Parker Palmer gives an interview on illusion and reality.

Date:   2/21/2009 1:49:28 AM ( 15 y ago)

Parker Palmer, of the Center for Courage & Renewal, talks about illusion, and how it is a negative force. He is a teacher and lecturer. I heard him in an interview on PBS tonight, and I thought I would share a bit of it with you here in my blog.

To overcome problems, in our personal lives and in the wider world of politics and society, he teaches people how to do things such as "to have the courage to face our illusions" ; "the courage to walk through our illusions and dispel them". He states "the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is fear - fear of abandoning illusions because of our comfort level with them" .

He goes on - "Another illusion is - “I am what I do .... my worth comes from my functioning. If there is to be any love for us, we must succeed at something.” He says in this example that it is more important to be a “human being” rather than a “human doing.” We are not what we do. We are who we are. The rigors of trying to be faithful involves being faithful to one's gifts".

I like that "human doings" description of what people are, it is one of the ideas I have mentioned before when writing about meditation exersizes, as a way to get us to focus on the present moment.

He spoke of how "illusion causes pain; only reality can bring happiness even though it might also be painfull". When illusion creates some temporary smiles, as it can do, it will eventually result in greater pain.

Parker applied this philosophy to the economic crisis:
The collapse of the U.S. housing market at the heart of the recent financial crisis is also, according to Parker Palmer, the collapse of a series of long-held illusions in American society: that housing prices will always rise, that Americans can live beyond their means forever, and that the growing gap between rich and poor doesn't matter.
Everyone realized the system was unsustainable, Palmer, a writer, traveling teacher and activist, told Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL, but, "We don't want to know what we really know, because if we did, we'd have to change our lives."

"The illusions about what was going on in this society, which are now being punctured and vaporized before our very eyes"

"Who didn't know it was coming? Who didn't know that a system that encouraged us to live beyond our means and provided all kinds of devious and ethically doubtful ways for us to do that was going to fall apart someday?
Who didn't know that housing was over-evaluated? That stocks were overpriced? Who didn't know that a system the makes the rich richer while the poor get poorer will someday face a curtain call? We all knew that at some level, and yet our capacity to deny reality is huge. And I think that we don't want to know what we really know because if we did, we'd have to change our lives.
And now we have to change our lives because the whole thing is crashing down around our head."


And something from Bill Moyers, the interviewer, getting caught up in the moment:
"when the dots connect themselves, reality can no longer be denied" [good one, Bill].


I was inspired by what Palmer was saying. I thought of how people are carrying an illusion in their personal lives in things like the way we look, the way we present ourselves to the world. It is contrived, trying to show an illusion and not the real self. That might be a practical matter in business, where, as I remember an aspiring business person tell me many years ago - "business people, if they want to be successfull, should allways appear the same way each day, so that others will see you as dependable". Apparently, changing your appearance would shatter the illusion that the business world needs. Perhaps that kind of illusion is the reason this economic crisis hit so hard and so suddenly, even though the signs were all there a few years ago, as Palmer was saying.

It might be important to avoid that kind of illusion-making in our personal lives too. Marriages might be more successfull if people were better at showing how they really felt - or maybe we would just marry the right person in the first place. How many relationships start out with an illusion, and then never break down the barriers that those illusions create? That cannot be good for building a solid relationship. The root of the word "relationship" is "to relate", the idea is not to trick or fool or deceive the other person into liking you!! Maybe if we all knew ourselves well, and could see our own value, then we would not be so insecure and fragile as to need to put out these illusory personas.



LINKS:
1] Palmer has written several books, and he has a website under the banner of "The Center for Courage & Renewal" at this link > http://www.couragerenewal.org/

2] The link to the PBS interview - much more there than I quoted here!! > http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02202009/transcript2.html

3] PBS profile on Palmer > http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02202009/profile2.html

4] Wiki page on Parker Palmer > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Palmer





 

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