Week 4 – Intro to the Roadmap

Week 4 Roadmap

I’ve not really looked at the roadmap section of the Metta website before but now understand and look forward to using it. I think the New Story Creation story is going to be crucial in the next couple of years. Without this we won’t turn the movement into something globally popular.  I think education in the New Story and Nonviolence could be somewhere I could contribute. I am on the Children’s Meeting committee at my Quaker Meeting House and need to start looking for ways to introduce the New Story to the kids and teenagers. My son Dan is also about to start Senior School with a very progressive seeming Head who said his three priorities are “Kindness, kindness and kindness”. So I’m hoping to talk to him about Nonviolence training for his staff and pupils.

I need to spend more time listening to the new progressive media and less time following corporate media, so I’m soaked in the New Story. I like the term “non-reductionist science”. It sounds a bit less new agey than New Science, which I know some of my friends will be sceptical of.

Further along the compass, I am part of an alternative currency group in Brighton which I could spend more time on. I’ve also made contact with a small group of transition town people in my town. I think that once the course is over, and I have more time, I will reconnect with them in order to have some personal interaction rather than just lots of online campaigning. I think “Be personal with everyone” is a great rule for me. As my job is so social, when I’m back home I sometimes lack the energy to forge new relationships at home. But I think that this is crucial. I might try to set up some kind of new story study group at my local Quaker meeting.

The Government is about to allow an Oil Corporation start exploratory fracking in my county of Sussex. This is the first time in Britain since they caused some small earthquakes in Blackpool a couple of years ago. I think that this is a red line for me. It seems like an opportunity to say “no further” as it is a fresh issue in this country. If we can stop them here, then maybe we can start to push back their agenda elsewhere. I’ve made contact with some early anti fracking groups and am hoping that my nonviolence training will have developed enough so that when the time comes for resistance, I can be of service – with my transition town involvement being the constructive programme side of the equation.

one last question: When will the interactive Roadmap compass go live? I think it will be a fantastic resource to refer people to.

Paul B

One of the aspects that really drew me to the Metta Center website and kept me coming back was the roadmap tool. I like the strategy and its focus on personal power and how that branches out to constructive programming and Satyagraha for an interplay of these interrelated disciplines.

I have been staring at Roadmap for a couple of months now and trying to figure out how to make the best use of it. I printed out the nonviolence wallet card earlier in the year and have been carrying it around ever since but can’t say I have looked at it as often lately. I feel like it has helped me in some situations though. I like the person power aspect of Roadmap as I enjoy that it is something that challenges in those five aspects listed. While the personal power is an ongoing work in progress I must say I still have not figured out where I fit in on the constructive actions on the map. I am hoping my involvement in this course will help me discover this so I could better focus my intentions.

One area that I am pretty passionate about is working for animals being killed for food. I stopped eating meat about five or six years ago and then became vegan about a year after, so I’ve think I’ve been vegan about 4-5 years or so now. That lifestyle switch shook many of those around me and helped lead to some of them making some changes in that direction as well. In this area I have mostly just focused on eating the way I feel is best and letting it speak for itself. However I have felt the urge to get more involved in this area somehow. I did a little fundraising for a walk last year which I enjoyed, not sure what my next step in this area would be but it is something I have an interest in.

When I look at roadmap one area that seems to draw me is “Gandhian economics”. I just feel drawn to this area. I hope to learn more about it as I go through this course as I feel I have a lot to learn on it still. I feel that many of the economic structures that suffocate us would stop if we refused to participate in them. The swadeshi movement in India is something that seems so powerful, it builds up the individual and helps better economic structures and slowly crush those factions that rely on exploitation. I have been curious of what could be done in this country to create a similar movement. It seems to me that we have such a reliance on exploited labor that not only hurts those being exploited but the exploiter as well. The amount of foreign goods, such as clothing, produced by under compensated  labor that surrounds us is astounding. We train people to become “managers” of the labor of others taking every measure to not do the labour ourselves. This just weakens our society immensely and just leads to continuing violence.  As a result I am interested in learning more and becoming more involved in this area.

Another thing….

I think the Roadmap is going to help me grow my passion for inner work into something that can make a difference in the bigger world.

Sydney

John, I am also finding myself wondering where violence towards non-humans fits in.  While I am not opposed to eating animals per se, I do think that the way we treat the animals that are raised for food is another symptom of our failure to respect the fabric of life….not to mention animals that are kept in captivity for entertainment or other purposes.

Right now, I am in a place in my life where I am focusing on “Person Power”.  I think in the past I have tried to jump right into the outer layers of the thing without doing the work on myself that was necessary for me to be successful and fulfilled.  I was very involved in the animal rights movement for a long time, and one of the things that turned me off, in retrospect, is just this – I felt that a lot of the people I encountered were working on an important issue that really sparked their passion, but they were not really cultivating their own inner resources and building an inclusive environment.  I was very burnt out by my work because I did not have the inner resources necessary to sustain my passion and commitment.  I appreciate John’s letting his behavior speak for itself.  🙂

These days, I see my own place on the Roadmap within the New Story Creation sector.  I am an educator and a writer, and I am starting to develop a clearer focus about where my work should be.  I am also very involved in the local food movement – I am in a farming community which makes it much easier, but even when I lived in a more suburban area I was starting to look for ways to localize my consumption of food and other goods to the degree possible.

Another idea I have been mulling over is volunteering in a juvenile detention facility.  I lead my daughter’s Girl Scout troop, and Girl Scouts has a program by which volunteers go into these facilities and lead a troop there.  I have to admit that I am a little intimidated by the idea, but I also think it would be rewarding.  Right now my plate is full, but maybe down the road….

Hi Kelly,

Interesting to hear about your work in the local food movement. That is something I have an interest in. I have been consistently trying to make an effort to try and better my food purchases and make sure they are the most constructive they could be. I have been trying to go to my farmers market and rely on them for my products more. Not sure what to do in the winter though when that resource goes away. I have been trying also when I go to whole foods to look for items that are made local. I have also experimented with the benefits of buying local more exclusively or trying to by local and fair trade items from overseas as well. Trying to figure out what strategy is the most effective.

I think it is great that you may get involved in the juvenille detention facility. Reading your post made me think about a book I recently read that I learned about through the Metta Center site by Colman McCarthy called “I’d Rather Teach Peace”. He is someone who is involved in teaching peace and the book tells about his experience teaching the subject in various places such as Georgetown but also documents his experience in a juvenile facility. If your looking for something to read you may find it interesting particularly because his teaching method seemed, to me at least, extremely interesting and thought provoking but also cause his description of the juvenile experience may be something that can maybe help as you prepare to do something similar.

John

Hello everyone,

I’m a week behind as I just returned home from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s Peace Leadership Course, a week-long retreat in Santa Barbara.  It was very encouraging to meet people from all over the country (and one from Uganda) who are making painstaking efforts for peace in their daily lives.  The course really complemented the materials we are studying here, too.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about after the retreat is how all issues are ultimately connected,  just like the map suggests.  Addressing one issue in complete isolation from others is just impossible – and I do feel drawn to the idea of working together under the one framework of nonviolence.

The inhumane treatment of animals also came up in our course several times too, especially in the context of our ability to feel empathy toward other living beings – and empathy is the foundation of nonviolence.

As for myself, I of course feel that I have a “place” in the peace section of the map, especially having worked on nuclear abolition in the recent years.  The map, along with the readings and studies I have been doing, has made me notice that as we push for nuclear nonproliferation and abolition, there is a need for understanding why nations depend on nuclear weapons for their security, and how we can fill the “need” for security in alternative methods.  So I think my challenge is to really spend the time thinking about the “constructive program” aspect of the issue while thinking of leveraging points for resistance.