Global Monitoring Report. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: UNESCO.
by Stefan Schindler
Everyone has a philosophy – a “worldview,” a system of values and beliefs influencing actions – whether they know it or not (through conscious, critical reflection).
Bertrand Russell’s early twentieth-century call for philosophy in schools is mirrored in Alfred North Whitehead’s The Aims of Education. I refer readers to my web-posted essay “The Tao of Teaching: Romance and Process.”
Philosophy in schools (including for children) and in public spaces (Francis Bacon’s “marketplace of ideas”) is much in need of augmentation and enhancement, and this especially true in the USA.
Philosophy can, or should, enhance critical thinking skills and ethical reflection – from early youth through old age. However, what is often missing from the call for philosophy in schools is a necessary conjoining of philosophy with what Michael Parenti calls “real history” (as opposed to the jingoistic mush of social conditioning). To paraphrase Santayana: Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it (as the USA is intent on doing, over and over, at great cost to the nation and the world, including the biosphere).
Democracy and justice depend on informed citizens, and the USA has perhaps the most historically illiterate citizens in the modern world. Hence the disastrous results of America’s political process ever since the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. People cannot think philosophically about – apply critical thinking skills to – what they don’t know. As increasingly evidenced in America, economic apartheid and historical-political ignorance go together. Hence the tragedy of increasing poverty, fear, prejudice, and scapegoating, and the equally tragic ease of political manipulation, in which citizens vote against their own best interest.
Recalling Plato’s parable of the cave, Howard Zinn observed: “The truth is so often the opposite of what we are told that we can no longer turn our heads around far enough to see it.” Hence Noam Chomsky notes: “The problem is not that people don’t know; it’s that they don’t know they don’t know.” To which I add: Individual innocence is no protection against collective responsibility. And thus, to conclude: Insofar as the purpose of life is learning and service, and insofar as Buddha’s political philosophy advocates democratic socialism (what the Dalai Lama calls “a common religion of kindness”), society should serve schools, not the other way around.
Standing before Michelangelo’s statue of David, the poet Rilke said: “I must change my life.” A Catholic bishop, after reading the Dalai Lama’s autobiography, said in his New York Times book review: “We must change our lives.”
Norman Mailer noted the contradiction at the heart of America’s ethical schizophrenia. As a largely self-defined Judeo-Christian nation, America pretends to worship the Prince of Peace, yet forgets that Jesus chased the money-changers out of the temple. America sacrifices its moral integrity on the altar of a perpetual and frenzied pursuit of profit. Today, the gap between rich and poor is larger than it was in the 1920s.
America’s unregulated banking system was the primary cause of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, causing the Great Depression of the 1930s, the devastation of the European economy, and the rise of fascism resulting in World War Two.
Justice Louis Brandeis said: “We can have great concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have democracy. We cannot have both.”
Brandeis and Mailer point to democratic socialism as the only viable way to save America’s soul. Democratic socialism – roughly defined as egalitarian economics and a politics actually “for the people” – was embodied in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” FDR’s “New Deal” included a nation-wide system of Savings and Loans banks prohibited from the stock market gambling so insidiously inherent on Wall Street and resulting in periodic recessions ranging from modest to extreme.
The Savings and Loans were systematically destroyed during the Reagan presidency in what was called the S&L crisis, as part of the Republican Party’s counter-revolution against The Spirit of The Sixties and FDR’s legacy of economic justice.
By Anthony J. Marsella and Kathleen Malley-Morrison
Note from Kathie MM: Enjoy this culmination of the quest in which we have engaged the past two weeks to identify 100 examples of peace and justice leaders, illustrated with enticing and enlightening new charts.
Introduction
26 Jan 2018 – The annual memorial holiday on January 15, 2018, celebrating Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s enduring contributions to peace and justice, has passed.
The events of the day linger in our minds, eternally grateful for Reverend King’s efforts to free people and nations from the brutal oppressions imposed by governments, nations, societies, organizations, and individuals, who willfully continue to support and sustain the evils of racism, prejudice, violence, and war.
Reverend King’s commitment to freedom from oppression and abuse compel us to continue his efforts far beyond the words, songs, and promises of his day.
To this end, we, (i.e., Kathie Malley-Morrison & Anthony J. Marsella), the authors of this article, have chosen to demonstrate our responsibilities to continuing the work of Reverend King, by identifying 100 living peace and social justice leaders and models.
The number is arbitrary for there are tens of thousands more who deserve citation. Many are not listed, but will be listed in future efforts. Do not be dismayed! Patience! We believed it essential to create a dynamic list of living peace and justice activists and advocates to encourage peace and justice work.
The individuals included on our list are from all genders, ages, roles. They are from many nations, ethnocultural groups, and “races.” We sense a rising tide of commitment to peace and justice, and an intolerance of the corruption, cronyism, and asymmetric power sustaining current abuses.
We consider our efforts a beginning, and we will continue to publish new lists. This is because the struggle for peace and justice is endless, and each day new people are rising to the call.
This is as it should be, and must be, until such time the forces of oppression yield to the forces of good; evil will continue, but human virtue, endowed in conscience will triumph! While the work of many included will be recognized, some of those listed may not be apparent. We have attached website information after each name to offer insight into their efforts.
Before sharing our list, however, we wish to include two charts offering graphic displays of essential material for understanding and appreciating living leaders.
CHART 1: PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PEACE AND JUSTICE LEADERS AND MODELS
CHART 2: ROLES AND STATUSES OF LIVING PEACE & JUSTICE LEADERS AND MODELS
TABLE 1:
One Hundred Living Peace and Justice Activists, Advocates, Models
This is our continuing contribution to the legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. His work continues in the lives of those who share his commitments.
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Kathleen Malley-Morrison, Ed.D., Director of the Group on International Perspectives on Governmental Aggression and Peace (GIPGAP), is Professor Emerita of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including Family Violence in a Cultural Perspective, and Family Violence in the United States, as well as editor of the four volume series: State violence and the right to peace: An international survey of the views of ordinary people. She has authored numerous articles and book chapters on violence within relationships and nations. Her current efforts to advance peace and social justice are centered primarily in her blog, Engaging Peace. http://engagingpeace.com. She can be reached at: kathiemm@engagingpeace.com
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Emeritus Professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus in Honolulu, Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known internationally as a pioneer figure in the study of culture and psychopathology who challenged the ethnocentrism and racial biases of many assumptions, theories, and practices in psychology and psychiatry. In more recent years, he has been writing and lecturing on peace and social justice. He has published 21 books and more than 300 articles, tech reports, and popular commentaries. His TMS articles may be accessedHERE and he can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.
Stefan and John. author: Lewis Randa, Life Experience School.
by Stefan Schindler
“Do we want to preserve the traditions – the history, prayers, rituals, and faith – which make Judaism distinctive, or do we want to become just a bunch of ethicists?” An ethicist advocates virtue, and the rabbi’s question was rhetorical. Now stay with me here; this is not complex.
Sabbath is the Hebrew holy day, beginning on Friday evening and extending through Saturday. Satori is a Japanese Buddhist word for enlightenment. One Saturday morning long ago, when I was still a child and attending a religious instruction class at our local temple, I had a mini-enlightenment.
I was only 12, and I found the Sabbath morning class inspirational. It was intellectually stimulating in a way that school was not. That morning, the rabbi’s question struck a chord. The name of that chord is irony. A Jewish education is ironic because, at its best, it’s Socratic: it teaches one to doubt and inquire. The same is true of Buddhism.
I was too shy to voice my response to the rabbi’s challenge; besides, he was on a roll. But I have always remembered that moment. Adding a retrospective flavor, here’s what I thought:
Although my mother was a Christian, she converted to Judaism to please my father. During the process of her conversion, my mother asked the rabbi if there was a conflict in being both Christian and Jewish. She wanted to convert, but she also wanted to keep her Christian values.
The rabbi responded that ethics is the heart of the Torah; therefore, at the deepest, most important level, there is no conflict. He told the story of the Hebrew sage who was asked to summarize the Torah, standing on one leg. So the sage stood on one leg and replied very simply: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
And so, dear rabbi, on this glorious Sabbath morning for which I do give thanks, kindly allow me to say: I would much rather have a world of ethicists, committed to peace and the Golden Rule, than a world of religious rivalry and strife. Religious distinctiveness has its beauty, but it also contributes, tragically, to what Hegel calls “the slaughter-bench of history.”
I would, therefore, gladly abandon all religious difference in favor of – and here comes irony again – a postreligious world committed to what the Dalai Lama calls “a common religion of kindness.”
After all, isn’t what all religions have in common more important than how they differ?
And at the heart of all religions, is there not a common urge, prayer, and path to the Peaceable Kingdom on earth?
