Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

This is a broad, catch-all category of works that fit best here and not elsewhere. If you haven't found it someplace else, you might want to look here.

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Tue Apr 16, 2019 9:07 pm

Spirituality at the United Nations
by Donald F. Keys, speechwriter for United Nations Secretary General, U Thant
Printed and distributed by the Aquarian Age Community [Lucis Trust]
1970s

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Such grandeur is ahead!
Such a great step awaits its fiery affirmation!
Our teaching and the affirmation of the Higher Principles
will reveal so much that is great to humanity!
A great period is drawing near. Thus do we create together.

-- Fiery World, Vol. III, par. 149


Recognizing the interrelated oneness of humanity, and indeed of all life, the Aquarian Age Community is a pledged point of synthesis, resonating to the Aquarian keynote, “Water of Life Am I Poured Forth for Thirsty Men.” Responding to the Aquarian energies of universality, synthesis and loving understanding, it recognizes the spiritual destiny of Humanity and the divine potential at the heart of every individual. In keeping with the resonance of the new age, the Aquarian Age Community is first and foremost a subjective community, seeking alignment and identification with all Spiritual Beings who inspire the evolution of life on planet Earth. All who strive to better understand the new spiritual energies pouring into our planet and integrate them into daily living are a recognized part of the community. As a not-for-profit educational community, it supports the restoration of the Spiritual Mysteries and the transformation of human consciousness.

The Ageless Wisdom tells us that we live in a time of unprecedented opportunity. The dawning of the greater and lesser cycles of Aquarius have been awaited by the Hierarchy of Light and Love—the Masters of the Wisdom, the Teachers of humanity—for untold millennia. It is a time when millions within our human family will have the opportunity to make a leap in consciousness, realize their spiritual potential and actively cooperate in the restoration of the Plan of Love and Light on our planet. That Plan includes the externalization of the Soul—the inner divine principle at the heart of all life, the product of the union between spirit and matter. When the Soul is freed or resurrected from the matter in which it is encased, then will we know without a doubt that all life is in fact interdependent, interconnected and whole. Then, will we truly understand and live by the spiritual values of liberty, fraternity and equality.

In support of that externalization process, the Aquarian Age Community:

• Cooperates and collaborates with the worldwide community that is actively preparing the way for the reappearance of the World Teacher—the Christed (Anointed) One, the true Aquarian.
• Cooperatively participates in the unveiling of the Spiritual Mysteries.
• Promotes the evolution of human consciousness by advocating such new age sciences as the science of meditation, the science of the Antahkarana—bridging consciousness, and the science of service.
• Encourages the activation and mobilization of the will-to-good as it sounds the Aquarian keynotes of JOY and RESURRECTION.
• Promotes the work of the United Nations as it seeks to uplift and improve all life on our planet.

The Aquarian Age Community is dedicated in loving service to humanity, the planet and the “Great Thinker.” It is inspired by the teachings of Master Koot Hoomi, Master Morya, and Master Djwhal Khul as these are set forth in the books of Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and the Agni Yoga Society. These teachings seek to inspire and prepare human consciousness for the great opportunities and possibilities of the 21st century.

Belief in the Soul has become widespread during the last two thousand years.
Knowledge of the Soul is the promise of the Aquarian Age.


-- About the Aquarian Age Community, by The Aquarian Age Community


It is a challenge to discuss Spirituality at the United Nations. It is a challenge because most people will think that the UN is the antithesis of spirituality. I must report, however, that I regard the United Nations as the most spiritual place in the world today. The UN is the first planetary focus at the human level. It is the first place that the nerve endings of all humanity join. It is the first place where all the qualities, characteristics, attributes, and essences of all human groups merge and blend. It is truly, the first temple of humanity.

Of all the contention, of all the disputes, of all the struggles, I am fully aware -- much more so than bystanders, since I am in the middle of them on a nearly daily basis. That is, of course, one level of reality -- but it is not the most important one. We are on the verge of the meta-organization of the world -- by that I mean the reorganization of the world on a level higher than that of the participating nation-states. We have been stumbling toward this development for half a century, and of course it is only commencing -- it is not complete. We have also been moving toward it since the first day a human was born on earth, or perhaps since the earth itself was formed, 4 billion years ago.

A single species, the human, has indeed gained dominion over the earth, and having collapsed time and space, in communication and travel, to the speeds of sound and light, the humans have become a continuous and globe-uniting species. In this setting, the nation-state is dysfunctional, and states are facing incorporation into a world being, of which they will be subsidiary organs. When such a meta-organization occurs, there must be an organizing center, there must be an organizing energy, a synthesizing energy never before registered by the parts, and evoked by the coming emergence of the whole. This is true of the alignment of atoms into crystals, of cells into tissues, or of organs into a human form, and it is true of the subordinate elements of a society. Now we face the next evolutionary imperative. We are forming the world society.

The synthesizing energy for the world society is focussed through the United Nations.
It courses through the halls, through the meeting rooms, through the offices of the United Nations. Blessed are those who are fortunate enough to work there for they are in touch with a new reality in the process of descent and manifestation. Hundreds of thousands of applicants are turned away each year from those who want to work there -- why? Basically, because they have heard the sound of humanity becoming whole and because they have sensed the new reality and have touched something of the energy of human convergence.

It is wearying, it is disappointing, it is tiring, but it is also thrilling, rewarding, and meaningful. The UN has its free loaders, its empire builders, its easy riders, and its CIA and KGB representatives, but it also has dedicated and inspired builders of the new world, spinning the future out of their own spirit, out of their own souls.

We have an informal network at the UN, a humanity underground. It consists of those who are committed, aware, and striving to bring the New World to birth. It consists of people in high places and in low -- of the patient secretary who has been 30 years with the UN, but lives with the vision and the spirit; of the professionals, and undersecretaries and heads of departments who are acting out the imperatives that their own inner vision gives them. Some few are conscious of the sources of their inspiration; most are not. They are the Karma Yogis of our time -- those whose path of spirituality is to achieve through doing -- to grow through serving. They are found not only in the secretariat but also in the delegations to the UN, among the diplomats and their staffs, and also among folks like us, representatives of non-governmental organizations around the UN.

I want however, in my remarks today to focus on the three major spiritual figures related to the UN, and an artifact. Two of the figures were Secretaries-General. The third is a non-governmental person.

The best known of the three persons is of course, Dag Hammarskjöld. The degree of the intensity of his inner life became apparent publicly after publication of his spiritual diary, Markings, following his death when his plane crashed in the Congo. In his briefcase, at the site of the crash, incidentally were found an English edition of the New Testament and Psalms which was always with him when he traveled, and a copy of Martin Buber's I and Thou, which he was translating into Swedish. Buber was a person with whom he felt a deep relationship.

With Hammarskjöld's temporal achievements we will not deal, except to say that he stabilized the United Nations, solidified the notion of an international civil service and independent Secretary-General -- free of political pressures, and originated the modern concept of UN peacekeeping. His personal credo was stated on Edward R. Murrow's program, "This I Believe:"

"The world in which I grew up was dominated by principles and ideals of a time far from ours and as it may seem, far removed from the problems facing a man in the middle of the twentieth century. However, my way has not meant a departure from those ideals. On the contrary. I have been led to an understanding of their validity also for our world today. Thus, a never abandoned effort, frankly and squarely to build up a personal belief in the light of experience and honest thinking has led me in a circle; I now recognize and endorse, unreservedly, those very beliefs which once were handed down to me.

From generations of soldiers and government officials on my father's side, I inherited a belief that no life was more satisfactory, than one of selfless service to your country or humanity. This service required a sacrifice of all personal interests, but likewise, the courage to stand up unflinchingly for your convictions.

From scholars and clergymen on my mother's side, I inherited a belief that, in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men were equals as children of God, and should be met and treated by us as our masters in God.

Faith is a state of the mind and the soul. In this sense we can understand the words of the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross: 'Faith is the union of God with the soul'. The language of religion is a set of formulas which register a basic spiritual experience. It must not be regarded as describing in terms to be defined by philosophy, the reality which is accessible to our senses and which we can analyze with the tools of logic. I was late in understanding what this meant. When I finally reached that point, the beliefs in which I was brought up and which, in fact, had given my life direction, even while my intellect still challenged their validity, were recognized by me, as mine in their own right and by my free choice. I feel that I can endorse those convictions without any compromise, with the demands of that intellectual honesty, which is very key to the maturity of mind.

The two ideals which dominated my childhood world, met me, fully harmonized and adjusted to the demands of our world of today, in the ethics of Albert Schweitzer, where the ideal of service is supported by and supports the basic attitude to man set forth in the Gospels. In his work I also found a key for modern man, to the world of Gospels.

Albert Schweitzer, (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German and then French theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. Early in his life he became acquainted with Annie Besant, who introduced him to Rudolf Steiner, who was still a member of the Theosophical Society (Adyar).[1]

-- Albert Schweitzer, by theosophy.wiki

***

Dear friend,

Much as I would like to, I cannot supply pieces that are not part of my normal program. That is why you have had to wait for my account of my experiences with Rudolf Steiner. Thank you for sending me all those writings about him. I have most of them in my library in Gunsbach, but it was easier getting them from you than having them sent to me from my library. The most valuable item was the autobiography. The reader really gets to know him. Too bad death took the pen from his hands.

I will write about our meeting in Strasbourg, where Annie Besant introduced us. I can still remember our conversations. They inspired me to keep dealing with him and to remain cognizant of his importance. What the two of us share is a desire to replace the uncivilized with civilization. In Strasbourg we both realized we had this rapport. He expected civilization to emerge from ethical thinking and from the insights of the humanities. In terms of my own character, I had to stick to having civilization come forth from an immersion in the true essence of the ethical. In this way I came to the ethics of the reverence for life which, I hope, will instigate the emergence of civilization.

I realize that Rudolf Steiner greatly regretted that I stuck to the old way of thinking, but we both felt the same obligation to lead people back to true civilization. I was delighted at what he managed to achieve in the world with his great personality and his profound humanity.

Everyone should follow the road that is his . . .

-- From Albert Schweitzer Letters 1905 – 1965, edited by Hans Walter Bähr, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (Macmillan Publishing Company, 866 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022)


In primarily Protestant German Europe, theologians who were acutely aware of the antagonism between Christian theology and modern scientific knowledge strayed from the Scriptures and their accessory libraries of commentaries and concordances, and instead sought novel perspectives through the study of contemporary philosophy, history, and even medicine. These historical and comparative methods were first developed into a school by the theological faculty of Tubingen University in the 1860s, and as historian Roy Pascal observes, "this historical research exerted perhaps a profounder influence on theology than the more sensational challenges of Darwinism." [26] These "theological modernists," as Pascal calls them, set out on a Promethean task to steal the fire of divinity from Christ and from Judeo-Christian traditions: "The heart of the Tubingen school was its biblical criticism, and its studies in comparative religion dispersed the solid revelations of Judaism and Christianity into a nebula of pagan sources." [27] During the Nazi era Tubingen became perhaps the dominant center for theology, for it was the base of operations for maverick Protestant theologian Wilhelm Hauer and his German Faith Movement. An English translation of two of Hauer's essays contains an introduction with a section entitled, "Tubingen -- The Home of the Neo-Pagan Movement." [28] Hauer was a close associate of Jung's in the early 1930s and participated with him in a seminar on Kundalini yoga in 1934.

The search for the historical Jesus proved to be the turning point for nineteenth-century critical theology and European culture as a whole, for by the end of the century, widespread skepticism about the divinity of Jesus and the truth of the stories in the Gospels of the New Testament opened the way for social experimentation with alternative religious, neopagan, occultist, or atheistic life-styles. These new paths of social action in European culture were, in part, the result of the intellectual climate created by the widely disseminated researches of German critical theologians. These ideas were denounced from the pulpits of many a Protestant minister (and many more Catholic priests) and were debated at both formal and informal events in the highly influential social worlds of the Protestant clergy. For some Protestant ministers -- such as, perhaps, Paul Jung -- the compelling new image of a historical Jesus led to a secret, shameful loss of faith in Jesus' divinity that had to be hidden from family and flock....

It was indeed in the Germanic lands of the Teutonic hero Siegfried and of the maturing parson's son C. G. Jung that the most serious challenge to Christianity fermented. Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) is not shy about his openly Pietist exaltation of the German Volk and their contribution to the world in the introduction to his famous 1906 volume summarizing the research on the historical Jesus:

"When, at some future day, our period of civilization shall lie, closed and completed, before the eyes of later generations, German theology will stand out as a great, a unique phenomenon in the mental and spiritual life of our time. For nowhere save in the German temperament can there be found in the same perfection the living complex of conditions and factors -- of philosophic thought, critical acumen, historical insight, and religious feeling -- without which no deep theology is possible.

And the greatest achievement of German theology is the critical investigations of the life of Jesus. What it has accomplished here has laid down the conditions and determined the course of the religious thinking of the future." [30]

-- The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, by Richard Noll


But the explanation of how a man should live a life of active social service in full harmony with himself as a member of the community of the spirit, I found in the writings of those great medieval mystics for whom "self surrender" had been the way to self realization, and who, in 'singleness of mind' and 'inwardness' had found the strength to say 'yes' to every demand, which the needs of their neighbors made them face, and to say 'yes' also, to every fate that life had in store for them, when they followed the call of duty, as they understood it. 'Love" that much misused and misinterpreted word, for them, meant simply an overflowing of strength with which they felt themselves filled when living in true self-oblivion. And this love found natural expressions in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and in an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it brought them personally of toil and suffering -- or of happiness.

I know their discoveries about the laws of inner life and of action have not lost their significance.

-- Dag Hammarskjöld


The diary, Markings, was translated into English by Leif Sjoberg and W.H. Auden. Of it Hammarskjöld had written: "These entries provide the only true profile that can be drawn. ...If you find them worth publishing you have my permission to do so, as a sort of 'white book' concerning my negotiations with myself -- and with God."

This extraordinary document is surely one of the most revealing and profound journals we have of the strivings of the human spirit. How to be fair to Secretary General Hammarskjöld in a few excerpts from Markings is a difficult task.

To love life and men as God loves them -- for the sake of
their infinite possibilities,
To wait like Him,
To judge like Him,
Without passing judgement,
To obey the order when it is given
And never look back-
Then He can use you- then, perhaps, He will use you.
And if He doesn't use you -- what matter. In His hand,
every moment has its meaning, its greatness, its glory, its
Peace, its co-inherence.
From this perspective, to "believe in God" is to believe
In yourself, as self-evident, as "illogical", and as impossible
to explain : if I can be, then God is

* * *

You are not the oil, you are not the air -- merely the point
of combustion, the flash point where the light is born.
You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive,

Give, and possess the light as a lens does.
If you seek yourself, "your rights," you prevent the oil and air
from meeting in the flame, you rob the lens of its transparency.
Sanctity -- either to be the Light, or to be self-effaced in
the Light, so that it may be born, self-effaced so that it may
be focussed or spread wider.


* * *

The United Nations Meditation Room:

"The Uncarved Block" -- remain at the Center, which is yours
and that of all humanity. For these goals which it gives to
your life do the utmost which, at each moment, is possible
for you. Also, act without thinking of the consequences, or
seeking anything for yourself.


* * *

The road,
You shall follow it.

The fun,
You shall forget it.

The cup,
You shall empty it.

The pain,
You shall conceal it.

The truth,
You shall be told it.

The end,
You shall endure it.


* * *

Tired
And lonely,
So tired
The heart aches.
Meltwater trickles
Down the rocks,
The fingers are numb,
The knees tremble.
It is now,
Now that you must not give in.

On the path of the others
Are resting places,
Places in the sun
Where they can meet.
But this
Is your path,
And it is now,
Now that you must not fail.

Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you-
And you must be thankful.


* * *

Hammarskjöld -- second Secretary-General, aesthete, man of letters, poet -- was also a modern Christian mystic -- a candidate for human perfection and graduation from this life school. In one of Alice A. Bailey's books, written in the 1930's, there is a statement that a leading Swedish disciple would soon be working in the world. A high Swedish initiate who was a friend of mine was once asked if the foretold one were he. His answer was "no, it is Dag Hammarskjöld."

Let us now turn to the artifact -- for it was Hammarskjöld's artifact. I am referring to the UN Meditation Room. The existence of the room was a hard won battle, not by Hammarskjöld who came later, but by the "Laymen's Movement For A Christian World." This movement, led by such persons as Warren Austin, Weymen Huckabee, Mrs. Pearce Drake, Frank P. Graham, Frank Laubach and J.C. Penny, strove mightily to assure that there would be a place in the permanent UN for prayer and meditation. The same group had worked successfully to assure that there would be a moment of prayer at the beginning and closing of each General Assembly, a tradition which is now well established.

"It will take an Archangel to find space for a prayer room in this building," one UN official told Mr. Huckabee, as construction was well along and no one had entertained the notion in the original plans. One was eventually promised but where to put it was a question. The approach to prayer by the Laymen's Movement was described by Mr. Huckabee as follows:

We were asking people to use prayer as a means of understanding and goodwill -- a substitute for criticism and fault finding, an expression of hope and confidence in world leaders ---a means of expanding the atmosphere of expectation based upon the assumption that peace with justice is God's Will. With the promise of the room I saw a canopy of goodwill and understanding being raised over the UN by the prayers of men and women of all faiths.


By the time the meditation room was finally realized, Mr. Huckabee was able to say:

My mission has been fulfilled. I had a wonderful experience. I had seen in a small way how God can and does use people to bring something about. I knew we had not begun to use or to be used by this great unlimited power which God desires to release through men -- men who remember to pray, to love, to understand, to forgive. I knew that Peace IS the will of God and I wanted to know how now to make it the will of man.


The room was opened on October 14, 1952. From then until 1957 it was a comfortable, reassuring place with arm chairs, member nations' flags, draperies, carpeting and as a non-denominational center-piece, a section of an African mahogany tree. On top of the section, a small potted philodendron grew, symbolizing perhaps, everlasting life.

In 1956, a cosmic north wind, named Hammarskjöld swept in and, gaining the stunned and somewhat uneasy cooperation of the Laymen's Movement, undertook the complete redesign of the meditation room. In November 1957 the transformed meditation room was finally reopened. And what a change! The room in dim light is an austere trapezoid, narrowing to a front wall covered by a fresco titled "Infinity" by Hammarskjöld's favorite artist, Bo Beskow. Ten cane-seated benches are arranged in the back.

In the place of dominance in the room is something wholly surprising -- a six and a half ton triangular block of crystalline iron ore from a Swedish mine. The polished top is lit by a single beam of light from a source hidden in the ceiling. It glistens like moonlight in water. Approximately 60 slabs were mined before this one was chosen.

Let us now turn to Hammarskjöld's own remarks about this room:

The Meditation Room is a kind of stepchild of the architects of this house; it was brought into being as an experiment, but now I am happy to confirm that it is a permanent part of the building and I am sure it will be of increasing importance. We had a very small space within which we sought to achieve a room of stillness. This house must have one room, one place, which is dedicated to Silence, dedicated to silence in the outer sense and stillness in the inner sense. We must do everything possible in creating such a room to create an atmosphere where people could really withdraw into themselves and feel the void.

We had one difficulty, that in a room of this kind in a house of this character we could not use any kind of symbols with which man has been used to link his religious feelings; we had to work on the basis of symbols common to all. In a sense, what I think we had at the back of our minds was something which is said, I believe, in one of Buddha's scripts -- that the significance of the vessel is not the shell but the void. The significance of a room is not the walls but is in what is framed by the walls; that is to say, we had to create a room of stillness with perhaps one or two very simple symbols, light and light striking on stone. It is for that reason that in the center of the Room there is this block of iron ore, glimmering like ice in a shaft of light from above. That is the only symbol in the Room -- a meeting of the light of the sky and the earth.

However, in a certain sense the symbolism goes one step further. I do not know whether there is anything quite like the arrangement of that Room with a big block of stone in the center. The original idea was one which I think you will all recognize; you will find it in many great religions; it is the empty altar, empty not because there is no God, but empty because God is worshipped in so many forms. The stone in the center is the altar to the God of all. At the same time, at least to myself it had strong associations with the cornerstone, the firm element in a world of movement and turmoil. In this house, with its dynamic modern architecture, there are very few things that give you the feeling of weight, solidity and permanence; in this case we wanted this massive altar to give the impression of something more than temporary.

We also had another idea which comes down to what, after all, we are trying to do here in this house -- we are trying to turn swords into ploughshares; and we thought we could bless by our thoughts the very material out of which arms are made. For that reason we felt that it was appropriate that the material to represent the earth on which we stand, as seen by the light of the sky, should be iron ore, the material out of which swords have been made and out of which homes are built. It is a material, which represents the very paradox of human life; the basic materials offered by God to us may be used either for construction or destruction. This leads our thoughts to the necessity of choice between the two alternatives.

You see therefore, that in the seeming void of the Room there is something we want to say. We want to bring back the stillness, which we have lost in our streets and in our conference rooms, and to bring it back in a setting in which no noise would impinge upon our imagination. In that setting we want to bring back our thoughts to elementary facts, the facts we are always facing, life struck by light while resting on the ground. We want to bring back the idea of worship, devotion to something which is greater and higher than we are ourselves. We want to do that by the form of our altar in such a way as to bring to everybody's mind the fact that every single one of us is faced, in his handling of the heritage of the riches of this earth, with the choice between the ploughshare and the sword.


I want to say just a few more words about the Meditation Room. It both gains and suffers from its position. It is one of the holiest of holies of the planet, yet it is easily accessible by the public, being located in the Visitor's Lobby. It is thus, a great open secret. Anyone can go there at any time. It suffers in that delegates do not use it much precisely because of its location.

But I have to say that in some way, its talismanic quality performs quite irrespective of who uses or does not use it. When I say it is a holy of holies, I mean that it is a focus for the energies of a unitary planet, for a unified humanity, and for right relations between all the kingdoms of life. Those energies use the room and the stone like a lens; and through that spot they course through the meeting rooms, through the secretariat, through the delegations and by that route throughout the world.

Let me share one anecdote. Recently I had the pleasure of guiding a representative of the traditional wisdom of the Hopi People through the UN, including the Meditation Room. He was not expecting anything in particular. But when he entered the room, he audibly gasped. Quickly and apologetically, he reached for his medicine bag, took out a leather pouch from which he made an offering on the spot in front of the rock while saying prayers.

"We have been told," he said, "that there are three most powerful places in the United States. This is one of them, and I am going home to report it to the Elders." Which he then did.

Also, a dynamite bomb was placed in the Meditation Room. The fuse went out.

U Thant was the third UN Secretary-General. This gentle Burmese Buddhist was regarded as unremarkable, which was exactly what most major powers, particularly the USSR, wanted after the lightening bolt of Dag Hammarskjöld. It is increasingly difficult to be elected Secretary-General. States would generally prefer a good housekeeper who does not initiate, innovate or otherwise threaten their equilibrium or the status quo. But, U Thant's self effacing nature belied his moral courage and inner strength. Those who voted for him were later to find themselves very surprised. He was never really understood by the West and probably not by the communist states either. He was, however, universally trusted -- with confidences and in his word and fairness.

I knew the man personally, and loved him. I had the pleasure of sitting with him in his home, working on statements and articles, which would become history. I sensed the reverential atmosphere filled with Buddhic qualities, and knew that this son of the East was dearly beloved of the guides and mentors of the human race. U Thant was an earnest Buddhist and meditated at home every morning before driving to the UN.

The two fullest statements of U Thant's belief's and practices are contained in his talk on "The Role of Religious Convictions" at the Third International Teach-In at Toronto in 1967, and his personal statement in his memoirs, View from the UN (Doubleday, 1978, pp. 20-25, 453-454). Dead from cancer upon its completion, he was unable to continue to his second volume, which was to have been much more introspective than the memoirs devoted to his role at the UN.

He states:

As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance. I was brought up not only to develop the spirit of tolerance but also to cherish moral and spiritual qualities, especially modesty, humility, compassion and most important, to attain a certain degree of emotional equilibrium. I was taught to control my emotions through a process of concentration and meditation. Of course, being human, and not yet having reached the stage of arhat (enlightened being) I cannot completely "control" my emotions ....

Among the teachings of the Buddha are four features of meditation, the primary purpose of which is the attainment of moral and spiritual excellence: meta (goodwill or kindness); karuna (compassion); mudita (sympathetic joy); and upekka (equanimity or equilibrium).

A true Buddhist practices his metta (kindness) to all, without distinction -- 'just as the sun shines on all, or the rain falls on all, without distinction. 'Metta embraces all beings impartially and spontaneously, expecting nothing in return, not even appreciation. Metta is impersonal love or goodwill, the opposite of sensuous caring or a burning sensual fire that can turn into wrath, hatred, or revenge when not requited....

Karuna ... the quality of compassion, is deeply rooted in the Buddhist concept of suffering. Human life is one of suffering; hence, it is the duty of a good Buddhist to mitigate the sufferings of others.

Mudita (sympathetic joy) can best be defined as one's expression of sympathy with other people's joy. The happiness of others generates happiness in the mind of a good Buddhist .... The person who cultivates altruistic joy radiates it over everyone in his surroundings....

Upekka (equanimity) connotes the acquisition of a balance of mind whether in triumph or tragedy. This balance is achieved only as a result of deep insight into the nature of things, and primarily by contemplation and meditation. If one understands how unstable and impermanent all worldly conditions are, one learns to bear lightly the greatest misfortune or the greatest reward. To achieve upekka, one has to meditate....Buddhist meditation aims at cleansing the mind of impurities, such as ill will, hatred and restlessness; it aims at cultivating such qualities as concentration, awareness, intelligence, confidence, and tranquility, leading finally to the attainment of the highest wisdom....


U Thant also writes that he was greatly influenced by the writings of Albert Schweitzer and his concept of "reverence for life," and by those of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In stating his own concept of human society, he states:

I am always conscious of the fact that I am a member of the human race.... This consciousness prompts me to work for a great human synthesis, which is the implicit goal of the world Organization I had the privilege of serving.... Long before I was appointed Secretary-General, I used to dwell at some length on the oneness of the human community.


Indeed, as a result of these convictions, U Thant became a founding co-Chairman of Planetary Citizens, which, together with Norman Cousins, we originated. In the closing pages of his memoirs U Thant again called for "a new concept of citizenship."

I am making a plea, he said, based on these ten years of looking at the human condition from my unique vantage point-for a dual allegiance. This implies an open acceptance of belonging... to the human race as well as to our local community or nation.... I believe that the mark of the truly educated person facing the 21st century is that he feels himself to be a planetary citizen.


The third figure I wish to discuss in the context of spirituality at the UN is not a Secretary-General, nor an official of any kind. He has, however, led meditations twice a week at the UN for 10 years, nearly one third of the life of the Organization. Sri Chinmoy comes from the lineage of saints and sages of the East, in the line of and in the tradition of Ramakrishna and Aurobindo. Like them, he is a post-graduate human. In his case, he awoke to that fact when in his early teens, and spent the next 20 years perfecting his inner tools for his life at the ashram of Aurobindo in Pondicherry, India.

It is not surprising to me that such an exalted being would choose - or be asked from within, to assume responsibility for spirituality at the UN as part of his mission. Rather it would seem inevitable, because of what he is, and of what the UN represents and strives to become. If there is any place on earth which is appropriate to an Avataric being, and where he is needed, surely it is the fledgling world organization, struggling to unify humanity and carry it to the next level of awareness. Thus we find Chinmoy acting as invoker and intermediary for the vastest and most significant energies the world has yet received, with our meditation group of 60 or 70 people striving to serve as a lens and distributing agent for the light, love, and purpose he brings down into our midst.

We are attempting to bring together and assist in publication of the statements he has made at these meditations about the UN and its task, and about the world community, and I would like to share with you some excerpts from this increasingly significant material. Of course, he recognizes the soul of the UN as well as its present outer manifestation. He recognizes the future of the world organization as well as its present state. He offers solace and comfort, he brings inspiration and insight, and he generates enthusiasm and expectancy for an unfolding reality.

A spiritual Goal for the United Nations; Is it practical?

Without the least possible hesitation I venture to say that it is highly practical. It is not only practical, but also practicable. Something more: it is inevitable. We have to know what the spiritual goal for the United Nations is. Its Goal is to become ultimately the saviour of the world's imperfection, the liberator of the world's destruction and the fulfiller of the world's aspiration.

My heart tells me that the United Nations has a divine Ideal. My soul tells me that this Ideal is going to be transferred into the supreme Reality. Soulful concern is the essence of the United Nations' Ideal. Fruitful patience is the substance of the United Nations' ideal. Supernal fulfillment will be the essence of the United Nations' Reality.

Today's United Nations offers hopeful and soulful advice to mankind. Tomorrow's United Nations' will offer fruitful and fulfilling peace to mankind. Today's United Nations' feels truth, Light and Delight in its loving heart. Tomorrow's United Nations' will manifest Truth, Light and Delight with its all-embracing soul.

My aspiring heart has a soulful message to offer to all the nations that have formed, that have made the Garland of the United Nations. The message is this:

There are two stumbling blocks: doubt and insecurity, Doubt in the mind, insecurity in the heart. There [are] two stepping stones: faith and surrender. Faith in oneself and surrender to God's will, conscious surrender to God's constant Will...

The message that the soul of the United Nations offers to the world at large is for Eternity. Its message is that today's imperfect and unfulfilled man is tomorrow's absolutely fulfilled and supremely manifested God
. (Garland of the Nation Souls pp 27-28-29)


On another occasion Sri Chinmoy stated:

Needless to say, the world is still not perfect. Since the world is not perfect, the world opinion cannot be perfect.... There are many on earth who find fault with the activities and the dedicated services of the United Nations. But from the spiritual point of view, I wish to say that each action and each dedicated service is not a mere experiment, but an experience of God in and through the United Nations. ....This is what we see and feel in the heart of the United Nations.

From the spiritual point of view, the United Nations is struggling and striving for something meaningful and fruitful. What it needs, it has; Divine Compassion. The Compassion of God has been unceasingly descending upon the United Nations.

It is not in vain or without any purpose that the United Nations has come into existence. God's vision has to be manifested here on earth. The suffering nations need a place for consolation; the sacrificing nations need a place for appreciation. Here in the United Nations we see the message of fulfillment. Now it is up to the world. The world, the sleeping, unaspiring, unawakened world is not yet receiving the Light of the United Nations. There are many things that the world could get from the dedication of the United Nations: but if the world is not receptive, it is not the fault of the United Nations.

God is all Compassion, He is all giving; but if we don't want to receive His Light the way He wants to offer it, that is not His fault. The heart of this place is dedication, the soul of this place is concern, the body of this place is for the illumining expansion of human consciousness.

... When we go deep within, we see that a seed was sown here in the earth-consciousness and that seed has boundless potentiality. God's Light is here for humanity to receive on a practical level, in an earthly manner. God's Light is here to illumine us. Consciously and unconsciously the world is receiving this Light from the United Nations; but the United Nations is not being recognized, and this fact is deplorable. The human beings who have become instruments to offer the Light that the soul of the United Nations has, may not be fully aware of what they are doing. When they see the imperfections in others, when they see their limited capacity, at times they feel frustrated. But the Divine in each individual nation is all-wise. It has chosen the right place and the right instrument -- the United Nations.

... The United Nations is the chosen instrument of God. To be a chosen instrument of God means to be a divine messenger carrying the banner of God's inner vision and outer manifestation. One day the world will not only treasure and cherish the soul of the United Nations but also claim the soul of the United Nations as its very own with enormous pride, for this soul is all-loving, all-nourishing, and all fulfilling. (Garland, pp 66-68).


In speaking to the meditation group, Sri Chinmoy once said:

We are the most fortunate people on earth, for God has chosen us to be his instruments to serve Him in mankind. Please try to feel that the United Nations is not a mere building, but a place of worship, a place where all human beings can worship and pray to God. This place is a living shrine for the Supreme.


On another occasion he said:

This meditation is not only for the United Nations but also for the world at large. If we really love God, and if we really love mankind and consciously believe that we are responsible for mankind, then we feel that our aspiration and dedication to the soul of the United Nations and our inner pilot is of paramount importance. Please feel that it is your own aspiration that will expedite the vision for the United Nations. And when the vision is transformed into reality, the inner pilot will know our contribution whether or not the world ever recognizes it....


Sri Chinmoy had a particularly poignant and deep relationship with U Thant. I attended a performance of plays on the life of the Buddha by Chinmoy that were dedicated to U Thant and performed for him. Of U Thant at his passing, Chinmoy said:

U Thant was a chosen instrument of God. U Thant was a chosen instrument of man. God gave him Compassion-sky to offer to man. Man gave him his suffering-sea to offer to God. Earth gave him the responsibility. Heaven knew and saw it. Heaven gave him the authority, but unfortunately earth did not know it or did not care to know it. His heart of brotherhood was misunderstood. His life of sacrifice was not valued. But his vision and goal of oneness will eternally be pursued by aspiring humanity.


Is Sri Chinmoy properly appreciated by the United Nations? Not entirely. Both the present Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and the past Secretaries-General, Kurt Waldheim and U Thant, have appreciated his work and that of the UN Meditation Group. Selected delegates and many secretariat staff as well as some NGO representatives do. However, such overt spirituality is still a big step for many.

Spirituality at the United Nations? The UN is a place of contrast and contests. It is a place of contrast between selfishness and sharing. It is a place of contests between the narrow self-interest and the world community's good. It is the major battle line for the future of humanity's soul and collective well being. It is the locus for the emergence of higher values concerning humanity as a whole, and the rebirth of the race as a Planetary Entity, a Planetary Human Being. Therefore, from the inner side the wiring has been put in place, the energies of emergence are focused, the power for planetary transformation is available. It is even represented there by a conscious post-human intermediary of great power. It is too early yet to tell whether that promise will be recognised, accepted by humanity and acted upon or scorned. But rest assured that those of us who work there with the vision before us will continue to worship at the altar of humanity-become- whole, for you and for all.

1 Written in the early 1970s by Mr. Donald Keys, when he was a speechwriter for Secretary-General, U Thant and Founder/President of Planetary Citizens. Printed and distributed by the Aquarian Age Community with the kind permission of Mr. Keys.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Tue Apr 16, 2019 9:33 pm

Planetary Citizens
by sourcewatch.org
Accessed: 4/16/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


U Thant was the third UN Secretary-General. This gentle Burmese Buddhist was regarded as unremarkable, which was exactly what most major powers, particularly the USSR, wanted after the lightening bolt of Dag Hammarskjöld. It is increasingly difficult to be elected Secretary-General. States would generally prefer a good housekeeper who does not initiate, innovate or otherwise threaten their equilibrium or the status quo. But, U Thant's self effacing nature belied his moral courage and inner strength. Those who voted for him were later to find themselves very surprised. He was never really understood by the West and probably not by the communist states either. He was, however, universally trusted -- with confidences and in his word and fairness.

I knew the man personally, and loved him. I had the pleasure of sitting with him in his home, working on statements and articles, which would become history. I sensed the reverential atmosphere filled with Buddhic qualities, and knew that this son of the East was dearly beloved of the guides and mentors of the human race. U Thant was an earnest Buddhist and meditated at home every morning before driving to the UN.

The two fullest statements of U Thant's belief's and practices are contained in his talk on "The Role of Religious Convictions" at the Third International Teach-In at Toronto in 1967, and his personal statement in his memoirs, View from the UN (Doubleday, 1978, pp. 20-25, 453-454). Dead from cancer upon its completion, he was unable to continue to his second volume, which was to have been much more introspective than the memoirs devoted to his role at the UN....

U Thant also writes that he was greatly influenced by the writings of Albert Schweitzer and his concept of "reverence for life," and by those of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin....

Indeed, as a result of these convictions, U Thant became a founding co-Chairman of Planetary Citizens, which, together with Norman Cousins, we originated. In the closing pages of his memoirs U Thant again called for "a new concept of citizenship."

I am making a plea, he said, based on these ten years of looking at the human condition from my unique vantage point-for a dual allegiance. This implies an open acceptance of belonging... to the human race as well as to our local community or nation.... I believe that the mark of the truly educated person facing the 21st century is that he feels himself to be a planetary citizen.


-- Spirituality at the United Nations, by Donald F. Keys, speechwriter for United Nations Secretary General, U Thant


Planetary Citizens was set up in 1974 and no longer operates.

"PlanetaryCitizens.net's mission is to create, expose and nurture positive change in the world. We hope to give you pertinent information and relevant facts in the process. Donald Keys, speech writer for U Thant in the 60s, coined the phrase Planetary Citizen on the way to creating The New World Alliance. The Occupy Movement, a global announcement of dissatisfaction in leadership and a call for change, could be seen as a call for planetary citizens. Numerous groups and organizations are adopting the 12-sector model, illustrated here, as a means toward self-organization." [1]

In 1970 the UN held a "Conference on Human Survival" which was chaired by Lester Pearson with funding coming from the Kettering Foundation. With funds left over from this conference Planetary Citizens was initiated. [2]

Another collaborative project Planetary Citizens helped launch is “The Planetary Initiative for the World We Choose.” “The original inviters of the Planetary Initiative were the leaders of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the Club of Rome, Global Education Associates, the United Nations Association of New South Wales, and of course, Planetary Citizens.” [3]

Board of Directors (October 1975)

Accessed May 2012: [4]

• Keith Alleyne, Alfred G. Brauch, Betsie Carter-Haar, Phil Gibbs, Matthew Haai, Anthony Hixon, Mark Horowitz, Jeff Kamen, Laraine Mai, Martha McDougle, Fred Rosenzveig, Stephen B. Shafer, David Spangler, Geir V. Vilhjalmsjon
• TREASURER - George A. Christie
• SECRETARY - David Genhon
• COUNSEL - Charles Teiry
• REGISTRAR - Donald F. Keys
• Honorary Chairmen - Norman Cousins, U Thant 1909-1974

Advisory Council (October 1975)

Accessed May 2012: [5]

• Saul Mendlovitz - chair
• Roy Amara, Richard E. Andre, Isaac Asimov, Archie J. Bahm, Richard Baker-Roshi, E. Alice Beard, Humberto Blanco, F. E. Boaten, Theodore Brameld, Noel J. Brown, William J. Butler, Peter Caddy, Sri Chinmoy, Andrew A. D. Clarke, David Steindl-Rast, Rene Dubos, J. Duncan Edmonds, Martin Ennals, Roger H. Evans, James Fadiman, Richard Fall, Jerome D. Frank, Johan Galtung, Denis A. Goulet, Alyce Green, S. Spencer Grin, Willis W. Harman, Robert J. Havighimt, Theodore M. Hesburgh, Richard Hudson, Ervin Laszlo, James D. Lenhari, Robert Jay Lifton, Mahavishnu, John McLaughlin, Edgar D. Mitchell, Henry E. Niles, Glenn A. Olds, Alan Paton, V. Madhusudan Reddy, E.F. Schumacher, Russell L. Schweickart, Philippe de Seynes, Salty Swing Shelley, Sir John Sinclair, Harold Taylor, William Irwin Thompson, Erling A. Thunberg, James G. Vargiu, Rene V.L Wadlow, Geshe Wangyal, Lucy Law Webster


First Endorsers

Accessed May 2012: [6]

• ARGENTINA - Raul Prebisch
• AUSTRALIA - Julius Stone
• AUSTRIA - Konrad Lorenz
• BELGIUM - Maurice Bejart, Paul Henri Spuk 1899-1972
• CANADA - Lt.Gen E.L.M. Burns, Marshall McLuhan, Lester Pearson, Maurice Strong
• SRI LANKA - T.S Fernando, Gunapala P. Malalasekera
• COSTA RICA - Jose Figueres
• CYPRUS - Archbishop Makarios
• FRANCE - Marcel Marccau, Darius Milhaud, Abbe Pierre, Jean-Francois Revel, Jean Rostand
• GREECE - Constantinos Doxiadis
• INDIA - Rajeshwar Dayal, C.D Deshmukh, Archbishop Angelo Fernandes, Arthur Lall, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Gen. Indarjit Rikhye
• IRELAND - Sean MacBride
• ITALY - Giorgio La Pira, Aurelio Peccei
• JAPAN - Toshio Miyake, Setsuo Yamada
• LEBANON - Charles Malik
• LIBERIA - Angie Brooks-Randolph
• THE NETHERLANDS - HM Queen Juliana, Jan Tinbergen
• NEW ZEALAND - Sir Edmund Hillary
• NIGERIA - Chief Simeon O. Adebo, Sir Adeiokunbo A. Ademola
• NORWAY - Thor Hryerdahl, OddNansen 1901-197)
• PAKISTAN - Sir Muhammcd Zafrullah Khan
• PHILIPPINES - Carlos P. Romulo
• PUERTO RICO - Pablo Calais 1876- [973
• ROMANIA - lorgu Jordan, Ion Nicodim
• SWEDEN - Gunnar Myrdal
• SWITZERLAND - Salvador Dr Madanaga, Adrian Pell, Jean Piaget
• TIBET - The Dalai Lama
• UNITED KINGDOM - Sir Adrian Cedric Boult, Lord Ritchie-Calder, Lord Hugh Caradon, Christopher Fry, Philip Noel-Baker, C.P. Snow, Arnold Toynbee, Peter Ustinov
• UNITED STATES - Roger Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Canon Blake, Elite Boulding, Kenneth Boulding, Harrison Brown, Alexander Calder, Judy Collins, Luther Evans, R. Buckminster Fuller, Frank Herbert, Paul G. Hoffman, Robert Hutchins, Coretta Scott King, Ingrid May, Rollo May, Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Miller, Morris Mitchell, David A. Morse, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Victor Reuther, Pete Seeger, Leopold Stokowski, Alben Szent-Gyorgyi, John Updike, Kurt Vognegut, George Wild, Earl Warren, James Watson
• UPPER VOLT A - Joseph Ki-Zerbo
• WEST GERNANY- Martin Niemoller
• YUGOSLAVIA - Leo Mates

Contact

Planetary Citizens
Attention: Zen Benefiel
925 S. Sailfish Dr.
Gilbert, Arizona USA, 85233
Web: http://www.planetarycitizens.net/contact.html

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch articles

• Rene Dubos
• Robert Mueller (UN)
• Freed Schmitter [3]
• Gordon Feller - former executive director
• William H. Bahan
• Sara Catlin
• Martha Crampton
• Joshua Cutter
• Alyce Green
• Virginia Satir
• Thomas Pliske
• William J. Butler
• Carly Newfeld - UK

References

1. Planetary Citizens Home, organizational web page, accessed April 21, 2012.
2. Donald Keys, "Earth at Omega: Passage to Planetization" [1] (Branden Books, 1982) (published by Findhorn Press in 1984), p.95, p.96.
3. Donald Keys, "Earth at Omega: Passage to Planetization" [2] (Branden Books, 1982) (published by Findhorn Press in 1984), p.103.
4. United Nations Items-in-Secretary-General's Statements, organizational web page, accessed May 4, 2012.
5. United Nations Items-in-Secretary-General's Statements, organizational web page, accessed May 4, 2012.
6. United Nations Items-in-Secretary-General's Statements, organizational web page, accessed May 6, 2012.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Apr 18, 2019 1:03 am

Earth at Omega: Passage to Planetization [EXCERPT]
by Donald Keys

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.




Chapter IV: Three Prophets of Planetary Unity

Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.

-- Jesus Christ of Nazareth


The third and final phase of our UN tour will be more subtle and subjective. It will try to convey something of the spirit of the place and the response it evokes, both from ordinary people and from extraordinary people. There is a very particular atmosphere in the UN compound. It becomes intermingled with the scents of aromatic tobaccos and espresso coffee as one approaches the delegates, North Lounge, but throughout the buildings the atmosphere is very exhilarating. My guest one day was David Spangler, new age writer and philosopher. After a few moments' quiet, David said, "It feels like home."

Yes, visiting the UN feels like a homecoming. There is something extraordinary about mixing together the essences of all elements of what we call humanity, and about their reuniting under a single roof. The whole, we are told, is more than the sum of its parts. And here is where you can sense that the whole of humanity is very much more than and something quite different from a mere collection of people with differing habits and customs, attractive as their uniqueness may be. I remember attending a Staff Day dance. The atmosphere was amazing. To be there was to participate in a joyous reunion of the species.

Quite apart from the surface phenomena of the United Nations -- the crises, conflicts, and confrontations which get headline treatment -- there is something else occurring which might hardly occasion comment. The UN is a place where we can sense the first intimations of what humanity really is, as an entity and as a species. Humanity as differentiated from this person, that person, from this group, that tribe or nation, is a quantum jump different from anything heretofore experienced. It is not uncommon for first-time visitors or short-term delegates to experience a sudden, overwhelming realization of planetary humanity, one similar to that which has struck moon-traveling astronauts gazing upon earth.

In the United Nations Secretariat staff we find many unsung heroes, persons who are unconsciously representing the energies of human unification. They are animated by it and act on it, but are not given to lives of contemplation or speculation. Their work can be equated with continuous meditation on human unification, not in the abstract, but in action. Among them are the grand Karma Yogis of the Age (Karma Yogis are those whose path of spirituality is to achieve realization through selfless and dedicated action), persons who are wholly invested in the effort to manifest the vision of planetary justice, freedom, equity and peace. The UN is more noted by the press for its freeloaders, its empire builders, KGB and CIA agents, but such people are, in the long run, much less significant than the dedicated Secretariat workers.

We have an informal network at the UN of persons who are committed, aware, and striving to bring the new world to birth. It consists of people in high places and in low -- of the patient secretary who has been thirty years with the UN and who lives with the vision and the spirit, of the professionals and undersecretaries and heads of departments who are acting from the imperatives which their inner vision gives them.

The full dimensions of the subjective dynamism animating the UN cannot be understood, however, without telling the story of three major figures at the UN. Two were Secretaries-General; the third is a non-governmental person. One was Christian, one Buddhist, and one is Hindu. All were extraordinary prophets of planetary unity.

Dag Hammarskjold

The best known of the three is Dag Hammarskjold. The intensity of his inner life became apparent only after the publication of his spiritual diary, Markings, following his death in a plane crash in the Congo. He went to the Congo trying to speech up the return to peace. At the site of the crash, incidentally, were found in his briefcase an English edition of the New Testament and Book of Psalms which always traveled with him, and a copy of martin Buber's I and Thou, which he was translating into Swedish. Hammarskjold felt a deep relationship to Buber and his work.

Hammarskjold's personal credo was stated on Edward R. Murrow's program "This I Believe." He states that his "never abandoned effort ... to build up a personal belief in the light of experience and honest thinking" led him to "recognize and endorse unreservedly those believes which once were handed down to me." Behind him on his father's side were generations of soldiers and government officials. From them he inherited a belief "that no life was more satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country or humanity. This service required a sacrifice of all personal interests, but likewise, the courage to stand up unflinchingly for your convictions." Hammarskjold's inheritance from his mother included the influence of scholars and clergymen, and it taught him that "in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men were equals as children of God."

Hammarskjold found that these two ideals were represented fully and appropriately for "the demands of our world of today" in the ethics of Albert Schweitzer. The strongest influence in his spiritual life, however, was the lives and teachings of "those great medieval mystics for whom 'self surrender' had been the way to self-realization and who in 'singleness of mind' ... found strength ... to say 'yes' to every fate that life had in store for them when they followed the call to duty as they understood it." For Hammarskjold, "love" meant an overflowing of the strength with which the mystics were filled when living in true self-oblivion, and which found "natural expression in an unhesitant fulfillment of duty and in an unreserved acceptance of life, whatever it brought them personally of toil and suffering -- or happiness." (Edward R. Murrow, This I believe, Vol. II New York, Simon and Schuster, 1954).

After Hammarskjold's death, his diary, Markings, was translated into English by Leif Sjoberg and W.H. Auden. Of it Hammarskjold wrote: "These entries provide the only true profile that can be drawn ... If you find them worth publishing you have my permission to do so, as a sort of 'white book' concerning my negotiations with myself -- and with God." This extraordinary document is surely one of the most revealing and profound journals we have of the strivings of the human spirit.

Let us content ourself with three quotations from Markings (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1966 pages 205, 213, 214):

I.

I don't know Who -- or what -- put the question, I don't know when it was put,
I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer YES to
Someone -- or Something -- and from that hour I was certain that existence
is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal
From that moment I have known what it means 'not to look back', and 'to take
no thought for the morrow.'

-- Whitsunday, 1961.

II.


Tired
And lonely,
So tired
The heart aches.
Meltwater trickles
Down the rocks,
The fingers are numb,
The knees tremble.
It is now,
Now that you must not give in.

On the path of the others
Are resting places,
Places in the sun
Where they can meet.
But this
Is your path,
And it is now,
Now that you must not fail.

Weep
If you can,
Weep,
But do not complain.
The way chose you-
And you must be thankful.

-- July 6, 1961

III.

Have mercy
Upon us.
Have mercy upon our efforts,
That we
Before Thee,
In love and in faith,
Righteousness and humility,
May follow Thee,
With self-denial, steadfastness, and courage,
And meet Thee
In the silence.

Give u
A pure heart
That we may see Thee,
A humble heart
that we may hear Thee,
A heart of faith
That we may live Thee,

Thou
Whom I do not know
But Whose I am.

Thou
Whom I do not comprehend
But Who hast dedicated me
To my fate.
Thou --

-- July 19, 1961
Dag Hammarskjold

Briant Urquhart, Hammarskjold's associate and biographer, wrote of Markings, "It is an unusual record for a highly successful public man, and some readers have found its earnestness and frankness embarrassing and even unattractive. It is certainly an intensely serious book which makes no effort at all to play up the more human or charming aspects of its subject." He writes also, "The springs of Hammarskjold's sense of vocation ran deep. They were traditional, intellectual, and religious. His identification with Christian thought, was not messianic, but rather in the old tradition of the imitation of Christ in sacrifice and in service to others. He was a member of that small and lonely band who throughout history have engaged at the same time in trying to deal with the hard world of political and social reality and in searching endlessly for a spiritual meaning which transcends that world...." Brian Urqhart, HAMMARSKJOLD, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972 pp. 18, 23).

Urquhart remains as Under-Secretary-General in a vital post dealing with political disputes and UN peacekeeping.

There is a remarkable artifact at the United Nations which bears Dag Hammarskjold's personal stamp. It is the redesigned Meditation Room, off the visitors' lobby, surrounding a crystalline iron ore altar six tons in weight. The existence of the room we owe not to Hammarskjold but to Weyman Huckabee and other persons of the Layman's Movement for a Christian World, who fought a hard-won battle to set aside space for a meditation room after the UN building was nearly completed. The group included Warren Austin, Mrs. Pearce Drake, Frank P. Graham, Frank Laubach and J.C. Penny, who were insistent that there be a place in the UN for prayer and meditation. The same group successfully assured that there would be a moment of prayer or meditation at the beginning of each General Assembly, a tradition which is now well established. The room was opened in 1952, and until 1956 it was a comfortable, reassuring place with armchairs, member nations' flags, draperies, carpeting, and a section of an African mahogany tree as a non-denominational centerpiece. These furnishings are now in the meditation room of Wainwright House in Rye, New York, the successor to the Layman's Movement.

In 1956, a cosmic north wind named Hammarskjold swept in, and gaining the stunned and somewhat uneasy cooperation of the Layman's Movement, undertook the complete redesign of the room. The transformed Meditation Room was formally reopened in November 1957. The room is an austere trapezoid, dimly lit, narrowing to a front wall covered by a fresco titled "infinity," done by Hammarskjold's favorite artist, Bo Beskow. Ten cane-seated benches are arranged in the back. The polished top of the great block of iron ore is lit by a single beam of light from a source hidden in the ceiling. Approximately sixty slabs were cut in Swedish mines before this one was chosen.

Dag Hammarskjold commented about the significance of the room in the following way. Speaking of the stone he said: "It is an empty altar, not because there is no God, but empty became God is worshipped in so many forms. The stone in the center is the altar to the God of all. At the same time ... it has strong associations with the cornerstone, the firm element in a world of movement and turmoil.

"We had also another idea which comes down to what, after all, we are trying to do here in this house -- we are trying to turn swords into ploughshares, and we thought we could bless by our thoughts the very material out of which arms are made."

Many people comment on the strength and atmosphere of the tiny room, and are unprepared for its impact. Perhaps one story is not out of place. Recently I had the pleasure of guiding a representative of Elders of native American Indian people through the UN, including the Meditation Room. He was not expecting anything particular. But when he entered the room, he audibly gasped. Quickly and apologetically, he reached for his medicine bag, and from a leather pouch, he took out an offering which he made on the spot in front of the rock while saying his prayers.

"We have been told," he said, "that there are three most powerful places in the United States. This is one of them, and I am going home and report its location to the Elders." Which he did. I am sure Dag Hammarskjold would have been gratified.

U Thant

U Thant was the third UN Secretary-General. This gentle Burmese Buddhist was regarded as unremarkable, which was exactly what most major powers wanted after the lightning bolt of Dag Hammarskjold, and what in fact they had sought in Hammarskjold as well. They were twice fooled. It is difficult to be elected Secretary-General. Many States would prefer a good housekeeper who does not innovate or take initiatives. Those who voted for U Thant were later to be very surprised. He was never really understood by the West, and probably not by the communist States either. He was, however, universally trusted with shared confidences, in his word and in his fairness.

I knew the man personally and loved him as did his many associates. I had the pleasure of sitting with him in his Riverdale home, working on statements and articles that would become history. I sensed a reverential atmosphere there, one filled with Buddhic qualities. U Thant was an earnest buddhist who meditated at home every morning before driving to the UN to shoulder the problems of the world.

The two fullest statements of U Thant's beliefs and practices are contained in his talk on "The Role of Religious Convictions" at the Third International Teach-In at Toronto in 1967, and his personal statement in his memoirs, View from the UN (New York, Doubleday, 1978, pp. 20-25, 453-454). Dead of cancer upon its completion, he was unable to pen a second volume, which was to have been much more introspective and anecdotal than the memoirs devoted to his role at the UN. He states:

"As a Buddhist, I was trained to be tolerant of everything except intolerance. I was brought up not only to develop the spirit of tolerance but also to cherish moral and spiritual qualities, especially modesty, humility, compassion and most important, to attain a certain degree of emotional equilibrium. I was taught to control my emotions through a process of concentration and meditation. Of course, being human, and not yet having reached the stage of arhat (enlightened being) I cannot completely 'control' my emotions....

"Among the teachings of the Buddha are four features of meditation, the primary purpose of which is the attainment of moral and spiritual excellence: metta (goodwill or kindness); karuna (compassion); mudita (sympathetic joy); and upekka (equanimity or equilibrium).

"A true Buddhist practices his metta (kindness) to all, without distinction -- 'just as the sun shines on all, or the rain falls on all, without distinction.' Metta embraces all beings impartially and spontaneously, expecting nothing in return, not even appreciation. Metta is impersonal love or good will, the opposite of sensuous craving or a burning sensual fire that can turn into wrath, hatred, or revenge when not requited ...

"Karuna the quality of compassion is deeply rooted in the Buddhist concept of suffering. Human life is one of suffering; hence it is the duty of a good Buddhist to mitigate the suffering of others.

"Mudita (sympathetic joy) can best be defined as one's expression of sympathy with other people's joy. The happiness of others generates happiness in the mind of a good Buddhist ... the person who cultivates altruistic joy radiates it over everyone in his surroundings ...

"Upekka (equanimity) connotes the acquisition of a balance of mind whether in triumph or tragedy. This balance is achieved only as a result of deep insight into the nature of things, and primarily by contemplation and meditation. If one understands how unstable and impermanent all worldly things and conditions are, one learns to bear lightly the greatest misfortune or the greatest reward. To achieve upekka, one has to meditate ... Buddhist meditation aims at cleansing the mind of impurities, such as ill will, hatred, and restlessness; it aims at cultivating such qualities as concentration, awareness, intelligence, confidence, and tranquillity, leading finally to the attainment of the highest wisdom...."

U Thant writes as did Dag Hammarskjold that he was greatly influenced by the writings of Albert Schweitzer and his ethic of "reverence for life," and by the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In presenting his own concept of human society, U Thant stated:

I am always conscious of the fact that I am a member of the human race ... This consciousness prompts me to work for a great human synthesis which is the implicit goal of the World Organization I had the privilege of serving ... Long before I was appointed Secretary-General, I used to dwell at some length on the oneness of the human community."



Indeed, it was as a result of these convictions that U Thant became a founding co-chairman of Planetary Citizens. In the closing pages of his memoirs U thant again called for "a new concept of citizenship." "I am making a plea," he said, "based on these ten years of looking at the human condition from my unique vantage point -- for a dual allegiance. This implies an open acceptance of belonging ... to the human race as well as to our local community or nation.

Sri Chinmoy

A third figure who represents the subjective side of the life of the UN, although a friend of U Thant and an acquaintance of statesmen, diplomats and popes, is not a Secretary-General, nor an official of any kind. Sri Chinmoy has closely identified himself with the spirit of the United Nations, and has led twice-weekly meditations there for more than ten years, nearly one-third of the life of the Organization. Chinmoy comes from the lineage of the saints and sages of the Hindu East, in the line of and in the tradition of Ramakrishna and Aurobindo. The formative twenty years of his spiritual life were spent in the Aurobindo ashram in Pondicherry, India.

It was not surprising to me to find Sri Chinmoy conducting meditations at the UN. Rather, it seemed correct and inevitable that a person of his stature should be and would be serving in his particular way at the headquarters of the world's first universal organization. Thus we find Chinmoy acting as invoker and intermediary for the energies needed to advance what U Thant called "the great human synthesis." His talks at the United Nations are the most profound literature available on the meaning and significance of the UN, and are very simply stated.

Speaking of the purpose of the United Nations and its relative non-acceptance, Chinmoy declared:

It is not in vain or without any purpose that the United Nations has come into existence. God's vision has to be manifested here on earth ... The world, the sleeping, unaspiring, unawakened world is not yet receiving the light of the United Nations. There are many things that the world could get from the dedication of the United Nations; but if the world is not receptive, it is not the fault of the United Nations. God is all compassion. He is all-giving; but if we don't want to receive His light the way He wants to offer it, that is not His fault. The heart of this place is dedication, the soul of this place is concern, the body of this place is for the illumining expansion of human consciousness...

the United Nations is the chosen instrument of God. To be a chosen instrument of God means to be a divine messenger carrying the banner of God's inner vision and outer manifestation. One day the world will not only treasure and cherish the soul of the United Nations, but also claim the soul of the United Nations as its very own with enormous pride, for this soul is all-loving, all-nourishing, and all-fulfilling." (Sri Chinmoy, Garland of the Nation Souls, Lighthouse Press, 1972, pp. 66-68).


Sri Chinmoy had a particularly poignant and deep relationship with U Thant. Thant attended a performance of plays on the life of the Buddha by Chinmoy that were dedicated to him. Of U Thant at his passing, Chinmoy said:

U Thant was a chosen instrument of God. U Thant was a chosen instrument of Man. God gave him His compassion-sky to offer to man. Man gave him his suffering-sea to offer to God. Earth gave him the responsibility. Heaven knew it and saw it. Heaven gave him the authority, but unfortunately earth did not know it or did not care to know it. His heart of brotherhood was misunderstood. His life of sacrifice was not valued. But his vision of oneness-goal will eternally be pursued by aspiring humanity.


Persons who have thought of the United Nations as a bastion of atheism, as lacking in spirituality, devoid of morals, empty of belief, had better think again. They had better wipe their feet and bow their heads to enter this First Temple of Humanity.

Thus, we conclude our three-phase "tour" of the United Nations, seed-crystal for precipitation of the Planetary Age. In this time of transition, the UN is a place of contrasts and contests. Of the contrast between selfishness and sharing. Of contests between narrow self-interest and world community good. It is the major battle line for the future of humanity's soul and collective well-being. It is the locus for the emergence of higher values concerning humanity's common future. At present it is too early to tell whether that promise will be recognized, accepted and acted upon, or scorned, derided and forgotten. "Too early" means that the trends of the present are not set in concrete. The future is not foreclosed. It is an open future which will bend to human aspirations and designs.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Apr 18, 2019 4:48 am

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/17/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Just as the then Archbishop of Canterbury refused to support the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, so in 1936 Archbishop Cosmo Lang advised King Edward VIII not to preside at the World Congress of Faiths, because Christianity was the only ‘true religion.’ Most of those who attended the Congress were scholars, such as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Yusuf Ali, and D. T. Suzuki. Religious leaders wanted to hold on to their followers.

Inspired by a sense of Oneness that transcends particular religions and inspires active service of others, members of WCF have continued to be gadflies urging faith communities to come together and to be more adventurous and socially concerned.

-- The World Congress of Faiths – An Overview, by Marcus Braybrooke


The same year, Humphreys founded the London Buddhist Lodge, which later changed its name to the Buddhist Society.[1] The impetus for founding the Lodge came from theosophists with whom Humphreys socialised. Both at his home and at the lodge, he played host for eminent spiritual authors such as Nicholas Roerich and Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, and for prominent Theosophists like Alice Bailey and far Eastern Buddhist authorities like D.T. Suzuki. Other regular visitors in the 1930s were the Russian singer Vladimir Rosing and the young philosopher Alan Watts,[3] and in 1931 Humphreys met the spiritual teacher Meher Baba.[4] The Buddhist Society of London is one of the oldest Buddhist organisations outside Asia.

-- Christmas Humphreys, by Wikipedia


Other Oxford colleges, notably Brasenose and Pembroke, were helped in many ways as a result of Spalding's generosity. However, the best known benefaction he and his wife made to Oxford must be the resources they provided for the establishment of the Spalding Chair in Eastern Religions and Ethics, the first occupant of which was Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. This unique position is associated with a fellowship at All Souls College....

In practical terms the task of promoting knowledge of this healing unity centred on Spalding's plans for the Union for the Study of the Great Religions ('the Union'). The Union was founded in Oxford in 1950/1951 by Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Canon Charles E. Raven, and H. N. Spalding. Radhakrishnan was the first scholar to be elected to the Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics. In later life he was to become Vice-President and finally President of India. He and Spalding soon established a firm personal friendship that was to continue until the latter's death. Radhakrishnan was appointed to the Oxford Chair in 1936 after Spalding had made the necessary funds available to the University....

Spalding was not an apologist for any one or other of the great religions of the world. As his friend Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan observed, HN was a deeply religious man, whose religion 'was not confined to a code of conduct and respect for outward forms. These latter were experienced as opening the door to the truths of spirit. Man is not a finished creation. He is an experiment of which he can be partly the creator. Religion is essentially the art and theory of the re-making of man. It assumes man's ability to change himself.'

-- The Spalding Trust and the Union for the Study of the Great Religions: H.N. Spalding's Pioneering Vision, by Edward Hulmes


Image
His Excellency
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Photograph of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan presented to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962.jpg
Radhakrishnan in 1962
2nd President of India
In office
14 May 1962 – 13 May 1967
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting)
Lal Bahadur Shastri
Gulzarilal Nanda (Acting)
Indira Gandhi
Vice President Zakir Hussain
Preceded by Rajendra Prasad
Succeeded by Zakir Hussain
1st Vice President of India
In office
13 May 1952 – 12 May 1962
President Rajendra Prasad
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
Succeeded by Zakir Hussain
Personal details
Born 5 September 1888
Thiruttani , Madras Presidency, British India[1]
Died 17 April 1975 (aged 86)
Madras, Tamil Nadu, India
Political party Independent
Spouse(s) Sivakamu (Died 1956)
Children 5 (daughters) 1 (Son) Sarvepalli Gopal
Parents Father : Veerasamy
Mother : Seethammal
Alma mater University of Madras
Profession
PhilosopherProfessor
Awards Bharat Ratna Ribbon.svg Bharat Ratna (1954)
Templeton Prize (1975)

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman[2] who served as the first Vice President of India (1952–1962) and the second President of India (1962-1967).[web 1]

One of India's most distinguished twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy,[3][web 2] after completing his education at Madras Christian College in 1911, he became Assistant Professor and later Professor of Philosophy at Madras Presidency College then subsequently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Mysore (1918-1921); the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta (1921–1932) and Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford (1936–1952) by which he became the first Indian to hold a professorial chair at the University of Oxford. He was Upton Lecturer at Manchester College, Oxford in 1926, 1929, and 1930. In 1930 he was appointed Haskell lecturer in Comparative Religion at the University of Chicago.[4]

His philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding.[web 2] He defended Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism",[5] contributing to the formation of contemporary Hindu identity.[6] He has been influential in shaping the understanding of Hinduism, in both India and the west, and earned a reputation as a bridge-builder between India and the West.[7]

Radhakrishnan was awarded several high awards during his life, including a knighthood in 1931, the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. He was also one of the founders of Helpage India, a non profit organisation for elderly underprivileged in India. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, his birthday is being celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5th September.[web 3]

Biography

Early life


Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was born in a Telugu-speaking[8] Niyogi Brahmin family, in Tiruttani in Madras Presidency.[9][10][11] His surname was Sarvepalli, for his forefathers were from Sarvepalli, a village fifteen miles from Nellore town of Andhra Pradesh. His grand father migrated to a village near Tiruttani in erstwhile Chittoor district of the Madras Presidency.[12][13][14] His father's name was Sarvepalli Veeraswami and his mother's name was Sarvepalli Sita (Sitamma). His early years were spent in Thiruttani and Tirupati. His father was a subordinate revenue official in the service of a local zamindar (local landlord). His primary education was at K.V High School at Thiruttani. In 1896 he moved to the Hermansburg Evangelical Lutheran Mission School in Tirupati and Government Higher Secondary School, Walajapet.[15]

Education

Image
Indian President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan with US President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, 1963

Radhakrishnan was awarded scholarships throughout his academic life. He joined Voorhees College in Vellore but switched to the Madras Christian College at the age of 17. He graduated from there in 1906 with a Voorha master's degree in Philosophy, being one of its most distinguished alumni.[16]

Radhakrishnan studied philosophy by chance rather than choice. Being a financially constrained student, when a cousin who graduated from the same college passed on his philosophy textbooks in to Radhakrishnan, it automatically decided his academic course.[17][18]

Radhakrishnan wrote his thesis for the M.A. degree on "The Ethics of the Vedanta and its Metaphysical Presuppositions".[19] It "was intended to be a reply to the charge that the Vedanta system had no room for ethics."[20] He was afraid that this M.A. thesis would offend his philosophy professor, Dr. Alfred George Hogg. Instead, Hogg commended Radhakrishnan on having done most excellent work.[citation needed] Radhakrishnan's thesis was published when he was only twenty. According to Radhakrishnan himself, the criticism of Hogg and other Christian teachers of Indian culture "disturbed my faith and shook the traditional props on which I leaned."[20] Radhakrishnan himself describes how, as a student,

The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it. My pride as a Hindu, roused by the enterprise and eloquence of Swami Vivekananda, was deeply hurt by the treatment accorded to Hinduism in missionary institutions.[5]


This led him to his critical study of Indian philosophy and religion[20] and a lifelong defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism".[5]

Marriage and family

Radhakrishnan was married to Sivakamu,[note 1] a distant cousin, at the age of 16.[21] As per tradition the marriage was arranged by the family. The couple had five daughters and a son, Sarvepalli Gopal. Sarvepalli Gopal went on to a notable career as a historian. Sivakamu died in 1956. They were married for over 51 years.

Academic career

Image
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan drawn by Bujjai and signed by Radhakrishnan in Telugu as "Radhakrishnayya".

In April 1909, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was appointed to the Department of Philosophy at the Madras Presidency College. Thereafter, in 1918, he was selected as Professor of Philosophy by the University of Mysore, where he taught at its Maharaja's College, Mysore. [web 4][22] By that time he had written many articles for journals of repute like The Quest, Journal of Philosophy and the International Journal of Ethics. He also completed his first book, The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. He believed Tagore's philosophy to be the "genuine manifestation of the Indian spirit". His second book, The Reign of Religion in Contemporary Philosophy was published in 1920.

In 1921 he was appointed as a professor in philosophy to occupy the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. He represented the University of Calcutta at the Congress of the Universities of the British Empire in June 1926 and the International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University in September 1926. Another important academic event during this period was the invitation to deliver the Hibbert Lecture on the ideals of life which he delivered at Manchester College, Oxford in 1929 and which was subsequently published in book form as An Idealist View of Life.

In 1929 Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estlin Carpenter at Manchester College. This gave him the opportunity to lecture to the students of the University of Oxford on Comparative Religion. For his services to education he was knighted by George V in the June 1931 Birthday Honours,[web 5] and formally invested with his honour by the Governor-General of India, the Earl of Willingdon, in April 1932.[web 6] However, he ceased to use the title after Indian independence,[23]:9 preferring instead his academic title of 'Doctor'.

He was the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. In 1936 Radhakrishnan was named Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. That same year, and again in 1937, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, although this nomination process, as for all laureates, was not public at the time. Further nominations for the award would continue steadily into the 1960s. In 1939 Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya invited him to succeed him as the Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU).[24] He served as its Vice-Chancellor till January 1948.

Political career

See also: British Raj, Indian independence movement, and Indian Independence Act 1947

Image
President of United States John F. Kennedy and President of India, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (left), depart the White House following a meeting. Minister of External Affairs of India, Lakshmi N. Menon, walks behind President Kennedy at West Wing Entrance, White House, Washington, D.C on 4 June 1963

Radhakrishnan started his political career "rather late in life", after his successful academic career.[5] His international authority preceded his political career. In 1931 he was nominated to the League of Nations Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, where after "in Western eyes he was the recognized Hindu authority on Indian ideas and a persuasive interpreter of the role of Eastern institutions in contemporary society."[5] When India became independent in 1947, Radhakrishnan represented India at UNESCO (1946–52) and was later Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union, from 1949 to 1952. He was also elected to the Constituent Assembly of India. Radhakrishnan was elected as the first Vice-President of India in 1952, and elected as the second President of India (1962–1967).

Radhakrishnan did not have a background in the Congress Party, nor was he active in the struggle against British rules. He was the politician in shadow. His motivation lay in his pride of Hindu culture, and the defence of Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism".[5] According to Brown,

He had always defended Hindu culture against uninformed Western criticism and had symbolized the pride of Indians in their own intellectual traditions.[5]


Teachers' Day

When he became the President of India, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday, on 5 September. He replied,

Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if September 5th is observed as Teachers' Day.[25]


His birthday has since been celebrated as Teachers' Day in India.[web 7]

Charity

Along with Ghanshyam Das Birla and some other social workers in the pre-independence era, Radhakrishnan formed the Krishnarpan Charity Trust.

Image
As President of India, Radhakrishnan made 11 state visits including visits to both the US and the USSR.[web 8]

Role in Constituent Assembly[26]

He was against State institutions imparting denominational religious instruction as it was against the secular vision of the Indian State.[27]

Philosophy

Radhakrishnan tried to bridge eastern and western thought,[28] defending Hinduism against "uninformed Western criticism",[5] but also incorporating Western philosophical and religious thought.[29]

Advaita Vedanta

Radhakrishnan was one of the most prominent spokesmen of Neo-Vedanta.[30][31][32] His metaphysics was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, but he reinterpreted Advaita Vedanta for a contemporary understanding.[web 2] He acknowledged the reality and diversity of the world of experience, which he saw as grounded in and supported by the absolute or Brahman.[web 2][note 2] Radhakrishnan also reinterpreted Shankara's notion of maya. According to Radhakrishnan, maya is not a strict absolute idealism, but "a subjective misperception of the world as ultimately real."[web 2]

Intuition and religious experience

See also: Mystical experience and Religious experience
"Intuition", or anubhava,[web 2] synonymously called "religious experience",[web 2] has a central place in Radhakrishnan's philosophy as a source of knowledge which is not mediated by conscious thought.[29] His specific interest in experience can be traced back to the works of William James (1842–1910), Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925),[29] and to Vivekananda,[34] who had a strong influence on Radhakrisnan's thought.[35] According to Radhakrishnan, intuition is of a self-certifying character (svatassiddha), self-evidencing (svāsaṃvedya), and self-luminous (svayam-prakāsa).[web 2] In his book An Idealist View of Life, he made a powerful case for the importance of intuitive thinking as opposed to purely intellectual forms of thought.[web 9] According to Radhakrishnan, intuition plays a specific role in all kinds of experience.[web 2] Radhakrishnan discernes five sorts of experience:[web 2]

1. Cognitive Experience:
2. Sense Experience
3. Discursive Reasoning
4. Intuitive Apprehension
5. Psychic Experience
6. Aesthetic Experience
7. Ethical Experience
8. Religious Experience

Classification of religions

For Radhakrishnan, theology and creeds are intellectual formulations, and symbols of religious experience or "religious intuitions".[web 2] Radhakrishnan qualified the variety of religions hierarchically according to their apprehension of "religious experience", giving Advaita Vedanta the highest place:[web 2]{{refn|group=note|This qualification is not unique to Radhakrishnan. It was developed by nineteenth-century Indologists,[36][37] and was highly influential in the understanding of Hinduism, both in the west and in India.[30][38]

1. The worshipers of the Absolute
2. The worshipers of the personal God
3. The worshipers of the incarnations like Rama, Kṛiṣhṇa, Buddha
4. Those who worship ancestors, deities and sages
5. The worshipers of the petty forces and spirits

Radhakrishnan saw Hinduism as a scientific religion based on facts, apprehended via intuition or religious experience.[web 2] According to Radhakrishnan, "[ i]f philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience".[web 2] He saw this empiricism exemplified in the Vedas:

The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision. The ṛṣis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts.[web 2]


From his writings collected as The Hindu View of Life, Upton Lectures, Delivered at Manchester College, Oxford, 1926: "Hinduism insists on our working steadily upwards in improving our knowledge of God. The worshippers of the absolute are of the highest rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations of Rama, Krishna, Buddha; below them are those who worship deities, ancestors, and sages, and lowest of all are the worshippers of petty forces and spirits. The deities of some men are in water (i.e., bathing places), those of the most advanced are in the heavens, those of the children (in religion) are in the images of wood and stone, but the sage finds his God in his deeper self. The man of action finds his God in fire, the man of feeling in the heart, and the feeble minded in the idol, but the strong in spirit find God everywhere". The seers see the supreme in the self, and not the images."

To Radhakrishnan, Advaita Vedanta was the best representative of Hinduism, as being grounded in intuition, in contrast to the "intellectually mediated interpretations"[web 2] of other religions.[web 2]{{refn|group=note|Anubhava is a central term in Shankara's writings. According to several modern interpretators, especially Radakrishnan, Shankara emphasises the role of personal experience (anubhava) in ascertaining the validity of knowledge.[39] Yet, according to Rambacham himself, sruti, or textual authority, is the main source of knowledge for Shankara.[34] He objected against charges of "quietism"[note 3] and "world denial", instead stressing the need and ethic of social service, giving a modern interpretation of classical terms as tat-tvam-asi.[32] According to Radhakrishnan, Vedanta offers the most direct intuitive experience and inner realisation, which makes it the highest form of religion:

The Vedanta is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance.[web 2]


Radhakrishnan saw other religions, "including what Radhakrishnan understands as lower forms of Hinduism,"[web 2] as interpretations of Advaita Vedanta, thereby Hinduising all religions.[web 2]

Although Radhakrishnan was well-acquainted with western culture and philosophy, he was also critical of them. He stated that Western philosophers, despite all claims to objectivity, were influenced by theological influences of their own culture.[40]

Controversy on Indian Philosophy book

In the issue of the Modern Review, January 1929 a certain Jadunath Sinha made a sensational claim that his own thesis was copied by his teacher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan on Indian Philosophy book.[41][42] He said that none other than Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan had plagiarised from him. His Indian Philosophy Vol. II had lifted several passages from bangali philosopher Jadunath Sinha's thesis. [43][note 4][44] The controversy spilled over upto February, March and April issues of the magazine too.[45]

In August 1929, Sinha sued Radhakrishnan on this issue.[46][note 5] Radhakrishnan also counter-sued both Jadunath Sinha and the editor of Modern Review, Ramnath Chattopadhyay.[45]

Then without any conclusion the court hushed up this sensational issue as Radhakrishnan’s stature.[42][45]

Influence

Radhakrishnan was one of India's best and most influential twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy.[3][web 2]

Radhakrishnan's defence of the Hindu traditions has been highly influential,[29] both in India and the western world. In India, Radhakrishnan's ideas contributed to the formation of India as a nation-state.[47] Radhakrishnan's writings contributed to the hegemonic status of Vedanta as "the essential worldview of Hinduism".[48] In the western world, Radhakrishnan's interpretations of the Hindu tradition, and his emphasis on "spiritual experience", made Hinduism more readily accessible for a western audience, and contributed to the influence Hinduism has on modern spirituality:

In figures such as Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan we witness Vedanta traveling to the West, where it nourished the spiritual hunger of Europeans and Americans in the early decades of the twentieth century.[48]


Appraisal

Radhakrishnan has been highly appraised. According to Paul Artur Schillp:

Nor would it be possible to find a more excellent example of a living "bridge" between the East and the West than Professor Radhakrishnan. Steeped, as Radhakrishnan has been since his childhood, in the life, traditions, and philosophical heritage of his native India, he has also struck deep roots in Western philosophy, which he has been studying tirelessly ever since his undergraduate college-days in Madras Christian College, and in which he is as thoroughly at home as any Western philosopher.[28]


And according to Hawley:

Radhakrishnan's concern for experience and his extensive knowledge of the Western philosophical and literary traditions has earned him the reputation of being a bridge-builder between India and the West. He often appears to feel at home in the Indian as well as the Western philosophical contexts, and draws from both Western and Indian sources throughout his writing. Because of this, Radhakrishnan has been held up in academic circles as a representative of Hinduism to the West. His lengthy writing career and his many published works have been influential in shaping the West's understanding of Hinduism, India, and the East.[web 2]


Criticism and context

Radhakrishnan's ideas have also received criticism and challenges, for their perennialist[30][49] and universalist claims,[50][51] and the use of an East-West dichotomy.[web 2]

Perennialism

Main article: Perennial philosophy

According to Radhakrishnan, there is not only an underlying "divine unity"[49] from the seers of the Upanishads up to modern Hindus like Tagore and Gandhi,[49] but also "an essential commonality between philosophical and religious traditions from widely disparate cultures."[30] This is also a major theme in the works of Rene Guenon, the Theosophical Society, and the contemporary popularity of eastern religions in modern spirituality.[30][29] Since the 1970s, the Perennialist position has been criticised for its essentialism. Social-constructionists give an alternative approach to religious experience, in which such "experiences" are seen as being determined and mediated by cultural determants:[29][52][note 6] As Michaels notes: {{quote|Religions, too, rely not so much on individual experiences or on innate feelings – like a sensus numinosus (Rudolf Otto) – but rather on behavioral patterns acquired and learned in childhood.[53]

Rinehart also points out that "perennialist claims notwithstanding, modern Hindu thought is a product of history",[49] which "has been worked out and expressed in a variety of historical contexts over the preceding two hundreds years."[49] This is also true for Radhakrishan, who was educated by missionaries[54] and, like other neo-Vedantins used the prevalent western understanding of India and its culture to present an alternative to the western critique.[30][55]

Universalism, communalism and Hindu nationalism

According to Richard King, the elevation of Vedanta as the essence of Hinduism, and Advaita Vedanta as the "paradigmatic example of the mystical nature of the Hindu religion"[56] by colonial Indologists but also neo-Vedantins served well for the Hindu nationalists, who further popularised this notion of Advaita Vedanta as the pinnacle of Indian religions.[57] It

...provided an opportunity for the construction of a nationalist ideology that could unite Hindus in their struggle against colonial oppression.[58]


This "opportunity" has been criticised. According to Sucheta Mazumdar and Vasant Kaiwar,

... Indian nationalist leaders continued to operate within the categorical field generated by politicized religion [...] Extravagant claims were made on behalf of Oriental civilization. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's statement – "[t]he Vedanta is not a religion but religion itself in its "most universal and deepest significance" – is fairly typical.[50]


Rinehart also criticises the inclusivism of Radhakrishnan's approach, since it provides "a theological scheme for subsuming religious difference under the aegis of Vedantic truth."[51][note 7] According to Rinehart, the consequence of this line of reasoning is communalism,[51] the idea that "all people belonging to one religion have common economic, social and political interests and these interests are contrary to the interests of those belonging to another religion."[web 10] Rinehart notes that Hindu religiosity plays an important role in the nationalist movement,[51] and that "the neo-Hindu discource is the unintended consequence of the initial moves made by thinkers like Rammohan Roy and Vivekananda."[51] Yet Rinehart also points out that it is

{{quote|...clear that there isn't a neat line of causation that leads from the philosophies of Rammohan Roy, Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan to the agenda of [...] militant Hindus.[59]{{refn|group=note|Neither is Radhakrishnan's "use" of religion in the defence of Asian culture and society against colonialism unique for his person, or India in general. The complexities of Asian nationalism are to be seen and understood in the context of colonialism, modernisation and nation-building. See, for example, Anagarika Dharmapala, for the role of Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lankese struggle for independence,[60] and D.T. Suzuki, who conjuncted Zen to Japanese nationalism and militarism, in defence against both western hegemony and the pressure on Japanese Zen during the Meiji Restoration to conform to Shinbutsu Bunri.[61][62]

Post-colonialism

Main articles: Orientalism and Post-colonialism

Colonialism left deep traces in the hearts and minds of the Indian people, influencing the way they understood and represented themselves.[30] The influences of "colonialist forms of knowledge"[web 2] can also be found in the works of Radhakrishnan. According to Hawley, Radhakrishnan's division between East and West, the East being spiritual and mystical, and the West being rationt and colonialist forms of knowledge constructed during the 18th and 19th centuries. Arguably, these characterizations are "imagined" in the sense that they reflect the philosophical and religious realities of neither "East' nor West."[web 2]

Since the 1990s, the colonial influences on the 'construction' and 'representation' of Hinduism have been the topic of debate among scholars of Hinduism Western Indologists are trying to come to more neutral and better-informed representations of India and its culture, while Indian scholars are trying to establish forms of knowledge and understanding which are grounded in and informed by Indian traditions, instead of being dominated by western forms of knowledge and understanding.[37][note 8]

Plagiarism controversy

Radhakrishnan's student Jadunath Sinha alleged that Radhakrishnan copied text from his doctoral thesis, Indian Psychology of Perception published in 1925, into his book Indian Philosophy published in 1927. Sinha filed a case in the Calcutta High Court claiming damages for Rs 20,000. Radhakrishnan filed counter case for defamation of character demanding Rs 100,000 from Sinha. Though Sinha's case was strong as many of his articles were already published, the high cost of litigation along with intervention of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who mediated between them made them, settle the issue out of court.[63][64][65]

Image
Radhakrishnan on a 1967 stamp of India

Image
Radhakrishnan on a 1989 stamp of India

Awards and honours

• 1931: appointed a Knight Bachelor in ,[web 5] although he ceased to use the title "Sir" after India attained independence.[66]
• 1933-37: Nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 1938: elected Fellow of the British Academy.
• 1954: The Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India.[web 3]
• 1954: Order Pour le Mérite for Arts and Sciences (Germany)[web 11]
• 1961: the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.
• 1962: Institution of Teacher's Day in India, yearly celebrated at 5 September, Radhakrishnan's birthday, in honour of Radhakrishnan's belief that "teachers should be the best minds in the country".[web 3]
• 1963: the British Order of Merit.
• 1968: Sahitya Akademi fellowship, The highest honour conferred by the Sahitya Akademi on a writer (he is the first person to get this award)
• 1975: the Templeton Prize in 1975, a few months before his death, for advocating non-aggression and conveying "a universal reality of God that embraced love and wisdom for all people."[web 12][note 9] He donated the entire amount of the Templeton Prize to Oxford University.
• 1989: institution of the Radhakrishnan Scholarships by Oxford University in the memory of Radhakrishnan. The scholarships were later renamed the "Radhakrishnan Chevening Scholarships".[67]
• He was nominated sixteen times for the Nobel prize in literature, and eleven times for the Nobel Peace prize.[68][69]

Quotes

• "It is not God that is worshipped but the authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity."[70]
• "Reading a book gives us the habit of solitary reflection and true enjoyment."[71]
• "When we think we know, we cease to learn."[72]
• "A literary genius, it is said, resembles all, though no one resembles him."[73]
• "There is nothing wonderful in my saying that Jainism was in existence long before the Vedas were composed."[74]
• "A life of joy and happiness is possible only on the basis of knowledge .

Bibliography

Works by Radhakrishnan


• The philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore (1918), Macmillan, London, 294 pages
• Indian Philosophy (1923) Vol.1, 738 pages. (1927) Vol 2, 807 pages. Oxford University Press.
• The Hindu View of Life (1926), 92 pages
• An Idealist View of Life (1929), 351 pages
• Eastern Religions and Western Thought (1939), Oxford University Press, 396 pages
• Religion and Society (1947), George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 242 pages
• The Bhagavadgītā: with an introductory essay, Sanskrit text, English translation and notes (1948), 388 pages
• The Dhammapada (1950), 194 pages, Oxford University Press
• The Principal Upanishads (1953), 958 pages, HarperCollins Publishers Limited
• Recovery of Faith (1956), 205 pages
• A Source Book in Indian Philosophy (1957), 683 pages, Princeton University Press, with Charles A. Moore as co-editor.
• Religion, Science & Culture (1968), 121 pages

Biographies and monographs on Radhakrishnan

Several books have been published on Sarve Radhakrishnan:

• Murty, K. Satchidananda; Ashok Vohra (1990). Radhakrishnan: his life and ideas. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-0343-3.
• Minor, Robert Neil (1987). Radhakrishnan: a religious biography. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-88706-554-5.
• Gopal, Sarvepalli (1989). Radhakrishnan: a biography. Unwin Hyman. ISBN 978-0-04-440449-1.
• Pappu, S.S. Rama Rao (1995). New Essays in the Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Delhi: South Asia Books. ISBN 978-81-7030-461-6.
• Parthasarathi, G.; Chattopadhyaya, Debi Prasad, eds. (1989). Radhakrishnan: centenary volume. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

See also

• Postcolonialism

Notes

1. Radhakrishnan's wife's name is spelled differently in different sources. It is spelled Sivakamu by Sarvepalli Gopal (1989); Sivakamuamma by Mamta Anand (2006); and still differently by others.[citation needed]
2. Neo-Vedanta seems to be closer to Bhedabheda-Vedanta than to Shankara's Advaita Vedanta, with the acknowledgement of the reality of the world. Nicholas F. Gier: "Ramakrsna, Svami Vivekananda, and Aurobindo (I also include M.K. Gandhi) have been labeled "neo-Vedantists," a philosophy that rejects the Advaitins' claim that the world is illusory. Aurobindo, in his The Life Divine, declares that he has moved from Sankara's "universal illusionism" to his own "universal realism" (2005: 432), defined as metaphysical realism in the European philosophical sense of the term."[33]
3. Sweetman: "[T]he supposed quietist and conservative nature of Vedantic thought"[37]
4. Dr. Radhakrishnan had published another book titled "The Vedanta according to Sankara and Ramanuja" in 1928, which was actually a reprint of Chapters 8 & 9 of his book "Indian Philosophy Vol. II." That book also had extensive pirated paragraphs from Prof. Jadunath Sinha's Premchand Roychand Studentship thesis. Luckily for Prof. Jadunath Sinha, he had published extracts from those two parts of his Premchand Roychand Studentship thesis in the Meerut College Magazines of 1924 and 1926.
5. Then in the first half of the month of August 1929, Prof. Jadunath Sinha sued Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan in the Calcutta High Court for infringement of copyrights of his original literary works, claiming Rs.20,000/- as damages. Sometime in the first week of September 1929, Radhakrishnan filed a counter libel suit against Prof. Jadunath Sinha and Shri Ramananda Chattopadhyay demanding Rs.1,00,000/-. Probably Radhakrishnan thought that attack was the best defence!
6. See, especially, Steven T. Katz:
 Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (Oxford University Press, 1978)
 Mysticism and Religious Traditions (Oxford University Press, 1983)
 Mysticism and Language (Oxford University Press, 1992)
 Mysticism and Sacred Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2000)
7. Rinehart: "Though neo-Hindu authors prefer the idiom of tolerance to that of inclusivism, it is clear that what is advocated is less a secular view of toleration than a theological scheme for subsuming religious difference under the aegis of Vedantic truth. Thus Radhakrishnan's view of experience as the core of religious truth effectively leads to harmony only when and if other religions are willing to assume a position under the umbrella of Vedanta. We might even say that the theme of neo-Hindu tolerance provided the Hindu not simply with a means to claiming the right to stand alongside the other world religions, but with a strategy for promoting Hinduism as the ultimate form of religion itself."[51]
8. Sweetman mentions:
 Wilhelm Halbfass (1988), India and Europe
 IXth European Conference on Modern Asian Studies in Heidelberg (1989), Hinduism Reconsidered
 Ronald Inden, Imagining India
 Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament
 Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, Representing Hinduism
 S.N. Balagangadhara, The Heathen in his Blindness...
 Thomas Trautmann, Aryans and British India
 Richard King (1989), Orientalism and religion

See also Postcolonialism and Mrinal Kaud, The "Pizza Effect" in Indian Philosophy
9. "Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was President of India from 1962 to 1967. An Oxford Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics, he consistently advocated non-aggression in India's conflicts with neighbouring Pakistan. His accessible writings underscored his country's religious heritage and sought to convey a universal reality of God that embraced love and wisdom for all people."[web 12]

References

1. "Radhakrishnan of India, Philosopher, Dead at 86". New York Times. 17 April 1975. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
2. Lawhead, William F. (2009). The philosophical Journey. An Interactive Approach. Fifth Edition (PDF). McGraw-Hill. p. 382.
3. Pollock, Sheldon (2011). "Crisis in the Classics" (PDF). Social Research. 78 (1): 21–48.
4. The Madras Mail, Saturday, 8 February 1936, page 9
5. Brown, Donald Mackenzie (1970). The Nationalist Movement: Indian Political Thought from Ranade to Bhave. University of California Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 9780520001831.
6. Flood, Gavin D. (13 July 1996). An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press. p. 249. ISBN 978-0-521-43878-0.
7. Hawley, Michael. "Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888—1975)". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
8. Anand, A. B. (20 May 2018), TENNETI HEMALATHA Interview By AB ANAND, retrieved 23 July 2018
9. Subramanian, Archana (2 September 2017). "On Teachers' Day, remembering an educator". The Hindu.
10. India. Parliament. Rajya Sabha (1988). Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: a commemorative volume, 1888-1988 (PDF). Prentice-Hall of India. ISBN 978-0-87692-557-7.
11. "Teachers' Day: 10 things to know about India's 'philosopher President' Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan". Hindustan Times. 5 September 2017.
12. Sudarshan Agarwal (ed.). "Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan A Commemorative Volume" (PDF). Rajyasabha.nic.in. Retrieved 7 July 2018.
13. Subramanian, Archana (2 September 2017). "On Teachers' Day, remembering an educator". The Hindu. Retrieved 29 July2018.
14. "The Great Indian Philosopher" (PDF). Internet Archive. Retrieved 7 July 2018.
15. Sarvepalli 1989, p. 11.
16. Sarvepalli 1989, p. 15.
17. Schillp, Paul Arthur (1992). The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Motilall Banarsidass. p. 6. ISBN 9788120807921.
18. Sarvepalli 1989, p. 14.
19. Sarvepalli 1989, p. 17.
20. Murty & Vohra 1990, p. 112.
21. Sarvepalli 1989, p. 12.
22. Murty, Kotta Satchidananda; Vohra, Ashok (1990). "3. Professor at Mysore". Radhakrishnan: His Life and Ideas. SUNY Press. pp. 17–26. ISBN 978-1-4384-1401-0.
23. Banerji, Anjan Kumar (1991). Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a centenary tribute. Varanasi, India: Banaras Hindu University. OCLC 28967355.. Page 9 states: "In 1931.... He was knighted that year, but ceased to use the title after Independence."
24. Murty & Vohra 1990, p. 90.
25. "Philosopher, teacher, president: Remembering Dr S Radhakrishnan". The Economic Times. 5 September 2017. Retrieved 16 April 2018.
26. "CADIndia". cadindia.clpr.org.in. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
27. "CADIndia". cadindia.clpr.org.in. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
28. Schillp, Paul Arthur (1992). The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Motilall Banarsidass. p. ix. ISBN 9788120807921.
29. Sharf, Robert H. (1998). "Experience". In Mark C. Taylor. Critical Terms for Religious Studies. University of Chicago Press. p. 100. ISBN 9780226791562.
30. King 2001.
31. Hacker, Paul (1995). Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta. SUNY Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780791425817.
32. Fort, Andrew O. (1998). Jivanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and Neo-Vedanta. SUNY Press. pp. 179–181. ISBN 9780791439043.
33. Gier, Nicholas F. (2012). "Overreaching to be different: A critique of Rajiv Malhotra's Being Different". International Journal of Hindu Studies. 16 (3): 259–285. doi:10.1007/s11407-012-9127-x.
34. Rambachan, Anatanand (1994). The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda's Reinterpretation of the Vedas. University of Hawaii Press.
35. Murty & Vohra 1990, p. 179.
36. King 1999, p. 169.
37. Sweetman, Will (2004). "The prehistory of Orientalism: Colonialism and the Textual Basis for Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg's Account of Hinduism" (PDF). New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies. 6 (2): 12–38.
38. Nicholson, Andrew J. (2010). Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History. Columbia University Press.
39. Rambachan, Anantanand (1991). Accomplishing the accomplished: the Vedas as a source of valid knowledge in Śankara. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 1–14. ISBN 978-0-8248-1358-1.
40. Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli and Moore, Charles (eds.) (1989) A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 610–639. ISBN 0691019584
41. Bakhtiar, Idrees (14 August 2012). "Subcontinental plagiarism". DAWN.COM. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
42. "সম্পাদক সমীপেষু: জেনে রাখা ভাল". anandabazar.com. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
43. Aich, Utpal (5 September 2016). "Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: The teacher who stole from his student's thesis". Round Table India.
44. "Why Teachers' Day in India is a sham". http://www.dailyo.in. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
45. "S. Radhakrishnan: Philosopher, President, Plagiarizer? | Madras Courier". Madras Courier. 20 October 2016. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
46. "A Biography of Jadunath Sinha". http://www.om-guru.com. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
47. Long 2007, p. 173.
48. Rinehart 2004, p. 199.
49. Rinehart 2004, p. 180.
50. Mazumdar & Kaiwar 2009, p. 36.
51. Rinehart 2004, p. 196-197.
52. Sharf, Robert H (2000). "The Rhetoric of Experience and the Study of Religion" (PDF). Journal of Consciousness Studies. 7(11–12): 267–87.
53. Michaels, Axel (2004). Hinduism: Past and Present. Princeton University Press. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-691-08953-9.
54. Rinehart 2004, p. 195.
55. Rinehart 2004.
56. King 2001, p. 128.
57. King 2001, pp. 129-130.
58. King 2001, p. 133.
59. Rinehart 2004, p. 198.
60. McMahan, David L. (2008). The Making of Buddhist Modernism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195183276.
61. Sharf, Robert H. (August 1993). "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism". History of Religions. 33 (1): 1–43.
62. Sharf, Robert H. (1995). Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited (PDF).
63. Minor, Robert Neil (1987). Radhakrishnan: A Religious Biography. SUNY Press. pp. 35–. ISBN 978-0-88706-554-5.
64. "Why Teachers' Day in India is a sham". Dailyo. 6 September 2017. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
65. "Subcontinental plagiarism". Idrees Bakhtiar. Dawn. 14 August 2012. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
66. Kuttan, Mahadevan (2009). The Great Philosophers of India. Authorhouse 1663 Liberty Drive Suite 200 Bloomington, IN 47403. p. 169. ISBN 9781434377807.
67. Kuttan, Mahadevan (2009). The Great Philosophers of India. Authorhouse 1663 Liberty Drive Suite 200 Bloomington, IN 47403. p. 174. ISBN 9781434377807.
68. Nomination Database. nobelprize.org
69. "Nomination Database". http://www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 23 January 2017.
70. Quoted in Brown, J. A. C. (1963) Techniques of Persuasion, Ch. 11. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0140206043
71. Sarvepalli, Radhakrishnan (1963). Occasional speeches and writings, Volume 3. Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. India. p. 77.
72. Philosophy East & West, Volume 5. University Press of Hawaii, 1955 – Philosophy. p. 83.
73. Sarvepalli, Radhakrishnan (1963). Occasional speeches and writings, Volume 3. Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Govt. India. p. 63.
74. Jain, Lala (2002). Essays in Jaina Philosophy and Religion. Piotr Balcerowicz & Marek Mejor. p. 114. ISBN 978-8120819771.

Sources

Printed sources


• Barbour, Ian (1966), Issues in Science and Religion, Prentice-Hall
• Hori, Victor Sogen (1999), Translating the Zen Phrase Book. In: Nanzan Bulletin 23 (1999) (PDF)
• King, Richard (1999), Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East", Routledge
• King, Richard (2001), Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East", Taylor & Francis e-Library
• Long, Jeffery D. (2007), A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism, A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism, ISBN 9781845112738
• Mazumda, Srucheta; Kaiwar, Vasant (2009), From Orientalism to Postcolonialism, Routledge
• Murty, K. Satchidananda; Vohra, Ashok (1990), Radhakrishnan: His Life and Ideas, SUNY Press, ISBN 9780791403440
• Rinehart, Robin (2004), Contemporary Hinduism: Ritual, Culture, and Practice, ABC-CLIO
• Sarvepalli, Gopal (1989), Radhakrishnan: a biography, Unwin Hyman, ISBN 978-0-04-440449-1
• Versluis, Arthur (1993), American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, Oxford University Press
• Versluis, Arthur (2001), The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, Oxford University Press
• Wilber, Ken (1996), The Atman Project: A Transpersonal View of Human Development, Quest Books, ISBN 9780835607308

Online sources

1. Dr.Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: The Philosopher President. Press Information Bureau, Government of India
2. Michael Hawley,Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888—1975), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3. "Padma Awards Directory (1954–2007)" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs. Retrieved 26 November 2010.
4. "Maharaja's royal gift to Mysore". The Times of India. 25 July 2010. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
5. "No. 33722". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 June 1931. p. 3624.
6. "No. 33816". The London Gazette. 12 April 1932. p. 2398.
7. "Teachers' Day". Festivalsofindia.in. Retrieved 2 October2012.
8. "DETAILS OF MEDIA PERSONS ACCOMPANYING THE PRESIDENT IN HIS/HER VISITS ABROAD SINCE 1947 TO 2012" (PDF). The President's Secretariat. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 August 2013. Retrieved 5 June 2013.
9. "The Great Indian Philosopher : Dr. Radhakrishnan" (PDF). State Govt. Of Orissa.
10. Ram Puniyani, COMMUNALISM : Illustrated Primer, Chapter 5
11. Order pour le Merite for Arts and Science, List of Members from 1842 to 1998
12. The Templeton Prize – Previous Prize Winners, Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1975)

External links

• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Works by or about Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan at Internet Archive
• "The Legend of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan"
• "Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan- The philosopher president", Press Information Bureau, Government of India
• "Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888—1975)" by Michael Hawley, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• S. Radhakrishnan materials in the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Apr 18, 2019 10:16 pm

New World Alliance
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/18/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Governing Council of the New World Alliance meets at a lodge in upstate New York, September 1980. Leonard Duhl of UC Berkeley is seated at the upper left, Michael Marien of the World Future Society is seated with legs crossed at the upper right, and spiritual-politics theorist and activist Corinne McLaughlin is sitting to Marien's right.

The New World Alliance was an American political organization that sought to articulate and implement what it called "transformational" political ideas. It was organized in the late 1970s and dissolved in 1983. It has been described as the first U.S. national political organization of its type[1] and as the first entity to articulate a comprehensive transformational political program.[2]

The Alliance maintained a national office two blocks from the White House. It established chapters across the U.S., produced a 98-page political platform, conducted "Political Awareness Seminars" to help participants learn to communicate across ideological and psychological divides, initiated national "Consultations with Elected Officials," and produced a national political newsletter whose sponsors included Ecotopia author Ernest Callenbach and psychologist Carl Rogers.

Over the decades, social scientists and others have sought to explain why the Alliance did not achieve a longer life. There is no agreement. Explanations have touched on history (the U.S. was not ready), culture (the Alliance was too counter-cultural), process (the commitment to near-unanimous consensus decision-making was too onerous), leadership (the people on the Governing Council did not have the personalities or skills to build a mass organization), transformational political assumptions and behaviors (said to be inappropriate, self-defeating, or cult-like), and more.[nb 1]

Following the dissolution of the organization, many former Governing Council members and other founders of the Alliance – many near the beginning of their careers[6] – took transformational ideas into a variety of organizational settings, including the early U.S. Green Party movement and the multinational corporate world. Their organizational efforts and published political writings extended into the 21st century.

A "transformational" politics

"The 10 Goals of the New World Alliance: 1. A politics of hope; 2. A politics of healing; 3. A politics of rediscovery; 4. A politics of human growth; 5. A politics of ecology; 6. A politics of participation; 7. A politics of appropriate scale; 8. A politics of globalism; 9. A politics of technological creativity; 10. A politics of spirituality."

–- New World Alliance, "Introductory Brochure," 1980.[7]


After the political turmoil of the 1960s, many writers and activists began searching for a new political perspective that would give special weight to such topics as consciousness change, ecology, decentralization of power, and global cooperation.[8][9] Some called the emerging new perspective "transformational."[10][11]

Naming the Alliance's politics

The New World Alliance has been described by many terms other than transformational – among them, new paradigm,[12]Aquarian Cconspiracy,[13][nb 2] New Age-oriented,[1][nb 3] postliberal,[20] post-socialist,[21] and Green.[22] A libertarian magazine found the Alliance's newsletter to be "surprisingly libertarian,"[23] and a book about radical centrism characterized the Alliance as radical centrist.[24]

However, "transformational" has been the term most frequently used to describe the Alliance's politics, both by political scientists[2][25] and by the Alliance itself. For example, an article from the Alliance's chairperson was entitled "The New World Alliance: Toward a Transformational Politics,"[13] and the Alliance's political platform is entitled "A Transformation Platform: The Dialogue Begins."[6]

Describing the Alliance's politics

Image
Academic J. Gordon Melton said the Alliance attempted to combine left- and right-wing perspectives.

Many attempts have been made to describe the Alliance's approach to transformational politics. Cultural critic Annie Gottlieb interviewed an Alliance member who said its goal was "to embody a new holistic vision of politics in America."[26] Futurists Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps said the Alliance was attempting to introduce values into politics that had traditionally been outside it.[27] British Green activist Sara Parkin named some of those values, including "healing," "rediscovery," and "spirituality."[22] Scholar J. Gordon Melton and his colleagues focused on the Alliance's commitment to combining supposed opposites – left and right, personal and political.[28] Citing the ancient Greek concept of Paideia, Alliance chair Bob Olson told an interviewer that the Alliance wanted to build a society where every institution was geared to developing people's abilities and potentials.[13]

Political theorists Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson identified what they felt was a defining passage in one Alliance document:

Politics is the way we live our lives. It is not just running for office. It is the way we treat each other, as individuals, as groups, as government. It is the way we treat our environment. It is the way we treat ourselves.[29]


Arthur Stein, a political scientist at University of Rhode Island, pointed to another passage in an Alliance document:

The NWA seeks to break away from the old quarrels of "left against right" and help create a new consensus based on our heartfelt needs. It emphasizes personal growth – and nurturing others – rather than indiscriminate material growth. It advocates "human scale" institutions that function with human consideration and social responsibilities. It draws on the social movements of the recent past for new values like ecological responsibility, self-realization and planetary cooperation and sharing. It draws on our conservative heritage for values such as personal responsibility, self-reliance, thrift, neighborliness and community. It draws from the liberal traditions a commitment to human and civil rights, economic equity and social justice. We call this synthesis "New World" politics.[30]


Author Kirkpatrick Sale observed that the Alliance's newsletter boiled its definition of transformational politics down to a phrase – "the reconceptualization of politics along human growth, decentralist, and world order lines."[31] "As sorry a mouthful of rhetoric as that is," Sale concluded, "that's roughly what this 'transformational' idea is all about."[31][nb 4]

History

The organizing tour


Image
Mark Satin at the start on his 24-city organizing tour for the Alliance, Vancouver, Canada, 1978. (Photo by Erich Hoyt.)

Organizing for the Alliance began in 1978, when author Mark Satin embarked on a two-year tour of North America.[1][27] Although the tour was initially designed to promote one of his books at conferences and other events, it quickly expanded into an effort to locate those who wanted to start a new political organization with a new political perspective.[1] Satin told the authors of the book Networking that he traveled "systematically" to 24 cities and regions across the continent. He was especially interested in finding people committed enough to want to fill out an extensive questionnaire about the future organization.[27] According to one magazine, by the summer of 1979 Satin had traveled over 50,000 miles, mostly by Greyhound bus.[1] He stopped when he found 500 people that were willing to answer the questionnaire.[27]

The questionnaire

The questionnaire, when finally composed and sent out, came to 21 pages.[22] One political science text later compared it to a Delphi survey.[25] It consisted largely of multiple-choice questions[6] about what a transformation-oriented political organization should consist of.[13] Some questions dealt with policy; for example, "How can we make small family farming more of an option for Americans?" Others dealt with structure – "How large should the Board of Directors be?"[27]

Of the 500 people the questionnaire was sent to, 350 responded.[27] The author of the book Green Parties described the respondents as people involved in personal-growth work and social change.[22] The editors of a book on transformational politics described them as "academics, policy experts, and political activists interested in this emerging political perspective."[25]

While it is not clear how closely the organization followed the questionnaire in shaping itself, one political scientist thought it significant that the "overwhelming source" of U.S. political problems among questionnaire-answerers was found to be "our attitudes and values."[6]

"Governing Council"

Image
GC chairperson Bob Olson (second from right) was a project director at the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment.[33] GC member Kirkpatrick Sale (center) was a Neo-Luddite theorist.[34]

The questionnaire determined that a 39-member board of directors, called the Governing Council (GC), should be chosen to run the Alliance. In addition, it determined that the GC should be chosen from among the questionnaire-answerers themselves. Eighty-nine of them volunteered to stand for the GC, and the first 39 GCers were chosen by a variety of means: 40% by mail ballot, 30% by lottery, 20% by Satin (who'd met the questionnaire-answerers during his bus tour), and 10% by four women.[27]

The selection process produced a diverse GC. A political scientist pointed to "teachers, feminists, think-tank members."[2] A journalist called attention to a Ronald Reagan speechwriter, a former Robert F. Kennedy speechwriter, a corporate vice-president, and a spiritual teacher.[35] A spokesperson for the Alliance touted "a co-author of the Pentagon Papers" as well as "several people from the erstwhile counterculture."[36]

In 1980, the 39 GC members included Jim Benson, Clement Bezold, Lex Hixon, John McClaughry, Corinne McLaughlin, Kirkpatrick Sale, Mark Satin, Eric Utne, Robert Buxbaum of the Office of the New York City Council President, Jeff Cox of the Rodale Institute, Leonard Duhl of UC Berkeley, Bethe Hagens of Governors State University, Miller Hudson of the Colorado legislature, Donald Keys of the World Federalists, James Ogilvy of SRI International, Bob Olson of the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, Gail Whitty of the NOW-Detroit board of directors, Malon Wilkus of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, and Rarihokwats, founder of Akwesasne Notes newspaper from the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne.[33][nb 5] Besides being on the GC, Olson served as chairperson of the Alliance.[13]

Structure and process

Image
The Alliance's national office was two blocks from the White House, in the light brown building midway down the row of buildings here.[nb 6]

The Governing Council met semi-annually.[37] There was also a Coordinating Committee,[13] and a national office was established two blocks from the White House in Washington, D.C.[35]

But one of the Alliance's expressed goals was "a politics of participation,"[7] and the GC chose not to run the Alliance from the top down. The authors of the book Networking describe the organization as "nonhierarchically structured" and say decisions were made by decentralized committees.[27]

There were also local chapters. Belden Paulson, a political scientist at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, says that in the early years the Alliance had "a kind of missionary zeal" to establish local chapters across the U.S. He reports that 50 people turned up at the initial chapter meeting in Milwaukee and that the group met for several years.[6]

The Alliance's processes emphasized consensus and even meditation. An encyclopedia from Gale Research reports that the Alliance expressed a "commitment to consensus building in all our groups and projects."[38] It also reports that Alliance chapters and projects claimed to use "short periods of silence [in order] to draw on our intuition in making decisions and solving conflicts."[38]

Projects

The Alliance sustained four principal projects.

Political platform

"The Transformation Platform of the New World Alliance is different from conventional political platforms in fundamental ways. ... It is an attempt to go beyond the polarity of left-against-right by integrating the highest values in our nation's conservative and liberal heritage with the learning that has taken place in recent social movements. ... It begins – but only just begins – a reconceptualization or paradigm change regarding the very nature of politics. We recognize that public policy is only one "face" of politics. Equally important political work takes place in the community, the workplace, and in personal development and interpersonal relationships."

–- New World Alliance, introduction to A Transformation Platform: The Dialogue Begins, 1981.[39]


The Alliance produced a 98-page political platform that achieved what one commentator claimed was wide circulation.[6] A Transformation Platform: The Dialogue Begins discussed crime and justice, economics, science and technology, health, the environment, global affairs, and more.[27] It made about 300 specific policy proposals.[2] But it sought to do more than provide good ideas. Bob Olson, chair of the Alliance, tried to explain to the Association for Humanistic Psychology why he felt the platform was unique:

... we call [it] a Living Platform. The platform offers concrete political proposals, but doesn't purport to offer final answers. It includes commentary and dissenting opinion, and it asks readers to criticize it and help improve it, so that over the years ahead it can serve as a focus for thousands of people to cooperate in thinking through the changes we need to make.[40]


"Political Awareness Seminars"

These were day-long or weekend experiences designed to make participants more deeply aware of the political process and their own potential for using it to heal society.[13] To some observers, the seminars functioned primarily to build self-confidence.[27] To Olson, they helped participants discover and merge their visions of a better society, and explore how to implement them.[13] To the authors of Spiritual Politics, the key part came when participants were asked to act out their feelings toward their political adversaries – and were then told to reverse roles. "Many deep insights resulted," the authors wrote, "with participants discovering [they] often had problems similar to the ones they accused their adversaries of having."[41]

"Consultations with Elected Officials"

Image
California legislator John Vasconcellos invited people to the Alliance's first "Consultation with Elected Officials" and was a featured speaker there.

These were national conferences of "transformation-oriented" politicians,[13] Alliance GC members, and other interested parties. Political science professor Belden Paulson, who helped coordinate the first one, in Milwaukee, says he recruited California state legislator John Vasconcellos and Colorado state legislator Miller Hudson to invite people to the weekend event and be speakers there. Sixteen elected officials ended up attending. There were also eight Alliance GC members, six academics, spiritual writer David Spangler, and some residents of intentional communities.[6] According to a letter Paulson quotes from one of the intentional-community residents, there was great tension at the consultation between pragmatists and visionaries – until the last day, when "it all came together, starting with the politicians who, one by one, spoke of how this opened whole new horizons for them."[42]

National political newsletter

Renewal newsletter attempted to report on current affairs from a transformational perspective.[13] It also attempted to critically assess relevant groups and books and serve as a forum for activists.[2] It boasted nine founding sponsors – Ernest Callenbach, Willis Harman, Hazel Henderson, Karl Hess, Patricia Mische (co-author of Toward a Human World Order[43]), Jeremy Rifkin, James Robertson, Carl Rogers, and John Vasconcellos.[2] The newsletter's annual "Transformational Book Award" was voted upon by 70 hand-picked academics and think tank staffers from across the U.S.[31]

Restructuring and dissolution

The Alliance restructured itself in 1982. It decided to close its Washington, D.C. office but keep the Governing Council intact. Rather than running and funding projects and supporting an organizational infrastructure, it would seek to serve as a kind of umbrella for entrepreneurial, independently run projects.[2] It dissolved the next year.[44]

Assessments

Image
Prominent writer and activist Jeremy Rifkin was a founding sponsor of the Alliance's political newsletter.[2]

The Alliance raised many hopes in transformational circles. For example, New Realities, a glossy transformation-oriented magazine, devoted a 3,000-word article to the organizing effort,[1] and futurist Hazel Henderson pointed her readers beyond the U.S. Citizens Party to the "more visionary" movement incorporating as the New World Alliance.[45] Arthur Stein noted that each of the founding sponsors of the Alliance's political newsletter had distinguished themselves in their fields.[2]

To some observers, including some inside the organization, the Alliance fell short of its promise and potential. It was certainly "short-lived," as three political scientists put it.[25] To other observers, the Alliance was a valuable pioneer.

External critics

Some critics focused on history and culture. To political scientist Belden Paulson, the Alliance fell short partly because it was too far ahead of its cultural moment.[6] To Annie Gottlieb, author of a book about the mainstreaming of Sixties-generation attitudes and values, the Alliance fell short because it did not sufficiently root itself in the mainstream culture, and in the immediately practical and viable.[46]

Other explanations focused on the Alliance's processes. Scholar J. Gordon Melton's encyclopedia said the focus on consensus led to "extended meetings and minimal results" – which in turn led to dispirited participants.[28] Even Aquarian Conspiracy author Marilyn Ferguson commented that the GC meetings, full of "intoxicating rhetoric" but little else, took their toll on one GC member.[37]

Still other explanations focused on internal dysfunction. Belden Paulson noted ongoing "friction and personality struggles." He also found it incomprehensible that the Alliance always seemed to be without money. He finally concluded that the GCers with the most power were more interested in advancing their own organizations.[6]

Some critics were skeptical about, or hostile to, the Alliance's transformational ideology. Speaking on a panel with two Alliance GC members at an Association for Humanistic Psychology conference in 1982, political scientist Walter Truett Anderson rejected the concept of transformation. He argued that it had become a cliché and that society was not going to transform itself totally or quickly. He added that its advocates were on the verge of becoming "what I think can rightfully be called a cult."[47]

The Alliance generated opposition among conservative Christians who worried that New Age ideas were being spread under the banner of transformational politics. For example, in her book The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, attorney Constance Cumbey warned that New Age ideas were being "synergistically enhanced by the parallel operation of networking organizations such as New World Alliance."[48] In an anthology called The New Age Rage, religious philosopher Douglas Groothuis said transformational initiatives like the Alliance were slipping New Age ideas into U.S. Democratic Party politics.[49]

Internal critics

"Belief that a social transformation is happening serves to keep it from happening. Behaviors associated with the sandbox of political impotency include: pronouncement of actual or imminent success, confusion of goals and results, an acritical stance, hubris, an incapacitating dialect, pseudo holism, egalitarian blinders, and self-centeredness. Upward growth to escape the Sandbox Syndrome is a necessary ingredient of any serious social change."

– Alliance GC member Michael Marien, "The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome," 1983.[50]


Both before and after the Alliance dissolved, GC members publicly criticized the Alliance. In 1987, former GC member Marc Sarkady told an interviewer that the Alliance was too immersed in the counter-culture.[26] In 1983, writing in a feminist quarterly, GCer Berhe Hagens said that – despite all the high-minded rhetoric and processes – the male GCers had been dismissive of the female GCers.[51] In 1982, Mark Satin complained to an audience of 400 that the Alliance could not decide on its mission.[52][nb 7] Later that decade Satin referred to his former colleagues as "beautiful losers,"[54] and even in the 2000s he was writing about what he saw as the Alliance's "ineptness" and its failure to understand and seize the moment.[24]

A more systemic critique by a GC member was Michael Marien's essay "The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome," published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 1983.[56] While Marien aimed his critique at transformational political organizations (and activists) in general, the introduction discusses Marien's involvement in just one such organization – the Alliance.[50] His targets in the essay include mistaking lofty goals for political significance, loving-kindness for effective action, and good intentions for actual results.[57]

Toward the end of its existence, Alliance chair Bob Olson wrote – in a spirit of acceptance rather than blame – that the GC did not have the "personalities and skills" to create the kind of dynamic mass-membership organization that had originally been envisioned.[58]

Positive views

Many observers have acknowledged the Alliance for what they see as pioneering contributions to the social change movement.

For example, the director of Self Determination, a California-wide transformational political organization co-founded by John Vasconcellos,[19] described the Alliance as "the first" national political organization of its kind.[1] Political scientist Arthur Stein claimed it made "the first attempt to take ecological, decentralist, globalist, and human-growth ideas and translate them into a detailed, practical political platform."[2]

A pair of futurists credited the Alliance with attempting to create a national political movement based on new values.[27] A pair of political theorists said the Alliance was one of the first groups attempting to create "a new synthesis" of left-wing and right-wing political ideas.[59] In a textbook, three political scientists identified the Alliance as a "precursor" of North American Greens.[25]

Aftermath

Image
Alliance co-founder Gordon Feller later became "urban innovations" director at Cisco Systems in Silicon Valley.[60]

Many initial Governing Council members and other founders of the Alliance – often at the early stages of their careers[6] – engaged in transformation-oriented activities after the Alliance dissolved in 1983.[nb 8] Some of them contributed to transformational theory and practice for many decades.

In 1984, at least nine people associated with the Alliance were among the 62 people in attendance at the invitation-only founding meeting of the U.S. Green Party movement in St. Paul, Minnesota.[44] In addition, the Alliance's platform circulated there.[61] One former GCer, Mark Satin, was later credited with helping to initiate that meeting,[62] and in a scholarly book on the early U.S. Greens, ecofeminist author Greta Gaard concluded that Satin "played a significant role in facilitating the articulation of Green political thought," and that his political philosophy influenced the Greens' "ideological foundation."[63]

Other former Alliance members helped organize other transformation-oriented political initiatives. For example, GC members Corinne McLaughlin and Stephen Woolpert helped develop the Ecological and Transformational Politics Section (section #26) of the American Political Science Association,[25][59] Leonard Duhl helped initiate the Healthy Cities program at the World Health Organization,[64] and Alanna Hartzok co-founded the Earth Rights Institute.[65]

Some Alliance founders later ran for seats in the U.S. Congress, though none won. In 1986, Joseph Simonetta – co-founder of an Alliance chapter[66] – obtained the Democratic Party nomination for a House seat.[66][nb 9] Six years later, former GC member John McClaughry obtained the Republican Party nomination for a Senate seat.[67] In 2001, former GCer Alanna Hartzok obtained the Green Party nomination for a House seat,[68] and in 2014 she obtained the Democratic Party nomination for that same seat.[69]

Several Alliance founders later took transformational ideas into the multinational corporate world. James Ogilvy co-founded the Global Business Network to introduce futures thinking and scenario planning to multinational corporations.[70] Marc Sarkady became a global management consultant explicitly committed to "organizational transformation" and "visionary leadership";[71] one of his earliest challenges was trying to build teamwork among General Motors executives.[72] Malon Wilkus, an intentional community activist while on the GC,[33] eventually became head of American Capital Strategies and won praise in a book devoted to "creative inside reformers."[73] Richard B. Perl founded an international investment company helping Japanese investors do environmentally friendly real estate development in the U.S.[74] He also partnered with a French chocolate manufacturer.[74][nb 10] Jim Benson founded innovative computer and space firms, including SpaceDev.[76] Gordon Feller became director of "urban innovations" at Cisco Systems, a multinational technology company.[60]

One year after the Alliance dissolved, two former GC members launched transformation-oriented periodicals, Eric Utne with Utne Reader[77] and Mark Satin with New Options Newsletter.[78] One futurist described New Options as a "successor" to the Alliance's newsletter.[79] While these periodicals did not please some critics, such as conservative scholar George Weigel,[80] others found them rewarding.[nb 11]

Many Alliance founders wrote transformation-oriented political books after the Alliance dissolved.[nb 12] These addressed a variety of traditional and emerging subjects, including intentional communities,[82] bioregionalism,[83] the interconnectedness of global issues,[84] small-scale participatory democracy,[85] social entrepreneurship,[86] sustainable cities,[87] environmental technologies,[88] radical centrism,[89] land rights,[90] transpartisanship,[91] and spiritual politics.[92] One former GCer became lead editor of an academic textbook on transformational politics.[93]

Some former GCers' transformational books were more personal. Bob Dunsmore wrote about being an activist for 40 years,[94] James Ogilvy wrote about moving from goal-driven to soul-driven,[95] [url]Eric Utne[/url] exhorted readers to "Look Up, Look Out, Look In,"[96] and Norie Huddle wrote a book explaining transformational ideas to children and others entitled simply Butterfly.[97]

See also

• Futures studies
• Green politics
• Humanistic psychology
• Transformative social change

Notes

1. Many of these concerns were similar to those encountered by other organizations of the 1970s and 1980s that were seeking to develop alternatives to conventional political perspectives and processes. See, for example, Susan Brownmiller on the second-wave feminist movement,[3] Andrew Cornell on Movement for a New Society,[4] and John Rensenbrink on the early U.S. Green Party movement.[5]
2. The reference is to Marilyn Ferguson's book The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s.[14] Of the seven "Related books of interest" listed in Ferguson's chapter on politics,[15] two were by members of the Alliance's Governing Council,[16][17] and a third was by a founding sponsor of the Alliance's newsletter.[18]
3. Self Determination was characterized as an exemplary transformational political organization in Marilyn Ferguson's book The Aquarian Conspiracy. According to Ferguson, it was founded in 1976 by California state assemblyman John Vasconcellos and other politicians and citizens to encourage Californians to take responsibility for their lives.[19]
4. In an anthology from 1998, in an attempt to delineate the transformational politics concept, Auburn University political scientist Christa Slaton listed nine authors: Fritjof Capra (for The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point), Marilyn Ferguson (for The Aquarian Conspiracy), Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique), Hazel Henderson (The Politics of the Solar Age), John Naisbitt(Megatrends), Mark Satin (New Age Politics), E. F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful), and Alvin and Heidi Toffler (Future Shock and The Third Wave).[32]
5. This list of Governing Council members and their organizational affiliations is drawn entirely from the "Governing Council" page of the Alliance's political platform.[33] No other source was used. It is a selective list, consisting of all GC members that have biographies on Wikipedia, and most GCers whose then-current affiliations – clearly stated on the "Governing Council" page – were to organizations with articles now on Wikipedia. To be the subject of a Wikipedia article, individuals and organizations must meet certain criteria; see WP:Notability.
6. According to journalist Ted Cox, the address was 733 Fifteenth Street N.W., Washington, D.C.[35] The address is given in Wikimedia's description of this photograph; to read it, click on the photo and then scroll down. The description identifies 733 as the sixth building from the right, and viewers should note that three narrow buildings to its immediate left are difficult to distinguish from one another. The entire stretch of buildings constitutes part of what is now known as the Fifteenth Street Financial Historic District.
7. GC members had disparate visions for the organization. Some GCers wanted the Alliance to be or become a political party,[53] Satin wanted the Alliance to model itself on grassroots mobilization and lobbying groups such as Moral Majority,[54] and others – ultimately a majority – wanted the Alliance to play a less assertive, clearinghouse role.[55]
8. The names of 39 early GC members and five additional founding members are on the "Governing Council" page of the Alliance's political platform.[33]These are the only founders named in this section, except for Joseph Simonetta, who is identified as a founder in a reference below.
9. Simonetta ran on the slogan "The Heroes Are Us"; his campaign literature spoke of the dangers of "excessive consumption" and "immediate gratification." His campaign logo consisted of a world map crossed by two lines – "symbolic of the fact," he said, "that we live in an interrelated, interdependent world."[66]
10. Perl also became one of five key leaders of the Social Venture Network, an organization incubating socially responsible businesses.[75]
11. Cultural critic Annie Gottlieb stated in 1987 that Utne Reader and New Optionswere among "our generation's most characteristic creations right now, and the networks through which we talk to one another."[81]
12. This recitation of books is intended to be suggestive rather than complete. For that reason, it is limited to one post-1983, transformation-oriented book per Alliance founder. Because GCers Davidson and McLaughlin are joint authors, two of their books are given.

References

1. Alison Wells and Stanley Commons, "Moving Politics With Spirit (And Greyhound)," New Realities magazine, June–July 1979, pp. 23–25. The authors are identified as journal editor and executive director, respectively, of Self Determination, a California-wide organization advocating personal and political change.
2. Arthur Stein, Seeds of the Seventies: Values, Work, and Commitment in Post-Vietnam America, University Press of New England, 1985, pp. 134–38. ISBN 978-0-87451-343-1. The author is identified as a political scientist at University of Rhode Island.
3. Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, Delta Books / Dell Publishing Co., 1999, pp. 35–294. ISBN 978-0-385-31831-0.
4. Andrew Cornell, Oppose and Propose!: Lessons from Movement for a New Society, AK Press, 2011, pp. 1–126. ISBN 978-1-849350-66-2.
5. John Rensenbrink, Against All Odds: The Green Transformation of American Politics, Leopold Press, Inc., 1999, Parts III and IV. ISBN 978-0-9660629-1-5.
6. Belden Paulson, Odyssey of a Practical Visionary, Thistlefield Books, 2009, pp. 500–03. ISBN 978-0-9816906-1-2. The author is identified as a political scientist at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
7. Mark Satin, New Age Politics: Our Only Real Alternative, Lorian Press, 2015, pp. 196–97 (quoting the Alliance's brochure). ISBN 978-0-936878-80-5.
8. Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, Harmony Books / Random House, 2000, chaps. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-609-60467-0.
9. Theodore Roszak, Person / Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society, Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1978, chaps. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-385-00063-5.
10. Willis Harman, An Incomplete Guide to the Future, W. W. Norton & Company, 1979, chap. 2 ("A Transformation Ahead?"). ISBN 978-0-393-95006-9.
11. George Leonard, The Transformation: A Guide to the Inevitable Changes in Humankind, Delacorte Press / Dell Publishing Co., 1972. ISBN 978-0-385-29075-3
12. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out, Ballantine Books, 1994, p. 70. ISBN 978-0-345-36983-3.
13. Bob Olson with Marilyn Saunders, interviewer, "The New World Alliance: Toward a Transformational Politics," AHP Newsletter, December 1980, pp. 14–16. A publication of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
14. Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s, Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc., 1980. ISBN 978-0-87477-191-6.
15. Ferguson, Aquarian, p. 434.
16. James Ogilvy, Many Dimensional Man: Decentralizing Self, Society, and the Sacred, Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN 978-0-19-502231-5.
17. Mark Satin, New Age Politics: Healing Self and Society, Delta Books / Dell Publishing Co., 1979. ISBN 978-0-440-55700-5.
18. John Vasconcellos, A Liberating Vision: Politics for Growing Humans, Impact Publishers, 1979. ISBN 978-0-915166-17-6.
19. Ferguson, Aquarian, pp. 232–35.
20. Mark Satin, New Options for America: The Second American Experiment Has Begun, The Press at California State University, Fresno, 1991, p. 6. ISBN 978-0-8093-1794-3.
21. Mark Satin, Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now, Westview Press and Basic Books, 2004, p. 29. ISBN 978-0-8133-4190-3.
22. Sara Parkin, Green Parties: An International Guide, Heretic Books Ltd., 1989, p. 294. ISBN 978-0-946097-27-2.
23. Robert Poole, Jr. and Christine Dorffi, "New Age Budget Biting," Reason: Free Minds and Free Markets, November 1981, p. 20.
24. Satin, Radical, pp. 187–88.
25. "Preface: Paths to Transformational Politics," in Stephen Woolpert, Christa Daryl Slaton, and Edward W. Schwerin, eds., Transformational Politics: Theory, Study, and Practice, State University of New York Press, 1998, p. ix.ISBN 978-0-7914-3945-6. The lead editor is identified as a political scientist at Saint Mary's College of California.
26. Annie Gottlieb, Do You Believe in Magic?: Bringing the Sixties Back Home, Simon & Schuster, 1987, p. 153 (quoting Marc Sarkady). ISBN 978-0-671-66050-5. Note that the pagination in the Times Books / Random House edition of this book is different.
27. Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, Networking: The First Report and Directory, Doubleday, 1982, pp. 107–08. ISBN 978-0-385-18121-1.
28. J. Gordon Melton, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly, New Age Encyclopedia, Gale Research, Inc., 1990, p. 324. ISSN 1047-2746. ISSN retrieved April 1, 2016.
29. McLaughlin, Spiritual, p. 70 (quoting a New World Alliance document).
30. Stein, Seeds, p. 135 (quoting a New World Alliance document).
31. Kirkpatrick Sale, "Kirkpatrick Sale's Letter from America," Resurgencemagazine, vol. 89, November–December 1981, p. 6.
32. Christa Daryl Slaton, "An Overview of the Emerging Political Paradigm: A Web of Transformational Theories," in Woolpert et al., eds., Transformational, cited above, p. 11.
33. "New World Alliance Governing Council, 1980–1981," in New World Alliance, A Transformation Platform: The Dialogue Begins, New World Alliance publication, 1981, p. 98. Booklet, no ISBN assigned.
34. Steven Jones, Against Technology: From the Luddites to Neo-Luddism, Routledge, 2006, pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-0-415-97868-2.
35. Ted Cox, "New Age People: Alternative to Militarism," The Churchman, August–September 1980, p. 7.
36. Olson, "New World," p. 14.
37. Marilyn Ferguson, "Foreword," in Mark Satin, New Options for America: The Second American Experiment Has Begun, The Press at California State University, Fresno, 1991, p. xiii. ISBN 978-0-8093-1794-3.
38. Melton et al., Encyclopedia, p. 324 (quoting the Alliance's newsletter).
39. Paulson, Odyssey, p. 501 (quoting the Alliance's platform, emphases in Paulson's quoted text).
40. Olson, "The New," p. 15.
41. McLaughlin, Spiritual, p. 109.
42. Paulson, Odyssey, p. 502 (quoting letter).
43. Gerald Mische and Patricia Mische, Toward a Human World Order: Beyond the National Security Straitjacket, Paulist Press, 1977. ISBN 978-0-8091-0216-7.
44. Mark Satin, "Miraculous Birth of the 'Ten Key Values' Statement," Green Horizon magazine, vol. 9, issue no. 26, Fall–Winter 2012, p. 19. A publication co-edited by John Rensenbrink, co-founder of the U.S. Green Party. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
45. Hazel Henderson, The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics, Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1981, p. 19. ISBN 978-0-385-17150-2.
46. Gottlieb, Do You Believe, pp. 153–54.
47. Stein, Seeds, p. 137 (quoting Anderson).
48. Constance E. Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism, Huntington House, Inc., 1983, pp. 64–65. ISBN 978-0-910311-03-8.
49. Douglas Groothuis, "Politics: Building an International Platform," in Karen Hoyt and the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, eds., The New Age Rage, Fleming H. Revell Company / Baker Publishing Group, 1987, pp. 97–98. ISBN 978-0-8007-5257-6.
50. Michael Marien, "The Transformation as Sandbox Syndrome," Journal of Humanistic Psychology, vol. 23, no. 1, Winter 1983, p. 7.
51. Bethe Hagens, "The Goddess in the New World Alliance," The Creative Woman Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 4, Fall 1983, p. 19. A publication of Governors State University. The author is identified as an anthropologist. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
52. Stein, Seeds, pp. 136-37 (quoting Satin).
53. Bob Dunsmore, I Am: A Journey Through Times and Spaces, iUniverse Publishing, 2011, p. 65. ISBN 978-1-4620-2432-2.
54. Mark Satin and Kevin Kelly, interviewer, "Mark Satin," Whole Earth Review, issue no. 61, Winter 1988, p. 107.
55. Stein, Seeds, p. 138.
56. Marien, "The Transformation," cited above.
57. Marien, "The Transformation," pp. 7–10.
58. Melton, Encyclopedia, p. 324 (quoting Olson).
59. McLaughlin, Spiritual, p. 72–73.
60. Kim Chandler McDonald, Flat World Navigation: Collaboration and Networking in the Global Digital Economy, Kogan Page, 2015, p. xv. ISBN 978-0-7494-7393-8.
61. Howard Hawkins, "North American Greens Come of Age: Statism vs. Municipalism." Our Generation, vol. 23, no. 1, Winter 1992, p 74. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
62. John Ely, "Green Politics in the United States and Europe," in Margit Mayer and John Ely, eds., The German Greens: Paradox Between Movement and Party, Temple University Press, 1998, p. 200. ISBN 978-1-56639-516-8.
63. Greta Gaard, Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and the Greens, Temple University Press, 1998, pp. 142–43. ISBN 978-1-56639-569-4.
64. Howard Frumkin et al., "Introduction," in Andrew L. Dannenberg, Howard Frumkin, and Richard J. Jackson, eds., Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Health, Well-being, and Sustainability, Island Press, 2011, p. 26. ISBN 978-1-59726-727-4.
65. Alanna Hartzok, The Earth Belongs to Everyone: Articles & Essays, Institute for Economic Democracy Press, 2008, p. 340. ISBN 978-1-933567-04-4.
66. Mark Satin, "Simonetta: The Heroes Are Us," New Options Newsletter, issue no. 29, June 30, 1986, pp. 3, 8. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
67. Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa, The Almanac of American Politics 1994, National Journal, 1993, p. 1295. ISBN 978-0-89234-057-6.
68. Elly Spinweber, "Green Party Candidate Addresses 'Earth Rights'," The Daily Collegian (Pennsylvania State University), April 19, 2001, p. 2. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
69. Author unknown, "Alanna Hartzok," Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics, website, no fixed date. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
70. Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, Currency Doubleday, 1996, pp. 92–95. ISBN 978-0-385-26732-8.
71. Gottlieb, Do You Believe, p. 340.
72. Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White, Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, Touchstone / Simon & Schuster, 1994, pp. 173–74, 175. ISBN 978-0-671-79214-5.
73. AArthur B. Shostak, ed., For Labor's Sake: Gains and Pains as Told by 28 Creative Inside Reformers, University Press of America, 1994, p. 107.ISBN 978-0-8191-9775-7.
74. Dina Cheney, "Richard Perl '79: Saving the World, One Bonbon at a Time". Columbia College Today, January / February 2007, p. 63. A publication of Columbia University. Retrieved 17 February 2018.
75. Jeffrey Hollender and Bill Breen, The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, Jossey-Bass, 2010, p. 203. ISBN 978-0-470-55842-3.
76. Patricia Sullivan, "Obituaries: James Benson; Inventor Led Computer, Space Firms", The Washington Post, October 16, 2008. Retrieved July 30, 2017.
77. Dan Chu and Margaret Nelson, "Eric Utne Created the Impossible," Peoplemagazine, vol. 34, no. 10, September 10, 1990, pp. 79, 81.
78. Jeff Rosenberg, "Mark's Ism: New Options' Editor Builds a New Body Politic," Washington City Paper, vol. 9, no. 11, March 17, 1989, pp. 6–8.
79. Michael Marien, "New Options for America," Future Survey, vol. 13, no. 7, July 1991, item 01-315. A publication of the World Future Society.
80. George Weigel, "No Options," American Purpose magazine, vol. 3, no. 3, March 1989, pp. 21–22.
81. Gottlieb, Do You Believe, p. 371.
82. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Builders of the Dawn: Community Lifestyles in a Changing World, Stillpoint Publishing, 1985. ISBN 978-0-913299-20-3. Both authors were GC members.
83. Kirkpatrick Sale, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision, Sierra Club Books, 1985. ISBN 978-0-87156-847-2.
84. Melvin Gurtov, Global Politics in the Human Interest, Lynne Rienner Publishers,1988. ISBN 978-1-58826-484-8.
85. Frank M. Bryan and John McClaughry, The Vermont Papers: Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale, Chelsea Green Publishing, 1989. ISBN 978-0-930031-19-0. McClaughry was the GC member.
86. Leonard J. Duhl, M.D., The Social Entrepreneurship of Change, Pace University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-925776-04-4.
87. Sarah James and Torbjörn Lahti, The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to Sustainable Places, New Society Publishers, 2004. ISBN 978-0-86571-491-5. James was the GC member.
88. Robert Olson and David Rejeski, eds., Environmentalism & the Technologies of Tomorrow, Island Press, 2004. ISBN 978-1-55963-769-5. Olson was the GC member.
89. Satin, Radical, cited above.
90. Hartzok, The Earth Belongs, cited above.
91. A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner, Voice of the People: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life, daVinci Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-615-21526-6. Turner was the GC member.
92. Corinne McLaughlin with Gordon Davidson, The Practical Visionary: A New World Guide to Spiritual Growth and Social Change, 2010, Unity House Publishers, 2010. ISBN 978-0-87159-340-5. Both authors were GC members.
93. Stephen Woolpert, Christa Daryl Slaton, and Edward W. Schwerin, eds., Transformational Politics: Theory, Study, and Practice, State University of New York Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-7914-3945-6.
94. Dunsmore, I Am, cited above.
95. James Ogilvy, Living Without a Goal: Finding the Freedom to Live a Creative and Innovative Life, Currency Doubleday, 1995. ISBN 978-0-385-41799-0.
96. Eric Utne, Cosmo Doogood's Urban Almanac: Celebrating Nature & Her Rhythms in the City, Cosmo's Urban Almanac, 2004. ISBN 978-0-9761989-0-1. The quoted phrase appears on the front cover.
97. Norie Huddle, Butterfly, Huddle Books, 1990. Art by Charlene Madland.ISBN 978-1-878690-00-5. A frontspage states, "a tiny tale of great transformation."

External links

Primary sources


• "A Different Kind of Political Organization," c. 1980. Excerpts from the Alliance's introductory brochure. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
• A Transformation Platform: The Dialogue Begins, 1st ed., January 1981. Booklet, no ISBN assigned. The introduction claims that the document was reviewed by the entire Governing Council, and that nearly 200 additional people contributed to the individual subject areas. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
• "New World Alliance Update." Selected articles about the Alliance's goals, projects, and strategies from the Alliance's political newsletter. Retrieved April 26, 2016.
• Former Governing Council Members of the New World Alliance, "Participants Agonize Over (and Draw Lessons From) the Death and Life of the First Transpartisan Political Organization," Radical Middle Newsletter, issue no. 114, January 2008. A quarter century after the Alliance dissolved, 15 former GC members attempted to assess it. The titles of some of their contributions convey the range of their views – "We Had It Down 30 Years Ago" (Bob Olson), "We Blew It" (Mark Satin), "We Chose the Comfort of the Armchair" (Alanna Hartzok), "We Weren't Willing to Play the Right Game" (Miller Hudson), "We Had an Unprofessional Attitude, Especially About Money" (Neal H. Hurwitz), "We May Have Been Too Personally / Psychologically Diverse" (Melvin Gurtov), "We Never Found a Leader" (John McClaughry), "Some of Us Weren't Ready" (Sarah James), "The Larger Polity Was Not Ready" (Richard B. Perl), "We Are Nodes of a Life-Giving Net Now" (Bethe Hagens). Retrieved April 1, 2016.
• New World Alliance and New Options: Correspondence Files, 1977–1992, in the Contemporary Culture Collection at Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia. Includes hundreds of letters among Alliance members. Also contains the Alliance's founding documents, minutes of GC and regional meetings, and a complete set of Renewal newsletters. Retrieved April 1, 2016.

Other links

• "Special Issue: A Report on AHP's 12-Hour Political Party," AHP Newsletter, May 1980. Publication of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. GC member Mark Satin and four sponsors of the Alliance's newsletter were featured speakers at this event, and the ensuing manifesto by George Leonard, on pp. 5–7 of this issue, is an early and explicit statement of transformational politics. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
• Donald Keys, "Planetary Citizenship: The Next Big Step," AHP Newsletter, December 1980, pp. 18–19. A publication of the Association for Humanistic Psychology. Prominent GC members Donald Keys and Martha Keys were co-directors of the Planetary Citizens organization, the subject of this article.
• Frank Feather, ed., Through the '80s: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, World Future Society (WFS) publication, 1980. ISBN 978-0-930242-11-4. According to a WFS booklet ("First Global Conference on the Future," 1980, items #3111 and 3711), six GC members spoke at the 1980 WFS conference where these papers, many of them transformation-oriented, were presented. Retrieved April 1, 2016.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Thu Apr 18, 2019 11:16 pm

World Future Council
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/18/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.




Image

The World Future Council (WFC) is an independent body formally founded in Hamburg, Germany on 10 May 2007.[1] "Formed to speak on behalf of policy solutions that serve the interests of future generations",[2] it includes members active in governmental bodies, civil society, business, science and the arts. The WFC's primary focus has been climate security,[3] promoting laws such as the renewable energy Feed-in tariff.[4] The World Future Council has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council.[5]

Image
Annual General Meeting 2011

History

The World Future Council was founded by the Swedish writer and activist Jakob von Uexkull.[6] The idea for a global council was first aired on German radio in 1998. In October 2004 the organisation began in London with funding from private donors in Germany, Switzerland, USA and the UK. Since 2006, the organisation headquarters is based in Hamburg, where the World Future Council is politically independent and operates and is registered as a charitable foundation. Further offices are located in London, Geneva and Windhoek.[7] The Council meets once a year at the Annual General Meeting.[8]

The Hamburg Call to Action

The Hamburg Call to Action was unanimously agreed upon by all Councillors present at the Founding Ceremony of the World Future Council, 9–13 May 2007.[1] It calls for the preservation of the environment and the health of communities, the promotion of "systems and institutions based on equity and justice", safeguarding traditional indigenous tribal rights, the protection of present and future generations from war crimes and crimes against humanity, a sustainable production, trade, financial and monetary system, the revival of local democracies and economies, and a universal ban on nuclear and depleted uranium weapons, cluster ammunition and landmines. It aims to generate governmental support for renewable energy technologies, the protection of forests and oceans, secure healthy food and water supplies, environmental security, healthcare, education and shelter, and a strengthened United Nations.[8]

Activities

Future Policy Award

The Future Policy Award (FPA) celebrates policies that create better living conditions for current and future generations. The aim of the award is to raise global awareness for these exemplary policies and speed up policy action towards just, sustainable and peaceful societies. The Future Policy Award is the first award that celebrates policies rather than people on an international level. Each year the World Future Council chooses one topic on which policy progress is particularly urgent. In 2009, the Future Policy Award highlighted exemplary policies for food security. In the International Year on Biodiversity, the Future Policy Award 2010 celebrated the world's best biodiversity policies.[9] In the International Year of Forests, the Future Policy Award 2011 celebrated successful policies that protect, enhance and sustainably utilize forests for people, and thus contribute to a better world.[10][11] In 2012, the Future Policy Award celebrated the world’s most inspiring, innovative and influential policies on the protection of oceans and coasts.[12] In 2013 the question was which existing disbarment policies contribute most effectively to the achievement of peace, sustainable development, and security? [13] In 2014the Future Policy Award was dedicated to policies that address one of the most pervasive human rights abuses that humanity is facing: violence against women and girls. [14] The Future Policy Award in 2015 committed to policies that contributed to protecting and strengthening the rights of boys and girls.[15]

The 2017 Future Policy Award was dedicated to policies that effectively addressed land and soil degradation, and the related risks to food security and livelihoods, and help secure a sustainable and just future for people living in the world's drylands.[16] In 2018, the FPA – often referred to as the "Oscar on best policies" celebrated the world's best policies scaling up Agroecolgy[17]; the Indian state Sikkim was awarded Gold.[18]

FuturePolicy.org

Image
Future Policy Award

The website https://www.futurepolicy.org/ presents political solutions and assists decision-makers in developing and implementing future just policies. It is an online database designed for policy-makers to simplify the sharing of existing and proven policy solutions to tackle the world’s most fundamental and urgent problems. It now contains policies, for example on renewable energies, energy efficiency, sustainable cities and food production in the era of climate change, that have been promoted in WFC publications, films and hearings.[19]

https://www.futurepolicy.org/

Zanzibar International Children Rights Conference

From 28-30 November 2017, the World Future Council hosted an international child rights conference in Zanzibar to explore the positive impacts of Zanzibar's Children's Act and share success stories on child protection, children friendly justice and participation from around the world. The Zanzibar Children's Act had received the Gold Future Policy Award in 2015.[20] Across three days, over 100 participants took part in a varied schedule of workshops, presentations and field visits looking at how to translate child rights laws onto paper into national and location programmes that improve the experiences of children and young people on the ground and effectively tackle child abuse, neglect, and exploitation. The conference was convened with the support of Janina Özen-Otto, the JUA Foundation, and the Michael Otto Foundation. [21] The conference closed with the Zanzibar Declaration on Securing Children's Rights, signed by over 50 representatives and policymakers from Ghana, Indonesia, Liberia, Nigeria, Seychelles, Somaliland, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zanzibar, as well as experts on children’s rights and representatives from civil society, including Gertrude Mongella and Auma Obama.[22]

Global Policy Action Plan

The Global Policy Action Plan (GPACT) is a set of 22 interlinked, proven policy reforms that together, build sustainable, peaceful, and just societies and help to realise international commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The "best" policies identified by the World Future Council are those that meet the seven Principles for Future-Just Law-Making. A coherent best policy guide that brings together working innovative policy solutions and forward-thinking practical tools. [23]

Implementation of Feed-in Tariff Laws

Feed-In Tariff (FIT) laws to speed up renewable energy production have been introduced in several countries e.g. the UK, Australia, several US states, among them California, as well as in Ontario (Canada), with the support of the World Future Council. In establishing the Alliance for Renewable Energy, the World Future Council has created a coalition to spread renewable energies and contributed to the implementation of Feed-in Tariffs in the United States.[citation needed] [24]

Campaign for Ombudspersons for Future Generations

The WFC has embarked on a Campaign for Ombudspersons for Future Generations on all governance levels. For the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, or ‘Rio+20’ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012 the WFC was calling for the establishment of Ombudspersons for Future Generations, as a concrete solution under the second theme of the Summit ‘Institutional Framework for Sustainable Development’.[25]

Councillors

The World Future Council (WFC) consists of 50 eminent global change-makers from governments, parliaments, civil societies, academia, the arts, and the business world. Together they form a voice for the rights of future generations on all five continents.

• Hafsat Abiola-Costello
• Ibrahim Abouleish (d. 2017)
• Helmy Abouleish
• Charlotte Aubin
• Maude Barlow
• Dipal Chandra Barua
• Ana Maria Cetto
• Shuaib Chalklen
• Tony Colman
• Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger
• Thais Corral
• Hans-Peter Dürr (d. 2014)
• Scilla Elworthy
• Maria Fernanda Espinosa (till 2018)
• Anda Filip
• Sándor Fülöp
• Rafia Ghubash
• Luc Gnacadja
• Neshan Gunasekera
• Hans R. Herren
• Ashok Khosla
• Rolf Kreibich
• Alexander Likhotal
• Rama Mani
• Julia Marton-Lefèvre
• Wanjira Mathai
• Jan McAlpine
• Frances Moore Lappé
• Cherie Nursalim
• Auma Obama
• Anna R. Oposa
• Katiana Orluc
• Ms. Sirpa Pietikäinen
• Vandana Shiva
• Victoria Tauli-Corpuz
• Alyn Ware
• Anders Wijkman

Honorary Councillors

• Patrus Ananias
• Walter Cronkite (d. 2009)
• Ahmed Djoghlaf
• Riane Eisler
• Olivier Giscard d'Estaing
• Prof. Herbert Girardet
• Jane Goodall
• Wangari Maathai (d. 2011)
• James R. Mancham (d. 2017)
• Gertrude Ibengwe Mongella
• Pauline Tangiora
• Michael Otto
• A. N. R. Robinson (d. 2014)
• Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker
• Christopher Weeramantry (d. 2017)
• Barbara Woschek

Research and publications

• Miguel Mendonça, David Jacobs and Benjamin K. Sovacool (2009). Powering the Green Economy: The Feed-In Tariff Handbook, Earthscan, ISBN 978-1-84407-858-5
• Herbert Girardet and Miguel Mendonça (2009). A Renewable World: Energy, Ecology, Equality, Green Books, ISBN 978-1-900322-49-2
• Herbert Girardet (editor) (2008). Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges, Earthscan, ISBN 978-1-84407-612-3
• Herbert Girardet (2008). Cities People Planet: Liveable Cities for a Sustainable World, Wiley, ISBN 0-470-85284-4
• Miguel Mendonça (2007). Feed-in Tariffs: Accelerating the deployment of renewable energy, Earthscan, ISBN 978-1-84407-788-5
• Jakob von Uexkull and Herbert Girardet (2005). Shaping our Future: Creating the World Future Council, Green Books / World Future Council Initiative, ISBN 1-903998-46-8

References

1. "Vandana Shiva elected to World Future Council", Boloji.com
2. ECI Congratulates the World Future Council
3. "WFC accuses industrial nations of putting brakes on climate talks", People's Daily Online, 8 December 2007
4. "Klimaschutzfinanzierung: IWF greift Vorschlag des World Future Council auf", Oekonews.at, 2 June 2010
5. "Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations Recommends Status for Nine Entities, Defers 33", un.org, 22 May 2014
6. "We are taxing the lives of future generations" Deutsche Welle, 5 October 2007
7. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/contact/
8. http://www.worldfuturecouncil.org
9. https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... odiversity
10. https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/ ... owned.html
11. http://vov.com/videos/2011-future-polic ... t-policies
12. http://www.icriforum.org/news/2012/06/f ... and-coasts
13. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/p/2013-disarmament/
14. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/p/20 ... nst-women/
15. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/p/fu ... ard-2015//
16. "2017: Desertification". World Future Council. Retrieved 2019-01-03.
17. "2018: Agroecology". World Future Council. Retrieved 2019-01-03.
18. DelhiOctober 16, India Today Web Desk New; October 16, 2018UPDATED:; Ist, 2018 18:19. "Sikkim becomes world's first organic state, wins Oscar for best policies by UN". India Today. Retrieved 2019-01-03.
19. http://www.futurepolicy.org/
20. "2015: The Rights of Children". World Future Council. Retrieved 2019-01-03.
21. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/shar ... -zanzibar/
22. "Zanzibar Declaration on Securing Children's Rights". World Future Council. 2017-11-30. Retrieved 2019-01-03.
23. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/gpact/
24. https://www.worldfuturecouncil.org/worl ... te-crisis/
25. http://peacemealproject.com/2012/06/21/ ... k-project/

External links

• World Future Council
• FuturePolicy.org - Good Policies for Future Generations
• African Renewable Energy Alliance (AREA)
• Future Finance Blog
• Climate & Energy Commission Blog
• 2012 Future Policy Award Blog
• Renewable Energy World - Developing Nations Eye Renewable Energy
• Ghanaian village to watch World Cup on the big screen
• WFC Grades North American FIT Programs
• Giving our future a face: We need guardians for long-term well-being
• Global Challenges - Increased GDP in the short term can entail destruction of foundations of life in the long-term
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Fri Apr 19, 2019 1:46 am

Club of Rome
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/18/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.




Image
The Club of Rome
Founded 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, David Rockefeller and Alexander King
Co- Presidents: Sandrine Dixson-Declève and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele
Type Non-profit
NGO
Location
Winterthur, Canton Zurich, Switzerland
Fields Global warming, Well-being, Humanitarian challenges
Website ClubOfRome.org
Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the Club of Rome consists of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe.[1] It stimulated considerable public attention in 1972 with the first report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth. Since 1 July 2008 the organization has been based in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Formation

The Club of Rome was founded in April 1968 by Aurelio Peccei, an Italian industrialist, and Alexander King, a Scottish scientist. It was formed when a small international group of people from the fields of academia, civil society, diplomacy, and industry met at Villa Farnesina in Rome, hence the name.[2]

The problématique

Central to the formation of the club was Peccei's concept of the problematic. It was his opinion that viewing the problems of mankind—environmental deterioration, poverty, endemic ill-health, urban blight, criminality—individually, in isolation or as "problems capable of being solved in their own terms", was doomed to failure. All are interrelated. "It is this generalized meta-problem (or meta-system of problems) which we have called and shall continue to call the "problematic" that inheres in our situation."[3]:12-13

In 1970, Peccei's vision was laid out in a document written by Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch, and Alexander Christakis. Entitled, The Predicament of Mankind; Quest for Structured Responses to Growing Worldwide Complexities and Uncertainties: A PROPOSAL.[3] The document would serve as the roadmap for the LTG project.

The Limits to Growth

The Club of Rome stimulated considerable public attention with the first report to the club, The Limits to Growth.[4] Published in 1972, its computer simulations suggested that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of resource depletion. The 1973 oil crisis increased public concern about this problem. The report went on to sell 30 million copies in more than 30 languages, making it the best-selling environmental book in history.[5]

Even before The Limits to Growth was published, Eduard Pestel and Mihajlo Mesarovic of Case Western Reserve University had begun work on a far more elaborate model (it distinguished ten world regions and involved 200,000 equations compared with 1,000 in the Meadows model). The research had the full support of the club and its final publication, Mankind at the Turning Point was accepted as the official "second report" to the Club of Rome in 1974.[6] In addition to providing a more refined regional breakdown, Pestel and Mesarovic had succeeded in integrating social as well as technical data. The second report revised the scenarios of the original Limits to Growth and gave a more optimistic prognosis for the future of the environment, noting that many of the factors involved were within human control and therefore that environmental and economic catastrophe were preventable or avoidable.

In 1991, the club published The First Global Revolution.[7] It analyses the problems of humanity, calling these collectively or in essence the "problematique". It notes that, historically, social or political unity has commonly been motivated by enemies in common: "The need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor. Some states have striven to overcome domestic failure and internal contradictions by blaming external enemies. The ploy of finding a scapegoat is as old as mankind itself—when things become too difficult at home, divert attention to adventure abroad. Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one, or else one invented for the purpose. With the disappearance of the traditional enemy, the temptation is to use religious or ethnic minorities as scapegoats, especially those whose differences from the majority are disturbing."[8] "Every state has been so used to classifying its neighbours as friend or foe, that the sudden absence of traditional adversaries has left governments and public opinion with a great void to fill. New enemies have to be identified, new strategies imagined, and new weapons devised."[8] "In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself."[9]

In 2001 the Club of Rome established a think tank, called tt30, consisting of about 30 men and women, ages 25–35. It aimed to identify and solve problems in the world, from the perspective of youth.[citation needed]

A study by Graham Turner of the research organisation CSIRO in Australia in 2008 found that "30 years of historical data compare favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century."[10]

Organization

According to its website, the Club of Rome is composed of "scientists, economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of state and former heads of state from all five continents who are convinced that the future of humankind is not determined once and for all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our societies."

The Club of Rome is a membership organization and has different membership categories.[11] Full members engage in the research activities, projects, and contribute to decision-making processes during the Club's annual general assembly. Of the full members, 12 are elected to form the executive committee, which sets the general direction and the agenda.[12] Of the executive committee, two are elected as co-presidents and two as vice-presidents. The secretary-general is elected from the members of the executive committee. The secretary-general is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the club from its headquarters in Winterthur, Switzerland. Aside from full members there are associate members, who participate in research and projects, but have no vote in the general assembly.[13]

The club also has honorary members. Notable honorary members include Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Orio Giarini, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mikhail Gorbachev, King Juan Carlos I of Spain, Horst Köhler, and Manmohan Singh.[14]

The annual general assembly of 2016 took place in Berlin on 10–11 November. Among the guest speakers were former German President Christian Wulff, German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Gerd Müller, as well as Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.

National associations

The Club has national associations in 35 countries and territories.[15] The mission of the national associations is to spread the ideas and vision in their respective countries, to offer solutions and to lobby for a more sustainable and just economy in their nations, and to support the international secretariat of the Club with the organization of events, such as the annual general assembly.[16]

Current activities

As of 2017 there have been 43 reports to the club.[17] These are peer-reviewed studies commissioned by the executive committee, or suggested by a member or group of members, or by outside individuals and institutions. The most recent is Come On! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet.[18]

In 2016, the club initiated a new youth project called "Reclaim Economics". With this project they support students, activists, intellectuals, artists, video-makers, teachers, professors and others to shift the teaching of economics away from the mathematical pseudo-science it has become.[19]

On 14 March 2019, the Club of Rome issued an official statement in support of Greta Thunberg and the school strikes for climate, urging governments across the world to respond to this call for action and cut global carbon emissions.[20]

Critics

Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Solow criticized The Limits to Growth as having "simplistic" scenarios. He has also been a vocal critic of the Club of Rome, ostensibly for amateurism. He has said that, "The one thing that really annoys me is amateurs making absurd statements about economics, and I thought that the Club of Rome was nonsense. Not because natural resources or environmental necessities might not at some time pose a limit, not on growth, but on the level of economic activity—I didn't think that was a nonsensical idea—but because the Club of Rome was doing amateur dynamics without a license, without a proper qualification. And they were doing it badly, so I got steamed up about that."[21]

An analysis of the world model used for The Limits to Growth by mathematicians Vermeulens and Jongh shown it to be "very sensitive to small parameter variations" and having "dubious assumptions and approximations".[22]

An interdisciplinary team at Sussex University's Science Policy Research Unit reviewed the structure and assumptions of the models used and published its finding in Models of Doom; showing that the forecasts of the world's future are very sensitive to a few unduly pessimistic key assumptions. The Sussex scientists also claim that the Meadows et Al. methods, data, and predictions are faulty, that their world models (and their Malthusian bias) do not accurately reflect reality.[23]

Notable members

• Hans-Peter Dürr (1929–2014)
• Mahdi Elmandjra (1933-2014)
• Călin Georgescu (born in 1962) - Chairman of the Board, European Support Centre for the Club of Rome, now European Research Center, Vienna and Konstanz (2010-)
• Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906–1994), economist, author of The Entropy Law and the Economic Process
• Mikhail Gorbachev (born in 1931), last leader of the Soviet Union
• Dzhermen Gvishiani, son in law of Alexei Kosygin
• Václav Havel (1936–2011), last president of Czechoslovakia, first president of the Czech Republic
• Bohdan Hawrylyshyn (1926–2016) – Chairman International Management Institute – Kyiv (uk:IMI-Kyiv), Honorary Council of Ukraine
• Daisaku Ikeda
• Mugur Isărescu (born in 1949), the Governor of the National Bank of Romania in Bucharest
• Erich Jantsch, author of Technological Forecasting (1929–1980)
• Derrick de Kerckhove (born 1944)
• Alexander King (1909–2007) founding member[24]
• Max Kohnstamm (Netherlands), former Secretary General of the ECSC (1914–2010)
• David Korten
• Elisabeth Mann-Borgese - first female member since 1970
• Graeme Maxton
• Dennis Meadows (born 1942)
• Donella Meadows (1941–2001)
• Mihajlo D. Mesarovic
• George P. Mitchell (1919–2013)
• Mohan Munasinghe
• Aurelio Peccei (1908–1984) founding member [24]
• John R. Platt (1918–1992)
• Mamphela Ramphele
• Joseph Stiglitz (born 1943), Nobel prize-winning economist
• Ivo Šlaus
• Prince Hassan bin Talal
• Hugo Thiemann (1917–2012)
• Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919–2000), former prime minister of Canada;
• Robert Uffen (1923–2009)
• Victor Urquidi (1919–2014)
• Frederic Vester (1925–2003)
• Ashok Khosla
• Fernando Henrique Cardoso

See also

• Club of Budapest
• Club of Madrid
• Club of Vienna
• Futures studies
• Global catastrophic risk
• Harlan Cleveland - DIKW
• Olduvai theory
• Peak Oil
• Survivalism
• The Revenge of Gaia
• The First Global Revolution

References

1. "The First Global Revolution". The Green Agenda. 19 November 2005. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
2. "History: 1968". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
3. "The Predicament of Mankind" (PDF). 1970. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 February 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
4. Meadows, Dennis. "30-Year Update of Limits to Growth finds global society in "Overshoot," Foresees social, economic, and environmental decline" (PDF). Club of Rome. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 May 2008. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
5. Simmons, Matthew R. (October 2000). "Revisiting The Limits to Growth: Could the Club of Rome Have Been Correct After All?" (PDF). Mud City Press. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
6. Mersarovic, Mihajlo; Pestel, Eduard (1975). Mankind at the Turning Point. Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-123471-9.
7. "The First Global Revolution (Club of Rome) 1993 Edition". Scribd. 17 March 2008. Archived from the original on 26 October 2012. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
8. Alexander King & Bertrand Schneider. The First Global Revolution (The Club of Rome), 1993. p. 70
9. King & Schneider, p. 115
10. Turner, Graham M. (2008). "A comparison of The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality" (PDF). Global Environmental Change. 18: 397–411. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 September 2014. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
11. "Membership". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
12. "Executive Committee". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
13. "Associate Members". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
14. "Honorary Members". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
15. "National Associations". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
16. "Annual Conference 2016". The Club of Rome. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
17. "Reports". Club of Rome. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
18. von Weizsaecker, Ernst; Wijkman, Anders (2018). Come On! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet. New York: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-7419-1. ISBN 978-1-4939-7418-4. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
19. "Reclaim Economics". Club of Rome. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
20. Alao, Sadikou Ayo; Alvarez-Pereira, Carlos; Andersen, Lene Rachel; AtKisson, Alan; Bamela Engo-Tjega, Ruth; Bardi, Ugo; Bastioli, Catia; Bateson, Nora; Benedikter, Roland; Berg, Christian; Bindé, Jérôme; Björkman, Tomas; Blom, Peter; Bologna, Gianfranco; Bozesan, Mariana; Brown, Peter G.; Chacón Domínguez, Susana Catalina; Cheng, Yi-Heng; Costanza, Robert; de Leeuw, Bas; Dixson-Declève, Sandrine; Dorsey, Michael K.; Dubee, Frederick C.; Dubrulle, Mark; Dunlop, Ian T.; Fainé Casas, Isidro; Fullerton, John B.; Gasparini, Alberto; Geier, Joerg; Georgescu, Călin; Gil-Valdivia, Gerardo; Giovannini, Enrico; Girardet, Herbert; Göpel, Maja; Güvenen, Orhan; Gurgulino de Souza, Heitor; Halonen, Tarja Kaarina; Hamilton, Carolyn; Hargroves, Karlson “Charlie”; Hayashi, Yoshitsugu; Heinonen, Sirkka; Hennicke, Peter; Hernández Colón, Rafael; Herren, Hans Rudolf; Higgs, Kerryn; Hoffman, Robert; Hudson, Cecil Ivan; Hughes, Barry B. (14 March 2019). "Statement in support of global student climate protests" (PDF). Winterthur, Switzerland: Club of Rome. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 March 2019. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
21. Clement, Douglas (1 September 2002). "Interview with Robert Solow". Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
22. Vermeulen P, De Jongh D (29 June 1976). "Parameter sensitivity of the 'Limits to Growth' world model". Applied Mathematical Modelling. 1 (1): 29–32. doi:10.1016/0307-904X(76)90021-4. Retrieved 2018-07-23.
23. Cole, H.S.D. (1973). Models of doom; a critique of The limits to growth. USA: Universe Books. p. 244 p., illus. ISBN 0876631847.
24. "The story of the Club of Rome". Club of Rome. Archived from the original on 31 May 2013. Retrieved 27 May 2013.

External links

• Last Call, documentary about The Limits to Growth (trailer)
• Club of Rome Reports and Bifurcations, a 40-year overview 17 March 2010 / Draft
• Analysis of Limits to Growth by Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 1999
• Donella Meadows Institute
• Suter, K. (1999). "The Club of Rome: The Global Conscience". Contemporary Review, 275 (1602), 1–5
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Fri Apr 19, 2019 1:53 am

Earth Charter
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/18/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.




The Earth Charter is an international declaration of fundamental values and principles considered useful by its supporters for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. Created by a global consultation process, and endorsed by organizations representing millions of people, the Charter "seeks to inspire in all peoples a sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the human family, the greater community of life, and future generations."[1] It calls upon humanity to help create a global partnership at a critical juncture in history. The Earth Charter's ethical vision proposes that environmental protection, human rights, equitable human development, and peace are interdependent and indivisible. The Charter attempts to provide a new framework for thinking about and addressing these issues. The Earth Charter Initiative organization exists to promote the Charter.

History

The idea of the Earth Charter originated in 1987, by Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev as members of The Club of Rome, when the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development [Brundtland Commission] called for a new charter to guide the transition to sustainable development. In 1992, the need for a charter was urged by then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, but the time for such a declaration was not believed to be right. The Rio Declaration became the statement of the achievable consensus at that time. In 1994, Maurice Strong (Chairman of the Earth Summit) and Mikhail Gorbachev, working through organizations they each founded (the Earth Council and Green Cross International respectively), restarted the Earth Charter as a civil society initiative, with the help of the government of the Netherlands.[2]

Strong died in November 2015.[2]

"The Ark of Hope[3] was created for a celebration of the Earth Charter held at Shelburne Farms, Vermont on September 9, 2001."[4]

Drafting

The drafting of the text was done during a six-year worldwide consultation process (1994–2000), overseen by the independent Earth Charter Commission, which was convened by Strong and Gorbachev with the purpose of developing a global consensus on values and principles for a sustainable future. The Commission continues to serve as the steward of the Earth Charter text.

One of the members of the Earth Charter Commission and Steering Committee was Steven Clark Rockefeller, who, among other things is professor emeritus of Religion at Middlebury College and an advisory trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.[5] According to a 2001 interview with Rockefeller,[6] he "chaired the Earth Charter international drafting committee". Other members included Amadou Toumani Touré (Mali), Princess Basma bint Talal (Jordan), Mohamed Sahnoun (Algeria), A. T. Ariyaratne (Sri Lanka), Wakako Hironaka (Japan), Erna Witoelar (Indonesia), Ruud Lubbers (The Netherlands), Federico Mayor (Spain), Mercedes Sosa (Argentina), Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Yolanda Kakabadse (Ecuador), Shridath Ramphal (Guyana), Elizabeth May (Canada), Severn Cullis-Suzuki (Canada), and others.[7]

The final text of the Earth Charter was approved at a meeting of the Earth Charter Commission at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in March 2000. The official launch was on 29 June 2000 in a ceremony at The Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands attended the ceremony.

Contents

The approximately 2,400 word document is divided into sections (called pillars), which have sixteen main principles containing sixty-one supporting principles.[8] The document opens with a preamble and ends with a conclusion entitled “The Way Forward”.

Preamble

“ We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.[9] ”


Principles

The four pillars and sixteen principles of the Earth Charter are:[9]

I. Respect and Care for the Community of Life

1. Respect Earth and life in all its diversity.
2. Care for the community of life with understanding, compassion and love.
3. Build democratic societies that are just, participatory, sustainable and peaceful.
4. Secure Earth's bounty and beauty for present and future generations.

II. Ecological Integrity

5. Protect and restore the integrity of Earth's ecological systems, with special concern for biological diversity and the natural processes that sustain life.
6. Prevent harm as the best method of environmental protection and, when knowledge is limited, apply a precautionary approach.
7. Adopt patterns of production, consumption and reproduction that safeguard Earth's regenerative capacities, human rights and community well-being.
8. Advance the study of ecological sustainability and promote the open exchange and wide application of the knowledge acquired.

III. Social and Economic Justice

9. Eradicate poverty as an ethical, social and environmental imperative.
10. Ensure that economic activities and institutions at all levels promote human development in an equitable and sustainable manner.
11. Affirm gender equality and equity as prerequisites to sustainable development and ensure universal access to education, health care and economic opportunity.
12. Uphold the right of all, without discrimination, to a natural and social environment supportive of human dignity, bodily health and spiritual well-being, with special attention to the rights of indigenous peoples and minorities.

IV. Democracy, Nonviolence, and Peace

13. Strengthen democratic institutions at all levels, and provide transparency and accountability in governance, inclusive participation in decision-making, and access to justice.
14. Integrate into formal education and lifelong learning the knowledge, values and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.
15. Treat all living beings with respect and consideration.
16. Promote a culture of tolerance, nonviolence and peace.

Reaction

The Charter has been formally endorsed by organizations representing millions of people, including the UNESCO,[10] over 250 universities around the world,[11] the World Conservation Union of IUCN, the Indian National Capital Territory of Delhi,[12] the 2001 U.S. Conference of Mayors,[13] and dozens of youth organizations.[14]

Various religious groups from a wide range of religions support the Earth Charter. The Soka Gakkai International, representing more than 12 million Buddhists worldwide, has supported the Earth Charter since its inception.[15] The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations representing over 1000 Unitarian Universalist congregations in the United States supports the measure.[16] The official body of the Baha'i Faith religion reacted by saying "While not officially endorsing the Earth Charter, the Baha'i International Community considers the effort toward drafting it and activities in support of its essential objectives to be highly commendable, and it will continue to participate in related activities, such as conferences, forums and the like."[17] The World Pantheist Movement, which supports a naturalistic view of religion, endorses the plan.[18] The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a Catholic organization in the United States approved the measure in 2004.[19] The Episcopal Diocese of Newark (New Jersey), an Episcopalian Christian organization, endorsed the Earth Charter in 2009.[20]

In May 1992, more than 650 representatives of indigenous peoples adopted their own 109-point Indigenous Peoples Earth Charter.[21] Representatives of indigenous peoples also participated in the Earth Charter consultations in 1996.[22] In 2000, the Russian Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON), representing 31 indigenous peoples living in Siberia and far eastern Russia, formally endorsed the Earth Charter.[23]

Mayor Hsu of Tainan, a city of 750,000 in Taiwan, endorsed the charter in 2007.[24] The cities of Corvallis (Oregon), Berkeley (California), Pickering (Canada) and 21 towns in Vermont have endorsed the measure.[25][26][27] Nine other towns in Vermont rejected measures endorsing the Earth Charter.[28]

Engineers Without Borders, an international association whose mission is to help its member groups assist poor communities in their respective countries and around the world, also endorses the Earth Charter.[29] The Green Party of Botswana supports the plan.[30] The African Conservation Foundation describes the Earth Charter movement as a "partner".[31]

In the UK, Bournemouth Borough Council endorsed the Charter in 2008.[citation needed]

The Charter has received opposition from several groups. For example, in the United States, members of religious groups, such as the Religious Right have objected to the document on the grounds that it is secular, and espouses socialism. In addition, some conservatives cite an informal comment by Mikhail Gorbachev that the document is "a kind of Ten Commandments" and point to the fact that at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, a copy of the document was placed symbolically in an "Ark of Hope"[32] — an independent project by the American artist Sally Linder.

Earth Charter International, the organization responsible for promoting the Charter, states in its literature that the Earth Charter is respectful and inclusive of all religious traditions. They say that the Charter itself makes no statements to support claims of intent to supplant any of the world's religions or to create a world government. ECI asserts that the Charter is a statement of common ethical values towards sustainability, that recognizes humanity's shared responsibility to the Earth and to each other.[33]

See also

• Globalization portal
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• University for Peace
• Earth Day
• World Ocean Day
• World Water Day

References

1. Earth Charter Initiative: "What is the Earth Charter?".
2. Maurice Strong: "History of the Earth Charter".
3. http://www.arkofhope.org/#
4. "Welcome". http://www.arkofhope.org. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
5. "Steven C. Rockefeller". earthcharter.org. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
6. Schwarz, Sherry (2001). "Charting a New Course: An Interview with Steven Rockefeller". abroadview.org. Archived from the original on 2 May 2008. Retrieved 17 April 2018.
7. "Commission". earthcharter.org. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
8. Nigel Dower, University of Aberdeen (2004): "The Earth Charter as a Global Ethic", p. 4.
9. Earth Charter Initiative: "Text of the Earth Charter".
10. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization: "Records of the General Conference", 32nd Session, Vol. 1, p.35
11. Earth Charter Initiative (March 26, 2009): "Universities that have endorsed the Earth Charter".
12. "One million saplings to be planted by 2010", The Hindu, Apr 21, 2007
13. "Adopted Resolutions: Energy and Environment, Endorsement of Earth Charter", 69th Annual Conference of U.S. Mayors, June 22–26, 2001
14. Earth Charter Initiative (March 26, 2009): "Youth Organizations that have endorsed the Earth Charter".
15. "SGI and the Earth Charter", SGI Resources, May 3, 2000
16. "Endorse the Earth Charter, 2002 Action of Immediate Witness", Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
17. "Baha'is participate in interreligious dialogue on faith and ecology", Baha'i World News Service, September 6, 2001
18. "World Pantheist Movement’s Help Centre", World Pantheist Movement website, retrieved March 9, 2010.
19. Leadership Conference of Women Religious (August 24, 2004): "2004 Resolutions" (press release)
20. Diocese of Newark (January 31, 2009). "135th Annual Convention Resolutions" (PDF). p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-10-21.
21. Brechin, Steven R., ed. (2003). Contested nature: promoting international biodiversity with social justice in the twenty-first century. Albany: State University of New York Press. p. 29. ISBN 0791457753. OCLC 51330533.
22. Schulthess, Beatriz (1996). "Participation of Indigenous Peoples in the Earth Charter Consultations". earthcharter.org. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
23. RAIPON (2015). "Endorsement of the Russian Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON)". earthcharter.org. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
24. "Mayor Hsu endorsed the Earth Charter with 15 Miss Globalcities", Tainan City Government news bulltetin, January 19, 2007
25. "Council passes Earth Charter", Rebecca Barrett, Corvallis Gazette-Times, April 17, 2006
26. "Resolution 61,007-NS", Berkeley City Council, March 27, 2001
27. "Committee of the Whole Meeting Minutes", City of Pickering, Canada, July 22, 2002
28. "Earth Charter Supported in Middlebury Meeting", middleburycampus.com, March 13, 2002
29. one page organization summary, Engineers Without Borders — International, 2009
30. greenpartyofbotswanna.com. Retrieved February 25, 2009.
31. Partnerships , African Conservation Foundation. Retrieved February 25, 2009.
32. http://www.arkofhope.org/#
33. Earth Charter Initiative. September 2008: The Earth Charter Initiative Handbook, p. 47.

External links

• Earth Charter Initiative official website
• Earth Charter Community Network
• Text of the Earth Charter
• Earth Charter Future-Actions & Perspectives of an Earth Child
• American chapter of the Earth Charter Initiative
• YES! Questions for Students: Earth Charter teaching materials for classrooms.
• Earth Charter Community Action Tool
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Fri Apr 19, 2019 1:59 am

University for Peace
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/18/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


University for Peace / Universidad para la Paz
Other name
UPEACE / UPAZ
Motto in English
"If you want Peace, work for Peace..."
Type Graduate School
Established 1980
Founder Rodrigo Carazo Odio
Rector Dr. Francisco Rojas Aravena
Dean Dr. Juan Carlos Sainz-Borgo
Students 196 (2018-2019)
Alumni 2,200
Address Calle U. Paz, El Rodeo de Mora, San Jose, Costa Rica, Ciudad Colón, Costa Rica
Campus Campus in nature (includes a protected forest reserve)
Website http://www.upeace.org

Image
Peace Park at the University for Peace

The University for Peace (UPEACE) is an intergovernmental organization with university status, established by treaty at the United Nations General Assembly in 1980 and having its main campus in Costa Rica. Its stated mission is "to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations."

The current Rector of UPEACE is Dr. Francisco Rojas Aravena.[1]

History

Image
UPEACE Rodrigo Carazo Campus, Costa Rica

The creation of the University for Peace was set in motion by a treaty and endorsed by resolution 34/111 of 14 December 1979 of the United Nations General Assembly. By this Resolution, the UN General Assembly established an international commission which, in collaboration with the Government of Costa Rica, was requested to prepare the organization, structure and setting in motion of the University for Peace. Thereafter, by Resolution 35/55 of 5 December 1980,[2] the UN General Assembly endorsed the treaty establishing the University for Peace by adopting the International Agreement for the Establishment of the University for Peace (UPEACE) along with the Charter of the University for Peace.[3] The University has the unique status of not only being a dedicated institution for higher education in Peace and Conflict studies, but also an international treaty body organization mandated by the United Nations General Assembly.

It offers master's degree and doctoral programmes at its main headquarters in San José, Costa Rica, and carries out various activities related to the international peace and security objectives of the United Nations (UN) through centres and offices located in Addis Ababa, New York, Honduras, Geneva, Bonn, The Hague, Manila and Beijing, and through partnership arrangements with numerous other institutions worldwide (see Special Programmes below).

Relationship with United Nations

The University for Peace is part of the academic wing of the UN system, and has observer status at the UN General Assembly,[4] while maintaining its independence in academic, financial and management matters. The UN Secretary-General is the Honorary President of UPEACE. The UN General Assembly maintains a constant interest in the activities of UPEACE, and in periodic resolutions calls on the UN Secretary-General to report to it on its activities.[5] Accordingly, the UN Secretary-General reports to the General Assembly of the UN periodically on the progress of UPEACE.[6] The Council of the University for Peace is the supreme authority of the University. It is composed of five ex-officio members viz. the Rector, two representatives designated by the UN Secretary-General and by the Director-General of the UNESCO, the Rector of the United Nations University, two representatives designated by the Government of the host country and the Chancellor of UPEACE. In addition, the Council comprises ten representatives of the academic community or other persons eminent in the field of peace and security appointed by the Secretary-General of the UN in consultation with the Director-General of the UNESCO.

Accreditation

The University has "unique world-wide authorization to award academic degrees, recognized by all countries which are members of the General Assembly".[7] In addition, its MA programs in the Department of Environment, Peace and Development, received official accreditation from SINAES (the national Costa Rican accreditation body) in 2014.[8] Similarly, the MA programme in International Law and Human Rights, and the MA programme in International Law and the Settlement of Disputes received accreditation from SINAES in June 2016.[9]

Headquarters and main campus

The University for Peace (UPEACE) has its headquarters in Costa Rica, a country distinguished by a long tradition of democracy. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948, the former President, H.E. Oscar Arias Sánchez was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 and the country continues to develop strong efforts for natural conservation - not to mention the friendly locals. The main campus of the University - the Rodrigo Carazo Campus - is located 30 km Southwest of San Jose, within a natural reserve composed of a secondary forest and the last remnant of primary forest (200 ha) in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. Hence, this protected area is very rich in fauna. It shelters mammals such as monkeys and deer; reptiles; and over 300 species of birds, as well as approximately 100 varieties of trees. The University's installations and protected area make up 303 ha.[10]

The closest town to the mountain on which the University is perched, is Ciudad Colon. Most of the students, staff and faculty members of the University reside in Ciudad Colon, making it one of the most multi-cultural places in the world for its size.

The Rodrigo Carazo campus of the University for Peace is the principal location for the activities of the University. Most of its Masters programmes and its recently announced Doctoral programme are administered from this campus. Students coming from several countries study in a highly multi-cultural environment on the campus. The University boasts of a highly accomplished faculty, that comprises a mix of both resident and visiting faculty members. Because of the structure of the programmes and its unique global status, the University has an academic calendar that enables bringing on board the most highly acclaimed academicians and practitioners from around the world. The University has also started administering distance education courses, including an online Masters Programme from the main campus.

The University also carries out hands-on training beyond its Masters and Doctoral Programmes aimed at practitioners and policy makers rather than graduate students. The University has established two Centres for this purpose that are located on the main campus. The UPEACE Centre for Executive Education delivers dynamic training courses to leaders from around the world. The Centre reaches out to nonprofit leaders, business executives, educators at all levels, UN staff, students and other professional audiences. According to the Centre's website, the approach to all its courses is innovative, interactive, and participant-centered, using case-studies and field trips when appropriate. The Centre aims to develop key leadership skills by incorporating the crosscutting themes of Intercultural Communication, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and Teambuilding.

The University has also established the UPEACE Human Rights Centre which was created within the contours of the broader mission of the University to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace and with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations. In particular, the work of the UPEACE Human Rights Centre seeks to promote understanding, respect and enjoyment of universal human rights. The Centre carries out this objective through human rights education, training, research, capacity building and awareness raising activities. The website of the UPEACE Human Rights Centre states that the Centre takes a practice based approach to the respect, protection and fulfillment of human rights and promotes the integration of theory and practice. The Centre also takes a multi-disciplinary approach to human rights and attaches equal importance to all human rights. Over the last few years, the UPEACE Human Rights Centre has conducted several training courses for policy makers, staff members of the UN and other inter-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, practitioners, academics and civil servants.

The Headquarters and main campus of UPEACE also hosts the International Secretariat of the Earth Charter Initiative, whose stated mission is "to promote the transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework that includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace." This mission is carried out using 'The Earth Charter' as the principal guiding framework. The Earth Charter is an international declaration of fundamental values and principles considered useful by its supporters for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. In 2012, the Earth Charter Initiative and UPEACE were jointly awarded the UNESCO Chair on Education for Sustainable Development and the Earth Charter.[11] The work related to this UNESCO Chair will be carried out at the newly constructed 'Earth Charter Center for Education for Sustainable Development' at the UPEACE main campus.

In addition to the activities at the Costa Rica Headquarters Campus, UPEACE works with an increasing number of partners in various parts of the world to ensure that the UPEACE mission is extended to reach as many individuals and institutions as possible.

Around the world

Africa


As a result of extensive international consultations, which have underlined the importance of according a high priority to activities in Africa, the University for Peace (UPEACE) officially launched its Africa Programme in January 2002.

The University for Peace (UPEACE) established its Africa Programme in 2002 on the basis of extensive consultations in the continent which aimed at developing a programme that responded to the true needs, aspirations and obstacles for education for building peace in Africa. From its inception, the programme focused on the necessity to stimulate and strengthen the capacity in Africa to teach, train and conduct research in areas of peace and conflict studies.

The first five years of the programme focused on the development of curricula and teaching materials and the delivery of a range of short courses, workshops, conferences and seminars in various parts of Africa. Within this period, the programme attracted close to one thousand participants from Academia, Policy makers and civil society organisations.

In a second five-year plan, which came out of a consultative meeting held in March 2007 with partners, the programme will additionally, work with a number of Partner Universities to develop full-fledged master's degree programmes to be based at African Universities. The principal aim of this endeavour is to further strengthen the African capacity and build a wide expertise for a better understanding of conflicts in Africa, their prevention and the creation of the environment favourable to lasting peace and development in the region.

Europe

In January 2012, UPEACE created a new Centre at The Hague, Netherlands (UPEACE The Hague), which is housed at the Academy Building of the Peace Palace, next to The Hague Academy of International Law. UPEACE The Hague will focus on education and research at the forefront of peace studies, closely cooperating with academic and policy-oriented institutions in The Hague region. UPEACE The Hague will initially advance three fields where it can be innovative and complementary: Peace & Conflict Studies, Water & Peace, and Urban Peace & Security. In addition, UPEACE The Hague will strengthen peace education in The Hague region by organising professional trainings, lectures, seminars, and workshops. Educational and research programmes will be characterised by the interaction between theory and practice, also contributing to policy innovations, and will therefore be appealing to both academics and professionals.

The Geneva Office of UPEACE, established in 2001, has continued to support the development of the overall activities of the University, in particular its regional programmes in Africa and Central Asia. The key focus of work undertaken by the Geneva office is contributing to the development of programme activities of the University in Africa and the Middle East, engaging with the academic community in Geneva to establish joint teaching and training courses on issues of particular relevance to the expertise available within the international community in Geneva and facilitation of relations within Europe and with the United Nations system, national delegations, donor community and academic institutions.

Asia

The Asia Leaders Programme, a Dual Campus Master Programme, is a shared initiative between the Nippon Foundation and the University for Peace, in collaboration with Ateneo de Manila University, which aims to provide students from Japan and other Asian countries with an opportunity to pursue a peace studies post graduate degree with a content-based language-training module. This offers the support for individuals who do not have a proficient command of English to work in this increasingly common international language and to become comfortable in their professional abilities as they gain academic skills. As part of the programme, students also have the opportunity to apply their academic and practical knowledge through a four-month internship at the end of the Master courses.

Affiliated institutions

Article 4 of the Charter of the University for Peace reads: "the University may enter into association or conclude agreements with Governments and intergovernmental and other organizations and institutions in the field of education." The University for Peace signed agreements with the governments of Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia), Colombia and Uruguay to open centres in those three countries. These centres have the necessary legal status to enjoy autonomy and academic freedom, while keeping its humanistic purpose within the framework of both the Charter of the University for Peace and the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD) in Belgrade, Serbia; the World Centre for Training and Research in Conflict Resolution (WCCR) in Bogotá, Colombia; and the World Centre for Research for Peace (CMIP) in Montevideo, Uruguay, have developed close links with their respective governments while being key UPEACE partners in areas of common interest. UPEACE keeps operational agreements with them and lends its logos when necessary in order to undertake joint activities within the framework of UPEACE's and the Centres’ mission. These activities, as with other partners, involve the cooperating parties working together at all stages of jointly agreed-upon projects.

Academics

UPEACE has been offering master's degree programmes at its Costa Rica campus for students from all parts of the world since its establishment. The following programmes are currently offered (academic year 2019-2020):

Regular programmes

• MA in International Law and the Settlement of Disputes
• MA in International Law and Human Rights
• MA in International Peace Studies
• MA in Gender and Peacebuilding
• MA in Peace Education
• MA in Media and Peace
• MA in Environment, Development and Peace
• MA in Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development
• Maestría en Resolución de Conflictos, Paz y Desarrollo (taught in Spanish)
• Maestría en Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos (taught in Spanish)
• Online MA in Sustainable Peace in the Contemporary World

Special programmes

• Dual MA in Natural Resources and Sustainable Development (with American University, Washington DC)
• Asia Peacebuilders Scholarship, a dual-campus MA in International Peace Studies (with Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines)
• Dual MA programmes with Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea
• Joint M.A. degree in Human Rights and a Culture for Peace (with Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Cali, Colombia)
• LL.M in Transnational Crime and Justice (with UNICRI, Turin, Italy)
• M.A. in Conflict Resolution and Coexistence (Brandeis University, USA) and an M.A. in International Law and Human Rights (UPEACE, Costa Rica)
• Water Cooperation and Diplomacy (UPEACE, Costa Rica; IHE-DELFT Water Institute, The Netherlands; Oregon State University, USA)

Study abroad programmes

UPEACE offers graduate and advance undergraduate students from other institutions the opportunity to enrol in UPEACE's Study Abroad Programme (SAP) in three ways:

• Semester Abroad Programme
• Undergraduate Credit Building

Distance education courses

Apart from its online MA in Sustainable Peace in the Contemporary World, UPEACE offers a series of individual online courses that can be taken for academic credits or for certificates.

Doctoral programme

The university's "Doctoral Programme in Peace & Conflict Studies" commenced in fall of 2012. According to the website of the University for Peace, "this Doctoral Programme is designed to respond to a growing demand for academic and professional training that addresses the complex and multidimensional issues of peace and conflict in societies." The programme offers a broad range of research foci and specializations including, though not limited to, Environmental Security and Peace, Gender and Peace Building, International Law and Human Rights, International Law and the Settlement of Disputes, International Peace Studies, Media, Peace and Conflict Studies, Natural Resources and Peace, Peace Education, Responsible Management and Sustainable Development, and Sustainable Urban Governance and Peace. The programme offers two tracks for achieving the doctorate: a research track and a professional track.[12]

Students and alumni

Students at UPEACE receive a high quality education in a unique atmosphere with a focus on multicultural perspectives, rigorous theory and practical applications. Thousands of students from over 100 countries have received graduate degrees from UPEACE. UPEACE alumni are working in peace related activities in their home countries and internationally, often in the front lines of conflict situations, for non-governmental organizations, academic and intergovernmental institutions, including the UN system. The University maintains a strong alumni network, all of whom get equipped with the necessary skills to pursue their chosen career paths at UPEACE. UPEACE aims to instill in their students a ‘sense of hope’ that forever ‘changes their lives’ and world vision in order to transform conflicts and promote sustainable peace and security. Notable UPEACE alumni include: Suzanne Hunt (2004) of X-Prize Foundation and Carbon War Room; Dan Juma (2006) former Deputy Director of Kenya Human Rights Commission; Hovig Etyemezian (2005) Director of the UNHCR Office in Mauritania; and Nick Martin (2006) Founder and President of TechChange.

Research

The Peace and Conflict Review[13] is a free, fully peer reviewed open source academic journal published by the University for Peace. Articles featured in the review cover aspects of peace and violent conflict with a view to informing students, policymakers, non-governmental organizations and other interested parties of relevant analysis, empirical findings, policy options, and areas for further research. A number of interdisciplinary and multicultural papers are published every year, as well as some review articles of books and conference proceedings. Submissions can be sent online.

The Peace & Conflict Monitor is an online forum for informed debate and peace journalism. Drawing on contributions from the students, researchers, and journalists who make up the majority of its wide readership, the PCM offers unique perspectives on current events from around the world.

Africa Peace and Conflict Journal is an academic journal focused on African issues related to peace and security and is published by the UPEACE Africa office. The aim of the APCJ peer review process is to be rigorous and free of bias, ensuring that only high-quality, innovative work is published. The interdisciplinary emphasis of APCJ seeks to encourage the building of the field, combining the disciplines of peace and conflict studies, development, and human and social security in Africa.

Outreach

The U.S. Association for the University for Peace is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 2006 to advance the University for Peace and the practice of education for peace in the United States. UPEACE/US projects include DCPEACE, an initiative to empower teachers, youth, and families with the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively serve as peacebuilders in their communities and PeaceRooms, a program that connect classrooms of middle school students from Costa Rica and Washington D.C. through the use of innovative virtual networking technology for the purpose of developing core concepts of global citizenship and peace education.UPEACE/US website

The UPEACE Sharing Knowledge for Peace Program (SKP) is a distance learning initiative which ensures that those unable to attend courses in Costa Rica or in one of the other UPEACE locations are reached through state-of-the-art dissemination methods.

Image
View from Costa Rica Campus

In 2017 the ECPD appointed London-based music producer Danny Briottet (founder of the group Renegade Soundwave ) Director of Music Programmes, as the organisation extends its aim to involve young people in the Balkan region and elsewhere in its work.[14][15][16]

See also

• Earth Charter Initiative
• UPEACE The Hague
• University for Peace Model United Nations
• UNESCO
• United Nations
• The U.S. Association for the University for Peace
• Peace and conflict studies
• Religion and peacebuilding

References

1. "Message from UPEACE Rector". Retrieved 10 December 2013.
2. "UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/35/55 on the Establishment of UPEACE". United Nations Official Document. United Nations. Archived from the original on 2019-02-28.
3. "Charter of the University for Peace annexed to the International Agreement Establishing the University for Peace" (PDF).
4. "See 'Other Resources' at http://www.un.org/en/peace/". United Nations.External link in |title= (help)
5. "UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/64/83" (PDF). United Nations.
6. "Report of the UN Secretary General on the University for Peace, A/64/281, dated 11 August 2009" (PDF).
7. "University for Peace". http://www.upeace.org. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
8. "University for Peace". http://www.upeace.org. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
9. "Two programmes from the International Law Department receive Official Quality Accreditation". University for Peace. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
10. "About UPEACE". University for Peace. Retrieved 26 February 2018.
11. "UNESCO Chair on ESD and Earth Charter, awarded jointly to EC Initiative and UPEACE".
12. "UPEACE Doctoral Programme in Peace and Conflict Studies". University for Peace.
13. "Peace & Conflict Review". http://www.review.upeace.org. Retrieved 26 February2018.
14. Coletti, Paul (2008-12-09). "The spectacular setting of Costa Rica's University for Peace is not the only thing about it that is idyllic". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
15. "Costa Rica: UN University for Peace". American University. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
16. "United Nations University for Peace". Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition. Retrieved 2019-02-26.

External links

• University for Peace
• UPEACE Human Rights Centre
• UPEACE Centre for Executive Education
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: Freda Bedi, by Wikipedia

Postby admin » Sat Apr 20, 2019 12:01 am

World Resources Institute
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/19/19

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
World Resources Institute (WRI)
Formation 1982; 37 years ago
Founder James Gustave Speth
Headquarters Washington, D.C.
United States
President and CEO: Andrew Steer
Chairman of the Board: James Harmon
Revenue (2016): US$ 90 millions[1]:57
Expenses (2016) US$ 90 millions[1]:57
Website WRI.org

The World Resources Institute (WRI) is a global research non-profit organization that was established in 1982 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation[2] under the leadership of James Gustave Speth.[3]

James Gustave Speth
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/19/19

Gus Speth
James Gustave Speth in 2008.
Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme
In office: 1993–1999
Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Kofi Annan
Preceded by William Henry Draper III
Succeeded by Mark Malloch-Brown
Personal details
Born James Gustave Speth
March 4, 1942 (age 77)
Orangeburg, South Carolina, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Education Yale University (BA, JD)
Balliol College, Oxford (BLitt)

James Gustave (Gus) Speth (born March 4, 1942 in Orangeburg, South Carolina) is an American environmental lawyer and advocate.

Biography

He was born in Orangeburg, South Carolina in 1942. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1964, attended Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Yale Law Journal, in 1969. He served in 1969 and 1970 as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black.

Speth was a co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council
, where he served as senior attorney from 1970 to 1977.

He served from 1977 to 1981 as a Member and then for two years as Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. As Jimmy Carter's Council on Environmental Quality Chairman, he was a principal adviser on matters affecting the environment and had overall responsibility for developing and coordinating the President's environmental program. In 1981 and 1982, he was Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching environmental and constitutional law.

In 1982, he founded the World Resources Institute,[1] a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank; served as its president until January 1993. He was a senior adviser to President-elect Bill Clinton's transition team, heading the group that examined the U.S.'s role in natural resources, energy and the environment.

In 1991, he chaired a U.S. task force on international development and environmental security which produced the report Partnership for Sustainable Development: A New U.S. Agenda.

In 1990 he led the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development which produced the report Compact for a New World.

From 1993 to 1999, he served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme; he served as Special Coordinator for Economic and Social Affairs under Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, piloted the United Nations Development Assistance Plan and also served as Chair of the United Nations Development Group.[2]

In 1999, he became the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. He served the school as the Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean and Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor in the Practice of Environmental Policy when he retired from Yale in 2009 to assume a professorship at Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont.[3] Speth was succeeded as Dean at Yale by Sir Peter Crane.[4]

In 2014 he published his memoir Angels by the River. In that year, he was also board member of the New Economy Coalition.[5]

Speth currently serves on the Advisory Council of Represent.Us, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization.[6]

Environment work

Speth has been a leader or participant in many task forces and committees aimed at combating environmental degradation, including the President’s Task Force on Global Resources and Environment; the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development; and the National Commission on the Environment.

Awards

Among his awards are the National Wildlife Federation’s Resources Defense Award, the Natural Resources Council of America’s Barbara Swain Award of Honor, a 1997 Special Recognition Award from the Society for International Development, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Environmental Law Institute, and the Blue Planet Prize. He holds honorary degrees from Clark University, the College of the Atlantic, Vermont Law School, Middlebury College, and the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Publications

Books


• Globalization and the Environment (as an editor), Island Press (2003)
• Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (2004)
• Global Environmental Governance, Island Press (2006)
• The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, Yale University Press (2008) ISBN 978-0-300-13611-1
• America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, Yale University Press (2012) ISBN 978-0300180763
• Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril (chapter), Nelson, Michael P. and Kathleen Dean Moore (eds.) Trinity University Press, (2010) ISBN 9781595340665
• Angels by the River, a memoir, Chelsea Green Publishing (2014)

Articles

• Beyond Reform Our Planet Magazine PDF
• America the Possible: A Manifesto, From decline to rebirth link
• America the Possible: A Manifesto, A new politics for a new dream link

References

1. World Resources Institute Biosketch of James Gustave Speth. Reuters. Retrieved March 27, 2012.
2. "Who we are & What we do". United Nations Development Programme. 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-08-26. Retrieved 2011-08-24.
3. "F&ES unearths new dean". Yale Daily News. Archived from the original on 2009-03-08. Retrieved 2009-03-05.
4. "Sir Peter Crane Appointed Dean of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies". Yale Daily News. 2009-03-04. Archived from the original on 2011-07-24. Retrieved 2011-08-24.
5. "About the Author". Retrieved 8 February 2015.
6. "About | Represent.Us". End corruption. Defend the Republic. Retrieved 2016-11-02.

External links

• Angels by the River - book website
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about James Gustave Speth in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• James Gustave Speth home page at the Wayback Machine (archived July 1, 2007) Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies profile, Archived July 1, 2007
• Greenery and Justice for All - Jan 9, 2015, Pacific Standard interview


Organization

They maintain offices in the United States, China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia.[4] The organization's mission is to promote environmental sustainability, economic opportunity, and human health and well-being.[5] WRI partners with local and national governments, private companies, publicly held corporations, and other non-profits, and offers services including global climate change issues, sustainable markets, ecosystem protection, and environmental responsible governance services.[6][7][8]

In 2014, Stephen M. Ross, an American real estate developer, gave the organization 30 millions of dollars to establish WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.[9]

Initiatives

WRI's activities are focused on seven areas: food, forests, water, energy,[10] cities, climate and ocean.

WRI initiatives include:

• The Access Initiative, a civil society network dedicated to ensuring that citizens have the right and ability to influence decisions about the natural resources that sustain their communities.[11]
• Aqueduct, an initiative to measure, map and understand water risks around the globe.[12]
• Champions 12.3, a coalition of executives to accelerate progress toward United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Target 12.3 to tackle food loss and waste.[13]
• Global Forest Watch, an online forest monitoring and alert system.
• The Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides standards, guidance, tools, and trainings for business and government to quantify and manage GHG emissions.[14]
• LandMark, a platform providing maps and information on lands that are collectively held and used by Indigenous peoples and local communities[15]
• Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), a public-private collaboration platform and project accelerating focusing on building the circular economy. PACE was launched during the 2018 World Economic Forum Annual meeting; from 2019, WRI is supporting the scale-up of PACE and establish an Action Hub in The Hague.[16]
• Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, a partnership of NGOs, customers, suppliers and policymakers working to increase global use of clean and renewable energy.[17] It has 300 members including Google, GM, Facebook, Walmart, Disney and other large companies, and reached 6 GW capacity in 2018.[18]
• The Science Based Targets Initiative helps companies transition to a low-carbon economic profile by setting greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in line with climate science.[19]
• WRI Ross Center helps cities grow more sustainably and seeks to improve quality of life in developing countries around the world.[20]
• World Resources Report, WRI's flagship report series. Each report deals with a different topic.[21]

References

1. Rising to the Challenge; WRI Annual Report 2016–2017 (PDF). Washington DC: World Resources Institute (WRI). 2017. Retrieved 31 August2017.
2. Broder, John M. (March 14, 2012). "Climate Change Envoy to Lead Influential Institute". New York Times. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
3. "James Gustave Speth". World Resources Institute. Retrieved 6 August2014.
4. "Charity Navigator: World Resources Institute". Charity Navigator. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
5. "World Resources Institute Offices – Washington DC". Office Snapshots. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
6. Bloomberg (2017). "World Resources Institute". bloomberg.com. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
7. "Charitywatch: World Resources Institute". American Institute of Philanthropy. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
8. Bloomberg (2017). "World Resources Institute". bloomberg.com. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
9. Pogrebin, Robin. "Developer Gives $30 Million to Establish City Planning Center". New York Times. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
10. M.A. Siraj (September 15, 2017). "Powering cities with clean energy". Thehindu.com. Retrieved 9 October 2017.
11. The Access Initiative
12. Aqueduct
13. Champions 12.3
14. Greenhouse Gas Protocol
15. LandMark
16. https://www.acceleratecirculareconomy.org/resources
17. Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance
18. Dzikiy, Phil (28 March 2019). "Google, GM, and more than 300 other companies launch Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance". Electrek. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
19. Science Based Targets Initiative
20. WRI Ross Center
21. World Resources Report

See also

• Rafe Pomerance
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36564
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

PreviousNext

Return to Articles & Essays

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests