From the Bottom Up

I recently posted on Facebook a short statement about the recent presidential election.  It seems that no matter what we do on the bottom of the top continues to win big and in a “money” system the 1% at the top control the 99% at the bottom.  So how can we shift from a money system?  As I mentioned last week Michael Tellinger says the Ubuntu system of Contributionism is a possible solution.  The problem in such a system is complexity and a lack of cohesiveness.  We need a simple path in which people with drive, skills in ordinary human relations and perseverance can succeed by their efforts in small groups. This past year we wrote a book called The Power of the Double Circle.

By the use of pairs of people working in tandem within a double circle, power is generated and sustained. By power I mean action to solve problems in real time about what in believe we all cherish; that is truth justice and love. In this triad love is the mystical and elusive element, which most group efforts fail to sustain because the human being is in the midst of an evolutionary crisis. This crisis is in the transition from individual ego, which is seen in powerful leaders, to the sense of team or WeGo. By WeGo I mean the effective pair within the double circle operating for the good of both circles. One might critique this to say the pairs can simply begin to act as just another overpowering ego. However, this pairing floats from individual to individual so that the pairing is constantly in flux.  So each person develops a skill to deal with those people he or she may think they are incompatible with by having to change pairing frequently. Each person learns to love what works; passing effortlessly from individual ego to the WeGo state of mind no matter what each person thought of the other’s

personality beforehand. Can we move to a personality of the pair casting aside the sharp edges of each other’s personality?

The Few Society

While in a meeting this morning it occurred to me that the two candidates who were struggling to gain the presidency of the United States were actually in the same camp.  Both are top-down people and are not bottom-up people.  We are moving into a period in our history in which war will seem be less of a problem than the famine used to avoid it.  The wealthy and the privileged will be protected in enclaves. Just two days ago Elon Musk was the first person in public life in forty years that spoke of the real problem we are faced with today.  Neither of the candidates mentioned that there are going to be (in the near future) no jobs for many of Americans as well as many people abroad.  With the oncoming automation, artificial intelligence, and insulated artifacts such as Washington DC most of us outside of that sphere will face extreme poverty and even starvation.  With the survival of the fittest mentality that both candidates seem to have in great abundance we are as bottom-up people faced with a terrible situation.  Both political parties seek to end or curtail seriously what are called entitlements.  But a kinder and more realistic word would be a floor for all to stand on.

The central problem of political reality is that opposing positions are used to create an atmosphere of conflict in which one can win over the other.  But what they fail to demonstrate is that there are some problems that are common to all.  Neither candidate can manage a campaign talking about conflicts that are common to us all.  This could be global warming or too few jobs for too many people. 

The technological improvements are racing ahead much faster than the population's ability to make use of it or service it.  So the net result is that we will end up with many more people than are useful in our society, which is obviously becoming more and more a society of privilege for the few. For the moment I will offer to you to consider a radical departure from the current society designed for a few to a society designed for all. This is  “UBUNTU Contributionism” as outlined in a manifesto by Michael Tellinger called A World Without Money. On Youtube at: 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sxwXjqawEw

Beeswax From the Bottom Up

     Our nation is in the midst of a severe and prolonged stripping away of the power of the middle class. In fact many of us will no longer be able to claim membership in the middle class. We find ourselves on or uncomfortably near the bottom.  If we find out how we got to the place then we might be able to figure out how to get out of the bottom.

     A second and related issue is what greased the wheel.  Just out of high school I worked at Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula and suddenly found myself on the ways crew.  We were responsible for greasing the skid that the 600-foot ship would use to slide the ship into the Pascagoula River. It took a ton of beeswax to grease the skid.  What will it take to swing the welfare of the people on the bottom into a chance to break from the bottom?  What will be the beeswax that moves our country and our people back into prosperity and hope?

     Why beeswax?  A generic article in the Internet says that there are at least 100 uses for beeswax.  But the 100 did not include using beeswax to launch a ship.  So there may be even more.  I was told that beeswax is used to launch ship because it is the lubricant that has the least chance of catching fire during the process.  If you want to begin dialogue by moving from the superficiality of deep discussion,we at least,must realize that when dialogue is approached overheating of the participants is likely.  Rather than catch fire some participants simply pull back and try to cool off.  I am leading up to a method, which helps as beeswax does to keep the process cool enough to be smooth and effective.  In other words if you form circles of people to talk about crucial issues in their lives how do you keep the individual egos from overheating.

     From an unlikely physicist, David Bohm, we are encouraged to develop small groups to go beneath small group discussion into small-group dialogue.  His vision was to stop the fragmentation that we now see in our political process and reach consensus for the common good.  In this 2016 presidential contest we see sharp contrast and nothing but innuendo and assumed moral decay.  The issues are not discussed and we are not in dialogue. Our children are only vaguely noticed. We would know we were in dialogue should we begin to talk about our children and how we are destroying our own planet and ask for forgiveness for calling each other liars. We would know we are in dialogue when we stop talking in political modes and begin to talk in survival modes.     

      As the species Homo sapiens we have just recently broken out of the African continent about 60,000 years ago.  Before that there were many thousands of years in which our ancestors were chimps and apes with much smaller brains.  With the enlarging of our brain about 1 million years ago the species began to emerge from Homo erectus and gradually to Homo sapiens.  We have lost our ability to swing through the trees but we have gained the ability to run and stand upright.  But what we have not done is completely evolve into reasonable loving caring unselfish human beings.  We are now rushing into a period of history in which the acceleration is leaving many people behind without jobs and without support.  If we do not care about these people that are being left behind then war will ensue again. 

Discovery

 I have been caught up in many conflicts in life and now face a conflict as to whether I should impose on the memory of an old friend from Natchez Mississippi.  He has since passed on and I now remain very old and unsure as to what I should be doing at this point in my life.  For the last several years I have been working on a group process.  This group process is aimed at the discovery of a very elemental human situation.  How do two people become so accepting of each other that they, as a pair ,have a force greater than themselves as single individuals?   There is no doubt that human beings communicate very readily in words, but have we lost a more basic nonverbal communication as we have raced through history and language development?  When I first developed the double circle group or supporting personal group it was seemingly too complicated to understand and very uncomfortable for the people participating in it.  But over the years I returned to the time and time again.  There is something mysterious going on in the double circle group which I cannot explain but I am determined to discover and expect to my dying day.  At times I felt a sensation while in the group that gave me reason without rationale, hope without fact, expectation without the slightest evidence that something material could be brought out in this group.

During my 10 years in Natchez Mississippi I came to know Ben Chase Callon.  This man was a mystery to me.  He seemed to jump right out of a Faulkner novel.  He had a way of speaking that almost was entirely metaphorical although I often groped for the metaphor.  As I began to decide to leave Natchez and go into psychiatry I thought he would object.  He helped me build the Morgantown Clinic and had been very supportive of me and my family.  But, in fact, he did not object to my leaving and told me that there was something important that I had to do that I could not do in Natchez.   At the time I just believed that I should go into psychiatry because I had always planned on it since high school.  Even though my family objected strenuously to pulling up roots, I dragged them to Gainesville Florida.  My wife was so upset about leaving that she said she played Beethoven's ninth Symphony over and over again just to ease the pain.  

 The strangest thing about Ben Chase Callon  was that he did not seem to have an ordinary ego. Rather than an ego he seemed to be in constant observation of everyone else in his life.  Over and over again  he spoke to me about the strange things that he would see in those about him which he found amusing.   Although he was a part of a several brother operation in the oil business event never really spoke about the oil business.  He talked about personality and the quirks  that he saw in personality.  I shared his interest in personality and talk to them as much as I could.  Twenty-five years after leaving Natchez and during the midst of my career as a psychiatrist, I return to visit briefly and found Ben Chase Callon there at a party for me hosted by former employees.   Again he told me that there was something important that I was supposed to do.  He did not know what it was but he was certain of it.

After a distressing period of rampant alcoholic fog in Venice Florida,  I sought the help of my long time friend, Bob Baringer, in St Augustine and limped to him for relief. In Venice I totally lost my spiritual rudder. I had also lost sight of Ben Chase Callon. I knew that there was nothing in Venice for us as a family or for me, professionally.

 Bob and I developed a practice down on St George Street in the heart of the touristy section of St Augustine. It was surreal but delightful to be in a session with a psychiatric patient and suddenly have a tourist burst through the door blurting out, " Is this house on tour?"  The patient and I laughed while the tourist sheepishly backed out of the door.  By some quirk of fate or God's blessing Bob and I gathered a men's group together. That men's group brought me to task as to what psychiatry was supposed to be about. Our group was composed of vets of three world wars and  a vet of the most notorious psychiatric hospital in the South.  At times the group unfolded into sunlight as our words failed us. Sometime later I asked myself  again and again."What was that all about?" After all words make up sentences and sentences go together to bring about enlightenment and positive change. But the stunned silences brought us all in the group to cohesion, annealing and finally relief of private pain into a shared bearable one.

So I left this idyllic practice and followed Frieda( my wife) to Gainesville.I decided to return to the University of Florida in the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry. But in a marriage one cannot go on very long with one having boucou of fun while the other sits on the beach. So when my wife decided to return to the University of Florida and find her own niche in the world of  niches. I felt vaguely permitted to tag along.They were desperate for someone who had experience in general medicine, so they welcomed me. Soon after in 1978 I began a new group method at Shands on the 8th Floor which was to become the Double Circle Group 28 years later. She gained a bachelors in psychology and went to work.

  Using my own imagination I assume that the important thing that I was supposed to do was some discovery.  I knew that Ben Chase had  little interest in wealth although he enjoyed a good life but I also knew that he thought there was something to discover in the human personality that was worthwhile.  Since then I have wandered around the state of Florida sometimes in the depths of alcoholism and sometimes in the heights of discovery.   Now at 83 I wonder how to bring this can opener into the light.  

The can opener is the Double Circle Group. This group is a method for discovery of forms of communication that predate the verbal one and may be effective in deepening and clarifying the communication level among people who are feeling the stress of modern life.

Tuesday Double Circle meeting

The meeting yesterday with K H and G H  and C  M  shook me up a bit.  I had planned on canning the entire operation of the double circle and dropping back for about six months or more; but they had other ideas and I respect that.  I realize how fragile and often worthless the individual ego is and how strengthening several people acting in good faith can transform everything I was thinking into something much better. A whole host of diagrams were brought and an entire chapter outline was presented at the meeting.  So we go forth.  That evening I met with RH and he seconded the motion to continue the project of the double circle.  In a manner of speaking the meeting helped me visualize what the double circle concept is all about.

In the first place the two circles have the effect of softening but strengthening the impact of the meeting.  The two people acting as a dyad also soften the individual egos of those two people allowing for the emergence of a deeper experience.  It is not an experience of the self but experience of the other as well.  I believe that much of what is happening is nonverbal and not easily traced without causing interruption and distortion.  So the whole matter of videotaping or recording is probably out in favor of an allowance of spiritual development rather than public exposition.  We decided to find terminology that would help simplify what are driving at.  So to begin with  we decided at least temporarily to drop the term dyad in favor of buddy.  It was agreed again temporarily that we are seeking dialogue over discussion.  We are seeking we-go over ego.  And we want to be able to visualize as much as possible what we are about on a minute-to-minute basis. So the buddies are the we-go and the individual is the ego.

Just what is we-go over ego?  When the group convenes it has a decision as to how it is to function and how it is to be directed.  In my opinion a process group is one in which there is no agenda to be fostered by the leader or a conspiracy of several.  But rather a group is dealing with the minute-to-minute process of what lurks in the hearts and minds of those in the circle.  They must however develop a sense of inclusion.  This means that they strongly feel that they belong in this group, pleasant or unpleasant, enriching or boring, too complicated or too simple, or simply unfathomable. There are implicit issues.  To borrow from David Bohm, there is an implicate order in the universe and our group in this moment is seeking to bring forth from the bottom-up a dialogue about crucial issues affecting how we live and avoid perishing on this fragile planet.  In the implicate order there is an assumption that though evil may abound in the world this group interaction has an overarching altruistic spirit.  Individual egos are dealt with by the arrangement of the two circles and the arrangement of the buddies or pairs. 

This blog is intended to become  something that the group folks are all contributing to and have an opportunity to add or subtract or even embellish what is already here.  But most importantly we need to simplify what we are talking about so that the Heart can understand it.

 I am posting a letter written to me my friend and colleague after reading the Power of the Double Circle:

Phil, I want to congratulate you on publishing your book, "The Power of the Double Circle". I have just finished reading it and I was delighted to learn more of your own life journey and to see how it has been reflected in the creation of the book. I was also extremely pleased to learn about your many years of working with groups and how you have learned from your patients. At times it seems too many psychiatrists see themselves only in the role of the teacher and not also as the learner. You have not done that but have stressed the importance of being human and  being a supportive person with your patients. This means you know the importance of being a good listener. 

Since I have not done a lot of group therapy I was not familiar with some of the concepts- such as  the "bottom up"   approach in groups. For the past few years I have been trying to learn more about the brain and in the neuroscience literature they also talk of "top down" vs "bottom up" approach but it has to with which part of the brain is becoming activated and showing its dominance and control over another part. By the time I got to the end of your book I was able to see similarities between the different concepts.

Most of all I want to say how pleased I was to see you talk of spirit in your book. To me we are one "BodyMindSpirit" unit and sadly this is not often recognized by many psychiatrists. 

I want to wish you much happiness as you continue your own journey. 

Best wishes. G