Episode 24: Julia Menard – Going Reptile

In this episode, Gord interviews co-host Julia Menard! Julia discusses:

• • How conversations with Season 1 guests have influenced her views on the world
  • The importance of managing our reptilian nature regarding fear
  • Learning important skills in conflict from the squirrels in urban Montreal
  • The etymology of conflict and Julia’s analogy of fire
  • The importance of being courageous and having conversations that need to be had
  • Joining your community and think about what’s required of you as a citizen

More about Our Guest

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST

• Leonard Cohen and the End of the World
• Catherine Ingram’s article Facing Extinction
• Bruce Lipton’s The Biology of Belief
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
• Barbara Coloroso’s book Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk into Genocide
• Robert Kegan
• E. M. Forster and his quote, “Only connect”
• Brené Brown quote: “Strong back, soft front, wild heart” (Source 1; source 2)
• Linda Hill
• Gary Harper
• Landmark
• Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Strategy by Jem Bendell
• Quote by George Bernard Shaw: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.” (Secondary source for the quote)
• Zen Buddhist Roshi Joan Halifax quote: “All too often our so-called strength comes from fear, not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open…How can we give and accept care with strong-back, soft front compassion, moving past fear into a place of genuine tenderness? I believe it comes about when we can be truly transparent, seeing the world clearly — and letting the world see into us.” (Secondary source for the quote; Roshi’s book that it’s actually from)
• More information about the reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and prefrontal cortex
• Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness
• Mary Oliver
• Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Quotes From The Episode

(Anything uncertain is either replaced by ellipses or put in square brackets, and some quotes are shortened using ellipses.)

• [6:06] “I think a central challenge [currently facing humanity] is managing our own fear as a species, and the reflex action that we have when we’re fearful, which is to make enemies of each other, and an overall managing our reptilian brain, our survival aspect of our personality. […] We have a perfect storm that’s facing humanity at this time, and it’s causing and continuing to cause increased conflict across our species.” Julia gives credit to Gord as being the one from whom she heard “the perfect storm” phrase.
• [8:07] “There are certain markers we notice – and you used the phrase the perfect storm, that conflict can happen when there’s a perfect storm of characteristics that are coming together that has caused that particular conflict, and most people don’t realize the signs that are mounting tensions that are going to result in conflict. So I applied that to humanity and I thought yes, there are signs, there are mounting signs that are happening that we know from our experiences dealing with didactic conflict or group conflict or organizational conflict.”
• [11:22] Gord asks Julia what she thinks about the relationship between fear and the perception of threat.
• [14:33] Julia talks about various perspectives on genocide and discusses a particular author’s thoughts around schoolyard bullying and genocide practices of “othering” and thinking of others as sub-human.
• [17:28] “When we’re in crisis, whether it’s real crisis or fabricated because I’ve decided I’m in crisis with you, it’s very difficult to override that [turning others into enemies].”
• [19:19] Julia talks about being drawn to the field of conflict engagement because of how war has personally impacted her life. She shares that she’s a child of a government-sponsored war-displaced refugee, and that her grandfather was murdered in the war in the Ukraine. [22:02] “I did want to note, the friendship program [supporting refugees] that I was part of [in Edmonton] was federally funded, and I do think governments have an important role to play in terms of supporting civility in society.”
• [23:25] In response to a question from Gord about managing fear of the enemy, Julia says “If I can see you as somebody that’s like me, I will not want to hurt you.”
• [27:27] “Part of what I’m exploring in this last year or less is how can we look to artists and how can we look to Indigenous populations to be some of our touchstone and some of our guides in these very scary times.”
• [29:50] “In my work there’s a phrase I’ve come up with that I talk about a lot: go slow to go fast. I think it does connect to managing our reptilian brain. I think if we can be mindful that we have this tripwire functioning in all of us, that we can start to encourage the capacity to continue to go forward. If we go, it might be two steps forward, one and a half back, and slow, and wait.” Julia talks about a memory from her childhood in urban Montreal in which she waited with a peanut for a squirrel who would eventually take it out of her hand, and she says she learned patience and the “go slow to go fast” from the squirrels. Gord expands the analogy by pointing out that Julia used a peanut to coax the squirrels; he says, “There needs to be something that maybe the person can see as a benefit or possibility for engaging.”
• [34:47] In response to Gord’s question about what conflict looks like in a peaceful world, Julia says “I think conflict looks like how I view it […]. I think conflict looks like opportunity. It looks like opportunity for innovation and creativity.” Julia talks about Linda Hill, who found in her research that “creative abrasion” is the necessary ingredient for spawning creativity and innovation.
• [35:31] “This world would be awfully boring without conflict.”
• [35:34] Julia talks about how she was married to a screenplay writer who’d often say that Julia’s work with conflict informed his work as a dramaturg, and that he was all for conflict because it inhabits all great stories. Julia says, “As I thought about it, I thought, we’d have no stories without conflict.”
• [37:20] “I’ve looked up the etymology of conflict, which is con, meaning with, and flict is literally a flick, like a flick of your hand or a strike. And it would never make sense to me really how conflict would fit for me as somebody who thinks that conflict is okay, until this very minute. Right here, right now, you’re witnessing it, you’re listening to it! And the insight I just got is that conflict is an opportunity because it’s a spark of energy. It’s a call to opportunity. It’s that creative abrasion – I think Linda Hill’s phrase is really what’s enabled me to see this. It’s like the striking of a match. And what do we do with that? We could let the fire just take over the whole forest and burn the house down, or whatever, right, which is the destructive component of conflict. Or we can blow it out, avoid it, squash it, let it stop. Or we can tend to that fire in ways that we know can help make it into this thing that gives life, the thing that cooks food, the thing that allows us to stay warm. It has so much opportunity for transformation.”
• [39:19] In response to Gord asking what people can start doing tomorrow to make the world a better and more peaceful place, Julia says “Courage and calm.”
  • “Courage would be the courage to have the conversations that I’ve been avoiding, the conversations that you’ve been avoiding.” She discusses a personal and professional development organization called Landmark, which is very encouraging of people having conversations imminently and not putting them off. Julia then shares an incredible story she heard from a fellow Landmark participant that illustrates the importance of initiating a conversation when we feel something needs to be discussed.
  • “Calm is required because if we can remain calm, our hearts can stay open – those soft fronts – keeping our hearts open means that we have a better chance of listening to the other person on the other end of the line or across the table or street from us, because deep listening is definitely going to be required. […] And calm is required to sit with the incredible sadness of our dying species and other species, and other lifeforms, because it’s so easy to collapse. I’ve been inspired […] by Phil Lancaster’s comment [on our last episode, about his work in the response to the Rwandan genocide] that he just kept going. I think I remember him saying to do anything else would be suicide.” [48:00] “Calm is required to balance our day-to-day demands and the minutiae of the day-to-day living that we have that tells us that we have no time to be involved in our community. We need calm to expand that sense of time that is it’s so urgently required of all of us.”
• [51:29] Gord says “One of the things I find interesting about this conversation, and in a way, about quite a few things that we’ve talked about during the podcast is that it doesn’t seem to be about conflict, right? And the way I make sense of that is that conflict, when you explore it deeply, is so embedded in life, that it becomes a doorway. The conversations around conflict become a doorway to almost every significant, for example existential experience that human beings have.”
• [52:18] “I love quotes. I may not be able to remember them with specific accuracy, as we have seen, and yet I still love them. I stumbled upon a quote when I was reflecting on the podcast for today, and so I brought that quote. I could have brought a million quotes, because I really love quotes. So this is the way that I want to leave it. […] It’s a quote from a Buddhist, a Zen Buddhist, Roshi Joan Halifax. ‘All too often our so-called strength comes from fear, not love; instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that’s flexible but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that’s soft and open…How can we give and accept care with strong-back, soft front compassion, moving past fear into a place of genuine tenderness? I believe it comes about when we can be truly transparent, seeing the world clearly — and letting the world see into us.’”
• [54:11] Gord asks Julia “What do you think she [Brené Brown] means by ‘wild heart?’ Or what does it mean to you?” Julia says “What it means to me is, the notion of a wild heart opens up so many possibilities. It’s that connecting with the animal part in us, I think. With the reptilian, with the mammalian, with the prefrontal cortex, and with the spirit. And the possibility that conflict offers us. As I said earlier, the world would be pretty boring without conflict, and we wouldn’t have our stories, like that spark is there in the wild heart, to open to that, the beauty of life even though it can be so painful.”
• [56:44] “I’ve had an image for a long time of one’s relationship to conflict being like being in a kayak going down a rushing river, and you know, yes we can have the helmet, we can have the safety jacket, but really, get in the water.”