Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy: Joanna Macy, Chris Johnstone
Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy Paperback – March 13, 2012
by Joanna Macy (Author), Chris Johnstone (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 44 customer reviews
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Books about social and ecological change too often leave out a vital component: how do we change ourselves so that we are strong enough to fully contribute to this great shift? Active Hope fills this gap beautifully, guiding readers on a journey of gratitude, grief, interconnection, and, ultimately, transformation.”
— Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
“To the future beings of the twenty-second century, Active Hope might turn out to be the most important book written in the twenty-first.”
— Bill Plotkin, author of Soulcraft and Nature and the Human Soul
“More than any book I’ve read, Active Hope shows us the true dimensions of this crisis, and the way our heart and actions can be part of the great turning toward healing. Please read this book and share it with others — for your own awakening, for our children, and for our future.”
— Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance
“Active Hope is a brilliant guide to sanity and love.”
— Roshi Joan Halifax, abbot of the Upaya Zen Center
“If you have despaired for our world, and if you love life, Active Hope will be for you an extraordinary blessing.”
— John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution
“Active Hope is not just a book but a gateway to transformation.”
— Jim Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable
About the Author
Ecophilosopher Joanna Macy, PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and the environment, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. Physician and coach Dr. Chris Johnstone is a specialist in the psychology of resilience, happiness, and positive change.
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Customer Reviews
4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Top Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 starsCrucial piece of work: hope as something you do, not something you have
By ManuArg on March 8, 2012
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Our identities (and, to a great extent, our destinies) are shaped by the story we, consciously or not, tell ourselves about the events in our lives, how we interpret them and how such interpretations make us behave. This makes sense in our personal lives -at least, it does for me and many, many people I know first hand-. This book shows that it is not only sensible but crucial to apply the same principle at the collective level- starting by ourselves, that is. For those of us who refuse to seek comfort in wishful thinking or ignore the increasingly obvious symptoms, cries and dangers of a system thrown out of balance, yet feel trapped into a sense of powerlessness and other painful emotions, this is a must-read.
As its authors contend, great revolutions start in the fringes. It shows a "third story": neither "we'll figure something out, just keep doing what you are doing" nor "we are already screwed, what is the point of anything?", but the very human ability to rise to the occasion and finally reach our collective adulthood as a "life-sustaining society", to use their words. I cannot yet say that I have become an optimist, at least not a full-time one. But maybe that is precisely the point -central in the book, to be sure-: is it only worth fighting for something we have good chances of succeeding at? What if we do not have a clue about the chances we actually have, what if we even KNOW that they are slim: does that make the very cause of making our world a place in which life is celebrated, and not exploited, not worth the effort?
I do not think so. As Frankl attests, even in the worst conceivable conditions, nobody can take away from me the freedom to choose my attitude and find meaning in my life. There is a phrase that has been popping a lot into my mind lately. Nando Parrado said it to Roberto Canessa, in 1972, when they made their last attempt to cross the Andes to Chile, 70 days after their plane crashed in the mountains, when almost everyone had given up on them: "If I die, I'm gonna die walking". This book is a priceless compass to do just that.
Just imagine what the world can be like if millions of us choose to acknowledge our pain, our fear, our ultimate freedom- and keep walking.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA watershed book...
By Barbara Ford on March 5, 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This brilliant new offering from Chris Johnstone and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy transforms her previous wonderful work, the Work That Reconnects, into a highly accessible and inspiring philosophical ground to stand on as we weather the literal and metaphoric storms of our times. Well organized, and with lots of opportunities for creative personal inquiry, it offers a new way to think about and honor our concerns and love for the world. If you've been feeling overwhelmed, cynical, or despairing in the face of environmental crises, economic disparity, and injustice, this book will feel like a healing rain on parched earth.
This would be a particularly wonderful book to share in a book group as well!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A healthy dose of optimism
By Hrvoje Butkovic on April 11, 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
How do we face the grim reality of the state of our world, with looming depletion of key resources, widespread ecological devastation, global climate change, and massive disparities in the distribution of wealth? How do we take on these problems without being overwhelmed by their sheer immensity? How do we marshal our energy, talents and skills for the betterment of our world knowing that we are not likely to succeed, and that it may, in fact, already be too late?
These are the central questions that the book tries to answer.
It is an unusual topic to grapple with. All the other books on the subject of environmental activism that I've read failed to mention it, instead devoting their time to facts and figures that left no doubt about the gravity of the situation, the ways of thinking that have brought us to the brink, and the changes that we'll have to make to dig ourselves out. This suggested an unspoken assumption that informing us about the crisis ought to be sufficient to prompt us to avert it.
My experience has been quite different. Despite being exposed to the problem through various media, I took no interest in it until my late twenties. Once I did, I found it just as difficult to get the attention of others. Some didn't consider it relevant - they had more pressing personal issues to attend to and goals to pursue. To my surprise, there were others who also avoided the subject despite having a fairly good grasp of its magnitude and severity. They felt powerless to do anything about it, so they chose to make the most of the present circumstances and not dwell on tomorrow.
When faced with the same dilemma, the authors of the book opted for a third course of action - to do what they can to bring about the Great Turning, no matter how seemingly insignificant their contribution may be. Depending on where one is in life, this can be a difficult decision to comprehend. While it looks self-evident to me now, I don't think I would have appreciated it when I was younger. It is for this reason that I'm exceedingly grateful to Joanna and Chris for tackling the subject. If the Great Turning is to happen, we will need many more people to take on the challenge of working towards it without expecting to see it realised in their lifetime.
The authors don't spend much time dwelling on the particulars of the global crises that we face, supplying just enough information to set the book's main topic in context. Still, the information that is provided, and particularly the ways in which it is visualised, is among the most stirring that I've seen. I have found it very difficult to read about the dream of leaving a barren, hostile world to our children to inherit, and not be moved to preserve its current life-giving qualities.
Perhaps the most importantly, the book does a great job of presenting alternatives to the dominant assumptions of the modern society. It illustrates how we commonly think of concepts like power and time, how these ingrained ideas have contributed to our predicament, and what alternative views can help us overcome it. Here, it is well complemented by John Broomfield's book Other Ways of Knowing: Recharting Our Future with Ageless Wisdom, which contains a more comprehensive analysis of our unidirectional concept of time and its alternatives, as well as Jack Reed's book The Next Evolution: A Blueprint for Transforming the Planet, which redefines wealth in terms of access to goods and services instead of exclusive consumption derived from their ownership. Noticing, let alone changing, the core assumptions that underpin one's worldview can be exceedingly difficult. This makes these insights all the more crucial.
On a more personal note, the book is a rich treasure of thought-provoking questions and other material that can be invaluable in a workshop setting. This is hardly surprising, considering that it has originated from a series of workshops that were conducted by Joanna over many years. I have found it tremendously useful in my own course work, as well as for personal reflection.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Can we really tell ourselves the story we want to hear?
By Joyce MacRedmond on February 6, 2013
Format: Paperback
There are three questions that I ask of this book; `what is it about, what can we learn from it and what do I think about it'?
What is `it' about? The book is about building our capacity, resilience and intention to act in the face of a world of uncertainty characterised by climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, water scarcity, habitat destruction, loss of top soil and rising toxin levels. The name Active Hope describes the practice that we can follow. This is based on the "Work that Reconnects" which as described below has four stages that circle in a spiral effect. Fundamental to the success of the practice is the narrative we tell ourselves which they note comes in three main forms; business as usual (more of the same will sort things out - head in the sand approach), it's a disaster/it's all too late (the climate is changing and there is nothing much we can do about it) or The Great Turning (this is an opportune time in history for us to change our way of living together on the planet). The later describes a kind of transition "from an industrial society committed to economic growth to a life-sustaining society committed to healing and recovery in the world" (p.5). The assumption here is that we can choose the narrative we tell ourselves and better we tell ourselves a narrative that will help sustain life in the future. The rest of the book then refers to the "empowerment process" that we can employ to strengthen our capacity to contribute to this great turning. There are four stages to this; coming from gratitude, honouring our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes and going forth". Central to this in a discussion on "widening circles of self" which begin with the individual, family/group, community, human society and web of life (p.90. Fig. 5). These are expanding wholes (or contexts) that we can operate from. At the heart of making this empowerment process work is also a "collaborative model of power", a power-with rather than power-over approach. Finally, the authors note that facilitating the great turning requires a "paradigm shift" in consciousness.
What can `we' learn from the book? Or perhaps another way of saying this is, `what does reading the book cause us to do'? The principle thing might be to cause us to update our information, improve our knowledge and turn our awareness to the changes that are going on around us. For instance from page 47, "More resources have been consumed in the last fifty years than in all of preceding human history". Also from page 55, " The carbon dioxide released when we burn fossil fuels puts back into the atmosphere the gas that ancient plants removed hundreds of millions of years ago. By burning fossil fuels we are reversing one of the planet's cooling mechanisms, and temperatures are rising". Page 213, that there is an annual loss in top soil equivalent to the size of Kentucky. Information, knowledge and awareness however are not enough, there also needs to be a transformation in our consciousness in order that new behaviours can emerge. This is discussed again in more detail in the final question. There follows here a brief introduction to the four stages in the "empowerment process" mentioned in the book;
Coming from gratitude. The authors note that starting with gratitude promotes a sense of well-being. It helps build trust and motivates us to act. It also shifts our attention from `what we lack' to `what we have'. Gratitude also helps the shift from "I to We" which is necessary for a collaborative approach to power, i.e., power-over (associated with the "I") to power-with (associated with the "We"). Crucially, gratitude is also seen as a "social emotion" that connects us with the important concept of "social capital".
Honouring our pain for the world raises questions around ways of noticing what's going wrong. Resistance to seeing include; I don't believe it's that dangerous, it isn't my role to sort this out, I don't want to stand out from the crowd, the information threatens my commercial or political interests, it is so upsetting that I prefer not to think about it, I feel paralyzed, I'm aware of the danger, but I don't know what to do, there is no point in doing anything, since it won't make any difference. Again, as we discuss below, a shift in consciousness is required here - until we get an emotional connection with the "web of life" we will find all sorts of ways of ignoring, resisting or indeed denying what is going on around us.
Seeing with new eyes is about using our imagination to engage the right-hemisphere of the brain (this is not exactly how they describe it, but it does equate with the left and right hemispheres of the brain as described by McGilchrist in his book The Master and His Emissary). They add, we tend to limit ourselves to seeing what is happening through what has already happened whereas seeing with new eyes reminds us to focus on the possibility of what can happen. (Note this may align with Scharmer's Theory U, "leaning into to the future to see what is coming down the line" and to Robert Fritz's "structural tension" i.e., creating a tension in the system between the reality of where we are and where we want to be"). This section also provides a very useful set of questions for identifying our goals and the kinds of resources needed to achieve them (p. 199).
Going forth reminds us that, "a crucial factor in any process of change is the level of support it receives". This is considered under four headings; the personal context of our habits and practices, the face-to-face context of the people around us, the cultural context of the society we are part of and the ecospiritual context of our connectedness with all of life. These four contexts map onto the "widening circles of self" mentioned earlier. Supports include; making `vows' to ourselves and others in a support group, mapping that support group and asking for help, joining with other like-minded groups and developing our eco-spiritual association to the `web of life. In the penultimate chapter they provide a useful map of factors that influence our energy and enthusiasm for change and in the final chapter make an important point that as the future is uncertain we can play some role in co-creating it. Such an appreciation of uncertainty can help galvinise us to act in the present in support of future goals.
What did I think of the book? I was asked to read this book and am delighted that I did. Good books raise many questions and this book raises a number of questions for me. These included questions in relation to the assumptions being made about the impending crisis (re climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, water scarcity, habitat destruction, loss of top soil and rising toxin levels) and the need for a paradigm shift in our thinking. I agree with the authors concerns about the impending crisis, but am less hopeful about our ability to transform our thinking sufficiently to support a change in our behaviour. It may seem like we choose the story we tell ourselves but more likely the story is chosen for us from our past thoughts, beliefs, feelings, self-images, defences and adaptations. As Keynes said "the problem is not with the new ideas but in getting rid of the old ones". Updating our information and knowledge helps but there is a much bigger problem when it comes to transforming our consciousness.
If the widening "circles of self" (described in ch.5) i.e., individual, family/group, community, human society, web of life, and the "four different contexts" (described in ch 11) i.e., the personal context, the face-to-face context, the cultural context of the society and the ecospiritual context of our connectedness to all are seen as "widening circles of consciousness" and are mapped onto to existing theories of adult development; ego-centric, ethnocentric, world-centric, kosmocentric, we can see more clearly the nature of the challenge facing each individual. As described in the book, the principle level of consciousness required to participate in The Great Turning is the eco-spiritual or connection to the "web of life" level, which in developmental theory, is equated with a kosmocentric (Alchemist) mindset (see table 1). This kosmocentric perspective includes all earlier levels of consciousness, i.e., a worldcentric, ethnocentric and ego-centric, but it doesn't work the other way around; an egocentric perspective doesn't include an ethnocentric, worldcentric or kosmocentric perspective. Also, as noted in the following table, most people operate from an egocentric or ethnocentric level of consciousness, a worldview and mindset that is unable to hold an ongoing connection to all of humanity (available at worldcentic) not to mention to all of creation (available at kosmocentric).
Table 1 WIDENING CIRCLES (Macy & Johnstone, 2012), DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES/LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. (Maslow, Gebser, Graves)., DEVELOPMENTAL ACTION-LOGICS (Torbert et al, 2004), % OF PEOPLE AT DIFFERENT ACTION-LOGICS
Individual self, Ego-centric, Opportunist, 4%
Family/group, Ethnocentric, Diplomat, 11%
Community, Ethnocentric, Expert/Achiever, 67%
Human society, Worldcentric, Individualist/Strategist, 16%
Web of life, Kosomcentric, Alchemist, 2%
Note also that these consciousness developmental stages are cross-referenced to levels of Spiritual intelligence (SQ) as described by Cindy Wiggelsworth, the highest stages of which are associated with the most "compassion and wisdom".
The challenge is, `how can we assist people to move up the developmental spiral'? I reference two of the leading researchers in the field of adult consciousness development (Prof. Bill Torbert and Prof Robert Kegan) both of whom highlight the difficult in "widening our circles of self", i.e., "widening our consciousness". Torbert (2000) notes that; "to sacrifice one action-logic [level of consciousness] for the possibility of another is inevitably a risky, scary, death-and-rebirth transformation" (p. 87). Kegan (1994) further adds that;
"If a given epistemological way of understanding is as robust and long-lived as my own research would suggest, then altering this kind of knowing cannot be as easy as teaching people to speak a foreign language. It inevitably involves separations from the self. It is more akin to teaching people to unspeak their native tongue, the language whose very rhythms and timbre carry with them powerful feelings of loyalty and identification". (p. 290)
Ken Wilber (author of Integral Spirituality and many other integral texts) says that unfortunately we may have to wait for the crisis to occur before we will make the change, which may of course be too late. As Samuel Johnson notes, "the chains of habit are to weak to be felt before they are too strong to be broken", in other words by the time we realize there is a problem it is too late to change. Similarly, John Harrison (a psychotherapist and author of Love Your Disease) says, that until the discomfort of where we are is greater than the fear of where we need to be, not much change is likely to occur.
How then, in the absence of the actual crisis itself, are we going to make the necessary transition in order that enough of us are ready for it when and if it comes? Wilber however adds a more hopeful note. He observes that when 10% of the world population get to this "web of life" level of consciousness (currently perhaps 2-4%), they can start to operate as a "tipping point" for the rest of society. Wilber adds that at current rates of development in awareness this may occur within a decade or so. In the meantime we work on gathering more information, improving our knowledge and through participation in empowerment processes such as "Work that Reconnects" continue to expand our awareness and our consciousness. In that process we gradually shift from knowing about the problem in theory to doing something about in practice.
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2016/05/12
2016/05/10
A Gospel of Quaker Sexuality
A Gospel of Quaker Sexuality
Quakers have sometimes been described as “a peculiar people.” That’s a fair way to describe my religious upbringing, in a geographically remote outpost and an extremely liberal wing of a kind of wacky denomination.
My weird and lovely little faith community was one where people spoke often about their grief and their hope for the brokenness in the world. Growing up, I heard a lot about Quaker values, commitments, and beliefs. I came out as queer without feeling any conflict with my identity as a Friend. But as my commitment to Quakerism as a spiritual path deepened, I realized that there was a disconnect between Quakerism and my emerging sexuality. Sexuality had generally been treated as a private matter in my family and community. I had been taught, however, that taking Quakerism seriously and listening for the leadings of God could potentially change my approach to everything. I realized that I needed to figure out for myself what a sexual ethic grounded in Quaker faith might look like.
Over the course of a decade of thinking, praying, and talking with people about the relationship between sexuality and Quakerism, I’ve come to a number of core convictions. In the most technical sense of the word, “gospel” simply means good news. I believe that this world is sorely in need of good news about bodies and sexuality, and that there is a lot of good news to be given! What follows is some of my gospel.
The gift of our sexuality
As a Christian, I am a disciple of a leader whose first miracle—according to the Gospel of John—was to turn water into wine. Jesus didn’t just refresh the supplies of a three-day-long wedding party that had run out of alcohol; he made really good wine—the best that had been served at the party up to that time.
These are not the actions of a God who feels negative, or even neutral, about pleasure, enjoyment, and riotous joy. We have a remarkable capacity for experiencing pleasure in our bodies—from the feeling of warm sun on skin to the smell of rain on pavement to the taste of rich food. Our capacity for pleasure is part of our humanity, a gift from God. Sexual pleasure is part of that gift.
Humans were created for love, in the broadest sense: familial love, spiritual love, the love of deep friendship, romantic love. Our sexuality is one of the ways we can experience and express love in and through our bodies, and that makes it important and potentially very beautiful.
I believe that how we live our sexuality is critically important in our spiritual lives. But I don’t think the rules are all that complicated. I don’t think God is judging us based on whether we have sex, how many people we have sex with, or what kind of sex we have with them. I don’t think God cares what genders of people we’re attracted to or whether we wait to have sex until we’re married. I believe that what God wants from us in our sexuality, as in all other things, is that we act with love and compassion. As the prophet Micah said, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?” Or, as the prophet Kurt Vonnegut said, “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
Including sexual violence in our peace witness
As a child growing up in a Liberal Quaker meeting, nonviolence was one of the first things that I was taught to associate with Quakerism. I learned that the Quaker commitment to nonviolence is a witness of our care for everything that is a manifestation of the Divine. I learned to think of peacebuilding as the ultimate goal of Quakerism, and of everything else that was described to me as a Quaker testimony—simplicity, equality, integrity—as a blueprint for what true peace would look like and how it might be achieved.
I was not taught to understand, as a child, that violence intimately permeated the lives of people in my own family and community. I was not taught that, as a person assigned female gender at birth, I would have a one-in-four chance of being a target of sexual assault during my life. I don’t remember sexual violence being identified as part of the culture of violence that we sought to dismantle.
If we long for peace, we need to acknowledge the pervasiveness of sexual violence. I need to remember that there are people, among those I love, who experience street harassment every time they leave their houses alone. Survivors of sexual abuse have been my friends, partners, coworkers, and kids I work with, and those are just the ones I know about.
There have also been perpetrators of sexual abuse among my friends and community members, including kids raised in Quaker communities similar to my own. On multiple occasions, in different communities where I’ve held leadership roles, I’ve known sexual violence to have occurred between Quaker young people. I feel a profound responsibility, out of love for my faith community and the kids we raise in it, to do everything in my power to transform the systems that put their safety and well-being at risk.
Sexual violence is a problem in Quaker communities. It is not restricted to any particular group of Friends. I have seen too much of it to perceive it as anything but a systemic problem: a collective failure to interrupt the cycle of sexual violence that pervades our society as a whole and to prevent it from running similarly unimpeded within our own house.
Friends must start teaching our children, and each other, that understanding and practicing consent is critical to a life of nonviolence. Silence isn’t going to do this teaching for us. If we can’t talk about sex, we leave ourselves at the mercy of the uninterrupted discourse of rape culture, because we have offered no challenge and no alternatives.
Quakerism and rape culture are fundamentally incompatible. Quakers will know we are working for peace well when we find ourselves butting heads with this culture at every turn. We must preach a sexuality of nonviolence, in which every human is allowed to choose freely how, when, and whether to use their body for pleasure and connection. To be an agent of sexual nonviolence, I must cultivate my capacity for listening, empathy, and honest communication. I believe this is within every person’s ability, if we teach and support one another in making it so.
Body positivity
Icame to Christianity somewhat reluctantly. I was already out as queer, comfortable in a progressive-nerdy-renegade role. I never felt like Christianity was for people like me. But then, like some lead character in a cheesy, gay, young adult novel, I started to develop these . . . feelings. At first, I thought I could push them away, or deny they meant anything, but I kept finding Jesus kind of unnervingly compelling.
The Jesus I fell in love with doesn’t feel scary or dogmatic or really anything like I expected. I’ve come to understand Christianity in a much more radical and countercultural light than I did as a child. In my view as a sex-positive person, Christian theology provides a powerful center of gravity for my understanding of the goodness of the human body.
Christianity represents an intersection of the spiritual and the physical, the sacred and the profane, that blows those distinctions out of the water. If God chose to take on human form and experience and participate in everything that comes along with having a body—eating and pooping and nose blowing and stuff—how can I consider any part of my life so mundane that it is without goodness or significance? How could I believe that having a body is anything other than a profound and beautiful mystery?
I’ve found body positivity easy to affirm in theory but incredibly challenging in practice. Body shaming is disproportionately leveraged at women, and people perceived as women, as well as people of color, people with disabilities, and lots of other marginalized groups, but it affects everyone. It’s a critical component of the systems of oppression that police certain populations of people and consolidate power among others. I’ve had to convince myself that “fat” isn’t a bad word but a neutral descriptor of lots of amazing, powerful, and beautiful bodies, including my own. I’ve only begun to dismantle some of my ideas about what bodies are “supposed” to be able to do, and to release judgment when my own or other people’s bodies don’t live up to that. There is still so much to do.
Conscious reproduction and village-dwelling
When I talk with people about connections between sexuality and Quaker values and beliefs, the connection that people seem to struggle with most often is between sexuality and earthcare. I’m not talking about places where sex-related consumer decisions have an environmental impact; I’m talking bigger, and also more personal.
By far, reproduction is the most significant environmental decision most of us will make. We are living in a pivotal moment of climate change and its effect on long-term survival prospects of every species on Earth. The prevailing scientific agreement is that this is now an unstoppable catastrophe. We are in a crisis, and it’s time to do what damage control we can, and start to imagine a new way of being on the planet.
In this context, I believe reproduction constitutes a serious moral choice. Humanity desperately needs rising generations of creative, thoughtful problem-solvers and leaders, but we also need fewer humans competing for the available resources. The moral questions related to bringing a child into what may be a dying world are ones for which I have no glib answers. So many factors go into reproductive decision making that any judgment of other people’s choices or experiences would be harmful and ignorant.
The dignity and importance of good parenting and the need to care for the earth by limiting reproduction are not incompatible. Quakers and others can better honor both by shifting to a model in which the decision to parent is spiritually discerned without predetermined outcome.
I choose to believe, as an act of faith, that there are enough resources on this planet to support every person, if we make reproduction an entirely uncoerced option. It can be one of many choices, including fostering, adopting, village-dwelling, or not being involved in the raising of kids at all. I’m a village-dweller myself: I love kids, and find joy and fulfillment in supporting parents and other family members in raising them. I don’t want to have any of my own, but I do want to be there for the kids in my life when they have stuff that is too hard or weird to talk about with their parents. I want to babysit so parents who don’t get enough time together can go on dates. I want to show up for the important things in the lives of the kids I love and help them know they are loved by a big circle of folks.
For reproductive parenting to be freely chosen from a variety of options, we need to take some concrete steps. Freely chosen parenting means freely available birth control in a wide variety of forms. It means universal, truly comprehensive, and holistic sexuality education that addresses not just the physical act of sex but communication, relationships, reproductive decision making, and sexual health throughout life. It means taking a serious look at the causes of socially pressured, personally coerced, or unintended pregnancies around the world, and supporting people in developing thoughtful, culturally sensitive solutions for their own cultures and communities.
It means transforming attitudes about what constitutes a normal life cycle, a fulfilling life, a family, and a legacy. Quakers can set an example for this shift by discussing reproductive decision making when we address topics of morality, discernment, and leadings with both children and adults. People approaching their faith communities for support and clearness around family planning could be a normal practice among us.
The wild idealism of Quaker marriage
The Quaker understanding of marriage is consistent with both the wild idealism and grounded pragmatism of Quaker faith. It’s the simple, radical idea that marriage relationships are created by God, not by other people. Neither a church nor an officiant, a judge, or a legislator—no human being or organization—can perform a marriage; we can only witness that God has married people, and agree (or not) to help care for their marriage.
The first wedding I remember attending took place when I was about five years old. I remember the sun in the courtyard of my meetinghouse and the brides smiling. It was the first time my meeting had married two people of the same gender. As was happening in many Friends meetings around the country and world at the time, this wedding was preceded in our community by years of painful debate. But we learned, somehow. We grew in our understanding of what “marriage” meant.
I’ve identified as polyamorous for years, and know a lot of other non-monogamous people in lovely, loving relationships. I’ve believed theoretically that deep, spiritual relationships of mutual care and long-term commitment could exist among more than just two people. Until recently, however, I didn’t personally know anyone who was married to more than one person.
About a year and a half ago, I met a family with three married partners at a Quaker conference. Since then, I have become a devoted long-distance, social-media fan of their relationship. I love their “kids going back to school” posts, their “can’t wait for family movie night tonight!” posts, their posts about silly things, and their posts about incredibly hard things. I have seldom seen relationships with such tenderness, affection, and openness, especially in the context of tremendous discrimination. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could know them and not believe them to be married, or fail to find their marriage to be worthy of care and celebration.
The profound hopefulness of the Quaker commitment to continuing revelation is that we are not stuck with what we know right now, or what we know alone. Our work is to be present and attentive in a gloriously complex world. Things will surprise us. We will be required to change our minds, to grow continuously into new understandings of how love manifests in the world.
Seeking wholeness
By affirming the goodness of human sexuality, in all its rich diversity, I am fighting for my wholeness: for all of my identities, desires, and connections to be present in the room, all at once, in dignity and safety. I am fighting for your wholeness. I am fighting for our ability to connect authentically. I am reaching for a place where we know more because we have heard each other’s stories, where we begin to grasp the full truth by sharing the parts of it we can each see from where we are.
Having sex like a Quaker—pursuing a grounded, loving, progressive, and life-affirming approach to human sexuality—is an act not just of seeking wholeness but of staking out ground and fighting for our wholeness actively and passionately. We need to do this if we are going to resist the machinery of shame, the hierarchy of human worth. These will try to erode and erase our wholeness. But they will not win. We can’t let them.
Micah encourages us to let go of our effort and anxiety about the things that are extraneous in our relationship with God and focus on the essentials: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?” We do justice, with regard to sexuality, when we work to dismantle the systems of oppression that lead to sexual violence, seek every opportunity to prevent that violence, and commit ourselves to prevention, justice, and healing.
We are lovers of mercy when we conduct our own relationships with compassion and concern for the well-being of others. We can walk humbly by acknowledging the things we don’t know, committing ourselves to a lifelong learning process about sexuality, and most of all, refraining from judgment of other people’s consensual relationships.
Finally, Micah tells us: God will be with us. Guidance and help are here, and they will keep coming. We are grounded. We are loved. And we are not alone.
2016/05/09
War Against War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
War Against War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/William_James_b1842c.jpg/190px-William_James_b1842c.jpg)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Berlin_plaque_Ernst_Friedrich.jpg/190px-Berlin_plaque_Ernst_Friedrich.jpg)
War Against War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/William_James_b1842c.jpg/190px-William_James_b1842c.jpg)
William James (1842-1910) c.1890. With his essay The Moral Equivalent of War he is considered [1] one of the fathers of the concept ofwar against war
In political philosophy and international relations especially in peace and conflict studies the concept of a war against war also known as war on war refers to the reification ofarmed conflicts.
Contents
[hide]Origin
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Berlin_plaque_Ernst_Friedrich.jpg/190px-Berlin_plaque_Ernst_Friedrich.jpg)
Memorial plaque for Ernst Friedrich at the 'Antikriegsmuseum' (anti-war museum) in Berlin-Mitte, Germany. One can read the title of Friedrich's book 'Krieg dem kriege"
If a work of Edmond Potonié-Pierre from 1877 already discusses the idea of reifying conflicts under the title "la guerre à la guerre" (the war against war)[2] in its modern acceptation the concept is formally coined in 1906 byWilliam James in his essay The moral equivalent of war. Though also used as a political slogan, it was a cornerstone of the ideology of both the European pre World War Ipacifist and anti-war movements in the 20th century[3]especially in its German version of Kriege dem Kriege from the eponymous two volume 1925 pamphlet of Ernst Friedrich[4] which was largely translated across Europe. Prior to World War I the French labour union Confédération Générale du Travail pleaded its pacifism under the sloganguerre à la guerre! which was also the title of a poster campaign by which the French Association de la Paix par le Droit recalled the commitments taken by European powers at the Hague Convention of 1907.[5]
Evolution in the 20th century
Although the slogan and concept (as the reification of armed conflicts) of war against war was the subject of an anti-military pleading in 1916 at the military tribunal ofNeuchâtel[6] the concept will also be developed by the French Military with GeneralAlexandre Percin, then War Minister, dedicating a comprehensive study to the subject entitled Guerre à la Guerre.[7] The latter work, which especially explores theoperational and strategic dimension of the concept from the angle of military doctrinewould become a seminal contribution to its academic establishment. At times defended by the socialist international as in the 1923 discourse of labour unionist Edo Fimmen at the international congress for peace at the Hague[8] the concept will remain politically neutral overall in the 20th century, being also claimed by the Christian democratic movement with Gérard Marier and Jean Godin considering nuclear disarmament a central contribution to the war on war as a Christian mission[9]
Contemporary evolution
Unesco
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization which constitution[10] declares "That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed" describing a memetical conception of war, brought together thirteen poets for a collective work entitled "war on war".[11] The question "how to wage a war against war" is clearly posed at the International Symposium on Global Security of 1996[12]
Aberkane & Goldstein and a peacepositivism
More recently the concept was discussed by scholarsJoshua Goldstein[13] and Idriss Aberkane.[14] As Aberkane defines it "it permits us to ask, before the war disease reaches its terminal phase, "has man domesticated war, or has war domesticated man?"". Based on the paradigm of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela for the description of autonomy and the works of Idries Shah ingroup psychology Aberkane's discussion of the concept consists of considering armed conflicts autopoietic and therefore dissipative systems which are parasitic and comparable to Richard Dawkins' notion of Selfish genehence "selfish wars".[15] Conceptually Aberkane argues for a prescriptive use of peace and conflict studies, especially in a study on the defusing of the tensions in Xinjiang[16]by which he defends the logical soundness of the concept of a "war against war" in five points:
- (i) "the qualitative complexity of the notion of interest (e.g. What you may think is not your interest may be in a broader perspective)"
- (ii) "the non-refuted possibility that external conflicts of interests may be internalized within one single interest,"
- (iii)" the fact that Hilbert’s sixth problem has not been solved (ie physical reality is not axiomatized) which implies that"
- (iv) "while limitation theorems can be demonstrated in first order logic (and game theory) there can be no limitation theorem predicating upon physical reality which comprises the notion of interest, thus in particular"
- (v) "the impossibility of the total interest of peace ie. the stable intersection of individual and collective peace in international relations cannot be demonstrated."
What Aberkane thus describes as "erenologic positivism" is transcribed in game theoretical vocabulary as that in international relations "it is also not proven that aPareto-optimal situation at the world level (or at a less formal level of describing diplomatic reality, a situation that may be reminiscent to the latter without its mathematical precision) could not be also overlapping with the Nash equilibrium of interacting individual interests."[17]
Peace-Industrial Complex
At least two approaches to the war against war may be distinguished, the frontal opposition to war or Anti-war movement on the one side and the transcendent, post-war conception of William James' 'Moral Equivalent of war' positing, in the way of theUNESCO, that the only way to end conflicts is to make Humanity busy with more fascinating endeavors than wars. In his Nobel acceptance speech Martin Luther Kingfurther underlined that idea which would become the basis of the transcendentist school (e.g. Aberkane):
“ | We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace. There is a fascinating little story that is preserved for us in Greek literature about Ulysses and theSirens. The Sirens had the ability to sing so sweetly that sailors could not resist steering toward their island. Many ships were lured upon the rocks, and men forgot home, duty, and honor as they flung themselves into the sea to be embraced by arms that drew them down to death. Ulysses, determined not to be lured by the Sirens, first decided to tie himself tightly to the mast of his boat, and his crew stuffed their ears with wax. But finally he and his crew learned a better way to save themselves: they took on board the beautiful singer Orpheus whose melodies were sweeter than the music of the Sirens. When Orpheus sang, who bothered to listen to the Sirens? [18] | ” |
Various scholars (Suter 1986, Aberkane 2012, Roberts 2009) and politicians (Seiberling 1972) have thus advocated that peace profiteering should simply be made palatably larger than any possible war profiteering, thus transcending the war against war. However, the first generations of Peace-Industrial scholars have advocated frontal opposition to the military-industrial complex rather than its transcendent, voluntary metamorphosis into a globally benevolent yet very profitable peace-industrial complex.
In 1986 Keith D. Suter defended his Ph.D dissertation onCreating the political will necessary for achieving multilateral disarmament : the need for a peace-industrial complex,[19] which was further cited in 1995.[20] The concept of a Peace-industrial complex had already been introduced as early as in 1969 in the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations.[21] The original quote affirmed direct opposition to the military-industrial complex and was therefore not transcendent in nature: "It is time for the United States to break the Huge military-industrial complex and begin in its stead a people and peace-industrial complex". It received further citation throughout the 1970s. The notion appeared in the 'United States Congress House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development' in 1972 [22] in a congressional address by US Rep. J.F. Seiberling (1972) [23]
Suter further defended that "each country create a national Ministry for Peace",[24] which was contemporary to the creation of the Ministry for Peace Australia (MFPA) initiative and the Global Alliance for Ministries & Infrastructures for Peace (GAMIP). An Education for a Peace Industrial Complex conference (EPIC) is also mentioned in a 1984 issue of the Nuclear Times.[25]
If Kofi J. Roberts [26] explicitly called for the substitution of a military-industrial complex by a peace industrial complex which would enable the focusing on federal spendings on construction rather than destruction, Idriss J. Aberkane further defended the transcendent approach to the peace-industrial complex by calling it the "military-industrial complex 2.0" and thus neither the enemy nor the political complement to the military industrial complex but rather its natural, inevitable evolution on the account that investors (either institutional or private) will inevitably realize the larger profitability of construction over destruction. Aberkane also advocates the political viability of a peace-industrial complex by declaring that in the 21st century, what he calls "weapons of mass construction" will grant much larger political leverage, leadership and soft power than weapons of mass destruction.
“ | every time a military technology makes it to civilian use it changes the world for good and what it brings you is love rather than hatred, for if you project destruction you're gonna be hated, if you project construction, you're gonna be loved. So what is power, truly, what is a superpower? Is it a nation that has weapons of mass destruction? No it is not! Many nations have weapons of mass destruction they are not all superpowers (...) when you're looking at The Pentagon you're looking at a budget of 740 billion US dollars, that's the budget of the Department of Defense plus dediscretionary budget that is allocated to Research and Development for defense. I'm not saying we should take it away from the Pentagon, I say we should move to the Pentagon 2.0. For so far, what has America gained in projecting every bits of these dollars? Every time America uses these dollars is it more loved? Is it more respected? Is it safer? Is it more trusted? Does it have more leadership? (...) America could project this money to gain love, respect, leadership and political power. This, is the military-industrial complex 2.0. [It] will be interested in weapons of mass construction rather than weapons of mass destruction because these weapons are the future in terms of power. For what was the power of the 20th century? In the 20th century power was the ability to go from a beautiful blue planet to a red one. If you could turn a blue planet into a red one you were powerful. We have the technology to do that, these (sic) are called weapons of mass construction. Do we have the technology to go the other way around? Can we turn a red planet - Mars in that case - into a beautiful green planet? We can't but when you're looking at a budget of seven hundred billions US dollars you can look into that. This is gonna be 21st century power, weapons of mass construction. Why? because if you project these weapons I guarantee you people are gonna love you | ” |
See also
References
- Aberkane 2010
- Edmond Pontonié-Pierre La Guerre à la Guerre 1877
- Francis Ludwig Carsten War against war: British and German radical movements in the First World War, University of California Press 1982
- Ernst Friederich, Kriege dem Kriege! 2 vol "Freie Jugend", 1925
- "Guerre à la Guerre!" campagne d'affichage de l'Association pour la Paix par le Droitexemplaire d'une affiche disponible à la Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, France
- Jules Humbert-Droz Guerre à la guerre: à bas l'armée : plaidoirie complète devant le Tribunal militaire à Neuchâtel le 16 août 1916
- Alexandre Percin, Guerre à la Guerre Paris: Montaigne 1927
- Edo Fimmen, discours prononcé par Edo Fimmen au Congrès international pour la paix La Haye, du 10 au 15 décembre 1922Guerre à la guerre: la tâche du prolétariat organisé dans le mouvement pour la paix mondiale
- Gérard Marier, Jean Godin, Guerre à la guerre: le catholique devant la folie nucléaire Paris 1963
- constitution de l'UNESCO, signée le 16 novembre 1945, en vigueur le 4 novembre 1946
- Lebel, Jean Jacques; Adonis; Ai Qing; Breytenbach, Breyten; Cardenal, Ernesto; Cortez, Jayne; Faye, Jean Pierre; Ginsberg, Allen; Tan'si, Sony Labou; Mello, Thiago de; Pritam, Amrita; Shiraishi, Kazuko; Voznesenski, Andrei War on war; poets of the world at Unesco
- [1]
- Joshua Goldstein Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide Foreign Affairs, November/December 2011
- Idriss Aberkane On the "war on war" in modern geopolitics e-international relations January 9th 2012
- Aberkane 2012, ibid
- Aberkane, Idriss "Yin or Yang: China and the Muslim World" e-International Relations, 29 avril 2011, §4
- Aberkane, Ibid 2011
- Martin Luther King, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 11th 1964
- Suter, K. D. Creating the political will necessary for achieving multilateral disarmament : the need for a peace-industrial complex, Ph.D Thesis, Deakin University, Victoria, 1986 [2]
- Summy, R. Salla, M.E 'Why the Cold War Ended: A Range of Interpretations' Greenwood Publishing Group, 1995 p.202
- United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969 p.147 [3]
- National science policy and priorities act of 1972: Hearings, Ninety-second Congress, second session U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1972 p.153 [4]
- Rep. J. F. Seiberling, "The case for economic conversion" Congressional record v.118, n°95, 13 June 1972, pp E6177-6179, cited in Science Policy Reviews, Volumes 4 à 5 Battelle Memorial Institute, 1972 p. 398 [5], see also Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the US Congress, Volume 118, Part 16 U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972 p.20738 [6]
- [7]
- Nuclear Times, Volumes 3 to 4, 1984
- Roberts K. J. The Sargasso Bridge, iUniverse 2009 p. 185
- Aberkane, Bring on the Peace-Industrial Complex, Wikistage Paris 2013
- John Gittings The Glorious Art of Peace Oxford University Press 2012
- Frederick Joseph Libby War on War: campaign textbook" The National council for reduction of armaments, 1922
- R Craig Nation War on war: Lenin, the Zimmerwald Left, and the origins of communist internationalism Duke University Press 1989
- Isaac Lewin War on War, Shengold Publishers, 1969
- This page was last modified on 10 April 2015, at 13:29.
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