Monday 17 January 2011

MINDFULNESS & MORALITY 1: EXPECTATIONS, GROUND RULES, PROCESSES


At Christchurch, Clarendon Park, this evening for the first session in a new course, "Mindfulness & Morality", offered by Christians Aware as part of their Faith Awareness programme.

The 12-week course has been devised by Ian Grayling and Kevin Commons (photo above) from the Leicester Serene Reflection Meditation Group. There are 24 people present this evening, half of whom are new faces to me.

Now I swear that the first two words I heard as I entered the room were "blog" - and "blog". Ian, Kevin and Barbara Butler (who runs Christians Aware) were standing talking together as I came in and they asked me right away if I'd be writing up this course. As if I'd be doing anything else!

This time last year, Ian and Kevin facilitated a course of similar length on Mindfulness Through the Senses. I blogged extensively throughout that course (see entries passim). I found it a very interesting and rewarding experience and am only too glad to have signed up for this new course. There were a number of issues raised in that course that couldn't be addressed then - so this course is something of a follow-on although it will still be accessible to newcomers. One such question brought up this evening, regards the nature of a mindful sniper. From a Buddhist perspective, the moral dimension emerges from "right mindfulness" not just mindfulness alone.

The first two introductory sessions are described as being "faith-neutral", serving as a launchpad for the "faith-specific" presentations to follow. The Council of Faiths leaflets for the faiths involved are being given to attendees, as a way of saving presenters from having to do a basic introduction to their respective faiths and get right into the moral issue in question.

In this first session, we're considering groundrules. To help us in our reflection and discussion, we're given a handout with some "exemplars" (adapted from the work of P. Senge):

Suspending assumptions and agendas
Typically people take a position and defend it, holding to it. Others take up opposite positions and polarization results. In this session, we could like to examine some of the assumptions underlying our direction and strategy and not seek to defend them.

Acting as colleagues
We are asking everyone to leave his/her position at the door. There will be no particular hierarchy in these meetings, except the facilitator who will, hopefully, keep us on track.

Spirit of inquiry
We would like to have people feeling able to explore the thinking behind their views, the deeper assumptions they hold, and the evidence they have that leads them to these views. So it will be fair to begin to ask other questions such as "What leads you to say or believe this?" or "What makes you ask about this?"

Expectations & concerns
We're given a few minutes to discuss these in small groups, then speak up to have them added to the flipchart.
  • is it limited to human beings?
  • relation between law and morality
  • not just knowing but the power to do good
  • will representatives of the different faiths be fundamentalist or liberal
  • religious correctness or morality
  • the idea of decency as a moral construct
  • how much common ground will we actually find among the religions?
  • which is more important: the individual or the group?
  • who decides?
  • can a coerced action be a moral action?
  • place of compassion and concern for other people

We're given an exercise to carry out, once again in small groups before reporting. back to the whole class.

Cave Rescue
The Abbeydale National Park has recently opened up a new show cave to the public. Although great care was taken to ensure the safety of this attraction, extreme weather conditions have caused a roof-fall, blocking the main entrance and exit and partially blocking a service tunnel which now the only route out. Thirteen visitors together with the cave's resident guide have now been trapped in the main chamber of the cave for six hours - two other died instantly in the rock-fall. The cave is now in total darkness and the survivors are cold, wet and beginning to show signs of shock.

You are the local cave rescue team
The guide's two-way radio has enabled you to talk to the survivors whilst two of your team have been clearing their way through the service tunnel. They have just returned with the worst news of all - the severe rain coupled with the rock-fall is causing the cave to flood.

All of the trapped visitors are local villagers who won tickets to the attraction in a raffle organised by the Abbeydale Natural History Society. As local people yourselves, you have got together with the Site Director and her staff to produce some brief profiles pooling what you know about the individual survivors.

Because of the damage to the service tunnel, you are only able to rescue one person at a time and it will take 30 minutes per person. You calculate that the cave will completely flood in three to three-and-a-half hours and you will have to decide who you will rescue and in what order.

Your decision will determine who will live and who will die.

We're presented with a list and biographical sketches of 14 people trapped below and we have to pick the ones to save: and we can only save, at most, half the people down there.
Winston Barnes (38) Official Cave guide: ex SAS - very fit and cool under pressure. Has had difficulties adjusting to civilian life after being caught behind enemy lines and tortured during the Gulf War. His wife has left him following repeated bouts of unpredictable behaviour and violent outbursts.
Humphrey St John-Smythe (68) Ex MP and leader of the local Hunt. Owns a factory employing 72 local people which is unlikely to keep going once he has gone. The factory is the major employer in the nearby village. 
Edwina St John-Smythe (64) Wife of Humphrey. Well known for her charitable work - has raised many thousands of pounds for good causes over the last five years. 
Paul Gallimore (19) Mildly autistic. Attends nearby special day centre with Molly. Both he and Molly were chosen to join Stanley Walker (their care worker) for what was to be a very special day out.
Molly Croft (22) Severely learning disabled. Attends nearby special day centre (same as Paul). It has recently been discovered that she is three months pregnant. 
Stanley Walker (38) Married with five children (8 months to 14 years). Popular with both staff and service users. He is thought to be having an affair with a colleague at work. 
Prakesh Acharia (49) Unmarried. Religious leader for the small local Hindu community. He did a great deal to help integration and ease tensions after a spate of racially motivated arson attacks on Asian businesses during the late 1980s. He is the new Labour candidate for the constituency. 
Katie Carre (22) Local singer and dancer. Has recently been spotted by a record company talent scout and is about to sign a recording contract. 
Brian Conroy (54) Brilliant research scientist. A bit of a loner - convicted of a relatively minor sexual assault on a young boy 15 years ago and was forced to resign as the local scout leader. He is thought to be close to making a breakthrough in cancer research.
Leanne Drury (39) Unmarried, single parent of three children (16, 18 and 22 years). She seems to be winning a long battle with an alcohol problem and now attends adult literacy classes. Her 16-year old daughter has just given birth to twins. 
Baz Baker (19) Baz has a criminal record starting when he was 12 years old - including a serious assault on a pensioner. He appears to have turned over a new leaf since starting community service at the nearby day centre for young people with learning disabilities. He now wants to get an NVQ in Care.
Madge Byers (72) "Super Gran" - has been campaigning for better leisure opportunities for the elderly. She promotes an active lifestyle, by example - she recently parachuted from a balloon to raise money for Age Concern. 
Richard "Blinkey" Byers (78) Madge's husband - a Second World War hero. Repeatedly risked his life to save trapped and wounded civilians and soldiers, whilst under heavy enemy fire and having been wounded twice. He is well known for his generosity and kindness.
Gary Needham (27) Local gay rights campaigner. He gives up a lot of his spare time working for the Samaritans and visiting a nearby Hospice for terminally ill children.

Well, faithful reader: it's the Kobayashi Maru, isn't it? I'm sure you can imagine what sort of calculations and deals were made as we tried to decide who should be saved and who left behind. Some favoured the elderly, some the young, some held to that old-fashioned British way of doing thins, "Women and children first!" Some complained that it was an impossible task, some refused to take part, some protested that it was unfair to be asked to make our choices in just 15 minutes and that we should have been given this as homework so that we had more time to decide. Some tried to work out who should be left behind, rather than who should be saved - but  by the time that would have been done, everyone would have died and no one would have been rescued. We made our choices, in our group of five. Basically, we just went round and picked one each. When one member of the group couldn't pick, the next one in turn got to pick two. We completed our task as a matter of expediency. The group[ next to us couldn't decide, so ended up picking no one. Another group put the names form the list into a hat and picked them out at random. Ian, facilitating this activity, asked if that was a moral choice or whether it was a way of avoiding a moral choice. I felt it was moral, inasmuch as it would have spared the rescuers from sleepless nights worrying whether they'd made the right decisions and what would if happened if ... (analogous to a firing squad being given one blank bullet, so that each soldier could convince himself that he was not one of those who fired a fatal shot). What we couldn't account for, of course, was the attitude and behaviour of those who were supposed to be trapped and in need of rescue. Would they have been moved by acts of heroism, sacrifice or selfishness? it would be a very different sort of game if we had been asked to play it from their side.

I'm sure you see the point of this game in the context of this course. It helps make us aware that there are processes, prejudices behind how we make choices, decisions, judgements - and how other people may be led to make different ones from us by processes and prejudices of their own.

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