I am continually astounded and dismayed by the persistence of murderous violence in the world. Humanity seems to be trapped in a deepening spiral of hatred, vengeance, and militarism that will ultimately lead to the horrible destruction of life on this planet. For centuries, our greatest teachers, from Jesus to Gandhi, from St. Francis to the Dalai Lama, from the Buddha to Martin Luther King, Jr., have insisted that peace, not violence, is the path to genuine salvation. They have told us that the “Kingdom of Heaven,” whatever culturally and historically conditioned images are used to depict it, is reached through reconciliation and love, not domination and conquest. Yet millions upon millions of souls, from oppressed inmates of refugee camps to Ivy-league educated power brokers in our capital, resort to killing and desecration and terror to achieve their purposes. As I read each morning’s disheartening headlines, I sadly ask over and over again, why?
Holistic thinkers also examine the spiritual dimension of human experience, and this understanding is essential to restraining the spiral of violence. On a personal level, spiritual practice enables us to break free of our conditioning—biological, psychological, cultural, and ideological. It does not much matter what form this practice takes, or, again, what historically colored images are used to describe it. Prayer, meditation, ritual, selfless service, fasting, retreat, physical disciplines—all such practices serve to disidentify the person from conditioned, habitual ways of being. They nourish a center of personality, a “Self,” in Jung’s terms, that lies outside, or beyond, or “higher” than the largely unconscious personality that is driven by fears, desires, insecurities, appetites, and fantasies. This realm that lies beyond our limited ego is regarded as sacred; it is, presumably, unpolluted by ideology or our petty desires. Obviously, religious beliefs and practices have often, and very tragically, used the human longing for the sacred to sanction hatred and unspeakable violence, so it becomes vitally necessary to distinguish genuine transcendence or disidentification from spiritual fanaticism. The greatest teachers in all traditions have declared that genuine spirituality results in loving nonviolence, so any ideology that leads to division, hate, and killing, no matter what spiritual language it uses to justify its claims, is still just ideology. It is psychological distortion mixed with cultural prejudice, projected onto the transcendent realm and blinding us to its true radiance. On a transpersonal level, a spiritual understanding of the Cosmos recognizes that there are vast evolutionary forces at work, far beyond our immediate experience or understanding. Secular modern culture has no place in its worldview for these mysterious formative energies, regarding any spiritual cosmology as superstition. Yet mystics (Rudolf Steiner being a notable modern example) maintain that these energies are real, and in fact shape the course of human destiny. Cultural and intellectual historians refer sometimes to the zeitgeist of a certain age, meaning the “spirit of the times” in a metaphorical sense, yet Steiner, for one, holds that there literally is a spiritual intelligence or being with a particular temperament or tendencies, that rules each period of history.
He further holds that there are dark forces counterbalancing those of goodness and light, situating the human journey, not on the sunny highway of progress and enlightenment that modern technocrats portray, but on a treacherous path requiring spiritual vigilance and conscious moral choice at every step. Many indigenous cultures, from ancient India to the native peoples of North America, similarly believed that human beings must contend with cosmic forces and deliberately work to strengthen the good and overcome the very real power of evil. At the very least, even if it is not absolutely, literally accurate, this cosmology challenges the hubris of any ideology or technology with a sense of humility in the face of mystery, and in the face of the Shadow which (again, in Jung’s model) lurks behind every self-assured conscious action. Perhaps one reason for the popularity of the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings mythologies is their recognition of a spiritual negative side that requires resolute moral courage, not simply physical power or some clever gadget or weapon, to overcome, because the negative impulses, the Shadow, live within each one of us.
Modernity has banished the negative side to its collective Shadow. “We” (the capitalist West) are good, democratic, and right, while the Other is evil, autocratic, and wrong. It is not hard to find profoundly violent men, such as Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, and Osama bin Laden, to become receptacles for all our projections; we dismiss all negative impulses in ourselves and attribute all evil to our enemies. But spiritual humility, on both a personal and collective level, would compel us to face the negative—the violence, greed, prejudice, and lust for power—that reside in the shadows of our own individual and national souls.
Violence, then, is comprised of layer upon layer of pain, ignorance, self-assurance, and callousness. To overcome violence in the world will require many corresponding layers of understanding and effort. More caring, nourishing ways of education and childrearing are essential elements, but they are not sufficient. Political activism is also essential, but also not enough. Spiritual practice of some sort is crucial— but as I have written before in criticism of “new age” or “new paradigm” holistic thought (Miller, 2000), spirituality detached from cultural analysis and political engagement is not going to effect substantial change. A holistic approach to peace, and to peace education more specifically, must be fluid and multidimensional. Its aim is not “peace” as an abstraction, but a culture of peace, which means a “web of meanings” that honors compassion, collaboration, negotiation, and service and dishonors conquest and violence. If most present cultures make violence, hatred, and oppression seem manly, exciting, and effective, a culture of peace would treat them as stupid and self-defeating. (I want to add “as in reality they are,” but then this places me outside culture entirely,as some sort of omniscient authority. We must promote peace itself with humility, or we defeat our own purposes.)
Riane Eisler has inspired many readers with her interpretation of cultural patterns as being oriented toward either “dominator” or “partnership” values (Eisler 1987; 2000). The power of her analysis lies in her recognition that a culture is an interconnected set of assumptions, beliefs, and practices, each of which reinforces the others. A society oriented toward “dominator” values, then, will exhibit violence in childrearing (corporal punishment) as well as criminal justice (capital punishment).
It will promote intense competition in sports and economics, which will carry over into education. Military leaders, more than peacemakers, will be considered heroes, and military technology will receive a large share of a dominator society’s attention and resources. There will be more crime, as well as demeaning attitudes towards women and minorities. Intellectually, such a culture will tend to favor explanations of human nature that emphasize aggression and biological determinism. These are not isolated “problems” that can be solved one by one, but inherent, interconnected elements of a cultural pattern that needs to be addressed on many levels.
To introduce a culture of peace, a culture oriented toward partnership values of caring, social equality, nonviolence, and cooperation, we will need to rethink common assumptions about education, not only the content of the curriculum, but the way in which it is “delivered” (indeed, whether “delivery” is the proper methodology at all), the design of the physical and social environment, the rules of communication and lines of authority within schools, and everyone’s expectations concerning the “outcomes” of the learning process. We will need to decide that education should no longer be a primary agent of cultural conditioning, but a liberating process through which conditioning as such—the inculcation of unconscious habits of perception, thought and action—is challenged by the cultivation of critical inquiry and spiritual awareness.
To educate at all is to introduce values into the lives of young people. This cannot be avoided. Whether we design a particular curriculum or try to refrain from direct teaching of any curriculum, our actions represent some set of values. Whether we arrange classrooms like miniature assembly lines or open them up as laboratories for free exploration, we are teaching which human possibilities we value and which we do not.
If we educate holistically, with a sense of wonder and respect for the complex mystery of life, then our commitment to peace education should not harden into an ideology, into a subtle form of conditioning itself, but the fact remains that to educate for peace is to take a moral stand in opposition to many of the primary values guiding modern schooling. As Michael Lerner reminds us,
The alleged neutrality of contemporary education is a sham that covers up the systematic indoctrination of students into the dominant religion of the contemporary world: the slavish subordination of everyone to the idols of the marketplace and its “common sense” that all people should seek to maximize their own advantage without regard to the consequences for others, that all that is real is what can be validated through sense observation, that it’s only human nature for people to compete with each other and seek “individual excellence”…. (2000, 235)
Throughout his writings, and in his visionary magazine TIKKUN, Lerner explains how this
ฉันอย่างต่อเนื่องข้างประหลาดใจ และ dismayed โดยการคงอยู่ของความรุนแรง murderous ในโลก มนุษย์ดูเหมือนจะติดในเกลียวลึกของความเกลียดชัง ล้างแค้น และทหารที่จะสุดการทำลายที่น่ากลัวของชีวิตบนโลกนี้ สำหรับศตวรรษ ครูของเรามากที่สุด จากพระเยซูให้คานธี จาก St. Francis กับ Dalai Lama จากพระกับมาร์ตินลูเธอร์คิง จูเนียร์ ได้ยืนยันว่า ความสงบสุข ไม่รุนแรง เส้นทางแห่งความรอดที่แท้จริง พวกเขาบอกกับเราว่า "อาณาจักรสวรรค์ รูปเครื่องปรับอากาศวัฒนธรรม และประวัติสิ่งใช้ในการพรรณนานั้น ถึงผ่านการกระทบยอด และความรัก ไม่ปกครอง และชนะ ยัง ล้านเมื่อล้าน ๆ ชีวิต ผู้ต้องขังที่อ่อนแอของค่ายผู้ลี้ภัยกับโบรกเกอร์พลังงานไอวี่ลีศึกษาในเมืองหลวงของเรา จากรีสอร์ทผิดศีลการฆ่า และความหวาดกลัวเพื่อให้บรรลุวัตถุประสงค์ของพวกเขา เมื่อผมอ่านทุกเช้าพาดหัวท้อ ฉันเศร้าขอเล่า ทำไมHolistic thinkers also examine the spiritual dimension of human experience, and this understanding is essential to restraining the spiral of violence. On a personal level, spiritual practice enables us to break free of our conditioning—biological, psychological, cultural, and ideological. It does not much matter what form this practice takes, or, again, what historically colored images are used to describe it. Prayer, meditation, ritual, selfless service, fasting, retreat, physical disciplines—all such practices serve to disidentify the person from conditioned, habitual ways of being. They nourish a center of personality, a “Self,” in Jung’s terms, that lies outside, or beyond, or “higher” than the largely unconscious personality that is driven by fears, desires, insecurities, appetites, and fantasies. This realm that lies beyond our limited ego is regarded as sacred; it is, presumably, unpolluted by ideology or our petty desires. Obviously, religious beliefs and practices have often, and very tragically, used the human longing for the sacred to sanction hatred and unspeakable violence, so it becomes vitally necessary to distinguish genuine transcendence or disidentification from spiritual fanaticism. The greatest teachers in all traditions have declared that genuine spirituality results in loving nonviolence, so any ideology that leads to division, hate, and killing, no matter what spiritual language it uses to justify its claims, is still just ideology. It is psychological distortion mixed with cultural prejudice, projected onto the transcendent realm and blinding us to its true radiance. On a transpersonal level, a spiritual understanding of the Cosmos recognizes that there are vast evolutionary forces at work, far beyond our immediate experience or understanding. Secular modern culture has no place in its worldview for these mysterious formative energies, regarding any spiritual cosmology as superstition. Yet mystics (Rudolf Steiner being a notable modern example) maintain that these energies are real, and in fact shape the course of human destiny. Cultural and intellectual historians refer sometimes to the zeitgeist of a certain age, meaning the “spirit of the times” in a metaphorical sense, yet Steiner, for one, holds that there literally is a spiritual intelligence or being with a particular temperament or tendencies, that rules each period of history.เขาเพิ่มเติมถือว่า มีกองกำลังเข้ม counterbalancing ของความดีและแสง situating เดินทางมนุษย์ ไม่ บนทางหลวงซันนี่ความคืบหน้าและตรัสรู้ที่วาดภาพสมัย technocrats แต่ บนเส้นทางทุจริตต้องระมัดระวังวิญญาณและทางเลือกคุณธรรมที่ใส่ใจในทุกขั้นตอน หลายวัฒนธรรมพื้นเมือง จากอินเดียโบราณกับชนพื้นเมืองของทวีปอเมริกาเหนือ ทำนองเดียวกันเชื่อว่า มนุษย์ต้องขับเคี่ยวกับกองกำลังของจักรวาล และตั้งใจทำงานเพื่อเสริมสร้างดี และเอาชนะอำนาจของความชั่วร้ายจริง น้อยมาก แม้ว่ามันไม่แน่นอน ถูกต้องอย่างแท้จริง จักรวาลนี้ท้าทายโอหังอุดมการณ์หรือเทคโนโลยีกับความรู้สึกของบท หน้าลึกลับ และ หน้าเงาซึ่ง (อีก ในรูปแบบของ Jung) lurks หลังทุก ๆ สติมั่นใจตนเอง ทีหนึ่งเหตุผลสำหรับความนิยมของสตาร์วอร์สและศึก mythologies แหวนเป็นการรับรู้ด้านลบทางจิตวิญญาณที่ต้องมีคุณธรรมกล้าหาญเด็ด พลังงานไม่เพียงแค่ทางกายภาพ หรือบางโปรแกรมเบ็ดเตล็ดฉลาด หรือ อาวุธ เอาชนะ เนื่องจากแรงกระตุ้นลบ เงา อยู่ภายในแต่ละคนของเราModernity has banished the negative side to its collective Shadow. “We” (the capitalist West) are good, democratic, and right, while the Other is evil, autocratic, and wrong. It is not hard to find profoundly violent men, such as Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, and Osama bin Laden, to become receptacles for all our projections; we dismiss all negative impulses in ourselves and attribute all evil to our enemies. But spiritual humility, on both a personal and collective level, would compel us to face the negative—the violence, greed, prejudice, and lust for power—that reside in the shadows of our own individual and national souls.Violence, then, is comprised of layer upon layer of pain, ignorance, self-assurance, and callousness. To overcome violence in the world will require many corresponding layers of understanding and effort. More caring, nourishing ways of education and childrearing are essential elements, but they are not sufficient. Political activism is also essential, but also not enough. Spiritual practice of some sort is crucial— but as I have written before in criticism of “new age” or “new paradigm” holistic thought (Miller, 2000), spirituality detached from cultural analysis and political engagement is not going to effect substantial change. A holistic approach to peace, and to peace education more specifically, must be fluid and multidimensional. Its aim is not “peace” as an abstraction, but a culture of peace, which means a “web of meanings” that honors compassion, collaboration, negotiation, and service and dishonors conquest and violence. If most present cultures make violence, hatred, and oppression seem manly, exciting, and effective, a culture of peace would treat them as stupid and self-defeating. (I want to add “as in reality they are,” but then this places me outside culture entirely,as some sort of omniscient authority. We must promote peace itself with humility, or we defeat our own purposes.)Riane Eisler has inspired many readers with her interpretation of cultural patterns as being oriented toward either “dominator” or “partnership” values (Eisler 1987; 2000). The power of her analysis lies in her recognition that a culture is an interconnected set of assumptions, beliefs, and practices, each of which reinforces the others. A society oriented toward “dominator” values, then, will exhibit violence in childrearing (corporal punishment) as well as criminal justice (capital punishment).It will promote intense competition in sports and economics, which will carry over into education. Military leaders, more than peacemakers, will be considered heroes, and military technology will receive a large share of a dominator society’s attention and resources. There will be more crime, as well as demeaning attitudes towards women and minorities. Intellectually, such a culture will tend to favor explanations of human nature that emphasize aggression and biological determinism. These are not isolated “problems” that can be solved one by one, but inherent, interconnected elements of a cultural pattern that needs to be addressed on many levels.To introduce a culture of peace, a culture oriented toward partnership values of caring, social equality, nonviolence, and cooperation, we will need to rethink common assumptions about education, not only the content of the curriculum, but the way in which it is “delivered” (indeed, whether “delivery” is the proper methodology at all), the design of the physical and social environment, the rules of communication and lines of authority within schools, and everyone’s expectations concerning the “outcomes” of the learning process. We will need to decide that education should no longer be a primary agent of cultural conditioning, but a liberating process through which conditioning as such—the inculcation of unconscious habits of perception, thought and action—is challenged by the cultivation of critical inquiry and spiritual awareness.To educate at all is to introduce values into the lives of young people. This cannot be avoided. Whether we design a particular curriculum or try to refrain from direct teaching of any curriculum, our actions represent some set of values. Whether we arrange classrooms like miniature assembly lines or open them up as laboratories for free exploration, we are teaching which human possibilities we value and which we do not.If we educate holistically, with a sense of wonder and respect for the complex mystery of life, then our commitment to peace education should not harden into an ideology, into a subtle form of conditioning itself, but the fact remains that to educate for peace is to take a moral stand in opposition to many of the primary values guiding modern schooling. As Michael Lerner reminds us,
The alleged neutrality of contemporary education is a sham that covers up the systematic indoctrination of students into the dominant religion of the contemporary world: the slavish subordination of everyone to the idols of the marketplace and its “common sense” that all people should seek to maximize their own advantage without regard to the consequences for others, that all that is real is what can be validated through sense observation, that it’s only human nature for people to compete with each other and seek “individual excellence”…. (2000, 235)
Throughout his writings, and in his visionary magazine TIKKUN, Lerner explains how this
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