Tag Archives: future

Altar Call: Holding Ourselves Answerable for Her Future, Dr. Robert Zuber

13 Sep

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.  Albert Camus

It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.  H.G. Wells

Deep under our feet the Earth holds its molten breath, while the bones of countless generations watch us and wait.  Isaac Marion

There had to be another way and I owed it to my daughter to find it.  Adrienne Brodeur

The trees waited for each generation to be born, to keep them company as they watched over us from high above.  Anthony Harkins

Love is the only future God offers.  Victor Hugo

When I see a photo like the one above, I wonder what is going through that girl’s mind.   A solitary youth with her sign, making a statement to political leadership and their followers, some of whom find such pleadings annoying at best and, if rumblings from the UK and other countries this week are any indication, a potentially criminal offense at worst.

That she could sit by herself on a bench calling attention to a threatened future to which those who pull the levers of economic and political power seem often indifferent speaks both to her power and likely also to her frustration.  Girls increasingly have a voice now and we can only celebrate that epiphany and wish for more of the same.  And yet we know that having a voice is not quite the same as moving the pile, and while we recognize that there are monstrous piles yet waiting to be moved, we seem to have depleted much of our reserve of energy, commitment, compassion and wisdom needed to find that “other way,” a way that can inspire sufficient confidence in the girl on the bench such that she can prepare more for her future and despair less of it.

Her generation is certainly not the first to grow up in unsettled times, but is perhaps the first to grow up amidst an avalanche of jarring, even dystopian images: of a pandemic which has robbed children of grandparents and classrooms, stoking both physical distance and social suspicion; of fires that have consumed vast groves of trees that can no longer “watch over them” and “keep them company” as they sojourn through this life; of adults who should know better choosing to shed dialogue for conflict, reconciliation for enmity, truth-telling for lies and conspiracies. 

It is a long and discouraging list of threats in part from climate and weapons but also emanating from our diminished selves; of our cautious engagement with issues to which we have largely acclimated ourselves but which must seem overwhelming to many young people; of the ways we continue to deceive ourselves regarding the depth of our “sacrifices” to make the world a safer, healthier place for those already poised to follow.

Indeed, hardly a day goes by when we have not been diminished yet again by some discouraging falsehood or other: manipulating COVID data, the stock market and election preparations to mask our health, economic and democratic failings; hyping the “virtues” of plastic by tying it to false promises about its recycling potential; demonizing people and ideas we don’t understand and won’t take the time to understand; indulging a relentless collapsing of general interest around our own private concerns. 

Given all this, it must be a bit lonely for that girl on that park bench, now distanced both from classmates and perhaps also from trust in those of us older folks locked in ideological and theological struggles that offer little to her future but compromise much.  That “come to Jesus” moment where we older folks must account for the decisions we have made and the consequences those decisions have produced; but also to answer for the anxieties of all those children on all those park benches trying in their own way to alter what appears to be the dire course of their future — that moment of gravity and accountability largely continues to elude us.  

While not quite the “moment” we seek, the UN for its part had a pretty good week where children and youth were concerned, highlighted by discussions on the role of youth in peacebuilding and on the nefarious practice of targeting school buildings and educators by (mostly) armed insurgents. An Arria Formula meeting convened by the Dominican Republic highlighted the importance of involving young people directly in policy decisions that could determine in large measure prospects for their own future.  One key to this, as suggested by a former UN Youth Advisor in Somalia, is through promotion of inter-generational dialogue, communication that is on a level playing field that can and must involve youth from diverse economic, ethnic, educational and religious backgrounds.

But the most compelling discussions of the week focused on the increasing phenomenon of armed attacks on schools and school facilities perpetrated by those seeking to intimidate students and teachers from pursuing a different path.  What Germany rightly deemed “crimes against our future” are being perpetrated, often with impunity, by persons whom Niger accused of preferring “ignorance and obscurantism” to learning and truth-telling.  UNICEF director Fore reminded the audience that the future will surely require diversely skillful youth and that such skills are in danger of being lost in large measure if we cannot stem the multiple impediments of COVID infections, poverty, the digital divide and school attacks.

While the UN week featured a (Security Council) presidential statement and a welcome affirmation of the value of the Safe Schools Declaration (click here), it also featured a bit of partisan bickering and limited practical measures (what Niger as Council president referred to as “rehabilitation and reconstruction” projects) that fell a bit short of what the President of the General Assembly highlighted in one of his final statements in that office – that at the end of the day “peaceful coexistence remains as the foundation for sustainable development and climate action.”

Such essential co-existence remains elusive at best. We adults continue to stoke the flames of misunderstanding and mistrust, flames burning as intensely as those now raging in the woods of the western US.  We continue to spin the truth, telling only the parts that serve our interests and not the parts that also call us to account.  We continue to act like we know what we’re doing, and then refuse to apologize (or amend our ways) when the limits of our collective wisdom have clearly been exposed.

The girl on the bench sees all of this.  They all do. 

As many of you recognize, this past Friday was the 19th anniversary of the infamous 9/11 attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York.   This is surely a day to remember, especially the sacrifices of First Responders whose valiant attempts to free persons trapped in the collapsing towers cost many of them their own lives.

But 9/11 is also a day to assess. What has changed/not changed over 19 long years? Are we any closer to reconciliation among nations and peoples? Have our preparations for armed conflict been any less active (or expensive)?  Are today’s children any more likely to inherit a sustainable, peaceful planet in which it is safe to go to school and then share with the world what they have learned there? Have we done anything close what we could be doing in this pivotal moment to stop the fires decimating our forests, the melting of our ice caps, the biological carnage associated with yet another cycle of preventable extinction, the bombs that intimidate normal life and learning? Have we done enough to swap out deception and hatred for honesty and love? Have we given enough of ourselves to the present to locate the “other way” that can ensure a safer, healthier future?

It turns out that, even in our centers of global policy, we have much to account for regarding our values, our choices and our actions.  The future for the girl on the bench depends on such an awakening.

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Our Time: Leveraging a More Sustainable Unknown, Dr. Robert Zuber

2 Feb

Wilderness

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. Jane Addams

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground.  Frederick Douglass

Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other part is ignored?  Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Every human is fated to have one moment in their lives in which they can change their own destiny. Takayuki Yamaguchi

I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.  Sojourner Truth

In principle, therefore, the more dizzyingly diverse the images that are propagated, the more empowered we will be as a society.  Patricia J. Williams

As January in New York drew to a (blessed) close, and despite rumblings regarding the spread of the coronavirus, a massive Caribbean earthquake, and the launch of a Mideast “peace plan” more likely to cause than resolve regional violence, we had to acknowledge that this has been a good week for our tiny organization.  We welcomed new interns and re-welcomed older ones; we have fresh evidence that our writing and advocacy (even our media work) is helping people in various global settings find their footing; and we have celebrated the formation of new partnerships with persons and organizations earning newly-enhanced status at the UN and with a demonstrated ability to open doors to policy and service that we could never open on our own.

The week for us was bracketed by a long interview with Global Connections Television on Monday and a Friday evening reception for younger advocates in our small, shared 49th Street office.   In between, there were numerous UN meetings on issues from the unresolved security threats plaguing Libya and the Central African Republic to discussions on appropriate measure for countering terrorist threats as well as how best to integrate our collective commitments to sustainable development and peacebuilding.

As is typical for UN conversations of this sort, the discourse in most of these conference rooms was earnest but not particularly urgent, competent but not particularly determined. Those of us who have had some time at the policy controls have presided over a period of significant successes but have also not done enough to reverse the deficits of trust that continue to plague multilateralism.  We who speak with increasingly frequency (as do current Security Council members such as the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent and the Grenadines) about the need to incorporate more youth voices into global policy continue to experience discomfort when the hands of youth reach out to share the steering wheel, or when young people wave their metaphorical tickets impatiently (often anxiously) in the hope that we older folks will recognize that we’ve used our own privilege to stay on the ride longer than the rules permit, that it is time to make the seats available for a fresher set of “paying customers.”

I get the sense that we who have been in this “business” (perhaps too) long sometimes forget what it is like to face an uncertain future, to prepare to jump into an unknown that is one part scary, one part exhilarating, regarding which younger persons know (as we once knew) that at some level we are simply unprepared to manage (let alone control) what comes next.  Will we experience the start a new war whose outcomes and consequences we can’t handle?   Will we be able to adjust to what are now virtually irreversible climate threats?  Will we have the strength of character to welcome the increasing number of displaced who are likely to show up on our shifting shores?  Do we have what it takes to ensure that “the good we secure for ourselves” can be made available to others? Can we, as Mexico and Ireland suggested this week in different UN meeting rooms, create viable action plans on peace and sustainable development to supplement what is often mere “thinking and believing” on our part?

The young people standing in line waiting for us older folks to get off the ride can’t escape the dizzying heights and unsettling tremors that they are set to experience.   That so many of our younger colleagues are still prepared to have their tickets punched for this uncertain journey is both laudable and gratifying.  As we all shared together on Friday evening, I was reminded of a favorite song, “This is Our Time” by WILD, a tune about finding the light that shines somewhere up ahead in the “open wide,” about running straight into the unknown instead of holding back – or stepping out of line altogether.  If you’ve only heard snippets of this song as background for an automobile commercial on US television, I invite you to have a listen.  In its entirety, it is a lovely reminder of the courage that life requires, now more than ever, the courage to face an “open wide” that seems as likely to swallow young people whole as to set the table for their own great adventure, the courage that we older folks have largely domesticated in ourselves and too-often sought to domesticate in those who will follow.

But as we cautiously prepare to share the controls and ultimately relinquish them altogether, we still have work to do, work to make the “wilderness” of life a bit more predictable, a bit more fair; to open up more space for innovative thinking and determined action by a greater range of stakeholders; even to enable policy relationships that can refresh the whole of the created order and not merely one or more of its constituent parts; policy to help ensure that the unknown to which young people are destined can still yield forests instead of brownfields,  gardens instead of mine fields.

In that vein, earlier this week I was honored to help a friend prepare a talk to be given on Monday focused on the human rights dimensions of sustainable development.   This linkage might seem abstract to some, but as is recognized in policy discussions from counter-terror and peacebuilding to disaster risk reduction and food security, a human rights lens is essential to ensuring that the “promise” of sustainable development results in more — much more — than development alone.   Indeed, we recognize that the sustainability of any development is clearly threatened where social and economic inequalities remain rampant; where journalists and civil society leaders face harassment and arbitrary arrest for doing their jobs; where governments feel free to divert public resources from common to restrictive uses; where impunity for abuses fuels lasting trauma and deep despair; where weapons flow like tap water from erstwhile “licit” uses to instilling terror in local populations; where people of modest means in small island states continue to bear the brunt of lifestyle choices made in the richest nations; where children are denied an education — even a childhood — via the decisions of powerful (mostly) men and women in faraway places.

These and related problems are ones to which older folks can (and must) continue to make valuable, even life-saving contributions. And, yes, we can “agitate” for a healthier planet without “clinging to the reigns” or taking up seats on rides that have long needed to be vacated for others. Moreover, we can keep ourselves open to policy and other innovations that pave the way towards solutions to pressing global problems that have largely eluded us in our own time, solutions that demand greater policy integration together with a more “dizzyingly diverse” array of active contributors.

As the first draft of this post was being completed, the bells of nearby Riverside Church were pealing, calling some to put on their clothes and come to church services, but seemingly calling the rest of us within range to make a more hopeful and sustainable future come alive, to commit to “ploughing the ground” that is ours to cultivate such that we may continue to harvest a range of metaphorical”crops” with which to maintain our own lives and share with others.

Such sharing in all its dimensions must be sure touch the lives of our “younger others,” those whose breathless journeys into the “open wide” are only just beginning.

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