Survival
of the Kindest. . .on the road less traveled
14 December 2017
"Governments cannot do
the whole job themselves.
Increasingly change comes
from the bottom up and not from the top down.
Increasingly governments
find themselves paralyzed to do what they ought to do.
Our job is to design a
complimentary 'public peace process' as the
new normal conduct of
relations between peoples across boundaries."
~ Dr. Harold Saunders (paraphrased)
former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
"We won't get anywhere
if we don't help each other."
~ Dave Letterman
on receiving the
2017 Mark Twain Prize for Humor
"What if you and I
spent most of our time. . .to consider the needs of another.
Our choice makes all of the
difference."
~ Jessica McCune
from The Story of Peace
TEDxOcala -- https://youtu.be/ZH3hI8qJKSE
"Two roads diverged in
a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled
by,
And that has made all the
difference."
~ Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
Un-distinctive roads commonly chosen lead toward exclusion,
separation, punishment, selective empathy, self gain, and the illusion of
individual survival.
In brave contrast, Ms. Huda Abuarquob, in
Hebron, calls for "a politics of acquaintance."
December, 2017, winner of the Vatican's first "Laudato
Si" Award for individual initiative, she is Palestinian co-director of the
Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) -- http://www.allmep.org
TODAY global citizens like Huda are increasingly taking the road
less traveled, most needed:
1. Helping Each Other with a Diffusion of Sympathy, Empathy, and
Compassion
2. Radical Kinship in Los Angeles
3. Radical Kinship Among Kentucky and Massachusetts Youth and Adults
4. Radical Kinship Heals, Diminishes Stereotypes Among Korean and
Japanese Young Adults
5. Enrichment Videos
= = 1 = =
SURVIVAL OF THE KINDEST:
Helping Each Other with a
Diffusion of Sympathy, Empathy, and Compassion
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) showed how
life and we evolved until now.
Less known -- perhaps more important -- was Darwin's prescription for
continued survival together.
Darwin's requirement was kindness, and a diffusion of empathy around Earth.
Expanding affections beyond clan and ethnicity, to include one's entire
nation -- all nations and peoples of our human family, Planet Earth -- would
become our calling and imperative.
May, 1839, Darwin published that people of the successful, ongoing tribes -- the
fittest -- were always ready to give aid to each other and to sacrifice
themselves for the common good."
For us today, the scientist's imperative for continued evolution is for us
to become fully human by diffusing sympathy and compassion around our global
community -- the new, inclusive tribe of Earth, our one home.
With this widening survival of the kindest, Darwin said: The social and
moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the
world."
= = 2 = =
SURVIVAL OF THE KINDEST:
Radical Kinship in Los Angeles
Father Gregory Boyle in Los Angeles,
California USA warns that despair is lethal and drives good people to become
our lesser selves.
The preventive and cure is a Culture of Kinship, he prescribes.
All that we struggle for -- peace, justice, equality -- are really
byproducts of our kinship.
So, no kinship, no peace; no kinship, no equality; no kinship, no justice
-- no matter how singularly we might focus on those worthy goals -- unless we
stand against forgetting that we belong to each other, that there is no
"us" and "them."
The world is invited to become a community where everybody belongs. . .
imagine a circle of compassion. . .imagine that nobody is standing outside that
circle.
We are all called to dismantle the barriers that exclude.
Part of it is coming to terms with your own broken-ness
and wounds.
If we're strangers to our own wounds, then we're going to be tempted to
despise the wounded.
This accounts for what is happening in the country -- such a moral distance
between "us" and "them" and wholesale despising of broken
people.
And people want to be connected to each other, no matter what.
Really, we already are.
Radical Kinship: Preventing the lethal absence of
hope
Father Gregory Boyle interview by Sarah
Silverman
7-min video -- 09 November 2017
= = 3 = =
SURVIVAL OF THE KINDEST:
Radical Kinship Among Kentucky
and Massachusetts Youth and Adults
In a divided America, fifteen eager Eastern Kentucky coal
mining, Trump voting residents piled into a rented van out of Letcher County,
KY, and drove 15 hours north to live with host families in more-liberal New
England.
"Hands Across the Hills" was an invitation to begin
conversations and relationships for three days in homes and public meeting
places in Leverett, Massachusetts.
At the midpoint of the weekend, about 300 people crammed into the Leverett elementary school auditorium for a public forum.
The opening sing-along featured lyrics written expressly for the exchange:
"Before we met you, we pictured your faces, we studied your names, planned
where you'd stay.... and we're taking a chance, to join and sit down
together...."
LISTEN to the song, Hands Across the
Hills at http://sarahpirtle.com/hope-sings/hands-across-the-hills.htm
Next Spring the New Englanders will return the visit to Kentucky, hoping to
create a national model.
For more information, contact Paula Green, Paula@karunacenter.org, of
the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding
-- http://www.karunacenter.org
Kentucky Group Gives Western Mass. A Lesson On
Coal Country
6-1/2 min audio -- 01 November 2017
http://nepr.net/post/kentucky-group-gives-western-mass-lesson-coal-country#stream/0
Conservative Kentuckians, Leverett counterparts reach across the political gap
Greenfield Reporter -- 28 October 2017
Time is now for Americans in dialogue
Daily Hampshire Gazette -- 17 October
2017
= = 4 = =
SURVIVAL OF THE KINDEST:
Radical Kinship Heals, Diminishes Stereotypes
Among Korean and Japanese Young Adults
August 7-12, 2017, Koreans and Japanese
with inherited narratives, and ignorance of one another and wounds from a
history of colonial rule, met and became closer in Okazaki, Japan.
The pioneering activity was created by the Universal Reinforcement and
Innovation of Youth Association (URIYA) -- http://uriya.org -- based in Seoul, Korea.
URIYA creates forums where young women and men can
engage and interact in creative activities that heal relationships and create a
new reality of connection across Asia.
They intend to strengthen the capacity of the individual citizens to
give birth to a world community of all humankind.
Primary mentors and planners were Sungho Kang
(Korea - GCSKang@gmail.com) and Ms. Naoko Jin (Japan - Naoko@bridgeforpeace.jp)
founder of Building Bridges for Peace -- http://bridgeforpeace.jp/aboutus/english/
SEE the student-created video:
Korean Youth Travel to Japan to Engage, Heal,
Become Closer
Okazaki, Japan -- Summer 2017
6-min video
= = 5 = =
SURVIVAL OF THE KINDEST:
Enrichment Videos
Hand in Hand:
Building a Shared Society for Jews & Arabs
3-1/2 min video
A Compassionate World Begins with You
1-min video
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This message is on the Web at https://traubman.igc.org/messages/709.htm
Hundreds of other success stories are preserved at https://traubman.igc.org/messages.htm