Ep 167: Elitism, Discernment, Self-Knowledge & Relationships

Ever wondered if elitism could actually be a force for good? In this episode, I unravel my complex relationship with elitism, influenced by my early love for Robert Heinlein's science fiction. I share how identifying with Heinlein's elite characters shaped my sense of self but left me questioning the broader societal implications of elitist thinking. A recent debate with a friend who sees elitism as a tool for discernment sparked a deeper reflection, inviting you to ponder the delicate balance between discernment and premature judgment.

Join me as I recount my professional experiences diagnosing organisational cultures and power structures, emphasising the importance of withholding judgment and maintaining equanimity. From being both underestimated and overestimated in various settings, I've learned the value of patience and open-mindedness. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of how we evaluate others and the impact of elitism on our connections and relationships, urging us to rethink our approach to understanding those around us.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence, brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 167. Today I'm going to talk about elitism. People talk about the elites and I always feel a bit uncomfortable when people say that.

Speaker 1: 0:34

I used to enjoy reading Robert Heinlein back in the 60s, 70s and actually every decade after that. I used to love his science fiction books. I mean, they really stretched my imagination, stretched my mind. But the thing I always found a little bit I was uncomfortable with was he was an elitist, or at least he wrote like an elitist, and in most of his books there was a category of people who were the elites in quotes. Whether they were elites because they had psychic powers or because they were wealthy or because they had extraordinary longevity or because they were fabulously attractive and good-looking or whatever reason, they were elites. And in the book, the heroes in the book were always members of the elite group. And of course, reading the book oh, this is lovely. I can identify with this person, I can imagine I'm in the elite group. This is really nice. Of course, as a child and a young adult, this was all part of me building my sense of self and self-worth. Also, all the imaginative stuff was fantastic and really mind-expanding and wonderful. But I still had that slight feeling of there's something about this that I'm not completely comfortable with.

Speaker 1: 2:00

I was talking to a friend the other day and saying I've got a bit of an issue about elitism. He said well, I think elitism is a good thing. I said what do you mean? He said, well, if we actually do rate people according to are they elites or not in our estimation, that can help us to select who we want to learn from, who we want to relate with and who we want to help and support, so we can make those decisions about who we want to have basically in our circle one way or the other through assessing people. Basically, well, I think absolutely yes, we do have to be discerning. We don't have to be, but it's a good idea to be discerning, and I have.

Speaker 1: 2:44

I will admit I've had times in my life when I could have been more discerning than I was. But equally, I can see times in the past when I was too quick to judge and when somebody that really could have been a real asset to me well, you know, whether personally, professionally or in whatever way, mutually as helpful to each other, it didn't happen. And I've also experienced times when I felt other people have decided I'm a certain kind of person that I feel like I'm not, where they've projected onto me the capacity or the ability to deliver some sort of value to their life that I cannot do, that I am not in a position to do, or where they have assumed that I cannot deliver something that actually I can. So I've experienced all four of those kind of points of the underestimating and the overestimating me towards others and others towards me, and they're all really uncomfortable, they're not great, and I think one thing they have in common is a lack of what the Chinese might call endurance or equanimity, a lack of waiting to see, a lack of withholding judgment, keeping my judgments to myself for just a little bit longer while I just wait and see who that person is and what they're like.

Speaker 1: 4:30

I used to do I've mentioned this before, I think I used to go into organizations and do diagnostic work. These were really large organizations with tens of thousands of people, and I would be asked to go in and see if I could do some diagnostic work around organizational culture and lines of power in the organization, formal lines of power, informal lines of power, subcultures within the organization groupings, silos, all that kind of thing. This sort of work was very popular in the 1980s and I can only imagine people are still doing it now. I'd start my meeting, let's say's say, the chief exec or somebody in his team, and they would invite me to come in and do this and I would get an impression of that person straight off the bat, an impression. And before I went into the organization I would have an impression of the organization based on what I knew about it and my perception of it, based on what I'd heard about it from other people, sometimes based on their adverts, their promotional material. Nowadays it would be what was in social media. Back in those days social media didn't exist. So I would have an impression and I realized when I went in and spent some time in these organizations that my preconceptions were by and large, at best partial, and there was so much more going on that I had no idea about a great deal of which was absolutely marvelous, wonderful stuff.

Speaker 1: 6:12

And I realized that my preconceptions were in danger of preventing me from doing a good job for my client. So I started to develop what I called debugging procedures. So these were processes I would put myself through, whereby I would delve deep within and pull out of myself as many preconceptions as I could possibly find. I would get these out, either in words or images or sculpts with bits of stone and whatever, and I would just basically externalize them in some way so I could look at them. I would admit to myself that these were my preconceptions and I would invite myself to set them aside as best I could before I went in.

Speaker 1: 7:03

Now I won't claim that I could 100% cleanse myself of preconceptions, but I was able to what I call bracket them. I was able to put them in a bracket which says these are my preconceptions. I'm going to do my best to suspend them long enough to go in and find out about these situations when I was working individually with these top execs Because, for example, the CEO would say to me Catherine, I'd like you to find out what's going on in my team, and I would go and chat with them one-to-one and they would each describe to me their boss, the chief exec, and their description of their boss was always partial and always contained a healthy dollop of the preconceptions they brought with them into the situation and, vice versa, the chief exec's impressions of them. Group sessions where I would invite them to really do some processes themselves, perhaps a little bit similar to the ones I'd done on myself before coming in, where they would examine their preconceptions and they would do their best to set those to one side, to bracket them off, and then we'd go diving deep together to try and find stuff about each other that was nothing to do with the preconceptions, and people used to come out of these sessions absolutely astonished at the richness of capacities that existed within that board of directors that had always been there but no one realized, no one knew.

Speaker 1: 8:52

Sometimes people went home and told their wives and the wives would say I could have told anybody that you had those capacities. I could have told anybody. I could have told you that you have those capacities. I have told you that you have those capacities, but you haven't listened to me because I'm your wife. These stories came back to me over and over and over again. What this brought home to me is that this elitism thing is really well worth questioning and just being aware that there is a potential downside to it. Preconceptions, judgments, discounting a value which could be there, and pigeonholing Pigeonholing Nothing to do with holding pigeons. These problems are actually in my opinion and these problems are actually in my opinion, to do with a lack of self-worth and looking for worth outside of us.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Because in my experience, when we know who we are and we're happy with that, we have no need to look for elites outside of us. We don't need to look for leaders and role models to to rescue us from our shortcomings and our seeming limitations. When we're authentically connected with the fact that we're all one and the fact that we are all absolutely fine as we are, of course we've all got scope for growth. But if you, if you go with the idea that in spirit we are all equal, in spirit, we are all got scope for growth. But if you go with the idea that in spirit we are all equal, in spirit, we are all miraculous, then we don't need to split everybody up into elites and other people. So when we're authentically connected with that, when we're in the groove of our path of growth and spiritual expansion, then where other people are on any given scale becomes a lot less important. That's their thing, we have our thing.

Speaker 1: 10:55

So if we're seeing the world and the people in it all neatly arranged on scales of virtue or wealth or power or beauty or cleverness or whatever, we could ask ourselves. Why are we doing that? Are we looking for virtue, wealth, power, beauty, cleverness and so forth outside of us to bolster our lack of self-worth, to try and find somebody that we can emulate and be less like ourselves? Or are we in fact totally fine with who we are and are we simply using discernment so we don't waste energy? So, on that note, thank you for listening, thank you for watching and have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about Transformational Coaching, pellewa and the Freedom of Spirit Workshop on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.