[Oe List ...] World Wide - History long

[SVESjaime at aol.com]

Len,
 
Thanks for reminding us of the Niebuhr quote.  Am the Student Council  
adviser at our Elementary School and we are welcoming back in two days an  alumnus 
(27 years old) who is the fifth CNMI casualty in the War vs. Iraq. I  just sent 
the wife and their three children our school's note of condolences. In  it 
are these words:
 
 
"The wages of war are very often paid for dearly by the young, in  this case, 
the life of your husband, and your profound grief as well as the  bewildered 
one of your three young children.  He is also a considerable loss to his  
parents.  Certainly, Lee Roy Camacho  lived his life and died his death as the 
single, only one of a kind,  unrepeatable gift of life into human history, of 
whom there has never been one  like him before, and there will never be another 
one like him ever again.  The completion of his life, ever  mysterious as the 
day he was born, and ever awesome as the days that he lived,  comes to plumb 
the depth of our despair, yet in his very uniqueness, we  nevertheless dare to 
celebrate his gracious and glorious expenditure, for  himself and for the sake 
of his nation.  
We join you, your children and his parents as we stand present to the  
journey of his life, and honor the uncommon valor before which his breath had  been 
taken away. We join you in remembering that the light of life far outshines  
the shadows of death.  May the  memories of joy abide with you even as Lee Roy 
returns to you in  silence." 

I teach Ancient Civilizations to 6th graders, mapping the 6,000 year  journey 
of War and Empire from Mesopotamia to George Bush, and molding young  minds 
to consider alternative options to the culture of violence we are all heir  to. 
 With efforts like yours, we might just manifest what David Korten is  
calling in his book,  The Great Turning; From Empire to Earth  Community. (Lucille 
Chagnon sent me a copy of the book which I immediately  passed around.  The 
local library and the local community college has since  ordered their own copy.) 
 
I lost my personal anger (learned Parliament of the Streets in the US  during 
the Civil Rights/Vietnam War days) in 1977 on a sojourn to Maliwada and  
Marahastra.  As a rural development consultant in the Philippines after  
Sudtonggan and I parted with the ICA, I used to travel around addressing  municipal 
governments with messages like: "I have good news for you.   Marcos the Messiah 
is not coming."  This jolted my audiences since I was in  the government's 
payroll!  But it also "prepared" the way for the people  power revolt to be 
accepted, and perhaps, even directly assisting in making it  happen!
 
My sociological anger is sheer strategy these days.  The Commonwealth  of 
Northern Marianas (favorite hang out of Majuro colleagues in the good old  days), 
made famous by Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, is in an economic nosedive  like 
a 747 about to crash land without wheels.  There is no messiah.   The garment 
industry which created the illusion that we were part of the first  world 
(albeit, on the back of imported contract workers on slave wages) has  collapsed 
and the reality that we are but a third world territory with a US zip  code is 
finally revealing itself to a lucid few.  This is the arena where  my (with a 
few colleagues) hope, faith, and love is showing itself in the  sociological 
form of forgiveness like the tone of the above letter to a bereaved  family.
 
Yes, we are saved by our lucidity as well - it is a worldwide,  history-long 
effort before the paradigm shift occurs.  Despair,  discouragement, anger are 
just momentary distractions; they are but  self-indulgent luxuries when we 
wear and tire.  But for the next 25 years,  this old coot will continue stirring 
the sociological pot.  For now, it is  having a congregation of a 100-some 6th 
graders who are captive audience to an  encounter with imaginal education, 
and since four weeks ago, assisting a  colleague conduct a bi-weekly evening 
open forum in public school auditoriums  with a simple format of "ground rules" 
and open microphone.  Not quite the  structured "town meeting" format, but for 
our purposes, it is promoting a timely  participation in governance format for 
the times.
 
By the way, if anyone reads this far, would someone point me to the classic  
as well as latest documents on the Social Process triangle?  With the  
Commonwealth looking like the Titanic after the iceberg, I was getting ready to  
hightail it Aloha Way but the Public School System ask me and a few colleagues  to 
rewrite the whole Benchmarks and Standards for Social Studies K-12.   Thought 
I'd give it six years to move substantive narrative to process thinking  in 
Social Studies, and could really use the wisdom and research behind the  
triangles.  And while I am at it, any literature on the Geo-Social Grid  would come 
handy as well.
 
Len, say Hi! to Phyllis.  Mary Lou and the girls will be in Chicago  
September 15.  Kristina who lives there, and until recently, a part of  Kanbay, is 
hitting the marriage trail.  Teresa, made me Grandpa last year  in Detroit with 
an Irish lad.  She and her family now lives in San  Diego.
 
Jaime Vergara
Saipan
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