I’m teaching Money and Meaning, the Course. It’s about the constant need to “achieve” self-worth in our society and the feeling of never having of being enough. It’s about time, attention, satisfaction, scarcity, sufficiency and how they all relate to the two pillars of our economic system: consumerism and “workism.”
It will be a 8 lessons, 1 per week for 8 weeks. The course will be more contemplative than FF1 or FF2; the weekly reading will be only 5-10 minutes long. Instead of Zoom sessions, your weekly assignment is to have a “walk and talk” phone conversation with at least one other classmate. No one wants to be online more right now. So, the assignment is to go outside for a walk and have a phone conversation with someone about important stuff. You’ll be contemplating the emotional consequences of our economic system and how you want to be alive in the world. Hope you’re interested! Below is the first lesson.
Welcome to Week 1!
Read this snippet from an interview with psychotherapist and “soul activist” Francis Weller (full interview here, but only if you’re interested). As you do, consider about the intersection of modern society and money and Weller’s primary and secondary satisfactions. Try to move away from interacting with this course cognitively and sink into your emotional intelligence. Take time with the material and relax into it. This is a class in non-self-improvement: What comes up as you contemplate this?
Where do you feel it in your body?
Weller: [W]e need to restore what I call primary satisfaction. The things that we evolved with over hundreds of thousands of years that satisfy the soul at the most basic level; adequate levels of touch, you know, comforting in times of sorrow and loss, celebration and gratitude, gathering food together, eating together under the stars, telling stories around the camp fire, you know, laughing and playfulness together, sensuous erotic connection to the wider world. These are what made us human. But for the most part these things have disappeared. Now, we are left with secondary satisfactions— material goods, seeking power, rank, prestige, addictions— and these things never satisfy the soul.
Anesthesia and amnesia are the two primary “sins” of modern society.
We go numb to try to cope with the fact that we have not been granted what we need to thrive. The levels of addiction in our society are off the charts, and I’m not just talking about alcohol and drugs; I’m talking about shopping, working, sex. Addictions are an attempt to cope with intolerable states. The meager lives we are asked to live, in which we are often reduced to “earning a living,” are themselves intolerable. We are meant to have a more sensuous, imaginative, and creative existence. As children we are enchanted with the world, yet as adults we end up, as poet Mary Oliver said, “breathing just a little, and calling it a life.” That’s the anesthesia.
McKee: And the amnesia?
Weller: We are living in what writer and cultural critic Daniel Quinn calls the Great Forgetting. Many of us have forgotten that we’re a part of an ecosystem, a watershed. We’ve forgotten that we’re kin to all the other animals. We’ve forgotten that we need each other. We have forgotten what I call the “commons of the soul.”
For thousands of years we were nourished by being members of a community, gathering around the fire, hearing the stories of the elders, feeling supported during times of loss and grief, offering gratitude, singing together, sharing meals at night and our dreams in the morning. I call these activities “primary satisfactions.” We are hard-wired to want them, but few of us receive them. In their absence we turn to secondary satisfactions: rank, privilege, wealth, status — or, on the shadow side, addictions. The problem with these secondary satisfactions is that we can never get enough of them. We always want more. But once we find our primary satisfactions, we don’t want much else.
Though primary satisfactions are rare in our culture, we do experience them. We can remember what that felt like and let our longing for that state become our compass, telling us what direction we need to go to get back to those satisfactions. We can find them through our friendships, by spending time in nature, by risking being vulnerable with someone we trust.
The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.
And we must have compassion for ourselves, too. When I lead workshops on self-compassion, I begin by saying, “This is a weekend in non-self-improvement.” [Laughter.] We’re so driven to make ourselves “better” all the time, as if the better we became, the more people would like us. We are mercilessly hard on ourselves for our losses, our defeats, our wounds, our failures, the parts of us that don’t measure up.
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Assignment
Call someone in your class and do this exercise. I suggest a “walk and talk” for most of the lessons, but this first one, find in a quiet place in your home for the call.
Take some time for silence and calming your nervous systems together. When you both feel ready, choose one person to ask the other, quietly, “What is your deepest longing?“
If you are that person, start exploring the question. The other person will just listen. When you’re finished speaking, allow for silence. If necessary (and only if necessary), your partner asks the question again: “What is your deepest longing?” Don’t be afraid of long pauses, it’s the spaciousness this question desires. And needs. Trust the silence. Go through this pattern as many times as necessary until you’ve touched the core. You’ll know when you’ve reached it. Sit in your answer for a little before breaking the silence.
Then repeat for the other person.
After you are both done, have a conversation about your deepest longing. Think about one or two the happiest, most nourishing moments of your life.
Were your happinest moments moments of “primary satisfaction?”
What relationship does money have, if any, to it?
Are the twin engines of capitalism, working and consuming, about your deepest satisfaction? Or are they secondary satisfactions?
What did you learn from this deepest longing exercise? What is calling up within you as you contemplate this?
After you are done, post your reflection on (1) your conversation and (2) anything wonderful you have to share about the Francis Weller piece. Make it short, meaningful, and from the heart.