Radical Decency: A Values-Based Approach to a Better Life and World

Compete and win, dominate and control – these values permeate every area of our lives, causing widespread anxiety and dissatisfaction. In an ideal world, we'd treat ourselves, others, and the world around us decently – valuing the needs of each as we strive for maximum happiness. In our present world, though, we're groomed to push for more, to be the best, to be a success, to win. Then, when this strategy for living falls short, we blame ourselves.

But beneath our personal unease is a more fundamental problem: We live in an indecent world.

Radical Decency confronts this deeply troubling reality. It explains why we urgently need to overcome and move beyond it; for our own well-being and for the future of the culture and planet. It then offers a pathway for creating a life affirming both our self and others via Decency's 7 Values: Respect, Understanding, Empathy, Acceptance, Appreciation, Fairness and Justice.

Nature has wired us to be creatures of habit – and we're deeply influenced by the environments we live in. Thus, to decisively diverge from our current problematic values, we need to systematically cultivating new habits. Otherwise, our old, habitual ways will, almost inevitably, overwhelm the small islands of decency we seek to create.

Accounting for this reality, Radical Decency challenges us to rewire our brains for decency, practicing it "radically;" not partially or sometimes, but in every situation and without exception.

To make this demanding change program a reality, we need guidance. Radical Decency does this, offering a detailed pathway for "going decent" in all areas – in our intimate relationships, our workplaces, our communities and political engagements, and in our deepest conversations with our selves. Demanding but realistic and do-able, it offers an inspiring, spirit-affirming roadmap that will empower readers to create more personally satisfying lives and, simultaneously, to contribute more effectively to a fairer, more just world.
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Arguing that its "radical" approach is urgently needed at this particular point in our history, the book begins with a description of how the exponentially accelerating pace of change – our new reality – threatens our very existence; through vast environmental upheaval and/or through an algorithmically-driven, Big Brother world in which we're more and more thoroughly harnessed to the twin Gods of production and consumption.

It then focuses on the all-important practical question that is the book's primary focus: How to actually make the shift to decency, so urgently required by our current situation.

To make good on this ambitious goal, we first need to know where the journey begins (the "Here") and, then, where we want to get to ("There"). Thus, the book: (1) describes the deeply embedded processes that keep us rooted in our current ways and their debilitating impact on our lives; and (2) offers a detailed vision of what a life, lived in a radically decent way, might look like. It then dives into the most vital question of all -- how to get Here to There – offering a detailed roadmap for progressively moving toward a more and more decent life: With our loved ones and friends, at work, and in our communal and political engagements.

We can only transform the environments in which we live – and so heavily influence every other area of our living – if we bring decency's values to the communities and institutions in which our lives unfold. Recognizing this reality, the book ends with a call to action: Describing how we can invest our reform energy in our communities of choice and in new more creative forms of collaboration with similarly values-based people, from all walks of life.

Jeff Garson, a lawyer, psychotherapist and social activist, is a graduate of Johns Hopkins Universit,, the University of Pennsylvania Law School (magna cum laude) and the Bryn Mawr College School of Social Work and Social Research.

Upon graduation from law school in 1973, he clerked for the Honorable James Hunter, III, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In the 25 years that followed, Garson worked for a number of large, Philadelphia-based law firms, initially representing both plaintiffs and corporate defendant in antitrust and securities lawsuits, including several large, national class actions.

Beginning in 1981, he re-oriented his practice, representing banks, equity investors and other creditors in corporate bankruptcies. In the last five years of his legal career, Garson represented nonprofit entities exclusively, ultimately joining the Shefa Fund, a public foundation, with senior executive and general counsel responsibilities. He then entered private legal practice specializing in litigation and commercial bankruptcy and, later in his career, nonprofit law.

Re-tooling as a psychotherapist in 2000, he has, for the last 20 years, managed a private practice working with an economically and culturally diverse group of clients. On two occasions, from 2005-08 and 2013-17, he led business entities that, coordinating the work of diverse healers and coaches, offered clients the integrated life guidance, central to Radical Decency's approach.

Garson is a co-founder and chair of the Decency Foundation whose mission is to bring Decency's 7 Values to all every area of living, with special emphasis on business and the workplace.
Set forth below, is a more detailed description of Garson's legal/business, communal/political, and healing/personal growth experience.

Legal Experience; significant cases
• Represented defrauded creditors in the aftermath of the financial/housing crisis of the 1980s that resulted in the failure of almost a third of the country's 3,000 savings and loan banks;

• A prime author in the re-organization of Mutual Benefit Life, an $18 billion insurance company;

• Lead attorney in the New Era bankruptcy, a $500 million Ponzi scheme that ensnared 5,000 nonprofit entities, including the Red Cross, the United Way, the Boy Scouts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Salvation Army, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Duke.

Communal/Political Experience
• Community Activism: Organizer and chair of Common Cause/Philadelphia, a leader in the fight to combat police brutality in Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia; Co-founder of the National Constitution Center; creator of Delaware Valley Habitat for Humanity, a coalition of five previously uncoordinated local Habitat entities.

• Representative Board Service: Philadelphia's Public Interest Law Center; the American Jewish Committee; Jewish Family and Children's Service; Philadelphians Concerned About Housing; the Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly; the Dream Line project.

• Direct Service: Volunteer tutor; Big Brother; co-organizer and leader of service missions to Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and, domestically, to refurbish a pocket park in West Philadelphia and to work at various Habitat for Humanity sites in Ohio.

Healing/Personal Growth Experience
• Since 2002, practicing psychotherapist working with a wide variety of clients; men's group leader in a variety of contexts.

• Graduate: Gestalt Therapy Institute of Philadelphia, an intensive 3-year, experiential training; Imago's year-long training for couples' therapists; EMDr Level I training program.

• 25-year involvement with the Essential Experience, a 3½-day personal growth workshop offered 3 times a year in Philadelphia; graduate, Mankind Project's New Warriors' Training