Hi Peter,

Not quite in the way you speculate: My comment on expanding on Bruce Lee quote was me talking to myself wondering how better to communicate what I see as a major stumbling block for integrating the teaching of the various wisdom traditions. Mistaking for action what is really passivity and vice versa.

Oh I see. The notion of activity vs. passivity is something that occupies you, and you believe that sometimes what is seen as action is actually passivity (Mistaking for action what is really passivity and vice versa). Would you expand on that? Can you give an example of an action which is actually passivity?

Erick Fromm suggested that unskillful hope is a attempt to flee from choice, from responsibility, from the anxiety of being, and in our flight, we embrace submission, conformity, and destructiveness.

Unfortunately, I’m not familiar with Fromm’s writings and his notion of hope… Do you mean that people often hope that someone outside of them would change their lives for the better – an external savior (even a political figure)? Whereas true change lies within us. True change comes from within, not from without. Is that what you had in mind?

Hi Peter,

I’ve often wondered why wisdom traditions, for all their depth and beauty, don’t seem to catalyze the kind of societal transformation they point toward. I’ve witnessed individual awakening, but once form becomes institution, something seems to stall. The flow slows. The tenderness hardens.

Ah, societal change is a big and complex topic. Something that occupies me, and saddens me, is that in the 21st century, we’re at the brink of WW3, or at least a war on the European continent.

We could speculate about the reasons, but I don’t think it’s for the lack of personal development and self-awareness in the Western world, but for other reasons. Perhaps being naive, appeasing the bully rather than holding them accountable, and becoming even more dependent on the bully economically, rather than seeking to reduce dependence. Perhaps that’s all a consequence of wishful thinking and fear (on behalf of European leaders), rather than thinking straight and being aligned with one’s true self-interest. Perhaps it reflects a certain passivity, both in thought (internal) and action (external).

Anyway, that’s just something that occupies and worries me, which I think is related to societal progress. But there are many more issues, which you’ve touched upon, where indeed the question could be asked why it sometimes seems that we go backwards, while we should be going forward and advancing as a society, as a civilization.

We live in a culture that celebrates transformation, makeovers, breakthroughs, revolutions… a world that privileges what can be seen, counted, and proven. Action, in this frame, means movement.

Inner work, by contrast, is subjective. It happens in silence, in solitude, in the messy terrain of thought and feeling. It lacks the markers of “doing something” that our culture recognizes: speed, noise, output. So we label it passive. We call reflection “navel-gazing,” restraint “weakness,” and emotional labor “soft.”

The way I see it, a part of the problem is that those who are loud and aggressive are the center of attention (which is largely exacerbated by social media), while those who are silent and contemplative, those who self-reflect and do the inner work, do not get the necessary attention.

People like entertainment, they like drama, they like individuals who stir strong emotions in them (or who give them excuse to vent their strong emotions such as anger onto others without being called out for it). Someone who is contemplative and self-reflective isn’t necessarily a good entertainer.

But more importantly, many people still don’t want to self-reflect, but would rather blame others for their problems. So the silent, contemplative, “navel-gazing” person may have audience (if they start a youtube channel haha 🙂 ), but it will be probably much less than some not so self-aware (but emotions-stirring and captivating) influencer.

We live in a culture that celebrates transformation, makeovers, breakthroughs, revolutions… a world that privileges what can be seen, counted, and proven. Action, in this frame, means movement.

If transformation is real and has come from within – and then it manifests in external action or outer success – it’s not a bad thing. There’s a funny meme that goes something like “Overnight success is a real thing. It just takes 5-10 years of hard work.” 🙂 But in all seriousness, I welcome that type of “overnight” success – behind which are years of hard work.

But there’s another type of action too, which is not aligned with our true self, but is let’s say to accomplish a goal that someone else wants for us, to meet someone else’s expectations. Thomas Merton said: “We may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”

If our action is driven exclusively by ego desires, e.g. fame or riches or some other “earthly” goals, it won’t be beneficial either to us or those around us in the long-run.

My thought is that to truly understand action and passivity, we must integrate both objective and subjective perspectives. We must learn to see the invisible, to recognize that stillness can be strength and motion can be avoidance.

Definitely. Motion/action can be an attempt to alleviate the pain that can only be alleviated by self-reflection and inner work. If we don’t want to face that pain, we might engage in actions that numb it (all kinds of addictions and distractions), or we might punish and attack those who trigger that pain and bring it to surface.

I believe that actions that stem from avoiding pain – when that pain would need to be addressed instead – are not balanced, beneficial actions.

In doing so, we confront our biases about what counts as passive and what counts as active. And perhaps then, we begin to discern how those biases have shaped the way we hope, what we expect from change, and where we place our trust.

Can you elaborate on how you see our biases regarding action and passivity affect the way we hope and trust?

Erick Fromm suggested that unskillful hope is a attempt to flee from choice, from responsibility, from the anxiety of being, and in our flight, we embrace submission, conformity, and destructiveness. In Escape from Freedom, he named such hope as fear masquerading as safety, the seduction of authoritarianism…

This is a very rich thought… I wonder if you’d expand on it a little?