Lesson 1: An introduction to the Roadmap & the 'third harmony'

Objectives:

• Explore the relevance of the New Story and how it relates to the Roadmap and The Third Harmony

• Provide insight into how the sectors of the Roadmap are interconnected

• Think broadly and strategically about principled nonviolence
  

Introduction

Nonviolence can be deployed across the whole array of human change: from personal empowerment, to construction of alternatives, to powerful resistance. These three elements are what make up the three circles of the 'Roadmap', a tool that the Metta Center designed to help people and organizations become more aware that they're part of a single movement. It has six sectors, covering some main areas of nonviolent action. These are not meant to be exhaustive or complete, they are however the result of many meetings to determine the major issues of the times we're living in. But, before we get into the sectors, let’s have a look at the structure of the Roadmap. 

Three circles

The Structure of the Roadmap as explained in this lesson was developed independently by Metta; but interestingly none other than Narayan Desai, the son of Gandhi’s lifelong secretary Mahadev, had come up with the same scheme. The principle behind the three circles is: You first work on yourself (personal empowerment), then with your colleagues (on what we call 'constructive program' or the construction of alternatives), and finally against injustice (obstructive resistance).

Moreover, the principle “Do constructive work wherever possible and nonviolent resistance when necessary” is an important guideline to keep in mind.

So, now let’s explore the first circle that forms the foundation of the Roadmap.

Personal Empowerment

The first circle of the Roadmap, personal empowerment, will help you to become an effective nonviolent actor, for either constructive program or obstructive nonviolent resistance. For this purpose, we must overcome our “socially indoctrinated sense of powerlessness.” And that is also where The New Story comes in. 

Martin Luther King wrote that we must shift from a “thing-oriented civilization” to a “person-oriented civilization”, by which he meant that currently the universe is perceived to be consisting of separate matter, while actually the universe is grounded in consciousness and human life has a meaning and a purpose. He eloquently put it as: 

So, while the 'old story', the world view that human beings are separate matter 'floating around' purposelessly in the universe, gives us a sense of powerlessness, the 'new story', helps us to regain power by realizing that we are not helpless and purposeless and that we are part of a bigger whole, of humanity and of the whole universe. Our 'person-power' thus is not based on our individual or independent power, yet we can actually cultivate it individually.

Michael Nagler asks:

“If we really are physical beings in a universe without meaning, doomed to compete for our separate advantage, why should we care about the well-being or the feelings of another person?”

Later on in the book The Third Harmony he shares a story of David Hartsough, a nonviolence activist that started his activism in the Civil Rights movement, that further illustrates this point. David was sitting at the counter of a drug store with African American friends, when someone pulled him off his stool and pointed a switchblade at his heart. He looked into the most angry eyes he'd ever seen. “If you don't get out of this store in two seconds, this is going through your heart,” the man said. David forced himself to look into the man's eyes and said, “Friend, do what you feel is right and I'll still try to love you.” After a shocked silence the man turned and walked out. Onlookers said they could see him silently crying.

From this story we can understand that the person that acted violently probably had self-esteem issues and these low expectations of himself led him to harmful behaviour. This might be only one reason for violent behaviour and there are of course many others, but it is not our 'human nature', like many media try to let you believe. In fact, we counter that claim and say the opposite is actually true: humans are naturally empathic and have a natural capacity for nonviolence. Without this empathic nature, people could not have survived by living together in groups. Moreover, as social beings, humans also long to be understood, recognised and loved. This is most likely what touched the man who wanted to attack David. His words pointed him to an unmet need, and he turned away and cried. 

Cultivate your Nonviolent capacity

So, how does one cultivate this capacity or the 'person power' we've been talking about? Here are five steps to help you on your way:

1. Out with the old: Get media-savvy, and avoid the violence and vulgarity of the mass media,

2. In with the new: learn all you can about nonviolence,

3. Spiritual practice,

4. Prioritize personal relationships,

5. Be the new story.

Let’s look at them in more detail.

1. Out with the old: avoid the violence and vulgarity of the mass media and become media-savvy

Acceptance of violence was the fastest-growing value in America from 1993 to 2004, according to sociologists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.

If we were more intentional about how we spend our time and energy, we might find a little more peace in our lives, become a little less susceptible to buying sprees, and in time feel more empowered to impact our own destiny, as well as the future of the world.

Violent media are dangerously self-fulfilling. This is particularly true, for example, when it comes to violent video games. The evidence indicates that it’s a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior. The more we lose sight of our higher potential and come to see violence as normal, the more we will actually be violent, in thought, word, and finally in action. This process has no built-in limitation.

2. In with the new: learn all you can about nonviolence

The very process of learning about nonviolence, (even if you have no intention of using it in the political arena) can be uplifting and reorienting. It’s hard to imagine anything more practical, both for our own well-being and the reformation of society, than the ability to transform our anger into nonviolent power. There are scholarly and popular books, websites, courses, and all manner of resources that we will share with you.

3. Develop a Spiritual practice
While such a practice is not a requirement to practice nonviolence, and individuals will each have their own relationships to religion and spirituality, meditation helps. It helps one build that pathway in the mind by which anger and fear make their journey to creative equivalents (compassion, fearlessness). We use the classical definition of meditation: stilling thought-waves in the mind.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nath Hanh said: “We may believe in nonviolence, but when the police are dragging us away, or the holdup man is ordering us to hand over our money, our ‘nonviolence’ will evaporate, if we haven’t grounded it in our consciousness by regular meditation.”

4. Prioritize personal relationships

The trend of our modern civilization to isolate us from one another, recently through technological substitutes for face-to-face connections, is a major cause of the increase in competition and violence. So, make an effort to deliberately form the opposite habit of reaching out to others around us in trust and service. This way, we’ll be creating the person-oriented civilization that King called for, starting with our own immediate circle.

5. Be the new story

With ‘new story’ we mean the new—to us—model of a universe of consciousness and purpose, of unity and sufficiency. Align your personal capacities with what’s needed by our community and, indeed, by the whole world. So find out what are your qualities and how these can make a contribution to others and give you a purpose in life. A sense of purpose will help you to sustain your moral and motivation even during difficult times.

The New Story and the Third Harmony

We just gave a brief definition of the New Story, which could also be seen as a new vision or world view, that contrasts with the current or ‘old’ vision of materialism and separateness. We use “new story” rather than “new vision” because it’s the term people use for it. A story is a universal, largely unconscious vision that is not easy to change. It’s a kind of unspoken constitution, a basis for ordinary laws. But constitutions can change, and so can stories.

In Re:Imagining Change, Patrick Reinsborough and Doyle Canning say that we live in a world defined by stories. They cite this important example: the pervasive and ever more personalized advertising tells us that happiness and progress mean consume more, more, more regardless of the price tag to people and planet. The currently prevailing story that we live in a material, random universe, so that we, too, are primarily physical objects that need material things to be fulfilled—has led us to a permanent state of competition, not excluding violence. So, it’s time to change this and drop this old story! But of course, we need something to replace it with. And that’s why it’s important to understand the new story. 

The new story community seems to have focused on harmony with the universe, then the planet, and finally within ourselves—a harmony of the body, mind, and spirit that constitute a human being. Michael Nagler argues that in practical terms this third harmony, the harmony of spirit within, really comes first and is the most important.

Nonviolence plays a key role in both the content and the adoption of the new story. Nonviolence has been growing in extent and sophistication since Gandhi’s day, but is still incompletely understood, even by the increasing number of activists who are using it, and remains unknown  to the general public. What is in the way? That old story of materialism and separateness. 

We will now discover the importance of nonviolence for the new story, by looking at what we call ‘the Roadmap’, a tool developed by the Metta Center, to get a clearer picture of what areas encompass the new story. We will then see that in all these areas it is nonviolent actions and principles that guide each sector. 

The Roadmap

The Roadmap was first and foremost designed to help people and organizations become more aware that they’re part of a single movement, by literally getting on the same page with like efforts. 

Now that we have understood all the “main ingredients” of the Roadmap, let’s have a look at the different sectors. The six sectors, worked out in many meetings and conversations, pretty well cover the major areas of (re)constructive work. The eighteen sub-sectors, like Restorative Justice or Transition Towns, are of course only a sample of the hundreds of thousands. 

In our vision, New Story Creation is top and center, as a change underlying and facilitating all the others. It’s not a sector, though there are people working specifically on it. It is both an enabling factor and implicitly an effect of any and all progressive change. We see it as a project in its own right— and arguably the most important one (short of stopping climate destruction in its terrifying tracks).

The new story thus includes the other five sectors, or in other words: the five sectors are an outward expressions of the new story. 

Reflection and discussion questions

1. What speaks to you most or calls you most deeply about the Roadmap? 

2. How does it expand your sense of the meaning of nonviolence? What might be included in a nonviolent framework that you previously overlooked, for instance? 

3. Reflect on the impact of old and new story on your experience of the world or your experience of a movement. 

Homework

• Do not consume any mass media for five days, and every time you feel the urge to check the news, you read something from our list of recommended nonviolence resources.

• Explore your willingness to start or deepen a spiritual practice. Start by writing down the possible benefits you perceive of investing more time in it. If you don’t have a practice yet, find information about different forms of meditation, either through the internet or asking your friends, and either pick one method or try several. After one week, go back to your list with benefits and see if you already perceive some change in yourself and write these down. 

• Make an effort to reach out to others around you. Set an intention to interact personally with people wherever you can—at the checkout stand, sitting next to someone at any gathering—the possibilities are endless.

• If you are willing, explore our fifth recommendation, to align your personal capacities with what’s needed by our community. Take a journal or a piece of paper and start to make a list with your qualities. These can be personal characteristics, like “I’m empathic” or “I’m innovative”, or they can be more concrete skills like “I’m good at developing software”, “I’m good at gardening” etc. Write down at least five and try to list as many as come to mind. Use the back of the paper if you want to. Then oversee your list. Perhaps a picture starts to form how you can use your skills. Take another color pen or pencil and write down where or how you could use each quality or skill. Hang your list somewhere where you can look at it frequently and see what happens over time. Give it at least a month or more. If you’ve never done an exercise like this, it’s important to take your time!

Additional resources

In order to better understand the word “nonviolence” and its application, The Metta Center has created an animation video called “Nonviolence: Your Inner Power”. Our recommendation is to look at it twice. The first time you just listen and try to absorb its content. The second time you make some notes of anything you want to remember or have questions about.