“Perhaps they will truly become American and create a nobler basis for their myths.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates

  • Do you encourage the growth of compassionate communities whose members serve humanity, the environment, and life itself? If so, how?

  • Do you counter self-centered domination and submission? If so, how?

  • Do you engage in other-centered compassionate action? If so, how?

  • Do you undo divisive, highly competitive social conditioning? If so, how?

  • Are you learning to more fully respect everyone’s equal value? If so, how?

  • Do you engage with others to support each other with these and similar issues? If so, how?

Americans for Humanity offers responses to these and related questions, but we don't have complete answers. We invite you to share your responses to one or more of these questions, submit your own questions, offer proposals for action, and engage in dialog. We post divergent opinions and aim to inspire without preaching. You're invited to join us by using the form below to comment.

“Rainer Maria Rilke…understood that when we are unable to live the answers to the questions in our midst, we are then called to hold, love, and live the questions. Our world is defined by raw, aching, open questions — personal, and civilizational — that we must live now if we hope to live our way eventually into new answers together.”
—On Being, “Living the Questions”

Cultivate justice and compassion

Assure everyone can meet their basic needs and participate fully in society

Oppose discrimination based on arbitrary traits like skin color

Strengthen unions, worker-controlled cooperatives, bottom-up hierarchies, and democratic equality throughout society

 


Organize peer-to-peer mutual support 

Set aside the desire to exploit others for personal gain

Care for yourself so you can better serve others

Build united, national movements that persuade their government to respect their people’s will and work with other nations to control global corporations

Build momentum with victories focused on winnable goals

Hold each other, elected officials, and organizations accountable to their commitments and highest ideals

 
 
 

Avoid scapegoating

Grow solidarity

Pursue win-win solutions — you benefit when others benefit

 
 

COMMENT

See how everything is connected

  • The System weaves together our institutions, our systems, our culture, and ourselves as individuals into a single self-perpetuating system that teaches people to climb social ladders, look down on, dominate, and exploit those below, and submit to those above

  • Individuals reinforce the System with their daily actions

  • The System dehumanizes everyone

  • No one controls the  System

 

Change the System’s mission and all of its elements simultaneously

Advance holistic and systemic transformation

 
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