Learning to act right (9)…. Learning reciprocity




Learning to act right (9)…. Learning reciprocity
Torrey Orton,
Barcelona, Spain
June 9, 2010

"En cas d'affluence, ne pas utiliser les strapontins"

Paris Metro 270510

On our first and only day in Paris I noticed a little sign (above) to the left of a Metro car door. One word reached out - "affluence" - touching my mangledmeanings warning system. So I read the whole sign again. While I knew I was in the presence of an example of what linguists call 'false friends', the overlap with our popular social disease affluenza was an irresistible attraction. However, in the Paris Metro an affluence is an excess of a different kind; one to be avoided by travelling out of rush hour. The little sign commands us not to sit on the springloaded, flapdown seats at the car door when there's a crowd on board. Something similar can be found in our own Melbourne Metro trains which also suffer affluences in the French sense, perhaps with less grace.


One might have thought the command unnecessary, that anyone would know not to sit down when their seating would block the ingress/egress of others - in a word, not to be civically inconsiderate. But like the French (the same sign is in the Metro of Toulouse, so I'll guess it's napoleonically everywhere in France), we have seriously increasing shortages of public consideration, especially where one would have thought that the right action was obvious!!


I expect soon there'll be signage on the outside of our Metro train or Yarra Tram doors saying 'make way for exiting passengers, you dopes' in recognition of the increasing practice of standing in front of the doors at rush hours. I have sworn lightly but audibly at some malefactors of consideration at Flinders Station tram stop. This malefaction seems to be a gender, age and ethnicity free affliction. Little old ladies of various origins look a little put out by a large old guy of my dimensions staring them down from the tram front doorway, especially the older grey ones which only admit one person in or out at a time.

The 'one'Ah, the ubiquitous 'one' of a notionally shared code of practice. Public life is where we learn and reinforce these codes. Some are found all around the world wherever modernity's opportunities (immediate need fulfilments across the whole range of the imaginable) impose their own constraints like traffic rules, queuing for service, and so on. Where they are well established, they are understood as right actions which everyday public life depend on. In Hong Kong the code of ingress/egress is marked in fat white lines on the train platforms to remind the selfish of a virtue which deserves the reinforcement of regulation.


We experience the codes as politeness, consideration … in fact, as personal respect. Their decline in Oz (partially out of immigrant ignorance of local habits or importing habits from other less polite cultures) of simple acknowledgments like the finger wave of thanks for letting another pass on a closefitting road is felt by some of us as the creeping edge of indifference or worse, aggression. I was pleased to find its equivalent is as alive in southern France today, as is its other face – the pass-on-any-corner culture of southern European (France, Italy Spain) driving.


We had a nearly terminally shocking encounter with that other face on leaving Cauterets down its 15 ks of winding, switchback, two lane road with 100-200 meter drops off one side. A turbo powered Mini, or French similar, popped out from a blind corner in our side of the road at 70-80 kph (we were under the limit at 70 kph) and a closely fitted line of four cars and truck he was trying to pass hedged him into our lane. That I'm writing now tells the outcome, but our driver lost a couple of lives in avoiding a multicar mush. Where does that madness, also an accepted code I've encountered in Italy and Spain, come from in a national transport culture with well regulated freeway driving which keeps slower vehicles consistently in the outside lane, and blocking the passing lane is an acknowledged sin recompensed by self-deprecating waves from those needing absolution?

Conflicting right actionsSomewhere in such contradictions lurks the changing dynamics of particular right actions at any time in history. Conflicting codes kept in mind without internal conflict it seems. The above examples are extended by the often impenetrable practice of give way to the right which make places like Place de L' Etoile and its many siblings in Paris actually work to move things. That code is a different solution to the power politics of human movement. People on escalators and streets walk to the right, too.


Reciprocity is a core value expressing the shared nature and mutuality of human (and other organisms!) being. Our everyday possibility depends on it, despite the common disregard by the simple-minded individualists of their various hues. How we learn reciprocity is a major challenge for our value-distorted times. Reciprocity does not equal mutuality, though they stand on empathy expressed partly and occasionally in compassion, underpinned by neuronal competence for recognising the thinking/feeling others. The oft cited downturn in close friendships between adults in the Anglo world in last 10 (?) years suggests an objective the decline in substantive mutuality and reciprocity.


So, as I wondered months ago, what are the young learning about relationships, both near and distant, and the ethics which sustains them??? Can it be the world of intergenerational fantasy promoted by Maurice Levy, chairman and CEO of Publicis Group in an article published jointly in Le Monde and the International Herald Tribune on May 28, 2010? He claims of his grandchildren "This new generation, activist and more inherently collective, is now taking the place of the post-Boomers, whose individualism and materialism may perhaps have contributed to the excesses for which we are now paying." I remember belonging to something like that 45 years ago, which shifted some social sentiments, but otherwise populated the Boomer world without a slip in the normal drive train. Levy's encomia for the young sound like those of my youth and with largely the same economic and social naiveté.

Does it matter?But anyway, does it matter? Is there any reason to believe that traditional virtues and structures must be maintained? Can people live in an untrusting world? Yes, of course, because the Germans, Russians, Chinese and hosts of others in hosts of places have done so, and do do so, now and they continue to be human, just less comfortably so. Our behavioural economists will tell us that the quality of life is partly (?) a matter of perception affected by personal expectations, so living in an Indian village or Caucasus city may have higher perceived well-being than your average denizen of supposedly advanced cultures, especially the Anglo ones….or so I read repeatedly.. and that's the latest research!!.



Most recently, yesterday, I read someone else wondering about the validity of various current social critiques because they are so often thoroughly ahistorical and so interpret the present as if there had never been a past with similar dynamics. He was introducing The Shallows (2010) by Nicholas Carr. Maybe the important learning of ethical basics continues persistently in the colourless undercurrents of living, driven by hard-wired needs for fairness, respect, etc.? And driven by ethical obsessives like myself who think the world is going to the proverbial in a handbag and so must thrash around about it, thereby keeping such matters in the public view a bit. This makes them available as materials for discussion later. After all, why did Plato write or Aquinas, or Confucius ... not for the past. Along the way a few perspectives on matters of what's right action and acting right provide us
not merely with an aesthetic diversion in the ethical spheres but difference with which to refine currently preferred decision equations.

Learning to act right (10)…. Doing little goods badly

Learning to act right (10)…. Doing little goods badly
Torrey Orton
June 1, 2010 - Cauterets, France


Little goods may be great for others, for a moment
A guy is sitting back against a building with a hat turned up next to a small, handwritten plea for our consideration…$10 for a ticket to Frankston, $50 for a return to grandma in Warrnambool, anything for a meal… He's roughly dressed and generally unkempt, with spare clothes and potential bedding behind him. The right action(s) in such situations are thoroughly clear, and have been since the beginning of recorded reflections on acting right. These have always commanded giving to those less fortunate. Only late in human history have we arrived at societies which discourage caring for those in various perils. I'm perhaps somewhat afflicted with such thinking. I don't know. I do things like this:


I was coming out of the DHS building in Lonsdale Street a few weeks ago when my eye caught that of a panhandler* standing by the entry. He moved slightly towards me, at once saying "have ya got a dollar" as I glided nervously beyond reach, though I had a hand in my change pocket reaching for a gift which in mid-fingering I decided against and continued down the street. Just describing this is very difficult. What really happened? What did I /he actually do if we had a three camera video of the event to discover it from?


We haven't got such a record, but I know I went on down the street as he said "I only need $4 to get a …." (something inaudible). I headed off, pursued by my shame at having turned away from our visual engagement, to check out a camera at a place recommended by a friend. And fifteen minutes later I was headed back the same way with new camera in backpack and hand in pocket searching out the four dollars to give to the guy who I'd walked away from… thinking as I went up the street to the train to find him and make good my failed first response...taking out the loose change and separating $4 into my right hand held ready for giving … and not finding him where last seen and so wandering back across the street towards the train station holding the change still in hand for giving…by that time willing to give to any likely needy person to make good my lack of doing good when and for whom it was first needed … and therefore the more deserving in some way, I agreed with myself… and along some 20 seconds later he came, another gifting candidate, as I approached the crossing meters away from the train entrance, stopping for the light to change and, as with his precursor, catching an eye and receiving a request to which I responded with the prepared hand held backwards towards him as I crossed refusing to acknowledge (so it felt) his thanks or his look, disappeared into the station.


Protecting my professional distance?
Is my problem how to assess need on sight: what global personal look means what need, and comparatively which look is more needy at any time? And what's the individual's and what's the social responsibility for their need, and what are the mixes between them? These are useful reflections but perhaps not the central ones underlying my initial disengaging moves.


Rather my avoidant moves above may arise out of my need to protect my professional distance. This goes naturally with the therapeutic territory for me, though requires constant monitoring to reach and sustain the right level(s) for each relationship. The maintenance is usually done more or less explicitly with each client, and we both understand that it has to be there. Levels below that lie my relatively distant relationship style, too. An unscripted and spontaneous encounter with a needy other torsions both my professional and private selves.


There are other aspects. These come into view in the following events.


On a street corner in Pau, France. We were on the way to a week in the Pyrenees and an immediate lunch which was expected to be and turned out to be worth the travel for. I saw the guy (a French instance of the beggar in the first paragraph above – almost a clochard) 10 meters ahead and reached in my change pocket to pull out a 1Euro coin by touch and got a 2 instead, which I handed over to profuse thanks in mildly religious language. On reflection about this event I realised that part of my halting approach to giving in public is being in public, being seen to give…an apprehension which I can't yet source itself. At least now I know it's there in the feeling of the act. A vulnerability driving my distance?


Who deserves a gift?
Maybe there's an element of doubt about who's most deserving, or how much deserving, which is brought prominently into my awareness by the publicity and variety of opportunity for a perceived misallocation, a kind of performance anxiety which might afflict me at anytime where the decision I'm making is relatively uncertain for me. Hence the importance of automatic ethical responses to our ethical effectiveness?? …to our making a decision rather than none (also a decision of course, but..)?


What good will it do anyway?
And there's the question of gift effectiveness. One friend handles this with the rule that when approached he will give whatever is claimed to be needed – e.g. $50 last week on the other's promise it was required to make a certain practical change which would liberate him from certain difficulties. There's no follow-up or follow through to validate the method. But, it is a method with more than madness since the problems of authentication of need and outcomes to giving are such as to require bringing the other into the family or a relationship of long term friend to support it... and then giving becomes an adoption! Perhaps that's a feared (while wholly unlikely!) effect for me, too.


Underneath this concern is an objective social one about what makes good lives and how can we increase the number of us leading them. The distance some of us are from any reasonable notion of good life is obvious – often for unavoidably visible reasons which invoke the notional danger of "othering" (see Lyn Bender's nice review of these challenges here). The visible reasons -liked poverty, disability… - are accompanied by less visible incapacities of all kinds (hidden injuries of class, family history, etc.) which are not going to be repaired or often even vaguely ameliorated by a little good giving.


Guaranteed continuous giving strategy
Another acquaintance adopted the strategy of guaranteed continuous giving to the same needy person she encountered daily on the way to work, and no giving to others in need on the same trip. This approach was a partial fiscal adoption. It went on at a rate of $15 a day for some years. My acquaintance noticed the person had not been around for a while and eventually ran into her looking a whole lot better. She asked what the other had done with the daily gift and heard that it had provided a foundation on which to build a new life and kept her child in school because she was settled enough to ensure daily attendance.


Counterpoint: the accordionist with recorded accompaniment on a Paris Metro. I felt trapped on his arrival, knowing that an unavoidable request for money was coming, so was ill-disposed towards him before he started. More commercial versions of this tactic are the wandering musicians or their candid photographer colleagues in certain types of restaurants.


Trapped and relieved
His play was actually notably good with a suitable selection of tunes for an enclosed space and an unintended audience. A few others were tapping to the beat, and I resisted with effort myself, knowing the movement would be a tell for a prize I wasn't offering at the moment. When he stopped and came around with a worn cup one of my co-riders noted that he was better than average and that all wandering players were actually field tested for quality by the authorities. This moved me to reconsider and I drew out a 2 Euro coin and offered it to warm thanks (the average offer seemed less than a Euro).


Shame and giving
Looking back, I imagine that some of the size of my offer was compensation (self-punishment?) for my initial recalcitrance / reluctance to engage. Only I knew this thinking at the time, so the negotiation was entirely internal, except as it was infected with the potential shame(s) of my public exposure for so thinking. This is perhaps the other within me, a companion and competitor ever present to my daily activities. My other is often most present when real others are present, eliciting one facet or another of my being in the world.


I'm guessing now that I will try to work on doing little goods less conflictedly. Then I might see more clearly what mixture of thought/feeling is really occurring and build thereon a more effective contribution to decreasing the numbers and varieties of challenging others for me and them. I have to clarify my otherness to get there. I know for sure there are some others I do not want to be (nor could I be) and for these the struggle is political. For example, there's a shift of view in OECD and US policy thinking (Krugman) towards making the unemployed responsible for their joblessness by cutting off benefits. This raises once again an underlying individualist mantra – you are responsible for your fate, even if you are not!! But the policy argument is fiscal.


For me the struggle is to engage personally, which could include policy struggle but cannot be achieved by that alone.




*Not really such; we don't have a word I can find for a reasonably presented, but slightly down, usually male person who's acting out of desperate need.

Learning to act right (11) … One dimension too few

Learning to act right (11) … One dimension too few
Torrey Orton
May 24, 2010

 

As I've pushed this project along, the gathering pace has exposed me repeatedly to the fact that others really do see the world differently from me. This simple truth, which I've espoused for years and can provide an epistemology for in a flash, I still did not see so clearly as when reading their stories of ethical learning. Another follows below which revealed to my supposedly open eyes that the ethical part of their stories is as much in how they tell the story as it is the what of each story - the ethical challenges, details and delights.

One dimension too few….

'you can't fix problems using the same level of thinking

you used to create them' (paraphrasing Einstein)

by Charles Brass

In 1995 a group of people of which I was a significant part created a not-for-profit organisation whose mission was 'to engage all Australians in creating a better future for work'.


One of the ways in which this was to be achieved was to create 'demonstration projects' through which better ways of working might be practically explored. In our fantasies at the time, many of these demonstration projects were envisaged to grow to become viable businesses in their own right, at which point they would be used to seed further projects.


Early in 2002 one of those involved from the beginning approached me with the tantalising prospect that one of our 'demonstrations' was now a viable (ie profitable) business and was beginning to explore how to use this 'profit' to benefit the community. On that basis I eagerly joined the Board of the entity, where I found myself alongside my colleague, the CEO and two other members of the local community.


Within four months the community board members had resigned, citing doubt that the organisation was as profitable as the accounts suggested. That should have been enough of a warning, but it wasn't.


Officially, the accounts confirmed a significant surplus and through my efforts we began a sponsorship program designed to significantly benefit the local community.


In August 2002 the CEO went on a month's leave and I acted in the role. For the first time I gained direct experience of the day-to-day practical financial practices of my company (and had personal contact with the staff involved).


My concerns escalated, and ultimately everyone's fears, were proven correct when the organisation was placed into administration and ultimately liquidated early in 2003.


My personal liability for debts incurred exceeded my superannuation and other savings and now, seven years later, I am still in debt.


Arguably, no-one involved was corrupt. Certainly no money was embezzled. However, there was a greater than one million dollar deficit when the company was eventually wound up.


How did three people, all of whom were unarguably focussed on the greater good and not on any personal glory, preside over such a disaster?


Sober reflection from this distance suggests that neither one of us alone would have allowed this situation to develop.


The CEO, who had founded the enterprise, was passionately committed to providing positive outcomes for its clients (funding for which was overwhelmingly provided by the State Government). My colleague had built his business on assisting small business owners to more effectively manage their enterprises, and I had previously been on the Board of a number of companies, including a multi-million dollar global enterprise.


Collectively, however, our blind spots were exquisitely aligned. The CEO had little practical financial expertise (and the accurate valuation of work in progress was a key component in the accounts), my colleague wanted to believe that his approach and his methods would lead to success and interpreted the accounts to support this belief, and I wanted the company to be making a surplus to prove we were doing good work and was very happy to believe his (and the auditor's) interpretation of the accounts.


All of us should have known better, and, truth be told, probably did. But the issue was undiscussable, even when the two Board members resigned. I, in fact, personally worked hard to convince them they were wrong about the company's profitability and that they should stay on Board.


Once the blinkers fell from my eyes, I took action which minimised the loss and (to a small extent at least) protected staff, creditors and clients. However, for a period of nearly 12 months I chose to ignore information which was available to me and to passionately believe in something which was patently not working properly. And yes, I am reminded of story of the person falling from a 100 storey building who, as they are passing the 90^th floor is heard to say: "so far so good".


What is right action in these circumstances?


Firstly, I stood up, admitted my culpability and accepted my punishment. Not only did I lose a considerable amount of money, but I endured the wrath of angry staff and creditors at meetings held by the liquidators (I was the only Director who attended, and I haven't missed a meeting in seven years – no, the company is not yet formally wound up, these things do take time).


More importantly, I have thought deeply about blind spots and their implications. By definition, you can't see something that is in your blind spot and if you can't see something it is difficult to know how to properly act on it.


Also by definition, since no-one can know everything, blind spots are inevitable and unavoidable.


Perhaps one way to individually overcome blind spots (as is done when motor vehicles come equipped with multiple rear vision mirrors) is to actively seek different perspectives or lenses through which one sees the world (after all, it was only when I actually sat in the CEOs chair that the situation described here became real to me).


Five years too late, a colleague gave me a question which might trigger alternative perspectives – and I habitually ask it of myself today – 'what is it that I am pretending not to know?'


I find this question helps me consider dimensions and perspectives to which I otherwise might not pay appropriate attention. For example, three years after the incidents described here I was invited to help the Board of a not-for-profit provider of specialist health services resolve an issue with their founder who had transferred the ownership of all their properties to a company he controlled, and now wanted to charge them rent to continue to use them. This seemed like such an egregious breach of trust that I was astounded that the agency which funded the service provider seemed willing to simply increase their funding to cover the rent rather than tackle the issue.


By asking what I was seeing, but not paying attention to, it became clear that officers of the funding body were complicit (probably by omission rather than commission) in the ownership change and hence did not want it investigated. Eventually it became clear that the underlying problem would never be addressed, and the most practical solution was to make the best of the situation.


Considerable pain, and expense, was saved by prompt recognition of a potential blind spot.


However, as I have already implied, in main situation described here there was, in addition, something quite exquisite about the interconnections between our three blind spots, which suggests that there might be a collective perspective to overcoming blind spots.


One of my favourite philosophical theorists (Ken Wilber) suggests there is inevitably a collective perspective, as well as an individual perspective, to any situation; and this experience seems to bear him out.


The simplest way to acknowledge the collective might be to always ensure that multiple people are involved in thinking through key decisions, but the above experience suggests that this might not always be enough.


Insisting on a systematic and structured approach to canvassing the issues involved in making every key decision is another valuable technique, and one which can often be overlooked in the easy familiarity of comradeship.


I am reminded of the story of a business executive who once lost his company a lot of money and was promptly summoned to Head Office. As he walked in to the Chairman's office he forestalled any conversation by proferring his letter of resignation. To which the Chair responded: 'sack you, why would we sack you, we have just spent millions educating you'.


My own education came at the cost of some hundreds of thousands of dollars, and also lost me my job, not to mention two friendships. All because our perspectives were unable to embrace the full scope of the situation.

Appreciation (24) … Affecting effects

Appreciation (24) … Affecting effects
Torrey Orton
May 24, 2010

One coin, two sides

 

Many interesting things stare me in the face and go unnoticed for their everydayness. One unremarkable day I noticed that two words have been a constant source of low-grade irritation for me for decades – affect and effect. The irritation is that I almost always have to decide which one I want under circumstances when the correct choice should be obvious.


I realised that what happens is that I confuse an effect¹ with an affect², and vice-versa. First off, they are both nouns and verbs, and they both overlap with each other. Second, affect is the bigger concept – less differentiated and more prevalent in everyday experienced – e.g. we are constantly affected by our worlds, except when diseased, disordered or focussed!! At those times we are affecting our worlds with emotional infections.


Mental teeth…
My doubtful capacity to clearly discriminate between affects and effects probably signals the lack of mathematical consciousness which prohibited me from taking an interest in the hands on parts of scientific disciplines. I really cannot engage the kind of abstractions which dominate my own profession - psychology – because they don't have enough meat on them, enough visceral contents, to stick in my mental teeth.


On the other hand, I can quite comfortably do theory of time and dilemmas of particle physics (that the process of studying particles required constructing settings – e.g. bubble chambers – to study them, thereby distorting (the real) nature(s)). The latter dilemmas of scientific process are still beyond everyday discourse in the science of psychology. Within the discipline in Australia, it remains largely a dispute conducted across a vast chasm of difference, with an air of disapproval on both sides for the perspectives they cannot take of the others. A failure of professional empathy? See the recent edition of Australian Psychologist, Volume 45, Issue 1 March 2010 , pages 67 – 76 for a discussion bemoaning the continuing dominance of a positivist scientific paradigm in our discipline.


This may betray my naturally integral frame of mind which can also handle contextualised numbers like restaurant bills intuitively within a few dollars of the staff calculated truth. The effect of a bill is a reduction of cash-in-hand, while the affect may be a kitchen of fine tastes and a stomach's satiation. A preference for the former may lead to entertaining memorable for its meanness of spirit rather than the lingering of its tastes, textures and colours. Or maybe I should just note that the effect of eating well is an affect.


Whichever way the preferences work, one thing is increasingly clear to some researchers in my profession – that thought, action and emotion cannot be considered apart from each other. No human thought occurs without an embodied emotional aspect which is experienced as feeling(s). The almost unreadably intense review of this research by Carroll E. Izard (Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions and Emerging Research Annual Review of Psychology; 2009. 60:1–25) provides some hard science underpinnings of the cognitive dominance of affect over effect in certain phases and events of life development processes.


The underlying problem here is the lack of understanding of the integral nature of experience. This lack is intrinsic to the scientific enterprise modelled on physics and chemistry, which proceed by dis-integrating things, by analysing them further and further. The counterpoint to this movement in these sciences is their intuitive, theoretical side. The latter is held at arm's length by the self-described scientists of psychology here in order to maintain the sanctity (?) of their evidence-base. A need to be seen as comparable in treatment specificity (and implicitly, effectiveness) to medicine increasingly drives this preference. It's not a matter of scientific requirements, but medical funding models. Meanwhile Izard reminds us:

 

Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior.

(pg. 3, emphasis supplied)

What can a psychological science do which does not proceed from that assumption? That which does not finds itself endlessly struggling with dissociated affect.

• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/effect
• http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/affect

Being here (2) …. Hurdles along the way to now…not submitting to sleep.

Being here (2) …. Hurdles along the way to now…not submitting to sleep.
Torrey Orton
May 11, 2010

The pull of doing (and having?) on being.

As I was contemplating my sleep disciplines and decision-making, I realised that for longer than I can remember I really had not been outside the boundaries of my self-imposed requirement to be doing something most of the time. I never just let go, though I am an agile napper. Yes, I can let go a little, and this acknowledges a capacity to be with how I am at various moments – to feel tiredness unmitigated by purposeful overdrive (which I apply automatically of course). It's not a virtue, just a normal adult habit, started in the depths of early childhood by requirements of others. Not a vice of theirs either, just normal bending to the wheel.


But, this napping and self-acknowledgment occurs in the blind spots of the general commandment to be doing something. The closest I get to evading the commandment are periods of mindless activity like shopping, lawning (my nephew's word for grass cutting when he was three helping push a hand mower around our yard) and car cleaning. I almost do not feel the commandment, only know it by inference from occasional awareness (as that which started this reverie) of deep, undifferentiated drives sturdily pulling/pushing away at me all the time … the flowing undercurrent of my energies.


Consciousness carved
I am imagining this current as the sort which flows through caverns and crevices in deep limestone formations, trackable by spelunkers 'til the point of nowaythrough where quiet waters slide between too-narrow gaps in smoothed stone. An out of sight consciousness this, its weirdness perhaps signalled by the very different names for the same exploration - caving, potholing, canyoning and spelunking. The surface evidence of these formations are the famous canyons of flash flood fame, followed by potholes which have surface access, and then caves which are 99% out of sight.


Anyway, it is an unbalanced drive this flow. I am extremely good at putting my often unconscious perception of the demand of the moment before longer term considerations of my health, rest, preparation, etc. I think this experience is related to that of low grade chronic stress, where the original stressors are now out of sight, but the drain on the total system continues. It is a hurdle I usually do not even notice I am stumbling over on my way to my possibly being present.


Recently I have had therapy clients fronting up with similar hurdles. Probably they have more often been there than I've noticed. So, insight into others follows insight into self, which allows more delicate evidence to become visible. Strange to think of stress as delicate.


NB – I do much of my writing these days by starting with a theme, image, or perception strong enough to demand a first step recording – a note in my always handy pad - and then letting it unfold from the act of writing itself. Putting down the first elaboration of the image elicits other words allied to those already on the page in some way which often is not immediately apparent…I used to sketch outlines of posts, but have found that they do not advance the production all that much. Revisiting the partially developed piece does the job of extracting its completion from the further images and perceptions which those already down pull up from my innards.

 

Rectifications (23) – Rough surface, and a Dip?

Rectifications (23) – Rough surface, and a Dip?
Torrey Orton– May 7, 2010

Some rough stuff ….

 

While "confronting" images and concepts abound these days (as they may always have done so?), some are astounding for their inanity. Road works again are among the more perniciously presumptuous, as if their owners put them around sporadically to remind us they are on the job. Or, they partially do the job like announcing from every perspective that there's road works on the side street and failing to note that that means you can't get through in a 4-wheel drive.


But among my most loved are small, caring missives letting the passing trade know that a minor irritant awaits us…a potential hitch in the otherwise silky passage to which we are accustomed on Victorian freeways, and byways. Take this for instance:

ROUGH

SURFACE

It and its twin arrived on Madden (no ministerial relation??) Grove, Richmond, a few weeks ago - one for each direction of traffic as they should be. I've been reaching for an expression of our experience of "rough" going either way. It requires a deft linguistic touch, similar to the sense a lip has for a loose hair sneaking in a partly open mouth. Anyway, the rough is a slight butt massage as the tire impacts are couched by the shock absorbers... so slight that without the signage we would not have noticed anything at all, and we were feeling for it with the advantage of the advanced notice.


Now the smart research types will tell me that forewarning is a violation of research protocols, so I should just pack the whole complaint in a mental kit bag and sign off!! Of course, rough's rough for someone, why else a sign? By chance, as I walked up to contemplate the warning above, two road workers (private contracting company, of course) stopped just ahead of me and 20 meters short of the sign. They were doing curbside storm water repairs – ensuring the drains are open for the next local deluge. I asked the shovel wielder why the sign was there and he acknowledged my wonder with his own at the "rough" component of its warning. He and his driver colleague had not felt a thing themselves. "I'll put in a query", he volunteered. My research reliability quotient just shot up, but I forget to ask him to put me on his customer query list. Validity down!

…and then, a dip?

 

There's an elder sibling to Rough Surface on the Westgate Freeway eastbound about three ks short of the bridge: "Dip" forewarns a gliding drop which registers slightly at 100kph as a fleeting weightlessness of my 110kgs as the seat dropped I'd guess 30 cms over 2-3 meters. We've been passing through this warning for 6 months or more and keep looking for the indicators of death and destruction which would warrant it. Did some hoonmobile with a three inch clearance owned by a vacuous entity (micro-celebrity) bottom out on the offending gulch at 150kph? Did s/he construe their own indulgence as an offence by VicRoads which some under-employed accident compensation barrister could extract fees for?? Why else the warning??

Real dips and crests with unacknowledged roughs

Now all this has reminded me of Jane's reminders to me that there are unacknowledged dips in country roads with seriously catastrophic potentials. When I first got off the boat in Oz (yes, I did get off a boat in '73) I had never seen a road as long or straight as many western district country roads, or even the Geelong road at the time. On some of these, real dips existed where a car could be totally hidden from the view of on-coming cars. These days most such are marked DIP, at least within 100ks of the GPO. Disregard for the warning while passing is an invitation to a terminal open road head-on. As for rough surfaces, there were many, and still are in all their unmarked originality.

Learning to act right (8)…. Taking an ethics course

Learning to act right (8)…. Taking an ethics course
Torrey Orton
May 2, 2010
When I first got hold of ethical learning as an objective for my productive desires, I talked to various people about it. The following came back unsolicited, arising spontaneously as a gift to the very bare cupboard of offerings I had in hand. He said:

Hi, Torrey.
This took longer than expected.
I spent a week reflecting on it after we had dinner.
Perhaps part of the elusive nature of pinpointing such experiences is that they become part of who we are and how we see the world. They are under the skin, so to speak.
Thanks for the work.
Scott

At the time I replied:

S,

Thanks for this …your contribution is an important addition to my sense of what this project should / could be

t.

There followed a break of a few weeks, and here it is.

My most influential ethical learning took place in The Melbourne School of Philosophy, which I attended one evening per week from the age of 19 to 22.

In the school's own words: "The School began in London in 1936 when a small group of people came together to study economics, seeking an understanding of the universal laws that govern the relations between people in society. They hoped to discover principles that would help to eliminate the social ills prevailing at that time."

The School of Philosophy presented teachings from various religions and philosophies: the Bible, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, Buddhism, Plato, Socrates, Spinoza, the economist/philosopher Henry George and many others.

You might expect such a school to be New Age, but it was quite the opposite. If anything, it was relatively conservative, both in politics and social conventions. The male teachers invariably wore suits, the women dresses, and I never once heard anyone say "Yeah, man."

What was most effective about the school was its motto of "testing the teachings in the light of one's own experience". The lecturers presented the various teachings in class, and asked students to experiment with them in real life during the week.

The following week, the same group of students would discuss their experiences, saying how they had put the teachings into practice and what the result had been. Then the next set of teachings would be presented.

Also, upon leaving each class, students were given a card with between five and ten quotations summarising that week's principles. These quotations might be from any of the sources mentioned in the second paragraph, as well as Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Yeats and other influential thinkers and doers.

The practical focus of the school made the teachings very real and applicable. Hearing the various stories from the week was illustrative, highly entertaining, moving and sometimes hilarious. You would hear anecdotes from lawyers, motor mechanics, actors, dentists, bike couriers, fashion photographers, university economics lecturers, entrepreneurs and boxers, all on topics like "Experiencing deeper levels of being through stillness," or "The nature of justice and injustice. Transcending fear."

We were also given some small exercises to heighten awareness and presence, such as pausing between activities during the week to reconnect with the senses and observe the workings of the mind. These short exercises were connected with the various material presented in class.

I finally left when I started to feel that the school expected an increasing level of "belief", as opposed to their introductory stance of not accepting the teachings as doctrine. This was the school's biggest shortcoming.

Nevertheless, I would still say that attending the school was a positive experience which taught me a lot about myself and my interactions with the world.

By Scott Wallace March 2, 2010