Dialogues

Action-oriented Dialogues Log

• After engaging in extensive discussions, the Compassionate Action Workshop made the following decisions concerning these questions:
  

  • What is our mission?

    We work to relieve suffering and make society more just and egalitarian — as we work on our self-development and how we relate with others as a model for the world we seek.

  • What methods shall we employ?

    • We’ll promote inner work to improve oneself, including learning to listen better. We’ll encourage respectful civil dialogue, discourse, and humility to build relationships that create positive, simultaneous change in each social arena. We must overcome social conditioning that leads to domination and/or submission. These changes reinforce each other synergistically. Structural changes that modify how society organizes its activities are essential.

    • We’ll use and promote these meeting guidelines:

      • Brief respectful expression and attentive listening

      • A focus on potential and expansive benefits to all humanity, not fault-finding and blaming

      • Optimization of points expressed rather than debating who is right

      • Complementary teamwork in interaction by building on each other's points

      • Emphasis on connecting the dots, then suggesting comprehensive solutions from different disciplinary or sector perspectives 

      • Pursue long-term proactive plans and strategies as well as immediate and tactical actions 

    • Shall we develop and use and encourage others to use a “holistic check-in”?

      • We’ll encourage all groups to open their meetings, at least once a month, with a check-in during which members respond to this question: How can you been working to bring more compassion into your life?

  • What frame shall we use to name our project? Shall we drop “Americans for Humanity”?

    • We decided “Moral Humanity” implies an assumption of superiority and “Americans for Humanity” is too narrow, and adopted “Compassionate Humanity Community.”

  • Share we declare that the “compassionate humanity movement” exists now?

    • When we find an organization that helps to relieve suffering and make society more just and egalitarian — and encourages its members to support each other with their self-development, we will support it as a “companion for mutual empowerment.” In the meantime, we’ll encourage the development of such organizations and the development of a new grassroots movement to advance these goals.