Our Worldview
The relentless pursuit of power, wealth, and status continues to dominate our society. This culture of climbing social ladders for personal gain often results in the exploitation of those lower on the ladder and submission to those above. Unfortunately, symptoms of this problem are all around us - mass shootings, police brutality, economic insecurity, and hopelessness. It's time for us to recognize this issue and work together toward creating a more compassionate and fair society.
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.
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. Together, we can undo oppressive social conditioning and change our institutions to achieve this mission.
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 values and endorse an agreed-on mission statement.
Informal teams spring from relationships with friends, relatives, colleagues, or group memberships.
Formal teams, at least monthly, open meetings with a moment of silence and a “holistic check-in” during which members report on their recent personal, social, and political activities.
Affiliated teams are organizations that promote shared values and mission.
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 idealism:, “We know that only those who dare to fail greatly ever achieve greatly.” However, pragmatism is also needed — as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated in his Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change, which guides how to conduct incremental nonviolent campaigns that build momentum with victories, aim for reconciliation, and cultivate the Beloved Community with other-centered solidarity. King’s idealism is rooted in his philosophy of nonviolence, which offers principles for nonviolence as a way of life
Simone Weil expressed a balance between idealism and pragmatism when she 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.” In that vein, 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
Nonviolent personal, interpersonal, and political action aims for reconciliation, minimizes demonizing opponents, and deepens mutual respect. It refrains from the violence of “fist, tongue or heart.”
Effective 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.
With democratic, bottom-up hierarchies, workers and members can select or otherwise help hold accountable their supervisors and leaders. As managers evaluate employees, employees can evaluate managers.
Governing boards and their staff can form co-equal partnerships. The board can adopt written policies to guide the staff and delegate responsibility to the staff without micromanaging. The staff can form democratic teams that engage in collaborative problem-solving together — within the organization’s framework.
Teams can seek to make decisions with unanimous consensus while resorting to a super-majority when necessary. The team leader can retain the authority to make the final decision If need be. Anyone can exercise leadership at any time by voicing an opinion that moves the work forward.
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 aim to relieve suffering — and prevent it by changing public policies and reforming social structures as needed. 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. Simultaneous positive growth in every arena — cultural, social, personal, economic, environmental, and political — can promote a synergistic upward spiral toward more justice and compassion.
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 — while retaining positive traditions and qualities from the past.