This Week:

Quotes of the Week

Fundraiser for Sara Olson

The Five Elements of Awareness

Greetings,

My intention this week was to use a recent story in the newspaper to illustrate the nature and usefulness of “radical thinking.” But I realized that there was a theoretical basis that probably should be explored to make the illustration more meaningful. That’s where this week’s article “The Five Elements of Awareness” comes from.

Some might find the example I use to illustrate the use of the Five Elements a bit personal, but it has been such a big part of my life that it was bound to come out somehow. I figured I might as well make use of the experience. By using a real-life example of some importance, my intent is to illustrate that I really use this process, and that it really works for me. Maybe it will be useful to some of you.

To all you letter-writers: I will be canoeing the Pine River in northern Minnesota for a few days, so don’t worry if I don’t get back to you right away. See you in July!

Nygaard

"Quotes" of the Week:

Two “Quotes of the Week” again this week. Who knows why? On the other hand, I don’t have a Website of the Week. Go figure.

“Quote” #1:

"It's not good enough to just interpret the world. You have to find a way to change it."

- Manning Marable, quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education of May 19, 2000

“Quote” #2:

“When the stock market rises for reasons not related to more rapid overall growth [in the nation’s economy] it implies a redistribution of wealth, not a net gain to society.”

- Dean Baker, Economic Reporting Review June 19, 2000

Fundraiser for Sara Olson

I don’t usually use Nygaard Notes to promote fundraisers, but this one is special. From 2:30 to 5:30 on Sunday afternoon, July 9th, there will be a special benefit concert for the Sara Olson Defense Fund Committee. Co-sponsored by the Committee and the Women’s Prison Book Project, the concert is being held to raise money for the legal defense of Sara Jane Olson.

Sara is the St. Paul woman who was arrested last year on 1975 charges of attempting to bomb a police car in California while she - then known as Kathleen Soliah - was associated with the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). I’m guessing that many readers have sort of let the Sara Olson case slip off of your radar, if you thought about it much to begin with. That’s why I am encouraging you to attend this benefit.

The case against Sara has been allowed to expand to the point where she is being charged with everything the SLA ever did, which was a lot, by use of the charge of “conspiracy.” Charges of conspiracy are difficult and expensive to defend oneself against, and are beyond the means of all but the super-rich. While Sara has gone on to marry a doctor and has had a relatively comfortable life in the years since her SLA days, she is far from super-rich. That’s one reason why I encourage you to attend the benefit concert, to help raise funds for the defense, whose goal is partly to assure a fair trial for this woman.

The other reason to go is to associate with and listen to some of the people involved in Sara’s defense. As I said in Nygaard Notes #38, July 16, 1999: “The police are big on symbols, and Sara has become one. The DA’s office would love to have a conviction in this case. As with all high-profile cases, and especially political ones, the desire for a conviction overrides any concern for justice. What they want is to convict the symbol that is known as Kathleen Soliah. What the defense fund wants is to assure a fair trial for the human being known as Sara Jane Olson.” Many of the people involved with the defense of Sara Olson understand well the complex politics of dissent and repression. It would be good for more people to hear what they have to say, and the defense of Sara opens a window to allow this to happen. I encourage you to take advantage of it, and support the effort to have a fair trial in the process.

To get a better sense of what this trial is about (and to get a great lesson in history and politics) go visit the website of the Sara Olson Defense Fund at http://www.saraolsondefense.com/main.html. Especially check out the speeches by Ellison, Erlinder, Rachleff, and Dohrn. The benefit concert on July 9th is being called a “Warehouse/Internet Concert,” since it will be broadcast live over the Internet.

The actual event will be held at 501 1st Ave NE in Minneapolis, with advance tickets going for $10, $15 at the door. Bring a book for The Women’s Prison Book Project: paperbacks only, please, and dictionaries are especially needed.

For more information, tickets, etc, visit the Committee’s website or call: (612) 822-1637. For more information on the Book Project, call (612)837-1762 or email wpbp@gurlmail.com.

The Five Elements of Awareness

I believe that there are basically five elements of human awareness, and in order to solve a problem, or come to some peace with a difficult situation, we need to be as conscious as possible of each element. We can think of them in any order, but I personally find it useful to think of the five elements in this order: Wants, Sensing, Thinking, Emotions, and Action. I will explain each of them and then give a simple example to illustrate how this process can work in real life.

I put Wants first because they are pre-existing, meaning that we all have them, regardless of the cards that fate may deal us. By “Wants” I mean what you desire from life. When you are about to blow out your birthday candles and make a wish, if you get really cosmic, you come up with some of your basic Wants. (I wish we had Universal Health Care, for example.) Understanding our Wants is maybe the best way to understand our values. Look at it this way: If you use your one wish to wish for world peace, you probably have different values than if you use it to wish for a new Mercedes.

The importance that I place upon values should be clear from the way I’ve been going on about them lately (for examples, see Nygaard Notes #65 (“Morals, Ethics, Values, and Thinking”) or the current issue of the Twin Cities’ biweekly Siren (“Social Security: Principles and Values”).

When you encounter a problem, a useful first step is to check out what you are Sensing. That is, what you take in through your senses, which is what you actually see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. It’s also useful to check whether there are relevant things that you have failed to sense.

After you have double-checked the exact nature of what your senses are taking in, the next step is to interpret it, which is a function of Thinking. You may see something, and realize that there are several ways to interpret it. For example, when you hear a government official state the reason for enforcing an embargo against Iraq, you may conclude that they are attempting to enlighten the public or that they are attempting to deceive the public. What you actually hear does not change, but what you think about it is up to you.

Depending on how you interpret what you have sensed, you will have some Emotional response to it. This Emotional response will be related to your values, which are in turn related to your Wants. If you are not clear on your values or Wants, or you are not able to be honest with yourself about them, this may lead you to be unaware of your true Emotional response, or possibly to deny or minimize it.

Depending on all of the above aspects of your awareness, you will then take some Action. It’s important to remember that whatever Action is taken would be different if any part of your awareness were different. If you were to Sense something differently, then your Thinking about it would be different, your Emotional response would be different, and your Actions would naturally reflect those differences. Of course, if you started out the process with different Wants, you would pay attention to a whole different set of stimuli to begin with. It all fits together.

A Real-Life Example

I’ll use a current example of my own life to illustrate how this process can be used to solve, or come to some peace with, a problem. I have a sister who is a drug addict and alcoholic, and is suffering greatly because of it. Let me talk a little bit about how I have used these steps to work on this problem.

1. Wants. What I want is for my sister to achieve some peace with herself, and to have some happiness in her remaining years. I also want for myself to have easier and happier feelings about her, and to stop worrying so much.
2. Sensing. I have observed that she has gone through treatment and several aftercare programs. And I have seen her each time relapse into chemical use after participating, and each time she has reported to me her great remorse and pain.
3. Thinking. What do I think about this? This is not simple. One of the difficult things about this situation is that nobody really understands the root cause of addiction. This means that I have to fall back on a certain set of beliefs about addiction that I’ve developed over the years, through much experience and study. The first thing I think is that she is trying as hard as she can, and I believe that she is remorseful and in great physical, emotional, psychic, and spiritual pain. I also think that she will likely repeat her cycle of treatment and relapse in the absence of significant outside support. I think that I can best support her by being honest and expressing my love for her, and also by allowing her to learn for herself the consequences of her continued chemical use. I know that she may never fully understand what I am doing. And, finally, I know that addiction kills many people who are trying just as hard as my sister.
4. Emotions. I’m sad, hopeful, and angry. Sad that my sister is in such pain, hopeful that she can get the support she needs to find some peace, and angry that addiction continues to cause such great pain to me and my loved ones.
5. Action. Since I am hopeful, I will continue to struggle to do all I can to help my sister. Since I am angry at the addiction, and not at my sister, I will direct my attacks at the appropriate object. And I will use my sadness to motivate me to continue to fight, as I always do, for increased options for treatment and rehabilitation for drug addicts and alcoholics.

As you can imagine, even this small example from my own life is quite complex (and I am only telling a tiny part of the story!)

Empathy and Social Change

With sufficient empathy and concern for social change, anyone should be able to use the Five Elements of Awareness to engage with the larger world on whatever terms work for them. Political, creative, spiritual, social, or whatever; you can use it whenever you want, to the extent that you want. If you do use this process, it’s important to understand that all five parts work together and that each one is essential to the process. For example, if I am denying a strong emotional response, I am likely to “project” that response onto something outside of myself, which will cloud my ability to accurately sense the reality. Or, if I am not clear on my Wants, it will be difficult to judge the value of my (or anybody’s) proposed solution to a situation. If I do not do my best to see “the whole picture,” I may have an emotional response to something that is only partly real, or not real at all. More examples are easily imagined.

The Five Elements of Awareness can be used as a handy checklist when solving problems, which is, to me, what “radical thinking” is all about. The more fully you can become conscious of all five elements of your awareness, the closer you will get to seeing the “root,” or fundamental nature, of the challenge before you. And this will make you much more likely to be capable of coming to a satisfactory resolution. I’ll talk more about this, in the political sense, next week.

If I had more space I would talk this week about how our increasingly technocratic society routinely neglects certain aspects of awareness and how this helps to explain why all of our technical fixes can only have a limited effect, or effects that are actually negative. We’ll get to that in a future issue of Nygaard Notes.