The NYT has a noteworthy article titled “Why Is It So Hard to Apologize Well?” Here is an excerpt:

All this apologizing should be good for our collective soul, allowing those who are wrong a chance to repent and those who have been wronged a change to forgive, right? Apologies, says Dr. Aaron Lazare, the former chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of the book “On Apology,” are “the most profound of human interactions.” When used well, the words can heal humiliation — by lifting anger and guilt and allowing splintered bonds to mend.

Or at least that’s what they are supposed to do. These days, they more often sound like parodies of their once-powerful selves, and instead of bringing solace, they tend to create more anger.

(Checkout Dr. Aaron Lazare‘s book On Apology referenced in the article.)

3 Quarks Daily has a post worth noting by Quinn O’Neill titled “Heroes and Whistleblowers.” Here is an excerpt:

There aren’t enough truly evil psychopathic types to build an entire army of bad guys to carry out atrocities. Could it be that the majority of people who join an army, regardless of the conflict or the side they take, think they’re doing something noble – fighting for freedom, for instance? It seems that if we were to put an army together to carry out unethical acts, we’d have to use ordinary people and convince them that the unethical acts are actually noble.

Which brings me back to whistleblowers and the noble things they represent, like freedom of information and integrity. Heroes and bad guys are distinguished by facts. Both may think they’re doing something noble and both may be lauded as heroes by their fellow countrymen and their family members, but invariably one side is wrong. We can only know which side that is if we have access to complete and reliable information.

Access to information is one of the most important freedoms that people can have. Without it, we can’t know what side of any conflict we should be on. And we can be easily manipulated. We can be led to believe that we have freedoms that we lack. We can be led to believe that ordinary people are “bad guys”. And we can become the “bad guys” ourselves.

(Find the image above here.)

I heard someone say years ago that being in a relationship is like being under a microscope all the time. I think this comment is right and makes an important point, our husband, wife, partner, is watching. Having eyes on us, observing who we are, what we say, feel, think, and do, should cause us pause, make us aware, and keep us on guard to some degree. Being on guard doesn’t mean to suggest defensiveness, but accountability instead.

We need to be observed in order to be accountable. Our marriages and partnerships are like a surveillance system that tracks our every move. In affect, without surveillance, a witness to our thoughts, moods, behaviors, we aren’t anchored enough to others and the world around us.

(Find the painting “Under the Microscope” by Lisa Stevens here.)

Trust is our most valuable and hard earned resource, but we seem to squander it without regard for how precious and fragile it is and how quickly we can lose it. I think of earning and maintaining someone’s trust as linked to accountability and how authentic we are towards others and within ourselves. PSYBLOG has a great post in this regard titled “The Trust Gap: Why People Are So Cynical.” Here is an excerpt:

People often say that it’s experience that breeds this cynicism rather than a failing in human nature. This is true, but only in a special way.

Think about it like this: the first time you trust a stranger and are betrayed, it makes sense to avoid trusting other strangers in the future. The problem is that when we don’t ever trust strangers, we never find out how trustworthy people in general really are. As a result our estimation of them is governed by fear.

(Find the image above here.)

We have had amazingly complex discussions with single people, mostly women, about the dating scene and finding a partner. These conversations center on exploring the many reasons it’s so hard to find someone. The stories we hear from our single friends who are actively trying to date are at times unbelievable, describing bizarre behaviors, total lack of awareness, and some remarkable acts of deceit.

The themes that always jump out for me are a lack of follow-through and this inability to be honest with and accountable. As a married person I see the dating world as filled with people who seem terrified of one another. Scientific American has an article titled “Changing the Dating Game: When women approach men instead of vice versa, the gender difference in selectivity disappears” that addresses some important questions. Here is an excerpt:

Women are much choosier than men when it comes to romance. This is well known, but the reason for this gender difference is unclear. Evolutionary psychologists think it is because back in prehistoric times “dating” was much riskier for women. Men who made an ill-advised choice in the ancient version of a singles bar simply had one lousy night. Women who chose unwisely could end up facing years of motherhood without the critical help that a stable partner would have provided.

That is less true today, yet women remain much more selective. Is this difference a vestige of our early ancestry? Or might it be totally unrelated to reproductive risk, the result of something more modern and mundane?

(Find the image above at lafleurerouge’s photostream.)

Finding who we belong with and where we need to be is in many ways a matter of choices with an eye on our fate. I mean fate in the sense that our family, friends, peers and community combined with the actual physical place we live and move in the world all determine what will happen to us. This is why we should view our life in terms of who we are surrounded by and where we call home as a series of choices, recognizing that we have to live with the family we are given and the place we were born, but we don’t have to stay with them or there if in doing so we are not allowed to be who we are. If we build this kind of awareness of family, friends, peers, and place as our reality and central to our identity, but not necessarily who we want to stay with or where we want to be, then we can make the kinds of choices that reflect who we are and where we really belong. Read more…

As we witness and/or experience a record number of bankruptcies through this current recession we have to continue asking ourselves how we got here, combating the desire to go back to the ways things were when we thought we could have and spend it all. A pay as you go model for living our lives, operating our businesses, and driving our economy, can be balanced with a need for targeted investment risks that move people and industries forward. We have talked about how a growth and consume governing philosophy has exhausted individuals, families and the country as a whole. But, we can’t look solely to the government or private sectors for relief. The answers to the huge challenges we face right now lie with us, within our own households and communities.

When we see how the second largest city in the nation, Los Angeles, has a projected $1 billion deficit gap by 2013, we can recognize that the way we live and govern must and will change whether we like it or not. The way to address the challenges we face and make the necessary changes are by redefining our myths and dreams about being Americans, focusing on who and what we are in reality entitled to pursue and possess. In this process of redefining who we are, what we pursue, consume and own, we keep in mind the people who need assistance and a way out of their difficult situations. Resources are then targeted to provide and promote opportunities and protect members of our communities who can’t do so for themselves.

We are describing an attitude that fosters the idea that the most vulnerable among us can in fact be us. In times like these so many of us can find ourselves in need of assistance and protection, but more importantly opportunity. Yet, for opportunities to be available they must be provided in a sustainable context where we are all being responsible, accountable, and conscious of the fact that the resources we have and use are finite and will eventually come to an end if we continue to stay on the same path we have been on.

(Check out the site of Mr. Tolendo and his series of photos titled “Bankrupt.”)

Following up on such previous posts as “Cultural Symptoms: Depth not Speed” and “Fostering Care: Speed of Thought and the Value of Timing” where we target the need for thinking, feeling, living, more deeply while embracing complexity NPR has a post by Michael C. Kalton titled “The Faster We Live, The Shorter We Seem To Be On Time.” How we perceive ourselves, others, and the world around us is distorted by speed and the need for easy answers and simple narratives. To take more time to see, think, and feel more deeply and live with and through the multiple aspects of people and issues is not fostered enough by our culture.

We look to others to think for us instead of doing the hard work of finding information, making changes, and being accountable to and responsible for ourselves and those we care for and love. The crises we face right now require our attention, commitment, and capacity to see, think, and feel more deeply. In order to meet the challenges we face we start with slowing down, not speeding up, our lives and avoiding as much as possible the many distractions that get in our way. It is not the number of connections we have, how fast we get things done, or how much we can take on in our lives that matters. Take the time, make the effort, and go deep. Here is an excerpt from the NPR post:

This disconnect between our perception of how things work and how things actually work is generating countless planetary and existential crises. We have specialized and elaborated our rapid temporal framework and achieved unprecedented mastery over our immediate circumstances, in the process detaching our responses from groundings in the slower processes of nature. We have become the fastest-living creature on earth, producing more than the earth can absorb or sustain, changing entire ecosystems and environments faster than lifeforms can adjust, and straining our own capacity to deal with our ever more dense, eventful, experience-packed lives in which the dominant feeling is that we never have enough time.

(See the image of perception and others like it here.)

As we track the toll this recession is taking on so many children and families we pay specific attention to what is happening to men. As noted in a previous post “Cultural Symptoms: ‘Man-cession,’” men appear to be hit particularly hard by the current economic crisis. To not be able to provide for your family or be productive wears so many men down, creating lasting anxiety and fear. We still don’t know what the toll will be on the now chronically unemployed and “discouraged workers.” The process of recovery is linked to our ability to trust that work will be available to us and that jobs won’t disappear again.

We are not suggesting that women are not as hit by this recession and tough economic times, they are, as told in the post “Cultural Symptoms: Working Mothers and ‘Maternal Profiling.’” In fact, women are taking on an incredible burden for their families by working harder, being primary, if not sole, earners. For them the long hours and distance they feel from their children as they spend so much time from home is especially cruel. But, with men what we focus on here is the anger they feel from being disempowered and left out of a place they find much of their identity and sense of self worth. In this regard, The Chronicle of Higher Education has a must read article titled “Mad Men in the He-Cession.” Here is an excerpt:

Men’s failure during panics, once viewed as a moral failing or a loss of masculinity, became more routine as panics became more routine in America. Reforms like the Bankruptcy Act eased the sting of depression for angry young men and did appear to minimize violence. As bankruptcy became more familiar and less harrowing than a prison sentence, tempers over indebtedness appeared to cool.

Are unemployed American men as dangerous as their counterparts in Russia or Pakistan? Probably not. The American political system has been jiggered and rejiggered through two centuries of angry, impulsive, violent men. Sometimes political institutions have been calibrated to deploy that violence, sometimes to redirect it, sometimes to quash it.

We will almost certainly see improved intelligence networks among credit-rating agencies to identify bad risks, given that leg irons are out of fashion in dealing with debtors. We might also see surges in policing institutions to deal with panicked perceptions about unruly American men. (After a Constitution, a Secret Service, and state armories, what is next? Real-estate surveillance drones?)