Change Condition 4: INSIGHT

Note: Serial approach. Introductory post (June 30). First in series (July 1).

Christmas…

I hope you are ready. Especially since it’s only two days until Christmas. For those who stand in the mystical stream of Christian traditions, Christmas is a feast/celebration of the high holy One/high holy day of the annual Christian calendar. So, as we are on the cusp of Christmas once more, the time seems right to share something that might strike you as a misprint. It’s no misprint. It is, in fact, my favorite Christmas story from the Bible—and I do seriously doubt that you’ve ever heard this verse identified as a Christmas story. So, I mean it to be something of a koan for you. A Christmas riddle if you will:

My favorite Christmas story is Mark 10.46. <– click

Granted, it’s an obscure Christmas riddle. Everyone knows the Christmas stories are found in Matthew and Luke, so what is up with this? Leonard Sweet has recently introduced a new term that really applies here. He’s made a mash-up of two terms, Christ and Mystery: ‘Chrystery.’ Here—from (an extracanonical text) The Gospel of Thomas—is a strong hint as to why I find Mark 10.46 to be a Christmas story:

cleave meme sized — Gospel of Thomas – Saying 77 || Image CC0

Potential for R.o.I. finally accrues …

Last week’s blog post in this space marked the beginning of the potential for a return on investment for my writing, and your reading, of these five-minute-posts here weekly this past six months. Finally, enough shared Spiral Dynamics [SD] language has been established in the blog to allow us to take both sides of a polarized issue to task within the same paragraph. In the 12/16 blog, “Solutions || Dissonance,” I challenged both sides of the immigration argument. I’m working on doing this because binary discourse is going nowhere. I hope in doing so that I was able to allude to how the same values are at work in many of today’s polarized, broken divisions—e.g.,conflicts between different values stages, or vMEMEs.

Change Condition 4… INSIGHT

World-Peace-Gaia-Orion sized — “World Peace” by Gaia Orion || **gaiaorion.com**

The fourth necessary condition for deep change is:

“INSIGHT … into probable causes and viable alternatives. By ‘insight’ we mean there is an understanding of (1) what went wrong with the previous system and why, as well as (2) what resources are now available to handle the problems better. Unless people have a rationale for understanding why the prior system was embraced initially and why it was eventually undermined, lasting change into the next order is fitful. Insight keeps the old problems in focus and clarifies the new ones.

Different patterns and models, as well as step-by-step processes for implementing them, are essential to moving into a new system. These alternative scenarios must be active in the collective consciousness before they can be considered. Too often, they are guarded in the minds of an elite few ‘planners’ or ‘decision makers.’ People need mental pictures of what things might be like for them in their own real Life Conditions, …” ~ SD, Beck and Cowan, page 83

Beck and Cowan continue: “Some ways to initiate change in patterns and models include:

Greater insight into how systems form, decline, and reform—particularly one’s own. People must accept the possibility of change as well as the means.

Put a stop to wasteful regressive searches into out-modded answers from the past which simply cannot address greater complexity of the present.

Consider optional scenarios, fresh models, and experiences from applicable sources. Scout the competition and demonstrate concretely what alternatives look like.

Quickly recognize the appearance of new Life Conditions and the vMEMEs required to shift into congruence. Custom tailor for best fit.” (page 83)

Current events…

OK, from a decency standpoint, it’s difficult to know where to begin when it comes to the many events of this past week. Given all our discussion of Blue [DQ] ‘order‘ values and the rule of law in the past few posts, let’s take a troubling news item of the week. The Trump travel ban was in the news again this week. The mother of a dying toddler—a U.S. citizen receiving medical care in San Francisco—who had been blocked to travel from Yemen to visit her child, was finally granted a waiver. From a CNN story (here):

Shaima Swileh, whose 2-year-old is on life support in an Oakland hospital, had been restricted from traveling to the United States under the White House travel ban until the US State Department granted her a travel waiver earlier this week.

Swileh spent over a year trying to get a waiver that would let her join Hassan and their son, Abdullah, as they sought medical care in the US, the family’s attorneys said.

Attorney Banan Al-Akhras, with the Nimer Law firm that represents the family, said Swileh was told she would be considered for a waiver over a year ago.

Since then, the family reached out to the US Embassy in Cairo 28 times but only received automated responses, Al-Akhras said.

We recall: Blue [DQ] is conventional…

A major benefit of law is that it creates clarity of authority. If Red [CP] ‘power‘ values occupy leading-edge ascendancy, then every relational situation is an opportunity to rehearse a power struggle to determine authority and direction. Even Kindergartners are experientially building an intuitive sense that rules free us from an endless power struggle and create ordinary order. We learn to acquiesce our personal power to the common good [e.g., the Blue conventions] and ascent/submit to the order of rules. Not having to work out all the Red power issues every time we make a move among others is helpful, and, as we discover and learn by experience, rules beneficially aid in getting us to recess and lunch more promptly and efficiently. While we must grant rules/laws are very short on agility and have little to no flexibility, we also must recognize that ordinary order is not possible without them.

We recall: Blue [DQ] is a blunt force instrument

A major downside of law is that it creates clarity of authority. We see here one of the often underappreciated limitations of Blue [DQ] ‘order‘ values, e.g., DQ‘s lack of agility (and, thus, lack of mercy). A mother barred from visiting her dying toddler—yes, that’s our government Blue in its present iteration at work on our behalf—strikes us as horrifying. Very few people, upon learning about this story, fail to immediately object to this situation, and most find it completely unacceptable, full stop. And yet, the obvious problem is that the rule of law creates very limited authority to deviate from the letter of the law for those who are responsible to administer them. We have judges who have authority to interpret available discretion in the law, but, obviously, we cannot station a judge in every local instance of the law being applied to people and situations. DQ application can often be obviously inappropriate and yet it regularly requires a cumbersome if not impossible process to rectify. Creative solutions to this problematic dimension of Blue are needed.