"Hell on earth is a damned good business idea. I personally, along with all the Iraq war corporate profiteers, have made a fortune from the human suffering created by scapegoating." -- Brad
Radical Honesty December eZine. Article 3
Susan Campbell about the author
The Premises and the Promises, An Interview with Brad Blanton
Susan Campbell: In your view, what is the biggest challenge (or one of the biggest challenges) facing humanity today?
Brad Blanton: The integration of personal growth with social change. This must be done soon enough and well enough to save humankind from itself. Some few millions of us are making progress in maturing beyond the standard level of maturation of most of humanity. But if civilization itself is a mental illness, as many of us are coming to believe (with corporate fascism it's terminal disease) we do not have the collective capacity to get over the disease. Our only chance is to manage this disease through deep democracy, which is a real democracy with co-intelligent decision making for the good of the greater collective (including all of humanity, not just the rich ones) and the consequent and necessary regulation of the corporate greed economy so that the well being of people does not depend on how much property or goods they can control. Civilization, the mental illness, is like herpes or diabetes-can't be cured, but might be inhibited and managed effectively to keep it from getting out of hand, so that we are not sick all the time and it doesn't kill us all.
We are all suckered by our culture. Many are just afraid of anything unconventional. Many of us don't do the overruling of the rulers as I have just advocated because we imagine ourselves as someday being successful exploiters for the benefit of our own small family, and to be able rule over others with money as we have been ruled over. Since we know this is true of us we suspect it is true of others and we are not inclined to trust each other enough to transcend this well ingrained training from our culture, which is killing us. So we fall back on habits of comfort and trust in Big Brother for the sake of a hopeful false sense of safety, which is, of course, not safe at all. Thus, we have the (suck my) Dick Cheney/George Bush neo conservative mentality-and mankind killing itself in the name of "free trade."
Susan Campbell: What gets in the way of people behaving "for the good of the whole?"
Brad Blanton: People behaving "for the good of the part!" When we mammals distinguished ourselves from our reptilian ancestors by birthing our young out of our own bodies rather than hatching, we developed at the same time the limbic brain, over on top of our reptilian brain, and it had to do with caring for our own. I have said before, as have many others, that the only thing that can save us is love--for all of each other and with all of being. But now I think love will probably not save us. Because most of the time, the love most human beings experience is not wide enough. Love for a narrower, smaller family group brings about defense against, and violence toward, other groups. In our evolutionary social experiment for all the goodies or nothing, the limbic brain is failing to integrate with the prefrontal lobes soon enough because we cannot develop the capacity to include all human beings, much less all being, to care for as our own. Humankind is coming to an end because of that failure.
Even when people get in touch with themselves as beings who notice as their primary identity (which is what the therapeutic goal of Radical Honesty is) and see the similarity between themselves and all other beings, they move away from that because everything in our culture reinforces the more limited view of who they are as just their performance. This is the main thing learned in school. You are your performance. You are the grades you make, the acceptance you get, the recognition by teachers and peers, your status in the eyes of others, how you rank, the college you go to, etc. In order to perform well and be recognized you must be obedient, showing up when they tell you to and doing what they say. Thus obedience training overrules caring for anyone or anything bigger than the trap of caring for your own performance. That is why I have kept my kids out of school. My daughter Carsie (Carsie Blanton, 22, at http://www.carsieblanton.com ) is an independent, powerfully creative person and a gift to humanity. She missed her obedience training. She is a performer. She knows that who she is, is not her performance. Most Americas have taken their obedience training and are proud of it.
Our schools are the very heart of fascism. This is why, as Morris Berman said, "America takes away love and gives its citizens gadgets in return, which most of them regard as a terrific bargain."
Consequently, as Dale Allen Pfeiffer says, "People need to understand that we are faced with a madness that will make life miserable for us and for generations to come, if it does not severely damage the viability of this entire planet. Yet they also need to know that each of us has the power to stop this madness, simply by ceasing to take part in the system that perpetuates this madness. We are all armed with monkey wrenches, it is time to use them. It is time to take back our power and to realize that we, ourselves, are our own masters. And let us never delegate that power or that responsibility again."
As my friend the great theologian and Christian leader Gene Marshall says: "...we are in a fascist system right now and this trend is intensifying. The Democrats are weak to nil in their opposition to this. We will need to use our monkey-wrenching power to correct this. We do not now have the forces to shut down the society and force the needed change. Building these forces is key."
The corporations, Morris Berman tells us in his books Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, are killing democracy and ending civilization as we knew it.")
Susan Campbell: How does your work address this issue?
Brad Blanton: My work is about two things: personal growth to the point of liberation from the mind and social change. Personally forgiving others and yourself for the sake of living free and perpetuating honesty for the sake of peace rather than violence-which means not suppressing anger, sexuality, joyfulness or grief-precedes and necessitates activism for social change. I coach people to live into their emotional experiences and to share what it is like and what they learn with others. By sharing honestly about how life is for us, we learn to forgive, be compassionate and contribute our wisdom and attainment of presence to benefit others.
We make agreements with each other to keep each other straight (which is to re-rescue each other from domination by our minds and culture of belief and ignorance). As we pass this renewal of freedom forward to others, and back and forth to each other, at some point we must come in conflict with the economic and social forces that are powerful and aligned against us and vested in stopping us for the sake of their continued domination of us. This is inevitable.
Therefore it follows that the second part of my work is to bring about social change. My colleague and mentor Derrick Jensen has been asking people this question for a while: "Do you believe that our culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living?" He says,
"For the last several years I've taken to asking people this question, at talks and rallies, in libraries, on buses, in airplanes, at the grocery store, the hardware store. Everywhere. The answers range from emphatic nos to laughter. No one answers in the affirmative. One fellow at one talk did raise his hand, and when everyone looked at him, he dropped his hand, then said, sheepishly, "Oh, voluntary? No, of course not." My next question: how will this understanding-that this culture will not voluntarily stop destroying the natural world, eliminating indigenous cultures, exploiting the poor, and killing those who resist-shift our strategy and tactics? The answer? Nobody knows, because we never talk about it: we're too busy pretending the culture will undergo a magical transformation."
Here are some of the premises of Jensen's recent book, The End Game:
Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.
Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources-gold, oil, and so on-can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.
Premise Three: Our way of living-industrial civilization-is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.
Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.
Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control-in everyday language, to make money-by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.
Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.
Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash-or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down-the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after." (There are 12 more premises and several sub edits of them in Derrick Jensen's book, End Game. Get it. It is a mind blower!)
Do these ring a bell? Do any of these premises seem right to you? They all seem to be sound to me and I consider myself an ally of Derrick Jensen, Gene Marshall, and Susan Campbell.
Susan Campbell: What would it take to make honest communication the new cultural norm? What are you personally doing about the damage being done to the world by the culture we are maintaining?
Brad Blanton: I am remembering these names and talking about them to others; Derrick Jensen, David Korten, Michael Brown. The three most recent books by those authors are the heart of the matter about both personal and social change. (Michael Brown, The Presence Process. Derrick Jensen, The End Game. David Korten The Turning.) Also, Morris Berman, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, and many, many others.
Also, with help from a lot of friends and colleagues I am building a portal for all the leaders in personal transformation and all of the leaders in social change to all walk through together. It is being constructed at our web site; http://www.radicalhonesty.com.
Finally, I am building and keeping track of and maintaining and reporting back on a personal pledge sheet, which has within it the fundamental elements of personal transformation and social change. I would like for millions of people to make these pledges and connect with us and each other, and suggest others to be added, until we overthrow the governments of the world and take power for ourselves, individually and collectively. Here are the pledges I am inviting you, and everyone we know, to make:
Dear Friend, Say yes to what you are willing to promise. Say no to what you are not willing to promise. Feel free to make further suggestions of promises you are willing to make and that other people can make that we can count, publish and write about. Send to: support@radicalhonesty.com
I promise to tell the truth, every day, to everyone I am personally related to, and when I fail in doing so and catch myself, I will report to them immediately that I lied to them and what it was I lied about or what I withheld from them. _____________.
I promise I will read http://www.adbusters.org, join the people there and not buy a damned thing the day after Christmas, "Boxing Day". ____________.
I promise will show up for work a half hour late on every Friday following the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I will add a half hour to that and do it every week until U.S. Troops are withdrawn from Iraq. _____________.
I promise perform some action in the real world after meditative consideration each day, to bring about honesty and peace on Earth.___________.
I promise I will attend at least one Radical Honesty Workshop or a workshop of one of the truth summit leaders in 2008. ____________.
I promise I will send a copy of these promises to 20 friends of mine and ask them to read and fill out this pledge sheet and send it back to support@radicalhonesty.com ___________.
I promise I will start some kind of ongoing group at my house or office or place of work to have an ongoing conversation about the relationship between honesty, personal growth and social change, so we, the participants can support each other and challenge each other's minds.__________.
I promise to eliminate unnecessary struggle in bringing this great turning about, by meditating and doing personal psychological work to allow me to forgive idiots and fools and love life and love being here. _________.
Susan Campbell: What does it take to be honest/to live an authentic life?
Brad Blanton: Give up being obedient to ideas about how you should behave. Make a lot of mistakes. Get that "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly." Operate out of what you notice in your body and what you notice in the world and out of ongoing honest conversations in the world, more than what you think. Always distrust your mind. It is your culture trying to control you. Love and honor the being of other people. Do not honor, respect, cater to, try to console, please or in any way shape or form submit to the mind of any human being, including yourself. Stay in love with being and let the chips fall where they may. Thanks for asking these questions, Susan. I am glad you and I are in The Honesty Cult together.
Susan Campbell, Ph.D., has worked for many years as a relationship coach and a teamwork consultant to Fortune 500 companies. She is the author of five previous books, including The Couple Journey, Beyond the Power Struggle, and From Chaos to Confidence.
Susan Campbell 
