Speaker 1: Questions bring us together, answers alienated us. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Peter Block, a leading
Speaker 1: consultant and best selling author whose work is about empowerment, stewardship,
Speaker 1: chosen accountability, and the reconciliation of community. He's a partner
Speaker 1: in Designed Learning, a training company that offers workshops designed
Speaker 1: by Peter to build the skills outlined in his books.
Speaker 1: He received a master's degree in Industrial administration from Yale
Speaker 1: in ninete and has received national awards for outstanding contributions
Speaker 1: in the field of training and development, including the American
Speaker 1: Society for Training and Development Award for Distinguished Contributions, the
Speaker 1: Association for Quality and Participation President's Award, and Training magazine
Speaker 1: HRD Hall of Fame. His new book is An Other Kingdom,
Speaker 1: departing the consumer culture. If you value out of the show,
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Speaker 1: with other listeners of the show and get support in
Speaker 1: feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: the interview with Peter Block. Hi, Peter, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm happy to have you on.
Speaker 1: Your most recent book is called An Other Kingdom, departing
Speaker 1: the consumer culture, and so we will get into that
Speaker 1: in great detail here in just a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: But let's start like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. So I will start with a dream.
Speaker 1: So I always had this dream that I'm on a
Speaker 1: dark street late at night and some people are coming
Speaker 1: up behind me, aimed to my direction, men, and I'm scared.
Speaker 1: It's always a panicky kind of dream. And so I
Speaker 1: asked a friend of mine about this dream, and he said,
Speaker 1: what do you think they wanted? And I said, I
Speaker 1: think they wanted to destroy me, robbed me, kill me.
Speaker 1: And then I thought for him and I said, is
Speaker 1: there another way of thinking which never occurred to me?
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, perhaps they wanted to be seen.
Speaker 1: And so that shifted from me that what I thought
Speaker 1: was danger when I feared the wolf at the door,
Speaker 1: maybe the wolf is just hungry. He's not after me.
Speaker 1: And so that parable tells me that even though it
Speaker 1: was a dark night and there is a shadow side
Speaker 1: to all of us, the way we see that shadow
Speaker 1: interpret that shadow is the nature of our transformation. And
Speaker 1: so my work has been trying to reconstruct how I
Speaker 1: see how the world sees these dark characters looming in
Speaker 1: the distance. And every cynic and every time you lose faith,
Speaker 1: you always have evidence to prove it, but an evidence
Speaker 1: never includes your choice of how you see the world.
Speaker 1: It's like people say to me, you push my button
Speaker 1: and I heard someone say yeah, but I didn't install it.
Speaker 1: What you're trying to do with this, with your theme
Speaker 1: here of the world, is to reconstruct the nature of
Speaker 1: a button in which how I respond to the world,
Speaker 1: honoring the dark side, honoring in this book the idea
Speaker 1: of Pharaoh, the idea were all caught up in slavery,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But then how I see the world
Speaker 1: is decisive. It's called context, and so to me that parable.
Speaker 1: So this is one thought, it's asking for a shifting context.
Speaker 1: The other thing, it's very individualistic. It says your life,
Speaker 1: my son, or my grandson, will be determined by how
Speaker 1: you show up in the world. And we have very
Speaker 1: few parables of how we excellent. That's a long answer
Speaker 1: to a question you didn't ask. No, I certainly asked,
Speaker 1: So thank you for the answer. So let's start off
Speaker 1: and talk about the book. And in the book you
Speaker 1: say we have a dominant cultural narrative best described as
Speaker 1: the free market consumer ideology. So talk me through. What
Speaker 1: are you trying to say when you say that, I'm
Speaker 1: saying we're living in a world that assumes as true
Speaker 1: that upward mobility is the point. It assumes as true
Speaker 1: that expanding businesses. Taking things to scale is the way
Speaker 1: nature is, and the dominant narrative has caused me to
Speaker 1: be ambitious, individualistic, okay, all right, competitive, and to think
Speaker 1: I am defined by my average annual income. Every parent
Speaker 1: says to the child, I want you to be happy.
Speaker 1: What they really mean is I want you to do well.
Speaker 1: So when I'm dependent on you in my later years,
Speaker 1: you're up for it. And so we've monetized our experience.
Speaker 1: We've commercialized our transactor. Marketplace used to be a Saturday
Speaker 1: morning occurrence where people came together to be together and
Speaker 1: then they bought and sold stuff, you know, because they
Speaker 1: sustained them. Now the marketplace is headline news. We've elected
Speaker 1: a president whose major accomplishment is his wealth. This is
Speaker 1: economic prowess, his toughness, and so that's what we're trying
Speaker 1: to So we tried to try to describe it gently,
Speaker 1: all right. But the belief that my well being is
Speaker 1: somehow defined by my economic my ability to shop, and
Speaker 1: I'm part of that. I love the notion I shop,
Speaker 1: therefore I am. So that is our kind of the
Speaker 1: consumer ideology that we live under. And you say that
Speaker 1: that free market consumer ideology has four pillars to it.
Speaker 1: You talk about scarcity, certainty, perfection, and privatization. So let's
Speaker 1: spend a couple of minutes on each of those and
Speaker 1: and explain for the listeners what's so bad about that approach,
Speaker 1: because the way you described it, On one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a part of me I've read the book and
Speaker 1: I go, well that, yeah, I get it. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's like that is the dominant cultural paradigm.
Speaker 1: So what's the problem. The problem is that if we
Speaker 1: believe that we don't have enough scarcity, then we decide
Speaker 1: that I win, you lose, you win, I lose. And
Speaker 1: that's framed in the first grade, when I'm told that
Speaker 1: we're going to grade you on a normal curve. And
Speaker 1: so my job is to compete with my classmates. Until
Speaker 1: I went to the first grade, I thought learning was fun.
Speaker 1: So the problem with that is it alienates us from
Speaker 1: each other. All these mindsets create a deep sense of isolation.
Speaker 1: So in my workplace, I think I'm in competition with
Speaker 1: the person next. And so the scarcity mindset is a
Speaker 1: lie there is enough whenever there's a crisis. You know,
Speaker 1: the day to day is we're poor, we owe too much,
Speaker 1: but when there's a crisis, we have all the money
Speaker 1: we need. When it's time to bail out the world,
Speaker 1: all the money. So it tells me that in my town, Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: there's an enormous out of money, So why do I
Speaker 1: act as if there's not In the world. There's an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of food, So why are we marketing hunger?
Speaker 1: And so that's the scarcity thing. The certainty is the
Speaker 1: appeal of a totalitarian world. The reason high control leaders
Speaker 1: are in the ascendants these days is because we're afraid
Speaker 1: of the future. We think it should be predictable. So
Speaker 1: anybody who runs for office, any leader of any organization,
Speaker 1: any talk show host who offers certainty as a magnetic appeal.
Speaker 1: And yet if you look at your own life, most
Speaker 1: of the time you didn't know what the hell is
Speaker 1: going on. None of us work in the field that
Speaker 1: we studied. So the idea you should, you know, to
Speaker 1: ask every child what do you want to be when
Speaker 1: you grow up? The honest answer is I don't know
Speaker 1: and I don't care. But we lie to give us
Speaker 1: the feeling. And to me, the longing for certainty is
Speaker 1: the basis for a high control world. High control organization.
Speaker 1: The media nows that five organizations that around the media,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's not that liberal. All of these
Speaker 1: are forms of modern concession. Okay, is the world that way?
Speaker 1: Do any certainty? Is there not enough? Is there something
Speaker 1: wrong with me? So the longing for perfection says that
Speaker 1: God created me, but he made a mistake in this case,
Speaker 1: and so that we wish to be perfect is the
Speaker 1: wish to be God. And so we're always you know,
Speaker 1: high standards, goal and stuff like that. And so all
Speaker 1: of these conspire or work together. Two chip away at
Speaker 1: our freedom, chip away at our humanity, our ability to
Speaker 1: connect with each other. Those are big coasts. And then
Speaker 1: the last one is the privatization peace. Well, the privatization
Speaker 1: is the implementation plan of the first three. It says
Speaker 1: that you cannot trust the collective anything with CEO. Starting
Speaker 1: a cooperative communal is dangerous, and so it says that
Speaker 1: in order to live the life of the first three,
Speaker 1: I have to argue against government, I argue against the
Speaker 1: common good. And in six twenty or something, the King
Speaker 1: of England privatized the commons and so the common land
Speaker 1: that I could sustain myself. When they put a fence
Speaker 1: around the common land, the common good. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I had to move to the city and get a job.
Speaker 1: So the privatization is the action step. It's the belief
Speaker 1: that the public sector, the communal sector, uh communal interests,
Speaker 1: land trust, common good. Tragedy of the Commons by James
Speaker 1: Harden has been refuted, and he refuted it, but he says,
Speaker 1: if you hold land in common, they'll destroy the land.
Speaker 1: And so to me it's been it's been the way
Speaker 1: of rationalizing by longing for a certainty. I wish to
Speaker 1: be perfect, and so we have to become We have
Speaker 1: to question whether the private sector, the private life, the
Speaker 1: life I lead alone in my home with an automatic
Speaker 1: garage door open, is really in my ankies. And it's
Speaker 1: a tough one because these are all deeply and so
Speaker 1: you would say that it's not in our interest because
Speaker 1: it's not working, because people are generally less and less
Speaker 1: happy in life, that that there's a great your sense
Speaker 1: of meaninglessness and isolation, and that we're suffering from that. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's not about being happy, it's about having financial
Speaker 1: and relational control over my life. So you know this
Speaker 1: economics have happiness is a kind of a funny promise
Speaker 1: because everything else offers as happiness is the point. Maybe
Speaker 1: meaning is the poet, maybe having a purpose as the point.
Speaker 1: Maybe the problem about our anxiety about our youth. It's
Speaker 1: not that they're young people. Maybe the problem is we've
Speaker 1: rendered them useless and maybe they need a purpose. Maybe
Speaker 1: when we house the elderly in warehouses of comfort, maybe
Speaker 1: loneliness is what kills them, not all day. And so
Speaker 1: I think it's deeply isolating and makes us deeply cynical,
Speaker 1: makes us support leaders regardless. And it's not about being
Speaker 1: left or right or anything like that. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's about it's a search for meaning. It's Victor
Speaker 1: Frankel was in a concentration camp, so he was not
Speaker 1: the living in a high consumers and he found meaning
Speaker 1: and the fact that he chose to breathe, and he
Speaker 1: realized he had control over his own sense of freedom
Speaker 1: even though he couldn't move. So I think it's about
Speaker 1: freedom and meaning. Right, he had realized he had control
Speaker 1: over his own reaction. On a similar note, I was
Speaker 1: watching something the other day and Saul I never say
Speaker 1: his name, right Eli Eli Wise l Wise l Thank
Speaker 1: you Chris. Edit that out, So I sound smart. Um,
Speaker 1: you have to be a Jew to be able to pronounce.
Speaker 1: Are you Jewish? No? I'm not. That's why I can't
Speaker 1: do it. How you are? I just I just brought
Speaker 1: you in anyway, I saw ed that out to well, no,
Speaker 1: it's good, I'm not belonging Ellie, Ellie Wisel. I heard
Speaker 1: him say uh something near the end of his life,
Speaker 1: which was, um, always think higher and feel deeper. And
Speaker 1: that just sort of when I think of concentration camps,
Speaker 1: he came to mind, and I just thought that was
Speaker 1: such a beautiful phrase. It is, and with respective consumerism,
Speaker 1: it's a it's an experience against thinking higher and feeling deep. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the promise of consumerism is that no matter how
Speaker 1: much you have, it's not enough. Now, do you think
Speaker 1: that that is a tendency inness that has been exacerbated
Speaker 1: by consumerism, or that it's been created by consumerism, because
Speaker 1: it does seem to be a human condition to a
Speaker 1: certain degree to to want more, to always sort of think, well,
Speaker 1: what's the next thing? Or do you really think that
Speaker 1: that's more of a modern creation. I think it's the
Speaker 1: creation of modernism, because before modernism, before the teen Hunters
Speaker 1: and all began. People found the Earth's sacred, they found
Speaker 1: history compelling, tradition compelling, the circle form compelling. They couldn't
Speaker 1: imagine changing their status in life. And so I think
Speaker 1: it is a product of modernism. It's not anywhere near
Speaker 1: our nature now. It doesn't mean our nature doesn't have
Speaker 1: a dark side in a greedy side, and a violent side,
Speaker 1: and a disobedient side. I mean, Adam and Eve made
Speaker 1: that point. But I don't think it's in our nature
Speaker 1: to want more than I have. I think in the
Speaker 1: absence of a memory, an affection for a place, and
Speaker 1: be surrounded by people that even though I don't get
Speaker 1: along with, I know we're going to take care of
Speaker 1: each other. Then more is a corruption of my nature.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that. I have a friend who's a nun,
Speaker 1: and so we do a lot of work trying to
Speaker 1: end poverty. And I looked at her after a conference
Speaker 1: about any poverty, and I said, Monica, wait a second,
Speaker 1: you chose poverty. What's going on here? She says. The
Speaker 1: reason I chose poverty because in exchange from my choice
Speaker 1: was community that I knew, no matter what I did,
Speaker 1: no matter how productive I was or how spiritual, I
Speaker 1: was that this was a group of people who would
Speaker 1: care for me for the rest of my life, and
Speaker 1: that's as much my nature as wanting more. One of
Speaker 1: the solutions that you talk about are there's two words
Speaker 1: that are woven through the book as potential solutions or
Speaker 1: other approaches, right, and one is neighborliness and the other
Speaker 1: is covenant. So let's start off with neighborliness. What is
Speaker 1: neighborly nous and how is that different than community, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty common word that's used these days. Is
Speaker 1: it the same thing or are we talking about something different?
Speaker 1: And I think they're cousins. Neighborliness is wider. Community is
Speaker 1: my sense of connection, my feeling of belonging to participation.
Speaker 1: Neighborliness is about the economy. It's about where I take
Speaker 1: my idea, how I raise my family. The product of
Speaker 1: neighborliness and community is to raise a child, to provide livelihood,
Speaker 1: to keep me safe, to help me age, to welcome
Speaker 1: the stranger. So neighborliness more is to the point it's
Speaker 1: more powerful, even though nobody including me, understands it. But
Speaker 1: I think there's something in that word. It says it's
Speaker 1: a way of being together where community is a little
Speaker 1: bit overused, and when something becomes popular then you have
Speaker 1: to be a little nervous. But community also, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interchangeable. But I think neighborliness is what
Speaker 1: the Jews discovered in the wilderness. And so I think
Speaker 1: if I feel a sense if I live in a
Speaker 1: culture or context of neighborliness that I know, I mean
Speaker 1: within walking distance of all the things I thought I
Speaker 1: had to drive to, which is my health, my job,
Speaker 1: my children in the right school, my ability to shop.
Speaker 1: And so it's a it's an expression of locality, and
Speaker 1: it has in my mind only in my mind, it
Speaker 1: has an economic core. And that's why the consumerism is
Speaker 1: the dominant narrative. Neighborliness is an alternative future, and I
Speaker 1: think we're headed that way anyway. The jobs are disappearing.
Speaker 1: Come on, we're not going to bring industry back to America.
Speaker 1: If we do, it'll be it'll be a million dollar
Speaker 1: tax benefit. It will be a three hundred million dollar
Speaker 1: business with four people working in Yeah, I tend to
Speaker 1: agree with you. I don't think that both the nature
Speaker 1: of globalization and the nature of technology points to a
Speaker 1: lot of job creation. It points to almost the opposite.
Speaker 1: And that's what the enaghborliness to me means that you
Speaker 1: and I will construct a livelihood together based on our interdependence.
Speaker 1: Back to the Wolf story, it's not just confronted migree
Speaker 1: or confronting my choice to see generosity. That's what we
Speaker 1: create together. And we can create a livelihood together. And
Speaker 1: I'll end up in the end borrowing sugar from you
Speaker 1: again instead of going to a convenience store. Sugar is
Speaker 1: not good for you. I can't. I can't help you there, Peter, Well,
Speaker 1: but come over some whole grain flower and I might
Speaker 1: be honest with flower. That's not good for me. I
Speaker 1: want to I want to flower free diets. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's exchange vegetables. Yes, vegetables. I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree on that. So talk to me about covenant.
Speaker 1: So the question is the distinction between covenant and to
Speaker 1: me contract. So contract defines our relationship as quid pro
Speaker 1: are you gonna do for me? Here's what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do for you. And to have a good contract, it
Speaker 1: has to be time limit specific. We know what it's
Speaker 1: a predictable way of being together. And most of the world,
Speaker 1: most the culture believes in a contractual way of committee,
Speaker 1: and what's in it for me? You know, all these
Speaker 1: T shirts for you, what's in it for me? All
Speaker 1: the feeding of you know, faith creating prosperity. It's like,
Speaker 1: we're going to contract with God if I do this you,
Speaker 1: So all of that makes it commodifies me, makes me
Speaker 1: an instrument exchange. The word covenant means I'm going to
Speaker 1: make you a promise and I have no idea what
Speaker 1: the hell is going to have. So covenant has an
Speaker 1: element of faith that places exchange, and so the covenants
Speaker 1: relationship with God, it has a faith tomension to it,
Speaker 1: but it's much more demand and contracts are easy. I
Speaker 1: can change my mind anytime I want and let you
Speaker 1: off the hook, or if I don't, if it doesn't
Speaker 1: work out, I say, will you let me down? Covenant
Speaker 1: there's no out, no back door. And so it's an
Speaker 1: expression of my capacity as a free and human being
Speaker 1: to decide what I'm committing to with no expectation of return.
Speaker 1: It's not dependent on anyone else, and so it's a
Speaker 1: covenantial relationship. It has to do with fidelity, It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to do with delivery or performance. Contract is about
Speaker 1: performance and as soon as you claim a person is
Speaker 1: a performer, you've stolen their humanity. But I'm only good
Speaker 1: for what I can produce with Monica said, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm part of a community. Even then, we've got some
Speaker 1: sisters that do nothing and working. Okay, So in the
Speaker 1: contract actual world, how't you go? You know, come on,
Speaker 1: in the covenantal world, I don't care if you do nothing.
Speaker 1: I will do what I can help you with your life.
Speaker 1: And so that's a that's a distinction, and that's existing
Speaker 1: in every relationship that really matters. If you have parents
Speaker 1: or children, if you have customs and family and friendship,
Speaker 1: it's not conditional on their performance. That's not friendship. That's
Speaker 1: a deal. So it's a powerful concept that we've shrunken
Speaker 1: by limiting it to a biblical context. You're talking about covenant,
Speaker 1: we're talking about um community. You know what you just said,
Speaker 1: there is you know what mother, father, children, you know
Speaker 1: we we honor that relationship regardless. There's also you actually
Speaker 1: use the phrase in the book that there's a shadow
Speaker 1: side of community, that there's a shadow side of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So let's let's talk about that because
Speaker 1: I think it's important to hear both sides of that too.
Speaker 1: Without the shadow side, it's wishful thinking, it's Pollyanna, the
Speaker 1: wolf is at the door. And at times community can
Speaker 1: be tribal controlling. It's expressed in the general culture is
Speaker 1: like mindedness. I want to be with like minded people.
Speaker 1: In the general culture, it's expressed as a fear of
Speaker 1: the stranger. And so if my community of our relationship
Speaker 1: is based as an against the other, against the stranger,
Speaker 1: and there's a party of me that wants to be
Speaker 1: on the winning side, you know, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: other side of the wall. And so there is in
Speaker 1: some communities we have the best community of the world,
Speaker 1: except for those people, okay from Section eight housing that
Speaker 1: moved into the three of these three houses and they're
Speaker 1: littering the ground. And I think, well, if you're such
Speaker 1: a great community, why don't you find out who these
Speaker 1: people are, Why don't you clean up after them? Why
Speaker 1: don't you welcome them to your social events, to your house.
Speaker 1: But there is a part of me that's just afraid.
Speaker 1: I was born. A friend of mine says, we're wounded
Speaker 1: at the moment of birth. My humanity Eve eight the
Speaker 1: app what's that about? You know, she wasn't that hungry.
Speaker 1: And so the part of me that is terrified of existence,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of my freedom. That's what I think. The fear.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid of my loneliness. It frightens me. Actually, I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I has given birth? What do I owe for that?
Speaker 1: How am I doing? And so I think the fear
Speaker 1: is a measure of our humanity to be afraid? And
Speaker 1: so how do I deal with the fear? Where I
Speaker 1: hold on? I try to be right, I try to
Speaker 1: look good. I want a life that I could edit
Speaker 1: and take out the bad parts, you know, not just
Speaker 1: a program. And so you have to acknowledge in young
Speaker 1: in terms, it's the shadow side. He swallowed the snake.
Speaker 1: What kind of meal was that? That he took the
Speaker 1: darkness of a snake and took it inside of me?
Speaker 1: He said, for me to be a whole, I have
Speaker 1: to embrace the shadow side. I have to add all
Speaker 1: the mythology that he talks about. Is it really about
Speaker 1: saying until you acknowledge the process is that once I
Speaker 1: own my own self centeredness, my own isolation, it loses
Speaker 1: control over me. It's in the denial of the shadow
Speaker 1: in the denial of the dark, greedy wolf that it
Speaker 1: owns me, and I become it in a masked and
Speaker 1: convoluted form, And so that parable The answer is, it's
Speaker 1: not just what you choose to see, but both are true.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you end up with a TV sitcom as an
Speaker 1: expression of life. So let's change directions a little bit.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about another book of yours, which
Speaker 1: has just a wonderful title that I'll just ask you
Speaker 1: to expound just on the title itself, which is the
Speaker 1: answer to how is yes? What are you getting at there?
Speaker 1: What I'm getting at is that as soon as somebody says,
Speaker 1: how are we going to do this? How much does
Speaker 1: it cost? How long does it take? I know they
Speaker 1: don't care at all about what we're talking about. And so,
Speaker 1: having lived become a system person, a corporate person, all
Speaker 1: of that, it seems the argument against possibility was always
Speaker 1: framed in the question of practicality. Oh, it takes too long,
Speaker 1: where is it working? People who run large institutions are
Speaker 1: the most cautious people in the world if you can't
Speaker 1: provide them with a predictable world. And so it was
Speaker 1: the end of a chapter of a book I wrote
Speaker 1: on stewardship, and the publishers says, why don't you write
Speaker 1: a book about this? And so, you know, when anybody
Speaker 1: makes this suggestion, you have to resist it for four
Speaker 1: or five years. But then for me, the how question
Speaker 1: destroys our faith in each other, as if the only
Speaker 1: thing that matters is how long, how much, how predictable?
Speaker 1: And so I just kind of felt that it was
Speaker 1: to work. It was. It was an anthem two people
Speaker 1: working in large organizations to say, give up your ambition
Speaker 1: and do something useful and meaningful without leaving, and don't
Speaker 1: be seduced by the practical. People accused me of being
Speaker 1: an idealist, which is a major flaw. But now when
Speaker 1: they say you're too idealistic, I say, thank I haven't
Speaker 1: dried up yet. Yeah. You've got a line from that
Speaker 1: work that says transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions
Speaker 1: than seeking practical answers. And it reminds me of you know,
Speaker 1: the show We cover this area a lot, but the
Speaker 1: you know the old Rilka quote about you know, living
Speaker 1: the questions themselves, don't seek answers, but live in the
Speaker 1: questions themselves. Questions bring us together. Answers alienators and so
Speaker 1: every time you or I have an answer, we think
Speaker 1: we know what's best for each other, and that's colonialism.
Speaker 1: I know it's best for you, and so it's an
Speaker 1: argument in the question, we honor the mystery and unpredictability
Speaker 1: of the life, and to live in the question is
Speaker 1: to be frustrating and anxious as a human condition. And
Speaker 1: the question that grabbed me, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: had that yet when I wrote that book was what's
Speaker 1: the question that, if he had an answer to, would
Speaker 1: set you free? And somebody asked me that twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and I thought, m good question, And so I spent
Speaker 1: the last years of my life trying to say, what
Speaker 1: is the question if I hadn't answer to, would give
Speaker 1: me the freedom that I've belonging. And lately it's dawning
Speaker 1: on me. I'm getting close to the question, but that
Speaker 1: question has animated my search for freedom. What I realized
Speaker 1: for myself is that I felt that somehow, because I
Speaker 1: was born, I owed something that in the delivery room
Speaker 1: that my birth and invoice was delivered to me, and
Speaker 1: there was what have you done? And to justify the
Speaker 1: fact you had given a life? And so my question
Speaker 1: is to someone you got. Have I done enough yet? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I got the question. I just don't have the answer.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of Leonard Cohen in a book about songwriters.
Speaker 1: He he said something to that extent about you know
Speaker 1: how he rewrites you know, lyrics so many, so many times,
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, this idea of redeeming the
Speaker 1: day you know was was such a big, big thing
Speaker 1: to him. There was there was a sense of I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess covenant right in a a there, and I
Speaker 1: feel that all the time somehow to be given given
Speaker 1: a life which I didn't even request. I don't think
Speaker 1: unless you talk to James Hellman, but I don't think
Speaker 1: Hellman thinks you've got a little damon up there to
Speaker 1: put you in the right place before you're born. But
Speaker 1: I think that's a great question. Is a redemption is
Speaker 1: not out of guilt, it's out of our humanity in
Speaker 1: a sense that I don't I have to kind of
Speaker 1: honor the fact that we've been given each other in
Speaker 1: a life. And Leonarn Cohen is a great example. I
Speaker 1: saw interviewed once and she said, you know, some of
Speaker 1: your songs are just breath takingly profound and everything. Where
Speaker 1: is that place you go to to create Suzanne or Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: And he says, I don't know. If I knew where
Speaker 1: it was, i'd go there more often. You know, listeners
Speaker 1: of the show have heard this dirty times. But he
Speaker 1: is the He was the number one guest I wanted
Speaker 1: to have on the show, which it never it never
Speaker 1: worked out, unfortunately, but at least we have his his legacy,
Speaker 1: and he started as a wealthy Montreal poet and then
Speaker 1: he went to the village and became calm. So we're
Speaker 1: near the end of time. But I want to wrap
Speaker 1: up with something that I read in an interview you
Speaker 1: did somewhere, and you were talking about how, at some
Speaker 1: juncture in your life there was a teacher of yours
Speaker 1: or a mentor of yours who sort of gave you
Speaker 1: the idea that the fact that you might be sad
Speaker 1: sometimes or anxious sometimes, or that you would have negative
Speaker 1: feelings wasn't a problem to be solved, but was actually
Speaker 1: just part of being human. I remember the moment I
Speaker 1: could I can tell you what the room looks like,
Speaker 1: all right, I can tell you where I sat in
Speaker 1: the auditorium. So this is Peter Kestenbaum and I was
Speaker 1: in Stockholm doing a little workshop on something I was doing,
Speaker 1: so I thought that was a general session. I'll sit
Speaker 1: in and he gets up there and he says, your anxiety,
Speaker 1: your loneliness, your sense of imperfection, the alienated part of
Speaker 1: your life means you're a human being. He wrote a
Speaker 1: book called The Vitality of Death. And I heard him
Speaker 1: talk for twenty minutes, and I said, whoops, because up
Speaker 1: until then I was trying to get it right and uh.
Speaker 1: And so I walked up to him and I said
Speaker 1: where do you live? And he says, I live in
Speaker 1: San Jose. I said, can I come and see you?
Speaker 1: He says yeah. And so that was a huge turning
Speaker 1: point that all the things I thought were wrong with
Speaker 1: my loneliness, my anxiety, my wish for more, all of that,
Speaker 1: he said, this is the nature of being human. That
Speaker 1: turned everything around. Now it's taken me a lifetime to
Speaker 1: get it, you know, but I think that's the point.
Speaker 1: So the point is that the world of certainty, consumerism
Speaker 1: tells us in some way that there's something wrong with us.
Speaker 1: So if you can convince me of my deficiencies, you
Speaker 1: own me. Every performance for you ever done. All right,
Speaker 1: every church, every whatever. It says there's something you're born
Speaker 1: in sin really and that means, oh, I got more
Speaker 1: to work on. Well, can you help me work on it?
Speaker 1: Of course I can because I love you. Okay. So
Speaker 1: this is a fabric of defending against our freedom. And
Speaker 1: so that that was a big shift in my life,
Speaker 1: is to realize I'm not crazy, there's nothing wrong with me,
Speaker 1: and I'm not alone. And it's kind of got me
Speaker 1: through a lot. Even though I proceeded to mess things
Speaker 1: up on a consistent basis. It just I didn't draw
Speaker 1: conclusions about my failures. Yeah. I think it's Christian Emurdy
Speaker 1: sort of taking this conversation all the way back to
Speaker 1: the beginning and the idea of, you know, the culture
Speaker 1: that we live in. You know, Christiana Murdy said something
Speaker 1: to the effect of to be to be well adjusted
Speaker 1: in a profoundly sick society is not a sign of health.
Speaker 1: To be insane, They're saying and saying, that's a huge insight, beautiful,
Speaker 1: and where do you find that. I want to find
Speaker 1: that in the Saturday morning marketplace. I don't want to
Speaker 1: have to go to yoga like I did, not to
Speaker 1: learn that. I want that to be the part of
Speaker 1: the fabric of our economic system, the fabric not only
Speaker 1: of our churches, but are you know what we do
Speaker 1: on weekend. You're bringing that into the world with your
Speaker 1: care and your questions, and I really appreciate it. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, and thank you for taking the
Speaker 1: time to come on. As I said earlier, the book
Speaker 1: is called an Other Kingdom, and we will have links
Speaker 1: in the show notes to where you can find that
Speaker 1: book and other things from Peter. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come on. Thanks Sarah. Okay,
Speaker 1: bye bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
Speaker 1: please consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support