Peacemakers through history: Selfishness or service?
Mayerly Sanchez, a young peace activist from Colombia.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Editor's Note: Dr. Wayne E. Baker is a sociologist on the faculty of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He is out of town this week, but welcomes Daniel Buttry, an international peace negotiator for American Baptist Churches and the author of the new book Blessed Are the Peacemakers at Our Values this week. He can be reached at ourvaluesproject@gmail.com
More than 50 years ago, John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.” His call to service inspired a generation to work among the poor in the U.S. and join the Peace Corps around the world.
Today, however, service is eclipsed by selfishness. Ayn Rand’s philosophy that the individual “should exist for his own sake” seems to be winning. I see these values reflected in billionaires paying less in taxes than their employees — and the gap yawning between rich and poor.
An alternative to Ayn Rand was Dorothy Day, an American Mother Teresa with a radical political streak, serving the poorest of the poor in the inner cities of our country. She began the Catholic Worker movement with houses that fed the hungry and took in the homeless. She was a tireless advocate for peace. She is profiled in my new book: Blessed Are the Peacemakers.
Day wrote, “We can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.”
Love in our hearts — that’s what we need if we are going to face the massive challenges before us. If we look at the trends in our society, the value of selfishness is leading to deeper division, which at some point will blow with destructive horror as we’ve seen this month across Great Britain. Day called people to values rooted in love and expressed in justice and mercy.
People who love so selflessly often are canonized as saints, whether by a religious body or by public sentiment. Day’s actions led to many people and institutions heaping honor on her, but she responded, “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”
That’s because we all have to deal with the question of selfishness or service in our own lives. It’s not a question just for the spiritual elite. It’s a question of central value in our lives. If we look around us we can find all kinds of amazing unsung heroes serving their neighbors and communities.
Yet, it doesn't take as someone as high profile as Ayn Rand or Dorothy Day to make a difference with the right attitude.
I can’t do anything!
Problems are just too complex.
I’m not smart enough.
I’m not strong enough.
Those are all self-limiting beliefs. They are hammered into our brains until they define our lives — and limit our possibilities.
If anybody should have held self-limiting beliefs it was Mayerly Sanchez. She was 12 years old. She lived in Colombia, one of the most violent countries in the world. She was poor — so poor she was a sponsored child through a religious relief agency. One of her best friends, a 15-year-old boy, was murdered.
How could Mayerly Sanchez hope to survive — let alone make a difference in the world?
But Mayerly, who I profile in "Blessed Are the Peacemakers," wasn’t limited by such beliefs. Instead she looked at how she could counter the violence around her. She began in a local park playing peace games with children such as “conversation contests” in which players were disqualified for speaking insults. She garnered support from the agency that sponsored her in forming a peace club.
Her activities prompted an invitation by UNICEF to a special children’s workshop. As she met other children from around Colombia, she launched the Children’s Movement for Peace.
“A child shall lead them,” is a wonderful vision from the prophets, but shouldn’t realism tone down our expectations? Not for Mayerly!
Under her leadership, the Children’s Movement for Peace launched a national vote of Colombia’s children on whether they wanted the government and guerilla forces to commit to peace. The Children’s Peace and Rights Mandate was endorsed by 2.7 million children!
Adults were so inspired by the children that they put the mandate before the Colombian public, which overwhelmingly spoke for peace. This groundswell from the children up through the adults pressured the president to begin negotiations.
Mayerly is now an adult and continues to work for peace.
How do you see the tides of selfishness and service shifting?
Are there signs Dorothy Day or Ayn Rand might be "winning"?
What's your prescription for encouraging service?
Do you know children with big visions for helping our world?
How are self-limiting beliefs playing a role in dimming those hopes?
How are you encouraging them?
Dr. Wayne E. Baker is a sociologist on the faculty of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He is out of town this week, but welcomes Daniel Buttry, an international peace negotiator for American Baptist Churches and the author of the new book Blessed Are the Peacemakers at Our Values this week. He can be reached at ourvaluesproject@gmail.com
Comments
BhavanaJagat
Fri, Aug 26, 2011 : 4:22 p.m.
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" ( Book of Matthew Chapter 22, verse 39 ). The action that describes acting with love towards your neighbor is preceded by an action called self-love. I cannot understand as to how self-love could interfere with serving others. I want to know as to how self-love may cause selfishness. The idea of 'individualism' is not the problem. I would say that Ayn Rand must win and man must establish a loving relationship with himself before he ventures to serve others. The biggest problem that we are facing today is that of people professing their love to serve others. All of them have their agendas and have vested interests and they use service to achieve success. When you carefully look at them, the idea of service is deeply intertwined with feelings of selfishness. Selfless service is a slogan or catch phrase to fool the gullible. Man must know his true nature, seek spiritual relationship with his own person and create a fountain of love within himself and act in accordance to the feelings of self-love. Jesus may have had the divine capacity to perform miracles. Jesus had not instructed us to perform such miracles. His instruction or Commandment is very direct and simple to understand.