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Exercise : The 7 Wonders Of Gandhi Exercise : explore 7 stories about Gandhi that you would like your social networks of peers to be
aware of, and value in practice and lifelong learning. For purposes of illustration, I have selected 7 stories that inspire
me. They are drastically over-simplified. If one or two help you to choose your 7 favourites that will great- even more so
if one day you choose to share your 7 stories with me and the web my friends, mentors and I wish to open source at http://peacecentury.tv
I look to Gandhi for help with mathematical and open entrepreneurial system mapping
values . Here is a relevant starting point :Gandhi.Source
Einstein Archive, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mahatma Gandhi's life achievement stands unique in political
history. He has invented a completely new and humane means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it
with greatest energy and devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously thinking human being of the entire civilized
world will probably be much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because
lasting will only be the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example
and educational works.We may all be happy and grateful that destiny gifted us with such an enlightened contemporary, a role
model for the generations to come. LISTING
OF 7 WONDERS OF GANDHI 1
Mother’s “serve the world” behavioural values 2 Father’s non-hierarchical job description in a ruler’s court 3 age 21 :Accidentally obtaining something
more practical than Barrister at Bar of London 4 age 38: the greatest truth reformation moment of life 5 age 51: after a career in S Africa returning to educate and mediate
a new India 6
being sent to jail over a most peaceful battle for truth imaginable 7 age 64-79: brokering independent futures for a region and ending with
a most transparent life's typical 20th century reward in a media-frenzied world: assassination. 1 From his diaries, Gandhi’s mother
is relentlessly revered as a great and most practical nurturer – not only of her family but everyone in the community
that she interacted with. A Mother Theresa figure, and offering a familial “serve the world” role model through
boyhood to manhood: in a world – often highly conflicted as Gandhi’s era always was – dominated by
men, and the separations their nature sometimes conditions or accidentally leads to. 2 Gandhi’s father had the most unpowerful powerful job. Like the honoured fool in a Shakespearean
court or a doctor who triages everyone who knocks at the door: how high or deep a priority does this stranger need; has he
got a view or practice our leader needs to integrate across the network of contexts he serves. This became relevant as Gandhi
became the most trusted networker for exploring truth of his generation – and arguably of known history. 3 Gandhi could not find a subject innovative enough to study at an Indian
University . So he hoped that by going to qualify as a Barrister at the bar of London – then the centre of empire and late
20th Century World- he would be taught great and practical understanding. Instead he found a fiction beyond the imagination
of Harry Potter readers - a young "old boys club" where most legal students were drunk by 4.00pm . Not partaking
of this global top's ritual, he became the most connected person of an international network of young foreigners
in London . This had many benefits in his later triangular voyages between India , South Africa and Britain . And yes he did
qualify as a barrister. His 21 year old’s diary records: the next day I sailed home. 4 On return to the Mumbai region, Gandhi could not find anything but the most dreary
of cases to be a barrister to. Accidentally, his international web found him a job in Natal, South Africa, where an Indian
law firm was setting up to represent the many Indians who had “jumped” colony. However, the beginning of the Gandhi
that is known today by change agents around the world did not happen until he was 38 –more than a dozen years into his
career in S Africa. Whilst travelling on a work assignment in a train’s first class carriage, he was thrown out of it
for having the wrong colour skin. Spending the night on a cold platform, his diaries declare this to have been his life-changing
moment. It is when he conceived the system transformation need for Satyagraha- standing up for truth in everything you interconnect.
To Gandhi, the biggest question of all : what do you do when the law and your profession and all your higher education to
date - is going to be the number 1 conflict of your life and the sustainability of all those who love to rust you? There
are many Be-the Changers today who feel that the answer he pioneered for the second half of his life is the most open benchmark
of how to free a people’s from colonial rule and sustain a better world of peoples independence. 5 Gandhi’s diary records his next
13 years in South Africa as Satyagraha 1.0. He messed around with experiments but no longer believed that using his professional
skills to argue in court would turn round the ever more apartheid lawmaking. His South Africa project was unfinished work,
which generations after Mandela, as greatest living practitioner of Satyagraha, is now justly celebrated for seeing through.
By 1920, Gandhi returned to Ahmedabad near his family’s roots in the Mumbai region of India . He started Satyagraha
2.1 by founding one of the most integrated education system ever seen. It was for every age group, every culture. It stressed
vocational knowhow- this was were Gandhi started to adopt the symbol of the spinning wheel. He and every follower should know
how to do this craft. Higher technology was only useful in a community if there was enough work for all the peoples. His children’s
educational system was deliberately pioneered in rural areas and out of communes called ashrams. At the same time he founded
a practical university in Ahmedabad: its motto – “knowledge is that which liberates us”; he was its chancellor
for the rest of life. Before recounting the last 2 wonders,
I need to mention another bias of my clan. My grandfather on my mother’s side had qualified as a Barrister in the Bar
of London, was a British Raj judge in the Mumbai region; presided over a case or two that sent Gandhi to jail, a
later liberation and much later editing the legalese brokered between Gandhi and Mountbatten that constituted India’s
Independence. In terms of history: we are entering 1930-1948. Arguably, the messiest times Europe ’s
ruling professionals – ever propagated on past , future and present worlds- whether their cultural
maps, knowledge of systems and individual willpowers (and compound consequences) were good, bad or blind-fold. 6 Gandhi appears to have been imprisoned 4 times 1922, 1930, 1933, 1942
. For marketers and humanitarians let alone peace activists, it is pivotal to see how he used imprisonment as the way to get
stories out that a censored media would never cover. In 1930, he led a salt march across hundreds of miles from Ahmedabad
to the coastline where each person in the march picked up some salt from the sea, was beaten over the head and British police
and imprisoned. Collecting nature’s salt was an illegal act because a British company had a monopoly production patent.
Ultimately, when courts came to try this case – Gandhi the lawyer would maximise his time in court pleading that if
you believe in the truth of this law then you as a judge have no option but to send me to jail; but if you don’t believe
in the truth of this law, maybe you should resign. Later examples of this included hunger strikes in jail, because by now
Gandhi’s worldwide reputation would have caused the British Empire more than embarrassment if they had caused his death
in jail. In between, Gandhi paid his last visit to London in 1931- dressed in the clothes of an Indian villager (normal to
Gandhi) the image was unforgettable compared with his audience dressed in suits in the large auditorium of the Quakers’
Friends House- opposite Euston Station. In parallel, Gandhi was winning networks of friends all round Europe ’s smaller
countries. His passion for empowerment education had attracted Maria Montessori who later visited schools in India with Gandhi.
17 years before Independence , the Challenge to Britain had been issued from the centre of London thanks to such remarkable
peace networks as quakers and empowerment teachers. ROUND
7 1948: Gandhi’s
last years were spent wishing that India and Pakistan would not be split up, but there were few leaders at the time who
dared go so far towards his system transformation of I want to be a world citizen as well as from the continent of India and
a cross-culture celebrator of truth’s many different community sustaining religions and cultures.
The West’s standard history books end in this sort of way: he collaborated with
Mountbatten and Wavell in the build up to independence in 1947. This association with the break-up of India was to cost him his life. There had been one assassination attempt on
Gandhi on January 20th 1948 - it had failed.
Just ten days later on the 30th January, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic who could not forgive Gandhi for his belief
that Muslims had equal value to Hindus and no-one was better than anybody else. Footnote: If my epitaph was an ordinary mathematician who helped people
to question truth, that would be good enough for me. I admire Gandian
stories and networks that look at integrating system change at every level of a triangle whose apexes may be drawn as: the most micro of what youth can
explore from the ground up, to the intermediaries systems whose hero
worship influences peer values such as: culture, media, community, laws of mediation, | Parts 2, and
3 lead into results from 50 years of learning experiments with quarter of a million children at the world's favourite
school http://cmseducation.org -one of those million people webs worth understanding every collaboration opportunity with can we slay the dragon that Gandhi had any interest in personal
level be the change that did not flow collaboratively through every system level - unless one understands Gandhi as the
greatest worldwide networker and media participant of his age, all the wrong conclusions get made and potentially empowering
entrepreneurial systems never scale, and open values of trust never flow Centenary Trilogy of Educators Who Value
Truth Part 1 - What Gandhi and Granddad Learnt
about Unlearning In India,
2007 is known as the centenary year of Satyagraha –a reason for celebrating education truth and empowerment everywhere.
No surprise to system transformation practitioners that reordering truth involves a journey in transparency requiring everyone
to be courageous enough to help each other find the lies a broken system is spinning ever more furious risks around. What happens when everything you have trained hardest
to professionally understand lies in the way of future truth? Both Mahatma Gandhi and my grandfather discovered this challenge
more than halfway through their professional careers. Both had qualified at the Bar of London, at a time in history when London
was the epicentre of superpower. It
was 15 years after becoming a barrister that Gandhi’s life changing moment occurred. In 1906’s South Africa, he
was thrown out of a first class train compartment for having the “wrong” skin. This caused him to realise that
in South Africa and India the laws being made were one hell of a system crisis. Gandhi had another 13 years in Africa to reflect
on how a lawyer could overthrow the law before returning to India around 1920. Then, in his fifties he spent his last quarter
century developing the greatest social entrepreneurial revolution orchestrated by a man. The records of his strategic experiments in Satyagraha (system
truth transformation) in South Africa show that two primary clues emerged as he prepared for the love of India : 1) change
the education system from bottom to top; 2) anticipate that when a national system is destructing goodwill among all men,
even the most sincere professionals will make a mess the harder they try to apply the old rules. System theorist Ackoff provides
a brilliant contemporary paper confirming this professional catch 22 at http://www.acasa.upenn.edu/RLAConfPaper.pdf . Einstein also leaves us a review of Gandhi as exemplifying today’s best hope of navigating
the worldwide warp. We are confronted by an unprecedented integration challenge - as one generation becomes highly interconnected
by networking technologies, and the truth consequences of death of distance. We cannot afford climate nor education nor justice
nor media nor healthcare to be governed as inconvenient because they all flow into the united truth challenge- can we integrate
every locality’s sustainability into the globalisation we develop? Gandhi invented
a completely new and humane means for the liberation war of an oppressed country, and practised it with greatest energy and
devotion. The moral influence he had on the consciously thinking human being of the entire civilized world will probably be
much more lasting than it seems in our time with its overestimation of brutal violent forces. Because lasting will only be
the work of such statesmen who wake up and strengthen the moral power of their people through their example and educational
works. Source Einstein Archive, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
Gandhi’s as a peacefully revolting lawyer was to
publicly celebrate the most absurd reasons for Gandhi the lawyer to be sent to jail. This made him the most culturally creative
brand messenger of his day and arguably the highest-trust man to have walked the last millennium. His imprisoning
was presided over by my grandfather as Raj judge in Bombay. Our story has a relatively happy ending. Two decades later granddad
had been converted to the role of writing up the legalese brokered between Mountbatten and Gandhi as India’s declaration
of independence. Gandhi determined education in India needed
to empower children vocationally in the communities and contexts of diversity they were in. This was the opposite of some
standardised program that governed over its own “theoretical” class system. Gandhi was to find the sort of educational
model he wanted in Maria Montessori, who came over to India to help plant wholly new educational systems. This testimony clarifies
what values Maria and Mahatma cherished as they helped children to change the world by loving their own communal productivities.
At Montessori Training
School: Mohandas K. Gandhi ,October 28, 1931, Montessori College London where Dr. Montessori
was also in attendance. Madame, you have overwhelmed me with your words. It is perfectly true, I must admit
it in all humility, that however indifferently it may be, I endeavour to represent love in every fibre of my being. I am impatient
to realize the presence of my Maker, Who to me embodies Truth, and in the early part of my career I discovered that if I was
to realize Truth I must obey, even at the cost of my life, the law of love. And having been blessed with children, I discovered
that the law of Love could be best understood and learned through little children. Were it not for us, their
ignorant poor parents, our children would be perfectly innocent. I believe implicitly that the child is not born mischievous
in the bad sense of the term. If parents would behave themselves whilst the child is growing, before it is born and after,
it is a well-known fact that the child would instinctively obey the law of Truth and the law of Love. Almost
15 years ago, I first became acquainted with your activities. It was in a place called Amreli that I found that there was
a little school being conducted after the Montessori system. Your name had preceded that first acquaintance. I found no difficulty
in finding out at once that this school was not carrying out the spirit of your teaching; the letter was there, but whilst
there was an honest - more or less honest - effort being made, I saw too that there was a great deal of tinsel about it. I
came in touch, then, with more such schools, and the more I came in touch, the more I began to understand that the foundation
was good and splendid, if the children could be taught through the laws of nature - nature, consistent with human dignity,
not nature that governs the beast. I felt instinctively from the way in which the children were being taught that, whilst
they were being indifferently taught, the original teaching was conceived in obedience to this fundamental law. Since then,
I have had the pleasure of coming across several of your pupils, one of whom had even made a pilgrimage to Italy and had received your personal blessings. I was looking forward to meeting the
children here and you all and it was a great pleasure to me to see these children. I had taken care to learn
something about these little children. I had a foretaste of what I saw here, in Birmingham , where there is a school between which and this there is a difference. But I also saw that there also
human nature was struggling to express itself. I see the same thing here and it was a matter of inexpressible joy to me that
from their childhood the children were brought to understand the virtue of silence, and how, in response to the whisper from
their teacher, the children came forward one after another in that pin-drop silence. It gave great joy to see all those beautiful
rhythmic movements and, as I was watching those movements of the children, my whole heart went out to the millions of the
children of the semi-starved villages of India, and I asked myself as my heart went out to those children, “Is it possible
for me to give them those lessons and the training that are being given under your system, to those children”? | |  | We are conducting an experiment amongst the poorest of the
children in India . I do not know how far the experiment
will go. We have the problem of giving real vital education to these children of India 's hovels, and we have no material means. We have to fall back upon the voluntary assistance of teachers,
but when I look for teachers, they are very few, especially, teachers of the type wanted, in order to draw the best from the
children through understanding, through studying their individuality and then putting the child on its own resources, as it
were, on its own honour. And believe me from my experience of hundreds, I was going to say thousands, of children I know that
they have perhaps a finer sense of honour than you and I have. The greatest lessons in life if we would but stoop and humble
ourselves, we would learn not from grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children. Jesus never uttered a loftier
or a grander truth than when he said that wisdom cometh out of the mouths of babes. I believe it; I have noticed it in my
own experience that, if we would approach babes in humility and in innocence, we would learn wisdom from them. I must
not take up your time. I have simply given you what is, at the present moment, agitating me, namely, the delicate problem,
considered in human terms, of drawing out the best from these millions of children of whom I have told you. But I have learned
this one lesson - that what is impossible with man is child's play with God and, if we have faith in that Divinity which
presides over the destiny of the meanest of His creation, I have no doubt that all things are possible and in that final hope
I live and pass my time and endeavour to obey His will. Therefore, I repeat that even as you, out of your love for children,
are endeavouring to teach those children, through your numerous institutions, the best that can be brought out of them, even
so I hope that it will be possible not only for the children of the wealthy and the well-to-do, but for the children of paupers
to receive training of this nature. You have very truly remarked that if we are to reach real peace in this world and if we
are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children and if they will grow up in their natural innocence,
we won't have the struggle, we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and
peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or
unconsciously, the whole world is hungering. related references: White Paper on Sustainability's
Coming Wars Between Goodwill and Badwill Networks, Indira Gandhi National Cultural Centre and GRN 2004: Delhi, by Chris Macrae
and Peace Brand Architecture Network http://www.collapsingworld.org, GRN 2003, London http://www.globalreconciliationnetwork.org http://globalism.rmit.edu.au/ http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bsatyagraha+%2B+mcdermott http://yourgandhi.blogspot.com http://www.skollfoundation.org/gandhi/index.asp http://bethechange.org.uk http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Bgandhi+%2Bentrepreneur+OR+ashoka+OR+montessori http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4741333.stm
Part 2 All over the world citizens can enjoy some LuckNow …. cheers chris macrae http://macrae.tv/ http://www.facebook.com web's greatest? cultural
creatives assembly starts Friday http://24weeks.com | | | | |
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