Goals
Americans for Humanity affirms these goals:
Mission
To support the development of compassionate communities whose members serve humanity, the environment, and life itself. To help achieve this mission we promote these Core Principles. These methods are also goals.
Core Principles
Respect for Equality
Everyone is created equal, with equal human rights and equal, infinite value. All citizens should be equal under the law. Everyone should treat others with dignity. No one should disrespect or control others due to one of their specific identities, such as race or gender.
Healthy Patriotism
Strong nations are needed to control selfish multinational corporations. The history of each nation is a mix of positive and negative traditions. We can uphold the positive and correct the negative — while seeking to cooperate with other nations rather than dominate them. We can identify as a member of our nation while also identifying as a member of the human family.
Freedom
Individuals should be free to direct their own lives without having unfair constraints imposed on them — so long as they respect the rights of others. Maximizing self-determination is valuable. Certain exercises of power, such as traffic laws, taxes, healthy parenting, and preventing police brutality, are necessary forms of justified domination, but we oppose domination (and submission) for personal gain.
Community
Society requires cooperation. Achieving certain goals in isolation is impossible. Individuals learn from their peers, need healthy communities, and support each other with their self-development. Strong individuals build strong communities, and strong communities build strong individuals.
Undoing Divisive Social Conditioning
Individuals are innately curious, caring, and often amazed. As such, they seek to become better, wiser, kinder, and more effective human beings who improve the world. Organizations and informal groups can help their members fulfill this potential by unlearning society’s deeply embedded, hyper-competitive, divisive conditioning.
Compassion
By focusing on efforts to relieve and prevent suffering, individuals and communities learn to trust and love each other, rise above fear and anger, realize their deepest nature, become whole, and nurture spiritual development.
Holistic Democratic Equality
Society can maximize democracy in every institution and every relationship. We can nurture mutual support for self-empowerment, build partnerships, give everyone a voice in affairs that affect them, hold leaders accountable for their responsibilities, establish democratic hierarchies, and avoid a tyranny of the majority that fails to respect individual and minority rights.
Economic Fairness
One way or the other, with private actions and public policies, society is obligated to assure that everyone has the means to live with basic dignity, including meaningful jobs, adequate income, quality health care, affordable housing, and sufficient food.
Multiple Identities
Human beings naturally self-identify as members of particular “tribes,” based on geography, beliefs, and other factors. But we need not be exclusive and tribalistic. We need not get locked into particular identities and demonize others. We can still see our common humanity — our membership in the human family.
Systemic Analysis
The various sectors of society fit together and reinforce each other. To transform it, understanding how our current self-perpetuating social system works is valuable. This System, which integrates society’s multiple systems into one system, is driven by efforts to climb social ladders, look down on, exploit, and dominate those below, and submit to those above.
Nonviolent Action
Social transformation can be advanced by people who treat others with deep respect, acknowledge that each individual is unique, practice active listening, make judgments without being judgmental, try to understand others better, avoid offensive labels and name-calling, and don’t scapegoat, demean, or dehumanize. Groups practicing these behaviors can engage in nonviolent direct action when needed.
Holistic Transformation
We can transform the System by establishing a new purpose for our society — to serve humanity, the environment, and life itself — and new structures to serve that purpose based on these principles. Mutually reinforcing, simultaneous changes throughout society can synergistically help us fulfill that purpose as individuals and communities.
Global Collaboration
The Compassionate Humanity Community welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with efforts in other nations that affirm these goals.
Related:
Vision: Promoting the Compassionate Humanity Community
COMMENTS
Larry Walker:
A wonderful set of overall Principles. They do a good job of setting the 'tone' of how to go about transformation.
A couple of related suggestions:
o The Systemic Analysis 3rd sentence begins with: "This System". I suggest you replace this with "Our current System" to emphasize that you mean the system we currently live under.
o Would it be possible to replace Nonviolent Relationships with an item called "Nonviolent Civic Action"? It would be placed between Systemic Analysis and Holistic Transformation. The intent would be to clarify the need for action to achieve transformation. the wording could be something like the following:
- Nonviolent Civic Action
Social transformation can be advanced by people who treat others with deep respect, acknowledge that each individual is unique, practice active listening, make judgments without being judgmental, try to better understand others, avoid offensive labels and name-calling, and don’t demean or dehumanize. Groups practicing these behaviors can address change through their elected representatives on a continuous basis.
With these 3 changes, the last 3 Principles set the stage for achieving meaningful transformation.
Wade Lee Hudson:
I added to Nonviolent Relationships: “Groups practicing these behaviors can engage in nonviolent civic action with their elected representatives on a continuous basis.” Thanks.
Larry Walker:
Your change is good. I would still suggest that you move the Nonviolent item to after Systemic Analysis. The sequence is then: do the analysis, take nonviolent action, and achieve holistic transformation. This sequence has meaning -- random placement of the items does not work as well.
Wade Lee Hudson:
I agree. Will do.