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Storm Surge: Clearing 2021s Mental Debris, Dr. Robert Zuber

I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards. Rudyard Kipling

Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. Margaret Atwood

When we kill people, we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretense of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history. Shashi Tharoor

He had a clear conscience. Never used it. Stanisław Jerzy Lec

So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness. Randall Robinson

Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one’s most reassuring self-deceptions! Ashim Shanker

No one, Naomi had learned, did evil without believing it was right at the time. Maybe this was why it was nearly impossible to talk them out of it? Rene Denfeld

The most trustworthy and likable guides are the ones who occasionally ask others for directions. Frank Bruni

I know that I promised fewer of these posts but the transition from one difficult year to another which, despite the hopes that we will pin on 2022, is likely to be saturated with challenges at personal, community and global levels that seemed to warrant a bit of reflection.

As 2021 and its lessons fade from conscious awareness, we at Global Action are attempting to do what we should have done years earlier – ask others for directions, including on how and where we should place our energies in what is already poised to be another time of challenge, both familiar and fresh.

We have commented before on the wide range of skills and capacities which the times demand, ranging from the deeply intimate to the most technologically sophisticated, just some of what we will need to tap if we are to effetively care for the sick and isolated, ensure that provisions are accessible by refugees and others in almost unimaginable need, launch and monitor telescopes that can bring us closer to the edge of creation, and reverse what we can of the damage done from a warming and warring planet.

None can attend to all of these things, certainly not alone. Indeed, any contributions we might make are constrained as we allow our own capacities to erode and as we fail to address what seem to be widening gaps between what we feel we must do and what we are able to do. Like many others, we at Global Action are trying to discern the frontier of our effective actions, a task in part about making more sound judgments regarding the efforts we can undertake ourselves and those times when we are much better off helping to enable others.

But success here also requires us to get our own heads straight, to clear away some of the psychological and conceptual debris that is holding us back, and by no means us alone. Amidst the pull of caregiving of all kinds, amidst our dangerous and often petty political rhetoric, amidst the necessity of broadened educational and health care access as well as restoring the impaired biodiversity on which our very lives depend, there are modes of thinking and feeling which have dominated much of our social life in this past year, modes which have wasted precious human energy and sown distrust at community and policy levels, modes we would do well to abate as this new year begins, if not relinquish entirely.

There are many candidates that could have been listed in this post, but three rose closest to the surface for me. The first of these was a focus of classical psychotherapy as practiced by persons such as Erich Fromm – pointing out our almost obsessive tolerance of “rationalization,” the half-truths (at best) we tell ourselves about our motives, our intentions, our goals; our unrelenting efforts to justify the unjustifiable; the misrepresentations we parrot with such frequency that we come to believe them – no matter how many others remain duly skeptical.

Such rationalization has done and continues to do damage to our social fabric. We are inclined, as Fromm himself noted, to invest enormous amounts of personal energy – energy we simply cannot afford to squander in these precarious times – protecting ourselves from the truth of our own intentions, the “explanations” that hide as much as reveal, the rationalistic “after-thoughts” of decisions which are often driven by desires we can scarcely admit we have, desires which might call into question our carefully-crafted images that fool only some of the people some of the time.

In this social-media saturated world that we have constructed for ourselves, we have been conditioned to purchase the surfaces, to make snap decisions (and often inflexible ones) based on mere snippets of camera-ready activity and/or personality. We seem committed more and more to the principle that what is true is what you can convince others to be true. This principle becomes an incubator of rationalization, exacerbating the trend of hiding often-complex truths about ourselves from ourselves.

This impediment is related to another which was also not invented during this past year but seems to have flourished at this dangerous moment – the tendency to judge (and even demonize) others about whom we know little, including little about their familial, social and economic contexts. The volume of judgements emanating from people of all political persuasions, all races and genders, regarding people that they don’t know, indeed don’t have any interest in knowing, is quite staggering. Those who struggle mightily to discern the truth of their own motives seem to have surprisingly little difficulty in pinning down the motives of perfect strangers often in the form of self-interested and overtly stereotypical rants. “We” know about those liberals, those refugees, those proud boys, those racists. What “we” know in fact are too-often carefully groomed snippets of behavior and perspective, now mostly social media-mediated, which serve to confirm rather than complicate our snap judgements. If we were more mindful and honest about the opportunities, limitations and challenges embedded in our own contexts, it might well help to moderate much of the self-righteous and context-challenged stereotyping that breeds division far more than understanding.

Finally, it would be good if in this new year we could find a way to abandon, or at least modify, our current widespread tendency to apply an anti-scientific mind-set to our assessments of science. We have been living through a period characterized by a profound skepticism of any official views of anything, coupled with a stunning lack of skepticism regarding the conspiracies which challenge such official views. Many also have doubled down on their desire for what John Dewey called “monistic” ideas, the “science” that is “true” once and for all, the “science” that eschews the “plurality of ideas employed in experimental activity as working hypotheses.” In other words, a “science” which intentionally rejects the methodologies and conclusions-in-process of science.

The solution to this is not what Dewey referred to as a “thoughtless empiricism” devoid of culture, of value, even of faith. What is required instead is a rejection of the fanatical claims of some, often draped in religious as well as scientific terminology, that what is “true” must be true for all in all circumstances. Regardless of culture. Regardless of context. Regardless of gender or race. Regardless of revisions to our understanding of the world required by subsequent research in many fields including by new technologies that allow us to see deeper and further such as the Webb Space telescope now probing areas of our universe hitherto beyond our reach.

It has become clear to me, rightly or otherwise, that the current skepticism regarding a “science” incapable of revealing or sustaining “monistic ideas” is merely one component of the same conceptual “field of debris” that we have duly laid out for ourselves and reinforced over this past year. One that rationalizes and conceals rather than reveals; one that habitually judges harshly, categorically and independently of context; one that pledges allegiance to the one that that claims to uphold the “truth” that is right for all in all circumstances, even as the actual truth lies elsewhere.

As our calendar year flips, we have so much on our collective plates if we are to keep ourselves sane and our progeny alive. Some of this is related to the pursuit of justice and physical health, the restoration of our environment, the resolution of conflict threats. But some is related to the debris rummaging around in our psyche that we generally seem unable or unwilling to clear away: the need to hide our true motives from ourselves, the need to de-contextualize those with whom we disagree; the need to turn pending truths into eternal ones. Overcoming these self-imposed impediments, these wounds inflicted over and over on our social fabric, is the new year’s resolution that can help heal our divisions, our democracies and possibly even our planet. Let’s give it a try.

Tags: rationalization, Science, stereotyping, truth

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Muscle Pain: A Christmas Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

23 Dec

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. bell hooks

All that surrounds him hastens to decay: all declines and degenerates under his sceptre. Your god is a masked Death. Charlotte Brontë

Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness. William Shakespeare

An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes. Ayn Rand

Everything precious was also vulnerable. Mary H.K. Choi

While most of us are, at some level, guilty of creating what some scribes and religious texts refer to as “graven images” of deeper and more challenging spiritual realities, our imaging has taken a particularly sinister turn as this season of Advent transitions into the season of the Christmas manger.

Many have seen for ourselves images of smiling elected officials and others sitting around Christmas trees while holding deadly weapons and asking Santa for suitable ammunition. We have also heard preachers, not always from obscure denominational backgrounds, urging a brand of “godly” violence in an effort, or so it seems, to drag an otherwise disredited version of Christianity out of the shadows and on to the pedestal of governance. It is as though we never abandoned the aspiration of “holy empire” nor ceased to honor the (mostly) men who perpetuated it.

Putting forth a notion of a “muscular Jesus” is not a new phenomenon in our culture, but in some circles it is clearly poised to make some fresh noise. An article this week in the Washington Post by Peter Manseau cited the desire in some “Christian” quarters for a “viral and manly Jesus” on the basis of which weapons and other threats of force can be justified, necessary to the “preservation of the good,” including the good of restoring a more testosterone-laden version of Christianity which, as they see it, had been allowed (by liberals mostly) to get too soft, too gentle, too “feminine” as it were.

This relishing of muscular force as a global (and even religious) good has a long and checkered past. While taking a break from weekly posts, I came upon a commentary on the iconic “Iliad” by the illustrious Simone Weil, one in which she reminds us of the deeper truths embedded in that seminal work, truths about ourselves including our almost genetic obsession with violence and its justifications. As she navigates the text, she is clear throughout that the “center of the Iliad is force,” force that enslaves, force before which our “flesh shrinks away,” force which “turns anybody subjected to it into a thing,” in essence making “corpses” of all of us.

This is sobering reflection, made more so by the accuracy of its portrayal. As a species we have long been addicted to the allure of force, which includes the assumption (until proven otherwise) that our choices are only between the projection of force and its receipt, that we have little recourse in this life aside from being on one end of a weapon or another, creating things out of people or, alternatively, enduring the experience of being turned into things by others.

This dystopian view generates plenty of supporting evidence, and we often seem surprised by how shallow are our collective alternatives, our practical commitments to the values of peace, dignity, compassion and tolerance. Weil notes that in the Iliad there are moments of grace to be found, but these are often buried along with the corpses of those fallen in battle or through siege, signaling the likelihood that the cycles of violence to which we have become all-too-accustomed are poised to flare up yet again.

And yet amidst the pain and carnage of our weapons and muscular mindsets, a child is born, a son is given, a manger barely fit for livestock has become the stage for a different way of engaging the world, one less involved in pumping iron and packing heat, and more interested in demonstrating that, even in this force-addicted world, another more peaceful course forward is possible.

The manger, after all, is more than a humble birthing location; it is a metaphor for what is to come: a life spent bringing dignity to outcasts who might otherwise have been ignored; a life bearing forgiveness in settings where many of us would likely succumb to bitterness; a life showering compassion on the sick and hungry beyond the influence of any comfort zone; a life rejecting the very violence and self-reference which some in his name would have you believe is a core component of a proper, “manly” faith. We hear the testimony of that divine life: Give him your cloak as well. Put away your sword. Cease your elbowing for honor and recognition. Understand that the ways of the world – embracing the coerciveness of muscular force – will not be your way, must not be your way if we are to have a way forward at all.

That same manger also sends a message to those who fear above all their own vulnerability and insufficiency, who measure strength by their ability to coerce others and even make them beg for mercy, who seek to double down on the terms of the current world rather than the terms which the ministry of Jesus embodies, a message that there is grace, dignity and forgiveness to be found emanating from the most extreme and forlorn places, even from a barn at the edge of town on a bone chilling night.

The late senior pastor of New York’s Riverside Church, William Sloane Coffin, used to speak of the essential Christmas choice as one between “shoving and loving.” This always struck me as hopeful but not uncomplicated phrasing. For we have constructed a world where the threat and use of force is, for many, the wallpaper that covers their world, an expectation that literally envelops their reality with its overly-muscular and militarized imagery, its inflexible bureaucracies, its self-refereential supervision, its stubborn power imbalances. It is hard for many now, as perhaps it has always been, to imagine a world suggested by the manger – vulnerable beginnings which transition into lives which are threatening only to those whose influence in the world is a byproduct of what we at the UN refer to often as “coercive measures rather than of commitments to compassion, forgiveness, dignity and equity.

And the “loving” option is certainly no simple matter either. Indeed, it is a matter much more easily professed than discharged, a claim too often drowning in intangible sentiment that sounds perpetually better in theory than in practice. Love is, for most of us, an easy choice, but as we soon find out is one fraught with missed connections and self-deceptions. We tend to forget (or ignore) how much of our being is earmarked for competition, possession and, yes, force, and this is increasingly true in some measure across lines of gender, culture and ethnicity. We are generally not as loving as we profess to be, surely not towards ourselves, certainly not towards others.

But having made the choice to eschew a life defined by “shoving” is an important transitional step, a step in keeping with a humble manger and the divine spark which emanated from it. While loving may ultimately offer “no place of safety,” as the late Gloria Jean Watkins (bell hooks) reminded us, it does offer us a path to follow, one suggested by humble origins and a subsequent life of divine purpose, a path which can take us to places where muscular force and the pain it inflicts has a measurably declining impact on how and why we live, what we can reasonably and hopefully aspire to for ourselves, our communities and our progeny.

The manger signifies more than merely tickling our sentiment. It suggests a fresh way forward, a path towards higher levels of dignity and service; a path towards reversing the self-inflicted decay which now envelops too much of our planet, a path wherein we are moved to both protect what is most vulnerable and invest in what is most precious such that others can also share in the remaining manifestations of abundance which we who are most privileged so often prefer to horde.

Let us be clear: the Jesus we revere especially on this Christmas Day did not advocate violence nor find it attractive; did not spend his precious time on earth working on his abs; was not to be found “packing heat” (or the biblical equivalent) on the donkey that carried him ultimately into Jerusalem; did not conveniently turn away from acts of compassion and healing, even unto death. And while he apparently turned over a table or two in the temple and had more than a few harsh words for those who represented or enabled a coercive empire, his cheeks always seemed to be turned.

Despite the contentions of some muscle-bound, force-challenged Christians, the Jesus who emerged from the Christmas manger is not “masked death” but unmasked life, offering guidance towards a world where the pain from coercion is no longer coin of the realm, and where what is most precious is duly acknowledged, protected and shared. This is why the wonders and aspirations of Christmas still matter to me. Perhaps to you as well.

Tags: Christmas, force, manger

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A Grateful (and short) Note to our Twitter Community, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Dec

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As 2021 comes to a close, I wanted to let you know how much we appreciate your engagement with this account as well as with the issues we cover both inside and outside the United Nations, issues which directly impact the health of our planet and the future of our children.

We very much appreciate your loyalty, your patience with our mistakes, and your many hopeful actions in the communities and contexts in which you work to help build a more just and equitable world.

As you may have noticed, we have started to scale back a bit, both in terms of daily coverage of UN events as well as our weekly reflections on global events, both of which have sought to reinforce how improvements in the world which are sustainable must be accompanied by improvements in ourselves.

And yet, despite prodding by us and many others, we continue to make too many weapons and lie about their consequences. We continue to increase emissions and reduce prospects for the biodiversity on which our very lives depend. We continue to discriminate and stereotype, to act upon beliefs that we cannot possibly prove to be true, to horde rather than share, and to forge ahead without asking ourselves “what can go wrong here” and then preparing to address those gaps and threats.

You all know this. We have tried to use this space to connect issues and people across culture and geography, but we aren’t ever telling you anything you haven’t already suspected. Indeed, one of our regrets so far is that we haven’t learned nearly enough from you. Not nearly enough.

We will take a bit of step back at year’s end, given financial and other circumstances. For a while at least, we will be covering the UN less, commenting less, sharing less. We’re not going away, more like going into a light hibernation. It has been a long and sometimes stressful haul for us – 20 years as an organization, 10 years on this platform. We need some time to reflect and reassess, to discern how we might add value going forward, how we might better enable and share, rather than impede, the invaluable contributions of others, including your own.

We have been honored to have shared our own opinions and energies over this time, and even more pleased to have been tethered to your own good work. If you need to leave us during this coming period of reduced coverage, all best to you as you go forward. If you have ideas for us as to how we can make more relevant contributions once we find our new bearings, we’re always happy to hear from you.

Thank you again for all you are doing to make this troubled period in our human journey less troubled. We need to get through this treacherous moment. We have little choice but to do so. We count on your energies and gifts to that end.

Warmest regards and blessings in this season from all of us,

Bob

Dr. Robert Zuber

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Anticipating Newness: An Advent Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

28 Nov

Once they’ve rejected resignation, humans gain the privilege of making humanity their footpath. Kouta Hirano

Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. Steven L. Peck

So many of us grow into doubting, hopeless, callous adults protecting hardened hearts. Medicating the pain. Life isn’t what we imagined. Nor are we. Charles Martin

One who is fed on promises feeds from an empty bowl. Marsha Hinds

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. Henry David Thoreau

You should seek answers, although it is better to anticipate some, to be the light and dream. Dejan Stojanovic

For unhappiness has nothing to teach, and resignation is ugly. Françoise Sagan

As we close this long chapter of weekly posts in anticipation of less frequent but perhaps more impactful contributions, there is much to reflect upon, much to give thanks for. While the audience for these posts has declined in recent times – a sign perhaps of a voice that has become tiresome and even redundant – I am so grateful to all of you who have dipped your toes in the water we have collected over many years, water which hopefully has helped to nourish both the day to day of this edgy world and that also anticipates a world that is on a path to become cleaner, fairer and greener, one more conducive to the health and well-being of our collective progeny.

I began these weekly posts several years ago in Advent and I will end them with Advent as well. For those located (or stuck) within the Christian tradition, Advent is perhaps the most neglected of our ecclesial seasons. We are so anxious to get to Christmas that we utterly fail this season of preparation, of discernment, even of longing. We too often ignore the value in anticipation of a world in which human and divine converge, where a vast universe of creation deigns to shine its light on our relatively tiny planet and its equally tiny pursuits, light which emanated from the stars long before the dawn of the human age. The light was there before we were, before our species embarked on this long journey – one clever in large measure but less so in wisdom – a species which now seems alternately passionate about renewal and resigned to what, in some key sectors of human existence at least, has become a precipitous and even ugly decline.

This pervasive and creeping resignation is why Advent still matters, perhaps matters as much as the holiday season of incarnation to which it is attached, that holiday towards which we drive much too recklessly and certainly over the speed limit. For how can we fully grasp the significance of the Christmas incarnation – of God with us (if you are able to accompany me there), and thus of a world that can be more than we have imagined it being — if we bypass the anticipatory stage to which it is rightly tethered? How do we make full sense of a season which has become captive in too many instances of addictive consumption and awkward reunions around a dinner table without also sitting in contemplation of all that is in danger of being lost from life now, and all that could be if we were truly and fully engaged in the task of making it so, indeed if we still believed that such a world is possible?

The anticipation associated with this season is not to be confused with wishful thinking or an excuse to avoid the localized affairs which constitute so much of daily living. Yes, the universe is vast beyond belief; yes, we are being called to discern more, to abandon resignation and embrace a kinder, fairer scale of possibility. And yet, there are also diapers to change, wood and water to gather, children and elderly to protect and reassure, bills to pay, dishes to wash, bathrooms to clean, rice to harvest and cook. On and on it goes, practical responsibilities that force our attention and focus our energy, the many details of responsible living which for many of us are challenging enough all year round, let alone as Christmas approaches, a logistical burden such that this seasonal call of the universe to us – this call of the divine if you will – cannot easily be heard let alone heeded.

And yet we cannot escape the fact It is anticipation in its best sense that is the glue that literally holds this time of Advent and incarnation and its myriad details together, giving it a full meaning. Theologians including Paul Tillich understood that to anticipate is to enable the energy of what our hearts long for to directly influence our thoughts and actions, to begin in essence to live in us as though the promise we anticipate is actually on its way, or more precisely is in some way already a living force within us, if not quite yet at its final landing spot.

We don’t have to look far to see this insight in action. The woman for whom an engagement ring is a symbol which allows her to anticipate and even map out the contours of a long life with another. The child anticipating a bicycle for Christmas that is not so much about the object itself but about the future ability to ride through the parks and around the neighborhood. The farmer attending to the question of to whom to sell and/or give his/her harvested crop while that crop is still months from its full ripeness.

We know how to do anticipation. We have experienced some of the effects of longings which have already taken up space in our hearts. But it is so difficult now to capture this one, unique Advent longing as the logistics of the Christmas holiday drown out the promise of an Advent season that strives to beam hope into lives that, in too many instances, have largely short-circuited their hopeful connection.

But we must be clear: The problem we face now is more than logistical, more than ensuring that our personal effects are in order or that our laws and (in the case of the UN) resolutions are properly framed. The problem now is in part that so many of us seem resigned to our current slide. Many of us, including in our own policy sector, seem to be giving up on the possibility that climate change and species extinction can be reversed, that nations can replace enmity with trust, that the vast inequalities of wealth and power can revert to the mean, that our vast expenditures on coercive security measures can be diverted to solving problems that are still within our capacity to solve, that our communities and families can do better than building walls and shunning diversity.

Collectively, we are indeed increasingly in a resignation frame of mind. We are increasingly suspicious of everything and everyone save for ourselves. But we are in some ways, if the sages and psychologists are on point, also desperate to be rescued from smug and callous versions of ourselves. Sadly our faith communities are simply not doing enough to reverse this toxic course. This applies as well, perhaps especially, to my own Christian faith, one which should stake its claim fully on anticipation rather than resignation, at least if the core of Advent is to be believed.

In this regard, I am reminded of an old professor of mine at Yale, Jaroslav Pelikan, who used to refer to a Christian faith characterized by “pessimism about life and optimism about God.” What this meant was that there buried deep within an otherwise hopeful faith is a resignation about ever having the world we might want, a world that is more than a snare and temptation to sin, a world envisioned by agreements like the UN Sustainable Development goals, but even more by the promise of incarnation — coming and already here –; a promise that is much more than an “empty bowl,” a promise to both honor and answer the vastness of a universe almost beyond comprehension, vastness which might otherwise make us despair of ever mattering in anything approximating the grand scheme of things. But the Advent promise reminds us that we matter anyway. The world matters anyway. We matter to each other anyway.

Mattering, perhaps, does not seem like a particularly high bar to many of you, but ours is a bar that has been slipping for some time and is now sliding lower still, a bar that needs so desperately to be repositioned such that it can inspire us to live out our lives in the light of the world we anticipate, to place our energies, talents and aspirations out where the light of a divine universe can shine upon them. We need to recover that place which confirms that a better world is possible, indeed that such a world is poised to appear if only we would consent to the “privilege of making humanity our footpath,” pledging to do at least our part to both anticipate the coming of a kinder, gentler, healthier planet and ensure its safe passage.

For the past six years, one Sunday after another, these missives have been devoted to that Advent spirit, one which eschews the temptations of inattentiveness, logistical chaos, personal resignation and, yes, of hardened hearts, one which attempts to inspire institutions large and small to keep the promises they make and, more particularly, that splendid promise of a world which has managed to come back from the brink, a world filled with people from all regions and backgrounds who have also found a way in this time of indifference, poverty and pandemic to come back from brinks of their own. For our part, we continue to live in anticipation of a world fit to sustain the lives of children, a world of doors not walls, a world of modest lifestyles and ambitious generosity, a world striving to bury every metaphorical hatchet — from hate speech to weapons of mass destruction.

For all our partial achievements and palpable failures over many years, this is what we continue to anticipate; this is what has been and remains alive in us; this is what we will do our best to grow and sustain until we meet again.

Tags: Advent, Anticipation, resignation

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Reform School: UN Lessons Incompletely Learned, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Nov

land reform | agricultural economics | Britannica

Agricultural Reform in our Distant Past

Enlighten yourself and then enlighten the world. Rashid Jorvee

We can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living. Wendell Berry

Reforming ignorantly, will consequence crisis and destruction. Kamaran Ihsan Salih

I’m not good,” he said, piercing me with eyes that absorbed all light but reflected none, “but I was worse.” Becca Fitzpatrick

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform. Derrick Bell

The best reform is to repent. Lailah Gifty Akita

It is very easy to point, but very difficult to refine and reform. Sarvesh Murthi

We’re nearing the end of these weekly posts and there are so many people to thank, those who (often unknowingly) contributed quotations and images, those whose comments helped us to become something perhaps a bit more than one shrill voice amidst a cacophony of statements and other noises from both diplomats and NGO. We are grateful to all of you, we will write many of you to say so individually over these winter months, and we will be sure to avoid any assumptions of value going forward without checking with you first.

Indeed, many questions loom at this moment, not only what is next for us but more importantly what is next for the institution we have tried our level best to discern over a generation. What is next for a policy center which is itself not particularly adept at discernment, which does not easily own up to its failures, which asks the questions which makes consensus possible but not the harder questions of unintended impact? What do we say about an institution that is constantly calling attention to itself, touting the multilateralism with the UN positioned at the center, promising global constituencies solutions to global problems that remain elusive at best while rebuffing suggestions that the UN was meant to do anything more, could ever anything more than “save us from hell?” What next for a system that has managed to fold unto itself virtually every issue of global importance, but also one that is constantly being forced to cater to the states which fund its programs, the results of which are an endless stream of “what we are doing” and a trickle of “what isn’t working,” with sometimes uncomfortable consequences for both human dignity and planetary healing? What is next for an institution that, at its core, tends to be a bit more smug than enlightened, that maintains the dubious assumption that changes in institutions are both possible and sustainable without simultaneous changes in those who manage those institutions?

To be fair, the UN has engaged in serious reform processes in most all of its Charter bodies. The Economic and Social Council represents a much more formidable setting for discussions on sustainable development –especially on finance – than was the case a decade ago. Pushed hard by small island and other developing states, and in response to the habitual gridlock on peace and security within the Security Council, the General Assembly has taken up the task of “revitalization” in earnest, a task which involves both strengthening the office of the GA president and clearing away the debris of endless resolutions tabled but not implemented, resolutions which maintain a GA “stake” in the large issues of the day but also help guarantee that such stakes will remain stuck in infertile ground until it is time to dust them off and peel away the accumulated rust in one year’s time.

The General Assembly has also been engaged – for what at times seems like an eternity – in prospects for reform of the Security Council, a body defined by its “provisional rules of procedure,” its endless and oft-repetitive speechmaking, the “bully ball” routinely played by the largest three of its five permanent members, and its inabiliy or unwillingness to ensure compliance with its resolutions (with the possible exception of peacekeeping mandates) despite both the coercive tools at its disposal and the erstwhile “binding” nature of such resolutions. Indeed, interest by the General Assembly in exploring its own peace and security bona fides, including in Syria and through the Peacebuilding Commission, is due in part to frustrations about Council inaction and in part due to longstanding concerns that the Council has long since failed to accurately represent the will or security interests of the general UN membership.

And yet, some of those member states go to sometimes extraordinary lengths to campaign for a seat on that very same Council, in some instances because they believe that, together with other elected members, they can force change in a chamber which gives up its privileges with great reluctance; while others seem excited by the expectation of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with global heavyweights and perhaps just as eager for the prestige (and even deference) that comes along with the heavy burdens associated with that two-year tenure.

Where the Council is concerned, much of the reform energy, especially emanating from the Council itself, is focused on working methods – including the system of resolution “pen holders” and levels of consultation required (especially with African states) prior to the crafting of peacekeeping mandates or the application of coercive measures such as sanctions and arms embargoes. And as pushed by a bevy of increasingly bold elected members (now including Kenya, Ireland, Niger and Mexico), the unfolded and sometimes even unwashed “laundry” of the Council is increasingly aired. Such an airing has been duly noted in the General Assembly where Council reform energies largely take the form of membership expansion, veto restrictions for the permanent members and a more regular (and respectful) engagement with the General Assembly and other Charter bodies.

We have long welcomed such efforts as our own view has been (and remains) that the elected Council membership is where the drive for more equitable relations within the Council and more impactful (even enlightened) relations beyond chambers is most likely to emerge. As conflict settings loom – having failed the prevention test and now dragging on year after year (and in the case of Palestine, generation after generation) it has become undeniably clear how the world has changed – in demographics and in global threats — certainly more than the Council’s permanent heavyweights have allowed the chamber they still largely control to change in response.

But it has also long been (and remains) our view that reform must be more than about tinkering with working methods, more than about clearing away the debris of endlessly tabled resolutions, backroom arm twisting and tepid commitments to consultation. Yes, UN bodies are improving accountability to constituents in some aspects. Yes, it has certainly been worse in terms of the hegemonic dispositions of the major powers. Yes it has done legendary work in keeping alive millions impacted by the conflicts we have failed to prevent or resolve. Yes, it has found space for virtually every area of global concern within its conference rooms, even if a number of those concerns – including technology, weapons production and climate change – are evolving much faster than our policies can address or at times even grasp.

We will have more to say about this in the months to come. But for now, a note of caution to those who make policy in the absence of discernment, or who remain unwilling to ask the question of even our most cherished policies, “What can go wrong here?” As hard as many diplomats and NGOs work in and around UN spaces, it might be too much to ask for those same stakeholders to invest a bit more in our own collective enlightenment, our own discernment, our own empathy. But we must. We all must.

Despite the disappointment that the UN, for all its access to expertise and accumulated wisdom, has failed to become a genuine learning community; despite the disappointment as well that we continue to run from our values and psychological resources as though fleeing a crowded room of unmasked, unvaccinated partygoers; it is still the depth of our character, our sustained empathy for the people looking to us for hope, which is key to pushing through our current bureaucratic limitations. Such are the barriers that stifle reflection and repentance, the ones that drown some of our best intentions under waves of protocol and status, the ones that funding and consensus alone cannot resolve, especially so when pledges of organizational or humanitarian support remain unmet and consensus sometimes means something even less than “agreeing to disagree.”

In this often august and intermittently smug and self-important community, the reform we need now goes beyond tinkering with working methods and levels of representation. What is needed is changes in how we choose to live, what we care about both in theory and in practice, the examples we set for others, the promises we insist on keeping no matter how inconvenient with regard to energies or financial resources. A women’s rights advocate speaking in the Security Council debate on Afghanistan this week began by confessing how “exhausted” she and other Afghans are by war and conflict. We must find the means to engage that exhaustion and other feelings lying largely beyond our own privileged experiences if she and many others are finally to find some place of dependable rest.

This is the truth of the reform we, collectively speaking, might continue to dodge or ignore, but make no mistake: we do so at the peril of our multilateral institutions and of our planet as a whole. Despite the failures of Glasgow and on Ethiopia violence, despite a more narrow, pandemic-influenced, state-centrism governing UN conference rooms, it remains true that our success as an institution requires that the people of this planet, the farmers and teachers, the journalists and caregivers, believe in us, believe that our rhetorical and negotiating skills represent tangible hope for their own communities, even believe that we are willing to change our ways, especially our most privileged and unenlighted ways, embracing what Mexico referred to this week as “dimensions of service” in that noble task of making life better for others.

If we cannot make these changes, if we are unwilling to make them, I worry for the future of an institution we still largely revere, but which has also sapped (at least for a season) all of our freely-given, if modest, organizational energies and resources.

Tags: enlightenment, General Assembly, reform, Security Council

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Chain Gang: Building Confidence in Global Governance, Dr. Robert Zuber

14 Nov

With appreciation to meassociation.org.uk

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. Charles Dickens

To grow up is to fight for it, to grow old is to lose it after having possessed it. Eudora Welty

The eye by tears speak, while the tongue is mute. Robert Herrick

Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. Boethius

People are not always very tolerant of the tears which they themselves have provoked. Marcel Proust

The truth of the story lies in the details. Paul Auster

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. Stephen Levine

The outcome of every worry is a worry itself. Mahendar Singh Jakhar

Of all the week’s images that literally flood our social media and email inboxes on a regular basis, the most moving for me was to be found during an interview at the COP 26 event in Glasgow with Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and current head of the Group of Elders (https://theelders.org/), a group of former senior officials and global leaders who, together, seek to remind current policymakers of the accumulated wisdom and insight which can be elusive in the midst of policy tensions but which becomes clearer and more actionable with time and distance.

Ms. Robinson has long been one of my few heroes/heroines at the UN. Even while taking on difficult tasks and promoting controversial opinions she has been able to maintain her clarity and humanity. Thus it was no real surprise that, while discussing the multiple frustrations associated with this COP including the omnipresent fossil fuel lobbyists and obstructionist governments (she mentioned Saudi Arabia by name, but there were others) seemingly content to kick urgent response to the emissions crisis to yet another COP, another parking lot for private jets and bad faith negotiations, another reminder to our youth that their future is being compromised yet again by older folks addicted to their privilege and deaf to the cries of those who that privilege continues to threaten, that in the midst of all of that, signs of her deep worry and compassion surfaced.

In fact, while speaking, it became clear that the venerable Ms. Robinson was fighting back tears. She was hardly alone. We might all be tempted to allow tears to flow at another opportunity for healing wasted at least in part, wasted by yet another UN-sponsored event that generated more carbon than hope, another lost opportunity for governments to overcome the prevailing sense that while the language of solidarity may remain hot, hopeful actions of solidarity remain lukewarm at best.

In our 20 years or so of fussing over policy norms and those institutions such as the UN that create them, we have been steadfast in both highlighting and linking global threats – famine and impunity, destructive weapons and biodiversity loss, climate change and terrorism. And while all these threats have complex and specific responsibilities associated with them, from delivering humanitarian assistance in conflict zones and restoring bio-rich habitat to ending cross-border weapons trafficking and creating dependable structures to ensure justice for victims of grave abuses, the need to address threats in tandem remains. We now understand more of the linkages between the spread of pandemics and biodiversity loss, between biodiversity loss and famine, between famine and armed conflict, between armed conflict and rights abuses. The chain that binds these threats seems to be getting longer not shorter, and we know (or should know) that inter-connected crisis are unlikely to be resolved merely by focusing on a single link of the chain.

Indeed, one of the benefits of the UN as an institution is the extent to which it tries to keep the full chain in view, even if bureaucracy (or the wishes or some powerful states) sometimes dictate that issues remain quarantined in places of specialized competence. But many at the UN also recognize both that the quarantine must be only temporary and that we must generate the will and resources to meet this current moment, to reassure constituents that we genuinely have their back, to demonstrate that the challenges on our watch can be successfully implemented while there is still time for us to keep.

And this leads to the issue of governance and the officials which in some key areas have seemingly lost their way or, perhaps more precisely, lost our way. We understand that UN diplomats more often represent positions than formulate them. We understand that we live in a world of considerable tensions which multilateral spaces retain some ability to “soften.” We understand that people have wildly different expectations of those who govern in national and multilateral spaces, specifically of their levels of attentiveness and promise keeping, regarding threats up and down the global chain. We understand that the UN maintains some genuine capacity, as former Slovenia president Danilo Turk noted this week, “to turn tensions into rules.”

But we also understand that trust in governance is at a precipitous juncture; trust in the ability of states to lead us away from the abyss, but also trust that officials can and will demonstrate the willingness to compromise their own position and status, to take the hard decisions that may cost them votes in the short term but that will guarantee a safer, greener, fairer world in which to exercise our franchise in the longer term. While it is unfair to throw a wet blanket over all government actions and agents, the disappointing results of COP 26 are merely the latest example of officials offering half a loaf when a full loaf is required, offering “solutions” destined mostly to keep tensions and frustrations – especially those festering among the young – at a needlessly high pitch, allowing those with money and influence (as a friend from El Salvador recently noted) to “control all spaces of meaning and care for peace on earth.”

And as places like the UN seem disposed to hold many relevant stakeholders without money and status in their own policy exile, and as some states persist in shrugging their collective shoulders while planning for the next, best, global climate extravaganza, one opportunity after another to point us in a healing direction goes by the boards.

Indeed, the frustration with officials and distrust of their intentions may well constitute as serious a threat as that of any other point in the chain. This was the subtext of a Wednesday event featuring the aforementioned Danilo Turk and the former PM of Belgium Yves Leterme, both of whom shared concerns and recommendations at the UN this week on behalf of Club de Madrid. They were clear that a large problem in the world now is not just the policies of states and their makers but levels of trust in institutions of governance themselves and, more specifically, the erosion of confidence in democracy, both its principles and its authority.

Gratefully, Turk and Letterme came to the UN offering more than high levels of frustration and urgency regarding the state of democratic governance in our time. Among their recommendations to the UN was for a “peer review mechanism” to assess the health and competence of democracies and an “anti-corruption court” to adjudicate the most egregious instances of state officials using public funds to bankroll private interests, including and especially their own.

These were welcome suggestions, though neither entity would likely be established quickly or absent tensions and controversies, including over sources and quantities of funding. But such suggestions do highlight major truths of our time, including the increasingly widespread perception that we are not investing enough energy in the promotion of democracy — not simply the promotion of elections, but of inclusive participation in policy decisions and regular access to those in power. Alongside this is a related perception, that people with gobs of money and political status have become far too comfortable using up far more than their share of resources they did not earn for purposes not expressly authorized. Both perceptions, and the realities that lies behind them, are toxic to problem solving and trust building, two items that are clearly experiencing major supply-chain issues at this tumultuous moment in our collective history.

Given this, it is appropriate for all of us to join in wistful solidarity with Mary Robinson, to shed a tear or two over climate- related threats which have seemingly exposed every official inadequacy, every official compromise, every official misrepresentation of our current state of affairs. She knows better than the rest of us that we cannot – must not – separate the resolution of the issues we care about from the quality and status of those given institutional power and authority to effect what we must hope are “good faith” attempts to resolve them. At the same time, the rest of us must expand our own advocacy to include more regular attention to the instiutions and officials who can and must do more to become those “anchors” of hope, healing and comfort we need now; to better enable the contributions of youth and others to more sustainable ends rather than seducing or discouraging them with insincere invitations to participation; and to help the world in general sleep more soundly and live each day with fewer worries.

Tags: COP26, governance

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Home Wrecking: Fleeing Callous Humans and our Warming Planet, Dr. Robert Zuber

7 Nov

Tuvalu Addresses COP 26

We have become a place of long weeping; A house of scattered feathers; There is no home for us between earth and sky. Rebecca Roanhorse

And so you travel. Forgetting that the problem is you. And wherever you go, you carry yourself. Ezinne Orjiako

The ultimate paradox and irony of this tragedy is that, in many cases, those who caused their displacement and those who hate them in their newfound ‘homes’ in exile are the same people! Louis Yako

There is no destination other than towards yet another refuge from yet another war. Theresa Hak Kyung

Distance is the journey. Displacement is the result. Jaclyn Moriarty

People returned to live on city streets and pavements, in hovels on dusty construction sites, wondering which corner of this huge country was meant for them. Arundhati Roy

She had sculpted the mist, the way those who have no choice do. Padma Lakshmi

One of the seemingly eternal struggles of small organizations as ours has been for a generation is how to add value: how to support the work of others without taking credit for its outcomes; how to call attention to the pain of others without appropriating that pain to raise our funds or build our brand; how to join voices with others without losing our own distinctive notes; how to honor those “sculpting the mist” without losing sight for one moment of the privileges associated with honoring such profoundly challenging sculpting in the first place.

For me, for us, as we end our current iteration the journey towards a fresh engagement with global crises is already underway. What is already clear is that the path to engagement will likely run through the issue of displacement, those who have lost their homes as the result of family meltdown or economic collapse, those “taking refuge from another war” as we now see in Ethiopia, those who can no longer harvest their lands or their traditional fishing grounds due to ruinous levels of flooding and drought, especially those living on relatively remote islands facing climate shocks which they did not create, for which they cannot possible be prepared, and from the increasing fury of which there is simply nowhere to hide.

Of course, settling on a rubric is not the same as settling on a strategy to encourage and support change. To that end, I joined yesterday with some activist friends on a march in support of unhoused people and the services which are both insufficient and indispensable in moving people off the streets, helping them find both stability and identity in multiple forms, from reliable indoor plumping to a equally reliable mailing address.

Sadly, this march took place not in a populated area, not in a place where homeless people gather, but in the parking lot of a sports arena. Somehow, some way, the decision was made to organize a 5K walk in a place with no relationship whatsoever to the people for whom we were allegedly advocating. There were apparently few if any unhoused persons on the march. There was no audience to inspire along the route. There were no occupied homes or apartments in sight. There was no press to speak of. No one could even enter the march route through security unless they could demonstrate that they had both paid their fee and had been vaccinated for COVID, two requirements virtually guaranteeing that none of those experiencing the “long weeping” of displacement (or perhaps none of those currently on the cusp of their own homelessness) would be able to join the lovefest ostensible organized on their behalf.

It was difficult to escape the conclusion that I and the others on that march had done nothing of substance to help the displaced. What we had done, if anything, was to help brand the sports arena and the major donors who are, after all, so often the preferred destination for the efforts of the organizers. It was all about money, we didn’t have much of it to offer, and so we were relegated to walking around an empty parking lot as though being exiled as punishment for our modest resources and/or our political naivete.

This trek in the parking lot at least called to my own mind scenes on the other side of the world: in Ethiopia where armed groups inch closer to Addis Ababa, creating both panic in the capital and fresh displacements along the route of conflict. And, of course, in Glasgow where erstwhile global “leadership” convened, yet again, to offer a bevy of “solutions” to the climate crisis ranging from the genuinely hopeful to the merely distracting, a crisis already displacing millions with millions more likely to come.

More than officialdom made its way to Glasgow. Thousands of young people did also, youth for whom climate change represents more than an inconvenience requiring more than a chain of UN-brokered “talk-fests” which might well result in more dangerous carbon emissions than prospects for meaningful change. These youth filled the streets and, in some limited instances, the conference rooms, lamenting the reality that youth are much more likely to be heard than heeded, that decisions about the policy trajectory for climate mitigation and adaptation, for reducing disaster risks and increasing options for survival when risks turn so many lives of the affected into “scattered feathers;” these decisions continue to be made by older folks like me. Many of these decisionmakers are unlikely to ever be displaced from their private jets let alone their homes. Moreover, they will never have to sit across a table and break the news to climate-affected people that their dreams are soon to be burned or washed away, or that the footsteps of armed groups are fast approaching. Older folks not unlike myself will never have to share the news with affected people, as former Liberia president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf noted this weekend, “that they must leave their community or drown.”

The youth in Glasgow this week were thankfully not marching back and forth across the parking lot of a sports stadium. They were visible to the public, to the global press, surely even to those inside the COP 26 conference rooms. And their urgent, frustrated and at times defiant messaging was picked up, especially by those from the least developed and small island states who, as we and others have noted time and again, have done the least to create climate change but who suffer the most from its impacts. Such impacts include many displaced crossing borders and regions seeking a modicum of safety and stability from climate threats and the economic ruin and armed violence which often follow, those forced frequently to take refuge amidst hostility from people who, in more than a few instances, made significant contributions to the conditions that prompted displacement in the first place.

The impact of these youthful voices on small island and other officials was clearly apparent, including on Fiji’s fine Ambassador Satyendra Prasad who bluntly asked, “If we are not to achieve 1.5 degrees, what are we here for? Everything else is a side-show.” The president of climate-impacted Madagascar reminded us all that “forests are the lungs of our planet,” but that these lungs are being damaged at a staggering rate. And perhaps the most compelling address from officialdom was delivered by the remarkable Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, who underscored the “immoral and unjust” implications of lives and livelihoods lost as we continue to ignore our climate pledges or fulfill them only incompletely. As did the youth on Glasgow streets, Mottley pondered boldly and wistfully, “when will leaders lead?”

On the UN side, Secretary-General Guterres warned about the “delusion” that we are making the progress we need to make on climate change. The former Ambassador of Jamaica, Courtney Rattray, now Under Secretary-General for the Least Developed States, made several high profile appeals for climate funding to help stabilize least developed societies and avoid mass displacement. And in a related event on tsunami risk, the head of the UN’s Disaster Risk Reduction program Mami Mizutori urged us to never forget the “the disasters we were unprepared for and the casualties they caused.”

But it was the ever-passionate David Attenborough, early on at this COP event, who worried and wondered if “this is how it ends” for we humans, allegedly the greatest problem solvers in the history of this planet? Ends in fires and floods, ends in mass displacement and homelessness, ends in “bad faith” engagements by officials who know better and refuse to act on what they know? One compelling response to this lament came later from a Samoa youth advocate who reminded us of the power of words “to save us or sell us out.” You all know why you are here, she proclaimed. “Do the right thing” and while you are doing that, look to the leadership of Pacific youth. “We are fighting not drowning.”

Indeed, their struggle must be our struggle as well. The alienation, insecurity and displacement they experience now are coming for us as well. For people like me, the grave might save us from having to confront the consequences of our folly, of our willingness to only make the changes it is convenient to make, not the changes that we know we must make. But this should offer no comfort, no excuses. Instead, while we are still able, we must do more to ensure that the toxic consequences of our inept climate and economic policies – the unhoused, the unfed and the unprotected – are not allowed to define life for other generations.

This week, Costa Rica’s president reminded delegations of the absurdity of conducting war — military or economic — on a planet which is slowly dying. He called instead for an “army of ideas, of courage, of peace.” It is increasingly likely that such an “army,” if it comes to exist, will consist largely of the young. If the rest of us want to make a real difference, including on the causes and consequences of human displacement, we will need to do more to support, sustain and enrich youthful aspirations.

Tags: climate change, displacement, United Nations, youth

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WordPress: Pedagogy for an Ailing Planet, Dr. Robert Zuber

31 Oct

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Ernest Hemingway

Much of what was said did not matter, and that much of what mattered could not be said. Katherine Boo

No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong. François de La Rochefoucauld

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion. Edward Abbey

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Oscar Wilde

The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is. Nadine Gordimer

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. Carl Sagan

In a week when UN diplomats struggled, as they often do, to speak words that truly matter, that can truly inspire and clarify – on climate change, on international justice, on the latest iteration of longstanding struggles for peace in the Sudan and Mali, on the need to protect educational opportunity from threats of conflict, on the role of technology (including in space) in enhancing our lagging sustainable development priorities – it was a series of compelling images that captured more of my own imagination, more of my own bandwidth as I try in my own small way to help guide our troubled path.

Among the many ways in which I seem to be no longer “fit for purpose,” is my own preoccupation with words, their meaning and impact. I have tried over several years to “write the truest sentences I know,” not confusing “truest” with “true,” but also not reducing words to their instrumental value, as a means to some unconfessed end or as a mere tool for building a personal brand, staking out political turf or inflaming constituent grievance. I have always believed in the value of what is becoming more and more of a dead art – the careful selection and arrangement of words can help both to clarify and inspire, that can remind people of the proper contexts for the “facts” we toss around with reckless abandon, but also provide the takeaways that leave a “taste” that lingers long after the initial presentation has concluded.

The UN, as most of you know, often drowns in words uttered by speakers whose need to “present” often far outstrips the pedagogical value of their presentations. Speakers are assembled, and often over-assembled based on position and entitlement. Those who are authorized to speak are given every opportunity to do so, regardless of how familiar,predictable or even uninspiring their words are likely to be. A few speakers do thankfully say things which linger, which clarify, which remind listeners that predictable statements of policy or token gestures of deference to academics or civil society leaders are not the same thing as thoughtful, mindful reflections on issues which are generally speaking more urgent and complex than our presentations imply.

The UN, like many other institutions, routinely struggles to “get its message out,” to connect with people in diverse circumstances who need more than provisions and peacekeepers. More than we often recognize in this multilateral space, people also need a clearer sense that leadership “gets it,” gets the urgency of things, gets that “we” spend too much time speaking to funding sources and “excellencies” and too little to constituents, gets that “we” waste too much time and energy honoring protocol, including by expressing endless gratitude to speakers for episodically-inspiring remarks that “we” actually didn’t pay any attention to, remarks that often sound more like the political version of “nagging” than like a serious exploration of fresh options for resolving conflict and solving stubborn global problems to replace our largely stale ones.

Surely we recognize that our endless parades of “speakers” is more about protocol than substance, more about ticking the boxes of national or institutional interest than of exercising a pedagogical responsibility beyond institutional walls. Surely we recognize that the worst way to influence anything is through endless speeches largely devoid of metaphor or of genuine invitations to co-create a better future. Surely we recognize that much of what is said within UN confines does not matter enough in pratical terms and that much of what could matter cannot easily or readily be said, in part because no one is “authorized” to speak those words.

This week as in times past, the UN has struggled with the still-growing problem of disinformation and misinformation, largely focused on a pandemic that some still deny but also with regard to climate change that may or may not move beyond the pious words of global leaders who will soon convene in Glasgow and who continue to hedge their political bets regarding actions that might actually galvanize response at the levels now required. On Friday, the UN held a side-event entitled “Empowering Civil Society in Strengthening Media and Information Literacy,” during which attention was given to the current “infodemic” wherein what were descreibed as “established facts” were being systematically ignored if not outright rejected. A panel of journalists from different global regions made helpful, if sobering points, including highlighting the dangers facing journalists in this disinformation age, as well as the mass quantities of energy required to debunk errors and misconceptions, especially as those errors move from elements of cognition to lynchpins of identity.

As one of many who has abundant respect for the statistical and other expertise which the UN has gathered around itself; as one of many who deem the protection of journalists and other info-contributors to be of the highest priority; I still wonder if what heads of state referred to in the Security Council this week as “toxic narratives” (Kenya) and “demons” (Tunisia) reference a larger problem, one characterized by convenient condemnations of the narratives of others coupled with an over-confidence that our own narratives are somehow beyond reproach or even self-executing.

I have deep confidence in science, but also understand its essentially evolving nature based on fresh evidence. I believe in facts, but also understand that facts have a context, and that both require attention if “truth” is ever to become a less elusive goal. I have deep confidence in the UN’s expertise, but do not assume the value of that expertise to every situation where it seeks to be applicable. I have a “hunger” to see the core values of the UN Charter enacted worldwide, including its “rule of law” aspects, but also understand the degree to which those values have been tread under foot by people, including people like me, who have misplaced at least part of the responsibility to narrow gaps between what we espouse and how we live.

The narrative that too many of us now seem to adopt, deliberately or not, regarding some alleged chasm between “truth tellers” and “liars,” is itself unempirical, even dangerous. It appears that, more and more, we are witnessing a struggle in part about the nature of truth itself but even more about those who authorize and promote it. In such a scenario, the hill we need to climb seem to be less about facts themselves and more about cultivating minds open and receptive to their full complexity, minds attached to people able to demonstrate attentiveness to context, curiosity, courage, even (can we actually propose this) humility.

How do we enable these traits of character in a time when ideas are more about social identity than attempts to understand our place in the universe, more about comforting delusions than about the courage to face up to the reality of things as they are and our collective responsibility to fix what is broken, to more deeply examine the complexities of the truths we espouse but incompletely understand, to embrace the contexts of the truths we promote without slipping into some careless relativism?

Maybe words are now becoming, in and of themselves insufficient to these tasks. I mentioned at the beginning the “compelling images” from this week, and I am so very grateful to the contributions of some of our twitter followers who continue to send thoughtful and at times powerful images of art that can help us to see more deeply than we might be inclined to otherwise. I equally honor those who share extraordinary images from space – not the space that some now pay millions to visit for an hour-long joyride, but the origin of extraordinary images supplied by sources from Hubble to backyard astronomers, images of galaxies pulling each other apart or being slowly consumed by black holes, images of gaseous clouds allegedly containing enough alcohol to make 400 trillion pints of beer, images that stretch our hearts and minds beyond the moment, beyond the conventional, beyond the petty and familiar, images that remind us of just how much can go wrong in this vast universe and how very fortunate we are on this relatively isolated blue ball for the opportunity to push back hard against the life-threatening damage we have clearly been doing to ourselves.

This bit of the truth of our times was underscored by an enormously clever video produced by the UN Development Program (click here for the video), one which depicts a dinosaur making its way down the center aisle to the UN rostrum to remind diplomats of the obvious — that “extinction is not a good thing” — referencing both our habitual climate stupidity and the asteroids that created the extinction event for those large lizards. The video does a fine job of reminding we humans that this particular extinction moment is something we are doing to ourselves. There is no space rock that we can credibly blame for our current climate predicament. As such it is past time, as the dinosaur-speaker notes, for we humans, especially those in positions of authority, to swiftly agree to stop making “excuses and start making changes,” to stare our complex realities in the face with firm and flexible resolve no matter how unsatisfying and unreassuring those realities are now likely to be.

There are times when I am so “old school” I’ve altogether forgotten where the school was in the first place. But I can still recognize the genius of this video – its blending of jarring and unforgettable images with words (not gratuitious speeches) to match. Clearly the changes we need to make, and urgently, are about correcting the mistakes we are currently disinclined to acknowledge, about changing habits of behavior we continue to justify instead. But it is also about recalibrating the false dichotomies that allow us the indulgence of positing a world constituted by truth-tellers (ourselves) and liars (those others).

It is ironic that the light from those those birthing and exploding stars, those galaxies expanding and contracting, those nebula which we can anthropomorphize from a vast difference, that light left some of those celestial bodies during the era of the last major extinction event on earth. We don’t know with any certainty what has happened to those bodies since light was released from them so long ago. But we do have a good sense of where we are headed if we don’t put our petty political ambitions, gratuitious narratives and lifeless speech making behind us, if we do not take the risks we need to right this planetary ship before it finally tips over, ensuring at a minimum that all aboard will drown.

As one who has trafficked in words for most of his life, I am aware of how impotent words can be, especially when they fail to represent the “truest” that I know. We do need to identify and counter the “toxic narratives” and other disinformation with the best truth at our disposal, but we need to do so by ensuring “truth” that is rigorous, humble, attentive to context and pedagogically sound, truth that can help us make a more reliable, more inclusive, less-polarizing case for the world we can still have.

Tags: extinction, pedagogy, truth-telling, United Nations

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Ditch Diggers: Extricating Ourselves From Policy Ruts, Dr. Robert Zuber

24 Oct

Staying locked into an image of how things are supposed to be can blind us to the grace of what is. Elaine Orabona Foster

Constantly focusing on the limitations, instead of all the possibilities, is how people become stuck in their lives. It only serves to recreate the same old reality from day to day. And soon the days turn into years, and lifetimes. Anthon St. Maarten

If you feel stuck, move. You’re not a tree. Germany Kent

There is pain in staying the same and there is pain in changing. Pick the one that moves you forward. Lee Rose & Kathleen McGhee-Anderson

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. John Dewey

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive. Edith Wharton

Everyone to whom much is given, of them will much be required. Luke 12: 48

There have been several times in my life when I have gotten myself in the kind of trouble that could have (and in some instances probably should have) put my life on an unwelcome trajectory.

On such event occurred many years ago on a particularly lonely road in Wyoming. I don’t even recall why I was there but having come to the end of the line and proceeding to turn around, I ended up in a ditch, one that it would have been easy enough to avoid had I not been fussing over an unanticipated detour rather than concentrating as I should have in finding my way around it.

On this particular cold night, at the end of a line with no lights but the stars, the gravity of the situation was pressing in. But true to form in a life punctuated by careless ruts and abundant responders, the property owner came home in his massive pickup truck, saw my plight and yanked me out of the ditch, shaking his head all the while.

Like many folks, I never seem to learn my lessons in real time, only after life has baked in what should well have been obvious at earlier stages – that ruts can and should be recognized and avoided, and that those who help us most directly to overcome ourselves and our limitations are not always obvious. Sometimes they are the equivalent of a stranger with a big heart and a bigger pickup on a road he owned and on which I was, in essence, a trespasser.

This is a nice little lesson, I suppose, but it is more than that. None of us affiliated with Global Action is exactly living in a “rut-free zone.” Indeed, such ruts proliferate in our lives and livelihoods like weeds in unmanaged lawns. Our personal life, the offices and organizations that demand our time and talents, the national and multilateral institutions which presume to be leading us out of the ditches we have clumsily backed ourselves into, all suffer to one degree or another from playing the same tune, over and over, because we’ve forgotten that what is familiar in a time of multiple crises, may sooth our frayed psyches a bit but is not nearly as impactful with regard to rut removal as we might wish for it to be.

As we at Global Action take our own step back to reconsider the value we hopefully add now and the value we could add going forward – the ruts we have acceded to and, perhaps more importantly, the skills needed still to extricate ourselves from whatever ditches we have inadvertently fallen into – we recognize that our primary institutional “cover” has its own issues. Two events at the UN this week highlighted both its still-considerable institutional promise and the ruts we have collectively stumbled into which tend to suppress the flourishing of that promise.

The first of these was a Security Council meeting hosted by Kenya on Women, Peace and Security. It has been 21 years since the original adoption of Resolution 1325, and while some decent progress has been made regarding women’s inclusion in the security sector and in peace processes, while some good work has been done in crafting “action plans” to implement core resolution provisions at national level, we continue to struggle with resolution implementation, hardly the deepest ditch we at the UN need to climb out of. As Ecuador joined us and others in wondering, what exactly are the obstacles here? Do we really want or need another 21 years of SG reports and high-level events? Is it simply, as an Irish Minister claimed, that we have yet to discern the right people to empower, the right voices to raise? Do UN member states really need to be reminded of the talents that women already bring to security sector functions? Do they really need to be reminded of the responsibility to protect women’s rights defenders (or any other defenders for that matter) or that entertaining the testimony of women’s groups is not at all the same thing as heeding their recommendations? After hours of (too) much solidarity talk and self-congratulations, this agenda is still sticking up out of a policy ditch, maybe not one as deep as before, but still formidable, still apparently beyond our collective skill set, let alone our collective will, to fully extricate.

And then there was the discussion hosted by the UN Peacebuilding Commission with the Secretary-General, a discussion focused on the peacebuilding implications of the SG’s recently-released “Our Common Agenda.” During this discussion, there was much appropriate attention to conflict prevention and, as noted by Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, on the need “to move beyond narrow peace and security lenses to address all relevant security threats,” this consistent with the SG’s call for delegations to invest in discerning “what peace now means in this world.” Fair enough. But as the UK Ambassador reminded the rest of us, this is all easier said than done as we do not yet possess the right tools, the right “architecture” to move our full, lofty and expanding peacebuilding agenda from aspiration to tangible progress. It is clear from our own long engagement with the Peacebuilding Commission just how many remarkable people worlwide are doing the good work, are helping build more sustainable communities and, by extension, ensuring the very futures of their neighbors. Is Our Common Agenda fit for their purpose? My best guess is that we will need more diverse contributions and more robust tools to make it so.

I want to use what remains of this space to honor some of the world’s unsung champions, the many women and men who cross our paths at those pivotal moments and rescue us – at least temporarily – from the practical and policy ditches from which we so often seem unable to free ourselves. But also, closer to our home, I also want to honor those diplomats, NGOs and others who understand and communicate that our largely-avoidable ruts of policy and practice are needlessly threatening our future every bit as much as weapons and emissions; and that part of our “troublesome work” now is both to tell bold and fresh truths, and to recognize that those now excluded from policy spaces might have the solutions we badly need to reassure anxious and even traumatized populations that long-sought relief is finally at hand.

Shifting back to that lonely Wyoming road, what I required on that cold night (and surely didn’t deserve) from the man in the truck was more than his “solidarity,” more than his “sympathy” for my plight. At that moment, I needed his sturdy bumper, his powerful engine and his formidable skill in maneuvering both. And that is precisely what he provided. The lesson here is that the trails we have converted into ruts, the ditches we have backed ourselves into during these often-traumatic times, these too require skills we don’t always know we need supplied in part by people we don’t yet properly recognize, let alone honor.

Tags: peacebuilding, policy ruts, women's rights

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Spare Change: Beyond Policy Convenience and Comfort, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Oct

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. Albert Einstein

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say. René Descartes

Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn’t quite as spectacular. Lisa Lutz

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The only crime is pride. Sophocles

You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them. Andy Warhol

If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write. Martin Luther

When I was younger (no time recently) and cutting my teeth on nuclear and environmental activism, I was intrigued by notions being floated at that time to help complete the multilateral project through a significant reform of its infrastructure – practically and considerably modifying the statist assumptions of the UN and other institutions, assumptions which presumed that multilateralism was state business and only extended to others when states decided to invite their presence.

Those modifications were deemed necessary at that time by myself and many others not so much because of our demand for a “voice;” (after all, those of us working on nuclear and environmental issues were mostly people of privilege to begin with), but because it was unclear, absent significant pressure from non-government advocates, that states would be able to fully meet the moment – to shed their national pride, their diplomatic protocols, their sovereign concessions, their longstanding political grievances, their ideological predispositions and more — and demonstrate to the world that they are prepared to endure whatever pain is needed, do whatever is necessary, to heal our damaged planet, to move away from the precipice of nuclear and environmental catastrophe and repair our damaged politics.

A large component of fulfilling this agenda, of course, is the willingness to make use of all available wisdom and expertise wherever it might be found, to embrace the inconvenient as well as the comfortable, to shed the skin of predictability and replace it with innovation which – then as now – exists in far greater measure in cities and communities than individual governments and even multilateral institutions can apparently appreciate or assimilate (even if they would wish to do so).

In this context, the pandemic-inspired call by some states, and acquiesced by some others, to return spaces like the UN to the primacy of “inter-governmental processes,” represents in our view a serious misreading of our current moment. As many UN-based delegations themselves recognize, public trust in governance is lagging almost across the board. Some of that trust deficit is related to states which seem completely out of touch with the needs and aspirations of their own people, acting as though political power is primarily an entitlement to be used to the benefit of leadership and their circles, that promises are what you use to get elected (or coronated) and then tossed into some metaphorical recycling bin in case they are needed at a later time in an attempt to prop up support for shaky regimes.

But part of this trust deficit is related to assessments of state competence, the fear that (much like in individual therapeutic contexts) some states are only willing to make only the “spare” changes they are comfortable making, not the changes that this current brew of climate change, pandemic spread, biodiversity loss, food insecurity and conflict-without-end now requires of us. The UN, for instance, is a place where all the critical issues of our time are routinely discussed. And yet there is also a sense more broadly held than many would like to admit that when it comes time to move from urgent discourse to meaningful change, the system too-often pumps the brakes. Like the winter heat in my New York City apartment where the old radiators are permitted to emit only enough to stave off illness and frostbite, we are collectively still addicted to only the questions we are comfortable asking and those large, government-hosted events that produce only enough “heat” to keep some of us believing that this time – just maybe – the results will justify the vast expenditures of human energy and carbon emissions required to hold them.

As it was in my past, it is not clear that such a belief is now justified more than in part. During the next few weeks, the UN will be seen co-sponsoring a series of major events – on sustainable transport, on biodiversity loss and on climate change – all of which have vast and direct implications for what UNSG Guterres has branded as our “suicidal war on nature.” And while the Sustainable Transport event in Beijing produced some interesting remarks including calls to end “short-termism” by the Panamanian president, the Russia president used his time to tout the construction of new highways and designation of new air and sea corridors, reminding some of the very practices that made this event necessary in the first place.

This all-too-frequent confusion of roles and goals simply isn’t good enough to produce meaningful change, let alone to prevent a global “suicide.” Every day that we voluntarily pump the brakes on the changes we know full well we need to make, every day that we accede to unnecessary compromises and political conveniences, the world is one step closer to a miserable and preventable end. And every day our “leadership” fails to deliver progress on the challenges we are running out of time to resolve, it becomes harder and harder for individuals to choose the path of change and renewal in their own lives. We live in this conundrum now — of more than a few states becoming too comfortable making “spare change,” but also (deliberately or otherwise) impeding those many individuals, organizations and institutions – including many experts in the UN Secretariat itself — who would urgently and willingly rise to to a higher calling, people who recognize that the changes required of us going forward will only become more sudden, more painful to behold.

As Global Action moves inexorably towards hibernation, it has been emotionally moving to hear from so many former colleagues struggling to forge more sustainable habits in the absence of consistent state leadership, to somehow succeed in transforming long-standing dreams of travel and other leisure activities into higher callings of solidarity with those many millions who will never board airplanes or stay in resort hotels, who will never be invited to Glasgow or Beijing or other centers of policy attention, but whose very lives are impacted by the actions we take, all of us, every day.

I know that over this past pandemic year my own bucket list has shrunk to the size of a measuring cup. Despite a long adulthood of (relatively) simple living, I have also been so privileged to see enough of the world to know something of its wonders and its struggles, but also to recognize the degree to which the former face precipitous decline while the latter continue to expand. This is simply untenable. We can’t presume to care about the future of our children as pride and greed stalk every corner of our planet, and as the gaps between our urgent words and carefully calibrated deeds continue largely un-narrowed. Our excuses and rationalizations, clever though they may sometimes be, must come to a halt.

I have had quite enough of my own hypocrisy, throwing spare change at former neighbors and using far more than my share of available resources. But I have also had enough of “inter-governmental processes” that fail to deliver in proper measure what we all know we need with respect to every one of the UN’s core policy frameworks, from security and rights to climate and development. The choice at this point for states in capitals or multilateral settings seems clear – find the courage and cooperative means to clean up the messes we’ve collectively made or open the doors to the rest of us with mops and cleanser at the ready and fortified with the full determination to use them.

Tags: climate change, policy change, UN

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