Learning to act right (51)… Obligation and relationships – invisible bonds which bind

Torrey Orton*

Sept 28, 2015

Attachment by obligation – an implicit reciprocity

A commitment may often be expressed in and through an obligation. An obligation reflects or expresses a reliable attachment, though this may not be what attachment theory means at first glance**. Add some culture to the mix and the meaning gets perhaps even more attenuated because experienced with less insight. For instance,

30 years ago my wife and I did a favour for someone which transformed their life, and not just putting on a new shirt or haircut as the word is used today. Our favour opened the door to a future they could not have ventured, though they certainly could imagine it and had done so. We have been paying for it ever since in the form of the others’ absolutely persistent thankfulness every time we see them (every few years 1/2 a world away). Here’s the rub: sustaining our enthusiasm for their over the top gifts is difficult for two reasons - time withers the intensity as the imbalance in the equation of our favour’s worth vis-à-vis the receiver’s benefit reduces our sense of that value to them. And the counter rub is this: our failure to receive with the energy of their thankful giving may demean the value of the gift and the giver!

This could be the dynamic of any gift relationship, until it is extended over 30 years with the expectation that it will never cease! That’s the cultural additive to the mix. Such devoted thankfulness is understandable in cultures where personal control over one’s fate, to say nothing of one’s opportunities and pursuit of them, is radically conditional. Such is the case described.

Ignorance of cultural obligations

The cultural effect at the individual, family and work group levels is a set of bonds with great temporal reach, with the consequence that social and personal bonds are almost an inescapable condition of living. These bonds provide a roughly guaranteed system of support extending to the outer reaches of ‘family’ to include village neighbours (the source of financial support for many Chinese students in Australia 20 years ago; those students who failed in the relevant terms were failing a whole village of stakeholders; the shame could be terminal). In this sense and in our own case, an obligation may often be attached with anchors at both ends. Under-acknowledgement of a benefit I provide may constitute another entangling bond both for me and my beneficiaries.

 

However, our western preparation for life included the implicit assumption that we could and should control our destinies in almost every regard. Where not possible, it became the responsibility of higher authorities to pitch in with ever more powerful health cares, safety nets and so on. Assume these conflicting assumptions in me and I came up short in receivership: I did not sustain the appropriate levels of concern for the honour they were bestowing. For me even 10 years later I emitted low grade resistance – the kinds expressed through slight withholdings of feelings…By 35 years later I had to mask a sense of irritation with the formalities. Of course lack of formality is ever so western, not eastern, too.

 

Binding bonds

The thing is, this bond (bind) by obligation can sustain any contents, from the merest reciprocities of food and drink to the entangling compromises of corruption and crime!! It can make anything personal and invest everyone touched by it with an ownership of the results of its exercise. So, we can track the resistance of institutions of many kinds to the acknowledgment of their various ethical, moral and legal calumnies to the need to hold the bonded together. Institution members hug their misdemeaning associates with warm embraces of approval or, under pressure, the cool handling of denial without betraying or exiling them. Those two ejecting responses are retained for punishing whistle-blowers of all kinds.

 

*I am a 72 year old, AHPRA registered male psychotherapist with a large caseload out of family violences. There the question of what is ‘live’ in real life is the central existential challenge and how to live better the central developmental one.

 

** I became aware by stepping into this simple task that whole chapters of Shaver and Mikulincer’s 577 pg. Attachment in Adulthood (2007) opened with it. A few hours perusal of it in turn reminded me of the abstract complexities of ‘attachment’ which cannot be processed in the act of engaging without disengaging to do the processing. I invite you to a small view here of that wide frame. There’s a modest (34 pg.) chapter on “Interpersonal Regulation” concerned mainly with the dynamic structures of interdependent attachment and not obviously with any contents, personal or socio-systemic, of those attachments.

Learning to act right (31)… When is a counter-attack ethical

Learning to act right (31)… When is a counter-attack ethical
Torrey Orton
Jan. 9, 2012

I look forward to the views of St James Ethics Centre on the ethics of our proposed action described below. At least, some generic guidelines for our thinking so far would be useful. I will be approaching Ethi-Call, the Centre's telephone ethics consulting service for an opinion of the following strategy when they re-open in a week. This article is still in draft at this posting.

I write on behalf of a loose assemblage called Friends of the Fertility Control Clinic (FCC), numbering around 6-8 volunteers who appear solo or in pairs at least 4 of the 6 mornings a week the clinic is open. We support patients arriving between 7:30 and 9AM who are being challenged by Helpers of God's Precious Infants (HoGPIs). The HoGPIs' view is that they are offering help to pregnant women who are, in their own views, being harassed by the HoGPIs.


Proof of the patient perception lies in two facts: almost no patients ever take up the help offer (as reported by the HoGPIs themselves) and, two, once the patients pass by the first offer they are subjected to various degrees of continuing verbal harassment (as defined technically by the Melbourne City Council by-laws, which is also harassment by our standards and, we believe, the standards of most of society). The HoGPIs have on passive display materials which can only be called provocative for patients and partners. Their view is that they make no contribution to patient distress because patients are already distressed – a simple, but self-serving ignorance of the psychology of stress (it is cumulative!).


We have been supporting patients for 18 months now. The HoGPIs in some cases have been protesting for 20 years at this site, or another. We are on a first name basis with the principal actors of the HoGPIs, though none will take responsibility for leadership on the site. The regular HoGPI participants number about 10, with daily numbers varying from 4 to12. The most persistently aggressive of their number are women. Patients do not know they are usually being covertly filmed by one HoGPI and their daily numbers recorded manually, all assumed to be seeking abortions. The HoGPIs do not know which patients are coming for abortions and which for other fertility control help.


Apart from our presence, which patients spontaneously thank us for, we support by actively pointing out when HoGPIs have stepped over the technical harassment line, usually saying to the offending HoGPI, "they said 'no'". Sometimes some of us step between patients and protestors after that line has been crossed and accompany them to the clinic entrance. The pattern of events under discussion occur on a public footpath bounded on one side by the property line of the clinic and overseen by a security guard each day (one of whom was shot to death 10 years ago by a protest-associated gunman; no one in the clinic has forgotten that this is a possible end game of their professional commitment).


Our commitment to patient support is based mainly on the need to reduce patient stress. I am professionally committed to this as a psychologist and psychotherapist. Others of the Friends have their own reasons, but reducing patient stress is always the starting place for our actions. Therefore, any actions we undertake to inhibit, moderate, or deflect HoGPI impacts are judged from a patient stress reduction perspective.


Our actions are largely seen by HoGPIs to be an inhibition of their freedom of expression. They seek legal redress for our perceived indiscretions, e.g. being supposedly "provocative" by pointing out the connection between their anti-abortion line and the Church's clear anti-contraception and anti-gay positions, plus its present difficulties with systemic paedophilia. We are prompted to remind them about the latter difficulty when a regularly appearing priest adds his contribution to the patient experience as he surveys the clinic entrance from 6 feet away: "protect your child." They call the police when offended. This results in no reportable offenses being found.


We have made efforts to assist the HoGPIs to increase the effectiveness of their first offer to patients so that there would be greater uptake potential and less added stress for patients. These efforts have been documented, discussed and refused consistently. Two of their number attempt to discourage the more flagrant misbehaviours of their colleagues.


The HoGPIs are absolutely certain about when life starts and finishes. From that position they judge others' positions as right or wrong. The source, and authority, of their position is the Catholic Church's published positions on said issues, available for all to see on their website. From their point of view, no one has the right to any other position. Hence they label as "murderers", including by implication patients, those differing with them at the FCC. They do not extend to non-believers the democratic consideration we extend to them as our starting point in opposing them – that they have a right to say what they want. We do not oppose their offering help, but we are "going to hell" for opposing their excesses.


Liberal democracies judge that everyone has a right to their claims, but not to ones which endanger the dominance of liberal democratic values – i.e. freedom of thought and its assistant, speech. At the gates of the FCC these two values clash quietly for the four groups of participants: patients and families, Friends of the FCC, security guards and HoGPIs. And so, we have the central challenge for Friends and HoGPIs – the challenge of enforcement of regulations which establish and manage the borders of free speech and offence. No one in enforcement wants to be involved with this highly irregular terrain. The last place the police and council officers want to hear from is the FCC footpath.



We know that the HoGPIs will vigorously defend their perception that they are not harassing the patients, just trying to help them…to the point of claiming, as one did recently when she was haranguing a couple who had turned away from the offer of help, that she was just "speaking to herself" in mouthing the standard accusative mantras at users of the clinic's services.


Now it's time for a new step. Remember the context, in brief, is this: 6 days a week the already emotionally charged patients of the fertility control clinic are confronted by anti-abortion protestors whose behaviour clearly offends them to the point of tears in many cases and outbursts of rage in a few. These patients are entirely within their legal and moral rights to use the services of the clinic.


This will be a more confronting step, at least from our viewpoint. Confronting for us is the fact that we have to become much more systematically attentive to HoGPI misbehaviour in order to push the Melbourne City Council / police authorities to enforce their own rules of public behaviour – notably the rules against public harassment.


So we are committing to a persistent data gathering campaign by live video to clearly document HoGPI transgressions against the law of harassment, and three other recurrent invasions of patient privacy. These three are:

(1) 'gang tackling' approaching patients in pairs or trios with the effect of partially blocking their normal progress along the footpath;

(2) chasing patients from many meters down the footpath, sometimes as far as 100 meters from the clinic so that their approach to the clinic is punctuated by the continuing presence of protestor(s); and,

(3) corralling patients in their cars on arrival so they cannot easily get out.

Harassment data is the most difficult to collect because it requires close video with audio which is highly likely to be more confronting for patients than HoGPIs.


This project, once agreed by all stakeholders on the FCC side, will be clearly advertised to the HoGPIs, as have been all our other initiatives. That is, we are trying to work with democratic values of openness and transparency in a context where they are not shared by the 'opposition' in the name of their right to free expression.


Torrey Orton
AHPRA Reg. No. PSY0001120138
11 Wertheim St
Richmond, Vic., 3121
Australia
Mob. +61 (0) 419 362 349
Skype - torreyo

Learning to act right (22)… Threatening to threaten – making sanctions clear

Learning to act right (22)… Threatening to threaten – making sanctions clear
Torrey Orton
Oct. 31, 2011


A reader wondered how I could "threaten to threaten"* someone – in that case, threaten a protestor that I might seriously threaten him and his accomplices for their harassment of patients. That is, that I would take aggressive action to injure them in some way (not physically). The actual objective would be to shame them in the theatre of their choice for shaming others. A brief discussion about the situation with a verbally facile buddy delivered a string of punch lines, advertising hording material and such in 3 minutes, so I know it's doable.


"Threaten to threaten" goes like this:

• Decide, preferably with the other, what our mutual expectations are for a specific activity.
• Establish to myself that potentially serious shortfalls in their performance seem to be happening
• Formulate appropriate step(s) I might take to sanction them for breaking our agreement(s)
• Invite them to discuss how we are doing with our mutual undertakings
• Have this discussion in private; if necessary, out of sight and hearing of others with an interest but not a stake in your relationship
• Make clear that what I am about to say is a threat to threaten more seriously at a later time if things do not change in the specific matters of concern to me.
• Conditionally offer an actual threat I might use ( if you / then I type of formulation)
• Note their non-verbal reaction to the threat – are they shocked, etc.
• Check it is clear to the them
• Check their perception of the appropriateness, intensity, focus, etc. of the threat.
• Invite them to consider changing their performance….Consider changing my threat.
  
   

The next step would be an announcement that the threat is about to be executed, if they fail to respond appropriately. Then, do it.

 People often wonder why others don't take them seriously in everyday life interchanges, especially in pursuit or defence of their own interests. All too often this, on examination, is because they have not been clear about their expectations / needs with those others. Being clear is not easy, especially under pressure. Both sender and receiver, to use an old, simplistic but resiliently tenacious image, are likely to have their communication machinery befuddled.


There are at least four virtues of the "threaten to threaten" tactic:

One, the ethical part of this is not dropping a surprise punishment on someone which they might have escaped if they knew one was coming for certain behaviour(s). This virtue is the private version of the management principal that leaders are morally obliged to warn their staff of dangers arising for them from contextual factors they could not know or guess by themselves – an impending buyout, default, bankruptcy, catastrophic technology or market developments, etc.

 

Two, the threatened threat may elicit the other's perception of our needs, our shared circumstances, or their needs, which may change the understanding of the total context. In other words a challenging event may increase our understanding of the realities we are in, if we engage it in a challenging way, out of the heart of our needs.

 

Three, threatening to threaten shows that we can act with effective restraint in strong ways without blowing things up irreparably, that we can act with strength and focus in appropriately modulated ways. Perceived self-control may increase the potential for negotiating difficult matters. Threatening to threaten demonstrates such control, as do other tactics like self-disclosure, and self-rebuke.

 

Four, the first three above may deepen and humanise the relationship in question.

*I learned this tactic 20 years ago on the negotiation training ground of Effective Negotiation Services. The basic influencing idea is do not threaten if you do not mean it. A fake threat is worse than no threat, especially when it establishes your bottom line or walk away position so the other party knows that an end game is approaching and can better gauge their need to win at all costs. If your 'Don't tread on me' point turns out to be posturing, expect to be counter-postured into even greater losses.

Rectifications (25) – Inculcate, inculcation?
Torrey Orton– Jan 30, 2011

"Supporters of private school education argue that it inculcates students with values."

Chris Middendorp, The AGE 070111

I haven't had an opportunity for a literate rant for a while, and 'inculcate' gives it to me. It's one of those impermeable words which seem to signify or indicate a lot but cannot be parsed or scanned for concrete meaning. I inculcated them with…? Like 'instil', it suggests beating something into others by droning repetition, backed with implicit threats, occasionally explicated in some unavoidable way for the threatened.* A school, sports club or company will do fine, and as usual public politics provides the model for all non-physical violences with its occasionally revealed backdrop of more vigorous pursuits of branch leaderships.


Middendorp immediately debunks this assumed virtue of private schools with a reminder of the "antics" of their students at end of terms. Or, just partying. Since it's schools we're talking about, probably the inculcating takes place thru religious education classes, or even more advanced ethics for the entitled. The mantra obligations to 'give back' to 'make a difference' that they implicitly will not be making in their real adult lives make it clear that giving for a difference other than their own always comes second, or as a ploy for another first order (self-interested) advantage. In the US, this is formalised as entry requirements for the 'better' universities – x number of hours in community service. I wonder what kinds of giving that produces. It's no longer a gift; it's an obligation whose honouring dishonours the purpose it espouses.


Coming from households populated by the present role holders in leading industries and professions, or aspirants thereunto, and which can afford the annual fees, the kids will know what's the real world and what a religious or secular ethical proposition means in that context. Pro-forma moral positioning is not to be confused with the commercial-in-confidence rules of private sector and, increasingly, public sector life, the deniability of public actions, or if not deniable, the escape acts of leaders of many hues – sporting, commercial, political, spiritual.


What may be important to learn in schools is what the to-be-inculcated mantra of the times are so that appropriate deferences can be made to them when constructing spin for pollies, leaders and/or oneself. This is much easier now that we have two sources present at all times – the implicit value systems of public behaviour and it's school yard practice sessions, and the explicit values teaching stuff of positive psychology, anti-bullying principles, and the vision-mission-and-values statements which every up-to-date organisation must have these days.


I look forward to the school which checks ethics learning using the following test: two questions, (1) what values should graduates of this school display in public (and examples of that actually occurring)? and, (2) what values are the real values that are displayed by our graduates and some examples of those displays? The evidence base for the test should be easy to assemble, but dismaying to share with the world. And the marking could be done in discussion groups of 8-10 students.


This process would also give these emerging adults a taste of the organisational life most are headed for. This often demands active embracing of 'values' with a concurrent agreement not to discuss the realities of the contexts in which they are to be expressed. So, it may be more inoculated than inculcated they'll be getting, if not a belting of some sort for failing to recognise the difference between espoused values and those in practice wherever they are. Publishing the results in the school's annual report under a heading like "Proceedings with our values" could be fun and more attractive than the My School website.




*Let's have a look at the definitions.
tr.v., -cat·ed, -cat·ing, -cates.

1. To impress (something) upon the mind of another by frequent instruction or repetition; instil: inculcating sound principles.
2. To teach (others) by frequent instruction or repetition; indoctrinate: inculcate the young with a sense of duty.
   Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/inculcate#ixzz1AKfuvakt
   

Being here (4) …. Being responsible…

Being here (4) …. Being responsible…
Torrey Orton
July 12, 2010

Being responsible and taking responsibility for…

My friend Hamid likes being and I am moved by the care he gives to his being…steadily pursuing its latest manifestation(s) in shaping his future (and mine to the extent that my doing and his overlap). I was engaged with my being early one recent morn – a time when I am most able to contemplate uninterruptedly. My topic was responsibility. I was musing upon it, pondering* it…my responsibility, or lack of it, in a recent event.


I became aware that taking responsibility and being responsible are different moments in the process of responsibility. Being responsible - that is, having a source of responsibility in me - is the pre-condition for taking responsibility and consequently acting responsibly. To act responsibly I have to already, all the time, have the need and intention to be responsible quietly present to me. In this sense, my being responsible is the origin or source (here the noun matters as the verb did above) of my doing things responsibly (or trying to!).


And here we can segue into ethics – both learning and acting – gliding on the back of character or foundational values, without which we cannot take action, ethical or otherwise. Being responsible is one of these values. Taking responsibility for specific actions is the public expression of character.


Actively denying responsibility for something, especially if not explicitly having been asked to take responsibility for it, is a backhanded acknowledgement of a self-perception of having actual or possible responsibility for it – guilt by defensiveness?. You can see this at work in public sex scandals when the implicated (eg. footy team managements and the users of their public faces for profit – advertisers, would be celebs, etc.) protest the innocence or mitigate the undenied behaviour of the accused. Or, see the recent David Jones CEO resignation for a higher class of the same predicament for corporate boards.


Back to being…
So, when we are working with people about being, we might entice them into experiencing their own values and virtues. Enticements might be invitations to tell stories about challenging events in their lives of which they, or which others who they value, are proud or ashamed. Both 'good' and 'bad' experiences (hence pride and shame as markers) can be sources of value finding because they are heavily loaded with various feelings and so self-traceable along the tracks of one's history. Values have to be enticed into view often because they reside in the foundations of our being and are shy of the light of day. Values and virtues tend to be a bit self-abnegating or they can easily turn into vices (pride, hubris, arrogance…).


In the process of seeking and bringing virtues and values to light we implicitly disclose the structures of being, perhaps. For instance, when acting responsibly we are in tune with ourselves and experience our intentions as emerging smoothly from the circumstances requiring them - a kind of mild flow experience.


Depleted replicas?
We learn to be responsible by doing and being with others – the active processes of social role modelling. Learning responsibility, among others, takes years, the sort of learning only an upbringing can provide. Hence, it takes a village to raise a child. It is possible in our times, freer of villages than ever, that those aspects of being inhabited by virtues and values will be thinly populated by depleted models. A google of their spiritual entrails may reveal bloodless, because unblooded, replicas of our historical values and virtues.

Being on the edge of nothingness??


*it's hard to know the right verb here, not because the action is evanescent (pondering is just a bulky musing) but because the subject assumes a different materiality with the action expressed in it! Responsibility is as often engaging for its presence as its absence, in which case the feeling is heavy and its trigger the sadness of disappointed, though justifiable, expectations of self or others.

Learning to act right, and some right actions (2)… what’s a right action?

Learning to act right, and some right actions (2)… what's a right action?
Torrey Orton
February 24, 2010


Compare Tiger Woods apology and our government's apology to the Stolen Generations. Which one is a model of right action? The Woods event is the most recent of a series of high profile apologies in the US – a couple of governors, a mightabeen presidential candidate, a rapper - all remarked for their variable credibility. Rudd's statement was well received at the time, but the follow-up is seen to be patchy on various fronts. Which will we remember – the performance action or the action performance?


Acting right is where doing the right thing takes form and is turned into action out of right intention. Often the fulfilment of one's intentions depends on their recognisability to others. This is why understanding of one's own and others' cultures is essential.

For example, a Chinese laugh in a moment of seriousness may be a recognition of that seriousness by them while being felt as clumsiness, if not insult, by Westerners. It is a laugh whose other face may be anger at having been put without warning in such an emotionally unguarded position as exposure to others' anger, damage, hurt, etc.


Manners and politenesses are traditionally the facilitators of respect for ourselves and others. As such, they are the leading edge of right action in many situations. Some of us disregard them for their repetitive and unimaginative forms, justifying our disregard by the ease of their dissimulation in formalities. In multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial societies like ours, the opportunity for misinterpretation of actions is large, and the underlying awareness of this is part of what fires worry about foreigners, whoever they may be for us.



Social formulas of ethical competence


Acting right is doing what we should do under certain conditions – the 'right thing' we all know about implicitly, though often through its absence. Right actions are the media of doing the right thing. They are social formulas of ethical competence, failing which we may not actually do the right thing. These formulas provide the clarity (its specific object(s)) and credibility (the intent) of action(s). Their authenticity arises from their personal character expressed in tone, pace, rhythm and volume.


We now know anew what's always been known – that humans have a capacity for being in the minds of others. This is a capacity for a kind of action at a distance by intrinsic understanding of another's situation and the typical intentions and reactions that are humanly appropriate to it. This is the neurological foundation of ethics and observational learning. While exciting to the neuroscientists, and re-affirming to other humans, this discovery has always been implicit in the basic ideas of individual and social formation, deformation and reformation. We need action models to embody our collective understanding of what's right. This includes, of course, when the models are wrong, which is where this venture started for me.


'How do we learn 'right action'?'


The main source of right actions is the live or virtual (theatre, film, TV, etc.) modelling of others, mined by observing them in action. We have a two-handed word for this - witnessing – through which we express the possibility that to witness another's action is also to give witness to it. Witnessing partners with giving an account to make a complete version of events. Giving an account of oneself provides deep interpretive meaning through thorough picturing of the context(s) and complexities of an event. From this fact arises much of our constant dissatisfaction with the two dimensional reporting of many public media.


The flight simulator training standard revisited

 As I said recently, we live in times where it is regularly proposed that ethical lapses or outrages can be prevented by training courses for companies and ethics units in MBAs. Consider by contrast what training really means for serious skill acquisition – the flight simulator in which pilots are regularly and persistently grilled in high pressure challenges. Perhaps learning to act right can be speeded up with some simulator-lite training. But to the level of automatic competence which must underlie ethical reliability? …that's another thing.


Or, consider how much video time it takes to represent one man's ethical growth in late life arising from the pressure of his standards on his prejudices – see Gran Torino if you haven't yet. The exposure to models required to build our standards and prejudices is a lifetime's task for all of us. And then we have to field test them in unpredicted, as well as foreseen, conflicts of appropriate (and, eventually, inappropriate) degrees of difficulty. The learning cannot be done if we are protected from potential failure. The fact that there's a legal distinction between adult and child reflects our society's minimum expectation of the learning required to be held fully responsible and accountable for our actions – about 18 years.


Important and discretionary rule actions – times they are a changing


For a view of how what's right is changing, and how that change occurs, a look at current TV shows and films is a good starting place. These reflect and promote emerging changes in what's right, especially at the manners and protocols level of life – the points where fashion and propriety run together. Body coverings from clothing to tats are a steady study in this run.


But it is not only fashion that's changing. Foundations are, too, as we discover that ethical options are conditioned by material circumstances. Tsunami and earthquakes are type immovable circumstances. Another is shifting material resources. These lead to a kind of general social triage where life critical and sustainable (as defined by those in command) criteria are applied. We can see this happening in health care and education most obviously.


Invitation to share…again.

 Learning to act right, and some right actions will be a host to investigations of actual ethical learnings across generations, genders, cultures and a full range of classical ethical dilemmas, great and small. The following pieces in the series will be devoted to single ethical learning events. I welcome your participation by offering pieces or suggesting domains which you would like to see explored. If the theme develops I see a publication not far off. In the interim, thanks to a discussion with one prospective contributor, I may start a new blog, or wiki, devoted solely to ethical learning matters and resources. Or, we may start it!