felt at a distance from the leader in the same degree that is felt adjacent to the leader in connection to the transference of state within the system where the leader operates.

A LEADERSHIP EXAMPLE:

If I take my family as an example of the liquid nature of presence there is a particular decision I can point to that has shaped my life for more than a decade … setting the course I have taken and continue to follow.

When my daughter was born, my son was already thirteen. I had an intention from his birth to be of service to him by virtue of being the man I wanted and needed to be such that he would experience me in ways that allowed for him to become himself. I accepted that he would nonetheless model some of my ways of being and behavior, if not permanently, then surely until he found his own ways. The weight of what I can describe as “generational responsibility” was heavy upon me.

I recognized in my own ways of being and behavior the imprints of my parents and extended family, and beyond those that of my teachers, friends and colleagues, not to mention lovers and partners. I assumed,rightly or wrongly, that my way of being, and the behaviors I expressed as a manifestation of it, would imprint themselves on my children, as my own history had demonstrated to me about myself.

At the moment of laying eyes on my newborn daughter for the first time I made a vow that regardless of the place, time, circumstance or situation … alone or with others … I would act as though my children were standing with me, observing and modeling me.

To be sure I have not keep this vow in any way resembling perfection. I continue to discover my humanity in my failings and foibles as I attempt to continue becoming the man I intend to be.

But, this way of organizing myself, in relation to my children, regardless of where they or I am at the time, permeates my consciousness and my actions. In other words in order to lead I must do so from one step behind, allowing the consideration of my constituents (in this case my most beloved children) to permeate my intentions, and the actions they give rise to  as well.

I am both leading and being lead by the consideration I have for my son and daughter in the role I hold as a leader in the family system that revolves to a great extent around my way of being and how that manifests in an extant way … through my words and acts.

However, I believe in my heart and soul that my children experience me as much as they attend to anything I say or do … to use a common expression, they “feel” me … as I “feel” them, even when we stand thousands of miles apart from one another.

Of course you can ask, and rightly so, who is leading whom?

SIGNALS IN THE SYSTEM (A RECURRENT THEME):

FWIW, I would answer by stating that the strongest signal in the system organizes the system, even when that signal is in response to another signal also within the system, e.g.: the way a fire alarm ignites the action of a team of firefighters, and possibly and entire community, in response to the signal of the smoke and flames.

Do the firefighters follow the signal of the alarm, or is the alarm a way of transmitting the signal of the smoke and flames beyond their local reach?

Likewise, it is only when the signal that I am and send is present, even when I am not, like the spore of pheromones in the wake of my having walked a particular path, does my “leadership” begin to permeate the system as a whole.

This applies equally as well to the vacuum that would be present, in the system, were I not at all … just ask any child who is missing a parent if the effect of the loss is as profound as the presence of the parent who remains. I know how the signal of both those who are present, and those who are not, reverberates in the system.

Despite the distance of time, the missing presence of my wife, who I lost to cancer almost two years ago, haunts the home that my daughter and I share. The emptiness where she once was stalks the rooms like a ghost in the wake of her absence.

We could also ask anyone at Apple what the effect of Steven Jobs is now that he is no longer physically present within the organization, arguably no where to be found literally. I presume the employees of Apple would share their sense of the ghost of Steve Jobs legacy haunting the corridors and conference rooms for years to come … despite whether or not they ever met the man.

This is the “liquid” I am referring to as … “the effect of the leader felt at a distance” … (applicable in both space and time).

 

CONCLUSIONS???  … NONE!

(even when I looks like I believe myself …)

BUT … MAYBE GETTING CLOSER!

(… or at least close enough to be of some service)

MY ROLE AS CHANGE ARTIST:

My current role as a researcher and practitioner is committed to exploring the nature of my professional actions, and their impact and effect/effectiveness, with a aim towards uncovering what might be revealed about what has remained hidden from view for me as of yet … and of the possibility of developing new ways of being in my role as a change artist that would better serve and benefit those I commit to being of assistance to in this role.

To date my observations include those that point to being of greatest service when I help those who lead better serve the systems they operate within, whether those systems are intimate relationships, families, business, multi-national organizations, or entire governments and their obligations and responsibilities to their constituents.

Simplifying and summarizing what has emerged on the horizon of my attention is that when I can (and do) help leaders, i.e.: lovers, parents, entrepreneurs, executives, administrators … become more aware and self-differentiated, while simultaneously remaining deeply connected to the systems in which they lead and serve, I am myself providing the greatest service.

This is NOT a function of helping leaders to motivate or direct others, or to organize the context or the actions that unfold within the context. 

In other words this is NOT a function of doing, but a function of learning to “be” in the role of leading.

In addition to some of the questions I have already asked, questions I have added that remain outstanding include:

• “What does it mean to lead?” 
• “How can a leader better come to know themselves in the role of leading?” 
• “What does it mean to be in the role of leader as change artist” (with the assumption that all change artists at some point lead their clients)
• “How does leadership apply to the work of being a change artist?” 
• “How can change artists best work with leaders?”

Leaders set the mood, or the emotive state, within the systems they lead. This role was explored and documented in the work of Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee in their book, Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Their conclusion, after a significant longitudinal study, was that the leader sets the mood for the organization-at-large … and I would add like it or not, with intention or not.

THE DISNEY MODEL – i.e.: KILL THE PARENTS:

I would argue that the baggage or our lack of self-differentiation, i.e.: our inability to cope with independence prior to seeking inter-dependence, now permeates leadership at all levels.

The primary differentiation that is lacking however is the differentiation from the family of origin, i.e.: our parents and their shadows in our lives, that prevents us from getting on with our lives.

With this consideration in mind I hold that one of my primary acts in my role as change artist is reparenting my clients to achieve the necessary separation, i.e.: “killing the parent/s” to achieve self-differentiation and independence, leaving the state of dependance behind and assuming a new state of being entirely.

Only from a state of independence, can a leader achieve inter-dependence.

 

MORE ANSWERS THAN QUESTIONS:

I think that too many programs and prophets have proclaimed that the way of knowing and doing that the leader possesses is what defines the quality of their leading, but I am suggesting that it is the state of being that the leader possess that defines the entirety of their leadership quality.

BUT … I still don’t know how to most effectively lead the leader to uncovering who they are in that role … the role of leadership … and that remains what is on the horizon for me at this point in my search, i.e.: how to most effectively assist my clients to transform themselves in the leaders they are capable of being, and the ones they desire to become …

As individuals operating in relation to others in love and work … as lovers and friends, parents and children, employers and employees … the edges remain largely undefined, but I believe the magic is there beyond the boundaries where entire systems, and the people that comprise them, find one another.

I have many, many more questions than answers, and FWIW I expect it will continue to be this way.

So I conclude for now with my ranting about the challenge that raised my hackles and sent me off bristling (a very powerful and useful state to be in for me, given my commitment to formal argument as part of my methodology and learning strategy) …

I found in my bristling at the challenge I perceived my stance was both reinforced and reinvented. I could, and do, hold the paradox of getting that it is only a stance, and yet I also indulge in the folly of believing it.

The idea of provoking the system via taking a resolute stance, and simultaneously observing the affect of taking that stance in a human system, is at the core of my inquiry.

Becoming the instrument of perturbation, provocation and probing all at time – i.e.: forming a singularity that collapses these roles into one – continues to fascinate me.

This is the heart of my inquiry as it stands today … albeit ready to be challenged and changed again …

To become the change I intend AND the change I seek to inquire about … the what and the how … knowing that I do not yet know, while acting as if I do … and accepting that I may never really know anything at all beyond my own experience reflecting itself, is where I stand today … breathlessly waiting for what is next, once again peering beyond the horizon.

I walk into a room and there is an effect. It seems impossible to avoid … not that I’d want to if I could.

I affect others … and in turn they affect me.

It seems that this is what it may be to be human, i.e.: humans affecting other humans … the human condition. Maybe we are built to affect one another, maybe “rubbing up against one another” is the essence of what life is about … life rubbing up against life.

To me, this seems at the heart of the human condition.

This is where I constantly find myself drawn. I spent years learning about and studying individuality, i.e.: “the way of the individual.” Even though much of what I was learning about in my reading and study gave lip service to the group – despite the name given to it, e.g.: family, organization, community, society – the focus and emphasis was on the individual.

The sources I went to were divergent … texts and teachers in the domains of psychology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy – Eastern, Western, Meso-American, Middle Eastern … and where that led me I followed … theology, spirituality, mythology, therapy, cybernetics, linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive science, economics, organizational theory, leadership … on and on I went. Despite my reach I continued to find myself stumped with few exceptions.

Let me reframe my comments for a moment before going on …

I was trying to figure out what it meant to be human, i.e.: how to do “human” really well.

I was trying to figure this out first for myself … and then how to engage with others who seemed to be asking the same fundamental question in so many different ways and personal languages of their own, “How do I do “human” really well?”

These folks were colleagues and clients. Sometimes they were in consulting situations I worked in with business outcomes and intentions. Other times they were direct therapeutic type interactions where a client was stumped about how to move on in their life … or what to move on to … what to be doing next with themselves.

In most cases I noticed that many of the folks I encountered seemed lost and hurting, even suffering by some accounts. Yet, in the work I offered, this was rarely on the surface. Rarely did my clients come to me with the expressed intention of relieving suffering per se.  Instead my clients wanted “strategic” help … “Joseph, how do I achieve the next goal?” Whether that goal was making more money (often), becoming more successful (even more often), finding a relationship, fixing a relationship, finding peace and comfort in their life … it always was about the next thing and what to be doing about it … what to be doing to achieve and attain the elusive “IT” they were searching for in their lives.

Fortunately for me I met and trained with someone who actually had something to offer. I sat at the knee of the master for many years, decades actually … studying and learning, absorbing his wisdom and tricks. He redirected me and my attention with these clients to help them re-focus themselves to attend to where they were in the moment, and only then moving onto what was next for them.

I called this (following the style of my mentor) an ontological approach, i.e.: attending to the experience of being in the moment … a critical distinction.

My mentor, and I following his lead, distinguished the idea of an ontological approach from one that was epistemological. The distinction was the focus on the nature of being versus knowing, or maybe more simply experiencing versus thinking.

I followed this lead further beginning to develop my approach with further distinctions, e.g.: the distinction of experiencing versus thinking about experiencing. I found that many of my clients, despite the particulars, were confounded by thinking about experiencing instead of experiencing their experience.

Then I found two more things that fascinated me and led me further down the rabbit hole …

That most people aren’t having their experience, they are having other people’s experience that had been imposed upon them. Most people start out living their parents’ dreams and not their own. Neither they nor their parents recognize the imposition or insult – until they begin to rebel (it’s typically called “adolescence”). Yet, despite the grand protestations they continue living the life imposed upon them, even if they leave behind the impositions of the parent.

An interesting side note here …

I’ve noticed that many folks I’ve worked with who believe they are leaving behind the impositions of the parent/parents spend the rest of their life in rebellion, not free of imposition, just transforming the imposition into it’s opposite.

Instead of accepting and becoming the vision of the parent they spend their lives becoming what they believe will free them of that imposition by becoming it’s opposite … never once even considering becoming themselves.

Back to our story …

Then life imposes further … schooling telling the child what to do and who they are to become, followed by society … and then the work environment and colleagues … and often life partners, spouses, children … an unending stream of impositions about who you are meant and destined to be … an overwhelming avalanche of impositions burying and suffocating who you are yourself. This is what I found again and again in my work with clients. Then, when I encountered them about the idea of simply being … NOT DOING (a very Zen, Taoist, Yin kind of idea BTW) … they fell in love with it.

The ones I worked with who got ‘IT’ began to rearrange their lives around being, often leaving significant aspects of doing behind. Sometimes leaving behind the contexts they had built their doing in as well … organizations, businesses, families … even whole communities … left behind.

Others sought new contexts to support their new found “freedom” … the groups I ran, organized religion, causes … something to hold onto that would confirm and reaffirm their sense of self.

What I began to notice was the need to be given permission to simply be … to relieve themselves of the obligations of the impositions they had carried for so long, who they had become. For some this meant exploring the other side of things … their suffering instead of their freedom. What some call “shadow work” … the repressed self.

Yet for my mentor, and for me as well, this was a path without reward. Of course there was and is great emotional experience there, a charge to be gotten from experiencing the suffering, the sense of coming to terms with what had been and may still be repressed in one’s self. But we agreed there was no way out of the hole by digging deeper.

So we sought a different way, first his decades of work and then, standing on his metaphorical shoulders, I began climbing myself.

The first thing I noticed (my second insight … the one that began to lead me up out of the rabbit hole I’d fallen into, the first being the lack of people having their own experience and substituting doing for being to compensate for it …) was that the shift from doing to being was primarily organized somatically. To become yourself you must first learn how to inhabit yourself.

That must sound strange to someone the first time they hear it I imagine, i.e.: “… you must first learn to inhabit yourself.” But it is the key in the work I have been doing for the last two decades with my clients, i.e.: repositioning them in their body in relation to themselves.

This work is about moving from intellectualizing experience to instantiating and inhabiting experience … to feel it … to see, hear, smell and taste it fully. To let the sensations of life wash over and in turn wash away the stench of abstraction for the sweetness of being present to life.

Again, I find myself coming to the idea of “life rubbing up against life.”

But still … for decades, I found something was missing in the puzzle that had and continues to consume me.

The somatic piece was and is indeed critical, powerful beyond the imaginings I could have held before I encountered it fully. Recognizing that we respond, as incarnate beings, to our lives and the experiences we engage in was immense. Recognizing further the dynamics of interaction, how we respond to one another responding was even more powerful … mesmerizing me into a kind of stupor.

I had climbed out of the rabbit hole for a moment only to be drawn back down. This time via another tunnel, the tunnel of somatics. So I went all the way … submerging myself into the study of the interaction between the mind and body, until I dissolved the separation of the two for myself … a body-mind emerged.

A singularity that has been my domain of expertise for the past twenty years, i.e.: the body-mind and how it manifests ontologically, forming the essence of who we are and know ourselves to be … the return of epistemology and the integration of it with the ontological consideration.

Yes … the body-mind … I worshipped at its magnificence.

When I worked with clients, exposing them to themselves via an new found integration of the somatic form they had repressed into a barely acknowledged part of their experience of themselves, they often blossomed into new beings … a kind of metamorphosis. Like the seed becoming the tree, emerging from themselves in a new form that had been barely contained in the kernel of themselves they had known and expressed previously.

As my clients learned about noticing the body-mind themselves via the somatic path I was sharing with them, they began to notice others differently as well. The noticing became subtler and subtler until they could and were adumbrating entire groups of people they encountered day in and day out, and for many they flourished in this way.

But I noticed a different kind of shadow too. The more they fell into the rabbit hole themselves, the more they became observers of life, playing less with others and more with themselves.

In the best cases they removed themselves to tiny enclaves of others who shared their new sense of awareness, a kind of “insiders” club about the wonders of the body-mind experience.

These insiders noticed the interplay between the somatic forms and the semantic forms that people expressed, and they would delight in their noticing and the sharing of it with others of like mind. But they were also somewhat removed from the messiness of life, somehow trying to remain out of the reach of the stench that arises when bodies truly rub together. Yet it was exactly in the space that ceased to exist between bodies with life that life was most evident … where life is both conceived and consecrated from what I could tell.

So my insights had led me out of the hole and then right back in … only with different illusions, not illusion free as I had hoped.

However, I was helping people. My clients were actually achieving and attaining more of what they were capable of and desired … more success, better and fuller relationships with others, a greater sense of coming to peace in their lives.

So for many years I continued refining the models I had been designing and developing. These were the models I used when I engaged with clients to provoke the critical transformations they desired, and in many cased we were successful together … and that’s where the new opening appeared for me … in the “together” I’ve only come to most recently.

All the years of learning, reading and studying had helped, but left me in some ways as lost as I had been when I first began. The abyss was individuality, the illusion of the individual.

I realized I had moved spasmodically away from anything resembling what I though of, and continue to think of, as false community … the lip service given to inclusiveness, plurality, diversity and all the socially, politically correct ways of thinking about communities of people. It all seems to be so much bullshit! When it comes down to it in those communities the folks who are so outspoken about their caring for others simply take care of themselves. Frankly, it disgusts me.

So I ran in the other direction. I renounced anything to do with the prophets of community and their false doctrines. The entire “New Age” movement and everything associated with it, including the meta-magical thinking and “love talk” that spouts from the mouths of every prophet espousing their wares nauseated me to my core.

The endless stories of the gurus with their perversions, the socially minded entrepreneurs with their addictions, and all the rest of it wasn’t what I was searching after … it was something more, something undefined, some call to something else .

I cannot conclude my tale here with the revelation of having found “IT” yet. I may be as delusional as the false prophets I so detest. But …

There is something that has been emerging from the manure piles the prophets have left in their wake, something more wicked than they ever imagined coming I think. Maybe the end of society as we know it even … but I both digress and expose myself too much without evidence for my philosophical meanderings.

What I’ve begun to notice is the emergence of a new kind of thinking that transcends self-interest. Not the self-serving speeches of the socially-minded about being of service to others, of social and economic equality for all. It is not even the talk about the rights of the repressed that I am pointing towards …

My meandering is about an organism I’ve only newly begun noticing for the first time, despite seeing it forever (forever being the entirety of my lifetime). The organism of society itself … we are collectively the organism. The ontological form we are is social, connected … in the same way our organs, muscles and bones comprise who we are, we comprise the organism of society … a living, breathing thing unto itself beyond anyone of us.

Let me close for now with another reframing exercise …

I have long disagreed with the idea that some physicians hold of treating disease apart from the whole-form of the body in which the disease resides. Despite the successes that this approach has generated in some cases, I believe the cost to be higher than the gain. Only when we expand our perspectives to see the entire being can we properly treat the symptomology that confronts us.

For instance treating a persistent rash with cream to suppress it will not relieve the issue of what causes it if the cause is metabolic or environmental, even if the symptoms are relieved.

The individual may indeed have temporary relief from the rash, only to find that they given room to the cancer to form and grow within them. However, when the cause is contextual, say living in New York with all of the stressors there, environmental and otherwise, and to “cure” oneself means giving up all that you’ve come to associate with being in New York true healing may be impossible.

The individual goes on living with the suppression of symptoms, maybe addressing one symptom after another … first the cream for the rash, then anti-acids for the stomach upset, satins for high cholesterol, blood pressure medications … until the system collapses in utter and total disrepair … FUBAR!

You see it’s not within the individual that the issue resides … it’s in the system-at-large. The individual is an illusion as something apart from the system that contains them, in the same way that a heart or spleen actually exist but are meaningless outside of the system that contains them.

What is the heart outside of the body where it pumps blood that is not it’s own, and breaths oxygen it does not absorb???

This is the question I began to see about the “individual” … and I had had inklings of this before, inklings I suppressed and ignored because I didn’t have the insight or tools to deal with them.

Often, we as change agents try to fix the individual, or to fix the system via the individuals within it. We think that change happens locally, even when we think systemically the systems we think about are most often local … not total.

Now I’ve begun to think that maybe the only thing we can do is to relate the individual to the whole-form, to relieve them of their illusion that they are in any way separate and/or apart from the system, that they are the system in the same way the heart is the system in the body … i.e.: it is nothing without the blood it pumps or the oxygen it breathes, both of which are beyond it’s ken … the domain of the marrow and lungs.

I don’t really know where to go with this from here … but somehow it feels like I am once again standing in the sun, out of the warren that had trapped me into thinking I was home.

The “ontology” I am looking for is everywhere … now if only I had eyes to see …

Joseph Riggio,Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ

P.S. – FWIW I’ve incorporated all of the *new* learning and insights I’ve had into my current work, what I’ve begun calling “Foolish Wisdom” … maybe you’ll join me in becoming a “Wise Fool” yourself someday soon …

P.P.S. – HERE’S THE LINK TO FIND OUT MORE …

 

Foolish Wisdom – London, UK 7/8 June 2014

Download the graphic files I’ve been working on about the Performance Logics models here too!

I Am Pissed At The Lies Being Told About American Education!

Well … they are not really lies per se, more like ‘mis-truths’ or ‘misleading comments’ about our kids here in the U.S.A.

The story reported by PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment) picked up by NPR as “U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science” where I got it, is suggestive that American students are falling behind in their math and science scores compared to other countries.

Now here’s the challenge with that statement …

MOST PEOPLE ARE TOO ILLITERATE TO READ THE STORY ABOUT THE FAILING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN AMERICA!!!

I bet that got your attention, huh?

Well that’s my point.

This story is a kind of subtle fear mongering designed to promote the interests of a very select group IMO.

Here’s a definition of “illiterate” from WordNet® 3.0 2006 edition:

1. uneducated in the fundamentals of a given art or branch of learning; lacking knowledge of a specific field; “she is ignorant of quantum mechanics”; “he is musically illiterate” [syn: ignorant, illiterate]

Now most people are familiar with the definition of illiterate as:

1. not able to read or write [ant: literate] (also from WordNet® 3.0 2006)

Yet the idea that illiterate also means “lacking knowledge of a specific field” escapes them when I use it in the bold statement above.

In this case I’m pointing to being illiterate in a specific way: i.e.: illiterate about how to read the subtleties of statistical information

The U.S. is not falling behind other countries … allow American students remain “sub-average” in ranking when compared to the countries that are “above average” in the PISA study, students in America are showing improvement in math and science scores between the years of 2003 and 2009 (the dates of the studies indicated in the PISA graph). It’s rather that the other countries begin compared with American scores on the PISA standardized test are moving up ahead of the U.S. in this specific scoring and ranking system …

The US is not falling behind at all, their scores have in fact remained flat from 2009, and have gone up since 2003!

NOTE: Using the data from the PISA scores the U.S. is actually tied at 15 in reading, tied at 33 in math and and 22nd in science specifically, so the mean of 28th is bunk when looking at the specific scoring in the individual areas of the test.

The specific score used for China’s ranking in math was the highest in the chart “600” and was from “Shanghai-China”  – arguably the most westernized and international city in China (with the possible exception of Hong Kong) with the most privileged educational opportunities in the country, not China at-large, including all the rural and non-metro areas of the country where education is likely least emphasized and least privileged.

As far as I can tell the scoring for the United States was a mean score for the entire country, presumably including all of our most economically underprivileged, and arguably least educationally privileged, regions. I’d personally be curious to see how students in the most privileged U.S. educational communities, like the one I live in near Princeton, NJ, would score comparatively.

(Ref: “Shanghai tops international test scores” SOURCE: 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development | The Washington Post – Dec. 7, 2010)

These are the kinds of distinctions that must be accounted for when looking at comparative test results and scoring.

Look at the chart provided from PISA that’s attached to the article I referenced above … it’s very clear from that chart what’s happening; much better than the article states it in words IMO.

THE U.S. IS NOT FALLING BEHIND AT ALL IN MATH AND SCIENCE per se … JUST IN THIS ‘SPECIFIC’ SYSTEM OF TESTING … AGAINST THE IMPROVEMENT MADE BY OTHER COUNTRIES!

There’s an question hiding inside of this data from my point of view.

What is the data, as it’s being presented publicly, intended to demonstrate and/or suggest … and who would benefit from the results the data indicates?

I don’t want to leap off of the “conspiracy death curve” … but I believe that more often than not statistics have an insidious purpose when they are applied to making a point without clarity about reasoning behind how the statistics were generated and the results arrived at by them.

To quote a favorite scholar of mine, Gregory Bateson … “shoddy epistemology!” 

 

 

So what’s the big deal … why all the fuss about math and science scores???

Simple …

Better math and science scores means a better chance at getting the “cubicle” jobs available in the current market conditions.

Yup … that’s it.

The U.S. and other developed countries need people in cubicles to run the sophisticated technology we depend on, to run our laboratories where drugs are made, to step into the industrial-military complex where the big money is spent to make millionaires and billionaires out of the capitalists that own the factories and businesses behind them … and we’re losing those jobs to immigrants who are better trained at filling the cubicle positions because they are better trained in rote math and science studies.

Here’s my proposition …

Americans who attend our public and private elementary and secondary schools, and continue onto both our public and private universities are among the best trained “thinkers” on the planet … BAR NONE!”

Instead of getting lost in this ridiculous intensity about producing better trained rote mental robots that will compete with the rote mental robots being produced in other countries … let’s focus on building up the creative and entrepreneurial skills of our youth so we can employ those folks as we continue to build the best and most successful businesses, products and services on the planet.

America will NOT produce more creative/entrepreneurial adults by focusing more heavily on math and science … BUT BY REINTRODUCING MORE HUMANITIES AND ARTS INTO OUR SCHOOL CURRICULUMS!!!

This is especially true in our elementary schools … and heck, our pre-schools as well where we’re beginning to see an earlier and earlier introduction of math and science into the curriculums there as well.

(Does it seem ridiculous to anyone but me that pre-schools even have curriculums??!!!????!!)

FWIW in my mind this includes the movement arts …

We need more music and dance in our schools … not longer school days and school years to improve what calculators and computers will always outperform humans at doing …

LET’S MAKE WHAT MAKES US MOST HUMAN MOST IMPORTANT!

 

 

A couple of other statistics that might be more telling than math and science scores …

Now let’s cross-map the impact of math and science in terms of real output. IMO this would be the test of applicability of the learning, more so than testing well, i.e.: what can you do with what you’ve learned?

From my point of view learning is all about the ability to perceive, think, imagine and create … not about regurgitating rote information.

So how about using information about worldwide patents issued???

In that ‘test’ where would the United States residents come out?
Well based upon a global study done in 2006 (a period that overlaps with the PISA study quoted about declining U.S. math and science scores BTW) … it turns out that the Americans did pretty dang well!

In fact the only country that surpasses the U.S. in patent grants is Japan … which is statistically relevant, especially when you consider that the population of Japan is about 1/6 of the United States.

Here’s some data for you …

“World Patent Report: A Statistical Review – 2008 edition”

When you look at the data you’ll get a sense of who’s doing what worldwide in terms of creating “new stuff” … as in new products, technologies, drugs, etc. … and you’ll see that the U.S. is by no means “failing” in any way!

In fact when you cross map the data from the PISA study and see how well the students from countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands are doing in math and science … and how well that translates into new patent filings you’ll see that the U.S. education begins to look quite a bit better very quickly (yes, I’ve taken into account the small populations of those countries in my comments).

How about we move on … to Nobel Prize winners, a distinction about who has done truly significant, often seminal, groundbreaking work in their field of expertise???

Here’s the list:

“Nobel Laureates and Country of Birth“

Now when you scroll down you’ll see that there are some pretty impressive turn outs given the population by folks in places like:

Austria, Canada, Denmark, France (very impressive prior to about 1940), Germany (both pre- and post- war geographical distinctions), Italy, Japan, Norway (very impressive given the population), Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden (a little over-represented? … maybe some bias there???), Netherlands (again, very impressive given the population), and then you come to …

United Kingdom … HOLY COW!!! … that’s a long list!

And, look at the dates for the Brits … consistent winners from the early 1900s through to the most recent prize awards.

By the way if you’re still up to it after reading this far, try cross mapping the list of Nobel Prize winners with the PISA graphic of math and science scores.

Especially look at the countries where there were declining scores and those where the scores were improving against the most recent prizes awarded by the Nobel committee.

Then you get to the United States Nobel Prize winners … and you have to ask yourself … “REALLY? Are we really worried about the state of education in the United States recently???”

Okay … that’s not just a long list … it’s a crazy long list!!!

And, look at the dates of the prizes awarded too.

Notice the number of Nobel prizes awarded for achievement (i.e.: not the Peace Prize) in the last decade or so to Americans, versus those awarded to folks from elsewhere.

Also, notice the categories that Americans receive the award for specifically. Nobel Prize winners from the U.S. dominate the list in Economics, Chemistry, (Physiology of) Medicine, Physics … with the only real competition in numbers coming in some categories from the Brits.

This is an impressive achievement for a country to lay claim to year after year. Not bad for one with such a “failing” educational system, eh?

Do you think we do so well on the world stage because of the rote learning of math and science required to score well on standardized tests???

OR … do you think that Americans do so well in the application of math and sciences because we’re taught to think and have the freedom to imagine what hasn’t be discovered to be taught yet?

If we follow the plans that the cabal of educational critics will have us believe we’ll focus on scoring well on standardized test, while we give up our children’s future ability to think and imagine.

Is this what we really want for the future of American education???

 

 

Creativity and imagination is where it’s at IMO!!!

To illustrate competence in creativity I want to use one more comparison, the MacArthur Foundation grants and prizes.

Here’s a comment about the MacArthur Foundation from their website:

“The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society.” – See more at: http://www.macfound.org/about/#sthash.BBwbRFQe.dpuf

This foundation awards what some people refer to as the “Creative Nobel Prize” – specifically looking to recognize and award creativity and imaginative approaches and solutions to significant issues in the world.The foundation is open to international inquiries, nominations and submissions.

While MacArthur grants are open to international applicants the Fellows program is solely for Americans So while looking at MacArthur Fellows won’t give us a clue about their ranking comparative to potential fellows from other places, because they are no such fellows, it will give us a chance to look at some of things some of the best and brightest from America are up to …

So the question again is, “In the international pool where do Americans swim when it comes to generating innovative and creative solutions to significant global issues such as those addressed by MacArthur Foundation fellows?”

Here’s the 2013 MacArthur Fellows List:

http://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/

Take a look at what American education produces and also what some of the top American educators look like through the lens of the MacArthur Fellows Class of 2013.

Once again I’d argue that …

The difference that makes a difference is education (especially early education IMO) is promoting a sense of wonder and curiosity … as well as a sense of intellectual confidence … that we’d all be better served putting our attention on than the building of rote memorization or methodology skills that the PISA standardized test measures for showing Americans falling behind in math and science.

 

What do you think it does to the psyches of our young when they are presented with misleading information about their “failure to perform on the world stage” in regard to considering their future … and the future of our nation???

And, once again that insidious proposition, “Who does this serve in the long run???”

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts about American education … or education anywhere in the world for that matter.

IMO there is nothing more important to us than protecting and preserving the future of our people and our planet … it is the sacred task we’re born into, like it or not.

What do you think???

Joseph Riggio,Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

 

PS – WARNING: massive Parental Pride follows … take care in reading further.

FWIW I have two children I inordinately proud of that are products of American education … both of whom attended American public schools.

My son Jason, a doctoral candidate at U.C. Davis in Ecology, attended American public schools though the end of his secondary schooling, and went on to graduate from the University of Vermont’s Honors College, and Duke University with a MEM (Masters in Environmnental Management) and a M.F. (Masters of Forestry), before beginning his Ph.D. work.

Jason is now working on mapping projects in Africa using global imaging, with a major scientific paper published in his name as lead author … and he was never a top science or math student recruited by top universities for his skills in those areas as a secondary student. While he was a quite respectable student, his skills were much more broadly focused than on a narrow band of learning in math or science, and today it is that broad approach that is creating the value he adds to the science he is publishing — alongside some of the world’s leading conservation biologists and ecologists BTW.

My daughter Michaela attended a private Waldorf school through fifth grade and then transferred to a local public school to complete her elementary education. She is a good student in the maths and sciences, but outstanding in the arts and writing. How would a student like her be better served by more focus on math and science in her schooling??? Where would she find time to do her art and writing in an already overcrowded academic routine … i.e.: three to four hours of homework a night, much of it in math and science. For my two cents I’d rather her have no homework, and three to four hours of time outdoors, dancing, singing, drawing, sculpting, conversing with friends and standing in awe at the wonder of the world-at-large that surrounds her. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help her navigate a course in secondary school that allows for many, many hours of wonder … not filled with repetitious rote learning.

As you can see this is more than mere speculation on my part or the opinions of an interested observer standing apart at arm’s length.

NOTE: I’m about to publish my next book on “whole-form learning and whole-form communication” … my next after that, which I’ve begun writing, will be on “whole-form” parenting. All the best – Joseph.

Truth Be Told … Fukushima Lies

 

The Times, Oct. 6, 2013: Japan admits it needs help to plug radioactive leaks […] Japan’s Prime Minister has asked the international community for help in containing radioactive leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant, a month after promising the International Olympic Committee that the problem was under control. Shinzo Abe told an international Japanese Government knows exactly what is going on.
TEPCO knows exactly what is going on. Lying has been the information method of choice.

How do you know when you hear or read the truth???

This is a critical question on two levels …

1. For your own safety and sanity it is imperative to know when someone is speaking (or writing) truthfully, and when they are being deceptive or deceptively manipulative.
2. If you know how you experience “THE TRUTH” then you know something about what it sounds like, looks like and feels like … and you will be able to present yourself and your ideas so others will hear them as truth

N.B. – Before I jump ahead I want to point out something I believe absolutely …

All human beings have built in B.S. meters that tingle or tremble when we encounter deception … AND, we are able to override those signals when our hidden agendas and secondary gains interrupt our natural instincts and intuitions.

Lies, Lies, Lies …

Okay, so we all encounter lying from simple, innocent deception to outright malicious coercion – we must decide BEFORE we encounter the lies we inevitably will how we will address them and handle ourselves as we confront them.

Simple, innocent lies are the white lies that range from the deception we engage in when we want to throw someone a suprise party to when we don’t want to expose our real feelings for fear of the confrontation they would expose us to, e.g.: “No, I’m so sorry, I can’t go to the movie with you tonight I have to take care of my sick grandmother.”

Malicious coercion occurs when others manipulate our experience to gain their outcomes at any cost, e.g.: “I am an expert emergency room physician and would be happy to help you out in the hospital.” (one of many lies told by Frank Abagnale famed deceiver who convinced people he as among other things a pilot, physician, attorney … and along the way cashing over $2.5 million dollars of phony checks in 26 different countries).

Now it might seem outrageous and you might hear yourself asking, “How is it possible someone could get away with this without people realizing what’s going on when they meet someone who lies so outrageously???”

Let me share a comment from the Energy News site on an article about the Fukishima cover-up:

Energy News 99.99999999% of the World Public believe TEPCO statements and their Government’s statements because, lies are easier to mentally process than truth and facts!science conference in Kyoto yesterday that “my country needs your knowledge and expertise” in dealing with the worsening situation at the power station. […]

The information has been out there for months, if not years, and anyone who gave even the slightest care about the truth of Fukushima would have been alerted to the inconsistencies in the Japanese version of “the truth.”

Just as the commentor on Energy News points out, i.e.: ” … lies are easier to mentally process than truth and facts.”

 

The Art of Deception

This is how we ge caught in deception … the lies of commission and omission that others tell us, and the lies we tell ourselves (to others and ourselves BTW).

The biggest issues include our greed, our laziness, our submission to authority and our desire to avoid unpleasant confrontation.

All “Professional Criminals” know these rules of human nature … and they especially like those who are greedy and lazy, these folks are the perfect marks.

One type of professional criminal is the confidence man (or woman), these folks are also known as “grifters” or as a “con man.” These criminals look for marks who are driven by their greed and laziness to seek out opportunities to make “easy money” … and are therefore perfect stooges for the “con game” that will be run on them, soon separating the fool from his/her money.

Unfortuately, these folks are also playing in more legitimate games like selling where the unscrupulous give the entire profession a bad name and image.

If you don’t want to be a “mark” for either a con man or an unscrupulous sales person you need to learn the rules of deception, and their opposite the rules of honesty.

 

Influence Rules

One of the most famous studies on influence was done by Dr. Robert Childini and the results were published in his bestselling book, by the same name, “Influence.”

Childini came up with six principals of influence he identified in his study:

1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment/Consistency
3. Social Proof
4. Liking
5. Authority
6. Scarcity

By using these six principals of influence it is possible to both influence with integrity or to manipulate, deceive and coerce people.

The Mind Tools website (www.mindtools.com) calls these principals “The Six Weapons of Influence” and places this warning on their pages listing and explaining these tools:

[Childini’s Six Principals of Influence]

Warning: – Be careful how you use the six principles – it is very easy to use them to mislead or deceive people – for instance, to sell products at unfair prices, or to exert undue influence. When you’re using approaches like this, make sure that you use them honestly – by being completely truthful, and by persuading people to do things that are good for them. If you persuade people to do things that are wrong for them, then this is manipulative, and it’s unethical. And it’s clearly wrong to cheat or lie about these things – in fact, this may be fraudulent. A good reputation takes a long time to build. But, you can lose it in a moment!

Now when many people who have come across Childini’s work before think of both influence and deception they think of these principals.

FWIW the Japanese government and TEPCO have been using these principals to deceive the public and hide the facts for more than two years now. Finally, after lying to the world, and to the International Olympic Committee to get them to award the 2020 games to Japan, they have begun to come clean and share the truth they have known for years.

Think about it … how has the Fukushima story been told in the mainstream press???

As an local tragedy that’s under control? (Yes, absolutely early on and for the most part.)

In terms of a disaster that was affecting the entire region and possibly even remote parts of the world?” (On occassion, and mostly by the alternative press.)

That this was potentially an “extinction level” event, that was out of control and possibly uncontrollable by any means available to us whatsoever?” (Not all all anywhere other than in the fringe blogs that most people perceive as utterly looney or at best promoting unsupported conspiracy theories.)

Now the question you have to ask yourself is, “Who can I/will I believe?” -or- “How can I know when I’m being told the truth?”

Patterns of Persuasion

There is more that occurs beneath the surface of human interaction and communication than occurs above the surface.

Almost all research and training in influence and persuasion, or alternatively training in uncovering deception, is based on some form of a cognitive/peceptual model.

The vast majority of research and training around the topic of human communication focused on influence, persuasion and deception is based in how we make decisions cognitively (i.e.: how we think) based on information available to us perceptually (i.e.: information that we can see and/or hear).

HOWEVER … for years I’ve been working with and developing the pre-conscious, non-verbal skills that we are innately born with to …

• A) communicate with honesty and integrity

and

• B) instinctively and intuitively recognize deception
  

… and these skills are first and foremost based in our somatic awareness.

As strange as the mixed metaphor maybe some people refer to the somatic awareness they have as a small quiet voice within” or “an internal whispering” – in part because the experience is so subtle as to be virtually undetectable as a feeling in their body.

What I’ve found actually happens is that there is first a somatic response that is in fact body-based and only then, after the fleeting body-based response, they become aware of what they’ve just experienced and processed, often as an internal auditory whisper.

The challenge for many people however is that when this feeling comes up into conscious awareness it’s no longer present in the body.

When there is no check-and-balance system in place, or a way to confirm the inkling about something you just sense, you will rely on conscious, rational/logical processing to make your decisions – and, you don’t have the information that you need to make a high-quality decision in the rational/logical channel of your experience!

In fact, professional liars … including grifters, indecent politicians, malfeasant corporations, unscrupulous sales people, portions of the interconnected media and others … depend on you using your rational, logical mind to make the decisions they want to lead you to making.

Trusting Your Gut

We literally store a “second brain,” i.e.: the label Dr. Michael Gershon, full professor in the department of Pathology and Cell Biology at Columbia University’s Medical Center gave to the enteric nervous system, in our intestines.

The enteric nervous system consists of around one hundred millions neurons. That’s a huge number of neurons for food processing!!! Compare this number, 100,000,000, to the number of neurons in the human spinal cord for example, about thirteen million (13,000,000) or about eight times as many.

While many people are aware of the significance of the spinal cord to the nervous system, human information processing and the motor responses that constitute much of our voluntary and involuntary behavior, they are much less aware or the impact of our “second brain” in how they perceive information and respond to it.

There’s another potent factoid about the enteric nervous system that might make you wake up and realize its potential importance to your decision making …

About 90% of the fibers of the vagus nerve (the primary nerve that connects the brain to the organs of the body, especially the heart … lowering or increasing heart rate/blood pressure and the like) run from the enteric brain to the cranial brain and not the other way around!

Beyond What Can Be Seen Or Heard

One significant aspect of the information processing and the subsequent transfer of that information to the cranial brain is that the enteric brain significantly impacts how we feel about things and our emotional response to events.

We are aware that neurologially the enteric brain and the cerebellum are linked. One way this connection is in place is via the route the the vagus nerve takes through the front portion of the cerebellum joins with the pons, the inferior cellebellar peduncle, where the cerebellum and the medulla oblongata (brain stem) meet.

Ultra simply put the vagus nerve and the cerebellum are capable of stimulating one another and creating an effect that you will experience in the body and that will affect your emotions and emotional responses.

Gaining direct access to the subtle, but profound, signals processed deep in your physiology will create an awareness of what is happening around you that others could only consider as some kind of magical or psychic awareness.

IMO the cerebellum is the portion of our neural system that I’d personally prefer to label our second brain for reasons pointed out by Dr. Steven Novella on his NeuroLogica Blog who is a clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine.

I tend to disagree with Dr. Novella’s characterization of the cerebellum as narrowly focused only on coordinating motor movement … by some recent accounts that view is an old and outdated characterization. For instance another neuroscientist, Masao Ito, gives much more credence to the functions of the cerebellum in his ground breaking book, “The Cerebellum: Brain for an Implicit Self”).

And, Where Do We Go From Here …
Which Is The Way That’s Clear?

In the work I do with clients we bring to the forefront the subtle somatic, or body-based, signals that are typically present below or before conscious recognition, perception and decision making … striving to create awareness and direct access to those signals.

When you become aware of your somatic signals you begin to assume control of your pre-conscious responses in the same way that professional athletes, A-list performers and special forces soliders do. These are the same signals that elite communicators use to manage themselves and their presentations to others.

Developing this level of skill exceeds by far what is possible when you rely only on developing your ordinary cognitive capabilities, including rational and logical thinking.

One of the most powerful things you can do to begin developing this “Sixth Sense of somatic sensitivity and awareness is to train ourselves to become sensitive when we are intentionally using our bodies.

There are what I call the “long road” options to doing this (some of which I have engaged in myself and loved BTW):

• Yoga
• Martial Arts
• Dance
• Chi Kung

You can add to this any movement activity that trains you to use your body and to simultaneously remain conscious of your experience in your body.

There are some shorter routes to learning about somatic sensitivity and awareness like:

• Alexander Technique
• Feldenkrais
• Hanna Somatics

And again there are many more in this category as well when applied for the purposes of learning in the hands of a truly skilled practitioner, e.g.: Rolfing, Cranial Ostepathy …

There is however a caveat I’d apply to these types of interventions, when the intention is physical training or therapeutic the potentional deep somatic learning and sensitivity I’m pointing to is often lost to the primary outcome of performance and/or rehabilitation.

The Clear Path …

My approach, i.e.: the MythoSelf Process and Soma-Semantics are focused on making explicit the very subtle and sublime aspects of somatic awareness, and developing the ability to notice for and control the somatic responses you have.
To my way of thinking this is the direct route, the clear way forward … i.e.: putting your attention directly on what you want to learn about noticing your somatic responses and how to access the powerful information they reveal to you.

For instance the next time you become aware of a strong emotional response your having, positive or negative, notice what you are doing with your body.

At the gross level of awareness you may notice things like clenching your fists, shoulders or jaw, a specific postural change like leaning forward or back, or a big shift in your breathing from very shallow to hyperventilating. In this same category you may even notice things like body tremors or shivering, teeth chattering, feelings a sense of looseness in your bladder and/or bowels, feeling like you cannot get enough air or faint, especially when you are in an extreme situation.

On a more subtle level you may notice less dramatic changes in breathing, your heart beating more quickly, pounding, ringing or swishing in your ears, extreme heat or coolness (especially in the extremities, i.e.: hands, feet and head/nose/ears), blushing, mouth dryness, light perspiration (especially from the palms or on the face/scalp), etc.

If you are extemely sensitive you may notice the precusors of movement and/or response (pre-fight/flight), a slight contraction of the muscles in your torso, arms, legs, hands or feet (especially slight twitches in your scalp, fingers, toes, lips and/or tongue), change in your eye blink rate, change of visual focus (i.e. sharpness, depth of vision, peripheral vision, color awareness), auditory directionality (acute awareness of the location of sounds in the environment).

Any or all of these can be signals that something is happening in the environment that you want to pay closer attention to so you can respond immediately, accurately and usefully.

Updating the System

One of the most powerful ways to enhance this kind of deep somatic learning, shorten the learning curve dramatically and build exquisite acuity (somatic micro-calibration), is with direct facilitation … i.e.: working with a highly trained and skilled facilitator who is capable of provoking specific somatic responses to be explored and updated.

An example of this kind of learning when you want to revisit vis-a-vis alternative responses would be to recall an event vis-a-vis exploring the possibility of alternative responses in situations similar to it.

For example as you think back to your response to the news coming out of Japan about Fukushima what were your responses?

If we were working together I’d ask you to think about what you heard about Fukushima’s nuclear reactors after the tsumami event in Japan in 2011, and I’d watch how you respond.

Then I might ask you if you remember how you heard the news … reading about it, watching a newscast on television, hearing it on the radio or from someone you know … and I’d continue to watch your pre-conscious, non-verbal responses.

I would likely then have some information about how you processed that event and I might begin feeding it back to you indirectly, in my own posture, gestures and movements, or via using hypnotic protocols in communication to direct your attention to your somatic responses.

We might then move onto how you thought about the news coming out (or not coming out) about Fukushima over the past couple of years. All the time I’d be weaving the information you were displaying back into the context conversationally so it became a part of what was happening between us interactionally.

When we’d conversed for a bit, and I’d gathered enough information to form a baseline and a pattern of response from you about this event and your experience of it, I’d move to asking you what you now think that in essence the Japanese government and TEPCO have revealed that the situation is out of control and that they likely lied about it all along.

 

NOW I’D BE FIXATED ON YOUR RESPONSES!!!

 

You’d be inadvertently revealing how you respond to being lied to … and we’d have a new pattern to work with that you could be using to notice for in the future in any situation where knowing the truth would be important to you … the pattern that remains “elusively obvious” (to quote the great Moshe Feldenkrais).

• PERSONAL PATTERNS OF PERSUASION PART I: Reading and Calibrating Communication Somatically

  When you learned to tap into this response you’d have the first part of the learning you need to become a highly effective communicator … i.e.: reading and calibrating the responses of others somatically.

• PATTERNS OF PERSUASION PART II: Sending Somatic Messages of Trustworthiness and Veracity

  The second part of the learning is to know how to shape your own communication so that others receive and perceive what you want them to about your trustworthiness and the veracity of your message.

 

Best,

Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.

Princeton, NJ

 

[mark – an un-streetwise person, and easy target or victim, e.g.: “This mark came walking out of the bank yesterday, counting his income tax check he just cashed. I just had to rob him.”]

 

PS – If you want to work with me on your own Personal Patterns of Persuasion check out the brochure for the Autumn Master Class I’m running with Acuity World in Denmark at the beginning of next month …

Behavioral Communication for Selling

 

PPS – If you think you want to attend but can’t make the live program work we’ll be running a Live Internet Simulcast of the full Autumn Master Class I’ll be delivering at Acuity World, and there is a special pre-program discount if you only want to order the program recordings so you can view them at your leisure in your own time.

NOTE: We’ll have the registration page for the simulcast and the order forms for the recordings up in the next day or two.