balance Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Lisa Colón DeLay

Thinking Class: 1st session

(POSTER BELOW)

I look around at the wars of words, the polarizing gridlock that has shutdown the Federal government (as if that could truly happen) and listen to talking heads both liberal and non liberal spew illogical nonsense. But then I realize! Most of what I hear is illogical and most arguments are irrational.

Let me explain.

Most things people say are opinions and are therefore unreasonable (in the true sense of the word: “lacking reason”). Because opinions tend to be based on emotions or other arbitrary factors they lack logic. In two to four seconds on any cable news station you’ll hear it.

This situation becomes even more apparent as you learn Critical Thinking formally.

When I learned about critical thinking and logical fallacies in depth in graduate school, I thought, why didn’t they teach us how to think in high school or at least in liberal arts university? (I mean isn’t the whole point of education to help you to think better? Apparently not…Silly me.)

So, yes. We literally are not taught to think well. Usefully. Thoughtfully.

That’s because it turns out that teaching people how to think independently is wildly dangerous and threatening. (Crazy, right?!)

It can upset the balance of power. That means it’s considered far better to cultivate “sheep” that follow the herd directed by the powerful instead of helping people think well using critical methods. So, we have the predicament best epitomized on cable news. Screaming and hysteria and irrational arguments aplenty! The crazies are running everything it seems.

When we stop simply believing what we are told and follow a true logical format to discover main arguments or separate opinion from facts, it can cause…wait for it…thoughtful questioning. Empires have fallen for less than that!

Critical thinking is rare and utilizing it may necessitate that answers involve reason. Serious repercussions indeed!

Why would a school (or any group exerting power) purposefully put itself in a position to be knocked off its pins by newly rational thinkers? Well, they avoid that very thing. The point is to engender obedience and conformity: Teach people in a (factory-style) system that gets them to think how we want them to and agree with us, otherwise it’s anarchy, and we can’t have that!

(See why thinking well is so rare?)

Imagine: What if you think something out of sync with your club, church, political party, or social sphere? Look out. A bumper crop of fallacies will likely be lobed at you like poop grenades! You are SUPPOSED to keep in line. Gosh, duh…you are not accepted for your ability to think outside the expectations and presuppositions of your group. So, remember, if you plan to use critical thinking be prepared to be demonized.

The worst threat of all for anyone in power is to encourage independent thinking, let alone teach it. Learning logical fallacies can lead to innovation and change and much apple cart upsetting. It’s a threat to media outlets, propagandists, governments, authorities, parents, policemen, and nearly every institution.

Below is the first poster I designed to teach (critical) thinking. Stayed tuned for more coming in the next few days.

If you’d like more people to learn how to think better, pass it along.

It could help someone.

(click to enlarge)

Click here for an extensive list of fallacies.

To see the other posters I’ve done on fallacies, use the sidebar and search for “logical”

Are you Skipping “Brain Pain” but picking the Plague?

Professor Bop via Compfight

Most of us don’t realize that we spend a bunch of time avoiding a familiar “Brain Pain”.

Just below our radar, but deeply connected with our emotions is an unsettling sense that something isn’t right.

That’s because it isn’t. Though it’s a normal sensation it’s not well-received.

We order and reorder things to avoid this feeling. But, it persists. And, it’ll make us do the strangest things.

Simply put: This “brain pain” happens when we try to hold two or more conflicting ideas together.

It’s officially called cognitive dissonance.

Unidentified, you don’t like it either.

But, in fact most of life and love is full of paradox and contradictions. All the great thinkers and spiritual masters speak of it.

The big problem?

Our cognitions don’t live together in a good jive and comfortable harmony. Our ideas, beliefs, values or emotional reactions have pointy and mismatched edges and we keep wanting things to piece together nicely like a glossy jigsaw puzzle.

Instead of feeling and living with dissonance, we try to avoid it or reduce it. Anything from changing our beliefs to be in keeping with the situation (to make it bearable), to reducing our regret through irrational justification, to reaffirming our bias even if a logical reason is absent. We are very irrational creatures and the more we think we are NOT the more irrational it is.

(It’s dissonant to be a partially rational creature, see?)

In wanting everything to “make sense” we pick fiction and live by figments instead.

You do it. I do it.

What’s worse?
The social pressure to relieve this sort of brain pain will blast toward us from everywhere. Maybe nowhere more powerfully than from our leaders. People in the pulpit, or the podium, power players in the board room or on news and media outlets they let the zingers fly that force you to inconsistently choice a faulty form of consistency. On cable television and radio of all stripes it’s a full-blown-plauge.

Everyone will try to sway you to give up the dissonance and see it their way (which they call “the right way”). It makes them feel better. But, the dissonance is part of reality just like it is part of jazz music. Not every note sounds just right or fits together seamlessly. It’s off-pitch and off-tempo. It’s very hard to predict.

How tricky! How disconcerting.

It is a mark of maturity to accept that reality is chock-a-block with inconsistency and incongruence. (That’s worth reading again.)

Though it can be unnerving, an abiding peace can yet remain in what seems a spongy place. This place is a good and useful tension of balance. It’s very hard to find and even harder to keep.

So, what about you?

Think about the things that create the discomforting feeling of dissonance for you.

• What are they? (relationships, finances, politics, tragedy, redemption?) Narrow it down to one or two big ones, for now.

• Have you been dodging logic or minimizing regret for the fantasy of consonance because you want to avoid the pain (and reality) of dissonance? Let’s be honest.

What could you hold in dissonance and balance that you haven’t been?

(Thank you for reading today. I would love if if you would share this post. Also great? If you would sign up for the next post in the sidebar.)

-Lisa

“The Tyranny of the Left Brain”: Thoughts from Len Sweet

(click photo to enlarge)

As promised, I’m writing a bit more to summarize the fascinating Leonard Sweet event at Evangelical Seminary this week. (Here’s the first one in the series.)

Dr Sweet had some interesting things to say about the legacy and effect of the Protestant Reformation which he calls “The 2nd Wave of Christianity”.

Wave 1: Catholicism (which is still growing in the global East and South).
Wave 2: Protestantism (which is in decline everywhere in the world and got its start by saying “no”.) It seems there is a shelf life to this version of Christianity. More on that in a second.
Wave 3: Pentecostalism (which is flourishing in the global East and South. Other Christian traditions are being influenced by its effect too.)

Sweet says that Pentecostalism is considered something other than Protestantism because it more fully integrates the Third Person of the Trinity (the Spirit) and perceives God as active and engaged in everyday life unlike previous versions of Christianity have done. He said that we in the West are slow to realize this seismic shift because we’ve been focused on Liberation Theology. L.T. accounted for the poor and was in essence created for the poor, but the poor didn’t pick it; instead they picked Pentecostalism.

In the West, we are in a post-Christian era. The “big-box churches” have put an end to most of the “mom & pop” churches, but mainly a reshuffling of Christians is occurring–not an increase of new devotees to Christianity. Sweet mentioned that on the West coast in the U.S. things have moved beyond simply disparaging Christians to open hostility. This promises to be the norm throughout U.S. culture, he says.

Why the “shelf-life” for Protestantism?
Protestantism was birthed just as a technological revolution hit. The moveable type of the Gutenberg printing press was one such breakthrough and Protesters of Catholicism used this technology along with their reforming ideas and desire to make the Bible available for everyone to create a major shift in how Christianity was practiced. According to Sweet, no invention was more anti-social and individualistic than the mass-produced book (you take a book and go off by yourself and absorb it). It seems, no worldview had been so individualistic until that time either (my note).

What happened soon because of that shift was the over-emphasis on the left-brain. “The Tyranny of the Left Brain”

And my what a power it’s had!
What was left behind? Mainly the arts, story using image, memories, relationships, emotional expression and recognition, intuition, creativity and a “whole person” view of Christian (body+mind+spirit).

What was favored? Reasoning, thinking, dissecting, apologetics/critical thinking, and textual language. Sometimes the right brain qualities weren’t just ignored, sometimes they were even despised. Whole sects of Christians took down art and have kept places of worship plain and non visual (More on left and right brain here). Logical left brain thinkers are often thought of as smarter even in our culture today, but it is the right side of the brain were some of the most meaningful things occur. And the combination of the hemispheres in balance makes us most fully alive.

We need both sides of our brain to be fully human.

Now something bigger than Gutenberg as come along: Google. All the information of the world is there for the taking, and the visual is back! Story is back again (and this is the format Jesus used too.) Word-heavy presentations are on the decline as many marketers have already noticed the shift and accounted for it (see ad below). Now we have interconnection of the internet and it’s been supercharged more recently by a new technological revolution even more significant than the internet: social media. (Apparently without Facebook the revolutions and movement toward democracy in the Middle East and in other important parts of the world wouldn’t have happened. So, yeah, it’s a big deal because it makes news and ideas travel so quickly.)

Social Media promises something we’ve been missing out on the interconnectedness. But, it cannot deliver fully on it’s promise, because face-to-face relationships are so transforming and vital. The internet and social media start to give us what we as humans crave, but a formidable wall persists that only the messiness of in-person interaction offers.

The shift is here and people are looking for a more holistic (whole) way of perceiving the world. Narratives, metaphors, image, story, and emotion are rushing back into the forefront and the it’s not a trend. It’s the new way the world works.

Future post: In the next post I’ll wrap up and focus on the “power of image” which includes metaphor, symbolism, and the affective powers of the brain and mind. Does Protestantism have a fighting chance?

If you liked this, will you please share it?

Would you like to know when next post goes live? Sign up in the sidebar for an update. See you soon.

See how the narrative doesn’t need words much anymore?

[sq_pop_shortcode popup_id=”6704552″ appear_position=”pop_top_right” appear_behavior=”pop_on_exit” appear_behavior=”pop_on_exit” background_color=”pop_bg_transparent” display_area=”pop_display_particular” background_cover=”pop_cover_no” frequency=”once” delay=”0″ ]

Michael Hyatt says he features the “Best Leaders” (Men)

Note to Readers. As you read this keep in mind I’ve been reading Michael Hyatt’s blog since 2007 and I still really enjoy it. (UPDATE – I stopped reading MH’s blog regularly a few months after writing this) Please read all of this in the spirit of grace and mutual understanding all of it is meant to be wrapped in. I have to ask the questions, but I want amiable solutions.

UPDATE as of July 11, 2013

Michael Hyatt continues to change his blog for the better. More women leaders are visible now (which wasn’t true almost at all since 2007!) and the site has come a long way since I started prodding for a more appropriate and equitable Platform for the Michael Hyatt brand a few short weeks ago.

What I think will also happen is that you will never hear about me and this incident as something he took into consideration. You will never hear him say any of this happened. He will continue to look wise and fair.

He unfollowed me Twitter and to him, I’m probably not a good leader. But, I wasn’t looking for a permission slip to make sure the right thing could happen.

UPDATE as of JULY 2
I’m happy to report that I just checked and Michael Hyatt has adjusted his homepage. Now the videos featured in the sidebar do include some women. VICTORY!

UPDATE as of JUNE 26

Joy Groblebe (claiming the title of Michael Hyatt’s manager) has weighed in below in the comments section saying Hyatt is a poor example of bias. Yet, he still does not have women featured in his video leader interviews See what you think! Is she right?

UPDATE as of JUNE 25!

The post you are about to read was written last week, published in a limited sneak-peak form, and announced on Twitter and Facebook at that point. Though Michael Hyatt has too seldom featured women, yesterday Michael Hyatt did feature his longtime friend, Michele Cushatt (maybe he read the preview of the post you will read below…I’m not sure. But, great timing I must say.). You can read her article here. (It’s about females experiencing rejection. Irony.)

I found out about this surprise and rare post through this personal note from Hyatt on Twitter this morning:

FROM: @MichaelHyatt mentioned “@lisadelay The irony of this is that @MicheleCushatt was featured on my blog yesterday: http://t.co/c560ZMQiBJ”

He didn’t see the irony… :)
The article is on REJECTION. Someting women leaders and speakers may be experiencing a lot with not just Hyatt (until recently), but also with publishers in general, as Michael explained in his Twitter posts. At this point, the vast majority of Hyatt’s blog guest posts are by men. Will it maintain the status quo of white male domination in leadership expertise? Time will tell if Intentional Leadership will evolve as a Brand that way. I have every hope it will grow more diverse and vital.

# # #

Background: This Spring (2013) I posted this (excerpt):

I’ve noticed something. Not too many male leaders list women authors, leaders, and thinkers in their blogrolls or refer to them in posts. You don’t see that women influence them. What about Christian male leaders? It seems twice as bad.

Michael Hyatt’s “Intentional Leadership” blog is a favorite of mine. I LOVE it. But have you noticed that not one video on his homepage sidebar features a female leader? Does he even realize the omission? Should he maybe be more intentional on this part….I think yes! Read the whole post here.

# # #

FINALLY- the post you’ve been reading this for.
POST WRITTEN JUNE 17.
What I didn’t get to do after that Spring post was follow up. I didn’t get to share Michael Hyatt’s direct correspondence with me that day. It’s far more interesting and surprising that I imagined it would be, and not for any of the reasons I expected.

Here’s that:

So why don’t females pitch to him? Isn’t that the bigger and more important question? Should we look into that maybe?

Then I asked him if he felt he was hearing from a balance of leadership voices, and here’s his reply:

I had presumed that Mr Hyatt would give my observation some thought. Maybe he would mention the need to assess he might have a blind spot.

Could there be an unconscious oversight? Were there ways to improve? But, he inadvertently offered up more than he may have realized. His comments only strengthened my contention that a gap, a regrettable gap, exists between men and women in leadership and visibility on his blog, website, but also across the board. This only gained momentum when he continued and mentioned the world of publishing. (see below. The older post is positioned on the bottom and is a continuation of his comment posted above.)

So by his admission the publishing industry (his experience as the CEO of Thomas Nelson is a Christian outfit) has a massive blind spot.

This is not a surprise, but certainly a disappointment. What are leaders like Hyatt doing to turn the tide if the gap is this vast?

I soon realized the aforementioned blind spots would stay largely “in shadow” that day, but it wasn’t a total loss. Hyatt did show a desire for improvement. [UPDATE – in subsequent blog posts he wrote about Blind Spots -though never did he mention this incident-perhaps it was a blind spot too.]

My exchange with Hyatt is long over and I wish him well. But, I have wonder: Has he for too long wasted his opportunity to his influence how we hear from leaders? Isn’t this the blindness that success and privilege creates?

I’ll let you decide.

APPENDIX:
Others weighed in during our Twitter conversation and things stayed interesting for most of the day, that Spring. Here are just two examples:

Yes, Hyatt has every right to feature only those he pleases, but mentioning that he doesn’t hear from women at the same time as mentioning that he only features “the best” seems deleterious.

Through his leadership we are left to wonder: Are “the Best” really predominantly male? or is Hyatt actually gleaning from a skewed pool?

Nah.

More importantly, does he realize it and will things change “on his watch”? I don’t think both his claims can be true unless he holds a disparaging view of women in leadership.

And, mind you, I don’t believe he does. I think it’s a genuine blind spot from a well-intentioned male leader (with the current #1 blog on Leadership) who hasn’t quite comprehended or addressed the light-skinned, male privilege he is privy to.

Sometimes a cautionary tale gives us a great lesson. We should learn from this:

None of us are immune to blind spots of our particular privilege.

We must be diligent agents of progress and positive change. That’s my own hope and the reason I have decided to continue the conversation today. The more of us who ask the tough questions of the powerful and prod for the answers and the transformation needed, the better off we will all be. Won’t you join me? To help, Leave a comment or share this post.

SO! Who are the “BEST VOICES”?

In truth, we don’t hear from the “best voices” by doing a google search and poking around. They don’t get pitched to us by the establishment. The “best voices” may not turn up or asked to be heard. Sometimes because it’s too noisy and sometimes it’s because they assume they are not wanted. The stats do not favor minorities (women, the poor, the physically or mentally disabled, the marginalized, and people with darker skin tones), they favor the already powerful.

This means that if you indeed want to have “the best” you must make extra efforts to find and hear from those who don’t have an equal shot. You have to work much harder at it, plain and simple.

As leaders we should admit this. To continue the conversation online please use the hashtag #bestleaders and others can follow the digital footprint and continue onward in the pursuit of improvement

These hard-to-find voices have plenty to offer even if they don’t quite have the following as of yet. The stats don’t make the leader, the character and efficacy does. I think we can all agree there.

In the next post, I’ll talk about the subtle ways language reenforces privilege, especially in the poor opinions and myths perpetuated about women–often unintentionally. It’s sobering. However, I’m skewering the topic not with a pitchfork but a rubber chicken. The point, and my point, isn’t to make enemies, it’s to start the conversation and act as a change agent.

Male Privilege and Female Leadership

Left Hand Rotation via Compfight

So I curate a Leadership Blog at a graduate school…

This means sometimes I write for it myself, and sometimes I find great guest writers who write for us or allow us to repost previously posted articles.

I scope out the inter webs for insightful and practical articles for anyone in a leadership position…from a small group leader, to a parent, to an influential thinker and writer, to a minister, to a business owner. Anyone who influences someone else is in a position of leadership.

[BTW-send me your links of leadership articles or pitch me your ideas. I’d love to have new voices posted at the Deeper Leader blog!]

There’s a lot of information out there, but there’s a big blind spot too.

I’ve noticed something. Not too many male leaders list women authors, leaders, and thinkers in their blogrolls or refer to them in posts. You don’t see that women influence them. What about Christian male leaders? It seems twice as bad.

Michael Hyatt’s “Intentional Leadership” blog is a favorite of mine. I LOVE it. But have you noticed that not one video on his homepage sidebar features a female leader? Does he even realize the omission? Should he maybe be more intentional on this part….I think yes!

(and so should I! I need to question who I read and why. I have a blind spot too.)

Let’s mind the gap.

As I prepare articles to begin announcing our 1st annual Women in Ministry: Conversations with Leaderships forum (June 12) I realize the glut. It’s massive.

So, what’s up?

• Is it that men don’t give it much thought? (an innocent blind spot that is likely borne of “male privilege“?)

• Is there a hidden bias or disregard for female leaders, and even among female leaders themselves?

and do men feel less manly if they read women authors? Any of that going on?

• Do men think, “Sure, I support women, but women leaders speak mainly to women and not to me”?

Let’s ask some hard and honest questions while at the same time not blaming, dividing and separating from each other. Let’s move the conversation forward!

I, for one, am going to assume the best from my male writers and friends. I’m going to put my trust and hope in the idea that if we bring the imbalance to greater attention and awareness maybe we can chip away at the disparity and both genders will be richer for it!

• What about you?

Are the top ten blogs or books you read written by a balance of men and women? If, so why or why not?

Are you taking the time to learn from someone else’s purview?

• How do we do better at offering others the chance to hear insights from the whole breath of the human species?

• What can we do about the blind spot?

LINK UP & Join Forces?

If you’d like to participate in the conversation, write an article and leave the link in the comments section. I’ll put the word out about your post too!

Andi Cumbo is tackling this and a few others. Will update soon!