#46—Damn you!

"Damn you!" is not always an expletive.

Ever more frequently, it is a genuine wish.

In 1973, forty years after joining in writing the original Humanist Manifesto, Roy Wood Sellars noted that "many humans seem to desire everlasting punishment for others" (The Humanist Alternative, p. 134). Now, more than fifty years after that, people in the US find that the chasm between left and right is so stark that what middle remains has collapsed into it. The shouting across the chasm, while there has always been mean-spirited rhetoric during election seasons, is now full of damning enmity (I quit you! Go to hell! You don't deserve to live!) and unwillingness to come together in civic pride once the election is over.

Some don't wish everlasting punishment on others. They are prepared to make it happen. We are leaving our humanity—our humaneness—behind.

Going Deeper: Alabama Shakes on giving up the fighting

What is noticeable and troublingly ironic is the readiness to permit or engage in damnable behavior in order to call damnation down on others.

Die! You and your children! (said at a Gaza protest)

Go back where you came from! (One candidate to another at an election debate -- the recipient of this demand was Native American)

You're a s**t Vice President! (One of our presidential candidates at a political rally)

It's time to put [him] in a bullseye (Our current president in a donor call).

It keeps on going.....

They are an enemy within, the real threat!

They are an existential threat!

They need to be eliminated!

I won't go anywhere near those people!

Just die, will you?!

I'm hearing a difference in the damns that were and the damns uttered now. There is more calculating sincerity in these expressions of late. They are more than a moment's reaction, a flash of anger.

We find ourselves in a moment we won't easily get past if the anger recedes. We've created a harmful deficit we must grow beyond—this blind anger leaks everywhere, including our workplaces, where we spend more time than anywhere else.

My mother washed my mouth out with soap when it was mere swearing. She would do it still! Lesson learned. With what we shout today, though, I need to do my own washing—not just my mouth, but the core attitude I'm inflicting on the world.

Join me at the sink?

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In My Backpack:

The title describes the content. Discipline yourself within a disciplined business process in order to be free.? But free to do what?? To grow and scale, for sure.?

The EOS-related authors don't talk much about the the life the entrepreneur can live freed up from those business-fires-to-put-out, but that freedom comes also.

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Executive Thinking is a?source for being and thinking as an executive who links the world's future to their enterprise mission and its profitable operations. Here you will find some of the soul-searching, middle-of-the-night, honest reflections at the core of who we are becoming as leaders.

A Systems Convener and Executive Advisor walking alongside accomplished executives in the third turn of their careers, Mark L. Vincent, Ph.D., EPC, loves leaders who love leaders.

In his own third turn, Mark continues to grow his capacity for wise advising, artful facilitation, and public presentation.

Mark has founded?Maestro-level leaders,?Design Group International,?and the?Society for Process Consulting and authored a number of books, including Listening Helping Learning. He now partners with Mygrow to build an emotionally intelligent world.