 Join idealistic university and high schools in respectful discussion
How to Dialogue and Prosper Together as Friends Today The North American Educational Initiatives Foundation, Inc., will be sponsoring its first virtual North American Youth Congress focused on “The Pursuit of a North American Civil Discourse and Friendships.” The meeting will be organized by university and high school students while the foundation will assist with the creation of the agenda, the marketing, and this virtual meeting, simultaneous translation and follow-up activities. The Congress will take place on Saturday, January 10th, from 11 am – 2 pm CST. Attendance will be limited to 300 participants. The Congress Steering Committee of students bears no legal responsibility for the event. Cultural and Historical Underpinnings of the Congress in Indigenous Culture “Three main concepts are identified as central to understanding the comic views of indigenous peoples. These are beliefs in the immortality of the soul, fatalistic views and the role of ancestors. One of the central tenets of indigenous cultures is the belief in the immortality of soul. For most indigenous cultures, because the soul does not die but rather transmigrates from human to animal or plant or higher spirit forms, and because the soul is capable of living in natural entities such as rivers, mountains, the earth, etc., both the animate and the inanimate are revered. Therefore, in indigenous cultures a forest of trees, for example, should not be cut down because a project, which seemingly has no relevance to the community, is being undertaken in the area. It is however accepted that soul forms such as plants and animals could be terminated to enhance the survival of the current earthbound higher soul – human. This cosmic view is an important reason why a project must always be made relevant to indigenous communities. Further to the belief in the immortality of soul are the fatalistic views to which indigenous communities ascribe Individual and community life, it is believed, must be accepted as it comes: what will be, will be! Family and community ties must be held sacred. Time is considered uninfluenceable, and should not be hurried: things will happen, in the way, and at the time they are intended by higher spirits, whether humans hurry or not. A third component in intangible cultural heritage is the role of ancestors in the life of indigenous peoples. Ancestors are dead members of the community who have lived honorable lives by preserving and/or enhancing the status of the community. It is believed that these ancestors become spiritual beings with the power to affect the fortune of the living for good or bad. Bad fortunes range from simple bad harvests (crop or animal) to mass extermination of communities. Good fortunes could be the opposite. Ancestors can be appeased, thanked or appealed to by designated elders, who through incantations, pouring of libation and/or propitiatory sacrifices communicate current wishes. Ancestors and their spiritual abodes are considered sacred.” (“Indigenous Cosmology of Cultural Heritage for Impact Assessment, Richard Akoto, Knight Piésold & Co., The Art and Science of Impact Assessment 28th Annual Conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment, 4-10 May 2008, Perth Convention Exhibition Centre, Perth, Australia (www.iaia.org). Foundational Premise for Westerners of the Congress While the contemporary perils of ideological silos to civil political dialogue are widely recognized, few observers have identified realistic ways to create channels of communication to the benefit of the commonweal. Many experts have pointed out the irony of the fact that as modern communications have attained such a remarkable level of intimacy in our lives, productive communications have never before been so difficult to achieve thanks to entrenched and unquestioned ideological barriers and human pride. We would humbly suggest that the Western key to discovering a civil discourse for North America lies in the recognition of the common ground and communication that these various silos are built upon. Furthermore, we would argue that the most attractive goal in this endeavor would be the development of new friendships, “authentic friendships” towards Aristotle’s ideal of “two souls living in one body.” “Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves, Aristotle wrote, “Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore, their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing. And each is good without qualification and to his friend, for the good are both good without qualification and useful to each other. So too they are pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without qualification and to each other, since to each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the actions of the good are the same or like. And such a friendship is as might be expected permanent, since there meet in it all the qualities that friends should have. For all friendship is for the sake of good or of pleasure-good or pleasure either in the abstract or such as will be enjoyed by him who has the friendly feeling-and is based on a certain resemblance; and to a friendship of good men all the qualities we have named belong in virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in both friends, and that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities. Love and friendship therefore are found most and in their best form between such men. But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.” Cultural and Historical Underpinnings of the Congress in Indigenous Culture “Three main concepts are identified as central to understanding the cosmic views of indigenous peoples. These are beliefs in the immortality of the soul, fatalistic views and the role of ancestors. One of the central tenets of indigenous cultures is the belief in the immortality of soul. For most indigenous cultures, because the soul does not die but rather transmigrates from human to animal or plant or higher spirit forms, and because the soul is capable of living in natural entities such as rivers, mountains, the earth, etc., both the animate and the inanimate are revered. Therefore, in indigenous cultures a forest of trees, for example, should not be cut down because a project, which seemingly has no relevance to the community, is being undertaken in the area. It is however accepted that soul forms such as plants and animals could be terminated to enhance the survival of the current earthbound higher soul – human. This cosmic view is an important reason why a project must always be made relevant to indigenous communities. Further to the belief in the immortality of soul are the fatalistic views to which indigenous communities ascribe Individual and community life, it is believed, must be accepted as it comes: what will be, will be! Family and community ties must be held sacred. Time is considered uninfluenceable, and should not be hurried: things will happen, in the way, and at the time they are intended by higher spirits, whether humans hurry or not. A third component in intangible cultural heritage is the role of ancestors in the life of indigenous peoples. Ancestors are dead members of the community who have lived honorable lives by preserving and/or enhancing the status of the community. It is believed that these ancestors become spiritual beings with the power to affect the fortune of the living for good or bad. Bad fortunes range from simple bad harvests (crop or animal) to mass extermination of communities. Good fortunes could be the opposite. Ancestors can be appeased, thanked or appealed to by designated elders, who through incantations, pouring of libation and/or propitiatory sacrifices communicate current wishes. Ancestors and their spiritual abodes are considered sacred.” (“Indigenous Cosmology of Cultural Heritage for Impact Assessment, Richard Akoto, Knight Piésold & Co., Denver, CO, USA, 'IAIA08 Conference Proceedings', The Art and Science of Impact Assessment 28th Annual Conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment, 4-10 May 2008, Perth Convention Exhibition Centre, Perth, Australia (www.iaia.org). Cultural and Underpinnings of the Congress in Western Culture Following the civilizational upheaval of the Second World War, leading cultural and intellectual figures began to define the core values that triumphed over the Nazi government during the Nuremberg Trials and the foundational meetings of the United Nations. While the Soviet Union actively participated in these debates, the gap between its aspirations and its actions widened further and further during the ‘50s through the 70s with its consolidation of Eastern Europe and nascent imperialism to the “Third World.” Meanwhile, the wartime intellectual unity of the Western countries began to splinter into competing philosophical factions as they basked in peace and prosperity and emerging rock and roll. As the majority of the younger generations increasingly defied longstanding social norms, Western societies faced yawning inabilities to communicate, to uproot gender and racial inequities, to undertake military ventures such as the Vietnam War, and to rehabilitate from political crises like the Watergate scandal and the MidEast wars. These significant fault lines of the post-war era ran as a tectonic line through the ensuing decades and were manifested in “culture wars” and “blue versus red” political alliances to the bizarre extent that tens of millions of allegedly highly educated Americans would find themselves unable to contemplate the good will or sanity of their political opponents, even if they had been close family members or lifetime friends. On the occasion of social gatherings, the commonplace solution to these frustrations would become to engage in utter silence on controversial topics rather than to engage in robust debate in imitation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, Christopher Hitchens and William F. Buckley, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon or as far back as Abraham Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens. Regrettably, the contemporary catastrophe lies in the lack of a stage to stand on, a launch platform of common beliefs and references. And therefore, like unto Shakespeare’s seven lives from As You Like It, we find ourselves “in second childhood and mere oblivion: sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” … and, astonishingly, sans friends who think differently than we do. Contemporary Indigenous Intellectual Forebearers of the Congress (Example of the Mazahua peoples of Mexico) “After 480 years of contact with Western culture, the Mazahuas are still here, because in us there is a continuation of ancestral thought that contains values rooted among the population, values based on a worldview that has endured throughout history, such as the cult of our ancestors, mutual aid in agricultural activities, solidarity related to the birth of people; the bride's proposal and the wedding, an event to which the population comes to help—in kind or with work—the new family, in order to establish and strengthen alliance networks for the reproduction of human life; these human acts are what give meaning to our social life and deserve to be known, valued and shared with society, whose vision of life is Western,” Maestro Antolin Celote Preciado, El Mundo Mazahua y la construcción de la interculturalidad, Gobierno del Estado de México, 2023. Contemporary Western Intellectual Forebearers of the Congress Fortunately, there are several Western thinkers who we can study from and build upon so as to address our trans-ideological conversational needs. Three of the most influential intellectuals who were active during the aforementioned post-war debates were Harvard sociologist Robert N. Bellah, Oxford cultural anthropologist Christopher Dawson, and the widely publicized advocate of academic freedom and social pluralism Reverend John Courtney Murray, SJ. Each of these men contributed to the nascent concept of an “American civil religion.” While all acknowledged the important contribution of the Judeo-Christian tradition to popular beliefs in the West, their proposal was not intended to be confessional but ecumenical in nature. Referring to the Latin root word of ligare, the notion of “binding” or “binding over” describes the bringing together of beliefs and rituals without necessarily referring to organized denominations. As a consequence, Buddhism is as much of a religion as Russian Orthodox Christianity as Islam is a religion as Hinduism. Taking this general definition one step further so as to apply it to today’s trans-denominational world, particularly in the West, we would suggest that “Deism,” “Marxism,” “Scientism,” and “secular humanism” bear many of the same traits as historical religious systems, even though some of their adherents might resist this nomenclature. Robert Bellah: “Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age” “Nothing is ever lost. Just as the face-to-face rituals of tribal society continue in disguised form among us, so the unity of political and religious power, the archaic ‘mortgage’, as Voegelin called it, reappears continually in societies that have experienced the axial ‘breakthrough’. Kings who ruled ‘by divine right’, are obvious examples, but so are presidents who claim to act in accordance with a ‘higher power’. At every point as our story unfolds, we will have to consider the relation between political and religious power. But one thing is certain: the issue never goes away.” Christopher Dawson: “Religion and Culture” “The world of culture is a moral universe which extends downwards to the most primitive forms of social life and upwards to the higher ethical systems. And all cultures from the lowest to the highest are similar in their essential structures. That is to say they all depend on religious or spiritual sanctions; they are all rooted in particular material circumstances—economic, geographical and biological, and they themselves represent the patterns of social and moral behavior by which two factors are coordinated.” Rev. John Courtney Murray, SJ: “We Hold These Truths” "Pluralism, therefore, implies disagreement and dissension within the community. But it also implies a community within which there must be agreement and consensus." While the North American Student Congress is an ecumenical activity in nature, we suggest that participants consider this prescient excerpt from Pope Francis’ recent diagnosis of our widespread cultural differences (Fratelli tuti (2000): “In today’s world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia. What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat. This illusion, unmindful of the great fraternal values, leads to a sort of cynicism. For that is the temptation we face if we go down the road of disenchantment and disappointment… Isolation and withdrawal into one’s own interests are never the way to restore hope and bring about renewal. Rather, it is closeness; it is the culture of encounter. Isolation, no; closeness, yes (n. 30). Preliminary Student-Created Agenda of the North American Youth Congress (The Steering Committee may choose from these 20-minute presentations. Speakers may suggest modifications to their presentations with prior approval.) 1. What is the Contemporary Case for “Natural Law”? 2. Is Human Dignity a “Fig Leaf” or an “Eagle’s Wing” in Today’s World? 3. What is the Nature and Probability of Aristotle’s “Authentic Friendship” in Today’s World? 4. Based on the writings of Oxford University professor Christopher Dawson, what is the relevance and possibility of “Civil Discourse” for Contemporary Youth? Frederick J. Woodward, Hillsdale College ‘28 5. Based on the writings of Rev. John Courtney Murray, SJ, what is the relevance and possibility of “Civil Discourse” for Contemporary Youth? 6. Based on the writings of Harvard University professor Robert N. Bellah, what is the relevance and possibility of “Civil Discourse” for Contemporary Youth? 7. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship” in the Face of Widespread Anxiety and Depression? Ishani Gandi, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ‘29 8. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship” in a World Entrapped by Exclusive Ideologies? 9. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship” in the context of The Nuclear Family? Alex Odland, University of Notre Dame ‘26 10. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship” in a Society with an Absence of Mercy? Karen Nguyen, Dartmouth College ‘29 11. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship”? Medha Jana, Texas A & M University ‘29 12. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship” in an Economy of Excessive Prosperity? 13. What are the Contemporary Obstacles and Incentives to “Authentic Friendship” between the domestic and foreign peoples in North America? Alexander H. Garcia, Rice University ‘28 14. What is the Value of Learning Indigenous Languages as a Unique Means to Enhance the Brains, Hearts, and Friendships of North American Students Lexie Gauthier, Dartmouth College ’26 Contact: Theodore Wills +12815206689 [email protected] Comments are closed.
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