Cross-Cultural Inspiration

Last week, I became a bit irritated by the conversation around a conference table of twenty-five business operators. The talk was all about numbers, strategy and organization charts. Not one person mentioned that all of the plans they were cooking up had to be executed by real human beings. This is a great company, but like most companies, its officers focus on the “what” and the “how” rather than the “why.”

I finally entered the discussion, and suggested that they were in great businesses that made a difference in the world, and that to remind their thousands of employees about that difference might contribute to some “inspired” action in the market.

There was general silence at that suggestion except for a solid comment by one senior executive at the table: “Everyone wants to be inspired.”

This seems true, at least for those who have had the experience at least once. And to confirm its validity, I often ask the question in the headline of this post, “When was the last time you were inspired?” The responses nearly always inspire me.

This week, in a group of fifty, there were only five answers. Two were stories about women over the age of 100 who continued to really “live”—an aunt who reportedly got out of her car and removed a tree branch from the road with a chain saw, demanding that others “stay in the car and keep our of her way.” (Feisty old girl!) Another was similar; a lady who still volunteered at the local school reading to kindergarten kids….she was also a centenarian.

Still other stories involve the aesthetic: music, art, nature—a particular sunset, a realization when looking at stars in a black sky from a meadow—in short, having the experience of awe in the face of a universe that is unexplainable.

Another from a young father—watching his three-year-old get a cookie from the top of the refrigerator by stacking books on a chair so that he could reach high enough to grasp the prize.

On Monday, September 29, Beliefnet published twenty-one ways to be inspired. Some involved nature—watch a sunset or take a walk near a waterfall—while others involved expressions of gratitude or love. Still others suggested solitude—read a book, listen to music.

Yet, even these actions which seem on target, require something other than the “what” to hit the mark. They all require a certain presence, an openness, a sense of wonder. It seems that even when you are doing the right thing, your internal space has to have room for inspiration to enter.

As I start now to write a dissertation on this subject, I come back to one of the earliest entries in this blog of February 10, “What is Inspiration?”

How does one person inspire others

We certainly don’t take specific political positions on this blog; our primary purpose is to explore the nature of inspiration. But whether or not one agrees with the political philosophy of Barack Obama, it’s clear that millions have been inspired by his written and spoken rhetoric in the past three years. Many of those inspired have not been citizens of the United States, but rather reside in other areas of the world, so it would be fair to say that his appeal is at least somewhat cross-cultural.

In the following video, Benedictine monk and prolific author Brother David Steindl-Rast offers his opinion of the basis for that reaction.

We’re interested in your view. After you watch the video, please reflect on the question and let us know your reaction.

Were you/are you inspired by Obama? Do you agree with Brother David’s assessment? If you were inspired and you disagree with Brother David’s assessment, why do you think you were moved by Obama?

If you were not inspired, what was missing?

Is Inspiration dependent on what we consider moral?

While many believe that we are only inspired by our “better” angels, it seems that many have been inspired by an appeal to values that would not be considered “better” at all. History and the present day hold many examples of dictators, corporate barons and other zealots who called forth the inspired efforts of many people for causes that were not considered “better.“

Are these aberrations, or is there something in the nature of inspiration that is amoral?

Thanks for your comments!

When I was in undergraduate school at Linfield College in the 60s, my cadre of friends studying Religious Philosophy would drink strong coffee and discuss whether the prophets of various religions predicted the future or created it. Since I’m a believer in the power of declaration, I always came down on the side of creation.

My friend and current teacher, Dennis Slattery of The Pacifica Graduate Institute, believes in the power of story to transform, to inspire. Since the human is the only being that can imagine a future different from the present, it would seem likely that narrative indeed has a special place in our quest to discover the source of inspiration. After all, Martin Luther King did not say, “I have a few concepts that I’d like to discuss.” He said that he had a different story, a dream in mind that could be lived out if we chose to make it real.

So what about the declaration of a future story in today’s world? In Sunday’s NY Times, Robert J. Shiller, economics professor at Yale, suggests that the “Depression narrative […] is not just a story about the past: It has started to inform our current expectations.” [1]

He warns the President that embedding a story in the populace can create a future that is not a pleasant one. Indeed, the darker the President paints the future, the lower the University of Michigan consumer confidence index slides.

Naturally, events have to also yield hope in order to produce new results. But is it possible that the voice from without has to speak first? Do we need to be inspired to create something new from this fire? I think so. Perhaps it is time for some of that optimistic, believable rhetoric from the campaign. Just what does our future look like?

February 5, 2009.

From the Morning Edition, July 18, 2005, comes an editorial by Iranian-born writer Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) about empathy and its function in allowing us to experience the commonality between people of different heritages. She remarks, “Whenever I think of the word empathy, I think of a small boy named Huckleberry Finn contemplating his friend and a runaway slave, Jim. Huck asks himself whether he should give Jim up or not. Huck was told in Sunday school that people who let slaves go free go to ‘everlasting fire.’” But when he imagines Jim, then he remembers their friendship. “He imagines Jim not as a slave but as a human being and he decides that, ‘alright, then, I’ll go to hell.’”

Professor Nafisi was supported in like manner by strict young Muslim men who disagreed with her views but defended her from the school administration in a Taliban-controlled Tehran University because of their respect for her as a colleague and peer. She was later expelled and virtually exiled to the United States.

“This experience,” says Nafisi, “reinforces my belief in the mysterious connections that link individuals to each other despite their vast differences.” It is through empathy that “the pain experienced by an Algerian woman, a North Korean dissident, A Rwandan child or an Iraqi prisoner, becomes real to me and not just passing news.”

Neurobiologists agree with Nafisi. Since the 1960s, research on empathy using new Functional Magnetic Resonance has revealed the working of mirror neurons. These neurons can not only recreate in us the experience of the other, but they also can allow us to feel what the other person is feeling. In early life, mirror neurons allow a child to imitate others, learning language, social behavior and other skills and behaviors necessary for survival. As adults a well-functioning system of mirror neurons allows us to feel the pain of others, to recognize ourselves in their circumstances.

If this is so, then inspiration itself can actually be physically infectious. We know that one person can inspire others with hope, enthusiasm and possibility. We know, for example, that I can build a model of the future in my own imagination and then communicate in a way that others not only understand it, but see and feel its impact on their own future.

Just as our understanding and empathy for the plights of others can be transmitted, so can new possibility.