Protesters hold banner showing support for the St. Petersburg (Florida) for Peace at the March 20, 2010, anti-war protest in Washington, DC. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Rrenner.
by Civility Pilgrim
You ask what we can do beyond the screams, sarcasm, threats, and tears:
I say: Hold mock constitutional conventions in each State to increase awareness of our constitution and the abuses to its inherent virtues and rights. People know nothing about our rights and governance.
Educate! Circulate copies of the universal declaration of human rights (UDHR). Create community dialogs to inform, inspire, and increase awareness of the rights, responsibilities, and requirements of citizenship.
2. I say: Teach non-violent protest.
3. I say: Remind people of the perilous state of life on Earth in our Anthropocene Era. Catastrophes are imminent. Extinctions of life, pollution of air, water, and earth are omnipresent.
4. I say: Preach peace! Educate people about the sources and consequences of war and conflict. There must be a relentless education of the public to stop their romanticist notions of the economic satisfaction, benefits, and comforts from war!
5. I say: Do what you can when you can to communicate empathy, compassion, and courage.
6. I say: Discuss and critique the serious pathology of the USA popular culture: Materialism, consumerism, exploitive capitalism, celebritization, endless competition and violence infatuation.
7. I say: Teach peace and nonviolence as an educational requirement in schools, colleges, and workplaces. Re-designate schools, colleges, and universities as peace institutions. Require each student to take a course or minor concentration in peace and justice.
8. I say: Elect political leaders who are not beholden to special commercial, professional, and personal interests.
These suggestions are insufficient in isolation, but as a group, as a wave across the land, they can channel energies, inspire ideals, and bring purpose and meaning to life and lives.
Author: James Montgomery Flagg. 1917. In the public domain.
By Anthony Marsella, Ph.D.
What does it take?
What does it take to awaken the American (USA) people to the egregious political, economic, and moral abuses and violations of their Constitutional rights and privileges? What does it take for the American people to demand changes in existing government and corporate political, economic, and social policies and actions limiting accountability, transparency, and participation?
What does it take for the American people to successfully reduce the concentration of power, wealth, and position favoring a few and denying equality and opportunity for the masses? Why are American people failing to respond to the numerous crises in American society that reveal widespread corruption, cronyism, and incompetence in public and private institutions and organizations?
Why are Americans savoring the fruits of consumerism, materialism, commodification, competition when the consequences of these institutionalized values are destructive for individuals and the social fabric? These questions are but a few of the many questions being asked daily across America and the world. At issue is the disproportionate presence of silence and passivity, and the absence of activism.
I am not discussing, nor am I advocating, widespread rebellion or revolt, even as some voices have called for these as solutions in the face of a creeping oppression. Rather, I am seeking an understanding of why so few protests have emerged and been sustained across time and place?
No one can deny the existence of protests from both “liberal/progressive” circles, (e.g., Occupy Wall Street, Wisconsin Teacher Unions, LBGT organizations) and conservative/tea party circles (e.g., regarding border immigration, abortion rights, gun ownership rights). Yet, in my opinion, these protests have been focused on specific causes, often informed by narrow ideological reasons. I am seeking an understanding of sources that could undertake a broader and unified protest, seeking to re-claim and to improve upon America’s inspired heritage of human rights — a protest to reclaim “moral authority,” “national identity,” and “social and civic responsibility,” not through guns, violence, and anger, but through virtue.
It must be asked whether current divisions across gender, racial, ethnicity, social class, political, wealth, regional, and religious boundaries have limited any collective citizen response challenging the concentration of power, wealth, and position that seeks national and global domination. In my opinion, the concentration denies citizen participation by controlling means, motives, and consequences of national activism, especially by creating divisions across diverse population sectors. Although developing diverse identities is to be encouraged because diversity is the essence of life itself, a sense of unity is lost as too many are denied equality.
And how does the fractioning of a society lend itself to external control and domination by those with wealth, power, and position? For me, the answer is simple: “A society can assume unlimited diversity, as long as it provides equal access to opportunity.”
It is the disproportion in opportunity, rights, and freedoms that lead to resentment, struggle, and violence. The USA needs a national vision identity that recognizes and accepts the conditions required for civility and citizen accommodation in our global era, including (1) an appreciation of the value of diversity, (2) a willingness to accept an interdependence ethic, (3) the commitment to nonviolence/nonkilling, and (4) a belief in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Unfortunately, what has emerged in the USA is a “limited good” mentality1 in which gains by one group or sector are considered losses by another, because there is only so much “good” to go around. But while this may be, in part, an accurate appraisal of our global situation, there are forces at work that seek control stemming from the age-old divisions rooted in concentrations of power, wealth, and position. Choose your century, country, or cause, and “concentration” will always be the root of problems.
In today’s global era, filled with challenges that defy solution (e.g., population increases, poverty, violence, wars, environmental pollution, crime), “control” by a few (e.g., 1%, bankers, dictators, corporate royalty, Davos faction, monopolies) has become the means and the end. In the USA, which leads the world in military force, financial wealth, corporate cartels, and exportation of popular culture, “control” is essential to preserve an existing state of affairs that denies equality, and promotes homogeneity.
The USA has the world’s largest military budget, highest medical costs, greatest number of prisons and prison inmates, and greatest divisions of wealth (e.g., 1% versus 99%). What this enables — indeed ensures — is the opportunity to implement a “Just Enough” approach to keeping collective control.
NOTE:
George Foster (1965). Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist. Limited good refers to the concept that in peasant societies the world is seen as a “competitive” place in which “goods” are limited, and so distrust, envy, jealousy, and resentment are fostered. Hmmm?
Anthony Marsella, Ph.D., a member of the TRANSCEND Network, is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii, and past director of the World Health Organization Psychiatric Research Center in Honolulu. He is known nationally and 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 15 edited books, and more than 250 articles, chapters, book reviews, and popular pieces. He can be reached at marsella@hawaii.edu.
The new calendar year is upon us . . . in every sense of the word! We use the New Year as an opportunity for renewal — a chance for a fresh start. We leave behind the accumulate residue of the past year, and respond now with a blank slate of possibilities — an imagined vision of what could be . . . “If only.” Yes, it is the “If only,” constraining us and inspiring us. I once wrote a wisdom bite: “If! A two-letter word, simple in sound, profound in consequence.”
So here we are! Wanting a new start, but clear we have much unfinished business from last year. There is wisdom in knowing the challenges we face, for life is never free of them. It is also useful to know the resources we possess, even if they may be inadequate to the task. It is useful to explore the dynamics of resource-challenge relations. There will always be tradeoffs and compromises, and these are disappointing. Yet, they constitute a reality that cannot be ignored. So what does 2016 look like from the resource-challenge perspective?
In my opinion, there are reasons for fear, and reasons for hope. Has it ever been anything different? Hasn’t history shown us each age was filled with its challenges and resources? Yes, this is true. But what is different this year – 2016 – is the “global stage” in which the challenges and resources are being tested and contested. We are unprepared for the magnitude of stage. And, the problem is resources are always fewer in number than challenges. But is their power less?
There is something noble and inspirational about the willingness to assert human and environmental dignity and worth via various resources. There is something noble about joining causes to bring positive changes. This may be the most important thing! It is hard to speak of the nobility of the human spirit when we consider the widespread abuses and insults human have engendered. But perhaps the “process” of responding to challenges reminds us of the essence of life itself – a felt force seeking and pursuing, not only survival, but growth, development, and becoming. Go for it!
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822.
Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, courage over fear, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.
