On Possibility

          A relatively newcomer to the scene of contending values, the value of possibility provides an array of goods for society and the individual. One cannot problem solve or innovate without a range of possibilities at his or her disposal. The increasing complexity of our civilization and its problems demands ever increasing options in the face of pressures towards uniformity. All too often we find ourselves trapped within some sort of either/or box without the capacity to imagine a solution or route of escape. Without the capacity to perceive possibilities one cannot muster the necessary divergent thinking to create anything remotely new. Possibility then is the very antithesis of tradition and the ruts caused by everyday thinking. The great challenge in possibility lies in application. It is easy enough to acknowledge the value of possibility but quite another matter to maximize the possibilities in our lives. To address this challenge we have an important book available to us, The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander. The Zanders have collaborated to bring the expertise of an accomplished psychotherapist (Rosamund) and the creative genius of the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic (Benjamin) together on the value of possibility.

            The Art of Possibility is a how-to book that is unlike any other self-help book you may have read. Rather than provide strategies to overcome the various obstacles in our competitive lives and get ahead, this book offers a way to rise above our judgment laden world and fly into a universe full of possibilities. The fundamental tenet of the book is that what possibilities are available to us depend in a measure upon how we define ourselves. What story do we tell? What role do we play in that story? This book is not about making incremental changes. It attempts to cause “a total shift of posture, perceptions, beliefs, and thought processes.” Ben and Rosamund hope to transform our entire world. I first read this book a year ago, and since that reading, I have come back to it again and again for the vista expanding riches it offers.

            The Zanders make a fundamental claim that no institution has a wide enough level of acceptance or hegemony sufficiently expansive to create values. In fact, much of the value creation is left to our economic system of free markets: a form of mindless populism that ironically performs without values (other than drives for profit, etc.). Here is where the arts and creative fields can step in and offer new energy, insights, consciousness, and interpersonal connections. The arts can provide the means to recreate the way our world operates, its very structure to something that maximizes creativity. The Zanders offer a path for expanding our possibilities as individuals and communities.

            The Zanders organize the book around twelve practices or principles that increase the levels of possibility and creativity in our lives. One of the first is that view that it is all invented. Our brains are narrative writing devices designed to explain and anticipate the conditions of the world in which we live. As such, we are ultimately the authors of this story. It is all a story that we tell. As such we can revise, rewrite, expand, or completely re-conceive the narrative. As the Zanders put it, “Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.” One point the Zanders do not address as well as they could have is the way that many stories are not of our own creation but have been imposed upon us from our infancy. The path to fully embrace this view of life would necessarily involve a bit of rebellion against narratives firmly entrenched in our thinking habits. A lifetime of traditional narratives designed to oppress and keep us in our limited and traditional roles can be a daunting obstacle.

            Another change the Zanders offer involves moving out of goal oriented task thinking. Rather than set up benchmarks for our success, we should create a vision for what we could be or what our world could become. Once this dream is in place, we step into that dream and out of the world of measurement. Anxiety over how we measure up or how our work will be received stifles our possibilities and suppresses our passion. Constantly comparing ourselves to others imposes hierarchies that either give us a false sense of accomplishment or debilitating discouragement. Views of the world that emphasize scarcity of resources or accolades limit our perception and awareness of opportunities just below the surface. The Zanders advocate that we change the context of our thinking: step away from the measurement world and step into the dream allowing life to unfold full of possibilities. A practice that guides us toward this shift in outlook is called “Giving an A”. Taken from a classroom experience where Benjamin Zander gave the entire class an “A” on the first day of school, “Giving an A”  removes the measurement world and presents a vision to live into. “Giving an A” assumes the best and gives people the respect that allows them to realize their best selves. “This ‘A’ is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.” Through giving an “A” we allow those we meet to escape the “stranglehold of judgment” and free ourselves from the measurement world as well.

            Many of the principles and practices that the Zanders offer stand in a delicious tension with one another. One of the criticisms I have often had with self-help books is that they place an unrealistic burden on the individual and overstate one’s ability to control an array of environmental constraints. The Zanders escape this tendency, in my view, through maintaining conceptual tensions. For example, the Zanders instruct us to be a contribution. “In the game of contribution you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others.” Another similar practice is to lead from any chair by giving way to our passion. Stop holding back out of fear and spark the possibility in others. Enroll them into our possibility. Then we read about “Rule Number 6” which states, “Don’t take yourself so seriously!” Another example of such a tension exists in the outlook of “Being the Board”. To be the board refers to approaching life as though in a board game where we recognize that our assumptions contribute to how the “board” is set up rather than just focusing on the moveable pieces. Owning that our assumptions make certain things possible helps us avoid downward spiral talk and instead focuses us on radiating possibility. “Gracing yourself with responsibility for everything that happens in your life leaves your spirit whole and leaves you free to choose again.” Be the board and we are free to direct our attention to what we want to see happen instead of what we need “to win or fight or fix.” This is a focus on making a difference not gaining control. Yet, the Zanders also recognize the importance of seeing circumstances as they really are. They call this principle “It is what it is”. Possibility is all around but rooted in reality.

            The Zanders provide a treasure trove of insights into how to maximize possibility in our individual lives and communities. I highly recommend this text for the practical approach it offers to making a virtue of possibility. The value of possibility needs to expand and grow across our world if we are to meet the challenges that face us.

On Values and Virtues

          I had an interesting conversation with an Evangelical Christian a couple of years ago. He was very interested in talking with me upon learning that I was a former Mormon. He immediately asked if I was an atheist. He had met a lot of former Mormons and found many of them had become atheists. When I told him that I was indeed an atheist, he contradicted me and informed me that I was not an atheist. Needless to say, I was perplexed. I was speechless. He continued to explain that I believed in God because I held onto values. If I was truly an atheist I would not accept values like truth, justice, and freedom. All of these values come from God and cannot exist without God as their source. Thus the existence of values proves God’s existence and even reflects that deep down I still believe. Such was his claim. Beyond his circular logic, fallacious thinking, and flat out lack of respect, he was wrong. Values have a much more complex and rich origin. Values, like emergent properties in chemistry, arise out of the interest, interaction, and shared experiences of lived communities. Real people striving to live lives of meaning and substance share those values. What we do with them determines whether they become virtues that are a part of us or not.

            Of course my Evangelical acquaintance was simply employing a rhetorical strategy to refute my atheist position. But, his view does illustrate a common understanding of values among many believers. Values such as honesty, kindness, compassion, and justice exist independent of human nature. Moreover, they exist dependent on God. For such faithful, one can best realize these values in his or her life by approaching and worshiping God. As such, many of this mindset see our contemporary society as in a state of crisis when traditional values like sexual purity become less accepted generally. A plurality of religious views can also appear very threatening to this demographic because only the true worship of the true God will yield the benefit of realized values in our broader society. Such religionists also bemoan this lack of shared values because it undermines the communal effort to cultivate the right virtues in the lives of individual members of society. This mistaken view fails to accurately account for how values emerge, transform, and recede in our civilization.

            Values are coded shortcuts for desirable behaviors, feelings, and relationships in our shared life-world. They are primarily shared and transcend many of the boundaries that divide up the various aspects of our world. The value of kindness has a desirable place among individuals, families, and even professional settings. In short, values are the goods that we desire. The more extensive and deep the desired for good, the more prominent and powerful the value.

            Virtues then are the habituated realization of such values in our everyday lives. Virtues are values so ingrained into our character that even our impulse reactions are in accordance to that value. Of course moralizers preach virtues as though there is an essential list all of us should cultivate and possess. In truth, the emergence of virtues in us comes from a complex cultivation of thoughts and actions in concert with the experiences, relationships, and predispositions we have. A virtue is far more complex than a simple ideal or some code one selects to live by.

            In short, values are emergent properties of the communities in which we live. An emergent property is a property that emerges from the collection of constituent parts. An emergent property cannot be found in any one individual member of the constituting parts. More importantly, an emergent property does not have any manner of existence independent from its constituent parts. For example, in chemistry, salt has the property of saltiness when we taste it. Saltiness is an emergent property of Sodium Chloride, the chemical compound for salt. Yet, the property of saltiness is not present in Sodium or Chlorine separately. Also, one is hard pressed to find the ideal form of saltiness floating around in the Ether somewhere. Put some salt on your baked potato and it tastes salty. The sociologist Emile Durkheim first developed the idea that properties of social systems emerge from social interactions in the early twentieth century and Talcott Parsons expanded the concept. Lived communities that stretch through the ages produce these values. As emergent properties, values ride on a tide of history, contending interests, and shared desires of real people but not independent of them.

            Once values and virtues have emerged they do have a guiding force. They become a foundation for action. They give us motivation, direction, and a strong sense for the way the world ought to be. How we live in proximity to these values even gives us a sense of worth and a measure of self-esteem. Values and virtues present us a way to matter in the world. Hence institutions and organizations of many types have sought to establish a monopoly on what values and virtues count. These institutions also create mechanisms to disseminate their values and inculcate them into others, children and youth in particular.

            Our task then is to explore these powerful features of our life-world. The world is far smaller than it has ever been before due to the exponential explosion of technological advancement in communication and transportation. A clash of contending values rages across the land. There are winners and losers. Values such as honor recede while others like equality of opportunity expand (as seen in the civil rights movement). There is an ongoing tension between a longing for unity in the face of pluralism and liberty under the weight of hegemony. In this context we must come to grasp how we receive and discover values, many of which date back millennia. Most importantly, by what criteria could we evaluate a set of values? How does one create a value?

*The foregoing paper speaks in general and vague terms. Subsequent entries will be rooted in much more concrete material rife with examples.