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Nonkilling Arts Research Committee Letter: Vol. 2, N. 6 (Nov-Dec 2018)Bimestrially sent from our site: Nonkilling.org. |
"Nonkilling art explores the spirit and practice of how to prevent, respond to, and to improve individual, social, and global well-being beyond killing." —Glenn D. Paige Dear NKARC members and friends,
One common theme that emerges from your contributions for this Issue is: Living.
Nonkilling is a prime value without which nothing else could exist, a value that permeates our Alpha to Omega. An outstanding original contribution last month was the launch of the Global Nonkilling Index developed by NKARC colleagues at Jagaran Lakecity university. The Index is unique as it supports a fundamental “idea of peace based on human life”.
In this issue, we have as usual your comments/contributions of Nonkilling poetry, non-fiction, animation, photography, video, design and architecture, doc film, peace index, reflections, journalism etc.
We begin with a poem, ‘To Live’ by Guatemala’s late Alaide Foppa and bookend this Issue with a rare poetic reflection, entitled, ‘Longevity’ by colleague Francisco Gomes de Matos.
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1. Nonkilling Poetry
(i) To Live
I feel
that my life flows
like a slow
river,
that it has
neither beginning
nor end,
as if ever
I were born
nor could exist
without boundary
On earth
runs my life,
so mixed
the living of humans;
and the resounding
of remote echoes
and mysterious voices.
Sometimes I feel passing,
as a secret current,
the mute beat
of the universe. Author: Alaíde Foppa, Guatemala (1914 – 1980)
Translation: Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan
Taken from: Poesía soy yo. Poetas en español del siglo XX
Raquel Lanseros y Ana Merino, Colección Visor de Poesía (Courtesy: ITHACA 551) (ii) THE PEACEBUILDING POSTER: For Reflection & Researchn Our Hubris
When we decide to BUILD PEACE,
we take on a challenge that will never cease.
WE BUILD PEACE BY:
leisure and entertainment,
respecting each other´s/one another´s beliefs,
suggesting just pacifying reliefs,
advocating dispute-solving through
negotiation, helping
implement U.N.-inspired PEACEBUILDING,
educating children, youth, adults to be PEACEBUILDERS in all contexts,
prioritizing PEACEBUILDING in conflict-resolution contexts,
embedding PEACE in democracy, human-rights, law, and
security, in places, i.e. in science-technology
environments, committing to the mission of becoming a PEACEMAKER as inspired by
various spiritual traditions,
creatively probing ways of teaching skills of nonviolence and non-killing for
SUSTAINABLE PEACE world,
making current/ensuing generations aware of the
interaction of PEACE -
safely in that continuum updating PEACEBUILDING definitions
from inter/multidisciplinary
perspective where interacting: e.g., at home, at school, at work, in places
of worship. Author: Francisco Gomes de Matos*
A peace linguist Co-founder, ABA Global Education Recife, Brazil
( Prof. Johan Galtung commented on Francisco's above rhymed reflection: "Poetry with concrete peace-building content!!--something new, Paco, we have to communicate in all possible ways, and you are going beyond what we thought was possible!” Thanks, Johan ) (iii) Untitled
Like the blink of a moment of truth;
Suddenly lasting,
Some sort of fulfillment,
Slowly progressing ...
From the cry of injustice,
To the path of serene understanding,
Universal well-being,
Rebuilding the world,
For happiness
Now and lastingly...
Author: Christophe Barbey is CGNK's United Nations Representative in Geneva. The poem was inspired by paintings of Swiss based visual artist Melanie Little Gomez. (iv) Inheritance (Excerpt)
i find emerald bliss
in the ribcage of some
skeletal apartment
where cradles line the wall,
chipped ceramic and thin earth
nourishing frail stems.
an impossibility in each
timid shoot, yet i coax them
toward life, like infants
finding their way.
damp earth, metallic water —
i inhale the sharp fragrance
of nature: grass, rain
sea and forests, from
an imagined home
i did not inherit.
Floria Gu is a 13 year old student from Vancouver, Canada. The poem was selected as the Junior Runner-Up of The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition 2018 from approximately 12,000 entries. (Thank you Peter Meincke for suggestion.) { Complete poem } |
2. Poetry Competition announcements/notices
(i) CHILDREN’S PEACE POETRY AND STORIES FESTIVAL Competition
From IFLAC (International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace): "Children of the world, from 6 to 18, are invited to write and submit up to 4 Poems, up to 30 lines long, or/and up to a 4-page story, on any aspect of Peace: World Peace, Peace between countries, or Peace in your own Life. You are also invited to send your Peace drawings and paintings. Please send your poems and stories in your own language and in English. The best poems and stories will be published in the book Children’s Peace Poetry Festival, that will be widely published on our websites, on Amazon and other places, throughout our Global Village. This beautiful book will show the power of children to bring about Peace in our world in our own time. Please sign the poems and stories with your first and family name, write your age, and the name of your country."
The poems and stories should be sent to the Editors before November 30, 2018. The book will be published in January 2019, on Amazon.
Three peace organizations involved in this Children’s Peace Book project are:
• IFLAC: International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace, Israel;
• UNILETRAS: Bogota, Colombia; and
• PEACE TRAIN: Seoul, South Korea.
Please send poems and stories in English by Email to the Editors:
• Ada Aharoni: ada.aharoni06@gmail.com ; and
• Jeremy Seligson: fjseligson@yahoo.com
And poems and stories in Spanish and Portuguese to Editor:
• Joseph Berolo: Naciones Unidas de las Letras berolojoseph@aveviajera.org
(ii) NONKILLING PEACE STORY FOR CHILDREN launch, a message from colleague Ina Kuric:
"Hope you are having a wonderful autumn! I am still working on this good cause with my stories. 'Home to Gaia' is now free for a few days on amazon.com kindle*
Also I wrote a very short piece on my website to initiate a conversation with a few questions - always a matter of debate.
Here is the facebook post on it."
(Thank you so much! Ina.) |
3. Non-Fiction Writing and NonkillingNKARC colleague Rich Panter from Bodega Bay, Calif recommended Yuval Harari’s three contemporary non-fiction best sellers: (i) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind; (ii) Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow and (iii) 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Rich notes: "If ever there were two books that could replace a semester or two of college, Yuval Harari’s Sapiens - A Short History of Humankind (2014), and Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow, (2016) would be my choices." Author Yuval Harari manages to compress into each 400+ page book a very readable account of our human species by tracing the web of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, geography, religious studies, science, and futurist studies.
"His second book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, incorporates material from Sapiens and pushes onward into a thorough analysis of the possibilities humanity’s future fate. Both works are loaded with a myriad of revelatory connections that explain things like: How we came to dominate the earth, despite the fact that we’re not nearly the unique life-form we have come to believe we are… How pre-modern man gave life meaning through the myth-making of religion… Why most cultures believed that humans played a part in some great cosmic plan… How we conquered the world with our inter-subjective realities, (which exist in the mind of many believers at once), - like money, nations and economies, and notions of freedom, democracy, and human rights… How the reality of evolution proved that we do not have souls… How science created humanism, which evolved into three main branches - liberal, social, and evolutionary… How we homo sapiens will likely follow a future trajectory that inevitably leads to true intelligent design - by us. And finally, how this new species may subsume and subdue us, as we have done to other species and life forms."
For select reviews, see:
• "Sapiens – a critical review", Bethinking.org
• "A constructive critique of Sapiens and Homo Deus"
• "Visions of the Semantic Apocalypse: A Critical Review of Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus"
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4. Animation and Nonkilling
A leading-edge animation video on Rohingya situation is produced by the Canadian Peace Initiative and the Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers), one of the endorsers of CPI’s campaign for a federal Department of Peace in Canada. The script was developed by CPI and narrated by Keira Mann at CFSC (Quakers), It was made using a software program called Videoscribe. The 5 min video is available in two places:
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/embed/NtCUFypt3jA and
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/canadianpeaceinitiative/
(Thank you, CFSC Matthew Legge.) |
5. Photography and Nonkilling
New Book on the work of Kenyan photojournalist Priya Ramrakha
Priya Ramrakha was a Kenyan photojournalist and one of the most prolific photographers of Africa’s independence movements in the 1950s and 1960s. He rose to international fame as the first African photographer published in Time and Life magazines. He was 33 years old when he was killed on an assignment in Biafra, Nigeria in 1968. Priya’s photographic legacy has been restored in a new book by Sharvan Vidyarthi, a result of meticulous sifting through more than 100,000 images. Vidyarathi notes: "To think of his work as singularly political or journalistic is to overlook the way he connected with people, with an abiding curiosity that framed bicyclists on the streets, a father cradling his baby, or friends chatting in the shadows, oblivious to his camera." For more, click:
• https://africasacountry.com/2018/07/the-story-of-kenyan-photographer-priya-ramrakha
• https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/showcase-finding-priya-ramrakha/
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6. Nonkilling Video
To mark this year’s World Peace Day on September 21, NKARC colleague Mony Dojeiji released YouTube video of her hour long three some conversation, entitled, "Developing a Culture of Peace", broadcast on TV show Ottawa Experts. Youtube videos:
• Part 1 (20.30 min).
• Part 2 (19.66 min).
• Part 3 (14.32 min).
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7. Nonkilling Design and Architecture
Bauhaus Centennial
In 2019, Germany will be marking centenary of Bauhaus design movement. Founded in Weimar in 1919, relocated to Dessau in 1925 and closed in Berlin under pressure from the Nazis in 1933, the leading edge school of design existed for a total of 14 years. The closure of the Bauhaus in Germany was closely linked to the perception of its orientation and teaching as politically leftist and internationalist based on the credo of "popular demand instead of luxury demand". All the same, the Bauhaus – School of Design has continued to have a lasting impact for its simplicity, elegance, representational, and abstract yet functional works. { Bauhaus’s past and present perspectives }
(Thank you Silvia Schwan.) |
8. Nonkilling Documentary
Peace Inside doc (77 min.)
The documentary directed by Cynthia Fitzpatrick points to transition that takes place within prisoners' lives after attending a 10-week Peace Education course given at the Dominguez State Jail, San Antonio, Texas. The prisoners in the film share their insights into the social and emotional forces that sent them onto the wrong path and offer the uplifting message that everybody has the possibility to change their lives around, no matter how difficult their situation. The camera follows several of them after their release and shows the challenges faced in their efforts to reintegrate into society. { Free Screening Event at Facebook } |
10. Nonkilling Research
Global Nonkilling Peace Index Launched: As one of the world’s first, the launch of a Global Nonkilling Index (GNI) last month is a bold new initiative towards a NONKILLING SOCIETY. In a seminal paper, Katyayani Singh and Anoop Swarup lay down the statistical foundation for recording the movement towards a nonkilling global society. It supports a more fundamental "idea of peace based on human life", going beyond other two current peace Indexes: the Global Peace Index and the Human Happiness Index. The pioneering research for GNI was done at Jagaran Lakecity University, Bhopal, India in conjunction with the Center for Global Nonkilling, Hawai’i, USA. { Additional information, including research paper } |
13. Nonkilling Reflections
(i) Does Philosophy Have Anything To Contribute? By Jeff Noonan, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Windsor.
Prof. Noonan writes: "Steven Pinker has argued that the gradual diffusion of Enlightenment Humanism has made the world a less violent place. As education, scientific reasoning, and universal liberal values have spread, violence has concomitantly declined. While I agree with Pinker that there are universal values embedded in Enlightenment principles, and that scientific reason can contribute to peace, it does not take a lot of historical work to find instances of science serving the military-industrial complex. Pointing this fact out in no way impugns the integrity of science as such. Philosophy too has been the servant ..., and also ideological cover for xenophobia, hatred, and war. I will therefore argue that, contra Pinker, there is no reason to expect that we will simply cognitively evolve our way beyond violence. I will not contest the conclusions of his aggregated statistics, but insist that peace-promoting thought cannot rely upon long term gradual trends. Lives are individual and unrepeatable, and if they are destroyed unnecessarily through violence, they cannot be redeemed by long term tendencies."
(ii) Intimacy. In the spirit of linking psychology with neonatology, NKARC colleague Hugh Mann, a physician-philosopher offers the following:
"As an embryo, and later a fetus, our needs are automatically satisfied. But with birth, we lose our home (womb), friend (placenta), and lifeline (umbilical cord). This is a profound and haunting loss, and all behavior is an unconscious attempt to recreate the intimacy and sufficiency of prenatal life."
(iii) Nonkilling Political Science. NKARC colleague Clay Edwards, a scholar in classical Greek philosophy considers political science, politics and philosophy together as one, instead of separate "fake products that allow lethal thinking and action of ignorance". He explains below why Glenn D. Paige's thinking in his Nonkilling Global Political Science book makes sense. Clay writes:
"Too often when the word 'politics' is uttered, it is usually assumed in the most negative place of darkness that because it is so dark, it cannot be explored as a pile of name instead of real things. I think Glenn Paige pointed out that darkness that makes people assume without any foundation that a nonkilling global society is impossible because of an ignorant conception of human nature. He pointed out a long existing lie we humans have been pounding into ourselves and condemning succeeding generations to violence and killing.
Paige indicated that we need to climb out of that hole of ignorance to see the hideousness of what he called sophistry, a dissembling rant that divides and destroys people. The truth is a blinding light and must be seen indirectly, as we would observe moonlight reflecting from the sun - as evidence based. We don't need to look directly at the sun to observe and act on Paige's observations. Glenn Paige's work is evidence based medicine for the soul and that is how we need to recognize political science in philosophy, as moving toward a desired outcome and not allow ourselves to be imprisoned intellectually by some idea of killing as permanently institutionalized gaining advantages over our fellow humans.
Plato in the Gorgias hit hard on the notion of the proper use of rhetoric, which is to make those around us better, not to cater to their whims and humors. To Plato this was perhaps the most difficult and oppressive aspect of life in Athens, where people were being taught wrongly by ignorant peddlers of the knowledge of virtue for profit. The young were being mis taught that politics was built on gaining human over human advantage in the social life of Athenian society. Pericles, often given credit for making Athens great - that is, people in worse condition better found many of these better people turning on him as Athens materially gained over the other Greek City States. In superficially making Athens great, he did not really make its people better.
This is the concern I have today in my country, where Trump's MAGA (Make America Great Again) slogan carried him to the White House, and to a place where it appears there is no trust institutionalized in sophistic controversies and flattery in the normal course of federal business. It is astounding how our dominating political party could tolerate how shabbily our President could treat entire nations, including Canada of all places in his pursuit of deals. One could go on and on but he makes me think of Pericles' and his successor Cleon and how Athens fell apart mistreating other City-States and eventually surrendering to Sparta, military occupation and a bloody civil war.
Social fabric, like any fabric, is strong but at the same time can get frayed and run bad and the condition of human education systems can show this political weaknesses in what the casual observer might mistake as strength. I think the world really needs a serious reformulation of political knowledge to reflect Paige's nonkilling values because that is the true source of the strength of human civilization, not the industrial or scientific or military base or even the prowess of business buccaneers."
Thank you all. |
Last WordTHE LONGEVITY POSTER: Rhymes for Reflection/Research
by Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace linguist, Recife, Brazil.
If we say that older persons age is ripe
does it also mean that "extra years lived" Biology can´t wipe ?
There are stereotypes on aging
Longevity is science accurately gauging ?
How can living longer mean living well ?
What stories of compassion do the elderly tell ?
Two processes that can benefit Humanity:
Technology and Longevity
How can we live a longer life ?
By avoiding/overcoming all kinds of strife
I wish all types of Longevity could mean peaceful existence
rather than merely say that they are but biological persistence
Why do some people say "it´s hard to grow old ?"
Because they fail to see Longevity as Life´s gold
Longevity can´t be bought
but a longer life can be sought
Why does Longevity call for creativity ?
It challenges the elderly to experience CREactivity
How can Longevity help make Life sweet ?
When it is traveled on as a joyful, fascinating street
What happens when Longevity is shared by two ?
There are twice as many pleasant things to do
By Longevity blessed you say you are ?
Thank GOD for making your life go far
Some say Longevity can be scientifically advanced.
How can Longevity be spiritually enhanced ?
Longevity though rhymes ?
Our maturIMAGINATION climbs ! |
My deep gratitude to all who contributed and pointed to the material for the Letter.
Looking forward to your inspirations and comments as always.
Warmest Aloha and Nonkillling Regards,
Bill
Bill (Balwant) Bhaneja
Coordinator
NonKilling Arts Research Committee (NKARC)
Center for Global Nonkilling (CGNK)
www.nonkilling.org
"Nonkilling Culture crosses all the lines." —Glenn D. Paige
Nonkilling is THE measure of Human progress
[THIS IS AN INTERNAL NEWSLETTER OF THE NKARC. COPYRIGHT FOR ALL MATERIAL IN THE NEWSLETTER REMAINS PROPERTY OF THE SOURCES/WRITERS/ART CREATORS.]
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