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Executive Summary
History and Background
(excluding base findings) of Resources Unlimited
2009 Study Sabbatical from Cross-Country Interviews
on Social and Spiritual Resilience in Challenging Times
Listening Matters on The Miracles Express
Depending on the kind of interviews—and there are
many kinds—Resources Unlimited interviews during a nearly year-long
study sabbatical on resilience were a curious mix of cynicism and
despair. They also revealed in tough times of political conflict and social
dislocation a certain restrained (occasionally animated) hopefulness and
faith in the future. Mixed blessings, yes. Not all that unusual.
These are sticky and demanding times. Worse even! Three questions:
Are we kidding ourselves? Are demands made of citizens, in fact, far
more difficult than many of us can handle? Who admits openly and unashamedly
that things are as bad as one can imagine?
Intriguing questions of human spirit and endurance. Altogether, results
of interviews, broadly considered, offer particularized and universal
answers to those three (and other) pressing questions concerning the
necessity of a higher quality of civic and political life than, say, has existed in the last decade or so.
In the happenings and exigencies of the last two years (our chosen
benchmark or basis of discussion in interviews) much has been written
and reported and analyzed about the business of
citizens from all backgrounds and callings devolving into depression and
despair and dysfunction over "the terrible state of the world."
Information has come from books and newspaper columns, as well as from
internet websites and blogs, plus from network and cable TV.
(Much information in words and images has also come from less grim and
more hopeful realities and opportunities.)
Pundits, commentators, scholars, historians, educators, public
officials, media luminaries, ethicists, religionists, and theologians,
plus everyday citizens of awareness, have weighed in on ways the culture
is living broken and exhausted, seemingly drained of real hope into a
dismal, more brutal future. The sense is of a lack of purposeful energy,
of a hunger for new and measurable relief and greater generosity in
communitarian efforts directed in achieving common good.
Relief from what? Who's keeping count, really, in a "culture gone
beserk"? Yet the most pressing concerns seem to revolve around
variations of these "Unlucky 13" realities, deadly and grim to be sure:
(1))Persistence
of war and the human destruction that is war; (2) grossest
economic injustice; (3) humanitarian aid or the lack of it in an
increase in unnatural disasters; (4) lack of charity and
kindness, added to more incivillity; (5) near-unprecedented
corporate corruption and greed big-time; (6) political
demagoguery and distortion and manipulation; (7) tolerance of
brutality and violence; (8) massive unemployment and
underemployment; (9) the prevalence of the death penalty, (10)
mortgages foreclosed by an unscrupulous banking system; (11)
inhumane bureaucratic inertia; (12) the ever-burgeoning increase
in teen suicides; (13) and all the unmentioned rest in a culture
that,
say both media-savvy pundits and engaged interviewees, is screaming
loudly,
desperately for more coherence and compassion.
Grim to be sure.
All of that, we learned in addition, has overtones (and undertones) of
citizens struggling mightily with
ennui, or with trying desperately to overcome acidia, of struggling
with abject apathy, of ardently if somewhat inchoately battling NOT to
live fruitlessly on the dark side of the moon. Collective national
entreaties for more light and coherence—and newer local compassionate
understandings of suffering—have come from nearly everywhere. Who
said: The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference.
Our search for new or unusual interview experiences did not
obscure a focus on seeking meetings spontaneous and open to the moment.
No specific agenda, and no grand announcement of wanting an interview!
If lucky (and sometimes we weren’t) that moment led to lengthy,
thoughtful, not hurried, even delightfully rambling interviews. We went
with the flow. We tried to be relaxed in engagements, and that effort
helped “strangers” (ourselves included) demonstrate a certain palpable
personal regard, or a transparent sense of friendliness and simple
peacemaking.
We interviewed and photographed countless people—old and young and in
between—from nearly all callings and walks of life: professionals,
construction workers, day laborers, part-timers, school agers employed
in retail or at fast-food eateries, executives, supervisors, retired
persons, volunteers, writers, journalists. We sepnt time talking with
people unemployed, or poor, or people without a home and living on the
streets, or in shelters, or in their cars. Variously we asked all about ways they do and
don’t bounce back spiritually from incivility, for example, or from much
more difficult and sometimes even brutal experiences of persistent
conflict—whether at home or on a larger socio-political or military
"battlefield." Do they hold grudges? Feel lasting and
debilitating resentment? We asked questions regarding their own unique
and
perhaps entrepreneurial
efforts to overcome vulnerabilities and set-backs.
We asked where and how to find affirmation in fragile times of war and from
human destruction that is war. We wanted to know how those interviewed were faring in
a troubled economy and whether they themselves knew anyone unemployed
long-term, or anyone who had lost their home to foreclosure. What
hurting person did they know? How were they connected? Were they
themselves hurting? Did they care to talk about why? No surprise in all
this: Answers and responses and agreements varied.
The world, as some well-considered perspectives have it, seems daily to
be restlessly alternating between collapsing outwardly and/or imploding
inwardly from external pressures and social and political strife. That a
lot in civic and political life has gone terribly, disastrously wrong is
now generally acknowledged. Anxieties are aplenty, running amuck. Added to
the deadly 13 concerns mentioned earlier, there is also lately an intensified clashing of civilizations
over religious views and
themes, along with continuing health disparities between the well-off
and the poor.
Our society’s prevailing problems
(a most inadequate word here) are, some say, insidious and evil,
insistently persistent, persistently insistent. Are we still
audacious enough as Americans to hope and work for something better?
Said educator and spiritual writer Parker Palmer, who himself has
written insightfully on his own major depressive disorder, in explaining
why some folk with debilitating and exhausting clinical depression
commit suicide: “They need the rest.”
In response, Resources Unlimited as an education institute in
social justice and civic engagement, confirmed aspects of the
here-enumerated sense of
reality (both perceived and real) through numerous interviews
conducted over 11 months in 2009—from February to December. During a
dynamically productive time away of play, travel, renewal, and studies
in resilience (bouncing back), the organization conducted more than
several hundred face-to-face interviews: videotaped, recorded live, and
interviews conducted by simple social experiences of listening, while we jotted a minimum of
notes.
A majority of interviews were based
in prevailing social and moral and political dysfunctions. Nearly all
sabbatical questionings concerned matters of social and spiritual
resilience. Matters focused on plausible ways to bounce back in troubled
times of travail and much intolerable suffering, bouncing back from
negative effects from within major dimensions of living: family, work
(or lack thereof),
civic and public life, community.
Yet let us quickly avow right now that we heard many times over of great
and small graces and blessings, and acknowledge as well that people told
brave and incredibly powerful stories of how graces sustained them
in vital ways. They spoke of moving ahead into some kind of real, albeit
occasionally tentative, hope. People spoke uniquely of wanting to be on the
move again, in ways important to them particularly.
What, if anything, did we learn about despair and hope from our
year-long sabbatical of study on spiritual and social resilience?
Sharing a cup of coffee or tea with us, or a simple salad or
sandwich, many questioned in less formal settings tended to speak
softly, tentatively of wanting to cultivate a new determination but
didn't know where to start the process.
They expressed a vague wish to begin anew what was termed, in one conference, "a personal and community search for some relief and new satisfactions."
They sought more joy and felicities amid an often oppressive and
nightmarish world-weariness stemming from unnatural disasters (e.g.,
destruction from floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, storms). They bemoaned excessive
unresolved political and social disagreement in home communities. They
feared further increases in the grievously negative effects of militarism.
They were apprehensive
over prospects of seemingly near-automatic national
decisions to engage aggressive or armed conflict.
Traveling some 18,000 miles across 28 states, crisscrossing from Utah
to Florida, Illinois to New Mexico, Connecticut to Alabama, Texas to
West Virginia, we asked for answers to
key questions about resilience. We queried not-mutually-exclusive doers and
thinkers alike—Alpha
can-do types, and citizens of a more contemplative
bent. Our personal guidance
in asking specific resiliency questions derived from multivalent sources: family
conversations, workplace discussions with colleagues, meetings with
trustees of Resources Unlimited and other leaders of local and national
nonprofits, conversations with friends, neighbors,
acquaintances, and from thinking through some of our own germane work and
personal experiences. These stories will, at some point soon, be told in
greater detail and nuance. They are insightful stories of local
particularity.
Here and there we took guidance, as well, from favored (and not favored) media
commentators of many thought-provoking persuasions and political and
social identities and ideologies. We were guided by
friend and foe alike, though not to the same degree with each. One daily sabbatical morning and late-night routine had us reading or
scanning local newspapers and publications (including tourist and travel brochures).
We did near-daily spot checking of internet "social networks
of like-minded folk” (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace).
Interviewees generally spoke freely of both pragmatic and tender bonds
of affection—or lack of them—with neighbors, co-workers, new and old
friends. At the same time for example, more than several interlocutors decried the
coming end of the world soon.
Whether that dire reality was a fact-based or perceived concern,
or used as metaphor of hopelessness or helplessness (e.g., “The world is
going to hell in a hand basket”) we understood the need to take time to take
time. A certain emotionally safe and careful space helped in hearing
of some exceptional psychic perplexities facing ordinary citizens on
vital fronts: Variously ethical, moral, religious, educational,
political, social, economic—not an exhaustive list.
When we were talking to or in conference with acknowledged experts or
influencers of opinion (particularly concerning current aspects of social and political
and ethical life) many of the answers and follow up questions typically were
complex…and decidedly complicated. Not a lot of easy answers, in many
instances. Routine was it, however, to hear experts and non-experts
alike say, atypically, ambiguous things. A few examples of their
"certain" uncertainty:
(1) “Geez, I don’t know anymore; all bets are off.”
(2) “I’m truly
baffled these days.”
(3) “Well, I’m mystified as to how and why this all happened.”
In a manner of speaking, more than several interviewees revealed that
their uncertainties were, well, certain. More anxious declarations of
withering or agrieved confusion were quite unexpected—startling even. Yet these
kinds of avowals nevertheless included occasional whispers of new
possibilities for greater happiness and plausibly deeper satisfactions.
A typically well-regarded American "bounce of energetic readiness" was
slow going, hardly visible, rarely robust. We had expected something otherwise
more hopeful. At
same time there were clear indications that people were determined to
recover from terrible hardships in order to reconnect better, in
particular, with family and community.
Thus, Listening Matters on The Miracles Express (a
fully equipped 31-foot Winnebago mobile office/motorhome) offered
fortuitous opportunities to discern a sense of both wonder and
perplexity in face-to-face encounters and visits. Paradoxically we were
grounded
and stabilized in moving along
open roads, in our "ready-to-roll" transport vehicle. We visited places for several days, if not longer.
We stayed in
cities large and smaller, in rustic towns, and in remote places
"hidden" within out-of-the-way rural and thinly populated areas. Apparent is
it that 18,000 miles covers, relatively, a lot of here-and-there
territory of places to visit, people to meet, things to do and engage.
Nevertheless in all this we showed little favoritism toward any one kind of place
or people of
promise. Instead we opted to make in-the-moment decisions to visit
somewhere or not, and then to do a limited amount of basic planning once
"next place" was identified from daily research effort. We
often made things
up as we moved along: Meaning, our thinking as to place remained reasonably flexible
and fluid yet was neither undisciplined nor willy-nilly.
We heard and learned lots of “wow” things along the ways and by-ways.
Stories of
true blessing, of good news in family and at work, were frequently stories of decisive
if slow improvement. Many lessons came to us unexpectedly from big-hearted
stories told. Same for stories of diminishment and disparagement.
Oddly perhaps, we learned
that people are actually thankful for difficult times, in part because
they experience a growth in spirit from troubles. Some reported a sense
of thanksgiving for embarrassing and stupid mistakes, because of the
valuable lessons from forgiveness of self and others. Some explained how
honest struggle alone brought them spiritual and personal fulfillment,
this from hard effort at overcoming adversity and affliction, whether at
work or at home...or elsewhere.
A marvel sometimes was it when people talked thankfully about how a
sense of rich fulfillment came to them and others they know as a result
of serious unwanted setbacks, or of underserved misery and suffering. (There were
notable exceptions, expressed sometimes as resentment toward "enemies
unfair.") A sense of gratitude, some believed or felt, was able to turn a
negative into something quite positive, or at least something more
agreeable to reasonable self-interest. Some said, somewhat eerily, that they were
actually grateful for troubles and mistakes made, because anger and
frustration at themselves and others forced an ultimate inward gathering
of courage (intestinal fortitude) to regard troubles as blessings, and
then to try spreading a sense of blessing to family members and
neighbors, and to others met along life’s rocky journey. Cloudy and
perilous times tended to generate, some reported, a hunger for
often-complex though reassuring light (and mixed blessings!) from caring
if sometimes "crazed" relations within family and other systems of
social engagement.
Variously some made the case that less do life’s vicissitudes make
living difficult; and more is it that choosing to deal
with (or not deal
with) both ups and downs is THE critical difference in achieving social and
personal and spiritual success. There was earnest vocalized searching
about in the moment for less passive and more community-based actions
(and schemes!) of
fulfillment. This was thinking aloud. In some rarer instances worth
noting, interviews centered on taking real responsibility ("ownership")
for messes in the discrete worlds they inhabit. Almost all encounters, in one way
or another, surfaced self-generated laundry lists of "worst messes
imaginable."
In still-rarer interviews (more deeply personal, a touch intimate), a
few respondents opined that in a free society some are guilty and all
are responsible. That somewhat startling—and refreshing—conclusion is
something to think about and report on further, perhaps to discuss more
openly in looking for solutions. That will happen.
And yes, there were others who argued
vociferously that all is gone astray, hopeless. They had given up, they said. They seemed more than
certain in select instances that society was beyond
fixing, beyond saving. Society, they believed,
was lost, no longer capable of executing more generous and
positive-looking ideas of finding workable solutions. This last sense of feeling
palpably dislocated and forsaken was in contradistinction to others
interviewed, who seemed more abstract in offering sometimes vague
problem solving strategies to relieve human distress and suffering.
In some instances, people were zealously aware that the
individual's task is to reveal and embody (“visible-ize”) their
commitments: word and deed in realistic sync, rhetoric and action
reasonably joined together. Primary commitments were twofold:
(1) Commitment to freedom with responsibility, including having a sense
of freedom's inherent limitations in a fallen world of too much "muck and jumble"; and
(2) Commitment to a sense of fairness and genuine goodwill in everyday
social and larger-community settings.
In the coming six months over the next year
(October 2010 through March 2011) Resources Unlimited plans to share wider a specific
range of particularized stories heard about social and political disaster leading to improvement and new
discovery, to new beginnings perhaps. Variously we will examine and expand on
bedeviling responses to some torturously perplexing contradictions mentioned here
in this broad "executive summary." The hope is that
home-grown and grounded reports and
stories will provoke needed and robust discussion and dialogue
concerning where “things are at” and where perhaps change and some new
thinking need to move forward into the near-term future, new thinking regarding
family, work, community.
Experiences of engaged discourse might, among several possibilities
available, generate
attention in three notable areas of disquiet or of more intense concern and
interest, as revealed through sabbatical findings and
interviews—ordinary and extraordinary alike. The three areas of great
concern are:
(1) Social and spiritual opportunities for new learning and growth in
families;
(2) Benefits and graces of more cooperative ventures across
non-traditional boundaries in work and employment situations; and
(3) Problematic challenges needing courage and new determination for improved
resolution and reconciliation in home communities and larger world.
We look forward to helping formulate and sustain dialogue efforts. We
hope, as well, to brainstorm and surface creative solutions. They are
many kinds of brainstormings and conversations, as there are were many
kinds of interviews during the year-long sabbatical. Altogether these
efforts in shared leadership are intended to surface (bring forth) common-good solutions from
solutionaries and other citizens of awareness.
Respectfully submitted,
Jim Boushay and Rickey Sain, Sr.
Trustees, Resources Unlimited Foundation
Oak Park, IL, 60304 USA
708-524-8387
May/June 2010
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