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Rotary and Global Peace: A Silver Cloud

By Bhuvan Unhelkar, PhD, FACS

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. Mahatma Gandhi (from Thus Spake Gandhi)

“Global peace?” The answer may not be easy and may even appear impossible at the outset, but the question is far too important to be ignored. Every attempt from every angle towards global peace is to be made, and has value.  Here is one such thought process on Global Peace through Rotary!

Peace is a by-product. It is not a directly achievable goal. In fact, most things of value in life are not directly achievable - happiness and love, for example. The question is: “A by-product of what?” And the answer, perhaps, lies in understanding the formative years of the “I”. When a baby is born, it a very fuzzy concept of “I” – almost vapour like. Subsequently, through parenting and society, the notion of “I” starts taking a firm shape.  Depending on the level of stringency of parenting (which, in turn, is based on the society), this ‘learned’ belief system of right versus wrong, true versus false and ... you name it, solidifies – freezes. And two frozen viewpoints, like two frozen icebergs, never meet peacefully. They are righteous. They are unbending. They have serious doubts about each other.  They quarrel, accuse and eventually try to destroy each other.

So, how to prevent the early “freezing” of personality? How can one approach the challenge of keeping the “I” from freezing? For that, we have to start early. The formative, school going years of a child should comprise detailed exposure to varying cultures and viewpoints. Development of a personality should be accompanied by understanding, not mere acceptance, of many different viewpoints. Rotation of cultures and social structures can produce an easy, flowing personality that is most likely to enjoy the grandeur of dew drops on a leaf or the music of wind through the bamboos. On the other hand, a frozen, stagnant “I” will devise clever schemes to “protect” itself and its so called belief system – no matter what.  Tragic indeed are the situations where a social system further eulogizes such a misplaced “I” to destroy numerous individuals including totally unrelated bystanders and their own selves. Narrowness in viewpoints as a root cause of wars was highlighted as early as 1893, in the city of Chicago, where the first ever World Parliament of Religions was held. There, addressing the august gathering, a certain monk called Vivekananda [1] narrated the now well-known allegory of the frog in a well: “A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. It was born there and brought up there, and yet was a little, small frog.  Then, one day another frog that lived in the sea came and fell into the well.”  The frog in the well simply could not believe the size of the ocean that the other frog was describing, called him a liar and told him to leave the well (if he could). These strong difference in viewpoints are  easily encountered in  views expressed in our lounge rooms, dining rooms, editorials and parliaments. Individuals who have experienced multiple cultures, who have traversed the high seas, so to speak, hold an all encompassing “I am okay, and so are you” [2] viewpoint that does not resort to a dagger or a bomb. Should such individuals be national leaders (and mind you, there will be few such people as they are not competitive in the traditional sense), they will be true to the maxim: “There is only one way to win a war - before it is fought”.

Twelve years later, in 1905, in the same city of Chicago where the first parliament of religions was held, another creative individual came up with the idea of “rotation” as a means of understanding, service and common good. His view of rotation (of individuals) stretched right from school-going years through to post-retirement and everything in between. We know him as Paul Harris. His underlying principle of rotation was eventually enshrined as a wheel that has come to represent us - Rotary. Appropriate to its name, the axis of Rotary is around its wheel – the tremendously creative and ongoing “rotation” of individuals through different experiences right from adolescence through to the ripe old post-retirement age. Without stopping once, the wheel of Rotary exposes members and society alike to a myriad of different situations and cultures: through the uniqueness of classification, rotating club roles, changing district and global leadership roles, and participation in various programs across vast geographical regions.   This year, the Rotary International theme  “Bridging Continents, Building Communities” exemplifies this process directly. Rotary provides continuous and effortless exposure to different situations, different cultures, languages and value systems. For example, The Tales from a Dilly Bag program (Rotary Dist. 9600) offers young Australian Preparatory children with resources for storybook sharing in school. Older primary-age students are engaged as reading mentors to share stories with younger children in the sponsored schools. The material in the kits encourages reading aloud and discussion about the texts and creative ways of responding to literature.

Similarly, developing our youth globally is an important part of Rotary’s commitment. Society at large is also highly benefitted through the rotation of the wheel of Rotary.  Programs such as the youth leadership, youth exchange across countries/nations, (e.g. Rotary Youth Leadership Awards – RYLA,  and National Youth Science Forum -  NYSF) provide immense benefit to the society in terms of creating understanding and goodwill amongst young people with varied socio-cultural-religious backgrounds. This is because this rotation results in an understanding of various cultures and value systems by an individual effortlessly.

So what exactly is experienced and understood when one “rotates” through different cultures and value systems? The underlying patterns of thinking, feeling and acting are permeated by five cultural variables, as suggested by Devereaux and Johansen [3]: Language, Context, Time, Power and Information Flow. I have modified this list, based on my understanding and experiences, and I expect it to be further improved upon and augmented as we develop deeper understanding of these cultural factors. My updated list of cultural variables that make an imprint on an individual as he or she goes through early childhood and adolescence are:  i) Food, ii) Music, iii) Sports, iv) Family, v) Language and vi) Faith. For want of space, I am not discussing these factors here in detail. Suffice it to say that I put forth my arguments based on some serious literature study and a presentation I made in 2003-4 in Canberra, Australia at a conference [4]. Depending on your feedback, I sustain hopes of outlining how exactly these 6 cultural variables can be, and have been, used to develop an understanding of “that other culture”.

Finally, I believe what we do in Rotary  transcends mere intellectual “acceptance” of  other cultures to a real “understanding” of those cultures. For example, I hear that based on the goodwill generated through Rotary, even the Afghan fighters have “days of tranquillity” to allow the polio vaccines to be delivered in remote parts of that region. Creation of  deeper understanding and  experiencing that other culture opens up many real opportunities.  Acceptance, on the other hand, is a poor cousin of understanding. Acceptance can be patronizing at best, condescending at worst. Understanding, however, is an inner flowering of multiple value systems within an individual that have a natural tendency to translate into peace. Because wherever there is understanding of multiple dimensions of life and society, peace happens. And what happens to individuals and within households also happens within and amongst groups, organizations [5] and nations.

Acknowledgement

 I would like to thank Margaret Dean and Megan Tilley from the Rotary Club of St. Ives for their constructive comments on the draft of this article. I would also like to thank Angus Robinson, PP Rotary eClubOne for persisting with me and providing me with the opportunity to publish.

References

[1]The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols. (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1-8, 1989, 9, 1997), 1.4-5.

[2] Thomas Harris, I am OK, You are OK (London: Pan, 1973), xvii.

 [3]M Devereaux and R Johansen, Global Work: Bridging Distance, Culture and Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994), 38-9.

[4] Unhelkar, B., Multicultural Societies and Their Impact on Creating a Peaceful and Prosperous Global Village: Australia-India Seminar, November, 7-8, 2002, Canberra.

 [5] Edward T Hall, Beyond Culture (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1977). 6. Osho, India

 About the author: Bhuvan Unhelkar (PhD, FACS, Paul Harris Fellow) is an information technology consultant and author of 15 books; He is current Foundation director and President Elect of the Rotary Club of St. Ives in District 9680,  on the northern shores of  Sydney, Australia. Bhuvan is an avid believer in global peace – particularly through Rotary. bhuvan@methodscience.com; (www.unhelkar.com)