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| A Larger View |
How Current Events and Problems wrest
The Spiritual Movement of Humanity
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| Volume X Edition 2 |
March/April |
2005 |
In this issue:
The Middle East: Applying Compassion, Fighting World Poverty: More Than Fashionable, Etching The Future: Young Americans And Their Counterparts, Martha Redux, Plus Web Site of Interest and To Ponder On.
The Middle East: Applying Compassion
Compassion is popular, whether it comes from Buddhism's growing influence on one side to the oft-mentioned "compassionate conservatism" on the other. But how to make the concept more than lip service is, for most, far from clear. While many desire to use compassion, they remain at least somewhat baffled by how to apply it. David Grossman, an Israeli novelist and author of "Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo" (published in 2003 by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) has a proposal that does just that. What would happen, he asks, if both Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel were to respectively acknowledge the suffering of the other side? Each side feels victimized by the other, and those willing to open their minds and hearts to include the suffering of those they consider perpetrators have been few.
The majority of Palestinians have been living on $1.50 a day. Jobs are almost non-existent, homes (until mid February) were being demolished, opportunities for a better future are too dim to be thought about, 69% of pregnant women were found anemic, daily life and the searches and long waits and possible humiliations at the many checkpoints are harder and harder to bear. For the Israeli the suffering takes a different form. Israelis are feeling the pinch of the economic implications of a 4-year long Intifada, but more than that they endure the fear of suicide bombers, of not knowing if they take a bus, go to a café or just stop at a public place whether they will survive the experience. Add to that similar fears for loved ones or the emotional turmoil of simply noticing someone is late, and daily life too is altered in difficult and taxing ways. Living without a sense of security and with the need of suspicion it engenders is detrimental and corrosive.
What would happen Grossman further asks, if each side were to accept partial responsibility for the suffering of the other? Whether such thoughts, and such acceptance are ever articulated, it seems that without them, the efforts towards peace have little chance of succeeding. What created the hope at the Sharm-el-Sheik's summit was that both Sharon and Abbas were recognizing each other as people. If that recognition can extend to the people each represents, they will no doubt find the inspiration to work through the political obstacles to peace that respectively face them.
Such exercise of compassion, whether it ever includes clear statements will go a long way to create the needed atmosphere, to reach out to supporters and dissenters alike. Grossman suggests the use of " I am sorry". But in the end it may not be the words that build the needed trust, but the policies that would flow from the recognition of suffering, from compassion on both sides, from allowing the meaning of compassion to transcend the sense of victimization.
Fighting World Poverty: More Than Fashionable
Fighting world poverty is In. It's been on the agenda of several important international groups. The need to address it may not be entirely altruistic, but is nevertheless there. The late-in-coming burgeoning realization that poverty breeds terrorism and creates an environment rife for new recruits energizes the motivation. It has in the recent past been the concern of several high level organizations. The effort, in part a reaction to the World Bank's president, James Wolfenshon, initial recognition of the problem, includes the United Nations and several of its agencies, the World Economic forum yearly Davos meeting in January, and the G-7 meeting in London a few weeks ago. Ever since the world summit in 2000 when the UN adopted what is referred to as the Millenium Development Goals, the idea to halve world poverty by 2015 has been gaining popularity. 9/11 made the need that much more relevant.
A few weeks ago, a report issued by economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and head of the UN's Millenium Project assures everyone concerned that ending extreme poverty-those who live on a dollar a day or less-is realistic. Critics however point to the amount of investment necessary and to the need for restructuring a number of governments as well as their ability to use aid efficiently.
Shortly after Mr. Sachs' report, at the G-7 meeting (comprising the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy), Gordon Brown, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposed debt relief for the poorest countries. Were this to be followed through, the implementation would raise problems of fairness, policy, future funding.
What is important and what cannot be overlooked is that the issue of ending world poverty is finally a reality, finally seen as a problem which has answers, finally understood as one which involves the industrialized world, as one which it needs to address. The chief obstacle as to whether these goals are met is not in working out the kinks of both the objections and the implementation, it is in sustaining the commitment to see these aims to fruition. If our present interest is going to be more than fashionable then the momentum must continue to build. Given the scope of the problem, it is bound to be a long way to resolution and to seeing concrete results. It ought to behoove each one of us to fulfill our part in ensuring that momentum grows into full realization.
Etching The Future: Young Americans and Their Counterparts
About a third of American high school students believe that the First Amendment of the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and the right to petition the government is too liberal. The Knight Foundation commissioned the million-dollar study from researchers at the University of Connecticut. The 2-year project surveying 100,000 students and 8000 educators across the country found that when the First Amendment is read to them many thought it went "too far." While students who studied journalism were slightly better informed, only a fourth of U.S. high schools have media programs. "High School attitudes about the First Amendment are important because each generation of citizens helps define what freedom means in our society," the report said. The Knight report is not the only survey documenting the ignorance of young Americans. Other surveys have similar findings.
Meanwhile, young students in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and a host of other countries, are learning about freedom, elections, the sacrifices required of democracy and mixing their new knowledge with their beliefs that America is an aggressor and distrusting, if not disliking, its role as the world's superpower. The contrast continues when one realizes that U.S. students are not deepening their understanding of a number of subjects including ethics or literature. Reading scores are not what they should be, neither are those of math and science. And many entering college students have difficulties with writing essays. Not only is the quality of education in jeopardy, so is the affordability of college tuition.
It's more than what's ailing education, it's the context in which that education takes place. In China the rate of economic growth has been double that of the U.S. and is slated to continue outpacing the U.S. not only there but also in India, the largest democracy in the world. Meanwhile, in the U.S., budget and trade deficits mount and plans for their containment are far off. If as a spiritual value, freedom is more than a word, or even concept, if it does entail a whole array of activities to sustain and preserve it, one can't help but wonder, what does it all bode for the future of the US?
Martha Redux
Martha's back. She'll be serving the second part of her sentence under house arrest in her home in Westport, Conn. And it looks like she'll be very busy. She has a multi-million dollar book deal and a commitment for two TV shows. One will be her own version of the Apprentice, the other an hour long daily variety show expanding as well as modifying her previous series. It's all good for her. One could say after loosing half her fortune during the trial, she needs the opportunity to make it back. It may be good for her fans, those who avidly followed her recipes, read her magazines and watched her on TV. But is it good for us, not us as in the rest of us, but us as in all of us, the us that together make up what we call society? How is it all going to help us move forward in some way?
Martha's enterprises create jobs, true, they circulate money through the economy, both necessary. But does that mean we shall be better off even in some small way, not in material terms but in terms of the quality of our lives? Here is someone whose ambition and possibly greed led her to lie about stock transactions (and the fact her punishment did not fit her crime does not alter the spiritual issues involved here), someone who had opportunities to help the underprivileged but who only thought of it as a proposed alternative to prison. Her shows will-one can safely predict-be commercial and created to attract those viewers marketers and ad people are there to lure. But of course too much of a good thing can soon cease to be good, and at some point the public will tire of Martha. In the final analysis we can't get around it, we, the we that makes up the us of society, have a hand in it all, we are ultimately responsible for whether Martha-and of course a lot of others-succeed or fail.
There does not appear to be anything lofty about her future plans. She will probably espouse the cause of women in prison, or the fare they are served, leaving many of us to wonder whether her words are heartfelt or prompted by PR concerns. On can assume her prison experience changed her for the better, but her plans (at least thus far) do not reveal in what way that change may be translated into her work. If her work continues as advertised, it is doubtful it will make us into better persons, more comfortable, yes, but not better, or make the society more humane or just or socially conscious. And if that's so, then it looks like we can't escape our share of blame or credit-depending on our given point of view.
Web Site of Interest: Learning About Our Freedom - www.firstamendmentcenter.org
The First Amendment is 45 words and guarantees what we usually think of as basic freedoms: of speech, press, religion, assembly and of petition against the government should we have grievances. This web site created by Vanderbilt University offers more than most may need to know about the First Amendment. It also has information about how to make a Freedom of Information Act request, a request based in the First Amendment. It gives information about cases the Supreme Court is currently reviewing which involve some aspect of the first amendment. The information is objective and written for laymen. It's not only an easy reference for the controversy and issues of this amendment, it contains what an American Citizen needs to know.
To Ponder On - A Thought Without The Benefit of Its Author
""...from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Pondering the phrase on its own merits without benefit of knowing its author would more than likely cause us to attribute it to Jesus or Gandhi, or anyone who believed in equality, fairness and equal opportunity.
In fact it is from Karl Marx's, explaining the rationale behind the economic changes he was proposing, changes which later became communism.
If you didn't recognize the author, you're not alone. Two-thirds of Americans recently surveyed thought it was part of some of the documents founding the United States.
A Larger View is published by the Inner\Outer Partnership, a tax-exempt educational organization probing how spiritual principles can be agents of individual and societal change. We are funded through donations. Please send any - as well as any comments - to P.O.Box 1293, Pac. Pal. CA 90272-1293. Also contact us by email at alargerview@earthlink.net or call 310-836-7710 or visit our web site at www.innerouterpartnership.org
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