The most mature recorded thinkers have always been mystics and, by definition, systems theorists. One of the constant characteristics of mystics of all cultures and all religions in all ages has been their ever-present consciousness of an invisible interconnectedness beneath the surface of things. Consequently, each of their teachings, one way or another, has de-emphasized the separation between self and other.
This de-emphasis of self reached its acme in certain Hindu and Buddhist mystical writings in which the entire concept of self is declared a total illusion (maya), where all human suffering is ascribed to this illusion, and where spiritual progress is completely defined by one's capacity to accident that in some of this literature the infant, who has not yet learned how to distinguish itself, is glorified as , having a pure mind-a mind liberated from maya, the illusion of self. It is also no accident that in this same literature the distinction between good and evil is considered illusion as well. Buddhists and Hindus do not use the Genesis story. It is as if they identified their heaven - 'nirvana, or the state of mind free from illusion-with the human condition in the Garden of Eden before we had partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, before we had become self-conscious.
From my own point of view, although I have learned much from it, this Eastern tradition of mystical theology has carried matters too far. It was the Eastern tradition that schooled me in the paradoxical nature of virtually all truth. Yet the Western tradition's attitude toward the self is the more paradoxical-and hence, I believe, the more accurate. Western mystics have also repeatedly spoken of Unity, : identified the self with God, blurred the distinction between , self and others and between self and nature. But they have , never, to my knowledge, gone so far as to deny the reality of the self or to declare it to be without consequence, or to totally denigrate self-consciousness.
Jesus was an example of the Western mystic. He integrated himself with God: 'I am in the Father and the Father in me.' He blurred the distinction between himself and others: 'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me,' and, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.'Over and again he taught that we should pay less heed to ourselves in many ways, for example, by concerning ourselves less with clothing, food, and security. But he also taught that we needed to pay more attention to ourselves in other ways, such as being concerned with motes in our own eyes and the quality of our prayer lives. Finally, he gave the ultimate expression of the proper paradoxical attitude toward the self when he proclaimed, 'Whosoever will save his life [self] will lose it, and whosoever will lose his life [self] for my sake [i.e., in the right way] will find it. In common with Jewish mystics before him and Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics thereafter, Jesus never said there was no self. Rather, he urged us to cease clinging to our lesser selves in order that we might find our greater true selves.
I do not believe it bad that we have been kicked out of the womb of Eden. That thrusting forth is evolutionary. And the point is not to stop as soon as we can, finding what looks like a safe place, and burrow into the sand, settling for limited consciousness and a lesser self-awareness. Instead, the point is to plunge ahead as pilgrims, through thorns and sharp stones of the desert into deeper and ever-deeper levels of consciousness, becoming ever more able to distinguish between those varieties of self-consciousness that are ultimately destructive and those that are life enhancing, even godly.
Richard Bolles once labeled us humans as 'the comparing creatures.' It is an apt designation. By virtue of our awareness of self, we are endlessly comparing ourselves with others. Are we bigger or smaller? More or less beautiful, handsome? Younger or older? Richer or poorer? Smarter or more stupid? Less or more powerful? Et cetera, et cetera ad infinitum. Our destiny as comparing creatures, ceaselessly measuring ourselves against our fellow beings, is simultaneously one of the greater blessings and curses of the human condition.
Take the matter of grades in school. They may give rise an utterly false sense of either adequacy or personal inadequacy. An A student with a disagreeable, self-centered personality may judge himself to be wholly competent when the reality is that he has light-years of psychospiritual growth to go. Conversely, a C student who is a truly fine person may consider himself unnecessarily incompetent and inferior in comparison to the first youth. How frequently have I seen the C students ultimately far outstrip the A students in this journey of life!
On the other hand, high grades may allow a young woman to feel sufficiently comfortable about herself to be able to venture forth into challenging new areas of psychospiritual development. Or low grades may stimulate a girl to buckle down to her studies, perhaps even to appropriately seek psychotherapy and other forms of assistance to correct her poor performance.
Comparisons are not always odious. Comparisons may work for the good in other ways. Our fellow humans may serve us not only as positive role models but also as negative ones. My father, for instance, despite his many virtues, was an outspoken male chauvinist. His chauvinism was such a glaring, negative trait as to cause me to want to be different. It made it easier for me to cleanse myself or much of my own chauvinisim and thereby gradually become a less imperfect husband, father, and friend. Through comparison, as we grow up, we partly define ourselves against other people. Such a self-definition process may be very healing and healthy.
The great psychiatrist Carl Jung labeled the self-defining, self-differentiation process individuation. Indeed, this process was so central to his thinking that his followers have called their body of theory individual psychology. It regards completion of the individuation process as the ultimate goal of psychospiritual growth. Unfortunately, it is a goal most of us never fully reach. Most of us, one way or another, will die still partly tied emotionally to our parents' apron strings or still mindlessly allowing our ideas and opinions to be dictated by the media. Relatively few of us ever fully learn to think for ourselves, to become full individuals. Yes, we live within systems, but it is also our task not only to preserve but to fulfill our individuality. We are called to become our true, unique selves, and not mere organization men and women.
Another enormous virtue of self-consciousness becomes apparent when we study ego psychology. The ego is the governing part of our personality. A very simple way to look at ego development the maturation of this governor-is in terms of three stages. The first stage, that of early childhood, is one of an absolute or almost absolute lack of self-consciousness. Here the ego is totally down at the level of the emotions and enmeshed with them. It is the lack of self-consciousness at this stage that makes young children so frequently charming. When they are joyful, they are one hundred percent joyful. They are marvelously spontaneous. But it is this same spontaneity that can so often make them difficult. For when they are sad, they are also one hundred percent sad, sometimes to the point of being inconsolable. And when they are angry, they are one hundred percent angry and sometimes violent or vicious.
As indicated, there are glimmerings of self-consciousness by the age of nine months. This capacity for self-awareness very gradually increases throughout childhood. In adolescence, however, it undergoes a dramatic growth spurt. For the first time young people have a quite obvious 'observing ego.' Now they can observe themselves being joyful or sad or angry while they are feeling so. This means that the ego is no longer wholly confined to the level of the emotions. Now a part of it-the observing ego-is detached from the emotions, above them looking on. There is a certain resulting loss of spontaneity.
The observing ego is still not fully developed in adolescence. Thus, adolescents are frequently spontaneous, sometimes dangerously so. At other times, however, they seem to be nothing but a mass of affectations as they self-consciously try on one new identity after another by donning to outrageous hairstyles, outfits, and behaviors. Constantly comparing themselves with peers and parents, these seemingly flamboyant creatures are often painfully shy and suffer innumerable spasms of excruciating embarrassment.
Perhaps because the process can be so painful, the majority of people fail to further develop their observing egos once they enter adulthood. Their self-observing capacity becomes modulated (and less painful), but often this occurs only because it actually shrinks. There is a real loss when this happens. When, unwittingly, the majority settle for a limited-even diminished-awareness of their own feelings and imperfections, they have stopped short on the journey through the desert, thereby failing to fulfill their human potential or grow into true psychospiritual power and civility.
But a fortunate minority, for reasons both mysterious and graceful, continue the journey, ever strengthening their observing egos rather than allowing them to atrophy. One of the reasons that psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy may be profoundly effective is because it is a vehicle for the exercise of the observing ego. What the patient is doing as he lies on the analyst's couch is not merely talking about himself but observing himself talking about himself and observing his feelings as he does so.
The exercise of the observing ego is crucial because if it becomes strong enough, the individual is then in a position where she can proceed to the next stage and develop what I call a ‘transcendent ego.’ It is analogous to being an orchestra conductor. The individual with the transcendent ego has become so aware of her emotions that she can actually orchestrate them. She may be feeling some sadness, but she is in command of herself, so she can essentially say, `This is not the time for sadness or violins; it is a time for joy. So hush now, violins. And come on, horns, blow forth.' Note that she does not repress or quash her sadness any more than an orchestra conductor would stomp on the violins. She simply sets her sadness aside, or ‘brackets’ it.
Similarly, she would be able to address the joyful part of herself: `I love you, horns, but this is not a situation for joyful expression. It is one that calls for anger. So beat the drums.' I was attempting to explain the concept of transcendent ego to a patient one afternoon. This particular patient, who was seeing me because of a problem expressing his anger, had some years before been high in the administration of a university at a time of , student riots. 'Aha!' my patient suddenly exclaimed. `Now I understand what you're talking about.' He recounted how at the height of the riots the president resigned and a new university president was immediately brought in to replace him:
My patient labeled his president's behavior in this instance as ‘impressive.’ Occurring in an auditorium filled with important members of a large institution, it was specifically an impressive instance of organizational behavior.
What made it so impressive? My patient, who was terrified of giving vent to his own angry feelings, admired his president's self-control. Not the kind of over-control from which he himself suffered, but a far more developed self-control that allowed healthy flexibility. It was not that in the course of the first three weeks the new man had never felt irritated, annoyed, angry, or even outraged. Nor was it that he had any problem expressing such emotions. It was that he saved his anger for the most propitious moment. He had learned how to orchestrate his feelings with the situation. It was a matter of timing. Most music is a matter of timing. The power of that moment lay in the kind of artfulness of leadership.
Underlying that artfulness, that elegant self-control, was a high degree of consciousness. The president was clearly conscious of his own feelings. It was clearly his conscious choice to single out that particularly unreasonable young faculty member for public criticism. And he seemed to do so out of a clear awareness of the needs of the institution at that particular moment. Thus, he was simultaneously conscious of the self, conscious of the other, and conscious of the organization.
Remember Herford's famous line that ‘a gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.’ Certainly, the president knew he would be hurting the feelings of that arrogant young faculty member, but he also appeared to be utterly intentional about it. The moment was so impressive precisely because he seemed to know exactly what he was doing in a complex situation.
I have already defined civility, in part, as consciously motivated organizational behavior. For behavior to be so motivated, there must be consciousness in the first place. And in this oxymoron lies a critical cornerstone of civility: To become more civil, humans must become ever more selves and Systems conscious of themselves, of others, and of the organizations that relate them together.
The converse of this cornerstone or simple principle is that incivility generally arises out of unconsciousness. It will be demonstrated again and again in Parts Two and Three, where cases of incivility in family and business life are considered in depth. They are cases of unconsciously motivated organizational behavior, or people who literally did not know what they were doing. Usually incivility is uncivil because it is unintentional. We will be exploring many ramifications of the fact that consciousness is a cornerstone of civility. One is that just as individual humans vary in the degree of their consciousness, so do the organizations to which they belong. This will be a particular focus of the concluding section, where it will be observed that whole businesses may be either more or less conscious of themselves and how they are behaving. It also follows that the more unconscious organizations are, the more likely that they, like individuals, will be perpetrators of incivility, albeit on an even grander scale.
Another ramification is already obvious. Since children are born as primarily unconscious creatures, we humans are not born civil. We only become civil through development and learning. This is also true for organizations. Many factors can either retard or enhance such development and learning. The most mysterious of these factors is free will. Individually and collectively, we can choose to become more conscious and more civil, although it is seldom totally explainable why the choice is made or fails to be made. It was mentioned that the very existence of a significant observing ego implies a certain loss of spontaneity. Since the development of a transcendent ego-such as that apparently possessed by the new university president is based on the prior foundation of an observing ego, the obvious question then arises as to whether the price isn't a renunciation of spontaneity. Paradoxically, the answer is yes and no. Yes, because the fully conscious civil person is often not free to do whatever she simply feels like doing. No, because she has the flexibility to consciously decide when she can be spontaneous as opposed to when the time calls for caution. There is a small loss of freedom associated with constant self-examination and consciousness. But those who have become accustomed to it have found, on balance, that consciousness and civility make for a way of life that is profoundly liberating.
Extracted from M Scott Peck's A World Waiting to be Born.
This de-emphasis of self reached its acme in certain Hindu and Buddhist mystical writings in which the entire concept of self is declared a total illusion (maya), where all human suffering is ascribed to this illusion, and where spiritual progress is completely defined by one's capacity to accident that in some of this literature the infant, who has not yet learned how to distinguish itself, is glorified as , having a pure mind-a mind liberated from maya, the illusion of self. It is also no accident that in this same literature the distinction between good and evil is considered illusion as well. Buddhists and Hindus do not use the Genesis story. It is as if they identified their heaven - 'nirvana, or the state of mind free from illusion-with the human condition in the Garden of Eden before we had partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, before we had become self-conscious.
From my own point of view, although I have learned much from it, this Eastern tradition of mystical theology has carried matters too far. It was the Eastern tradition that schooled me in the paradoxical nature of virtually all truth. Yet the Western tradition's attitude toward the self is the more paradoxical-and hence, I believe, the more accurate. Western mystics have also repeatedly spoken of Unity, : identified the self with God, blurred the distinction between , self and others and between self and nature. But they have , never, to my knowledge, gone so far as to deny the reality of the self or to declare it to be without consequence, or to totally denigrate self-consciousness.
Jesus was an example of the Western mystic. He integrated himself with God: 'I am in the Father and the Father in me.' He blurred the distinction between himself and others: 'Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me,' and, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.'Over and again he taught that we should pay less heed to ourselves in many ways, for example, by concerning ourselves less with clothing, food, and security. But he also taught that we needed to pay more attention to ourselves in other ways, such as being concerned with motes in our own eyes and the quality of our prayer lives. Finally, he gave the ultimate expression of the proper paradoxical attitude toward the self when he proclaimed, 'Whosoever will save his life [self] will lose it, and whosoever will lose his life [self] for my sake [i.e., in the right way] will find it. In common with Jewish mystics before him and Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mystics thereafter, Jesus never said there was no self. Rather, he urged us to cease clinging to our lesser selves in order that we might find our greater true selves.
I do not believe it bad that we have been kicked out of the womb of Eden. That thrusting forth is evolutionary. And the point is not to stop as soon as we can, finding what looks like a safe place, and burrow into the sand, settling for limited consciousness and a lesser self-awareness. Instead, the point is to plunge ahead as pilgrims, through thorns and sharp stones of the desert into deeper and ever-deeper levels of consciousness, becoming ever more able to distinguish between those varieties of self-consciousness that are ultimately destructive and those that are life enhancing, even godly.
Richard Bolles once labeled us humans as 'the comparing creatures.' It is an apt designation. By virtue of our awareness of self, we are endlessly comparing ourselves with others. Are we bigger or smaller? More or less beautiful, handsome? Younger or older? Richer or poorer? Smarter or more stupid? Less or more powerful? Et cetera, et cetera ad infinitum. Our destiny as comparing creatures, ceaselessly measuring ourselves against our fellow beings, is simultaneously one of the greater blessings and curses of the human condition.
Take the matter of grades in school. They may give rise an utterly false sense of either adequacy or personal inadequacy. An A student with a disagreeable, self-centered personality may judge himself to be wholly competent when the reality is that he has light-years of psychospiritual growth to go. Conversely, a C student who is a truly fine person may consider himself unnecessarily incompetent and inferior in comparison to the first youth. How frequently have I seen the C students ultimately far outstrip the A students in this journey of life!
On the other hand, high grades may allow a young woman to feel sufficiently comfortable about herself to be able to venture forth into challenging new areas of psychospiritual development. Or low grades may stimulate a girl to buckle down to her studies, perhaps even to appropriately seek psychotherapy and other forms of assistance to correct her poor performance.
Comparisons are not always odious. Comparisons may work for the good in other ways. Our fellow humans may serve us not only as positive role models but also as negative ones. My father, for instance, despite his many virtues, was an outspoken male chauvinist. His chauvinism was such a glaring, negative trait as to cause me to want to be different. It made it easier for me to cleanse myself or much of my own chauvinisim and thereby gradually become a less imperfect husband, father, and friend. Through comparison, as we grow up, we partly define ourselves against other people. Such a self-definition process may be very healing and healthy.
The great psychiatrist Carl Jung labeled the self-defining, self-differentiation process individuation. Indeed, this process was so central to his thinking that his followers have called their body of theory individual psychology. It regards completion of the individuation process as the ultimate goal of psychospiritual growth. Unfortunately, it is a goal most of us never fully reach. Most of us, one way or another, will die still partly tied emotionally to our parents' apron strings or still mindlessly allowing our ideas and opinions to be dictated by the media. Relatively few of us ever fully learn to think for ourselves, to become full individuals. Yes, we live within systems, but it is also our task not only to preserve but to fulfill our individuality. We are called to become our true, unique selves, and not mere organization men and women.
Another enormous virtue of self-consciousness becomes apparent when we study ego psychology. The ego is the governing part of our personality. A very simple way to look at ego development the maturation of this governor-is in terms of three stages. The first stage, that of early childhood, is one of an absolute or almost absolute lack of self-consciousness. Here the ego is totally down at the level of the emotions and enmeshed with them. It is the lack of self-consciousness at this stage that makes young children so frequently charming. When they are joyful, they are one hundred percent joyful. They are marvelously spontaneous. But it is this same spontaneity that can so often make them difficult. For when they are sad, they are also one hundred percent sad, sometimes to the point of being inconsolable. And when they are angry, they are one hundred percent angry and sometimes violent or vicious.
As indicated, there are glimmerings of self-consciousness by the age of nine months. This capacity for self-awareness very gradually increases throughout childhood. In adolescence, however, it undergoes a dramatic growth spurt. For the first time young people have a quite obvious 'observing ego.' Now they can observe themselves being joyful or sad or angry while they are feeling so. This means that the ego is no longer wholly confined to the level of the emotions. Now a part of it-the observing ego-is detached from the emotions, above them looking on. There is a certain resulting loss of spontaneity.
The observing ego is still not fully developed in adolescence. Thus, adolescents are frequently spontaneous, sometimes dangerously so. At other times, however, they seem to be nothing but a mass of affectations as they self-consciously try on one new identity after another by donning to outrageous hairstyles, outfits, and behaviors. Constantly comparing themselves with peers and parents, these seemingly flamboyant creatures are often painfully shy and suffer innumerable spasms of excruciating embarrassment.
Perhaps because the process can be so painful, the majority of people fail to further develop their observing egos once they enter adulthood. Their self-observing capacity becomes modulated (and less painful), but often this occurs only because it actually shrinks. There is a real loss when this happens. When, unwittingly, the majority settle for a limited-even diminished-awareness of their own feelings and imperfections, they have stopped short on the journey through the desert, thereby failing to fulfill their human potential or grow into true psychospiritual power and civility.
But a fortunate minority, for reasons both mysterious and graceful, continue the journey, ever strengthening their observing egos rather than allowing them to atrophy. One of the reasons that psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy may be profoundly effective is because it is a vehicle for the exercise of the observing ego. What the patient is doing as he lies on the analyst's couch is not merely talking about himself but observing himself talking about himself and observing his feelings as he does so.
The exercise of the observing ego is crucial because if it becomes strong enough, the individual is then in a position where she can proceed to the next stage and develop what I call a ‘transcendent ego.’ It is analogous to being an orchestra conductor. The individual with the transcendent ego has become so aware of her emotions that she can actually orchestrate them. She may be feeling some sadness, but she is in command of herself, so she can essentially say, `This is not the time for sadness or violins; it is a time for joy. So hush now, violins. And come on, horns, blow forth.' Note that she does not repress or quash her sadness any more than an orchestra conductor would stomp on the violins. She simply sets her sadness aside, or ‘brackets’ it.
Similarly, she would be able to address the joyful part of herself: `I love you, horns, but this is not a situation for joyful expression. It is one that calls for anger. So beat the drums.' I was attempting to explain the concept of transcendent ego to a patient one afternoon. This particular patient, who was seeing me because of a problem expressing his anger, had some years before been high in the administration of a university at a time of , student riots. 'Aha!' my patient suddenly exclaimed. `Now I understand what you're talking about.' He recounted how at the height of the riots the president resigned and a new university president was immediately brought in to replace him:
I don't know enough about either the university or its new president in those turbulent times to make an accurate historical assessment of the situation. Nonetheless, this secondhand tale is an ample illustration of how conscious ness is another critical cornerstone of civility.
We went from meeting to meeting to meeting. More often than not, the discussions were very heated. The new man mostly just listened. Occasionally he would very calmly comment that university policy was probably such and such, but he wasn't sure because he was still learning the ropes. I admired how he kept his cool. But I also began to wonder if he wasn't being too passive, possibly even ineffective. Finally we were at a huge meeting in the amphitheater, open to the entire faculty. The issue was particularly critical. A very young faculty member went into a long diatribe about how the entire administration was nothing but a collection of insensitive and unresponsive fascist pigs. When he was finished the new man stood up and strode to the lectern. 'I have been with you for three weeks now,' he said with his usual calm, steady voice, 'and you have not yet had the occasion to see your new president get angry. This morning you are going to have that opportunity.' Then he proceeded to utterly blast the arrogant, young fool away. It was very impressive. Maybe that's an example of what you mean by a transcendent ego at work.
My patient labeled his president's behavior in this instance as ‘impressive.’ Occurring in an auditorium filled with important members of a large institution, it was specifically an impressive instance of organizational behavior.
What made it so impressive? My patient, who was terrified of giving vent to his own angry feelings, admired his president's self-control. Not the kind of over-control from which he himself suffered, but a far more developed self-control that allowed healthy flexibility. It was not that in the course of the first three weeks the new man had never felt irritated, annoyed, angry, or even outraged. Nor was it that he had any problem expressing such emotions. It was that he saved his anger for the most propitious moment. He had learned how to orchestrate his feelings with the situation. It was a matter of timing. Most music is a matter of timing. The power of that moment lay in the kind of artfulness of leadership.
Underlying that artfulness, that elegant self-control, was a high degree of consciousness. The president was clearly conscious of his own feelings. It was clearly his conscious choice to single out that particularly unreasonable young faculty member for public criticism. And he seemed to do so out of a clear awareness of the needs of the institution at that particular moment. Thus, he was simultaneously conscious of the self, conscious of the other, and conscious of the organization.
Remember Herford's famous line that ‘a gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.’ Certainly, the president knew he would be hurting the feelings of that arrogant young faculty member, but he also appeared to be utterly intentional about it. The moment was so impressive precisely because he seemed to know exactly what he was doing in a complex situation.
I have already defined civility, in part, as consciously motivated organizational behavior. For behavior to be so motivated, there must be consciousness in the first place. And in this oxymoron lies a critical cornerstone of civility: To become more civil, humans must become ever more selves and Systems conscious of themselves, of others, and of the organizations that relate them together.
The converse of this cornerstone or simple principle is that incivility generally arises out of unconsciousness. It will be demonstrated again and again in Parts Two and Three, where cases of incivility in family and business life are considered in depth. They are cases of unconsciously motivated organizational behavior, or people who literally did not know what they were doing. Usually incivility is uncivil because it is unintentional. We will be exploring many ramifications of the fact that consciousness is a cornerstone of civility. One is that just as individual humans vary in the degree of their consciousness, so do the organizations to which they belong. This will be a particular focus of the concluding section, where it will be observed that whole businesses may be either more or less conscious of themselves and how they are behaving. It also follows that the more unconscious organizations are, the more likely that they, like individuals, will be perpetrators of incivility, albeit on an even grander scale.
Another ramification is already obvious. Since children are born as primarily unconscious creatures, we humans are not born civil. We only become civil through development and learning. This is also true for organizations. Many factors can either retard or enhance such development and learning. The most mysterious of these factors is free will. Individually and collectively, we can choose to become more conscious and more civil, although it is seldom totally explainable why the choice is made or fails to be made. It was mentioned that the very existence of a significant observing ego implies a certain loss of spontaneity. Since the development of a transcendent ego-such as that apparently possessed by the new university president is based on the prior foundation of an observing ego, the obvious question then arises as to whether the price isn't a renunciation of spontaneity. Paradoxically, the answer is yes and no. Yes, because the fully conscious civil person is often not free to do whatever she simply feels like doing. No, because she has the flexibility to consciously decide when she can be spontaneous as opposed to when the time calls for caution. There is a small loss of freedom associated with constant self-examination and consciousness. But those who have become accustomed to it have found, on balance, that consciousness and civility make for a way of life that is profoundly liberating.
Extracted from M Scott Peck's A World Waiting to be Born.
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