Self-Development and the Obama Movement

This was emailed to me via my local Obama group, and I'm going to post it in its entirety so that I don't lose it. Great piece.

Self-Development and the Obama Movement
by Wade Hudson

Barack often affirms self-improvement, personal responsibility, and mutual support. His statements on these issues include:

• Children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets.
• Alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people.
• We understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.
• It was here [in Illinois] we learned to disagree without being disagreeable.
• So long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst.
• Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility – for instilling an ethic of achievement in our children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice.
• The time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear, and make good on the debt we owe past and future generations.

His most powerful statement on these issues, however, may have been his 2007 Commencement Address at Southern New Hampshire University. Following are some excerpts (emphases added):

• We become tempted to turn inward, suspicious that change is really possible, doubtful that one person really can make a difference. That's where the true test of growing up occurs.
• In both your own life and the life of your country, will you strive to put away childish things?
• It is a constant struggle, this quest for maturity, and as my wife will certainly tell you, I haven't always been on the winning side in my own life...
• [T]he first lesson of growing up: The world doesn't just revolve around you…. We should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes…. As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier….
• [T]he second lesson is this:  Challenge yourself. Take some risks in your life.... Listen to what's inside of you and decide what it is that you care about so much that you're willing to risk it all.
• [A] third lesson in growing up: Persevere. Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.
• Cultivating empathy, challenging yourself, persevering in the face of adversity – these are qualities that dare us to put away childish things. They are qualities that help us grow.

With these remarks, Barack touches on how the never-ending change we need is personal as well as social, political, and cultural.

My previous recommendations to the Obama for America national office for their ongoing planning process has touched on these issues by suggesting that our post-election movement (the "Movement for Change"?) should clearly encourage the development of "supportive friendships."

Prior to those recommendations, I had suggested that we explicitly commit to "self-development and mutual support." But some individuals resist affirmations concerning "self-development," whether the concept is expressed in terms of self-development, self-improvement, personal growth, or some other language.

Some believe that they have already matured as much as they can. Others believe that some perfect self exists separate from those aspects of their personality that they wish to change, so to talk about self-improvement negates that perfection.

Yet others claim that any talk of self-development reinforces American rugged individualism. In The Audacity of Hope, Barack eloquently counters this concern by pointing out that self-development and community development are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they can reinforce one another.

Nevertheless, the resistance to affirming self-development persists. So in order not to turn off those people who object to that language and include as broad a range of individuals as possible, I suggest advancing "supportive friendships." Language is weird. The same words carry different meanings for different people. I'm hoping that "supportive friendships" will be more universally acceptable.

I assume almost everyone wants to develop, strengthen, and/or sustain supportive friendships. And I assume that supportive friendships generally involve the same process to which I refer when I talk about "self-development and mutual support." Almost everyone wants to figure out how to deal with difficult situations more effectively. Almost everyone wants to reduce "down" times. Almost everyone wants to increase her or his effectiveness in the world. Almost everyone wants good friends who can assist him or her with these efforts. And almost everyone is willing to be a good friend to others by assisting them. So I believe that promoting supportive friendships implies promoting self-development and mutual support.

It may be wiser and clearer to make this belief explicit by affirming "self-development and mutual support," even if some folks exclude themselves as a result. I'm not sure, but for now, I suggest leaving it implicit in "supportive friendships."

Regardless, I consider it important that we somehow address these issues in our training materials and Host Guides. We might simply talk about "how to increase our effectiveness." But one way or another, we need to encourage each other to take time to evaluate our efforts, both individual and collective, reflect on ways that we could improve those efforts, and commit to undertaking improvements.

We need not prescribe for others exactly how they should proceed in this regard. Rather, following the harm-reduction model in drug treatment programs, we can encourage everyone to define their own goals for themselves and then support them in achieving those goals.

To some degree, friends naturally provide one another with this kind of support informally. Presumably, team members will do so to some significant degree, during shared meals, during meetings, after meetings, and at other times.

It's easy, however, to get caught up in the pressures of the modern world and the urgency of meeting immediate goals. So in order to pay more attention to these issues, some teams might, with some loose structures, decide to formalize their commitment to self-development and mutual support.

Those teams, if any, that decide to do so could, after pledging to keep their conversations confidential, go around the circle with each person first reporting on recent efforts with regard to self-development – whatever form that might take (as determined by each individual). Feedback from others could be minimal. Unsolicited advice could be discouraged. Mostly, others could simply listen carefully. Problem solving and conflict resolution could be addressed later as needed, perhaps informally. Benefits could include the increased self-understanding that comes from articulating one's reflections, as well as increased mutual understanding. Just slowing down and a break to reflect can foster forward movement. Team members could then go around the circle reporting on their political action and how they felt about it, and then their community service, followed by decision-making concerning their joint political action for the next month and other items.

Those are some options that a team could use to nurture self-development intentionally. Any such teams that made this kind of commitment could affiliate with one another, perhaps in a Community of Home-Based Teams.

Though it's generally counter-productive to tell individuals how they should change, we can fruitfully talk about these issues in general terms, if only to offer points for folks to consider. So, recognizing that there are many individual exceptions, following are my observations about how we progressive activists need to improve how we relate to others in order to improve our effectiveness.

We need to become:

• More accepting and less judgmental toward others.
• Better listeners.
• Less power-hungry, ego-centered, and competitive.
• Steadier and less prone to burn out.
• Less wrapped up in ideas.
• More expressive with our feelings.
• Better able to offer constructive criticism.
• Less angry and more loving.
• More joyful.
• Less obsessed with results and more trusting.
• More attuned to how we work.

In short, we need to constantly become the change we seek. While there is much we can do on our own, we'll always need support from others at times. The higher the quality of that support, the more we can grow. And the more we grow, the more we can change the world.