Life is made up of many situations appearing and reappearing in our lives, from national presidential elections to holidays, to relationships, to thoughts and to feelings. Yesterday I was listening to NPR radio and on came one of my favorite programs Radiolab and the topic was about being able to change our behavior. The program (“New Baboon”) started out by following around a man, John Horgan in Hoboken, NJ, with a microphone who was asking “Will humans ever stop fighting wars?” and 9 out of 10 people in his recent study said, “No we would not.” However, thirty years ago the study found only one in three who said, “No we would not.” It is not really about war John says, but it is about the idea that people can change, that we can create a “new normal.” That piqued his interest and so he went and interviewed a man who studied baboons and discovered quite by accident that not only can people change but “tribes” of people can change. He calls this the “New Normal.”
How did these baboons unlearn their entire culture of aggression and now they don’t do things like that in this particular tribe anymore? Well, for the whole story you’ll have to listen to the podcast “The New Normal” Radiolab. But what happened in a nut shell was that they just made one small change, the alpha males were taken out of the tribe by an unexpected illness, which left one male and all the females. As the new young males entered the tribe from other villages the females were able to get to them early enough and began to groom them in a loving maternal way. In the traditional baboon society this process usually took about 3 months in the new tribe it happened in just 6 days. They were treated better and something about the aggressiveness melted away. So how permanent is this change anyway. Prof. Richard Wrangham from Harvard, an evolutionary biologist, was interviewed on the program and he believes that there needs to be a genetic change to make a permanent change, but this family of baboons was able to change their culture and it has stayed changed now for 20 years.
I am sure that you are asking yourself, “What does that have to do with me, I’m not a baboon?” Well let’s just think about it. If primates can change, and we are a part of the primates on planet earth, that means we just might have a chance of changing as well. But only if circumstances force us to! I know that you have made changes in your life that at first you did not want, like, expect, and need. But things happened!
Maybe you lost a job, or flunked out of college, or got a divorce. Maybe you had to move out of your home, or lost a child to disease or an accident. These life experiences changed you forever. They may have changed you for the worse, or they may have changed you for the better. But change you did. I hope that they changed you for the better. That they made you more flexible, loveable, honest, hardworking, more relaxed, or freed you from a bad habit like a drug addiction or alcoholism, or workaholism, or whatever “ism” you may have had. Maybe you took on a good cause like the mom who started MADD (Mother’s Against Drug Drivers) or the man who started the show America’s Most Wanted after his son was kidnapped and killed.
So it is a good thing to take some time today and ask yourself what situations have you been saying “Oh, here I go again…” Hopefully, some of them will be good things, like playing with your children, volunteering at a soup kitchen or a food pantry, helping your elderly neighbor, mentoring a young student, or selling Girl Scout cookies. When we take time to do these things we will have less time for the negative thinking, less time for the “pity parties” as I call them. Less time for bemoaning, “Oh, poor me…” you can fill in the blank there yourself!
Before I retired from being a Unity minister I spent lots of time teaching the rule of “psychological reciprocity” or “what goes around comes around” or “what you focus your thoughts, time, and energy on attracts like energy.” So if you focus on giving of your time you’ll get more time. If you focus on loving thoughts and loving people, you’ll get more love in your life. If you focus on health, wealth, and happiness you’ll get more of them as well. Where your thoughts go—your energy goes! So what do you want to manifest in your life: health, wealth, and happiness?
The Benedictine nun and best-selling author, Joan Chittister, in her book Happiness sees happiness as a personal quality to be learned, mastered, and fearlessly wielded. So, if you want happiness and if you want to be able to joyously say at the end of the day: “Oh, here I go again! Yippee!” And you want to be like that tribe of baboons to be able to eliminate aggression in your body, mind, and spirit for twenty years or more…it is all up to you! Master your happiness today!
unlockthedoortolearning 
very timely! there are no accidents.. many are experiencing what you wrote about because it is part of our collective unconscious.. up for healing on an ongoing basis.. I was at a wonderful retreat at the Franciscan Center in Tampa recently and when asking a nun the question of why do people suffer, her response was that suffering has been around since the beginning of time, it is the human condition, just read the story of Job, however, that being said, it is our response to the tragedy or unexpected events in our lives that transforms them into good which then creates the next change in our lives and on and on and on even into and beyond the next life….the other side of breath…Shalom!
Dr. Deri, your research into peace education gives you a great view into the subject and I enjoyed reading your post. Your students and congregants are so lucky to have you on Florida’s west coast…keep up the great work.
Isn’t it interesting that the question arises about changing a society/system from the questions that proved that the system had already changed from roughly 1/3 to 9/10 of the people now not believing in peace, or the possibility of peace? A dramatic event may, in fact, have caused this, but the insidious changes have been coming on for years. Now, a huge majority no longer believe in peace, and a segment of these people do not believe in love and helping others with medical care or any safety nets while creating the need for both. Do societies/systems change? Yes, they do. They have changed. Now the question becomes what all must be shown or taught to believe that love and understanding is a basic need, thought, desire, and thus re-building toward a believe in peace. Without the former, the latter is not possible, it seems to me.
Arnold, you are right about question “what next?” Hopefully, it will be a time of peace building around the world with 4 more years for Obama. Kathy