Baby Boomers and Non-Action

Introduction

Tension exists between science predicting disastrous consequences caused by climate change and economists predicting gains in prosperity that guarantee future well being. Consumers, governments and business maintain their traditional viewpoints about how technological innovation and entrepreneurship will fix any problems. For example, advertisements on TV tell us the American goal is to preserve the value of vast reserves of coal as an energy source that requires only a technological fix and we will have clean coal.

The strategies used today are conservative and rely on business-as-usual practices. These strategies preserve the existing economic system and rely on traditional values. These strategies result in three failures that lead to a system collapse:

1. Failure to anticipate the problem.
2. When the problem arrives, failure to recognize the problem.
3. When the problem is recognized, failure of attempting to solve the problem.
4. When action is taken, failure to actually solve the problem.

Baby Boomers

A poll by Yale University found that seven in 10 Americans believe that “global warming is affecting the weather" and that more than 80 percent of Americans have personally experienced extreme weather or a natural disaster of some sort in the past year." At the same time, Baby Boomers (born 1943-1960) are transitioning into retirement and slowly accepting a lifestyle change.  What do these things have in common?

Boomers are experiencing a loss of position power and action but not transitioning to inactivity. Instead Boomers are seeking and will find their power of participating in society in ways that prior generations did not.  Instead of retiring to a warm climate for leisure time activities, Boomers are going to fulfill their new role in society as the new elders with the power of non-action.

Non-action is not inactivity and not about spending all your time on leisure activities. Boomers with a purpose will engage in non-action activities. An example of non-action is a boycott. Gene Sharp listed 198 non-violent activities that groups use to deal with authority.

Boomers will stay in place instead of moving for retirement.  They will stay connected and anchor themselves near family, friends and community.  Boomers will learn to use the power of renunciation, non-action and non-violence to deal with the failure of government and business to anticipate, recognize, attempt solutions and succeed in solving local and global problems that have catastrophic consequences.

¹ Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2005.

² http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/05/climate-impacts-day-extreme-weather-climate-change_n_1483420.html

³ "Albert Einstein Institution - Publications - "From Dictatorship to Democracy."  Web. 31 May 2012. http://aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html

Why Systems Collapse

Tension exists between science predicting disastrous consequences caused by climate change and economists predicting gains in prosperity that guarantee future well being. Consumers, governments and business maintain their traditional viewpoints about how technological innovation and entrepreneurship will fix any problems. For example, advertisements on TV tell us the American goal is to preserve the value of vast reserves of coal as an energy source that requires only a technological fix and we will have clean coal.

The strategies used today are conservative and rely on business-as-usual practices. These strategies preserve the existing economic system and rely on traditional values. These strategies result in three failures that lead to a system collapse:

1. Failure to anticipate the problem.
2. When the problem arrives, failure to recognize the problem.
3. When the problem is recognized, failure of attempting to solve the problem.
4. When action is taken, failure to actually solve the problem.

 Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2005.

Education Reform

Matt Farmer of Chicago
Chicago parent takes down Board of Education member and the Mayor of Chicago and basically all education reformers. Don't miss this!
Chicago parent Speaks the truth to power

Mindfulness

In 21st Century society, we experience situations that make us feel like either running away or fighting.  Stress at work, with family, driving or with people we don’t even know can trigger a reaction and yet we do not have the option of fighting or fleeing. When the Fight or Flight syndrome is not able to function we each have a threshold before the stress begins to affect our our mind works.  We create the Dictator.

There is a Dictator in my mind and we are at war with each other.  The Dictator commands the Fight or Flight syndrome that controls my body chemistry that makes my head buzz, causes nausea, makes my leg muscles twitch and creates negative thoughts. The Dictator uses force and direct action to make my life miserable when I am anxious prior to an event or activity. The Dictator knows that once my system gets started in the wrong direction the feedback loops in my body and my mind will keep making things worse for me until I give up, close my eyes and lay down in a quiet place. Afterwards, I am exhausted and have to take a nap during the daytime and that interferes with my sleep at night.

The Dictator depends on me reacting to my own thoughts and feelings about the past and the future to increase his strength and maintain his control. The Dictator listens to all my conscious thoughts and feelings and my unconscious thoughts and feelings. So the Dictator has information about the secret life I live inside my mind that I do not have.

I will lose if I try a direct approach to stop the Dictator triggering his forces. I can not stop him by using positive affirmations, keeping busy all the time or staying home all the time. Medication works for a short period of time or I have to take them all the time and they have side effects. Medication only makes the Dictator go to sleep for awhile but he is still there.

I can not run away from myself, but I can hide in my house for the rest of my life.  I can not fight the Dictator directly but I can use medication to make him go to sleep, and me too. There are many strategies that people use to cope that do not get rid of the Dictator.

Mindfulness is a strategy that does work over time to defeat the Dictator or at least get him out of power so that he is not in direct control over my mind and body. Instead of a direct approach, mindfulness is non-action (not inactivity).  Instead of keeping busy with activities, mindfulness cultivates stillness. Mindfulness is a strategy that gets information over time from the conscious and unconscious mind that the Dictator could use to trigger an attack and instead practicing mindfulness opens me to experiencing those memories, thoughts, emotions and feelings in the moment to accept them and let go of them.

Non-action has a long and successful history. Non-action is engaging in activities to overthrow a Dictator like what Gene Sharp lists in his book “From Dictatorship to Democracy”. An example is a boycott. In my case, I want to boycott the Dictator forcefully hijacking my body and mind.  To do this, I have to train my body and my mind to not react. I have to cultivate non-action and stillness in my mind and my body.

My mind needs to be still and my body needs to not take action. My conscious and unconscious mind both need to not take action. My legs, arms and internal organs that control my body chemistry need to be still. 

Stillness is the renunciation of the stress-induced reaction of the mind and body to daily activities. Stillness is boycotting the Dictator that decides to release adrenaline and cortisol, to suppress the immune system and send excess energy to muscles.  Stillness is non-action, not inactivity. Each time my mind wanders, I am practicing mindfulness by bringing my mind back to the present moment and my breath.

The daily practice of mindfulness opens us up to experiencing our life in the present moment. The Dictator wants to remain in power and uses past and future thoughts to force the body to react. The practice of mindfulness cultivates stillness that grows over time until we are strong enough to use the power of non-action to defeat the Dictator.  When stressful events happen our response to the memory or anticipation is non-action.  The Dictator has no power over us when he is unable to get the mind and body to react.

Heroes

“Only when teamwork and civic trust is reborn in the dire heat of a Fourth Turning can a society again become capable of saving itself.  In that moment, the self becomes fused to the community and everybody becomes a hero.  This is the basic plotline of The Avengers.  It also a good shorthand description of the choices facing America today.”

http://blog.lifecourse.com/2012/05/avengers-assemble/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

By Neil Howe

Your Ground Hog Day

Just like in the movie Ground Hog Day, you wake up every morning in the same exact place, always repeating the same day. No matter what you do to try to change things, you can not get what you want.

In Ground Hog Day, he starts out just trying to fulfill his own desires. Then he begins to move toward fulfilling the needs of others.  Finally, he becomes more and more life-centered and lets go of his desires.

Most of our life is spent living strategies meant to cover up or avoid our own pain of not getting what we want. Our pain is the deep sense of basic alienation that takes the form of feelings we have about ourself.

You like influencing others and being in charge - that’s your personality. When your strategy is to be dominant, persuasive, and motivational at work, you have a structured environment where everyone’s behavior is guided by the organization’s ethical system. When your strategy remains the same even though you are not at work, then your desires take over and you feel the pain of unfulfilled desires.

What is the basic human problem? We live a substitute life. We believe our thoughts are our life. We substitute our believed thoughts for reality. 

Unfortunately, we act on our believed thoughts. We make mistakes because our believed thoughts are not how things actually work.

The practice life is not about expressing or suppressing our thoughts and feelings. The practice life is about experiencing our thoughts and feelings.  By sitting quietly for ten minutes, focusing on our natural breathing, we experience our thoughts and feelings.  We welcome them.  We let them come into our mind, release them and then the next one comes.

In the practice life, we do not express negative emotions and do not suppress emotions.  In the practice life, we experience our emotions.  For example, we sit quietly for ten minutes, focusing on our natural breathing and we welcome our anger.  We feel our anger coming, we experience rising anger, the peak of anger then the anger falls away and we release the anger.  We experienced anger and did no harm to anyone.

The goal is not enlightenment or perfection or never feeling angry or afraid.  The goal is to not live a substitute life of believed thoughts and instead experience our thoughts and emotions and realize that they are not us. Your thoughts and feelings, and your reactions to others are a substitute life. Practice experiencing your thoughts and feelings without expressing or suppressing them.

Every day, practice with thoughts and emotions while sitting quietly and focusing on the natural breath.

System Dynamics Question Leaders

I am confused about looking at historical events versus designing social systems for future consequences.  I am probably not going to get this exactly correct with the appropriate words but here is a possible response to what Chad Green wrote about. I would rather have system scientists influence public policy over the next 10 years in a way that gets America started on a different path so that future system scientists can use counterfactual questions to show how outcomes might have been worse if America had not taken action prior to 2020.

snip:
"What we need now is system thinkers who are more than willing and able
to ask the tough counterfactual "what if" questions that no one is
asking publicly.

I will call them Question Leaders."

From Wikipedia (edited):
"Counterfactual questions seek to explore history and historical incidents by means of extrapolating a timeline such that certain key historical events did not happen or had an outcome that was different from what did in fact occur. The purpose of this exercise is to ascertain the relative importance of the event, incident or person the counterfactual hypothesis is negating."

Here is what I'm thinking:

For example, a system scientist in the future will be able to explore historical records on global warming to show how America's outcome could have been different or records on fossil fuel resources to show how America fiddled while the resource collapse could have been predicted. Then the system scientist would ascertain the relative importance of key events not happening, such as what is described in the book "Merchants of Doubt" or how a different outcome could have occurred.

The counterfactual hypothesis for global warming might be that America did endorse the Kyoto Treaty and began reducing CO2 emissions, building renewable energy and growing the economy based on non-fossil fuel energy fast enough to avoid catastrophic consequences.

However, Dr. Forrester's message seems to focus on future system scientists designing social systems to mitigate future unintended consequences.  Chad seems to suggest present system scientists might use historical case studies as a learning tool to change the quality of people's mental models now. Maybe combining each into an overall strategy might help system scientists now and in the future.