Disabling Poverty:  Overcoming humanity’s most pervasive limitation, Dr. Robert Zuber

5 Feb

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People presume my disability has to do with being an amputee, but that’s not the case; our insecurities are our disabilities, and I struggle with those as does everyone.  Aimee Mullins

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. — Mark Twain

At the UN this week, the Commission for Social Development has been in session, a Commission that takes up issues and policies related to poverty, disability, ageing and youth, seeking to link these concerns in ways that will motivate greater levels of policy coherence and funding commitments by state and non-state entities.

We’ve always tried to be present in the room for this annual Commission as much as we can, in part because of the constituencies it routinely identifies – youth, persons with disabilities, the aged – but also because of its sensitivity to the ways in which poverty acts as a complicating factor in efforts to help these and other  constituents (as noted in a recent UN report) “fulfill their potential in life, and lead decent, dignified and rewarding lives in a healthy environment.”

As we have written about often, “dignified and rewarding lives” constitutes the essential precondition for peaceful and inclusive societies.  Where the elderly are preyed upon rather than protected, where youth are patronized rather than respected, where persons with disabilities – the apparent and the hidden – are left to fend for themselves on our often-dismal social and economic margins, prospects for conflict within societies surely rise.  For too many people in this world, despite our recent, demonstrable poverty-reduction successes, overcoming the effects of poverty is like trying to claw their way out of a deep swamp with plastic scissors.  Many times, there is no enabling environment anywhere to be found; only insecure spaces filled with hidden pitfalls that persons are mostly incapable of surmounting by themselves.

Of all the poverty-related connections raised during the Commission, the one most “personal” for me is the connection with disabilities. I have no disability myself – only miscalculations and mistakes that I commit, over and over, and about which my circle of friends and loved ones, and the larger world surrounding my life, are much too forgiving.  But I have also seen first-hand how genuine poverty and equally-genuine disabilities reinforce each other. As is the case with many of the other 1 billion people on this planet estimated to be living with disabilities of all kinds, I have seen my former Harlem church family members struggle to overcome the effects of sometimes-severe, physical and psychological limitations.  I have seen some of them toil mightily just to get by, to maintain connections of kindness and avoid discrimination, to find employers willing to take a chance on them or advocates willing to help them pursue more fair and sensitive social policies. I have seen them struggle to find physical or mental health services that could make at least some of the disabilities we widely recognize – and those we don’t quite know what to do with yet – less likely.

It can simply be overwhelming for persons with disabilities who also face the additional burdens of poverty, or for their caregivers (if they exist) trying to make ends meet while overcoming the effects of discrimination of their disabled loved ones.  For some facing severe economic constraints, it takes every ounce of energy, every fiber of resourcefulness, just to keep the sometimes-traumatic and always-insecure impacts and implications of disabilities on a remotely even keel.

In listening this past week to the often hopeful discussions within the Commission, some of us wondered what it would mean to explore the option of seeing poverty not only as a complication to disability but as a potential disability in its own right.  What if we put the same creative energy into finding that metaphorical “prosthesis” for poverty that we have been more and more successful at creating when physical limbs are lost and psychological disorders and addictions proliferate?  What if we could convince states and others to treat poverty more as a “condition” that needs to be addressed – with tools and laws and changes in social perspectives at the ready – and less as a moral failing or stigma to be overcome – or simply ignored altogether?

Given that poverty as we know it is embedded within a host of social and political conditions that breed deprivation and discrimination and impede just and robust societal responses, it will surely be more difficult to address than other “disabilities” – though as the Commission rightly notes, certainly no less essential.  However, this pattern of deprivation, discrimination and inadequate response is common to the more recognizable disabilities community as well.  Indeed, in some parts of the world, we have taken mere “baby steps” towards ending discriminations against persons with disabilities, even as our persistent social inequalities and heavily-armed militias create new legions of disabled, of traumatized, of the fearful and insecure.  Poverty might represent a higher bar for our collective response, but its disabling effects are also far more pervasive.   It is not the first goal of the UN’s 2030 development agenda for no reason.

As I was preparing to write this, I consulted hundreds of photos and “posters” on the internet that focus on one or more aspects of disability.  Many approvingly showed people being kind or courageous, or they depicted welcome examples of how societies are adjusting to differing abilities, challenging both complacency and our dependence on one-size-fits-all approaches to education, health, mobility and other core human tasks.  The solitary image I found in my search that seemed to in any way couple poverty and disability is the one found at the heading of this post.

For that man, as for too many others, the crutches we see from afar could merely hint at the full complement of his potential limitations, including limitations endemic to poverty itself.   While it is unwise to make too many inferences from one photo, we can hopefully come to see that of all the physical impediments and psychological disorders that impede our human progress, it is the pervasiveness of poverty that disables us most.

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Future Shock:  Traumatized Youth and Prospects for Sustaining Peace, Dr. Robert Zuber

29 Jan

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Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children, Sitting Bull

As many of your recognize, part of our task in these weekly missives is to blend events at the UN that are too-rarely blended – to help people inside the UN become more conscious of policy linkages and to help people outside the UN discern what this institution is uniquely suited for – and perhaps not so terribly well suited for.

In both aspects, this week presented multiple venues and options for reflection.

The highlight of the week was probably the 1+ days devoted by the President of the UN General Assembly (PGA) to “sustaining peace,” a welcome effort to link implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), arguably the UN’s most ambitious current project, to the promotion and maintenance of peace, arguably the UN’s most important overall mission.

The events, including a relatively uninspiring, pre-event, “brainstorming” session, attracted the highest levels of officials across the UN system.  Brainstorming is not what we do best here, but this particular session at least put on the table the notion that funding the SDGs will require some adjustments to our rapacious patterns of military spending, and that such adjustments are more likely if we can demonstrate as much capacity to prevent armed conflict as we currently expend to clean up the debris left behind in armed conflict’s aftermath.

The main “sustaining peace” event in the Trusteeship Council was devoted in part to what GA President Thompson called the “disastrous consequences” that conflict inflicts on development prospects. On his last day as chair of the Peacebuilding Commission, Kenya’s Ambassador Kamau urged capacity development for what he called a “diplomatic surge” that could help all UN member states address threats in their earliest and most manageable stages.  And Switzerland’s Minister Baeriswyl was one of several voices advocating for an end to our policy “fragmentation” so that we can impact the security and development fragility of states with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

By the end of these sessions, there was a bit more clarity on what “sustaining peace” means in theory, especially regarding the reinvestment of our energies more towards conflict prevention and less towards the rehabilitation and reconstruction that have proven so costly and with uneven consequences for human and ecological well-being.  Nevertheless, the Mexican Ambassador made his own plea – urging that we quickly move beyond “beautiful political concepts” to embrace the hard, practical work of peacemaking whose success has eluded our grasp in more instances than we are publicly willing to acknowledge.

And much of the failure of that work directly impacts future prospects for our children.

During both the main and side events on “sustaining peace,” states as diverse as Cambodia, Jordan and Andorra all advocated for education to raise levels of SDG awareness among youth.  Such education is welcome especially if it then leads to more direct participation by youth in the implementation of these diverse goals.  And indeed speakers did advocate more pathways to involvement, led by the PGA himself who noted that youth have a greater “skin in this game” since they are the ones who will inherit the fruits of our policy labors, for good or for ill.   In that context, the PGA lamented what he called the “selfishness” of too many adults that inhibits gender balancing and other hopeful prospects for his own (and for many others’) “female grandchildren.”

Indeed, the “selfishness” of adults currently takes so many insidious forms that result in long-term physical and psychological damage to our young.   At a small side event this week seeking funding pledges for a badly-needed “Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty,” a roster of UN and NGO experts highlighted the horrific and lasting impacts on children who find themselves in often inhumane, punitive detention facilities: some who have been victims of organized crime and traffickers; some who were living on the street having been separated from their families; some exhibiting clear signs of mental illness or drug dependency; some seized by government or insurgent forces during armed conflict.  These “invisible and forgotten” children include many who had already been victimized through sexual violence or recruitment into criminality, a second-helping of trauma for lives that are literally being drained of promise.

We can now only guess how many children are currently deprived of liberty in facilities that are dispiriting at best.  In this as in other areas of children’s rights, we need better data to guide our policy and focus our concern.  But what we are already able to predict is the long psychic climb that these deprived children must make if they are ever to live “healthy and constructive” lives, if they are ever to achieve their full capacity to help guide this planet through what remain treacherous waters.

As is noted often at the UN, this generation of youth is the largest in human history.   But it is also a generation characterized by deep distress in many of its sub-groupings.  When damage in the world is mirrored by — — even at times surpassed by — damage absorbed by our children and young people, both education and participation are sure to be negatively impacted by a trust- and confidence-eroding trauma that we can and must collectively do more to prevent.

The UN already recognizes its responsibility to promote “mental health for all” in part through SDG-related initiatives led or supported by several member states including Panama, Belgium, Canada, Liberia and especially Palau.  Indeed, at a UN side event this week co-hosted by the NYC Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, Palau’s Ambassador Otto reiterated his plea for mental health services and priorities, noting that it is not only in places like Aleppo and Sana’a where services are needed, but also in the midst of our own hometowns.  Otto recognizes the value of spiritual resources in mental health, but also acknowledges the longer-term threats to peace and development that present themselves when youth and families are abandoned to cope with the impacts of trauma and mental illness that, if anything, are clearly still on the rise, still represent a distressing “shock” to a collective, sustainable future.

In a not-so-charming opening gambit, the new US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley began her tenure here with a threat – that the US would be “taking names” of states that do not “watch the back” of the US and its interests.   We’d like to suggest that the “names” that Ambassador Haley should take first are those of agencies and governments that deliberately inflict – through policy and practice — traumatic damage on children and youth, thereby creating deprivations of mental health that will impede “sustaining peace” efforts long past the tenure of any of our UN offices – or national administrations.

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Cooperation Nations:  Creating Circles of Many Winners, Dr. Robert Zuber

22 Jan

The only thing that will redeem [human] kind is cooperation. Bertrand Russell

There are days in our office (as I suspect in most others) when dissonance overwhelms clarity, when it seems as though we are hell bent on confirming the darkest, murkiest corners of our human character.  While it appears that Gambia will finally achieve political transition, ominous clouds are descending over Cameroon, a country and people for which we have a special fondness and which appears, more and more, to be giving in to the stresses of Boko Haram, refugees from its neighbors, and the vestiges of a protracted bi-lingual struggle that is now quite out in the open and warns of more ugliness to come.

And then there was Friday’s spectacle in Washington, DC featuring a new president with his own dark and at times insulting message; a day that also called attention to a violent minority within what were mostly peaceful protestors, a minority whose own angry message is unlikely to turn down any of the heat that most in what is now referred to as “the winner’s circle” of governance seem disinterested to turn down themselves.

Up the road in New York, I sit daily in “safe” multilateral space, full of people whose task it is to create and endorse norms that are intended to impact behaviors within and beyond national borders.  On the US inauguration day alone, the Security Council found common ground with the Economic Community for West Africa on ways to ease what is now a full-fledged political transition in Gambia.   The General Assembly is close to finding common ground on a conference that will endorse protocols for “safe, orderly and regular migration” with a clear priority on “effective participation of all relevant stakeholders” from scientists to migrants themselves. And in ECOSOC, the Forum on Forests cemented details on a document that will highlight the critical role that forests must continue to play in addressing climate-related impacts.

There are holes that can be “poked” in all three of these initiatives, including states running away from the idea that the regulations they are creating on migration governance have any sort of legal force. But the fact remains that none of these would have even a fraction of the global support they enjoy if not for the sometimes torturous but mostly welcome convening and norm-building power of the UN.

With dramatic changes in Washington, that power will surely and soon be put to the test.  Despite the fact that the US has long been the de facto decision maker at the UN, despite all the deference to US interests which most UN diplomats are encouraged to display, new leadership in Washington seems convinced that the UN will need to sing even louder for its supper — deep-throated odes to the needs and whims of US leadership — or risk losing its place at the dinner table.

There have been US-orchestrated challenges previously, mostly behind the scenes, to the fiscal and political integrity of the UN.   And frankly not all those challenges have been without merit.   It is difficult to assess the current threat level at this early stage, one which could well result in more or less the status quo or facilitate a highly dramatic move out of New York with US funding completely severed,  at least until the next electoral cycle.  Multilateralism was never the strongest interest of many of those who bothered to vote in the US election this time around, and there was nothing in yesterday’s inaugural speech that indicated that such dismissive indifference to the UN, at least at high official levels, will abate any time soon.

Thankfully, the UN that I see up close every day is better equipped than perhaps it has ever been to handle this challenge.  More governments are taking the lead on policy, grasping connections across sectors and finding ways to contribute to the global commons and not only reap its capacity-building benefits. More governments are stepping up with ideas, with funds, and with inspiration needed to cooperatively tackle global problems, some of which have become nearly overwhelming in their scope.

Let’s be clear:   While the UN still too often privileges protocol over insight and bureaucracy over character, we have what it takes in this space to meet our global development and climate obligations.    We have what it takes to create safe and orderly conditions for persons fleeing conflict or drought, or merely seeking a safer environment for their children.  We have what it takes to end our reliance on weapons of mass destruction, to reduce threats from pandemics, to solve conflicts upstream so that we don’t have to unravel mass atrocities downstream.

There is enough talent and resolve in and around the UN to help the human race get through this rough, distracted and dangerous patch — with or without the largesse or approval of any single state and its temporary government.

And thankfully, the potency of our multilateral institutions is mirrored, even surpassed, by the potency of global citizens. The extraordinary, hopeful and non-violent marches that swamped the streets of Los Angeles, Washington DC and New York on Saturday and which resonated with many thousands of other women (and some men) marching in settings from Mexico and Australia to South Dakota and Missouri, are the latest, forceful indication that there will be no turning back, there must be no turning back, on women’s full participation, on respect of persons, on gender justice.

But as there is no turning back, there must also be no turning away.   For every woman of determination marching on Saturday, there is surely at least one woman who might feel slighted, or ridiculed; who might be discouraged from participating in marches in part ABOUT participation perhaps because she doesn’t toe the line on progressive orthodoxy; because her views on what makes women empowered don’t jive with the ideational and behavioral expectations of the political and cultural celebrities who seem always to find their way in front of the cameras.

If the myopic grimness characteristic of Friday’s inauguration in DC is to be countered effectively – and the Saturday marches were a hugely hopeful beginning — it will require an expanding tent, what we at the UN like to refer to as “a broader range of stakeholder engagements.”  To counter threats from hostile officials, whether grounded in ideological paranoia or garden-variety misogyny, our mostly like-minded movements – no matter how large and vocal — are unlikely to be sufficient to the current spate of threats, even if those groupings are already better equipped to fill the streets with legitimate concern than the sources of the threats themselves.

The pathway to the change that women are rightly looking to sustain and grow lies beyond elections and their victors, beyond celebrity endorsers and well-worn messaging.  Indeed, it probably also lies beyond the women marchers themselves.  Much like the hopeful agendas endorsed this week at the UN this change does not depend as much as we might think on the largesse or “permission” of any particular government.  But it does depend on our willingness to push the envelope on participation, doing more to ensure that all who seek to share a contributing, even cooperating voice will have that voice respected and, to the highest degree possible, integrated.

We at the UN must work much harder to honor our promises to include all states and their constituents in global policy. On the domestic side, we would also do well to keep our doors – and our ears – open to the voices of those many, still-marginal women and their still-marginal neighbors, persons tempted to brood in the darkest corners of our national psyches in part because they feel, rightly or wrongly, barred from access to brighter spaces.

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A Pound of Cure: The new UNSG Seeks Upstream Alternatives to Downstream Crises, Dr. Robert Zuber

15 Jan

Let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.  Maya Angelou

The Security Council was a bit more festive than usual this week as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and five new members of the Council – Sweden (as president), Italy, Ethiopia, Bolivia and Kazakhstan — made their first presentation in chambers under their current status.

All five states have so far handled their duties with aplomb, especially Sweden which was thrust into the presidency on its very first day back in the Council. Bolivia, taking over from an often-combative Venezuela, was equally feisty, criticizing the large Council powers – in this instance especially the US – for playing unfairly, largely through their manipulation of both Council working methods and policy outcomes.   We always appreciate a concern for fairness and hope that Bolivia can help find the clarity and tact needed to bring the non-permanent members together to address working methods and power imbalances long in need of correction.

But on this day the stage belonged to newly minted SG Guterres who has not only hit the ground running, but as outgoing US Ambassador Power noted, he is also running hard.   And he appears to be heading in a direction different from most of his predecessors – not only keen to address crises, as he is now attempting to do in Cyprus, but even more to keep crises from happening in the first place.

Guterres’ “upstream” approach is fully in keeping with directions advocated by Global Action and many other NGOs.  As he himself noted, while preventing conflict is not always straightforward, it is clearly more cost effective than rebuilding failed states after conflict – costs related to the repair of damaged infrastructure as well as healing for traumatized families who have already watched their intimate spaces and the communities beyond crumble around them.

The UN has, as many speakers in the Security Council on this day acknowledged, a full toolkit to address conflict and crisis at earlier stages.  What we do not have, as Guterres himself advised, is a reliable, robust early warning mechanism that would allow us to engage potential adversaries through re-energized tools including diplomacy, mediation and good offices. What we also need, in our own view, is a Secretariat more committed to over-ride political obstacles and bring fresh and actionable information to the Security Council at a point when preventive measures are most likely to bear fruit.

Even with that, conflict prevention remains a high and daunting bar. Two days after the Guterres statement, the Council met again for an update on conflict in the Lake Chad basin, a long-festering crisis defined by Boko Haram atrocities, one that is constantly evolving as climate change, drought and other social and environmental factors destroy agricultural and other livelihoods, inflame local tensions, and create massive flows of displaced persons for reasons that go beyond terror-related threats.

It is not an overstatement, as noted in the Council by the Nigerian Ambassador, that a “shrinking” Lake Chad has become a “tinderbox” for regional conflict, an area (as shared by Senegal) characterized by significant “resource depletion” that lies at the core of regional instability.   Add in the presence of trafficking networks in arms, narcotics and persons (cited by Italy’s Ambassador Cardi) as well as high child mortality rates in regional camps for the internally displaced (as described by UN “Relief Chief” Stephen O’Brien), and you have the makings of a protracted crisis that only becomes more difficult to resolve whether Council calls for “action” by Ukraine’s Ambassador and others are heeded or not.

Given the deep severity of longstanding crises such as Lake Chad, you would think that the notion of preventive maintenance would have wide resonance for diplomats, in part because their own lives are veritably punctuated with preventive obligations.   We feed and inoculate children we love so they can grow strong and better resist disease.  We educate children so that they can achieve decent employment and self-sufficiency. We service our vehicles so that they won’t leave our families stranded at the sides of highways. We conduct boiler maintenance in our homes so that we are not without heat on the coldest winter days. We put coats on our children because we don’t want them to get sick and because we don’t want to have to take care of sick children.

Waiting until things go horribly wrong before we act is widely considered to be grossly irresponsible – to ourselves and to those for whom we are actually responsible.   This principle applies in virtually every area of life – except at times inside our large multi-lateral institutions.   In these places we authorize massive funding to rebuild societies that did not need to face destruction in the first place.  We seek to rehabilitate so many thousands of victims who did not need to suffer in the first place. We develop a formidable infrastructure needed to provide humanitarian relief to persons subject to unspeakable cruelty the causes for which were anything but inevitable.

Unfortunately, in the realm of international diplomacy, prevention is not as simple as getting children vaccinated, keeping insurance policies updated or changing the oil in our car’s crankcase.  We can be more “preventive” in our personal lives in part because of the extra degrees of control that we exercise in that realm such as when determining how our children eat and learn.  In the realm of diplomacy, however prevention runs up against a Charter conundrum (not to mention UN culture) – that states maintain rights to territorial integrity and sovereign equality until states choose otherwise or until circumstances on the ground are sufficiently dire and compelling enough to warrant more focused international attention.  In other words, the presumption of authority lies with states to resolve problems before other states (or the UN itself) can claim a vested interest in so doing.

This, as indicated by Guterres, is a culture requiring both acknowledgment and refreshment.  If states remain free to refuse guidance and assistance (from the UN and other states as well as from the wisdom of their own citizens) right up to the moment when they are forced to confront national versions of the “gates of hell,” then our “love of prevention before illness” will remain as an aspiration for poets but essentially beyond the reach of diplomats. We can’t make states accept that “love” no matter how sincere it might actually be.

And as a number states will readily attest, it is not always so “sincere.”  Among other examples within this institution, we have rarely displayed the honesty and care to do a “full cost accounting” of armed conflict and other crises.   If we had to sit with and dwell upon our massive and often ineffective expenditures related to our current “conflict management” preoccupations–including the proliferating armaments that we tolerate in too many security environments, weapons that generate much trauma and distrust but little in the way of sustainable employment or sustainable peace — we would surely hesitate more than we do now before authorizing coercive responses that are rarely timely let alone particularly “loving.”

Perhaps this is indicative of what prevention dictates in multilateral settings; perhaps this is the culture change that can make “up-stream” engagements more productive and hopefully more likely. We can embrace future opportunities (which the new SG will hopefully provide) for sober, honest and respectful sit-downs with ourselves and our communities of policy regarding our expensive and unsustainable habits of response — the weapons we churn out but also the peacebuilding actions we postpone and the diplomatic tools we leave dormant in our toolbox, all of which make recourse to armaments (and other coercive measures) more inevitable than helpful.

If SG Guterres is to succeed in his efforts at policy redirection, if the UN is to remain politically relevant and fiscally viable in the face of evolving conflict threats, then we can no longer accept the crushing expense associated with sluggish action; neither can we ignore our patterns of irresponsibility towards those we presumably care about, patterns arising from our failure to engage threats at their most propitious moments as well as the failure to keep our most effective tools of diplomatic engagement close at hand.

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Policy Scrabble:  Words that reveal; Words that bind, Dr. Robert Zuber

8 Jan

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” — Mark Twain

The UN has had a quiet week.  Perhaps the most notable event was the formal transition to a new leadership team headed by SG Guterres and, in the Security Council, a bit of relief that the Kabila government in the troubled DR Congo has seen the wisdom (or at least uttered the words) of agreeing to a political transition including (relatively) expedited presidential and parliamentary elections in that country.

In a Presidential Statement issued in the Council by Sweden’s Amb. Skoog, DR Congo leaders are urged to continue on the path “to organize peaceful, credible, inclusive and timely presidential, national and provincial legislative elections no later than December 2017, leading to a peaceful transfer of power.”  President Kabila might well pursue this request.  He may also find new “reasons” to stall.  To that latter end, he might even invent a security crisis (beyond the many we already know about) or make some “trumped up” (pun intended) claim about the unreliability of MONUSCO and other UN partners to honor their own security or development promises.

In the gaps between declaration and intention lies a conundrum for the Security Council, indeed for the entire UN system. We are an institution of words — we make statements, give speeches, make presentations, write reports and resolutions.  Words and more words, statements made year after year, at times where little but the page heading has changed, words that bear little resemblance to circumstances on the ground, and which are rarely challenged by those who might well know better. Part of the muted skepticism of diplomats which is not uncommon across the UN, stems from so many discernible disconnects between the words we utter and the actions (if any) we eventually and collectively take.

It is frustrating, in and out of the UN, to see what has become of words.  Political cultures in the UN and in many member states seem to have lost their moorings when it comes to straight talk, not only the validity of the “facts” we cite, but in the contexts we provide for the judgments we make.  In this, “truth” (for all its contemporary imprecision) is more than simply disregarded; indeed in some political circles it is actually ridiculed as “old school” in a manner not unlike the social approbation cast on users of flip phones or cassette players.   The “truth,”, as we note often and with increasing urgency, is now simply what you can convince others is true.  And a “lie” is simply something someone is not prepared to hear, especially if it is about themselves and/or their policy choices.  Shrinking standards.  Flimsy evidence.  Thin Skin.  Ignoring the people paid to know about facts and contexts essential to finding the “right words.”

To the persuasive go the spoils.

As we wish we never had to write again, we have lost the discursive dimension of words, that is, the deployment of words to reveal and relate.  Words for us have become like what we used to call “sweet talk” a way to get someone to part with something you want rather than a means for establishing and building connection.  We are often content now, it seems, to be merely sellers and buyers, looking for a good deal – in business or politics – but having fewer and fewer convictions of a world we want to live in beyond the material plane, and even fewer notions of whose lives are impacted by the convictions we hold (or don’t).  Indeed, “convictions” themselves are becoming just another means to massage an audience into believing that someone “cares” even in those (thankfully still) uncommon instances when there is not a drop of evidence to support the presence of a caring impulse.

This phenomenon is neither new nor confined to the current spate of populist currents grabbing headlines around the world.  We in the more elite centers of influence actually cashed in many of our linguistic chips a while ago.  We made bold promises to people from our lofty perches and then smirked at those same people when they fell for our pitch.  We created and advertised technology that promises connection but is actually closer to a full-on selling machine.  We now often text people instead of calling them in part because the brevity of texting lends itself to the making of demands and the establishing of preferences.  On the phone (admittedly not my favorite device), people can hesitate or even object to our plans and strategies.  Negotiations might be needed.  We might have to explain ourselves.   Nope.  Not happening.

When we speak, too often it is to manipulate outcomes.  We also speak to be accounted for, which we often see in Security Council as protocol demands that all 15 members insist on weighing in on a particular security issue when perhaps half offer real substance to contribute to policy going forward.   Less and less do we speak to reveal, to tear away the shroud of politics and let people – even high-end diplomats – glimpse the mistakes that we lament, the circumstances of threat that keep us awake at night, the worries we have that maybe – just maybe – we’re in over our collective heads this time.

President Kabila, egged on by advisers and UN officials, might be sincere in his desire to effect a peaceful political transition for DR Congo.  From what we know about corruption and spoilers in that country, as well as cross-country tensions of a political and ethnic nature, the challenges of transition will be formidable even if the hopefulness of Kabila’s words is to be matched by the sincerity of his transition strategies.

But what if that isn’t the case?  What if this promise of transition turns out to be just another smokescreen, just another delaying tactic, just another bait and switch to throw political opponents and the international community off their respective games?  How will we know, and do we have what it takes to discern what would be yet another gross political insincerity in a manner timely enough to divert its course?

The fear of my office is that at some level, perhaps unconsciously, we have become so accustomed to empty phrases and broken promises that we have forgotten that there is another way, another objective for the words which currently fill our world to brimming, another path to contribute to holding others –even our leaders, even our inner circles – accountable to rhetorical commitments.

The populist movements flaring up around the world are not merely skeptical of “truth” in some self-authorizing and self-defeating fashion; some abandon “truth” in large measure because it was first abandoned around them – democracies bought and sold; media filling the airwaves with escapist nonsense and then telling only (the easy) half of any story; educators cultivating youth with skills for non-existent jobs but not for their very-much-existent lives; an economic system that aggressively disrespects the needs of workers so that the super-rich can continue their own shrouded competitions.

Is it any wonder that so many people have stepped away from civic life, preferring rooting interests and reality television to investments of themselves in still-grand civic projects?    I think not.  Indeed, if we are serious about addressing this malaise in our civic culture we must first avoid the temptation to do in political and diplomatic life what the Wall Street crowd did after the 2008 collapse – keep our heads down for a time and then go back to the familiar, insulated and, in the case of the mega-investors, lucrative business at hand:  with “sweet” words to match, of course.

This won’t work for us.   Not this time.  If people are to come to believe again in we who deign to manage institutions of culture, governance and economy, we must adopt softer, less judgmental and more straightforward communications, even about our greatest policy concerns and hardest policy challenges. We must insist on honoring the promises embedded in the rhetoric of all our leaders. And we must work harder to find the right words to let people know –many times over and despite a generation of appearances to the contrary — that we believe in them as well.

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Survive and Advance: Ode to a New Year of Living Dangerously, Dr. Robert Zuber

31 Dec

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Every year in the United States, we witness a March sports ritual that many refer to as “madness” — a College basketball tournament to determine a “national champion.”

The tournament itself is relentless – many close games that push athletes (and their fans) to the brink of anxiety and exhaustion.  Teams don’t worry about margins of victory; merely about guaranteeing the circumstances that allow them to play again and hopefully play better.  “Survive and advance.”

As we enter 2017, this basketball mantra seems apt for a world that has endured many shocks –more than a few self-inflicted – and in which we should mostly be grateful for any opportunity to “advance” and improve.

It’s not as though 2016 was without its value:  At a personal level, couples fell in love or welcomed babies into the world; others were given a new chance for life by skilled surgeons or by compassionate citizens welcoming persons fleeing conflict.  Still others inched closer to their educational or professional dreams which, we can only hope, have positive implications for societies beyond the limits of self-interest.

At the levels of national and UN multi-lateral policy, 2016 had its own hopeful moments, including broad international attention on the dimensions of oceans governance; regulations to better protect the rights and safety millions of displaced persons; renewed commitments to solve data and funding obstacles to fulfillment of the 2030 development goals; good-faith efforts to address the security and health needs of persons victimized by ISIL and other insurgencies in places like Fallujah; agreements and elections that hold out the promise of lasting peace in places like Somalia, Lebanon and especially Colombia; shifts in the framework for humanitarian assistance that nuance responses to need with commitments to building more resilient communities.

But in other ways, we seem hell-bent to confirm the predictions of the famed physicist Stephen Hawking who has been making ever-more worrisome predictions about our planetary fate and our current, expanding universe of risk factors akin to dark, gathering clouds of an impending mega-storm.

We know the horrific settings that keep some of us up at night – Sana’a and Aleppo, Mosul and Juba.  We witness the populist movements that lash out at unresponsive elites.  We note with concern threats by states to modernize nuclear arsenals and cancel their reservations to serious multilateral discussions on climate health.  We can barely get some adversaries to sit and talk, let alone talk about pathways to peace.

For some time now, Hawking has urged some out-of-the-norm planning to address the long-term survival of our species but also shorter-term existential threats tied to what he often refers to as unresolved “human aggression.” Such a stubborn and deep-seated trait may have been indispensable in our earliest human iterations but has clearly outlived its survival value and now, in many and various forms, has inspired and manufactured new and multiple challenges to our very existence.

Unfortunately, modern iterations of human predation have taken more insidious forms, from the use of rape as a tactic in war to economic policies that deliberately ignore gross and growing inequalities in power and access. Hawking cites these and other threats, warning that “the frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future.” “We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully,” he notes.

Care and judgment are not words that readily come to mind when describing our current political and economic circumstances.   If we are to do more than hide out from the worst “madness” of impending storms, more than merely hoping to survive the current shocks, we will need to care more and judge better to ensure we can “advance” together.

Collectively and individually, this means resisting the temptation to revert to our more predatory legacies.  It means being more vigilant about warnings of impending conflicts that at some future point we will lose the ability to halt.  It means committing to stay at the table of all discussions with implications for the global interest, even if they do not seem immediately germane to the national interest.  It means promoting accountabilities for values and not only for profits. And it means finding more effective ways and means to demilitarize – recognizing that the volume, sophistication and costs associated with weapons developed, manufactured, modernized, shipped abroad, and eventually leaked into unstable political environments constitutes a grave and un-affordable stain on our global prospects.

There is, for me and for many others, a melancholy that sets in as our western calendar flips: another year of life now fully “in the books;” a year we can never recapture and in which we cannot honestly say that we did enough to improve our collective condition, to seize our respective opportunities.

Some of us are simply running out of years.

Regardless of our mortality status, there are so many contributions in this New Year that we can all make in our various contexts, contributions that can help us collectively advance towards a future that is defined more by sustainable well-being and less by the species-implicated threats that so often consume our remaining reserves of compassion and kindness.  We all have opportunities to promote healthier, more connected living as a contribution to the world within and beyond local boundaries.

There may be no time better than this New Year’s weekend to embrace our piece of a collective resolve to locate and seize those opportunities.

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Away in a Manger:  The UN Sends a Christmas Message to the Displaced, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Dec

It’s Christmas Eve morning and on a table near my computer is a dusty wooden crèche, a replicated space apparently large enough to hold a holy family, a couple of onlookers, a barn animal or two and some early-arriving dignitaries.  The crèche is guarded by a host of other creatures courtesy of my many trips abroad – a camel, a hippo and a variety of cats – lots of cats.  Atop the crèche is a cross tied together with palms from the previous Lenten Season – a reminder of where this particular birth, indeed all of our births are ultimately headed.

In part because we are so desperate for vindication of our optimisms, we have somehow managed to sentimentalize the manger event.  Oh sure it must have been cold.   And it really isn’t anyone’s fault that there was no room at the Inn.  And the travel to Bethlehem couldn’t have been THAT treacherous.  And the manger doesn’t appear to be THAT uncomfortable.

On an on it goes, trivializing the scene, apply the “Hollywood gloss” to the lives of persons who were in essence displaced.   Persons with few tangible assets.   Riding a donkey across treacherous pathways while coping with the uncertainties of an immanent birth event.   Fleeing violence and rumors of violence for a mostly uncertain future. Showing up at an Inn with a keeper who might well have had every reason to believe that a cleaner, higher class of folks would soon arrive to purchase what were probable (still) empty beds, folks ready to eat and drink without bringing with them the drama and danger that so often accompanied birth in those times.

The manger is not a film set, nor should it constitute an occasion to celebrate the holy baby while ignoring the unholy circumstances.  This was hard, harder than most everyone who will bother to read this missive will have ever experienced in their lives.

There are millions of people this very day who also find themselves on the treacherous move – fleeing conflict they had no role in starting, walking many miles without being able to quench their thirst or reassure their children, bearing the load of the most essential provisions while, in some instances, carrying within them the multiple “weights” of a new life.

For some, the actual manger from this Christmas season would be a relief:  a donkey to ride when feet are weary, some hay to provide minimal comfort while waiting along hostile borders, the hope that the same Innkeeper who provided the manger space might also show some mercy and provide nourishment for the new mother.

For many of the millions of displaced who are today on the move, such mercy is hard to come by.  Despite the misery of their often torturous journeys, they encounter closed and closely guarded borders, hostile governments and their electorates, and sometimes very cold hearts.

Too many of us nowadays wouldn’t let the displaced get close enough to knock on our doors let alone to direct them to a relatively comfortable and safe landing.

For all its warts, the UN is taking the needs of the displaced seriously.   The UN has not always done enough to stop the bombing or alleviate the poverty and drought that drive so much global displacement, but neither has it minimized the immense physical suffering and psychological trauma that displacement occasions.  In resolution after resolution, the UN has urgently highlighted the multiple burdens of displacement – from physical deprivation and hostile countries of destination to increased vulnerabilities to criminal elements, including and especially from traffickers.

One example of this concern was this week in a (much too small) UN conference room within which the UN Office for Drugs and Crimes’ 2016 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons was launched.  The event was sponsored by France and included UNODC’s director Yuri Fedotov and the Yazidi activist Nadia Murad.  It also included many states affirming commitments made in aforementioned resolutions and through the New York Declaration, a seminal document that outlines challenges and obligations towards the displaced by both states and diverse, additional stakeholders.

There were many insights from this event, one of which is that states are being more thoughtful about the particular vulnerabilities of displaced persons, especially to traffickers — those soliciting victims for forced prostitution, for child labor, even for child soldiers.  It was Mexico that most clearly acknowledged the preponderance of “push and pull” factors that promote displacement noting that, for all the attention that the displaced now rightly receive, both raw numbers and vulnerabilities continue to rise.  Such discouraging data, as noted by UNODC director Fedotov, must inspire us to more thoughtful, comprehensive commitments to the victims of displacement, including as noted by Iraq, commitments to help those seeking to return to their homes to do so.

One of the longer-term lessons of Christmas for me has been that in settings such as the manger-turned–delivery-room — settings of uncertainty and discomfort, settings of weariness and fear — a child can be born bearing the capacity to literally change the world.

On this Christmas, along many militarized borders, in many makeshift refugee camps, on many cramped crafts that are anything but sea-worthy, there are children about to leave the womb, children who also bear the capacity to make change and bring hope in our world.  Given the violent, melting state of our planet and the unbridled confusion and anger of so many of its current inhabitants, we would be foolish and grossly negligent to do anything other than welcome and nurture their promise.

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Culture Club:  Non-Permanent Members Impact Security Council Customs, Dr. Robert Zuber

18 Dec

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Photo by Rick McKee

As 2016 draws to a close, we make our annual review of the Security Council’s “migrating” non-permanent members.  Soon we will lose Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and Venezuela, while welcoming new members Bolivia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Italy (in a shared-term arrangement with the Netherlands) and Sweden.

Each of these current non-permanent members has left their mark.  Spain has done noteworthy steering of Council activities on Iran and DPRK non-proliferation, and has worked closely with the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate and other UN entities to develop thoughtful, full-spectrum responses to threats of violent extremism.  Angola for its part has been especially helpful in drawing the Council, the African Union and regional bodies into a more collaborative, trusting, functional partnership to promote peace and security across a still-unstable continent.  Malaysia joined the Council in the difficult aftermath (and subsequent investigations) of the downing of MH 17, has been a voice (including at times a woman’s voice) of passion and perspective on issues of Children and Armed Conflict, and has also done solid work on sanctions to help support Libya’s often torturous transitions.   Venezuela has taken strong stands in support of self-governing territories, for restraint regarding coercive interference (including South Sudan sanctions) imposed on smaller states by larger ones, and for an end to P-5 (mostly US-led in its view) backroom manipulations of Council procedures and working methods.

All have had impact on the often disabling “culture” of the Security Council, but New Zealand has been a special and welcome case.  From the earnest and wise declarations of Ambassador Jim McLay to more measured guidance from current Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen, New Zealand has understood better than almost all states serving on the Council in the 10+ years we’ve been paying attention, that the limitations plaguing the Security Council are, indeed, fundamentally “cultural” in nature.

New Zealand, which has rightly prided itself on its “fair and straightforward” SC approach, does not need me (or anyone) putting words in their mouths.  And yet we can safely say that the country has invested significant energy in determining the best ways for it to be “relevant” in matters such as Middle East peace that are so clearly dominated by large state interests and deterred by legacy working methods more appropriate to the century in which they were birthed than the current one.   Time and again, often thanklessly, New Zealand has placed itself in the middle of squabbling colleagues in an attempt to break negotiating impasses and clarify policy options. Time and again, in a manner that is clearheaded but not preachy, it has reminded Council members of their responsibilities as well as the consequences to lives and reputations when those responsibilities – as is too often the case – are delayed or denied.

Some have wondered why we persist in this ritual of elevating the accomplishments of rotating states in a Council that remains in almost complete (if acrimonious) control of the Permanent Five.  The answer comes about in part as the result of sitting in many hundreds of Council meetings over the years with our interns and fellows, all of whom were honored to be present in that space, but most of whom have been baffled by the extent to which such an august chamber often results in mediocre, compromised responses to compelling global threats.  Here are just some of the questions (paraphrased) they have posed (and that we have subsequently discussed) during our time together:

  • Why do Council members so often treat each other like strangers in formal and even non-formal sessions (a question raised regularly by Ambassador Rycroft of the UK as well)?
  • Why do Council members read statements that so rarely reference the content of statements delivered either by the invited briefers or by other Council members?
  • Why don’t Council members consider crafting more joint statements and fewer individual ones?
  • Why don’t Council members dispense with ritualized “appreciations” for briefings and use the time to highlight items in those briefings that have influenced their own policy priorities?
  • Why does the Council hold general “debates” when no debating actually takes place?
  • Why are end-of-the-month, “open” sessions on Council achievements and working methods apparently optional instead of mandatory?
  • Why are Council meetings so often lacking in reflection and commitment to careful, honest assessments of peacekeeping mandates and other policy decisions that (often) haven’t worked out as well as we had hoped? What are members learning that can improve effectiveness?
  • Why are some Council members reluctant to reference (let alone engage) other relevant UN bodies — including the Peacebuilding Commission – in helping to discharge its mandated peace and security responsibilities?
  • Why isn’t there some type of “alumni association” of recent past non-permanent members who can serve as a guide to new non-permanent members and as another experienced resource on culture and working methods for the Council as a whole?
  • Why do Council members allow some sessions to be concluded by often acerbic and self-serving comments from states such as Sudan and Syria rather than by more contextual, perhaps even hopeful, summary comments emanating from the Council presidency?
  • Why is “veto restraint” such a popular reform option for so many states but less so the reforms to our system of early warning and special political missions that could stem violence in its early stages such that vetoes might not even become an issue?
  • Why is it that some Council members are so comfortable with increased levels of coercive peacekeeping but are seemingly less interested in assessing the diverse (sometimes quite negative) impacts and implications of coercive response?

There is much frustration among member states and the global public regarding stalemates in the Council that impede responses to tragedies, such as Aleppo, that are splashed across our phone and TV screens.   Indeed, there are many days when our own twitter feed is inundated with digital “screams” directed towards the UN and more specifically the Council to “Do Something!!”  When the “screams” are not heeded, the blaming begins.  It’s the Russians in Syria, the US in Yemen, the French in Central African Republic: members and others casting a wide net of blame, though rarely accepting blame in return.

This blame dodging, too, is part of the “culture” of the Council that the non-permanent members must continue to interrogate.   This is the culture for which ideas like “veto restraint” are only partial solutions. This is the culture that New Zealand has so capably identified and on the basis of which they (and other states such as Uruguay) have endured many frustrating and even awkward moments.

And these (aforementioned) questions are ones that reasonable global constituents –including many who don’t have hours to spend studying the Council up close – have the right to have answered.

In this time of populist political transitions, when trust levels in multilateralism’s security effectiveness are too low and about to take another significant hit from Washington, it is incumbent upon all members – including this new group of influential states taking their seats in January — to ensure that the effectiveness of the Council does not continue to be undermined by its operational ethos. The world’s most important chamber deserves a culture to match.

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The Sounds of Silence:  The Current UN DSG Makes an Enduring Appeal on Human Rights

11 Dec

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. Desmond Tutu

As the holiday season approaches, the UN is racing to a year-end finish line characterized by significant transitions and activity across all three UN pillars.  The activity has been intense, ranging from a new General Assembly resolution to help resolve the Syria carnage and efforts to sharpen our financial and communications tools to combat terrorism, to discussions on how to improve global taxation policies and ensure political participation for migrants and refugees.

So, too, have been the transitions.  On December 12, the UN community will witness the oath of office administered to António Guterres as the next UN Secretary General.   And, if current rumors are to be believed, the Deputy Secretary General post will soon be offered to Amina Mohammed of Nigeria, a woman of great substance who worked tirelessly in her previous UN iteration to bring the Sustainable Development Goals to fruition.  Guterres, the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and Mohammed will hopefully make a formidable team, especially regarding core UN responsibilities for sustainable development, humanitarian assistance and refugee protection.

These two will step in for the current team of SG Ban Ki-moon and DSG Jan Eliasson whose joint UN legacy will surely be assessed at length over the coming years.  The departure of SG Ban has garnered most of the UN’s attention to date and so I would like to focus a bit here on some recent contributions of the Deputy Secretary General, a man in possession of one of the most storied careers ever to have played out within UN confines, a career that has greatly shaped how the UN understands its responsibilities to promote human rights and build sustainable peace.

For the past 4 + years, my various groups of diverse interns and fellows have often commented on the DSG’s special appeal.  He uses his voice to full effect, not as a battering ram, but as a way of reminding delegations and NGOs why we’re here in this policy space, why it matters that we’re here.  He understands the need to inspire as well as to contextualize – helping all of us to recognize that our lofty ideals and values cannot be taken for granted as we so often do, cannot become the equivalent of tiny candies we sprinkle on top of an ice cream cone that is slowly melting before our eyes.

My office colleagues have also understood that the DSG is much more than a cheerleader for the UN Charter that he claims to always carry in his coat pocket.  Eliasson well understands the complex and anxious times that we find ourselves in, citing in recent remarks at NYC’s Roosevelt House the “fear factor” that must be forthrightly addressed, the anxiety that too often results in “us vs. them” scenarios and the suggestion of quick, blame-filled solutions to problems that are clearly more systemic in nature.

We acknowledge that the rhetoric of human rights can and has been misapplied by many –by those elites unconcerned by violations beyond their neighborhoods and media of choice; by those who overly-personalize rights to mean “doing what I want to do” –mostly without consequence; by those rightly passionate about the protection of their own rights but indifferent to those suffering from other discriminations.   We ourselves know too many people who utilize the language of “rights” in much the same way that children in my old neighborhood once used the language of “cooties” – creating artificial distance based on fears real and imaginary rather than pathways to human communion.   As Eliasson noted recently at Roosevelt House, we must all recommit to creating a trustworthy, positive narrative about our common humanity, a narrative that has clearly been misplaced amidst our pervasive social grievances, cultural distractions and populist passions.

If the current wave of populist politics has taught us anything – and the jury on this is still out – it is that we have not suitably “sold” populations on a “common” system of values, laws and commitments that ostensibly has the best interests of all at heart.  These persons have not been “sold” in part because we have not always lived up to the high expectations of policy leadership.  Despite the efforts of the DSG and many others, we have not properly supported the UN’s human rights pillar nor highlighted its many practical achievements; we have bestowed selective outrage on horrific tragedies like Aleppo while keeping our policy distance from other horrors, such as in Yemen.   We have reached deeply into some communities desperately needing a dignity boost while overlooking that dignity is a common aspiration, a common need, a common pursuit.  If populists are suspicious of our “universal” values, as the DSG has maintained they are, it is in part because we caretakers of those values have been careless about their application – “politically correct” perhaps, but much too political in any event.

Human dignity, as Eliasson affirmed recently at a UN side event hosted by his native Sweden, is indeed that irreplaceable “starting point” for our peace and development commitments.  If we cannot find the means and the will to hold each other in higher regard; if we cannot uphold those facing particular discriminations without also rushing to demonize those allegedly doing the discriminating; if we cannot speak up for the rights of strangers in the same way we support those in our tightest social circles, then prospects for peace among nations and peoples, as well as for sustainable human development, will remain in serious jeopardy.

These current “trying times” will not be resolved solely by getting our accounts in order or through pious proclamations of universal values.   We will all need to raise our game: to accompany others on their search for dignity; to stand up and speak out for others in times of great need; to advocate for fair access to education, economics and politics; and above all to pay more attention to each other such that – as Eliasson recently urged – when we come across something gone wrong, we can and will “act early.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the fundamental document defining the UN community’s human rights commitments, remains as a powerful testimony to our common responsibility to each other.  But as Eliasson noted at Roosevelt House, the ills to which the Declaration points are “largely still with us.”  If we want that world envisioned by the Declaration, we will all need to sound off and sound wisely.  The “silent treatment” is simply not a remedy adequate for what now threatens us.

Our new SG Guterres, building on the longstanding efforts of Eliasson and so many others, has already proclaimed that “human dignity will be the core of my work.”  But if dignity is to prevail, this will take more than the SG, more even than fair and competent international institutions.  This will require all of us to replace the “sounds of silence” with voices of compassion, attentiveness and care.  As with the UN and its new leadership, this is likely to become our defining moment as well.

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Night Vision:  An Advent Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

4 Dec

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Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.  Anne Frank

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.  Edgar Allan Poe

This reflection is dedicated to Robert Aspeslagh, perhaps my greatest mentor, who passed away this fall in Amsterdam.  Robert was a thoughtful student of humanity and our always messy and sometimes mean-spirited politics.  He was also a painter who, like great Dutch artists of the past, explored the wealth of human wisdom lodged in the metaphorical spaces between darkness and light.

There are many reasons why Advent is my favorite liturgical season, coming as it does near the end of what in many years is a dark, gloomy and wind-swept fall.

Advent conveys the seasonal obligation to prepare for a Christmas celebration that is hopefully about more than conspicuous consumption and strained family relations.  It also expresses a strong and pervasive longing – calling out to Emmanuel for relief from fear and despair; dreaming of that time when peace is finally welcome to permeate our hearts and define our politics; doubting and then overcoming doubt that we can right our collective ship before it becomes permanently disabled on rocks of our own making.

The image that I have always carried around with me during Advent is that of a young adult, female or male, sitting with some sense of urgency on the edge of a cliff on a crisp, clear night, moon and stars casting light both subtle and mesmerizing.   There is vast darkness in this image, but also spectacle; the spectacle of the “heavens” we rarely bother to seek out any longer, an awe-inspiring display that provides a soft but sufficient light once our eyes figure out how to adjust to its peculiar intensity.

Of course, there are many fall nights — even in biblical lands — that are crisp but not clear; when clouds hover, blocking out the spectacle and leaving the cliff sitters in a veil of darkness that, even in those times, must have been highly uncomfortable.   A darkness that most of us “modern” folk can barely relate to, an enveloping presence for which there is no candle, no flashlight, no outlet for devices: for us a bit reminiscent perhaps of a long walk down a dark and lonely path with little to guide your steps or protect you from the unexpected.

This is the darkness that suspends all of light’s gifts  – the ability to navigate space, to pinpoint danger before it seizes us, to orient ourselves in a world of constant stress that trades off satisfaction for the (not always cheap) thrills of modern complexity.  To be in an enveloping darkness is akin to being lost in a deep swamp (or the deep woods) where potential dangers lurk but where there are no signposts of safety.   We cannot “see” threats that might be lurking, dangers both real and imaginary, those that might attack our person and, much like the monsters allegedly hiding under our first childhood beds, those that stoke fantasy-driven fear and helplessness.

But there are dangers with the light as well.  Where there is light there is also distraction, an almost relentless seduction by everything in range of our senses, an exposure to the world made uncomfortable through its ability to behold you as well as you beholding it.   Our lives are now so “bright,” our world so fully (and artificially) illuminated.  Sunlight may indeed be the best disinfectant, as noted last century by US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, but the light we manufacture, the clutches of which we can barely escape, is as likely to cause sickness as alleviate it.

As many of you recognize, “light pollution” is a term now used to describe the consequences of what for many of us (especially in cities) are our excessively indoor lives, dominated by artificial illumination for which even copious amounts of Vitamin D cannot compensate.  Especially this time of year, our encounters with natural light are often reduced to fleeting glimpses of sun or moon. Indeed, even if we wanted to, there is so much artificial illumination in our world (before and after sunset) that most of us can no longer find a seat at the cliff to behold the galactic encounter that inspired and absorbed the first Advent longings.  Our obsession with masking the powers of darkness robs us of exposure to the greatest spectacles and deepest wisdom that darkness is best suited to reveal.

Sometime before the dawn of the computer age, I used to run a program at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York known as “Nightwatch,” named in part after that famous and expansive Rembrandt canvas which, along with other Dutch masters of the light in the Rijksmuseum, I was privileged to see with my dear friend Robert on several occasions.  The idea of the Cathedral program was to give groups of teenagers an opportunity to abandon at least some of their distractions for a weekend, to experience this grand sacred space in a manner unlike what they would likely be exposed to elsewhere.

As I recall, the pre-Christmas programs were the most popular, despite the relative lack of seasonal warmth and sunlight. But the “darkness” they experienced at the Cathedral was mostly safe, even in that (at the time) mostly unsafe neighborhood.   The Cathedral’s walls mostly though not completely rebuffed the noisy, illuminated chaos coming from the outside.  The lighting inside the Cathedral itself was carefully modulated (by me) to accentuate the shadows in that great space, but the subtle volume and intended object of that light (an altar) seemed to bring a comfort and even calm to many.  There was just enough light in that vast, dark space to inspire awe in those youth and create opportunity for reflection, but not enough to allow them to be distracted by those many objects that a stronger, more intrusive light would have revealed.

As our current group of UN interns has shared with me, there is much emotional content that can be attached to darkness, or at least regarding degrees of darkness that they have experienced in their lives.  On the positive side, darkness is associated with solitude and reflection, a break from the relentlessness of our excessively illuminated lives and the “flaws” and distractions such illumination exposes.  In that sense, darkness is rightly associated by them with both relief and focus, offering judgement-free opportunities to sit with themselves and examine their life trajectory, concentrating and comforting the senses in ways that daylight hours in UN conference rooms and their artificial illumination can make so very challenging.

We “all look better after dark” one recent television commercial proclaims.  We “look better” in part because the light surrounding us then is softer, more forgiving of the physical flaws and behavioral quirks we otherwise try so hard to conceal, the flaws that make us more interesting to others (also I suspect to God) but often – and so sadly I think — less interesting to ourselves.

Finding space to cultivate that ever-more elusive night vision is a key aspect of our Advent preparation.  Beholding light that can soften the darkness without robbing it of its powerful messages; light that focuses our attention while minimizing temptations to distraction; this is central to tapping the emotional content of this season.

In some metaphorical sense, and in part due to longstanding addictions to our overly (and artificially) illuminated world, many of us still prefer to “sleep with the lights on.”  This is the season to turn those lights off or, at the very least, lower the dimmer switch.

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