Excerpt from Typhoon Honey (Girrell & Sjogren): Ethics and Meritocracy

 


Ethics and meritocracy

There is an ethical responsibility one assumes in taking on this life and in being source. We recognize that we have assumed a certain set of powers and conditions that are not universal. Many who might be otherwise powerful and successful contributors to their world may not have been gifted with the set of circumstances or privileges that we often take for granted. There are people whose circumstances are so debilitating that it may seem nearly impossible for them to rise out of their conditions. We would consider ourselves as insensitive were we to step over the conditions of those who are disenfranchised, disabled, exploited, un-banked (having no bank account or means to save money), or victims of systemic injustice. These issues are human issues and by default are our issues as well. As we contend with the abundance of the universe, that sharing in abundance carries with it the responsibility of being a channel of abundance for all and that we cannot win at the expense of others’ losses; we likewise are required to be part of the solution for the disparity of justice and humane conditions for those who are often forgotten. We consider this a matter of ethics and accountability.

 

Recognizing privilege is difficult—it is like trying to differentiate some parts of the air we breathe from other parts. Privilege shapes our language, is the foundation of the logic and philosophy that guides our thinking, is endemic in the principles of psychology we feel are “normal,” and is the context in which most people who read this book function. Privilege is a product of power, and the power that those who are privileged to possess can shape destiny, frame our lives, and even to select or limit resources to accomplish much of what we would consider just conditions for living.

 

My life partner Sarah has an avocation of empowering women. For years she has worked with women, designed and run trainings, and led women’s organizations at the local, regional and international level. Frequently she would be coaching some woman on the phone, and one time I noticed a different tone to her conversation. When she hung up, I asked her what that was about, and her response surprised me: “She feels like prey in her relationship.” Not understanding, I asked what that meant. Sarah explained that most women feel like prey. They have been ogled, pinched, groped without consent, and whistled at all their lives—they just feel like prey, she explained. The thought had never occurred to me. As a six-foot, three-inch athletic male, I have never once had the feeling of being prey—not even walking home after rugby practice at night in Central Park, New York! That is male privilege. But whether we talk about privilege as male privilege, white privilege, economic privilege, geographic privilege, or any other unconscious state of life that set us even a step ahead of our sibling humans, our duty is to become aware and wake up to how privilege has tilted the scale.

 

When we stand as source, we also own the responsibility that we are source for the suffering of others who live without those privileges. You cannot have it both ways: being source and ignoring a third of the world’s population who suffer. We are either source or we are not. Choosing to live as the source of our lives means that we choose to participate in the whole of life, and by extension, that we are the source of life for others as well. If we have any hopes of holding on to the gifts that we generate in standing as source, then we own the responsibility of sharing those gifts with others. After all, our gifts were given to us to be shared—that is the nature of abundance. When we hold onto something as “ours” or “mine,” we stop the flow of abundance and lose any chance of understanding greatness.

 

Somewhere in the conversation of abundance and privilege, we encounter the egoist concept of merit—a belief that we deserve (whatever it is we think we deserve) because we worked for it. 

 

The extension of that same principle is that if the disenfranchised of the world were to work hard enough, they would be inheritors of this same level of abundance. Nothing could be further from the truth nor more bound up in ego and privilege. It is not simply a matter of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps for the disenfranchised. Entire systems (economic systems, justice and legal systems, social, political, and even geographic systems) are working to hold them down. If humanity can share in abundance, humanity also shares in pain, wealth disparity, injustice, and exploitation. Becoming source carries with it the ownership of balancing these imbalances. We recognize that we are all part of the same universal system and as long as even one human suffers, all of humanity is suffering. Thus, we do NOT hold the idea that “I deserve” what I get and “if only they would work as hard,” they would earn these rights as well. 

 

There was a YouTube[1] video that became popular showing a teacher trying to illustrate the effects of privilege. He had all of the students start on a baseline in the field to have an opportunity to get a one hundred dollar bill he was holding. The first one to reach him would win. But then he added some conditions. If they lived in a home with both parents, they could take two steps forward. If they never had to work to help the family out financially, they could take two more steps. If they did not have to count on a scholarship or athletic ability to get into college, take two more steps forward. And he continued that way as the privileged students moved closer to the goal. Some looked back at those still on the baseline who remained motionless, heads down, looking dejected. Finally, he said “go” and one of the foremost of the privileged students easily grabbed the money. And many that still stood at the baseline never even attempted to run in the race.  After the exercise, the teacher debriefed the students on what they learned. The race had been rigged from the start. That is the effect of privilege.

 

Meritocracy is a term used to describe an attitude that one gets what one earns. It comes from a northern European work ethic that holds that if you work hard enough for anything, it can be achieved. But meritocracy also holds the thought of entitlement. Those who work hard enough are entitled to reap the rewards. But the foundation of meritocracy is scarcity and competition; not abundance. It assumes that we all have the same starting point and the same innate skills. Meritocracy does not take into account centuries of poverty, malnutrition, lack of access to education, or even to clean water. And those are just a few of the inequities that wealth disparity and privilege have created as the starting block for our disenfranchised siblings in the human family.

 

Psychologists usually discuss this thought (merit and entitlement) under the general heading of “locus of control.” When we are doing well, we see things that happen in our favor as within our span of control—“I did that!” It is referred to as an internal locus of control. Conversely, when we experience “bad luck,” we see those instances as outside of our control—“It happened to me!” This is referred to as an external locus of control. Meritocracy is based in the conversation of locus of control in as much as  people who ascribe to the principle of merit believe that they have control and can positively affect their outcomes through their effort. They have mottos like “no pain, no gain” and “God helps those who help themselves.” Yet despite this, because meritocracy is a locus of control principle, they also hold fast to the belief that “shit happens” and that forces outside of your locus of control have power to disrupt their path. “You just have to hunker down and work through it,” they will say. 

 

So what are we to do? The day Andrew proposed to me we started talking over dinner and he began enumerating the woes of the world. It quickly spiraled downward to this heavy and sad place. My immediate response was, “So what can we do?” HIs answer of essentially that there was nothing we can do had me reconsidering my earlier “yes.” But I said if we think we can’t do anything, then what are we here for? Why are even alive if not to be part of the solution? That discussion began our journey toward creating this center of BBA and the life we are now living as partners.

 

As transforming people who totally accept our being source, we also get to accept our complicity in the injustices that create systematic disenfranchisement of others. We see our complicity in the plight of the disenfranchised and we own doing our part to work for justice. But like the other issues in our lives that require our attention and understanding, being source carries no guilt within it; it only requires our shifting to source a different outcome. If we approach working with people who are living in poverty or those who society has demeaned, from a place of guilt, we are still coming from a place of us/them. It is only when we are in full solidarity with our oppressed siblings and stand beside them as one of us that we can act in full power with them.

 

My friend, an ordained minister, traveled to Standing Rock Reservation during their protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Her intentions were purely to be in support and add her body and voice to that of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. But when she arrived, the council informed her that she could work in the food preparation or in any of the many duties required to support those who were protesting, but she would not be permitted to stand on the front line. The elders said that because she did not know what it is like to have been oppressed for generations and still stand in nonviolent protest, they feared she would get angry or indignant at how the military was treating the protesters, and as a result be a disservice to their nonviolent stand. Her lifetime of privilege and power would result in her experiencing oppression in a way that was inconsistent with their values. Imagine for a moment how committed to peace it would be for those who have been oppressed, murdered, and cheated for hundreds of years to continue to work peacefully for the right reasons. So, seeing that truth, she supported their efforts as best she could from behind the scenes.

 

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (in his now-classic text Pedagogy of the Oppressed,[2]) identified five different perspectives or experiences in working with poor (which Freire defined as those who are powerless, dismissed, or considered as lesser by society) people. These are not sequential or progressive levels of understanding, but rather different awarenesses we must move through to get to full solidarity. 

  1. The first perspective is feeling compassion for people living with injustice and as a result befriend them. Seeing exploitation and suffering, we are naturally moved to compassion. My family and I were helping a family living in dire poverty clean up a trashed section of their house so that they might rent that part out to others. The place had not been lived in for several years and was filled with trash, rotting garbage, and dog feces everywhere. At lunch my son sat down with me and said, “Dad, I’m embarrassed at how disgusted I am with the conditions they live in. It is not right and I know that is my privilege speaking, but they are people and they deserve better than this.” His heart was breaking for this family and yet all we could do that weekend was clean and repair the building.
  2. The second perspective of solidarity is indignant anger at the injustice, the place where our friend perhaps was when she wanted to support the Standing Rock tribe. We see clearly the bitter injustice of these exploitive systems and are outraged at the suffering they cause.
  3. The third perspective of solidarity seems a bit like patronizing. Freire says, as we move into solidarity, we may tend to idealize the virtues we see in oppressed peoples. We often hear people who have worked in so-called “third world” locations saying how happy and generous the people were, that they have little or nothing to give but will give you anything they have. When Andrew and I went to Vietnam, we encountered this phenomenon. We wept at the war memorial, but we experienced no resentment or hostility from the Vietnamese people there. Our guide, Typhoon Honey, simply explained that those atrocities were done by other people, not us. It was both humbling and inspiring. Another version of this level is to admire people’s stamina for dealing with the oppression, calling them strong or thinking that someone is almost superhuman to work three jobs, keep a house, and raise five children in such conditions—or for Andrew and me to think of the Vietnamese people as more evolved. 
  4. The fourth perspective is disillusionment with those we are trying to help. This is almost the opposite of the previous perception of “superhuman” when we become upset with oppressed people’s defeatist attitude. People who have lived in oppression and have been told countless times that they are nothing, that they will never amount to anything and have no value, often internalize those thoughts as an acceptance of failure, like the students left at the starting line in the one hundred dollar bill game. They become convinced by their surrounding culture that they are nothing and worthless and lose all will to even try. To outsiders, they may appear lazy and like they are using the system to get a free ride. Freire says we need to confront our disillusionment, resulting from our attitude, and not something wrong about them. 
  5. The fifth perspective is to actually walk with the oppressed as one of them and to allow their perspective and living conditions to transform us. Freire says that it is not until we are able to say “we poor” or  “we oppressed” that we are in full solidarity with them. It is one thing to work with poor, oppressed, and exploited people yet have the ability to escape to our homes and “normal” way of being. But when we actually let it in and let those conditions penetrate our inner world, the forces of oppression have the ability to transform us, to feel a deeper level of compassion, not based in pity, but in understanding firsthand what that suffering is. 

 

This fifth level of awareness is not something we can easily hold on to. Like being totally present in the moment when our minds are continually sifting through past, present, and future, living in solidarity is difficult and challenging. Andrew and I moved into an apartment in Roxbury to be in solidarity with the poor and destitute of Boston. We made friends with homeless people and some of the addicts on the street corner. We invited them to breakfast. But in no time those same people we were befriending were continually knocking on our door asking and demanding that we give them something or feed them more and we slipped quickly back into the fourth level of disillusionment and resentment. It is not easy, even if this is your life’s calling.

 

Lest we think that this only applies to the world of wealth disparity and hunger, we want to be clear that this same conversation can be had with society’s discrimination and disenfranchisement of others based on human sexuality. Our gay, lesbian, gender neutral, transgender, bisexual, polyamorous, or otherwise queer siblings in the human race have long suffered much of the same disenfranchisement and oppression as do people of different races and skin colors or economic standing. Oppression is oppression. We get to be allies to with the disenfranchised.

 

My daughter is an ordained minister and identifies as queer because she is married to a transitioned man. The level of maturity that both my daughter and son-in-law can teach me is so advanced because of having to ask and answer far more questions on life, on who they really are and what their identity really is. As a large, white, heterosexual man, none of those issues were ever challenged in my life. Wherever you are on the continuum of life and economics, there is always someone who can teach you more.

 

Many of the principles and practices outlined in this book cannot be simply handed to people living in oppression. Without an understanding of the psychology of the oppressed (what is called Liberation Psychology) we can miss the mark or come across as uncaring and uninformed. Without the proper humility, Standing as Source will not land well with others. While we talk about the power of declaration, our understanding of that power starts from a position of privilege and freedom to choose in the first place. We still get to contextualize these principles so that they fit within the culture and paradigm of the people we are enrolling. Stepping into leadership for a person of color in a culture of discrimination is not simply a matter of “saying so.” It is imperative that we be taught first by our oppressed sisters and brothers and learn to approach transformation from their starting point, not ours.

 

My primary care physician is a brilliant doctor, and her husband is a wealth manager for a major brokerage firm. While engaging in normal chit-chat at the end of a physical a few years ago, she mentioned that she and her family were planning where they might be able to go for summer vacation—so many places were not safe. When I pointed out that the travel alert level was lower than it had been in a few years, she said, rather bluntly, “Kris look at me! My skin is brown—and brown is the color of terrorism. People don’t see my degrees when they look at me, they see a brown-skinned woman with a brown-skinned man and two brown boys! There are few places we can go in the world where that is not the case, and that’s scary.” If that is the case for an affluent American doctor, imagine the level of oppression felt by those whose skin color is Black or Brown or Yellow, or for people who don’t look like they have any available cash reserve, people who are gender neutral, transgendered, or whatever their particular natural state might be. And those are issues in our country—a place considered by much of the rest of the world to be a place of affluence and freedom.

 

Our ability to stand humbly beside the oppressed ones, to walk with the poor and know life from their perspective, is essential before we are able to “teach” the skills of transformation. We first get to learn from our queer friends what life and sexuality really means; from our exploited sisters and brothers what suffering is; and to experience hunger not as a choice to fast but as a daily condition of life. Then, when we are transforming by that experience, when we understand the starting point of living with oppression, we can begin to frame the perspectives of becoming source differently for them and for ourselves. As we are fond of saying, there is always more, and tomorrow is a much bigger day!



[1] “Privilege/Class/Social Inequalities Explained in a $100 Race,” YouTube, October 14, 2017,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K5fbQ1-zps

[2] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition. (New York: Continuum International [now Bloomsbury Publishing], 2008).


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