The slides for the talk in ServiceSpace's 2019 retreat. The focus was on holding space, and this talk gets into values, metrics, the legacy of Robert Hartman, etc.

1. Holding space:
Listening for god…
Sep 1 2018
…when you totally disagree

2. “I was born to die for Germany”

3. “I was born to die for Germany”
“I was born to live for Germany”

4. “I was born to die for Germany”
“I was born to live for Germany”
Robert S. Hartman -- 1910-1973

6. “Germany lost in the First World War 1,808,545 dead or three percent of her population. After
the war the birth rate made up for this loss in 6.4 years. Thus, it could be argued from a
collective viewpoint, Germany lost nothing. But the individual casualty was a man, loved and
loving, and his loss was irreplaceable. It was a life lost, a life wasted, dumped into a manhole.
The state takes human life supposedly to protect the whole. But is a human life of less value
than a collective? Perhaps, I thought, in the true scale of values, the individual loss weighs more
heavily than the supposed gain of the state. Perhaps the individual in his concreteness is worth
more than the collective in its abstraction. Perhaps the simple arithmetic of population
statistics is morally, and hence truly, false.” -- Robert S. Hartman

7. Hartman’s mathematics of value:
Value of 1 actual life > the count of 1 million lives

8. Powerful in catching valuation mistakes. But, how
do you listen for inseparability?
INTRINSIC VALUE
Defined as LIFE
INTRINSIC VALUATION
Felt as inseparable from self
SYSTEMIC VALUE
Defined as constructs/rules
SYSTEMIC VALUATION
Completely objective rule-fulfilment
PRACTICAL
VALUE
Defined as means-to-an-end
with physical space-time reality
PRACTICAL VALUATION
Felt as everyday interestedness
Richness

9. A different kind of listening
“As an observer, the researcher notes that when the subject discovered the
intrinsic value, he immediately went silent for some seconds. When he
spoke next, the researcher got the impression that he felt he was finally
being understood. This assenting silence has been experienced by the
researcher with other subjects as well, and might be a clue that we are
touching on ground that is indeed of an intrinsic nature to the subject.”
– P128, Achieving Clarity on Value

14. Shaped my own
listening

15. Gandhi’s listening for gold
Nrityendranath Sarkar, Head of Kali temple in C.
R. Park, New Delhi, hung out with Gandhi as a
16-year old in Kolkata
Ref: A gift of Gandhi,
ServiceSpace blog
Angry youth chided
Gandhi and had harsh
words for another
community

16. Nrityendranath Sarkar, Head of Kali temple in C.
R. Park, New Delhi, hung out with Gandhi as a
16-year old in Kolkata
Ref: A gift of Gandhi,
ServiceSpace blog
Gandhi’s response: “I
really like your
energy. So much
energy is good. Very
good.” And on the
topic, “We are all just
humans.”
Gandhi’s listening for gold

17. listening for gold
Or listening for god

18. St. Ignatius’ Inquiry
What is of God, and what is not
of God?
“Over years of prayerful reflection and spiritual direction of others, Ignatius
developed many ways to listen to the language of the heart. This is the language
that reveals God’s intentions and inspires us to a generous response. What we
believe and what we do are important. But Ignatius is far more interested in the
condition of our hearts.” Basically St Ignatius teaches us that the spiritual journey is
about learning God’s vision for our hearts not our minds. (WHO DO I WANT TO BE?)
...Reference

19. “What is of God, what is not of God”?
Hartman’s secular equivalent: Catch valuation
mistakes -- Instrinsic valued systemically, and
systemic valued intrinsically

20. The poets know this.
“Patriotism [commitment to a systemic
value] cannot be our final spiritual
shelter; my refuge is humanity [life as an
intrinsic value]. I will not buy glass for
the price of diamonds, and I will never
allow patriotism to triumph over
humanity as long as I live.”
… in a letter, responding to the criticism of Abala Bose,
wife of scientist J. C. Bose

21. “I am willing to serve my country; but
my worship [intrinsic valuation] I
reserve for Right [that which is true/real]
which is far greater than my country. To
worship my country as a God [intrinsic
valuation of systemic] is to bring a curse
upon it.”
… the protagonist in Tagore’s novel, The Home and the
World

22. “I loved it (civil state) and would, in a given case, die for it, as I would die to save a
drowning child, to rescue a person assaulted by a criminal, or to save the victims of a fire.
These, I felt sure, are ways in which one may die for life. But can I, who am loved and who
loves, disregard the grief, the despair of the human heart deliberately arranged by and for
political power? Can I barter compassion for my fellow (hu)man for a mess of collective
glory? Is not the choice, again, between truth and falsity, reality and fake? For the glory of
the military state, won with the deaths of millions of men, women and children, is not my
glory.”
-- Robert Hartman
Hartman helps us understand what Tagore meant

23. Listen for god
“god”: a 100% commitment to a specific
value
…that connects you to wholeness
…through a feeling of creative joy

24. Listen for authenticity,
creative joy

25. CEO: “How do I organize
employee-giving program
to support causes like
hunger, poverty…?”

26. Let’s go back to listening again.. There is something
in our bodies that guides us (remember Nipun on
Day 1)?

27. Strangely, traction on my work on listening
came after I started measuring… :)

28. Going beyond Hartman…
Sometimes, the intrinsic (life/sacredness)
manages to peep out of the systemic
(artificial constructs)...

36. Q&A
Things you could ask:
Other stories of numinous metrics
Implications on counting
Implications on common metrics: profits/impact
Addressing polarization with listening – “violent” CEO story
“not feeling it” Saudi story
goddess: Jane

37. Kindful
commuting
Direction
giver
JANE MURRAY
Reconnecting with
Pre-existing communities