F. David Peat (1938–2017) was an English holistic physicist, philosopher, and writer. He initially focused on solid-state physics and the foundations of quantum theory, and collaborated for many years with physicist and philosopher David Bohm, about whom he wrote a monograph. Later, his interests expanded to include depth psychology, art, and general aspects of culture, including Native American culture. He is the author of books on quantum theory, chaos theory, synchronicity, perception and art, and Blackfoot spirituality. One of his most recent works is the book Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World (2008). David Peat lived in the medieval Tuscan town of Pari, Italy, where he founded the Pari Center for New Education. See www.fdavidpeat.com, www.paricenter.comThis author's text about "gentle action" was published in the magazine Prostor (90/2011) and in Sedmá generácia (2011); translation: Jiří Zemánek.
Today we feel that we live in a world that is constantly in crisis. Everything around us, newspapers and television, warns us of global warming and environmental degradation, terrorism and international conflicts, third world poverty and the consequences of the current economic downturn. Add to this the many other problems we face, and everything seems to be in turmoil. In the face of all this, we feel a passionate need to carry out corrective actions, major interventions, introduce new government legislation or implement various aid programs.
We recall with nostalgia our earlier dream of a world built on the idea of precise prediction, control and endless progress. But it is only when we examine the situations we face in greater depth that we discover that this dream was a mere illusion. The economic, social and natural systems in which we are embedded are much, much more complex than we originally imagined; certainly more complex than the organizations we set up to deal with them. As a result, our best-intentioned plans and interventions can often be questionable. Aid to Africa is a typical example. Although there have been exceptions, such as the successful malaria treatment programme of the International Red Cross, other African interventions have ended up destroying local economies, communities and the environment. One example of this is Zambia, which once had 140 garment factories and now has only eight. The reason for this is the export of donated clothes from charity shops in the West.
And so the problems remain unsolved—and when our attempts at intervention fail, we use more of the same means with greater force. Reflecting on this topic, Joseph W. Meeker in his book The Comedy of Survival (The Comedy of Survival) suggests that we Westerners tend to view the world through a mask of tragedy. In the face of environmental problems, we feel we must defend ourselves: we declare war on poverty, we declare war on drugs, we declare war on terrorism. But according to Meeker, the solution to the environmental problems we face must come through comedy, which I understand as close to what I have called “soft action” (gentle action).
Our usual interventions approach the problem from the “outside.” In contrast, “gentle action” involves something subtle, sensitive, and creative that emerges from within the system itself. A regular action is more like throwing a stone into a pond. The result is a big splash that quickly dissipates. But suppose that the thousands of tiny ripples at the edge of the pond could be arranged so that they were all in exactly the same phase: they would then move toward the center and gain strength. In other words, creative action would emerge from the whole, rather than being imposed from the outside.
Creative procrastination
But how can an organization achieve sufficient sensitivity to practice “gentle action”? I believe the answer lies in the act creative procrastination. Through their stated mission and internal structure, organizations are always programmed to take action. However, creative postponement involves postponing action and questioning the nature of this contingency. For example, a layperson who arrives at the scene of a traffic accident may eagerly try to help an injured person out of the car or bandage their bleeding arm, but such actions could make their condition worse. In contrast, emergency personnel postpone immediate action and perform an assessment according to urgency: they always assess the situation individually, using sight first and then touch to determine the full extent and severity of the injury. Only then do they provide first aid to the injured person and rush the next person to the hospital by ambulance, etc.
When the urge to act is put on hold, all sorts of warning signs begin to flow freely, and the organization becomes more sensitive to its internal structure: to areas that are too rigid and to areas that have the potential for creativity. This is exactly what happened at the Fetzer Institute in the United States, where most of its programs were put on hold. Its employees came to work every day, month after month, to question the role and meaning of their organization. Some were frightened and frustrated by this, but others began to examine their place in the organization. In this way, the Fetzer Institute entered a “dark night of the soul.” The end result was a rediscovery of the institute’s core values and the realization that everyone in it, from the president to the caterer and his staff, had a deep sense of belonging and interest. According to Fetzer Institute President Tom Beech, the creative postponement was like “a little silence” that occurs when people stop talking and start listening.
Examples of "gentle action"
So what are some examples of “soft action”? They range from the global to the individual. When American farmer Dan West was distributing powdered milk to victims of the Spanish Civil War, he realized it would make more sense to give them a cow. So he asked a friend in the United States to donate fertile heifers. Today, his organization, Heifer International, donates twenty-five species of animals around the world.
When Peter Benson read in the newspaper in 1961 that two students had been imprisoned in Portugal for insolent behavior, he was disheartened. But rather than immediately launch a public protest, he postponed the action and sat in silence in the church of St. Martin in the Fields. Then he decided to write an article in the newspaper The Observer, in which he presented his "Appeal for Amnesty 1961". In this way, the organization was born Amnesty International, a movement in which ordinary people are able to win freedom for political prisoners all over the world simply by writing letters. Other examples of "soft action" on a large scale include Gandhi's principle of ahimsa (nonviolence) and the concept Ubuntu Desmond Tutu, the Grameen Bank system of Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the city of Gaviotas in Colombia, or the literacy movement of Paulo Freire.
TAMS Association
I live in the medieval hilltop town of Pari, south of Siena. It is a place where people greet each other by name, stop to chat, and leave keys in their doors. Two of our guests, Gordon Shippey and his wife, were deeply moved by life in Pari, contrasting it with their own home in the Middleton area of the city, which was full of crime, drug dealing, garbage, and burned-out cars. When Gordon Shippey returned home, inspired by what he had seen in Pari, he decided to walk down his street, knock on the door of each house, and introduce himself: “My name is Gordon. I am your neighbor.” When Gordon was halfway through his journey, another neighbor joined him, and it soon became clear that the two shared the same anguish over the conditions in which they lived. And so the local TAMS association was created, which visited the local mayor and showed him a video of the neighborhood and how local children see it in their drawings.
The result was the boarding up of a factory that had previously been a drug dealer's shop, its transformation into a community center, and the organization of street festivals. As other groups gradually formed and a community newspaper was founded, The Streetwise Insider (Local Expert), the spirit of TAMS began to spread further. This led to the transformation of the former church into a large information center and computer center for supporting people with dyslexia and for supporting groups that worked with people with learning disabilities.
I have met many other people who have made “gentle changes” in their lives. Pauline McCormick tried to make people smile on the subway; Jane Tinsley decorated a stone bus shelter near her home; Helena Bongartz projects her artwork onto an abandoned building on the Mojave Desert road at night. I would of course like to hear about other examples of “gentle action” or creative procrastination: please send them to me at dpeat@fdavidpeat.com.