Shaping Change
“All that you touch, you Change.
All that you Change, changes you.
The only lasting thing is Change, God is Change.”These are the wise words of Octavia Butler - we’ll come back to them in a moment.
The first time I heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment I was with a friend, living in Washington, DC a few months after working on the first Obama Presidential campaign.
We were at a coffee shop - well caffeinated, riding the wave of hope and change rolling into the nation’s capitol - talking about humans, the nature of humans.
“Well, you know the Stanford Prison Experiment - he asked.”
I didn’t and he began to share about one of the most well known psychological studies in the world conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 out of Stanford University - a study, I imagine, familiar to many of you.
Often the way it’s shared is that a sampling of the population was put into a basement - some were told they were prison guards and given uniforms, some were told they were prisoners.
And within a couple of days - unprompted - the guards began to abuse the inmates.
The study was called off early as it deteriorated quickly and all in all proved that within certain conditions humans have a natural inclination toward power over, domination and abuse.
Oof.
I was both disheartened as my friend outlined the findings of this study, but also eagerly grabbed onto the clearness and simplicity of the conclusion.
Well, ok, this is disappointing, but at least we now know this thing about humans and can build from there.
And people have been citing this experiment for 50 years - myself included - it shows up in most beginner psychology textbooks and its mainstream popularity has shaped culture.
And - it turns out - the Stanford Prison Experiment is riddled with problems and proves very little, actually, about the nature of humans - outside of what many Americans at the time wanted to hear and wanted to be true about humans.
A couple of weeks ago I texted a friend seeking some peer motivation around not wanting to clean my house and she suggested a podcast called - You’re Wrong About - which meticulously goes through big moments in popular culture and the way they’ve been miscast in the public imagination - like, the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Over the course of the next 70 minutes I probably spent more time with my vacuum off and in hand….jaw dropped -
Philip Zimbardo, it turns out, was understandably wrestling - along with the rest of the world - with how to explain the Holocaust at the time of this study.
And, he was commendably an advocate for prison reform. Unfortunately this meant that he went into the study already deciding what he wanted the study to prove. Two days into the prison experiment Zimbardo called a press conference to reveal the results of a study that was still actively going on…
No peer review, no standard research process - there was a press conference and an agenda, which ended up dominating the narrative for the next decades.
This was not a random sampling of the population -
but all men who happened to be hanging out in Palo Alto that summer
And there are recordings of Zimbardo and others challenging the guards to demonstrate more abusive behavior…as it was important to the study…which they were getting paid for, mind you.
There’s much more I could share.
The debunking of the popular experiment still leaves room for many things learned - it’s all interesting and complex - much like humans.
But as I listened to each layer of nuanced unpacking…I could feel the ground slightly shifting underneath me -
I mean, in some sense it was great news to hear that the experiment was bunk - more hope for humanity…but I also confronted the feeling of having to let go of something I thought was completely true, sturdy, sure -
like a pillar holding up a dock - one got knocked out and all of a sudden I felt a little wobbly.
These moments when what we thought was true - turn out not to be.
We’ve all had them, big and small - an experience when a foundational truth begins to crumble - a truth about the collective like the Stanford Prison Experiment - or something closer to your heart and deeply personal.
Maybe it was an illness - in your own life or in the life of someone you deeply love - maybe it was when your beloved died - two legged or four legged.
Confusion, disorientation - our minds trying to rationalize - or resist. Trying to make sense of a completely new truth that our brains don’t yet have patterning for. Is this really happening?
When what we knew to be true - sure, stable, reliable - secure - is no longer - there can be almost a sense of groundlessness.
How do you respond when change rushes into your life? When what you thought was true - turns out not to be? When a new truth rushes in?
Joanna Macy, Buddhist, deep ecologist and the founder of the Work that Reconnects - names this time we’re in as The Great Turning - a time of collective awakening, a shift away from industrial growth and individualism - - toward sustainability, regeneration and interdependence.
A time of awakening to our profound and complex connection to all life - - an awakening that requires us to see the shock and to feel the despair in the ways we’ve been living in disconnection.
In the ways we’ve been living in systems ordered by supremacy (consciously and mostly unconsciously) - whether human supremacy, white supremacy, sex or gender supremacy, group supremacy.
Since the fall of 2016 many of us gathered here have felt the foundations of what we thought to be true - begin to break.
For many of us - especially and maybe even primarily those of us that are white and citizens - the stories that we’ve had and held about our country have been coming apart at the seams. Sometimes like a slow unraveling and other times like a - shattering - a shock. A breaking open.
The rise of fascism and white nationalist terrorism, a global pandemic, climate collapse becoming more real and felt.
Experiences of confronting your whiteness for the very first time - witnessing white people confront our whiteness in new and deeper ways - - and the terrifying, devastating iceberg of truth that shows itself every time an unarmed and beautiful Black man, Black woman, Black trans person, Indigenous person, an immigrant, an Asian American elder - loses their breath, loses their life at the hands of state violence or community terror.
With these big collective shifts of truth for many of us - It might feel like the very ground is cracking open underneath your feet.
And in response I’m noticing a variety of reactions - especially, again, those of us who have been traditionally afforded levels of safety and security in our lives and in these systems.
Some of us are shutting down, denying, ignoring as best we can. Our plates are more than full - no doubt. And others of us are going into action/fix-it overdrive mode.
Even when difficult but necessary - even when ushering in new life - change is often uncomfortable. Like birth - or the coming to life of something new - change is often messy, raw, miraculous - often complicated.
And it is also inevitable, a part of the fabric of life.
The seasons, our bodies, the shapes of our families and communities - the night sky, our values and commitments.
Change just - is.
And I haven’t been able to get those words of Octavia Butler out of my head:
All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is change.
This, dear ones, is some of the good news of Unitarian Universalism and how our faith prepares us for this moment in time.
And if the word “God “ here trips you up - translate for yourself - Spirit, Love, Community, Universe, Ground of All Being.
Octavia Butler was not a Unitarian Universalist - but a science fiction writer, a black woman, a feminist - a change maker, a shaper of change.
She did the important work of imagining futures - imagining possibilities through massive change - - and the central role marginalized people and groups in this country (poor people, Black people, brown people, queer people, women… ) will take in leading the way forward.
“All that you touch you change.
All that you change changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
God is change.”
In this faith we often talk about it as - truth ever unfolding, that revelation is unsealed and continuous.
Unitarian Universalism, afterall, is a - living tradition - a living faith. Truth isn’t only in the past - or sealed in one particular text - or held frozen in time by one particular person.
Our faith, this faith, says that the story is not over - is never over - that truth is constantly revealing itself - now
and now
and now
to you, and to all other life.
Constantly revealing itself from within our own lives and real human experiences, from within the lives of others, through science and stories…
What truth is revealing itself to you in your life right now? And what new truth is revealing itself to your neighbor? Your child? Your spouse? To us as a country - as a collective body?
And how do we do it - how do we greet this gift of truth when it means so much change.
When it might mean that parts of our lives have to change - maybe small things, maybe big things. How do we faithfully face it?
With courage and humility.
The courage to use your agency and will, your power of choice (where you have it) - to co-create community - and maybe even a country - where the inherent worthiness of all life rings through every pocket and corner.
The courage to shape change - or at least try to - knowing that no right is guaranteed, knowing that even in the midst of all that you carry - we need you and your gifts - yes, yours - because you’re here.
Because the improbability of your life has landed you here, in this moment, 2021, right now.
But the courage is always paired with humility.
The humility needed to be changed.
To be shaped by the change - to keep our palms always a little open - humble in the face of all we do not yet know - open to our unlearning.
The humility to listen and be changed by the truths of others knowing that you carry a piece of the truth - and it’s just a piece.
We live into this Great Turning with courage & humility, but also with our imaginations turned all the way up.
Imagining, allowing ourselves to imagine a future of interdependence where all are free - with detail and color, shapes and shadows - far from being unrealistic or childlike - is essential, we must imagine it…really imagine it…as a crucial part of getting there.
I recently learned from historian Yuval Harari that there are a few things that distinguish humans from all other species.
Unlike our close chimpanzee kin, as humans - far from being innately punitive toward each other - we have this capacity to work collectively with each other in groups even if we don’t know everyone intimately in the group.
“The real difference between humans and all other animals” Harari shares “is not at the individual level, it’s on the collective level.”
And Harari argues that the thing that makes this possible - is our imagination. The ability to not only imagine a possible future, but to share this imagining with each other - a kind of collective imagining.
“All other animals use their communication system only to describe reality” says Harari. “Humans, in contrast, use their language not merely to describe reality but also to create new realities.”
What can you allow yourself to imagine? What ways of being, relating, what institutions, systems structures - that don’t currently exist - can you allow yourself to - imagine?
“The world we are living in it right now,” writes adrienne maree brown - author, healer and social justice facilitator whose words I know you explored last week together.
“The world we are living in right now” she writes, “someone else imagined it into being and we’ve accepted it as a reality. Someone imagined these concepts, imagined this hierarchy, imagined some would be superior to others, and imagined that we could only move forward with a punitive system.” she adds.
The rules and assumptions that govern our economic system were literally imagined be humans before us.
Sometimes when I imagine our collective futures I like to get really specific:
There’s more dancing and shared meals. Even amidst the push and pull of what will be - everyone, all of us - never forget that we are worthy, that we are loved - just as we are.
Children everywhere feel connected to their No and their Yes and empowered by the gift of consent. The values of reciprocity, regeneration, and humility shape are economic structure. Water is seen as life.
There’s no email in this vision. We’ve figured out some other way of communicating in the ways we need to communicate with each other.
There’s also a different rhythm that values slowness instead of speed, where we ask - how are you? - and really want to know the answer.
Where we know that we are not separate from nature, but a part of her.
There’s laughter and silliness - tears too no doubt - but a community ready to catch them.
What do you see? What does your heart know is possible? Not just in the timeline of your own life or even your children’s lives - but 5, 6, 7 generations from now. What will you, can you, allow yourself to imagine?
Because the power of the imagining is that we do it together.
“All that you touch, you Change.
All that you Change, changes you.
The only lasting thing is Change, God is Change.”
May it be so. Amen.