Our Culture does not Mag 1500

OUR CULTURE DOES NOT WORK ANY MORE by Kelly Bryson

OUR CULTURE DOES NOT WORK ANY MORE. WE NEED TO CREATE A NEW ONE! By Kelly Bryson

In an interview with ABC newsman Ted Koppel, sociologist Morrie Swartz, who was on his death bed at the time said “Our culture does not work. We need to create a new one.” One part of creating a new culture is letting our children know the truth about the culture we live in. For example we need to tell them that if you murder someone and you are wealthy you are much, much more likely to go free than if you are poor. And if you do get convicted you are much more likely to get lethal injection or electrocution if you are African American or Hispanic, and a life sentence if you are Caucasian. If you are female you will get paid less for whatever you do than if you are male, until things change. I wish parents would explain to their children what their values are and where the culture deviates from these values. It is very painful and confusing to children to have their parents paint the culture with one whitewashing brush as good and fair, as if all the inconsistencies and injustices do not exist. This openness and honesty about the larger culture we live in is of course just one small thread in a tapestry of transparency that I would like to see develop in our culture. Certainly the most nurturing transparency that occurs, happens within the community of our circle of friends. However you may have noticed that many of our little community cultures are less than open, honest and nurturing to their members. Instead they are cesspools of gossip, backbiting, infighting and politicking. One of the pillars in the paradigm of a culture of cruelty is the following belief: * Expressing oneself honestly causes psychological pain for others. * Parents are taught to tell their children “It hurts mommy’s feelings when you tell her that the dinner she slaved over a hot stove to make ‘sucks’.” This often comes from best selling parenting books in America that unwittingly teach parents how to set these kinds of hooks deep into their children’s hearts so that emotional manipulation can be effectively used to control feelings and behavior through the use of fear, guilt and shame. Of course it is not the intention of these parenting gurus to harm children. From their perspective they are disciplining and preparing the children for the ‘real world.’ Dr. Rosenberg says we must be very careful of preparing children to fit into organizations like certain corporations, armies, governments and schools that do not honor individuals autonomies and souls. One key to transforming this familiar family scene is to tell the truth. The kids did not hurt Mommy. What hurt was what she said to herself. A more self-aware mommy might notice that her hurt is coming from her interpretation of the child’s honesty as a rejection of her. If the child is under nine she would hopefully choose to deal with her feelings by asking her husband or a friend for empathy about what was triggered, or do some journaling. She might say to herself, “I’m angry because I’m thinking children should hide their dissatisfaction.” Or, “I’m feeling hurt because I think my child does not care about my feelings.” Or, “I’m ashamed thinking that I

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© Kelly Bryson 2003

OUR CULTURE DOES NOT WORK ANY MORE by Kelly Bryson am a poor cook.” Or, “I feeling guilty because I think I should have realized I was over salting it.” If the child is mature enough to understand, the mommy might tell the child “I hear you do not like the food. Would you acknowledge though that I did try hard to make you some food you like?” Self-awareness is just that simple. No deep insight or analysis required. Yet most of us lack this simple skill. Instead, we habitually blame, punish and project. Sadly, these patterns of dishonesty destroy “transparency” and “congruency.” When we are transparent, we are honest and self responsible. We express what is alive and truly going on within us. We are congruent when we say what we are feeling and our face, gesture and tone are all in concert with that. (What we are feeling, needing and thinking and what our face, words and voice tone is expressing is the same.) If I am incongruent, you will instantly sense I am not trustworthy. You will withhold cooperation. Trust is the basic factor needed for cooperation. When we trust we open our eyes to another’s humanness. Trust lets us empathize. It allows for natural openness and affection. It clarifies our understanding of each other. Trust allows for the free flow of honesty, affection, accurate perceptions of each other, risk taking and love. In cultures and couples where this basic trust is missing the need arises for a great degree of external control, rules, policing, punishment and a general loss of true freedom. True freedom is not the ability to own three SUV’s and a super wide screen TV but a joyful flow of connectedness, peace and creativity within one’s community. When a group or a couple has transparency, a full disclosure of all the important elements of one’s inner and outer life, then individuals cannot be turned against each other through the spread of false rumors. This allows trust to grow strong. The commitment to stay open to each other even when someone does something out of integrity makes it much easier for everyone to keep telling the whole truth. Therefore we must stop punishing people not only for telling the truth, but for anything, if we are to develop a truthful group, family or couple. Part of the reason most of us do not have this ‘true freedom’ is because we live in what I call the soap opera culture of the Five C's: Collision, Confusion, Collusion, Cover-up, and Chicken Soup. Our personal communities stay superficial or knotted up in strife, and pain-filled struggle, because we do not know how to support each other in working through the difficulties that inevitably come up with each other. John Bradshaw, best selling self-help author, says that we can only have deep intimacy if we have strong skills at working through the inevitable conflicts that arise as human beings interact closely. When someone expresses pain that was triggered by a community or family member (Collusion), and then they form static judgements and turn against that person, this tears at the fabric of cohesiveness of the group. The fear that is generated by coping with conflict this way creates an atmosphere of fear in the group that severely limits it’s tolerance of mistakes (Confusion), and therefore growth and creative individual expression. This contributes to divisiveness in the community, which frequently results in all sorts of schisms and conflicting camps. Just look at the cliques in high schools. It was the venom between some of these cliques that led to several different school shootings including Columbine. Page 2 of 4

© Kelly Bryson 2003

OUR CULTURE DOES NOT WORK ANY MORE by Kelly Bryson It is also painful, isolating and depressing to stuff down pain to protect another person’s reputation in the community (Cover-up). Knowing that you are undermining someone’s respect within their community can lead to debilitating guilt. It is this guilt and the fear of this guilt that prevents an open free flow of communication within a community. This constipation of communication creates all kinds of violent, unhealthy, painful consequences for that community including, scape-goating, low enthusiasm, power struggles, confusion etc. Because we have so few true forums of transparency occurring in our personal communities, honesty gets repressed, split off and closed up. Any time any part of ourselves, whether it be sadness, anger, fear or sexuality, gets separated off or shut down, it begins to take on a daemonic life of it’s own and usually comes out in a destructive way. Then, according to my mentor, Virginia Satir, the mother of family systems therapy, “they become like ravenous dogs that you put down in the basement. And one day when you least expect it, they bust the door down and wreak havoc.” In community when honesty is not given it’s space, Gossip and in-fighting will soon take its place. Because we live in a punishment/reward, Patriarchal, and often judgmental culture it can be quite dangerous to be honest about what is happening. Consider the cost Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jesus paid for telling it like it is. However if we do not run the risk of telling the whole truth we set in motion inescapable dynamics destructive to harmony among human beings. These destructive dynamics occur based on a principle of ecology that says: “Nature hates a closed system.” According to Dieter Duhm, founder of the Zegg Community in Germany (Zegg stands for a German phrase which means ‘an experiment in cultural design’) it is particularly important to keep the communication open and flowing in those areas where we tend to have shame around and are tempted to sweep under the rug. These things include sex, anger, fear, disease and money. Duhm wrote: "Building a humane community usually means confronting difficulties that are deeply rooted in people. Instead of the fixation on humanitarian slogans and demands, what is needed is that emotional reality must at all times and places be made visible, with as playful and joyful methods as possible, until all pretense and hypocrisy drop away. Try to make what happens in the community understandable and transparent to everyone. Especially emotional and sexual processes for they are behind almost everything that makes the group situation difficult and opaque. Only if all processes are transparent will the members lose their paranoia, and the destructive processes will be kept from leading a life of their own. Only then can the causes of rifts and fractures in the group be treated before it is too late."

Credit This article is taken from “Don’t be Nice, Be Real – Balancing Passion for Self with Compassion for Others – COVER TEXT: A Handbook to compassionate communication” by Kelly Bryson, Marriage, Child and Family Therapist. To order the book, or for info about Kelly or Nonviolent Compassionate Communication Training go to www.LanguageofCompassion.com or call 858-277-LOVE.

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© Kelly Bryson 2003

OUR CULTURE DOES NOT WORK ANY MORE by Kelly Bryson “Don’t Be Nice, Be Real” a book by Kelly Bryson MFT is a lively light approach to a deadly serious subject – our lives. It is a mix of humor, radical wisdom, and new culture spirituality. It is about Compassion without Compromise. The book teaches the mechanics and spirit of Nonviolent Compassionate Communication to cure “Niceitis”, a hereditary disease. So many people feel powerless and victimized by the people and circumstances of their lives. They are tired of being one of the ‘nice dead people’ in the world. This book takes us on a journey from depressed “doormat” through overly “obnoxious” aggressiveness to an evolved, enlightened ‘Selfish’ assertiveness.

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© Kelly Bryson 2003