Respect

“If you realize what the real problem is – losing yourself, giving yourself to some higher end, or to another – you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.” Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, The Hero’s Adventure Chapter

We live in a pluralistic society. We have become so diverse we are quite literally bursting at the seams. When Buddhists are committing genocide, then we have a much larger problem than one dysfunctional government or the ravings of one impotent leader. Technology has distributed power to the many and the few are desperate to hold on to their privilege.

When power – money, access, influence – is centralized, respect is demanded by the leaders and given enthusiastically by the toadies and reluctantly by the fringe. The privileged power party runs along with excess. Respect for laws, women, honor, the natural world and wisdom falls away as the core rots from the inside. Corruption soon becomes the norm and the truth must be distorted, suppressed or redefined to preserve perverted power.

Into this bacchanal a hero is born. The hero does not attack the old potentate or bang on the walls of the crumbling establishment. The heroine founds the new. With the power available to each of us today, whether through instant global communication, the sharing economy, or myriad opportunities to respect our disparate neighbors and lift them up; we all have the choice: to stay on the current vicious path and relate only to our coterie and concentrate on our own protection or to take up the hero’s path and open the way to better more respectful world through dialog and engagement.

Change

“Change is the only constant.” Heraclitus

During a fitful sleep on my recent Asia trip, this quote surfaced in my dream. I had delivered my lecture in Kuala Lumpur and was in Busan, Korea preparing for a presentation at the FIABCI Asia Pacific Real Estate Congress. I also had another lecture planned in Honolulu on the way stateside. Many real estate professionals remain remarkably resistant to change in spite of clear evidence that the world is leaving them behind.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Darwin

Developers glom on to the latest trend and brokers hustle to sell yet another luxury condo tower to foreign investors to sit empty while the affordable housing crisis continues apace. I look outside my window and see the eighth construction crane erected while a man shuffles to his shared living space under the highway bridge. Another man comes out and gets on his bike to make his way in the city. Periodically the state highway department arrives to clear out their debris.

“Dire things are happening. Plague? Funny weather? Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy – probably a necessary lie – that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and I am in the know: crazy people, bunches of them! New diseases, sways in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?” Annie Dillard

We need to take a step back and realize that the fall of this dynasty is no more or less important, disgusting, savage, putrid or frightening than the ones that came before. We only feel it more because it’s ours.

Women

“And our sons must become men – such men as we hope our daughters born and unborn, will be pleased to live among. Our sons will not grow into women. Their way is more difficult than that of our daughters for they must move away from us, without us. Hopefully our sons have what they have learned from us, and a howness to forge it into their own image.” Audre Lourde, Sister Outsider p. 73

As we watch the malevolence currently precipitated by our fathers and our brothers groping for their manhood in paramilitary mobs, I was reminded of this book of essays by Audre Lourde, the black feminist poet. In one essay she describes catching herself teaching her son how to hate – how men aren’t supposed to feel – when he came home from school after being bullied. She realized her initial reaction to her son’s tears was to train him to be what our culture defines as a man – a person trapped in dependency and fear.

I am currently working on the Uganda Property Markets Scorecard – Conditions for Women and researching decades of denying women property rights. Systems still deny women access to property and power even decades after laws have been changed. Is the system really any better in the developed world? How can it be that straight white men continue to be threatened by the rise of everyone else? What role did women have in creating these men?

Women primarily shaped my vision of the world and taught me how to think and create. I am forever grateful for the women who continue to push me to be a better man. Yet somehow I am still afraid.