Modeling Change

Joe lives on a nice street in a relatively safe neighborhood, but he has a concern about the way people leave their lawn chairs and toys and other belongings around the yards and sidewalks when they aren't using them. He has seen this type of behavior in other areas and the lack of concern for appearance seems to match the progress of neighborhood decay. He is worried that it is an early sign of a downhill trend.

Pete shares Joe's concerns. He gets very angry when they discuss it. He can not afford to move and he fears neighborhood decay.

Joe and Pete both approve of Betty. She is considered a quiet woman, but seems neat in her habits - her yard is always picked up. When asked, she simply says she respects her responsibility to her neighbors and her space.

Joe tries to make the others on the street see the problem by setting an example. He has neat locations for his garbage receptacles, his outdoor chairs and the few tools he uses in his tiny garden. He always puts things away when he is done and sweeps the sidewalk in front of his house regularly. He is trying to show the neighbors by example how doable it is to maintain a standard of appearance. He does this often.

Pete is more outgoing. He exhorts neighbors to pick up when done. He will take toys from the sidewalk and place them in the yards of the owners. When he joins conversations around the neighborhood, the talk will almost certainly gravitate back to that of neighborhood decay. He feels he is leading the fight against it.

People like Joe, but they think he worries too much. They notice his concern by things like the almost compulsive way he dramatically picks up his chair and puts it away as soon as he stands up. Nonverbals say loudly for him what he refrains from sharing outright. He seems to think they must take responsibility for calming his anxieties.

Pete stirs up fear and anxiety in his wake. People interpret his behavior as aggression, his efforts to clean up another's property as controlling and intrusive. Resentment is a common emotion expressed when people talk about Pete: the feeling is that he is intent on organizing the world according to his beliefs without caring about theirs.

The locals like Betty. Even the sloppiest amongst them like the appearance of her yard. She is referred to as "a nice, neat lady" and "quiet but friendly." People see what she does and they associate it with the attitudes induced by her nonthreatening manners. She seems to be calmly happy with the way the world is, a trait many would like to share.

Betty walks the talk rather than preaching it. She believes in her way, but she understands that others have different priorities and beliefs. Her mannerisms and action proclaim her serenity.

People may resist change when it is thrust at them, but they may also seek it when they perceive rewards.

As with Joe's subtle cues or Pete's overt intrusion, anxiety can be felt when change seems to be forced on someone. If I feel there is a message I want another to hear, I may close his ears by needing him to hear it. If the message is so important, it may be best for me to model it. If it is supposed to improve his life, then maybe it should be something I am willing to adopt myself.

By removing the anxiety for change, I am accepting what is and who is as they are. I move from threatening others to working on myself. If I do a good job, the results may interest others.

You must be the change you want to see in the world - Mahatma Gandhi

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Simplify It

It is interesting to note that there were no Christians when Jesus was teaching. After some reading, I get the impression that various teachers from then till now assert that wisdom is not found in complexity. Material attachment, resisting transience, filtered versions of reality - all these are human perspectives that deserve a clear view. That learning process is not improved by material wealth or religious complexity.

Meditation (sometimes labeled prayer as well) seems to be a common element across many spiritual traditions. Some moral behaviors, such as the Golden Rule, also seem commonly represented. It is my contention that the original message of Jesus, Buddha and many other teachers can be deduced from our personal experience of our own natures and by looking at the elements that are common across enduring traditions.

Complex dogma was not present when they were teaching and, in fact, is universally rejected by the teachers themselves. They all extended their teachings to cover even humans considered socially worthless in their time, they all taught wherever they landed with a crowd, they all died before their words were codified into ponderous rule sets that were somehow intended to replace the vitality of living self-examination.

Spirituality - the relationship to life that these people taught others to explore - is not a set of behaviors. It is an introspective process.

The Real Axe?

In discussion with some friends, this was presented:

"This is the axe of my father..."

Same principle applies. Is it still the same axe, even after the original head and handle have been replaced? If I replace the handle of the axe of my father, from my perspective, it is still the handle of the axe of my father. The identity of the object has become a concept separate from the item itself. "The axe of my father" is now a different thing than the axe in my hand.

Such things are among my favorite topics, so I had to respond:

It seems obvious that the label is being applied to a different set of physical components. That is the source of the fascinating flexibility of labels, though: they are really being applied to concepts that represent objects.

The label Dad's axe is stuck onto a mental model I created to represent my father's axe. The model is also composed a physical axehead and the handle. New handles and heads over Dad's lifetime are simply absorbed as components of the model - the concept is considered unchanged. Even more interesting is that if the axe is bequeathed to me when I grow up, it can still be represented by the same model: this is Dad's axe. In fact, even my concept of the axe can change as I attach emotional memories of my father chopping wood or as I grow from being unable to lift it to swinging it with one hand.

To me, it seems important to understand that neither the concept nor the label is the external reality they model. To remember that in all things I address my mental representations of reality. When I feel hatred for the enemy, it is an emotion directed at my construct of that concept. Not considering this, if the enemy reforms or is proved innocent, I might tragically not update my construct correctly and so continue to condemn the man inappropriately. This type of mistake can be carried to many situaitons in the average day.

I think many would be comfortable with the idea of evaluating their own understandings of reality - sometimes it is the wording of all this that gets in the way. From that phrase, it is only a small step to the view that each of our "realities" is made from its components - the things we put together to make the snapshot. In practical terms, the axe is a concept and it would behoove us to remember that a new handle may change the balance. Or that from one chop to the next, the axe may develop a hidden defect, with painful repercussions.

So with all reality. We freeze our concepts, or models, as snapshots of reality. But the environment does not freeze along with them. It continues to express its transient nature in each moment. To react skillfully to phenomena, it seems sensible that we would need to see clearly what is now rather than what was when we took the snapshot.

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