While listening to the 2016 United States Presidential Campaign media coverage I am reminded of a message I once heard from Western Buddhist teacher and author Jack Kornfield: there is a need for “moral leadership.”
“Moral leadership…” These two words reverberated deeply with me; probably because I was surprised by the language itself and the source of the language.
As a Social Worker, a Democrat and a Unitarian Universalist, I am undoubtedly left of liberal; which is why I found it so interesting that I still twitch every time words like “morality” are used in the context of governance.
As someone whose politics are acutely intertwined with moral and ethical belief systems, it makes absolute sense that I would hope and, might I be so bold to say, expect to have moral leadership.
The problem for me though is that the media has over-associated moral leadership with political and religious groups that do not reflect my own morals and ethics. And, my own political and religious groups have under-associated themselves with moral leadership- deciding instead to maintain a secular or neutral façade, to their own detriment I might add.
For this reason, in order to de-program my brain from the media’s sound bites that somehow infiltrate no matter how discerning I may be with my viewing and listening, I have found it is a must for me to intentionally expose myself to spaces of free exchanges of ideas, hope and activism that represent and cultivate my own values, namely: the worth and dignity of every human being.
Admittedly, at times it can feel like these spaces of ideas hope and activism can be a little like looking for a needle in haystack. For this reason, I must remain vigilant because despair can be a very convenient rabbit hole to slide down if I am not careful.
This creates a dilemma. And one which I know others may be concerned about as well.
In an interview with Maria Popova, the creator and writer of the website BrainPickings, she said,
I think a lot about this relationship between cynicism and hope. And critical thinking without hope is cynicism. But hope without critical thinking is naïveté. And I try to live in this place between the two to try to build a life there because finding fault and feeling hopeless about improving our situation produces resignation of which cynicism is a symptom and against which it is the sort of futile self-protection mechanism.
But on the other hand, believing blindly that everything will work out just fine also produces a kind of resignation because we have no motive to apply ourselves toward making things better. And I think in order to survive, both as individuals and as a civilization, but especially in order to thrive, we need to bridge critical thinking with hope.
I agree with Ms. Popova’s statement wholeheartedly. In fact, hope and critical thinking in combination with activism may be the very definition of moral leadership because it may create the perfect formula for Right or Wise Action.
As Dr. Jerome Groopman notes in his definition of hope from his book The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness:
Hope, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them.
He then acknowledges that hope is not a Pollyanna concept of unicorns and rainbows but is in fact a powerful tool for thoughtful forward movement. In this, he distinguishes between “true” hope from “false” hope.
False hope does not recognize the risks and dangers that true hope does. False hope can lead to intemperate choices and flawed decision making. True hope takes into account the real threats that exist and seeks to navigate the best path around them.
Dr. Groopman’s definition of hope is one of my personal favorites, and I hold it in my mind’s eye as I scan the horizon for examples of those spaces of free exchanges of ideas, hope and activism that can defuse the enticement of cynicism.
Sometimes I find examples of these spaces in the past.
Recently I encountered a mid to late 20th Century book series called: World Perspectives, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen.
Pragmatically, World Perspectives is a book series of 45 volumes, each by an intellectual and/or spiritual author as diverse as Margaret Mead to D.T. Suzuki and with titles like: The Revolution of Hope, Toward a Humanized Technology and World Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for All.
As someone who is too old to be called a Millennial (a proud Gen X’er actually!) and whose adolescence predated email and internet (or the “World Wide Web” as it was first introduced to me), I still find hardcover books familiar and resourceful.
But in this case, more than that, I find it to be a source of relief that there was a person out there (a woman no less!) who was born in the year 1900, and had the foresight to use her resources to create what she called an “intellectual and spiritual movement” in a series of books whose sole purpose was to relate
the accumulated wisdom of man’s spirit to the new reality of the World Age…In articulating its thought and belief, World Perspectives seeks to encourage a renaissance of hope in society and of pride in man’s decision as to what his destiny will be…[To] define that ecumenical power of the mind and heart which enables man through his mysterious greatness to re-create his life.
I love this line “a renaissance of hope in society.” Amen to that.
It seems Ms. Nanda was part of the cohort who believed that the 20th century marked a critical moment in evolutionary history of humankind. In her introduction to the World Perspectives series she says:
Man has entered a new era of evolutionary history, one in which rapid change is a dominant consequence. He is contending with a fundamental change, since he has intervened in the evolutionary process. He must now better appreciate this fact and then develop the wisdom to direct the process toward this fulfillment rather than toward his destruction.
Ms. Nanda appears to have had tremendous concern (or maybe she even shared my propensity for despair…) for the responsibility that 20th century human beings had inherited from their evolutionary predecessors.
Personally and historically it all makes sense.
Ms. Nanda was herself born to Jewish Russian immigrants, and then she lived through literally all of the 20th century world-wide civil wars, World Wars and genocides to the ripe old age of 103, giving her a “perspective” unlike I will ever know.
What is most interesting to me though, and most unexpected, is Ms. Nanda appears to maintain a sense of hopefulness and activism in the company of her concern.
In her Introduction to the series she says things like:
we may come to understand that there exists an inherent interdependence of spiritual and mental growth which, though conditioned by circumstances, is never determined by circumstances.
“Conditioned” but never “determined.” A bold statement that conveys both hope and activism to be sure.
It seems in creating the World Perspectives book series Ms. Nanda was creating a “space” for knowledge and intelligent dialogue that might shape the future of humankind and the planet in positive ways. Moreover, this woman born well over a hundred years ago does not shy away from using language akin to Jack Kornfield’s “moral leadership.”
In fact she declares the necessity for “values” within this dialogue.
Judgments of value must henceforth direct technological change, for without such values man is divested of his humanity and of his need to collaborate with the very fabric of the universe in order to bestow meaning, purpose, and dignity upon his existence.”
“Collaborate,” not dominate, with the very fabric of the universe. Enlightened and radical. (I hope they are having these conversations at NASA, the Pentagon, Exon Mobile, Google and Apple…)
In a nod to Earth Day on April 22nd this year, Ms. Nanda would still be considered progressive in 2016 in her very appreciation and respect for our organically interdependent earth and natural world.
We are all becoming seriously concerned with our natural environment…It is the result of a deepening awareness that something new has happened, that the planet Earth is a unique and precious place.”
Reading Ms. Nanda’s writing, and learning about her passionate reverence for bringing modern, progressive thinkers together, reminded me of an earlier moral leader who also used her resources for the cause of improving civilization and humankind: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.
Also born in eastern Massachusetts an entire century before Ms. Nanda, without the ability for such mass publication of books like World Perspectives, Elizabeth Peabody relied upon assets like her own bookshop to create space for “Conversations” that would gather women together to discuss diverse areas of interest and concern. She also acted as business manager for The Dial, a transcendental magazine of the times of which Ralph Waldo Emerson was a part, and worked to publish and sell modern and progressive nonfiction books and periodicals of the day in her bookshop.
Oh, and did I mention Ms. Peabody can be thanked for establishing Kindergarten in the United States- talk about spaces of ideas, hope and activism!
Flash forward to 2016.
I am still looking for those spaces of free exchanges of ideas hope and activism—particularly those organized by women, but not exclusively—and I see modern day versions for Ms. Nanda’s World Perspectives and Ms. Peabody’s Conversations in Krista Tippett’s NPR Radio Show On Being and in Maria Popova’s website BrainPickings. I also see it in the values and actions of the Unitarian Universalist Church. Internationally, I see it in organizations like The United Nations, and in grassroots I see it in the Democratic Republic of Congo at Eve Ensler’s City of Joy (a recovery center for survivors of rape).
It still doesn’t feel like enough though does it?
What other spaces might there be? Do you know of any?
