anthropology 2228:001
peace with purpose: on culture, co-operation, and non-violence
douglass st.christian
office: ssc 3425
office hours: monday 8.30-11.30 or by appointment
university of western ontario
We meet on Mondays from 12.30-2.30 in UC 224 -- Conron Hall -- and again on Wednesdays from 1.30-2.30 in Somerville House 2355. Attendance is always your choice. Learn how you need to learn. We will all end up where we need to be.
Our Weekly Classes will include:
Monday: 12.30-2.30 UC 224: discussion, films, line dancing lessons, fashion tips, guided meditation, general mayhem and putting it to the man as often and as joyously as we can.
Wednesday: 1.30-2.30 - Somerville House Rm 2355: potlucks, fingerpainting, practicing silence, whatever we feel we need. Suggest. Participate. Learn. [This is a change of room from the original schedule created by a computer program that seems to be in charge of teaching and learning here are McWestern.]
OccupyWallStreet! photo by Jeremy Ayers
Read Christopher Ketcham's Orion Piece
The Reign of the One Percenters
before going any further.
That’s just the way things are, you know. There’s before and then there’s after. Life changes in the instant, the ordinary moment. It changes in the moment someone – anyone – looks up and says “what the fuck”. Then it’s after. And everything has changed. So -
Two simple propositions:
Peace is its own success.
Peace fails only when it is abandoned.
A year ago I proposed this course to my erstwhile boss guys. I had something in mind, which was in part answering a question I had been putting to myself with increasing urgency – it was a “what the fuck” question about what Buddhists call right livelihood, which Thich Nhat Hanh describes as "finding a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion, a way to support yourself that is an expression of your deepest self and not a source of suffering for you and others."
Now, these "bossmen" probably saw $ signs, since that’s all that they allow themselve to see most days. That’s fine, since I can’t make their choices for them. But I saw, a year ago, something different. I’ve been playing this “hey, look at me, I’m a teacher” gig for a couple of decades now, which I realize is almost as long as some of you have been alive. It’s meant navigating conflicting values to work out ways to do something ethical and compassionate within an institution which is about neither. The corporate university, with its business schools and its grade curves and its lecture halls crammed with the eager and the docile is no longer about humane critique and committed action, if it ever was. [I think it was, and I think there are still schools of many different kinds out there that are about these things, but this is not one of them. It probably never was.]
One of my “bossmen" also ordered me to put the important stuff in my course outlines in the first few pages. What he means by important stuff and what I mean by important stuff are not quite the same thing. I’ll follow my own counsel here.
Doing this “course” was, a year ago, a way for me to think through that complicated navigation again, this time by asking myself and those who came along for the ride questions about peace as something done rather than something thought about. There was a certain arrogance in that, of course. That’s unavoidable, I suppose, since someone has to start the journey, point towards a path at least as a starting point. But in planning this, I realize I hadn’t gotten beyond that moment of arrogance.
And then I saw the library at OWS in New York. And the medical tent in Victoria Park at Occupy London and the responses – some editorial, some military – of the crooks and liars, most especially at our institutions of higher learning. Like this one: Crowing about how the head of the business “school” here is such a powerful important person, isn’t she just. Sounds like a good reason to celebrate. And don’t get me started about the recently appointed chancellor, about which the CEO and his underlings have been doing a truly ugly happy dance. This guy's claim to fame: he has had his speculating fingers in every destructive little bubbly pie of thievery and made a fortune in the process. Symbols matter, and this is a symbol that should sicken anyone with a conscience. Accepting a degree, even symbolically, from this guy's hands is more bile than I could swallow. Symbols matter.
Playwright and teacher Jean-Claude van Itallie put it well:
“I’m glad to be alive to see Occupy Wall Street. People from many countries, classes, occupations, ages,
backgrounds, and races are joining together to march, sing, and live together on small patches of urban land,
reclaiming for humans what has been co-opted by corporations with more than human rights. So how will
change finally be effected? We don’t need to know that yet. How something like a single line of poetry brings
down a whole corrupt system will reveal itself.”
I’ve quoted something Doris Lessing once wrote several times, but it is only in the last couple of months I’ve come to understand how right she is, and how wrong I’ve been in telling others to listen to her advice, but not heeding it myself:
“You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a
system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an
amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how
impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to
a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more
robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating
your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and
patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
So, a key question we are going to ask here is whether it is even possible to practice peace inside the machine-like halls of a university. Does compassion -- which is the kernel from which curiosity and community grow -- stand a chance in a place like this? We'll see, won't we? No harm in trying.
Two simple propositions:
Peace is its own success.
Peace fails only when it is abandoned.
A year ago I proposed this course to my erstwhile boss guys. I had something in mind, which was in part answering a question I had been putting to myself with increasing urgency – it was a “what the fuck” question about what Buddhists call right livelihood, which Thich Nhat Hanh describes as "finding a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion, a way to support yourself that is an expression of your deepest self and not a source of suffering for you and others."
Now, these "bossmen" probably saw $ signs, since that’s all that they allow themselve to see most days. That’s fine, since I can’t make their choices for them. But I saw, a year ago, something different. I’ve been playing this “hey, look at me, I’m a teacher” gig for a couple of decades now, which I realize is almost as long as some of you have been alive. It’s meant navigating conflicting values to work out ways to do something ethical and compassionate within an institution which is about neither. The corporate university, with its business schools and its grade curves and its lecture halls crammed with the eager and the docile is no longer about humane critique and committed action, if it ever was. [I think it was, and I think there are still schools of many different kinds out there that are about these things, but this is not one of them. It probably never was.]
One of my “bossmen" also ordered me to put the important stuff in my course outlines in the first few pages. What he means by important stuff and what I mean by important stuff are not quite the same thing. I’ll follow my own counsel here.
Doing this “course” was, a year ago, a way for me to think through that complicated navigation again, this time by asking myself and those who came along for the ride questions about peace as something done rather than something thought about. There was a certain arrogance in that, of course. That’s unavoidable, I suppose, since someone has to start the journey, point towards a path at least as a starting point. But in planning this, I realize I hadn’t gotten beyond that moment of arrogance.
And then I saw the library at OWS in New York. And the medical tent in Victoria Park at Occupy London and the responses – some editorial, some military – of the crooks and liars, most especially at our institutions of higher learning. Like this one: Crowing about how the head of the business “school” here is such a powerful important person, isn’t she just. Sounds like a good reason to celebrate. And don’t get me started about the recently appointed chancellor, about which the CEO and his underlings have been doing a truly ugly happy dance. This guy's claim to fame: he has had his speculating fingers in every destructive little bubbly pie of thievery and made a fortune in the process. Symbols matter, and this is a symbol that should sicken anyone with a conscience. Accepting a degree, even symbolically, from this guy's hands is more bile than I could swallow. Symbols matter.
Playwright and teacher Jean-Claude van Itallie put it well:
“I’m glad to be alive to see Occupy Wall Street. People from many countries, classes, occupations, ages,
backgrounds, and races are joining together to march, sing, and live together on small patches of urban land,
reclaiming for humans what has been co-opted by corporations with more than human rights. So how will
change finally be effected? We don’t need to know that yet. How something like a single line of poetry brings
down a whole corrupt system will reveal itself.”
I’ve quoted something Doris Lessing once wrote several times, but it is only in the last couple of months I’ve come to understand how right she is, and how wrong I’ve been in telling others to listen to her advice, but not heeding it myself:
“You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a
system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an
amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how
impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to
a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more
robust and individual than others, will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating
your own judgement. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that they are being moulded and
patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
So, a key question we are going to ask here is whether it is even possible to practice peace inside the machine-like halls of a university. Does compassion -- which is the kernel from which curiosity and community grow -- stand a chance in a place like this? We'll see, won't we? No harm in trying.
My promise to you is a simple as this:
This class, like all of my classes, is yoga for the mind and soul. It will give you an opportunity "to crack open your
heart, peel away layers of urban anxiety, sweat out toxins and bad text messages, drink in spaciousness, build
strength and stamina, look tastier in a bathing suit, sample some divine rasa (nectar), find connection and
stability in your daily life, and slide through the world with more authentic grace and flexibility. I promise you will
not leave this class feeling, breathing, or moving in quite the same way you came in."
I begin with two very simple questions: “What do you want to learn?” and “How can I help?” That is a simple as it gets.
I am asking you, in Derek Jensen’s beautiful image, to “ reach deep into the tiger's fur and hold on tight, because we are all in for a wild ride.” The heart of that invitation is trust. I ask you to work hard, to take chances, to suspend expectations and, as my best teachers have done for me, to be ready to step off the cliff. I promise I won’t push you off that cliff, only that I will take the leap with you, into the wave and waft of the experience of learning, into the tidal pool of each of our puzzlements and uncertainties.
After all, isn't it time you occupied your own learning, rather being occupied -- conquered, colonized, corrupted -- by it? My goal here is simple: to stand with you – not over you – to stand together at the place between heaven and earth where our curiosity and wonder can thrive, where we can embrace honest doubts and not false certainties.
In other words, which do you want: pornography or romance, a hand job or a love affair?
This class, like all of my classes, is yoga for the mind and soul. It will give you an opportunity "to crack open your
heart, peel away layers of urban anxiety, sweat out toxins and bad text messages, drink in spaciousness, build
strength and stamina, look tastier in a bathing suit, sample some divine rasa (nectar), find connection and
stability in your daily life, and slide through the world with more authentic grace and flexibility. I promise you will
not leave this class feeling, breathing, or moving in quite the same way you came in."
I begin with two very simple questions: “What do you want to learn?” and “How can I help?” That is a simple as it gets.
I am asking you, in Derek Jensen’s beautiful image, to “ reach deep into the tiger's fur and hold on tight, because we are all in for a wild ride.” The heart of that invitation is trust. I ask you to work hard, to take chances, to suspend expectations and, as my best teachers have done for me, to be ready to step off the cliff. I promise I won’t push you off that cliff, only that I will take the leap with you, into the wave and waft of the experience of learning, into the tidal pool of each of our puzzlements and uncertainties.
After all, isn't it time you occupied your own learning, rather being occupied -- conquered, colonized, corrupted -- by it? My goal here is simple: to stand with you – not over you – to stand together at the place between heaven and earth where our curiosity and wonder can thrive, where we can embrace honest doubts and not false certainties.
In other words, which do you want: pornography or romance, a hand job or a love affair?
Before going any further, please read this recent story from Rethinking Schools: Chicago's Peace Warriors
After that, please have a look over the to begin... page and then the first a word about grades and grading and the so let's get organized here pages from the to begin... tab at the top of the page. This should give you a clearer idea of how I will be approaching this class and you, as a participant. Then come back and finish this and move around to other things I will point you towards.
After that, please have a look over the to begin... page and then the first a word about grades and grading and the so let's get organized here pages from the to begin... tab at the top of the page. This should give you a clearer idea of how I will be approaching this class and you, as a participant. Then come back and finish this and move around to other things I will point you towards.
the big question is....
“A real struggle for justice requires that we fight systems of oppression both in and outside of the classroom, pose real threats to their ability to function, and be brave enough to take the risks required to resist the conservative goals of traditional education, rather than apologetically working along with them.”
Peace
is everywhere, if we take the time to look for it. But how can we
recognize it when we see it? This course explores the practice of peace,
co-operation, and non-violence from an ethnographic and historical
perspective. Using cross-cultural material as its foundation, we will
examine the ways societies across time and space have developed and
deployed non-violent strategies of collaboration and conflict
resolution. We will explore ideas from other cultures and traditions as a
way of learning and practising peace in each of our lives. Notice the
word we. That is key. This is your class, our class, and not simply
mine. As best as this queer old hippie can manage, this class will not
only be about peace, it will be an act of peace. That is, if we all make
the effort.
My goal is to encounter and engage insights and ideas that offer ways of understanding and pursuing the practice of peace. Some of the issues and questions we will explore might include:
1. “Aren’t we just biologically hardwired for aggression? Isn’t it just our evolutionary inheritance?” ~ well, as a century of anthropological and other discussion has shown, the short and long answer to that question is NO. We’ll look at why.
2. “ Peaceful societies just can’t survive. They’re outnumbered.” ~ societies and cultures grounded in peace and co-operation are, in fact, the rule and not the exception. This has been true throughout history and ethnography shows us it is actually true today, whatever the headlines and the brutalisms so many are subject to.
3. “This is all just hippie airy-fairy utopianism. It’s a great idea but it just can’t work on a global scale.” ~ understanding and practicing peace means understanding what interests are served by denying the viability of peace and co-operation. We’ll look closely at objections raised against peace and co-operation, and who raises them, in order to better understand what the obstacles to peace are. And yes, it is airy-fairy hippie utopianism and I am damned proud of it.
4. “It’s all too big. What can one person, or small clusters of people, actually do? I’m helpless to change anything, anyway.” ~ history and ethnography suggest otherwise, but this is a historical truth that is very carefully suppressed. We’ll look at how acting with peace in every step we take has worked and continues to work throughout history and around the world, in order to understand why this knowledge is suppressed and how to act against that suppression.
This class will be built around exploratory and wide-ranging reading and writing, practical activities both in the classroom and in our communities, and the incorporation of voices from peace activists and organizations both globally and locally. Our goal will be to find a space where we can listen and talk and act as conjoined and indivisible facets of that rough diamond we call community. Not a bad way to learn, and, I hope we’ll better understand, a pretty damned good way to do peace. My goal -- our goal I hope -- in a class meeting to discuss peace is that it will itself be an act of peace, against the silencing odds.
How to Use This Website; or what to read now....
Each of the tabs at the top of the page has several levels, starting with the tab itself, which opens a start page for that section of pages.
Start at the beginning, by reading the material under the to begin tab above. These pages, including the to begin page itself, set out some basic principles and ideas which will guide this class in our journey.
The words tab has a list of the texts I've ordered, a tentative topical schedule -- we'll be updating that together as we move through the term -- and links to some other readings you should familiarize yourself with. There will be additional brief pieces added to this tab during the term, so you should get in the habit of checking regularly.
The work tab has information on the various assignments you will do. In particular, pay attention to the homework page as this will be updated regularly as we develop each new homework assignment. For now, make sure you read the page about grades and grading, and the general descriptions of the course assignments. We will come back to all this over and over again.
The resources tab will contain links to groups, sites, sources, and other things of interest. It is not comprehensive, and I will update it as the term moves along with things that crop up. If you have any suggestions for resources, pass them along to me and I'll add them.
Finally, I will use a blog -- linked under the appropriately labeled douglass's blog tab -- to post information, commentary, recipes, suggestions, flirtatious winks and other stuff. I will be posting to this at least once a week, usually on Sunday morning. Where appropriate, I may post more frequently. For now, assume you should check the blog Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. Important announcements might be made here, though I will also send any really serious announcements by email.
This website is ongoing, organic, a work in progress. It is an important part of my contribution to the travels this class will take over the next three months or so.
About Email: I will be emailing everyone to get an alternative email address -- one other than your uwo.ca email address. I prefer to use these alternative email addresses to help ensure privacy. Email sent through the uwo.ca servers is archived and accessible to the university administration. That makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons. One is political -- that the administration can engage in surveillance of communication between teachers and students is equivalent to putting cop cameras in classrooms. Mind you, given the tone of recent discussions I have been party to with administrator types, that may be coming. But more serious for me is simple privacy: I've been teaching for more a few years now and students have told me things in emails that are deeply deeply private. I am honoured by their trust. And want to ensure that anything any of you tell me in an email note is kept private -- between you and I. Using your gmail or yahoo or hotmail or other email address helps do that. I do not keep student emails – another administrative policy “requires” us to retain email exchanges between students and to allow administrator type thuglets access to them. Nope. No can do. Just can’t resist that old delete key. Sorry.
You should direct all your emails to me to this address:
dr.d@wightman.ca
Notice there is no period after that second "d".
Do not use my uwo.ca email address ever.
And please send me some alternative email address, if you have one. If your only email address is the one given you by the university, you should exercise discretion in writing anything in an email message you would like to keep confidential.
This class is open to anyone who just wants to follow along through this website, and anyone in and around London is invited to drop by and join in. It is about community, right?
My goal is to encounter and engage insights and ideas that offer ways of understanding and pursuing the practice of peace. Some of the issues and questions we will explore might include:
1. “Aren’t we just biologically hardwired for aggression? Isn’t it just our evolutionary inheritance?” ~ well, as a century of anthropological and other discussion has shown, the short and long answer to that question is NO. We’ll look at why.
2. “ Peaceful societies just can’t survive. They’re outnumbered.” ~ societies and cultures grounded in peace and co-operation are, in fact, the rule and not the exception. This has been true throughout history and ethnography shows us it is actually true today, whatever the headlines and the brutalisms so many are subject to.
3. “This is all just hippie airy-fairy utopianism. It’s a great idea but it just can’t work on a global scale.” ~ understanding and practicing peace means understanding what interests are served by denying the viability of peace and co-operation. We’ll look closely at objections raised against peace and co-operation, and who raises them, in order to better understand what the obstacles to peace are. And yes, it is airy-fairy hippie utopianism and I am damned proud of it.
4. “It’s all too big. What can one person, or small clusters of people, actually do? I’m helpless to change anything, anyway.” ~ history and ethnography suggest otherwise, but this is a historical truth that is very carefully suppressed. We’ll look at how acting with peace in every step we take has worked and continues to work throughout history and around the world, in order to understand why this knowledge is suppressed and how to act against that suppression.
This class will be built around exploratory and wide-ranging reading and writing, practical activities both in the classroom and in our communities, and the incorporation of voices from peace activists and organizations both globally and locally. Our goal will be to find a space where we can listen and talk and act as conjoined and indivisible facets of that rough diamond we call community. Not a bad way to learn, and, I hope we’ll better understand, a pretty damned good way to do peace. My goal -- our goal I hope -- in a class meeting to discuss peace is that it will itself be an act of peace, against the silencing odds.
How to Use This Website; or what to read now....
Each of the tabs at the top of the page has several levels, starting with the tab itself, which opens a start page for that section of pages.
Start at the beginning, by reading the material under the to begin tab above. These pages, including the to begin page itself, set out some basic principles and ideas which will guide this class in our journey.
The words tab has a list of the texts I've ordered, a tentative topical schedule -- we'll be updating that together as we move through the term -- and links to some other readings you should familiarize yourself with. There will be additional brief pieces added to this tab during the term, so you should get in the habit of checking regularly.
The work tab has information on the various assignments you will do. In particular, pay attention to the homework page as this will be updated regularly as we develop each new homework assignment. For now, make sure you read the page about grades and grading, and the general descriptions of the course assignments. We will come back to all this over and over again.
The resources tab will contain links to groups, sites, sources, and other things of interest. It is not comprehensive, and I will update it as the term moves along with things that crop up. If you have any suggestions for resources, pass them along to me and I'll add them.
Finally, I will use a blog -- linked under the appropriately labeled douglass's blog tab -- to post information, commentary, recipes, suggestions, flirtatious winks and other stuff. I will be posting to this at least once a week, usually on Sunday morning. Where appropriate, I may post more frequently. For now, assume you should check the blog Sunday afternoon or Monday morning. Important announcements might be made here, though I will also send any really serious announcements by email.
This website is ongoing, organic, a work in progress. It is an important part of my contribution to the travels this class will take over the next three months or so.
About Email: I will be emailing everyone to get an alternative email address -- one other than your uwo.ca email address. I prefer to use these alternative email addresses to help ensure privacy. Email sent through the uwo.ca servers is archived and accessible to the university administration. That makes me uncomfortable for a number of reasons. One is political -- that the administration can engage in surveillance of communication between teachers and students is equivalent to putting cop cameras in classrooms. Mind you, given the tone of recent discussions I have been party to with administrator types, that may be coming. But more serious for me is simple privacy: I've been teaching for more a few years now and students have told me things in emails that are deeply deeply private. I am honoured by their trust. And want to ensure that anything any of you tell me in an email note is kept private -- between you and I. Using your gmail or yahoo or hotmail or other email address helps do that. I do not keep student emails – another administrative policy “requires” us to retain email exchanges between students and to allow administrator type thuglets access to them. Nope. No can do. Just can’t resist that old delete key. Sorry.
You should direct all your emails to me to this address:
dr.d@wightman.ca
Notice there is no period after that second "d".
Do not use my uwo.ca email address ever.
And please send me some alternative email address, if you have one. If your only email address is the one given you by the university, you should exercise discretion in writing anything in an email message you would like to keep confidential.
This class is open to anyone who just wants to follow along through this website, and anyone in and around London is invited to drop by and join in. It is about community, right?
An Important Note About Accessibility:
I take this very seriously. If you need this or any other course
information in a different format, or need any other assistance to make
this class accessible to you -- anything, whatever your needs -- please
contact dr.d. as soon as possible so he can help. Where appropriate,
get to know the people in Services for Students With Disabilities - Room
4100 in the Western Student Services Building [ph: 661-3031], as they
can provide you with additional assistance specific to your personal
needs.
This is not dr.d. but...it might be.
this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
