Challenging but extremely important work.

I was looking forward to reading this book because I love Dr. Wheatley's work - especially her earlier stuff. Now, there is a lot I like about "Who Do We Choose to Be?", especially her writing about systems, Indigenous traditions, and about community. I am mostly disappointed about its lack of addressing the title of the book more specifically. As a career counselor, I always think about the question: “Who am I becoming?” I didn’t find any real practical interventions other than suggestions on Warriors for the Human Spirit’s state of being (e.g. that they “are awake human beings who have chosen not to flee. They abide” p. 159). I know she conducts retreats that address how to be a warrior, and I would have appreciated more detailed suggestions to address the shit show we face every day and probably offers more tangible activities to be a warrior.

Although disappointed, I do respect her writing style and multi-media (e.g. images, poems, quotes, etc.) approach to the book. I highly recommend her earlier work. I give the book a 3.5.

V

Quotes

“This is the Age of Threat, when everything we encounter intensifies fear and anger. In survival mode, we flee from one another, abandon values that held us together, withdraw from ideas and practices that encouraged inclusion and created trust in leaders. And, most harmfully, we stop believing in one another.”

“I can’t imagine a more important task than to consciously choose who I want to be as a leader for this time. We must understand the time we’re in, focus our energy on what’s possible, and willingly step forward to serve the human spirit.”

“Can human behavior and consciousness be changed, or have these also already tipped? Individuals and whole societies now exhibit behaviors of increased fear and vulnerability, behaviors from multiple causes and conditions that coalesced into a critical state. No matter where people live and work, threats to personal well-being, and threats to our global future, are increasingly evident. ”

“The Hopi prophecy for these times teaches: “At this time in history we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.”18
____
“I should like to think that prehistoric man’s first invention, the first condition for his survival, was a sense of humor.” —Andre Leroi-Gourhan, paleoanthropologist”

“Without identity there is no life, no creation, no responsiveness, no continuation, no possibility for evolutionary change. Yet every change is motivated by an attempt to not change, to preserve a self.”

“Curiosity leads to adaptive responses. Certainty leads to death sentences—at least this is true for every other life form on this planet.”

“When fearful people bond together, all the ingredients for strong community are present: a shared world view, a desire to support one another, a clear lens for interpreting information, and a collective self-image that they’re engaged in important work.”

“The core teachings from many spiritual traditions teach skills to awaken our better brains and enable higher capacities. In different forms, but from the same wisdom, these spiritual teachings offer practices to pause, settle, open, identify emotional triggers, notice reactions, practice patience, refrain from judgments, overcome bias, make moral decisions. It takes work to be a human being rather than a human animal! Robert Sapolsky, a brilliant neurobiologist whose work has educated me, defines the frontal cortex’s role as “making you do the harder thing when it’s the right thing to do.”

“The antidote to misinformation and confusion is personal, face-to-face, slowed communication.”

“A recipe for creating mind change has three basic ingredients: a relationship of mutual respect; genuine curiosity about one another; and a process that requires good listening.”

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
—Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning”

“Belonging is the path to healing. The word “healing” comes from an older word for “wholeness,” which comes from an even older word, “holiness.”

“We need to be in the world but not of it. We need to create places at work and in our communities that protect people from the destructive dynamics of this culture and reawaken their human spirits.”

“There are two basic gestures in life: Either we open or we close, either we embrace or we withdraw, either we move forward or we retreat. The choice is to step forward into Warriorship or to withdraw in retreat. Either we understand what’s going on and choose to stay present for this time, or we hide in cocoons of denial and distraction. The choice is yours.”

Wow. I read this in a single day, and I will likely read and reread it again and again, especially on those days I'm feeling particularly lost or unsure of my journey.

5/5 stars. I would recommend this to anyone interested in understanding humanity and its role in the decline of civilization, and what the heck we can do about it.

This book is asking readers – or uplifting leaders to work for the common good.

The author suggests that in order for us to deal with the overwhelming problems of our time – “since we cannot change the way the world is – we need to open it to a world that we can discover gentleness, decency and bravery – for all humans” – we need to layout a mission.

This mission is to:

Create islands of sanity, guiding with courage and integrity, dealing with the impossible, directing social change, depending on diversity, inspiring with the joy of interbeing and standing up for what is right.

What will it take?

Throughout the book are large quotes reminiscent of cheerleading moments of “you got this,” “we can do this” and “we are in this together.” Of course, the quotes don’t say any of that, but the feeling is there.

Wheatley concludes:

“Now we have front row seats in the lessons of interconnectedness and the consequences of ignoring nature’s fundamental truths. As the ecologists have noted: nature bats last.”

Wheatley writes, teaches and asks the right questions. This book is a call to action.

Recently passed activist, Daniel Ellsberg is quoted on page 265 in this book as saying,

“You have to take a stand, and stand there.”

Perfect. The time is now.

As others have expressed, there were parts that I loved and parts that really turned me off. I loved, in general, the idea of leadership at the village or "island" level, focusing on maintaining a community of love and ethics in the midst of so much hatred and corruption. I also loved the ways she connected ethics and morality to concepts of quantum physics and the biology of symbiosis. The idea of the function of leadership as helping to keep the "membrane" of an organization porous while constantly reinforcing values and core identity is something I will carry with me and try to apply in my life. But I could not stomach her use of the military as a key example of this type of leadership. In those sections, she seemed to deny or forget about the dynamics of coercive and bureaucratic authority. I was also put off by her insistence that Glubb's 6 stages of collapse offer an uncanny description of our own times. Glubb's account of heroic and brave pioneers "collapsing" into a diverse and multiethnic society, offering equal rights of citizenship, assistance to the young and the poor, and supporting free education and health care... well, I'm just not seeing it.

It took me a while to finish but I think it is a great read. Sometimes a bit depressing but also a way to find your strength in this time and get back to what is important.

Met me where I'm currently at with thinking our society is a sinking ship. But... I really do wonder if she stuck too hard to "our society is going to collapse" because she can't/doesn't see alternatives outside of the ruling-class’s approach to everything. Sure, if we keep doing exactly what we're doing, we'll crash and burn. But what if we let other people, who haven't had a chance to create things/solutions/systems take control, right the ship? She talks about how every society that collapses thinks towards the end, “we’re smart, we can use our smarts to get out of this”. And that they never can. But how many people ruling the collapsing societies at the end of their run say, “you know what? We suck, let’s give the marginalized a chance to run this.” Seems like there could end up being some different results.