three qualities
To fully benefit from questions of purpose and commitment, we need to be grounded in certain qualities that help us hold to our personal intentions when we engage with the pressures of the marketplace. These qualities are our capacity for reawakening our idealism, our ability to become more intimate in the way we contact the environment, and our willingness to choose depth in the face of the ever-quickening pace of modern life. The culture has forsaken idealism for cynicism, it has foregone intimacy for consumption and virtual experience. As a result, we find ourselves alienated and isolated, regardless of the crowd that we move in. Finally, in an effort to go fast, we sacrifice depth. When we lose idealism, intimacy, and depth, we function at a cosmetic level, pushed along by fashion, out of touch with our center, and we react as if we are the effect of the culture, rather than its cause.
recapturing the idealism of youth.We are looking to balance our concern with what works with what matters. What is lost in a materialistic and pragmatic culture is our idealism. Idealism is a state of innocence that has the potential to bring together our larger purpose with our day-to-day doing. Idealism is required to reclaim our freedom, for at the end of it all, it is our freedom that gives us the possibility to more fully live our lives.
In Praise of the Impractical
Idealism is the pursuit of the way we think things should be. Webster's definition of an idealist is “one who follows their ideals, even to the point of impracticality.” This takes us right to the place we want to be, the place of practicality in the pursuit of our desires. It confronts us with the question of who decides what is possible and what is practical. Who draws the line, and do we perhaps yield too quickly on what others define as impractical?
There was a time in each of our lives when we were more idealistic than practical. A young child asks for the moon and expects it to be delivered. As we grow older and enter what is called the “real world,” our idealism is assaulted. Our idealism is thought of as weakness—a flaw in perception, an unwillingness or, worse, an incapacity to see the world as it really is. To be told you are idealistic and therefore unrealistic is a painful accusation. Idealism is the province of the child, a sign of immaturity. When are you going to grow up and get it?
Too Real, Too Soon
The pressure for realism is introduced at what seems to be an increasingly early age. Perhaps it is the media, or what is happening in the streets, in our communities, or the transient nature of our lifestyle, or the easy electronic exposure to the larger world. But whatever your theory about this might be, our children start adapting to the “real world” at younger and younger ages. We contribute to this realism by urging our children to learn more quickly. As soon as they begin school, we start worrying about their SAT scores and college. We fill their afternoons and weekends with developmental activities. We are happy when they win at sports, for we think this is a leading indicator of their future. Early in the game the child is asked to shift from experiencing life to preparing for it.
The push towards early adulthood undermines the possibility of prolonged idealism. And why not? Idealism is hard to defend, for data and history seem to be on the side of realism and practicality, almost by definition. How can you defend idealism . . . by measuring its value? Idealism dissolves in a world where measurement and instant results are the most acceptable answers. The result is a socially acceptable cynicism. Cynicism is a defense against idealism, and cynicism is so powerful because it has experience on its side. We each have our wounds. We each have our story of idealism unrewarded or even punished. Cynicism is the safe ground, for it is the ultimate defense against disappointment. The effect is that the idealist is discounted, even considered a fool.
I am one of those fools. One of my character flaws is that I am a dreamer. The rap against the books I write and the talks I give and the way I am in the world is that I am not realistic. That I am out of touch with the harsh reality of life. That I view life from a lofty perch, forgetting what it is like in the trenches. All of which is true.
Self-Interest Becomes the Bottom Line
Conventional wisdom makes several arguments against idealism. We have come to accept as true the economist's claim that behavior is basically driven by self-interest. This seems to be affirmed by the entitlement culture that we live in. We organize our institutions around the principle of self-interest, and this gives rise to the question “What's in it for me?” This question traps us in a utilitarian world. The implication is that if you do not come up with a decent offer, I am not interested. I have a right to something more from you, you owe me something, and if I commit myself to an organization, you must give the devil (in this case my self-interest) its due.
“What's in it for me?” declares that for me to care about something larger, there must be a payoff. My commitment is up for barter. If my commitment is conditional on your response, or on your delivery of a promise, then it never really was a commitment. It was a deal.
Real commitment is a choice I make regardless of what is offered in return.
People in power reciprocate the self-centeredness of “What's in it for me?” when they, in turn, ask, “How do we get those people to commit?” Once we have begun this exchange—which is really the commercialization of commitment—we have excluded the possibility of authentic, personal commitment and the willing pursuit of our own desires and ideals. People in power despair over finding commitment without resorting to devices designed to “get” someone to do something. Employees abandon their desires because they think they won't be rewarded.
This creates such a widely accepted barter mentality that any discussion of individual ideals and desires has been relegated to our private lives. We've replaced desire with the discussion of needs: what they are and what we can exchange to satisfy them. John McKnight and Ivan Illich have written extensively about how when we talk of people's needs, we convert people from citizens to consumers. We shrink the human spirit when we define needs, because it has us acting out of our deficiencies rather than from our capacities. And we barter away one of our greatest capacities, which is the capacity to dream and to pursue that dream, simply for its own sake.
It is common to get stuck complaining about the culture of entitlement, how generation XYZ is in it for themselves—and whatever happened to gratitude?—but this a tired conversation. The questions that are most compelling are: What does it mean when we lose contact or faith in our ideals, or our dreams and desires? Why would we give up the pursuit of our desires if the right offer does not come along? Why have I placed my desires up for auction? When did I decide that I could live without them or postpone them until I have implemented my exit strategy?
Idealism is the willingness to pursue our desires past the point of practicality. The surrender of desire is a loss of part of our self. Desire is an affair of the heart. My heart's desire. This is why the word desire is so out of place in a world of commerce. Matters of the heart, such as our deepest values, are not open to negotiation. The heart cannot be explained, or reasoned with, or commanded. The heart longs, it suffers and breaks, it desires. The economist has no interest in affairs of the heart because they cannot be predicted or traded; in other words, they cannot be managed. The discounting of desire is a loss of faith that there could be any alternative to the world as defined by the economist.
Barter as a Last Resort
We are willing to barter our commitment when we have no more authentic, or desire-based, commitment to give, because we forget for that moment what we are willing to sacrifice for. In this way barter becomes the booby prize. In the absence of knowing what I can give myself over to, or the willingness to place myself at risk for an unknowable and uncertain outcome, I am willing to come to the table and play Let's Make a Deal with my idealism. Who wouldn't want to be a millionaire at these moments?
To freely choose barter as the basis for work is to commercialize our relationships and ourselves. I treat myself as a transaction in the making. I value myself according to what I can get for myself. My market value becomes my only value. I am now worth what the market will bear. So why wouldn't I get the highest price possible?
Part of the price of becoming a transaction is that we allow our value to be defined by others: an organization, a boss, a recruiter, a partner, a lover. I become a commodity whose worth rises and falls according to the marketplace. I place my self-esteem in the hands of forces that I cannot control. I am happy when the price rises and feel depressed in periods of recession—and I am literally depressed in times of deflation.
The economic model of the person affirms instrumental relationships that are held together by the nature and value of the exchange.
I am willing to do what is rewarded, I want desperately to know what they value, I refuse to do what is not rewarded, and I want greater rewards, especially when I deliver greater and greater results. Ultimately, no level of reward is enough, for my work and my purpose have become a game. Winning more becomes the point, for I need the game to feel valued.
What I may not realize is that when I choose this path, I sacrifice my own purpose. The choice of purpose and the rules of engagement are no longer mine, they belong to the marketplace—and the marketplace knows how to take advantage of that.
Calling and Commitment
There is an alternative to the barter model. It is to believe that people want to contribute to an institution and need not be purchased to do so. Paid yes, but purchased no. There are other sources of motivation besides a negotiated exchange. There are elements of desire that want to be expressed. There are many examples of people choosing work because they simply want to do it, not because of the material rewards. This is, in fact, what some have called the artist's way. It also the teacher's way, many civil servants' way, the way of those who have chosen a religious path.
In the eyes of commerce, a calling is a luxury and the artist is seen as either a fool or a terrorist—they do not live by the rules of commerce or within the bonds of loyalty. They are loyal only to their own art, their own values, their own idealism. They are no more dangerous or rare than those who choose the more instrumental path, they just value their own free, subjective experience enough that they have chosen to not be defined by the economic model.
Virtue Is Its Own Reward
You may ask, Why would someone commit themselves to the success of a business unless the rewards were there? To which I would reply, Well, what happened to virtue? Virtue is advertised to be its own reward. It does not do well, however, when we define the game as the economic pursuit of all that is practical and immediately useful. When we only treasure How? and devalue all questions of “For what purpose?” and “For whose sake?” we send virtue into hiding. And with virtue's retreat, sacrifice, commitment, faith, and her other cousins are left in the cold.
With the loss of inside-out commitment, our institutions also suffer. The possibility that people will voluntarily care for the whole disappears. Instead of seeing that we are part of the cause, we think it is in people's nature to be self-centered and interested in their own small silo. So we then conclude that the only way that care for the whole will exist is if we purchase it. Then the prophecy is complete. Our belief in the barter model proves that money is the only voice that speaks. The fact that we have actively silenced individual desires and authentic commitment never even gets defined as a problem for management.
Besides costing the individual a more compassionate version of themselves, the economic model also costs the community. This is the loss of philanthropy. So rare has altruism become that the word is unfamiliar from lack of usage. Though large organizations give money to the community, acts of philanthropy have become part of a business strategy. For example, the Public Broadcasting System used to ask for funding for its programming by going to the foundation or community relations departments of large corporations. During the 1980s, however, they were told to contact the marketing department for a decision on what to fund. Intentions that began as philanthropy have now converted to marketing and image building.
Freedom for Sale
There are emotional forms of barter that are even more significant than economic transactions.
The barter mindset treats every act as if it were driven by the exchange value for the players.
Everything is offered up for auction, the most precious of which is our own freedom: We are willing to surrender our freedom, especially in the workplace, in return for protection and promotion. We surrender sovereignty to the boss and they in turn protect us and look out for our interests.
This is a bargain that goes back at least to medieval times when the feudal lord offered the protection of a walled city to the peasants in return for dominion over them. He was the lord; they were required to serve him through taxes, sex, and other forms of allegiance. He, in turn, maintained a fighting force and security system for their safety. Straightforward deal. Subjugation in return for safety.
Bring this forward to modern institutions, and employees make a similar bargain. We will follow orders, live with the management style of the boss, defend the interest of the unit in exchange for the boss's advocacy of our interests. A small example: I heard an executive state that he was troubled by managers competing over who got promoted. He was in a personnel planning meeting where all of the division managers fought for the promotion of their own people, with little concern for the well being of the larger institution.
Why would these executives think their own people were better than others and act out of some kind of familial imperative? You might say this is in the nature of being human and there may be some truth in this. But more likely it was the executives attempting to deliver on the patriarchal promise, the bargain of loyalty in exchange for protection and promotion. They have to advocate for their own people to meet their contractual obligations.
It is easy to blame the boss for becoming a baron. I think the choice and mentality of the subordinate are more significant. We offer parts of ourselves, our desires, our freedom, as part of the bargain and so expect our bosses to fight for our interests every chance they get. And when they do, we think we have made a good deal. At this moment we begin to believe that in order to be successful, we must put our freedom on the table. When we are rewarded, at least we sold it for a good price.
Naming the Debate
In the barter framework, the cost of the bargain is dependency: We have become so dependent on our institutions and their agents that we think they hold the key to what we most dearly seek. When we think that the only way we can get what we want is to bargain for it, we hand over power to others, including the power to define reality.
We yield the capacity to define what matters. We encourage the institution to define what matters for us by asking our leaders what is important to them. I listen when they list the five values that we should operate under. I want to know what their objectives are and how we should achieve them. I let the organization tell me who I am when I take their feedback seriously. I want my boss to be my mentor. I work on myself in line with their suggestions; in fact, if I do not get feedback from my boss, I am disappointed. The consequence is that I do not feel I can be myself and also be successful. At least, not until I get near the end of the line and can wade into shore.
At Home as Well as Work
Like every other element of our passion for practicality, the barter belief system also bleeds into our personal relationships. I think that to get what I want from my partner, someone I love, I must consciously offer something of value in return. The destructive element in this is not that there needs to be balance in the relationship, which there does. It is that I have become instrumental about what I offer. I have heard myself talk about all that I have “invested” in a relationship. Well, when did a relationship become an investment decision? Did I fall in love with the expectation of a return on that “investment”? Am I a friend as long as I get something back? Or as long as the relationship “works”? Have you ever heard yourself suggest to a family member that we have a “meeting”? I have.
There needs to be a place for the mystery and surrender and forgiveness that characterize idealism, in our work and our personal lives. These conditions are not amenable to barter or exchange. Mystery means that much of what matters may be unspeakable, or unknowable. Surrender, in a spiritual sense, would lose its value if done for effect. Forgiveness is not forgiveness if given with the expectation of return.
Talking in these terms is a way of reestablishing our respect for idealism. It is the artist in each of us speaking. It is believing in something for its own sake, a rediscovery of innocence in the best sense. It entails giving up some of our sophistication and cynicism. This becomes the stuff of what matters. It entails some risk, subjects us to possible scorn, especially from the economists. All of which makes it unsafe and trustworthy. It may be that only when we stop thinking in terms of barter, and market value, are we ready to experience our freedom once again. Not only our freedom to act on our own choices, but our freedom to take our dreams seriously, and return idealism to the place where we once kept it sacred.
The point to focusing on idealism is that it is part of what can sustain us when we act on our values. Our idealism gives us the conviction to bring the models of effective organizations into the world in a way that affirms our deepest values, regardless of whether the world reinforces our efforts. For example, if we say that what we care most about is compassion, justice, and reconciliation, then these qualities will define how we implement the model of the workplace we believe in. Our idealism allows us to act on our values for their own sake and not be lured by more barter-based, self-interested strategies of action. We advocate tactics of living out our commitment and do not expect to be rewarded for following this path. Otherwise, the kind of organization we want to create (our model) gets polluted by the way we try to bring it into being (the means). We get caught up with the ends justifying the means. To avoid this, we recapture our idealism as one of the preconditions to acting on what matters.
sustaining the touch of intimacy.The second condition for acting on what matters is to choose intimacy in the face of an instrumental world. The challenge is to sustain our humanity when all around us is in the process of being automated. Intimacy is about the quality of contact we make: It values direct experience over electronic or virtual experience. It is immersion into the world of feelings, connection with the senses, and vulnerability—all of which, not incidentally, are considered liabilities in our institutions. In an instrumental world people are considered assets, resources to be leveraged; they are not valued as unique and highly variable human beings. Institutions are based on consistency and predictability, while intimacy relies on variation and surprise.
The Pull of Disconnection
Instrumentality turns our bodies into tools—or, in the end, crops. My friend Peter Koestenbaum tells of conducting a Philosophy in Business seminar with an oil company. As he begins to speak, one of the participants interrupts and says, “We want you to know, professor, that we have brains made of cement.”
Peter responds, “Well, you have a heart, don't you?”
“We call that a pump.”
In the world of commerce, the heart becomes a pump. Everything gets defined by its utility—so often and for so long—that we apply that thinking to our own selves: My body is no longer valued as the temple of my soul, but as a commodity, a mechanical puzzle, the ultimate clockworks. There will come a time when my body will become completely replaceable, from my brain to my heart, as well as all the rest of my organs and limbs. And if there is a spare parts shortage, no problem, my body can be cloned—an exact copy of myself can be made. Supply and demand. Upon death, my net worth goes up. My organs, when harvested and sold off individually, have a market value of close to a million dollars. So in the end, the sum of my parts could be worth a great deal more than the whole. When this happens the world of commerce has transformed the human body into a product. Quite a contrast to the idea of the body as the physical incarnation of our existence.
Intimacy is a relationship to the world where feelings, touch, sight, and smell are the point. Close contact with another person, with nature, a work of art, an idea, our own bodies— these are all elements of living intimately.
Intimacy requires free and willing disclosure, often at the expense of instrumental values such as role playing, control, and negotiation. Intimacy values the detail and nuances of life, it cares for the color, shape, and light in a room. It attends to the detail of interaction with other people. It is sensitive beyond comfort and recognizes the pain of existence. Intimacy cares more about the fate of a person than the success of an institution. In this way, intimacy can become a political stance that seems to endanger institutions. This is one reason we fear intimacy in the workplace: If we get too close to an idea, or people, or even a product, we will not have the detachment necessary to engage in tough institutional surgery.
Intimacy, like idealism, has little market value. Intimacy can't really be measured and is difficult to price and purchase, try as we might. When you think of becoming an artist (the archetype of someone who is on intimate terms with nature, with ideas, and with the world of the senses), the word starving follows quickly. Intimacy also implies an element of activism, the willingness to show up—often. It is to be in dialogue with others, to be in their presence often enough to know what they look like, think about, feel like. It is the experience of sharing doubts and talking through differences. It is a contact sport, where touch is fundamental.
The Virtual Experience
Intimacy is becoming obsolete with the growth of the electronic culture. We choose video conferences rather than face-to-face meetings, we attend school online, we email, voicemail, and more, all for the sake of cost and efficiency. As Robert Putnam and others keep reminding us, civic engagement and social capital, which are collective forms of intimacy, are on the decline in our communities. We stay home at night, the porch has moved to the back of the house, and we are too busy or too exhausted to join in activist, collective endeavors. We only show up in numbers for sports and entertainment. Instead of contact sports, we want spectator sports.
In its ability to replace or enhance human effort, computer technology also changes the nature of human experience. For all its ability to make the world work better, it may unintentionally increase my feelings of detachment and reduce my capacity to sustain an intimate relationship, not only with people, which is always difficult, but with my environment, my workplace, my neighborhood, my world.
One way to view the impact of technology on our experience is to notice how it drives us towards a more virtual existence. Virtual is defined as “being in effect, though not in actual fact” (Webster). Virtual reality gives us the appearance or simulation of an experience, without having the experience itself. Much of the electronic technology offers us efficiency and infinite access to information, instead of direct experience. The direct experience it does offer is with a monitor, a keyboard, and a variety of magical devices. Where I once knew the bank teller, now I am friends with my ATM machine. Where I once went to a store to shop, I now go online. In all of this I gain convenience, but sacrifice human and material contact.
Intimacy as Marketing Strategy
Language is another example. We are defined by our language and we are increasingly bringing the language of technology into our daily dialogue. What was conversation is now considered “information exchange.” When we want a private conversation we “talk offline.” When we talk about “community,” we are referring to a long-distance network with people we may never have met.
And commerce is now co-opting for its own use the language of relationship. We now hear the term customer intimacy. A large technology company proudly advertises that it is “in the relationship-building business” and offers the latest ways to develop customer intimacy. What they mean by “relationship building” is knowing enough about me to have the right product at the right place at the right price at the right time. This is their version of a relationship: detailed customer data ready to be monetized into a sale.
Where intimacy once meant a close encounter, it is now a marketing strategy. Companies know everything there is to know about me, the customer: my income level, whether I am a high-or low-maintenance customer, what my buying patterns are, the other kinds of products people like me tend to buy. They know more about my buying patterns than I do. Some day I expect them to know me well enough to send me new clothes that I never ordered. And what bothers me the most is that they will be right: I will probably like what they have drop-shipped to my house. This form of intimacy could get very expensive. Plus, if they can offer me pants today, can a spouse be far behind?
It says something profound about the nature of our culture when intimacy becomes an instrument of trade. It is interesting that before the term was commercialized, it was not welcome in institutional life. Now that it has lost its original meaning and can be used to sell, it becomes strategic and therefore acceptable.
The Disappearance of Place
When we take the language and knowledge once reserved for close friends and family and, through technology, commercialize it, our sense of place in the world shifts. What we once did with friends, families, and loved ones will now be done with suppliers. Commerce creeps closer and closer to the center of our lives and starts to create an electronic membrane between us and what was once, if not holy, at least human and personal.
The result is that intimacy with the natural and material world is being supplanted by intimacy with the electronic world.
I now spend many hours, even days, learning how to navigate and becoming dependent on this electronic world. I used to be able to set and wind a clock, turn a page in an address book, be surprised by who calls on the phone, cook food over a fire, read by simply turning a page. I could write readable cursive, I could spell, walk down the hall to communicate with co-workers, add, multiply, and divide. Now I can do none of these things. Every time I buy a new labor-saving and life-changing device— which I do because I have a mild addiction to them—I spend hours selecting modes, changing settings, waiting for blinking numbers to calm down, hiding passwords I can never find, and buying batteries.
Technology is amazing, useful, efficient, and at times life saving. But it also has the effect of funneling us into a more virtual way of being and reduces our capacity to live a life that matters. For example, it gives me the illusion of going somewhere. Microsoft asks, “Where do you want to go today?” Well, I am not actually going anywhere. I am sitting right here in front of my monitor. For all its benefits, technology increases my passivity, it isolates me, and it automates more than just my work.
The Illusion of Electronic Reality
I lose touch with myself when I lose touch with what is real, with what is essential about being a person, a part of the earth, intertwined with other human beings. When I become accustomed to a virtual experience, when my private life becomes increasingly organized around my work life, when an electronic world, perfect as it might be, begins to replace my imperfect, decaying, but living and breathing world, I become like that tool.
Here is a summary of the impact our loss of intimacy has on our ability to act on what matters.
The End of the Touch of Reality. When I live a virtual life, in which I can choose my experiences off a menu, I gain the illusion of complete control over my life and those around me, which in clinical terms could be called a mental illness. It is the ultimate state of being out of touch with reality. It is the equivalent of many people's wish to have a garden that requires no maintenance. A friend, Allan Cohen, cleverly argues with my concern by asking why we think that plastic flowers are not real. They are real, he says. They are real plastic. You might argue that our electronic experiences are real, they just happen to be electronic.
The End of Nature. In a way, the loss of intimacy in our modern culture is making nature itself obsolete. In agriculture, we have the terminator gene in a seed. This means that the seed is good for only one crop and one harvest. The traditional regenerative power of the seed, as eternal giver of life, has ended. The moment the terminator gene was introduced, the life-giving aspect of nature was ended and now the ability to grant another harvest has been vested in Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland.
Or consider the way the outdoors is now being manufactured. Go to Las Vegas or the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. They both essentially replace the out-of-doors by covering it on a grand scale. You leave the hotel, walk outside, down a street, and discover that what you thought was outside is just a large dome that covers the immediate world. In this simulated world, the temperature is always 71 degrees, it never rains, and the sun is never in your eyes. I remember going to a restaurant in Las Vegas where we were asked whether we wanted indoor or outdoor seating. We chose outdoors and they seated us on the patio: nice evening, stars above, last light of day slowly fading, quiet breeze from the southwest. Then we suddenly realized we were under a big dome. The twilight, the stars, the breeze were all part of a manufactured natural setting. Who needs nature when you can get a night like this?
Leveraged Learning. Computers and long-distance technology are changing our classrooms and conference rooms. Learning is essentially being “leveraged.” Long-distance learning is automating the college campus and the classroom. My favorite teacher now will be someone I have never met. We will be taught by a “master teacher” in a remote location. The possibility of the master teacher in one location, broadcasting their wisdom and knowledge to a thousand other locations, is a growth industry. It is a case of confusing learning with information exchange. Long-distance learning devalues the intimacy of the traditional teacher-student relationship. If we believe that all learning is social and thereby intimate then learning becomes one more way our desire for efficiency and economic value replaces our need for human connection.
Digital Activism. Our capacity for intimacy is also threatened by the way electronic technology substitutes for social and civic engagement. I think I can get all I need from my home entertainment center and never leave the house, meet my neighbors, know my local government. Part of the problem is that the technology is sold as a creator of community. What is the value of connecting with people in China if I never go next door or downtown?
Technology increases our isolation while at the same time promising to overcome it. My mother used to keep the TV on all the time to try to overcome her loneliness. It didn't. It only made enough noise so that she did not have to really make contact with others who might have offered some genuine relief.
Like our idealism, intimacy is needed to keep acting on what matters. We have to make a special effort to deepen our direct participation in the world. This is not an argument against technology, only that it is not a substitute for direct contact. The final cost of virtual connection is that it experientially isolates us and leaves us dependent on a reality constructed by others. It reduces our willingness to show up and invest in the realization of our desires. Our desires are given life by their demand for touch, vulnerability, disclosure, surprise, and raw feeling. Not great conditions for bottom-line bargaining in an instrumental culture. Intimacy is also about more than a relationship. It is the wonder and connection to the earth, to humanity at large, and to something more important than anything that can easily be talked about. It is something that is not knowable or manageable. It must be chosen for the sheer experience of it or it loses its quality. This is what acting on our deeper purpose entails, and operating in an environment of isolation and virtual experience makes acting on a set of values more difficult.
enduring the depth of philosophy.If acting on what matters needs idealism and intimate contact, it also calls us to go deeper into ourselves and become more reflective towards what we most care about. This includes giving ourselves time and space to think independently and to value the inward journey. Without the willingness to go deeper, there is little chance for any authentic change.
We are out of the habit of thinking and questioning; we prefer action and answers. Our favorite clichés express our preference for doing and our ambivalence towards reflection and inwardness:
We want to have a bias for action.
It is not enough to simply talk, we want to walk it.
Talk, after all, is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.
Don't just stand there, do something!
In the end, the proof is in the pudding.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
We want a bird in the hand, who cares about the two in the bush? (I wonder how the birds feel about this.)
Intellectual pursuits are not popular in our modern culture. We have negative images of those who spend their lives trying to understand. We condemn thinking by demeaning the “ivory tower.” Anyone who values thought over action gets labeled with such terms such as pie-in-the-sky, dreamer, idealist, navel gazer. Serious thought, and the time and depth this requires, becomes a luxury, an impractical distraction.
Inner Space
Thinking, reflection, and going deeper take time and require us to get personal—to question our own beliefs, theories, and feelings. When we decide to set aside time to think, to reflect, we get nervous. The fear is that if we took the time for questioning, for thought, for introspection, we might not have what it takes to act or do. Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to do or die. Interesting message: If you question, you die.
It is hard to imagine making any important change in life without an inward journey. Think of Christ going into the desert for forty days. It was in the desert that he dealt with his own doubts and temptations and from which he emerged having chosen his freedom and his destiny. It is in our own internal deserts that we remember what really matters. It is on the inward journey, taken over time, that we develop the capacity for intimacy with ourselves and with others, with the environment, and with the world. It is deciding that we are deep human beings with inner lives that defines who we are and brings our ideals back into focus. To put this on a schedule is to undermine the possibilities open to us. We might be willing to go into the desert for five days—who can spare forty days with so much to do and so little time to do it all? There are many things in this culture that make it difficult for us to go deeper; the one I want to focus on is our relationship to speed.
Speed Is God and Time Is the Devil
We are well acquainted with the value of speed. The information age has built its reputation on it. The importance of being first to market, the importance of quick cycle time, turn on a dime, a 24/7 response, we will be there any time, any place, with any thing you need. Just call.
Depth becomes a victim of this love affair with speed. As with most aspects of modern life, what began as a requirement of commerce has expanded and bled into the fabric of our lives. There are legitimate needs for speed, such as in emergencies, or in markets where being first is everything. These legitimate needs, however, often expand to illegitimately change every aspect of our lives—including how we think about what is real and who we are. In this way, speed becomes the antithesis of depth, perhaps even a defense against it.
Some popular examples of the modern, 24/7 life:
I eat fast food. Perhaps gourmet, low-fat, high-quality, out-of-the-freezer fast food—but it's still fast.
When I do go to a sit-down restaurant, it becomes a call center.
I am always on call and my home has become a workplace.
My belt has become a hanger for pagers and phones.
Packages and mail come overnight, even though I ignore them for days after they arrive.
I have no time to read, so I digest everything in sound bites and executive summaries.
Speed and the Quality of Experience
When speed becomes the measure of performance it governs the way we experience our lives as well as the quality of our lives. Speed becomes a reason to settle for lower quality and ignore our desires. A friend, Meg Wheatley, told me about a poet who agreed to publish a poem on a very tight deadline. When she asked how he could do that, he said, “All I have to do is lower my standards.”
As an expression of this temporal materialism, we believe that we must postpone what matters until later in life. Young people believe that they need to make money first, and then do what will have meaning. They do this by getting on the “fast track.” Living out a set of ideals, doing what I want, making deeper contact with the world, and really engaging those around me—all get postponed.
Artificial Scarcity
The question is whether the need for speed is real or manufactured. In many ways the shortage of time is an artificial scarcity. We think we are increasing the value of time when we make it more scarce than it objectively is. Why have we come to the point where we think there is not enough time? We know exactly how much there is. We do not know when we will die, true, but the number of hours in a day is completely predictable and easily managed. Yet we seem to fight time and the clock.
The marketplace demand for speed may be a realistic standard for production, but who said it had to become a standard for living? Why is speed a god and time the devil? Do we really believe that to have time on our hands is to flirt with the devil.? When did it become a mistake to walk—slowly—instead of ride? When did we decide that there should be a minimum speed on the highway? We end up using speed to fight the devil of free time, unstructured experience, aimless ambling, and the emptiness and lack of direction that exists in each of our lives. Perhaps speed fills a void for us so we do not have to struggle with ideals, intimacy, and depth.
We also treat time as a fact, rather than a perception. In reality, we decide how long fast or slow is. In a doctor's office, time creeps along; when we are in love, days fly by.
If we want depth, we need to step out of time.
The quality of our experience is not measured by the seconds on the clock, but by the timelessness of our experience. We fool ourselves if we ask how long it will take before we know who we are, become conscious, identify with our purpose, or remember our own history in a more forgiving way.
The things that matter to us are measured by depth. Would you assess your humanity by its pace? When I view myself as a time-sensitive product, valued for what I produce, then I have made depth, extended thought, and the inward journey marginal indulgences. Instead of doing what matters, I spend my life doing what works. It increases my market value and postpones the question of my human value.
No wonder we feel lost, or at times helpless, because speed is indifferent to its destination. We are in as much of a hurry to do things that have no meaning as we are those things that actually matter. At times, the only goal is to go faster. Acting on what matters means knowing the difference between moving quickly and knowing where we are going. I know that when I am driving and I am lost, I always speed up. If I do not know where I am going, or if I am going to the wrong place, I want to get there more quickly. This would suggest that speed itself is an indication that we are lost.
If we decide to act on what matters, then we shift our consciousness about pace. There is always time to do everything that really matters: If we do not have time to do something, it is a sign that it does not matter. If we claim that going fast is not our choice, but is a dictate of the world, then we have yet to claim our freedom and risk the possibility of saying no. If we love going fast and speed is our friend, then we need to ask what we are postponing. There is simply no way to shorten the time that depth requires. Any of the values we hold dear wilt under the pressure of time. It is difficult to imagine instant compassion, instant reconciliation, or instant justice. If we yield to the temptation of speed, we short-circuit our values. Ultimately we become disappointed and lose faith in our attempt to bring our strategies and models into the world.