Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/author/a_kashtanm/page/2/)
Miki Kashtan, certified NVC trainer (cnvc.org) and cofounder of Bay Area NVC (baynvc.org), teaches and works with organizations, visionary leaders, activists, and others to support the transition to a world that works for all.
The classic question of “where do you want to be in five years?” has within it the attempt to control the future. Conversely, going from here forwards in the direction of where we want to go, without knowing if we will ever get there, has the quality of shaping and co-creating…
What would it take for everyone in the world to be able to participate in actual decision-making about the multiple, overlapping, existential global crises humanity is facing? Our commitment: a true win-win system, based on genuine willingness […].
How do these global crises invite us to explore a fuller range of who we are?
As many parents bring their work home, we are invited to explore how this particular challenge of quarantine-lifestyle affect our families. How are our children impacted?
Miki Kashtan re-imagines socialism freed from its patriarchal roots.
We have created a machine that we’ve been told cannot stop. It did. We have been told that we need all that we consume, and ever more. We don’t.
The overwhelming majority of the world’s population is doing work in the form of jobs that are insufficient for sustenance, assault workers’ dignity, and lack meaning. Even when the pay is sufficient, jobs are still lacking in dignity and meaning.
The Coronavirus has brought new possibilities as it calls into question one of the deepest and most pervasive narratives of modern life: that every problem originates in an individual and can, and should, be fixed by individuals for themselves.
There is a window now open for far more significant change than the single-issue focus on police brutality; a time when such brutality can be seen as merely a tragic symptom of much deeper causes.
Our future depends on our ability to quickly align our policies and practices with the reality of our embeddedness within an interconnected web of life. The changes this calls for are sweeping and profound: restoring reverence for life, seeing all as kin, and seeing no one and nothing as “other.”
What do we actually mean by “use of force” and what counts as such? What makes it “necessary” to use force and how do we recognize that line? What, if anything, can we look at to have any sense of solidity that our use of force indeed stays on this side of an elusive line on the other side of which lies outright violence? In an attempt to answer these questions and more, I now have a template I will unpack in this article. Here it is:
“Use of force is consistent with nonviolence to the extent that we use the least amount of force possible, with the most love possible, aiming at (re)creating conditions for dialogue; that we make the choice using as much nonreactive discernment as possible, with as much support for the choice as possible, and while mourning not seeing another way to respond to a situation in which vital needs are at stake except to use force.”
One of the things the coronavirus pandemic opened up is the possibility of exposing the incapacity of the market to attend to need. If the market were able to attend to needs, there wouldn’t have to be any governmental mobilization anywhere, because it would happen by itself through the mechanism of the “invisible hand.”
Because just about all of us have deeply internalized the mindset of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness, going for liberation will take a long time before it becomes spontaneously available.
The power to choose to speak in ways that will support what we want, is one of the ways the oppressed can have strength.
The first in a series of pieces exploring the opportunities for transformation borne from the coronavirus crisis. This piece gives context for the perspective that this crisis is an immense opportunity while also being a dire catastrophe in the making, and gives an overview of what comes in the following segments.