Last updated 6-10-08.

The response of our government to the tragedy of 9-11-01 has brought to the forefront different types of responses by world leaders.

The first type of response is one by decisive responders who act quickly and face increased probabilities of making mistakes, choosing poor strategies, not having adequately prepared strategies, resources, and so on. The actions of President Bush and his team of advisors exemplified such a response after Saddam Hussein was captured. The Iraqis started to oppose the occupation and rebelled against the occupiers for a number of reasons. Bush's advisors all seemed to be dominated by the decisive responder type of personality. Their motivations seem to have been fear of losing access to oil and the promise of gain from assuring such access. They wished to steer Iraq toward democracy, but seemed to lack a broad-based knowledge of the different cultures in Iraq and how to implement development of an Iraqi democracy.

This is the type of response displayed by road rage. Many corporate CEO's react similarly since from their points of view or perspectives, their goal is to capture the market ahead of their competition and make a profit for their department or corporation. Those are their overriding concerns and they impose limits upon their perspectives. They often overlook compassionate actions toward customers and others impacted by their actions.

This Ego type of animal response was exhibited by Pres. G. Bush in the following article by syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer in the Loveland Reporter Herald of 6-10-08. She wrote the following.

Consider: Now-retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the original commander of U. S. troops in Iraq writes in his memoir of the war, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldiers Story", of Bush saying in a "confused" pep talk after four contractors were killed in Iraq: "Kick Ass! if somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! ,,, Stay strong! Stay the course! kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

Many who act without compassion in this way are seeking to satisfy self-oriented egoistic needs for power and/or to reduce fear, overcome threats, and reduce ambiguity. This type of fear reaction comes from the Amygdale, a part of the brain that evolved as animals lived in groups and fought to protect their turf, hunt of graze for food, and raise their young. It is associated with macho personalities. Along with modern weaponry and suicide bombers it can do much damage.

In sum, this age of instant communication, high-speed travel and weapons of mass destruction, leaders sometimes fear that they must act quickly. Communications with an opposing group pose an immediate threat and the egoistic response takes over control.

The second type of responder is the more spiritual humane-compassionate one. Two way relations with those that have different perspectives and interests are important to these leaders. Such relations provide learning experiences and an understanding of diverse others. This leader waits and acts cautiously to learn about the opponent. The opponents might be viewed as a threat or perceived as competitors, but compassionate responders do not wish to hurt the feelings and identities of these others within their community and outside their communities. They would rather cooperate and work together to achieve broader goals. Therefore, the second type of responder responds slower than the decisive leaders and they can lose some advantage by being cautious to guide all sides along toward a consensus. Therefore, such approaches require planning ahead to overcome the need for quick actions. Leaders must learn about the the different cultures and perceived needs of their neighboring countries and then they will be better prepared to negotiate balanced and peaceful solutions to differences.

This type of response is located in the part of the brain where spirituality develops. This part of our brains keeps unconscious memories of past events that have been repressed for various reasons. These memories are tied to relationships with other people, usually close two-way relationships. They might be repressed feelings of a need for acceptance into a supportive group or community, guilt feelings from hurting or breaking a working relationship from the past, or feelings from loss of a loved one. This area of the brain includes ways of communicating, that include art, music, language and is the creative part of our brains. It is where caring, compassion, love, and guidance with others in the community occur.

This relational part of our brains governs compassionate, artistic, and spiritual aspects of our lives. It produces caring, compassion, joy, and peaceful lives in family and community settings. An example of an unconscious emotion is when a person sheds tears or cries when viewing a drama that displays the group joy generated by efforts to help care for and show compassion to another. The emotion is a shared joy among all those concerned as the good doer is rewarded and accepted as a member of the group.

Another example is a time when I cried after being told that we might have to give up our beloved dog, because cancer in my spine, was affecting control of my legs. I cannot take her walking four times a day. The crying, in my view was from my unconscious feelings of guilt and breaking a great loving relationship with our dog and hurting my wife who also loves the dog dearly. These emotions had been repressed for some time. When feelings related to relationships have been repressed, they can come out as crying at funeral services and other occasions very unexpectedly.

The ideal way to respond with the two different approaches is with a balanced approach based upon consideration of decisive responses, and approaches that include compassion for the other and strive for cooperation. If a quick response is needed, it is important to prepare adequately before the threat occurs. Careful planning will help reduce strategic mistakes. I believe that Presidents Abe Lincoln and F. D. Roosevelt were two leaders who exemplified fairly good balance. However, in today's world with portable weapons of mass destruction, cultural change and threats can arise too quickly. Climate changes that are overlooked can also require preplanning and decisive responses. The unexpectedly severe hurricane season of 2005 illustrated the need for planning ahead carefully and not skimping on budgets. When there is less time to manage a balanced approach in today's world, preplanning and advanced gathering of resources and expertise become essential.

The foregoing discussion leads to the following question. Is there a correlation between Republican leaders who tend to be involved in managing corporations more so than do Democrats, and therefore support a decisive mindset? On the other hand, is there a correlation between Democratic leaders with public service experience that emphasizes a more compassionate-cooperative, humane approach? Both of these approaches are risky, though the risks often are uniquely different in the two approaches. We need leadership that will depoliticize these concerns and emphasize balanced approaches.

Some people combine the two different types of response outlined above: the quick, sometimes Violent Ego response and the Spiritual Loving response. An example of this more human response is the very tight bond that develops among troops fighting the insurgents in Iraq. The small groups become more tightly bonded than many families do. A loss of ones buddy deeply hurts the survivor. Feelings of guilt in not being able to save his buddy and the feelings of loss become repressed deeply into ones unconscious, since the fighting must continue on and these men have to rely on their very quick ego response when the shooting starts up again.

Hopefully, with the end of the neo-cons that got us into the mess, we have seen the benefits of compassion finally win out, thanks to General Petreaus and the new Defense Secretary, Gates.

Some big questions that we might learn about in the next few years are:

1) What role does combining these two responses so tightly and deeply repressing related feelings of guilt, shame, and loss have in strengthening problems of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder? The MayoClinic.com has a good web sight that describes the disorder. It is accessible at: Mayo-ptsd..

2) How does the trauma affect one's religious trust that an anthropomorphic image of God will protect one and his loved ones? Such a loss of faith will also be repressed. I discussed relating to God and Images of God in Chapter 2 of my book.

AS PEOPLE BROADEN THEIR PERSPECTIVES AND CLIMB THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE TO THEIR POINT OF SATURATION HOW DOES THE ULTIMATE CARE GIVER - GOD - BECOME INVOLVED?

Consider externalities of egoistic actions and side effects from complex governmental and large corporate enterprises. They pollute our natural environment, and follow bottom lines motivated by profit and greed used as performance measures by their various departments. Both our government and the corporations do not monitor adequately the external impacts of their actions upon the human and natural qualities of life. As it is that we humans are to do God's work, we need much improvement in this area. We humans have to be responsible to do the monitoring and protection. How do we do this? where does God fit in?

Consider how people relate to an invisible God, usually an anthropomorphic image which makes such a relationship easier. Often, the image is internalized similarly to how a child internalizes an image of his or her Mother. Children learn about God from hearing, and later reading, Bible stories. Relationships with caring others lead also to learning about what is important to the other, whether the other is Mom, a sibling, a family friend, a school teacher, a supervisor at work, or God. By sharing experiences with the other, one learns about their friend or co-worker, their worldview or perspective, their universal and basic values, their traditions and habits, their preferences and tastes, etc. These ideas can be grouped into religious belief systems, political beliefs systems, and economic belief systems, etc.. All these traditions, values, and norms comprise what social scientists call culture.

There are many careers that contribute to God's work. Teaching children in small classes and getting them excited about learning is one of the best. Farming and giving tender-loving care to plants and animanl helps the young relate to being patient, compassionate and caring. Nursing and medicine, research and simulating economic development, for planning and monitoring justice are other careers that help God's work. Sharing experiences helps people broaden their perspectives so that they can more easily relate to those in other careers.

However, what is not doing God's work is accumulating wealth and power to control and distort information to one's own selfish purposes. It is my impression that FOX News, Rupert Murdock, and his lackey, Riley, exemplify such evil people. They immediately, upon meeting someone people, classify them as liberal or far-right and can not listen to what they have to say about their perspective. They are bigots who have corrupted our news and information media and are threats to the future of our democracy.

On 6-09-08 on channel 12 at 6:00 pm I listened to Democracy Now and heard an excellent talk by Bill Moyers at the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, organized by the group Free Press. It was entitled: Democracy Only Works When Ordinary People Claim It As Their Own. Transcripts are available and I recommend them highly.

In Biblical times, the perspectives were limited, for most people. They were based upon commitments to family, clan, tribe, and only centuries later to city, state and nation. Nowadays the levels of perspectives to which we commit ourselves extends to federal government research about drug side effects, monitoring production of drugs, food products, car safety, and so on. However, any one person can not become familiar with the complexity of departments in large organizations and business corporations. We become saturated.

Remember that perspectives include a hierarchy of universal community values, occupational traditions, other cultural traditions such as: approaches to child rearing, and the like. They include music, poetry, literature, technical items such as radio, television, cars and tools. Persons incorporate these aspects or components of perspectives in their memories through shared experiences from working and recreating together.

To prevent saturation, every person must erect some barriers that limit commitments. The media do not help us much to broaden perspectives and manage identities as they have been increasingly subjugated, in recent years, by corporate sponsors and governmental administrators who sponsor television shows and the like.

THE MAJOR WORLD RELIGIONS GUIDE US TO OVERCOME SATURATION AND SIMPLIFY RESPONSES SO THAT WE CAN DO GOD'S WORK?

In the First Great Commandment of God, according to Jesus, said that we should "Love thy God with all thy heart, mind and soul." Love is a two-way street. It is a relationship between the two lovers, a relationship that emphasizes caring, compassion, guidance and the like. It is best represented by how a loving Mother responds to her child as I discussed earlier in Chapter 1 of this book. Its characteristics are spiritual rather than egoistic.

The Second Great Commandment of God tells us to: "Do, in their context, unto others as you would have them do unto you, in your context." Here I have added phrases that include the word "context" to emphasize that one considers persons outside one's own group, in their context and changing environmental situations. These two commandments imply that we rely upon in the spiritual rather egoistic mode of response.

I believe that we should interpret the two commandments as doing God's work by following spiritual guidelines that reside in the spiritual part of our brain and emphasize being loving, kind, caring, compassionate, and a guide to peaceful living as all humans would prefer to live. Today's world is too much dominated by the egoistic part of our brains.

I have listed a number of Bible references that point out the compassionate actions that Jesus, God, and St. Paul, in his letters, seem to prefer to be used to do God's work here on Planet Earth. It is accessible at: Bible References.

SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW WE SHOULD BE DOING GOD'S WORK

With this in mind, it should be a responsibility of the creator of a business or industrial product or process to check the impacts of externalities, rather than rely upon governments to do it with insufficient motivation and funds. Environmental Impact Statement Processes, The Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Aviation Authority are examples of such governmental monitoring agencies.

Only in this way can the common people do God's work. Where are the Prophets of Old? Our media, the sponsorship of which has been taken over by large corporations, often overlooks or is forbidden by its sponsors to present timely prophesies to the general public.

In relating to people with ever broader perspectives, some people have the opportunities to climb "The Spiral Staircase" to a good relationship with ultimate caring other and reach the Ultimate One - God. It is important to note that the Spiral Staircase is a long one and many people do not reach the top, but still find God at the level they do reach. We had a neighbor who had a perspective that focused on a literal following of a simple Biblical fundamentalism and held a job as an accountant. She was very efficient at following the rules. She was a good friend, a kind and caring friend and mother of two children. I know a number of engineers, computer scientists and workers, health care service workers and others who held similar perspectives. There are people in government and large corporations with similar characteristics. As they gain shared experiences with co-workers in other departments, with neighbors, classmates, church members, and club members all with different backgrounds, they broaden perspectives until they hit their own Berlin walls that protect personal identities and prevent saturation. Berlin Walls are also used to protect, in addition to personal identities; tribal, city, and state perspectives, and religious, political and economic belief systems.

I refer the reader to a paper that elaborates, from a slightly different perspective, an appropriate conclusion to this book. It is entitled: Philosophical and Religious Foundations of a Global Ethic by Ingrid H. Shafer, University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. It is listed in my Bibliography.

By the Fall of 2007, changes in the political stances of the far-right in the USA indicated a ray of hope. It seems that a significant portion of the Republican voters seem to have tired of single issue politics and are broadening their perspectives.

A decrease in insurgent activity in Iraq provides support for the post-surge policies and perhaps the compassionate perspective will gain support.

I have discovered the research and writing of Dr. Clare W. Graves after completing work on this book. As I delve further into his work, see my bibliography, I expand upon descriptions of his work in Chapter 5 of my book. His ideas about stages of development are summarized in The Never Ending Quest which is listed in the Bibliography included in my E-book. See also the following web site for quotes from Graves' writing. [http://www.clarewgraves.com/neq/neq.html]. For some idea of Graves work, see also: [http://www.integralleadership.com/graves-quadrants.htm]. These ideas, which are new to me, are implicit in some of what I have written in Sections H and I of Chapter 5 above.

NOTE: This epilogue replaces the one that is printed in my book, entitled: COUNTERING POLARIZATION and has been taken from my revised web posting, with the same title, that is accessible at: Countering Polarization. .

© Copyright: by Charles Notess, 2004-8. "Fair use" encouraged.