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Profile of Jonathan Granoff
I counteract violence, anger, and hatred, [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I counteract violence, anger, and hatred, within myself, by cultivating non-violence, patience, and love. I have made an evaluation that violence, anger, and hatred diminish my life. I have made a commitment to live through prayer, meditation, reflection, devotion, service, caring, and balance, as much as I possibly can. How do I counteract violence, anger, and hatred? I pray, and the evidence of prayer is love, and the evidence if love is caring for others, and the evidence of caring for others is service, and the evidence of service is a clear conscience, and the evidence of a clear conscience is inner peace, and the evidence of inner peace is wisdom, and the evidence of wisdom is the sense of humility and awe at the power of the Creator, and when you see the power of the Creator in the lives of others, you don't want to be angry and hateful toward them. So I try to counteract violence, anger, and hatred within myself with prayer, and attempts to bring the inner qualities that God has gifted me and you and all of us with into action as best as I can. But that is a battle that I fight within myself, and the prize of that battle hopefully, with you and I, will be the treasure of a clear conscience, inner peace, and, if we're really blessed, wisdom, and the wisdom of knowing ourselves and knowing how precious every life is. Every one of us has to ask, how do I counteract, how do I overcome the violence and anger within myself. And it can - it can be done. The Wise since time immemorial have been giving us the same message on how to do it. It's only for us, you and I, to try to put this into practice.
We not only have the right, but we have the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We not only have the right, but we have the responsibility to preserve human life when it's attacked by life forms such as viruses. The plague, which decimated this region of Europe several hundred years ago, was a life form, and I don't think anybody would say, oh, people should not have changed their hygienic practices to curtail the spread of this life form. That maybe - you know Europe should have - should continue - should have not developed central plumbing and greater hygienes to nurture this other life form, and let the pathogen of the plague spread, and have as much richness on the planet earth as human life has. So I think not only do we have the right, we have the responsibility. But that doesn’t mean that we should not apply some sense of justice. It doesn't meant hat we should kill and hurt other life forms without any sense of respect and recognition of their value. There is the capacity of judgment and evaluation and balance. Should we rely on killing animals to feed our hunger, when we can kill plant life that doesn't suffer so much to feed our hunger? And certainly, we don't have a right to be destroying thousands of species for our greed in the marketplace. That we certainly don't have a right to do. We don't know why there's a platypus, why the creative force of the universe and the mysterious source of creation itself created platypuses. There's so many creatures there, you know, they just seem so strange to us. But we don't know. We have to have a sense of respect for the great mystery that creates, sustains, and absorbs life.
It's clear that we need a system of economic [...]
Jonathan Granoff: It's clear that we need a system of economic arrangement in which there's a higher level of respect for all people. And to the extent that capitalism doesn't have mitigating institutions, it's going to change. It's necessary to meet the economic needs of so many people on the planet, the gross disparities of wealth are not sustainable. Also capitalism's unlimited exploitation of natural resources is not sustainable. So at some point - I'm just giving two examples of places where unfettered capitalism has to be mitigated by other institutional considerations. As we become more effective as a human community in making our economic order responsive to protecting the environment, and more socially just, at some point will we still be calling the system capitalism - I'm not sure. You know when a system changes into something else, whether you still call it that. If what we mean by capitalism is the unfettered capacity to exploit the natural resources of the planet, and that the market determines the only wages of labor, I think that's on its way out. And what we're gonna call the new thing, I don't know what we call it, but will we do away with private property? Will we do away with the rights of movement, rights of capital investment, things that involve harnessing greed into creativity? I don't know.
Economic organization at the level of a [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Economic organization at the level of a community can either be a means of promoting oppression or providing a better way of having goods and services delivered to people. It really depends on the other mitigating institutions. For example, in a country if economic organization allows for a disproportionate amount of unaccountable power in the hands of few people, then it will not lead to furthering of democracy. And I presume that the question is about democracy in the greater sense of meeting people's real needs and a means of expressing their real values. And a globalization is a driving force that provides the opportunity to globalize values, that can globalize values of the trivial, values of greed and selfishness. On the other hand, it can promote values of human rights, it can promote values of human unity. So economic globalization to the extent that it has the mitigating institutions that promote human rights, environmental responsibility, the rule of law, social justice, could create the enabling environment for greater human expression and democracy. On the other hand, it also creates the wherewithal for the greater exercise of oppression and dominance. So the question is not economic globalization alone, it is economic globalization with human rights, or economic globalization without social justice. It is the same principles that apply in a community. Economic organization can be a means of helping liberate people or a means of dominance. It really depends on wheher there is the principal of justice and human rights.
I would start by letting kids in the city [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I would start by letting kids in the city know that they are important, and they matter and people care about them, and when you put forty, fifty kids in a classroom with one teacher, it's just impossible for them to get an experience that they mean something, that they're – that they’re valuable We need to change our spending priorities and really make the schools in the cities exciting, and wonderful. I mean, if we simply had a law that said, no more than ten teachers per kid, that would tell those kids that we care about them. Beyond that, changing from a culture that lauds violence to a culture that really honors the human spirit, I think that people in those communities are the best to answer that. And I don't live in the community of the inner city. So I wouldn't go that far. But I know those are the values that my friends who are in those communities want to be able to propound. But they need the institutional context. The first place is the schools. Gang violence has a lot to do with social identification. Kids join gangs 'cause it gives them a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves. And it's interesting that they're willing to sacrifice their physical well-being for their gang loyalty. So there - they understand making sacrifice, so it's important that we just change that motivation from using violence for social identity, to using caring and growing, and dignity. The dignity of caring, caring for old people, caring for one another, instead of hurting one another. How to make that turn. How to make that turn is a question I don't have an answer for. But we need to make that the question. How to turn from a culture that lauds violence as a means of social identity, to a culture that lauds the real human spirit as the cause
Jason, I can't speak as a black American, [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Jason, I can't speak as a black American, but I can say that it's important to note that this cancer of racism was at the founding of America, and it was right in the crucible of debate in 1787 when it was - America was created. And the issue of slavery was not resolved, and black people were treated as three-fifths of a person, and they're not treated a whole people all across America or the whole world today. Racism is a terrible cancer. But one could say that there's - and, women couldn't even vote. There's been a, hopefully there's a – there’s been the possibility of continued progress to greater social justice and freedom and dignity within the United States, and that possibility of progress might be worth defending and fighting for. But it would be arrogant for me to think that I can understand the suffering that Jason who asked this question has experienced because of his race. It would be arrogant of me to think that I could understand what it felt like when he was a child and he realized that he lived in a society in which many people judge others by the color of their skin, not the character of their person. It would be arrogant for me to think that I could understand that. And it might be difficult for Jason to understand my children - my wife comes from an Armenian heritage, and Armenians suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks, at one period in history. Or my family, my side of the family which is Jewish, and Jason I don't know if you'd understand the legacy of the holocaust and anti-Semitism for thousands of years. Dehumanization is the issue, for Jason, for me, for my children, for all of us. To treat others based on their identities and their religions and their races diminishes everybody. This is a cancer. It's a cancer of the spirit, it's a cancer of society.
The best use of that money would be a [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The best use of that money would be a global Marshall plan, that would express the generosity of people. It would - we know that between twenty and thirty thousand children die a day from starvation and preventable diseases. That a third of the human family doesn't have adequate security with potable water. Half of the human family's living on less than two dollars a day. The millennium goals have been analyzed very carefully addressing poverty, is gross, gross inequities in the human family, and the renowned economist Jeffrey Sacks suggested that for less than a hundred fifty billion dollars a year, that poverty as we know it could be ameliorated. Well, that would not only enrich the poor, but it would save the lives of the rich, it would save their humanity. So if we took that money and a portion of it would be to promote the values of social justice and caring and compassion and the importance of a culture of peace. To work on sustainable - a sustainable energy policy, that would promote mass transit, that would promote technologies that are less polluting, that would conserve energy, that would refurbish houses, build infrastructure, bridges, bridges amongst people could be built. The amount of resources that could be freed up from turning these swords into plowshares is inestimable. But, these children. I come back to these children. Twenty to thirty thousand children a day. Systemically, unnecessarily, dying. And UNICEF has never put a figure over forty billion to totally take care of that. Well that would change the whole atmosphere on the planet if leadership said, oh we're really really going to address - collectively address this as a way of perusing peace, stability, and security. Additionally, we must find a way of protecting the climate of the planet. We can't put this off any longer. So, I - but it would change the human relationships. It's not just the institution of spending and war. But it would be an enrichment of the relationships between people, by saying that we're not going to try and resolve our differences through violence. That we must resolve our differences through our common humanity, which means using diplomacy, and law, and dialogue, in a massive way. I mean one of the reasons why the Cold War ended was that the people in the Soviet Union realized that the United States didn't want to take them over, and that the people in the United States stopped demonizing the people in the Soviet Union. And now we’re moving forward. We need to do this on a global scale.
There is an enormous amount of peace in the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: There is an enormous amount of peace in the Middle East. People raise families, they fall in love, they live their lives, and many people live their lives in peace. But there is no peace amongst the religious fanatics who have forgotten the message of love and compassion of the prophet Mohamed; between the Jewish fanatics who have forgotten that the admonition is to remember you are a stranger in a strange land, and all the political fanatics who worship the state above caring for their fellow human beings. I often think of the prophet Abraham, who when asked to sacrifice his son, whether it's Ishmael or Isaac, it's insignificant for this point - he's - the story is he's willing to do this. But when he hears about the other, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and that the city's gonna be destroyed, he argues with God, in the court of the soul, and says if there's one - if there's fifty just men, will you destroy the city. Are you not a god of justice and mercy, and argues with God, if there's one just person. So I say to my Palestinian and Muslim brethren, the prophet Mohamed said Abraham is a perfect example. The Jewish people have 4,000 years of oppression and isolation and violence; are there not some just Jews. Surely there are. And I say to my Jewish brethren, look at the eyes of the children in Gaza and the West Bank. Are they not - do they not have a right to a future. What would Abraham do. Would Abraham argue for the other. Shouldn't we be arguing for the benefits of the other, and bring the wisdom of our religious traditions, not their divisiveness, to the table. There's a history of the Middle East being played by super powers, being played off against one another for economic interests. But there's also a history of great, wise people in the region. And the wise people always find a way of reaching peace and accord. I think the whole world has a tremendous interest in pushing for peace and accord, and overcoming these divisive factors of religion and economic interest. The Middle East is not just a problem for people in the Middle East. It's become a global problem. It's our problem. And the solution is in our hands.
How do we stop our governments from going to [...]
Jonathan Granoff: How do we stop our governments from going to war. Nancy Reagan said "Just say no." I wish it were so simple. We have to organize, we have to educate, we have to persuade people that going to war is not the way of gaining the kind of security that we need. War has become an institution that is no longer practical. And with weapons of mass destruction, it's extremely hazardous. Because war is a breakdown of our cooperative security. War arises when the other skills that we have of law, diplomacy, persuasion, morality, and inclusion and [cooptation] don't work. Here we're in Germany, it's ah -we're in a place in which the books were burned in the 1930s, and Nazism arose out of a breakdown of social order. But let's look at what happened that were the – that built the [inaudible] of that war. After World War I, Germany was punished, its society suffered, it had social disruption, great swings of its economy, and out of that arose the disequilibrium of Nazism. After World War II, wisdom was applied to the defeated, with the Marshall Plan, and now Germany is a thriving democracy, and a responsible member of the international community, and a great trading partner with the victors, similarly with Japan. So the principle of generosity and goodness worked. And it worked after World War II. So we need a global Marshall Plan, to make war obsolete. We need an inclusive attitude toward all people in the world. If - when people have hope they don't turn toward violence. If you take away hope, violence is the recourse. And war is the ultimate expression of organized violence. And so it's violence - we need to strike at the roots of violence and build a culture of peace. This is an active endeavor that we're all trying to do. We believe here that dialogue is very much a part of that - is a pillar of that process of building a culture of peace. Interfaith, intercultural, reaching out, learning about the other, seeing our common humanity, these are the tools that will make war obsolete. Let war be thrown into the rubbish bin of history, like gender dominance, environmental irresponsibility, they belong there. But we've thrown slavery, Apartheid, and many other antiquated institutions into the rubbish bin of history. Let's do that with war.
The basic human dignity that every human [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The basic human dignity that every human being deserves is to be treated the way you, yourself, want to be treated. Those basic human dignities are beyond verbal expression. They reside within your own conscience. The way in which you yourself would want to be treated is the way in which others want to be treated. And we in fact treat others the way we treat ourselves. When we have a divided heart within ourselves, when we have anger witching ourselves, we treat others in that divisive, angry fashion. So the first way of understanding how others want to be treated, the first way to understanding human dignity, is to understand the dignity within oneself. The capacity of caring, the capacity of service, the capacity that every mother has when she gets up at three in the morning to feed a crying child, that everyone experiences when they have love for another, these dignify us. The sacrifices we make for those whom we care about and for whom we have love. The issue now is not - you know whether people have love and caring, 'cause they do - soldiers have love and caring for their nations, on all sides in conflicts. The issue is developing the sense of universal caring, and the sense of the unity of the human family. We let people go without them because we're in denial of our human unity. And denying our human unity is a diminution of our own personal treasure, which is our own humanity. If we have a heart without those treasures, what value do we have.
We do produce enough food to feed everyone [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We do produce enough food to feed everyone in the world. We don't distribute the food to nourish everyone in the world. And the reason is we don't view food as a fundamental human right. We don't view food in the same way as we view, say, air. We have not commodified air. Ah, to some extent we’ve commodified water, but for the most part, at least in the developed water, people presume the human right to water, that water's free because it's the water of life, it's the wherewithal through which we live. And air is not commodified, air is ah, everyone has a right to breathe, nobody would propose that you have to buy air to breathe. But we have fully commodified the food chain. And so the distribution of food is dependent on the economic arrangements that we have. So you know we hear people talking about with better genetic engineering we could feed everybody. But in fact that's not the problem. Now I'll take an example: Brazil. In Brazil, less than 5% of the farmers produce all of the food that the people in the country eat. The rest of the agri-business produces feed stock for animals, to feed animals to turn them into meat, to eat them, abroad. But the capacity to feed everybody is met by a fairly small amount of the farming. But the distribution network works and so you don't have starvation there. The problem therefore is in my opinion not one of the capacity to grow, but again the issue of our sense of justice, and the way in which we arrange power. And a sense of what right people have. I mean, do people have a right - does everyone have a right to a minimum health? Does everyone have a right to decent shelter? The issue is that we have enough to satisfy everybody's needs, we do not have enough to satisfy everybody's greeds. And greed is the organizing principle for our economic engine and it's great that we've harnessed greed into a useful dynamic, but it's not enough. We also have to harness generosity, justice, caring, love, compassion. When we begin to harness those powerful human dynamics, we will not only have enough food, we will have enough justice and everybody will be fed.
We are now the first generation that must [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We are now the first generation that must decide whether we're going to be the last generation. For the first time in history, the - for the first time in history, the admonitions of the wise, and the admonitions of the most practical, come together. The admonitions of the wise have always been to see the human family in one framework, to see the wholeness of the globe in its magnificence and mystery. But now we have a series of global threats: protecting the oceans, protecting the ozone, protecting the climate, addressing gross disparities of wealth, and preventing the use of nuclear weapons, that cannot be solved by any one country or small group of countries alone. For example: if one country - if one country can dump in the oceans, others will dump through their flag. So we need a universal regime to protect the oceans. Similarly, if one country says that they have a right to weapons of mass destruction, others will similarly overreach and impair our common security, get those weapons of mass destruction, and eventually use them, to the detriment of us all. So, in this unique moment in history, we must find rules of global governance. We have rules of governance at a local level, we have zoning laws, and then we have rules at a state level, where you have schools, and provide services, and we have national rules, and now in Europe you have multi-national, regional rules, the European Union. But none of these arrangements, none of these political arrangements, are able to protect our global environment. I focus largely on nuclear weapons 'cause I think that nuclear Apartheid, some states having nuclear weapons and claiming a special right to security, impairs our capacity to work together on the global threats that challenge us all, whether you're Muslim, Communist, Socialist, Monarchist, Theocrat, Democrat, male, female, north, south, we all share one, living, biosystem. We all share the same climate. And short-term economic interests will not be sacrificed for long-term environmental responsibility, unless we see our common security. This issue of global responsibility is - how we deal with it will determine whether our children - whether our children have the kind of world that we want them to have or not. Or whether in fact we could be the last generation. If there is any issue that we have got to address today, is how do we break down the borders and work together on these global challenges.
The world itself is inherently temporal and [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The world itself is inherently temporal and corrupt. Human beings are inherently inadequate. And the world is not Heaven. But to the extent that we can bring the exalted qualities of justice and caring into our economic institutions is the extent to which they're going to function and be sustainable and work. Well that's not so Utopian. If we had a different system of accounting and the bottom line of corporations included their responsibility to communities, their responsibility to the environment, that would have a huge effect on them. I don't think that there's any economic system that has ever demonstrated perfection, but there are periods in human communities in which the principle of justice and caring is predominant, and then the economic system provides goods and services in a more equitable fashion. Can we bring that into our institutions? Of course we can. But multinational institutions operating without global governance controls, put our oceans at risk, our climate at risk. And that is corrupting of the sacredness of life. And we don't have the luxury of having the only voices in governing policy be those that serve the market. We have to find ways of bringing the sense of the sacredness of life, and the nurturing of our relationship to the natural world, to the fore. And we can. Laws create our main economic institutions, and laws can express these values just as they are disproportionately protecting the values of the market. There was a time in which slavery was considered a legitimate means of production. It's no longer considered a legitimate means. We would not ever plant gardens in our back yards in such a way that they would destroy the ecosystem of our homes.
The use of force is not what defines [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The use of force is not what defines terrorism. Terrorism is when there’s an intentional infliction of terror upon a civilian population for political purposes. And when strong states use those techniques, it’s state terrorism. The bombing of Hiroshima was a form of terrorism. Deterrence theory and the nuclear arsenals between Russia and the United States now, which still have thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at each other, risking all life on the planet earth, is based on deterrence. The root of that is de- ter – with terror -of terror. It's a balance of terror. That is a form of terrorism. This is a use of massive terror. When non-state actors kill innocent people wrongfully in order to advance their political purposes, this is a form of terrorism that must be condemned as well. The uses of violence for political purposes, whether it's on a massive scale or small scale, are simple unacceptable and must be condemned. When the powerful use force in that fashion, the powerful could use force in other fashions that's not terrorism that could still be unjust, or even use force for the purposes of justice. So I think we need to look a little bit more closely. I think the idea however of a war against terrorism is absurd. Thuggery and violence against innocent people is illegal under any criminal system and should be prosecuted, and shouldn't be given any quarter because of religious-political rationales. And the state terrorism most exemplified by nuclear weapons, we should work assiduously to eliminate as well. All of these are evidence, a lack of respect for God's gift of life. And moreover they're ineffective ways of bringing about the change that we want to see. They can bring about maybe a short term change, but not the kind of world that we want to live in. It only reinforces the cycle of violence. State violence, the use - war as a means of spreading values, is impractical. It doesn't work. It didn't work in Vietnam, it's not working in Chechnya, the war between Iran and Iraq was a catastrophe for both countries, the war - the use of violence by the United States presently led - in Iraq is not proving successful. I think we need to find non-violent ways of resolving our conflicts, whether it's the powerful or the disenfranchised.
In World War II my understanding is that [...]
Jonathan Granoff: In World War II my understanding is that the relationship between civilian deaths and combatants was about eighty percent combatants, twenty percent civilians. But in the wars of recent times that equation has reversed and the casualties of war have been about eighty percent to ninety percent civilians and ten percent combatants. And, war is sold as a solution, and the realities of war are not taught to people. They don't now what they're buying into when they go to war. So I think in answer to the question, it's tolerated because people don't know. It's really ignorance. And what we can see down the road if we don't change the pattern is fewer people with less resources being able to inflict greater levels of casualties and damage, leveraging technology. So the need to build an informed public, and to build a culture of peace, in which war is not tolerated, is really an imperative. And that means strengthening institutions like the United Nations, and strengthening the concept of international law, and the application of international law. And it also means building the kind of cultural institutions that we're seeing here today, with this - this dialogue of ideas. Sort of strange dialogue, I'm talking into a camera, but I'm trying to remember that I'm speaking to you, and that I'm speaking to many people, but that I'm part of a dialogue of addressing these very powerful questions, and thus hopefully raising people's consciousness. If people knew that the casualties of war were just regular people and not, you know, soldiers who volunteer, I think they would find the institution even more horrific and abhorrent. There's still the glorification of war in our culture, and that's - boy that's an old movie that we've got to find some way of getting over. War is a failure of human qualities, war is a failure of diplomacy, war is a failure of law. War is sold as a means of solving problems, but when you look at wars of recent day, they rarely solve the problems. They just kind of push them down the road, and sometimes they get even worse.
The greatest strength of the Western model [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The greatest strength of the Western model of stability and security has been the capacity to limit the power of the State over the individual. And the paradigm of that has been that the individual has privacy, the individual is opaque, and the State is transparent and accountable. When that paradigm shifts, and the individual becomes transparent and the State becomes opaque, security will soon be lost. Because when there's that kind of power in the hands of the State, it will attract the kind of people, very rapidly, who want that kind of power. So the juxtaposition of security versus liberty I believe is a false juxtaposition. Our security will be obtained by wise policies that address the underlying causes of insecurity. In the United States, at the beginning of the country, there was real challenge to the stability of the State. The British successfully caused great damage in the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. The - and yet, yet it was in that crucible of tension that the idea of inalienable rights, the idea of the Bill of Rights, the idea of limiting state power, was forged. And we found in history whenever states have unlimited power, it attracts people who want unlimited power. Is that what you want in your life? That power over other people? Probably not. And you certainly don't want people who have those qualities to be running your government. So I think security is in limiting the power of the State over the individual, in the long term. And security will be obtained by addressing the underlying causes of violence.
Nobody wants to live in fear all of the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Nobody wants to live in fear all of the time. People are not aggressive against the Western way of life, they're aggressive against oppression that's taking away their ability to live with security. So, the question is really, presupposes assumptions that are not accurate. No-ones' aggressive against the - there's one world, and maybe there are people aggressive against what they perceive to be the legacies of colonialism, and dominance, and they want to have their own freedom. Having freedom and democracy and local accountability is not Western or Eastern, it's just what people want. People in many countries believe that the dictators that are oppressing them are backed up by countries - so-called Western countries. In some instances that's true, in some instances it isn't true. But they're not - they're not against the Western World, they're against the oppression that they're experiencing. So, the question is - is why are people responding to oppression. Well people respond to oppression 'cause they don't like it.
Well, you know I don't want to be Utopian [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Well, you know I don't want to be Utopian and jump too far ahead, but the main economic institutions that we have now are corporations. And corporations are fabulous ways of organizing talent, and energy, and capital. But the bottom line of the corporation doesn't include the realities of the world. It doesn't include the effect of business on the environment. It's not included - it's not included in the corporate statements. It's not included in our accounting principles. Make it really simple. Let's say you're in the fishing industry and you're over fishing a fishing stock. The fact that that fishing stock will deplete over time is not included in the bottom line. So if the bottom line also included environmental responsibility, then that - that price in a sense would show up. Similarly, accountability for the effect of- on human beings, human rights, the effect on workers, all the stakeholders of the corporate enterprise, need to be put in the bottom line. We need a corporate bottom line that includes caring for the community, caring for workers. Right now, the bottom line is an accounting only of capital to shareholders. The corporation is a strange entity in which the group to which the corporation is accountable, one is the state and the other is the shareholders, is not necessarily the group that the corporation effects. The corporation can be affecting the environment, it could be affecting the workers rights, and the rights of the community and consumers, but it is accountable mainly to the shareholders. We need to have our economic institutions have a sense of accountability to the full range of stakeholders. What's interesting is often when there is an economic enterprise run by an entrepreneur, by an individual, because an individual carries within himself or herself the dynamic of conscience, the business enterprise will often take into consideration the effect on the environment, the effect on workers, the effect on the community. But when the economic enterprise is only a [inaudible] enterprise, a creature of the state, a corporation, then its accountability is to the shareholders alone. And there is no institutional context for this precious dynamic of conscience. So the market - the market institutions must find a way of bringing to bear all of our human qualities and accurately reflect the bottom line. We need a new bottom line.
Corporate social responsibility is possible; [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Corporate social responsibility is possible; in fact it's very easy to achieve, because corporations are [dejoury] institutions. They're created by law, by states. They're not natural institutions. So the values that are infused in a corporation are values that can be expressed very explicitly and positively. So, right now, the main value in the corporation is simply profit, and that's the bottom line in evaluating the success or failure of a corporation. But there are other values that could be included in that. Such as its environmental responsibility, such as - well, I mean we have laws relating to child labor, for example, if we have - in most of the industrialized world, and there's laws about safety in the workplace, and there's laws about how shareholders have rights of information, and corporations have to account to their shareholders. So, there are high levels of social responsibility that corporations have, but their responsibility is only to - is mainly to the shareholders. So if we took that principle of accountability and brought in other stakeholders, the corporation would be more socially responsible. If we put in values of protecting human rights and protecting the environment, the corporation would be more responsible. So, bringing the corporation into becoming socially responsible is not difficult at all. It’s redefining to whom, and for whom, and why, and for what, they’re going to be responsible. That it’s a matter of changing laws, since corporations are only creatures of law.
Women are in positions of power within the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Women are in positions of power within the lives of every infant that comes into the world. Women are not in positions of power in our major economic, legal, and military institutions. The question that I have is, are these places in which so much power should be centralized. Should we not be questioning this synthesis of power in those particular institutions. And would the values that we associate with women - nurturing and caring, if we mean these to be feminine values, would they be successful in changing these institutions. I'm not sure. I would hope so. I think in the modern world where the strength of intellect is in many ways more important than the brute strength of the body, that women certainly can play a major role in every major institution. But it seems to me that men need to develop those qualities that are associated with women. Caring, and loving, and nurturing. Why are these just the property of women? And the capacity of self-expression and confidence and strength and assertiveness, why are these associated with men? I don't think anybody is truly a human being if they're not able to confidently express their heart, and I don't think they're fully human if our heart doesn't have nurturing and love and compassion as its central tuning fork. So, yeah there needs to be balance of these different principles that we see embodied in men and women. Without them it's like a bird trying to fly with one wing. But our point of reference should be those qualities and values, not just the institutions as we see them today, but the inner architecture of what is it to be human, what is it to be a man, what is it to be a woman, what is it to be a human being.
The life of states does not begin in Africa. [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The life of states does not begin in Africa. Biological life might begin in Africa. I don't know. I'll accept that premise as true; that's what science has thus far discovered. We might discover later that life began in Latin America, you could say the same thing, that it's less developed than other states. Or we might find that life began some place where states are more developed. China might become a very developed state and we might find that life began there, or Sri Lanka. But let's presume that it is a fact that life began in Africa. States did not begin in Africa. States - or maybe states did. I mean I don't know what the first state was. Was Egypt the first state? Was the first state in Samaria? Was the first state in the Indus valley? Exactly what is meant by a state? Is it an organization with a King? We had kings a long – you know thousands and thousands of years ago. I presume that the question talks about the modern nation-state which emerged in the 17th century, largely in the treaties of Westphalia, here, very close to where we are here, as a response to the religious violence of the thirty years war, in which Catholics and Protestants were killing each other. And then the state became a - an institution largely at the service of the business interests, of the mercantile class of Europe. Which in turn attempted to dominate and colonize the world, and did in fact colonize and dominate Africa, and enslave the people in Africa, and sold them like chattel. I don't believe Africa has recovered from this terrible injustice. The state, the modern state system, was built to some extent on the backs of the people of Africa. An there is I believe a moral account that needs to be adjusted, and the rest of the world has a moral duty to right the wrong of what happened in Africa for several hundred years. We still see the residual cancer of racism. And ah - we had states that institutionalized racism. We had [inaudible]
Well, I don't - I don't know if the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Well, I don't - I don't know if the leadership is not decent, but I do know, I - from my personal experience I can give an example of what people-to-people can do. During the height of the Cold War I was privileged to work with a lawyers' organization that sent lawyers over to the then Soviet Union, and they sent lawyers over to the United States, and we spoke with each other as if our countries weren't squared off and - you know and demonizing each other at a leadership level. And this had an enormous effect on a lot of Americans who met people from the then Soviet Union and saw that they were decent people, and they were people, and they didn't want to kill us, and we didn't want to kill them. Many of these lawyers that came saw jury trials for the first time that really worked, and they saw bankruptcy courts where capitalism was mitigated by principles of justice and caring. And those lawyers went back and become strong advocates for Glasnost and perestroika and helped bring about the end of the Cold War without violence. So, I – people-to-people exchanges, dialoguing, this is so important. I mean the division - the so-called division with the Muslim world, I think it's just bogus. If we really had communications, and outreach programs, my son, for example, one summer, in - it was - I think it was the year 2000, yes it was 2000, he brought - he worked with an organization Seeds of Peace and he brought twenty children from Gaza and twenty children from Tel Aviv, Muslim and Jewish children, to Jordan, to get to know each other. And it was just an incredibly dynamic and positive experience for them. We need to have student exchanges, children exchanges, professional exchanges, on the kind of massive scale that we have with our military appropriations. If we took ten percent of our military appropriations for a true dialogue amongst people, the decent people in the world would solve many of the problems that states are finding amongst themselves. People are able to recognize their common humanity, but states have to help them do this now.
I live in my body, and I'm not sure whether [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I live in my body, and I'm not sure whether I chose this body for this birth. Some people say that we have chosen our bodies, and the particular parents that we're born through. I don't really know. I have a house, I have a deed to the house, I don't think just some stranger should be able to come and say I want to live in your house. Should people be able to come and live in the country that I'm from, because it's richer than other countries? Should they be able to say well I should be able to come and live on the streets? Or should they be able to say, I should be able to come and have a right to a house, in your country? I'm not sure about whether the world presently could say that borders can be removed and people should be able to move freely about. It's a really interesting question in a geopolitical sense, because capital now moves freely, and the capital markets, over a trillion dollars a day, is slushing around in currency trading alone, and yet we don't have the same kind of freedom of labor and freedom of movement of people. But capital moves very fast without borders. I'd like it if we had such a level of human unity and social justice that you wouldn't throw everything out of order and create chaos, if we did away with borders, if we did away with deeds to houses. I'm not sure if that is a little too Utopian for the nature of this world. But I come back to the really basic question, is we really live within our own bodies. Did we choose them? How did we choose the body that we live in?
People don't realize that their brothers and [...]
Jonathan Granoff: People don't realize that their brothers and sisters in the human family are living in unacceptably poor conditions, that they could have a positive effect in changing. When people feel the intimacy of other lives, then they step forward to express their caring, to express their love. These are natural human dynamics. And ah, it's the denial, the intellectual, emotional denial, of this interconnectedness. The great master said, "Love God with all your soul and all your heart and all your might, and like unto that love your neighbor as yourself." Well neighborhood now has become a moral location. It's not just a physical location. And then of course in Mathew twenty-five he describes how people will be judged. And he says "I was naked, did you clothe me. I was hungry, did you feed me. What you do to the least amongst you, you're doing to the presence of the divine amongst men. Now that's the premise of the Christian religion. I think that Christians understand and value this but they don't see that connectedness, they don't feel that intimacy with the poor. In Islam, taking care of the poor and the orphan and the disenfranchised is - it was the highest, one of the highest values of the prophet Mohamed. Charity toward the poor - which is not just charity but it's truly giving of oneself, is a fundamental requirement to being a full human being. Judaism has the same, if you read the Old Testament prophets, this sense of accountability to the poor, let justice flow down from the mountains like a river, the prophets said. And that justice is to care for the poor as your own family. Why is it acceptable? It's not acceptable. It's not acceptable.
I don’t know how the world would be [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I don’t know how the world would be different, but you can really see a big difference between Canada and the United States, with respect to their relations between races and the way the quality of life is in their cities. I mean, if you look at Detroit, where you still have the legacy of slavery in the Black community, and then you go to Toronto where there's plenty of Black people, you can walk the streets of Toronto with much more confidence and you see a higher level of social stability and dignity in the Black community. In the United States there's still the legacy of the cancer of slavery. It's never really been fully healed, we've never had the healthy conversation, and we've never done justice to the Black community. And in Canada, there isn't this sort of heritage that the people are carrying. And it's just much healthier. Maybe - you know I don't know how the world would be but I've been able to observe that big difference. I think that when there's such an injustice, you can't just pretend that it goes away by changing the laws. I mean it's sort of a psychological residue, and you've got to reach out and make efforts. These injustices breed imbalances later on. I mean the Middle East is kind of an example of the residue of injustice, and the State of Israel emerging from the destruction of the Jewish community here, and all the distortions. The wrong of slavery, it still hasn't come into balance. We all of us need to look at these injustices and see them as part of our own family and work toward healing them. I look at Canada, didn't have this injustice of slavery, and the Black community is much - it just seems so much nicer. Healthier. And of course the White community isn't carrying this deep guilt.
It's necessary to break the law when the law [...]
Jonathan Granoff: It's necessary to break the law when the law breaks the laws of fundamental justice, and - well I mean we're sitting in a square where the venture of Nazism took over this beautiful country of Germany, and distorted the laws of justice, in a most gross and horrific fashion. Imagine the courage of people that broke the laws of the state to honor the higher law of caring for human life. So, you know there are times in which the state which creates the laws that need to be broken can go so out of sync with basic principles of justice and righteousness that the law - that it's better to break the law than to go along with it. But I would add that it's very important that we not fight laws of injustice with violence; that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jesus Christ and Socrates have shown us a higher law, a law of giving. That - that - I don't know if I could live up to that law - just seems so lofty. But at least we should set that as our compass point and strive for it. And strive at all - in all instances to bring the laws of the state into accord with that higher law. Would it be right to free slaves when slavery was legal? Would it be right to break the law of Nazi Germany if you were told to kill Jews? Would it - would that be - would it right to have broken the law in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge were running the country and killing their own population? Would it - would it be right to go along with those laws? Would it be right to go - was it right to go along with the laws of slavery? Was it right to go along with the laws of Nazi Germany? Was it right to go along with Pol Pot? Of course not.
I don't think these human rights do conflict [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I don't think these human rights do conflict with traditional values. I think that they may conflict with the distortions of those values in institutions, and - but here, let me give an example. Those values are universal and the basis of universal human rights is - is found here. Listen. Listen. Buddhism: hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful, Udana-Varga. Christianity: all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them. Matthew. Confucianism: do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you, [Analytics]. Hinduism: this is the sum of duty: do not unto others that which would cause you pain if done to you. Mahabharata. Islam: no-one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Hadith. Jainism: in happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self. Lord Mahavir. Judaism: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow human being. That is the law. All the rest is commentary. The Talmud. Zoroastrianism: that nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatsoever is not good for its own self. [Danistani Dinek]. These are universal values. They're not the property of any religious franchise or any particular tradition. These are the qualities and values that are intrinsic to the human architecture. And the human architecture comes from the divine mystery, and the divine mystery has placed beautiful qualities and values and attributes within the human soul that finds resonance in the human conscience that has to find articulation in the human hand, in the human intellect, in the human institutions. So, human rights, the right of respecting the lives of others as one's own life, the highest human life, the human unity and the sacredness of life, these are universal. They are not of any tradition and any religion. And to the extent that any religion or tradition distorts these values, they're outside of the great universal way articulated so clearly in the golden rule found in every tradition, amongst all peoples. The sun of goodness and caring shines upon all.
Well, there's - democracy doesn't work in a [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Well, there's - democracy doesn't work in a family, when you're raising children, so democracy is not the best way to have a family. And we're here in Germany and Hitler was elected in a democracy, so that didn't work all that well. But, without accountable government being responsive directly to the will of the people, without checks and balances on power, tyranny seems to be the consistent result. So democracy alone, is - it's just not a - it doesn't get to the sufficient level. But we need to have a democracy with checks and balances. With protections of human rights. With transparencies and accountability. There's distortions in democracy when the microphone can be bought, and so democracy without free debate in which just a few are not permitted to dominate by virtue of buying all the airspace, where you don't have a real free-flow of ideas, that's not really - doesn't let democracy function very well. But the issue is - the issue is accountability. Whether the power is unaccountable because a religious group says on we're really wiser than you and we should tell you what to do, or a wealthy group that says well we have a right to completely dominate the airspace, and we're not gonna have campaign finance reform, so that ideas can be more free flowing, any - or we're not gonna have checks and balances, because we were elected and we're popular, and checks and balances are inefficient, these are distortions of a healthy functioning democracy. Democracy alone is not sufficient. We need other characteristics. And in some places democracy isn't the best. You don’t want democracy in a family, where the children have as much say in the finances as the parents, for example. But you do want elected officials accountable to the people whose lives they’re impacting. I think it's a good - it's a good system. In small communities though, wise elders in some instances might be better. I'm not sure. But in my country, the United States, democracy has the potential of blossoming in a beautiful way if we could have much stronger campaign finance reform, and get the capacity of buying elections thrown away.
There's no such thing as a "holy war." The [...]
Jonathan Granoff: There's no such thing as a "holy war." The only holy war is the war within the human heart, in which anger, falsehood, jealously, envy, hastiness, are overcome by the qualities that emerge from wisdom: love, compassion, peacefulness, and justice. But self - the doctrine of self-defense is a long-standing doctrine, and it is - it's not particularly ambiguous or confusing. Humanitarian intervention however is different. That's new. The concept is that if a state does not protect its own population, say Rwanda for example, the international community has a right and maybe a duty to intervene and stop genocide against a minority population. So how do you determine that, whether that is a just or unjust action. Well you look to see, was this in order to seize booty, to seize resources, or did it enfranchise the people by reducing the levels of violence. Did a force come in and occupy and steal the resources in a country? That would be indications of an unjust intervention. But the idea that the first duty of the state is to protect its own citizens, and if a state fails to do that and in fact engages in killing its own citizens, I would argue that the international community has a legal duty to stop that killing. When the state of Germany was killing Jews it was right for other countries to intervene and stop that. We should have intervened in Rwanda. I think we should stop the killing in Darfur. But if a state intervenes and then occupies a country to seize its resources, well that's hardly humanitarian intervention. So in each instance I think we need to have some format, and some legal criteria, for defining humanitarian intervention. The idea that the United States leapt into Iraq based on the doctrine of humanitarian intervention was not the argument that the State Department of the United States has made. They've said that the justification was to fulfill Security Council resolutions. I'm not sure that's a particularly strong legal argument. I wish they had made the argument that the international community should have stopped the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. They never made that argument as a legal argument. So the issues remain unflushed and we need a dialogue and conversation of this [complex]
The great power of America was demonstrated [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The great power of America was demonstrated at the birth of the country. In 1787 when fifty men got together in Philadelphia, and, instead of completely synthesizing power for themselves, they created a way of empowering others, and actually created checks and balances on their own exercise of power. It was most aptly demonstrated when George Washington, who could have easily been the king and acquired enormous power, stepped down as the first president, and most honorably said, with pride, that he was becoming a citizen, a free citizen. Now that principle of creating checks and balances in governance, that principle of the dignity of every citizen of the Planet Earth, that principle of creating accountable government, that principle of sharing power, is what served as the foundation for the creation of the United States. If the - and the United States was instrumental in creating the United Nations system. The United States was instrumental in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If the United States will but live up to its own highest calling and principles, it will rise to a stature to which the Wise can gather. As Washington said, let us raise a standard to which the Wise can follow, something that was at the beginning of the creation of the United States, when the Constitution was created, that these principles of people's empowerment, We the People, We the People of the Planet Earth, must form a more perfect Union. We the People of the Planet Earth, in order to protect our rights, our rights to be free, and be secure, We the People of the Planet Earth, in order to fight the scourges of poverty, environmental irresponsibility, and the challenges of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, We the People of the planet earth, 3:05 must form a more perfect union. This concept, that - these concepts that were at the birth of the United States, they're needed. They're useful. They're still wise, and they're still good. If America would but live to - live according to these, I think that the - the whole world would be ennobled and strengthened. They're not American ideas, they're good ideas.
Who is profiting from terrorism? Well I [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Who is profiting from terrorism? Well I guess the people that make the machines that check you at the airport, but - and people that make profits out of weapons and the war industry. I suppose that there are some terrorist organizations that are able to get away with drug trade and black market trade in arms, and they're profiting. Who else is profiting - I guess politicians that get elected on the fear ticket, they're profiting. Profiteering from terrorism is an interesting question. The military budgets have increased based on this war on terror, but when you look at the deployments of the kind of weapons that are being purchased, they don't seem to have much relationship to this war on terror. I mean, Pakistan just bought several dozen F-16 rockets from the United States - not rockets - Pakistan just bought several dozen F-16 jet fighters from the United States, they don't do much for terrorism. And the United States is entering in to a nuclear sharing arrangement with India that is gonna allow them to free up some of their facilities - nuclear facilities to increase their nuclear arsenal. These are huge weapons systems not related to terrorism, but tremendous profits are being made. And I don't think they could be justified without this atmosphere of fear that terrorism has spawned. So the residual effects get pretty far down the line. And military contracting has become pretty profitable because of the fear spawned by the war on terrorism. So I guess you would say at the end of the day that the only people that are profiting from terrorism are people who are - who use military means of addressing social issues. It's terrible.
There are some brands that are more powerful [...]
Jonathan Granoff: There are some brands that are more powerful than governments. Ah, the brands of religion for example, that claim the singular explanation of the great mystery that brings us here, why we're born, why we die. Some of those brands are extremely powerful. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism. These are brands in a way that claim a franchise on truth and on mystery. Then there are brands that are really very very superficial, they are doorways to products and services. Those brands are certainly not as powerful as governments. They may have cultural influence but it's only on the surface. Governments create the economic entities that are able to own those brands. But the brands that come from the aspirations of people out of their primal questions, and that brand answers to those primal questions, they are more powerful than governments, because they create a stimulus within people for which people are willing to die. The brand of the nation, the nation-state, is a kind of brand. The United States, Italy, Germany, these are brands that divide the human family. And people are willing to sacrifice their children, sacrifice their wealth, sacrifice their lives, and limbs, and everything, for those brands. So, to say are brands more powerful than governments, governments to some extent are themselves, brands. Religions are brands. To only talk about the superficiality of consumer culture as branding really misses the dynamic of social identification. So, the question, are brands more powerful than governments? Some brands are, and some brands are governments.
Courage means, now, what it has always [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Courage means, now, what it has always meant. It means a unflinching willingness to look at oneself, evaluate oneself, and act according to the dictates of conscience. It means placing faith in the power of love and compassion, over the – over mind and desire. It means exercising patience when it would appear that passion will get us what we want. It means exercising tolerance, and love, when passion seems to be the way of getting what we want. It means having the ability to say no to selfish - love of self, and yes to selfless love. Courage means living with an open heart. Courage means following the dictates of conscience, without excessive attachment to blood ties, and nation, and religion. It means - courage today means what it's always been. To see the value of other lives as one's own life, and trying as best as one is able to live with that principle. Courage is the expression of human dignity and the presence of God within the human being. Courage is accepting the responsibility of being human. Courage is the humility of being human. Courage is to live with the recognition of the mystery that we don't know very much about where we came from, and we certainly don't know very much about where we're going. And we certainly don't know about how the next breath will sustain our lives. Courage is living comfortably, and patiently, and securely, and peacefully, knowing how little we actually know. Courage is having the responsibility to own up to how much we do know. How much needs others have. How precious life is. And trying to respond to that calling of responsibility that love brings us. Courage is - awesome.
A nuclear weapon is a horrific device. Let [...]
Jonathan Granoff: A nuclear weapon is a horrific device. Let me quote George Keenan about nuclear weapons. "The readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings, against people we do not know, whom we've never seen, and whose guilt or innocence is not for us to establish, and in so doing to place in jeapordy the natural structure upon which all civilization rests, as though the safety and perceived interests of our own generation were more important than everything that has taken place, or could take place in civilization, this is nothing less than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity, an indignity of monstrous dimensions offered to God." That's George Keenan who was the architect of the containment policy that spawned the huge arsenals between Russia - the Soviet Union and the United States. The reason people argue that an Iranian bomb is so hazardous is that Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is the bargain that a hundred and eighty-seven countries in the world have, in which five countries promised to eliminate their arsenals in exchange from a hundred - over a hundred and eighty that they would not get them. And if Iran goes forward with a program and obtains nuclear weapons, that would really unravel that treaty. Additionally, Iran has - has made very belicose statements about another state, Israel, and so there's a lot of fear that they would create grave - great instability in the region if they got them. My attitude is that the American, Israeli, and French bombs should be eliminated. France and the United States have a legal obligation to do so under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Israel has a security interest in really resolving the conflicts in its region through non-violent means. 'Cause eventually, as long as some have nuclear weapons, others will want them. As long as they want them, at some point they will get them. And as long as they exist it's inevitable that either through accident or design they will be used. Any use is catastrophic. Therefore they must be universally abolished.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in a way as a code of - a code of values. And yet, it has become an established norm to which people all over the world give reference. And, out of that norm, even local laws emerge, thus advancing - advancing what is rapidly becoming a shared set of values that emerged out of a legal instrument without any enforcement mechanisms. Law at a national level emerges out of - out of the aspirations of values, and laws are - is a creative institution. The enforcement mechanisms for public international law are beginning to emerge. The International Criminal Court is the nascent seed of this. The International Court of Justice is a place in which the principles are starting to - are starting to emerge. But we have a long way to go, and yet to deal with the global problems we have, we’ve got to find a way of strengthening international law. It’s interesting that in private international law, that in areas involving commerce, international law is working very effectively. The - strengthening the Berne convention for example, protecting intellectual property rights. Business is driving that. We haven't created the same kind of pressure groups to push for the social justice, environmental, and peace and security issues that we need to. The business community has done very well in creating an international - international legal regimes, so that commerce can take place effectively. We haven't created a sufficient international legal regime so that peace can take place effectively. It's my hope that the business community might realize that peace is better for business than the kind of short-term gains that war is providing only a few businesses. But I think that as people become more aware of the need for the rule of law at a global scale we'll find progress. And it could happen very rapidly.
The connection between - do I know the - the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The connection between - do I know the - the connection between politics and violence. I suppose that politics is the art of negotiating well the space between human beings, in the way that spirituality would be - realizing the space of the unity of human beings, and politics is the way of finding effective means for people to work together. And violence is the breakdown of that, and I guess that violence is the demonstration of the failure of politics. Violence is bad politics. Violence is - violence is to politics what illness is to the human body. When there's justice, there's stability. When there's justice there's peace. And when politics is done well, then it's the application of justice. And when there's - when there's justice there's no violence. State violence is the - is the expression of collective imbalance.
Rapid industrialization has not been often [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Rapid industrialization has not been often criticized anywhere. I haven't heard that. I've heard criticism of failure of honoring human rights in China. I've seen arguments that the Chinese are not being environmentally responsible. But rapid industrialization? I haven't heard anybody criticizing that. I certainly wouldn't criticize rapid industrialization. I would join in the criticism of inadequate - from what I've heard, I've never been to China but what I've heard is inadequate respect for the rights of laborers, and an inadequate sense of the sacredness of the environment, and the need to protect it. Does - must industrialization abuse workers? Must industrialization abuse the environment? Those are not questions about China, those are global questions. And the answer that we all have to give is that if China follows the route of economic development of say the United States, I don't know if there'll be enough resources, everywhere. So it'd be foolish I think to criticize China on the grounds of industrialization, but we've got to criticize any place where there's a lack of justice.
Colonialism is the application of [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Colonialism is the application of economic, political, and social dominance. There are many, many attempts to apply those principles. There' religious quests to do that, there's global economic systems that try to do that. We could say that the consumer-driven global economy is a kind of colonialism. I don't think that these are - that the dominance of markets as a means of expressing cultural values of one culture over another is particularly modern. It's the same process that - of conquest and dominance that has taken place in many civilizations over time. We're going to have a global culture. It's already happened, and it's being driven by market forces. The question is can we bring other forces to bear in this global culture, such as human rights. Such as a culture based not just on acquisition but a culture also based on generosity, and caring. This is not utopian. People spend their lives caring for their families. They are willing to give up life, limb, and property for religion and nation. So people have the capacity for sacrifice. And they do it. They do it every day when they go to work and feed other members of their family. The question is can we create a sense of responsibility for the whole. So that there are no others, so that no-one's left out, so that no-one is treated as the enemy. We're going to have a global civilization. The question is whether that divination will be civilized.
Is anyone free from mind and desire? Is [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Is anyone free from mind and desire? Is anyone free from their prejudices? Is anyone free from anxiety? Is anyone free from the fear of death? Is anyone free from disease, old age, and the trial and disappointment in life? Can we find an aspect in the human condition in which our inner state, the state of our tranquility, is free from the disappointments of the world, in which we maintain an equilibrium of our psyche. When a person has wisdom, and their lives are devoted to caring for others, are they free? Is that a kind of freedom? A freedom of the heart? The concept of freedom that has developed in political dialogue, freedom of - freedom to say what you want, freedom of belief, freedom of conscience, I believe are very important political freedoms to allow people to develop their inner freedom, which is the - the really - the most important place of freedom. When power is in the hands of a few and they're able to dominate others, and people don't have freedom of conscience and freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, it's very difficult for them to have freedom from fear. And when you have freedom - without freedom from fear, without freedom from fear, it's very difficult for people to develope inner freedom. Hope, is - hope and creativity are natural states. So when you have freedom from oppression, hope and creativity emerge naturally within people. And that's a kind of freedom of expression, a kind of freedom. Is that relative? Everything in creation is relative. Only God is absolutely free. And of course God lives in the human being.
The best is when the individual realizes [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The best is when the individual realizes that the highest fulfillment in the human life is to see the lives of others as being as valuable as one's own self. And then, the pursuit of the common good comes into concordance with the pursuit of one's own personal freedom and own personal values. And I believe there is a golden mean in creation in which the balance between the voice of conscience and the proper allocation for oneself, personally, of one's energy and resources, and expression of one's time and energy and resources for the common good are brought into proper balance. There's a certain amount of responsibility that we have to our own body, to feed it, to clothe it, to nurture it, to our families, to our community, to our nation and to the common good of the world. Each one has a call upon us. If we only try to take care of our bodies, and not take care of our caring for others, our lives are pretty thin and psychologically distorted. If we don't take care of our bodies and only work for the sake of others, you burn out. So, having an inner sense of balance, and that's where we have judgment and conscience. And the - finding that place in which one can take great joy in the joy of others, and feel the suffering of others as one's own, is where the balance between personal focus and common good come together. They're not in discord at all. In fact the, the Wise since time immemorial have explained that living together in harmony is the deepest fulfillment.
Our educational system takes place in the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Our educational system takes place in the context of communities and families. If the transference of knowledge and skills to operate in the world, which is a bottom line of our educational system, is placed in a context in which there are loving families and communities, yeah it can help a child to bloom. On the other hand, if you have overcrowd - like in cities in the United States, I'm very familiar with, you have overcrowded schools, and children are warehoused. I we had a law that said you can’t have more than ten children per teacher, that would be just basically fulfilling even the mandate as it is now to teach those basic skills of reading and writing. But more importantly, is how do we have education that creates or allows the natural blossoming of character, of curiosity, inquisitiveness, of asking questions, and living a life of learning, and learning the social skills that build successful families in communities. Creating human beings who care about service, who know the mystery of giving of oneself, and the power of generosity. And the harmon - coming into harmony with the great power of love in the heart. How can we have education that doesn't dishonor or marginalize those human qualities. Well I think as a minimum we have to have some laws that say you can't have more than ten kids, children in a classroom per teacher, so that there is a connectedness. How can we fix our educational system? It really rests on the values that we want to put in our educational system. But let's be real simple. We're spending a far disproportionate amount of money on the means of destroying and killing than we are spending on the nurturing and caring of our young. What education - what information is that passing on.
[inaudible] depend on the Third World being [...]
Jonathan Granoff: [inaudible] depend on the Third World being poor. Because wealth now is generated by information and greater social organization and, ah, wealth is generated through - largely through intelligence, not just through resource appropriations. So, we can do more with less, and the need to have an unjust social order in which wealth - one man's wealth is dependant on another's poverty, that no longer applies. It comes back to the principle that we stated earlier, that many of the people here I'm sure are stating: there's enough to meet our needs, not enough to meet our greeds. The zero sum game toward human destiny that one must succeed, the Hobbesian world in which people are unable to cooperate and work together for the common good is no longer an ignorance that we can survive. We will either have a common destiny of the poor and the rich together, coming to a greater level of balance and justice, or our destiny will lead in violence and our destiny will be unsustainable. It's unacceptable, morally and practically, that half of the world's population lives on less than two dollars a day. It is not morally sustainable and it creates mental and emotional diseases amongst those who refuse to acknowledge this injustice, and physical disease in those who are subject to this oppression. This is not sustainable. Not only is it - wealth is not dependent on the poor, but wealth will not be sustainable if we don't change the equation.
We consider some lives to be worth more [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We consider some lives to be worth more than others because we've identified with ignorance. It is ignorance that identifies with that part of us that's temporal. Our bodies, and then the accoutrements of our temporal selves, our religious identity, our gender identity, our national identity, and then we consider ourselves different from others who have a different gender, and different nation, a different religion, a different language. And we forget that we are sharing air together, that we are sharing the sunshine together, but in a deeper sense there is an inner connectedness. There is the - and it's visible, but it's in-visible. It's visible within. And when we develop the capacity of wisdom, the level of consciousness that emerges from the awakened heart that is given by the generosity and grace of the universe that gives us life itself, that gives us that matured level of consciousness, then one of the first recognitions of that level of consciousness called wisdom, is the sense of the sacredness and preciousness and mystery and exaltedness of every life. That, if you develop that - the evidence of wisdom is that sensitivity of the preciousness of every life. Because that's the evidence of knowing your own life, and when in fact you know just a taste of the beauty of your own life, your appreciation of the symphony of music of all the lives that are born with you on this tree of life now, all of us who are living together now. That is so much more beautiful than the egocentric ignorant selfishness, that the heart doesn't want to give it up. It wants to serve. It wants to see the preciousness of every life. Because that's one of the deepest fulfillments we can have.
I was in Sri Lanka observing a great wise [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I was in Sri Lanka observing a great wise man instructing representatives of the government of several decades ago, who were planning on building a huge dam, and the wise man suggested that the social organization at a village level had nurtured and protected and kept harmonious both the communities and communities’ relationship to the environment for thousands of years. And he said, if you give the people in these villages nails and pumps to get deeper in the water table for irrigation, so they can irrigate their crops more easily, they can organize their economics effectively. Now, I thought about this, and I thought, well they - they won't necessarily organize their economics in terms of the global economy well, but the point of reference that he was making is they would organize their economics in terms of the environment in which they were living well, and their lives would be sufficiently enriched to have a high quality. But he said to the bureaucrats you'll probably want to build the central - the central electrical grid more effectively because that will give you greater control and power. And, so then he said, and the issue is to find a balance between the wisdom of village life, the wisdom of communities that have a sense of nurturing their - the soil in which they emerge from, both the social and physical soil, and the benefits of higher levels of technology and organization. So, we need to have both dimensions, and we need to have a sense of respect for the values of each. There is a value in large-scale social organization of skills and capital; but to completely neglect the value of what has been learned over thousands of years in villages all over the planet, and how to nurture and husband the soil, and the community, this is foolish. We need a balance.
Women are in a disadvantage in the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Women are in a disadvantage in the marketplace and women are at a disadvantage in the exercise of brute power, but the question as to whether women are at a disadvantage in the human journey, is un - it remains pretty unanswered. Women to some extent are allowed in our society, in our global society, are legitimate trustees of love in the family. Of nurturing, of caring. And I wonder whether a life lived without love and caring and nurturing, by a man or a woman, is a rich life. So I would say that people who are able to live their lives around those values and are gonna be richer when they hit their death bed, and they're looking back at what their life meant. And whether it's a man or a woman, if you haven't built up the treasury of inner resources of love and compassion and nurturing and caring, which women are in a way permitted in our society to do without apology, those are the treasures. So are women disadvantaged within the assertion of military power, within the assertion of economic power, within the work force? Yes. But are women disad- but men are disadvantaged in the sense that those beautiful qualities that make us human in the military, in the work force, are diminished. So it really depends on what you view as the advantage in a human birth. The answer obviously is that we must bring those beautiful qualities that are essential to our - to a sustainable economy into our economic institutions. Our economic institutions have to view our communities the way a mother views her family. A family becomes toxic unless there is a center of peace and justice and love in the family. And a society that loses its purposes can similarly become toxic. So, when there's a balance between the dynamism of organization and the qualities of nurturing, then health emerges. Are women disadvantaged? Are men disadvantaged? What are the values that determine advantage?
We need a biodiversity of insistence. Of [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We need a biodiversity of insistence. Of insisting on non-violence in all or our institutions, but beginning with the nonviolence within ourselves. The cycles of violence that we’re seeing are not only impractical, but they reinforce the very problems that we're trying to address. So, we live, for the first time in human history, when the voice of conscience has the capacity of reaching out to the world. We must insist on getting the microphone back, and getting it out of the hands of those whose interest is to divide us. A biodiversity of insistence on human unity. A biodiversity of insistence on diplomacy and law. A biodiversity of insistence that our human qualities are more important than any other human venture that we can take on. A biodiversity that respects the biodiversity of life and ideas. That's what I think we need.
Addiction is in some ways a form of habitual [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Addiction is in some ways a form of habitual behavior that is not healthy. I mean if we were - we are addicted to things that are healthy. In a healthy way, we are addicted to air. But we're supposed to be addicted to air. We have to have it. We have to breathe. We're addicted to healthy relationships. If we don't have them our humanity suffers, and our spiritual health is impaired. So, addiction to drugs I presume and the question is addiction to unhealthy substances that impair our relationships to our fellow human beings and our own selves. So there's so many, you know sort of addictive behaviors and thought patterns that need to be broken to become liberated from suffering. Drugs are a very coarse and clear sort of addiction that reinforces suffering, that numbs the spirit to the sensitivities that it needs to have to go to the next - to grow. People take drugs often because the pain of the human birth is too much for them to bear. But the drugs won't cure that suffering. It's only compassion and wisdom that can cure anybody's suffering. There's nothing new about this information. What is new is the need quickly to find ways of institutionalizing its expression and not minimizing its value. The idea that we can cure drugs by taking other drugs for example, you know it's sort of -it's sort of crazy. It's like trying to cure people who are crazy by getting crazier. I like the question. I think we need to try out human relationships as a cure for drugs.
Our responsibility is commensurate - our [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Our responsibility is commensurate - our responsibility is commensurate with our ability to respond. Because diseases like AIDS don't know national boundaries. The disease of cold-heartedness and lack of caring, of failure of compassion, is as severe a disease as AIDS. Even if we find a cure for AIDS, or a cure for cancer, we will not find a cure for death. And when the human spirit is bereft of compassion and a sense of caring for other lives, that's a kind of living death that can't be filled. It can't be filled with consumer goods, it can't be filled with a quest for power. The only way in which the disease of the cold heart can be cured is by bringing into life caring for others. It is not just the responsibility to care for people with AIDS, but it is the responsibility to care for our own lives, and our own lives are impoverished, if we don't care for the least amongst us, those suffering from the scourge of AIDS. So indeed, our responsibility is the size of our ability to respond. And our ability to respond is enormous. If we can spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on armaments, we can certainly redirect a significant portion of that to addressing AIDS. That's the level of our responsibility.
Socrates is a hero to me because, although [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Socrates is a hero to me because, although the law was wrongfully applied to him, to promote law for those without conscience he gave up his life. Jesus is a hero to me, because he demonstrated selfless love in action. Mohamed is a hero to me, because he - he lived and proclaimed the unity of the human family, and the - the unity and reality of God. Moses is a hero to me, because he gave up his position of privilege to help free enslaved people. And [Bouo Muahi Adin], a great Sufi contemporary teacher, is a hero to me because he demonstrated that through a completely melted and open heart, there is a way of knowing in which the lives of others is known as one's own life. And he demonstrated that there is a state of being and consciousness beyond the separation of I and you, wherein love opens up all doors. He showed me that there are places that the senses can't go that the mind can go. And there are places that the mind can't go that wisdom can't go. And there are places that wisdom can't go that grace can go. And there are places that grace can't go that divine love can go. And he showed me that divine loves serves, and cares, and affirms the reality that the human being lives within God and God lives within the human being. I have seen a human being do this. I have seen someone who loves other lives as he loves his own. And that to me is true heroism. I'm humbled by the mere thought of a human being becoming so surrendered to the divine within himself. And so resonant, that it can awaken and melt the hearts of others. There's a technology that's melting the polar ice cap. This technology of knowing the self can melt the human heart. Anyone who applies this technology of justice, love, human unity, and surrender - surrender to the divine, is a hero for me.
The origins of intellectual property law has [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The origins of intellectual property law has always been to stimulate productivity, creativity, and innovation. And it's been an amazingly productive way of mobilizing creativity through the driving force of greed. The problem is we need a mitigating dimension to the discoveries, such that public allocations of benefit can be bestowed upon those who create innovations and creative technologies that are of value to the public good, not just the marketplace. I mean if you - like somebody could develop a drug that would be very useful in addressing a rare disease and it could be very expensive. But the market couldn't justify producing it. That innovative technology should be publicly funded. If we were to take on the same measure of focus that we have in developing new weapons designs, in addressing the common cold, as a public venture, and provided economic incentives to people investigating in that area, I think we’d probably enhance the quality of our lives. The idea behind copyright and patent law is that the application of an idea should be protected, but the idea remains open to everybody. It has generated - the patent laws have generated tremendous innovation and creativity. But there has to be some balance and mitigating for the public good. But it's not by getting rid of patent laws that that would happen. People wouldn't invest in the research and development of new technologies that are complex and expensive, if they didn't have their economic investment protected at the end of the research.
Of course there's an economic limit to [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Of course there's an economic limit to economic growth. Up to seventy percent of the fishing stocks are at risk, because the economic growth has not taken into consideration the capacity of replenishment of the fishing stocks. It's the tragedy of the commons, clearly manifest in the modern age. The tragedy of the commons is when a sheepherder rationally decides to maximize their self-interest and overgrazes, thus causing others to overgraze, ultimately destroying the commons. Well we now know that the earth has living systems that are like that commons, that simply cannot be overgrazed. The rainforests are like that, the oceans are like that. So, when we set up - or, in the evolution of the kind of modern nation-state and the multinational corporation, we didn't have this awareness of the limits of the biological systems of the planet. And we simply cannot ignore them. We can't create economic systems that are not beholden, and obligated, institutionally, through law, to work in harmony with the living systems. Indeed, there is an ecological limit to the amount and the kind of growth that we have.
No. No, I don't think so. I find the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: No. No, I don't think so. I find the internet to be extraordinarily enriching. All the people I can - that I can listen to, and learn from, and talk with, and express myself to, and share ideas, and access subject matter that would be so arcane and out of my reach, and it's so there at my fingertips - I am so grateful for the people that put the internet together, and it made it a technology that's simple, simple to use. I'm a technological retard, and yet I've learned how to navigate through the internet in a sufficient way to just really enrich my personal life, and the lives of so many other people that I know. And I think it's increasing in its capacity to help us and enrich our lives. It's almost as if we have within our grasp the technology of solving so many of the global challenges that we have, in the way the technology has brought about many of these challenges. And the internet is one of the technologies that's - to me, I think more on the side of the solution than the problem. I'm just extraordinarily grateful for people that helped make it happen.
Lazy people use technology as an excuse for [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Lazy people use technology as an excuse for being lazy. People who care use technology as an opportunity to help. The issue remains the - the charisma of the heart. If people exercise their beautiful qualities in their heart, then technology becomes a way of helping, and enriching lives. I mean we can build houses better because of technology. We don't live in caves any more. What - you know technology is a human tool-making ability. We've now extended it to such an extent that we can destroy ourselves with technology. That's my concern. My concern is technologies that - like nuclear weapons technology, which is the example of improved means to an unimproved end, in which we've allowed certain forms of technology to run like a wild horse out of the barn without the constraints of law and morality. And now that hasn't made us lazy, it's just made us dangerous. We have a race against time to reign in the technology of nuclear weapons, with law and morality, before they rain upon us and civilization. There's probably other technologies where the same principles have to be there. So in a way technology challenges us to - to become more invigorated, to become more responsible, to be more actively engaged. But the capacity of human beings to use their intelligence, and build tools to enhance human life, you know, that's - should we be all living like in the Paleolithic age, when our tools were so primitive? I don't think that's particularly wise. Let's use the gifts that have and let's use them wisely.
Sustainable communities are based on [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Sustainable communities are based on gatherings of people who nourish each other spiritually, emotionally, and care about each other physically as well. In intentional and spiritual communities, people are satisfied, and they don't - they're not driven to - to just get more, but they - they're aspiring to be more, to be more generous, to be more loving, to be more kind. That's the purpose of the great religious teachings, to inform and awaken people to their capacity to be satisfied from a spiritual perspective. And we're very much in need of people creating communities in which people are emotionally satisfied and not gluttonous for power, gluttonous for more material objects. There's a great need for building - building these communities of caring. And I believe that it's got to be done in a heart to heart, person to person level. I'm very lucky and blessed to live in a – live in a - nested with - community of people who had been praying and working on themselves spiritually for several decades, and so there's a sense of deep satisfaction in being part of a community. And most of the people that I've seen who are rooted in working on improving their qualities as human beings are less interested in the acquisition of power over others and the possession of material goods.
Water must be considered a basic human [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Water must be considered a basic human right. Governments have a duty to ensure that all citizens have access to clean water. We have commodified water. Imagine if we commodified air. Water is part of what is essential for the right to life. It should be considered a human right.
If this question is true, we must find ways [...]
Jonathan Granoff: If this question is true, we must find ways quickly of building the cooperation amongst people so that these dynamics which would create a situation of insufficient resources - to insure that a situation of insufficient resources doesn't lead to more violent conflict, and ultimately to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. So we must immediately begin creating a sense of collective destiny, which includes strengthening the United Nations systems, strengthening levels of dialogue amongst peoples, strengthening the international rule of law. Otherwise these dynamics will create tears, divisions, and violence amongst peoples. So I think the most important thing we can do is to build human unity. Culturally, politically, legally. Of course there are the more practical, technical aspects of addressing these problems by changing lifestyles and improving the uses of energy and so forth. I think that's important - I have very little knowledge in that area. But I do know that we could improve our political and legal institutions, and dramatically improve our ability of understanding one another. This global conversation is a small first step. It’s fascinating, I’m sure. Very low cost compared to what fighting costs. And, extremely enjoyable. We should have more of these kinds of global conversations and exchanges of ideas.
The pornography of the trivial - the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The pornography of the trivial - the pornography of the trivial is the consequence of the market. And television has the capacity to educate, to inspire, to inform, but when it is so over-dominated by market forces, it becomes a medium that's designed simply to create desires and sell products. So I think we need to dedicate more space on television for the dissemination of education. Why don't we have stations in which the great lecturers of our universities are broadcast freely on television? Would our great professors not volunteer to dedicate their knowledge to the larger community? I'm sure they would. You wouldn't have a lot of people watching it, but you could have a critical mass. The reason is that it's not profitable. But you know we spend so much money on military appropriations. What would it cost to dedicate several hundred stations for the dissemination of the kind of knowledge that is only given to the privileged in universities, and the sophisticated on the internet? I think it would be - it's a pittance compared to what we spend on ways of killing ourselves. So the reason why television is really a - sort of a distra - a weapon of mass distraction, is because of its dominance by the marketplace.
If it's true that we're taking incalculable [...]
Jonathan Granoff: If it's true that we're taking incalculable risks, and that the genetically engineered food crops could have adverse – adverse impacts on the genetic pool, I would agree that we need to have a much more robust and engaged debate of the ethics and efficacy of it. But I don't personally know enough to have a judgment on the technology of genetic engineering. I know that the food problem is not because of inadequate capacity to produce food so much as social justice issues and distribution. But if we are taking an incalculable risk it's probably because of greed and stupidity. But I'm not sure that we are. I don't know enough.
...wonderful in addressing things that can [...]
Jonathan Granoff: ...wonderful in addressing things that can be measured, predicted, and controlled. But everything can't be measured, predicted, and controlled. Science can only investigate a very small area of reality. It can't measure, predict, and control things that are the most important in the human journey. Love. The self. The consciousness that knows. Compassion. Justice. Beauty. Meaning. Science is great at measuring how, but it doesn't ever address why. If we become too preoccupied with how, we end up with - we end up with - science, defining the good inadequately. Science can't define the good. If science is use to be the only arbiter of the real, then where does the good come in? So we need to have an investigation within ourselves into what is good. So that our own values provide the why, and use science and technology to provide the how. If we allow science to be the sole arbiter of value, we will end up without adequate values. It's almost as if you had a net and you went to a lake, and you - the net couldn't catch a fish smaller than two inches, and you came back and said, there are no fish smaller than two inches in the lake. Science can only capture that which its - its tools, it's an intellectual methodological tool, only what it can capture. It can't capture knowledge of consciousness itself. It can't capture knowledge of where we come from, where we're going, and what has meaning in human life. The heart is needed for that. Another kind of inner knowledge. The invisible knowledge is what's needed for that. In-visible.
Global warming is part of the axis of evil. [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Global warming is part of the axis of evil. The axis of evil is unsustainable environmental practices, gross disparities of wealth, and nuclear weapons. The cooperation needed to deal with the destruction of the environment, most evidenced by global warming, the cooperation will not be obtained in a nuclear apartheid world. The gross disparities of wealth and the quest for short-term economic progress, without long-term environmental responsibility, cannot be dealt with without a high level of global cooperation. So as a threshold, every person should be asking every politician who can control state policy, and thus control business structures, the following three questions: with respect to the axis of evil, environmental degradation, gross disparities of wealth, crushing poverty, and nuclear weapons, what are your plans. What plan do you have to eliminate nuclear weapons, what plan do you have to address gross poverty, and what plan do you have to protect the environment. No politician should get a free ride on this. That's number one. The other thing that we can do is we can vote with our capacity as consumers to only consume products that take into consideration the environment, take into consideration the challenge of global warming. And the third thing that we can do is we can demonstrate to people that the quality of life is not determined by the amount of products that we acquire, but the quality of life is determined by the quality of what kind of people we are. We are living in a society in which people's value is all too often equated with their - the products that they possess, rather than the kind of people they are.
The United States model cannot go writ [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The United States model cannot go writ large. If every nation in the world follows the US model of approaching energy consumption and resources, we simply will not have a sustainable – a sustainable world. So, the United States has a responsibility to develop technologies that don't so dramatically deplete the earth's resources, and other countries hopefully will have the wisdom to develop a course that's based on different values, a more holistic approach to what development means. A different bottom line. A bottom line that includes the quality of life, not just the quantity of life.
I have always wanted to study the art of [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I have always wanted to study the art of architecture, the art of making beautiful living spaces for people. I once was in Fes Morocco, and went into a house. On the outside - it was in this very small alleyway. And you went in the door but as you went into the house it opened up inside, and in the center was a spring. And I thought what an amazing architectural statement, duplicating the inner architecture of the human being. That as you enter in it opens up into space and in the center of it is of course the spring of life, the spring of the heart. And I thought wow, architecture that expresses beauty and expresses inner space, how amazing. Or the architecture of this locale where we are here, where so many beautiful and horrific things have taken place. I mean Beethoven probably walked here, and Goethe, and Bach, and Brahms, and I mean all of these great figures. And also this was the place in which fool - foolhardy people gathered with hatred and prejudice and violence and burned books. But this public space is here - this wonderful public space for spectacle, for use of human expression. And how wonderful that we're able to gather here and use it well. So we need spaces for public expression. I would like sometime to study the ways in which architecture influences the psyche of participants. I think that would be really, really interesting to learn about.
I would like to see a world in which every [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I would like to see a world in which every life is remembered by every other life as being as precious as that life that is remembering its own capacity to know its own preciousness. I would like to see a future in which there is a profound value placed on generosity, and sharing, rather than on acquisition and power. For myself, I would like a world in which God's will is recognized more profoundly by me, through the fully awakened conscience. Conscience has a beauty of knowing where real value lies, and when conscience is joined with love, the dynamism within is like an open sail capable of catching the wind of grace. When conscience and love open, the heart unfurls like that sail, and the wonder of God's grace-awakened wisdom is gifted. Grace-awakened wisdom allows the inner turning toward the source of consciousness living within ourselves. I would like my future to be one of greater nearness, greater nearness to that inner awakening, and that inner response to conscience and love.
It's certainly an opportunity. It has the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: It's certainly an opportunity. It has the capacity to build bridges amongst people, it has the capacity to demonstrate our common humanity, it has the capacity to reflect our higher values. It also - in some places it was the mass media that created horrific violence, like in Rwanda, where the radio helped demonize the Tutsis in the eyes of the Hutu people. Or the abuse of the weapons of mass distraction of the media, that trivializes the nobility of the human birth. I call it the pornography of the trivial. But, it doesn't have to be that way. The media of the internet I think has had a fabulous effect on creating a much higher level of global awareness, and will in time truly improve human communication. So I think by and large this externalization of the internal hardware of the mind, into the image-making and rapid dissemination of information of media, is an opportunity. But nothing, nothing can supplant heart to heart, soul to soul, sharing of human beings, based on compassion and caring for one another. That's unmediated. That's what takes away the mediation of even the ego. Of - the mediation of the mind. Heart to heart, soul to soul, that's what - what is our calling, and our opportunity in - as human beings. And this information can be enhanced by mass media, or it - we can be distracted from our most fulfilling human capacities.
I don't know. It's too technical for me. To [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I don't know. It's too technical for me. To machines. Directly connect the human brain - don't they connect electrodes you know like on your brain, for certain kinds of brain scans, and those are connected to machines, and provide information. It would seem logical that the information could become increasingly sophisticated. But this is a purely technical question, more appropriately answered by people involved in biotechnologies.
There's a - an integrated human security [...]
Jonathan Granoff: There's a - an integrated human security agenda that arose out of the World Summits of the 1990s, that's still valid and needs to be structured and brought into practice. Just go through them: you had the World Summit on the Rights of the Child, and I'm sad to say that my country, the United States, is one of the only countries, other than Somalia, that hasn't signed this. So it's a focus on the rights of children and the value of children. And the second is the World Summit on Human Rights, in which the right to - the right to live, and have education, and a home, and food and so forth, are held in the highest esteem, just like the right of assembly and freedom of conscience. And then there was the world summit in Rio, on the environment, out of which came Agenda 21, and - and the Kyoto Protocol as a responsibility to the environment. And then came the World Summit on Population, and the World Summit on Gender Equity in Beijing, which we learned that as women become more educated the population levels off. And then there was the World Summit on Human Settlements in Istanbul. And the most important I think was the World Summit on Poverty, in Copenhagen. And out of this, we came the consciousness that we could have - that human security is not just about states, but it's about people. And if our states began refocusing on bringing security to people, the consequence would be a greater quality of life for every child that's born into the world. I know that amongst the voices at the table, there are many more - tangible, concrete. But I think that the - that ideas, and frameworks, have a tremendous power, and we have a distortion [audio ends]
We are alone. We're born alone, and we die [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We are alone. We're born alone, and we die alone, and that's the fact. And people have to realize that they're gonna die alone. No-one's gonna die with you, the other people aren't gonna die with you, and you and you alone have to answer to your own conscience. Now. We're all put here together, to learn from each other, we're all put here together, and if we do it right, then like stones in a bag bumping up against each other, as we come out, we - we kind of smooth each other out, like, do you see these nice smooth stones, and - [inaudible] how beautiful stone here. And the issue is, while we're alone, are we cultivating that power of being human within ourselves, that we better cultivate in the short period of time in which we're here. Because as we cultivate that power, the sense of being disconnected, completely is gone. The sense of being alone, arises - or disconnected, I think that's what's meant - the sense of being disconnected, arises from selfishness. Because if you take one step toward God, God takes ten steps toward you. And the way in which you take steps toward God, is by exercising compassion. By feeling the suffering of others as your own. That will open your heart and that will bring about a connectedness and a sense of peace and fulfillment. You'll never feel alone. You'll always feel connected. And you'll feel connected to that which put you here, you'll feel connected to other human beings, and you'll feel connected to that to which you must return. So the question of how to not feel disconnected and alone, in the negative sense, is to cultivate compassion. That connects us. To feel the joy of others, and the sorrow of others.
I believe that it would be excellent if [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I believe that it would be excellent if there were core curriculum from the great universities systemically made available on the internet, everywhere. I - free. For free. I don't know how that would affect the sort of franchises of the university system. It may be a jolt in the short term, but I think it would actually improve the value of the university because it would call it to a higher level, and the rational for physically coming to the university, or the academy, and I mean that in the broadest sense, would be because of the interactive aspect. But, in terms of low income communities, imagine if things were just available, and bright kids - you meet these kids, fourteen, fifteen years old, who are just so bright nowadays, it's almost as if they're some kind of higher level of evolution, who've been growing up with this access to great amounts of information. That if there was more available core curriculum of the universities, I think that would be very good.
I don't think that my aspiration to be [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I don't think that my aspiration to be bigger is helpful. My aspiration is to be a proper servant of God's expression of compassion and love, in making creation so that he would be known. And the proper way of honoring that is to work to protect the sacredness of life, to be a servant toward life, not to be bigger than myself or bigger than anything, it's really to just be authentic to the conscience. The aspiration of the I - the I being bigger, is very dangerous. I mean I'm – I mean I’ve - I'm working on the elimination of nuclear weapons and if I should succeed in that and feel I did it, this would be so arrogant it would be absurd. And at each setback if I were to say I failed the burden would be too great. I think it's enough to have a sense of - a sense of the ant that was - there was an ant taking down a mountain and Solomon, the prophet, said to the ant, "What are you doing?" And he said "I'm taking down the mountain." And Solomon said, "But time is so short, the mountain is so large. And you're so small." And the ant said "Yes, but my beloved who lives on the other side, rewards my intentions. And so I brought my intentions into action." So it's to have integrity of conscience, and service, would be enough for me.
The only way of overcoming the attraction of [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The only way of overcoming the attraction of consumer culture, is by developing a culture that's more attractive. When you see the fulfillment in your life of developing a culture of service, a culture of caring, a culture of pursuing the common good, a culture of giving of yourself rather than consuming for yourself, you find that simply to be more attractive. I make it very simple. One is joining in the generosity of the divine, which is power of giving. All life is given to us. And those who do that are for-giving. And then if your life is centered around getting, then you're joining in the culture of for-getting. So the choice is to be part of for-getting, and be forgotten, or part of for-giving, and be forgiven.
Anyone who consciously breathes will know [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Anyone who consciously breathes will know that their breathing is completely connected to the breathing of trees and plants. So if one is not even connected to their body, they will not feel that connection to the mystery of the inner connectedness of life that is called nature. Nature and our bodies are one. The earth of our body will return to the earth when the soul departs. Without a healthy environment there's no possibility of individual healthy bodies. The question is whether we can have political institutions that are sensitive to the perception of the integrated living system that is the biosphere. The great Sufi Rumi speculated that the bones are analogous to the mineral world, and the vegetative system of the body is connected to the vegetative kingdom, and that the other dimension of the human being is the animal kingdom and then human rationality and then our divine aspect. And all of these have to operate in harmony. I mean when we're ill we have to vegetate to heal. We're - we are one with all the living systems of the earth. I can't conceive of how anybody could not perceive this.
I didn't know that. Excuse me, um, excuse [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I didn't know that. Excuse me, um, excuse me. Excuse me a second there. Before I answer this question. What is the question? Why is it easier to get a cold can of Coca-Cola than a fresh glass of water? Excuse me. Ah. Glass of water. It's the real thing. Ah. Water. It brings good things to life. I'm part of the water generation. Ah, water. It hits the spot.
My experience in Africa was being [...]
Jonathan Granoff: My experience in Africa was being overwhelmed by the capacity of peoplewho - who I saw who had so little physically, but who still had so much dignity and the capacity to celebrate life. And a sense of disquiet over living in a place where there was just - there was just so much physical abundance, and so little celebration. So maybe we could learn to have a greater sense of gratitude, appreciation, and celebration. We could learn in the developed world the joy of sharing, and we could learn so much from people in Africa, of the value of elders, the value of community, the value of family, and the ability of the human spirit to overcome very difficult conditions. Everybody faces difficult conditions sometime in their lives. Everybody faces death. Everybody experiences betrayal. Everybody experiences disappointment. We need the spiritual resources that - that come from within the human heart. To be able to overcome all of these very universal challenges. I think that it's called wisdom. Wisdom paid for through going through adversity, and there are people in Africa who've acquired that. There are people everywhere who have, but you see it so clearly.
We have to have a criteria of what we want [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We have to have a criteria of what we want to preserve. We want to preserve the light, the love, the healthy aspects of every local culture, every - every culture, every religion. But those qualities that we want to preserve are universal. And they find expression in so many different ways. In a way the human community is like a bunch of stones, rough stones tossed in a bag, and we have to bang up against each other. And if we bang up against each other and do it with appreciation and forbearance and patience and love, rather that violence and the acquisition of power, then we'll find that in coming together around one another we will smooth ourselves, and become very beautiful stones. So the qualities that - in local communities that enhance our sense of appreciation of the sanctity of life, and enhance people's characters and inner peace, those need to be shared and nurtured, for they enrich our global community.
By living the highest qualities and [...]
Jonathan Granoff: By living the highest qualities and aspirations that have been expressed here today, and trying to live and be the beautiful human beings that we are knowing we are capable of becoming. If we - if some of us here can become what we're - what we're talking about, and live and be the beauty that we're calling for, the justice we're calling for, the love that we're calling for, it will - it will be irresistible to people. If you who are watching can become that beautiful being that is your potential, it will spread and you will inspire others to work for disarmament, to work for sustainable development, to work for businesses that provide good goods and services, to work for education with character, to work for art with beauty, to work with medicine with healing, to work for law with justice, to work for - to work - to treat other lives with the preciousness that you want to be treated. These - if some of us can actually live these beautiful expressions that so many people have made here today, if some of us can live that, the calling in our hearts, that will be irresistible and a blessing to all. May God give us ...
Every human being lives in God. And God [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Every human being lives in God. And God lives in every human being. Every story of every life, to that person, is the most important story. But for all people, the story of discovering where we were, and where we are going, remains the one most important story. And the most important story, that is not reported, is, discovering and appreciating this mystery; is the most important story that each of us has. The human being, every human being, lives in God. And God lives in every human being.
Well the - answers could be different, but [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Well the - answers could be different, but that doesn't necessarily mean they contradict each other. Is this a trick question? It’s - it seems too tricky for me. If the question is, can people have different perspectives... how can two answers to a single question be right, but still contradict each other. I wish there was more clarity in this question. I suppose two people could answer this question and explain what the question is differently, with contradictory explanations of the question, and because the question's so confusing, that they'd both be right, but I think they'd both be confused, because the question is a trick question. You could describe a candle as giving off heat, and giving off light, as a - as a accurate description of the candle. They'd both be accurate. They wouldn't necessarily be contradictory but they would demonstrate different perspectives. What a confusing question.
Every moment of every life is a precious [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Every moment of every life is a precious treasure. How much property would any person give to have a few more moments of this precious life. Every moment is -of every life is precious.
Indoor plumbing has saved - was invented and [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Indoor plumbing has saved - was invented and save - to save time, and make life easier, and it has. Many technological innovations have indeed been very productive and enhanced our well-being. I mean here in Germany where we are, several hundred years ago, because they didn't have adequate plumbing, people died of diseases and the plague. And now we keep inventing things that do indeed seem to make life more stressful. But it's not because of the - it's not because of the tools, it's because we're failing to teach and value the development of human character. We've forgotten the why in the quality of our lives, and become so preoccupied with the how. This forgotten why has created a preoccupation with process, with doing rather than being. So we end up with medicine without healing, law without justice, art without beauty, religion without transcendence, business without sustainability, and we keep inventing distractions from coming back to the core why. If we can integrate our advances in how with the perennial values of beauty and justice and healing, and come to a more balance between being and doing, then this stress to keep up with our own inventions, sort of like a donkey with a carrot - that it's - put the carrot in front of itself and is chasing after it. You know like "I'm a fast car I don't know where I'm going but follow me anyway." This syndrome could be mitigated and we could be living in a far more enriched human community. The issue always comes back to the qualities in the heart. Are we cultivating peace inside. Peace comes from recognizing the sanctity of life, the wonder of life, having a sense of humility toward the mystery that's created us, and seeing that mystery in its preciousness in the lives of others. Then stress is reduced. Stress is reduced when the heart is open. When the heart is at peace. And the only thing that gives the heart peace is love and compassion. Technology can't do it.
I'll just take one technology, and the [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I'll just take one technology, and the economic allocation. According to the Brookings Institute, the study called Atomic Audit, the amount spent in real dollars, by one country alone, the United States, in developing the nuclear arsenal, to this date, is in excess of 5.7 trillion dollars, with no public discussion. Well for one thing, it has distorted democracy, by not allowing debate, by crushing any public debate, in such a huge allocation of resources. Imagine. 5.7 trillion dollars could have wiped out world hunger several times over. We could have built mass transit systems, and prevented the dangers of global warming. We could have created educational systems and made our - you know helped develop human character and a sense of value in people, and made our cities so much safer. We could have - there are just - huge amounts of resources that could have been used. I want to - I thought - oh here it is - I have a quote from General Eisenhower on this that I'd like to share. General Eisenhower, who was the president of the United States. He said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Those who are cold, and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." And his friend General Omar Bradley, that - said, "We live in an age of nuclear giants and ethical infants, in a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We've solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know about war than we know about peace, more about dying than we know about living."
Everyone. Whose responsibility is it to [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Everyone. Whose responsibility is it to manage the world's resources? All of us.
[Inaudible] every human being's indigenous [...]
Jonathan Granoff: [Inaudible] every human being's indigenous to the planet earth. Everybody is part of the same human family. Everybody has a right to be here. Everyone is a - everyone is in - is connected to the earth in the same way. It's a myth to think that some people are more connected to the earth than others. That's a myth. Everybody is biologically connected to the same living systems as everybody else. The issue is, will we recognize that we are all indigenous. That we are all part of the same living system. That's the issue. And that's not a myth. That's a reality. That's the fact. We are all sustained by the same power. And all of us who were born at the same time are living on the tree of life sustained by the same tree at the same time. You know in some ways, if you really think about that, that there were people before us, and there'll be people after us, and we have all of this preoccupation with the people who were before us, some great people, some famous people, some wise people, saints, prophets, etc. But what about the people who are here at the same time as you and I? Living and sustained on the same tree? Like we're hanging on the same tree of the moment. We're hanging on the same tree of life at this moment. How precious and mysterious that is. And all of us are indigenous within this resonance of expression of the divine that we call the human family. And yes indeed, we are all interconnected. Without separation. At this moment. Can we still be indigenous. Yes. It's a fact. We are.
I don't know enough about genetic [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I don't know enough about genetic engineering to give a sufficient explanation, but I would think that if it's a - we could deal with diseases and life-threatening ailments - but I really feel that this is a subject that I, like many other people, need to learn more about. I know there are things that, right now, useful to address, with stem-cell research. Spinal injuries, childhood diabetes, things like that that I know make a lot of sense, to me. The people I know in the field are saying that genetic engineering and stem-cell research could be useful with. But I don't know enough to be able to put the boundaries on it. I don't think that should hold up addressing things that almost anybody would say is a good thing to address with stem-cell research, but we do need to have a much more informed, vigorous debate, publicly, on putting boundaries on these new technologies. I'm not sufficiently informed to engage in that debate yet.
Truth cannot be manufactured. Truth is - [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Truth cannot be manufactured. Truth is - truth never changes. Facts can be accurate or not. Facts can be illusions. Facts - facts can be distortions. Facts can be lies, and they must be tested. Or rather the assertion of certain empirical data as facts can be tested. Illusions are things that can't be known for example. You can believe in an illusion but because it's not real you can't know it. Facts are quantifiable data, which can be tested. But truth is different. Truth cannot be manufactured. To some extent, we have, in the Western cosmology, equated factual accuracy with truth. Facts are reification of the flow of being into quantifiable bits of information. And we need that in order to - in order to make decisions about worldly affairs. And therefore they must be accurate. When the government deceives and distorts facts and lies, public policy will lead to disaster. And one of the ways in which we test assertions is by public debate, by an informed electorate, and some of the distortions of facts have just gotten the United States into a terrible war. I mean I’ll give - give examples. Dick Cheney said in August 26, 2002, simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. Well that - he stated that as a fact. That wasn't a fact, reality has shown that this wasn't a fact and now we know it wasn't. So question is would we trust this person again if he asserts something. So that, you know there are checks on assertions. There are empirical ways of checking it. [inaudible] this person said something, and it turned out not to be true.
Teaching the qualities of the soul is to [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Teaching the qualities of the soul is to allow the child to have their own intrinsic qualities grow and become manifest and appreciated. So you don't really teach these qualities, you allow them to - to grow on their own, and you nurture them and you, and you demonstrate their values. So, gratitude is necessary. Gratitude - gratitude allows the person to live in the present, it allows one to receive grace, it's a precondition for - for grace, is gratitude, experience of grace. Love is the fabric that binds us together as human beings, that awakens our consciousness. Love is the dynamic force that can move us from the senses, through - through intellect, through conscience, through wisdom, to divine wisdom. Love is what - what brings us into being. God is a hidden treasure loving to be known, and as we learn about ourselves we learn about God, so it is - it is gratitude, love, and - which is, love and compassion are very intertwined - and then it is faith. A child needs to have the value of faith and confidence. Confidence that God blesses them, confidence that they belong in this world, confidence in their own intrinsic goodness. What's amazing is that if you look at each of these qualities they contain, within themselves, the other qualities. There's no love without patience. There's no gratitude without the sense of praise - I mean all of the good qualities interconnect.
How can art awaken the beautiful qualities [...]
Jonathan Granoff: How can art awaken the beautiful qualities within the human heart. And how can art remind people of their potential to live beautifully with one another. How can art awaken a sense of wonder and mystery. How can art extol good character and good qualities. And most of all, how can art point toward that which cannot be - cannot be comprehended by art. The heart. The heart that reflects the beauty of God's presence within the human being. Can - how can art help in that turning from the senses to the inner world. How can art stimulate the quest for justice. The questions are basically, how can art move from being a medium of distraction and entertainment only, into a medium of turning and awakening. It's not that easy. Take a picture of the Grand Canyon, could only be as large as the picture, it's never the Grand Canyon. But it might make people want to go look at the Grand Canyon. And similarly, art can be an icon that stimulates people to go looking toward the great mystery beyond art. And that's always inside. That's invisible. God, the divine, has no form. It has no end, it has no beginning. But we can see the effects of God's grace through love and kindness and art that turns us toward those qualities. That art that opens the heart. That's what art should be looking into. That's what we need. And there's plenty of other kinds of art, and I don't mean to say that they shouldn't be. But we need art that opens heart.
The quest for knowing reality beyond mind [...]
Jonathan Granoff: The quest for knowing reality beyond mind and desire. What moves me to action in the world is the sense of the sacredness of life, and the sense of responsibility of wanting to – wanting to protect it. I personally am very involved in working for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I believe that they're immoral, I believe that the International Court of Justice call to negotiate their elimination is correct. So I've picked a particular issue to focus on presently that is global in scope and it's - in which there's a distortion of law, morality and values, as a way of expressing my own inner - my own inner sense of the sacredness of life. But what moves me is a calling to know. A calling to know what is it that is knowing within you and I, what is it that's alive and awake within us. Where did we come from. What is the nature of consciousness itself. How do the senses come to know and who is observing the senses. What is the nature of that soul that when it leaves the form of the body the body disintegrates. What moves me is to gain knowledge of these great facts of life within ourselves, the fact that we do have consciousness, and awareness, and the potential for wisdom. These are facts of the human birth. It moves me to know these. I feel a calling to know, who am I, and what is - what is the nature of life itself.
We don't need myths, we need truth. We need [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We don't need myths, we need truth. We need to dissemble myths. We need to penetrate myths. We need to deconstruct myths. We need to give people the tools to not - not to mythologize. Now, if what's meant by myths are pregnant metaphors for greater meaning than the story that they tell, inspiring stories with larger proportionality, we need contemporary stories that laud the perennial qualities of love, justice, peace, and caring. And compassion. But, we don't need myths for that. We need to tell the stories of real people. And how real people really, really, really have amazing qualities in their daily lives. And let people know that those beautiful qualities that they have really, really, really matter.
Good energy of love always produces more [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Good energy of love always produces more love. Good energy of the human spirit can never be depleted. It's a great wonder that the more we express good energy, the more good energy we have. And when we guide ourselves by negative energies of greed, then we are - come out of harmony with the natural order, and the physical energy of the planet cannot sustain a culture totally based on greed. So the first principle is to overtly, and clearly, and explicitly promote values that are liberating from the total and complete dominance of purely market values, and energies that are exclusively grounded in greed. We need to clearly and explicitly start talking about and centering our institutions on promoting the good energies that we have. Energies that heal. Energies that fulfill. The energy that we call love. That's the good energy we need.
We do have different nationalities, [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We do have different nationalities, different languages, different genders, different religions, different cultures. The question is whether with these differences we can dig deeper within ourselves and see our common humanity. The purpose I believe of religion is to open the hearts of its participants so that they can develop a greater sense of appreciation and love for the other. The other being other people. In Koran it says that God made man and woman and from that different people so that they would come to know one another. And the best is the most pious, and God alone is all aware and all-knowing. It might be that as we come to know one another we realize that within all lives is one life, within all [knowers] is one living, great mystery, interconnecting all lives. You can't come to know that principle of the unity of life without seeing the unity of the human family. We have various identities. Our size, the size of our bodies. But need we have any of these identities as means of separating ourselves, or simply expressing ourselves. I would hope that we have a major paradigm shift from the emphasis on what separates us to the appreciation of what unifies us.
I don't eat food of bad quality. I think [...]
Jonathan Granoff: I don't eat food of bad quality. I think people are stupid if they eat bad - food of bad qualities. In the developed world, the only reason people eat food of bad qualities is they don't - they don't know any better. And they're undisciplined. And they're not aware of how healthy they could feel if they ate more consciously. I'm concerned about the great number of people who simply don't have enough to eat. There's probably a relationship between people eating food that's not healthy for them, and a situation in which there are people who don't have enough to eat. I think when you become conscious of food and its healing capacity, and how - just more appreciative you become of the fact that food is such a blessing, you might become sensitive to those who don't have enough to eat. And eat with a sense of gratitude every time you get something to eat, and think about those who are less fortunate. Why is the food we eat of such bad quality. Stupidity. I believe more and more people are becoming conscious of the health benefits of eating healthy food. But the market is so - such a dominant social force, the issue is how to make being healthy profitable. Eating healthy profitable.
God doesn't have any religion. God cannot be [...]
Jonathan Granoff: God doesn't have any religion. God cannot be found through religion. God can only be found through universal love and compassion. The kind of love that God has. It's as if all of the religions, all of the difference, even every single individual, is like a house. And God is like the sun. Any house that opens its windows that opens its doors will be filled with the sunlight. And God is more like that sunlight. Certainly God can fill the house of religion of Islam, or Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or any house that opens itself up to God's love. And God's love is opened up as we open our love toward one another. The same qualities that separate us from one another are the same qualities that separate us from God. Religious pride, religious arrogance, personal pride, personal arrogance, jealousy, falsehood; all of these qualities separate us and reinforce the illusion of separation and they reinforce the ego mind of ignorance. Qualities of love, compassion, patience, justice, they open us up toward one another, and they open us up toward God. The religion of God is the – is only discoverable in the silence of the open heart. And the religion of God is beyond description. The religion of God is beyond symbol, and signs. The religion of God is the reality - the reality of infinite light and infinite love. The religion of God is the intrinsic source of being mysterious and beyond all description. And our search for it is very much like the search of a fish looking for water. We live within God and God lives within us. And it is that wisdom to know the self that is needed to realize this awesome mystery, and anyone who tastes it a little bit is humbled, and awed, and forever transformed. Because the taste of that mystery of God is the taste of overwhelming presence and love. May all beings who seek that taste be rewarded and see beyond the veil, without the veil, and see as one.
When people are free, they continuously find [...]
Jonathan Granoff: When people are free, they continuously find new ways of expressing themselves, and expressing their values. When people are not free, and they're in fear, then their creativity is thwarted, and sameness will be the result. And it's a lowest common denominator. So if we protect freedom, natural - the natural human creativity will guarantee against dullness, sameness, and flatness. As the human spirit seeks expression, because the divine lives within the human heart. And there are always going to be artists, and poets, and creative people who will guarantee against sameness. Where does art come from? Where does music come from? Where does vision come from? Where does inspiration come from? It comes from within people. And if people live in peaceful environments, all of those beautiful attributes that create culture will continue to emerge, and variety and culture is - it's just part of the human journey. But when there's fear and deprivation, then that won't happen. So the issue is to protect it is to protect basic human rights and freedoms. And cultural diversity and creativity is the consequence of healthy freedom. If we become pre-occupied with how, and forget why, we won't have that. The why of art is - and culture, is to exalt beauty and our higher qualities. I mean that's the why of it. It's not – it’s not just to have diversity or just to distract us. That will result in sameness and flatness. So we have to protect our artists. We have to protect our visionaries, our dreamers, our poets. They're always gonna be with us if we protect them. And we don't have to worry about sameness.
We all come from a mystery beyond our mind's [...]
Jonathan Granoff: We all come from a mystery beyond our mind's reckoning. And we all will return to that mystery beyond our minds' reckoning. While we are in this room together, it behooves us to remember where we really come from, and where we are really going. You don't know who's gonna be in the room with you, after you leave this one. It may be people from Africa, America, anywhere. Places you and I can't even imagine. But we certainly know that we don't really fully know where we're going, and what it's like there. Or where we're from. And we all come from that great mystery. When one reflects on how precious and unique and special every single individual life is, when you look closely at the eyes of the child being born, you know an infant, and that great wondrous light that emanates from them, regardless of where they are, when you look at the infant, you're just fascinated by their purity and their light, more than their identity. If we could look at adults with that same sense of wonder, we might be seeing more clearly.
They need very much - they need very much to [...]
Jonathan Granoff: They need very much - they need very much to be seeing and experiencing a sense of the awe and wonder of the natural world. That the beauties that are gifted, in the changing seasons, in the most basic phenomena of the natural world, are just so awe-inspiring. They gain a sense of humility, at just the way God has created creation. That's the most amazing of the sacred scriptures. And then hopefully more people would realize that every time we destroy a species it's as if we're destroying a page of a sacred scripture. Apropos of that I think people need to be reading the sacred scriptures of traditions other than their own, and to see that the unifying principles of love, and service, and the pursuit of wisdom are universal and they - they're contained in all the different religious traditions. An that the - one of the problems we face is any sense of possessiveness. And to identify these universal - universal perennial values. Children can easily access this now. The internet allows you - allows anybody to - you know any Christian to read Hindu, the Hindu Bhagvad Gita, and any Hindu to read the Koran, and anybody anywhere to read Lao Tzu, and just the wisdom literature of the world is available to all of us. And it's also very important that children learn to be confident, in living with questions, and asking questions, and pursuing inquiry as a lifestyle. And of course the most important question, the most pregnant question, is to know who you are. To know - because the one who knows himself will know the Lord. And the person who knows themself is capable of acting from conscience. It's only the child that is - has a sense of inner confidence and inner faith whose able to question and bring about change.
Well it does. It is serving our - it is [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Well it does. It is serving our - it is serving the values of communities by providing access to information and means whereby people can communicate and get to know one another. I have a sixteen-year old son who communicates with peers all over the world. I mean he has a greater sense of global citizenship and neighborhood than I had at his age. I couldn't conceive of that sensibility and expansiveness that he has. And so there are two icons of the modern age. One is the - is sort of the image of the planet earth from outer space. One living organism, one whole, and that global perspective. And children growing up today with the internet - they just get that right away. And the other of course is the image of the mushroom cloud, in which technology is run amok, without the constraints of law and morality. And the tribalism of nationalism and the violence of excessive - the excessive quest for power. The internet is a great tool in giving people that expanded awareness and that expanded sense of the wholeness of the human family. It's a fabulous, amazing, miraculous tool. It's the externalization of the common mind. And indeed, communities all over the world are having the quality of their life enhanced by this.
Well I hope it's not a big traffic jam. And [...]
Jonathan Granoff: Well I hope it's not a big traffic jam. And I hope it's not a big parking lot. Cities used - cities were places where people gathered for commerce, places where people gathered for safety, places where people gathered to meet other people. A lot of those functions we no longer have, but places where people can gather to share ideas and meet each other are still needed. I mean there's a synergy when people get together. And people like being together. But the transportation and energy systems we have in cities may not be the most efficient way that we have to organize ourselves, and then again they could become efficient. If we just keep spreading the suburb in sprawl, obviously that's not particularly efficient. So I think the future of the city is very much based on the values of why we want cities. I mean there's some cities that are just so enriching and exciting to be in. New York City - if you go to like, um, Queens in New York. It's the most multicultural place ever in the planet earth. People from Latin America, Asia, Africa, everywhere, living together, and living well, living within their own cultural heritage, and appreciating and eating each other's foods, and it's just very exciting. And the modern city is - some cities have a global flavor. And then other cities are mega-cities where people have been forced off of - off of the land, and living in absolutely horrific, insufferably difficult conditions. So, I mean, we can look forward to the city as a place of culture and enrichment, or possibly the city as a place of economic deprivation and imprisonment. I mean the future is in - the future's in our hands. We must have more efficient transportation systems in cities. Just sitting in traffic in a city is I think one of the outer - the outer - outer neighborhoods - the outer suburbs of hell. And so foolish, when we know the technology to have mass transit. Or at least bicycle routes, for goodness sake. I like Copenhagen. In the middle of Copenhagen you have this area where everybody walks. You know you go to - you go to Mexico City and people hardly ride bicycles or walk. Everyone's trying to get around in a car. You go to Copenhagen, people are riding bikes, even if it's cold. It's still not considered a sign of poverty. Because it's culturally promoted. It's in our hands.
What if all the people in Amsterdam - what [...]
Jonathan Granoff: What if all the people in Amsterdam - what if all the people in Amsterdam decide to get cars? In Amsterdam, you don't have a lot of cars, you have a lot of bicycles. There's a wisdom in the bicycles. There's a wisdom in the bicycles in Copenhagen. If you've ever been to Mexico City, on a bad day you can hardly breathe the air because there's so many cars, and so much congestion, so much traffic, so much waste of gas, and so much cost in health. If all the Chinese people want cars and get cars, with the kind of cars we have today, we're going to have an ecological crisis. And on the other hand, possibly cars will improve in their engineering, their efficiencies, and their capacity to run on different fuel systems. I think it's time that we started thinking seriously about alternative ways of transporting ourselves, improving mass transit, more bicycle use in our cities, creating a culture of pride in ecological responsibility, rather than pride, in - you know, how glossy your car looks. What if all the Chinese people want a car, what if all the Chinese people get a car. I think we'll have a serious situation if all the Chinese people want cars and can't get them. I think we'll have an even more serious problem if all the Chinese people want cars, we don't change the technology, and they get them. It's time that changed the aspirations and the currency of value as a person from the more you have, the better you are, to the better you are as a person, the better you are.
