Quotable Quote
"The people have always some champion whom
they set over them and nurse into greatness
... This and no other is the root from which
a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is
a protector."
-Plato - The Republic, Bk. VIII
A Good Book
Sanday, Peggy Reeves. 1981. Female Power and
Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual
Inequality. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Good News
The developing countries do care. They are
not blind to the problems linking energy use
and Global Warming. Commissioned by
governments of Brazil and China, the report
"Lighting The Way" identifies a scientific
consensus framework for directing global
energy development while securing climate
protection and global development goals. The
work of 15 world-renowned energy experts,
co-chaired by Nobel Laureate Steven Chu,
Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National
Lab in the United States, and José
Goldemberg, former Secretary of State for the
Environment for the State of São Paulo,
Brazil. Addresses sustainability,
mitigation,
the Kyoto Protocol, unequal access to
energy,
and more.
A Future Without War
Believe in it.
Envision it.
Work for it.
And we will achieve it.
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Paradigm Shift
The theme of this newsletter is PARADIGM
SHIFT! Legions of men and women on this
planet are weary of war, alarmed by violence
tearing into their communities, sad that too
many of their children have no hope for a
better future, and increasingly frightened
that the blowback that the environmental
destruction we've wreaked on Mother Nature is
finally going to overwhelm civilization as
we've known it.
Anyone reading this newsletter can cite long
lists of these ills. Major cultural upheavals are
examples of what are called "paradigm
shifts:" fundamental changes in the
underlying assumptions under which humans run
their endeavors. We've had many such shifts
before, three of the largest being the agricultural
revolution, the industrial revolution, and the digital
revolution. It's the view of A Future Without
War that we're now living in another great one:
The Egalitarian
Revolution
The newsletter showcases projects launched by
a tiny handful of the multitudes of individuals and
organizations working, even as you read, to shape
and accelerate a radical, cultural shift to a less violent,
more just, more environmentally stable, and more
egalitarian future.
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The Shift Movie
Producer Rochelle Marmorstein is creating,
with Lighthouse Films, Inc., a movie called
simply The Shift Movie. It will highlight
scores of agents of this change or people
calling for it, including luminaries such as
Desmond Tutu, Al Gore, Deepak
Chopra, Benazir
Bhutto, Bono, Richard Branson,
Jimmy Carter
and others who are largely unknown but hard
at work.
Although apolitical and unaffiliated with any
particular religion, there is a strong
underlying philosophical base to the film
project, perhaps best represented by two of
the agents interviewed who have extensive
writings, Deepak Chopra and Mary Ann
Williamson. The extremely well-done, six
minute trailer is available online and is
worth viewing for perspective on the scope of
the change and the people calling for it. The
trailer will also just give you a positive,
emotional pick-me-up for your day. Let's hope
a full length film will be as effective ...
more, however, is not always better.
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Alliance for a New Humanity
On March 11-13, AFWW was represented in San
Jose, Costa Rica, at the "Human Forum 2008: A
Symphony of Transformation." This meeting is
one of two this year that will be sponsored
by The
Alliance for a New Humanity (ANH), the
second conference to occur November 7-9 in
Barcelona, Spain.
The mission of ANH is to "connect people who
are determined to build a more just, pacific,
and sustainable world through personal and
social transformation." It's "open to every
person, group or organization with this goal
in mind." Its operating budget for 2007 was
slightly over 1 million dollars. The overall
spirit at this meeting was positive and
determined.
More than 500 people, only slightly more
women than men, came to the five-star Hotel
Intercontinental Real in San Jose from as far
away as Libya, Norway, Chili, and Australia.
Luminaries were there-the principle ones
being Costa Rica's President, Nobel Prize
Winner, and one of the founders of the ANH,
Oscar Arias and motivational speaker and
prolific writer and thinker, Deepak Chopra.
But the AFWW representative also talked to a
college student from Aurora, Colorado who,
after meeting Deepak Chopra on My Space, paid
her own air fare and didn't even have a room
reservation (yes, another good soul took her in).
For a report on the meeting, including some
background on the founding of the group, its
objectives, and the nature of Costa Rica
meeting and its participants, see our site.
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Dee Dee Myers on How to Change the World
In her new book, Dee Dee Myers,
ex-presidential press spokeswoman for Former
President Bill Clinton, suggests that we use
women. See our site for AFWW's take on Myer's
book, including a listing of the
characteristics women would bring to
leadership positions,. Read our review.
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Marie Wilson and the Big Shift
Yet Another Woman Suggests that Women May be
the Key to a Big Shift
Marie C. Wilson is founder and President
of
The White House Project, co-creator of Take
Our Daughters and Sons to Work ® Day, and
former President of the MS. Foundation for
Women. She has re-released her 2004 book in
2008 with a new epilogue. Closing the
Leadership Gap explores many of the same
points made by Dee Dee Myers and many other
writers about the innate talents of women.
An important earlier book, published in 1999,
suggesting that women have biological
proclivities that, if harnessed in leadership
positions, can and will bring positive change
was The First Sex: The Natural Talents of
Women and how They are Changing the World by
the anthropologist Helen Fisher. The book
Women, Power, and the Biology of Peace by
biologist and AFWW essayist, Judith Hand,
explains why women's input is critical to
limiting or even ending the practice of war.
Despite possessing these many documented
pluses that women, as a group, embody more
characteristically than men, the United
States still has not had a woman president.
Only one of nine U.S. Supreme Court judges is
a woman. The powerful Senate of the U.S.
Congress has 100 members, only 16 of which
are women. The United States, like much of
the rest of the world, is a long, long way
from utilizing the biological natures of
women as a powerful agent of paradigm shift
toward less violence and more equality.
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AFWW is About Paradigm Shft
Paradigm Shift is what AFWW is all about.
AFWW argues in How
Far We've Already Come that we are in a
unique moment in history, a time in which
sufficient elements are in place to reach a
tipping point to the massive, positive shift
people of good will in all places and times
have longed for but which in past millennia
they were never able to achieve. We can have
hope because our time in history is
different.
It's also our conviction that if we want a
less violent world, a world where there is
justice and equality and environmental
stability, we'll ultimately have to bite the
bullet and abolish war-and the sooner we take
on this enormous challenge, the better. War
is a 1,000 pound gorilla in our house. Wars
devour resources urgently needed for better
things and they foster a culture of violence.
Ending war will be extraordinarily difficult,
but there is no alternative if the goal is
real change for the better.
The AFWW website essays about producing
change focus on 9 cornerstones (See The
Nine Cornerstones). ANH's strong focus,
beyond their overarching emphasis on personal
growth and change, is on one of AFWW's
cornerstones: "fostering connectedness" (See
"Fostering
Connectedness). Wilson and Myers's books
are highlighting AFWW's need to "empower
women" cornerstone (See Secret Ingredient).
A series of essays on the AFWW website
outline briefly each of the 9 AFWW
cornerstones. AFWW takes the position that we
must address them all simultaneously to
ensure that the next great human cultural
SHIFT produces the positive results we dream
of ... that we don't just stumble blindly
into nightmare alternatives so many of us see
looming ahead.
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Links Reminder
AFWW has completed an initial listing of over
100 links to a selection of organizations in
the vanguard of change. If you haven't
checked out the links before, here they are
again. If you belong to or head up an
organization, you may find your organization
listed. Check under the Nav Bar "Links and
More".
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