Dwight D. Eisenhower said "I think that people want peace so much that
one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have
it."
Many politicians stand in the way of peace for their own vested interests, or from a sheer lack of self awareness, care and emotional control. This makes them blind to the impact their words and action have on millions of people.
In an interconnected, transparent world, our political leaders are under scrutiny unlike any other time and leaders who do well for the world will manage themselves - their emotions and actions and find the power of balance.
Dee Hock founder of the VISA card wisely said -
"Without management of self no one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of leadership are inescapable."
Management of self can only come from self awareness grounded in a practice of mindfulness.
History provides enough painful narratives about nations divided and ruled by selfish leaders. The separation of people causes tremendous suffering that can lead to violence and destruction.
Trumpism - in going back to a primal reptilian emotional place to stoke fears of people who are disadvantaged for much larger reasons than the other’s colour or where they came from – globalization, neo-liberal economics, the World Trade Organization, the Federal Reserve and the likes of Wall Street – Donald Trump, one of the most self obsessed, emotionally immature leaders we have seen in a long time, keeps finding scapegoats and separating his people through fear when they should be coming together to meet its economic, social and climate change challenges.
Many politicians stand in the way of peace for their own vested interests, or from a sheer lack of self awareness, care and emotional control. This makes them blind to the impact their words and action have on millions of people.
In an interconnected, transparent world, our political leaders are under scrutiny unlike any other time and leaders who do well for the world will manage themselves - their emotions and actions and find the power of balance.
Dee Hock founder of the VISA card wisely said -
"Without management of self no one is fit for authority no matter how much they acquire, for the more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the management of self that should occupy 50 percent of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do that, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of leadership are inescapable."
Management of self can only come from self awareness grounded in a practice of mindfulness.
History provides enough painful narratives about nations divided and ruled by selfish leaders. The separation of people causes tremendous suffering that can lead to violence and destruction.
Trumpism - in going back to a primal reptilian emotional place to stoke fears of people who are disadvantaged for much larger reasons than the other’s colour or where they came from – globalization, neo-liberal economics, the World Trade Organization, the Federal Reserve and the likes of Wall Street – Donald Trump, one of the most self obsessed, emotionally immature leaders we have seen in a long time, keeps finding scapegoats and separating his people through fear when they should be coming together to meet its economic, social and climate change challenges.
A divided
nation is easily tampered with and the USA has a lot more to lose than any of
those waiting to pounce on it for
their own advantage.
Divisive
rhetoric of a national leader puts people on edge - separates neighbourhoods,
schools, workplaces and even families. Not
only that, a divided nation has a tremendous cost to individuals, communities and
institutions, as the dissonance, pain and suffering it generates could end up
in a major upheaval and tragedy.
Lessons from Sri Lanka
We never imagined, growing up in a multi-ethnic Sri Lanka in the 1960s and 70s with Tamil,
Muslim, Burgher and Sinhala people in relative harmony, that we would end up in
a brutal thirty year war starting in the 1980s, which killed almost a 100,000
people.
In order to
make amends to the domination of Tamil bureaucrats and other favours by the
British colonial government, the post-independence government of S.W.R.D.
Bandaranayake pandered to Sinhala nationalists and denied the Tamil minority,
their language and civic rights in 1956.
Allowing a peaceful group of Tamil protesters in Colombo to be beaten by
Sihnala thugs, the country began to squander its ability to come together as
one nation, rather than divide along ethnic and language lines. Instead, if Prime
Minister Bandaranaike, invited the protesters to a conversation and others also continued a dialogue into the future, perhaps Sri
Lanka could have changed the course of history.
As Sri Lanka
liberalized its economy in 1977 aligning with the USA and the west, India played
cold war politics to destabilize the country. What better way than to fan the
fire by training a cadre of disenfranchised Tamil youth[i],
which eventually resulted in the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Ealam (LTTE) - one of the fiercest fighting forces of its time[ii].
The Sri
Lankan government also walked into a trap of the Sinhala extremists in July
1983. The riots left hundreds of Tamil
people dead and thousands displaced in Colombo and other cities, which brought
the country’s deep divisions to international notice.
Sri Lanka as
a sovereign nation lost its cohesion and control as the world deemed it a
pariah and the war was fueled through international support and interest.
As the
country was divided and separated with poor leadership, opportunistic politics,
stoking xenophobia, outsiders with geopolitical interests and the arms industry
took advantage.
No nation is
immune, not the US and not even Canada, if we, the people, do not play our role to keep pluralistic
values that hold together the diverse tapestry of humans in harmony. This requires exemplary, mindful leadership and we, the
people, are responsible for putting them into power.
Canada’s Strains
“Why don’t
you go back to where you came from” said the young man to a response - “What!,
do you want to me to come and build my Teepee in your backyard?” from a First
Nations women who was threatened a few days after the tragic October 2014 shooting of Sgt. Nathan
Cirillo in Ottawa.
The young man was bewildered by the response and made a hasty retreat, according to the woman - a Canadian Federal
The young man was bewildered by the response and made a hasty retreat, according to the woman - a Canadian Federal
Government employee, who was at one of my soft skills training programmes.
This young
man would have been emboldened like others who harassed people of colour over
the next few days, egged on by Prime Minister Harper’s insinuations of ‘us’ and
‘them’ – differentiating old and new Canadians – implying the ‘them’, the
non-white are separate and could be terrorists.
The authorities deemed this a terrorist attack by Canadian born Michael Zehaf-Bibeau - who happened to have a Libyan father and was known
to be mentally unstable.
Nevertheless, the ambiguous yet subtle finger pointing
reaction towards Muslims extended to minorities by the Prime Minister, gave
license to some ignorant opportunists towards aggression.
These
reactions are reptilian, could be driven by a larger fear of the other, now
perceived as perpetrating terror, they were also acts of cowardice, as many men
picked on women of colour. Yet it put us all on
edge, as the head of Canada was not speaking out on these.
So
refreshing was Justin Trudeau at the time, leading the Liberal Party for
elections, as his principled fearlessness led him to take a stand on the notion
of us and them Canadians. His position on the Niqab (the face covering as a
part of the Hijab), which the Harper government was bent on banning for the
Canadian citizenship ceremony to begin with, was courageous, as it was a
political risk just before elections.
At a time when the polls showed the Harper
conservatives leading, when the security issues were front and centre driven by
extreme Islam of a few and the ISIS -
Trudeau did what was right in stating that the government had no right to
legislate a dress code and that it was un-Canadian to do so.
Trudeau was bold
enough to say the following, even if it risked losing support of the average
Canadian for his fledgling Liberal party at the time;
“You can dislike the niqab. You can hold it up as a symbol of
oppression. You can try to convince your fellow citizens that it is a choice
they ought not to make. This is a free country. Those are your
rights......But those who would use the state’s power to restrict women’s
religious freedom and freedom of expression indulge the very same repressive
impulse that they profess to condemn. It is a cruel joke to claim you are
liberating people from oppression by dictating in law what they can and cannot
wear.”
Then he went onto say;
“But what’s even worse than what
they’re saying is what they really mean. We all know what is going on here. It
is nothing less than an attempt to play on people’s fears and foster prejudice,
directly toward the Muslim faith,”
This brought Harper’s Evangelical Christian religious
beliefs, even showing a Social Darwinistic approach of manifest destiny and
superiority into light, and the dangerous edge he brought the country towards
racial divisiveness. Canadians were more astute and Trudeau’s emphatic response
actually put the Harper government on the back foot.
Trudeau was consistent with his earlier response when former provincial Premier of Quebec, Pauline Marois unveiled her government’s plan to legislate cultural and religious symbols. The Charter of Quebec Values was designed to ban the turban, hijab, head scarf or wearing the cross in the Quebec public sector. Trudeau kept to his values and spoke out in public against it, despite much criticism.
Trudeau was consistent with his earlier response when former provincial Premier of Quebec, Pauline Marois unveiled her government’s plan to legislate cultural and religious symbols. The Charter of Quebec Values was designed to ban the turban, hijab, head scarf or wearing the cross in the Quebec public sector. Trudeau kept to his values and spoke out in public against it, despite much criticism.
On September 12th 2013
- Trudeau wrote an article called I have faith in Quebec. So should you in the Globe & Mail newspaper where he said;
The PQ government’s plan is
divisive, negative and emotional. It is designed to be that way. Quebeckers
will reject it.
Quebeckers rose to the occasion to oust Marois’s 18 month old provincial
government to even unseat her own riding of Charlevoix-Côte-de-Beaupré.
Canada voted
in spades for Trudeau and Liberals at the time, as it showed Canada in its true
light – a multicultural, plural nation that is an example to the world that
diversity can work with a strong set of values and fearless leadership.
The new
Trudeau government also made a commitment to make amends to another glaring
separation – our Aboriginal people.
However, the Liberal government has lost momentum on the reconciliation process, frustrating many aboriginal communities again. As such, we, the people, have to hold them accountable.
However, the Liberal government has lost momentum on the reconciliation process, frustrating many aboriginal communities again. As such, we, the people, have to hold them accountable.
Our Aboriginal Pedigree
Historian
and writer, John Ralston Saul asserted - we should
not be imagining ourselves in the tradition of either, but recognize the
country's distinct nature, born of this land, and the integration, not just
interaction, of settler and aboriginal life.
Saul begins his book, A Fair Country: Telling
Truths About Canada, by
establishing the country's aboriginal pedigree where he says, we all owe
many of our best qualities as Canadians to our indigenous peoples’ heritage.
In one of Harper’s rare brilliant moments in
June 2008, he made a formal apology to our aboriginal people for the
residential schools acknowledging that an absence of an apology gets in the way
of reconciliation and he said we are sorry.
His formal statement read in the Indigenous
and Northern Affairs website[iii];
Two primary
objectives of the Residential Schools system were to remove and isolate
children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures,
and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. These objectives were
based on the assumption Aboriginal cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior
and unequal. Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, "to kill the
Indian in the child". Today, we recognize that this policy of
assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.
What he said then and the follow-up action did
not match, making a mockery of the apology, yet it opened the door for a more
sincere effort at reconciliation later.
I was surprised on a trip to North West
Territories not long after I came back to Canada in 2011, an aboriginal
business leader told me - “We do not tolerate nor do business with people from
the south. I will speak to you because
you are not white”.
I was afraid that the fissures I witnessed
between mainstream Canada and the First Nations, Inuit and Metis people, now to
be one of the fastest growing and advancing communities in Canada, would someday
hurt Canada’s cohesion.
That is why sooner we accept and honour that
pedigree the better. That especially goes to us new Canadians to know and accept
that history, as we come together and influence each other, into the ever
evolving culture of Canada.
Pluralism
Another positive move by the Stephen Harper government
was to establish the Global Centre for Pluralism (GCP) in partnership with the
Aga Khan to spread Canadian values of pluralistic democracy around the world.
Canada certainly has the
credibility right now to do that as the GCP website states[iv]
- in too many places, diversity is a source of competition and fear. Taken to extremes, escalating exclusion leads to oppression, extremism and
violence. Rooted in respect and inclusion, pluralism offers a different
path.
More
than anything, a commitment to pluralism creates mutual benefits, giving every
member of society reason to get along.
o
When
valued rather than feared, human diversity enriches and benefits a society.
o
Having
difference recognized by the state and the nation fosters belonging, participation
and equality.
o
Cultures
of inclusion do not erase difference or disagreement; rather, they offer ways
to manage conflict peacefully.
o
Majority
identities and minority aspirations must be considered.
o Pluralist societies require ongoing
work and investment – by citizens, civil societies and governments – but the
returns are enormous.
That is why we, the voters, globally, have to be vigilant and
engaged never to allow in the likes of Pauline Marois, Kelly Leitch, Marine Le
Pen, Geert Wilders, even at 95, emotionally immature Robert Mugabe and other unwise, opportunistic individuals to come into power, as they will divide, separate
and create dissonance - as we see Trump doing to the USA.
At a time when the world has to come together to deal with
issues of inequality, poverty and most of all, natural calamities, we can ill
afford for nations to implode for prejudice and xenophobia.
For that, we, the people, have to ensure we only elect leaders who are mindful, emotionally mature to manage them selves first and understand the implications of the power they wield.
That is the power of balance that comes from quietening the mind daily for contemplation and reflection through a practice of mindfulness meditation.
For that, we, the people, have to ensure we only elect leaders who are mindful, emotionally mature to manage them selves first and understand the implications of the power they wield.
That is the power of balance that comes from quietening the mind daily for contemplation and reflection through a practice of mindfulness meditation.
