Culture is pervasive

That's part of what makes it "culture" in the first place, don't you think?


Culture: the things we do, and the stories we tell about doing them.

More at BluePuzzle.org ...

 

Being a good person despite bad outcomes

One of the most useful things I learned from Peter Senge's book, The Fifth Discipline, is that bad outcomes often occur despite the good intentions of good people.

So often we work so hard to distance ourselves from bad events because we don't feel safe if we are associated with anything bad. It's fashionable to talk smart about responsibility and accountability, but we all know that it's not safe to be responsible. In our culture, to be responsible is to be guilty. In our culture, to be responsible is to be blamed. In our culture, to be responsible is to be a bad person.

Of course no one will sign up for that! It's a bad deal. No one wants to be labeled a bad person. But we label each other that way every day. Heck, we label ourselves that way. And then we wonder why no one will ever voluntarily admit responsibility for anything.

To say that bad events occur despite good people is one of those things we all think we know. If asked about it, we nod and say, "Oh, of course."

But do we behave as if we know that? How often do we behave as if we really believe that good people can remain good despite their participation in a series of unfortunate events? How often do we behave as if we, ourselves, really believe that we remain good despite our own participation in bad outcomes? If we really believe that, why do we still feel a need to distance ourselves from our participation in bad happenings?

There's another meaning to "responsible": Able to respond.

We can be responsible simply because we have the ability to respond.

In the first three chapters of The Fifth Discipline, Senge shows how any competent person can end up making poor decisions because of job descriptions, because of role expectations, and because of hidden assumptions.

Becoming comfortable with the idea that my worth as a person is separate from the events that happen around me brings an incredible sense of freedom. It's liberating!

I don't have to work so hard to distance myself from bad stuff that happens around me. I can acknowledge the bad stuff without dodging my ability to respond.

I can afford a computer and Internet access to write this because I participate in a global economy that brings harm to other people. I participate in a system that brings harm to people and to the planet that keeps us alive.

I am deeply disturbed by that system. I am deeply disturbed by the circumstances that perpetuate my participation. But I can acknowledge it because my goodness as a person is separate from the badness of that system.

I can acknowledge it because I can respond.

I learned that after reading The Fifth Discipline. And when I say "learn", I mean, I stopped nodding my head and pretending I knew it and I began to behave as if it mattered.

 

note to RSS feed readers

Because my other web site is moving to BluePuzzle.org, I will update some links here to reflect the new address. That may cause older posts to reappear in your feed reader. I apologize in advance.

On the bright side, it can be an opportunity to see how those older essays fit with new ones.

Thanks for your interest and attention.

Cheers

my new site, BluePuzzle.org

My new web site, BluePuzzle.org, is up and running, thanks to my friend Chris and his web hosting assistance.

This blog will stay, but my other personal web site (at home.nc.rr.com/sustain) will go away as soon as the new one appears at the usual web search sites. If you have a bookmark or a link, please update it.

I think of this blog as a rough draft writing area. Ideas are scattered around here, and though tags help to connect some of the pieces, reverse chronological presentation still restricts the way ideas can be assembled here. BluePuzzle.org is a place where I can assemble and rearrange ideas in more interesting and useful ways.

Thanks for stopping by.

Cheers

Saramago's observation of conflict

 

Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of blindness.

A quote from Blindness, by Jose Saramago.

 

Google's Earth Day logo

When we begin to live in sustainable ways, every day will be Earth Day.

Until then, designating at least one day to focus attention on the state of our planet, to focus attention on the state of our home, that's a good deed. I commend the many people and organizations who make Earth Day notable, including Google.

As serious and as urgent as global warming is, it's the tip of the iceberg of sustainability. Let's spend some time over the next 364 days to explore the rest of the iceberg, shall we?

How will we live when we discover that it's not the ends, but the beginnings that justify our means?

Thanks for your time and attention

 

Thanks. It's nice to be noticed.

Karmen, who blogs at Chaotic Utopia, kindly designated me a Thinking Blogger. Thanks, Karmen, it's nice to be noticed.

Like the ten books meme, this blog meme offers an opportunity to share what we care about. Following the Thinking Blogger links forward and backward can be an interesting way to catch a glimpse of things other writers care about.

The Thinking Blogger Award is a “name five” meme. My task is to share what I care about by naming five more Thinking Bloggers. Very well, then — in no particular order, here are five more bloggers in this meme's path:

Chris Hardie - Along with his personal blog, Chris has created a podcast site to explore news local to his town. How many of us have been compared to a one-man version of National Public Radio?

Christine Kane - An Asheville-based musician when she's not blogging, Christine often writes about themes that overlap mine, but she writes from a somewhat different point of view, with a different vocabulary, for a different audience.

Sally Greene - Chapel Hill is the sort of place where a woman who writes a thoughtful blog about literature, architecture, urban planning, and the environment can be elected to local government.

World's Fair - co-written by two guys who teach at two universities on two coasts* of two countries, World's Fair has “all manner of human creativity on display”. I'm pleased to see their creativity sometimes demonstrates systems thinking about sustainability issues.

Stoplight Haiku - Sometimes thoughts have exactly 17 syllables. Sometimes they don't. Either way, they're haiku thoughts.



*Okay, so one of the universities is somewhat inland. It's coastal when compared to, say, Nebraska. And it makes the sentence's parallel structure work.

I notice the meme originated with the suggested name “5 Blogs That Make Me Think”. Two months later it seems better known as the Thinking Blogger Award. Memes often spread via inexact copying.


 

Vine Deloria, Jr., a career summary and a play in one act

Recently I began reading some books by native American Indian author Vine Deloria, Jr. So far I enjoy his unorthodox approach and his playful, witty, and provocative style. I find value in his apparent role as trickster. I think I see what he wanted his readers to see.

Not everyone appreciates the role of trickster as teacher, however, especially outside of native cultures. As I do some more research about the man I notice that some of the folks who criticize him seem mostly baffled by his unconventional perspective. It occurred to me that Vine Deloria, Jr.'s career might be summarized in a very brief one act play...

Vine Deloria, Jr.: I reject the rules of white culture.

Critics: Goshdarnit, Deloria! You're not playing by our rules!

Vine Deloria, Jr.: No kidding.


Since I have previously declared that I don't do book reviews, this certainly should not be construed as one. I'm just noting another instance of personal perspective on culture, another illustration of faces and vases, of icebergs and the illusion of communication.

Yup, that's all, really.

Seeking solutions in the culture domain

A while ago I wrote a brief satirical bit about culture, comparing culture to conspiracy. And the occasional reader who lands here after following my comments at other web sites may notice that I use the word “culture” frequently.

My reason is simple: The concept of culture is a model I find useful.

Since I use the word so often it occurs to me that I should begin to explain how I think about culture and why I find it so useful.

Satirical comparisons aside, one broad working definition of culture I like to use is this:

Culture is what we do,
and the stories we tell about why we do it.

You know the advice, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”? That's culture. When someone looks at me strangely and asks, “You're not from around here, are you?” That's culture. On the first day at a new job, when someone says, “That's not how we do things around here!” That's culture.

When someone says, “I can't do that because I'm a Somethingist”, that's a culture story. When someone says, “I must do this because I'm a Somethingist”, that's another culture story.

Every day, we humans do things. And we explain to each other why we do those things and why don't do other things. Every day we navigate a sea of deeds, steering by the stories we tell.

(Sometimes we navigate totally on autopilot, by habit, following courses plotted by stories we no longer bother to pay attention to. But that's a story for another day.)

Okay, interesting metaphor, that, but what's it good for?

Well, for one thing, thinking about what we do and the stories we tell to explain ourselves is a different way of seeing. It's a perspective that I rarely see or hear mentioned in the news, in blogs, in conversation. Seeing from the perspective of culture exposes facets of our world that remain hidden when viewed only from the perspective of economics or from the perspective of politics.

But more than that, thinking in terms of culture offers a way to simplify some complex issues. It offers a way to transform thorny, intractable problems with unsatisfying half solutions into simpler, manageable problems with potentially satisfying solutions.

This concept of a transform comes from my background in engineering. Sometimes, for example, a math problem seems incredibly complicated, tedious, and difficult when it's expressed in terms of time. If that problem can be rewritten, if it can be expressed in terms of frequency, it may be easier to analyze and easier to solve. Then when an answer has been found in terms of frequency, that solution can be transformed back, to be expressed in terms of time. The problem and its solution can be transformed back and forth between the “time domain” and the “frequency domain”.

But I'm not interested in math problems anymore. I'm interested in environmental problems. I'm interested in social problems. I'm interested in economic problems. I'm even interested in (eeww!) political problems. And when I spend time with like-minded people who hope to solve those problems, I see some of my colleagues expend enormous energy and time grappling with intractable methods that lead to unsatisfying half solutions (and worse, to new problems).

It seems to me there's an easier way. It seems to me that politics boils down to things that people do and stories we tell each other about why we do those things. The Economy and the businesses that operate within The Economy are just things that people do and stories about why we do them. Crime, poverty, and public education? Things we do. Stories we tell. And the environment? Our home planet is going downhill fast as a consequence of the things people do and the stories we tell each other about why we continue to do them.

That's culture. Deeds and stories.

It seems to me that culture ties together all those other problem domains. Culture is their common denominator, their common variable. That means all those problems can be expressed in terms of culture. Those problems can be transformed into the culture domain. I'm confident there are simpler solutions — in the culture domain.

And after we've found simpler, more satisfying solutions, we can — if we wish — transform those solutions back to the economic domain, back to the political domain, back to the public school domain.

I'm confident our problems can be solved. I'm confident that satisfying solutions can be found — but not in the domains where many folks are currently looking. We've been trying for years and years to solve problems of crime and poverty and pollution in the political domain or the economic domain. How many stories do we tell each other about why we keep trying to do those things?

I'm tired of economic misdeeds and political fairy tales. I'm tired of so-called solutions that create new problems.

For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we need to do things differently. That means we need a better story to make sense of the things we do. That's culture.

And that's why I talk about culture so much. That's why I look at problems from the perspective of the culture domain. That's why I seek solutions within the culture domain. That's why I see culture as a model that's useful.



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Something to keep in mind about this model of culture: Most models are wrong, but some are useful.

Culture:  things we do, stories we tell. See The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge, for example. Also Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, by George Lakoff, and Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

See how this piece fits other pieces at BluePuzzle.org.

 

Denying people the right to their own experiences

I see faces in this picture.

No, you don't.

Huh?

I repeat, you do not see faces in that picture.

Well, I understand that you may not see faces, but

No! I mean, you! You. Do. Not. See. Faces.

Oh. Well, um, I'm kind of taken aback by that. I'm pretty sure my own personal experience seems real and legitimate to me. And I'm not saying that you have to experience it exactly the same way, too. I'm just trying to share a description of something I see.

So what? I don't care. I see vase. So you see vase.

Ummmm ... well, that doesn't work for me.

Doesn't matter. I don't care. It's a vase.




 

Tip of the iceberg

The world weighs on my shoulders
But what am I to do?

You sometimes drive me crazy
But I worry about you

I know it makes no difference
To what you're going through

But I see the tip of the iceberg
And I worry about you...

I often think about the metaphor of “the tip of the iceberg”. It's a common phrase, and we all know it suggests there may be something huge, mysterious, and dangerous hidden from our view. But do we use that knowledge effectively? Does it make a difference?

The world weighs on my shoulders...

Over the course of a couple of years I participated in many earnest conversations about the future of humanity and the fate of our planet. I found it amazing, and frustrating, how often conversations among dedicated, like-minded people turned to anger and acrimony.

You sometimes drive me crazy...

After a while I learned to recognize the pattern. I learned to spot the icebergs and to predict their intersecting courses. I tried to warn folks. Like the familiar history of a certain ship, people would wave me off and say, "There's no iceberg out there. Even if there is, it doesn't pose a threat to me."

I know it makes no difference...

Icebergs are big, slow-moving, and ponderous. There's plenty of time to change course, to steer a conversation differently. But there's no iceberg out there. And even if there is, it's not a threat.

But I see the tip of the iceberg...

Crunch.

After a while all those colliding conversations begin to look the same to me. I see frustrated people standing on the tips of icebergs, shouting angrily, throwing snowballs at each other, wondering what happened. And they're far apart. Too far to talk, usually. Below the waterline the hidden parts of icebergs collide long before their tips ever meet.

But what am I to do?

Sometimes people declare, "You can't say this. You can't have that conversation. It just doesn't work." I can see why. But I find greater value in thinking of the situation this way: In what circumstances could we have that conversation? To whom can we say that? When, and where? In what circumstance is it safe to have that conversation?

It seems to me the important first step is to acknowledge the existence of the hidden part of the iceberg. Too often we try to talk about the tips of icebergs without recognizing the submerged assumptions, the accumulated history of feelings and memories below the surface. Even if we don't talk about those things explicitly, if we can at least acknowledge they exist, if we can recognize the rest of the iceberg and adjust to accommodate it, then we might have more satisfying dialog. Then we might have more effective, more productive dialog.

We might invite other people over to our iceberg. Or we might climb down from the tips of our personal icebergs and meet elsewhere. Sometimes we might mean saying, "Sure, we can talk about that, but not here." Or it might mean deciding, "This is better suited to a different audience." Mostly I think it means behaving as if we know the iceberg is there.

I see the tip of the iceberg...

I've seen the tip of the iceberg, and I've learned that acknowledging the rest of it does make a difference to what we're going through.

 


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"I see the tip of the iceberg" quoted from the song, Distant Early Warning, lyrics by Neil Peart, Rush, Grace Under Pressure, 1984.

Photo by Ralph Clevenger, 1999

This is a follow-up to an earlier piece: Of icebergs, NPR, and language

Two worth reading

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

I've been planning to recommend Ursula K. Le Guin's delightful book, Changing Planes, since I discovered it a few weeks ago. The reward for procrastination is an opportunity to pair it with Jose Saramago's unusual book, The Cave.

Changing Planes presents itself as a sly travelogue, a collection of short stories that describe some of the planes of existence a traveler can reach after experiencing the peculiar combination of stress, boredom, and indigestion that occurs only in a modern airport.

The book's back cover blurb observes that Le Guin's stories of exotic places and peoples all reflect the here and now of 21st century life. Most notable for me were the perpetually annoyed and squabbling people of Veks, the reckless genetic experiments on Islac, the thoughtful people of Ansarac who took some bad advice but abandoned it for their own time-tested wisdom, and the sad holiday island of Great Joy.

While searching Le Guin's web site for supplementary links I noticed her recommendation of Nobel prize-winner Jose Saramago's books, Seeing, Blindness, and The Cave. The titles Seeing and Blindness caught my eye because I've written a bit myself about seeing and not seeing. Saramago's writing style may challenge us, but readers who appreciate William Faulkner's page-long streams of consciousness should be equally comfortable with Saramago's technique. What Saramago's charming characters discover deep within The Cave is both disturbing and liberating:

“They are us!”

 

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The Cave and other books by Jose Saramago are available from Powell's and from local bookstores

Ursula K. Le Guin's web site is worth exploring

“We shall not cease from exploration...”
quoted from Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot

 

Internet mud wrestling

As we careen headlong into a future that's globalized, industrialized, and urbanized, I suspect we lose our connection to our rural roots. Barely a generation removed from the farm, we're already losing the context that informed the common sense our grandparents shared.

I hope we've retained some of their common sense, enough to appreciate the insights expressed in some of our grandparents' sayings. Almost daily, on the Internet and on TV, I witness reminders of this one:

Never wrestle a pig in mud.
You both get dirty --
but the pig enjoys it.

The pig enjoys it.

Seeking, finding ... seeing

To paraphrase ... some guys ... we can't always find what we want. But if we try, we just might find what we need.

To be wise is to see...

 

No more burned marshmallows

My parents often took me camping when I was a young child. At night we sat around the campfire, and sometimes we roasted marshmallows. Well, my parents roasted their marshmallows. I burned mine.

I hadn't yet learned patience. I was too eager to get to the toasty marshmallow result to spend much time holding the marshmallow away from the flames. Clearly they toasted faster if they were held closer to the flames. Or right in the flames. Then they caught fire, burned, and charred.

Each time that happened, I blew out the flames around the blackened sugar lump, waited as long as I could stand for it to cool, and then ate it. Sometimes I tried to remove the charred black crust, but that rarely worked. So I ate burned, black, slightly-sweetened charcoal.

Mmmm ... charcoal.

I assured my mom and dad, and my friends when they camped with us, that "I really like burned marshmallows! I enjoy eating them that way."

To prove it, I quit trying to toast them carefully. I deliberately held every fresh marshmallow right in middle of the flames. I became skilled at burning them. I declared they were even tastier when they caught fire twice. Three times even.

"Mmmm ... I really like burned marshmallows!"

But I didn't, of course. Burned marshmallows taste bad. They taste like burned ... well, they taste like burned anything. They taste burned.

Eventually I tired of pretending to enjoy burned marshmallows. I decided that learning to be more patient might taste better than pretending to enjoy the flavor of charcoal.

Now, as an adult, sometimes I see people work very hard to pretend that unpleasant outcomes are really going just fine. Often I hear people tell me things that sound remarkably similar to my childish proclamation, "I really like burned marshmallows!"

I don't believe them.

Culture as conspiracy theory

"Oh, you and your conspiracy theories!"

Yeah, well, I tell ya what...

When a small group of people try to fool a bigger group, I call it conspiracy.

When a small group of people try to fool themselves, I call it denial.

When we all try to fool each other, I call it culture.

Arithmetic allegory(3+1=4=1+3)

Did you just say, "3 + 1 = 4?"

Yes, I

That's all wrong! 4 = 1 + 3 !

No, it's 3+1.

1+3!

3+1!


It seems to me there's something they do not see.

Haiku tunnel (carpal)

The typing finger
with carpal tunnel treatment
having writ, moves on

To be wise is to see

I'm intrigued by the notion of seeing as a metaphor for learning and for understanding. I'm also concerned about wisdom, how we apply our knowledge, and how we make decisions. So it caught my eye when Canadian blogger Dave Pollard mentioned that the word “wise” originally meant “to see”. The Online Etymology web site reveals

 “to see,” hence “to know”
(see vision)

See vision, indeed. See. Vision. Perspective. Viewpoint. Foresight. 20/20 hindsight. Insight. Take a close look. Take a closer look. Seeing is believing. Blind. Blindness. Blind spot.

Do you see what I see? Do I see what you see? How do we compare and communicate what we see?

Have you ever been with other people while looking at one of those optical illusions? Have you ever been the one person who couldn't see what everyone else sees? It's frustrating! It's easy to suspect they're just playing a prank.

Or, have you ever tried to help someone to see the other image? That can be frustrating, too. “Well, if you kinda squint your eyes this way and turn your head...now do you see it?”

In a way that experience is the whole point of this blog. It's the point of my other web sites, too. Can I see what you see? Can you see what I see? How do we acknowledge and demonstrate what we see?

It seems to me that our culture often tries to tell us there's only one thing that can be seen. Ever. If we see something else, well, we'd better keep it to ourselves. Our culture tells us, “This is a picture of a vase. It's only a vase. If you think you see something else in this picture, well, you're wrong! Because it's a vase.”

We have 24-hour “news” channels, and magazines and newspapers and radio stations, all to remind us that this is a vase — and only a vase. Vase, vase, vase. Wait! Breaking news! “Some nut claims to see faces in this picture. Har har har, isn't that quaint? Faces! Now back to you, Sue, with the 5-day vase forecast.”

Blindness. Blind spots. Vision. Perspective. Insight.

To see, hence, to know. To be wise is to see.

 

A startlingly different view of the world

“He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.”

That's from The Salmon of Doubt, the book Douglas Adams was writing when he died.

Imagine: A startlingly different place, and only three feet to the left. It seems to me that three steps to the left is an easy journey to see a startlingly different world. That's worth the trip, don't you think?