The Power and Promise of Humane Education
Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times
Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs
So, You Love Animals: An Action-Packed, Fun-Filled Book to Help Kids Help Animals
In my last blog post, I wrote about the 8th graders at the Bay School whom I taught recently, and I mentioned that they were unwilling to take significant risks to help others. I could relate to these 14-year-olds. Ever since reading Marc Ian Barasch’s superb book, Field Notes on the Compassionate Life, I have been haunted by the truth that I’m unwilling to donate a kidney to save a stranger’s life, as do many of the generous people Barasch profiles. I’m no hero. Only a few special people are heroes, and they are fundamentally different from the majority of us, right? Not quite.
As I also mentioned in my last blog post, all the 8th graders I taught last week eagerly and passionately wanted to help end poverty and felt they had a responsibility to do so. They were inspired by the film segments in The New Heroes of Albina Ruiz and Mohammad Yunus who, without risking their lives, dramatically and positively affected millions of people living in poverty. Ruiz and Yunus are true heroes for sure, dedicating their entire lives to help others, but they inspire the rest of us to be ordinary heroes. They remind us that we, too, can and must be part of the solution to pervasive challenges, using our creativity toward positive ends.
Assuming that our basic needs are met, each of us can easily be an ordinary hero by making MOGO (Most Good) choices in the face of desires, peer and social pressures, laziness, and greed that might lead us away from the healthiest, kindest, and most restorative decisions. As one of the students in my class last week said, “We can choose what is right instead of what is easy.”
Matt Langdon has launched the Hero Workshop, which he brings to schools to inspire ordinary heroism. If you’re a teacher interested in bringing this workshop to your students and inspiring their ordinary heroism, too, visit the Hero Workshop website.
For a world of ordinary heroes,
~ Zoe
Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), responsibility Tagged: | Hero Workshop, heroism, Most Good, responsibility
IHE offers online courses for educators, activists, parents & concerned citizens seeking the tools, knowledge & motivation to align their actions with their deepest values & to become more effective leaders and changemakers. Sign up now for an upcoming session. 
Easy forms of Ordinary Heroism (when shopping):
1. If you like chocolate or coffee, then buy fair trade certified chocolate and coffee in order to prevent child slave labor
2. Buy certified organic food instead of food grown with toxic chemical herbicides and pesticides
3. Buy as little clothing as possible, and when you must buy new clothing, either buy it from a thrift shop (so you are reusing what someone else disposed of instead of using up more of the Earth’s resources) or, if you absolutely must buy a new garment, then buy it from someone who makes organic cotton clothing, instead of clothing made with lots of chemicals. Some of the places where you can buy more earth friendly (organic) clothing include:
mamasearth.com
rawganique.com
goodhumans.com
cottonfieldusa.com
maggiesorganics.com
4. Ladies – gladrags.com sells reusable menstruation pads, which are easily washed like any other laundry, and much more earth friendly than ‘disposable’ menstruation pads.
5. For the sake of your own health, eat as little meat as you can. The less meat you eat, the better it is for you and everyone else because (based on the books of numerous authors including John Robbins, Dean Ornish, Richard Schwartz, Will Tuttle and T. Colin Campbell) meat is a primary cause of just about every major disease on this planet, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure (hypertension), kidney problems, constipation like Crohn’s Disease and Colitis … eating less meat with help the person who eats less of it, because meat is a primary factor in a wide array of ailments, and eating less meat is also sighted as a way to help the environment, and humanity at large, because a vegetarian style diet is gentler on the environment and humanity as a whole in numerous ways, according to various authors, including some of the ones listed above.
6. If it’s packaged in (or made of) Styrofoam or plastic, don’t buy it. See if you can get the same thing in a thrift shop, or live without it. You’d be surprised at how little we really ‘need.’ Once I started making the conscious effort to buy less, then I realized that I didn’t ‘need’ most of the things I thought I ‘needed.’ And the less I buy, the better it is for me because it is cheeper and therefore I have to work less. And the less I buy, the better it is the environment because the less I take from the environment, the strong the environment, and when the environment is strong, that means I will be stronger, because I am completely dependent upon the Environment for my survival.
7. If you’ve got kids, once in a while, take them shopping with you, and explain:
– “I’m not going to buy that because it comes in a plastic bottle and plastic pollutes the environment, poisoning me, you, and all of humanity.”
– “I’m going to buy that organic sweater instead of the non-organic sweater because organic cotton is healthier for me, and if I buy non-organic the chemicals will seep into my skin, poison the water that I want to drink, and deplete the soil which I need to grow healthy produce.
Easy forms of Ordinary Heroism (for every day living)
1. If you can carpool, walk, bike or take a bus, instead of taking a car by yourself, then that would help salvage the environment, which would salvage your own life, because you need the environment to be healthy in order for you yourself to be healthy
2. Learn how to use lemon juice, vinegar, and baking soda to clean your home, by reading authors like Debra Dadd and Annie Bond, because cleaning home and clothing with lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda and other simple products helps by keeping toxic chemicals and plastic bottles out of the environment. If you must buy clothing detergent, go for Seventh Generation, Ecover (seventhgen.com / ecover.com) or some other earth friendly, cardboard boxed detergent, instead of liquid chemical ‘cleaners’ packaged in plastic bottles
3. Open a window instead of using air freshener
4. Don’t use fabric softener or any other chemical. Everything that you put into the water will come back to you and your children. Our water resources are limited. Once they are gone, they are gone. If we keep using chemical laundry detergents, fabric softeners, and “conventional cleaners” the water supply will become completely polluted and we won’t have enough clean water to drink. As it is, there are already thousands of kids dying on a regular basis, because they live without any clean, drinkable water. We will end up just like them, and die of dehydration and illness due to lack of clean water, unless we stop using all of the “cleaners.”
5. Line dry your clothing instead of using a dryer. If your really ambitious, wash your clothing by hand instead of using a washing machine. Oversees, and in warmer areas of the US, people regularly line dry their clothing. They smell a lot better that way.
6. Educate yourself about environmental issues by reading E magazine
Easy forms of Ordinary Heroism (for the mind, body, soul and society at large)
Everything is interconnected. Everything that I do to my mind will affect my body and society at large. Everything that I do to my body will affect my mind and society at large. Societal, spiritual, mental and physical peace all start inside of me, and I turn myself into a peaceful person, who will have a peace inducing affect upon all aspects of myself, my society, my government and my world at large by taking a few simple steps:
1. Listen to peace inducing music
2. Expose yourself to peace inducing people, movies, books, lectures and magazines
3. Study and practice a peace inducing meditation technique like yoga, tai chi or qigong
4. Read peace inducing books, like the books of Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chödrön
5. Stay away from stress inducing TV programs, lectures, teachers, music and newspapers
6. Do not buy newspapers which create a stressful atmosphere. A newspaper creates the news by sharing ideas which people either copy or react to on an emotional level. A newspaper creates the news by sharing ideas which affect people’s thoughts, actions, emotions, choices and opinions. So encourage the growth of peace inducing newspapers by buying those peace inducing newspapers. And starve stress inducing (war mongering) newspapers to death by refusing to buy those stress inducing, war mongering, newspapers.
7. Do not listen to speech (or read books) which induces negative, stress building emotions, opinions, actions …
8. Use theTVboss.org to block out TV programs which demoralize and induce stress
Our lives are a delicate balance. If we want everything to work well, then we have to treat ourselves and each other carefully, gently and compassionately. We need to help those who have been damaged by trauma or stress (by healing them with peace inducing music, books, lectures, TV programs, DVDs, and loving companionship).
Those of us who are healthy enough to do so, must help heal those who have been mentally or physically damaged, because we are all indivisibly linked to one another, and a person who has suffered psychological damage due to trauma will, unintentionally, cause damage to other people, unless they receive the care they need to heal.
We need to keep ourselves functioning in productive, peaceful and peace inducing manner by exposing ourselves to peace inducing music, people, books, movies, magazines, and lectures (while intentionally staying away from stress building, war mongering newspapers, books, rallies, speeches and music.)
[...] at the Bay School several weeks ago (described in the previous blog posts Responsibility and Responsibility, Part II: Ordinary Heroism), I received some letters from them. Here are excerpts from a few: “Although some of the [...]