Naming the Real

In this episode, we explore how notions of personal freedom have changed over the last 400 years, post-Enlightenment, creating a new notion of the self and a rampant individualism across Western culture. This concept is key to understanding our cultural crisis of anxiety and polarization because our new notion of freedom and our new individualism fuels much of our contemporary anxiety and undermines moral discourse.

Progressives and conservatives mis-understand each other's morality, that much is clear. But what exactly do they misunderstand?

In this episode, we explore Jonathan Haidt and Craig Joseph's research into the 5 universal moral foundations (harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, authority/respect, in-group loyalty, and purity/sanctity) and the differences between the moral frameworks of progressives and conservatives. Progressives and conservatives relate to each of these 5 moral foundations differently because much of our contemporary cultural conflict traces back to these differences in moral outlook. If we understand that, we can start to live with more curiosity and a willingness to critique our own positions before attacking "the other side."

How do we understand the rise in anxiety, polarization, and division in the US? More to the point, how do we name it so that we can transcend it and live free of its dominance? In this episode, which launches a new series, I explore two of the dominant archetypal impulses in human nature: conservatism (the desire to keep the good that is) and progressivism (the desire to pursue the great that could be). And I explore how we might all edge away from the precipice and start living more balanced, sane lives.

There's an ancient paradigm for how we build our character: our desire for change can be funneled into practices. Practices, consistently engaged, become our habits, our instinctual, reflexive ways of behaving in the world. Our habits, quite simply, become our character, who we become, for ourselves and for others.

It sounds simple, but it takes real work. Sometimes people get so caught up in "what they don't want" that they lose sight of pursuing "what they do want." In this episode we explore how we can make change sustainable in our lives by learning to state our vision in positive terms.

Every issue we face in life is, to some degree, a factor of how we think. Even how we frame issues, whether we see it as a problem or an opportunity, for example, is a function of how we think. Sometimes our problems really exist solely-or at least, primarily-in our own minds. We our are own jailers, and...we can be our own liberators.

Bottom line, if you change the way you think, you can change your life. And you can do it by practicing a 3-step change process.