Resilient Voices

I sit today in my office quite concerned about where our democracy is heading. In my work, I have been given a mandate to develop and increase engagement and inclusion in community and society; to ensure there are processes, formal and informal, that support citizens to be part of their democracy and; to ensure policy and programs will be relevant, accountable and just. The benefits for including and engaging all voices of community are many. To correctly identify, diagnose and design solutions for complex challenges requires we hear the voices of all who are impacted, all who care about the challenge and all who have previously been silenced for systemic reasons. Without high levels of engagement by citizens, we have no capacity for building social capital or social cohesion – both vital for human and community wellbeing and resilience.

It is interesting today that many civil society groups are joining a mass black out of their websites in protest. http://blackoutspeakout.ca/  They are protesting the loss of voice – voices that speak to protect the environment and voices that demand justice from established systems of power that are creating disparity.

When the Quebec government recently passed Bill 78 to silence the voices of protesting students, it made demonstrating inside or near a university campus illegal and outlawed spontaneous demonstrations in the province. As writer and social activist, Chris Hedges notes in www.truthdig.com , “It forces those who protest to seek permission from the police and imposes fines up to $125,000 for organizations that defy the new regulations. This, as with the international Occupy movement, has become a test of wills between a disaffected citizenry and the corporate state.”

Despite Law 78, the protests continue and no doubt will continue until changes are made. It is an awaking by many young people that, not only has the previous generation sold the current generation’s future off through environmental and biospheric degradation, but the current establishment is in the process of selling off their economic future as well, with debt loads escalating beyond comprehension. Telling our children that “getting an education” is a ticket to self-reliance is being received with great skepticism, especially when graduates spend many, many years trying to pay back their debt.  

Our most crucial investment –learning– is getting sideswiped by beliefs, politics and priorities that suffer from short-term thinking and capitalistic ideology. And it’s not just access to learning in our education systems that is being eroded, but the critical learning that happens in community where one developes a sense of social, cultural and environmental co-responsibility.

In her blog, Susan-Casey-Lefkowitz http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ suggests that with the rolling back of environmental laws and the ability of citizen groups to advocate for their environment and health—is clearly part of a longer term shift. “The Canadian budget bill cuts the National Roundtable on the Environment and Energy – a highly respected forum of industry, scientists and environmentalists that came out with a new report about the high cost of climate change to the Canadian ecomony.” Labelling anyone who disagrees or raises concerns about environmental practices as radical as seen in Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s open letter attacking groups he alleged were threatening to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical agenda”, is clearly a conversation stopper. It also sends a message that it is “inappropriate” to engage in voicing your concerns and opinions, unless you are  invited to and you agree to play by the rules of the establihed powers.

We need to protect and build our capacity to talk about these pressing issues. Preventing or limiting citizens from expressing their needs and interests is not unique to countries run by fascist dictators, as “democratic” Quebec demonstrates. Outlawing discourse or limiting deliberation to a select few who have their own specific agenda (and one that is thought to cause harm to others), will no doubt lead to more and more of the protests we are seeing around the world. It appears to be a time in history when global voices are joined in a common message for the future– end the disparity, end the injustice. The voices are telling us to listen to what it really means to be alive and human.

I see your lips moving but I can’t hear you…

I’m sitting in a meeting—a very long meeting. I shift my weight on the chair so my aching back doesn’t cause my mouth to involuntarily scream out “Enough!” thus, interrupting the discussion. I stopped listening a while ago, mentally choosing to go to a beach in Costa Rica where there is no sound but gentle waves meeting the shore and strange “eekkuu”sounds from some exotic bird. I think I stopped listening due to boredom—the kind of boredom that comes from “same old– same old” discussions. I give my self a quick shake and summon the discipline I know is needed to listen attentively.

Individuals in the group have re‐stated the same thing for the last twenty minutes (and for hours in many previous meetings). How can so many people say the same thing in so many different ways? They are not listening to what was already said. It’s as if they weren’t present at the meeting. (Perhaps they too are daydreaming!) This group, myself included, struggles with what I would call “purposeful and productive” listening, re‐hashing old ideas, old solutions and never replacing them with new ones. We need to change this somehow.

Otto Scharmer in his book Theory U identifies four basic types of listening.

1) Downloading: This listening is about reconfirming habitual judgments.You find yourself thinking “Yeah, know that already.” When we download, we are deaf to other people’s stories; we only hear that which confirms our own story and worldview. This is the kind of non‐listening exhibited by fundamentalists, dictators, “experts” and people who are arrogant or angry.

2) Factual Listening: “Ooh, look at that!” This is listening by paying attention to facts and novel or disconfirming data focusing on what differs from what you already know. You switch from attending to your “inner voice of judgment” to attending to data right in front of you. This listening is the basic mode of good science. You ask questions and carefully observe the responses that nature (data) gives you. This kind of listening requires an open mind.

3) Empathic Listening: “Oh yes, I know how you feel”. The third deeper level of listening happens when you are really engaged in a dialogue and you become aware of a profound shift from cognitive listening to listening with an open heart. You connect with the other person, forgetting about your own agenda and seeing how the world unfolds through their eyes. “This is a skill that can be cultivated and developed, just like any other human relations skill. It’s a skill that requires us to activate s different source of intelligence: the intelligence of the heart.”

4) Generative Dialogue: “I can’t express what I experience in words. My whole being has slowed down. I feel more quiet and present and more my real self. I am connected to something larger than myself.” We listen not only from within ourselves or from within others but from the whole of the system. This type of listening requires us to connect to possibility and the emerging field of the future. You realize you are no longer the same person that you were when you started the conversation. This kind of listening requires you have an open will.

In the book Presence, collaboratively written by Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer and others, they explore the implications of downloading. When we download we limit our potential to learn by engaging only in reactive learning. “We are learning how best to react to circumstances we see ourselves having no hand in creating. We discount interpretations and options for action that are different from those we know and trust. We act to defend our interests. At best, we get better at what we have always done. We remain secure in a cocoon of our own worldview, isolated from the larger world.”

Presence suggests a type of learning that could lead to the creation of a world not governed primarily by habit. “All learning integrates thinking and doing. All learning is about how we interact in the world and the types of capacities that develop from our interaction. What differs is the depth of the awareness…” If our awareness and understanding go beyond the superficial level and beyond current circumstances, we begin to see the larger wholes that generate “what is” and our connection to this wholeness. We begin to act in service to what is emerging so that new intuitions and insights create new realities.

Presence is more than being conscious and aware in the moment. It is deep listening, being open beyond one’s preconceptions and historical ways of making sense. As Senge puts it so well, “We came to see the importance of letting go of old identities and the need to control and of making choices to serve the evolution of life.”

So back to my meeting…I think to myself, “What if we could learn more about the kind of listening and engagement needed to move away from our unproductive “thinking and doing” habits? What kinds of questions might we ask to help us get out of our “box” and “open our heart”, as Scharmer puts it, to explore “different”? Perhaps we could come up with some new ideas to move from the conventional agenda type meetings to something more “generative”, more inspiring, more imaginative—something that allows us to create a deeper understanding and better sense of our situation and our options in a more comprehensive way. Maybe we should build in a part of the meeting where all we do is ask questions and then spend time researching and exploring potential and emerging answers.

I walk off the beach, clean the sand out my ears and lean forward in that all too uncomfortable chair. I’m back in the meeting.