Peace through compassion

Speech: Peace through compassion Kym Goodes, CEO, TasCOSS Tamar Valley Peace Festival, 27 July 2016 Introduction At the start of the federal election campaign the Member for Braddon Brett Whiteley said publicly that people on the Newstart allowance were ‘off their heads on drugs’.

When I hear statements like that I imagine how it feels, to be someone who can’t find work, who as a last resort signed up to Newstart allowance, how it must feel to be labeled in that way.

Imagine how it feels to be a peace-loving Muslim right now?

Or be told that you don’t deserve the right to marry your same-sex partner?

When the media asked me to respond to Mr. Whiteley’s comments and I did, Mr Whiteley accused me of being “too compassionate”.

The judgments that are made, the labels that are put on people come from the same place – fear.

Change I understand why people are fearful. Change is happening at a rapid pace.

We are going through a period of great disruption.

The systems we thought were made of stone and here forever are failing: This is borne out in both economic and social examples •

the global financial crisis and the collapse of banking systems

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the exposure of long term and wide spread sexual abuse of children in institutional care are just two examples

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the institutions that had always served us are failing –

These are painful endings to things that we have trusted and relied on for many years.

Otto Scharmer founder of Theory U, says we are in a period of transition and the crisis in the world that we see and hear every day isn’t just the crisis of a single country, a single leader, or just one organisation or just one community. 1 We all share awareness of this emerging reality.

Schmarmer says that what we hear and see in terms of the rise of fundamentalist movements in both Western and non-Western countries is a symptom of this disintegration and deeper transformation process.

Fundamentalists say ‘look, this modern Western materialisms doesn’t work–it takes away our dignity, our livelihood, our soul–let’s go back to the old way’.

And …

As tiny individuals on a big planet we can’t control these huge changes. But we can control our response to them.

We have a choice. We can choose to close down and retreat into prejudice, blaming and fear. Like Donald Trump, Nigel Farrage and Pauline Hanson.

Or we can open up by being compassionate, truly listening and showing courage, not our rage.

If we let the media consume our waking moments, following everything that’s happening in Turkey, Nice, Munich, Orlando–we will let that fear that Sharman describes overtake us. We don’t have to be ignorant to these events, but we also do not have to let them consume us.

We are letting social media, become a tool for this hate and violence, an echo chamber for prejudice, blame, and fear.

What we need to do is to have a look at the story of hope.

At what took place in Germany when thousands of Syrian refugees were embraced by local people– giving them food, blankets, clothes and homes.

Have a look in our own community here in Launceston where locals are inviting new migrants into their homes to share a meal.

Have a look at who just got elected to the Federal Parliament.

While the media gives Pauline Hanson all the oxygen at the same time we have our first indigenous woman in the House of Representatives.

1 Scharmer, Otto, Form Follows Consciousness, The World Post, 16 April 2016.

We have our first Muslim woman, a counter-terrorism expert no less.

We have Senator Lisa Singh and the power of people saying no to political factions and power deals.

After England voted to leave the European Union a lot of progressive thinkers, my friends included, quoted the fact that the most Googled question the day after the vote was ‘What is the EU?’ They laughed in disbelief.

But what they were doing was labelling the people who had voted to Leave. It was convenient to label them as stupid, or ignorant, as duped by a populist campaign.

But when we label people in that way we stop listening.

I read some of the interviews with those who voted to leave. They just wanted their voice to be heard, they felt so powerless.

What they said was that Globalised capitalism had taken away their power – their power to have secure employment, income, a home, a safe community. They wanted to go back to the way things were, to a time when things felt safe.

In Australia we are at risk of the same sort of break down caused by marginalization.

It is inflamed when we hear Ministers label people ‘leaners or lifters’, welfare cheats, deserving or underserving.

When our leaders know the potential division of our community through a plebiscite to unleash hate and bigotry on people who just want to right to marry the person love.

And this language does not just sit with leaders. In their own homes, many women do not live with peace, they live with fear and violence. They live with abusive language and a deep sense of being disrespected. Last year, this culture and this direct disrespect resulted in 80 women in Australia dying at the hands of men.

When events and language and culture in our community like this happen we need to walk towards them, not shrink back in fear.

We need to really listen and find out what’s going on for those people and to peacefully and respectfully mirror the appropriate behavior and the appropriate responses back.

We need to peacefully and purposefully take back the power. We need to not be afraid to say it out loud and name it up for what it is. We need to no longer tolerate it.

It makes me more determined to change the public discourse to one of compassion and curiosity to understanding.

But ultimately, with a goal of peaceful, respectful discourse.

Peace When I started working on what I would speak about tonight I realised that I had an opportunity to reflect on what peace meant to me, to ask questions about what peace is. And it felt peaceful to step back from some of the most recent sadness and the madness of the world and to have permission to think about peace.

I knew undoubtedly that we all want peace for ourselves, our state, our country and our world.

We want peace for our loved ones and our children.

But what does that peace look like? And does my community, Tasmania, Australia, resemble that image?

When we talk about peace at home we are talking about an environment of mutual love and respect, of equality that is void of derogatory language.

A community where every man, woman and child has the right to choice and self determination.

A community where everybody is respected by their partner, their family and their community.

When I reflected on that—when I question what values are informing the political, social and cultural discourses of modern Australia—I see that our communities are not always peaceful.

I see that our society is not peaceful.

That this language of hate that I’m talking about has grown up under the feet of our leaders and has seeped into our community.

In a country that prides itself on tolerance and acceptance and of being fair, we are giving into its insidious nature.

I come back to the question that I started with - what does peace look like and what is my role in that?

Peace as a concept is the same wherever you apply it. At home, in the community nationally and globally. It is mutual respect and love through language and culture as well as action.

We cannot expect to live in a peaceful world if we continue to let our leaders, our media, our society espouse hate.

What we do as individuals is critical, critical in stopping the language of hate and to change how we frame it.

When we change the lens on this issue we get a broader perspective that allows for greater context and understanding. And allows for greater listening and more targeted action.

That allows people to express their fears rather than funnel them into support for campaigns that run on hate and fear.

My call to action to everyone here tonight is to think about our desired future. What do we want to see and what is our role, individually and collectively to shift the quality of thinking, the language, the culture and the power of the people.

To demonstrate that we want a different future to what we are currently hearing and seeing many of our leaders describe.

Let’s not hate the haters, let’s put our energy, our focus, into the vision that the late Governor Peter Underwood had; the vision that influenced this collective action that became this peace festival.

Let’s spend less time discussing the violence that is embracing the world and the language of hate and more time focusing on our role as change agents and our role in fulfilling our goal for peace in our homes, community and our country.