JULY 2021 BLOG

Fritz Perls
 

Dear Readers,

I am starting this July blog a bit late due to a lot of complex issues, both personal and social. Brisbane is now on lockdown for about 4 days, and I personally am not choosing to get the AstraZeneca vaccine and waiting to get the Pfizer one. However, the good news is that I am inspired to write more and share myself online.

One of my reflections this week, was on the matter of Elderhood. I wrote a paper on “Chaos Theory and Elderhood” and this paper was accepted as a discussion paper at the AASW (Association of Social Work) international conference to be held in Brisbane  in November of this year.

  The other topic that I am reflecting on, is the Mentoring Initiation for men over 50 and who are ready and willing to help the young men of today in their initiation into adulthood. This idea comes from my attending the MANSHINE event last month where 130 men shared their stories in small and big group gatherings every day.

At this event, I noticed a small group of elder men that called themselves “old cogers." I joined them excited to hear their stories and share my own.  Being with the elders there, I became  inspired to design a proposal for men over 50, where they could join me in a group that will learn and experience the skills of Mentoring, leadership, initiation rites and more.

As a gestalt therapist and trainer of group leaders, for over 20 years, I want to share my skills and knowledge with men who can become facilitators and develop Mentoring abilities to help young men. My own Mentor, Michael Meade, gave me a lot of tools and ideas by way of rituals, stories, myths and poems that led me to design a "bag" of teaching tools. I add here my own gestalt theory and practice to enhance the Humanistic perspective.

You may listen to Michael Meade’s podcast by clicking on the link below.

 

Michael Meade podcast: 

 

 What follows is a facilitators program ideas for Mentors -  a gestalt approach in working with groups. Much of this content was derived from my readings of  books by Malcolm Parlett and others.

1. The group is an ‘organism-environment’ field consisting of multiple forces in functional interrelationship to each other and to the whole.

2. Experience has an underlying structure

3. The group field has multi-boundaries.

4. The group field is multi-layered.

5. The group has many contexts (field conditions), all of which affect its here-and-now process.

6. We can discover the nature and structure of the group field both by observation and by systematic experimentation.

7. Everyone has a point of view, and no point of view is inherently preferable to any other.

8. The observer is always and necessarily part of the situation, and affects the object of study, and vice versa.

9. We should try to distinguish ‘naïve experience’ from theories, hypotheses, assumptions, preconceptions etc.

10. Begin by describing phenomena, rather than trying to explain them.

11. All information is potentially relevant.

THE FIELD PERSPECTIVE

Gestalt therapy has a particular version of field theory. Its starting point is the ‘organism-environment field’, a field that is created and sustained from the interactions of humans (and other animals) and their environment. In this field many kinds of factors operate at the same time. I am a physical body, also biologically an animal, as well as a therapist – a social role – an Australian, etc. All these are part of the field, and all must be considered in any investigation of the field. Let me illustrate this more concretely:

Imagine that I am a therapist who is starting a new group. The members arrive and settle themselves in the group room. I look around at them, noticing my own feelings and wondering what theirs are. As I sit in the group room waiting for the group to start, my present physical environment includes air to breathe, a chair to support my body, and a room temperature. Looking out of the window, I can see trees being blown by a blustery wind.

All group phenomena are 'of’' the field, in the strong sense of being actually constituted by the field and its complex structures and dynamics. The people and events of the group are continually mutually influencing and affecting each other so that no events in the group field are isolated from other events. We sometimes describe this in Gestalt as ‘co-creation’ – I create something that is in turn helping to create me…and so on.

FIGURE AND GROUND

Returning, again to the group, I notice that it is time to start, and close the door to signify this. Looking round, I see Jim sitting silently, without his usual energy. I wonder what is up with him. For a few moments, he is the centre of my attention, and stands out for me. At that moment, I do not notice the others in the group. They have momentarily faded into the background.

The point is a general one: in perception, we do not see all things equally. At any given moment, some things are 'figural', and grab our attention. Then something else stands out for us, and the previous figure recedes into the background. We are continually organising and re-organising our experiences of ourselves and the environment into a series of 'meaningful wholes' or gestalts in this way.

MULTIPLE BOUNDARIES IN THE GROUP FIELD

In Gestalt theory, experience occurs at the boundary between the organism and its environment. This boundary is sometimes called ‘the contact boundary’, and its operation is what creates the world as we experience it.

‘Contact’ – being in touch with objects – is the basis of both our sensing of the world, and our action within it. Contact, in Gestalt theory is ‘the simplest and first reality’. It is through this contact that the boundaries that come to define us as human organisms and as people in the world come to be constructed. Let me briefly show how this occurs.

For our purposes, it is useful to think of three different boundaries operating in the formation of experience. First is the so-called ‘self’ boundary. This includes my body-boundary (skin surface) and the sensory organs which operate in it and which give me my basic experience of the world – sights, sounds, smells, surfaces and so on. Next is the ‘Me’ boundary. This is where I begin to get a sense of myself: who I am, what I want. I do this by making choices about which bits of the world are important and interesting to me, and which are not. I identify with some things and alienate myself from others, giving myself a sense of I and not-I. Finally, is my ‘Social’ boundary, where I can be aware how others and I would describe or characterize me.

THE GROUP FIELD HAS MANY LAYERS

Both the group leader and the group members are trying, in their different ways, to gain insight into the structure and dynamics of the group field, right here and now. I would like now to consider a way to divide up and focus in on current process that is of particular interest and use to group leaders. This involves identifying three natural 'levels' of group life: the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the group-as-a-whole. If the group leader understands these levels, then he can organise his observation and intervention in the group setting by choosing to concentrate, as appropriate and useful, on the behaviour and experience of group members as individuals; on the interactions between individuals, and on the 'group-as-a-whole', the group system.

I believe that this way of looking at group life in terms of 'levels' stems directly from Gestalt’s holistic roots. When we talk of levels, we are talking about the hierarchical ways in which the group field is structured by natural and social forces, and our attempts as group leaders and members to gain insight into this structure both by how we conceive it and how we act within it. AS A WHOLE

SEVERAL WAYS TO NOTICE THE GROUP ZONES OF AWARENESS

(i) Here and Now: This is what goes on in group sessions, the here-and-now process of the group. In field theory, this is what is 'real', our primary therapeutic focus. A few of the relevant field factors which constitute the group process are: the physical conditions of the group room, group member's current feelings and desires, individual contact styles, contact patterns between individuals (pairs and sub-groups), energy levels and so on.

(ii) There and Now: This zone includes factors relating to the current (spatially) external field in which the group operates. This includes group member's current lives outside the group and between sessions, the location of the group room, events in the world that may be impacting on the group in some way (in the electronic age, spatial distance is irrelevant). The current pandemic is creating a need of spatial distance.

(iii) Here and Then: This refers to the group's history, what has happened to group members in previous sessions. This includes their memories of what has happened, and fantasies and stories about the past.

(iv) There and Then: This largely refers to the past history of group members - their life stories.

DISCOVER THE NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE GROUP FIELD BY OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENTATION

Uncovering the structure of the actual situation is a key task for the leader and the group together. Sometimes this is done by observation, noticing something, perhaps making a comment, and sometimes by an experiment, trying something out to see what happens. When we do this, the underlying structure is often made more visible. A feature of group life that was not in individual or group awareness suddenly becomes figural.

The more we understand how this process of exploration and discovery works, the more we can systematically endeavor to make the field structure visible by exploration and experiment: ‘What will happen if I/you/we….?” Some simple but relevant questions that group leaders and members might ask themselves are:

· What, in general, seems possible or not possible here and now?

· What can be done or not done?

· What can be said or can’t be said?

· What can be felt and what is rarely or never felt?

· What do we know and what do we avoid knowing?

· What are the present enabling and restraining forces around possible group events?

So even though several people are in a group room together, their phenomenal experiences are all different. They will have different perceptions, needs, desires and backgrounds. No two people will experience the group process exactly the same, and sometimes perceptions will vary very widely indeed. There is therefore no absolute objective 'truth' about how the group really is. The best we can hope for is an inter-subjective, negotiated view of what is going on which allows for multiple perspectives.

The implications of this for group processing are profound. Even if we think that a situation is repeating itself, we must recognise this is literally impossible. Every situation and every experience is, if we consider it fully enough, unique, different to any which has preceded it. This does not mean that there are not regularities, that one situation will never resemble another, but that the resemblance is always partial and limited.

THE OBSERVER IS ALWAYS PART OF THE TOTAL SITUATION AND AFFECTS EVERYBODY.

In groups we are all observers sometimes, noticing things that happen or do not happen, aware of ourselves, others, the group in the situation. And we are also subject of observation by others. We act and are acted upon in turn.

This applies to the group leader as much as to any other group member. The group leader has an important role to play in the group, but he always remains part of the group field. The idea that the leader is (or should be) a separate, objective figure who must somehow distance himself from the other group members in order to study them does not fit with a field theory perspective. No longer, in this relational universe, can we study anything as separate from ourselves. Our acts of observation are part of the process that brings forth the manifestation of what we are observing.

  BEGIN BY DESCRIBING PHENOMENA, RATHER THAN TRYING TO EXPLAIN THEM

If we take a phenomenological approach, then several things become clear. The first is that our knowledge of the group comes through the experience of all its members. Not just the group leader, but also everyone who is in, and experiencing, the group has something to offer. there is no single truth about what is happening in the group or about group process. If several people have a similar experience, which they then interpret in a similar way, then there will, to that extent, be a consensual reality, but it is not ‘the truth’ of the situation.

Perhaps the group has a feeling of stuckness that we cannot understand, until we realize that several people are feeling angry with the leader but are not voicing this feeling. Once we realize that this is happening, we have an ‘Aha!’ experience. So that’s what was going on! Suddenly the energy rises, and people start to relate more freely…

 BEGIN BY DESCRIBING PHENOMENA, RATHER THAN TRYING TO EXPLAIN THEM

This theme encourages us to initially focus on our immediate and concrete experience, and not to rush to explanations and theories too quickly. Of course,  we can never escape theorising at a conscious or unconscious level entirely, but we can learn to recognise the continuum between more concrete description at one end, and more abstract theorising at the other. Once we appreciate this, we can combine our observing and theorising more effectively.

CONCLUSION

The gestalt work with groups is not the only way to describe and work with group process, and no way is ‘truer’ than any other approaches. Whether you use the Gestalt approach described here, or prefer some other, the approach you use is a means to an end, and the end is helping you and group members to get greater understanding of the complex and constantly changing facets of the overall group process.

 

READING LIST

John Harris [1995], 'Working with Large Groups and Teams', Topics in Gestalt Therapy Vol 3 No 2

Malcolm Parlett [1991], 'Reflections on Field Theory', British Gestalt Journal, Volume 1 No 2

Peter Philippson & John Bernard Harris [1992], Gestalt: Working with Groups, Manchester Gestalt Centre

*Peter Philippson [1995], 'Why Shouldn't We Interrupt?', Topics in Gestalt Therapy Vol 3 No 2

Ernesto Spinelli [1992] The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology, Sage Pubs 1989

Starak, Yaro (2012), Group Work Skills.

Shaw Martin  The Branch From the Lightning Tree .White Cloud Press

 

 

 

  

JUNE 2021 - BLOG

 

FEAR

 

              artist: Edward Munch

“Fear is one of the most powerful emotions. It has an extraordinarily strong effect on your mind and body.

Fear can create strong signals of response when we are in emergencies – for instance, if we are caught in a fire or are being attacked.

It can also take effect when you are faced with non-dangerous events, like exams, public speaking, a new job, a date, or even a party. It is a natural response to a threat that can be either perceived or real.

Anxiety is a word we use for some types of fear that are usually to do with the thought of a threat or something going wrong in the future, rather than right now.

Fear and anxiety can last for a short time and then pass, but they can also last much longer, and you can get stuck with them. In some cases, they can take over your life, affecting your ability to eat, sleep, concentrate, travel, enjoy life, or even leave the house or go to work or school. This can hold you back from doing things you want or need to do, and it also affects your health.

Some people become overwhelmed by fear and want to avoid situations that might make them frightened or anxious. It can be hard to break this cycle, but there are lots of ways to do it. You can learn to feel less fearful and to cope with fear so that it does not stop you from living.” (Mental Health Foundation.)

Having read a booklet about how to overcome fear and anxiety, I am noting how our human and natural world are changing. We are undergoing a series of severe crisis like Covid-19 (coronavirus). The climate change crisis and political leadership that is eroding our expectations of what is democracy and truth. Surely there is hope that the vaccines now available are cutting down some of the spread in some countries but the tragedy in India, Brazil and most of South America and Asia is still severe.  

The other dangerous global issue is the climate crisis, a global event that is severely damaging our planet due to overuse of fossil fuels. The production of plastic and polluting the air with manufacturing. The world leaders seem to be more interested in doing short term decisions and business is only caring for income and unsustainable development.

There may be more challenges in our time, but I am reflecting on the two global issues that are creating more and more FEAR among the population. Of course, there are climate denialists, skeptics and all sorts of false theories that are floating around the social media. However, FEAR is behind all the many expressions of feelings and thinking currently in vogue.

So, I decided to reflect on the word FEAR. We all know “fear” as some sort of uncomfortable inner feeling, but few reflect about the origins of fear. As the quote above indicates, researchers tend to define the fear as certain behaviours and link the feeling of fear with anxiety. Yet, I want to know about the original source of fear.

Recently I found a video recording I made of an event in a 'kindy' where my 5-year-old son was attending every day. I was observing the children (some as young as one year) reacting to a dance show projected on the wall. I noted that one child suddenly screamed with fear and went to the teacher to hide his face. Another child simply looked at the light coming from the projector and still another just looked bored and did some other activity ignoring the show.

This event stimulated my reflections as to how we, humans express the feeling of fear at a very early age. Perhaps the feeling of fear was inculcated by some family members, or experienced in school, work, relationships, crisis events etc. Life meant to be fun and productive, but we seem to respond to many events in life with this sense of fear. This indicates to me, that fear is a powerful resource for learning and creating.

Michael Meade, my mentor, and mythologist, speaks of fear in terms of the response to this feeling and that our response depends on how we develop wisdom or become more creative or be more foolish and living in anxiety. Therefore, fear is a powerful resource for growth and personal development in a world filled with shifts and changes. This fear resource also works with collectives, institutions, and countries.

Meade speaks of the “inner voice” as we experience fear, that says:  “ I cannot do this” … “I cannot go on”... “I am stuck”…and that is our ‘little ego’ taking that is in charge of our daily life. But, as things turn bad, the little ego starts to feel powerless and when events turn to be challenging, the ‘little ego’ cannot deal with such disturbances. Our deep Self or true Self is connected to our deep wisdom or soul and that is the place where we can creatively develop solutions to all crises.

As we connect with our wise Self, we develop what I call Perspective. Fear may be the reaction to our insecurities or disruptions and by connecting with our Wise Self, we develop a positive Perspective to challenges we may face and discover our sense of curiosity or simply disregard the importance of the disruption in front of as a temporary or an event of no consequence. Fear is multidimensional, on one hand we may suddenly suffer greatly from fear, or we connect with our wise/deep Self and discover a creative solution.

In the current global pandemic, fear has permeated everyone at all levels of society. Fear promotes a reaction of negative emotions by suddenly seeking a solution by dividing people (and nations) into “them” and “us”; This fear is linked with hatred and even war. On the other hand, we may develop a perspective that takes us to the discovery of something new.

This idea is not new. Since ancient times reactions to fear promoted wars, destruction of whole societies and promoting extreme leaders both in politics and religions that dominate and control entire populations promising solutions to the dread and fears. Today, the Pandemic created all sorts of distrust in the democratic leadership, in modern science, seeding paranoia everywhere.

In the absence of trust, people seek to believe in something to feel safe. This ‘something’ is filled with false news, bad answers to problems, faith in false beliefs and conspiracy theories. People seek those answers in social media and religious dogma.

Fear is not just a ‘fight’ or ‘flight’ response from our animal part of the brain but also a loss of self (little ego) when we do not connect with our deep wisdom, curiosity and awareness of the deep Self that can implement a new and creative solution to our crisis. I still remember the panic buying of toilet paper where some people would fight to get a toilet paper bag at the store.

Fear can be considered as a “voice” that is calling us to wake up to our creative energies and contribute to the wellbeing of all and not just us. When I purchased a big package of toilet paper, I started to distribute single rolls to people waiting in line at the store (only a few could enter) and many begun to smile and some to laugh.

Finally, I like to reframe the word ‘fear’ into an emotion. E-motion has a direction while ‘fear’ is a constricting energy. Being closed in, I start to panic and try to break out, while emotion gives me a direction towards a solution. Emotions move us as they carry energy to ACT. Repressed emotions tend to become fear and grow into a depression in our body, mind, and soul. Fear quickly becomes a body symptom or a neurotic pain or addiction or all at once.

A proverb: “Whenever one suffers from fear, winds up suffering from fear” and

“Courage is most often engendered by fear”.

  

SHINING MEN - MAY 2021

 

SHINING MEN BLOG MAY 2021

A friend asked me if I would join him at the MANSHINE RETREAT and I happily agreed if he gives me a ride to Somerset Dam area near Brisbane. 130 men gathered for three-day series of group events and workshops.

I was once a founder of men groups and festivals and with my friend Rein van de Ruit, we enjoyed many events and conferences that were inspired by men like Michael Meade and Robert Bly.

Coming back to re-visit the gathering, I was very inspired to write the following poem statement:

May 1, 2021 – Somerset Dam, Brisbane, Queensland.

 

Music, Song, Dance – all happening.

Men ‘workshopping’ together in small groups.

Rules are essential to connect with the “I”.

The fears of being close disappears.

Breaking the SOUL distance is the norm.

Siting with 130 men in a great circle

It is the HEART MEETING – speak from the heart.

Open your feelings, stay alert for one minute.

Say: “If you knew me you would know”.

Speaking from the heart, the soul opens.

A flood of feelings: sadness, Loss, sorrow, pain.

The stories flow openly and powerfully.

Memories are recovered with meaning.

A father spoke to his son, honouring him.

A son spoke to his father – “I love you”.

Bothe are present with all and both with heart.

A golden thread spread among all the men.

The thread that is pure LOVE.

And more stories flowed from the river of life.

I sat among the ELDERS and my heart spoke to me:

One word only – RESILIENCE! We are one!

We are resilience with love – tat is IT!

Love brings the magic of Resilience.

SUCH IS THE GOOD LIFE – FOREVER!

 HO!

                                                     Gerald, James & Yaro

As I was writing the current blog, I came across my talk at Manshine event on May 3-6, 2002 and here I a copy for you to reflect on:

 

MEN’S SACRED CONTRACT 

A Talk at the MANSHINE Festival May 3-6, 2002 by Yaro Starak.

 

Recently I read the new book by Caroline Myss called “Sacred Contracts”. In her book she defines this term as: “A commitment to a mission that promises to expand our consciousness and express the Divine purposes on Earth.” I am calling this talk “Men’s Sacred Contract” – the expression of our divine masculine.

In the last six or seven years that I became involved in working with men groups, I realized that I have connected strongly with the Divine Consciousness that has been revealed to me over the years. This revelation does not mean some ‘burning bush’ or voice that spoke to me, but it has been my inner awareness about men’s work that grew rather slowly and over considerable time.

 

When I began this work, the message came in a simple form. I was given an invitation by my friend Rein Van De Ruit, to come to the Blue Mountains near Sydney and facilitate a group. He sent out a flyer that had a pretty wild sounding title at the time.: FROM SLAVE TO HERO - a three-day workshop for men with Yaro Starak - it was the year 1993.

Some 55 men arrived and gathered in a circle. I felt my legs tremble and shaking with fear. I have never seen so many men together in a group. I was on the spot.

Fortunately, I happened to review a book that Rein suggested I read by Robert Moore & Doug Jilette, it was entitled: “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover – Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine” I quickly asked men to go into four groups that represented those four Archetypes. And in this way the first day begun. Over the 3 days Rein, I and the men present, learned a great deal from that brief but full-on experience. Other groups followed. Then channel 10 TV news had a brief but damning review of men dancing and drumming in the bush. However, the more people in the mainstream joked about men ‘playing boys’, more and more men came to the gatherings. “A Circle of Men” in Lismore gathered over 100 men and ‘Standing Up Alive” became a yearly event.

We are now gathering in a circle of men for the 10th time - MANSHINE Festival is 25 years old now. Congratulations.!!

Many such Gatherings and Festivals are now a part of the Australian landscape. Men gather from many and diverse backgrounds, color and nationality to share stories, develop new contacts and renew the old friendships. We have fun, we dance, play drums, and experience a wide range of activities. Thank God the sensationalist media has left men’s gatherings alone.

Here are some ideas and questions to reflect on:

 

•          More than ever men must assert a strong masculinity that is authentic, non-violent, and productive.

 

•          The decline of the traditional nuclear family is clearly the most significant but least recognized threats to men’s health and well-being.

 

•          The death of the ‘patriarch’ (Latin meaning FATHER) is not just an important structural change in the evolution of the family relationships, but it also gave raise to single parent families, most of them headed by women without a mature adult father figure for the children.

 

•          The so called ‘modernisation’ or as it is now being described as ‘post-modernism’ has contributed to the decline of fatherhood and at the same time created a highly publicized model of MOTHER/WORKER who is expected to deal with children at home and a full-time job at the office.

 

•          Young people are growing up without clear and cohesive structures that show them how to become an adult male or female.

 

•          No one can show young men how to transform ‘boy energy’ into ‘man energy’. This is evident in the current and on-going crisis in drug use, alcohol consumption and violence.

 

•          There is a lack of initiated Elders who know how to properly initiate young men.

There is more, however and you are invited to discuss these and other issues and share your own personal story and your willingness to participate in work and play that will bring out into the consciousness your own Sacred Contract. To guide us we can manifest here the four powerful adult masculine Archetypes. Such manifestation of masculine energies can empower us for the next 10 or more years. You may start by reflecting on the following questions:

 

1.        How do we become more conscious of our fear to initiate ourselves and initiate our younger brothers? By shifting from fear to Courage and engender the PEACEFUL WARRIOR.

 

2.        How to discover what is your passion for life instead of being fixed on developing your EGO? Passion comes from the heart; Ego tends to retain fixed beliefs and attitudes of what a real man should be. Such passion requires the LOVER Archetype.

 

3.        How to find out ways to shift your hard-core values (Aussie Male) and letting go of old and outdated roles and games that no longer serve our growth and development as men. Be aware of the Magus or Magician in you but experiment with new ideas, values, models, and relationships.

 

4.        Finally, can you find out what are you focusing on in your life now? (men are particularly good on one thing at a time). Are you focusing on doing, doing, doing, performing? Or focusing on BEING. That is being here and now and being conscious about your Sacred Contract on Earth? That is the call of the scared KING archetype.

In our journey to understand our purpose in life we may discover that what we thought or focused on may be the path to personal development (you will participate

in many a workshop here about this) It may be the path of developing our DIVINE POTENTIAL or our true masculine archetypes.

I leave you with three final questions:

 

- What do you RESPECT in your life?

- How do you feel your COMPASSION?

- How can you express more HUMILITY in what you are doing or being?

 

 HO!

LISTEN TO MICHAEL MEADE HERE.

APRIL 2021 BLOG

 

RETIREMENT AS REFIREMENT

  

This month, my reflection is about retirement. Most people who work for many years, dream about retiring in peace, harmony, travel and enjoying their well-earned pension.

After living in “almost retirement” for over 10 years, (I still work in my private gestalt practice), I am coming to the conclusion that “re-tire” is being tired and spent, out of energy, and needing rest. Most people are tired of a long and monotonous work time doing no particular thing for themselves but working for others and earning a salary. Many of those retired are now exhausted with the current pandemic, being locked down and wearing masks for protection and full of fear of dying.

It is now over a year of “no-thing” simply being at home, shop for food, and watching a lot of movies or Netflix. A new solution emerged as the need for connections arose. That thing is called ZOOM. My wife loves it as we can easily talk to the family in Spain, design seminars and even do Yoga at home. Zoom is an online “living experience’ that saves us a lot of money going overseas. Yet, the ‘travel bug’ is extraordinarily strong and we are waiting for another year taking on Zoom waiting for news that the vaccine will do its work and protect us all from this evil pandemic. In the meantime (due to Covid-19) we are making a daily practice to manage safely our lives, be more secluded, less party with friends and be careful where we go in the city.

It seems that on a metaphorical level, we humans are undergoing a global cleansing and therefore it is time now, to take a good look at how we, not only stop the pandemic but also how to change ourselves to make sure that the future catastrophes as climate change will become a less of a major global catastrophe but more a healing experience for us and for Nature.

But coming back to the notion of ‘retirement’, I am sharing here a wonderful article by Gregory J. Beaupre published in the recent Quillette magazine. The author reflects on his own retirement and probably coins a new word for it “REFIREMENT”. Here is his full statement:

ON RETIREMENT BY Gregory J. Beaupre

It is Sunday as I finish writing this, and I am reflecting on work on this biblically traditional day of rest. Specifically, I am thinking about not working, i.e., retirement. The ultimate rest for the dues-paid-in-full working stiff.

I did not plan it, but I retired first. Before any start to a career. Through my four-year college degree program that took seven on-and-off years to complete, and a few more years on top of those, I spent my time doing a host of things one associates with a traditional retirement: playing golf, reading, hitting the beach, doing a range of odd jobs to make some money, keeping my “nut” as low as possible to match the lean cash flow, taking classes to keep my brain in the game, writing in my journal, doing some traveling, offering some folks and good causes time and help, reflecting on life past and future, learning a couple of new hobbies, hanging with similarly positioned friends, and observing with secret satisfaction all those other people who spin themselves into a frenzy in their workaday existence.

Of course, retiring first also gave me the benefit of doing it while enjoying the good health that youth typically offer, if not the better money or good sense that senior status typically offers. Today, as a card-carrying sexagenarian—a stage when culture traditionally expects me and my ilk to have hung it up—I find myself looking back on that earlier period. And admittedly, my perspective from my current wisdom-informed worldview is that I was aimless, unambitious, untethered to responsibilities like career-building and family-building, struck with wanderlust, and not too concerned about it all. In other words, I was what society calls a bum. A Young Bum, not a Young Gun like today’s precociously talented youth are dubbed.

So, unplanned, I retired first. Had a good run. Then had enough, could not run anymore, sought a new path, and got to work. (Also, I finally employed a CEO for my brain. More on that below.) In my case, the work was writing. I have been writing ever since. Four decades’ worth of words. If only I had charged by the word. I love doing it, I (usually) get paid to do it, and I have no intention of stopping. But what about that “real” retirement? After 40-plus years of working, shouldn’t I and others like me seriously be considering that?

I could. But here is something I recently learned, with unassailable data to back it up: Folks in their 60s like me (and well beyond) can perform their work—writing, woodworking, scientific research, song writing, consulting, practicing law, designing, entrepreneurial pursuits and on and on—at their highest level ever during these years. And “highest level” means more productive, innovative, collaborative, knowledgeable, wise, and creative than most younger people in the same positions. The data is quite convincing that those of us who qualified for the American Association of Retired Persons several years ago (they should not be sending out their first membership solicitation when you are 50, for crying out loud) usually have several more years of continued high performance and further advancement ahead of us.

I could choose to continue my writing work at this stage out of sheer guilt that I had taken a sloppy undeserved retirement before even getting to work and do not deserve another one. Or I could take the knowledge of likely future productivity and purposeful contribution and ask myself, “Why would I leave all that on the table for an unending series of tee times?”

I glommed onto and grappled with all this and more last year while reading the mind-opening book, Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed with Early Achievement, by Rich Karlgaard, the long-time publisher of Forbes magazine as well as entrepreneur, speaker, and confirmed Late Bloomer. (Important note of clarification: By “late bloomers,” Karlgaard does not just mean someone in advanced years who finally accomplishes something. He means someone at just about any mature adult age who ultimately “blooms” with some success or achievement; and the “blooming” can happen multiple times in a life, not just once.)

While the book was inspiring and enlightening in pointing out the positives and strengths people at my age can take with us into the coming years of professional output and personal productivity, it also was nothing short of an epiphany in helping me understand that my “early” retirement, my vagabond period, my wanton youth, maybe was not a sign of purely reprobate behaviour after all.

I now see I was, and in some significant ways still am, a Late Bloomer as Karlgaard describes. And I am just one of countless such Late Bloomers all around us, according to the research. Maybe you can relate. As I look back on it, I am lucky to have gotten away with a retirement at all, early or otherwise. These days senior folks are working well past the traditional retirement age, for a variety of reasons, oftentimes financial.

I am fortunate to have the prospect of meaningful work now and into the foreseeable future, COVID and chaos be damned. That “early” retirement will likely end up being the only one of its kind that I will experience. Frankly, I would not enjoy that kind of existence much now anyway—some of it, maybe, but not all of it. My values and experiences then are not my values and desired experiences now. It took quite a while for me to understand it, but actually getting to work at something you love doing is one of the greatest blessings you can have. And, if we are to accept the polling data out there, loving your work is an experience that is sadly all too rare.

Retirement? No thanks. “Rewirement?” Hmm, sounds interesting. “Refirement?” For sure.

We must stop excessively glorifying precocious achievement [the wunderkind ideal] and seeing human development as a “fast track” on-ramp for early success. Not only is it unjust to most of us, but it is also profoundly inhumane. It ignores the natural-born gifts that we all possess. It cuts off paths of discovery for our more latent or later-blooming gifts and passions. It trivializes the value of character, experience, empathy, wisdom, reliability, tenacity, and a host of other admirable qualities that make us successful and fulfilled. And it undercuts most of us who are potential late bloomers.

The wunderkind ideal was not so much a factor in American culture and society when I was of an age to have qualified, by age alone if not the exceptional talent. We got to go to college (if you were lucky enough back then to have the family support and enough means to do so) and truly “navel gaze,” as higher ed was designed to be then. Muse about life and your future career, have a few fits and starts, change majors seven times on average.

I recall that a semester of tuition at Louisiana State University cost about $300 back then. You could, without stockpiling debt, flunk out your very first semester, rethink things, then get back to school after waiting a semester and try again. Do better. Hit the books. But not well enough to avoid flunking out one more time. Take a year off for a fascinating job in another country. Then finally graduate cum laude with a customized degree called “Humanities Interdisciplinary.” Do it all guilt free, and not be broke for a decade. All of which I did.

One thing at work back then for me—or not at work, as this case shows—was my brain’s “executive function.”

Eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds are literally incapable of making responsible judgments, paying sufficient attention, or managing their emotions. Yet at this age they are being measured and fitted (via tests, grades, and job interviews) for the trajectory of the rest of their lives. This makes no sense.

The incapacities Karlgaard cites are related to brain development, specifically the “executive functioning” that lives in the frontal lobe. The so-called “CEO” of the brain can be slow to fully form, such that the mental maturation process can last into a person’s late 20s or even 30s. I would like to believe the late-blooming development of my executive function was surely a part of my “retirement”; I didn’t really start buckling down until I reached about 29. Surely other aspects were at play for me, too, such as garden-variety immaturity, chronic laziness, as well as creative curiosity that sent me a-wanderin’ mentally and physically just about anywhere. (I have kept a list of all the jobs, odd and otherwise, I held during this timeframe, and I’ve started writing about some of the more, let’s say, “interesting” ones. First one on deck: Sewerage Treatment Plant Operator I… coming soon to a virtual bookshelf near you.)

There is a compelling neurological rationale for taking a year or two off before, during, or after college. People who prolong adolescent brain plasticity for even a short time enjoy intellectual advantages over their more fixed counterparts in the work world. Studies have found that highly accomplished people enjoy a longer period during which new synapses continue to proliferate. The evidence is clear: Exposure to novelty and challenge while the brain’s frontal cortex is still plastic leads to greater long-term career success.

Karlgaard entertainingly cites many fascinating examples of people who did much as I did, most of whom ended up simply fine—and in some cases, really fine like J.K. Rowling. These stories about late bloomers, whether the blooming happened in their 30s, 60s, or even 90s, are some of the best parts of the book. I should also mention that his stories of the precocious achievers, many famous ones, who shot to stardom right out of the gate (Bill Gates aside), only to crash and burn, are equally riveting and highly confirmative of the book’s thesis.

Our brains are constantly forming neural networks and patterns—recognition capabilities that we did not have in our youth when we had blazing synaptic horsepower. As we get older, we develop new skills and refine others, including social awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, humour, listening, risk-reward calibration, and adaptive intelligence… abilities we acquire up until the end of our lives.

Chapter 4 of the book, titled “The Six Strengths of Late Bloomers,” is simply packed with fascinating information. The deeper explorations of these six strengths are illuminating, but here is the list: curiosity, compassion, resilience, equanimity, insight, and wisdom. And the key point Karlgaard makes is that each of these is conferred only with time. Diving as deeply as I have been into this recollection of my Decade of Delayed Development (my term, not Karlgaard’s), I am inclined to give myself some grace and be thankful that Patience, somewhere, somehow, entered the picture for me.

What about our creativity, our ability to land upon the unexpected insight? Once again, we retain that capability for much longer than previously thought. The idea is that random thinking—seeing beyond the obvious—is connected to creative thinking. When an apple falls from a tree, the creative person does not simply think that apple must have been ripe; like Isaac Newton, he sees the apple fall and pictures the invisible force of gravity.

If this sounds like self-promotion, it is, but for my whole superannuated cohort: Karlgaard’s keen insights and data-driven analyses show why you should hire (or keep) talented people of, let us just say, ages later than are currently in vogue in ad agencies, marketing departments, social-platform giants, and lots of other places.

One of my favorited quotes from a writer’s standpoint is from Henry David Thoreau: “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” I have used that thought to support my procrastination on personal writing projects for years, saying to myself, “Hey, buddy, you’re just not ready.” But for this purpose, I will paraphrase: “How dumb it is to have a 25-year-old barely out of her art school bubble create real-world advertising reaching out to incontinent seniors on welfare.” Okay, that is an exaggeration (or maybe not), but you get my drift. And, with that, I have ticked off a bunch of bright and talented twenty-something friends and colleagues of mine in the biz. I did not mean you!

Why should a sixty-five-year-old or a seventy-two-year-old not work if they want to and their employer finds their contribution to be valuable, at the right level of pay? (Note to CEOs: If your human resources and legal departments cannot figure this out, replace them with ones that can.)

Why not, indeed? And that “level of pay” part is key. It is utterly illogical to squeeze out a senior employee who is fully and richly capable just because she or he has a salary now deemed too high (or ignorantly assumed to be cognitively diminished, over the hill, out to pasture, all washed up). It is entirely logical to keep the person who is good and likes their job, and has unique qualities to offer, and just agree to an appropriately lower pay, with maybe some diminished responsibilities or shift in duties (e.g., reducing or eliminating stressful client contact for a creative who can then focus on the brilliant concepting). Sounds like a win-win to me.

I recently returned to the world of freelance following a five-year full-time stint as lead copywriter and creative director on a large agency’s largest account, and I can honestly say that those five years were the best of my career on several levels, like those mentioned earlier: more productive, innovative, collaborative, knowledgeable, wise, and creative. Did I, as of changing my status to lone-wolf freelancer, just because of the number of years on the planet, lose all those abilities overnight? Again, I am pleading the case not just for me, but for all my chronologically advanced peers.

Our brains are driven to seek calmness as we age. Columbia University social psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson claims that calmness is central to happiness. As we age, she says, “happiness becomes less the high-energy, totally psyched experience of a teenager partying while his parents are out of town, and more the peaceful, relaxing experience of an overworked mom who has been dreaming of that hot bath all day. The latter is not less ‘happy’ than the former—it is a different way of understanding what happiness is.”

What better person to have working in the often hectic and chaotic trenches alongside you than someone who is calm and growing in calmness every day and who has been through these fire drills countless times and intuitively understands the patterns associated with them and how to use them to succeed. And not only that, but someone who is happy, too. And not a watered-down version of happiness, but a wised-up version of what is truly worth being happy about. Go ahead, tap that sixty-something who retired first, stretched the plasticity of her brain, and gained unique and highly marketable strengths through the whole unintended experience, to the great benefit of her career-long employers.

As we age, we collect and store information. That, and not a “fuzzy memory,” is part of the reason it takes us longer to recall certain facts. We simply have more things to remember. Older people have vastly more information in their brains than young people do, so retrieving it naturally takes longer. In addition, the quality of the information in older people’s brains is more nuanced. While younger people excel in tests of cognitive speed, one study found, older people show “greater sensitivity to fine-grained differences.”

In terms of what Karlgaard and others call “crystallized intelligence”—the cumulative and growing amounts of skill, knowledge, and experiences we acquire in life—those of us in our seasoned years know a thing or two (million). And we tend to see, typically more clearly than those lacking our depth of crystallized intelligence, the nuances, subtleties, and pin-pricks of light in a given situation, which are often right where the sparks of true insights are found—i.e., the kind of lively and actionable insights that really kick a Creative Brief (and creative practitioner) into high gear.

We get smarter and more creative as we age, research shows. Our brain’s anatomy, neural networks, and cognitive abilities can actually improve with age and increased life experiences. Contrary to the mythology of Silicon Valley, older employees may be even more productive, innovative, and collaborative than younger ones.

Okay, so a couple words to all the youthful people, my many friends and colleagues and former colleagues out there, whom I (and Karlgaard) seem to be trashing throughout this piece. To the contrary! What Rich Karlgaard is speaking to and I am trying to reinforce is the egregious unfairness and incorrectness of what our culture puts by way of expectations and paths forward for our teens, twenty-somethings and beyond.

For the unfortunate majority, however, our latent skills are neither discovered nor recognized nor encouraged until much later, if ever. As a result, most of us are falsely labelled as having less talent or ambition; we are written off as lazy or apathetic. But, the light simply isn’t shining on [young people’s] true abilities, on the things [they] can do uniquely well. The toxic combination of early pressure and conformity is turning us into machines.

Karlgaard clearly is not arguing for the Beaupre Method of Delayed Advancement through Really Early Reckless Retirement here, and I am definitely not either. Yes, for sure, let us consider, hire, unleash the wiser older practitioners out there for everything truly valuable they can offer employers and brands and mentees and communities and industries. Just as important, maybe more important in the longer scheme of things, I think we need to give a whole lot of grace and encouragement and opportunity to those younger ones who seem to be in those early stages of struggling and on whom, like for me once, the “light simply isn’t shining”—yet. Let us celebrate our next generations’ full range of human ability and possibility. And as Karlgaard posits, let us give them all diverse timetables and genuine opportunities for individual success and achievement.

I strongly believe that we need to go back to what it used to be:

In the past, success was not about becoming rich or famous, or about achieving as much as possible as early as possible. Rather, it was about having the opportunity to live to our fullest potential. It was about being appreciated for who we are as individuals.

So enough already with the wunderkind ideal. Let us each, younger and older and in between, be and do our best and keep doing so without looking at the clock or the calendar or the culture’s misplaced expectations. May you, too, be blessed in your work. To my peers who are of such a bent, here is to a great refirement. And if you are not, more power to ya! Keep it in the short grass. As for me, I did retirement first, and once was enough.

 

Gregory J. Beaupre is a non-retired freelance practitioner of 40 years in the writing arts, including advertising and marketing, public relations, the occasional song lyrics, and limericks, as well as a journalistic effort once in a while. In between advertising writing projects, he is currently writing a series of memoirs/essays while enjoying the home-free life, traveling the US with his wife and dog. You can contact him at beauwriter@me.com.

Photo by Chris Thompson on Unsplash

MARCH 2021 - FEAR OF FEAR

 

FEAR OF FEAR

Tainting by Thomas Aring

Dear Reader,

I am reflecting, this month, about the enormous pandemic of fear that we are experiencing globally. The Covid-19 epidemic is still with us, the vaccinations are starting but there are many complications, economical issues and other social issues are promoting more fear. Yet, this is not new in the history of humanity. Fear separates a person from his or her inner resources that help to live a good life and the past events have indicated the perils that fear is imposing on all society. Michael Made states:

“Throughout history, epidemics and plagues have stirred deep levels of distrust and fear that have, in turn, thrown entire cultures into upheaval. The current pandemic seems to be a perfect storm of fear that permeates all areas of society and exposes deep divisions as well as wild extremes.

Eventually, it becomes necessary to realize that what we fear will not simply go away; rather we must face our fears or else become overwhelmed. It is important to know that the hidden aim of fear is not “fight or flight,” but rather the revelation of untapped inner resources that are trying to awaken in each of us. Healthy fear involves an increase of consciousness that stirs deep instincts and intuitions that can be life-protective, lifesaving and life enhancing. In critical times, the greatest safety can be found in becoming wise enough to take the right risk.”

While afraid, we feel the need to become dependent of others, but a lack of help can quickly turn into aggression. Fear is multi-directional, as recent invasion of the Washington Capital indicated. The mob incited by the Qanon conspiracy theories and white supremacists have created a violent atmosphere where the paranoia about the elections results were considered  “stolen elections” from Trump. This is what the psychopaths in power are creating a collapse of whole government by speaking to people about theories that are clearly fake but place the faults to the other side. Daniel Pinchbeck a NY bestselling book review on “Conspiranoia: The Betrayed States of America” has a very insightful theory about how conspiracy theories turn to “facts” convincing whole mobs to attack and become destructive to people and property. I am offering an excerpt of his remarkably interesting book:

"A segment of the ruling elites in government, finance, and the corporate world are psychological deviants on the psychopathic spectrum. These individuals rise to power in hierarchical systems based on control, dominance, and exploitation. They win the game because they lack conscience. This allows them to ignore destructive consequences and “externalities.” Psychopaths can sense each other and recognize their distance from ordinary human beings. As the winners of the power game, they see themselves as innately superior, “masters of the universe,” who have a natural right to control and manipulate the mass population.  ​Some of them actively enjoy causing suffering. Over time, some of them get addicted to the adrenaline rush that comes from illicit, immoral, and criminal activity. Like addicts, they must keep increasing the dose. As world leaders, they enjoy performing increasingly flagrant immoral and destructive actions without getting caught or punished.  ​This framing helps us reach a coherent understanding of events like 9/11, why the Chinese leadership decided to spread the Coronavirus globally once it was released, and the partly orchestrated social breakdown that is happening in the US right now. Psychopaths do not necessarily need to be meshed in tightly plotted conspiracies to be working toward the same goal and agenda. Their tendency will be to push societal forces in the direction that serves their perceived, short-term interests. They automatically project the barren quality of their inner lives into the outer world, reshaping the world in their image.  ​That we are being ruled and manipulated by psychopaths without conscience helps to explain the vacuous, numbing quality of contemporary existence.

 

“When you understand the true nature of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time, everything suddenly begins to make sense,” Callahan writes. “Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless — they literally have no conscience.”

We can, therefore, define one new organizing pole for a global counter-movement: It will be based on identifying psychopaths — through brain scans, personality tests, and observation — and removing them from positions of power. This is something that people can agree with, from across the political spectrum. The various forms of psychopathy must be understood more widely, along with methods for identifying the manipulative mechanisms used by psychopaths to cover their tracks.  ​Along with this, we need to define a new direction for human society that is distinct from the technological control paradigm which is sociopathic in its essence. I believe that liberals and progressives are making a mistake in rejecting working class anger against automation and corporate globalization. They need to re-think their position, finding common cause with them. Similarly, I consider the mass movement questioning vaccinations and other advances in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals to be a healthy one that is worthy of support. The subject requires much deeper analysis as well as oversight from civil society.  ​There are legitimate reasons to be concerned that a rushed vaccine for COVID-19 could have negative long-term health effects for many people. We have seen a massive increase in vaccinations since the mid-1980s. During that time, children have become more prone to many chronic diseases and conditions, from asthma to autism to ADHD. Vaccines provide enormous profits for pharmaceutical companies and billionaires like Gates. The pharmaceutical corporations that produce vaccines are part of the same market system that led cigarette companies to hide the danger of cigarette smoking and energy companies to disseminate climate change denial. Someone who develops a chronic condition is a long-term profit centre for a pharmaceutical company. Such long-term conditions are actually advantageous to pharmaceutical companies, increasing their bottom line. Also, in the US, vaccine-makers have been released from legal liability for damages they cause.

 ​My reason for writing this is to persuade those who still support the old progressive establishment or neoliberal agenda (which encompasses the technocratic / biosecurity worldview, the Blue Church etc) to abandon this obsolete ideology. We need to build a new alliance between the working class and the progressive “woke” elite — a group that includes those who have inherited wealth, plus the self-made entrepreneurs and tech company executives who flock to events like Burning Man, Nexus, and Summit — by defining a new orientation toward what is taking place as well as a shared vision for humanity’s future. Before we can get there, establishment liberals and progressives must take a step back and reassess. They need to understand there are valid reasons that the masses feel scorn toward them, reject their ideal of progress, and are now embracing lurid and dangerous conspiracy theories.

People have good reason to freak out about ever-increasing corporate control and techno-surveillance, enforced vaccinations, as well as other aspect of the bio-security control agenda. It is good that they are rejecting neoliberalism and seeking alternative. There are, also, good reasons why many people deeply distrust the traditional media. For many decades, CNN and The New York Times and other mainstream news sources have been thoroughly infiltrated by intelligence operatives who shape the content and rhetoric of the mainstream news when necessary. We know this to be the case from many past examples, including recent ones, such as the media frenzy over Hilary’s emails before the 2016 election, which tilted the election to Trump, or the laughable coverage over Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide.”   Until space colonies on Mars open, we still must +deal with this world and its fragile, increasingly insecure, and unstable realities. If we hope to change the dynamics of the global geopolitical game, those of us who wish to see a more just, ecologically sane, and truly democratic society must coalesce around a new strategy. At this point, no matter who is “elected” as US President, this strategy must go beyond traditional political means.   

Much of our government and financial system is controlled by psychological deviants, outliers, who lack conscience. These psychopaths constantly seek more wealth, power, and control, to compensate for their innate insecurity and fear of discovery. They recognize each other intuitively and work toward the same basic goal: A destabilized and chaotic world order that allows them to oppress, dominate, and exploit. ​We need to acknowledge the invisible, occult, and ceremonial aspects of the culture, the operational theater, of our ruling elites. Some of them are drawn to secret societies. Some participate in rituals of domination and pedophilia sexual abuse which directly express their position above and outside of the law. Others share an ethos of self-interest, where the “means justify the ends” (the ethos of The Illuminati, an influential 18th Century secret society which has become legendary) on an individual or societal level.  ​When we turn our collective focus to address these two issues — the psychopaths who have taken control of human civilization and the technocratic system that enhances their capacity to manipulate us — we can build a global movement across classes, races, religious and ethnic groups to defeat them. If the mass populace’s fury can be redirected and channelled, transformed into a unifying force, we can bring together various classes and political factions in a global rebellion against corporate and technocratic rule, in favour of local democracies and bioregional autonomy. We can focus on building a regenerative system that supports local communities and allows humanity to focus on our next great collective mission, that of healing the biosphere, which requires harmony across classes, races, nations, and religious groups"

 

Pinchbeck, Daniel. Conspiranoia: The Betrayed States of America (p. 50). Kindle Edition.

 

I could not agree more with this analysis and learn from his book that I highly recommend.

 

 

 

Fear and Anger are related 

 

FEBRUARY 2021 CANCEL CULTURE AND THE PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN MOVIE

 

FEBRUARY 2021 BLOG

CANCEL CULTURE AND THE PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN MOVIE.

 

Dear Reader,

Recently I went to see a film with some of my male friends. The movie was hailed as an amazing and complex story of a young woman attending a medical school at a University in the USA. Her studies were interrupted by a rape of her best friend, who later suicides. She becomes totally obsessed with VENGEANCE and stalks young men pretending she is blind drunk. A quote from a review:

“She lives with her parents, and spends her nights going to bars and night clubs and pretending to be dangerously, blindly intoxicated.  When men take her back to their places—under the pretense of helping her—she rejects their advances, begs to go home, and then, when they persist, switches off the slurring and asks, in a cold and sober voice, what they are doing. It is startling enough that they always immediately backpedal. “I thought we had a connection,” one sputters. “I’m a nice guy!” Afterward, she goes home, tallies each conquest in a small notebook hidden under her childhood bed, and the next morning begins the whole process over again”.

The movie A PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (written by Emerald Fennell) was very upsetting for me and I walked out at the middle of it. I felt a sense of inner disgust at the way the woman “Cassie” is after vengeance against all young men. Here the victim and the vigilante collapse into a single entity or confluence and it is an overly complex story. As I left the movie theater, I had a flash in my mind about how similar the theme seemed to the old Westerns where the good (hero) cowboy is taking vengeance on several “bad guys” who killed his friends. He stalks them and kills them all.

But vengeance (male or female) is a place where a ‘fractured’ mind goes when it is striving to stay whole (sane). But in many cultures, revenge means ‘doing something’ right and justifiable.

While reading several reviews to find out the end of the movie, I found this description:

Much has been made about the film’s ending, the final way in which “Promising Young Woman” sets itself apart from its lineage. Cassie infiltrates the bachelor party of Nina’s rapist disguised as a stripper. She ties him up, tells him what she knows, tries to get him to admit to what he has done, and threatens to cut Nina’s name into his skin. He breaks free of his restraints and smothers Cassie with a pillow. It takes an agonizingly long time for her to die. It is as brutal as watching the rape we’ve never been witness to.”

Now, this is an amazing topic for a serious discussion, and I am inviting my male friends to meet and share freely their opinions and feelings about the movie. I am asking my friends to be open and free to keep the door of rational debate and do not enter a place that journalists call  “the cancel culture”. where all rational open sharing is quickly judged, and the blame is usually put on the men.

Young men, in my experience, are frightened to express themselves freely for fear of being castigated and blamed for injuring women. Many young men retire to their mobiles and stay quiet.

As I followed my own intuition regarding the origin of the movie script and as I read the interview with the writer published in the VULTURE (www.vulture.com),where the author, Emerald Fennell, states that she loved old cowboy movies – YES! I thought, here is the source of her script. A hero cowboy now converted in the girl Cassey, is on a rampage to avenge the killing of his friend and goes and kills all the bandidos (bad guys). Therefore, I am seeing a ‘cancel culture” model emerging in the movie where the hero is a woman, and the young men are the bad guys. As Gemma Tognini states in her newspaper article: “The mob does not always dress in black and wear dark glasses, and carry knives or guns, the mob also wear suits and dresses, and are everywhere.” So, my readers, here is the challenge – speak up and write your comments - and here is a question:

As viewers, we have our own questions to ask. Do filmmakers owe us realistic portrayals of rape and its aftermath, or may we take pleasure in revenge fantasies, in which real-life obstacles are cast aside?

the futility of vengeance