Living in Paradox: Matchmaker Heaven

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be;

When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.

(Tao of Leadership, The Paradox of Letting Go, ch. 22)

All behaviour consists of opposites or polarities. If I do anything more and more, over and over, its polarity will appear.

(Tao of Leadership, Polarities, ch. 2)

I'm not sure whether Barnaby Tucker might be a closet Taoist. What I'm reasonably certain is that both Dolly Levi and Malachi Stack are. I accompanied a generous (more on why this is relevant in a moment) friend to a performance of Thornton Wilder's Matchmaker this weekend and met all of the above characters -- granted not, as they say, 'up close and personal'; but close enough to have some of their folksy wisdom and life perspectives penetrate.  

Among a number of themes Wilder explores in this entertaining (if somewhat OTT) production is that of the costs associated with living at the polarities of our experience; holding that an extreme of anything (money, caution, propriety), as another friend and author of the two quotes at the top of this piece would say, is not a very satisfying or sustainable posture. Barnaby first. This hugely naive, scared rabbit of a young man, is charged with the responsibility (by Dolly, the matchmaker) of providing the audience a summary of the 'importance of the play'. Having been compelled by his co-worker to venture to New York (from rural Yonkers) for the day in search of 'an adventure', Barnaby certainly gets his money's worth. The wisdom he gleaned -- and what he wishes for all of us -- is 'just the right amount of adventure, not too much, but, then again, not too little'.  A lovely restatement of living in balance, the mindfulness equivalent of equanimity.  That is to say that calm, composed place we are encouraged to cultivate each time we sit, the middle ground between attachment and avoidance, a composed observer rather than the reactive participant.  For Barnaby, pudding is great -- just don't eat too much (you have to see the play to get this one).

And then there's Malachi, brilliantly presented by Geraint Wyn Davies. Malachi spends the early part of the production firmly establishing his slick credentials -- not the right fox to be left in charge of the hen house. As the play builds to its denouement, our garrulous con man finds a dollar-stuffed wallet and -- steps out of character (or so we think) for a little tete a tete with the audience. 'I suppose you thought I'd just keep this'. He goes on to explain that this is not in keeping with his 'value system' (an apparent oxymoron if ever there was one). His 'logic': that to cultivate multiple vices -- and equally no vices -- is a recipe for disaster. His advice, predicated on his own rocky road of experience, is to indulge one at a time, lest eschewing all would make one a tightly constrained, about to explode vessel of self-denial; while throwing oneself indiscriminately into self-indulgence will almost certainly come to a bad end. Already a committed drunkard, he therefore cannot be a thief at the same time. And he gives the wallet to the man he suspects has dropped it. Another lovely statement of 'moderation in all things'.

And finally, Dolly. Again, not just what she seems on first blush. Professing to be the 'selfless matchmaker', she clearly has designs on the wealthy (and decidedly unhappy) antagonist of the piece (Horace), alternately whetting his appetite for the next candidate and salving his disillusionments with the next in line -- all leading relentlessly to her own doorstep. And this is where Dolly's Taoist leanings begin to shine through. She harbours a philosophy of money that it is only of value when 'it's spent' -- keeping the system well-oiled and mobile -- rather than being an end in itself (as is typified by Horace's miserly style).  At core, she personifies our first quote: letting go of . . . enables the attainment of. In this production, loosening one's grip on one's 'wallet' allows one's heart-desires to thrive. Simple and oft-stated but. . . Dolly, the paradox.

Excepting Dolly herself, each character occupies a polarity, is largely unhappy, unfulfilled, and resigned. Dolly's 'matchmaking' is less of the external relationship kind and much more of putting each of these individuals in touch with their 'other side': Horace with his generous, loving aspect, Barnaby and Cornelius with their adventurous sides, Ermengarde with her emotionally risky face. Living in balance, in equanimity -- fully aware.

Seeing the Forest and the Trees

A mule and a camel were put in the same stall. The mule began, "Why do I come stumbling down the mountain frightened, with my pack saddle crooked, and the driver beating me, while you glide over the same grade in pure felicity? Have you been given a special dispensation? Why don't you ever fall on your face like me?" The camel: "Every smooth descent is a gift. But also there are differences between us. Unlike yours, my head stays high, so that from the top and all the way down, I see the foot of the mountain and every hollow and rise, fold on fold. A true human being does this in life. Your animal eyes see only the next step, what is directly in front of you."

(Rumi, Book IV, IX; translation by Coleman Barks)

Having just spent a truly nerve-wracking, wrist-whacking, bone-rattling five minutes descending a 20% grade on gravel on a bicycle better designed for flying down twisting, paved roads, I just had to ask my companion's secret for his having taken half the time with twice the enjoyment accomplishing the same descent.  "Freedom". Hmm, that was helpful! So I posed the same question to our third friend: "Trust". This was not getting any better.

Begging a few more details, one took mercy on me and elaborated. 'You pick a line and let the bicycle carry you down. You're fighting every inch of the way, riding the brakes, and missing the flow.' To be sure, both of my friends are avid mountain bikers, downhill heli-skiers, and, if their pocketbooks would support their fantasies, formula-1, race car enthusiasts -- all sports where speed, split-second decision making, balance, and probably a hundred other variables mean the difference between an exhilarating rush and a rock, tree, or wall. Nevertheless, the comment resonated --  and I was reminded of Rumi's story.

It seems to be very difficult indeed to 'raise one's head' and see the larger picture. Back on Italian gravel, I was intently focused on the foot or so in front of my wheel (certainly not the 'foot' of the mountain!). Watchful for the next loose stone or eroded rut that might send me 'endo' as the parlance goes (polite biker talk for 'ass over tea kettle'), tight, anxious, and decidedly resentful of having to endure this stretch of road. Relentlessly checking my cyclometer to see just how much longer it would last -- not a recipe for enjoying some of the most beautiful, idyllic, and arguably bicycle-friendly (for all but those damned gravel roads!) landscape through which I'd ever cycled.

As coincidence would have it, this weekend my wife and I were discussing a book she's currently reading, Harvard academic Clayton Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life?  In it he explores very similar ground: principally how to stay open to 'the forest' (in essence, seeing the whole way down the mountain) while remaining cognizant of 'the trees' (the next rock in front of the wheel). A particularly relevant section examines the differences between deliberate and emergent strategies in decision-making. The former refers to 'the plan' we all typically bring to a situation -- from structuring our day to deciding on a career path. The latter to the serendipitous, accidental, unintended twists and turns that we might take on that path that really serve to determine a life direction.

For example, I'd accepted a one-year position with our local school board in 1974, fresh out of grad school and grateful for anything smelling like a job. The intention ('the plan') was to make a few bucks while I finished my doctoral research. In that year, I met Nancy Wilson, a psychologist who happened to be setting up a new department at Stratford's hospital and happened to be giving a 'lunch and learn' presentation at the board office. We chatted briefly; she offered me an interview and 38 years later I'm still in town. No doctorate -- but contentedly ensconced in a city many people retire to reside in!  The emergent strategy, the 'unintended path', had it been disdained or interpreted as a 'departure' or interruption, would have likely been ignored at my peril (perhaps).

What Christensen describes is a stepping back from the compelling, consuming immediacy of a situation -- to become more the 'observer', open to possibility; and less the overly vigilant 'participant', caught up in the control of and reaction to those irritating, distracting departures from our 'deliberate direction' -- the one we've carefully chosen versus explored or allowed. Rather like John Lennon's famous line about life -- that thing that happens, often just 'out of sight' (awareness), ignored, unappreciated, while we're doing other things.

I was struck by the overlap in this approach with mindfulness practice. When we meditate, the extent to which we become absorbed, caught up, attached to the thought, the emotion, the feeling (the 'rocks' if you will), the less available we are to the 'flow', as my friend called it -- less conscious of 'what is' and more concerned about 'what isn't'. We become constricted, agitated, resentful, preoccupied with how far we've 'departed' from the prescribed (desired or deliberate) path; less attentive to the actual. Our choice I suppose. Are we camels or mules? Do we 'glide down with felicity', heads high, seeing the grand display, the 'line' through our lives that's always been there -- but perhaps went unnoticed? Or do we stubbornly ignore the implicit 'rhythm', intent on 'getting back on track' -- even when that track is full of wheel-grabbing rocks?

NOTE (to self): Start mountain biking.

NOTE 2 (to self): Take (or, at least take note of) the road less-travelled

Karma at the OK Corral

In the few days' run-up to his visit to Canada this time round, HRH Prince Charles published a letter in this week's Globe entitled: Service to Others Builds Strong Communities. He defines service variously as 'thinking about how we can use our own positions to help others'; and later underscores that 'the most effective way to foster cohesion (amongst ourselves) is to build partnerships (generating) community capital -- that invisible but vital element that holds communities together'.

Somewhat ironically, and standing in marked contrast to HRH's lauding of 'best practices', modeling of community cooperation and sharing of 'good ideas' as the basic tool set for overcoming skepticism and deadlocked standoffs, is a saga unfolding in our own newspaper: the 'dirty little story' of the Haig St. joust. For those of you that may have missed it, dueling dentists lined up at 40 (or so) paces distance, armed not with picks and drills but with backhoe and entitlement, letting fly in the local press. At stake evidently is the right to 'farm' on Stratford's waterfront row and, equally, the opposition to same cloaked in issues of child and public safety, trespass, noise-law violation, and all around dare met with double-dog-dare retort. My, my, my . . . what a mess (to borrow from a Tommy Lee Jones' favourite line). 

Begged is the question: where did the violation and/or thwarting of the respective rights of each stop and the need to oppose, challenge, and dominate begin? With no intimate knowledge of either individual (or their entourage), I turned to first hand quotes of slashed tires, roofing nails (that ne'er saw shingle), and toxic cocktails in fuel tanks on one hand; and property infringement and denial of access on the other for some sense of history backgrounding this OK Corral tableau. And came away with a feeling that perhaps the current shootout had deeper roots; and that a pile of sand may just have been the straw that broke it (to allow some mixed imagery). Indeed it seemed that opposition to vs. cooperation with and accommodation of were more central issues with some longstanding precedent lurking in the shadows (of late night high jinx).

Be that as it may, and as this is purportedly a blog on mindfulness practices, I cast about for some alternate ways of proceeding -- not all that different from HRH's sentiments; and came upon this lovely little quote in Lama Surya Das' Awakening the Buddha Within. 'Karma means that you don't get away with anything; we all reap exactly what we sow. . . (T)he word actually translates as action and reaction; there are no accidents (like nails or slashed tires). In very simple terms, the Buddhist Law of Dependent Origination means that every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause' (p 109).

In a very similar vein, Bhante Gunaratana, as part of his commentary on Lovingkindness meditation, describes this process as an 'antidote' to two principle distractions to effective practice: greed and hatred (aka, attachment and avoidance; grasping and rejecting). He is quoted as: 'if you sit down to meditate while in the grip of some strong obsessive attachment (my right to 'farm') or if you are in a black fury over some recent insult (tractor tire evidence on my property), mindfulness will have a very rough time' (p. 90; Mindfulness in Plain English).

I found myself pondering the future of our little community and the choices with which we are frequently presented -- when, as a friend used to query, what does one do when Captain Karma comes a callin'?  Well I suppose we could strap on the leather one more time, wait for high noon, and stride out into the street; bent on righting the wrong of some presumed insult. Or perhaps we could, in the spirit of HRH, model behaviours spawned in cooperation and service to others, compassion, forgiveness.

For me, the abiding image of this whole affair -- and quite possibly the only redemptive element therein -- was that of an eight-year old child, broom in hand, sweeping up the remnants of 'the dirty little pile on Haig'. Helping daddy -- perhaps; or just finding the middle ground and doing her small bit to heal the rift that older (and presumably wiser??) players had insisted on widening.

Congruence: Fitting with Yourself

To thine own self be true.

While Polonius is not perhaps the most stellar of role models, his advice to his son has some resonant value in this piece -- despite both father and son ending up a little worse for wear at Hamlet's hand. I suppose my interest in 'being true' (not to be confused with 'telling the truth') surfaced for me in a definitive way in early grad school. I'd been approached by my supervisor to examine some possible reasons for a disproportionately high attrition or drop-out rate amongst first year engineering students -- when compared with their parallel numbers in other faculties. Once the more obvious factors were accounted for and statistically removed (differential difficulty of the course material, academic ability of applicants, too much beer and partying, etc.), I was left with an interesting variable: congruence. 

Back in the bad old days, when math made sense (for me, in mid-high school), I had the, at the time, questionable good fortune of studying plane geometry. Of all those propositions and corollaries, the proof that stuck was one dealing with 'congruent triangles'.  And so my fascination with how two things -- be they geometric shapes, statistical distributions, or people and their chosen paths -- show compatibility one with the other began to emerge.

For our less than fortunate engineering ingenues, I speculated that the expectation a particular student brought with him or her into first year might have some bearing on the measure of success they experienced in the early going of the program. Specifically, I'd identified two very different views (well three, if you include the opportunity to party hardy!) of engineering as a discipline: one being that of the hard core scientist (lots of chemistry and physics!) and a second, that of a glorified auto mechanic or draftsman, closer perhaps to a designer. It seemed that those newbies with the former orientation tended to do better than the latter group -- quite possibly because they were greeted with course work that was more consistent with, more congruent with their preparation and expectations coming in. The latter group tended to be left with a 'that's not what I thought I'd be getting into' kind of disillusionment; with an attendant measure of increased dissatisfaction (which I also measured as a part of the study) and decreased interest and motivation in applying selves to the material. The 'blind-sided' crew didn't necessarily fail -- but they were more open to the idea of shifting to other areas of study -- and out of engineering.

The material I'd considered in an earlier blog around solitude in general and the introversion - extroversion dimension in particular finds its way into the congruence issue as well. When we identify ourselves as living in a particular way (alone rather than in partnership) or experience our measure of social comfort and mode interaction as 'less valued' (shy or introverted versus ebullient and outgoing), a tendency can be to become disenchanted with, even critical of that way of living or that style of connecting -- and 'buck the system'. In short, entering some form of denial around 'what is' and investing large amounts of energy into being something or somebody we're not. I don't suppose there is a 'law of congruence' in the sense of a 'law of gravity' or other universal, physical truths. But if there were, it might read something like Polonius' words to Laertes. First figure out who and what you are -- no mean task in itself. Secondly, cultivate an attitude of compassion and acceptance of that identity. And thirdly, identify those places where you best fit -- that lovely and elegant sense of congruence between self and environment; self and choices.

Having spent a good many years assisting people with 'job 1' -- bless all those wonderful personality tests and typologies -- I've come to realize that that might just be the easy part. Job 2, as it were, is the real challenge. Helping people with self-acceptance, particularly when the 'news' is not what they, a parent, or a partner, might want it to be, can be an unpopular task. The obsession is much more directed at change, re-invention -- not that these are undesirable ends in the right spot -- but always accompanied by a measure of denial of an existing (and just maybe, immutable) 'truth'.

My oft-referenced mentor spent a great deal of his professional life facilitating the search for congruence. In his language, helping individuals identify when they were on 'their path' -- and equally, when not. And eschewing the negative emotion attaching to, once again, discovering that 'I'm not where I want to be -- but I am where I am'.

A mindfulness practice provides a number of invaluable tools in this endeavour: awareness, acceptance, compassion.

Solitude

The caption reads: "And then it hit me: I'm salivating to a damned bell!" A victim of his own reflexes: the cage door rattles and, before he knows it, he's drooling. For those of us a little less than familiar with the Pavlovian 'conditioned response', it's one of the most basic forms of 'learned behaviour'; and generally, as our wee, four-legged friend points out, one that occurs at a barely conscious level -- in gear before we're even fully aware of it.

It occurred to me that our response to solitude, the prospects of time 'in isolation', alone with oneself shares some of these reactive, 'automatic' features. Or perhaps more properly and completely, the ends to which we will go to avoid this state of contemplative silence and seclusion . I happened upon a heartfelt 'confession' in the form of a letter to the Globe's editorial page this weekend from a university professor who is a self-admitted email addict. Finding himself unable to resist the 'bell' (as our puppy would have it), indicating 'new mail' on any of the various devices by which he (supposedly) connects with the outside world, he engaged a self-imposed attempt at email withdrawal -- cold turkey. And only with very modest success. He gives account of 'needing a fix' a dozen times per hour and 'feeling the rush' of a new message, compulsively replying on the spot -- lest the sender become discouraged and fail to send more messages.

Very similar was my own experience of sitting with a client this past week, only to have his mobile chime signifying 'new text'. Watching him search frantically for the device, I'd assumed (silly me) it would be to turn it off before the sender 're-sent' (of maybe that should be resent). Wrong. The search was to read this hot epistle before it's content cooled. 'What's up? Busy?' Disbelief deepened as my client proceeded to reply: 'Nope. What's up with you?' -- then without a hint of self-consciousness (let alone, apology), folded the phone and pocketed it. Only to have the same ritual repeated another four times. That this man should have had such a strong, near-terrified response to being signed off work a few days earlier by physician ('What will I do by myself??'), should then have come as no surprise to me. Solitude and the opportunity to recover from a plethora of issues facing him finished very distant seconds to the prospects of being 'cut off' from his social network. What's so terrifying?

The New Yorker's book review this week of Eric Klinenberg's Going Solo: the Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, points up that not everyone is quite so untracked by solitude. A state that has historically been vilified, viewed as alternately as pathetic, suspect, and desperate, to be pitied, pathologized, and frankly avoided like the plague until the past twenty years, has finally begun to be valued as a conscious and intentional choice -- rather than a default state to be tolerated only when all 'social' options have been exhausted. The reviewer is quoted: "far from being a mark of social abandonment, the solo life tends to be a path for moving ahead, for taking control of one's circumstances. . . providing 'restorative solitude', exactly what we need to re-connect."

I continue to be reminded of a research project conducted at my alma mater, many decades ago, which examined differences in nursery school children and their social choices: those that readily and easily engaged in shared play with their peers and the 'isolates' that opted to play alone or in parallel play. An underlying presumption, at the time, was that the former group was somehow healthy and adjusted; the latter displaying some form of aberrant choice, perhaps inhibited by shyness or worse, and in need of corrective therapy. I wonder if our compulsive prof, client, and Pavlovian pooch would feel quite so certain of this hypothesis' correctness.

And finally, my wife and I were discussing a book she's been devouring this past week -- and one more bit of evidence that the constant connectedness of the 'global village' is not the only way to go: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Susan Cain). She, my wife as well as Ms. Cain, is a self-admitted introvert. She maintains it's some of the glue that keeps our relationship right on track: the less she talks, the more room for me! The telling revelation was her comment that she sees me (and I think quite accurately) as a 'pseudo-extravert'. Namely, someone who has crafted the social facade (often read as being extroverted) of easy social engagement, readiness to enlist the nearest lamppost in conversation; but who is perhaps more contented in solitary activities. She cites as evidence my aversion to 'joining', my abject terror at attending dances (and 'letting go'), my habit of 'dipping into' chats preferably with strangers -- but always with a quick exit route in sight, and finally, the valuing of solitary cycling, running, photographing. . . and meditating.

Our mindfulness practices are custom made to explore our comfort with solitude -- even when participating in a group. Our comfort with our 'aloneness' equips us so much more fully to engage our community. It frees us from our phobic aversions to finding ourselves alone with ourselves. And it just maybe allows us to 'unplug' from the abundance of often meaningless exchanges that intrude upon our 'real lives' -- driven by the fear of no more emails. So what's up? Ya busy?

*Cartoon, New Yorker, April 16, 2012

Look, Listen. . . and Learn

Four quotes: from a pedantic, 2000-year old zealot, a Minnesota poet, a French resistance fighter, blinded at age 8, and a teacher-composer.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
(1st Corinthians, 13).

I notice a caterpillar crawling over my sheet of ten-cent stamps. The head is black as a Chinese box. Nine soft accordions follow it around. . .skinny brushes used to clean pop bottles rise up from its shoulders. The caterpillar advances around and around the edge, and I see feet: three pairs under the head, four spongelike pairs under the middle body, and two final pairs at the tip, pink as a puppy's hind legs.
(Creatures glanced at briefly, from Robert Bly's What Have I Ever Lost By Dying)

Because of my blindness I had developed a new faculty. Strictly speaking, all men have it -- but almost all forget to use it. The faculty is attention. In order to live without eyes, it is necessary to be very attentive, to remain hour after hour in a state of wakefulness, or receptiveness, and activity. Indeed attention is not simply a virtue of intelligence or the result of education. It is a state of being. In its truest sense, it is the listening post of the universe.
(From Jacques Lusseyran's And There Was Light)

Listening is receptive. You allow something outside your body to come inside, into the deep brain. . .to be open and impressionable, to hear everything. . .the eyes are hungry. They eat brain energy. When you close your eyes, your brain opens to your ears; sound rushes in. Open your eyes and now the brain is crowded [again], and the bright screen of sound grows dim.
(From The Listening Book, W. A. Mathieu)

As we grow older and (ostensibly) more mature, conventional wisdom has it that we become 'more worldly', less naive. While this is most likely true in that we might grow more cynical or jaded, more tainted by the 'treasures' the world has to offer -- I would maintain that we may actually become less of the world. As Paul's letter to the Corinthians suggests, it is the child who engages the world fully and directly; the adult who, by stages, has his sight 'dimmed' -- has his experience of the world increasingly filtered by his own 'lens', becomes narrowed, selective, and capable only of seeing 'through a glass darkly'. We tend to withdraw into ourselves, increasingly 'derivative' and more out of touch with the full sensory experience of our surround.

Lusseyran, our French freedom fighter, makes a similar point. In his case, deprived of sight from middle childhood by a school-ground accident, his description of the figural importance of attention and what he characterizes as 'wakefulness' echoes, both in language and sentiment, the very teachings of mindfulness practice. Specifically, we all have the potential, the capability to 'pay attention' -- we simply fail to cultivate this faculty unless compelled by circumstance to do so. In his generous comment -- we 'forget' to attend. His vigilance, 'hour after hour', not only allowed him to survive, but to thrive; not only to hone his other senses, but to alter the way he experienced the world -- to change his 'state of being'.

Mathieu too, makes a compelling case against the exclusivity of vision as a preferred sense of awareness. He may be a bit too hard on the eyes, attributing to them an almost bullying sensibility, as they flood our brain with 'easy stimuli', quickly overpowering the ear and, in the process depriving us of the rich and nuanced subtlety available through our hearing the world. Frequently we choose to meditate with our eyes closed -- evidently, if Mathieu has his way, for good reason.

The words of our mid-western poet restore some legitimacy to our sight as a vehicle for sensory presence and immediate awareness. Bly's slim volume is at once a lament of that same 'sensory withdrawal' (alluded to in Paul's letter) and a celebration of the result when we resist the desire to 'pull each sturgeon and hollow tree' into ourselves. He makes a strong case for what happens when the writer is able to see an object or a creature -- without laying claim to it; without, in his beautiful prose, 'immersing it like a negative in one's [own] development tank of disappointment and desire'.

In a few weeks, our intrepid little group of meditators will once again 'make room' for the immediate experience of sensation, emotion, and thought -- in a silent space. A suggested preparation for this -- or indeed for mindfulness practice in general -- might be to cultivate what Lusseyran refers to as a more constant state of awareness and receptivity. In mindfulness terms, this translates into perhaps slowing oneself down, reminding oneself to return to the present moment -- when we notice that we're digging into a past experience and becoming stuck; or 'reliving' emotions with perhaps attendant anger or anxiety; or anticipating a moment before it's arrived.

For the 'listening' version of this blog click: http://db.tt/FqUPFo02

Altruism: The Right Action Choice

My old friend and teacher, John Heider, was a card-carrying member and proponent of the Human Potential Movement. Growing out of the seminal works of such psychological theorists as Fritz Perls, one of the cornerstones of HP is the taking of personal responsibility for one's actions. Put simplistically: 'you make your choices . . . and you take responsibility'. The consequences -- good, bad, or otherwise -- are yours. But what drives us to make responsible choices? Do we all have the same 'moral (or human) potential'? Are there (genetically) good folk . . . and bad?

I have long been fascinated by psychopathy. Defining this disorder as 'a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of the rights of others. . . [characterized by] the lack of empathy or remorse, false emotions, selfishness, and deception' (online definition), it paints a lovely picture of depravity and moral bankruptcy. There is little question that such individuals exist -- and that many of them are in jail (or perhaps ought to be). The issue of whether this is the appropriate placement, however, has been debated a little more heatedly in recent times. The work of Bob Hare (the psychologist most often associated with advances in this area of study and identification), as well as advances in neuroscience and brain scanning, has determined that psychopaths are, in fact, as much born as made. That their brains work a little differently from those organs that the rest of us rely upon to direct our day . . . and our choices. (And God did not create all Amygdalas equal.) And so the question of whether it's fair to incarcerate someone who evidently has no choice but to behave in the way he (mostly males . . . sorry guys!) does, has begun to surface a little more often.

The above quandary, in part, is predicated of course on the larger question of free will versus determinism. If there's no choice, if our behavioural patterns are cast in genetic stone, then how can we put someone away for merely following his cerebral, pre-wired inclinations? Equally, we find ourselves more or less at the other pole from my mentor John's teachings -- I make my choices . . . but I don't have to take responsibility, because it's not my fault! I'm just the Adult Child of a (fill in the blank).

Fortunately for all you devoted followers of this weekly ramble, I'm able to direct you to some definitive answers on this ages old philosophical question. This weekend's Globe contains a review of an interesting (scientific) treatise (Who's In Charge? by Michael Gazzaniga) which, rather than trying to resolve the free choice / determinism debate, reframes the issue: what are the consequences of failing to make folk responsible for their choices? To quote: 'in the absence of punishment, cooperation [in society] cannot sustain itself. In the presence of free-riders, cooperation collapses. (Defining 'free riders' as those who cheat, lie, steal, kill, etc. for their own benefit, thereby taking advantage of everyone else's cooperation, without paying the price of cooperating themselves -- sound familiar?) And so it becomes an issue not of choice or no choice; but one of providing a little firm guidance to that subset of society that, for quite accepted reasons, is a bit responsibility-challenged!

A second piece that I ran across that speaks to the same question appeared in this week's New Yorker. Jonah Lehrer looks at the evolutionary origins and support for altruism -- historically considered, even by Darwin himself, as a flaw in his theory of natural selection. If we define this 'highest of human ideals' as one's readiness to sacrifice self for another, for a greater cultural good, how could individuals with 'large helpings of selflessness' continue to survive? Throwing oneself in front of the bus to save the little old lady crossing the street is not likely to extend one's lineage -- and so another altruist buys it, progeny-less. Lehrer's article, in considering the scientific evidence for altruism across species (i.e., not just in us great apes), manages to reconcile this apparent paradox. It seems that acting in ways that will benefit the greater good of the colony (at least amongst leaf-cutter ants!), is just as selfishly driven as opportunistically swiping the pie cooling on the window sill when aunt Milly isn't looking. The group survives, I survive; the colony dies, I die (if we can anthropomorphize Mr. Ant and his pals for the moment.) To return briefly to Mr. Gazzaniga, 'punishment by incapacitation [plunkin' the buggers in the slammer - ed. note] resulted in temperaments being selected [out] for that which makes us more cooperative'. . . and responsible.

Within the realm of mindfulness practice, Right Action, the fourth step of the Eight-fold Path in Buddhist tradition, informs us at these critical choice points. Sylvia Boorstein is quoted on the topic in the following:

"Codes of ethics are most often associated with prohibitions: Don't do this; don't do that. . . all the don'ts elaborate on the awareness that if we are not alert (or in jail -- ed note), our naturally arising impulses of greed and anger might lead us to do something exploitative or abusive. The fundamental rule is: 'Don't cause pain'. Right Action use[s] the terms 'moral shame' or 'moral dread' [conveying] the sense of awesome responsibility they are meant to convey. . .that every single act we do has the potential of causing pain, and every single thing we do has consequences that echo beyond what we imagine. It means we should act carefully. Everything matters".

And so allowing that 'we don't have a choice' . . . maybe we do. To cultivate a fully present awareness of the responsibility that attaches to 'every breath you take'.

Audio Version: Click here http://db.tt/aTdxEJoT