A Proper Level of Woo
After ten years or so of looking deeply at how the world works, of developing more complexity-fit mindsets, of supporting people through the biggest challenges and opportunities of their lives, some patterns begin to emerge.
One of them is this: if we go too far with any one thing, it becomes damaging.
As I once heard the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson say, even too much water will poison you.
This is as true of our strengths and talents as it is of our vices and struggles.
It is as true of the things that have carried our societies to places of incredible possibility as it is of the things that seem to be taking us closer to the precipice.
One of the reasons for this is that when we move to an extreme in one dimension we tend to leave behind the possibilities of the opposite dimension.
When we discover something new, we tend to leave everything of the old behind.
The alternative, to borrow a phrase from the philospher Ken Wilber, is to transcend and include the previous stage.
One of the patterns that I have been returning to again and again is our overreliance on the rational.
Most expert thinkers know the problem with this. The overwhelming stuckness that comes when our rational mind can’t work out a problem by the pros and cons. When the complexity of the situation means that trying to think too much gets us only wrapped up more and more and more.
I’ve heard it in a room full of acadmic researchers: the suggestion that the only relevant things to say are those based on peer reviewed studies. That there is no other valid way to know things than the scientific method.
I’ve heard anything unscientific or slightly ‘odd’ be dismissed as hippy nonsense. I’ve done that dismissing myself.
And yet.
What have we left behind in moving to the ultra-rational?
Have we really transcended and included what came before, or have we pushed and come to overrely - personally and collectively - on the rational?
Allow ourselves to move beyond only the rational and - many times - previously invisible doors may open.
Allow ourselves to transcend and include it, but also include what came before, and we might find ourselves with what Rob Bell calls A Proper Level of Woo.
We don’t want too much woo - then it really might be hippy nonsense. And don’t forget that the scientific method is an incredible exercise in collective sense-making and developing robust knowledge.
But we don’t want no woo. Because the wisdom traditions, the ancient customs, the witches and shamen - even the hippies - they knew things we don’t. They know things that are true, but they know them in their own irrational ways. They knew things that are true that we have forgotten.
Or at least we forget them when we don’t have a proper level of woo.
I’ve seen intuitions take people through a previously intractable problem in seconds.
I’ve heard someone’s dog barking at them during a coaching call and asked them, if the dog was carrying a message from the universe, what would he be saying? And found that they knew, and it changed everything.
I’ve seen the power of the moon, or the tree in my garden, seem to shift things for me where no amount of thinking could help.
I’ve had God speak to me in flowers, as Ingrid Goff Madoff wrote, as long as I didn’t miss it while I was waiting for words.
A strange thing happened to me last year.
Three clients, all leaders, all ‘serious people’… All of them, in the space of two weeks, sharing their secret spirituality with me.
It didn’t stop them being effective, being hard-hitting at times. Having the numbers right. Having the difficult conversations.
It did something else. It guided them, it connected them.
It was, we might say, a proper level of woo.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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