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Dr. Jude Currivan — cosmologist, futurist, planetary healer and author of the new book, “The Cosmic Hologram” — is this week’s guest on Nonviolence Radio, and she “illuminates” for listeners (and readers) a new perspective from which to understand the cosmos. This perspective captures the essential unity that permeates every level of existence, from the atomic to the personal to the galactic. With host Michael Nagler, she traces the idea of cosmic unity back to ancient spiritual traditions and then returns to modern science, which is now (re)discovering the same wisdom.
The meaning and unity that is the foundation of all being impacts not only scientists and scholars, but each of us in our everyday lives. “We are waking up,” Dr. Currivan says, “to literally remembering that we are inseparable. One of the things with that though is the emphasis on unity-in-diversity — because unity is not about uniformity. It’s this incredible gorgeous, wonderful radical diversity of expression.” Understanding that each of us is a unique expression of a bigger oneness or whole can explain the grounded and joyous feeling of loving and being loved. It can help to motivate our meditation practice, and perhaps most importantly, it can fuel our desire to work — nonviolently — to improve and transform the world.
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Stephanie: Welcome everybody to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I’m your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I am the executive director of the Metta Center for Nonviolence. We study the power of active nonviolence worldwide. This show explores the same topic from the perspective of activism, activists, teachers, and even scientists. We also get to the news a little bit later in the program.
Today, Michael Nagler, my co-host and news anchor for the Nonviolence Report interviews Dr. Jude Currivan, a cosmologist, planetary healer, futurist, author — and she’s actually previously one of the most senior businesswomen in the U.K. She’s also the co-founder of something called, “The WholeWorld-View.”
Jude holds a PhD in archeology where she researched ancient cosmologies, and a Master’s degree in physics from Oxford where she specialized in cosmology and quantum physics. She’s the author of six nonfiction books, currently available in 16 languages and 26 countries. Her latest is, “The Cosmic Hologram: In-Formation at the Center of Creation.” Let’s tune into her conversation with Michael Nagler about cosmology, quantum physics, and nonviolence.
Michael: Greetings everyone. I am very pleased to be interviewing Dr. Jude Currivan who is an evolutionary leader and is phoning in today from the U.K. She is the author of six books. The latest being the “Cosmic Hologram: In-Formation at the Center of Creation,” which is going to be one of the things I’d like to talk about. She is previously one of the most senior business women in the U.K. which is I think a fascinating and intriguing combination.
Jude, you have an M.A in physics and a PhD in archeology; that’s already an unusual combination.
Jude: I’ve been on a very scenic route in my life, Michael, as you’ve just described.
Michael: Reminds me very much of Elisabet Sahtouris who also had various migrations. For starters, Jude, would you tell us about your book? The latest one, that is, “Cosmic Hologram” — why is that important?
Jude: Well, it’s a book that I’ve really wanted to write since I was 4 or 5 years old because it describes reality. It describes the world in the way that I’ve experienced it from being a small child, where everything is profoundly interconnected — and even more than that, is ultimately unified. It’s remarkable and wonderful in the unity expressed through its diversity.
What I’ve been feeling for a very long time is that our worldviews drive our behaviors. In our societies, we generally have a worldview of separation. Science has told us that our universe is made up of separate things, pretty much, even though quantum theory pointed clues out that that wasn’t the case. Still, our general science and all the other things that flow from that describe a world that is separate and therefore ultimately meaningless, that evolution is a series of accidents. Somehow, after a very long time, consciousness somehow has arisen from our brains.
But that’s wrong. I mean, that’s innately, fundamentally wrong. As you know, universal spiritual teachings have shown us and indigenous wisdom has always understood. And now, new discoveries across all scales of existence in numerous, numerous fields of research are providing the evidence that turns that old paradigm of materialistic separatism on its head. Instead, it shows us that our universe indeed does exist, and evolves as a unified entity, beginning in a big bang, which wasn’t really big and wasn’t really a bang. It was very small, very small, but incredibly ordered and intentional.
Space has expanded and time has flowed ever since as a big breath, as an out-breath. Everything in existence in this new understanding – and this ancient understanding, of course — is meaningful. We have meaning and purpose, but in addition, the whole of existence has meaning and purpose. It also shows us that our universe embodies, from the very beginning, an evolutionary impulse to evolve from simplicity to complexity.
And finally, to really frame this, it’s showing us that mind and consciousness aren’t something we have, they’re literally what we and the whole world are. Now that, for me, heals our worldview. It heals our fragmented perspectives that drive our dysfunctional behaviors. And just as conflict is the most natural outcome of a fragmented worldview, a world of separation, so for me, peace is the most natural outcome of this new perspective, this ancient perspective of unified reality and unity expressed in radical and wondrous diversity.
Michael: That is so wonderful to hear. It’s much more elegant and a much more expert version of things that we’ve been trying to say at the Metta Center for a long time. The phrase that has occurred to me recently is, you cannot graft nonviolence onto a materialistic worldview.
Jude: Yeah, absolutely.
Michael: It just doesn’t fit. Could you share with us what some of those really telling new discoveries are?
Jude: Well, I’d be delighted to. First of all, what we’re finding is that there are patterns throughout nature, but not just throughout nature, patterns that also play out through our collective behaviors. From the very smallest patterning of energy and matter to the largest scale of vast clusters of galaxies, there are relational dynamic geometrical patterns that can be seen as underpinning the appearance of all systems.
We’re finding these patterns called “fractals,” not just through the natural world at all scales of existence, but throughout our human behavior. For example, we find that the way that cities grow and the way that galaxies grow have the same patterning. We find that the patterns that underpin ecosystems underpin the relational patterning that we find in the Internet, yeah?
We find also that these – the appearance of energy, matter, space and time — are arising from these deeper levels of cosmic mind, cosmic consciousness, intentionally and meaningfully. So that everything we call reality is literally informed, meaningful information embodied in people and planets and plants, from the very smallest to the very largest.
There are two pieces of evidence that actually were discovered after the book went to press. One was cosmological in scale — well, both were cosmological in scale, which means the scale of the whole universe. The first is a study of something called “the cosmic microwave background,” and what that is, is that when our universe began, it was incredibly dense and hot, minute, but dense and hot — but also, ordered.
It wasn’t therefore transparent to light, but it was transparent to sound. Over the next almost 400,000 years as our universe was beginning and the energy and matter that would go on to form stars was coming into being, instead of light flooding the early universe, it was flooded by sound. Pulses of sound literally sang our universe into existence. They sang the beginnings of stars and planets and everything that’s unfolded since.
After 380,000 years, the universe expanded enough and cooled down enough so that it did become transparent to light. And that radiation, that light, still exists, and it fills the whole of space. As space has expanded, that light has moved from being visible light — we actually know it was sort of an orange color, how cool is that, that we know the color of the universe? It’s amazing. But over time it moved from being orange to microwave wavelengths. So now it’s invisible other than through certain telescopes that measure microwave radiation.
What we find filling the whole of space is exactly the same patterns, fractal patterns that underpin everything we see at all scales of existence — and that is a signature of the cosmic hologram. That is the signature of the cosmic hologram that fills the whole of space. The other thing that I think is even more mind-blowing and heart healing is that in 2018, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, were able to do something that quantum theory had predicted but had been sort of discounted for a very long time, which was the idea that the whole of our universe exists and evolves as a unified entity, what’s called “non-locally interconnected.”
Now what that means is that within spacetime, there is a limiting speed limit, the speed of light, which means that signals between and within our universe can only go as fast as the speed of light. But quantum theory predicted that our universe would actually exist and evolve as a unified entity, a nonlocally connected entity that knows itself as a wholeness as well as expressing itself within spacetime as diverse and differentiated expressions of itself.
What the MIT team did was they were able to nonlocally entangle photons of light in the laboratory with starlight from 600 light-years away.
Michael: Good grief.
Jude: Hang on, it gets better. With light from what’s called a quasar — a quasar is the incredibly active galactic center that formed very, very early on in the universe’s history — and the MIT folks managed to entangle light from two quasars, the furthest of which was 12.2 billion light-years away, with the starlight and the photons in the laboratory. And 12.2 billion light-years away is essentially cosmological; we can take that as essentially being the wholeness of our universe.
That actually is able to help us understand what I call “supernormal phenomena,” such as telepathy and precognition. But also it brings value, huge value and grounding to our intuitive insights, to synchronicities, to all these phenomena that the old paradigm of science has discounted — they are now being seen as natural phenomena, and natural attributes of what it means to be human.
Michael: Does this go beyond what I knew as the EPR experiment, Einstein, Podolski, Rosen? Didn’t that also prove the universe was nonlocal?
Jude: Yes, and Einstein hated it. He called it “spooky action at a distance.” But with the new evidence, I absolutely am sure that if he was with us, he would be waving his hands in the air, you know? He really would be.
Michael: He’s bound to be with us in some sense.
Jude: He is.
Michael: This is so fascinating. The Vedic science, of course, always said that the primal emanation of the universe from non-differentiated reality was sound.
Jude: Exactly, it was the original Om. And it was, it was the primordial Om. But the Om of our universe lasted 380,000 years.
Michael: Then it becomes what David Bohm called, “frozen light.”
Jude: Yes. Then it becomes light. Exactly. And of course, as you know, Michael, the Ishavasya Upanishad, which is one of the key teachings of the ancient Vedic Indian tradition, says that everything is consciousness. What we’re able to do now is to show the “how” of that. How does cosmic mind, cosmic consciousness create, co-create, the appearance of the reality of our universe? We’re now melding this leading edge science with this ancient understanding.
This is why I feel it’s so powerful, because science and spirituality are converging and integrating into this unified perspective, this framework, this unifying framework. And so we can say, yes, and come together because we’ve never been apart.
Michael: I want to sort of edge our way more toward nonviolence and peace now. You lay a wonderful groundwork for that when you talk about the unity of the universe. And of course, twice you’ve touched on a buzzword here which is, “appearance.” The way consciousness becomes the universe that we experience is what the ancients called “maya,” which doesn’t mean illusion necessarily, but it does mean appearance as opposed to substantial reality. Is that approximately what you were getting at when you used that word “appearance”?
Jude: Very much so, because for me as well, reality is multi-dimensional. When we talk about the ground of all being, we’re talking about really the infinity and eternity of cosmic mind. So yes, I talk about our universe and universes being great thoughts of cosmic mind. They’re great thoughts rather than great things, so it very much is that Maya, that appearance.
But it is an appearance of a universe that is experiencing and exploring and evolving what unity means by differentiating. In other traditions, in the ancient Chinese tradition, the I Ching talks about the one differentiating into the two, the two into the three, and from the three, ten thousand things are born. This is that perception too.
Michael: So when we are practicing nonviolence, we are actually tracing our way back to an original state of being from which we have, as they would say in the Judeo-Christian tradition, from which we have fallen — is that correct?
Jude: Yeah. I personally prefer not to use the word fallen. Maybe we’ve lost our way a little bit or become misled. [Laughter] But you know, we are waking up, it seems to me, to literally remembering that we are inseparable. One of the things with that though is the emphasis on unity and diversity — because unity is not about uniformity. It’s this incredible gorgeous, wonderful radical diversity of expression, but it’s exactly what you’re saying.
Michael: Yeah. It has often seemed to me actually that that inability to grasp that concept of unity and diversity is causing incredible problems and tremendous grief. It kind of prevents us from understanding the universe that we’re living in and the world of living beings that we’re living with.
Jude: Absolutely. I sort of co-founded something called, “WholeWorld-View,” alongside launching the book in 2017. We emphasized that it’s not just about understanding this, it’s experiencing it and it’s embodying it. So, you know, I think that it’s incredibly important that this is an invitation to adventure into a remembered wholeness. And that adventure, it calls us to experience this sense of wholeness however we do so.
It’s just that the book’s got our back. The book is showing us the evidence that this isn’t a fool’s errand, that this is real, that this is the true reality. And it invites us into adventure to experience that for ourselves. When we do that, not only do we wake up, we can eventually link up and lift up together.
Michael: Oh, that is just beautiful. Now, is that where perhaps meditation fits in? When you talk about experiencing the oneness — that is the end result of a successful meditation journey, is it not?
Jude: Oh, very much so. I find though that people can feel into that oneness in different ways. I think it’s certainly about an inner practice and a regular inner practice, and certainly meditation is a wonderful, a wonderful way. My sense is [to meditate] more often and shorter because there’s something about the repetition of a practice, an inner practice, that I personally find very helpful. But also being in nature, actually just being with a tree, being with a plant, being with a child, being with a sunset. That sense of oneness, that sense of what this is all about is the science of love.
When we experience love, with all the sort of trauma that a sense of fragmented love causes, but also an experience of unity love, then whatever that may be can open up the whole world, literally, to us.
Michael: Well, we often say that nonviolence is love in action so understanding would be one dimension, but people can also practice nonviolence, experience its effectiveness, experience how deeply grounded and wonderful it makes them feel without necessarily understanding the theory behind it. But the theory certainly helps.
Jude: It does. I agree with you, and the book wasn’t written for those folks. It was written for the folks who say, “Show me evidence. I might meditate if I thought it was helpful, but show me the evidence. I might be able to accept the invitation to this adventure if I can trust that it’s real.” So, it was sort of those folks that say, “Well, science says…” But the old paradigm of science is fundamentally flawed, and this expands that science.
I revere the pioneers of quantum physics and Albert Einstein and many others. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. What this does is expand that 20th century science, and it absolutely frames it in terms of consciousness and unity.
Michael: Thus, if I’m not mistaken, see if you agree with me – thus, it brings it into living reality and in every compartment of our life, not just an intellectual exercise.
Jude: Oh, absolutely. We spent a few years enjoying playing with words on this, we’d say, “It’s about thinking cosmic, feeling global, acting local.” It’s all about head, heart, and hands.
Michael: Body, mind, and spirit. Well, if you go back, Jude, to the days of Norbert Wiener, I think, who kind of launched information theory, then we had the General Environmental Research Group with – oh, you would probably know better than I some of the people who were involved in that. Do you see – here’s the important point — do you see a growing acceptance of these ideas in any or all fields that you interact with?
Jude: I do, I do. I’m part of a group called, “The Spirituality in Education Alliance, U.K.” That’s a large number of organizations who are looking to bring a holistic worldview into education, and the WholeWorld-View is their unifying framework, it’s essential unity. Essential unity is the framework for what we’re doing together, and so I’m working in communities of transformational leadership where this is becoming the unifying framework: transformational education becoming the unifying framework. Transformation at the social and cultural levels and transformation at every level because, of course, the old material separatist worldview drove a siloed approach to everything. This, obviously, offers a holistic framework within which everything interweaves and can be optimized in that sense.
There’s an initiative that I’m working on with with my friends and colleagues at the Evolutionary Leaders circle and beyond which is offering a unifying framework for the consideration of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Their responses to our dysfunctional behaviors can only moderate those symptoms if we adopt a unified holistic framework as a worldview within which the STGs can then have a natural flow, just as peace and nonviolence naturally flow from this perspective.
Michael: That is just wonderful to hear. Henry Stapp, here at UC Berkeley, a colleague of mine – oh, it was like 30 or so years ago that he was saying these new discoveries in quantum theory and EPR and so forth are bound to produce a different worldview, an entirely healthier society. For a long time, it looked as if yeah, they should, but it wasn’t working. And now what you’re telling us is – and I’m so glad to hear it — that this is starting to catch on.
Jude: Yeah, very much. To be honest, quantum theory of itself was unable to actually take this next step because quantum theory, which describes energy matter, and relativity theory, which describes spacetime, are really of themselves apparently incompatible. But when you take the next step — and this is always the case, isn’t it — you take the next step in a journey and you see how they can be reconciled, the reconciliation comes through.
I won’t go into it because I’d go full science nerd, but it actually shows that when you restate the two laws of thermodynamics, those two laws of in-formation, then quantum theory and relativity theory drop out as expressions of the first and second laws of in-formation — and then they naturally reconcile. They’re just complimentary expressions: energymatter and spacetime are complimentary expressions of in-formation.
I keep halting between the “in”and the “formation” because I want to stress it’s meaningful. Everything is meaningful information.
Michael: What I think what we need are more people who grasp the fundamentals. Like myself, I am innocent of mathematics; I came from a scientific family but I’m non-scientific myself. But I do grasp these basics and what I’ve been trying to work on is the adaptation, if you will, of these basic ideas into our social life and our social behavior. It has often seemed to me that a connecting link is the question of evolution and animal behavior and how cooperation played a much greater role in it then we used to allow in the old paradigm. Is that something that you’ve dipped a toe into at all?
Jude: I’m more than dipping a toe, I’m swimming in it at the moment. The reason is that I’ve always seen a trilogy of books that I call, “The Transformation Trilogy,” and “Cosmic Hologram” was the first. It’s about understanding this model, this unified model. But the second book, which I’m writing now, or it’s writing me, is called, “Gaia, Her Story.” It continues from where the “Cosmic Hologram” ended in its perspective of a living sentient evolving universe, Gaia as a sentient gaiasphere. We are all Gaians in that regard, and a universe that literally embodies an innate impulse to evolve from simplicity to complexity, at ever greater levels of individuated self-awareness.
Michael: And then the third book?
Jude: “Many Voices, One Heart.”
Michael: Ah, I see. Well, I have been arguing that we have two communities of interest of practice that are operating in this, each in its silo – to use the word that you just used. One is the New Story People, of which you are a brilliant example. The other is nonviolence folks who also have a gut feeling that nonviolence works, but they don’t know the background to it. One of the most useful things we can do, I think, is to try to bring those two communities into a single discourse.
Jude: I wholeheartedly agree. I was actually in New York – many times, but I think it was the last time I was in New York — and I co-facilitated a workshop with a dear friend and colleague of mine, Rick Ulfik – you know Rick?
Michael: Oh, yes.
Jude: Rick and I, we also worked together on 11 Days of Global Unity this past September. He invited me to write 11 pulses for those 11 days, and so I did. Of course, three of those days were around Peace Weekend which was all about freedom, disarmament, and peace.
Michael: It’s happening.
Jude: Yes, it is.
Michael: Well, Jude, I really needed some good news this morning and you were it. This is wonderful. We have just about come to the end of our time but I can’t leave without on the one hand thanking you very much, and on the other hand, asking if we might do this again.
Jude: Oh, I’d be delighted to. Thank you so much for inviting me. This fills the time, Michael, doesn’t it? I mean this year we have been working globally with many organizations: we had World Unity Week in June, we’ve had Ubiquity University and Jim Garrison launch Humanity Rising where we’re sharing the WholeWorld-View with Rick. So many of us are now literally linking up and lifting up together.
I reckon in 2021 I’d like to take two more steps — that we level up together and light up together.
Michael: Well, I will be huffing and puffing at your footsteps, trying to catch up.
Jude: I don’t think so. It’s me huffing and puffing at yours and all the amazing work that you and your community do. I’d love us to continue this conversation and exploration and just see how we can really share this as widely as possible for the benefit of as many folks as possible. And for healing our relationships, not just with each other, but with our planetary home, our beloved Gaia and all her children.
Michael: My conviction is, Jude, that we have to do this in words and action.
Jude: Yeah, very much.
Michael: Our words need to be clear and compelling and our actions have to be consistent with them. As Gandhi showed, when you have that magical formula, it does gain a qualitatively different power.
Jude: Yeah, very much so.
Stephanie: You were just listening to an interview between Jude Currivan, who is a cosmologist and futurist. She has done extensive research into ancient cosmologies and quantum physics, in Peace and Conflict Studies, and Michael Nagler, my co-host here on Nonviolence Radio, is also the president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence.
Let’s tune in now to the Nonviolence Report with Michael Nagler, with special thanks to Jewelia White for researching information presented in this segment.
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Michael: Greetings everyone, I’m Michael Nagler and I’m bringing you this week’s episode of the Nonviolence Report. We’re going to be doing, first of all, some news and then some resources, and we’ll end up with a word or two about Metta.
So let’s start with some activists in France. They have been protesting a security bill that was passed last week. Protests are going on because they are demanding the eliminations of certain articles that would make it almost impossible for protestors or demonstrators to, for example, take films of police actions during their protests.
Now, here and elsewhere – that is here in the U.S. and elsewhere — there is an international protest against Amazon that was launched on Black Friday. It’s because of the work conditions of employees; many of them have actually contracted COVID at their work. They also are aiming to have Amazon commit to zero emissions by 2030. So it’s partly to protect their own health and wellbeing and partly to get the company moving in a better direction for all of us. I think that’s a really good combination for protests, demonstrations, other nonviolent actions to undertake.
Looking to our northern neighbor, we have once again news about an indigenous owned solar farm. Remember when we were talking about indigenous ownership by a company that the Mi’kmaq have opened up? They have started. This is an indigenous owned solar farm in Northern Alberta, the community there is Chippewyan. From the solar farm, they plan to produce 25% of the energy needed for three indigenous communities.
“We worked together and we made it happen,” said Chief Allan Adam of the Athabaskan Chipewyan First Nations. He further said, “We work with the sun, we work with the wind, we work with Mother Nature and we work with the water for the children of the future – to give them a better, cleaner life.”
Other Canadian and indigenous news, the Wet’suwet’en standoff continues. I’m afraid a lot of the events that I’m going to be reporting on today are precisely about standoffs that are continuing. The Wet’suwet’en have been calling now for international solidarity, and this is partly a familiar wrinkle. The background here is the Coastal Gaslink – that’s the name of the company, Coastal Gaslink — they have actually now called in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to try and remove the community members and the indigenous youth as they hold a ceremony at the proposed drill site for Coastal Gaslink’s pipeline.
The wrinkle that I was referring to is holding a religious ceremony, which has been very successful, for example, by Thai Buddhists in years gone by, who made shrines and sacred objects out of certain trees to protect them from being cut down. Now, here there is another wrinkle: it’s the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who have full jurisdiction over these lands. So Coastal Gaslink is actually trespassing, is actually breaking the law.
“As CGL continues to trespass, we will do everything in our power to protect our waters and to uphold our laws.” Sometimes you need nonviolence to uphold the laws, as in fact, nonviolence always upholds the higher law. But sometimes you need it to actually uphold human laws.
Moving on to a couple of economic items here: Pope Francis has now recently invited young economists from around the world to join him in an event called, “The Economy of Francesco.” Francesco being, of course, the original Italian name of St. Francis and the Pope. They discussed creating a global human-centered economic system.
Remember way back to the book, “Economics As Though People Mattered,” which is kind of a launching pad for this whole movement. Here, “More than 2000 economists and entrepreneurs from around the world joined. They emerged with a 12-point proposal for a way forward that will move us away from greed and death towards life and dignity for all.”
I’ll have occasion in a little bit to mention one of the Pope’s statements in a recent letter, but to learn more about this issue, the all important issue of economics, there’s now a very good resource called, “ItsOurEconomy.us.” That’s one word. ItsOurEconomy.us.
We have been following events in Nigeria, where once again protestors have been met with brutal oppression. This time, the cause of the repression is something called, “the special anti-robbery squad,” or S.A.R.S. There are now threats of the Nigerian Army stepping in. I hadn’t thought for many years about another struggle in Nigeria, the Ogoni struggle. Now, there is a book by a woman, Domale Dube Keys, who has published a prize-winning dissertation entitled, “For the survival of Ogoni people. Women’s contribution to movement building in Nigeria and the United States.”
The prize committee noted the competence of this book, rich ethnographic and historical detail and said, “This book will be a significant resource in Women and Gender Studies by focusing on the transnational dimensions of black women’s organizing and contributions African women specifically make to our global political landscape.” And that is a really helpful development.
A bit of background: the Ogoni struggle really began in the 70s after oil was discovered in their part of their Nigeria back in 1958. You may remember the figure, Ken Saro-Wiwa who wrote, “The Ogoni have been gradually ground to dust by the combined effort of the multinational oil company, Shell Petroleum Development Company, with the murderous ethnic majority in Nigeria and the country’s brutal dictatorships.” So they were really up against a lot, and of course, Saro-Wiwa himself was executed three years after that statement, which was 1992, by a military regime.
For that matter, protests are still going on in the streets of Louisville, four months after Breonna Taylor was killed by police in that city. As we mentioned before, they’re continuing in Thailand and Belarus. It’s this saga we seem to be facing now of nonviolent – at least non-violent insurrection. Tell you why I use that term in a minute – and brutal repression.
I’m calling it non-violent because what we’re seeing in Belarus is a mixed bag. I’m getting this information from the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. In their struggle against a rather brutal regime in Belarus, the people have resorted to various creative actions that help engage other people in mass noncooperation and disobedience against the regime. So far, so good.
But also, people are working to mock its ruler and to peel off key regime supporters. So we have two perfectly legitimate nonviolent efforts: mass noncooperation, disobedience — that’s one. The other is to peel off key regime supporters, that’s known as taking away the pillars of support, an idea made famous by Gene Sharp.
But mocking a person is a no-no in real – or I guess I should call it, “Principled nonviolence.” And there have been episodes of that, I have mentioned it before. Once again you find a movement not really being able to discriminate between what is correct and what is incorrect nonviolence.
There’s now a book by one Steve Crawshaw called, “Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief” which looks at what the history of nonviolence has done in the immediate region, that is Belarus and worldwide.
Now we are moving on to resources.
I always seem to start off, or at least include, talking about Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping. We now have a list of UCP organizations that have been active throughout the world since 1990. That work is done by Selkirk Canada database and it’s called, “Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping Database.” And our own Stephanie Van Hook is busy compiling a more updated and complete list for the Shanti Sena Network here in the states.
The Mindsight Institute will be hosting talks called, “Personal Exploration of Planetary Possibility.” That will be every Friday at 1 PM Pacific Time. They’re focusing on using the science of the mind and the practice of presence to create a world of compassion and kindness. If I could comment on that, I do believe that spiritual exercises themselves have a direct effect on the environment, that is, the social human environment. But it isn’t easy for just anyone to really make that effect potent, so this is something maybe we should talk about further in another time.
Meanwhile, there will also be, on December 9th, a Zoom discussion with Larissa Rhodes. She’s the woman who produced, “The Social Dilemma” film. That will be on what we can do to keep digital media from interfering with the healthy development of children. That discussion is titled, “Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood” and that’s very helpful, given the harmful role of commercials in disorienting us to materialism.
And did not Pope Francis just say in his letter to the New York Times, “Feverish consumerism breaks the bonds of belonging”? I think we have to go further and help our children stay free from the two V’s — violence and vulgarity.
Might mention that Alicia Garza who co-founded and gave the name to the Black Lives Matter movement, she also has a new book out where she distills the lessons she learned from BLM and actually, from a decade of community organizing. This is Alicia’s first book, it’s called, “The purpose of power: How to Build Movements for the 21st Century.” That is information we need to have.
As for the Metta Center, our film, “The Third Harmony” continues to get accolades wherever people see it. And it will be shown at the Camera as Witness Program’s Power of Empathy series which is being co-presented with the Palo Alto libraries and the Stanford Film Society on Human Rights Day, December 10th 4:00 to 5:00 PM Pacific.
Our board game, Cosmic Peaceforce, is also shipping now.
And on Giving Tuesday, we launched some special offers which you can learn about at MettaCenter.org/get-dash-involved/donate.
And finally folks, we are moving to a nicer office here in the same building, and we hope that we can actually get to use it when the pandemic is over.
So, with many thanks to our mother station KWMR, and to our redoubtable team, Matt Watrous and Jewelia White. Glad you could listen and we will meet you again with the next episode of the Nonviolence Report.
Transcription by Matthew Watrous.