Gracenomics: Squaring off with the Grace Killers
by Mike Foster
Mike Foster on Gracenomics: Squaring off with the Grace Killers
Mike Foster: "If we truly want to unleash second chance living we have to show grace to the grace killers."
PICKAXES & NIBBLED BY DUCKS
When Census worker Sherri Chesney approached a woman working in her garden, she politely introduced herself and showed her Bureau badge. The woman’s reaction? “I don’t need the blankety-blank government snooping in my business”—a declaration she punctuated by a metal patio table thrown at Chesney.
Shocking? Yes. But it isn’t even a singular occurrence.
According to Carol Morello of the Washington Post, Census takers have been “shot at with pellet guns and hit by baseball bats. They have been confronted with pickaxes, crossbows and hammers. They’ve had lawn mowers pushed menacingly toward them and patio tables thrown their way. They have been nibbled by ducks, bitten by pit bulls and chased by packs of snarling dogs.”
And it’s getting worse, not better.
In 2010, the Census Bureau reported 379 assaults on census workers, almost double the 181 recorded assaults made during the 2000 census.
Citizens’ backlash against the census captures a glimpse of the rising hostility emerging in our relationships.
Never before has GRACENOMICS FOR OTHERS been so needed. The census assaults didn’t shock me though because I often get a front row seat to observe hostility.
But in many cases, a spot close to the action isn’t something to brag about.
As I counsel others, it’s often like I have ring-side seats at a MMA match.
I hear every crack and thud of fist meeting flesh and occasionally I have to duck the blood and sweat flying my direction. Some people get off on that. I don’t.
The stuff I’ve seen as people bash out their conflicts is equally capable of making onlookers cringe:
Best friends rattling off tedious laundry lists of gripes and “hurts” they’ve been collecting against each other.
Leaders delivering torturous speeches shifting blame to scapegoat employees.
Couples ripping on each other’s inadequacies and lack of understanding.
Any one of these situations could be radically changed—and sometimes were changed—by just a little bit of grace.
That is, if grace was in more plentiful supply.
MONKEY TIME AND THE FORGIVENESS INSTINCT
The thirst for revenge is natural. Instinctive.
Hating on freeloaders, Wall Street types, and people who hurt us is…human.
Payback is in our DNA.
David McCullough, professor of Psychology at the University of Miami and author of the book Beyond Revenge, points out that western therapy often sees revenge as a disease. But actually, according to McCullough, revenge is a biological impulse that is part of a creature’s innate, hard-wired ability to fight for survival.
Take the Macaque monkey. If a Macaque is harmed by a stronger, more powerful Macaque, even though the victim cannot exact their revenge directly on his stronger offender, he will go out and find the relative of the higher Macaque and harm him instead.
Revenge is natural stuff, although—be warned—McCullough found it can lead to some very ugly behaviors in the long run.
But there is good news. The tendency to forgive is in our DNA too. “The forgiveness instinct is every bit as wired in as the revenge instinct,” McCullough said. “It seems that our minds work very hard to get away from resentment, if we can.”
And here is the best news of all. McCullough does not believe forgiveness is this enormous, impossible thing for humans to practice. Instead, he believes forgiveness is a built-in instinct seen in humans’ unique ability to cooperate with others.
McCullough maintains we already forgive in small, routine ways every day. We just need to feed and develop this instinct that is already at work.
INVISIBLE PRICETAGS
Another reality of the human species is that we love to judge, label and assess value.
Recently Newsweek did a feature story called The Beauty Advantage. In it, reporter Jessica Barnett wrote, “Economists have long recognized what’s been dubbed the ‘beauty premium’—the idea that pretty people, whatever their aspirations, tend to do better in, well, almost everything.”
Handsome men, for example, earn an average of 5% more than their less-attractive counterparts while good-looking women rake in an extra 4%.
They also found that “pretty people get more attention from teachers, bosses, and mentors; even babies stare longer at good-looking faces.” Can you believe even babies are in on it?
For some of you this is good news. For the rest of us it is pretty depressing, huh? But before all of us beauty-challenged folks get too huffy-puffy, we must first consider whether we participate in this system too.
I know I do. Sometimes I act as though it is somehow my job to determine people’s worth.
Good looks, lots of cash, a likable personality and the potential to help me in life? I whip out my pricing gun and tag them with a high value.
Run into someone who is a little on the f-ugly side, has low skills and has the potential to damage my reputation with their sordid past?
Bzzt! My pricing gun assigns them a low value that sends them to the clearance rack.
I’m guessing we all get pulled into this sort of pricing game, maybe without realizing what it subtracts from the quality of our lives and relationships.
How many times do we let a misguided fashion sense or blemished complexion cause us to pass over someone who could’ve genuinely contributed to our development?
How many times have we failed to enjoy the moment we were in because we were so stuck to our judge’s clipboard?
The sooner we recognize human life is important—PERIOD—the sooner our lives start to feel more humane.
The worst part is, it’s not just strangers that we assault with our pricing guns. Often it’s the people we love the most that we treat most harshly.
When it comes to this, I stand among the guilty. I have an incredible wife and two kids who I genuinely cherish, so it stuns me (in retrospect) how I can somehow be so impatient and intolerant toward them.
It makes no sense.
And if you think we’re bad to the people we love, think about the people we used to love.
Take our ex-spouses for example. Isn’t it amazing how we can come to thrash on a person who we…
* once thought was the funniest, hottest human being on the planet?
* loved enough to make us rent tuxedos, dress up our friends in silly bridesmaid dresses, and drop thousands of dollars on wedding cake and finger sandwiches?
* got naked with and made babies with (or at least enjoy the attempts)?
But now, all of the sudden, these once fabulous, glamorous, intelligent people are the epitome of evil.
I’m not buying it. Our exes can’t ALL be mentally deranged monsters.
The more likely scenario is that we let the grace get sucked out of our families and marriages. And it all went downhill from there. Instead of unleashing second chance living we sent it packing.
DON’T TRUST YOUR BLINK BRAIN
You know what else sucks the grace out of life? Our obsession with speed.
In his best-selling book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Author Malcolm Gladwell encourages readers to use a technique called “thin slicing” to quickly gauge what is important based on gut instinct.
Thin slicing may come in handy in some scenarios, but I’m not convinced it’s a good philosophy for approaching people.
Our first impressions are often bigoted and prejudiced. And that squishy little sponge in our cranium can be easily tricked into drawing the wrong conclusions.
Take the first time I met my wife. I totally “thin sliced” her. She walked into an event I was at accompanied by a well-known Don Juan type. I was instantly convinced she was a “blonde floozy” with subpar morals. 5 years later I married her. This year we celebrated our 15th anniversary together.
My “blink” was dead wrong.
Or consider the time I first met Jud Wilhite at a retreat in Palm Springs. I dismissed him as a schmoozing-salesman-consultant type who was too upbeat for my taste. My blink brain whispered in my ears, “Don’t trust this dude! He is bad news.”
Dead wrong again!
Jud is now my best friend and my closest confidant. Together we founded People of the Second Chance.
Sadly, our rushed life has facilitated simplistic opinions, conclusions, and judgments about issues that are ANYTHING but simple.
People. Religion. Values. Sexuality. Race. Marriage. Immigration. Just to name a few.
So do your relationships a favor and slow down.
Do your long-term research.
Respect complexities.
It is key to effective grace giving.
42 OUNCES OF HATER-ADE
So grace for strangers, our families, ex-spouses, opponents and prisoners. We’ve pretty much covered it, right? Not quite yet.
See, once you adopt grace, the hardest people to show grace to are…the grace killers. The people who ignorantly, perhaps overtly tout their lack of grace.
Think picketers who show up at the funerals of servicemen to protest the United States’ engagement in Iraq. Or protestors who wave “God Hates Fags” signs at Gay Pride parades.
On his blog, my friend Pete Wilson noted the ungracious can be the hardest people to treat with grace.
“Grace to prodigals? Yep. Grace to screw ups? No problem.
Grace to self-righteous, pride filled, judgmental types? Ummmmmm, not so quick.”
I’ve got to admit this is a tricky one for me too. I have no patience with people who spew hate and disrespect others.
So when I come across grace killers I feel justified chugging down my own 42-ouncer of hater-ade and giving them a bruise or two to help them re-evaluate.
But GRACENOMICS FOR OTHERS says otherwise.
If we truly want to unleash second chance living we have to show GRACE TO THE GRACE KILLERS.
Why, you ask? Because if you don’t extend grace to the grace killers….well….you are one of them.
Mike Foster Mike Foster leads an organization called People of the Second Chance which provides innovative strategies on failure and crisis. Mike also serves as the Creative Principal at PlainJoe Studios in Southern California. He blogs daily at www.POTSC.com and is @MikeFoster on Twitter.
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