Halcyon Imagines

Imagining not allowing our "projections" to hold us back...

 

...as argued in this thoughtful piece?  The idea that we are often very wrong in the assumptions we make about what other people are thinking and feeling strikes a chord. Is there a word for "false empathy" - i.e. for trying to put ourself into the other's shoes, but coming to completely wrong conclusions?  Maybe we'd benefit from "cognitive reframing".

So often we seem to impute to others far worse feelings and motives than we subsequently learn were really there, and often isn't the truth that the other person was focused on his/her own problems and, far than condemning us, was probably not thinking about us at all? Even if/when they were, what harm does it really do us? 

As the article concludes, "when we become strong enough to accept and live with any response we might get from people, our need to know how others will react to us, and our tendency to project our thoughts and feelings onto them, naturally begin fading away".

This article also makes reference to the Lost Art of Compassion, which argues that the Western practice of psychology has taught us to work with damaging emotions and patterns, but "has not offered even one clear, practical, well-researched method for people to use to develop compassion".

In contrast, through the practice and "steady cultivation of positive emotions and mental states such as affection, even-mindedness, empathy, gratitude, and especially compassion...we not only free ourselves from negative emotions, but are moved to ease the human suffering around us that is fed by such emotions".

We only have to think about compassionate people that we know or witness to sense that this is true, so at a time when it is becoming ever clearer that so much education is irrelevant or unfit for purpose, should we make space for training courses and exercises in compassion - in schools, at work and in wider society? If so, who would be best qualified to deliver such training in an integrating, secular manner - i.e. free from any particular tradition or belief system, from any of the "-isms" or categories that currently divide us?

Halcyon would like to explore this further with like-minded partners...

 

Imagining balancing self-interest and caring for others...

 

...self-interest and caring for others." If true, then:

(1) What is the approximate balance between the two today - in individuals, organisations and societies?  How much time do we really spend thinking about and then acting on other people's needs?

(2) How can we start an open and ongoing debate about what the balance should be - next year, in 2015, in 2030 etc? I f we don't do this, then how can individuals really know how to lead a "good" life, can organisations know what their wider responsibilities really are and can societies really know how to develop fair policies for all?

(3) How can we then best collaborate with one other, sharing our good practices and our ideas and reaching out for a consensus on the most effective actions, projects and policies to get us ever closer to that optimum balance between self-interest and active compassion?

What will be the best fora and media for involving as many people as possible in both the debate and the sharing?

Halcyon intends to play a key role in starting to answer such questions.

Our aim? Introducing ideas that have never met...

From today, our Halcyon Days blog will also include posts of some the thousands of comments and quotes by others that have made us feel and have made us think. 

Many of these quotes are already available on the community pages at Halcyon Future, but we will now also start to share these quotes here in order to encourage others to reflect upon and make use of the ideas - and in many cases, the timeless and profound wisdom - contained within them. 

For now, we will deliberately not comment directly on most of the quotes that we post because, although they stir much in us, we would like to leave it you to interact with the quotes in your own way. We will therefore simply tag the quotes under the same categories that we use for all other entries here, and on both Halcyon Future and Halcyon News (where we share exciting responses to the world's problems). 

You can therefore now easily find news, quotes, blog entries for all of Halcyon's communities under common categories, and we will soon add audio, video, conversations and related content from all over the social web. 

However, we also believe that most value will come not from leaving ideas within their categories - on the contrary, we believe that such silo thinking actually compounds many of the world's problems - but rather, like a chemist or perhaps an alchemist, from introducing to one another ideas that have never met. 

For example, how well can acceptance co-exist with activism, complexity with simplicity, or consumption with sustainability?  Only one way to find out: let's get them together and watch the novelty emerge...

Funny but scarily prescient...

...account of what seems to now be happening in the financial markets.