Episode 4: The Mathematics of Wholeness

What does it cost when we subtract each other from the equation?

In a world that makes division easy, host Norma Wong and guest Nan Stoops take time to do the math.  This episode adds up the real cost of othering, and makes the case for wholeness as the only equation that works.

In this conversation, Norma and Nan discuss:

• Why Sun Tzu’s teachings on fire speak to this moment of social division
• The difference between worldview and ideology-and why it matters
• What Minneapolis taught us
• Why this generation’s assignment is to choose humanity

If you’re feeling the weight of a divided world and looking for strategies and a sense of purpose, this conversation is for you. 

Visit us at thehorizonstory.com, subscribe on Substack, watch on YouTube, and listen wherever you get your podcasts. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who is ready to hear it. To keep this work going, become a supporter of the show!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Chapter eight, wholeness is not accommodation. Wholeness as a slogan, excellent for food, including the spiritual kind, and as in food, more useful as food than slogan. To be one with is wholeness, and wholeness just is. Wholeness is not accommodation of our troubled existence, seeking to include the farthest of one side with the farthest of the other. Sides all loud voices does not intactness make. Intactness is wholeness worthy of endeavor. Not accommodation, not opposite of, separation, division, subtraction of human life. Not accommodation, not opposite of. Having come this far, exceeding 144 characters, can't ever be the whole of who we are, becoming or even left behind. Our notion of what is whole and what is not. Just remove the W, and we clearly know the whole. In the middle of our heart where grief used to productively water, our loss giving way to resolve's hard-fought hope, this whole we know. Ours to know and fill from the darkness of Po to red dawn awakening. Our Kuliana sacred mutual responsibility in this endeavor to know wholeness, not as purity. How can it be static, devoid of dirt and stain? Only the equity of sweat, hard work will bring us safely to the other side. The other side beyond turmoil, separation, erasure. Yes, sanctity, but not righteous purity, as much hard work needs to be done, people fed, streams, cooled and cleaned, everything in between interrupted. For we do not yet really know wholeness in this fully embraced way, being neither on top nor bottom, the side or that, replacing them with us will not the we make. We the ancestors of descendants yet to come, reaching farther back than memory's dreams, embracing original not knowing and making this leap. We create the event horizon of the whole, much more than accommodation, don't you think? No, don't think. Instead, adopt Xuang Su's advice to listen with our spirit as the way gathers in this nether space, emptied of our ambition, and all the things, all the noise giving way to just a whisper. An earnest wind reminds the land how whole all can be, in the multitude of life learning to be one with, one piece at a time, one by one by one, making our way, figuring out our figuring out way, figuring out what makes the whole whole. A fierce aloha, this enduring wind, wholeness. A worldview is a way of understanding and experiencing and responding to the world, and we all have a worldview. Sometimes we hold more than one at the same time. But generally, there's a prevalent worldview, a worldview that includes our beliefs, our values, our assumptions of what is real and what is not. And we can be in a moment where there's a huge clash of worldviews. And I believe we're like smack dab in that moment, right on top of each other. For those of whom smack dab is like a term that you might not have heard since the 50s, right? This whole notion of a worldview that is about the survival of the fittest, that all is fair in love and in war, and that I is greater than the we. Individualism is a worldview. The whole notion of us versus them, and that being absolutely fair game, and not only fair game, but that's where you begin, where you live, and where you end. That all of that in a package can be a worldview. It can be a worldview of people, it can be a worldview of an entire nation, it could be worldview of some people of that nation, and they may mean different things. So you could believe that it's us versus them, but your ideology may be different than the other people who believe us versus them, and then you really have us versus them. All of that could be all in the same worldview. So, worldview is not the same thing as ideology. Clearly, when you talk about survival of the fittest and us versus them, you could be at different parts of an ideology and still be within the worldview that is the same worldview, us versus them. That juxtaposed against a worldview that was the subject of the poem that I just wrote. Sometimes a worldview can only be expressed through culture and art, through poetry, through the lyric narrative rather than the analytical narrative. And I believe that actually that worldviews, the more that they are inclusive, the more that they have to be described primarily through art. It's one of the reasons I wrote that poem. Wholeness, not an accommodation, not something that you settle for, or you say that it is the opposite of brokenness. Wholeness is something that you have to work for, work towards, even in a world where many people are in just the survival of the fittest and therefore not whole at all. Wholeness is when each person is important to every other person for your collective existence. And in fact, all beings are important to all other beings for your collective existence, your collective success, your collective possibility lies more in the whole than in the individual parts. And this is the worldview that is being embraced in this particular podcast learning. It is a reason why the podcast has to have many episodes, because it's not that easy to grasp, but you know absolutely, absolutely where you are if you feel it, in your experience, that you understand it in your gut. Your hara if you're Japanese, your Na'ao if you're Hawaiian. That place that's below the belly button, where you understand, is where worldviews live. So you can understand that only the people who are of your own identity are worthy. Or you can understand that all people are worthy if we can only discover the humanity in each other. And sometimes it works in the same moment, at the same time, in the same place. And we're going to we're gonna discover that together. We're gonna talk about that. I'm gonna have my friend Nan come back at some point, and we're gonna like have it unfold this notion of humanity being in relationship to all beings as a worldview. And all of our problems are because of those people as another worldview. Which would you choose? Which do you want to live with? Which do you want to pass on to your descendants? Hope you'll come back. We'll be right back in just a few minutes.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

What to do when nothing works. With Wise and Witty Pros, Zen Master and Indigenous strategist Norma Wong reflects on this question and more in her acclaimed first book, When Nothing Works. Norma weaves poetry, storytelling, and meditation, inviting us to imagine a horizon of possibility beyond crisis. Hard copy and audiobook available now. Shopbookshop.com and support your local bookstore.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Welcome back, folks. I'm glad you return. You know this whole notion of whether or not we will choose humanity or not. Some people will make a calculation. They'll make a calculation that it's easier to other to blame other people for the circumstances we're in, and then therefore to look at the strategy that would follow if that's the worldview that we have. And we say then it becomes a very simple formula. The people who don't agree with you are the enemy, or at least the opposition. You might say, well, calling somebody an enemy is a little bit too far. I'm not that kind of person. Let's just call them the opposition. And let's just say that overcoming the opposition is the strategy that we will take. And that is the instinct that we have. It is an entire worldview when it comes to all kinds of strategy. And the question is, why not? Because if you are going to take that path, then the steps that you're going to take are pretty clear. You amass more power than the other side, you amass more resources than the other side. You build up more arguments than the other side. You put more people in play on your side than the other side, and voila, you win. But are there consequences to following that path? I believe that there are. Not only consequences of the spirit, but also consequences of strategy. So let's just take a look at that, the consequences of othering and why choosing humanity is both an imperative of strategy as well as an imperative of the spirit. So let's take the situation that we are currently in. And I say that actually with sad confidence, that when you are watching this particular podcast, or if you're listening to it, that it's highly likely that in some part of the globe that there will be a large consequential military action that will be occurring, and probably our country, the country of the United States, will be involved. I could say that with sad, I don't need to be like a predictive engine for that. In fact, if I were going to take a bet, it would be a sucker's bet. That would be the case. The notice thing of how quickly we arise to military action is our understanding of our willingness to be able to flirt with the notion of mass destruction, which is to say that a consequence of othering is that you have to be willing to take the other people out. And by taking them out, you take them all out. That is a thing, that's like a threshold. And it is a threshold that, among other things, you get measured for whether or not you are on one side or another side of humanity. And that is not the same thing as choosing a strategy of wholeness. But we'll get into that. We'll get into that in a bit later. Let's just take othering. The furthest course of action of othering is mass destruction. In Sun Tzu's The Art of War, there's a whole chapter around fire. And fire in Sun Tzu's time was the weapon of mass destruction. And what do we mean by that? It's by its description what it is, but why would fire be a weapon of mass destruction? It's because once you start it, you cannot predict what will happen. You cannot predict that it will come back onto yourself and that you too will be taken out by the fire. It's the nature of what fire is, as an element, but also in the way in which we might describe anger, for example. Of all of the various emotions and passions of humankind, fire is readily available to us in the emotion called anger. And when we are at the height of our anger, we could not only take out the people who we believe are the others, we could take out ourselves as well. All kinds of ways, intentional and unintentional. It might even be what it is that we go for as the final strategy that we have. Like, I cannot win, and so therefore I am just gonna take out the other, and then I too will perish. And you see that in the headlines, the tragic headlines, tragic headlines of people doing that just recently. Children killed in one family by an adult in an act of domestic violence, but really it was about unheralded, unfurling anger that had no other place to go, and it became a weapon of mass destruction. Children taken out, and it is a thing that can happen when we move towards mass destruction. Well, othering is this generation's fire, othering. And in an amazing kind of thing, unlike many other times, othering is a thing that many individuals can do. It doesn't require an organization to do or a government to do or a country to do to another. We can do it to each other. Othering is the fire of our generation, and it is, as in all fires, a weapon of mass destruction. You know, when you look at othering, othering doesn't even make sense from a math perspective. And here I say the word math, and I know that right offset somewhere, uh, Nan is sitting there and her ears have perked up because I use the word math. So, you know, I'm just gonna say it one more time because even though I'm not looking in her direction, I know her ears are perking up. Math. Why doesn't it make sense from a math perspective? Othering is about dividing and subtracting. It is not about adding. We think it's about adding because we go and we try to gather up all the people who believe the same way we do, who will other the other people the same way that we do. But as we go, we apply a stricter and stricter litmus test as to whether or not you other the same way that I other. You know, is it going to be that way? And even if it's a little bit off, we will question your loyalty to the flag of othering. And so it is a dividing and a subtracting thing. And who it is that you are with becomes a smaller and smaller, more isolated group of people building a moat, building a large wall, building as much ground between you and others in order to be in the righteous position of whoever it is that you are. Othering can so quickly, quickly get to the extremes of things. And when it does, when it inevitably does, there you'll be. The people othering who are othered by other people othering you. A self-fulfilling prophecy in which no one has each other's back, no one looking out for each other, no one calling, wait, wait, stop, running across the street to help two old women carry something down because you noticed, you noticed your neighbor. And even if you didn't know your neighbor's name, that you would come to their aid sits in a worldview that is definitely not othering. Hey friends, we'll be right back, and when we come back, we'll be talking. With our friend Nan Stoops, exploring this a bit more. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

What to do when nothing works. With Wise and Witty Pros, Zen Master and Indigenous strategist Norma Wong reflects on this question and more in her acclaimed first book, When Nothing Works. Norma weaves poetry, storytelling, and meditation, inviting us to imagine a horizon of possibility beyond crisis. Hard copy and audiobook available now. Shopbookshop.com and support your local bookstore.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Hello friends. Welcome back. We're here with Nan Stoops, who I know has a few questions for me, especially since I use certain words. But I'll let her ask the questions. Okay. Thanks for coming back, Nan.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Thank you for having me. I want to make sure first that all of the listeners have the reference point for the wholeness is not accommodation that Norma read earlier. And it is page 49 of Who We Are Becoming Matters, which I would imagine that by this point in time everyone has acquired somehow the book or the audio tape and is familiar with the with the contents.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

And that would be something that many people could actually shout out today, right, in defiance of people who wish to snuff them out, either in terms, stuff them out in terms of their politics or their beliefs, or to deny who it is that they are.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

In the even in the poem, I was I was I was wondering, is there a place within wholeness? Is there a place for accommodation? You know, I was kind of picturing nesting nesting baskets, and or are they two really different uh concepts?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Okay. So when I say that wholeness is not an accommodation, what I mean is there'll be, you know, there's some things that are like, for example, we could say, oh, we are uh a big tent party, for example. Okay. Or we are people who include many other peoples and things like that. And there'll be the part where you might say that as an accommodation rather than as an understanding that the people who are under the tent are in relationship with each other, and that you are important to each other not only for transactional reasons, such as electoral reasons, okay, but you are actually important to each other for each other's successes and failures and happiness and for your existence itself. Okay, and so there's it in Portugal beyond just the accommodation. And as a if if you're just go up to the edge of accommodation and just say, well, we're just gonna include all these people to accommodate all the people, then practically uh you would do it as long as you're not gonna disrupt things too much. Okay, but for change to occur, the waters will be rougher than that. And then we have to think about wholeness as not being conditional. So there's something about accommodation that's conditional. Yeah, we want to move beyond that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

Uh I want to go back to some of the kind of some of the ideas you were talking about earlier to make make sure that I understand them and um maybe also to give the listeners another chance to hear. Um, so worldview versus ideology. Um why is it like say again what the difference is, and then why is it important to understand that difference?

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Okay. So worldview is about how it is that you uh are in relationship to the world, okay, and it is the entirety of your belief system, but you could be in a belief system uh as part of an ideology, and another person could have a different ideology, but we could be in the same worldview. Now, how how would that work? How would that work? And I would say that in spite of the um you know all of the tumultuousness within uh, let's say a body like the US Congress, you know, for example, as a practical matter, even though they're all of these splits in accordance with issues and whatnot, for the most part they are in very, very similar, overlapping worldviews, even if they are widely different in terms of ideology. Okay, and so for example, this whole notion, one side blames the other. When I say one side, who are you thinking of? You're thinking of whichever side it is that you mostly agree with, and you think of the other as the other guys. Now they're thinking the same thing. Okay, they're thinking, okay, our side has to be there. We have to have power, we have to hold the White House because the other guys are the ones that are going to take this nation down. Okay. Ideologies couldn't be more different in terms of those two groups of peoples, but on a worldview basis, it's still about us and them. How do we win? We take the other out. We gerrymander the map until we can control the votes. Because power is at the center of how it is that we will win. So, you know, those two concepts, right? Power and control, part of a particular worldview, but you could have your ideology could be uh very liberal or to the far right of conservative. But you could have the worldview about power and control.

unknown 30:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Does that make sense or beginning to make sense? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

That's where I went when you were giving the example earlier of the man in Louisiana who killed his family. And um, you know, my work has been for so many years in the arena of domestic violence and um that extension uh of anger into like uh these acts, right? Violent acts of that are really about power and control and how um like what do you see as what is it? What is it about about our species that moves us so quickly from anger to to you know mechanisms of power and control and those those just that mass destruction you know that you talk about?

SPEAKER_01 31:25

So it's you know, we could talk about like the human physiology and emotional construct and all those kinds of things, and uh and all of that is real, but behavior modification in of itself will not mean that we cease to believe that the world is built in a particular way. So there's an overlay of the two, right? One sits in the worldview side of things, and the other sits in just like our human behavior and whether we can modify human behavior. But if you if you have all these interventions to modify human behavior, but you still believe that you are the center of the universe, and that what is meant to be is for you to have control and power, and that your identity will collapse, your uh agency collapses, your very notion of who it is you are collapses, if you don't have control and the power of control. If you don't do something about that, and that's not about behavior, that's really not about behavior. That's about really your belief of how the world is built and how it's intended to be. And if you are if you are uh modifying your behavior, it's it's what's happening is someone is trying to take control of you. Okay, and so you could see how actually even behavior modification might work against you, them, us, okay, if it is you, them, us. Okay, if if if that's where you're locked into. Because the you, them, us kind of a perspective of things. And when I use the word perspective, that's too shallow a world for it. It's like the entire notion of what is right and what is wrong is about you being right and the other being wrong, and that the way that you hold your rightness is to have more power and to have more control. So we say it's the ultimate of othering that just plays itself out. And violence in in lots of ways, it's like it's like the the ultimate weapon that you would have to win. And it might actually be the easiest for you to reach for, especially if you're talking about the realm of power and control.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

You talked about um othering as being the fire of this time, and I wonder uh, you know, how can this be so? And um, is it too late for us?

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Well, okay, so here's the thing, right? If I thought it was too late for us, then I wouldn't be doing this thing, right? It's like I'm an old dog, and the question of whether an old dog would even want to learn new things, right? Tricks, new things, is really about that there possibility is just teasing us. Okay, and that possibility is teasing us because we actually see it springing up all over, right? We see it in Minneapolis, for example, that in the middle of intense othering, that people would look to each other and say, I don't know who you are, but you are my neighbor. And if you are my neighbor, I am going to help you because when I help you, I'm helping myself. I'm helping myself because I'm redeeming this whole notion, right, of what it means to be someone who will be a neighbor rather than someone who will target someone, someone who will pick someone up indiscriminately from the side of the street. Like in the face of all of that, in the face of all of that. And our muscle for it, I don't think, is gone. It just has to be awakened. And I'm not downplaying the difficulty of that at all. But I know that in the middle of immense difficulty, it is actually where humans basically embrace each other.

SPEAKER_04 36:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Now we need to do it very consciously and towards a future that not only extends to uh us as individual people, right? I mean, it matters a lot. It matters a lot, but the muscle is still there. It is among the most hopeful things to be experiencing would be the stories of people in embrace of total strangers. Okay. And time and time again, we have done that in natural disasters, and now we're doing it in human-made disasters. Okay, that's the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Can we build on that? Okay. That may be the answer to this question, but I do want to, of course, get to the math.

unknown 37:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Well, okay. Of course. Okay, you talked about othering as being about subtraction and division. And there are two other functions that we should address, those being addition and multiplication. So, in terms of what you were just saying, what's the addition? What's the multiplication? What do those hold for us going forward?

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Okay, so the addition is is pretty simple. And the addition is can we include all of our own parts that are within us so that we are whole rather than divide it from ourselves? In other words, I'm thinking one way, but I'm feeling another way, and I leave this at home, and I take that and I block this out, and I, you know, all of that, all the ways in which we can essentially not be one whole. So we have to work on the one whole, and I believe that's really about addition and uncovering. Okay. And then there's a multiplication. The multiplication is about getting to the place where you begin to feel that as you gather people in, it you're more than a sum of your parts. Okay? And notice that that is described in math terms.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Well done.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

But it is qualitative. How can that be? So you break the mold of mathematics when you say that. Okay. You're more than a sum of your parts. And how will you know? You'll know it when you experience it, when you feel it. Such that you could be the people doing that in Minneapolis, and an entire country can feel it. The energy of that reverberates. Right. And in that way, it's not only math, it's science.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

Oh, for the next episode, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

For the next episode. Chemistry, right? Yes. The chemistry of humanity. You gotta write that book.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

I'll start on it immediately. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Thank you, friends. Uh, we're gonna take a quick break and then we're going to close this episode. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

What to do when nothing works. With wise and witty pros, Zen master and indigenous strategist Norma Wong reflects on this question and more in her acclaimed first book, When Nothing Works. Norma weaves poetry, storytelling, and meditation, inviting us to imagine a horizon of possibility beyond crisis. Hard copy and audiobook available now. Shopbookshop.com and support your local bookstore.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Will we choose humanity? I certainly hope so. It's the only reason why I'm here at this moment and why I am taking this risk, right? The risk of seeing what it is that I see that I hope that you will see too, which is not just expounding on things, but understanding things for what they are so that we can do something about it. Will we choose humanity? If we don't, I'm not sure if we're going to make it. And for me, it's not about just surviving. Because if we're all aiming just to survive, and it's okay with us to just be smaller and smaller and smaller groups of people, we will also diminish our fullest possibility. To me, like every child that is born is in the fullness of their possibility. And as we keep growing older, that shouldn't become smaller and smaller in both our aspiration, but also in our reality. That's this generation's assignment. Choosing humanity as the most wonderful thing that we can contribute to all of humankind in this time space of our existence. And we've been around for a long time. Whether we are still around, I believe, is a matter of whether we choose into humanity, but not just to survive, not just to survive. To be in that interwoven relationship with each other and all beings and the earth itself, and to discover what's next. Speaking of next, I'll see you next time. Thank you so much. The Horizon Story Podcast was produced by Sarah Demarest de Rivera and Bryson Hole, hosted and written by me, Executive Producer Na'alehu Anthony, Associate Producer Scott Nine, featuring Nan Stoops, for Collective Acceleration Kelly Miller, for OEV TV, Ken Sato, Wesley Kealoha, Courtney Leong, Jeff Lee, and Ivy Lagadla Gad. For Pa'akai Communications, Jamila Silver, Diana Hahn, Pearl Tilley, and Christine Matsuda, Hair and Makeup by Chris Jose. Mahalo to the place of my birth, ancestors, teachers, collaborators and friends, Rosie Abrium for the support, and Todd James for the encouragement. The Horizon Story is brought to you by OEVTV, copyright held by Collective Acceleration. Follow us on social at The Horizon Story. Questions to Hello at the Horizon Story.com. Visit us where you find your favorite podcasts or At the horizonstory dot com