The Town and Human Attention

7/28/2019 The Town and Human Attention

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THE TOWN AND HUMAN ATTENTION

Eugene T. Gendlin Ph.D.

Presentation at the first FISS August 25, 2006

Transcribed by Nada Lou from DVD recording Edited byEugene Gendlin

I want to say that we are in the middle or the beginning stagesof a really gigantic development of human beings. Partly mymessage is going to be, "Don't be discouraged." There has been

an incredible development of the mass of people all over the

world in my lifetime, which is a little longer than yours, but notthat much. Now in a town that you never heard of, somewhere in

Northern Ghana, a kid goes to the movies on Saturday and seestelevision all week and knows everything that's going on; andthis is a tremendous development of people. There is literacy in

half the world, but even where there is no literacy, there istremendous awareness that a mass of people have gotten much

more similar and much more developed. That's my first thing to

say.

Secondly, there has been a smaller development, still of millions

of people, who are now psychologically sophisticated. Not just in

the West or in Japan, but in many places. What I mean by thatis, you sit on the bus and the woman behind you is telling her

friend, "I am not his mother!" (for instance). And you realize that

there is a level of sophistication that has come, psychologically,

to certainly not the majority, not to the mass of people, butnevertheless to some significant hundred million people or sowho are aware of all this stuff and coming in closer to the center!

There are all these so-called "methods" that are our neighbors,

so to speak. Several hundred of those, ten of which at least

you've heard of. You know what I mean: there are all kinds of

training, and interaction in energy, and in NonviolentCommunication, and in dialogue, and in a whole list of thesethings that are all happening, developing human beings to be

much more sophisticated than that first thing I mentioned, whichis worldwide. This is a kind of minority, a creative minority I

hope.


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To me it compares to something like the really major change that

happened between agriculture and industry back 300 or 400

years ago, where the basic thing that people were doing changedfrom agriculture to industry. Agriculture used to take 99.9% ofthe people to grow food. There were few people who could carry

on what we think is a history. When we look back and don't hear

from all those other people, they are the so-called peasants. And

then it changed. Only a small percentagenow it's somethinglike 5% of the world's populationneeded to do agriculture, and95% of the population were freed to do that other thing, that

new thing. What was the new thing then? It was industry, trade.

and financethat kind of stuff.

When the world changed, it changed inside the individuals, and

outside. This split between inside and outsidewe have to getacross it. The split between individual and society, between

finding yourself and dialogue, these things can't be split. So therewas no split between the external conditions and the individual;

both changed.

With the coming of industry everything changed. The man went

to work in the factory, the wife stayed home all day, the kid went

to school. The woman went to see her friends, and they were allseeing different

people. The people that the man met in the factory were not theparents of the kids that went to school with his kid, and theywere not related to the friends that the woman had in the town.

That split up everything and made all the conditions of living

different.

So some people say, we see it's external change that determined

the difference in the people. But it also goes the other way. Itrequired a human development for people to run machinery.

They had to be taught how to read instructions, they had to betaught how to be careful with powerful machinery, they had to be

taught to be there at 8:00 in the morning, because the whole

factory can't work unless everybody is there, because they areworking on the assembly line and when two guys are missing the

whole thing stops. So everybody had to buy a watch, everybody

had to learn numbers. There was this tremendous development


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of people, inside and outside.

And it's happening again. Because now it's enough for 5% of thepopulation to do industry and produce things. So everything is

made in China, and we are doing something else. What the hell

are we doing? What's the new product?

Well, up to here I am sure I am right. From here on inwe'll see.

I think the new product is called "interhuman attention." I

think what people are doing in developed countries is, they arepaying attention to each other. Some people call that the service

industry. Some people call it the business world. It's mostly

having meetings the whole day and writing memos to each other.

Now we are still in a phase. There is a characteristic phase that

took a long time when the forms of society were still agricultural,even though the main activity was no longer agricultural. Andthat took revolutions to get out of. So if people wanted to ship

some products from Marseilles, the port down on the

Mediterranean, up to Paris, they had to pay 20 different

landowners fees along the road. They had to stop every time anddo all this kind of stuff because the forms of people relating toeach other socially were still from agricultureeven though what

was really going on was no longer agriculture.

Well, we are in an analogous situation right now, I am saying.

We sit on the expressway and it's stuck every single morning at

8:30. But we don't really have to get there at 9:00, because

there is no assembly line. We can stay in our pajamas and writethose memos. Granted, we have to come to the meetings, but

they are useless anywaymostly. So we are stuck in the social

forms of the previous stage. Therapists sell by the hour, like the

whole industrial system which works by hourly labor. The farmdoesn't of course. There you don't count the hours. You do this in

the winter, this in the spring, and this in the summer. Butindustrial society has to have everything by the numbersthe

time, and the money, and the exchange, and the labor, and all of

that.

And we are still in that. We are selling human attention by the

hourit's called therapy. It's ridiculous. But that's the form we


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are in. Actually, you are not replaceable. It's not the hours; it is

you that the person comes to. Then you are on vacation, and

then you say, "Well, for the next four weeks see doctor so-and-so." That's ridiculous. Doctor so-and-so can't replace you. Butthat's the way we have it, in case there is an emergency. We are

still in the old forms and we are going to be in the old forms for a

long time.

So I look back to this history and I say, "What were the new

people doing?" We are the new people now, but what were they

doing then?

First of all, they lived in towns. The other people were on theland. So I would like to introduce a new term and call us "the

Town." By which I mean all the new methods, not just Focusing.All the new methods, all the psychological sophistication, all the

interactional training, all the therapy, all that stuff is the Town.

And we need to become conscious that we are producing a newproduct. And the product is human attention. And the productisn't very good right now. Mostly right now that attention is not

great.

But there is an interesting phenomenon going on. Back in the

middle ages the townspeople were important to the landholding

people. The duke or the guy who owned the whole provinceneeded the towns, so he gave the town a charter. The chartersaid: you have certain rights as a town. They were veryimportant rights, because if the serfs that were owned by the

landowner ran away from the land to the town, the landowner

couldn't go into town and get them back. Which was reallyimportant so that towns could grow; they had certain rights. But

why did the landholder need the town? He needed the town

because the town was the trade center. So if he wanted anythingthat didn't grow on his farm, he had to depend on the town. The

town could get him wine and spices, silk, jewelry, and all kinds ofstuff that he thought he needed, so he tolerated the town. Are

you following me?

These days the business world is looking to this new Townto be

taught how to pay attention. And this is going on all over. It's

well known in the business world that more than half the failures


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there have to do with a failure in interpersonal relations. Such

failures come from not knowing how to give interhuman attention

properly. I could tell you stories about that, but everybody can.People know they need this now. They need to improve thequality of the kind of interhuman attention they can give others.

So I am saying there are three really important developments,one inside the other. There is the broad development of the

human specieswhat used to belong to only a very, very, tiny,

tiny, tiny minority is now all over. That has to do with television,

has to do with the internet now recently, has to do with radiobefore that. Back probably 40 years ago, all these Chinesepeasants got these little radios. Sure, they got them because the

central government wanted to control them, but meanwhile they

developed, they learned about their whole world, and then thepeasant is no longer what the peasant used to be. You and I are

the peasants too.

So there is this large development; and inside of that is what Icall the Town, which is these peculiar people who are specialized

in attentionin raising the quality of the attention. And inside of

that I think is Focusing, is us.

Now of course I am making us the center, but that's the human

tendency to do so. You can look at it from some other angle. ButI think we are again raising the quality of the product to acompletely new level.

I have a wonderful quote from Afghanistan. I think the workbeing done in Afghanistan is probably the most significant thing

that's happening right now. So would you please, on the web,

when you have time, click "Afghanistan" (on the www.focusing.org website)

There are three reports there from Afghanistan and there aremore reports that are being sent. One quote I want to read to

you.

This is a village woman from Afghanistan and it's what she said

after some workshop or some session (because we are teaching

Focusing to ordinary people, not to therapists). She said: "I went


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home and I listened to my sick uncle and he brought all his

medicines for me to see. And I listened to him. He was very

happy and told me his whole heart."

So there is something that we are bringing to the middle of this

whole developmentwhich goes right in. It doesn't require anykind of training or complications. It's like she learned that andshe went home and did that. It worked right away.

Now the people who are in control right nowand of course thereare different people in different kinds of control all over the

placethey don't have this yet. They are still learning from the

Town the more general kinds of things: how to interact and allthat kind of stuff. They don't have that yet.

In my country right now the war party is in control. But theydon't know what they are doing really, because first of all theyare having meetings. If you pursue what is going on, they are

considering, they are planning, they are doing what management

always does. Which is that they mangle around the categories

that they have and they only manage what fits those categories.So this is like, should we go to war with Iran or not? It's eithergoing to support such and such a government and such and such

a place or it won't. The choices that they have when they plan

are already cut in such pieces that the situation can't be copedwith. There is this gigantic development of human beings all overthe place, but they don't know about that. They don't have a wayto think about that. They are still bombing peasants, they don't

understand that they are bombing people mostly just like

themselves. There is no category yet for it. But we'll bring thema category. Right?

So you can look forward to a time when things are going to get alot better than they are right now. Don't be discouraged. Because

if you watch management, both politically and in the businessworld, they want to learn this now. It's well known that

something is missing there. Like, I read articles in the business

paper and it says there that things are no longer alwaysrepetitious and you can't routinize them. They think they are

going to have small groups now. Well, God help us. But they

want to have small groups because you can't direct these things


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from the top down the way they used to. They are all saying

something is missing. And of course something is missing. They

don't know how to relate even to each other, let alone to thiswhole development. But it is coming. And it is coming a lot fasterthan things used to come in history. So it'll get further even in

your lifetime. When I started I was a very weird person. And I

didn't really change, but the world changed a lot and I am a lot

less weird now than I used to be. And that will happen also toyou.

There is something, though, that I would like to point out that'sdifficult. This Town that I am talking about is not conscious ofitself. We are conscious that we are teaching that stuff and we

are teaching it to whoever listens so ... teach it to villages, teach

it to management, it doesn't matter, teach it to anybody. We areteaching all right, but we are not conscious, not yet, even of each

other as the Town. Like when I say, "Learn everything else;please don't just do Focusing," I am talking about the Town. We

are still all these entities. If you just learn my thing, it is never

true. You need five more things.

But if we were conscious of ourselves as producing a new kind of

product, there is a different world that goes with it. And it's amuch better world that goes with it, where people are aware of

each other as people. Everything will be different. And it isgetting different. But it's not getting different fast enough so that

you feel good when you read the paper. But please read thepaper. A great many Focusing people that I know are no longer

reading the paperit hurts too much. And they can't do anything

about it anyway.

But there is something there about fresh thinking that I want to

point to and I am done.

My colleagues at the University of Chicago, who are high-powered intellectuals, they all believe that they can't think about

economics. Because economics is some kind of science that they

don't understand, but respect, and it has computer models in itand curves and graphs and all kinds of things that they don't

understand. And so economics is off by itself, and if you talk to

anybody in there, you discover that no, they don't have the


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vaguest idea what they are doing. They are putting together a

computer product, a computer model that will do what they

wanted to do, which is usually to make profits for banks or somesuch thing. And that doesn't even work, but it works to someextent.

My point is that when they tell you that lowering the taxes willbring more business activity and make jobs, they are lying.

They've been lying now for thirty years or so on this point. And

some of them know they are lying and some don't. But you can

thinknot economic computer models, leave those to thosepeople who want those. But you can think about the fact that ifyou cut all the services, if you take money away from people, if

you restructure the company and fire 30,000 employees every

day, then people can't buy as much as before. They certainlycan't buy more. So then they want you to believe that if you

lower the taxes the rich people will invest the money and createjobs. You can know that that can't be true. That's very simple.

Now if that's economics don't be scared of it. Or else call it

something else. But you have to be able to think freshly in thatkind of placeand not go giving up on it because you can't do

anything about it anyway. For a moment it's important to realize

that.

The United States has put pressure on Japan and South Korea toopen everything up so that private individuals can buy everything

up and use the profits without building the country. They'veresisted that. Isn't that great?

They've been smart. They resisted that, they've said no, we haveour own model and we are building our own country. And so in

South Korea you have all these apartment houses; nobody is

homeless in South Korea because they imitated Japan, and it'sbeen like that in Japan now for almost a hundred years or so,

maybe more. They are building the place.

So yeah, people get incredibly rich, but meanwhile there is also a

government. Like in South Korea they said, business people cando anything they want, just go to it, do anything, we'll support

you. But if you send money out of the country, you go to jail.

That's an economic model that's very interesting and very


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successful. You won't read about it in the American paper

though, because the American paper is all in favor of opening

everything up so that the individual investors can have it andnobody is building anything for anybody else.

But that's going to change. It's going to change because we can'tbomb the people out of whatever they are doing any more. It's inthe process of changing. There are no categories for this yet, so

the policy makers can't think about it yet. But they will. They are

already thinking about how this doesn't work. So that's a big

advantage.

The reason that you don't want to read the paper is a very goodreason. Partly it just makes you feel bad, partly you can't do

anything about it, but also it's very boring. Because everything iscut in terms of certain pro and con issues. And both sides of

those are always wrong. So either you support the mother and

you don't give a damn about the infant, or else you support theinfant and you don't give a damn about the mother. But whywould I have to choose? Either you are for continuing the

hopeless war or else you are for bringing everybody home and

making ourselves a terrible embarrassment. Am I supposed to

vote for one or the other? Well, I'd rather they came home if Ihave to choose just between those two, but my point is: If we

widen the scope of those options, there will be something thatwould fit better. No real situation is ever just how we have it

conceptualized.

But in the U.S. policy-making procedure the people who think are

at the bottom. By the time it gets to the top just the cut-upoptions remain.

For example, giving services to people where the governmenthas completely failed, which is almost the entire Islamic world.

The only services for people, the only clinics, the only schools,the only clothing, the only food, are distributed by the people

who are trying to organize people against the West. Well, as long

as they are the only ones you can't blame them. You can't blamepeople for supporting that. But there might be some other way to

get them clothes and schools. But now I am confusing you

because you don't know that that's happening.


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It's like when you read the paper, you have to pick up these little

items now and then. You say, "Oh, is that right, is that what's

happening?" Then you have to remember it because they'll nevermention it again.

The point I am trying to make is that the way the issues are cutyou can know in advance that both sides are going to be wrong.Either you want to kill all ofthese people or you want to kill all of

those people. And then they want you to choose.

So to hell with that. Then you have to allow yourself to think

about it yourself. You have to say, "Does that really make sense

that if we cut taxes it's going to make more investment here?" Ofcourse not. And the same with any other issue, you are going to

have to say, "Well, I haven't yet heard anything that makessense or anything that I could choose."

The latest process that we developed is TAE, which is teaching

people that you can actually think freshly. You can! What we

learned in school was that we can't. We are not supposed to

think freshly, we are supposed to learn twenty concepts and keeprearranging them. That's the only way you get good grades, sofine, we learn how to do that. We can do that. But that's not so

interesting.

Thinking is something else. Thinking is like Focusing. Only, in

Focusing we always talk in terms of a particular situation, where

in Thinking we would be saying, "Well what is wrong there with

this issue, that either I am supposed to do this or that? Thatcan't be like that. Why do I feel it can't be like that?" Then you've

already got something. If you allow yourself to allow language to

flow out, then you get different parts laid out. You say, "Oh look,

I've got five things now, whereas before I only had 'uh?' Now Ihave five things, well let me list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... Oh, there is the

sixth, well how do they go together?" And in there we have away for people to be able to think.

And of course not everybody wants to think. That's fine. TAE is

not only for thinking, TAE is also to let people hear themselves

say something they want to say. So often we have trouble saying

something because when it's new, there are no standard phrases


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or categories for it. And it's with categories that I want to end.

Then I want to come back to where I started.

This whole philosophy can let you realizeand it only takes you a

few momentsthat whatever it is you care aboutreality,

people, yourself, your kid, anythingit doesn't come incategories. Fortunately. It doesn't come all chopped up in graphpaper, it doesn't come like that. So you don't have to stay with

the categories that they give you. In fact you can't stay with the

categories they give you anyway. But that's a place I would ask

you not to give up too quickly, because things are changing andthings are very interesting and you can think about them if youdon't fall for "economics" or "neurology" or any of those kind of

things. Then you become aware that those people who have

charge of everything, they are still thinking in the categories, sono wonder things aren't going so well.

That's all. Thank you.

Eugene T. Gendlin

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The Town and Human Attention