Sunday, December 31, 2017

The answer to "How?" is Yes



BETRAYAL AND DISOBEDIENCE

[From Peter Block’s book “The Answer to ‘How?’ is Yes.”]
Carl Jung said that disobedience is the first step toward consciousness. Not only are we not here [ i.e., alive on earth] to fear or please our bosses, but we should realize there is
The cover of Peter Block's 2003 book.
meaning and value in our acts of disobedience – not disobedience for its own sake, but as a fuller expression of our own unique humanity and purpose. The fact that we are disappointing authority may be a sign that we have begun to live our own lives, that we have become fully engaged. We do not know that our lives are our own until we have paid for the choices we make. This is choosing adventure over safety. The adventure we can trust is the journey towards our own freedom and our belief in what is real and valuable.

To hold a stance in the face of disapproval means that the ground we stand on is our own. In philosophic terms, it is choosing existential guilt over neurotic guilt. Neurotic guilt is what we feel when we disappoint the expectations of others. Neurotic guilt is a symptom of an inauthentic life, when we ask the culture, by way of a boss or a parent, who we are and what we should become.

In its messages about what is real and what is best, our culture invites us to live a life chosen by others. If we feel guilty for disappointing the boss or the institution, the problem is not our actions, but the conclusions we draw. If we decide we are at fault, or continue to wish they were different and would appreciate us more, we are still living another’s life and hoping for a world that does not exist.

Existential guilt is the guilt that comes from having betrayed ourselves. It is the positive force behind our acts of disobedience and efforts to reclaim who we are. This serves our freedom and purpose. Existential guilt is what we feel for not being who we are, for wasting our lives and postponing our own possibilities. This guilt can be ennobling. It draws us towards deeper and deeper integrity and keeps in front of us the task of fulfilling the potential given to us at birth.

Stated simply, this way of thinking offers the redemptive value of betrayal. At some point in our lives, each of us must betray our parents. We acknowledge that we are not the children they had in mind. Period. It frees us to inhabit our own life and also is, incidentally, liberating for our parents, whether they are alive or not, or in contact with us or not. Every parent’s deepest wish is that their children are self-sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life. When we say no to a parent, or a boss who serves as a surrogate parent, it liberates them from the confines of the parenting role and, whether acknowledged or not, gives them the satisfaction of playing a role in the recovery of our most precious gifts, our freedom.
Homeless Charities can be a Colossal Problem in this regard. Many of the charities are orientated such to demand that homeless people behave in a proscribed manner. Or, they change their rules at whim that can deny homeless people benefits, resources, or access (to lockers, for example) that they've paid for.

Libby Fernandez, when she was the Director at Loaves & Fishes, is the prime egregious example of  someone who applied rules and restrictions on others while granting herself a kind of royalist freedom to do whatever she pleased, no matter that it disrupted the lives and freedom of others.

An evaluation of the conduct of Loaves & Fishes under the new administration of Noel Kammermann is in limbo. While Kammermann has proved not to be disruptively authoritative in the manner of Libster, his "touch" as the program director at L&F has been gentle and light.

A curious area of interest in the Kammerman Administration has been emailed pleas for donations. It appears that photographs and script for these emails have been little-changed retreads of pleas in past years, written by Libby's assistant, Justin Wandro -- who is now Kammerman's assistant with the ironic title of "Development Director." Wandro is a "development director" who doesn't appear to develop much of anything. But, to be fair, since Libby has left Loaves, L&F seems to be frozen in time -- but it may be that more is going on behind the scenes than I think/suppose.

[to be continued!]

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