Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice

Being here (1)…. Everyday moments of pure choice
Torrey Orton
April 30, 2010


As so often, out of sleep came a new theme – being here. This is not new in world history or local practice, but it is new for me to notice moments of everyday life that may be what the proponents of presence are referring to. Here's the first.

 

To wake or not…

These days I sleep with increasing lightness, a movement encouraged by my growing awareness that sleep's end is coming each new day. I often wake 30-40 minutes ahead of the alarm, which itself is inconstant, having different settings from day to day. My therapist would tell me therein lies my own inconstancy of sleep and be right but irrelevant to my emerging points now.


Two points
These points are: one, should I rise, or not, so much in advance of the alarm? And worse, two, should I rise at the moment of the alarm's bzzz, bzzz if I have slept up to the alarm's sounding? These two moments have the same challenge under different conditions. The first has more time than the second. Its space for thinking is bigger and so, strangely, more confusing. I can consider more options. The more space the more attraction for awareness to fill it, to populate it. I often do not seem to have a choice not to populate it.


Once the populating begins - often about subjects like this post - thoughts arise out of the upper depths of consciousness. These usually are structured thinkings about currently occurring work issues. And more strange, the material that populates it is often a comfortable fit with my overall low level of general arousal – I can contemplate a very precise thing for some minutes; an argument (an account) about it flows naturally. They follow their own path to an appropriate, usually transferable, conclusion. I make notes about them for use later. In the process I have decided for less sleep and more awake for the day.


An everyday moment of pure choice?
The second condition's time is 5 to 8 seconds I think. The boundaries are the distance between the bzzz, bzzz initiated conscious awakeness and turning the alarm off. This opens the door on a very slight possibility- that I will not get up just then – in which exists for some seconds a suspended state, a present but not engaged state that may be being here. I have to be quick or else I'll sink into blogthought diversions.


My day's rhythm is set in this moment since the underlying question is 'how pressing is my day?' arising in the dome of my awareness of the total substance of it – a global forecast of stressors without distinctions among them. I imagine this dome as a mini-me version of a lava dome (see Mt St Helens, USA) in an active volcano.


A pressing day…
This moment is a critical one for my taking control of the new day, or more likely for my being taken control of by it!! With a moment's being here comes the position, space or location in which to interrupt the naturally occurring flow of my whole system. At high stress times this matters, since automatic stress response habits engage to reduce potential stress before it is felt consciously…and so blocking me from certain realities altogether.


My first try seldom reaches the intended target
In the reflection created by the above excursion, I am aware that even trying to capture such a moment of apparent being here is a fraught enterprise. The word formation and deployment processes drive the experience out of range…making it impossible to capture the thing. Maybe I will get better at this with practice?? We'll see I hope. Getting better at it would mean my being able to use clearly, for example, 'position', 'location' or 'space' to characterise a "here".

Appreciation (24) … An older man's beard, after burning
Torrey Orton
April 19, 2010

Some fires are too fierce…

 

On the last day of a weekend in Falls Creek, 7 years after the alpine fires which burned for two months in early 2003, a verbal image for the sight we had seen from a dozen perspectives and lights over three days assembled itself out of a hundred glances – an older man's beard, grizzled, shaped by the number 2 razor cut now popular among young and old (I get this look after about two weeks not shaving). This impression is startlingly present in the light of early morn or evening, slanting in to reveal things against their backgrounds almost rising anew after the directness of full light which submerges differences of distance and colour. That full light is its own subject, not the lighted!


This is the look of the snow gums on the highest peaks of the ranges around the ski village which itself escaped a fiery fate by a hundred meters on the day the surroundings were vaporised back then. The fire was so fierce that nothing it touched regrew around many trunks for years, in contrast with my "woolly" story from last year's Black Saturday fires. Even the leaves were burned off most trees, not merely browned or shrivelled as often happens.


So 7 years later the ridges up to the tree line are bordered with lifeless, bleached white branches, much below which a slight tinge of new growth arises from the still vital roots of the nearly dead. They were mature trees so the height is quite constant, noting outstanding about above the surrounding remnants as does with higher alpine ash forests. An impression can be found here. Some predict it will take 50+ years for their next maturity to be reached again.


Here's a winter view which captures some of the effect, but overdone because the non-winter look is more branchy (as in the previous view). If it were a beard it would have some hairs articulated amongst the general brush of the cover. Or, taking the image another way, it would show some skin beneath the fuzz. In forester lingo these are called "stags" – freestanding, blanched, dead remnants of fierce fires, reminiscent of stag horns. These snow gums look especially antler-like.


As we drove out the last morning of this Easter weekend, we recalled the morning 7 years and three months before when we drove out through the smoke of the fires started by 87 lightning strikes, some of which we had seen from the top of Mt Nelse three days before, noting the rising columns of smoke all around us at 50 to 100 Ks distance… and a couple at 20! They closed the Nelse track the next day as the columns were still rising, more or less vertical. The wind which carried all before rose two days later and the fires burned for another six weeks.


"This is Australia…."

Learning to act right (6)…. Learning to be accountable.

Learning to act right (6)…. Learning to be accountable.
Torrey Orton
April 16, 2010

"It was my fault …"

… said James, an executive coach, as he worked over a recent incident in his practice. He has in hand a rising CEO, Tom, with a commitment to developing interpersonal and group sensitivities and competences, especially under pressure and/or in conflict. Half way into a six month coaching process James began thinking some structured group work would be useful as a complement to and extension of their one-to-one work.
James's thinking had been prompted by a professional colleague's (Anne) mention of a new relationship skills program she had designed. She was building on her extensive experience with a variety of group-work formats and focuses. She was ready to run a trial group and was networking for potential participants. Fees would be nominal.

James agreed to nominate a client after a few further chats with A. This was Tom, who J. encouraged to attend on the grounds he was ready for and could use the enlarged growth opportunities of group work. T. signed up, paid up (6 sessions in advance) for a two hour evening session a week with 8 other exec's in training.

"I want my $ back…"
J stayed in touch with T's experience, but it was not the main focus of their work. Not, that is, until T. reported having walked out of the final session with A. in a stir of disappointment at the process. He felt it had not really been what it was claimed to be in the pre-work documents, or J.'s description of it, or the facilitator's (A.) work style. "I want my $ back" T. said at the next meeting with J. he had also made the same request of A. and her organisation.

It became clear to J. that T. had not been an appropriate candidate for A's program – an impression confirmed when he suggested T. go back to A. to see if he could clarify his perception of what the program was supposed to be. This perception was the basis of T's sense of betrayal by the program, and by A. and, implicitly, by J. T. agreed but was not able to follow it through.

J. realised that the responsibility for T's experience and its resolution was his. He had over-rated T's development at the time and under-rated the shortcomings of A's design. He had for a number of understandable, but, it turned out, inappropriate reasons misjudged this opportunity for everyone. He entered it under some time pressure to nominate someone, had wanted to help A. get her new program up and, indirectly, to support A.'s organisation in its business development efforts. This combination, along with J.'s tendency to over-estimate client development on the basis of development achieved in coaching, produced the mismatch, and he sat at the centre of it.

So, rectification was his to achieve, including financial aspects. The highest possible refund was <$500, so dollars were not the issue, though differently for T. and A. They were the currency of their relationship.
For J., the basic framework for taking up his responsibility was the concurrent and continuing coaching process with Tom. One of its core themes at the time of this disappointment was how to negotiate perceived performance failures, and that's where J started – with his own misjudgement of both T and A. He explicitly took charge of the follow-up individually with T., Anne, and the head of her organisation (who offered to cover any refund if it was eventually agreed; J. refused).


Finales
J. met with T. in an unpaid consultation to explore the experience, with a focus on how T. had been disappointed to the point of not being able to raise it with A. until too late, both emotionally and temporally. J. also participated in a debrief with A. and her organisation, seeking to understand what actually happened and how it might be approached differently. This included review of how the program was promoted and conducted to reduce future prospects of such misunderstandings and or mis-fits. In both events major growth occurred for all participants, including J.

Appreciation (23) … A little byplay thanks to Mark

Appreciation (23) … A little byplay thanks to Mark
Torrey Orton April 11, 2010

Catch this…

From Mark in Hudson, NY

"I heard about this play on NPR this morning. After looking at the video, especially the slo-mo replay ,,,,, i thought I had better pass it along to a few fans who might otherwise have missed it."

I commend the video to your attention. Watch it through because the best view of the event is about the last in the series. Strange they didn't put it first.
To which I replied, after watching the video -
I would have missed it, and having seen it, won't miss it BUT am glad I saw it..if you know what I mean!?


A reflection: things like this didn't happen before because:

1) they did but we weren't there;

2) they didn't because no one would have thought of something so silly; they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be so silly;

3) whoever the first tennis pro was who did the same on global telly hadn't arrived yet?? Since then at least one Agassi (was it Henri who perfected the blind between the legs return from the baseline?) a game seems to be required in pro circles. And it's a more guys than gals thing it seems.

4) smallball players have always unconsciously lusted after the largeball grand moves of basketball and the various footballs?

5) smallball players have always underestimated the superiority of their skills over largeball ones – anyone can catch a basketball / football; kicking's a bit harder, but getting a ball to the right place by using a wing extension (racket, bat, stick) clearly geometrically multiplies the difficulty doesn't it?…

6) So, they, the 'silly' effective ballgame antics, are a triumph of fashion, not capacity?

Thanks for the exercise!!
T.

http://ballhype.com/video/mark-buehrle-amazing-play/

Appreciations (22) … Snake in the path!

Appreciations (22) … Snake in the path!
Torrey Orton
April 8, 2010


Mistaking a snake for a stick? …you might wonder?


Appreciating a snake in the path is a bit odd unless you've done something like this: wandering down a dirt fire track 1 kilometre from our parked car on an early Sunday afternoon three weeks ago talking with Jane about something important we thought and suddenly detecting a fat black tree branch with a strange tip - the head of a snake I eventually realised - only a foot away from my next step…. Not your common garden variety but one of Australia's contributions to the troops of really dangerous fanged foragers…at about 1.3 meters, a well developed specimen...and, it was out in the open in clear light and we had missed it as we walked up onto it from 100 metres away with a clear view all the way until stumbling into the preceding events.


"Aaaah…" I gasped with arms thrown back and drawing myself up from the shoes in retracting my next step, as it was a slight lift into execution, before it fell on the snake's tail emerging into my vision and realising that Jane was a half step in front of me heading for the biter's mid-flank, and also not seeing it, I started saying "Back, back" which stopped her just before she would have been too close not to land a foot on its back…and so it glided off the road and into the edging forest without a backwards glance.


On reflection a few minutes later I noticed that my entire response had been without any palpable rise in heart rate, or tensing of muscles apart from those involved in the rising "Aaaah". Strange ways the body/mind.


Not mistaken, just missed
Or like this: 15 years ago, wandering down an old 1.5 meter deep by 2 meter wide grassy, overarched by light brush and trees, loggers' tramway cutting some K's from another car park in the second or third growth forested outer reaches of Melbourne (60+ K's from the GPO), Jane in front and me two meters behind hearing a stick crunch lightly under boot and sensing, barely seeing, something dark and ropey rise into the air a few feet to my right rear, and responding soundlessly but automatically with a jump myself which got me up to a height equal to the ropey thing, which turned out to be a large black snake, or close enough to scare the whatevers out of me, giving my heart rate a serious lift at the same time!
…a story I'd have told a dozen times, mostly to impressionable foreigners like myself who did not grow up with tiger snakes or their peers in the backyard, as many inhabitants of Australian cities do. I'd never seen a poisonous snake until coming here, though I knew (I thought) they inhabited the woods of Massachusetts (timber rattlers), not that I or anyone I knew or heard of had ever seen one in 1950 or '60!! But then in those days I didn't see racoons, wolves or bears in the woods either. They weren't there to see maybe, but they certainly are now a reliable source has been telling me for years since then.


Outdone, again…
However, someone else always has a better snake story, like this: a friend's wife found herself eyeing a large black snake in their backyard, shouting quietly that the thing was a danger and trying to shoo it away while holding it tightly in place with her left foot which was firmly planted on its tail. She hadn't noticed the tail and so her fear mounted as the snake stayed put and reared up with vengeful non-verbals. Her husband intervened with a strong right hand and pulled her of the offended tail, allowing all to move on into peaceful distances from each other.

Dance of difference(s) – 6 – Indians, and Other(s)

Dance of difference(s) – 6 – Indians, and Other(s)
March 31, 2010
Torrey Orton


I wondered recently what I could say about Indians and us that everyone might agree about. I couldn't come up with a thing, since obvious ones like that there are two nationalities, Indian and Australian, would be open to the minimising argument that we are all the same or the relativising one that they blend indecipherably into each other. Let's start by noting at least three good efforts to cover the contentious ground in the last two months from three different perspectives which overlap in some detail – (1) the state-to-state, (2) long-term local and visiting Indian, and (3) local Australian socio-cultural.

• Hanson and Medcalf's 18/02/10 The Australian op-ed "Clear the air with India" which is concerned with relationships between leaders as representatives of gross cultural constructs like Indian and Australian.
• Tony Walker's 6-7/03/10 AFR article "Anatomy of an Indian tragedy" which picks up the Indian perspective from inside Australia (long-term Indian residents /citizens and places of origin of students).
• Kate Shaw's …19/02/10 SMH article "There is little that is black and white in attacks on Indians" which covers the explanatory territory well and proposes social systems interventions for change.

For a socio-cultural counterpoint, look at Amrit Dhillon's "Untouchable Prejudice" in THE AGE of Feb. 27, 2010 which presents the historical social structure of the place called India as it affects the least powerful there now.


Yet, I feel a need to try a few things in this ongoing saga of public distress about private happenstances. Some things have been left out, or brushed by in the story so far.


Darkskin Lightskin
For example, we both want to be some other colour than we are. Sales of skin whiteners in the one place and darkeners in the other place, especially to women, are a marvel of the counterintuitive for racists. If you like what you are, and disapprove of others for not being what you are, as the light skin folks sometimes do, why at the same time would you be trying to darken yourself, even to the tune of taking a solarium bath which endangers your health with high certainty? Darkskin folks, like lightskin folks can tell when a foreigner has arrived on a darkskin patch, especially in a lightskin defined ghetto like Redfern, Harlem,…or a cabbies protest in Flinders Street.


Simple racists?
The Indians (yes, I know, there's really no Indians, just self-identifiers) wanting to look more like 'us', is an aspiration which they share with many Asians as far as I know – that is to be lighter (so as not to be confused with peasants or others who work in the sun). What are they really thinking? Are they racists, too? I guess so, in the simple meaning of the term. So, there's another thing we all share – we're racists in a simple meaning of the term.


What, then, does that meaning offer us about Australia's problem with recently arrived Indians, and the Indians problem with being recent arrivals? Well, let's try this: visible difference is a quick way of imagining we are in the presence of a challenge to our basic understanding. This challenge arises anytime a culture gap of sufficient magnitude opens around us. The step from colour to accent to foreign language, mediated by foreign coverings and behavioural exceptionalities (a local's viewpoint from a distance) is a progress of distancing, with unreachability the ultimate feared outcome. One effect is what the impact of unexpected and unusual difference is on an existing 'community'. I think it can look something like the following.


Difference for a change
At the local level, the personal level where most of us live (not the state to state, institution to institution level, where pollies and interest group leaders parade in the public discourse), if a change happens in our neighbourhood too fast about too many neighbourly things like management of the local 7-11, washNdry, newsagent, cafe….we may feel alienated from our home grounds. If the change comes not only fast but in such great numbers that the passages of everyday life are increasingly occupied, or even blocked, with what will soon be perceived as invaders (because we didn't invite them to be in our yards, did we?) a rational response and an irrational one may soon be indistinguishable…and no one wants to hear it do they because it's racist to say I am uncomfortable, feeling dispossessed, overwhelmed across all my senses by the influx…and the parading public discoursers didn't ask or tell us this was coming because they didn't care, didn't know, couldn't imagine…were, in brief, incompetent to think below the level of spinnable generalisations like the economy and the industry and lucrative and…nor did they tell the new arrivals in their hopeful learning plumage covering residential expectations that there were things to know about our open and free and democratic place that locals know – dangers of various kinds (who goes down to King Street at night to play, or walks home through dark parks?).


It all runs on for us a bit like that - one sensation / perception into another with only our past to guide us, our leaders having abandoned us to market forces, and 'get with the action' Rudd mantra and struggles across great distances for the moral head space of their respective masses, all the while knowing that we all have more or less racist moments and systems and sensings but unable to speak that truth when it's appropriate because there are moments of fear of difference(s) the denial of which insures their eternal return, partly because the very ones who mouth the 'we are one' platitudes are the same who use the racist (in the deep institutional social structural senses) levers to manipulate! And, partly because we cannot change an embedded perception and belief without some pain.


Whose out group?
So, we (the Indians and Other(s)) also share knowing when we are in group or out group in our respective societies, and respond to the perception that we are an out-group, indiscriminately for some Other(s), with the fear and trembling that is appropriate to an attack on our identities. And, we also share the idea of having some purpose for being, which is prior to our right to be in terms of its moral or human interest (as distinct from the abstract interest of our right to be - a fallback position for the possibility having purpose, but not a replacement for it). Purpose is what we make of the opportunity that right has given us, or that we claim in the absence of right!


In my first blog on difference 12 months ago I wrote:

We are entering more dangerous times for difference. As many threats, and a few promises, assail us, our room for response contracts. This will lead to uses of difference (stereotyping, demonising, etc.) which make normal engagements with difference unmanageable, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy of difference's distastefulness and, eventually, punishment worthiness.

 

I think now that the most manipulative users of differences of usually kinds are always those the furthest from them – the politicians, party organisers, big bosses and their associated support machineries of spin'sters in their variegated plumages.

 

Manipulate the manipulators

And what do we know about the psychology of times which dispose us all to manipulate and be manipulable in this way? We know that they are times like ours – times in which at the individual, family, workplace and societal levels we are chronically assaulted by multiple physical, social and spiritual stressors. We experience these in emotional overwhelms more or less consciously. As a result, our feeling/thinking becomes increasingly regressed, appearing in actions which are formally rigid and emotionally florid – too hot or too cold to handle. These are the instruments of racism on the playgrounds of social and personal disorder. Exposure and debunking are the first treatments of choice for them.

Rectifications (22) – Minister for the “respect agenda”?

Rectifications (22) – Minister for the "respect agenda"?
Torrey Orton– March 29, 2010


How did I miss the Maddening one? Guess I was concerned about learning to act ethically that day. The grounds of my amazement today are summarised well here. Meanwhile, trolling the net for a few minutes failed to reveal a definition of that agenda's prime term – respect. Then I found John Brumby, Dec. 2008 on respect, noteworthy for its negative simplicity. His three defining propositions are things not to do. Presumably these are items of disrespect. So we can't learn much about what to do or how to be respectful or ourselves, others and our community.

 

"Our government understands that many Victorians are concerned about anti-social behaviour in the community," he said on Wednesday, after announcing Mr Madden's new role. "We have got some challenges in our community, particularly based around what I call respect. If you respect yourself, you don't go out and binge drink; if you respect your community, you don't go out and vandalise it; if you respect people around you, you don't go out and beat them up."

I suspect some spin'ster (contraction of spinmeister) told him that positive propositions would open the government up to empirical review of its respect performance. Not that this should trouble them since no manner of empirical review touches their disrespect for the public…but I digress.


A year later the minister responsible, Madden, provided this conversion of Brumby's don'ts into do's in a ministerial epsitle. I have added some glosses for his key terms. These suggest the inappropriateness of the glib generalities on offer.

"The Victorian Government's Respect Agenda is based on three simple ideas. We respect ourselves by accepting and valuing who we are (does this include motor head hoons, financial fraudsters and internet scammers, child abusers and bullies, religious kooks and …? Aren't they are quite likely to accept and value themselves). We respect others by listening, treating people fairly and appreciating different circumstances and views (Listening, appreciating and fairness require shared social practices and values; they can't be grabbed across gulfs of language culture and value differences on demand, but the Minister did try to demand others listen to him in a meeting he wasn't invited to!). We respect our community by welcoming newcomers and lending a hand to each other (Well, it sounds good, but fairly small town to me, having come from on. What does welcoming look like on the streets of a city where smiling at strangers on the street is an invitation to a 'who ya lookin at?' from the passing others)."

And, the principle engine for increasing respect? The schools, actually. Think of the disrespect messages they are competing with!


Respect yourself and others will respect you ~ Confucius
For example, our cat Poppy has injured self-respect. He attempts basic cat respect behaviour - head butting anything of own catty family (watch your local lion pride anytime when they're not eating or sleeping) or anyone having to do with food or pre-heated sleeping spaces (us). But he won't get closer to us than a hand's length away; not a true head butt. It's long been evident that he had a deprived or depraved kittenhood before arriving in our lands. His self-respect is damaged and his respect for others is similarly slightly depleted.


He gets a slight disrespect from me in turn, even though it's not his fault. He's just not entirely there for real respect like a ride on my chest/shoulder almost face-to-face. He can't stand the closeness, and now 14 years later resists my conflicted effort to hold him up for a view and a smoodge. People can be certainly more difficult to respect than he is, though in principle they warrant it anyway as he does.


Observation #1 – Respect is a two way function in a two-way event – a relationship. Respect has to occur with almost perfect timing to prevent it's opposite – disrespect – from rushing in. Feeling respected provides a container of engagement and commitment which allows relationships of all kinds to weather storms of others' making. These others include the gods, other people and sometimes the relationship members themselves (where one is an other for the other, as husbands and wives, the ethnically different and the differently abled always are to some extent!).


Observation #2 – Disrespect, expressed in the now well known verb 'dis', can be the underlying assumption of all relationships for some people. The 'dis' sensibility presumes a likelihood of always being dissed, and probably is fed by feeling largely dissed by life. At the public political level this seems to be what's been happening in the US for the last 5-10 years (or more?) – a culture of disrespect on a grand scale. See the most recent responses of Right pundits to the US health bill.


Lack of respect vs. active disrespect
Observation #3 – Lack of respect, or active disrespect, is one of the most common complaints of couples in trouble (sometimes both members; sometimes just one). While active disrespect provokes more virulent reactions than lack of respect, it also sharpens the perception of the provocative behaviour and attitude(s). Because they are clear, they then become accessible to reworking, or not. The more passive lack of respect carries the flag for disengagement. Those needing a respect injection are usually looking for things like:

Being consulted about what's happening; being listened to, heard and acknowledged when they are contributing to discussion; being given space to speak for themselves; being treated as a person not just a role (husband, wife, caretaker, provider, etc.); being 'just me'- having a life apart from this relationship.

It's not love but probably you can't get love without respect. Or, you can kill love by withholding respect. Disrespect over long time periods for deep needs elicits powerful feelings which, once freed, make recovery of a workably respectful flavour very hard to do.


Observation #4 - Having a "respect agenda" is to misrepresent respect. The problem where respect is absent is how to have a shared agenda of any kind. This cannot be mandated – though power can be used to encourage rather than discourage sharing. Efforts to legislate respect are often dull and indiscriminate. Politically correct behaviours trap as much as they liberate. Readiness is required. See respect attitudes, assumptions and behaviours below


Responsibility and respect
Observation #5 – Appropriately admitting ones responsibility for a perceived error or misstep in a relationship is a good step towards rehabilitating respect in relationships. Doing so demonstrates respect for self and other(s) by setting boundaries and standards for the relationship. As a result, we know what actions will be respectful to members and who may be accountable for making the effort.



Observation #6 – Being self-respecting and other-respecting can be very difficult when we are injured, sick, overloaded, under attack (direct or indirect), etc. Like Poppy, I find it hard under such difficult conditions to respect others (or myself!) when certain levels or styles of self-disrespect are present. For instance, when someone has indulged beyond their personal capabilities in any kind of consumption which threatens others' viability – alcohol, gambling, drugs, food, palliative purchasing (the world of nothing's enough consumerism)…


Definitions…
Observation #7 – One definition of respect has 8 variations with an example phrase for each. There are larger numbers of variations (try the O.E.D. for instance) but 8 are enough to suggest the range of mistakes one could make in trying to be respectful. That's within Anglo cultures!


…and differences
Observation #8 – Within cultures, the entry level behaviours of respect are politeness formulas. These are acts like acknowledging another's presence with actual contact like a handshake or virtual ones like a nod or wave, and then a query about their current state (How's it going, How's your day been, G'day, etc.). Between cultures the same rules apply, but through often unguessable or unrecognisable forms of action. It is easy to bow the wrong amount to the wrong person and insult a monarch, or earn the ire of local morality mavens. Try getting the length of a handshake right without threatening sexual identities.


Back to the agenda
The Maddening Brumby respect agenda adjusted for realities looks like this:

1. 
   
   "We respect ourselves by accepting and valuing who we are".
   Adjusted version: The boundaries of respect in our culture are …, and differences about them can be engaged in this way…but some clearly not negotiable at the moment elicit spontaneous gut rejections from others.…and it is important to acknowledge that before anything else is done.
2. "We respect others by listening, treating people fairly and appreciating different circumstances and views." Adjusted version: Fair treatment (being heard and understood in our differences) for the less powerful in any situation require the more powerful to provide safety, especially on the debatable boundaries, and beyond them, of the respectful. Real differences cannot be simply appreciated because they shock and offend in some cases (your first sniff of black bean sauce may not of course!).
3. "We respect our community by welcoming newcomers and lending a hand to each other."Adjusted version: make way for new respects by informing the present residents of any space that new arrivals may inadvertently challenge and inform new arrivals what areas of respect will be challenged for them buy their new home. These are notably obvious: intimate relationship expectations and obligations, food choices, public behaviours in gender relations, hierarchy protocols, hygiene, the nature of security services,…etc. Try the DFAT and immigration websites to see what's available to immigrants and refugees as local knowledge.
   

The third level of respect – community – is the government's main area of responsibility. Only they can do it effectively. Effective means doing it before arrival here. Or at least soon after. In the absence of the fact, sing a little song:
either Otis's or Aretha's RESPECT

..or two, the Staples'
Respect yourself