As You Were – looking for connections between the work of Brené Brown and Daniel Quinn as I revisit them in book clubs. See the introductory post for what this is all about. In this post, I look at:
- Daniel Quinn Book Club — Ishmael, week 1: chapter 1
- Brené Brown Book Club — The Gifts of Imperfection, starting week 1-2 reading: Preface – Courage, Compassion, and Connection: The Gifts of Imperfection
Chapter 1
“Five severed fingers do not make a hand.” In civilization, we wrestle with individualism vs collectivism. But Brené regularly notes that we’re wired for connection. It’s John Bowlby’s attachment theory. We should be looking for what transcends individual-over-collective and collective-over-individual. Win-win.
“My subject is: captivity.” Reading this book for the first time in probably over 25 years, this really hit me. And the fact that it hit me then hit me, telling me just how out of touch I’d gotten with this being the/a central theme topic to the book, and to Quinn’s work. When dysfunctional systems are chronic, we’re prisoners of them, but they get so familiar we don’t realize we’re captives, don’t realize there are things to live in other than a prison.
“Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world… I think there are many among you who would be glad to release the world from captivity… They’re unable to find the bars of the cage.” Connects with and echoes personal dysfunctional, addiction, self-destructiveness.
“And you yourself are a captive in a personal way, are you not?” What is so on the cultural level is so on the personal level. Internal Family Systems tells us this, too. This sentences points to the importance of understanding individual-level captivity, which would be one way to conceive of Brené’s work.
“I can’t shake the crazy feeling that there is some small thing that we’re being lied to about.” On the individual level, it’s a belief that we are unworthy, unlovable.
“Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it.” The vulnerability of relationship, of seeing and being seen, of mutual support.
Preface
“Humans are a meaning-making species.” She’s interested in who we are as a species. Echoes Quinn’s focus on the stories cultures tell about themselves.
“Wholehearted.” Wholeness. Not partial, not fragmented. Echoes Quinn’s “five fingers” quote above.
“Wholeheartedness is as much about embracing our tenderness and vulnerability as it is about developing knowledge and claiming power.” Echoes Quinn’s criticisms of civilization as being focused on power in an imbalanced way.
Introduction: Wholehearted Living
“Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” Echoes Quinn’s focus on people being fine as they are, no need to be perfect. Talking like this, as there’s an opposition where there is none, is a hallmark of life in civilization, which dichotomizes/polarizes at almost every turn.
“How do we define worthiness, and why do we so often end up hustling for it rather than believing in it?… I’d try slowing down rather than relying on my old standbys: pushing through, soldiering on, and sucking it up.” The individual-level hustling here seems tied, very directly, to civilization’s overall obsession with productivity and achievement.
“It’s extremely difficult to dedicate your career to studying topics that make people squeamish.” Quinn studied such topics. It may be a truism that anything that makes people squeamish in this way will join the two of them together, will be, in the most literal sense, counterculture.