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Getting Along with Robots

I posted the Inside Alibaba’s Smart Warehouse Staffed by Robots video on Facebook the other day. No one liked it or commented on it.

My mother used to say: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.” I guess I have to appreciate all the folks that followed her precept!

Why It Seemed Cool

If you just watch the video, you see all these little blue guys just waiting to get under the palettes of stacked inventory boxes, 10 times their height and weight. So cute. Little flat R2D2’s.

And then the camera cuts to show – from both the robot eye level and the overhead point of view – many of the machines ferrying palettes about, all at the same time.

The whole effect is like lego assembly, like puzzles, a thing of intricacy and fascination.

Why Not Cool?

So why no Likes? It seems obvious – robots are taking people’s jobs. Although few of my Facebook friends would see warehouse work as their career path, many would take a loading job if that was all that was available. I know I would. So in this sense automation hurts. Or at least it did before the reported unemployment rate here in the U.S. circa 2018 fell to much lower levels.

Where will people go to work as job after job gets automated out? Today, we can move on to higher skilled jobs (perhaps controlling the robots) or jobs that involve caring for people in ways that machines can’t do yet. And yet the machines are evolving so fast. Where will we humans end up when robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems continue to take over the work we once performed?

Can we all Get Along?

One hopes that if computing machines and robots get to the point where they can replace everything we do (even on the caring and nurturing side) they themselves become almost human. We might then have much in common with them. We could all live together in a beautiful cybernetic future, as Richard Brautigan envisioned in the poem: Machines of Loving Grace.

But, even we humans aren’t living together all that well in this acrimonious political world. Add sentient machines to the mix, and their ability to get along with people might be determined by their initial programming and how they evolved from there. Is there reason to suppose they would end up becoming enlightened and altruistic, or would they more likely be motivated only to protect their own survival? Would they learn prejudice against human emotion and human life? It is certainly possible to imagine dystopian futures like those in the Terminator moves.

Existential Questions without Answers

Like the Alibaba video, this is a quite a puzzle. There no answers to it yet. The Matrix movie came closest to addressing the existential questions; when the machines are winning, the superhero Neo comes to save humanity by wielding Godlike powers no one can explain. There’s much more story and philosophy in the Matrix, but humanity’s salvation comes down to the divine element.

We Have to Do Better

Advanced technology has a way of sneaking up on us; as a species we never seem to consider or agree on the long-term consequences. Look at automobiles. Would people have “voted for them” if they knew how cars would transform the air, the landscape, and the climate for the worse? Perhaps not. Anyway, they were given no idea.

I realize I’ve opened up this question but provided no better analysis than what’s available in pop scifi movies! Someone must have written well-reasoned papers forecasting both our long-term employment prospects, and how we might get along with the machines once they become more than our equals in every way. I’ll try and get back to you on this in another post.

What to Do When the Shadow Falls?

Traveling on twin journeys of Dream Building and Meditating, I’ve noticed a keener awareness of the inner world of the mind. From living on a higher frequency of gratitude and flow, we get habituated to the way we love to feel so that later, when we’re inwardly ruminating on whatever seems wrong in the world, we notice our thoughts have changed from positive to negative.

Today, I noticed something else. While walking, I felt a sense of disquiet steal over me. Nothing specific, except that instead of enjoying another beautiful spring day, part of me was expecting something to go wrong even if just in my own mind. Soon I found myself remembering reasons I should feel bad, and from there descending into more negative thinking.

Later, I told myself to be happy and grateful to be able to notice negative thinking before it begins. Increased awareness is always good, yes?

Here’s my question: Can anyone relate to this idea of feeling the shadow fall? And what can we do to clear the shadow immediately and not even start down the road of negative thinking, self-doubt, or resentment?

Machines of Loving Grace

Are computing machines our friends or our enemies? After living with them as an average American for almost 60 years as of 2018, it is interesting to reflect on how attitudes change, and where we are today.

Source: Marcus Felsman’s English Blog

Today’s 60-to-70 somethings didn’t grow up with computers. Instead, computers arrived like something out of science fiction during our tumultuous teenage years. The computers of that time were accessed through punch cards or bulky cathode ray terminals (CRTs) in reality. But the Star Trek TV series and the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” depicted fully functional speech recognition, artificial intelligence (AI), food processors, and handheld communicators.

Funny thing, we have now built all those Star Trek devices (except for the transporter beam). Children and younger adults now take them for granted. The 60-to-70 years old can only imagine what it must be like to grow up surrounded by computers at an early age; our children had Windows, Macs, and eventually cell phones. Our grand children have enjoyed smartphones and personal digital assistants almost from infancy, and now have AI with Alexa, Echo, Cortana, and Siri.

Ambivalence

Humans and their technologies have transformed much of Earth into a machine world, but we still have a love/hate relationship with machines.

At least one megacorp has its roots in a Silicon Valley hippie: Steve Jobs. Please read this page from Walter Isaacson’s book on Jobs to learn a bit about how, in the 1960s and early 1970s, attitudes changed from dismissing computing as a tool of Big Brother to embracing it as a symbol of individual empowerment.

Today, debates rage anew over AI, privacy, surveillance, censorship and technological monopolies. As a sixty-something, I know what people in my age group (and perhaps my children’s) conflicted-ly think on these issues, but frankly have only vague ideas on how younger millennials view them. That is great fodder for future posts! For now, check out Isaacson’s bit of history and Richard’s Brautigan’s poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.”

“I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”

I’m with you Richard. Bless you, and RIP.

Looking Ahead

With all the discontent out there about government surveillance and intrusive advertising, have we returned to a negative view of computing?

Perhaps, on balance, we have a more nuanced view of computing that acknowledges any technology is neutral and can be used for either good or bad purposes. And some of the current Internet’s detractors are learning to love a new model – based on blockchains – that I’ll write about in another post on the topic of Decentralization!

Computing and the Counter-Culture

The following excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s book “Steve Jobs” is crucial. Without reading this page from history, we would never have read the poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” and perhaps never begun our Machine World series. Isaacson wrote:

“In San Francisco and the Santa Clara Valley during the late 1960s, various cultural currents ﬂowed together. There was the technology revolution that began with the growth of military contractors and soon included electronics ﬁrms, microchip makers, video game designers, and computer companies. There was a hacker subculture—ﬁlled with Wireheads, phreakers, cyberpunks, hobbyists, and just plain geeks—— that included engineers who didn’t conform to the HP mold and their kids who weren’t attuned to the wavelengths of the subdivisions. There were quasi-academic groups doing studies on the effects of LSD; participants included Doug Engelbart of the Augmentation Research center in Palo Alto, who later helped develop the computer mouse and graphical user interfaces, and Ken Kesey, who celebrated the drug with music-and-light shows featuring a house band that became the Grateful Dead. There was the hippie movement, born out of the Bay Area’s beat generation, and the rebellious political activists, born out of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. Overlaid on it all were various self-fulfillment movements pursuing paths to personal enlightenment: zen and Hinduism, meditation, and yoga, primal scream and sensory deprivation, Esalen and est.

This fusion of ﬂower power and processor power, enlightenment and technology, was embodied by Steve Jobs as he meditated in the mornings, audited physics classes at Stanford, worked nights at Atari, and dreamed of starting his own business. ‘There was just something going on here,’ he said, looking back at the time and place. ‘The best music came from here—the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin—and so did the integrated circuit, and things like the Whole earth Catalog.’

Initially the technologists and the hippies did not interface well. Many in the counterculture saw computers as ominous and Orwellian, the province of the Pentagon and the power structure. In the Myth of the Machine, the historian Lewis Mumford warned that computers were sucking away our freedom and destroying “life-enhancing values.” An injunction on punch cards of the period—~’Do not fold, spindle or mutilate’–became an ironic phrase of the anti war left.

But by the early 1970s a shift was under way. ‘Computing went from being dismissed as a tool of bureaucratic control to being embraced as a symbol of individual expression and liberation,’ John Markoff wrote in hid study of the counterculture’s convergence with the merchants of the computer industry, What the Dormouse Said. It was an ethos lyrically expressed in Richard Brautigan’s 1967 poem, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, and the cyberdelic fusion was certified when Timothy Leary declared that personal computers had become the new LSD and years later revised his famous mantra to proclaim, ‘turn on boot up jack in.’ The musician Bono, who later became a friend of Jobs, often discussed with him why those interested in the rock drugs rebel counterculture of the bay area ended up helping to create the personal computer industry. ‘The people who invested the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently,’ he said. ‘The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, German, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mind-set that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence.'”

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In case you haven’t seen it already, please check out our first Machine World post as it was inspired by Isaacson’s fascinating history lesson.

Music Is Sound Healing

Jim Donovan is a professional musician, writer, and educator. He uses music to help people achieve deep personal healing and transformation. On the course of his life’s journey he stumbled across an amazing discovery:

We can use the power of sound to stimulate our nervous systems to promote relaxation and memory function while reducing stress and inflammation as well as serious diseases such as depression, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy. Known to ancient Chinese, Hindu, African, and native American cultures, sound medicine techniques are now being rediscovered in modern studies of the Vagus Nerve Brain-Body pathways.

Jim’s Dream: “In a perfect world the information I teach would be taught in kindergarten and elementary school. It would be part of Western medical practice and prescribed by doctors before pharmaceuticals in many cases. It would be used for preventative medicine the way diet and exercise are today. It would be prescribed for stress, anxiety, sleep problems, depression, and pain relief.

Kids would come out of school with a whole body of knowledge and experience managing their own stress. This would taught to them like ABCs. Teachers could use this too! If and when this happens, I know that attendance and behavior problems will improve and learning will increase.”

Jim’s Story

From Jim’s earliest memories, music was a constant companion, especially when life was challenging. From the age of 8 Jim wanted to play, but the family was poor and he didn’t get to play until he was 15 and earned the money from a job at Burger King to buy his own drum set. Playing the drums was life changing, Jim says: “It gave me an instant way to move tensions, to move my teenage frustration and young adult frustration out.”

Jim went on to become a professional musician, landing a place with the American world music band Rusted Root. Jim traveled the country and the world with Rusted Root, and he lived many dreams. His intuitive connection to the transformative nature of music deepened over time: “We were fortunate to have success and play every night in front of thousands of people. I watched people react, dancing, laughing, crying to the music we were making. It was a visceral experience to people and I would meet them afterwards and hear story after story about how the music changed them.”

Jim also said he repeatedly heard audience members say the music was “life changing.” I asked him what that meant. “It’s hard to explain,” Jim answered, “But it’s as if the music made people feel more themselves, more comfortable in their own skin, able express emotion and let it out. They would say things like: ‘OMG you have no idea what you guys did. I’ve never felt anything like it before.””

Over 15 years from 1990 through 2005 with Rusted Root, such stories were identical. After 2005, when Jim left the band to raise his children, he found a new occupation teaching music at Saint Francis University and leading drumming workshops both privately and for the university. Interesting things happened: “I thought I was just teaching people drumming technique but what I found was that they would show up and then come back because – like our concert audiences – they said they were having a transformative experience. Only this was different: less euphoric, more relaxed. Some said it was the first time they’d felt really relaxed.”

From Music and Relaxation to Medical Breakthroughs

Within a year at Saint Francis, Jim was approached by university researchers wanting to study what he was teaching to see if it would help kids with autism. They invited kids with autism to drumming workshops. Autism educators observing the workshops couldn’t believe the results: Jim could keep the kids’ attention for 30 to 60 minutes – something that would otherwise be impossible. Saint Francis University obtained a grant from the Army to study the phenomena further.

Jim realized that if he was going to take what he increasingly perceived to be transformational therapeutic benefits of music to the next level, he would need to have a lot more research and to be able to communicate the benefits to everyone from the scientist to the layman to little children.

Jim began researching and writing, publishing his own “Drum Circle Leadership” book and also writing for the OmniVista Health Learning programs, for which he runs the “Jim Donovan Whole Body SOUND HEALING System.” Writing for OmniVista has increased Jim’s knowledge base and helped him branch out. He has developed training programs for autistic children’s support staff and teacher’s aides, as well for people in recovery, and in recovery centers across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina.

Author’s note: I did a bit of my own research and learned that numerous medical studies of Vagus nerve stimulation (using electrodes or implants) have been done in the U.S., showing clinical benefits in treating heart disease, epilepsy, depression, and other diseases. If you google “Vagus nerve stimulation” you’ll find many references to such studies, as well as studies in India of the benefits of stimulating the nerve by chanting or humming. Jim’s core observation is actually that many therapeutic benefits can be obtained through sound and touch alone. Our nervous systems are then known to trigger release of beneficial chemicals, such as norepinephrine, acetylcholine, serotonin, and adrenaline. I’m not able to prove or disprove the science of this, just to say that since attending one of Jim’s workshops. I’ve been using the brain humming and brain tapping procedures. I find they relax me and reduce some chronic neck, back, and shoulder pain symptoms. I subscribed to the Jim Donovan’s Whole SOUND HEALING System myself to learn more!

As with all our True Stories of Giving and Inspiration, I’d like to close with Jim’s moments of greatest challenge and inspiration, and a call to action.

Moments of Greatest Challenge

Jim said his greatest obstacle was finding self-confidence, especially early in life: “Once I had success as a musician I thought I was cured [of a lack of self-confidence], but when I pivoted to education, it reared its head and I had to rebuild it. I’ve also tried hard to invent a life that I wanted to live (and still make a good living) rather than doing something imposed on me by normalcy. I’ll be 50 soon, and I want to look back on my life and say I would do that again in a heartbeat. I’ve realized I’m good at manifesting things, the next challenge is making sure I’m thinking big enough!”

Going forward, Jim has big plans. He wants to continue creating music-based products that are educational, and use his new Sun King Warriors band as a platform to get the word out on whole body sound healing: “Music is a way to reach a lot more people; we have a record coming out and will do something a little bit risky and audacious: We will give it away!”

Moments of Greatest Inspiration

After each of his children was born, Jim said: “I felt like my heart grew 2 sizes bigger. What it increased in me was my capacity to love people without needing anything from them. When I get in front of people I think: Love them first, then perform.”

Jim was also inspired by getting to play with some of his heroes: “When Led Zepplelin played Pittsburg they said we [Rusted Root] were the best band in Amercia and dedicated a performance of ‘The Song Remains the Same’ to us as Jimmy Page came out on stage wearing a Rusted Root t-shirt. This was reminder to me that anything is possible!”

Authors Note: At the workshop, Jim told us another inspiring story. During the Rusted Root days, playing as the backup band one night the group found itself on a stage in the middle of a completely deserted parking lot. It was time to play, and the band members looked at one another in disbelief and uncertainty. Jim recalls: “We were in a dire circumstance but we decided to go all in, to take pride in what we do, and to play like it was the last time we’ll ever get to play. This is something we did it consistently from the very first night we played together and I didn’t realize until years later the power of that mindset; whatever it is do it right, go all the way, and don’t hold back.” As the band played, a woman wearing sunglasses came out into the parking lot, walking a dog, and then it was as if they were playing just for her. After the song was done, she came up to the stage and introduced herself; it was Sheryl Crow! After saying “People need to hear you guys!” Crow referred Rusted Root to radio and concert connections in New York City, leading eventually to the band selling over three million records.

Call to Action

We should all take Jim’s story to heart and learn from his mindset and experience. Each of us will follow a different path, but we can all work on visualizing our dreams, being the best version of ourselves we can be, and going all in to the flow of giving and receiving in the stream of life.

Jim’s sound healing tools like brain humming may be an important addition to Technologies of the Mind we’ve already discovered here on Thirdways Communities. If you ever feel stressed, depressed, can’t sleep, or just plain curious check it out at the links provided in this post. And let’s talk in this space here about what works for us. Perhaps the time will come to get on board with Jim’s Dream!

Technologies of the Mind

Three technologies for mindfulness and personal growth have served me well over the years:

Holosync and the 9 Principles of Conscious Living
The Sedona method: Releasing
Dream Building and Brave Thinking

What are They?

Holosync is a “brain wave entrainment” technology. By listening to the Holosync soundtrack, people can effortlessly fall into a consciousness-enhancing meditative state in which they experience higher self-awareness. Bill Harris, the inventor of Holosync, also teaches Nine Principles of Conscious Living. Of the nine, “witnessing” (aka being self-aware) and “let whatever happens be ok” are core. By using Holosync and following Harris’s principles, one can gradually feel better and learn to choose the thoughts and beliefs most resourceful for achieving one’s goals in life.

The Sedona Method (and the book) teach us to release attachment or resistance to feelings, the need to change things, or our need for security, approval, separation, and control. This relates to the Buddhist idea that all suffering comes from resistance. To the Eastern philosophers, even becoming attached to something good can cause suffering. One can use Sedona to help in letting whatever happens be ok.

Dream Building and Brave Thinking is a set of intellectual and spiritual practices taught by Mary Morrissey’s Life Mastery Institute. It helps one manifest the life one would love. We are taught to apply the Law of Attraction (or visualization) in blueprinting our dreams, overcome limiting beliefs or paradigms, and build dreams through action.

Mindfulness

The three technologies and associated practices all revolve around mindfulness, or awareness. With awareness comes the possibility of taking greater conscious control of our choices in life, down to the very thoughts we think. And in this way, I find the three technologies complementary.

The kind of awareness you get from Holosync, or other meditation disciplines, can be empowering in itself. Bill Harris believes that once we can actually watch how a belief or behavior is playing out in the mind to manifest unwanted results, it will just fall away.

The Sedona method gives one a way to move to deeper levels of awareness – not by digging up the past as in psychoanalysis, but by peeling the mental onion to expose core feelings of lacking security, approval, separation, or control that may underlie surface feelings, like excessive frustration over some petty incident.

In Dream Building, Mary Morrissey advises us to “notice what we’re noticing” and to “notice our longing and discontent.” Therein we can discover attributes of the life we would love. We also become aware when a thought or feeling is expansive (taking us toward what we want) or contractive (discouraging us from taking action, or dreaming bigger).

Putting Them Together

Could there be a contradiction between active dream building and achieving a state of enlightenment wherein we’ve released any sense of resistance or attachment? Bill Harris calls this the double bind: Life deals unwanted circumstances and changes we try to overcome in order to feel better, but these efforts in themselves could create suffering. Harris suggests: “Play Hamlet, don’t be Hamlet.”

In the Sedona method, it seems everything is to be released. The Sedona syllogism goes: “Can you welcome this feeling? Can you release it? When?” No matter how bad the feeling, we can say we learned from it and release it. No matter how good the feeling, we could release it now and still be able to get it back later.

Morrissey argues much the same as Harris. Dream Building requires a high level of participation. But we should not be “Type A” about it. Don’t be overly attached to specific ways and means. Instead, hold dreams and goals in an open hand: “In a universe of infinite possibility, there are infinite ways to fulfill a dream and it can be easy. Let it be this or something better still.”

Bottom Line

I’ve just scratched the surface in this post. Soon, I hope to go deeper into each technology of the mind and the many interesting topics raised. In the meantime, you can use the links under “What are They?” to learn about the technologies, to try them, or to buy them.

The White Magic of the Infinite Mind

You often hear advocates of the New Thought such as Mary Morrissey say that we have access to the Universal Mind, to an infinite consciousness.

If so, that is not through any mechanism that science yet understands. The metaphysical part of Morrissey’s teaching (aka the “woo woo” stuff 🙂 seems like mysticism or fantasy. Something that the wise should not believe. Or should they?

On a coaching call this December for a Brave Thinking course that I’m enrolled in with Morrissey, she took us through an exercise: Four times we were asked to pick one of three numbers. At the end of the exercise we were given four statements corresponding to the numbers we had picked. It was later revealed to us that those 12 statements (from which each of us had selected four) themselves came from a list of 18 statements in the book “The Optimist Creed.”

Mary said that our subconscious has access to the infinite mind, and it would guide each of us in selecting the right four numbers. Indeed, my following four statements seem thematically connected in an amazing way. Take a look.

I promise to talk about health, happiness, and prosperity in all conversations I’m having.
I promise to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.
I promise to wear a cheerful expression it all times and to give a smile to every living creature I meet.
I promise to live in the faith that the whole world is on my side so long as I am true to the best that is in me.

Isn’t it beautiful how these statements build on each other?

Did this just happen randomly? Was it inevitable that any 4 of the 12 used would seem to have a powerful relationship with each other? Was it a accident? Or do I actually have access to an infinite mind that actually exists and knew about these 4 statements?

I could try to compare three lists of statements: 18 in all, the 12 offered, and the 4 I picked. But would I even want to do this analysis? Or would looking behind the magician’s curtain only spoil the serendipity I found?

Magic it’s one of those things it works best when you believe in it. If this is white magic, let it be true.

Friends of the Homeless National Resource Center

Dianne Fanti describes herself as good at finding and helping to fill in missing gaps. She loves to connect people with resources and support, and to help them understand how they are uniquely aimed. She has developed an educational program enabling those experiencing homelessness to develop essential life skills through the healing and expressive arts. “It’s in my nature to help and I’ve been working with the homeless for many years. At 15, I had my first encounter with the homeless and I felt this calling.”

Fast forward to 2013. Dianne and her partners created the Friends of the Homeless network, a Maryland non-profit designed to provide an organized structure and support system that both helps the homeless directly and helps organize, mobilize, and improve support for them.

Dianne’s Story

It started one day when, at 15, Dianne and some friends were taking a short cut through a field in the Baltimore, MD suburbs and stumbled upon a homeless encampment. Some of her friends were acquainted with the people there and got into a conversation with them. Dianne was surprised, she didn’t know there were any homeless people in their town. After listening to the conversation for a little while, she came to discover that, “They didn’t sound that much different than the other adults that I knew, and even had similar problems, only theirs were stacked or compounded. So while one person might be going through a divorce or have lost their job, they would have many problems occurring simultaneously. But something about their humanity touched me and I would return to see them regularly after school.”

In her blog post, Warming the Stone Child, Dianne describes her own challenges with almost experiencing homelessness as an adolescent, before receiving the support she needed and turning her life around. She recovered, began to thrive, and went on to college. She started in social work, but went on to study the holistic health sciences, and healing and expressive arts. But she never forgot the homeless, and in so many ways she still lives for them today.

Origins of the Work

After college, Dianne continued to think of the homeless and wanted to share what she had been learning. She developed an educational curriculum of essential life skills, and taught her first class at a shelter. Over several years, she refined the curriculum with the help of the participants and staff, so it became customized for them. She developed a passion for discovering how each person’s journey through the kinds of troubles that may lead to homelessness is unique. For example: “Some people cannot hold a job for more than a few months. But why? Have they taken jobs that don’t suit their nature, like an introverted hostess? Do they need to feel validated and supported to unlock their potential? How can we help them discover what they need, and become their partners in getting it?”

Friends of the Homeless National Resource Center

After years of teaching and working with the homeless directly, Dianne and the colleagues she connected with along the way formally established FOTH in 2013. The website describes FOTH as: “A nonprofit project fostering resilience and resourcefulness in marginalized women and men through the sharing of community resources and our transformational educational curriculum and programs.”

The Resource Guide and Resource Cards are now being distributed in 20 states. FOTH is a network of professionals and concerned citizens working together to provide the following services:

Street Outreach: FOTH publishes and distributes street cards (resource cards), which volunteers can hand out directly on the street when circumstances seem appropriate. The cards can also be distributed to friends, colleagues, churches, or other care-giving organizations. The cards can be handed out along with recommended gifts of toiletries, snacks, or other articles as well as the simple gift of human contact and encouragement. For many homeless or challenged clients (hereinafter, “clients”), a street card is a starting point for recovery and receiving further help. FOTH volunteers can also connect clients with local and national resources.
Resource Guide and Workbook: FOTH’s freely-downloadable resource guide is a “train the trainer” sort of publication that can be given to clients and their supporters. It is designed to provide awareness of helpful resources available in communities, including hotlines, meals, lodging, counseling, and career support. It also provides guidance on discovering one’s skills and strengths, reducing stress, and building or rediscovering life skills for budgeting, saving, and job search. A free companion introductory video accompanies the guide online and is used to train volunteers in multiple centers. These materials have been peer-reviewed and approved by a panel of expert clinical social workers, psychologists, and human service professionals.
Educational Curriculum: The educational curriculum is a teacher-training program for professionals working with the homeless. It enables them to provide hands-on training with participants in shelters and centers to acquire essential life skills through “engaging classes that utilize the healing and expressive arts and holistic health sciences, through 42 techniques and over 20 additional activities.” It includes evidence-based and proven techniques for helping clients with many of their challenging problems and can help them to build a new life.
Connection: FOTH connects supporters in communities with giving initiatives and helps them find a way to contribute that suits their individual skills, talents, or abilities.
Advocacy: FOTH also advocates to dispel myths about homelessness and the causes of homelessness through public talks and their videos online

Moments of Greatest Challenge and Inspiration

Dianne explains that: “Street outreach is really challenging. Yesterday I was visiting some people under a highway bypass, keeping out of sight. Sometimes they manage to make themselves fairly comfortable. It can be worrisome as it starts to get cold outside and people don’t feel an incentive to change or leave the cold. Some may not be able to feel the cold due to some of the substances available on the street and so we worry about them and encourage them to get inside, even if it’s just to an ER, library, or fast food place. Of course, we’re doing our best to connect them with resources and helpful shelters and centers, but it’s ultimately up to them. While we ultimately want to help them connect with further support and opportunities, our goal in the Winter is for their survival.”

On the other hand: “Our greatest inspirations occur when we have success stories. When we connect with someone at the right time, then through the education process, their life really can rebuild. It is both humbling and rewarding to see.”

Call to Action

I’m sure that most of us have walked down city streets, seen people hopeless or homeless, and felt powerless to help. We’ve handed out a dollar now and then, but as we walk away we know that nothing really changed. But what if there is a way to make a change?

Dianne’s heartfelt dedication to the homeless, and her wonderful achievements should inspire us to act. We can all be part of the FOTH network and/or help in these or other ways.

Gain understanding with helpful articles and a video series on YouTube.

Contact FOTH and stay in touch through the mailing list.

Share the RESOURCE CARDS and, if appropriate, help a client take the next step by calling “211” or “311” to find shelters or other assistance centers and contact caseworkers.

Download the Resource Guide and share it with clients or other supporters.

Donate at this link.

Independent Thinking

Notice some of the key points in the vignette below from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance essay (italics added). Emerson is expounding in independent thinking, tolerance, and civility.

“Say to than, ‘0 Father. 0 mother. 0 wife. 0 brother. 0 friend. I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward l obey no less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife but these relations I must ﬁll after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble. I will have you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selﬁshly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us our safe at last.”

Recovery Without Walls

Recovery with Walls (RWW) is a Cape Cod-based center that offers structure, safety, support and stability to women following treatment for substance dependency. It’s services are free of charge. RWW is Bill Dougherty’s gift to the world, so we begin with his story.

Bill’s Story

Bill Dougherty spent his first 40 years growing up and then working in various pursuits while struggling with alcoholism. He served in the military, and also worked in marketing, as a schoolteacher, even as a bartender but never found fulfillment. As Bill puts it: “I was continuing to hit dead end streets.”

At 42, Bill hit a low. He recounts: “I’d hit low points, lost my family, and I was in darkness. I was going to doctors and psychiatrists. I was taking medication. I found myself at Cape Cod on a bridge looking over the water. I couldn’t jump, I couldn’t NOT jump. Fortunately, by the grace of God I’d met a young woman who’d been to a treatment center. Someone who understood me. Although she was tough with me when I hit bottom, she was my last friend. I came down from that bridge, called her and said ‘I’ll do anything.’”

Bill was one of those people for whom Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) really worked. As for many, AA became his second home and he eventually met his wife there.

For the next 20 or 30 years Bill worked in hospitals and treatment centers to try and help others recover as well. Through experience, Bill learned from that treatment programs usually don’t cure long term addiction. “Eleven years ago I was working in a very good center where I could actually get to know people. But I kept watching same cycle: They leave, lack backup, they relapse. And it seems to be even more of a problem with women than men.”

The Real Treatment Begins the Day You Leave Treatment

Bill began to develop his dream to establish a post-treatment support center for women. Services would be free of charge. Bill didn’t want depend on reimbursement from governments or other organizations because that would give those organizations authority over his work. When he talked about his vision, however, others in the treatment business told him it would never fly. He would run out of funding, they said.

Recovery Without Walls

Bill opened the Recovery Without Walls (RWW) office in Falmouth, Massachusetts in 2006 with the support of his wife and a few volunteers. RWW’s model was and is to provide immediate help for women who have completed a course of treatment for addiction, are in a 12-step program such as the AA’s, remain sober or clean, and also abstain from relationships for their first 12 months in RWW.

As Bill puts it, those in recovery “Need to have an attachment to something healthy and move on to other healthy things.” Through its volunteers, RWW is highly flexible about finding ways to help women. The first priority is to help with any safety issues, then to offer services.

The approach to assistance is highly-individualized because everyone has individual needs and challenges. For example, the immediate safety issue may be getting a car fixed, finding a place to live, or getting a job. Then clients need a point of attachment, a way to commit to something and in turn, to themselves. This may be counseling, an opportunity to volunteer at the office, another support group, a job, or something else.

The RWW website details the following services:

Basic services including client support services, referrals and resource information, coaching, skill development, limited financial assistance, and advocacy.
Mindfulness & Meditation For Women in Recovery: A weekly class with an Instructor and Integrative Life Coach that assists participants in “cultivating a sense of deep relaxation and renewal, combining soothing guided meditation, calming rhythmical breathing exercises, energizing body movements and rejuvenating sound therapy…”
Acupuncture: RWW has found this ancient Chinese treatment highly effective in reducing cravings and anxiety. It facilitates an overall sense of wellness even for patients that are resistant or fearful of other interventions. Here’s a link to a moving video describing the acupuncture program from the RWW site.

A Community that Runs Itself

RWW does not charge for services, does not seek reimbursement from government, and does not have employees. It is in fact the model that Bill envisioned 11 years ago that others in the recovery space said “could not work.” So how does RWW do it?

RWW runs entirely on volunteer efforts and private fundraising. For volunteers RWW has Bill himself, family members, and RWW program alumni. Current and former clients often drop in to help, or sometimes Bill calls them for help. Money for RWW’s dedicated yoga, meditation, and acupuncture service providers and other expenses is primarily raised through athletic and concert fundraising events.

As Bill puts it: “RWW sort of runs itself. One of the beauties is program serves clients forever. You can always keep coming back.”

Moments of Greatest Challenge and Inspiration

RWW has been operating for 11 years, and Bill hopes it will still be here in 20. It has helped over 500 women in recovery so far, 120 this year alone, and plans to help 250 next year. RWW has been opened to other programs, so that women in recovery at those programs can draw from 800 hours of mindfulness and acupuncture care paid by RWW.

Not surprisingly Bill describes raising money as the biggest challenge: “Sometimes we have periods when money is running out, it is a big challenge to raise more and the needs keep coming in. On those days, one gets disheartened.”

On the inspiring side: “I know that somehow what we need will be provided for, with God’s help” and “The women – there’s much more laughter than tears.”

Call to action

Studies show relapse rates after treatment for alcoholism or drug addiction are as high as 90%. Addiction is one of this country’s worst issues, accounting for more than two-thirds of arrests and enormous health costs.

How is this for inspiring? RWW touts a 74% long term success rate at keeping women in recovery sober, safe, housed, and employed or productively occupied.

These numbers – 74%, 500 women – represent a wonderful gift from Bill to so many and an inspiration to us all. Please watch the acupuncture video and read Troy Clarkson’s articles from The Falmouth Enterprise (link1, link2) – they capture RWW’s human story so well.

Knowing that recovery is a long road, look for opportunities to help people on along it. If you are in the recovery business, do what you can to meet clients wherever they are. Give them a hand up, or a point of attachment.

And please help keep “Bill’s Gift” going. Donate or help RWW here!