Going Beyond Polarized Thinking with Inclusive Neutrality
Jen McCutcheon, Metro Vancouver Director for Area A asked to interview me for her regional newsletter. Originally published March 8, 2022 in her Newsletters section here.
Jen: We first met on the mall here at UBC [University of British Columbia] and then I learned your grandfather was the Nobel-prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi. He made a number of major contributions to twentieth century physics, including building the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (CP-1) and working on the development of the first atomic bombs during WWII. How has being Enrico Fermi’s granddaughter changed your life?
Olivia: My maternal grandfather Enrico died a few years before I was born so I never met him. Yet somehow I felt his energy in the house. There was something thrilling about him, though I barely comprehended what. From childhood, more was expected of me because of my grandfather’s genius. Being told I could achieve anything was a gift I’m grateful to my parents for. At the same time, such high expectations from one’s family were a burden I’ve grappled with for most of my life.
I liked the attention when someone who loves science or history of science learned of my relation to Enrico — that special connection is a delightful conversation starter!
As I grew older and slightly more mature, I realized I was bothered that too many folks are raised to feel that they are not special, they are not smart. Lots of people have these internalized messages from their parents or from school that they’re stupid. That’s not right. Each of us is unique, each of us, given half a chance, can express our own greatness in whatever form. In graduate school, I was studying for an MA in Applied Behavioral Science with an emphasis in Leadership in Human Systems (1999). I had a requirement to give a presentation to our faculty and my cohort. I chose to talk for the first time in a more public forum about what it might be like to have someone great in your ancestral lineage. I asked everyone to choose a real figure who they admired and to imagine they were a descendant of that person. What inspiration might that give them? Only after that did I talk about my grandfather and his impact on me. For a couple of days after that, folks came up to thank me for the inspiration I’d offered. When I was in Rome in 2011, I was invited to give a TEDx talk, which I called “Becoming the Inspiration We Seek”.
Jen: Speaking of inspiration, from reading your website, I understand your grandmother Laura Fermi was also influential in forming your world view. Please tell us about that and growing up in Chicago.
Olivia: Yes, my grandmother lived close by and we’d see her a couple of times a week. She was a huge inspiration to me, a major role model. Laura was a pioneer in the environmental movement around the time Rachel Carson published her seminal exposé on the interconnected nature of life: Silent Spring. One of my earliest memories — I would have been in kindergarten — is of my grandmother and her friends folding flyers and teaching me how to fold them too. They successfully lobbied to transition from coal to natural gas in some of the buildings in Chicago — which at the time was revolutionary. I got a lot of encouragement to express myself creatively from my parents. My grandmother encouraged me to write from the time I was seven years old. She modelled a very forward way of looking at society to see what she might contribute. When the environmental movement gained traction, Laura and her colleague friends moved on to start the first-hand gun control lobby in the US. I learned about human systems thinking from my grandmother at a very young age and it is part of how I look at the world.
Jen: Given the US government’s controversial decision to push ahead with developing atomic weapons starting in the 1940s and your grandfather’s integral role there, the legacy of his work is complicated. This is something that you have addressed head on. I can see how your grandmother’s guidance helped you with this. Can you tell me about your Neutron Trail project and your personal work to come to terms with this legacy?
Olivia: My Neutron Trail project is actually dedicated to all of us coming to terms with our shared nuclear legacy. I went on a kind of pilgrimage (2009–2014) to visit the people and places most impacted by that legacy of nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and the question of nuclear energy. Los Alamos, where the first bombs were put together, Richland, WA where plutonium was first refined, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, where atomic bombs were dropped on civilians, are some of the main stops on my Neutron Trail pilgrimage over those years.
Neutron Trail popped into my mind one day in early 2009. Later I realized where that name came from. Trails aren’t obvious like a highway, yet there is a track to follow. Neutrons are neutrally charged particles, part of the nucleus of atoms. Enrico had the intuition to bombard elements in the periodic table with slow neutrons to learn more about the make-up of the universe. He won his Nobel-prize (1938) in part for pioneering this technique — he was a neutron genius.
I’m not a physicist. I’m a humanist, an activist of the soul. To me, these slow-moving, neutral particles with the power to open up the nuclei of atoms are a metaphor for how to create dialogue on the extremely difficult and complex topic of dealing with our shared nuclear legacy. When I went to these places, I went with an open-mind, open-heart, and sometimes quite naïve so as not to have pre-conceived ideas. All sorts of wonderful coincidences happened and profound dialogues that moved me and changed me. And I gather, from the responses I got, changed and impressed those I had contact with. Often I would give a talk and a workshop, though a lot of the dialogue was informal, like I said there were a lot of synchronicities. I shared many stories on my Neutron Trail blog.
I feel deeply saddened that First Peoples and marginalized peoples around the world have suffered the greatest proportion of harm from nuclear waste stream products, including losing access to their sacred and traditional areas to nuclear facilities, as have the Tewa pueblo people of New Mexico, living in the shadow of these facilities, and being exposed to harmful levels of radiation.
While I was trekking the Neutron Trail, I learned about ancestral healing and family constellations (if you haven’t heard of constellations, check out Netflix, Sex, Love & goop, ep 5). These modalities connected me more deeply with my grandfather’s spirit and I was fortunate to train and become a constellations facilitator to help others with healing their lineages.
Jen: What are some of your current interests (personal and professional)?
Olivia: I’m a counselor, coach, and constellations facilitator in private practice. I love my work. I also volunteer in my spiritual community (Diamond Approach), with supporting dialogue and assisting with conflict resolution. I enjoy Pilates, walking, deep and quirky conversations, and all different kinds of creative expression. Here on campus, I enjoy my role as Engagement volunteer for the Old Barn Children’s Garden. Since we’re in the midst of a climate emergency, I’m very interested in how we UNA residents might envision and incorporate substantive actions at a community-wide level, beyond recycling, like retrofitting our homes, more community gardens, that whole arena.
Jen: On your Neutron Trail website, you describe an approach of using “inclusive neutrality rather than either/or logic to penetrate the pressing problems putting humanity’s future in peril.” How can we apply this approach to the challenges we are currently facing in our world today?
Olivia: Thank you yes, that’s the heart of the project. Here is a short answer. I think we have to chunk it down, “think global, act local.” Basically, choose the places where you personally have the resources and passion to make a difference. That could be in your family, your community, at work — there’s so many possibilities. The main things are to not give in to doubt, guilt, or shame and to remember you have your unique greatness to offer the world. And to keep doing your inner growth work as you take action.
I often walk by Reconciliation Pole and reflect on its messages to us. In terms of your question about inclusive neutrality, Reconciliation Pole stands as a profound and literal statement of the Coast Salish ways that were before European contact (bottom third of pole), the Indian Residential School genocide (middle) and the incredibly generous gesture at the top of the pole to the possibilities for navigating together into the future. Near the base, standing on the Salmon House, between the legs of Bear Mother is sGaaga who signals when to begin the salmon harvest. He waits until some of the first and strongest salmon have gone by out of respect and care for all our relations. Reconciliation Pole is inclusive and raw in the truths portrayed.
