Tuesday, May 23, 2006
The Path to Nirvana, Here and Now
I have been reading Scott Peck's book from almost 20 years ago, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. He's writing during the late eighties, the Reagan era, which was nearly as dark a time as the present day--the Cold War not yet over, the Latin American civil wars hot and dirty, anti-Semitism rampant in the Middle East, on and on. Much of what Peck had to say then about the importance of building true community in order to attain true peace is still highly relevant today.
Peck's great insight is that most of us, especially in the U.S., live in what he calls "pseudo-community." "The essential dynamic of pseudo-community is conflict-avoidance....In pseudo-community it is as if every individual is operating according to the same book of ettiquette. The rules of this book are: Don't do or say anything that might offend someone else; if someone does something that offends, annoys, or irritates you, act as if nothing has happened and pretend you are not bothered in the least; and if some form of disagreement should show signs of appearing, change the subject as quickly and smoothly as possible....It is easy to see how these rules make for a smoothly functioning group. But they also crush individuality, intimacy, and honesty, and the longer it lasts the duller it gets."
In order to get beyond this stage and move towards true community, Peck says, groups must go through a period of unpleasant, uncomfortable chaos and conflict:
"'There are only two ways out of chaos,' I will explain to a group after it has spent a sufficient period of time squabbling and getting nowhere. 'One is into organization--but organization is never community. The only other way is through emptiness,'" Peck says. Emptiness "is the hard part. It is also the most crucial stage of community development. It is," he explains, when individuals within a group "empty themselves of barriers to communication," which include expectations and preconceptions, prejudices, ideology, theology and solutions, the need to heal, convert, fix or solve, and the need to control.
Peck describes this stage in the most dramatic terms possible. "During the stage of emptiness my own gut feeling is...the pain of witnessing a group in its death throes. The whole group seems to writhe and moan in its travail. Individuals will sometimes speak for the group. 'It's like we're dying. The group is in agony. Can't you help us? I didn't know we'd have to die to become a community.'"
If they hang in there and make it through this period of suffering, Peck says, they will finally enter true community. "It is like falling in love. When they enter community, people in a very real sense do fall in love with one another en masse. They not only feel like touching and hugging one another, they feel like hugging everyone all at once. During the highest moments the energy level is supernatural. It is ecstatic." And it "can be channeled to useful and creative purpose."
I know that I spend almost all my time in pseudo-community, and so do most of the people I know. I am afraid of conflict, and will, just as Peck says, do everything I can to smooth it over and avoid it when it threatens to crop up. As he says, this is rather dull, but functional. Even within my family, pseudo-community is the norm. The effort of getting down deep and dirty into our differences is just too much--it seems much easier to let those sleeping demons lie, and live in superficial harmony.
On a national and international scale, too, pseudo-community is actually all we're aiming for: respect for diversity, mutual tolerance, peace.
But Scott Peck has prompted me to imagine how truly powerful it would be if humanity actually made the effort to get past pseudo-community into a more authentic mode of communication and connectedness. If we were willing to talk through our conflicts, from the family level all the way up to the international level, and work through the chaos and anger, to empty ourselves of all the barriers to communication, to actually attain what we've always longed for: a brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind.
The United Nations was founded on this vision. Many religious groups aspire to it. But to actually get there, it requires more than just vision. It requires hard work, and as Peck says, conflict so intense that it feels like "the throes of dying," only to be reborn on the other side.
"When I am with a group of human beings committed to hanging in there through both the agony and the joy of community," Peck says, "I have a dim sense that I am participating in a phenomenon for which there is only one word. I almost hesitate to use it. The word is 'glory.'"
Human beings have always sensed the possibility of this kind of glory. The Bible tells us we once knew it, in the Garden of Eden; the New Testament and the Koran tell us we can go back to it, in Heaven after our earthly lives are done. The Buddhists call it nirvana. In all of these religious views, what we do in our communities here on earth determines whether or not we can attain glory after death.
Scott Peck tells us we don't have to wait until after death to achieve this kind of collective nirvana. I think he's on to something incredibly powerful. The question is, how many of us have the nerve and the stamina to walk the path of true community?
Peck's great insight is that most of us, especially in the U.S., live in what he calls "pseudo-community." "The essential dynamic of pseudo-community is conflict-avoidance....In pseudo-community it is as if every individual is operating according to the same book of ettiquette. The rules of this book are: Don't do or say anything that might offend someone else; if someone does something that offends, annoys, or irritates you, act as if nothing has happened and pretend you are not bothered in the least; and if some form of disagreement should show signs of appearing, change the subject as quickly and smoothly as possible....It is easy to see how these rules make for a smoothly functioning group. But they also crush individuality, intimacy, and honesty, and the longer it lasts the duller it gets."
In order to get beyond this stage and move towards true community, Peck says, groups must go through a period of unpleasant, uncomfortable chaos and conflict:
"'There are only two ways out of chaos,' I will explain to a group after it has spent a sufficient period of time squabbling and getting nowhere. 'One is into organization--but organization is never community. The only other way is through emptiness,'" Peck says. Emptiness "is the hard part. It is also the most crucial stage of community development. It is," he explains, when individuals within a group "empty themselves of barriers to communication," which include expectations and preconceptions, prejudices, ideology, theology and solutions, the need to heal, convert, fix or solve, and the need to control.
Peck describes this stage in the most dramatic terms possible. "During the stage of emptiness my own gut feeling is...the pain of witnessing a group in its death throes. The whole group seems to writhe and moan in its travail. Individuals will sometimes speak for the group. 'It's like we're dying. The group is in agony. Can't you help us? I didn't know we'd have to die to become a community.'"
If they hang in there and make it through this period of suffering, Peck says, they will finally enter true community. "It is like falling in love. When they enter community, people in a very real sense do fall in love with one another en masse. They not only feel like touching and hugging one another, they feel like hugging everyone all at once. During the highest moments the energy level is supernatural. It is ecstatic." And it "can be channeled to useful and creative purpose."
I know that I spend almost all my time in pseudo-community, and so do most of the people I know. I am afraid of conflict, and will, just as Peck says, do everything I can to smooth it over and avoid it when it threatens to crop up. As he says, this is rather dull, but functional. Even within my family, pseudo-community is the norm. The effort of getting down deep and dirty into our differences is just too much--it seems much easier to let those sleeping demons lie, and live in superficial harmony.
On a national and international scale, too, pseudo-community is actually all we're aiming for: respect for diversity, mutual tolerance, peace.
But Scott Peck has prompted me to imagine how truly powerful it would be if humanity actually made the effort to get past pseudo-community into a more authentic mode of communication and connectedness. If we were willing to talk through our conflicts, from the family level all the way up to the international level, and work through the chaos and anger, to empty ourselves of all the barriers to communication, to actually attain what we've always longed for: a brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind.
The United Nations was founded on this vision. Many religious groups aspire to it. But to actually get there, it requires more than just vision. It requires hard work, and as Peck says, conflict so intense that it feels like "the throes of dying," only to be reborn on the other side.
"When I am with a group of human beings committed to hanging in there through both the agony and the joy of community," Peck says, "I have a dim sense that I am participating in a phenomenon for which there is only one word. I almost hesitate to use it. The word is 'glory.'"
Human beings have always sensed the possibility of this kind of glory. The Bible tells us we once knew it, in the Garden of Eden; the New Testament and the Koran tell us we can go back to it, in Heaven after our earthly lives are done. The Buddhists call it nirvana. In all of these religious views, what we do in our communities here on earth determines whether or not we can attain glory after death.
Scott Peck tells us we don't have to wait until after death to achieve this kind of collective nirvana. I think he's on to something incredibly powerful. The question is, how many of us have the nerve and the stamina to walk the path of true community?
