"A Mother's Fearless Heart"
From an interview with Visaka Dharmadasa

This May marked three years since the end of the bitter 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Visaka Dharmadasa had two officer sons in the Sri Lankan army. In 1998, her younger son was among 600 soldiers who went missing after a battle near the town of Kilinochchi. His remains were never recovered. For Visaka, it was the beginning of open-ended, agonizing uncertainty. She rallied other mothers to lobby the military to help trace the missing, forming the nonprofit group Parents of Servicemen Missing In Action. Visaka also began to seek ways to bring the conflict to an end so that other mothers would not have to experience the pain she endured and later founded the Association of War Affected Women. Here, she describes her efforts to engage the enemy in dialogue.

Visaka Dharmadasa (Sri Lanka)
Mobilizing Mothers for Peace

We requested permission to go to the LTTE area. Finally, after much difficulty, the Ministry of Defense gave a letter to our organization saying that we can go to Wanni. Seven mothers went to meet the LTTE. I can still remember someone from the Ministry of Defense telling me, "You don't know who you are dealing with, they are not human beings. Don't go there."

We traveled in a van. There were youngsters around us on bicycles with automatic guns hanging from their shoulders. They started riding around our van. We were all women, except the driver. Their husbands and families trusted me and let those mothers come with me, so it was an enormous responsibility. But I never felt scared for a moment. I don't know why.

We didn't go pleading that they have to pity us. That was not our approach. What I told them was, "As much as you are proud of your striped uniform, we are very proud of plain color uniform. Things have happened on both sides." They told me of all the bombings and all the atrocities they had experienced, and I said, "I can also talk about bombings which have killed thousands of innocent people. But that will not solve the problem. The problem will only be solved if we sit and talk, and that's what we have come here for." We stayed there for five days and we bonded as mothers and sons. We were able to come back and tell people that it is not as it is portrayed. They are human beings.

For me, a child's life, no matter what color the uniform, is very precious. Because of that, both sides respected me for what I stood for and never for a moment tried to use my moving back and forth to and from the LTTE areas to bad advantage.

When LTTE committed human rights violations, when they killed unarmed policemen, I walked into their office and scolded them. I told them, "If you are going to do these things, if you are going to ask for justice, then you have to practice it." I did this. I didn't have much to lose.

The definition of security has to be articulated as women see it. And how I define security is, "if you want to be secure, make your enemy secure, because then the enemy will not be an enemy anymore."

If you know that what you are doing is right, no one can make you scared. We walked into the LTTE office not to hurt but for the benefit of everybody. Maybe they didn't understand the first time or the second time or the third time. But by the fourth time, they definitely understood. That's why they opened the doors to us without even checking us. They trusted me, because I was doing what was right, as a mother. If your conscience says it is right, then there is no fear.

"An Undaunted Voice"
An interview with Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson

Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson is a radio journalist from the city of Bukavu in Kivu, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The region has for many years been mired in militia conflicts spilling over from the Rwanda genocide and fueled by competition over lucrative mineral deposits in the area. The conflict in Congo has claimed over five million lives and been marked by brutal sexual violence against women. This is sometimes incorrectly assumed to be rooted in the culture of the region. Sadly, sexual violence is a tactic of terror in conflicts around the world.

In 1999, Chouchou began broadcasting the testimonies of rape survivors and advocating for the rights and protection of women. In 2003, she founded South Kivu's Women's Media Association (AFEM) to train women journalists and defend the rights of women through the media. Her work won her the Knight International Journalism Award in 2009.

SGI Quarterly: What was the reaction when you first started to talk on the radio about the problem of rape in DRC?

Chouchou Namegabe Dubuisson: People were shocked. They said, "How can you talk about sex openly on the radio?" It's a taboo. It wasn't easy.

Interview with Chouchou Namegabe

We started to sensitize people and say, "It's not a problem of sex, it's a big problem of the community." We didn't even have a word to talk about rape, so we had to borrow a word from Kiswahili from Tanzania, and we started talking about ubakaji. It was a new word for eastern Congolese people. So it was the media that sensitized people and told them that there's a problem now that is affecting women and we have to act.

Survivors were rejected--first by their families. This happens even though, when the militias attack the villages, they rape women in front of their husbands and children, in public. It's a planned strategy, a way of terrorizing the community.

SGIQ: Is awareness about rape changing?

CND: Yes. We have done a lot of sensitization of communities and have also worked with many NGOs to empower women. There has been a change. Some survivors have been reintegrated with their families.

Image: Chouchou interviews women in South Kivu.

I'll give you an example of a young girl. She was 13 when she was raped, and she had a baby. She had been taken into the forest with her mother, but they managed to escape. I met her after she heard the testimony of another woman and came to us. There are many women who were hiding what had happened to them, and after hearing the testimonies on the radio, they have come to us. They say that telling us their story is the first step to healing their internal wounds.

I rented a house for that girl, because every time people discovered her story, she had to move. I had to tell her, "No, don't leave your place. It's your story, don't hide it." She found a fiancé, but he left her when he found out her story. But when she got a second fiancé, I told her she had to tell him her story. He accepted her, and they married and had a child together.

SGIQ: Do you feel afraid doing your work?

CND: We've been threatened many times. They told me, "We'll take you, and you won't even have a second to call for help." And other members of our organization have been threatened that they will be killed. The threats are anonymous.

SGIQ: Have you ever considered stopping?

CND: Sometimes I think about that but, no, I have to do my job.

But sometimes when I have to talk about the stories and the atrocities that are happening I do feel I want to stop, because I don't see change. But I get courage from the women with whom I work and the survivors. When you see them smile--you can't believe that they would be able to smile after what has happened to some of them. So, I have to continue.

RAISE Hope for Congo Podcast Series: Chouchou Namegabe

SGIQ: It must take courage even to listen to their stories.

CND: It is difficult. I am pregnant now. Recently in one attack where the militias killed people and raped women, they found a woman who was seven months pregnant, and they cut the baby out of her belly. When I heard that, I was traumatized. And when you listen to the many atrocities that the women face. . . unimaginable things. I used to think that rape was done for sexual needs, but no. It's a strategy to destroy.

Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu is Honored at ICFJ's 25th Anniversary Awards Dinner

SGIQ: Do you manage to feel hopeful amidst all of this?

CND: Sometimes I feel like I've lost hope. But I can't lose hope, because I am working. It's not only me, many people are involved in the fight. One day things will change. And when I do advocacy, I propose solutions.

The first thing is peace and security. And the other problem is the illegal exploitation of mineral resources. It's a cycle.

The international community doesn't like to talk about it although it's a big problem, and they know that they have a responsibility for the presence of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a rebel group) in the eastern part of Congo, who are committing the atrocities on women. Powerful countries should pressure Rwanda to accept their return. Then I think the eastern part of Congo could live in peace.

We are working to empower women. And we think that solutions will come from women, when they have power. That's my hope. And to talk about the problem is to act. When you make the problem known, it will bring solutions, somehow, though we don't know how.

As part of our ongoing exploration of the virtue of courage, we would like to share an interview with Rev. James Lawson in which he describes how the unique convergence of courage, nonviolence and social action inspired a generation of youth to change the course of U.S. history. This interview was originally published in the July 2012 issue of SGI Quarterly.

"A New Measure of Power"
An interview with Rev. James Lawson

In the late 1950s, James Lawson moved to the southern US state of Tennessee and, as southern secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, began training students in Nashville in nonviolent direct action. Prior to that, he had spent over a year in jail as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. The students Lawson trained launched sit-ins and other protest actions to challenge segregation in Nashville. Many of them became key figures in the Civil Rights Movement.

An example of the fortitude of the Nashville students was seen during the Freedom Rides. In 1961, a group of activists planned to travel by bus through the southern states to challenge the segregation of public transport. In Anniston, Alabama, a bus they were traveling on was firebombed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Freedom Riders were savagely beaten, narrowly escaping being lynched. When the movement's leaders decided to suspend the journey, the students in Nashville were determined that violence should not be seen to triumph over nonviolent protest and, in place of the injured riders, continued the journey at the risk of their lives.

The Freedom Riders

Their actions gave vital impetus to the development of the Civil Rights Movement around the country. Described by Martin Luther King Jr. as the foremost nonviolence theorist in the world, Rev. Lawson, now in his 80s, remains a vibrant voice for social justice.

SGI Quarterly: Do you remember a particular moment after you became involved in the Civil Rights Movement when you felt afraid?

James Lawson: I recall a number of moments of fear. But, I should say to you that those are isolated moments, and that from the beginning of my involvement character requirements froze out any fear.

I was going to finish my graduate degree and then probably move south to work in the movement. I had spent three years in India in '53-'56 and then came back to Ohio for graduate school. I shook hands with Martin Luther King for the first time on February 6, 1957. I had been practicing and studying nonviolence from a Gandhian perspective of methodology for 10 years. And so as we met and talked, he said I should come south immediately. I said to him, "OK, I'll come just as soon as I can," which meant that I dropped out of graduate school and moved. There was no fear in making that move.

I don't recall a single moment as I traveled around the South that I was frightened or fearful. And as we began the movement in Nashville, I wasn't aware of any moment of fear there. I was expelled from the university--I had reenrolled at Vanderbilt University. I was made the target of many public attacks.

This is the movement that produced Diane Nash, Congressman John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette and C. T. Vivian, and a whole wide range of other people. Well, some of those people write about the fears they had in doing what they were doing. I had no such fear as we did it. Why? And of course for Diane and John Lewis and others, their fears largely evaporated as soon as we got past the first public demonstrations. Because they realized that they were fighting against that which is wrong--they knew that segregation was wrong, but they had not been given any clues as to how to go after defeating it. Our workshops in Nashville gave them the tools. Once we got past the first two weeks of demonstrations and once we got past the first violence and the first arrests, they had no fears.

Operating on fear is an issue of character. Courage is not merely, or primarily, the absence of fear. It is the taking on of tasks and concerns that are larger than the fear. It is discovering how to face your fears and moving through them as a whole person. That is what is essential. I know the testimonies of some of these persons with whom I worked back then; they found the conquest of fear. Now, for all of them there may have been certain times when the fear was very strong, but they managed by virtue of the tasks they had assigned themselves to walk through those fears and overcome them.

SGIQ: How did you train young activists in nonviolence?

JL: I gave them concrete experiences of black people, Europeans and others in nonviolent behavior in situations of conflict. I gave them a picture of Jesus of Nazareth as a nonviolence practitioner, and an interpretation of his life from the point of view of his direct action. I especially gave them the methodology of Gandhi, as I and others had come to summarize it in 1957-58, and made him and his independence movement a major illustration of what nonviolent power can do. I put together a curriculum that helped them see that there were people not much different from ourselves who had decided that there was a better way of changing evil, rather than imitating it; and that Gandhi had called all of that nonviolence.

Training for Nonviolence Resistance

Secondly, we worked on the scenery of segregation, what it was about, what downtown Nashville was about and how it deprived people. Then we did a series of role-playing exercises to help them face the possibilities of certain scenarios in their lives both at a personal level and then at the concrete level of the campaign we were devising.

I gave them the tools to live with tension and fear and to have a different vision and recognize that they have the resources within themselves to exercise that different vision.

With fear, if you follow it from the perspective of adrenalin, it will mislead you in your humanity. But if you follow the fear through the perspective of your character at its best or through the task of doing good--justice that needs to be done, the tasks at hand--then the fear becomes an ally for your work.

SGIQ: Is it right to say that the courage of the activists created a change in the hearts and attitudes of their opponents?

JL: Well, there is such a thing as a spirituality of nonviolence, the inner resources that one can shape and exercise that allows for the conquest of fear in a great variety of personal and social situations.

In the movement back then, society used two or three major tools to reinforce the racism. There was the threat that if you do not adhere to it, you are going to be punished. The second threat was the threat of actual violence. The third was that you would be arrested. And so in our workshops we tried to deal with all three of those elements by which Jim Crow segregation was put in place.

In the Nashville movement in 1960, there developed a spirit that came to laugh at all three of those threats.

Nashville Sit-Ins and Boycotts

In our movement--among our students and among our adults as well--those threats were destroyed in our minds and in our hearts and in the activity of the movement. So those powers that society had in Nashville for preserving segregation were no longer there in the minds of the people in the movement.

Lunch Counter Sit-ins in Nashville

During the bus boycott, Martin King said that the movement saw the "emergence of a new negro" in Montgomery, because people who joined the bus boycott basically told society, "You can threaten us, but it won't mean anything to us. You can use violence against us. We are not going to be intimidated by it, and you can arrest us and we are not going to fear going to jail for the cause." When the city government took out warrants against some 90 or 100 black folks in the boycott, people shocked the community and the police and the mayor, because they went to the police station to turn themselves in. The police had never heard of such a thing.

When the first group was arrested and officially booked, other people gathered. So there were some 90 other people outside the jail waiting to be booked and wanting to be booked and very cheerful about it. Well, that had never happened before in this country in these dimensions.

So it was astonishing that blacks who had stayed in place for 60 years, now suddenly are asking to be arrested. The threat of the jail is no longer an issue.

SGIQ: Is nonviolence a strategy, or is it more than that?

JL: I know there are people who do it only as a "tactic." But I don't know what that means, because we human beings are not "tacticians." We have more going on in our minds and in our spirits.

For human beings to act, we must have faith--confidence, trust--in what we do, whatever the methodology is, whatever the tactic is. And if we have doubts and fears that what we are doing will not work, we're finished.

When Gandhi says nonviolence is a social science for social change, I think he's including the intellect, the heart, the personality, the emotions, the tactics, the methodology and the philosophy that you have to develop to make this work. And I think it does become a lifestyle, just as when you launch a professional military career you develop a lifestyle, or when you become a lawyer you develop a lifestyle. In that lifestyle I think you can analyze methods and tactics versus spirituality, character. But in human beings it becomes a whole cloth, a whole garment.

Gandhi and Nonviolence

Today in Western civilization we have this massive mythology that the way you effect change is through violence, and that violence offers effective change. So nonviolence comes along and it has a critique of war, a critique of violence. We don't think violence has worked.

SGIQ: Many people are concerned about the state of the world. What do you think is necessary to galvanize people to stand against social injustices today?

JL: Basically to figure out that you do the kind of politics that was represented by the Civil Rights Movement. The politics of participation and engagement, developing the empowerment of people who bend their power together to put into the public agenda a new measure of power that can challenge the old powers.

When people collectively come together and strategize and plan, working together and acting together, they create a power that they can effectively use in their situation to effect change.

Image (top): James Lawson in Nashville, Tennessee
Credit: Joon Powell (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

"The Question of Courage"
by William Ian Miller

Courage is first among virtues in heroic epic and in cultures of honor. Men cared to be known for their courage. It not only took courage to fight well, but the issue often being fought over was who had more of it. Courage was competitive. Men were ranked according to the degree of courage they possessed. Arguments arose as to what counted as truly courageous, what the perfect form of the virtue was, and what were lesser though still worthy semblances of it. Not only philosophers theorized about courage: warriors, politicians and spectators did so as well. The stakes were high, and so there emerged a politics of courage, a jockeying to define your performances as worthier than your competitor's.

Thus we have Pericles of Athens arguing--and trying to convince his fellow citizens--that Athenian courage is superior to Spartan courage. His claim is that courage came naturally to Athenians, while Spartans had to be force-fed theirs by laborious, state-imposed training: "The prize for courage," he says, "will surely be awarded most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and still are never tempted to shrink from danger." Wishful thinking? Rigging the criteria of the prize for courage? Or just trying to buck up the citizenry for the war about to be embarked upon?

The Power of Shame

Move now to Sparta some 30 years earlier. One Spartan, Aristodemus by name, was denied the first prize for courage at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE, though he had rushed forward in fury and routed a large force of Persians. The prize was instead given to Posidonius, a man who had fought bravely but held his place in the phalanx line. Aristodemus's courage was judged inferior because he wanted to die in battle to redeem honor he had lost at Thermopylae, whereas Posidonius had fought bravely without any wish to die. Posidonius knew something of a good life. He wanted to come away alive if he could, though he would die if he must.

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to rank the two performances, but Herodotus, to whom we owe the story, smells a fish; in his view Aristodemus was easily the most courageous fighter that day. The Spartans simply were not going to give a prize to Aristodemus, because he was Aristodemus and his deeds, no matter how effective and how glorious, did not count. Why?

A year earlier, Aristodemus had been one of Leonidas's 300 at Thermopylae, but Leonidas had excused him along with another man, Eurytus, for having severe eye infections. The two nearly blind men retired to a place several miles to the rear. Word of the battle came to them: Eurytus ordered his slave to lead him back to the battlefield to rejoin his comrades to die with them, while Aristodemus took advantage of his excuse to stay away. Eurytus was Aristodemus's bad luck, for they made a sorry contrast. Aristodemus returned to Sparta, to unrelenting shame and loathing.

Contrasting Courage

The politics of courage is with us today. People still care intensely about courage, and we're still trying to stack the deck in our own favor. Determining who has courage, what actions count, who gets the prize, is disputed now no less than in the Iliad. Look whom we call heroes and claim are courageous. In our day, we hear people praised for their courage for getting in an elevator if claustrophobic, getting on an airplane if stricken with fears of flying, investing in a Silicon Valley start-up, or, if a politician, for taking a position that might cause his approval rating to drop for a few weeks, while a Tibetan who incinerates himself for a cause he conceives much greater than himself is deemed fanatic or an example of the cheapness of life "over there," as was the case when the average Japanese soldier in World War II did deeds for which Americans won Medals of Honor, or Brits Victoria Crosses.

Some might lament the debasing of courage's coin, for it is surely debased, but others might rejoice that the virtue has been rescued from danger and death, softened and broadened, making it more easily available to all by eliminating risk to life and limb, while still employing martial metaphors to describe takeovers and acquisitions, the so-called entrepreneurial risk. And not just undertaking monetary risks, but courage is ascribed to resisting the temptation of pleasure too: the courage to resist lust or gluttony. But it was ever thus. Theories of courage cannot escape tendentiousness.

Indeed, Plato claims that philosophers, not warriors, are the purest exemplars of courage. The former, he says, do not fear death because they know life is really something best gotten over with, while the latter face death because of a greater fear of shame. He tries to preempt criticism of this preposterous claim by putting it in Socrates' mouth as he awaits death. No one doubted Socrates' courage. He was rather vain about it himself and, as a younger man, had won quite a reputation as a fearless soldier.

Needless to say, Plato's view is hardly disinterested; one detects the influence of the philosophers' lobby. Some of the braver people I have met do not happen to be in humanities departments. A good portion of the wondrousness of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's stand at Little Round Top at Gettysburg in the American Civil War was that he managed it even though he was a classics professor.

Fortitude vs. Aggression

The broad view of courage, the view that would make resisting pleasure a matter of courage, is hardly the dominant view, nor is it a recent invention of the American self-esteem and self-help movements. Plato articulates it in an early dialogue. Socrates asks Laches, a well-known general, to define courage, and when Laches comes up with a quite reasonable definition from combat--"remaining at one's post and not running away"--Socrates presses him to expand it to include those "who are not only courageous against pain or fear, but mighty to contend against desires and pleasures." Plato thus may well be the first to grant courage to a recovering addict or to the person who says no to a tempting adulterous affair, thus emptying courage of precisely what makes it the theme of the greatest stories ever told.

The stricter martial view gets its classic formulation in Aristotle, who makes courage a matter of risking life and limb in war for one's country, kin or people. The martial view is easily the dominant view, informing heroic literature and songs of triumph from Judea to the Germanic North all the way out to Iceland. Indeed, it is nearly a universal view of courage, and the broad view must be understood as a reaction to it, an attempt to steal a bit of martial courage's luster, democratize it, or in a less friendly way of putting it, dumbing it down (so as to make it more readily available to the intellectually inclined).

Yet even within the confines of the narrower battle-oriented view of courage, two basic conceptions warred against each other as to which best represented the purest form. In a nutshell: was courage best exemplified by offense, marching into the teeth of danger, the charge; or was it best exemplified by defense, by refusal to quit one's post, by not backing down, by patient suffering over time? Later, this dispute was captured by warring ideologies: heroic aggressive honor vs. Christian and Stoic fortitude. (I apologize that my account is a Western one; were I to add in the East it would exceed my comfortable knowledge base.) The contrasts are not only substantive but also stylistic. Offense tended to be noisier, favoring intense expenditures of energy in short bursts with long, lazy intervals in between: gender it male. Defense required stolidity, constancy and, above all, endurance: call it feminine if you are so inclined. And the historical record is filled with examples of those who were courage itself on defense, but of rather mediocre virtue on offense, and vice versa. And then the ambiguous cases, offense or defense is not clear, of self-immolating Buddhist monks who brought down the Diem regime, for whom taking it was a form of dishing it out.

The Courage of Defense

The courage of offense was and remained, with some notable exceptions, the preserve of men and, by widespread ideology across a multitude of cultures, upper-class men. The courage of defense, by obvious necessity and by definition, was no less at home on the battlefield than the courage of offense. But defensive courage had within it seeds of expansion, for it was called to do service in a multitude of miserable and horrific conditions, not just on the battlefield.

Look how the courage of defense begins to colonize other domains. The ability to take it, not to dish it out, becomes the prize-winning form of courage, resulting in an express ticket to heaven when it came in the form of martyrdom, specifically Christian martyrdom. The hagiographical sources devoted to martyrdom put courage, as much as faith, squarely in issue, and rather make the former more to be marveled at than the latter. And women were no less eligible than men, rather more so in fact, for some of the most stunningly heroic of martyrs were women: Saints Blandina in the second century and Perpetua in the third. They couldn't be broken morally, even though every part of their bodies had been broken. But nonetheless, the passivity of being racked, flayed, fed to beasts in these saints' lives was reconceptualized as offensive action by the martyrs. The martyr was depicted as a gladiator, a fighter, wrestling with the devil, delivering blows as she lay bound, roasted and spitted. Martyrdom and the courage of defense borrowed its laudatory metaphors and imagery from offense; it was parasitical on aggressive courage for all its diction, for its songs of glory.

In the Germanic North, it took quite a dose of disbelief to accept a God who let himself be crucified, so the crucifixion was recast as a battle against the cross itself and the battle was extended to the next day; by having Christ's descent into hell look ever more like a military campaign against Satan, passion became action. Offense retained its conceptual allure even when the action was turning one's cheek to get slapped again, for as Paul recognized in his reformulation of the Sermon on the Mount's message, forgiveness and passivity were offensive weapons. In Paul's words: it was like pouring hot coals on the heads of your enemies. Passivity and forgiveness in the Stoic and Christian scheme were just moves in the honor game of challenge and riposte, and again it was courage and toughness that was being contested. You think that slap on the face hurt? Here, take another shot, you cannot touch me.

As war became more mechanized, the virtues needed to endure, the courage of defense, martyr-like fortitude, began as a practical matter to dominate the battlefield itself, despite the charge never losing its primal allure. The image to keep in mind is the trenches of the Great War, where for all the extraordinary courage it took to go over the trench top, months could go by before one had to charge. And in the meantime, one had to suffer unrelenting mud, cold, filth, constant shelling, gas, the ubiquitous corpses and the stench of their rot, and the rats who ate them, the flies that hatched maggots in them, and the pain and itch of the lice and your own rotting trench feet. Take away the gas and shelling and some of the corpses and you have the endurance required of Roman legions doing duty on the Rhine, who mutinied on occasion because of the sheer misery of the cold and wet and a term of service that never seemed to end. By World War II, Eisenhower could formulate "real heroism" as "the uncomplaining acceptance of unendurable conditions."

The death camp and Gulag of the 20th century, the horrors of evil governments, succeed in making survival itself its own kind of courage, seeking to avoid death at all costs, thus turning traditional courage and cowardice on their heads. Tales of escape and corresponding tales of rescue, life-saving rather than death-dealing or death-enduring, begin to elicit their share of courage prizes: Victoria Crosses, Pour le Mérites and Medals of Honor become almost as likely to be won by medics and stretcher bearers as by the man who storms the machine-gun nest.

Moral Courage

My politics of courage keeps mostly confined to the narrower Aristotelian view of facing real danger to life and limb, the courage demanded by war, feud and mean streets. So I will expand my account to raise the question of moral courage.

Moral courage--the concept, that is--as distinguished from plain old courage, is a rather recent development; the term does not appear in English until the 19th century. It took a largely pacified society for people to think to distinguish stand-up-in-meeting kind of courage--the courage of risking ridicule, humiliation, loss of employment or social ostracism for speaking out against injustice, or of defying immoral or illegal orders from a superior--from plain old courage. Before then, to stand up against the judges trying to burn your neighbor as a witch or your cousin as a heretic could get you burned as one too. Your life was on the line. The young girl from the projects who testifies against the drug dealer whom she saw kill his girlfriend is showing plain old courage; her life unfortunately is very much on the line, and likely to be very short because of her testimony. We need no recourse to moral courage to find her worthy of admiration.

But moral courage bears one telling requisite that in some domains distinguishes it from physical courage. Moral courage is lonely courage. Physical courage is no less courageous for having the support of comrades on the left and right in a shield wall, and when it must be carried out alone, it is all the more admirable. But moral courage loses no small part of its virtue when it is backed by a substantial support group. It takes little courage, moral or otherwise, for instance, to speak out against war or against Israel's policies in a university setting in the Western world.

Moral courage, though, cannot dispense with physical courage. Imagine the person who quite alone speaks out against an injustice in a meeting hostile to the moral and just position he voices, but who retracts his statement as soon as someone threatens to punch him once the meeting breaks up. Moral courage, to be entitled to its morals, or to its courage, cannot let itself be squelched by a threatening glance, or even by a good beating. Recall that girl testifying against the drug dealer, who was shaking like a leaf on the stand. No coward she.

William Ian Miller, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, is the author of The Mystery of Courage (Harvard University Press, 2000) and several other books exploring subjects as diverse as revenge, aging and Icelandic sagas. See www-personal.umich.edu/~wimiller/.

Image (top): An image drawn in pencil of a Spartan Warrior.
Credit: SAWg3rd (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

As part of our ongoing exploration of the virtue of courage, we would like to take a look at the relationship between courage and fear through the following article titled "Courage and Cowardice" by author Anthony McGowan. The article was originally published in the July 2012 issue of SGI Quarterly.

"Courage and Cowardice"
by Anthony McGowan

Plato's early dialogue on courage, Laches, points up the difficulty in pinning down what we mean by courage. All the definitions we reach for seem either to be excessively restrictive, or unnecessarily permissive, gathering in too few or too many of those moments of resolve or recklessness that we recognize as instances of bravery.

Laches (extract), a Socratic dialogue written by Plato presenting competing definitions of courage

Casting around, one finds two competing paradigms of courage. The old-school definition makes courage synonymous with fearlessness. The hero, as generally conceived, seems to have this quality--lightness in the face of danger, a certain swagger. Our hero, from Galahad to Captain Scott and on to Luke Skywalker, might be permitted to smile regretfully at the lost future as he confronts his (usually his, of course) nemesis, but never will his soul quake.

Coming up on the rails is a contrary view--that true courage, in fact, precisely involves the overcoming of fear. The soul must quake before resolution stiffens it. This view may be less heroic, but it adds a psychological realism, for who has not achieved at least the first part of this definition of courage?

Image: Plato from The School of Athens (detail). Fresco, Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican.
Credit: Raffaello Santi (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

The soul must quake before resolution stiffens it.

But the truth is that these remain words, and they struggle to gain purchase on the world of lived experience. So I've tried to dig down in my memory to find examples of courage to add flesh to the wraithlike concept.

The first real job I ever had was working in a UK tax office. I was straight out of university and, frankly, didn't have a clue. I was lost and hopeless and unhappy. My line manager was a person quite out of my experience. Let's call her Norma. Clearly once a great beauty, now, approaching retirement, Norma was, to me at least, genuinely terrifying. She could see through me, and left me stuttering, blushing, lamely defending myself for my latest error or miscalculation.

But I got by. I survived by surrendering. By paying court. By offering her the elaborate compliments she demanded. She outgunned me, and so I struck my colors.

But then another person joined our team: Sarah, a dumpy, happy, not very bright former primary school teacher, who didn't know how to use apostrophes and whose best friend was the budgie she used to let fly freely around her tiny flat. I was rather fond of her, and I tried to show her the ropes. My boss, however, hated Sarah. Something about her plainness, and the lack of interest that she showed in her dress and hair, enraged Norma. And so a campaign of persecution began. Cutting remarks came her way, along with the nastiest and most tedious office jobs. Sarah was frequently driven to tears. After a couple of months, she left.

And me, what had I done to protect her? Nothing, except offer quiet condolence and eye-rolling sympathy at Norma's latest sally. I never confronted Norma with the unfairness of her conduct, never publicly stood up for Sarah. Why not? Because I was afraid. Because Norma had power and presence, and I was a coward, and I feared the embarrassment and awkwardness my intervention would cause. And because of my cowardice, a person's life was made worse.

Brave, True and Just

For my example of positive courage in action, I'm going to have to travel yet further back in time. Back to a period when almost every day held a challenge, a conflict, a moral dilemma: the raw material from which cowardice and courage are formed. My school was on the outskirts of Leeds, where the city, in the face of bogs and fens and scrubby moorland, loses its will to go on. Leeds back then was poor. And hard, and this toughness found its apogee in my school. It was a place where bullying and violence saturated the air like the Leeds rain.

Dean Taylor was in my class. He was one of the kids in a carefully pressed blazer, his hair combed into a side parting, his tie neatly knotted, who draws bullies the way grime loves a fingernail. His chief tormentor was a kid called Merton. Merton wasn't the worst of the hard cases, but for some reason he had it in for Dean. Random punches, sly, back-of-the-head slaps. The routine trippings and dead-legs that make school playtime a little hell to be endured.

Dean, like the rest of us, put up with this sort of thing. We put up with it partly through physical fear--the thought that the punches would get worse if we snitched--but much more through the huge social pressure, the law which says, Thou Shalt Not Tell.

And there were more subtle pressures. Drawing attention to the fact of being bullied meant adding to the humiliation. It was exposing your weakness to further ridicule, to mockery and to pity.

What had happened, I think, is that our world--the hard kids and the quiet, even Merton and his crew--suddenly saw that what Paul was doing was brave, and true, and just. And in the soul of every human, there is something that makes us bow our heads before such things.

But Dean had something the rest of us lacked. He had an older brother, called Paul. Paul was just a year older, and so similar to Dean in his scrawny neatness that they could pass for twins. One break time, Paul saw Dean take a punch from Merton. He then calmly took Merton by the collar and dragged him across the yard toward the school, and the headmaster's office. Merton was by far the larger and stronger of the two, and he rained down punches and kicks on Paul. We heard them land with either the crunch of knuckle on bone, or the softer, almost wet sound of knuckle on cheek.

Merton's mates joined in, turning the procession into a gauntlet. They jeered, they kicked, they tried to prize Merton away. But Paul still held on, still marched toward the office. He was bleeding by now, and his neat hair was tousled, his blazer torn. But on he went.

And then something happened. Merton stopped fighting. His arms no longer flailed down on Paul's head. The other hard kids stopped screaming, and launched no more than the occasional, desultory foray. And the whole playground was somehow transformed. The silence of the oppressed minority changed its texture. And then suddenly it was not silence anymore, but a kind of exultant murmuring. And finally a joyous cheering.

What had happened, I think, is that our world--the hard kids and the quiet, even Merton and his crew--suddenly saw that what Paul was doing was brave, and true, and just. And in the soul of every human, there is something that makes us bow our heads before such things.

So what was it that made this act from Paul so brave, so right, so courageous? Well, there was the physical danger involved. There was the huge social pressure to overcome. And there was the simple justice of the act.

And is there a lesson to be drawn from all this? Well, there is one, I think. I am haunted by those little acts of cowardice--not helping Sarah, not resisting the petty tyrants infesting the power structures of modern life. I wish that I had made my stands.

And I imagine that, in contrast, Paul and Dean will always remember that moment of bravery in the playground, when courage and justice made them mighty.

Anthony McGowan is an award-winning author of books for adults, teenagers and younger children. He has written two highly acclaimed literary thrillers, Stag Hunt and Mortal Coil. Filming began in the UK in March 2012 on the movie based on his book for young adults The Knife That Killed Me.

Image (top): Dorothy meets the Cowardly Lion, from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz first edition.
Credit: Illustration by W.W. Denslow (d. 1915) (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

Courage is one of the key virtues of the VOV Pledge for Nonviolence. This is evident in the fourth paragraph which states:

I was visiting Raj Ghat, where Mahatma Gandhi, the father of Indian independence, had been cremated.

Somewhere a bird sang. A forest was nearby, and squirrels ran through its lush green thickets. The area was a spacious, well-tended shrine to nonviolence.

As I offered flowers before the black stone platform that constitutes Gandhi's memorial, I bowed my head.

Image:Portrait of Gandhi.
Credit: http://images.google.com/hosted/life/f?&imgurl=eabb95f1554228a3 (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

I pondered Gandhi's brilliant spirit. I thought of his ceaseless struggles to douse the fires of hatred with water drawn from the pure springs of love for humanity. And I thought of how alone he was in his quest.

Violence solves nothing. By engaging in reprisals, you only hurt yourself.

"Gandhi tells us not to retaliate against the Muslims! How can he take their side? There's no way! They killed my family, including my five-year-old son!"

"Is he telling us just to endure the attacks of the Hindus? Ridiculous! Doesn't he know what we Muslims have been through all these years? After all, Gandhi's a Hindu himself, isn't he?"

The elderly sage went everywhere, wherever Hindus and Muslims were mired in blood-stained cycles of conflict and reprisal. He called for the killing to end. But people, crazed by hate, did not listen. They told him to leave, calling his attempts at reconciliation hypocritical or worse. They demanded to know whose side he was on.

But he wasn't on either side. And at the same time, he was on both sides. To him, people are brothers and sisters. How could he stand by, a silent witness to mutual slaughter? Gandhi declared that he was willing to be cut in two if that was what people wanted, but not for India to be cut in two. What good, he demanded to know, could ever come of hatred? If hate was returned with hate, it would only become more deeply rooted and widespread.

Just as fire is extinguished by water, hatred can only be defeated by love and compassion.

Suppose someone sets fire to your home and you retaliate by setting fire to theirs, soon the whole town will be in flames! Burning down the attacker's house won't bring yours back. Violence solves nothing. By engaging in reprisals, you only hurt yourself.

But no matter how urgently Gandhi called on people to listen to reason, the fires of hatred raged on. Against the lone Gandhi there were far too many people fanning the flames.

Image:Gandhi during the Salt March, March-April 1930.
Credit: gandhiserve.org (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

On January 20, 1948--10 days, in fact, before he was assassinated--a handmade bomb was hurled at Gandhi as he attended a gathering. This act of terrorism was carried out by a Hindu youth. Fortunately, the bomb missed the mark and Gandhi survived.

The youth was arrested. The next day, several adherents of the Sikh faith called on Gandhi and assured him that the culprit was not a Sikh. Gandhi rebuked them, saying that it mattered nothing at all to him whether the assailant was a Sikh, a Hindu or a Muslim. Whoever the perpetrator might be, he said, he wished him well.

Gandhi was alone.

Gandhi explained that the youth had been taught to think of him as an enemy of the Hindu cause, that hatred had been implanted in his heart. The youth believed what he was taught and was so desperate, so devoid of all hope, that violence seemed the only alternative. Gandhi felt only pity for the young man. He even told the outraged chief of police to not harass his assailant but make an effort to convert him to right thoughts and actions.

This was always his approach. No one abhorred violence more than Gandhi. At the same time no one knew more deeply that violence can only be countered by nonviolence. Just as fire is extinguished by water, hatred can only be defeated by love and compassion. Some criticized Gandhi for coddling the terrorist. Others scorned his conviction, calling it sentimental and unrealistic, an empty vision.

Gandhi was alone.

Image:Gandhi drafting a document at Birla House, Mumbai, August 1942.
Credit: gandhiserve.org (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

Many revered his name, but few truly shared his beliefs. For Gandhi, nonviolence meant an overflowing love for all humanity, a way of life that emanated from the very marrow of his being. It made life possible; without it, he could not have lived even a moment. But for many of his followers, nonviolence was simply a political strategy, a tactic for winning India's independence from Britain.

Gandhi was alone.

The more earnestly he pursued his religious beliefs, the deeper his love for humanity grew. This love made it all the more impossible for him to ignore the political realities that shaped people's lives. At the same time, contact with these political realities strengthened his conviction that nothing is more essential than the love for humanity that religious faith can inspire.

This placed him, however, in the position of being denounced by both religious figures, who saw his involvement in the sullied realm of politics as driven by personal ambition, and political leaders, who called him ignorant and naive. Because he walked the middle way, the true path of humanity that seeks to reconcile apparent contradictions, his beliefs and actions appeared biased to those at the extremes.

The real struggle of the 21st century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.

The 20th century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. In the new era of the 21st century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the 20th century.

The real struggle of the 21st century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.

Courage is always required to transform evil into good.

More than half a century ago, Gandhi sought to break the cycles of violence and reprisal. What distinguishes us from brute beasts, he said, is our continuous striving for moral self-improvement. Humanity is at a crossroads and must choose, he asserted, violence (the law of the jungle) or nonviolence (the law of humanity).

Image: Mahatma Gandhi with textile workers at Darwen, Lancashire, England, September 26, 1931.
Credit: http://rena.wao.com/gandhi/jpg/GGS99.jpg (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

Courage is always required to transform evil into good. Now is the time for each of us to bring forth such courage: the courage of nonviolence, the courage of dialogue, the courage to listen to what we would rather not hear, the courage to restrain the desire for vengeance and be guided by reason.

Nonviolence is the highest form of humility; it is supreme courage.

Violence is born from a wounded spirit: a spirit burned and blistered by the fire of arrogance; a spirit splintered and frayed by the frustration of powerlessness; a spirit parched with an unquenched thirst for meaning in life; a spirit shriveled and shrunk by feelings of inferiority. The rage that results from injured self-respect, from humiliation, erupts as violence. A culture of violence, which delights in crushing and beating others into submission, spreads throughout society, often amplified by the media. The American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was a student of Gandhi's philosophy. He declared that a person whose spirit is in turmoil cannot truly practice nonviolence. It has been my hope that the light of India--a country known in the East since ancient times as "the land of moonlight"--will help spread the spirit of peace, much as the cool beams of the moon bring soothing relief from the maddening heat of the day. From a healed, peaceful heart, humility is born; from humility, a willingness to listen to others is born; from a willingness to listen to others, mutual understanding is born; and from mutual understanding, a peaceful society will be born.

Nonviolence is the highest form of humility; it is supreme courage. The essence of Gandhi's teachings was fearlessness. The Mahatma taught that "the strong are never vindictive" and that dialogue can only be engaged in by the brave.

Image (top): Gandhi Icon
Credit: Pratheepps (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)

In observance of the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, delivered the following statement at The Hague.

Navi Pillay
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Hague
May 17, 2013

Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
Colleagues and friends,

UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in 2001 and in December 2002, the UN General Assembly, in its resolution 57/249, declared May 21 to be the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

Do One Thing For Diversity and Inclusion

In 2011, a grassroots campaign ‘Do One Thing For Diversity and Inclusion’, celebrating the annual World Day for Cultural Diversity was launched by UNESCO and the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

The 2013 campaign, by encouraging people and organizations from around the world to take concrete action to support diversity, aims:

• To raise awareness worldwide about the importance of intercultural dialogue, diversity and inclusion.
• To build a world community of individuals committed to support diversity with real and every day-life gestures.
• To combat polarization and stereotypes to improve understanding and cooperation among people from different cultures.

The campaign works through a dedicated Facebook page, serving as a platform for people around the world to share their experiences through posts and videos.

Intercultural Dialogue

One of the main action areas of the campaign is intercultural dialogue. An equitable exchange and dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based on mutual understanding and respect and the equal dignity of all cultures is the essential prerequisite for constructing social cohesion, reconciliation among peoples and peace among nations. This action is part of the global framework of an Alliance of Civilizations launched by the United Nations. More specifically, within the larger framework of intercultural dialogue, which also encompasses interreligious dialogue, special focus is placed on a series of good practices to encourage cultural pluralism at the local, regional and national level as well as regional and sub-regional initiatives aimed at discouraging all expressions of extremism and fanaticism and highlighting values and principles that bring people together.

Interreligious Dialogue

UNESCO’s Interreligious Dialogue programme, an essential component of Intercultural Dialogue, aims to promote dialogue among different religions, spiritual and humanistic traditions in a world where conflicts are increasingly associated with religious belonging.

It stresses the reciprocal interactions and influences between, on the one hand, religions, spiritual and humanistic traditions, and on the other, the need to promote understanding between them in order to challenge ignorance and prejudices and foster mutual respect.

Learning the art of dialogue is both a personal and social process

Learning the art of dialogue is both a personal and social process. Developing one’s skills and capacity for dialogue implies a willingness to be open while retaining one’s critical judgment. Dialogue concerns us all: from decision-makers and leaders to individuals within each community. Alongside relevant international conferences to raise awareness, UNESCO strives to promote grass-root activities, particularly in sensitive geo-strategical areas that reach target-populations such as women, youth and marginalized populations.

In support of the 2013 campaign for intercultural and interreligious dialogue, we would like to share an except from the 2005 peace proposal of Buddhist thinker Daisaku Ikeda titled, "Toward a New Era of Dialogue: Humanism Explored."

...Ikeda's belief in dialogue is based on a deep faith in humanity and a pragmatic recognition of the inability of violence to produce lasting positive change.

At the core of Ikeda's peace philosophy is his belief in the power and possibilities of dialogue, a belief that he has advocated and explored at length in his writings. His belief in the efficacy of dialogue in many ways reflects and is inspired by the great tradition of nonviolent philosophers that include Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Like his predecessors, Ikeda's belief in dialogue is based on a deep faith in humanity and a pragmatic recognition of the inability of violence to produce lasting positive change. Lawrence E. Carter Sr., Dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College and disciple of the civil rights leader, has called Ikeda the individual who is doing the most to put into practice the philosophy of King and Gandhi on the global stage.

In the mid-1970s, Ikeda began traveling to meet with the leaders of the Eastern and Western blocs to promote and encourage dialogue.

Excerpt from "Toward a New Era of Dialogue: Humanism Explored"
by Daisaku Ikeda

How can twenty-first-century humankind overcome the crises that face us?

There is, of course, no simple solution, no "magic wand" we can wave to make it all better. The way forward will be perilous as it requires finding an appropriate response to the kind of violence that rejects all attempts at engagement or dialogue.

All these problems are caused by human beings, which means that they must have a human solution.

Even so, there is no need to fall into meaningless and unproductive pessimism. All these problems are caused by human beings, which means that they must have a human solution. However long the effort takes, so long as we do not abandon the work of unknotting the tangled threads of these interrelated issues, we can be certain of finding a way forward.

The core of such efforts must be to bring forth the full potential of dialogue. So long as human history continues, we will face the perennial challenge of realizing, maintaining and strengthening peace through dialogue, of making dialogue the sure and certain path to peace. We must uphold and proclaim this conviction without cease, whatever coldly knowing smiles or cynical critiques may greet us.

Here I am reminded of the words of the poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), whose writings have long inspired my affection and respect:

Asks the Possible to the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling place?"
"In the dreams of the impotent," comes the answer.

A Whirlwind of Dialogue
As mentioned earlier, this year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the SGI. The year 1975 was also a time of deepening conflict and division in the world. The aftershocks of the fourth Arab-Israeli War (1973) and the war in Viet Nam were still being felt; the first summit of leading industrialized countries was held in that year to strengthen the unity of the western bloc, while in the communist bloc, the confrontation between China and the Soviet Union was escalating ominously.

I dedicated the year leading up to the founding of the SGI to intensive efforts in dialogue. My first visits to both China and the Soviet Union were made in 1974. Keenly aware of the potentially explosive tensions, I met repeatedly with the top leadership of both countries, engaging them in earnest dialogue.

In Japan at the time, the Soviet Union and its people were regarded with violent hostility. There were many who criticized my decision to travel there, asking what purpose could possibly be served by a person of religion going to a country that officially denied the value or validity of religion. But my sincere belief, as a Buddhist, was that no vision of peace was possible that didn't recognize and include the one-third of the world that was the communist bloc. It was crucial, in my view, that a breakthrough be found as soon as possible.

On my first visit to China in May 1974, I witnessed the people of Beijing building a vast network of underground shelters against the eventuality of a Soviet attack. When I met, some three months later, with Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin (1904-80), I conveyed to him the concerns I had encountered in China about Soviet intentions and asked him straight out if the Soviet Union was planning to attack China. The premier responded that the Soviet Union had no intention of either attacking or isolating China.

I brought this message with me when I next visited China in December of that year, conveying it to the Chinese leadership. It was also on this visit that I met Premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), discussing with him the importance of enhancing and strengthening friendship between China and Japan, and of working together for the betterment of the entire world.

In January of 1975, I visited the United States and presented to the United Nations a petition with more than ten million signatures calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons gathered by the youth membership of the Soka Gakkai in Japan. I also had the opportunity to exchange views with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

My consistent belief, reinforced through this experience, is that the basis for the kind of dialogue required in the twenty-first century must be humanism--one that sees good in that which unites and brings us together, evil in that which divides and sunders us.

It was in the midst of such feverish efforts to promote dialogue that the SGI was founded thirty years ago on this day, January 26, 1975. The inaugural meeting was held on the island of Guam, site of fierce fighting in World War II, and was attended by the representatives of fifty-one countries and territories. From its inception, the SGI has sought to draw on people's energy and creativity to forge an effective grassroots movement for peace.

Since that first gathering, the members of the SGI have consistently upheld the conviction that dialogue represents the sure and certain path to peace. I have also committed myself to "human diplomacy," the kind of diplomacy that seeks to unite a divided world in the spirit of friendship and trust, and to promoting broad-based, grassroots exchanges in the cultural and educational fields.

Seeking to look beyond national and ideological differences, I have engaged in dialogue with leaders in various fields from throughout the world. I have met and shared thoughts with people of many different philosophical, cultural and religious backgrounds, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism. My consistent belief, reinforced through this experience, is that the basis for the kind of dialogue required in the twenty-first century must be humanism--one that sees good in that which unites and brings us together, evil in that which divides and sunders us.

The real essence and practice of humanism is found in heartfelt, one-to-one dialogue.

As I review my own efforts to foster dialogue in this way, I gain a renewed sense of the urgent need to redirect the energies of dogmatism and fanaticism--the cause of so much deadly conflict--toward a more humanistic outlook. In a world rent by terrorism and retaliatory strikes, by conflicts premised on ethnic and religious differences, such an attempt may appear to some a hopeless quest. But even so I believe that we must continue to make efforts toward this goal.

Dialogue is indeed this kind of intense, high-risk encounter.

Here I am not suggesting humanism as something that goes head-to-head with dogmatism or fanaticism in a sterile confrontation between competing "isms."

The real essence and practice of humanism is found in heartfelt, one-to-one dialogue. Be it summit diplomacy or the various interactions of private citizens in different lands, genuine dialogue has the kind of intensity described by the great twentieth-century humanist and philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965) as an encounter "on the narrow ridge" in which the slightest inattention could result in a precipitous fall. Dialogue is indeed this kind of intense, high-risk encounter.

I believe that the analogy of trimtabs--small, adjustable flaps on the wings of airplanes and the keels of boats--is useful. As designer and philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller pointed out, a trimtab on a ship's rudder can be operated by the unaided power of a single individual; it can facilitate the movement of the rudder, thus enabling a change in direction of a massive ship. Humanism can play a similar role, redirecting the course of global society.

As ripples of dialogue multiply and spread, they have the potential to generate the kind of sea change that will redirect the forces of fanaticism and dogmatism. The cumulative affect of such seemingly small efforts is, I believe, sufficient to redirect the current of the times--just as a small trimtab can adjust the course of a massive ship or plane. What is crucial is the hard and patient work of challenging, through the spiritual struggle of intense encounter and dialogue, the assumptions and attachments that bind and drive people.

Jazz shows the wealth that rises from diversity.

With events taking place in every country on the planet, International Jazz Day 2013 culminated in an evening concert at Istanbul’s Hagia Irene that was viewed live by millions around the world and featured pianists Herbie Hancock, John Beasley (Musical Director), George Duke, Robert Glasper, Ramsey Lewis, Keiko Matsui and Eddie Palmieri; vocalists Ruben Blades, Al Jarreau, Milton Nascimento, Dianne Reeves, Esperanza Spalding (who also played bass) and Joss Stone; trumpeters Terence Blanchard, Hugh Masekela and Imer Demirer; bassists James Genus, Marcus Miller and Ben Williams; drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Vinnie Colaiuta; guitarists Bilal Karaman, John McLaughlin, Lee Ritenour and Joe Louis Walker; saxophonists Dale Barlow, Igor Butman, Branford Marsalis, Wayne Shorter and Liu Yuan; clarinetists Anat Cohen and Husnu Senlendirici; violinist Jean-Luc Ponty; Pedrito Martinez on percussion; tabla master Zakir Hussain; trombonist Alevtina Polyakova; and special guest Martin Luther King III.

Photo: Joss Stone
Credit: Mahmut Ceylon

International Jazz Day brings together communities, schools and groups from across the globe to celebrate jazz, learn about its roots and highlight its important role as a form of communication that transcends differences. In partnership with the Republic of Turkey, the all- star evening concert was held at Istanbul’s famed Hagia Irene. Dating back to the 4th century, the Hagia Irene, located in the outer courtyard of the Topkapi Palace – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – is regarded as an international treasure for music lovers because of its brilliant atmosphere and enchanting acoustics. In addition to being streamed live worldwide at www.jazzday.com and via the UNESCO, United Nations, U.S. State Department and Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz websites, the concert was also taped for future broadcast on public television stations around the world.

Malaria still kills an estimated 660,000 people worldwide...

Over the last decade, the world has made major progress in the fight against malaria. Since 2000, malaria mortality rates have fallen by more than 25%, and 50 of the 99 countries with ongoing transmission are now on track to meet the 2015 World Health Assembly target of reducing incidence rates by more than 75%. A major scale-up of vector control interventions, together with increased access to diagnostic testing and quality-assured treatment, has been key to this progress.

However, much work remains. Malaria still kills an estimated 660,000 people worldwide, mainly children under five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. Every year, more than 200 million cases occur; most of these cases are never tested or registered. A recent plateauing of international funding has slowed down progress, and emerging drug and insecticide resistance threaten to reverse recent gains.

If the world is to maintain and accelerate progress against malaria, in line with Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6 (combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases), and to ensure attainment of MDGs 4 (reduce child mortality) and 5 (improve maternal health), more funds are urgently required.

"Invest in the future: defeat malaria" is the theme partners chose for the next three years to call attention to #thebigpush needed to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goals and defeat malaria in the future.

WHO will use the 2013 World Malaria Day as an opportunity to illustrate best practices in a range of settings where malaria is a major health challenge, and will facilitate the sharing of experiences between countries to adapt and strengthen malaria control efforts. Each year, Roll Back Malaria (RBM) partner organizations unite around a common World Malaria Day theme. Invest in the future: defeat malaria is the theme partners chose for the next three years to call attention to #thebigpush needed to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goals and defeat malaria in the future.

#thebigpush for Global Health featuring Arianna Huffington, Bono, Tony Blair & Bill Clinton

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is one of the world's foremost researchers and advocates for the eradication of malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other contributors to extreme poverty. His experience in this arena provides a powerful leadership model for assessing and innovating intervention efforts. Learn more about his experience and approach in the following excerpt from his lecture, Paths to Peace Through Compassion, Cooperation and Sustainable Development, delivered in New York as part of the SGI-USA Culture of Peace Distinguished Speaker Series. The full lecture was published by Culture of Peace Press in Voices for a Culture of Peace Vol.1.

Excerpt from the lecture "Paths to Peace Through Compassion, Cooperation and Sustainable Development"
by Jeffrey D. Sachs

The inability to solve this problem does not rest with our technologies. It lies squarely with us and with our understanding. As I have looked at these shocking realizations, what has amazed me is our incapacity to understand and to act with the power we have.

The beautiful part is that making a difference does not require us to overturn our lives...It just requires our attention, our awareness — nothing more.

I have almost given up on Washington. For a long time, I hoped that someone would sign a check and we would get programs going. I have realized that it is not going to happen that way. I have realized that it is going to happen when we understand the stakes, the opportunities, and when we make direct connections. I have realized that whether it is a global classroom, a temple to a community, a city to a city, or an individual to an individual, we need to turn the tide on a large scale. The beautiful part is that making a difference does not require us to overturn our lives. It does not require self-abnegation to the point of living an ascetic life. It just requires our attention, our awareness — nothing more.

Let me focus on malaria for just a moment because it is the perfect example of a scourge we can end. Malaria is a mosquito-born, tropical disease. The parasite, which is a protozoan, lives in the mosquito and is transmitted to a human when the mosquito bites. That person gets sick, and then another mosquito comes to bite that person and pulls up the parasite and goes on to transmit it to somebody else. This transmission requires warm temperatures, making it a tropical disease. It turns out, for absolutely accidental and fascinating reasons, that in Africa malaria incidence is by far the worst in the world. This is not because Africans are uncaring, corrupt and do not know how to get their act together, but because of the kind of mosquito they have, the high temperatures and the ample mosquito-breeding sites.

[Editor’s Note: Anopheles is a genus of mosquito. Of the approximately 400 anopheles species, 30-40 transmit the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria. Anopheles mosquitoes usually enter homes between 5:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. and again in early hours of morning. They start biting by late evening with the peak of biting activity at midnight and the early hours of morning. By keeping the windows and doors closed between 5:00p.m. and 10:00 p.m. and again in early morning, one can prevent the entry of these mosquitoes into homes. Protection can also be provided by wearing garments that cover the body as much as possible and by using mosquito nets while sleeping.]

There is one type of mosquito(anopheles), that transmits malaria, but there are many kinds of anopheles. As it turns out, Africa has the only kind that does not bite other animals, it only bites humans. Africa’s problem is a burden of nature. It is not the fault of the poor, and it is not to be blamed on the poor.

It is clear that the health problems of the poor have solutions...

One hundred years ago, even ten years ago, we did not have the tools to help. Now, thanks to modern processes, for example making bed nets that protect against mosquitoes, help is here. The bed nets drive mosquitoes out of the hut since they are repelled by the smell. The nets are made in an ingenious way which includes a mosquitocide, and thus it protects the child from being bitten. A company invented a way to put the insecticide right into the resin that is used to weave the net. For five years, when you wash the net, the mosquitocide keeps coming out from the resin and keeps providing a protective cover. If you protect everybody this way, you can drive the malaria burden to zero.

How hard could this be? The nets cost five dollars-- that’s all! Five bucks and they last five years. Do you think we could manage this? We know there are roughly 500 million people in the malaria region of Africa, and that the average size of a household is five people. That’s 100 million households. The average number of sleeping sites in the household is three, so three bed nets are needed for five people. Three bed nets for 100 million households, or 300 million bed nets that cost five dollars equals $1.5 billion.

Here is another denominator. Every minute, the United States spends $1.2 million on the Pentagon. Every day, we spend $1.7 billion on the military. It costs $1.5 billion for five years of bed net coverage versus $1.7 billion per day of military spending! It seems to me that 22 hours of the Pentagon budget would fix this problem. My longstanding policy recommendation is that the Pentagon take next Thursday off. If they did, and we could use the money to give every African family in a malaria zone protection against malaria, our security would be raised profoundly in terms of goodwill, in terms of understanding and in terms of human connection.

Jeffrey Sachs discusses his support for bed nets

It is clear that the health problems of the poor have solutions — like bed nets against malaria. Issues for agricultural productivity also have simple solutions. A while back an agronomist took me, a complete city boy, out to the fields and said, “See the yellow on that maize stalk. It should be green. The yellow is an indication of nitrogen deficiency, because this farmer is too poor to buy a bag of fertilizer.” That’s all.

If you give a 50-kilogram bag of fertilizer to a farmer with half a hectare farm, he can triple his production. 

Two hundred years ago, you didn’t need to buy fertillizer. The population was one-tenth the size it is now, and when the soil ran out of nitrogen, you moved to another area. It was called slash-and-burn or rotation agriculture. Now the population in the world is 6.6 billion and the old ways just aren’t an option. But, if you take out the nitrogen, the potassium and the phosphorus, every year, without putting them back, you get massive crop failures.

Farmers in Africa have the yield of about 1 ton per hectare. That is about one third or one quarter of what it should be, and it is not enough to feed the family, much less to have a surplus to take to the market to earn a profit.

Certain things are utterly unimaginable, but true. One of these things is that the World Bank, headquartered in Washington, let African farmers farm for twenty years without fertilizer. Twenty years ago, the World Bank said that the problem of African agriculture is government intervention. They advised that the government get out and let the markets take over. They were wrong. Unfortunately, the market runs away from people who have no money. If you are investing in a business that is specializing in customers who have no money, I suggest you get into another business. The market is not designed to solve the problems of people who have no money.

For twenty years there was no fertilizer. I was a latecomer to this-- what did I know about fertilizer? I am a macroeconomist. I had to learn about malaria. I had to learn about AIDS. I had to learn about fertilizer. The mistake I had been making until then was thinking that someone must be taking care of these problems. The reality is that we were letting people go hungry year in and year out. Then when an extreme famine came, we would ship food from Iowa at about eight times the price it would cost to give a bag of fertilizer in the first place! If you give a 50-kilogram bag of fertilizer to a farmer with half a hectare farm, he can triple his production. This can happen within one season, not years of training and a generation of change, just a bag of fertilizer.

In September 2006, the World Bank issued a report in what is called its Independent Evaluation Office. If I had to paraphrase the 150-page review of their twenty years of agriculture work, the title would be “Sorry,” because the report quite honestly said, “Well, we blew it for twenty years. Nothing we recommended worked. We said the market should get involved but there was no market.”

Let me close by telling you what we have done and mention what you might do.

A few years ago, my colleagues and I worked with Kofi Annan, then U.N. Secretary-General, and we decided that we needed action; we needed to put the policies in place that would save lives. I went knocking on the doors of the White House and 10 Downing Street and other places for help. I explained this to a benefactor, a wonderful trustee of Columbia University, Gerry Lenfest, complaining about the lack of financial support and all the rest, and he said, “Well, what if you actually did this, how much would it cost to help a village?”

I made some quick calculations, and he took out a checkbook. He wrote a $5 million check and said, “Go get it started.”

They know malaria is killing them. They would love bed nets. They just can’t afford them.

We started in Western Kenya, in a place called Sauri Village. One of the most incredible days of my life was meeting with the community in Sauri in the summer of 2004. I recounted it in my book, The End of Poverty. People had walked many kilometers to come, and we sat in the sweltering school hall. I asked them questions. I asked them about malaria. Everybody had it. I asked them, “How many of you have bed nets?” There were two or three hands out of the 250 or so people in the room.

I have heard so many rumors from Washington and elsewhere, all of them wrong, like, “Maybe they don’t like bed nets.” “Maybe they are too hot and they bother people.” I asked this roomful of people: “How many of you know what bed nets are?” I thought that maybe they don’t even know. Every hand went up, of course. I asked, “How many of you would like bed nets?” Every hand stayed up and people got very excited.

A woman in the front row stood up and, through the interpreter, said, “But, Mister, we can’t afford bed nets.”

They are poor, that’s all. They know what bed nets are. They know malaria is killing them. They would love bed nets. They just can’t afford them.

Jeffrey Sachs discusses "The End of Poverty" at the World Bank, Washington, D.C.

We talked about fertilizer the same way and they knew exactly what the situation was. This wasn’t about changing some deep cultural habit somehow, it was just about poverty. I said something about electricity and a man raised his hand, stood up, and said, “Professor, I am chairman of the electricity committee.” Wonderful!-- but there was no electricity anywhere. He explained through an interpreter that they had been told in 1997 that electricity would be coming, so they formed a committee. But electricity never came.

There is nothing that can’t be done in a straightforward fashion, in partnership, to address these problems. We have launched a program that we call Millennium Villages, of which Sauri is one. These are villages committed to meeting the Millennium Development Goals, the goals to fight hunger, poverty and disease by 2015. The Millennium Villages now cover about 600,000 people across Africa.

Millennium Village in Action: Rapid SMS in Sauri, Kenya

Governments, NGOs and companies are all partnering on the Millennium Villages Project. Sometimes companies are vilified, but some of these companies have key technologies that can work towards human betterment. The first company I talked to was Sumitomo Chemical, which makes wonderful bed nets. The chairperson immediately said, “I will provide bed nets for every sleeping site in all of the Millennium Villages for free.” He delivered 360,000 bed nets for free. It didn’t take twenty years to see the results. It took a few days to cover all the sleeping sites. They didn’t go missing, they weren’t stolen, and they didn’t end up in safe deposit boxes. There weren’t bribes. There wasn’t any theft. There were bed nets protecting people from mosquitoes, and the malaria burden went down.

Human-to-human contact is so powerful. It is the essence and the path to peace on the planet.

The point is that there are solutions. They are within our hands. We have no time to lose; our safety depends on it. Our security depends on it.

We can take action. I would like everybody in one way or another to help partner in the cause of meeting the Millennium Development Goals. One way that you can do it is something as straightforward as helping to provide bed nets. There is an organization which I helped to start, called Malaria No More, that can help you do that. The Web address is www.malarianomore.org. It is led by a wonderful philanthropist named Ray Chambers. He is raising tens of millions of dollars for bed nets and helped to get American Idol to Africa last year.

Malaria No More Cameroon: Malaria Music Spotlight, K.O. Palu

Another way is an organization that I co-founded with Mr. Chambers called Millennium Promise, which is devoted entirely to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Because of the beneficence of wealthy people who support the organization itself, we can say that every cent anybody contributes goes directly to villages. It is used to empower people through a holistic approach, addressing malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis, through a clinic, safe childbirth, safe drinking water, a bag of fertilizer, food supply and microfinance. It is an organization that helps with the transition from subsistence to cash earning, so that communities can escape from poverty once and for all.

I met with heads of state last week in Ethiopia, Mali and in Liberia. The words and the ideas are spreading. President Toure of Mali is an absolutely wonderful person. He has seen the village that we started in Segou, Mali, and asked for more. This past week, we opened the Timbuktu Millennium Village with the most incredible hospitality you can imagine. We are now working with the government on scaling up to 166 communes.

I believe we are capable of ending poverty and to changing the world. I have no doubt that by doing so, we can make the most important connection of all, across every racial divide, religious divide, linguistic divide or any other divide you can think of including class. Human-to-human contact is so powerful. It is the essence and the path to peace on the planet.

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

Let me end with one statement from that miraculous peace speech by John Kennedy. I find these words to be the most beautiful spoken by any American president of modern times. He said: “So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s future, and we are all mortal.”

John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963 - Part 1

John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963 - Part 2

John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963 - Part 3

Jeffrey D. Sachs is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation. For more than twenty years, he has been in the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation and enlightened globalization, promoting policies to help all parts of the world benefit from expanding economic opportunities and well-being. He is also one of the leading voices for combining economic development with environmental sustainability, and as Director of the Earth Institute leads large-scale efforts to promote the mitigation of human-induced climate change.

Dr. Sachs is also Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University as well as Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the U.N. Millennium Project and Special Advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease and hunger by 2015. Dr. Sachs is also president and co-founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty.

In 2004 and 2005, he was named among the hundred most influential leaders in the world by Time magazine. In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian honor bestowed by the Indian government. Sachs lectures constantly around the world and was the 2007 BBC Reith Lecturer. He is author of hundreds of scholarly articles and many books, including New York Times best sellers The End of Poverty (Penguin, 2005) and Common Wealth (Penguin, 2008). Sachs is a member of the Institute of Medicine and is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining Columbia University, he spent more than twenty years at Harvard University, most recently as Director of the Center for International Development. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University. His work supports several of the eight action areas identified by the United Nations Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, especially the third: Promoting sustainable economic and social development.

Photo: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Credit: Eiwebnyc (Attribution via Wikimedia Commons)