think4change.org

A Civil Civic Discourse - Good Design or Just a Fluke?

2009-08-21T14:45:39Z

Relation is the essence of everything. Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)

Last week US Representative Joe Sestak held a townhall forum on health care at a faith-based organization, Broad Street Ministry (BSM), in Philadelphia. The front-page article in The Philadelphia Inquirer the following morning described the event as "overwhelmingly civil".

The evening went so smoothly in fact that some thought the forum had been in the planning stages for several weeks, or that opponents to the Democratic plan were purposefully kept out of the gathering. Neither assertion is true. I work at BSM several days a week. I was there from the beginning of the planning process until the end of the actual forum (Sestak stayed on afterwards to meet with a small remnant of the more than 1000 people who showed up that evening). And while there were any number of reasons that the townhall was a civil one, not the least of these was the fact that a very welcoming and grateful tone was set from the outset, and was carried through to the end.

]]> The idea to have the forum stemmed from a conversation Representative Sestak had with Bill Golderer, BSM's convening minister, last Sunday - a mere three days before the forum took place. Those of us on the staff heard about it on the following afternoon, and so we had just two days to prepare for the event. At the initial planning meeting we decided to focus on two distinct yet related themes - hospitality and cordiality. We began to think of it as a sort of wedding ceremony where people did not know each other very well, but were coming together to be part of a larger civic ritual.

With that metaphor in mind we decided that some of us would act as greeters and ushers to make everyone - regardless political position - feel welcomed. Also, several of the ushers would act as microphone holders who would move about the room and go to the people with questions, rather than have people stand in line. We also experienced a blinding flash of the obvious when we considered that very likely the more strident and firmly entrenched members of the community on either side of the issue would be lining up outside at least at least an hour before the doors opened. Finally, we knew that the church building itself - built in 1900 - would be oppressively hot, and we needed to be sure that our guests were as comfortable as possible. So we planned with these three ideas in mind.

The first thing we did to address these issues was to go outside and greet all the people who were in line early -about 300 or so initially. Several of us introduced ourselves, telling them that we were from Broad Street Ministry. We then asked them their names and conversed briefly with each of them either individually, or in small clusters. Before moving on to the next group in line we mentioned that no signs or placards were allowed in the church sanctuary. Remarkably, out of the several hundred people we spoke to only two asked us why they could not bring their signs in. Our response that it was at the direction of the church's convening minister seemed to suffice.

We then identified anyone with special needs, older folks with canes and so forth. We invited them into the dining room below the sanctuary to wait until the doors opened. Of course we did this without regard to any position the individuals may have taken on the health care issue. As it happened, though, several of these people were very much on the conservative side of the issue, and did not expect this level of hospitality from a progressive, "Black Panther Church" (as Broad Street Ministry was described in several right-wing blogs - copy of tweet HERE).

Once the doors were opened those waiting in line were invited to join other members of the community at the weekly dinner that happens each Wednesday evening. A few of them did when they were assured that space at the forum would be reserved for them. Those who chose to go immediately up into the sanctuary were again greeted by ushers at the doors and given some materials to read about the townhall forum and about the organization hosting it.

Another important question that we worked with in the few planning meetings we had focused on the experience the guests would have while waiting (for at least an hour or more) for the actual forum to begin. We knew that the room would be warm initially and then become very hot over the course of the evening. We also knew that people with different political viewpoints would cluster together, and yet be rubbing elbows with others from opposing camps. The consensus in our planning group was to have music during that waiting time. There was some disagreement, however, about the need for live music or recorded music. Fortunately (I believe), we eventually settled on the need for live music. The music director of an affiliated church kindly agreed with very little advanced notice - actually only a few hours - to offer a solo piano mini-concert. He is an exceptionally gifted musician, and the impact his music had on the tone and energy in the room was immediate and positive.

When the actual townhall began, Bill Golderer, the convening minister at BSM, offered the guests a brief description and orientation of the room where they were situated. He directed them to look at the art installations on the ceiling above them, acknowledged one of the artists who created them and explained the meaning and significance of having art in our everyday environment. Only after that did he introduce the congressman.

After some brief initial comments Congressman Sestak opened the floor to questions. One of the first questioners was an opponent to the House's proposed legislation. Before the individual had finished his question several people rose up in unison and shouted, "Let him speak. Let him speak." The only problem was that no one was interfering at this point. Also interestingly, no one responded to those chants. Within just a few seconds it became clear to everyone in the room that the only obstacle in the questioner's way were those people insisting that the question be allowed. The chanters rather sheepishly sat down, and were not heard from for the rest of the long evening.

For the next three and a half hours the congressman fielded every type of question from many different viewpoints and constituencies with only one or two slightly testy interactions. And even those were far from acrimonious.

So what happened?

While it is important to note that any number of correlations does not a causality make, intangible factors can impact the tone and tenor of political discourse. Also worth noting is that at least two-thirds of those attending were in general support of the Democratic plan, so the opposition, while substantial, did not reach the critical mass it may have in other venues. Additionally (and rather wisely, imho), Mr Sestak spoke from a stage about three feet above the audience. Perhaps not the most democratic and egalitarian postures to take, it was effective in muting some of the strident opposition, and made some of the visuals less dramatic. There were no scenes of a crowd of placard-waving opponents surrounding and shouting down the speaker. Finally, Mr Sestak took much of the stridency out of the opposition by assuring everyone that he would stay until every question had been asked, and anyone who wanted to voice their opposition would be given an opportunity to speak.

That said, let's review some of those intangibles that may have also contributed to a rather civil civic discourse.

One: Connection before content -- make personal contact before establishing ground rules.

We so often miss this rather obvious point. We all want to be seen and heard at various time in our lives. By taking the time to express sincere gratitude, by being cordial and hospitable, we invite the best to emerge from each other.

Two: Be cordial throughout the event -- a rigorously fair and neutral host can also be a pleasant one.

From the outset we made it a point to identify ourselves as being from Broad Street Ministry and not from the congressman's office (or anyone else's for that matter). This served also to remind those attending that they were guests in someone else's home, and were encouraged to act accordingly. Having beautiful artwork in the environment helped as well.

Three: Be in control of the process at all times -- create the widest possible field and then hold the boundaries.

Several of the ushers were charged with holding microphones. We stressed to them the importance of not letting go of the mics. Had they done so, then if someone went on a rant, or spoke inappropriately, our only recourse would have been to cut the audio. That would have likely led to an allegation of censorship. As it happened, the only limits set concerning what people could say were: no profanity, and no remarks threatening violence.

Four: Encourage people to listen -- by creating an atmosphere where listening is rewarded.

Since we had people moving through the audience with microphones, rather than having microphones stationed on stands throughout the room, we repeatedly (and gently) asked members of the audience not to line up to ask questions. After a time they realized that what we had said was in fact true - that waiting in a line did not increase the likelihood that they would have access to the microphone any sooner - they actually sat down and listened to the conversation. This had the added benefit of allowing others in the audience behind them to see more clearly what was happening.

Five: Continue of connect with the guests throughout the evening -- it ain't over until it's over.

At various times during the event we, as hosts, interacted with the guests, especially if they appeared to have any particular needs. This also served to remind those in attendance that, although this was neutral ground, it was not a no-man's land where anything goes either. When we ended the formal townhall at about 10:15 PM, a number of those in the audience stayed around for a brief time to help clean up and rearrange the chairs for an event already planned for the next morning. Another indication that we had succeeded in our attempt to create and sustain a civil space.

A final remark. A few days after the townhall I was in a meeting with a professor from Penn who had attended the event. He said to me that, after participating in so many of these types of gatherings, he no longer expects to learn anything. For him they have become a form of political theater. "This one was an exception", he said. Further remarking, "I actually learned some things about the health care issue... I didn't expect that."

Music to my ears.

Some Summer Reading Suggestions - Part 1

2009-06-22T13:50:14Z

It's that time again - time for sorting through the pile of books that have been sitting there on the night table waiting patiently for your attention. Or perhaps finally getting around to actually reading Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Or even a bit of Tolstoy...

Then again it may be time for a non-fiction page-turner. If that's the case, some of the Whitmanians have a few suggestions to offer. Hopefully, these suggestions might add to your beach experience. They also may encourage other TWI members to chime in with some gems of their own.

First up is a new book by Fred Kaplan, columnist for Slate.

Reading through the timeline in the beginning of Kaplan's new book, 1959 The Year Everything Changed, will give you an immediate sense of just why the author has identified this year as so pivotal to the political, cultural and economic future of the United States.

A few highlights:

January 1 Castro takes power in Cuba.

January 2 Soviets launch the first spacecraft to break free of Earth's gravity.

January 9 Judge orders Atlanta to integrate its buses and trolleys

January 12 Berry Gordy borrows $800 from his family to buy a studio for his new record company, Motown.

And that is just in the first two weeks of January.

The rest of the year is equally eventful - from Miles Davis breaking into new territory in jazz, the US Air Force coining the term "aerospace" to stake military claim to space as well as the skies, to the introduction of The Pill, the invention of the microchip, to Ginsberg's Howl, Malcolm X's fateful trip to the Middle East, to the dismantling of the obscenity laws, to the opening of the Guggenheim, and Ornette Coleman's debut in Manhattan. And this is merely a sampling of what occurred during this remarkable year.

]]> Kaplan weaves a fascinating narrative that stitches together seemingly disparate events that in hindsight seem to have much deeper connections - rapid irreversible change in the way we saw ourselves as Americans, and how America saw itself in relation to the rest of the world. He also pays particular attention to the arts and the artists who pushed the edges of this new cultural frontier. He captures with keen insight the artistic undercurrents - highlighting several important artists, writers and musicians who took enormous risks in the process, and who by breaking free of many of the assumptions about what is "acceptable" redefine in the process what is possible. Young artists today, especially those interested in hip-hop and other current cultural trends, would be well served by reading about the experiences of the artists of that time.

Although heavily weighted toward the arts, Kaplan also focuses on a number of political and economic milestones that at the time may not have seemed all that big a deal, but now we look on them as monumental shifts. The impact of the pill is an interesting exception. While few noted the importance of the birth of the microchip, or the introduction of Datsuns and Toyotas into the American markets, or the first American casualities in Viet Nam, the pill was a different story. The potential impact of women being in control of their own reproduction was not at all lost on various conservative institutions. The tension surrounding that issue seems eerily similar to the battle over gay rights today. No doubt in 2059 people will be looking back to this year's controversies with a similar sense of astonishment as young women might today, as they wonder what the fuss was all about.

Equally noteworthy is Kaplan's narrative about the fairly relentless deconstruction of the obscenity laws that were on the books at the time. Breaking through these out-dated barriers to free expression was an essential accomplishment in 1959 - an accomplishment that reverberates still to this day. Not only did marque members of the so-called "Beatniks" take the forefront in this effort, but also publishers like Charles Rosset of Grove Press, who went to court to fight for the right to publish "obscene" material such as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Rosset ultimately prevailed, and with that and with other limit-bashing performers such as Lenny Bruce, those laws quickly became an artifact of another era.

It is very tempting to recap many of the compelling stories Kaplan relates here. And there is a page-turner quality to his writing that leaves this reader with an urge to be a bit of a spoiler. So I will resist that temptation, and invite you to go on the road with Mailer, Ginsberg and Kerouac, Rauschenberg and Pollack, Lenny Bruce and William Burroughs, Miles, Coltrane and Coleman, as these artists provide some of the artistic energy that created the momentum for so much dramatic change in so brief a time. Along the way you will also meet some lawyers, editors, engineers and scientists, who made equally impactful contributions to the world as we know it.

This is a engaging read, written by a thoroughly modern writer for this time. (His chapters are tightly focused and mercifully brief - ideal for the daily commute and a trek to the beach.) It is also an important book to read what with so much talk of hope and change and new frontiers these days.

Oh, a niggling note - he did omit one important date. February 3, 1959. The day the music died.

1959, The Year Everything Changed, Fred Kaplan -- John Wiley & Sons 2009 [HERE is good place to look for a copy at a good price while still shopping at an independent book store.]

Re-imagining Mars

2009-06-07T18:46:06Z

Preston Moore, a member of the extended TWI community, is a former partner at the San Francisco law firm, Morrison & Foerster, and now a Unitarian minister. He has generoulsy allowed us to post a sermon he recently delivered to the Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Williamsburg. In this piece he explores an interesting question: Is war a manifestation of spiritual energy?

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"Re-imagining Mars"

a sermon by Rev. Preston Moore
Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists
Williamsburg, VA

March 29, 2009

The distinguished historian Will Durant has calculated the total length of time in recorded human history during which our planet was free of war. It's twenty-seven years. We've had world enough and time to learn about the causes and cures of war. Theories abound. One says war is a reprise of psychological and physical abuse due to bad childrearing habits. Eisenhower cautioned against the military-industrial complex. "War-mongering munitions makers" have been the political left's favorite explanation too. The theories range from geopolitics to gender. Yet, a standard modern reference text on war concludes, "the voluminous works of contemporary military intellectuals contain no new ideas about the origins of war. . . . [A] 'satisfactory' scientific view of war is as remote as ever."

Despite having no reliable causal picture of war, we persist in advocating for its photographic negative, named peace. It is a natural impulse, but actually, not a good one. Plato called peace "really only a name." Hobbes said it was just "a breathing time." The Oxford English dictionary defines peace as "the absence of war." With peace imminent at the end of World War II, the French novelist Marguerite Duras described her sense of "a great darkness falling . . . the beginning of forgetting."

Invariably, the peace has been shattered long before war breaks out. The hostilities persist long after the armistice. But our flight from war's horror is so headlong that, along with the dead, we bury the wisdom purchased so dearly in war's misadventure. "Longings for peace," said James Hillman in his book A Terrible Love of War, "become both simplistic and utopian, with programs for universal love, disarmament, and an Aquarian federation of nations, or [a throwback] to the status quo ante of Norman Rockwell's apple pie."

The failure of all these diagnoses and cures leads Barbara Ehrenreich to conclude, in her book Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passion Of War, that war is an autonomous force - rather than the consequence of something else. But even if autonomous, war does break into the world through human beings. We have a say in how this force expresses itself.

An autonomous force entering the world through humans sounds like something spiritual. So I have to ask, is war a manifestation of spiritual energy? An intimate consort of war seemed to be thinking along these lines when he said, "despite the impossibility of physically detecting the soul, its existence is proven by its tangible reflection in acts and thoughts. So with war, beyond its physical aspect of armed hosts there hovers an impalpable something which dominates the material . . . . To search for this something we should seek it in a manner analogous to our search for the soul." So said General George S. Patton.

A distant ancestor of Patton embarked on such a spiritual search in the ancient Hindu text called the Bhagavad-Gita, or Song of God. Krishna, the ultimate manifestation of God in Hinduism, is asked for his support by the chieftains of two rival branches of a royal family. He won't take sides, but offers to give his vast army to one and to act as counselor for the other. One chieftain, Duryodhana, opts for the army. The other, Arjuna, says he is happy to have Krishna as his counselor.

This is a decisive moment in the story. In choosing the army, Duryodhana reveals himself as having no value higher than winning. In choosing Krishna's counsel, Arjuna reveals himself as a holy-man-in-training.

Arjuna agonizes over warring against his cousins. He wants to leave the field. Krishna shakes his head and points Arjuna toward a calling instead: to act in the world - and in the imminent strife that confronts him - so as to fulfill the relationship between God and humans, but without attachment to the outcome. Although the story is subtitled "Krishna's Counsel in Time of War," Krishna's advice shows that this is no military strategy text. The "war" in question is the endless internal struggle within each person. In fact, Duryodhana and Arjuna are really archetypes, representing competing spiritual energies. What happens in the world outside is a reflection of what happens in the struggle within.

War may call people to the most repellant duties imaginable. As Thomas Merton has observed, the Bhagavad-Gita is saying that "even in what appears to be most 'unspiritual,' one can act with pure intentions and thus be guided by [holy] consciousness. The consciousness itself will impose the most strict limitations on one's use of violence . . . ."

This consciousness requires great discipline -- meaning discipleship to the divine, to the grace, balance, and wholeness of the universe. To inspire this consciousness in Arjuna, Krishna reveals all the forms of his divinity. The light of his spirit is likened to a thousand suns rising in the sky at once. In his form as destroyer, Krishna says "I am death, shatterer of worlds, annihilating all things." Arjuna comes to realize that he has a calling in life - one filled with both joy and sorrow -- to sustain the human drama of gracefully limited creation and destruction.

True to Krishna's teaching that Arjuna must renounce attachment to outcomes, the Baghavad-Gita itself ends without revealing the military result. It doesn't matter who "won." Only that Arjuna's action is grounded in spiritual discipline and renunciation of attachment.

This is a story of the transformation of a soldier into a warrior, through expansion of consciousness. A warrior is someone who has practiced a spiritual discipline of humility and surrender to holy presence, a discipline of containing struggle and conflict while remaining conscious enough to hear "God's Counsel in Time of War" - even though everything is collapsing.

The image of the warrior has been tarnished by cultural misuse, but the nobility of the idea is intact -- captured poetically in the legendary Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation), which declares that

Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent people detest them.
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent person will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Wholeness is his highest value.
If wholeness has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn't wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of humans?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.

This idea is not a romantic artifact of antiquity. You can hear the echoes of it in Sue Peterson's testimony this morning about her own journey in doing the work of social justice. [ed. note - "testimony" given during service] There are warriors among us this morning, practiced in the spiritual discipline of many arts, martial and otherwise. As Sue mentioned, for ten Thursday evenings this spring, a small handful of WUUs are meeting to seek a deeper understanding of the social justice ministry of our church. We talk about many different things from session to session, but the conversation is always about the relationship between the material struggles and conflicts of the outer world and the spiritual ones of the world within.

The Baghavad-Gita reveals the fundamental problem with how we view war. We want to distance ourselves from its terrible bloody stain. But war is simply an extreme and corrupted form of struggle and conflict, which are essential to human life. They are part of the divine energy that flows through us into the world -- an expression of life's endless process of creation and destruction.

We cannot even form an identity, individually or collectively, without struggle and conflict. We are defined by our adversaries. If they did not exist, we would have to invent them. And sometimes we do. New ideas compete with old ones. Political and religious movements wax and wane. Cultures flourish and wither. These dialectical processes are good.

All human pursuits are part of this endless creation and destruction. In a sufficiently open society, all such pursuits offer the radically creative possibility of experiencing the holy and reflecting it into the midst of the mundane. We tend to think that this is a special calling reserved for poets, artists, and saints; but actually, the same noble calling awaits us all - carpenters and lawyers, brain surgeons and bellhops.

Every person has the capacity to connect with the truth, beauty, mystery, goodness, and wholeness that lie beyond the horizon of life in the material world; and to bring pieces of these facets of the holy back to share with others - by reflecting them in the work we do and the way we are present in the world. The word for the essential quality of such work and such ways of being is poetry.

The Greek ancestor of this word, poesis, actually means "creativity," and creation of something new always involves destruction of something old. It is all one process. Every one has the God-given capacity for a kind of universal poetry - in her life, in her work, whether she ever writes a single verse -- whether the medium in which she works is opera or garbage collection. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

All these forms of graceful creation and destruction require freedom, and freedom requires a space protected by limitations and boundaries. These limitations include everything from the ordinary rules of civil society to styles and conventions of artistic expression. Without enough of these, everything collapses into terrifying chaos. With too much of them, everything collapses into tedious rigidity and inertness. Such collapses reflect a violent dis-integration and corruption of the graceful balance of creation and destruction, imagination and literalism, belief and novelty, mundane boundary and far spiritual horizon.

When this happens, the universal poetry dies. When universal poetry dies, the channels through which truth, beauty, goodness, mystery, and wholeness are brought into the world and shared with others are shut down. Universal poetry is a divine capacity in humans. When this godliness is trapped in chaos or inertness, it will find a way to break into the world - violently, if the person in which it lives lacks the discipline and balance to express it in a better way. If the chaos or inertness becomes severe enough, the violence will escalate from the individual level - road rage, physical attacks, crimes of personal passion - to the social one - gangs, rampage killings, rebellion, governmental persecution, and, ultimately, war.

The violence will not be logical, but rather, chaotic. Any ground for discharging the violent urge will do. The anger of the German people at the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles, which concluded World War I on terms that were harsh and unfair to Germany, fits this pattern. It was splattered like lethal acid all over groups that had no part in imposing the treaty -- notably, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and assorted other non-Aryans all over Europe.

So. Is war a manifestation of spiritual energy? In thunder, yes.

Many years ago, a young and liberally educated physicist read the Bhagavad-Gita in the original Sanskrit. It fascinated him. A dozen years later, his work took him to a beautiful place where he experienced that "light of a thousand suns rising in the sky at once" of which Krishna spoke in the ancient text. The place was Los Alamos, New Mexico. The occasion was the first test of the atomic bomb. The physicist was Robert Oppenheimer, architect of the Manhattan Project. Witnessing the explosion, he said to himself, "Now I am become death, the shatterer of worlds" - the line spoken by Krishna in revealing his destroyer aspect. Oppenheimer felt no exultation, but rather, dread and shame at having crossed a forbidden boundary. The lesson of the ancient text about the humility and discipline required of a warrior had come too late. He had made a god of theoretical physics, which became terrifyingly nontheoretical.

War is force without restraint. In war, there is neither a secular higher power strong enough to restrain the combatants nor a spiritual one whose call they can hear.

Religion is frequently invoked in wartime, of course, but only as a request for tactical support. No modern general would have considered Arjuna, the hero of the Bhagavad-Gita, to be anything but a fool for choosing God's advice over God's army.

In war, the violence continues until one side or the other is exhausted. The collapse of imagination that made going to war look like the only option also makes grinding onward until the bitter end look the same way.

The human impulse toward godliness is not extinguished by war, which invariably strikes sparks of selflessness, heroism, and deep connection among those it ensnares. But these are undisciplined flashes. They cannot derail the machinery of war, but rather, can only remind us of the universal poetry tragically trapped in chaos or inertness long before the fighting began. The Irish airman of whom Yeats wrote was an aristocrat, fabulously wealthy, with a peacetime life so meaningless that aerial combat seemed a delight. The warrior he might have been never saw the light of day.

In contrast, the powers and principalities of seventeenth century Japan woke up before the chaos descended. Their ethics undoubtedly fell short of the Tao Te Ching. But they did have boundaries they would not cross, limitations the violation of which would bring shame and dishonor. Can we even imagine that, in our shameless society of today? These limitations could be seen in their centuries-old aesthetics and ethics of swordsmanship, inculcated through disciplined training and spiritual practice.

At first the guns looked like freedom, but then chaos often does as the descent begins. Eventually, they were seen for what they were: a form of attachment to the outcome of conflict, machines of efficient production in the artless business of killing, a dangerously democratic way to evade the bothersome limitations of aesthetics, culture, and religion. Eventually, Japan's warrior tradition won out over the guns - but only for awhile.

War breaks out when there aren't enough warriors to prevent it. War grinds relentlessly on until the bitter end when there aren't enough warriors to grab the reins and stop it. The warriors are crucial, because they have not distanced themselves from Mars. Rather, they have tamed him with a higher power. Without them, we are remitted to the leadership of banty roosters prancing across the decks of aircraft carriers in flight jackets, under boastful banners that say "mission accomplished."

Governments rarely have any interest in warriors. It is soldiers they want - people to be molded into killing machines, their memory of their own godliness wiped clean by indoctrination, like a computer hard drive. Warriors know that wartime begins at the first sign of loss of grace, balance, and integrity in the processes of creation and destruction that are the rhythm of human life. They have a joyful and sorrowful sense of stewardship toward all that grace.

Warriors know that the opposite of war is not peace but poetry, universal poetry. They know that men do indeed die every day for want of what is found there. Let us leave off praying for peace and take up praying for warriors. Let us become the warriors we are praying for. We are not the bystanders. We are the battlefield.

AMEN.

Preston has a number of sermons and talks published on-line. One in particular I recommend can be found here.

The New School @ Commonweal

2009-04-04T23:53:23Z

Commonweal, a member of the Whitman Community, has for the past thirty plus years been at the forefront of the environmental health field, describing itself with remarkable understatement as:

a health and environmental research institute where for three decades we have worked at the interface of personal and planetary healing through focused initiatives in the environment, education, and health.

Over the past two years or so co-founder, Michael Lerner, has been hosting conversations/dialogues with thought leaders in these subjects from around the world. Fortunately, Michael has been generous enough to capture these conversations and post them as netcasts (mp3 files) easily accessible through Commonweal's website, or through iTunes.

Over the last several weeks I have been listening to a number of these netcasts. Michael is in my experience the most effective interviewer on the internet today. He brings a depth of knowledge to each encounter that is at times astonishing; yet he manages to keep the focus on his guests and their particular (and considerable) expertise.

I invite and encourage everyone associated with TWI to download these netcasts and listen to them at your leisure. (BTW I learned recently from Michael's interview with Peter Kingsley that our English word school comes from the Greek word, schole (σχολή), which means leisure.)

Check out all that The New School has to offer - including links to its netcasts and iTunes - here.

Gates Foundation Disappointed With Its Small School Initiative

2009-02-02T16:41:32Z

In an annual letter published on the foundation's website, Bill Gates says that their efforts to raise "...college-ready graduation rates...fell short".

He writes:

"Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way. These tended to be the schools that did not take radical steps to change the culture, such as allowing the principal to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum. We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school.

Even so, many schools had higher attendance and graduation rates than their peers. While we were pleased with these improvements, we are trying to raise college-ready graduation rates, and in most cases, we fell short."

The foundation intends to focus more tightly on charter schools and on best teaching practices.

"So our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other teachers and as a resource for students."

Read education portion here. And the the entire letter here.

Important Article About Early Days at Guantanamo

2009-01-25T18:29:11Z

Karen Greenberg, the executive director at NYU's Center on Law and Security, has published a piece in the Washington Post about the early days of the detainee camp at Guantanamo. It seems that the military got it right in the beginning - it was able to make consistently wise and measured decisions even in the stressful times that many have said made such decision making impossible.

Here is the link.

For more on the current situation the Obama administration is faced with as they plan to close Guantanamo see John Cole's post here. He asserts that:

"The moral of this story is not the danger for Obama going forward with his Gitmo decommissioning, the moral is that when venal, shallow, small men are given unfettered power and authority, they do incompetent, stupid, and evil things."

Another Obama First

2009-01-23T19:49:05Z

The inauguration of our 44th president contained a litany of firsts. Too many to list here. Besides the gaggle of gasbags in the popular media and the Internets have done an exemplary job of listing virtually all of them.

There is one first sandwiched between Rick Warren's curious invocation and Rev. Lowery's remarkable benediction that drew scant attention. President Obama became the first president in our history to acknowledge atheist Americans:

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers."

Contrast that quote with this assertion by Bush 41 some twenty years ago:

"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots."

Unlike his recent predecessors - Bush 41 & 43, Candidate Obama promised inclusiveness as well as greater transparency in his administration. It appears that he means to implement that promise from day one.

More here. And more here.

Atheist Ads On London Bendy-buses -- "Stop Worrying"

2008-10-22T11:42:42Z

The British Humanist Association launched a campaign recently to place ads on a number of large buses in Britain. From their news release:

The Atheist Bus Campaign launches today, Tuesday October 21. With your support, we hope to raise £5,500 to run 30 buses across the capital for four weeks with the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Here is where you can add some dosh (American = cash) to their effort. BTW, as noted above, their fund-raising target was £5,500; so far they have raised close to £60,000.

Whitman Grantees To Showcase Their Dialogue Skills at NCDD Conference in Austin, TX Oct 3-5, 2008

2008-09-07T15:56:08Z

Several members from On The Move, a Whitman grantee organization, have been invited to partner with the The Rockrose Institute's Youth Dialogue Project (YDP is also a Whitman grantee) to design and facilitate a series of dialogues focusing on ways to include more young voices in the dialogue community, and on ways to deepen the intergenerational conversation about community impact and effective citizens.

Details about the upcoming NCDD conference here.

Wait or Walk? Inquiring (and Lazy) Minds Want to Know

2008-09-07T04:07:59Z

Most of us have been faced at one time or anther with the decision to wait for the next bus, or walk to our destination. All sorts of magical thinking can go into our calculations: How many others are waiting at the bus stop? How far (in both walking time and distance) to the destination? How long ago do we imagine the last bus came by?

Well, some young geniuses at Cal Tech seem to have cracked the code. Here is their study, Walk versus Wait: The Lazy Mathematician Wins (3 pages), along with several download options and with all the math formulae that look like they were copied from Professor Barnhardt's blackboard... oh, and along with the young (and lazy) mathematician's "Eureka" moment.

Remember: exact change required, and bus schedule subject to change without notice.

The Wisdom of the Lowly Ant -- Distributive Intelligence

2008-07-23T15:47:00Z

Researchers are working to clear away the freeway gridlock that is overwhelming at times in large metropolitan areas globally. And just what are they studying to solve this problem? Ants. Slate has a video describing this phenomenon here. As it happens, ants have developed what scientists call "distributive intelligence" - a way to communicate with others from the colony in real time important information about the shortest, quickest route to potential food sources. Instead of using biochemical pheromones to communicate with other drivers, real time information will be distributed to other drivers on the same route advising them when it is best to take an alternate route.

In one sense we are already experiencing the implications of "distributive intelligence" when reading this blog entry. The packets are continually "learning" which is the fastest route from one server to the next to the end user. The difference is that the packets are to communicating with each other the way ants do.

This "distributive intelligence" model may have far-reaching implications for all sorts of learning beyond solving traffic jams. Who knows, perhaps a better understanding of bees will help relieve the gridlock in the skies.

Again here is a link to the video (about 3 minutes long).

No Place to Land the Plane

2008-07-18T16:18:50Z

Sociology professor Ulrich Beck, from Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University and the London School of Economics has a thought-provoking article in the Guardian on how the conversation about increased use of nuclear power is being framed by political leaders today.

He writes:

"...the actors who are supposed to be the guarantors of security and rationality - the state, science and industry - are engaged in a highly ambivalent game. They are no longer trustees but suspects, no longer managers of risks but also sources of risks. For they are urging the population to climb into an aircraft for which a landing strip has not yet been built."

Several of the comments are worth a look as well.

A National Teacher Academy ala West Point?

2008-07-07T03:04:14Z

This "Teacher Corp Academy" is one of the ideas bandied about by a panel at "EDin08", America's Education Crisis: Pursuing Academic Excellence. EDin08 is an initiative that grew from the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Strong American Schools project. This nonpartisan campaign is also supported by The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is dedicated to "promoting sound education policies for all Americans".

Then again, maybe there is already one in the making (see below).

Even though it is difficult not to notice that the entire panel was comprised of white males, the ninety-minute panel discussion is worth a look. Also, there was very little "kid focus" to the conversation. The conversation was advertised as a look at some of the political implications of the educational crisis in the US, and to that extent it fit the bill.

Several participants - notably the superintendents from New York City and Prince George's County in Maryland - really nailed some key points about the gap in achievement between the privileged and those living in poverty.

The conversation about standards is an important one. According to John Deasy (from PG County) the standards need to be "higher, deeper and fewer". They did seem to dance around some of the barriers to national standards, and especially a candid assessment of No Child Left Behind. It would also have been helpful if the panelists decoded "state's rights" and "local rights" in this context.

Also, missing from the conversation was a discussion of the purpose of public education. It appeared axiomatic that the only reason to educate children is so that we, as a nation, can be more competitive with children in other countries. Admittedly, math and science proficiencies are crucial, but so is critical thinking and creativity.

It is still amazing that discussions about the need for increased time on task are still in the mix. Solid research on that issue has been around for at least twenty years. Yet, we still are discussing it instead of increasing it. Just like the school year and the school day. An indication of just how many contravening forces are at play in American education.

And from what all of these experts said, it is very clear that initiatives like the On The Move's* REACH Institute is at the cutting edge of the creation of these new teachers.

To repeat, a useful conversation to drop in on. It would have been great, though, if some representatives from academia, like folks from REACH and some classroom teachers, had been on the panel. Or at least a woman, or a person of color. Maybe next time.

Here is the link on FORA.tv.

* On The Move is a member of the Whitman Community.

The Empathy Switch

2008-07-02T18:52:04Z

Recent empirical research from Taipai has validated anecdotal evidence that has long suggested that medical practitioners have a physiological capacity to disengage "natural" empathic responses to seeing others in discomfort, or in pain. This kind of neurophysiological research leads to any number of questions about the interplay between thinking and feeling.

Here is one of the interesting research findings:

Physicians registered no increase in activity in the portion of the brain related to pain, whether they saw an image of someone stuck with a needle or touched with a Q-tip. However, the physicians, unlike the control group, did register an increase in activity in the frontal areas of the brain--the medial and superior prefrontal cortices and the right tempororparietal junction. That is the neural circuit that is related to emotion regulation and cognitive control.

The research was focused on acupuncture practitioners exclusively. One question that emerges from this study is whether or not there is a similar, yet dysfunctional, capacity in sociopaths for instance to "turn off" empathy when they see others in pain. And of course that would lead to the possibility that such a switch might be turned on.

Here is a longer discussion of the study along with appropriate journal links.

Book Review: The Wise Heart

2008-07-01T22:14:06Z

The Wise Heart, A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, Jack Kornfield's latest work, is well worth a read, even if you have very little interest in the particularities of Buddhist Psychology. The book combines many lessons learned during the forty odd years he has been a practicing Buddhist with twenty-six principles of Buddhist Psychology that he has studied and help refine over those years. The result is a very practical map into a world that is both extraordinarily complex and profoundly simple.

Kornfield teaches at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, and the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. Those experiences gave him an enormous amount of anecdotal material to make these principles very clear and available to the average reader, while also making striking parallels to traditional western methodologies.

Interwoven throughout the book are stories from his own family life that are carefully crafted to add to our understanding of this discipline. At no time did I have the sense that I was reading an Oprahesque tell all - even though these personal stories spoke of some very difficult times in his life.

Also, Kornfield brings a number of his clients into the conversation. Normally I tend to skip over "case studies" in such books. They are usually much too long with more context than I want and less relevance than I need. In this book it is different. The "cases" are really brief, tightly focused vignettes that capture the essence of the principle being discussed. I was left with powerful personal sketches that continue to stay with me, and are very helpful in keeping the more abstract principles grounded.

The author does not shy away from difficult, and sometimes arcane, notions within the Buddhist psychological systems. There are the healthy and unhealthy states of desire, the eight levels of the jhana states "that open the door to illumination". Not to mention the "alchemy of transformation". Woven through entire book, though, is how mindfulness, compassion and lovingkindness are some of the essential tools we bring into any transformative relationship that might lead to an end to suffering.

Finally, at the end of each chapter Kornfield gives very clear practice instructions to activate these principles into everyday life. No doubt these are the same practices he suggests to his meditation students during retreats.

The eastern psychology systems - in tandem with many centuries of consciousness studies, ethical systems, and spiritual practices - are in many ways far more advanced than our western perspectives on the nature and function of emotions and thought processes. This is especially true when looking at human beings through lenses other than those provided by the DSM.

As an advanced practitioner in both eastern and western psychological traditions, Kornfield has added important new ways to approach many psychological questions, such as how we construct and make meaning of our world, the interplay of thinking and feeling, individual and social identity, reality and self as social constructs, and so forth. Questions that are at the forefront of many conversations that members of our community have every day.