The Power of Kony 2012 and What It Means for Our Future

Posted on March 19, 2012 by zoeweil
For my blog post today, I’m sharing a recent post I wrote for One Green Planet, a website dedicated to ethical choices. Here’s an excerpt from “The Power of Kony 2012 & What It Means for Our Future”:

“As I write this more than 70 million people have watched a 30-minute video, uploaded less than a week ago from the group Invisible Children, about Ugandan Joseph Kony’s atrocities…. What interests me, and what I think is worth reflection, is the phenomenon of this film itself. This is not some funny 1-minute YouTube video that’s gone viral. It’s a thirty minute documentary about a war criminal in Africa whom few have ever heard of. When one thinks of all the people perpetrating atrocities in the world, why did a video about Joseph Kony go viral, and, more importantly, why does this matter?

The film itself is masterful. It’s about good guys and bad guys; innocent children who need rescuing, and innocent children who want the bad guys punished. It leaves the viewer in tears, but then it gives us something to do. The action plan is clear, simple, and doable: spread the word, make Joseph Kony famous, participate in an urgent (and time-limited) campaign, and Joseph Kony will inevitably be stopped and the abducted child soldiers returned to their families.

The real brilliance of this film’s message is revealed toward the end when a graphic of a pyramid depicting the movement of power, from the moneyed and government elite at the top, to the institutions below, to the people at the bottom, is inverted and the people – us, those who use and share social media and harness the voices of millions – begin to influence the actions of the moneyed and government elite. The very fact of this video’s viral success proves its point. We citizens, at home with our computers, can wrest (at least some) power back and make important and good things happen through our voices.”

Read the complete post.

For a humane world,

Zoe Weil, President, Institute for Humane Education
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and The Power and Promise of Humane Education
My TEDx talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“

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Filed under: systemic change, videos | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Hostility Toward Good: Don’t Criticize a Good Deed — Go Do One

Posted on June 24, 2009 by zoeweil

David Ashby, a 14-year-old boy from Orlando, Florida, is walking from his home to Washington, D.C. to raise awareness about homeless children. You can read about this remarkable young man here. Then read the comments. They begin with such venom and vitriol, it’s hard to imagine that the authors of these criticisms read the same article I did — about a boy who cares enough to dedicate his summer to walking 1,100 (southern!) miles, without knowing where he’ll sleep or what he’ll eat each day. When I read such comments I always feel so sad and frustrated, but I am not surprised by them. Unfortunately, finding fault with good deeds is all too common. People who work to protect animals are often criticized by others for “not caring about people” or “wasting time on animals.” People who give money, rather than food, to those who are homeless are criticized for aiding and abetting their potential cigarette, alcohol or drug habits. Recently, brilliant and inspiring humane educator Christopher Greenslate , who has changed the lives of his high school students and helped them to become effective and engaged change agents, was criticized for sending his students a ‘bad message’ because of his tattoos and piercings.

Sometimes our critiques are important, as in the case with the well thought-out commentary on cause marketing I mentioned in a previous post. They help us make wiser, more efficacious choices about how to make a difference. But too often they are just mean-spirited, as in these few comments about David Ashby. One of the criticisms of David is that he could do more for homeless children by getting a summer job and donating his earnings directly to them. But I don’t believe this is true. Were he to work all summer and donate his earnings to the homeless he would do something good, certainly, but the contribution would be minor compared to what might ensue from his walk. Gaining media attention for the travesty of child homelessness in the richest nation on earth has the potential to do so much more than a summer job ever could. It has the potential to influence changes in systems that perpetuate homelessness among children. Thank goodness for kids like David. Thank goodness that they think of creative ways to draw attention to pervasive problems so that we can solve them at their roots.

How much easier to criticize others than to plunge into good work ourselves. If ever you find yourself ready to criticize a good deed, go do a good deed instead. Take that energy and make a positive difference.

~ Zoe

Filed under: changemakers, citizen activism, compassionate communication, human rights | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

The Great Ape Project

Posted on January 12, 2009 by zoeweil

I just finished the recently published Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess and then immediately picked up Roger Fouts’, Next of Kin, which is about Washoe and the other chimps to whom he has taught sign language over his long career as a psychologist. I recommend both books (although my preference isFouts’ Next of Kin). They describe the language studies conducted with chimpanzees during the 1970s and 80s, the astonishing reality of human-chimpanzee communication in our language, and the aftermath for the celebrity chimps.

These books reminded me of my brief volunteer work in David Premack’s primate facility at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Premack had written a book about his research chimp, Sarah, to whom he taught a symbolic language. After reading his book, The Mind of an Ape, in 1985, I called Dr. Premack to see if I could volunteer at his lab. He agreed. I was so eager to meet Sarah, but I felt heartbroken when I did. Although she had quite a spacious cage, she was alone, separated from both humans and other chimps. She was 12 when I met her, and I was told she was too big, strong, and dangerous to interact with people, except through the bars of her cage. Although chimpanzees are social animals, she had no chimp companions. The other chimpanzees at the facility were just a few years old, and while these young ones were caged together, I was told Sarah might harm them if allowed to be with them. And so, while Sarah could often see the other chimps when they were outdoors, she was isolated.

I was told to keep my distance from Sarah, warned that if I got too close to her cage she could grab my arm and pull it off, but one day, standing several feet away, I said to Sarah, “Turn around and I’ll scratch your back.” I twirled my index finger as I spoke, and sure enough, Sarah turned around, pressed her back against the bars of her cage, and sank down to sit on the floor. I walked up to her cage and scratched her back, not worried in the slightest that she would harm me.

I’ve recently learned that Sarah now lives in a primate sanctuary. This is a tremendous relief, because I feared for her future. I had volunteered with the best intentions, imagining that language studies with chimpanzees were not only benign, but wonderful. Reading Next of Kin and Nim Chimpsky reminded me that these studies were anything but. Although Sarah, despite her imprisonment, was treated with great kindness when I volunteered at Dr.Premack’s lab, the chimps in other facilities were often brutalized (as Dr. Fouts describes at length). But even if they were all treated well, chimpanzees live for half a century. Trendy language studies of the 1970sdidn’t carry into future decades very far. In fact, Dr. Premack stopped his research only two years after I volunteered at his facility. The chimpanzees, dangerous and expensive to house and feed for the duration of their lives, were often sold to biomedical research labs, used for HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and military research, and other forms of invasive experiments. Many have wound up in tiny isolated cages, going mad, suffering unrelieved depression and anxiety, in addition to the misery of their testing protocols. Raised as human children, and experiencing themselves as human children, such chimps are, ultimately, no more than property, and many have been sold into ghastly, nightmarish lives of abuse.

There’s a way to stop this abuse of our closest living relatives. The Great Ape Project (GAP) seeks to secure rights for great apes. Their declaration is as follows:

We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. The community of equals is the moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law. Among these principles or rights are the following:

  1. The Right to Life – The lives of members of the community of equals are to be protected. Members of the community of equals may not be killed except in very strictly defined circumstances, for example, self-defense.
  2. The Protection of Individual Liberty – Members of the community of equals are not to be arbitrarily deprived of their liberty; if they should be imprisoned without due legal process, they have the right to immediate release. The detention of those who have not been convicted of any crime, or of those who are not criminally liable, should be allowed only where it can be shown to be for their own good, or necessary to protect the public from a member of the community who would clearly be a danger to others if at liberty. In such cases, members of the community of equals must have the right to appeal, either directly or, if they lack the relevant capacity, through an advocate, to a judicial tribunal.
  3. The Prohibition of Torture – The deliberate infliction of severe pain on a member of the community of equals, either wantonly or for an alleged benefit to others, is regarded as torture, and is wrong.

You may have heard that in 2008 the parliament in Spain passed a resolution granting certain human rights to great apes. That resolution was based on the work of the Great Ape Project.

If you would like to sign the GAP declaration, learn more, or get involved, I recommend visiting the The Great Ape Project, and reading the books mentioned above.

~ Zoe

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Spread the Word About 350.org

Posted on October 24, 2008 by zoeweil

Bill McKibben spoke at Bioneers this past weekend introducing the 13,000+ participants to 350.org, a viral effort to influence government leaders around the world to commit to reducing carbon in the atmosphere. As they describe it on their website:

“350 is the red line for human beings, the most important number on the planet. The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.

But solutions exist. All around the world, a movement is building to take on the climate crisis, to get humanity out of the danger zone and below 350. This movement is massive, it is diverse, and it is visionary. We are activists, scholars, and scientists. We are leaders in our businesses, our churches, our governments, and our schools. We are clean energy advocates, forward-thinking politicians, and fearless revolutionaries. And we are united around the world, driven to make our planet livable for all who come after us.”

Please visit 350.org, sign up and spread the word!

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of 350.org.

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Eating on $1 a Day

Posted on September 22, 2008 by zoeweil

One of our M.Ed. graduates at the Institute for Humane Education, Christopher Greenslate, and his partner, Kerri, have embarked on a new project. For a month, they are eating on less than $1 per day each. You can read about their journey on their blog.

As I read their first week of blog entries, I found myself thinking about how important it is to break out of the unexamined routine of our lives. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Yet, how many of us actually examine our lives and challenge our assumptions, our ideas, our beliefs, and our behaviors?

When Christopher and Kerri end their experiment they will have learned so much: about poverty, desire, and themselves, and about the billion people in the world who go to bed hungry every night. They will have become cleverer and more resilient, more introspective, more aware. They will have cultivated their ability to persevere, their courage, and their creativity. They will have paid more attention to what surrounds them – not only to the availability of free food at fast food restaurants and in dumpsters, but also to plants and trees from which they can forage. They will have learned about the systems of food distribution and production.

And they will have deepened their capacity to make MOGO (Most Good) choices. What often makes living according to the MOGO principle difficult is that our desires, fears, and habits compete so vigorously with our commitment to lead an examined, intentional, positive, generous life. Most of us resist change; we become attached to our habits and mistake our desires for needs.

I love what Christopher and Kerri are doing for so many reasons, but what is most compelling to me is that by embarking on this challenging project, they open themselves ever more deeply to the possibilities for positive change because they have cultivated their ability to understand, to act, and to choose.

~ Zoe

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