Many years ago someone told me that the reason they supported the NFP organisation I worked with was that they had had a bad experience with us. I do a double take, did I hear that correctly??? He went on to explain that he had come to base his life on the reality of paradoxes: you get more satisfaction from giving than getting; to truly own something you have to let it go; seeking acceptance from people actually drives them away, etc etc. He therefore found it liberating to be generous towards an organisation that hadn’t treated him well. Hmmmmm.

Paradox has been deeply informative for my own view of the world. In particular, I accept that apparently contradictory ideas, when held together, can offer insight and wisdom that are denied us when we hold dogmatically to a particular perspective, irrespective of its apparent right-ness.

One of the things I appreciate about the way David, Andy and the team designed the Do Lectures (www.dolectures.com) in Wales this year was the bringing together of things that rarely end up in the same space.

• An international gathering of acclaimed achievers, sharing their stories while being accommodated in tents (not hotels). Eliminates the pretention that typically accompanies such events when you are bunking down in sleeping bags and lining up for simple but exception food with enamel plates.
• CEOs, activists, film-makers, inventors, adventurers, entrepreneurs … Do-ers of all kinds sharing the microphone.
• An event that unashamedly showcases a smart little country (Wales), while being genuinely international.
• High tech threads (via speaker selection and social media savvy) and earthy, high touch culture.
• … and the list could go on.

To illustrate this, in one session we heard from Zach Smith (co-founder of Makerbot industries http://www.makerbot.com/ – a 3D printing device likely to be part of the manufacturing revolution) and designer and photographer Nick Hand who rode his push bike around the coast of the UK seeking out and interviewing artisans along the way (http://www.dolectures.com/lectures/why-we-need-to-celebrate-craftsman/ ). The question about which approach, high-tech localised manufacturing or the super skilled handcrafts of the artisans is ‘better’ misses the opportunity to retain the best of the past and embrace the future by holding both stories together in tension.

Our world is in constant flux. Wise people remind us that the thinking required to solve today’s challenges cannot be the same thinking that created the challenges in the first place. When I caught up with fellow Do-participants Ross (@RossHill), Sam (@sambe11) and Derek (@dwinter) last week we talked about the difference in approach when the motivation is not so much to ‘save the world’ but to get on with creating a world with the attributes we understand as good. The Do Lectures, like many other gatherings these days, is part of a groundswell that is not just imagining what a healthy 21^st world is like, but is already living it. This is not happening by reacting against the dominant systems, but by just getting on and doing, believing that the intuitive innovation and resilience of the human spirit will create pockets of life and energy that grow organically.

Haven’t been as inspired by a group of people collectively and individually for a long time.

Ok, so let me ground the philosophical musings of last week …

AFL is a better code than NRL, Macs are better than PCs, and Spooks is the best spy drama on TV.

Pronouncements like these litter our conversation. We get passionate about our beliefs and can even get into arguments. This happens because we make leaps in logic …

We go from: “I really enjoy AFL” to “NRL is a rubbish game”. What we don’t necessarily acknowledge is: “AFL is all I’ve known and it has provided me with extraordinary satisfaction and a sense of community. As for NRL, I’ve only ever seen it on TV and I’ve actually got no idea what it feels like to play rugby league or support an NRL team.”

In one sense, all we’ve got is our point of view. There’s nothing wrong with not having grown up with NRL, but why do we insist on limiting our appreciation of life by wanting to look at everything through our own blinkered experience? Why do we leap from, “I’ve experienced this to be true,” to “my experience is universally true for everyone”, and it’s corollary, “your experience of truth is invalid.”

Despite the passion involved, the relative merits of football codes don’t matter in the scheme of things. Other things matter more. Justice for people in society who get marginalised or are victims of indiscriminate power or carelessness matters more. Asylum seekers and people with disabilities are just two groups that come to mind. We should be very wary about forming views about people until we have experienced their plight first hand. Until then, listen intently.

The point is simply this: if we want to grow and develop, immersion in a situation that challenges our preconceived ideas about what is good and right is the way to go. Feeding ourselves with content and people that affirm what we already think puts our roots down deeper, but doesn’t help us figure out if we’re in the right spot in the first place.

… but Collingwood supporters really are morons.

The London based RSA, founded in a Covent Garden coffee shop in 1754, is dedicated to finding innovative practical solutions to today’s social challenges. Last week I read an RSA essay by Matthew Taylor exploring 21^st century enlightenment. Included in the essay is an evidence based exploration of behaviour change. Here are a couple of paragraphs;

“Most of our behaviour, including social interaction, is the result of our brain responding automatically to the world around us rather than the outcome of conscious decision-making. In this sense it is more realistic to see ourselves as a node integrally connected to the world rather than a separate, wholly autonomous, entity. For example, recent work on the impact of social networks shows how they subtly but powerfully influence our lifestyles. After studying public health patterns for two decades Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler conclude:

‘Social influence does not end with the people we know. If we affect our friends and they affect their friends then our actions can potentially affect people we have never met. We discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend gained weight, you gained weight. We discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend stopped smoking, you stopped smoking. And we discovered that if your friend’s friend’s friend became happy, you became happy.’

Practically, it turns out that changing our context is a more powerful way of shaping our behaviour than trying to change our minds. If you want to become a better person, don’t buy a book of sermons, choose more virtuous friends.”

I first started to think deeply about behaviour change about 15 years ago after reading Professor Rodney Stark’s 1996 book The Rise of Christianity. The book unpacks the sociological context and factors behind the extraordinary growth of the movement in the first three centuries AD. At the time, the disruption in my thinking was related to the power of community to affect people’s lifestyle choices. In short, rather than people choosing a particular behaviour (for example, helping poor or sick people) because of a belief, studies of a variety of groups suggest it is more substantially driven by a desire to belong to a community who also practices these behaviours.

What we are exposed to, our experience of life, is the dominant shaper of our beliefs and behaviour, rather than our articulated belief system or worldview. So what? Here are two important implications:

1. Until we have experienced the alternative, we should be cautious about how dogmatically we argue our case as superior.

This should not paralyse us in putting forward a viewpoint. Indeed, whether it is a trivial argument about the merits of Sydney or Melbourne or a more substantial discussion about an ideology, we should make our point with robust evidence. But the point is that until we have walked in another person’s shoes our argument is simply a point of view. In a less ethereal context, a commitment to immersing ourselves in the other’s perspective is a powerful path forward in everyday family or household tensions.

It is often said that until one has a child, we have no idea what its like. Until we have grieved we have an impoverished view of life. Until we are unemployed, we have no idea what it is it actually like. I recall Ched Myers, from whom I have learned much, saying that the reason he chose to live where he did in LA was to “intentionally see the world through the eyes of the marginalised”.

2. Personal and professional development is still mired in the myth that it is mainly about content. Content, without context is hollow though. The stuff that catapults us forward is our intentional or unintentional exposure to a situation that challenges our existing capabilities or prejudices. Our lives follow predictable paths because we stay within our communities; we feed our minds with content with which we already basically agree, we hang out with people like us. There is nothing wrong with this except if our long term goal includes development and wisdom. My hypothesis is that the broader our thoughtful first hand exposure to different perspectives, the wiser our grasp of that domain.

Happy exploring.

Tim McCormack – the generous enthusiast

In the last of this series, acknowledging the key influencers in my first career, I go back to the beginning. In fact, while I’d framed this as being about the foundations for the years between 20 and 40, I was only 18 when I met Tim McCormack.

I had just returned from 12 months as an Exchange Student in Gifu, Japan. My childhood in Ulverstone, North West Tasmania was happy and successful; I’d done OK at school, socially and in various sporting endeavours. Japan had opened me up to the world beyond my little pond; I returned slightly less naïve ready to take on the world. I was a green and zealous young man. I left home and moved into a residential college at Uni in Hobart and in orientation week was welcomed by Tim. His influence on my life was swift and deep.

I was hungry to develop, I was alert to opportunities and was sponge-like in my enthusiasm. I absorbed and mimicked many things from Tim but there are two things in particular that defined the way Tim lived that were so attractive to me I found myself taking them on.

Firstly, Tim was an enthusiast. He was (and probably still is) confident and charismatic. He had passions. He loved the Tasmanian outdoors, he fiercely supported Australian Rules Football team Carlton, and he had a love affair with 1963 EH Holdens. He was active, social and political. People liked him and he liked people. Tim gave me permission to be energetically and irrationally committed to living life at full volume. Fanatical even. We believed in ‘rightness’, to the extent we made decisions that were against the grain.

But Tim’s enthusiasm wasn’t scattered and shallow. One of his attributes that most endeared him to me was his polish and depth. He had an eye for quality that was contagious. He was articulate and considered.

Coupled with his enthusiast nature was a startling generosity. Tim demonstrated time and time again that the money in his wallet belonged to whoever needed it most. I listened wide-eyed to the story of how he’d saved to buy a beloved EH and then given the lot away. It was not that I hadn’t experienced generosity before, but Tim’s style was risky. Resources were simply a tool for living. He gave away time and things. He seemed to be testament to the proverbial truth that what goes around comes around, the more generous he was, the more came back to him.

Tim has a stellar and distinguished career. It has been many years since we shared a coffee, but I come across his name or voice from time to time. Notably, in 2010 he was appointed as Special Adviser on International Humanitarian Law to the Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, an outstanding achievement.

Mate, thanks for believing in me. Thanks for the years of friendship and for imparting something of your enthusiasm for life and generosity of spirit.

Rob Conkie – the unconventional creative

In this little series reflecting on key influencers in my years between 20 and 40 I come to my mate Rob. Rob and I lived in the same house in Brunswick in the late 1980s. I was a fairly conventional young man; until I met this Ballarat boy it was not common for me to hang out with people who regularly wore clown pants to Melbourne Uni when most other people wore either their private school casual uniform or black. Rob opened up my experience of life to include creativity. I had never known someone as sensually aware and intelligent.

I picked up a little practice from Rob that I still find myself doing sometimes; sitting at the dinner table, before he started eating, Rob would slowly lean forward so his face was immediately above the meal. With eyes closed he would inhale deeply, embracing the smells, immersing himself in anticipation of what the flavours would soon deliver.

On more than one occasion I’ve heard people snigger at the extreme ridiculousness of liturgical dance; for good reason I might add. Can you imagine my reaction, while away with friends one weekend, when Rob announces that he is going to perform a dance to a well known song? He executes with such passion and meaning that the circle around him were drawn into a moving and memorable experience.

From his love of drama as an undergraduate and teaching as a young professional, Rob has done the hard yards, here and in England, and now finds himself with a global reputation in Shakespearian performance. I so admire his passion and competency in a domain of which I know virtually nothing.

But Rob is no marginal arty farty. We got to know each other over a diet of sport and slap stick comedy. We laughed and competed our way around Royal Park golf course countless times. We never got our balls confused because for years Rob played with the same bright pink ball. His golf prowess, unlike mine, meant that he wasn’t prone to losing the little blighters. He kicked the pig skin with both right and left (we are both Carlton supporters), a skill that no doubt served him well during the long period he called England home when the world game joined his list of sporting passions. Despite our shared generalist sporting skill and the hours upon hours we spent talking and competing (we played nerf basketball in our kitchen endlessly, seeking to score from increasingly impossible angles and positions – darts, snooker …. ), I could never come close to him on a tennis court where he still hits an A class ball.

On one occasion, much to Maria’s embarrassment, we sat ourselves in front of a TV screen at Barkly Square Shopping Centre and laughed ourselves silly watching the Naked Gun 2 ½ . We laughed often together, seeing things that were not conventionally comical, but of which we shared a comic perspective. We had some fun, typically during morning peak hour traffic when driving home from the cleaning job we shared, picking out the stereo-typical commuting types. A favourite was the blond young professional women driving small red cars. It amused us deeply how many there seemed to be on any given day at that time.

The Australia I recall growing up in had a neat way of categorising people. White collar, blue collar; Catholics and Protestants; Aussies and migrants; private schools kids and government school kids. There were us’ and thems’ at every turn. Meeting and becoming friends with Rob helped me appreciate that the tendency to categorise creates prejudices that prevent us from embracing all humanity has to offer. Like many exceptionally talented people, Rob did not fit a stereotype and in being a friend, taught me to love the unconventional in people.

Mate, as I’ve said to you before, I feel like our souls are connected in some way. You have helped me laugh. You have opened my eyes. Our lives have their own independent maturity now but you have left an imprint on mine that means I will always be grateful for having you as a friend.