On Being

This was the first SOF that I couldn't listen to all the way through. Parker Palmer's relentlessly miserable view of society was simply too much to swallow. He seems to feel that we're all shallow and materialistic and hopelessly lost in "the unexamined life," which, apparently, "is not worth living."

This does not represent the America that I live in. We're not buying yachts and jacuzzis. We're buying clothes and food for our children, paying the heating bill, and trying to keep a roof over our heads. Is this something that we're supposed to be ashamed of? Would our children be better off without warm clothes and a decent meal? Would our nation be better off if we all took vows of poverty so we can live in the narcissistic lap of "the examined life"?

It's just too much nihilism for me, and too disconnected from the world around me. The Americans I know are basically good people. Flawed, of course, but ultimately we've got our priorities straight. Parker Palmer may disagree, but I think that my neighbors and myself all have lives worth living.

First let me say this is the first time I've listened to your program, and it won't be the last. I was driving home this afternoon and turned on the radio. I'm a huge NPR fan. I was so immersed in Parker's conversation with you that I pulled over to the side of the road to write down your program name and time. I drove around in the car, down to the bluffs in Santa Monica listening. The mix between the cold wind, both your warm hearts, the economic implosive, and the magnificent explosion of colors across the sunset helped me really feel my aliveness. Not the rote, automatic movements that so many of us have fallen into.

You ask how do we get to a place like we are, both financially and spiritually, morally? Little by little, we learn how to turn off others around us, then we turn off ourselves. Or does it begin that we learn to slowly turn off ourselves and then it becomes habitual to turn off others. Walk by people in need because we don't have time or the inclination to be in the now of our lives. In our race to the finish line of who has the most stuff, we inevitably lose the race — the human race. And here we are.

And like Parker, I think this devastating downturn may just be the bottom that we need to feel in order to begin to rebuild ourselves as a person, people, nation, and world. How easy it is to forget we are human with all our darkness and our light and that we can determine which path we decide to follow. The good news is that turnaround can happen in an instant. Piaget spoke to humans needing tens of thousands of experiences for a real change within the organism to occur. A real structural change, not just a cosmetic change. The difference between accommodation and assimilation. Now is the time for that real structural change.

I also loved the concept that an inner life cannot be turned on and off or just on by enormous amounts of data digesting. But clearly creating an environment that allows and supports the study of one's innards as being as important if not more than one's outwards, opens the doors for inquiry and meaningful searching. I also recall the question Parker posed of why no one spoke up if they had or more solidly that they knew of the divisive programs in the financial markets. The answers were fear (of being known as a whistle blower) and of course, greed. And then begs the question, how much is enough. When does someone say when. That a society is not known by how well its most wealthy and successful achieve but how that society treats the least fortunate members.

As a doctor of the psychological, a clinician for many years, I might suggest that we are so disconnected from our true selves that we cannot connect to those who are not akin to us in our false selves. We push away those parts of ourselves in others we fear the most. We may give money, but not our time. And clearly, what is more precious than time. Once spent, it cannot be reclaimed. Though we all have hearts that beat in our chest this is most certainly a matter that is driven straight from the heart. Our spiritual heart.

I suggest that many are not afraid of telling but more afraid of being known. Of being revealed. Of realizing that in spite of a vast fortune, there is nowhere anyone can go to get away from the world. People can no longer pretend the rest of the world does not exist. We are all globally connected. Their existence is our existence. There is no where to go to get away. Away is always with us. We have to change the way we live, from the inside out and then from the outside as well. We all rise and fall together. Tomorrow depends upon today. Now more than ever.

Thank you for your show. I needed to listen. We all need to be reminded. And we are all the reminders as well.

I work for a company in the financial service industry. One day we were all called to attend a conference call from our president. During the call we learned that the entire leadership team had decided to not take annual bonuses and also had agreed to reduce their pay. They did this in order to delay any staff layoffs. It took a while to sink in, but, now that it has, I realize how committed to the rank and file our senior leadership team is. It has changed the way I approach every day. Every day I try to find ways to help co-workers to make their day a little bit better. I appreciate your show. My wishes for a blessed holiday season to you, your family, your staff, and their families.

I can't quite express this thought the way I'd like to; it seems too complex for me to articulate. But, the reaction I'm having is that SOF is a great dialog on what is primarily individual integrity, morality, spirituality, etc. This economic crisis is something I'm reading as a system-wide failure, not a failure of individuals. Can we speak of our human systems as having virtues? Is capitalism amoral, or does it have virtue? Why do we even have an economy? And why do we have the one we do? And I'm thinking that having Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged) in this conversation would be very interesting and helpful.

Today is the first time I listened to the tape of Krista's whole, unedited, interview. I was drawn to Parker Palmer, whose simple, direct words about the inner life invite me to accept my imperfections and vulnerabilities. It's all OK! I can see how challenging it was to edit but, despite being an educator and supporter of Obama, I think editing out those portions was wise. A snowstorm kept me home instead of attending a church service. This was better.

Can you provide information on the educational study that Parker Palmer referred to on the program? He cited it as a breakthrough study linked to how the presence if trust in the institution was related to superior performance. Money and other resources like it are not the dominant influencing factor. He implied that the culture or climate of the organization had much more to do with student success. For my work, I could use reading the abstract or the study itself. How can I find out information so I can locate the study. Thank you.

Editor's note: Mike, you can find out more about the study on relational trust on the show's Particulars page, which is an annotated guide to each week's program. Look for the entry at the 14:38 mark.

I find myself irritated by a theme in Parker Palmer's routine: there seems to be (to this rational materialist) a near-worship of want, of flaws, of brokenness, an acceptance of death and suffering that I believe will stand in the way of their near-elimination. I've done physical work; I have done tedious manual labour; I have known want in a small, middle-class way; and I believe that they are fundamentally useless except as a spur to doing better. Any other attitude makes me feel that someone is attempting to sell something unpleasant to me, and to do so by deprecating the possibility that these things are not at all necessary.

We are bits of matter and the forces between them; this frees us of any underlying telos that would keep us from being more than we are. If we are failing to provide for the needs of everyone, it is due to our hilariously primitive technical level. We can do much better, and there are reasons why we have not — some are inadvertent, some are bound-up by the fact that some at the top would not be so happy if there were none at the bottom to exploit, to mock, to lead, to preach-to, others are the limits of some imaginations that see no way out of the morass.

I always have my radio alarm clock set to come on in time for your show every Sunday morning. I especially liked your show with Parker Palmer. You are extremely well-prepared, fair in your handling of issues, and engaging in your approach. Keep up the good work!

Thanks again for another good show. Your interview with Parker Palmer made me think about Douglas Adams. In his Hitchhiker's series, a spaceship lands in the middle of a cricket pitch with thousands of people all around it — but it's effectively "invisible" because it's generating what's called a "Somebody Else's Problem Field." It's not physically invisible, but able to operate in plain view with total impunity. I find so much plain truth in Adams' work. I suppose "The Emperor's New Clothes" says it pretty well, too…

Palmer is so beatifically truthful about the denials that have mislead us, viewed from within our cultural sphere. He doesn't even mention our failure to partner with what is going on outside our cultural sphere. There's a dramatic simple proof. The real problem is not so much our internal moral integrity, but how that integrity drifts when we are so self-absorbed. Our morals lose contact with reality when we imagine that it's our cultural values that are all important.

Believing in a world in our minds of human images and meanings is an arrogant and foolish dream if, as it occurs, it prevents us from recognizing remarkably clear signals from the environment around us. There's an amazingly simple "hidden in sight" proof of how utterly disastrously self-absorbed people all are with their own imagery. It's not the greed or nay other moral value that is the problem if your do the acts of it with sincere incomprehension of the consequences. Our global environment is collapsing before us directly because our one and only unwavering (if unthinking) plan for money is for it to multiply. It's a procedural thing, the compounding.

Everything that begins in nature begins with compound growth. Everything that survives turns that off when it starts "running into other things." If our minds are self-absorbed with internal imagery and don't notice, but keep on doing it as our world collapses from it, it's not the greed that is the problem. It's the acts. We always find our selves in the wilderness — and it is really a beautiful place to be.

Your program is always meaningful to me and I thank you. I made greeting postcards for friends and acquaintances with a digital photo of a flower in my garden on one side and the message listed below on the other. After making all of the cards, I became shy about the message until I heard today's program Repossessing Virtue. Encouraged by your show, I will mail out tomorrow with confidence. The message reads:

New Year — 2009
Arrives with my deeply felt hope for an
Awakening of Love and Tolerance
A Renewal of Authentic Values that respect our
World ... its air, earth and people.

With a heart full of hope