Claiming a Better Future
Lessons on Building Community and Restoring Peace
by Robert C. Koehler
In our techno-saturated society, we have the casual capacity to capture any unfolding event on film — even an act of shocking violence — and send images of the live action around the globe just by whipping out a cell phone.
Two years ago, Chicago’s Fenger High School had its 15 minutes of horrific fame when the beating death of one of its students, an honor student named Derrion Albert — waiting for a bus after school, caught suddenly in a surge of gang violence, savagely beaten with two-by-fours and railroad ties — was recorded on someone’s cell camera and became an international spectacle.
What we lack, it would seem, is the capacity to do anything about the violence itself. We remain trapped within a context of thought that reduces our interaction with the world, and ourselves, to winning or losing, domination or defeat. (more…)