The Adventure that is Metta

by Michael Nagler

One of the things we’ve been saying and hearing about us lately is that what we are is as significant as what we do. Not that we’d find it easy to define what we are as a group; but it’s worth a try because the way people are forming new associations today is itself a key part of the revolution, paradigm shift, or whatever it shall be called.  Just as the struggling rebels in the Spanish Civil War congealed into “affinity groups” that live on today in the caracoles of indigenous Mexican movements — and of course the affinity groups of grassroots protests — so also, if less romantically, groups and communities are finding their way into non-standard forms of organizing. And we are one of them.

Let me share with you just one idea that emerged from a recent hope tank.  It started

when we were reviewing the appalling statistics about soldier and veteran suicides, here and in Israel, with some recent documentaries about ‘basic training’ for military service at the back of our minds.  Like many hope tank ideas, it’s very simple.  Here’s a moral compass: never degrade a human being. For any reason.  You can then go to any institution in the present system and ask yourself, as Gandhi did, is this sound, would it be sound if modified, or must it be tossed aside.  Do you want to defend the country?  Fine, but do not dare to dehumanize prospective soldiers to do it.  Do you want protection from crime?  Prisons?  You can have anything you want, but not if you have to dehumanize people (including yourself) and lock them away. Do you want a sound economy?  No problem, but if you have to lie to people and make them feel empty and insecure, if you have to  distract them from seeing own their inner resources, you are doing irreparable harm for a small good, and that’s not allowed.

This is an idea, of course, not a plan.  Some hope tank ideas roll right out into projects, others just help to fill in the ‘story’ of the future toward which humanity is feeling its way. We need both.

The other two ingredients of our life are guests and projects.  Sometimes they’re both: this month we were visited by Prof. Elizabeth Lozano of Loyola University who came to know of us when a friend who has too many books gave her The Search for a Nonviolent Future. Elizabeth is Colombian, and went back there, armed with her social science skills and the nonviolence models in Search to visit and study those islands of courage in the midst of extreme and unrelenting violence — the peace communities.  The talk we had her give here in town, filmed and taped, may end up part of the three-volume book I am coediting for Praeger right now, Peace Movements Worldwide. (OK, that’s not technically a Metta project, but the line is blurry).

As one of our newest and youngest, UC freshman Justine Parkin said recently, “The days I spend time with Metta are always the best of my week.”  Now that Chris and Audrey have stepped up so impressively to the challenge of organizing this summer’s Mentors program (they were mentees in it themselves just last year), I hope there will be many more good days for many such idealistic, capable, visionary and smart young people.  And that we can find ways to make you part of us.