ISBN: 9780787987978

I remember the brief moment in French history in 1871 when the commune of Paris was formed and when people really acted in common—in community—for themselves. They created an am… Plus…

I remember the brief moment in French history in 1871 when the commune of Paris was formed and when people really acted in common—in community—for themselves. They created an amazing, though short, period of equality and justice in Paris, where people gathered together every day and talked with one another. No one would accept salaries much higher than anybody else, and they took advantage of the latest scientific thing, which was a balloon, and they floated a balloon over the countryside, and the balloon dropped leaflets to French peasants, and the leaflets had a very simple sentence on them. Those leaflets, dropped all over the countryside, said Our interests are the same. I think that is the most important message we can address to one another. We are all human beings. Our interests are the same. Our problem is to discern which interests have been artificially drummed into us: like the interest of accumulating a lot of money, or the interest of being a stronger country than any other, or even the interest of being more beautiful than anyone else. These false, artificial interests have been inculcated. I can''t think of anything more important to do than to be able to resist these false interests and to declare our common interests. . .(And) when you have models of how people can come together, even for a brief period, it suggests that it could happen for a longer period. When you think of it, that''s the way things operate in the scientific world, so why not socially? As soon as the Wright brothers could keep a plane aloft for twenty-seven seconds, everyone knew from that point on that a plane might be kept aloft for hours. It''s the same socially and culturally. It''s not just instances like the Paris Commune or the Spanish enclave of commonality in Barcelona in the early months of 1936. We''ve had countless incidents in history where people have joined together in social movements and created a spirit of camaraderie or a spirit of sharing and togetherness and have absented themselves, even momentarily, from the world of greed and domination. If true community can stay aloft for twenty-seven seconds, it is only a matter of time before such a community can last for hours. It is only a matter of time before a beloved community, as Martin Luther King, Jr. described, can come into being.—Howard Zinn, from The Common Cradle of ConcernThe Fetzer Institute''s project on Deepening the American Dream began in 1999 to explore the relationship between the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service. Through commissioned essays and in dialogue with such writers as Huston Smith, Jacob Needleman, Gerald May, Kathleen Norris, Robert Inchausti, Carolyn Brown, Elaine Pagels, Parker Palmer, and others, the project is beginning to sow the seeds of a national conversation. With the publication of these essays, the thinking and writing coming from these gatherings is being offered in a series of publications sponsored by Fetzer Institute in partnership with Jossey-Bass. The essays and individual volumes and anthologies to be published will explore and describe the many ways, as individuals and communities and nations, that we can illuminate and inhabit the essential qualities of the global citizen who seeks to live with the authenticity and grace demanded by our times. Howard Zinn, Books, Religion and Spirituality, Dreaming America Books>Religion and Spirituality <