Goals
Cultivate justice and compassion
Assure everyone can meet their basic needs and participate fully in society
Oppose discrimination based on arbitrary traits like skin color
Strengthen unions, worker-controlled cooperatives, bottom-up hierarchies, and democratic equality throughout society
Organize peer-to-peer mutual support
Set aside the desire to dominate and exploit others for personal gain
Care for yourself so you can better serve others
Read MoreBy Randy Thomas
We are living in the world in the greatest revolution in history, a huge spontaneous upheaval of the human race. Not a revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in people, a revolution of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it anything we are free to avoid”
Thomas Merton
Indeed, we are living in the midst of uncertain and transitional times. The life, fate, and destiny of “human civilization” and our planetary home as we have historically come to understand it is unknown. It is a time of challenge, crisis, and opportunity for all of us.
Read MoreThe Moral Humanity Movement
Scattered pockets of positive change are transforming society into a compassionate community. Seeds are being planted.
The enrichment of cultures creates a moral foundation for systemic improvements in our major social institutions.
These structural improvements nurture personal and spiritual growth rooted in mutual support that helps individuals undo divisive, selfish, competitive, domineering socialization and form partnerships.
Increased ability to cooperate enhances the emergence of a sustained, massive, united, nonviolent, grassroots moral humanity movement
Mutually reinforcing nonviolent efforts are based on Gandhi’s principle: “Be the change you seek.”
Countless individuals and organizations contribute to the moral humanity movement — including those who don’t yet identify as members. The challenge is to deepen, strengthen, expand, connect, and unify these innovations. This manifesto moves in this direction.
Read MoreBy Wade Lee Hudson
Scattered pockets of positive change transform society into a compassionate community. Seeds are planted. Awareness of basic realities increases. Good people relieve others’ suffering — and correct the root causes of preventable suffering. Efforts to improve public policy persist. The moral humanity movement unites these fragments and reverses humanity’s downward spiral.
Enrichment of our shared culture creates a moral foundation for systemic improvements in our major social institutions.
These structural improvements nurture personal and spiritual growth rooted in mutual support that helps individuals undo divisive, selfish, competitive, domineering socialization and form partnerships.
Increased ability to cooperate enhances emergence of a sustained, massive, united, nonviolent, grassroots moral humanity movement that persuades Washington to respect the people's will while respecting minority rights.
Mutually reinforcing nonviolent efforts are based on Gandhi’s principle: “Be the change you seek.” They liberate inherited instincts that modern societies suppress. They strengthen positive capabilities and correct weaknesses. They affirm the equal value of every individual and awaken moral commitment to compassionate action. They set aside self-centered domination and blind submission.
Countless individuals and organizations contribute to the moral humanity movement — including those who don’t yet identify as members. The challenge is to deepen, strengthen, expand, connect, and unify these innovations. This manifesto moves in this direction.
Read MoreBy Wade Lee Hudson
In “The Shaming-Industrial Complex, Becca Rothfeld describes the problem: Absent structural change, self-improvement will be limited. A large network of supportive small teams whose members are aware of this problem could be one solution. In itself, this network could constitute structural reform, which Rothfeld seeks. It could also nurture a strong sense of community whose members, given their awareness of the Shaming-Industrial Complex, would logically pursue structural reform in other social sectors and, ideally, cultivate holistic and systemic transformation.
Read MorePolitical organizations don’t encourage members to engage in self-reform to undo divisive social conditioning, including the desire to dominate and the willingness to submit. And personal- and spiritual-reform organizations don’t nurture political action to help change oppressive public policies. If these two communities made simple shifts in their approach, they could come together and build an independent social movement powerful enough to persuade Washington to respect the will of the people, transform social structures throughout society, and support compassionate personal growth.
The first step is to agree on a shared worldview rooted in compassion.
Read MoreBy Michael Johnson
The Growing Democracy Project (GDP) is a cultural and political program for developing a legion of everyday citizens who can generate enough collective power to make democracy the dominant political force in our country.
The strategy is to produce abundant, persistent, and effective citizen action to solve shared problems at all levels of our society.
The means is the continuous development of participants’ “habits of the heart” and skillful democratic means.
Read MoreBeing in the flow with a partner is a great experience, but society undermines partnership by inflaming its dominate-or-submit culture. The Democratic and Republican parties reinforce these divisive tendencies. Undoing deeply embedded social conditioning and nurturing compassionate cooperation throughout society will require sustained effort and mutual support.
With true partners, you care for the other as much as you care for yourself. The more they benefit, the more you benefit. You listen, learn, understand, and respect each other. You make decisions together, as equals, perhaps switching roles and delegating responsibilities. You’re a team. No one dominates or considers themselves to be a superior human being.
Tight-knit teams flourish at work and school, in sports, with music and the arts, and in community organizations. Members cooperate to achieve collective goals. Whole nations unite to solve problems or deal with catastrophes. Study group members teach one another. Sports team members inspire each other. Highly skilled musicians improvise, taking the group to new territory. Every member is important. Team spirit elevates performance. Throughout society, while accepting justified social control, strong individuals and strong communities cultivate empowerment.
Unfortunately, however, Americans (as is the case with humans in general) have an arrogance problem.
Read MoreImagine a moral America. Americans treat each other as they want to be treated and respect everyone’s equal value. If you live elsewhere, imagine the same for your country.
We love our country, live good, compassionate lives, care for others as we care for ourselves, avoid both selfishness and self-sacrifice, improve ourselves and the world, are politically engaged, work to undo racism and all forms of oppressive domination, and nurture partnerships throughout society.
Read MoreBy Michael Powell
…Yet the phrase is deeply contentious. Influential writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, a Boston University professor, have embraced it, seeing in white supremacy an explanatory power that cuts through layers of euphemism to the core of American history and culture. It speaks to the reality, they say, of a nation built on slavery. To examine many aspects of American life once broadly seen as race neutral — such as mortgage lending or college faculty hiring — is to find a bedrock of white supremacy.
“It is not hyperbole to say that white supremacy is resting at the heart of American politics,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor of Princeton, a socialist activist and professor of African-American studies, said in a speech in 2017.
But some Black scholars, businessmen and activists — on the right and the left — balk at the phrase. They hear in those words a sledgehammer that shocks and accuses, rather than explains. When so much is described as white supremacy, when the Ku Klux Klan and a museum art collection take the same descriptor, they say, the power of the phrase is lost…
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