Iterations of grief and intentional gratitude

Grief is a profound iteration of gratitude that entails latent recognition of unidentified or yet to be realized loss which leads to mourning within oneself and/or a community.

Guilt can be a kind of grief where the wrongdoing in the absence of action or trespass of one's values entails a profound sense of loss to oneself and those the guilty individual may have (or may not have but perceived to have) harmed. Guilt is a form of grief over an action that the individual or community perceives as "wrong"...

Shame is a kind of guilt that happens as a kind of loss of connection to one's sense of self. It's often characterized by the sense that there's something deeply (harsh personal narratives might even say irreparably) wrong with who the individual is as a person by essence of their existence. Maybe shame is also a sign of blind self-grief. That blindness is what perpetuates a toxic negative feedback loop -- ergo my expression that "shame is the leukemia of mental health." when left in isolation without supportive signals that help ashamed individuals see qualities of their truest selves more completely in healthy light.


Yet what is "wrong" and what would be good in contrast to it?

Adopting a significant part of Aldo Leopold's maxim in his Land Ethic essay, I characterize as follows:

A thing tends to be good when it tends to preserve and advance the beauty and integrity of the biotic and abiotic community.
[biotic = living organisms, abiotic = non-organisms like rivers, mountains, rocks, etc.]

So "wrongs" are only useful insofar as they are used to guide us toward what typically will preserve and advance the beauty and integrity of the communities we live with--and since we are integral to those communities, it means "wrongs" must also preserve and advance our own beauty and integrity with respect to the communities we live with as well.

Beauty was a tricky thing for me to grasp, but thanks to a Kyudo demonstration and talk from two Japanese exchange students studying in Hawaii, they've illustrated a fundamental trio of Eastern concepts used in the martial art and even in my mother's line of family members:

Zen, Bi, Shin
Truth, Virtue, Beauty
In that sequence. Begin with truth. It can be a challenging and messy process, but committing to finding the "correct" or "good" form and developing a consistent relationship with goodness brings us into virtuous practice. Beauty emerges from recognizing the complete relationship between truth and what makes finding truth consistently a process. As a relationship, we then create the possibility for ethical consideration to exist--how we might improve our relationship with a truth using systemic processes for discerning and replicating "goodness" as guidance--in other words, we apply an iteration of science to our existential endeavors.

Recognizing the complete arc of truth, virtue, and beauty is the process for realizing grace. How elegance can manifest from the mundane.

Wisdom comes from our reliable truths. It's an incarnation of beauty that comes from a place of intelligence be it cognitive, kinesthetic, intergenerational, or otherwise.

Gratitude as I practice it comes from choosing to acknowledge something from an experience and/or relationship as an endowment--a gift, considering what that quality says about the situation/individual from a place of appreciation, how it brings out something genuinely worthy of appreciation in me, and expressing it in a way that's meaningful, hopefully relevant and visceral to all parties concerned.


I'll link back to older posts, but I'm glad to know and share that there's an arc toward healing and I've been able to document much of it over the past few years.

If you've the time and interest, go ahead and search this blog for the following keywords:
[good grief]
[shame: the leukemia of mental health]
[an emotional list + etc.]
[coping with tragedy -- gratitude exercise embedded]
[zin bi shin, kyudo]
[grace]

Be well or on the path to better, onward.

Screening Your Resolution for Effective Outcomes

​Screening for Persuasive Resolutions

The most important thing for resolutions
to manifest is committed self-persuasion. [1]
But that doesn't mean a resolution must be achieved by yourself alone.

With a quiet turn of the New Year, and now being able to say with some degree of confidence that I survived three full decades on earth, I'm starting to realize celebrations (many of which I barely partook in) also exist as a form of persuasion. And celebrations can be significant even away from other people, though never far or completely independent from others.

Just as important, the way we form our resolutions--setting intentions can be done in a way to remind us why we're committed to taking action toward something we want rather than discourage us from not reaching our goals.

Effective resolutions come from one's capacity for effective self-persuasion. What if, instead of mandating a specific future and living under the tyranny that comes with limiting one future for yourself, that people entertained the opportunities of their lifetime with questions to keep them moving forward? Like how scientists might create a hypothesis before diving into experimentation.

I often champion the worth of thoughtful questions because they allow you (or organizations [2]) to find and create new answers in multiple situations, time and time again. From a scientific point of view, the value of a hypothesis is that it lets us move closer to the truth by discerning whether a specific influence will have an effect on an anticipated outcome--and just as important, we can potentially let others replicate the results too. And my friend Onyx is often quick to warn people that "committing to only *a* future can be a dangerous false choice."

Life is a creative endeavor, why must our aspirations terminate into a specific sentence or outcome like "losing weight" when you can commit to experimenting with specific and intentionally chosen actions that will always contribute to manifesting multiple goals?

"How might I consistently improve my health?" or better yet, "How might *we* improve our health?"

"How might I enjoy more activities that contributes to my physical fitness?"

"What does eating well look like?"

"What does taking care of myself, or loving myself look like?"

When we engage in long-term efforts to create systemic change that require more than what an individual or group can explicitly control, and it's the same kind of thinking that's probably necessary for people to make meaningful change as individuals who live in a world filled with plenty of people and experiences that go well beyond their own selves.

Does it change the fact that we still need goals and milestones? No, what matters is the *resolution* our goals are framed with--and yes, that's a play on words. Think about resolution in terms of digital screen definition -- how granular is your goal?
If it's too specific, it warps your reality in unfavorable ways--watching a youtube video in high definition on a clunky old computer sometimes brings the entire computer to a halt. Watching it at a 180pixel resolution might not overburden your graphics card, but it might not do service to the viewer in showing the details of an event or a picture of a map that might be important to remember in the near future. How can you take more effective steps toward making a good resolution? Look to the trajectory of your past experiences and the ingredients playing into their circumstances. If none of it has changed and you're setting sights on lofty goals for your New Year's (or any other time of year) resolution, you might need to create more persuasive ways to reach that goal.

If eating healthily isn't easy because healthy food is rarely if ever available, maybe it's to find ways to increase your chances with being in places that offer healthy food--deepen your friendship with a local gardener, work toward a new job or promotion that provides better mobility for taking care of your basic needs. These are roundabout but important steps to your bigger priorities, and it's important that you honor the challenges even when it didn't seem like part of the bigger picture you envisioned when looking from the cusp of a new year.

        .       .       .

One of the many gifts genuine interpersonal connection brings us is that a friend, a sincere coworker, or even kind strangers can help "screen" out unnecessary information and put part of the reality you live with in check -- though it goes without saying to engage wisely as some don't know where you want to go, and bad relationships can have powerful negative repercussions. So another person's agency and ability to check in on you can count as a system, just like making commitments to yourself for exercising with goals or milestones with your rest, eating, and emotional health habits too.

In other words, friends can boost your ability to achieve what you set out to do that becomes a form of persuasion that better futures are possible--and you can do the same for them too!

Last year international life coach Bere and I put together an event called "Party Like it's 2019!!!" [3], where the value of the activity comes from being able to experiment with iterations of who you are, and set up systems that help keep you on track with what you aspire to do along the way. One of Bere's biggest points of emphasis in her coaching came from being able to break down big endeavors with specific and achievable goals.

In the world of organizational and systemic change (complex systems) I studied and worked with during and after University, the same concept's about recognizing how the things you have direct control over plus tangible reminders can create structure to influence your paradigms about the world [4].

It's how gratitude exercises often succeed by letting people realize visceral past experiences and outcomes can present them with reasons to be happy (or satisfied, or hopeful) because they show us a different trajectory of choices available that we didn't see before.

That's the magic of empowerment too--that you can suddenly generate 300% more with 100% of the ingredients you already had with a simple shift in perspective.

Confidence at its essence is about trust--trust in oneself, trust in others, or trust in an endeavor--including the promises or resolutions we make. Often when we're overwhelmed, we lose track of what we've done before and what we remain capable of doing.

My friend Marnese Jackson and I would also check in with each other on a weekly basis as we worked through unstable housing, irregular transportation, living with kids, family challenges, and professional priorities that also extend into community and civic impacts. Sometimes the best thing that came from it was the ability to unpack our overwhelm and remember what we've done or sought out to do.

And as strategists, futurists, and science fiction writers might all agree: good strategy is the practice of good science fiction. When we create believable futures, they're often rooted with discernable, plausible, and replicable truths that allow us to leap beyond the ingredients we know into new places.

Since the future becomes the present with every moment, you'll have plenty of opportunities to find a persuasive resolution. Hopefully you're finding something for moving together forward now.

[1] https://lighttelecommunication.blogspot.com/2019/01/persuasive-resolutions.html

[2] http://ismotion.co/2013/12/purpose-in-questions/

[3] https://www.eventbrite.com/e/refreshing-your-vision-party-like-its-2019-tickets-43259414072# 

[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view

https://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/how-turning-your-goals-into-systems-can-change-your-life.html

Possibly related and useful--for setting more feasible systemic goals; one of my biggest challenges was the feasibility side of goal setting, a lot of visioning processes and goal setting processes are admittedly very time and effort intensive to the point of feeling overwhelming--I have some ways for dealing with it but I'm certain there are better and curious to see how the following turns out:
https://www.inc.com/heather-wilde/3-simple-steps-for-setting-your-next-business-goals.html

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash
I don't know who this woman is but she's definitely looking at a screen and reaching
with what could be described as resolve. By the way, staring at
blue light from screens can degrade your eyes
so try to look out to the real world instead.

Choices: Life on Dignity or Terror

Choices: Dignity in Life, Choices over Terror and Death

There’s duality in fear for living and embracing death. For samurai, choosing a worthy cause to die for is a means of embracing the presence of life and inevitable reality of death. The result: life is fleeting, live in the present as if you will die today.

Choice is fundamental for human dignity, yes. Terror happens when one’s in a situation that makes severe irreparable harm or death seem imminent and you’re unable to find or create any other choices for living.

Plum blossoms, a close relative to cherry.

-A fragmented note to myself from 11/3/14 found in my draft box

…

Back to the present:

Approaching life from grasping death first can be a very severe, spiritually violent, and overall dark approach.

Even for me today, the opening sentence was a little unclear. I think I was also touching on moments when someone is genuinely afraid of stepping into living their life fully — because with all the joys it can bring, you’re also choosing to accept and embrace the consequences of failures too.

A caveat on foolhardy failure: In my experience, the slogan “fail faster” that gets hyped in silicon valley/startup circles glorifies the downside and understates the resources necessary for recovery. Failing faster also requires proportionate tools and support to respond or rebound quickly. For people living in severe situations where balancing life and death, genuine poverty, etc. are at stake it’s a naive and misleading attitude.

We need to set parameters for failure. It doesn’t need to intrude on the sum of your existence, find ways to contain, govern, or facilitate it. Failure isn’t always bad, if you learn and grow from it. But what we’re really supposed to focus on are controlled or informed risks that we can successfully navigate. Where possible, fail forward — choose to fail in a direction of your preference so you can learn from it and still know how to stay on track. Immersing yourself in failures that go beyond your capacity to move on or focus on what’s worth failing for however, becomes a detriment one’s existence.

But this idea, really deciding to commit to living your moments fully, genuinely overwhelmed me into nihilism at times. The most overwhelming moments looked like shutting down, or believing it was important to stay with any accessible pain because that seemed like an essential part of living fully.

When some aspect of the idea made less sense to use as guidance for life, it also manifested into isolating myself in existential angst and numbness for months at a time. Of course, I still sought to show up online in minor ways and at work to keep me up to date with the rest of reality on topics I knew were important, but bridging the gap between what you think and what you believe can be quite the challenge.

The connection to choice: Life, Death; Dignity, Terror

Understanding the link between choice and dignity matters as much or even more than understanding how terror works. Terror is designed to happen when it deprives people from their sense of choice. Choice is fundamental to dignity. It requires a degree of consciousness to discern and make a genuine choice. Paraphrasing my mom: “Even into death, you have choices.” The trick is to see what they are, choose from the best, or create better ones.

Dignity and terror reflect life and death in their simplest forms. They hinge on your ability to discern, and choose with some sense whether active or intuitive.

The best practical tools for overcoming the designs of terrorism I know of boils down to three things: Joy, Truth, and Love.

It sounds unrealistically naive and Utopian at first — especially when considering that I came across them listed in a song written by my friend, Markita Moore. But the more I thought about those three around the time the Orlando shootings took place, the more I realized each element has clear, practical components that allow most of the public to deal with reality in a way that doesn’t make them beholden to reactions spurred by fear from terrorist acts.

Of course, counter-terrorism work still has an important place in the world, but for the general public in the long-term, I think this goes a long way to prevent or overcome terror:

Joy can be shared, draws people together, and builds cohesion. It inspires curiosity and deeper understanding on a voluntary basis. People are often drawn to humorous and positive moments. It can soften entry to challenging dialogues and conversations through assurance that comes from sharing a common experience — so long as it’s not used divisively at someone’s expense. It’s a significant topic in research for effective education.

Truth, upholding it and understanding it, shows us that we have more choices than what terror wants us to believe. It reminds you that a supremacist ideology is flawed putting your beliefs into proper scope with additional realities. Presenting or facilitating the truth also holds people accountable.

Love revolves around manifesting the best in and with people, which includes celebrating them as they are and the effort, history, and legacy that surrounds them in its most humane light. You can look at it in subtle forms like the discipline it takes to prepare meals for your kids even when you’re dead tired, care for the state of society, or consider the camaraderie and solidarity earned from common hardship and purpose.

Love is one of the most powerful motives used for framing purpose. Military boot camps in part are designed to cultivate an iteration of love — in terms of camaraderie — among service members and for the country. Simon Sinek, an anthropologist focused on leadership, cites similar examples in several of his talks. If you spend time speaking with service members, veterans, or yourself served you probably hear this too.

Coincidentally, scientists notice love and hate share many neurological pathways in common. What distinguishes a lively hate group from a healthy successful organization is the way they force dependent relationships and control information. But they start out and often frame their cause in terms of loving an identity, or protecting who they are. The rest of the hallmarks of their process actually mirror characteristics you’d see in healthy organizations that would appear in a Zappos/Delivering Happiness case study.

As a nation, the same applies: beyond taking care of the basics, don’t react to terrorism out of fear — else you play into someone else’s game by doing so. Focus on the things people would do in the first place when combat isn’t imminent: joy, truth, and love. It draws people to the righteous reality from their own volition, or asserts the truth without necessarily escalating violence.

But I keep returning to the general concept that making choices for death and life presents us. Major turning points basically revolved around thinking: “what’s something worthy of dying for/living for?” there’s more to say about the question itself, but that was a big starting point for my life in 2012.

Last year I met a wonderful woman who demonstrated the same idea but with an opposite (in my opinion, much healthier) approach — I’m still working on going about it from a joyous angle but it’s the same goal as far as living fully is concerned. Perhaps all of the above gives you a jump start too.

REFERENCES

On “fail faster”Example of common narratives around “fail faster” — I may or may not have a tendency to attempt living ideas to straw-man proportions, if you must try in that fashion too, don’t do it the way I did. Resilience comes from the ability to rebound instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDjrOaoHz9s

What would have been nice to hear more often with “fail fast”
https://venturebeat.com/2015/03/15/heres-what-fail-fast-really-means/ 

I especially wish this was something I read in 2014 to affirm some of my own questions about the slogan, but it’s nice to see today now that I’m reading up on how other people looked at it. Also note that someone created an entire company/consulting practice around “fail forward” — focused on dissecting failures. I guess it was bound to happen:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2014/07/14/why-silicon-valleys-fail-fast-mantra-is-just-hype/#27c7ac0124bc

Three Chords: Joy, Truth, and Love (song excerpt by Markita Moore)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0QqQ_zKj1E
[side note for those following our band’s progress: we’ve finalized the recording, moving to fundraise for filming a video with the students who sang in the song and coordinate its release with the video, ideally around October]

Humor in education (need to follow embedded links within this article for the research):
https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/humor-in-the-classroom-40-years-of-research/

Humor in Education via the APA, learning — it seems mostly focused on higher education, I’ve yet to read in-depth for source articles, etc.:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun06/learning.aspx

Other iterations of love, many Latin rather than Greek, a good framework, I think Ubuntu should be considered too though it’s of African origin:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/the-ancient-greeks-6-words-for-love-and-why-knowing-them-can-change-your-life

Military — trust, co-operation as interpreted by Simon Sinek in his research referenced multiple times in his talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe

Simon Sinek speaking on “Why Leaders Eat Last”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRcHdeUG9Y

First-hand story on service leadership from Lt. Col. Drowley (the A-10 pilot mentioned in Simon Sinek’s book and talk, “Why Leaders Eat Last”):
http://www.hankschuurman.com/videos/johnny-bravo

Recovering from hate: how hate groups function and the neurological wiring behind love/hate
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/hatred/ 

Delivering Happiness, p. 173 Happiness Framework 1:https://raymkt.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/delivering-happiness_-a-path-to-profits-hsieh_-tony.pdf 

On choosing worthy reason(s) to die. Also contains practical instruction for one-strike swordsmanship (iaido) in addition to the philosophical context that informed/s the martial art: Flashing Steel, Second Edition: Mastering Eishin-Ryu Swordsmanship by Masayuki Shimabukuro (Author), Leonard Pellman (Author)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/833931.Flashing_Steel
[seek out the second edition, supposedly a worthy improvement from an already excellent first edition]

This post originally appeared at: https://wordpress.com/post/iandtran.wordpress.com/3271

An emotional list

I started looking at mental health and some emotional states like habits--we don't always notice when we start doing things, and left to its own or when isolated, the mind has its own tendencies too.

Hope can be found in knowing how to change habits, and in creating a clear vision for a healthier and more desirable way of being.

Aside from this guide for coping when isolated or among others, the following are possible first steps for recognizing what you might experience and how to shift out of it in-the-moment. Longer-term changes can come from changing your environment and how you're supported in pursuing better habits, as well as from shifting how you perceive your environment and actions.

Anxiety - focus/isolate attention to very simple sensation & senses--concentrate on one sensation or stimulus at a time and selectively add/reduce what's going on around you, try to embrace something
[rampant, toxic] Shame - make the suffering tangible and put it into context with something worthwhile; reconnect with people who can help you do so/help see yourself more completely
Depression - push yourself/reconnect with what matters

[for the above three, the following cycle and long-term intervention objectives  to prevent them from consistently feeding into one another. Note that other loops and cycles may exist with any of these mental states/emotions too, I'm only familiar with the above.]

Grief - deep gratitude
Unrelenting Anger - focus it toward constructive/disruptive engagement, energetic outbursts, seek humbling
Fear - (how to distinguish from anxiety?) what is the courageous choice? Acknowledge heightened body function as aid/reframe as excitement, accept and focus on overarching intention/purpose

Dead numbness/emotionally hollow - *?
Breathe sharply and deeply, note Sabina Berman's passage (last three paragraphs of p. 239 "I am Me, but what's new is that I am..." -240 "Which means, plug back in to the real world with every sense" below),
push yourself/try these (among the simplest: seek healthy sources of pain, physical activity, try to activate empathetic thinking and if/when possible, actually empathize)
[*I'm still figuring this out]

A few overlapping areas I've yet to sort out:
Inert/indifference/apathy/definite lack of clarity or recurring uncertainty/ambiguity - commit to something aligned with higher intentions and dive in.
Despondent - see above + depression

(images above: excerpted pages 338-341 of "Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World" by Sabina Berman)

Reality aesthetic and the art of living

Science is the conscientious process for discerning Truth. Ethics are a qualitative science for discerning what is good. We seek to discern what is truly good, yet the process of discovery goes beyond understanding, it is also lived. When we do good, life can be beautiful. I strive to find beauty through experiencing, recognizing, re-presenting and creating reality in its truest forms.

Engaging experiences in the arts and amid the built and natural environment can elicit a tremendous curiosity. "The sense of wonder", a phrase coined by Rachel Carson, captures this phenomenal experience well. It awakens a timeless reverence for beauty that is inspirational, simple, and mysterious at the same time. To contextualize the significance of this phenomenon, I'll refer to the wisdom of a quote from Baba Dioum:

"In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

We can surmise that we'll best learn when our interests are ignited for discovery through exploratory inquiry. Discovering these facets of creativity and inquiry through the sense of wonder, I believe, is key to authentic learning and appreciation for the people and world we live with alike.
Engaging experiences--the arts, outdoors, courageous conversation, etc.--compel us to relate with the world through our sense of wonder, present a nexus between living and deeper learning. For that reason, I champion pedagogical methods that foster deep learning through exploration, mutual inquiry, reciprocity, and re-integrating our connectivity for a better understanding of the world and one's abilities to purposefully live with it.


When the insight of an individual or community can discern and constructively elicit beauty from parts of life that were once mundane, they've discovered what I call the reality aesthetic. It's how people find profound inspiration, dignity, and meaning in their work. It's the art of living and shines brightest when our basic needs are met with love.

A Devil's advocacy and simple actions

Yesterday morning I had a dream that I was at work and a lab user told me a story about "the devil's advocate".  Normally, the expression "Devil's advocate" refers to someone who offers insightful reason for a contradictory if not controversial position in a debate.  But in this story, the person spoke about immense hope and changing the world--and before anything conclusive about what the first step to take toward making a better world might be, he added another condition and new story.  It was endless.

His advocacy led to nothing.

In that case, the Devil's advocate advocates to move us emotionally, while hacking emotional sensation and rapid dependency on the next detailed caveat. In lulling our being into the next caveat, the Devil's advocate shifts our attention from any prospect of moving forward to look for the next caution and item to fear. We're smitten by grandiose prospect, while simultaneously disempowered by its monolithic complexity and our loss of self-agency when relying on someone to create a vision and path for us to follow.

Conversely (and in waking life), I spoke with another person about mantras and music as both means and ends to sensing spirit and confidence yesterday.  I think it ties in really well with the same practice of self-empowerment by scaling down big initiatives into something you can act on. There was a lot of great insight from the discussion I'll share another time, but for now I'll send some links.

Converting grand intentions (like new years resolutions) into habits that are tangible and actionable:
http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-new-years-resolutions-why-88-fail-and-how-to-make-them-work

http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-the-research-on-habit-formation-reveals-about-willpower-and-overall-well-being

The academic research it's based on:
http://psyserv06.psy.sbg.ac.at:5916/fetch/PDF/10978569.pdf

Thankful for this peace that I found today
Swear I almost threw my life away -- now I live on
Sweepin' through the streets still around the way
Man a good thing
I found a way -- pain made me strong

- Lyrics by Gmac (unpublished and song still in production)

Last week I was part of a suicide prevention training.  By miraculous coincidence I also received the following lyrics via e-mail while I was at the training from a Detroit "conscientious hip hop" artist named Gmac whom I'm in the midst of collaborating with.

Here's what I personally gleaned from the training, and some of the other stuff that arose earlier in the week:

1)  Once we've tried everything we can come up with, it's time to wait.  Waiting allows new opportunities for us to move forward.    To "suffer with patience" is wisdom for the crisp moment at the brink of life and death, and it's perhaps the same test of patience for any life endeavor too.

The biggest challenge posed in the workshop comes from empowering people with reasons to survive and sustain themselves.  However, to ensure meaningful impact in the bigger scope of life, you must help them engage something they love--"reasons for living".  During an intervention, you facilitate the discovery of their reasons.  You might also be their only reason for living at the moment too.  Sometimes the opportunity to be heard without retribution is most profound demonstration of compassion one has ever experienced.

In the long-term however, we need a resilient vision that moves one beyond the balance of survival by means of subsistence toward living well.  The Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (AKA ASIST) workshop, developed by Living Works and hosted by the American Indian Health and Family Services, gave proper priority to the survival aspect of an intervention.  However, as I've mentioned before, some of the people I carry concerns for were driven to considering suicide because of the long-term

2)  Tenacious creativity literally becomes a vital tool.  Creativity no longer becomes a luxury as an outcome of proper resources and imagination, it's necessary for living life and helping others live their lives more fully.

Though I don't have an explicit connection, I know the following's related:
Earlier this week, I clarified part of my interpretation of social sustainability for a social entrepreneur's keynote speech to Jane Goodall's Vision 2020 symposium earlier this week.  The notion basically coheres all those lofty ethical ideals (peace, compassion, love, etc.) and processes of governance (democracy, restorative practice, etc.) and brings us to consider at what point do our relationships impact how we engage other things in the world?  I used this photo series to visually pose answers to that question:  The collateral effects of poor relationships create definite economic and environmental impacts. Though most of the animals here are/were domesticated, the idea that our social relations among other beings bear economic and environmental consequences as well--what does it take to rebuild a war-struck neighborhood?

[note, it might have pop-up survey questions, I got annoyed by it but the first couple of photos highlight the notion really well]: http://media.sourcenewspapers.com/2013/03/18/photos-animals-caught-up-in-human-conflicts/#1


#11:34 31 Mar. 2013

Ian Tran's Guide to Embracing Wicked Problems and Complex Systems

I wanted to quickly explain the basics to a bunch of people trying to solve wicked problem/complex system types of challenges amid 4 days of very little sleep and intensive projects.  I cleaned it up some and posted it for anyone interested to check out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZWASyBqmHHcGFyVkxWNTEyYTA/view?usp=sharing

Or for those on academia:
http://www.academia.edu/2776740/Ian_Trans_guide_to_embracing_wicked_problems_and_complex_systems

You'll need to download it and/or zoom in (it's a large document which shows up at 47% of its actual size on my screen--printed to actual size, it's 2 feet wide!) to read the content comfortably.  Despite my inclination for freely sharing information, I put up a copyright because the "infographic"(?) needs some cleanup in its design.  Given its hacked-together inception, it's not completely satisfying.  I hope to finish a cleaner version later for the creative commons.  However, if you substitute "wicked problems and complex systems" with "life", the theoretical stuff makes a profound guide for approaching any issue.

A Conundrum of Compassion

... there's more to this notion of love for sustainability (I feel like the ideas are 3/4 baked at this point).  In particular, the role of concepts like compassion, love, hocma, and their relation to appropriately bringing one's courage,  wisdom, and capacity for expressing it in life that signify the significance of an individual in the world.  I can see it, but it'll take me a while to put it all down into writing.  For now, here's something I call the conundrum of compassion: How an unsustained instance of kindness can create tremendous pain through disempowerment.

Good education allows us to discover, and some of what we learn from discovery enables us to wisely live through whatever truly matters in life.  Oddly enough, increased exposure to the sensations of a holiday like Valentines day, or for those who experience it, exposure to loving people (even those with non-amorous intent) can be painful and disheartening.

When suddenly lifting the burdens of oppression and anticipated threat creates trauma in itself. When realized opportunities for that kind of reprieve are unsustained or non-existent, it doubly serves to break one's hope. It's a different kind of growing pain.

Sometime last year I started to realize it was very likely I was still clenching a few grudges so closely that they might have influence over how I trust and engage other people.  I know of a few people who always have "an ax to grind", and could feel myself teetering in and out of bearing preemptive hostilities in almost every situation I came across.  I frequently considered it mandatory that I prepare something to validate and assert about myself or my presence before I engage another person, or whatever event or activity before me.  I'd come to an event out of curiosity, but find ways to point to bigger responsibilities or obligations beyond self-interest.  For the most part, it works--people might know there's something more to what you do or they'll find out if they do something to trigger the unveiling of whatever you had to say for yourself.  Yet working in many public forums and among passionate and injusticed community activists, I also recognized that this kind of armed or hostile mental mechanism quickly becomes a detriment to the intended consequences that people seek.

Exposure to a genuinely compassionate person or event that makes any anticipated hostilities pointless can become profoundly painful experience of remorse.  You spend so much of your life living in anticipation of hatred only to realize that some people currently don't or never had to deal with systemic injustices the way you had to for all or most of your life.  You also realize that their life and community might actually have all of the things that allow them to express themselves in ways that you'd have never conceivably done before.

If you carry a burden on your shoulders for long enough, your body undergoes a kind of traumatic shock from its sudden release and removal.  I've experienced this physically several times in my life, but taken as a metaphor, it's a fairly new phenomenon that arose for me in 2012.

The best illustration of this experience might be seen in a film.  To make this a bit more realistic, imagine a film where a malicious dictator was apprehended and eliminated from a country, or where the oppressed people were extracted and rescued from the grips of the regime.  After having endured and been rescued from a terrible situation, a person of few words and grim resolve suddenly breaks down even though they're in a safe environment and one would think that they should be overjoyed about their favorable new circumstance.

To the casual observer, it's a bizarre token of sadness in humanity, but sometimes it represents something really profound:  suddenly lifting the psychological burden of living in anticipation of threat and oppression creates trauma in itself.  It might be good, but it's almost unbearably profound and it hurts almost as much, if not more than being in a state of consistent oppression.  In essence, they're growing pains, but the brevity of the phrase doesn't do justice to the extent of the challenge some people have to endure.

I most keenly realized this phenomenon last year after speaking with a person whom I initially was extremely guarded around and was taken by surprise when she allowed a long phone discussion for me to address a lengthy array of personal concerns, and much later I realized she had sincerely entertained the possibility of being a girlfriend to me.  Months before, as smitten as I might have been, I was convinced that people were more disposed to using each other for temporary personal gain and let that overshadow and sabotage the reality and opportunity presented in our relationship.

I later noted something similar when I shared conversation with a few people who considered me a friend over drinks in Detroit as we discussed transformative ideas for social justice and proactivism.  Simple acts, but a taste of ambrosia--you've discovered a brutal possibility about compassion, love's prerequisite.  It's something that everyone should be able to live with, but for some, it's rare to find in the environment they live in.  A moment of genuine reprise from a struggle so constant, you never knew there were other ways of living life that don't require hindrances from hostility as a preemptive defense.  Instead, you discover what it's like to live with a part of yourself that's exposed and unfamiliar.  For some, it triggers an overwhelming kind of grief that results from suddenly lifting decades, lifetimes, or generations of burden.   It's a traumatic appreciation--good grief in a literal sense--that has you wishing you had found and embraced the opportunity to act without hindrance or burden sooner.  It's a naked consciousness that's as fragile in its being as it is mysterious in its resilience.  At the same time, I think some people, myself included, are inclined to fight the signals of reality so as to minimize the pain of trauma--especially when we see those opportunities to openly live remain rare, inconsistent, or non-existent.  We uphold facades of hollow identity to keep excuses at the forefront of our existence to the world that we're willing to engage.

Last summer, Willie of the Wellness Center at UM-Dearborn had said to me: "some people don't know what love is, or how to love--they never grew up with it" (paraphrased).  In the context of his story, he was talking about juvenile delinquents in Detroit but it was profound to me given my circumstances. Thrashing through a mix of hardened oblivion, self-hatred, and what almost certainly amounts to an iteration of unknown behavioral triggers for acute-traumatic stress coupled with behaviors to patch disingenuous actions [listen to Paper Cuts by Broadcast for a sense of this "the things you miss out when you try to mislead..."], I know I've squandered even simple friendships.  From here, the only solutions amount to giving up—which doesn’t fit with my ethical framework—or belief in ideals that hold little other than disparate possibilities.  Belief, and perhaps faith then becomes a requisite for social sustainability as well.

Plan to Overcome

"Today there is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence." -Dr. Martin Luther King

"It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men." - Karl Popper

I think Dr. Martin Luther King Day (which I learned is not his birthday! That happened January 15th) is an appropriate opportunity to reflect upon and reinvigorate our commitment to the timeless legacy and vision of justice exemplified by Dr. King instead of giving deference to him as an idol of noble aspirations.

More than that, I think we foremost benefit from recognizing our ability to empower ourselves and each other (all people, of course not just men).

Another quote, this time from the living Bill Moyers, shares this belief that action is up to you: 
“What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called ‘hocma’—the science of the heart. . . the capacity to see. . . to feel. . . and then to act. . . as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.”

In that regard, all of us are capable of discovering greatness in ourselves and one another.  Among their accomplishments, civil rights proponents like King succeeded in empowering people by promoting awareness and opportunity to engage in justice through democracy with disciplined planning and steadfast implementation. I recently met the Reverend Dr. James Lawson, who worked closely with Dr. King, in the autumn of 2012 after he gave a speech about non-violence. By miraculous coincidence, I met him one day after I tasted the gunpowder from a gunshot meant to kill a person less than 8 feet away.

At first blush, non-violence can seem like a fairly simple, even vague if not hollow, term.  If someone draws a gun with malicious intent, what other choices do we have?  Guns, much like nuclear weapons, can almost guarantee mutual destruction.  Yet if we ask why one would draw a gun to potentially kill extended family, or even carry one in the first place, the answer had to revolve around personal security and insecurity when you boil the situation down it to its essence.

Security is a sophisticated need.  It’s inherently dependent upon complex systems which are beyond the full control of an individual.  Even one’s perception can skew our judgment of an already shifting reality.

I suspect an answer to dealing with potentially absolute violence lies in interventions that meet the following condition: overcome our human tendency to engage in rules that necessitate the reciprocal escalation of powers.  Undermine or reshape the entire premise of our value system for fighting—the “rules of the game”—by changing the perceptions and paradigms which shape how and why we think about combative engagement in the first place.

People are complex; fortunately, science helps us find ways to effectively work with complexity, including social codes and personal beliefs.  Complex systems scientists recognize tangible behaviors as necessary for persuading peoples’ values, paradigms and worldviews  (see the list of 12 leverage points for intervening in a complex system here: http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf ).

When appropriate, non-violence may need to employ the use of non-lethal protective use of force (check out Marshall Rosenberg's well-earned wisdom: http://youtu.be/21g1S7stoQI ), but no matter what, non-violence is exercised without malice in our actions.  The way we communicate ideas, or even notions, in language (can we speak without engaging in abuse or instigating escalation?) usually becomes the first symptom for a potential intervention. To astute observers, it may be expressed visually in our physical posturing and gestures (can you assert your presence without resorting to making it threatening to others?) as well, and of course in how we physically interact with one another (can you embrace and redirect a person's attack rather than impose force onto them? That's what the martial art Aikido focuses on).

Adding Popper’s contention about the notion of “great men”, I gleaned another note for non-violence from Dr. Lawson:  Non-violence operates via empowerment as its primary principle.

“Non-violence is premised on the idea that all people have power to act beyond the influence of their circumstance.”  But in this, there's a challenge: unlike violence, which can quickly and easily interfere with the integrity of an ideal like peace, trust, or love, non-violence requires discipline, careful planning, and patient dedication.

We must act from a hope to overcome, we must plan to overcome.

Which leads us to another nuance of non-violence from Reverend Lawson: 
“Non-violence is the moral equivalent to war.  It requires organization and discipline.” 

Consider the planning and commitment that went into what we now see as watershed events:  Coordinated planning took place for the sit-ins from 1959-1964.  The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially began on December 1st of 1955, some of us heard that in the history books or on television programs, but few of us realize the tenacity of the cause: the boycott was sustained for over a year—381 days.

An ideal is a lot like other life-processes: education, communication and the arts, design, even ethics.
All of these activities involve intentions, actions, and consequences.

Among seasoned practitioners like Reverend Lawson, the term "non-violence" actually isn't representative of what people really strive for. Non-anything implies reaction and work that runs directly against something. If anything, I suspect people really strive to love--create it and do it. It's a noun, but most importantly a verb.

Love exists as a plausible ideal. We may bear compassionate and loving intentions. Caring actions may manifest loving intentions, and perhaps the desired consequence of compassion and love creates a legacy that reaffirms the intention and fosters more love.

Yet as an ideal, it becomes so expansive to act upon that many find--and take--temptation in believing ideals cannot happen in reality.  Furthermore, it's possible, potentially even reasonable [using the word in a very strict sense, link goes to various definitions] though never justifiable, that a person can love the person whom they abuse. Their intentions may be true, but the actions they know or choose to express care through compromise the dignity and autonomy of another being.

This remains the challenge of Dr. King and many other notable living visionaries of our time: to truly validate worthy ideals such as peace, justice, and love all three aspects of the ideal must be good and present. That takes visionary planning to manifest dreams from ideal to real. When society-shaping, you need to do so with people, not just on behalf of them, and certainly not independent of them.

Keep it up, we shall overcome someday, but let’s discover the someday together, every day in our actions with one another.


.  .  .


Notes about music in the video above:

Minor variations and improvisations on the Civil Rights song "We Shall Overcome" recorded in the University of Michigan-Dearborn Wellness Center on January 21st 2013.

A few weeks ago I played it spur of the moment and it was a profound rendition if I say so myself, but I don't remember what I did and I didn't have anything to record it with at the time.  There's some irony to the notion of playing a social justice song, solo, to no one but yourself on MLK day.  I was somewhat disappointed that I missed a few opportunities including a symposium on social justice that day, so as I practiced other tunes, I decided to give the song another try in observation of the day as well.

I suspect playing a song used for civil rights alone doesn't quite contribute to making the dream manifest, but hopefully sharing it here might be worth your while. I'm drawing memory from a rendition I heard on a cd by Peter Paul and Mary when I was in second grade-fifth grade, and hadn't really prepared my playing as much as I now think I should have. Ongoing process...

What would Colvin do? Go to Avalon.

Don't want to disappoint, don't want to freak you out. Don't want to resurrect all of your buried doubt. But if you wanna know where I’m going to: Avalon.
...
I leave you facing life--in the face of death. There is no deeper truth, there is no truer rest--Avalon.
-Lyrics to Storyhill’s "Avalon"

When relapsing into rougher states of morale, I frequently wonder “what would Colvin do?”  Marie Colvin was a journalist who was willing to die because she had a burning desire to tell the truth about other peoples’ suffering.  [I've written about this realization before in my musings about dour optimism]  She also understood the profundity of presence, and lived that wisdom.  She recognized and promoted the empowering participatory aspect of journalism:  everyone has the privilege of presence, and with social tools that most everyone can use like twitter for broadcasting information, we're even called to acknowledge our obligation and the power of our own presence as witnesses to misfortune, crisis, and tragedy.

I've seen and experienced beautiful and joyous stuff, witnessed significant events in peoples' lives and their communities.  I've also lived through terrifying realities, and helped other people literally survive amid disputes, gunshots, and beatings.

At this point, I question where the wisdom I once took comfort in recent months went.  At this point I can only look back at the year as a comfort which stems from knowing the extent of one's endurance.  As Bear Gryllis (whom I don't admire but can appreciate in some ways) had remarked: the only reward of hardship is pride.

So long as we're able to--and do--help others, we are rich.

In many ways, it's true:  We're privileged to share knowledge of rich places and people--but it's fleeting.  

Perhaps that's an aspect of life that the lyrics to Avalon captures:  amidst fear, we strive for a fantastic ideal that leaves us restless for so long as we live.

Global+Local=Glocal Empowerment

When one understands how their local actions connect to global consequences and vice versa, I call it "glocal" understanding. You've developed a sense of place and can discern some degree of efficacy and significance in the systems which you affect.  In essence:

Global+Local=Glocal Empowerment

For Global Fest at The University of Michigan-Dearborn, I presented this concept by introducing three people representing organizations of differing scale:

Michelle Martinez, who worked with the regional Sierra Club Detroit office, Sally Petrella of Friends of the Rouge (a local watershed education group), and myself, representing the Student Environmental Association at UM-Dearborn.

To my alarm, the event orgnanizers broke up our presentation ending on a fiery, timely, and urgent statement from Michelle about the perils of current global problems on severe weather agitated by the effects of climate change. [For anyone skeptical and serious, please read here for common arguments refuted with good evidence).] 

The problem happens when a presentation that highlights problems to a large audience can not be followed up immediately with any empowering information and education about how individuals can make a difference in the world.

Even still, the event worked out well by the end of the day.  We made a global issue come down-to-earth and presented the audience with a variety of ways to make a difference in the world.

Using the geographic context behind a set of fiddle tunes arranged (and one written) by Michigan Fiddler Judy Plester, I performed and gave a speech that tied them into the industrial revolution, Appalachian cultural heritage, where our electricity comes from and how our current local energy consumption ties back to coal which accelerates global climate change and contributes to local environmental injustices.

In turn, I used that to flesh out the idea of global citizenship--that our local actions can make a global difference.  We share an opportunity to celebrate a rich cultural heritage, but also share a responsibility as stewards of human cultures and the broader ecosystemic communities they share.

For most people in Southeast Michigan, every time we turn on the lights we increase energy demand from the local utility, Detroit Edison, which sources much of its power from coal plants (coal makes up 54% of Michigan's energy circa 2011). Also worth noting from a 2011 energy report by Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Public Service Commission:

Michigan is limited in most energy resources and imports 97 percent of its petroleum needs, 82 percent of its natural gas and 100 percent of coal and nuclear fuel from other states and nations. These imports account for about 72 cents of every dollar spent for energy by Michigan’s citizens and businesses. Michigan citizens and businesses spent an estimated $31.3 billion on energy in 2009.

A sizable proportion of the coal used to meet this demand is obtained through a process known as mountain top removal (MTR) extraction. Cost competitive alternatives to coal energy exist in Michigan--here, wind power is on par or beneath the price of coal. In addition to its economic and environmental impacts, MTR displaces and destroys much of our Appalachian and ultimately the very cultural heritage that makes up the United States of America.

This presentation and performance was a fairly personal topic for me, I've met a few West Virginians who experienced MTR firsthand, and one of my friends grew up there. All of them conveyed similarly. Land owners are frequently encouraged or pressured (sometimes simply intimidated and threatened [disclosure, I have no affinity with the Mountain Justice organization which this link goes to]) to move away from their homesteads. For those who remain, the byproducts of MTR and its waste can lead to contamination of groundwater, or contribute to poor air quality which can lead to silicosis and other respiratory diseases. To find out more or get involved with finding alternative solutions to MTR, I Love Mountains and Mountain Justice are good places to get started.

This is why I work on issues of comprehensive sustainability, which looks at the social, economic, and environmental issues.  I don't like advocating solely about climate change because it tends to distract everyone from very real consequences and issues of public health, environmental justice, and the underlying ethics that motivate what we care about.