“Peace hath higher tests of man-
hood than battle ever knew.”
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
hood than battle ever knew.”
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
Few have the foresight to see more than a few weeks or months into the future. But glancing back over one's shoulder at the road already traveled, it becomes clear that there has in fact been a process, and patterns emerge that begin to make sense of all the hustle and bustle of daily life. This experience can be a bitter-sweet one, because alongside the delight at finding progress and achievements, there is the dismay at seeing so much time wasted and so many opportunities lost. The latter, however, I will spare my reader, for it is the former that give us vision and hope for the next stages of the journey.What follows, then, is a sort of narrative curriculum vitae that outlines what I feel has prepared me most for what I have come to discover as my overriding passion and central mission in life: to promote a new culture of peace and mutuality, and to refute the theories and beliefs that support the present mainstream culture of conflict and adversarialism. This overview is written in an attempt to explore for myself and suggest for others what the next steps in this process might be.
Back to the roots
My mother and father -he a teacher and she a social worker- set the stage for me in both word and deed. Their greatest sacrifice for peace must have been when my father freely chose a prison sentence over supporting the war effort, thus missing the birth of his first child. After studying Cooperativism under Morris Mitchell, they went on to co-found the pacifist Macedonia Cooperative Community.1 With time they discovered that community cannot be based solely on economic principles, but must have a spiritual grounding.2 The ensuing search lead them and many other Macedonians to join the Bruderhof, a Christian community based on the writings of Jacob Hutter (1500-1536) and the conviction that private property is anathema to living the Sermon on the Mount.3
That is how, in the late 50's, I came to be born in Loma Hoby, one of three Bruderhof communities nestled deep in the Paraguayan Chaco, where my parents had gone to serve.4 Back in the USA by the time I was three, we lived outside of the Bruderhof for several years due to both a leadership crisis and my father's inner struggles.5 Still, my five siblings and I were raised in the community spirit of pacifism, service to others, voluntary poverty, no television, movies or commercial radio, and lots and lots of singing, songs that alone conveyed an inner message of love and joy.
Formative years
Growing up in the 60's was a time of activism in the peace movement, including everything from participating in demonstrations against the war at a nearby Air Force base to exploring varied aspects of pacifism and peaceful lifestyles. Our daily bread was authors like King, Ghandi and Thoreau: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” It was during this period that my father's active support of the Civil Rights Movement almost got him killed. One of the most stimulating and inspiring influences of this time, however, came from my active participation in many of the extracurricular activities at the Wilmington Quaker Community College, right across the street from our home. By high school I was already writing for the school journal about my values and against what I perceived to be the ills of contemporary society.6
It was during my early adolescence that I began investigating the Bahá'í Faith, which was particularly attractive to me due to its teachings on universal peace, the oneness of humankind, the elimination of all forms of prejudice, the essential unity of all religions, and the independent search for truth.7 The latter two were entirely unacceptable to the Bruderhof, and this eventually lead to my abandoning that life at age 15 and beginning my active participation as a member of the Bahá'í World Community.
Pioneering to Ecuador
Not content with mere membership, as soon as I graduated from high school I volunteered as a Bahá'í 'pioneer' to Ecuador. There I spent one and a half years doing awareness-building and training, mostly among marginal urban and rural communities throughout the country, on such issues as universal basic education, gender equality, freedom from substance use, work in a spirit of service, collective decision-making, community building, alternative organizational approaches, and others. It was this experience that inspired me to seek a career in education, and over the following five years I continued with that work on a part-time basis while completing my undergraduate studies at the Catholic university, which culminated in my being certified as a high-school teacher and guidance counselor.
Master in Education
Feeling that my studies up to that point had been aimed at maintaining the status quo, which I believed education should help question and change, I returned to the USA for three years to complete a master's degree in education from the University of California at Davis. There I sought to study as broad a range of educational subjects as possible, and continued to speak and act on matters aimed to promote human understanding. My thesis was the result of an intense inquiry, far beyond my regular courses, into our nature as human beings and the consequential purpose of our education.8
Upon my return to Ecuador, I taught at the Education Department of the Catholic University, directed its Centro de Asesoramiento Psico-Pedagógico, and collaborated with the Salesian publishing company "Editorial Don Bosco" as a high school textbook writer and editor, where I concentrated on eliminating adversarial content and replacing it with mutualistic messages.9 I also helped establish a new private school, Santana, and as its first headmaster introduced several elements aimed to promote a culture of peace among students, teachers and parents, as I later continued to do as a teacher trainer and consultant for other schools.
Service on Bahá'í Institutions
On a volunteer basis, I founded the "Centro de Estudios Bahá'ís" for the purpose of documenting, studying and disseminating Bahá'í approaches to contemporary social issues such as human rights, equality of men and women, elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty, international peace, religious unity, etc. I also edited and wrote for the Study Center's annual publication "Reflexiones", spoke at public meetings on several of the topics that were researched, and organized national forums on subjects relating primarily to education and peace.
I have had the opportunity to serve as a member of several local, regional and national Bahá'í institutions over the years. One of the most challenging and rewarding was my appointment to the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Counselors, which primarily entailed training local agents of change and empowering them to arise in service to their communities. Finally, I was elected to my present post as a member of the Bahá'í National Assembly of Ecuador, which steers the development of local communities, directs the activities of regional institutions, and oversees the management of their various educational institutions and socioeconomic development projects throughout the country.
Social and Economic Development
It was during this period that my wife Monica and I had our two children, Ahmad Alejandro and Jesahel Layli. The economic instability of Ecuador, coupled with the financial pressures of raising a family, forced me to seek more lucrative pursuits, which is how I ended up working primarily as a translator/interpreter for the next twenty years. This change of occupation, however, had the unexpected effect of galvanizing my commitment to promoting a culture of peace, as it put me into direct contact with the fascinating - albeit controversial - world of social and economic development, identified by UNESCO as one of the crucial elements of a culture of peace.
Of particular importance in this process was my work with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and its sister UN agencies; international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, IADB, and their various projects; the Organization of American States (OAS) and several of its agencies and programs; the Ecuadorian presidency and different ministries of its cabinet; international development agencies such as World Vision, C.A.R.E., and Foster Parents Plan International; and a long list of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
In an attempt to get a better grip on the theory, practice and perspectives of development, especially its social aspects, I enrolled in the post-graduate "Programa Latinoamericano de Desarrollo Social (PRODES)", offered by the Núr University of Santa Cruz, Bolivia in a university center near Cali, Colombia.10 There I explored the relationships between development and education, health, gender, culture, science, religion, leadership, administration, economics, and environment.
I found that social and economic development was to the community what education was to the individual, provided that both were understood correctly, and that both were powerful instruments (for better or for worse) of sociocultural change. This program enabled me to offer development consultancy and training to organizations, and better serve the institutions of which I was a member.
Moral Leadership
This contact with the Núr University took me to Bolivia and Honduras to study its magnificent "Moral Leadership" program designed to train educators as effective change agents in the communities where they work. Its twelve modules challenge inherited mental models and build new conceptual frameworks of moral leadership, a learning approach to development, community participation, training adult learners, team building, participatory action research, strategic planning for development, project design & management, and evaluation for collective learning.
Back in Ecuador, I initially organized a year-long training program in a couple of regional centers for seventy-five leaders, preparing them both to implement Moral Leadership in their own activities and to replicate the program among diverse sectors of society, including educators, parents, children & youth, businesses, NGOs, local governments, etc. I then worked alongside some of those participants as instructors for a masters program implemented by the Núr University and financed by the World Bank, which trained 1000 educators in ten centers throughout Ecuador using the same materials plus four modules on empowerment through education.
ANISA and beyond
It was around this time that, in an effort to share the struggle for a culture peace with the family, I supported my wife, Monica, in her interest in taking a master's degree in Systemic Family Therapy and exercising that profession. Together we enrolled our children in the "Colegio Integral Internacional de Educación Holística para la Paz",11 the only Ecuadorian school cited by UNESCO as participating in its goal of education for a culture of peace. We also secured opportunities for them to receive extracurricular training in community service activities and leadership roles and to participate in programs involving them in service projects. The entire family also completed the tutorial training offered by the Ruhi Institute and began taking responsibility for replicating its different programs.
FLACSO and frustration
During International Peace Year, I participated actively in a campaign to present the Bahá'í statement “The Promise of World Peace” to authorities at all levels and the public at large.12 I had especially been intrigued by its observation that “so much have aggression and conflict come to characterize our social, economic and religious systems, that many have succumbed to the view that such behavior is intrinsic to human nature and therefore ineradicable.” It claimed that “uncritical assent is given to the proposition that human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive and thus incapable of erecting a social system at once progressive and peaceful, dynamic and harmonious.” Overcoming this barrier to peace would demand a “reassessment of the assumptions upon which the commonly held view of mankind's historical predicament is based,” which is in reality a “distortion of the human spirit”, thus enabling “all people to set in motion constructive social forces which, because they are consistent with human nature, will encourage harmony and co-operation instead of war and conflict.”
Throughout my subsequent training and consultancy endeavors, I repeatedly came across this same obstacle. Every discussion of world unity, justice and peace, was invariably countered by at least one participant who claimed that these aims were impossible or utopian on the grounds that human nature is selfish and aggressive, conflict is endemic to society, there always have been and always will be wars, man is the wolf of man, the law of the jungle is survival of the fittest, social dialectics and social entropy, homo economicus and self interest, politics defined as power struggle, and so on and so forth. I came to realize that there is no greater hindrance to building a united, just, peaceful world than the belief that it is not possible based on such notions regarding the nature of humanity and its society.
Seeking to understand the theoretical underpinnings of these claims and identify any research that might help me to refute them, I enrolled in the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).13 There, however, I was frustrated at finding only vehement support for those views, disparagement at any suggestion that things might be otherwise, and no knowledge of any alternative studies. We were living in a cruel world, that's the way it always had been and always would be, and instead of wishing it were different, we would be best advised to learn how to cope and make the most of it, or better yet learn how it works and make it work to our advantage. Social scientists were not to be activists for any cause, but rather limit themselves to 'objectively' providing the tools necessary for policymakers to do their jobs, for better or for worse.
The Culture of Contest
That is when I stumbled across Michael Karlberg's wonderful book titled "Beyond the Culture of Contest - from Adversarialism to Mutualism in an Age of Interdependence".14 Soon my frustration turned to amazement as those locked doors flew wide open and I began eagerly importing and reading the works referenced in Karlberg's generous bibliography. I began to see the deep flaws that persist in the massive body of traditional, mainstream human and social theory that currently supports and promotes the culture of contest or adversarialism, and how it is gradually being replaced by a new body of research that suggests alternative ways of looking at and restructuring society towards a culture of peace or mutuality.
With a thrill of discovery, I felt that I was witnessing the unfolding of a veritable scientific revolution or paradigm shift (if these terms can be applied at all to the human/social sciences), of which the Latin American academia and general public appeared utterly oblivious. I began speaking throughout Ecuador whenever possible at universities, NGOs, and public forums such as Quito's renowned cultural emporium, the "CafeLibro",15 in an attempt to promote an awareness of the overall features of this revolution. The response has been amazing. People have come up afterwards and thanked me for validating through science what they always suspected to be true but never dared to admit for fear of ridicule. Others said they felt a new freedom to even consider that there might be other ways of thinking and doing things.
Fundación Horizonte
As a result of this experience, I became convinced that the time was ripe for significant change in Latin America towards a culture of peace, mutualism and cooperation. I decided that broadly disseminating this new body of research among both the academia and the general public would be a strategic way to get the snowball rolling. Vague statements of lofty ideals and good intentions have been expressed for centuries, but achieved limited change in the foundational structure of society. The 21st century demands clear, reasoned, scientific evidence before committing to such a profound transformation of thought and action. Failure to act now could very well delay processes of change that are desperately needed throughout Latin America or, worse yet, might leave the door open to extremist ideologies that would only serve to exacerbate the present situation.
I approached different organizations with these ideas, upon which Fundación Horizonte offered to make "Cultura de Paz" one of their core programs.16 Our preliminary lines of action included gathering a collection of works (mostly in English), making translations and original essays available in Spanish, and networking with other researchers, projects and resources. ANISA-Colombia provided space and assistance to develop a forum on the Web, and the Universidad Técnica de Ambato agreed to sponsor a pilot Certificate Program to train college professors as agents of change towards a culture of peace.
Once this initial groundwork has been laid, we foresee expanding our scope of action, further systematizing in Spanish the corpus of work already done in different disciplines, and making it available to students, teachers and researchers. The initial Certificate Program needs to grow into a Specialization and then a Masters Program. This would establish a firm foundation upon which to promote original research into the needs and possibilities for sociocultural change towards a more mutualistic society. Such work should especially benefit from Participatory Action Research (PAR), in order to build that new culture from the bottom up and the inside out. Combining research and consultancy through PAR would enable immediate implementation of findings among NGODs, school systems, governmental and international organizations, and others. We need to continue studying the available material and documenting it in Spanish, mostly through reviews and summaries, but also as direct translations where deemed most appropriate, to be able to answer questions such as these:
- How can we understand today's adversarialism as a cultural construct, and what is needed to change it?
- How and why did this culture come about, to what extent can it be defined as a hegemony, who are its beneficiaries, and who pays the price?
- What popular beliefs and scientific theories feed the current myths underpinning the culture of violence, and how can they be deconstructed and replaced with alternative beliefs and theories?
- How is the culture of conflict reflected in and reproduced through the sociostructural and psychocultural elements of the modern world, and what proposals exist to replace them?
- What referents are available of alternative sociocultural constructs, whether among preindustrial societies, intentional communities, social movements, parallel subcultures, and the mass phenomenon of everyday, anonymous heroism?
- What are the historical reasons for our current disenchantment with utopia, what alternative futures are being proposed, how to decide which are feasible, and how to recover humanity's courage to dream and ability work towards a common vision?
- What can be done here and now, at each level of society, to build a new culture of mutualism, cooperation and peace, and how can we as agents of change in all walks of life promote this?
In closing
The exercise of looking back over my life, at the different paths that have lead me to this point, has strengthened my resolve to continue struggling in the direction described above. Any comments and suggestions that might help in moving towards this goal will be most welcome.
Notes
1. Orser, W. Edward, Searching for a Viable Alternative - The Macedonia Cooperative Community, 1937-58. New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1981.
2. Newton, David R., "The Macedonia Community," Politics (Winter 1948): 27-30.
3. Arnold, Emmy, Torches Together: The story of the Bruderhof Communities - their life together, sharing all things in common. New York: Plough Publishing House, 2nd edition, reprinted in 1991.
4. Wagoner, Bob & Shirley, Community in Paraguay - A Visit to the Bruderhof. Pennsylvania: Plough Publishing House, 1991.
5. Mow, Merril, Torches Rekindled - the Bruderhof's Struggle for Renewal. New York: Plough Publishing House, 1989.
6. Newton, Peter, "The Eagle," "Where has all the freedom gone?", "The Blue Ridge Mountains." Artes, Vol. 8, Spring 1972, pp. 1, 21, 29.
7. Hatcher, William S. and Martin, J. Douglas, The Baha'i Faith: The Emerging Global Religion. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984.
8. Newton, Peter, "In Search of Purpose in Education: Implications of the Bahá'í Writings", unpublished M.A. thesis, University of California, Davis, 1985.
9. See, for example, L.N.S. English Method Books 4, 5 and 6. Ecuador: Edibosco, 1989.
10. See http://www.nur.edu/50821/wp_m00c0.asp.
11. See http://www.vidaintegral.org/home/contenidos.php?id=42&identificaArticulo=26.
12. See http://bahai-library.org/published.uhj/world.peace.html.
13. See http://www.flacso.org.ec/.
14. Karlberg, Michael, Beyond the Culture of Contest - from Adversarialism to Mutualism in an Age of Interdependence. Oxford: George Ronald, 2004.
15. See http://www.cafelibro.com/.
16. See http://www.fundacionhorizonte.com/es/fundacion.htm. At this writing the Web site required a major overhaul and was still lacking information on the "Cultura de Paz" program.
2 coments:
Nice job, Peter. You certainly have been busy. It is interesting to see your work compiled this way and makes it easier to understand how all your different efforts tie together. Thanks for sharing it.
Well, This is a great introductory letter to accompany your PHD application!
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