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 AnimalsThis animated viral video has been circulating on the Internet. It’s entitled “Man” (a dismaying title in an era where sexist language should have faded into oblivion), and it depicts the cruel, destructive manner in which humanity has lived on the Earth. As I watched it, I found myself so eager to see how this animation would demonstrate the transformation we can, and must, experience to fix the messes we’ve created and right the wrongs we’ve perpetrated. No such luck. We just become the victims of even more powerful aliens. No utopian vision this.
In various talks and workshops over the past year, I’ve been speaking about a different reality than what this video demonstrates: a reality in which we are living in less violent, discriminatory, and cruel times; a reality painstakingly researched and described by Steven Pinker in his book, The Better Angels of our Nature. Many don’t believe this reality is actually true, given the horrors in the world: a continuing slave trade, sex trafficking, and gender discrimination; the frightening despoiling of nature; the massive abuse and killing of more than one trillion animals each year, and more; yet it is true.
So as I watched this animated film, I found myself thinking how behind the times it was; how dystopian, when what we need right now are visionary ideas and examples of solutionaries doing the important work that lies ahead. But I do hope you will watch this video anyway, and then construct your own ending, one in which we build a humane and healthy world for all.
~ Zoe
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 TEDxConejo talk: “Solutionaries”
My TEDxDirigo talk: “The World Becomes What You Teach“
My TEDxYouth@BFS “Educating for Freedom”
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Filed under: humane education, MOGO (Most Good) | Tagged: animal abuse, better world, changemaking, consumerism, environment, exploitation, humanity, natural world, oppression, pollution, videos, vision | 1 Comment »
This past weekend I watched two disturbing movies: Woody Allen’s Whatever Works and Shutter Island. Whatever Works was not meant to be disturbing, but in typical Woody Allen fashion, the protagonist raises persistent questions about humanity’s cruelty and destructiveness, and for some reason, this particular time, such rants left me less amused and more despondent. Shutter Island is a dark movie about people who have perpetrated the worst imaginable atrocities, with Holocaust visuals to boot. So after a weekend of these two films, I was aching for some renewed hope and faith. As luck would have it (or, more accurately, as lack of luck would result in), I got my wish.
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