What i hadn’t noticed until today is that there’s another voice that tears other things apart very similarly. It’s not sunny enough where i live. It’s too noise (not quiet enough). A friend of mine isn’t emailing me enough. Or not considerate enough. Drivers aren’t safe enough. And on and on it goes.

Underneath it all seems to be a strong resistance toward resisting what is. My friend is emailing me when he does. The sun shines when it’s not cloudy (and not nighttime). It is as it is.

The idea that we are not xyz enough is closely tied to shame. We are simply not worthy because we’re not xyz enough. Is the part that is judging everything else as not enough just the other side of the coin? If i fully accept who i am, shame has a hard time creeping in. If i fully accept life, i am building shame resilience within and without. And i can be fully present to life – instead of getting lost in wishing that things were different than they are.

So, i spent some time today trying to figure out what that fear is about. What bubbled up first was fear around changing my mind: “What will others think! I keep doing this! I should be more reliable!” That’s what i was telling myself. Using Kathleen Macferran‘s approach for digging deeper into my thoughts to find a core belief, i noticed that there is fear that i’ll be all alone. And then, deep underneath, there was “people don’t like me!” (and that’ll be my fault because i keep changing my mind…). Sarah Peyton has developed a process that utilizes Nonviolent Communication together with interpersonal neurobiology. Basically, we repeat the core belief – people don’t like me – out loud and guess the feelings and needs underneath it. Several times. That was terrifying to me, at least at first. Slowly, the terror turned into fear and then a core need emerged: Unconditional acceptance.

I went on to do something else. Letting things bubble some more. I remembered again how i had felt lonely at times during last year’s festival. Again, there was fear around that. Back to digging. I end up alone because i don’t really belong in the folk dance community – i just don’t dance good enough. So, i was telling myself. And around and around that thinking went until i had enough and decided to just sit in meditation (gently reminded to breath by a computer app i am testing). During that meditation the question arose: “If i am the only one in the world who accepts me, will that be enough?” To my amazement the answer is “yes, it will be enough!” Not only that: Self-acceptance is the foundation on which other people’s acceptance can rest!

After that shift, i felt energized! I changed into my most colorful dance clothes, ironed a blouse for tomorrow, and will soon go off to take part in the parties. If i don’t do the steps perfectly, so what? I accept that.

As a spinster by choice, a woman who weaves her own life, i am interested in building a support network that replaces the traditional family (both nuclear and extended) with a network of people i chose. I envision that this network offers mutual support and helps us all live more resilient, secure lives because we know there are others who have our backs. I’d love to have connections where i could call someone to chat, to vent, to cry. And i’d love to know who i could call to do some spontaneous thing like go on a walk, watch a sunset, or even share some dinner. If i sprain my ankle, i am comfortable asking for help because i trust in the mutuality. It is a supportive community where we help each other grow by offering full acceptance to each other no matter how much we stumble or get stuck in patterns (we might point that out gently, though). Ultimately, i would enjoy having this kind of community in a shared living space.

Yesterday, as i was musing over my frustration with one particular strategy of building community, i realized a few things. I am sharing them here in the hopes that they inspire others! I know i am not the only one struggling with this since it’s touching on topics in at least two books (Bowling Alone and The Gifts of Imperfection)

• It helps to have clarity around what exactly i am looking for. In NVC-speak, i want to understand what needs i am trying to meet. This then helps me find strategies, including modifying current strategies.
• Somewhat related: There are seeds of community sprouting in my life. Most of these are virtual, so i wouldn’t be able to do the spontaneous dinner thing. Yet, they are tremendously supportive. I want to continue to nourish these.
• Along the lines of Donna Marie’s comments: Be the community i want to build. Instead of waiting for someone to call, call someone.
• Look at my own points of resistance, which includes figuring out why i might not make that call and what thoughts i might be carrying around that could be counterproductive
• Figure out how i can focus on the things that work in my life rather than what isn’t. I suspect that a gratitude practice can help me counteract that tendency. I want to compost my pessimism!

Ultimately, then, community for me is about authenticity: Creating a space, living in a space, where i can be fully authentic because i trust that others will receive me with care and compassion (and we have the skills to get there if it’s not the first reaction) and where i offer others the same opportunity.

The honesty part that’s missing in the claims about quantum physics and consciousness:

The interpretations of quantum physics presented in movies like “What the Bleep,” which i have watched, and (presumably) “The Quantum Activist,” which i haven’t watched, are not supported by (almost all) quantum physicists or philosophers studying quantum mechanics. This includes at least one of the scientists featured in “What the Bleep,” David Albert (see here). I realize that Amit Goswami was trained as a physicist, yet his approach is
more philosophical than physics. It is critiqued by a fellow physicist, Victor Stenger, in “Quantum Gods” and in this essay. Also, the experiments in quantum mechanics are done at the scale of atoms or atom particles. Extending these experimental results to anything larger than an atom might not be valid (in the sense of external validity – the generalizability of study results).

Research in psychology points toward the importance of unconscious decisioning (see work by John Bargh, Timothy Wilson, and George Lakoff). There’s also considerable evidence for implicit biases that impact our judgments (stereotypes & system justification tendency) (work by John Jost and stuff around the Implicit Association Test). I have been trying to understand what needs are behind the wish that quantum physics somehow proofs certain spiritual beliefs. There seems to be something particularly “sexy” about it – maybe because it’s shrouded in mystery and some experimental results are mind-boggling. If we want a scientific grounding of the idea of connection, why not simply look at the theory of evolution? Evolutionary, we are all related to every living thing on this Earth. I wonder if the needs are hope and credibility, something that the theory of evolution might not hold despite its scientific grounding (see this Nova series). (I remember how inspired and hopeful i felt after “What the Bleep” until i started checking into JZ Knight and the credibility of the movie started to unravel).

I would enjoy hearing reactions, especially if you can share what needs are met for you when you watch movies like “The Quantum Activist.” Also, i would welcome feedback on how i presented this, as i realize that i am using a lot of words…

The other thing that is alive in me: Fatigue. I didn’t sleep well. Often waking up scared what reaction my email would garner. I realize now that i am so longing to be heard and accepted as i am even if i chose not to watch the movie because there is enough evidence for me that contradicts the claims made in the movie (based on the summaries i read on their website).

I am also sad because of my inability to get my point across in a way that it could be heard. I was wondering this morning why i feel so strongly about this. Yes, there is shared reality – as Michael Shermer puts it: If Amit Goswami’s claims are correct, he could jump off a building without getting hurt. And that is where i realized why i feel so strongly: Compassion. If i get hurt jumping off a building in Goswami’s interpretation that is because i must have fallen into “conditioned choice,” which leaves me feeling dismayed because i value compassion, which to me includes looking at the whole picture and acknowledging that there are things – like physical reality – that limit our choices. If we claim that there are unlimited choices, i fear that we end up blaming the victim because they were stuck in “conditioned choice.”

What did you “hear” me “saying”? What did you read me writing?

I know that there is still some mourning i want to do – mourning that i cannot lean into the unconditional love of a God/spirit/consciousness and the pain that has created in me. However, i also know that i can lean into the beauty of the need for unconditional love itself! How beautiful is that .

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Upon my return, i continued listening to Michael Nagler’s lectures on Nonviolence. In the third lecture he makes some startling claims. Well, they startled me at least. The one that prompted me to listen to this lecture again was that the science in “What the Bleep” is portrayed accurately. Uhm. No. It’s not, at least it’s not according to one of the scientists included in the “What the Bleep” infomercial. For some reason, quantum physics is sexy and i haven’t fully understood yet exactly why Nagler brings it out – it has something to do with his claim that sciences other than physics have to deal with diversity. Well, yeah. You don’t have to go to quantum physics to make that point. You could simply look at an evolutionary biologist’s work.

Nagler also does not acknowledge that the demolition hypothesis of the towers on 9/11 has been debunked by most scientists, except for a handful of conspiracy theorists. It wasn’t a governmental coverup that kept this story out of the limelight. It plain did not make much sense – even though it came from a physicist.

Finally, his most startling claim: Darwin was wrong. Nagler hastens to add that he doesn’t deny evolution but he does not specify exactly what he thinks Darwin was wrong about. Listening between the lines, it seems that Nagler claims that Darwin thought competition was at the heart of evolution. It wasn’t actually Darwin who emphasized the “survival of the fittest”. That emphasis is one of the myths that surrounds the theory of evolution – a myth that is all too helpful in maintaining the current status quo.

I’ve tried to figure out why all these claims bother me so much. Yes, there’s a wish for honesty, yet, this doesn’t seem to fully capture it. When i listened to the next lecture, i gained some clarity around my reactions. Nagler talks about the three consequences of the scientific view: Scarcity, determinism, and separateness. He ties determinism to not taking responsibility for our action, for example how the idea of corporate personhood takes away any personal responsibilities of the executive team. While i completely agree with Nagler that this lack of responsibility is a huge problem and that the personhood of corporations has created many of the issues we are facing, i got lost that this is tied to determinism. For one, claiming that consciousness is an expression of matter rather than a separate entity does not strictly lead to determinism. The manifestation of consciousness is likely much more involved than a straight line, so the claim “my neurons made me do it” won’t hold up even if we can ultimately reduce consciousness to something material. I then realized what bothered me the most in Nagler’s arguments: He was reinforcing us-vs-them thinking by splitting science into the “old” science (the Newtonian model, which leads to determinism according to Nagler) and the “new” science (quantum physics, which doesn’t). Old science is bad. New science is good. This creates an artificial separateness! And it’s actually scientifically incorrect: Quantum mechanics does not replace Newtonian physics, just like the theory of relativity didn’t replace it. It’s a matter of scale: Quantum physics explains some things better than Newtonian physics, yet there is a lot that the “old” science explains very well. (Additionally, physicist express worries about using quantum mechanics to say anything about consciousness – see the Albert quote).

And then i remember to look for the underlying needs: Nagler does not have a need for “bashing science.” He is interested in healing this world, giving us hope that nonviolence is possible, and focusing on interdependence. He is trying to find paradigms within science that can provide a framework for this. These underlying needs, including his dream, i share with Nagler. I disagree with the effectiveness of his strategy to use a pop-culture interpretation of quantum mechanics as the foundation. Further, dividing science into good and bad, ironically reinforces the separateness Nagler is so worried about. Inclusion of all the voices, especially those which might on the surface support the current dominant cultural paradigm, could provide a more credible foundation for a science of nonviolence – and ultimately for shifting our current cultural paradigm away from violence to nonviolence.

Alternative Sources for Learning about Nonviolence
Steve’s comment below reminded me that there are other options to learn about nonviolence than through Nagler’s work. Here are some options – please feel free to add more in the comments, i will compile them into this list:

• Miki Kashtan’s Gandhian Principles for Everyday Living (the link takes you to the fifth part, which contains references to the first 4 parts)
• The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
• Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

On my way to a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) training, i started to read the book (well, the first 100 pages of it or so). I am finding it a quick read, though i ended up putting it down before landing because i could not read any more about lynching. I actually cried on the plane (okay, it was just a few tears coming down but still i usually don’t cry, especially not in public). It is absolutely incredibly infuriating how little i know about slavery and the aftermath: 20-30 million people were displaced – half (!) of them died on the way from Africa to the US. The USAmerican slavery was the most brutal of any slavery there ever was (for example slaves couldn’t buy themselves out of slavery in the US, whereas in Greece or Rome they could). Rape was used as a terrorist weapon. And then after slavery officially ended, Whites tried everything to ensure that Blacks couldn’t get anywhere. And the lynching – OMD! Horrible, horrible! Yes, i knew they hung people off trees, which is horrible enough, but they often cut off pieces of their bodies before they died! And after death, they’d use body parts as trophies. (That’s when i had to stop reading: I needed some time to mourn these atrocities, the dehumanization). And nobody freaking talks about this!!!! As DeGruy Leary writes (73):

Studying history in American schools we learn about the excesses of the Roman Empire, the viciousness of Stalin’s Soviet Union and the brutality of the Nazis. We learn about the barbarity of the Mongols and the cruelty of the Huns. You can easily add to this list the Japanese during World War II, the Viet Cong and the Huutu Nation. More recently we have had Milosevic’s Serbia, Hussein’s Iraq, the Taliban, and Osama bin Laden, to name but a few.

Certainly all of those listed above are responsible for their fair share of atrocities. But missing from this list is one society that is responsible for some of the most gruesome crimes against humanity in history – The United States of America. While the powers that be in America are happy to talk about others’ crimes, they seem to be reluctant to truly confront their own. With respect to the genocide of Native Americans, and the enslavement and later oppression of those of African descent, the history we in this land learn has been greatly sanitized.

After i had closed the book and was sitting there in shock, horror, and empathic pain for the suffering of millions, the question kept coming up: Why? Why do people do this? And why do we keep on denying it, sanitizing history? According to NVC, all actions, including atrocities, are attempts to meet needs. What needs could people have possibly been attempting to meet by cutting another human being apart alive?!? DeGruy touches on this somewhat by pointing out that Whites dissolved the cognitive dissonance they felt between their beliefs (all humans deserve to be treated with dignity and respect) and their actions by dehumanizing Blacks. Blacks weren’t quite human (in fact, the US Congress agreed they were 3/5th human, so that the Southern states didn’t have to give them full rights but could count them to increasing their White male representation in Congress). But why did they do that? What needs could they meet with that? (Power & wealth are not needs!) The only answer i keep coming up with is to avoid the pain of realizing what they were, what we are, doing! Safety. Comfort. It reminded me of the difficulty of an abuser to face up to his abusive behavior. He would have to admit that he hurt someone else – and that can be very difficult, very shameful.

I have been exploring the connection between shame and stereotypesarguing that stereotypes are used to shame people into believing they are not good enough because they don’t live up to a social norm, such as being a White male. In that context, shame is not a useful moral emotion: It is destructive and holds up the status quo. But what about the shame that Whites feel about being white? I am hesitant to call this a useful moral emotion because shame tends to turn us inward, away from reconciliation. And clearly that is what we need to move toward: We need to face the atrocities committed, how they still benefit us, and work toward true reconciliation. DeGruy points out that the first step toward healing is knowing the history – so, let’s start by no longer sanitizing US history. Let’s become familiar with the Black Holocaust instead of denying it or downplaying it. And let’s learn what went on after slavery was officially abolished, how it really continued in other ways. And let’s admit that we are not in a post-racist era, that racism is very much still a reality in everyday live of all colored people, especially African-Americans.