Who Does The Pope Think He Is?

Since the release of Pope Francis’ encyclical letter “On Care For Our Common Home” there have been two primary commentaries.  One has been enthusiasm that the leader of the Catholic Church has placed climate change, and a concern for those suffering it’s affects, firmly within the realm of religious interest.  The other commentary boils down to variations on the theme of “who does the Pope think he is?”

I have no answer to that question, nor do I intend to pursue it.  However, the question does raise a more fundamental one: Does religion have a place within the dialogue around climate change?

At the heart of the question about the Pope’s ontology is the assertion that religion should have no place in the politics of climate change.  Therein lies the critical mistake.  Action on climate change is not a political debate.

Nor is climate change a scientific debate, or an economic one.  It is not an ethical or moral debate.  Placing climate change within any of these human domains is topsy-turvy.  Climate change embraces all of these domains; politics, religion, science, economics, ethics, morals, and more.  Each of these brings it’s own observations and understandings to the climate change dialogue.

Science brings the understanding of the dynamics of climate change.  It brings the data and scientific analysis.  It brings the facts and figures.

Economics brings the financial constraints and opportunities that lie ahead and  seeks answers to questions such as: how much will this cost?  Can we afford it? Can we afford to do nothing?  Do we have the economic resources, and how are they to be distributed?

Politics brings the mechanism of public decision-making.  It brings together the competing interests and priorities from within the public, social and national fields.  Furthermore, climate change forces us to think politically at an international level.

Religion brings the history of our human place within the cosmos.  It asks us to think about our spiritual connection with the earth and all that live in it.  Religion asks us to consider our connection with each other and with the earth.

Morals and Ethics bring a series of questions relating to how we should act, individually and socially.  Morals and ethics ask questions such as: what state should we leave the world in for future generations? what right do humans have to hold dominion over other sentient beings?

(Note.  I have distinguished morals and ethics from that of religion.  This is deliberate.  One does not need to be religiously inclined in order to have a strong moral and ethical compass.)

All of these spheres of human endeavour have a place in the dialogue around climate change.  There is no room for nit-picking and playing games of “religion has no place in politics,” or “science is unequivocal, morals don’t enter into it.”  The dialogue around climate change must embrace all, because climate change embraces all.  None of us is immune.  None of us can truly claim to be solely scientists, politicians, economists or religious adherents.

Who does the Pope think he is?  I guess he would answer that he is a religious leader.  Certainly, in terms of climate change he claims that:

“I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.”¹

As a religious leader he must be welcomed to the dialogue.

1. Pope Francis, encyclical letter “On Care For Our Common Home,” 2015, para 3.
Disclaimer:  I am not, and never have been, a member of the Catholic Church.

7 Myths About Civil Disobedience

Some of the world’s most revered social justice campaigners have been advocates of Civil Disobedience.  Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Vaclav Havel, Emmeline Pankhurst, Henry David Thoreau, Lech Walesa: all of them practised civil disobedience.  Yet civil disobedience remains largely misunderstood within the general population.  Even within social justice and other movements myths abound.  Here are just seven of those myths.

1. Civil Disobedience is unlawful.  Civil disobedience in and of itself is not unlawful.  Those practising civil disobedience may be charged with offences (eg disturbing the peace, trespass, damaging property etc) but civil disobedience is not a crime.  Indeed, some of the world’s most influential proponents of legal systems note that disobedience may be necessary in order to propel a government or other agency towards socially just policies.

2. Civil disobedience activists disregard the law.  Au contraire.  Oftentimes those undertaking a civil disobedience action are well aware of the law and the consequences of breaking it.  The difference between a civil disobedience activist and a criminal is that the former acknowledges that by their act they are willing to be charged and may be jailed as a result.  The latter does not.

3. Civil Disobedience should be a “last resort” action.  The obvious difficulty with this myth is defining the point at which all other possibilities have been exhausted.  For instance, can it be claimed that the Women’ Suffragist Movement had exhausted all legal channels open to them before they chained themselves to the fences around Parliament?  Yet, few would now claim that their actions were unwarranted. 

The argument that civil disobedience should be a “last resort” action can mean prolonging injustice, environmental destruction or repression.  Martin Luther King said it best with his pithy dictum that “justice delayed is justice denied.”

4. Civil Disobedience is divisive.  Civil disobedience is no more divisive than are the issues for which civil disobedience activists undertake their actions, indeed, often less so.  For example, American society, especially in the south, was divisive long before Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and others initiated the Civil Rights Movement.

5. Civil Disobedience is violent.  Civil disobedience can take on violent forms, that is true.  However, civil disobedience is more often associated with non-violent forms of protest.  So much so that often the two terms, Non Violent Action and Civil Disobedience, are seen as interchangeable.  Social activists have moved away from the motto that “the ends justifies the mean,”  which held sway in many activists minds up until the latter half of last century.  Activists moved towards an understanding that means and ends had to be in harmony.  Beyond that, many now recognise that means are ends and vice versa.  Hence, civil disobedience activists appreciate that if it is a world of peace, justice, fairness and equity that they desire, then it is these same qualities that they must display in their actions to achieve it.

6. Civil Disobedience is undemocratic.  The role of civil disobedience within  democratic societies has been thoroughly analysed and theorised about.  Thoreau for example, noted that a government only exists because of the power delegated to it by free individuals.  Therefore, he claimed, free individuals can decide to stand aside from the law.¹  Martin Luther King suggested that if the channels of change, though open in theory, are closed or obstructed then civil disobedience becomes necessary.

Democratic theory is underpinned by the notion of the “social contract” whereby citizens tacitly consent to the law by being residents of the State.  Consequently, according to this myth, civil disobedience is undemocratic because it’s adherents reject the “social contract.”  (This argument is addressed in 2 above.)  Furthermore, the myth assumes that the State always and continuously upholds it’s side of the contract.  It doesn’t!

7. Civil Disobedience encourages lawlessness.  Aside from the fact that this myth has no empirical evidence to support it, it can be argued that obedience to some laws and governmental actions would cause more harm than would disobedience.  Many civil disobedience activists understand the implications of breaking the law and do not attempt to “get away with” breaking the law, but rather, deliberately face the consequences.  Gandhi, for instance, took upon himself the brutality of the police, and he accepted being arrested and punished.

Other theorists note that, rather than encouraging lawlessness, civil disobedience can actually help stabilise a society by “nudging (it) closer to it’s shared vision of justice.”¹

Civil disobedience is not for every social justice advocate, community development worker or environmental campaigner.  However, civil disobedience should not be dismissed.  It is a valid, useful and tactical tool in the struggle for a peaceful, just and sustainable world.

1. Peter Suber, Civil Disobedience, in Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia, (edited by Christopher Gray), Garland Publishers, 1999.

Question, question, question

There is a saying from a Buddhist master that goes like this:

“Great questioning, great enlightenment.  Little questioning, little enlightenment.  No questioning, no enlightenment.”

How do we come up with great questions?  Sometimes the role of a facilitator is to prompt people to come up with good questions.  How?  That is what this exercise is designed to do.

1.  Working alone, have people spend a few minutes thinking about and writing down a number of questions that they have in their own life or the life of their community.  Ensure that the questions are personal.  For example, how do I get publicity for this cause?  Not: “what is the local government going to do about this issue?”

2. Ask people to choose one of their questions and then to write down the feelings that they have about that question.

3. Still working individually ask people to think about their question and to reflect upon their life with respect to that question.  Is there an experience in their life that has prompted that particular question?  There may be more than one experience.   Ask them to reflect on that experience and to write down their memories and feelings from that experience.

4.  In pairs, people then share their question and their experience.  The listener then remarks upon their responses to the story and the question and makes suggestions if they have any.

5.  Again working individually, each person tries to improve their question.  Do new thoughts, feelings and experiences come to mind in doing so?

6.  As a whole group ask people to share their final question and the feelings surrounding it.

We can learn a lot from each other by sharing our answers to questions.  We might learn even more by sharing our questions and the feelings we have about them.  Furthermore, questions are the “critical starting point of problem-solving and innovation.”¹  Anyone working within the fields of community development, social justice or sustainability will recognise this.

Warren Berger¹ notes that “society does it’s best to discourage questioning, but those that ignore that and remain inquisitive often end up running our most creative and successful businesses while coming up with game changing ideas.”

It is those game changing ideas that society desperately needs, and they begin with good questions.

1. Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014.

The Fourth Revolution

Homo Sapiens has undergone at least three major revolutions.  Some 10,000 years ago much of the
world witnessed the first of these – the Agrarian Revolution.  We humans moved from being nomads and wanderers, from being hunters and gathers, to become settled agriculturalists.

Then, beginning in Great Britain, and quickly spreading to Western Europe and North America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Industrial Revolution upset the established agricultural patterns.  We began to move off farms, away from rural lifestyles, and into cities and factories.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw many revolutions, yet the most significant occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, and exploded with the introduction of the world wide web in 1991 – the Information Revolution.

But information, data, facts and figures have not stemmed the onset of numerous global problems; climate change, war/terrorism, species extinction and many other inter-connected problems.

We need a Fourth Revolution.

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez (pictured above), still a teenager, has eloquently suggested what that revolution might entail.  Martinez is the youth director of Earth Guardians, an international movement hoping to wake the world up from it’s stupor.  Repeating themes that others (such as Krishnamurti, Vaclev Havel and Ervin Lazslo) have previously espoused, Martinez calls for a Consciousness Revolution.

Many of those studying the phenomenon of consciousness and those actively seeking a collective appreciation of consciousness note that for much of the human race there is a defeatist idea that we are “just along for the ride” with little control over our destiny.¹  There are, however, signs that this is changing.  Many people are becoming conscious that the inter-connected crises are real and pose a threat.  That’s a start.

Building on the First Three

We can use the first Three Revolutions to give an impetus to the Fourth.  For example:

• We have enough food to feed everyone on the planet (albeit very poorly distributed), thanks to the First Revolution.
• We have the technology that would enable us to use sustainable energy resources, thanks to the Second Revolution.
• We have all the facts and figures and information that we need to inform us about the crises we face, thanks to the Third Revolution.
• We need to shift our individual and collective consciousness; the Fourth Revolution.

How do we do that?   The first step is to acknowledge that our focus on a mechanistic system, based on separation is unhelpful.  We need a consciousness that recognises that the world is a self-organising, living system.   We need a consciousness that recognises wholeness and connection.  We need a consciousness that bases human interactions on caring and sustainability.

And to do that we need to listen.  We need a threefold listening process.  We must learn to listen to our heart and to our deepest inner selves.  This is at odds with placing our faith in leaders who, more often than not, wish to remain wedded to old notions of hierarchy and control.  Second, we must learn to listen to one another.  That is not as simple as listening to our spouse, parents or children.  It is learning to listen to the “stranger” - those who are different.  Plus, it is time that those of us in the older generations listened to the young, those like Xiuhtezcatl Martinez.  It is their future that we condemn by not doing so.

This listening challenges much of our current ways of thinking and behaving.  That is why it is a revolution – the Fourth Revolution.

1. Paul von Ward, Worldviews and Evolution of Human Consciousness, in Spanda Journal, July/December 2014, pp 65-73

Community Development Jigsaw

It can be a frustrating task when it comes to defining or trying to explain what community development is.  There is a very good reason for that frustration.  Community development does not fit within nice, logical, rational boxes that can be defined.  Community development can be applied within most human endeavours: social, artistic, economic, spiritual, cultural, environmental, sporting….  “But, what is it’s purpose?” can often be heard by those operating within a managerial or bureaucratic paradigm.  “Well… it doesn’t really have one,” can seem a very unhelpful, even lame, answer.

But the truth is: community development doesn’t have a purpose in the sense that it doesn’t set out a grand design or political objective.  There is no Grand Narrative that is the Community Development Project.  It is not capitalist, it is not communist.  It is not Democrat, it is not Republican.  It cannot even claim to be Green.  It does have goals though, albeit fairly global ones like justice for all, equity, sustainability etc etc.

What community development is, though, is a journey.  It is a mutual journey of discovery and shared experience.  Community development workers may have a map, but the exact choice of route between one point and the next is discovered by setting out on the journey rather than sitting with the map and plotting a course from “here” to “there.”  Furthermore, as communities work and journey together they may discover that the map needs updating.

So, what is the purpose of community development?  Many years ago, a fellow community development worker and I grappled with a way of explaining this rather ephemeral concept to those who may be just beginning the journey or those who had a more managerial approach to “community.”  We came up with the idea of a jigsaw.  Each piece in the jigsaw represented a vision, value, method or role that community development embodied.

© Bruce Meder, Jane Parret 2007

The jigsaw became a very useful metaphor.  The pieces - although in one sense unique, identifiable elements - had to fit with other elements to allow the jigsaw to be pieced together.  There is no box-top picture to guide us in putting the jigsaw together.  The picture becomes apparent as you put the pieces together.  This symbolises community development’s emphasis on process rather than outcome.

Community development is an evolving process, emerging from, and reacting to, the changing social conditions of the times.  Hence, it is unbounded, symbolised by there being no straight edges to this jigsaw.  The edges allow for extra pieces to be added.  Consequently, you will also notice that there is no piece in this jigsaw that is labelled “outcome focused.”

Before it looks as if I am suggesting that community development is the panacea to all the social ills and a vehicle for bringing every potential to its fullest, let me say that it is not.  The community development jigsaw is only part of the bigger puzzle.  But, it is an important one, because it recognises the importance of relationships and  that people are people first.  People are not consumers, they are not assets, they are not objects.  People are also not individuals, people become who they are because of the families, neighbourhoods, communities, cultures that they live in.  The analogy of the jigsaw recognises these links and relationships.

Of course, like any good jigsaw, the community development jigsaw can be pulled apart and reassembled.  What is unique about the community development jigsaw though is that the pieces can be put back together in a different configuration, yet still fitting together to show a community picture when done so.

Right, back to putting the pieces together…

Note: The piece labelled "Treaty of Waitangi"refers to the 1840 document signed between the indigenous peoples of New Zealand - the Maori, and the British crown.

It Doesn’t Happen In Isolation

One of the basic understandings that community development workers have is that things are
connected.  With this understanding it is possible to see beyond the anti-social actions of individuals.  It becomes possible to see the contributing factors that lie in the culture and environment of that individual.

An understanding of systems also assists in recognising the factors that contribute to an individual’s actions.  We all live inside systems.  Our own body-mind-psyche is a system.  The culture we live in is a system.

Systems theorists describe three things that combine to produce a system: elements, interconnections and function or purpose.¹  The interconnections (relationships) between elements are easily identified when they are tangible, e.g. the relationships of father, mother, son, daughter, aunt, uncle etc. in a familial system.

The relationships that are harder to identify are those of information flows.  These are the signals that get sent between elements that then result in a decision or action by another element in the system.  An example may help explain this more simply.

When I am hungry I get a signal from my stomach that tells my brain that it is time to get something to eat.  Meanwhile, I know that I am on a limited budget this week, and I don’t get paid until next week.  I also know that I have some food stored in the pantry at home.  All this information combines to enable me to decide what action to take.  Much of those information flows happen unconsciously.  Someone witnessing my food choice will almost certainly have found it difficult to recognise all those information flows.  Yet, the flows exist.

So it is within a cultural system.

That is why, as community development workers or social justice advocates, we must beware of focusing only on blaming individuals for their actions.  We cannot neglect the contributing factors that inform individuals.

We must look at our culture and society as a whole and ask: what information is our culture sending that may contribute to individuals acting in anti-social ways?  Two examples help explain this.  One is specific from June 2015.  The other is an ongoing, general problem.

Two Examples

On 17 June 2015 Dylan Roof entered Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina along with the largely black congregation.  He sat there for an hour listening to the sermon, the prayers and the bible readings.  Then he took out a gun, chanted some racist, hateful, rhetoric and shot and killed nine people.  A crime, certainly, and Dylan Roof must be called to account and pay for that crime.

But, what information did Roof’s culture send to him that contributed to his crime?  Roof had posted photographs on the internet of himself holding the Confederate flag; a symbol of white supremacism during the American Civil War.  The Confederate flag is a symbol of slavery and white domination over black people.

Although the Civil War ended 150 years ago and slavery abolished, the Confederate flag still flies at South Carolina’s State Congress. (Note that since this blog was written the politicians have voted to remove the flag - ed) Is this one of the many messages that Roof’s culture sent him?  The message of white supremacism.  It appears so.

The second example is that of domestic and family violence.  In just about every culture in the world domestic violence is an ongoing issue.²  Wives, children, ex-partners are beaten and killed every day.  Again, the perpetrators of these crimes must be brought to justice.  In many countries of the world there are now programmes available to try to help perpetrators reform.

We still must ask: what are the information flows that exist in our cultures that contribute to domestic and family violence?

One such flow is the information that is contained within sexist comments and jokes.  All too often those telling sexist jokes claim that it is “only a joke.”  But, as with all words, sentences, phrases and speeches, jokes contain information.  And, the information contained in sexist jokes is that women are inferior to men, that women do not have the same rights as men, that men can control women.

Until we begin to understand the interconnections and flows of information within cultural systems we will continue to see examples of hate-filled racist attacks and domestic violence within our cultures.  We will continue to see many other anti-social activities.  We have to start thinking systematically if we are going to solve these individual actions.  They don’t happen in isolation.

1. Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems, Chelsea Green,Vermont, 2008
2. In the OECD the lifetime prevalence of a violence against women by an intimate partner range from 10% to 40% (www.oecd.org/social/family/database)

Who Am I?

“Know thyself” is a well known ancient Delphic maxim.¹  Attributed to a number of Greek philosophers, including Socrates, the saying is an exhortation to be wary of the answers given by others and to always test them against ones own wisdom.  The Delphi oracle could be ambiguous, even perplexing at times.  To be able to untangle the ambiguity, the maxim suggested that one should know oneself.

But, who is that self?  Do we base that sense of self entirely on our own existential experience and knowledge?  Or do we understand ourselves in relation to others?  The answer could be important for our collective future as human beings.

Centuries after the Delphi oracle, Rene Descartes, in the 17th century, gave us the famous phrase je pense, donc je suis – I think, therefore I am.  This phrase has often been quoted and alluded to almost, ironically, without thinking.  The phrase supposedly proves our existence as well as forming the foundation for all knowledge.  It also solidifies the idea of the self as the one and only reality.

Within a few years of that famous phrase being published Thomas Hobbes was proclaiming in The Leviathan (1651) that we only need know our self in order to know others:

“to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, etc., and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and passions of all other men upon the like occasions.”

Western thought and culture has taken that notion of the self and made it the cornerstone of who we are.  Building upon that philosophical idea we became enamoured with personal gratification, we glorified Ann Rand’s extreme form of capitalism and became an increasingly narcissistic culture. 

Since the middle of the 20th century the process of globalisation has spread this individualised sense of self to almost every corner of the world.  If we answer the question: who am I? with this narcissistic form of self, then we must ask the next question: is this sense of self the very thing that lies at the basis of many of our problems and concerns?  Does this self lead us into wars?  Does this self drive our consumerism?  Does this self perpetuate climate change?  Does this self exacerbate the extreme conditions of poverty and hunger in the world?  Does this self allow for 1% of the world’s population to garner almost half the world’s wealth?

I Am We

There are other notions of the self though.  The Zulu concept of ubuntu is especially vivid.  Desmond Tutu describes ubuntu as:

"the philosophy and belief that a person is only a person through other people.  In other words, we are human only in relation to other humans.  Our humanity is bound up in one another… This interconnectedness is the very root of who we are." ²

The concept is not confined to the Zulu, it occurs in many African cultures and is notably different to the western notion.  Ubuntu describes a notion of who I am as being so inter-twined with others and my environment that any idea of an independent self disappears.

A very similar concept is found within Asian thought and philosophy.  One such is the term interbeing – a term coined by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.  Thich Nhat Hanh describes the concept as being “the many in the one and the one containing the many.”  In a nod to Descartes, Thich Nhat Hanh expresses interbeing as:

“I am, therefore you are.  You are, therefore I am. We inter-are.”³

Both ubuntu and interbeing are quite different conceptions of who I am to that of the western notion.

Who Am I? Who I Am

Our sense of self is a construct, it could even be asserted that it is a self-proclaimed construct.  Alan Clements is very clear on this:

“The idea of self was just that, an idea that had no tangible existence, any more than there is an equator one can touch circumscribing the earth. Self, like the equator, exists only as an idea in consciousness and has no objective reality other than thought.”⁴

If our sense of self is only an idea and not anything tangible, then that means that we can change it.  I can change my thoughts, hence, I can change who I am.  If we did that, if we changed our concept of who we are, and how we come to know ourselves, then maybe we can also change the state of the world.

1. The maxim (γνῶθι σεαυτόν in the Greek) was inscribed above the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
2. Desmond and Mpho Tutu, The Book of Forgiving, p8.
3. Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace, p88
4. Alan Clements, Instinct For Freedom, p170