Who Are We? The Way We interpret An Action Determines How We Respond to It

How can we best understand ourselves and our history as a species? We humans have created so much violence, environmental degradation, inequality. Yet, we’ve also created incredible art, science, and love relationships. How do we emotionally and otherwise take in these absurd contradictions?

 

This is not just an intellectual question. It’s a huge and infinitely complex one. It concerns the nature of our mind and body, what we’ve inherited from parents or biological evolution, and what by history and cultural evolution. It has tremendous social-political implications as well as personal. It can affect how we feel about, and how much suffering we cause, ourselves and others.

 

Three friends from college and I zoom together once or twice a month. We often share poems, music, articles, suggestions, and questions. One recently shared article was particularly relevant to this question. It’s by Adam Kirsch and published in the January/February Atlantic. It’s titled The People Cheering for Humanity’s End: A disparate Group of Thinkers Says We Should Welcome Our Demise. It focuses on two opposing theories of where our species is headed, or where our evolutionary traits are driving us.

 

Most of us realize that the possibility of extinction is very real but would prefer to delay that ending as long as possible. But Kirsch says a variety of thinkers have challenged that assumption and revolted against humanity itself. The two most prominent of these theories are Anthropocene anti-humanism and Transhumanism.

 

The first states that our self-destruction is inevitable, but we should welcome it. Our species is destroying our home and the other creatures we share it with. What we most glorify in us, namely our reason and the scientific and technological achievements it spawns, is precisely what is destroying us. To preserve our home, we should leave it.

 

The second theory, Transhumanism, expresses a love for what the anti-humanists decry. Transhumanists imagine that some of our most recent and illustrious discoveries, like nanotechnology, and genetic engineering, will save us by allowing us to abandon the frail, destructive being we are now in favor of a new species that we’ve created. For example, a cyborg or hybrid of human and computer; or maybe a brand-new artificial intelligence.

 

Both theories are responses to the climate emergency we face, but they do so in opposite directions except, says Kirsch, the most fundamental. They both share the necessity for the demise of humans. And as I read the article and thought about my friends, what became clear was how our theories about life, and ourselves, are key to our responses, and actions. And this quality of mind and heart is precisely what most makes us human.

 

The theories, at least as far as I understand them from the article by Kirsch, do not deal enough with “why”— why do we act so destructively? Or, since it’s not all of us, why do so many of us act so destructively? Is it Ignorance? Self-centeredness? Greed?

 

Or maybe we’ve been so destructive due to patterns of thought and behavior inherited through cultural evolution as opposed to traits we’ve inherited through biological evolution. Has every human culture been so destructive? Maybe a culture that preaches we’re created in the image of God ⎼ that we must be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over all the earth and over every creeping thing ⎼ might be more narcissistic and less attracted by stewardship, less willing to control its fruitfulness, than one that emphasizes the interdependence of all beings….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**The photo is of a Mother Goddess figure, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

The Dream that Heals and the River that Flows Through Us

Recently, just before having a scary medical test, I had a dream that I not only remembered afterwards in detail, but which greatly affected me. Actually, remembered might not be the most accurate way to describe what happened, because I was partly awake even while I was dreaming.

 

In the dream, I was visiting the city of my birth and wanted to call my parents. They were back in the home where I grew up, even though they had moved out of that house several years before either my mom’s or my dad’s death. And in the dream, I knew all this, knew they had died years ago. Yet, I still wanted to call them on the phone, but I had forgotten their phone number.

 

Suddenly, I was with a group of friends entering a restaurant not far from my parent’s old home, not far from my old home. The friends and I had reservations for dinner. But I decided to quickly walk to my parent’s house, tell them I would come by after dinner and stay the night, and I’d get their phone number.

 

When I got to the house, I looked in the front window. Both my parents were there. They were entertaining other couples. But they had a security guard at the door, a tall, strong man standing in a darkened area of the front porch. The guard knew about me, had heard stories from my parents. He even told me about his own son who was training in the martial arts. But he wouldn’t let me in without checking my ID. I showed him my driver’s license and he said I could enter.

 

As soon as I did, I was swept up in the feel, the atmosphere of the past. I was there, in my old home, with my parents very fully there, right there, and yet I also knew they were no longer alive.

 

Then I woke up. Somehow, dreaming this dream changed my whole emotional situation. I felt good, no longer afraid of the medical test, or maybe anything. It was not that I felt my parents could, now, speak to me. But seeing them made my past come alive ⎼ and was possibly telling me something about my future. About not fearing death, maybe? Or about fear itself? About reality?

 

We wander to so many places in our dreams, and we can dream and wander both while asleep and awake. Daydreams, and all manner of thoughts and images can run around our minds all through the day, accessing the same river of imagery as night dreams.

 

The dream clearly reminded me how much I missed my parents and that they were still with me, as me. And that includes so much more than their DNA. No one is perfect, but my parents, more than anyone, taught me to love. But was the security guard a gatekeeper to a mythic realm or heaven, or maybe a form of Charon without his ferryboat, taking my dream mind to the other shore? And why had I forgotten their phone number?…

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

Ancient Lessons About Reducing Anxiety and Embracing the World

Despite feeling tremendous relief just a few nights ago, when Catharine Masto Cortez was declared the winner of the Nevada Senate race and my wife, and I, danced around the living room⎼ today I feel heavy once again. Why is that? I was so happy the Democrats exceeded expectations and maintained control of the Senate. The outpouring of support for the rights of women and to vote has clarified for all that the GOP war for autocracy can be stopped.

 

But sometimes, we get so caught up in a situation, a worry, expectation, and lose any perspective. We might be too frightened, traumatized, or invested and we see things only one way, as if the moment stood isolated in time. And we lose sight of how the situation came to be.

 

We might lose sight, for example, of just how traumatized we all were by past threats and those still looming. We have the GOP barely gaining control of the House and, of course, keeping control of the Supreme Court. And their leaders, DJT and others like him, are still threatening to seize the Presidency, avoid prosecution for their crimes, and impose their will on the rest of us. And the chaos they might yet cause, with their program of hate, lies, and division, and denying the factual results of this and past elections.

 

But not only is no human an island but no moment. The past sets up the present, as this moment educates the next. One moment’s mistake can lead either to another mistake ⎼ or to insight, when we can allow our heart, mind, and senses to be open to it.

 

I was reading a book by Joan Sutherland, a Zen meditation teacher, called Through Forests of Every Color: Awakening with Koans. In chapter two, she talked about how a new form of Zen developed in China in the eighth century in response to catastrophic times. Over just ten years, two-thirds of the population died due to rebellion, invasion, famine, and disease. The Tang dynasty of the time went from a flourishing empire to, afterwards, a barely surviving one, where life was so tenuous.

 

Of course, this mirrored back to me our own time, marked as we know too well, with so much disease, so many climate disasters, and the threats mentioned earlier of violence, and the attempted destruction of our democratic form of government.

 

No moment is the same as any other, but how did people, in awful times in the past, or going through awful times today, cope? Can we today, or those from the past, reveal ways of living that can help us through the pain to something we could welcome, to ways of living that meet our needs and strengthen our humanity?

 

I especially look to people like Zen adepts, those who have spent years studying the mind, body, and heart, and living harmoniously with others and nature. According to Sutherland, the Zen adepts and innovators of the 8th century,  realized that trying to escape their world through a narrow path to personal peace or religious ceremony would not serve them or their culture. They needed a sense of immediacy and, awful as it was, they got it….

 

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Spirit Music, and A Study in Sincerity

Today was a tough day. My body hurt in so many places and for reasons that are beyond my knowing. And the daily news is so mixed, the horrible mixed with the beautiful. Yet…

 

Even on days like today, we can read, hear, or see something that takes us someplace totally unanticipated, to a mind-state, or a universe so alive, so conscious, that moments which once seemed painful, tired, or sad are transformed into something wonderful we embrace with all our being.

 

I’m reading a book called Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, by the poet and translator of Chinese literature, David Hinton. And I feel this. I’ve felt this in other books by Hinton, and books by other poets, and philosophers, historians, meditators, travelers, and psychologists. I’ve felt this with certain people, animals, and places.

 

Books have forever been a way to inform, challenge, and inspire us, to understand what before was incomprehensible. They allow a depth of examination that other formats don’t. For me, the internet, tv, social media all favor little sound or information bites that keep us more focused on the surface of things.

 

But the words in books like Hinton’s are spirit-music. When we read them, if we’re open to them, if we can inhabit them so we walk as the inhabitants in the books walked, we create something never seen before, yet ancient. The very air breathes us, speaks the words with us.

 

Hinton says, “Things are themselves only as they belong to something more than themselves: I to we, we to earth, earth to planets and stars…” We recognize ourselves and become truly ourselves only with others, in whatever place, time, and universe we are in.

 

The first chapter is called ‘sincerity.’ Hinton says the Chinese character for sincerity depicts a side view of a person walking or standing next to words rising out of a mouth. A lie attempts to hide the truth from others, but usually hides the universe and others from ourselves. This creates an inner tension. If we’re sincere, our thoughts are the same as the words we speak; all of what happens supposedly “outside,” in language, mountain, and sky, opens inside. And what we say unites us with where we are and who we’re with; it reveals to us that, in fact, we’re the universe itself speaking.

 

Sincerity raises us like a parent’s love, one that is absolute, yet clear seeing and adapting. We each have different loves, different doorways to the mysterious. Everything provides such a doorway if we can find it. Sincerity is the sign that marks the door.

 

When I was teaching secondary school literature, philosophy, or history, the students and I talked about finding that doorway. Children, especially teenagers, are not shy about calling out insincerity and respect the care and trust expressed by sincerity. For example, poetry can often be so difficult to comprehend. But when we read a poem with full attention, a word, phrase, or image would stand out, but which word or image did that was different for different students. And once we realized the door was there, we could feel or question our way in deeper….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

The Hideous and the Beautiful: A Good News Newsletter on the Two and the Infinite Sides of Humanity

There’s so much in our society and world right now that angers or frightens me, but also so much that is providing optimism, maybe, or at least, reassurance, that what we need or wish for is possible. I’m often tempted lately to write a good news newsletter to cheer up and energize myself and others.

 

First, there is the news that our legal system is greatly damaged but not broken. In 2021 and 2022, the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty of murder and hate crimes. The DOJ has also increased its efforts to prosecute hate crimes.

 

Secondly, it has been so jarring and has created such anxiety in so many of us to see DJT’s obvious criminal, unjust, even traitorous actions escape any legal consequences, until, maybe, now. The Jan. 6 Hearings have and will continue to present for all to see (if they’d look) new and old evidence of DJT working to violently overthrow our constitutional democracy. Then there’s the evidence collected at Mar-A-Lago that DJT illegally took government documents, including classified files, with him as he left office. He obstructed investigations into that theft.  And the DOJ has opened investigations into his election interference, and issued over 40 subpoenas to people in DJT’s orbit. He faces a very good chance of a criminal indictment.

 

The GOP cry they must enact controls on voting (i. e. suppress the vote) due to voting fraud, but the evidence shows their claims are disinformation. Such fraud is a GOP created myth.

 

The biggest voting fraud is by DJT followers, some of whom are now being held accountable. For example, GOP officials and lawyers, such as Sidney Powell, have been exposed for breaching and illegally sharing voting information. In Michigan, DJT’s pick for attorney general is being investigated for a conspiracy to get access to voting machines. There is Representative Scott Perry in Pennsylvania and a GOP election official in Troy, New York, named Jason Schofield. According to the DOJ, Schofield “was arraigned on an indictment charging him with unlawfully using the names and dates of birth of voters to fraudulently apply for absentee ballots for elections held in Rensselaer County in 2021.”

 

Then we have criminal investigations against DJT in Georgia, fraud investigations in New York. And the investigation into DJT fraudulently raising money to fight a fraud that never happened, but he spent the money for his own personal uses. Some of these charges could result in jail time and/or disqualification from running for office.

 

Thirdly, with abortion, the GOP have exposed their heartlessness. Having an abortion is an awful choice to make, but it’s a mother’s choice. The GOP are not only trying to rip from women the right to make decisions regarding their own bodies; they’re demonizing mothers who want the right to decide when, how many, or if they have children. They’re trying to ensure women are legally considered second to men.

 

This has frightened and angered so many people. And GOP Senator Lindsey Graham’s call for making abortion illegal nationally just increased that anger. The number of those registering to vote to protect the right to abortion even in red states like Kansas has increased dramatically, and with young people as well as women. The whole election calculus is changing. In many states, the number one concern motivating women and young people to come out and vote is abortion, second only to protecting democracy. This is happening in many other states as well.

 

People are saying, “enough.” …

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Let Love Live, Revisited: Will We Act to Strengthen the Caring Relationship We Call a Community and Hope to See Actualized in Our Nation?

I’m sure you, too, are amazed at scenes like this: You’re watching your child at play, or a puppy running around the yard. Or you’re walking in the woods and see a fawn, or a kit, a baby fox, or a butterfly.

Or—I’m sitting in bed, a magazine on my lap. My wife is next to me, doing a puzzle. In between us, near our feet, are two cats, sleeping. I look at them, at all of us, and feel awe. Ok, the cats are simply sleeping, my wife, puzzling. But there is such trust on that bed. These beings want to be here, with me, with each other. They care. Or we care.

One of the cats, Miko, starts shaking, as if dreaming. He wraps his front paws around and over his head, as if to hide. I lean over and touch his back, and the shaking stops. He relaxes, releases his head, and turns over, showing me his belly. There is such vulnerability there, and tenderness. I give myself to you, and you give it back, enhanced.

When life is tough, we need to know such moments are possible, and even better, how to create a situation so they’re probable.

I’m reading an article in Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time. The piece details a wonderful conversation between author and meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, and the educator, scholar and social activist Bell Hooks, about “The Power of Real Love.” Sharon talks of growing up and thinking that love is something given by others, but instead, it is an ability, a capacity, maybe even a responsibility we have in ourselves. Bell Hooks talks of love as residing in our actions, not just in our feelings.

In this day, in this threatening political climate, where fear and hate are so frequently in the news—How do we love? How do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and care when the forces of domination and injustice seem to surround us?

Fear can be a message to wake up and observe more closely, or to turn away and flee. It’s built on opposition and is unstable and lasts only as long as we maintain a threat, an enemy, and a wall. Those outside the wall are rejected; those inside the wall are suspect. Such fear needs our compliance with it to succeed. Sometimes, we must or can’t help but act out of fear, but we pay an awful price when we allow fear to live too dominantly in us.

Love is built on mutuality, on approaching as close as possible to another being. It thrives on moments when there is little or no boundary or wall and, as the philosopher Ken Wilber put it, when our borders are not just points of demarcation but places where touching is possible….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**And thank you to Bell Hooks and Sharon Salzberg (and Lion’s Roar) for the conversation and teachings.

***This is a revisiting of a blog from September, 2017.

 

The GOP Would Sacrifice Us on the Altar of their Power and Profit: What if, Instead, We Created a Better World?

What if we, or I, have been looking at this all wrong? I often feel like we’re on the verge of losing almost everything. But what if we’re on the verge of⎼ well, winning. Or maybe not winning but at least making things better? Maybe we must re-think our thinking about  what’s possible.

 

The GOP, and even some Democrats, or the financially well-off financiers of some Democrats, have become totally desperate. The immorality of many GOP, their willingness to sacrifice everything and everyone for their greed and power, has become totally upfront and obvious to anyone not blinded by lies and an unwillingness to question their beliefs or recognize the humanity of those holding views different from their own.

 

Desperation is a sign of weakness, not strength. Unwillingness to change one’s views or listen to others is a weakness, not a strength.

 

On May 30th Sonali Kolhatkar, host and founder of Rising With Sonali, a tv and radio show that airs on Free Speech Radio and Pacifica stations, wrote an article for the Independent Media Institute arguing very cogently that the very rich are making a very dangerous calculation⎼ that it is worth sacrificing millions or even billions of lives in order to preserve corporate and individual profits.

 

She cites a new poll by the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment which found that “there is no longer skepticism among the public that the effects of climate change are real, as 76 percent of respondents—the highest on record since the poll started—’believe there is solid evidence that temperatures on the planet have risen over the last four decades.’”

 

Yet, despite overwhelming support for doing all we can to halt climate change, “corporate profit-based considerations have constantly dictated our energy use and climate policies, [and] we have effectively decided that major sacrifices of lives—most likely poor people of color—will be worth the pain of relying on fossil fuels for energy.”

 

And the same holds true with the pandemic. “Today, even as COVID-19 infection rates are skyrocketing, with cases having risen by 58 percent in the last two weeks alone, mask mandates are being dropped all over the country and COVID-19-related restrictions are ending. This is not because the virus is under control—it is clearly not—but because it’s no longer financially viable for corporate America to sacrifice profits for lives. So, it will sacrifice lives for profit….”

 

Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post back in September about how the GOP would exploit the pandemic, sacrifice lives by lying about vaccines, for example, to resurrect their power. Millions of people were tricked, made sick, and many died due to the anti-vaccine propaganda of DJT and the right.

 

*This blog was syndicated by The Good Men Project.

 

Dismantling Walls, Reducing Pain, and Rethinking Thinking

There are so many obstacles, both personal and institutional, we face in trying to improve our lives as well as the society we live in. But we too often overlook the way we think about thinking as one of those obstacles.

 

How we think, as well as what we think about or pay attention to, influences the answers we derive and our emotional state. This might be one reason why the GOP so vigorously use twisted logic to attack the search for truth⎼ about Jan 6 and DJT,  about science, public schools, and education in general, and certainly about gun violence. This is not just a dangerous political maneuver, but one that could threaten our survival as a nation and as a species, because it turns our most precious resource⎼ our minds and ability to think⎼ into an enemy to be feared and fought against.

 

We often conceptualize intelligence as our ability to learn, solve problems, or select goals and calculate how to reach them. But intelligence and thinking are not just a road to a desired end but a quality of our journey. It involves the ability to let go as well as dig deeper, not just to think but rethink our assumptions and beliefs. To know our limitations. The Greek philosopher Socrates supposedly said that what made him wise was that he knew he knew nothing.

 

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant, in his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, spells out how our mistaken idea of thinking can lead to distorting what we look at. And the brighter we supposedly are, the more blind we can be. What makes us intelligent, he says, is an ability to question our assumptions, and beliefs. To act like scientists testing our hypotheses.

 

We often resist rethinking, not only because of the time and energy required, but because it would mean questioning ourselves. Such questioning might add more unpredictability to an already unpredictable, often threatening world. And we’d have to admit we’re wrong, and capable of being very wrong. Our identity is tied closely to our beliefs and what we think are facts. To change our viewpoint can feel like abandoning our sense of ourselves. We might prefer the “comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.”

 

Many of us use one of 3 models for thinking: a preacher defending their sacred beliefs, a prosecutor proving the “other side” wrong, or a politician seeking approval. Instead of thinking clearly, we often “listen to opinions that make us feel good instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat… and surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions” instead of those who challenge our thought process.

 

The result is what’s called the Dunning Kruger Effect. This is based on studies showing that people who scored the lowest on tests of reasoning and grammar had the most inflated idea of their abilities. The less we know in a particular domain, the more we overestimate our intelligence in that domain, and the more rigidly we hold our beliefs. Instead of recognizing what we don’t know or have yet to learn, we hide from the realization. We fall easily into the bias of thinking we’re not biased.

 

We might think this doesn’t apply to us, but I saw this operate in my own life. After returning to teaching after a 10-year absence, for a few years I found myself presenting answers to students more than modeling ways to question. I held viewpoints with more conviction than I felt because I didn’t want to expose my lack of knowledge.

 

 

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Relationship of All Humans, Revisited: A Stable Society Is Like a Loving Relationship

A relationship with another person, even one of long standing, with a friend, colleague, even a spouse, can seem so strong but, in reality, be so delicate. It is important to recognize this. We expect emotional ties to bear so much, to tie people, families, groups together. But emotions are just thoughts, feelings, and sensations. They are ephemeral; like air, they can be moved or changed so easily.

 

I look at my wife, Linda, and realize how much better my life is because of her. I think more clearly and gain new perspectives because we talk so easily together. The more I feel love, appreciation, and gratitude, and the more I allow her in, the more I enjoy my day. Yet, despite all that, sometimes I lose it. I don’t feel the connection. I feel what I feel and think what I think but what she feels, or thinks is beyond me. I relate to her as if she were a means to an end, my own projection, simply the source of my own satisfaction, or pain. I mentally accuse her of being the cause of what hurts me.

 

And then I become aware of what I’m doing. I feel our separation, the fragility of our life together and how easily I could lose her. I shudder and wake up.

 

Society is also a relationship. Of course, there’s more to it than that, just like there is more to a marriage than emotion. There’s history, commitment, often there are children, homes, possessions, and for a society, institutions, buildings, roads, laws, and social processes. But what do any of these mean without the sense of relationship?

 

We spend most of our time each day in human constructed environments with other human beings. The beauty and necessity of our cooperation with others surrounds and envelops us. Yet often we lose it. We treat other people as means to our own ends. We treat cashiers like the machines they control. We treat other drivers as obstacles to pass. We treat people we barely know with the briefest of recognitions and people we don’t know are ignored or worse. There are so many people around us. How can we do anything else?

 

The more we harden our personal borders and think of ourselves as separate from others, the more pain we feel, and the easier it is to go from indifference or ignoring others, to hurting.

 

Or to lying to ourselves. Telling and recognizing the truth means getting as close as we can to what’s real, what is happening in ourselves and the world. A lie hides and distorts, pushes away what’s real, by intent. It substitutes a fiction, an idea for reality. Of course, it can get complicated. I don’t know if it’s best or not to always tell the truth. But in general, knowing and speaking the truth, or knowing as best we can what’s actually going on in ourselves and others, fosters healthy relationships. When problems arise, as they must, we can only face them if we notice them. We can only face what we allow ourselves to perceive….

 

**To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

The Power that Liberates vs the Power that Corrupts: The Skills Needed to Obtain Power and Lead Effectively are the Ones Most Likely to Deteriorate Once We Have Power

What is the root of real power, power that is consistent with having a satisfying life? That inspires others? That makes us effective leaders?

The people of Ukraine especially, but really the whole world, have been suffering due to political leaders like Putin⎼ and DJT⎼ politicians whose idea of leadership is to center power on themselves alone. Too many people have this maladaptive idea that only by being selfish and ruthless can we be an effective ruler. Some even think that only by being ruthless can we succeed in making the world a better place.

I was just re-reading two articles from the May/June, 2017, Scientific American Mind that clearly show research on power proves the opposite to be true. The first is about the psychological effects of power on the powerful, and that one of many reasons the common idea of power is maladaptive is because it can undermine the motivation by ethical and empathic people to want to take political action. The second article is on self-compassion.

The British politician and historian, Lord John Acton, has often been quoted as saying: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power to corrupt absolutely.” He was mostly speaking of Popes, Roman Emperors, and absolute monarchs, but he could be speaking of Presidents.

In an article called Power Moves: Success Changes How People Think and Act—Often, But Not Always, For the Worse, psychologist and science writer Theodor Schaarschmidt asks if the corrupting influences of power are real and attributable to the mere fact of having power? Or is it that ruthless people are the ones most likely to search for power to begin with? The article discusses psychologist Susan Fiske’s research—as people gain influence, they change. They act with less empathy and with a reduced concern for details.

In general, those in powerful positions tend to overestimate their skills, take greater risks, think in terms of stereotypes, and ignore outside viewpoints. The more power they get, the fewer social norms they tend to follow. They can become “Machiavellian” and disregard moral or even legal limits and feel free to use others in the pursuit of their own status and advantage. Schaarschmidt cites research by psychologist Kibeom Lee showing that when Machiavellian traits combine with narcissism and psychopathy, people act with less honesty and humility.

At first glance, it might seem from this research that empathy is somehow in opposition to the sense of agency and motivation to assume power. However, in his book The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, psychologist Dacher Keltner says it is social intelligence, or the power to understand, value and advance the goals of others, that yields true power; and it is involved in every relationship and interaction. Without this social intelligence we tend to act like patients who have damaged their brain’s orbitofrontal lobes (the parts of the brain critical to empathy and socially appropriate behavior)….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

**This article is an update and re-write of an earlier piece I wrote, https://irarabois.com/power-liberates-vs-power-corrupts/

https://archetypeinaction.com/index.php/en/more-tools-to-change-society/162-politics-a-rhetoric2/political-psychology/4770-the-power-that-liberates-vs-the-power-that-corrupts