The Future: When Not Feeling Safe & Loved Is the Ruling Moral Memory… A New Individual and Collective Memory
Those who need to feel safe and loved the most and eventually to form part of a caring community are those labeled with a borderline personality. Psychiatry has created a description that seems to doom a large group of these marginalized people to an eternal hell of segregation, confinement, homelessness, incarcerations, drugs designed to snow and turn living beings into robot-like creatures. The broad antiseptic diagnosis ends up being an
The role of a servant leader is primarily to have clear non-violent and justice-based values and standards, to set a strong example in every aspect of her/his leadership, and to enter into an on-going dialog with the entire caring community. Of course, there is a myriad of other tasks, not the least of which is the fiduciary obligation of leadership. Yet, the latter tasks are at the center of leadership.
Meetings can be a bland obligation or a terrific opportunity for dialog and deepening shared values. Often, today’s agencies are swept up in meeting after meeting that all too often have little to directly to do with non-violence and peace-making. A culture of gentleness calls for a transformation of an agency’s focus and values. At the continuous center of our dialog we need to put supportive management chores secondary to
Research in nonviolent approaches also has a role to play. Today’s research journals in general have been based on the behavioral research model. This adherence to antecedents, behaviors, and consequences has prevailed for over half a century. Libraries are filled with this type of research and the effects have been slight and short-lived. We need to evolve a new research thrust based on successful stories related to nonviolent approaches, the
As the future unfolds, Gentle Teaching should also signify more than community inclusion, but a whole cloth made up of thousands of threads, each with equal value and beauty, and those whom we serve becoming leaders for non-violence and justice. Non-violence is a tough word. In many ways I am part of a culture that thrives on guns and bullets, drones and dynamite, the electric chair and death by injection.
Within a culture of gentleness management has to take care to develop a servant leadership style of care giving and supportive services. This involves putting those served at the center of all management decisions. At times this will require strong advocacy that might contradict and require substantive changes in what government or funders might require. The servant leadership has to take prudent risks and persevere in needed systemic change that
Gentle Teaching has had fruitful outcomes because we have honored and respected each place and its particular culture. Gentle Teaching International and its web page has been a strong instrument in sharing a general direction across the world and our many projects from Japan to Belgium, Holland to Puerto Rico, Portugal to Canada, and on and on. We do not want any external control anywhere; yet, it would be helpful
Finally, we must also look at Gentle Teaching’s long term impact, not through any sort of long term planning, but as a way of sharing our collective open-heartedness. Gentle Teaching now has varying degrees direct involvement in over 26 nations. We must attempt to ensure that we are sharing our world—wide experiences and materials. In this generation behaviorism will continue to loose its sway. Its use and popularity is waning.
Another mother stands with her baby in the picture above. In even a brief encounter with anyone whose heart is broken or on the verge of breaking we can gain much insight into the human condition—so much suffering, yet the possibility of joy and the presence of hope. It is up to us, the caring community, to bring hope, warmth, and unconditional love. In our work we meet many suffering,
