Our Worldview
A Compassionate Humanity Proclamation
The pursuit of power, wealth, and status prevails. Society teaches everyone to climb social ladders for personal gain and look down on and exploit those below or submit to those above. Mass shootings, police brutality, economic insecurity, and hopelessness are symptoms of this problem.
Nevertheless, political organizations and unions don’t encourage and help their members to provide mutual support for self-development. Social services, mental health organizations, schools, and religious institutions don’t help their clients, students, and members to engage in political action. And in the intimacy of the household, families struggle to establish solid, harmonious partnerships.
Many resist these patterns and develop alternatives. An emerging cultural revolution indicates possible fundamental reform. This website supports these efforts.
Our Commitment is “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.” Together, we can undo oppressive social conditioning and change our institutions to achieve this mission.
Positive changes in every social sector can reinforce each other. If these changes occur simultaneously in the same direction, they can produce a virtuous upward spiral. Self-development, compassionate action, and social change are equally important. Those who identify as religious or spiritual can join with those who don’t. We can address the whole person and the whole society to promote holistic and systemic transformation.
In this way, we can help grow a broad, united, democratic grassroots movement that fundamentally reforms our self-perpetuating social system.
Embrace Core Values
Our efforts to serve humanity, the environment, and life itself promote holistic and systemic transformation, They are based on these principles:
Advance justice and compassion.
Improve ourselves and support each other.
Undo oppressive social conditioning.
Respect those who engage in spiritual growth.
Acknowledge each person’s equal worth.
Set aside the desire to dominate for personal gain.
Cultivate bottom-up hierarchies.
Nurture relational equality and co-equal partnerships throughout society.
Support grassroots, broad-based, unified, independent, activist campaigns.
Ensure that everyone can meet their basic needs, participate fully in society, and fulfill their potential.
Oppose discrimination based on identity.
Create new structures to solidify these improvements.
Form Small Teams
We encourage the formation of small teams whose members promote these Core Values.
Informal teams spring from relationships with friends, relatives, colleagues, or group memberships.
Formal teams endorse Our Commitment and conduct “holistic check-ins,” during which members report on the following: In what way have I worked on bringing more compassion into my life?
Affiliated teams are organizations that promote our Core Values.
These teams are learning communities that facilitate peer learning, self-reform, collaborative teamwork, political action, and mutual support.
Members become better listeners and speak honestly. They practice what they preach and push institutions to serve the public interest.
Support Pragmatic Idealism
In an address in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1966, Robert Kennedy affirmed the value of pragmatic idealism: “We know that only those who dare to fail greatly ever achieve greatly.”
Simone Weil wrote: “Limits are only legitimate if the needs of all human beings receive equal attention… The needs are earthly, for those are the only ones that man can satisfy.”
Valarie Kaur affirms: “We are reclaiming love as a force for justice.”
Our work is rooted in these beliefs.
Human beings deal with countless polarities. Handling these tensions requires balance and flexibility while accepting that everyone is a unique member of the human family with multiple identities.
We aim to be diverse, global, and pragmatic, moving forward step-by-step, focused on achievable goals within its transformational framework.
Cultivate Cooperation
Collaborative leadership overcomes social fragmentation and oppressive top-down domination and helps to build the unity that’s needed to sustain lasting change.
A deep commitment to cooperation can help establish personal and economic security and overcome excessive fear and extreme anger.
Nonviolent personal, interpersonal, and political action based on The King Philosophy of Nonviolence as a way of life aims for reconciliation, minimizes demonizing opponents, and deepens mutual respect. It refrains from the violence of “fist, tongue or heart.”
We support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The U.N. General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights.
and the U.N. rule of law
All persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards.
Pursue Compassionate Action
We’re inspired by the Charter for Compassion:
We call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion — to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate — to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures — to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity — to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings.
Members learn and grow. We strengthen our organizations through alliances with like-minded organizations. We balance individuals and communities. Strong communities grow strong individuals, and strong individuals grow strong communities.
We challenge oppressive top-down structures and public policies and engage in political action. As Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Promote Holistic and Systemic Transformation
This project is multi-issue and other-centered, rooted in universal moral values committed to gains for all humanity, the environment, and life itself. We urge institutions and organizations to serve the common good and facilitate peer learning and mutual support for self-development.
We nurture cooperation and partnership. We want to enable everyone to meet their basic needs for economic and personal security and equality under the law, with their dignity as humans respected. We promote freedom from discrimination based on any arbitrary identity, including age, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or disability.
In relations within and among individuals, communities, institutions, and nations, reconciliations can contribute to the holistic transformation of our social system. As this transformation ripples through society, a compelling vision can form on the horizon: a compassionate society that, in many respects, looks, feels, and is NEW!