by Lynn Soots | October, 2015 | Community, Culture, Relationships, Uncategorized
The Syrian crisis has been the most frequent topic of discussion in my twins’ Global Perspectives class. I love the concept of the class – they access media coverage from around the world and see the same event covered from different perspectives. A great way to challenge their unconscious biases and broaden their perspective, or so one would think. But then they go on to do something that I think totally defeats the purpose. They critically analyze the news, but in what’s been called “motivated reasoning”, process the new information through the filter of their preexisting worldview. Which means that it often leads to what their teacher calls a drunk’s bar conversation, where they adamantly defend their positions and become all the more certain of their views. What Children Learn is Important At the breakfast table one day though, one of the twins was reading the story of a refugee family, one of many that they had read over the past few weeks. But when she looked up, something had changed within her. “Mommy!” she cried in alarm, “this family was just like us – they worked in good jobs, their children went to good schools. Their daughter did ballet, their two sons played soccer and basketball. And look what happened to them…” as she trailed off in disbelief. Somehow, the fact that most of the people were living normal lives before the crisis had evaded her for so long. And somehow this was all she needed to feel genuine empathy for them. It’s true that critical reasoning without empathy simply leads to cynicism and disconnect. To be moved...
by Aren Henry | September, 2015 | Clarity is . . ., Karen Henry
Compassion in action When we’ve become who we need to be, it is time for us to turn toward helping others. In our world today, anyone with a television, radio, newspaper or social media will know that we are watching people flee for their lives in more than one place in the world. We’re watching countries shift their minds and monies toward helping. “We are interconnected that when we improve ourselves, we help others, and when we improve others, we also help ourselves. This is part of the wisdom of synergy.” ~ Paul Wong It’s not enough to only serve ourselves in the time we have in our world. Not only is the perception of existence itself in the balance but our relationship with humanity is being tested. Do we, as a species have the innate ability to help others? At the very least, have compassion for their plight? We struggle with the technicalities of how we can help others in such vast quantities. War, flooding, fires, and other natural disasters (yes, war is man made, but it must be that our need to war is stronger than our need for peace, or humans would have figured it out that it never actually solves any problems by now). These are daunting, overwhelming experiences that we have all been affected by at some point in our lives. Help one person Is it too hard for us to help everyone? For most people, yes. But we can help one person. We can work toward compassion for those less fortunate than us. That is within our grasp and a concept so light...
