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Interview with Dr. John Hanley - Page 13 INT: In the same vein, what do you think are the top--number one, two and three or however many--influences that prevent people from being able to do and be who they want to be? What are the obstacles? JH: Well, I just think that really there aren't any obstacles so much as it is just exposing people to this experience and giving them an opportunity to take a look-see at something from a different point of view than they're accustomed to. I just think about the old adage that "you can't teach a new dogs new tricks" and that people think that learning happens when I'm in grade school, high school, and, in some cases, college, and then after that we're all about doing. So, what we try and do with people is to let them know that, really, this is about learning to learn again. And once people say, "Oh, okay. You mean I don't have to know?" No, you don't have to know, it's okay not to know. Then we can start looking at those areas in our lives which we didn't know we didn't know, and as soon as people get the concept of, "Oh yeah, there's a lot of stuff that I don't know that I don't know, and it's okay that I don't know it. And it might be interesting to see if, experientially, I can access some of that stuff that I know I don't even know I don't know." It becomes commitment to learning, and that's really, at the end of the day, the breaking of the barrier: having it be okay to learn again. INT: What would you say are the philosophical roots of this approach in terms of classical philosophy? I think it's always fascinating to consider the fact that every influence today is a result of a whole stream of hundreds of years. It seems to me that one of the great geniuses of the Lifespring approach is that reality is deeply rooted in philosophy but applied as a viable, practical process. JH: Well, philosophy is a wonderful study, it just doesn't pay very well. The economics of being a philosopher are a little weak unless you happen to be a tenured prof at some fantastic university, but most organisations don't have, "Hi, this is our CEO and this is our Director of Operations and this is our Chief of Philosophy." So it's not considered sort of the heartbeat of America, but what we tried to do was to make philosophy accessible for the average person in a way that they could use it and produce value in their life in a way that, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to do. So, the roots of transformation per se are continental existential philosophy, and there's a lot of people involved, but two primary characters. One is Soren Kierkegaard and the other is Martin Heidegger. These two philosophers gave us the notion of what a self is. Up until that time, we were thinking more like René Descartes' description of what a self was. He was the guy who came up with "I think therefore I am," and he's what's called a Cartesian. A Cartesian notion of self means that "there's me--the subject, and then there's everything else--the object." And that "I have a certain relationship as a subject with all those objects, and it's real and it's true and I am part of the symbolism between myself and everything else, the objective." |
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