Highlighting Key Ideas expressed in book, articles and meetings of the Circle
Culture and the arts play fundamental roles in societies’ development and their mutual relations. Artists and works of art are essential to harmonious societies and play strong roles in opposing tyranny. They can give humanity the courage to face many complex challenges. In expressing the raw emotion integral to the human experience, art can connect individual experience to social phenomena. While presenting the unique experience of the creator, it may touch universal chords that unify.
Language and history encapsulated in the written word, visual media, theater and dance are powerful tools connecting humankind to others, to nature and the universe on primal and cerebral levels.
Education is the key to human flourishing. It is essential that cultural appreciation and the humanities be strong elements in its curriculum. The languages of art and culture vital to the art of living help identify and teach universal values and in turn find their place in the foundation of harmonious, mutually supportive societies— that strive to meet the material and spiritual needs of its citizens.
Published by the School of Diplomacy and International Relations,
Seton Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey (USA)
“A Dialogue among Civilizations is a dialogue between those who perceive diversity as a threat and those who do not. Crossing the Divide is more than just a call for Dialogue. It is the anti-terrorism manifesto.”
– *GiandomenicoPicco, Former UN Chief Hostage Negotiator
There is another matter which should be on our minds and for which I ask the concern of the Circle. That is the error of measuring the success of all life in economic terms.
Measuring all progress in economic terms, we over look the great achievements of much poorer societies in the past.
The art of the Renaissance which we view and enjoy was the product of communities far inferior in wealth to our own.
William Shakespeare, as I’ve else where said, was the product of a society with by present standards, a very low Gross Domestic Product.
The great artistic talent of our time is now employed in advertising goods and services. We must ask ourselves whether our economic success is matched by equivalent achievement in the arts and in the sciences.
John Kenneth Galbraith [from his message to the Triglav Circle]
Articles and Manuscripts presented to the Circle
Meetings of Circle
Education and the Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions of Life in Society
Meeting of the Triglav Circle at 100 Acres, Manchester NH – March 2002
Should educational aims be reassessed in a globalizing world? According to Samuel Hazo, State Poet of Pennsylvania and professor emeritus at Duquesne University:
“College was once defined as a time when students were briefly absented from the present in order to discover the past so that they could more wisely face the present in the future…The current collegiate goal is not the beginning of wisdom but proficiency (in marketable skills), not breadth of knowledge but adjustment, not cultural understanding but social (upward) mobility. In brief, the goal of graduating free men and women (intellectually free) has been replaced by giving degrees to instantly employable trainees. What if anything is wrong with this? Nothing is wrong with it, if you believe that it’s quite acceptable to graduate instant earners who can’t write, who can’t understand and feel no need to understand history, literature and even geography of their own country, who don’t know nor care to know another language (70% of the graduates of America’s 3,000 or more colleges and universities earn degrees without being required to study a foreign language), and whose main goal in life is not regenerating or contributing to their society, but retiring from it in comfort as early as possible.”
— excerpted from an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Seeking Harmonious Society and Multiple Modernities,
International Symposium: Beijing, China: 23-24 June 2006
Whether one attributes concept of universal values to human nature or to the convergence of the teachings of great philosophies and religions, or to both, there is little doubt that the moral compass of peoples of different traditions and cultures is fundamentally the same. Perceptions of right and wrong, or of the beautiful and the ugly, do not dramatically differ from one continent to another. In that sense the distinction between Asian, or European, or American, or African values, and universal values is artificial.
But such syncretism, to be at the same time respectful of freedom and diversity and exempt from moral laxness and relativism, implies a fairly short but rigorous “selection” of what are truly universal values. Difficulties with the notions of shared understanding of the human rights expressed in the Universal Declaration are partly due to a politically motivated interpretation and extension of such rights in the domain of political arrangements which should have no claim to universalism or in-temporality. But then, is this presumably shared core of values a sufficient foundation for the construction of harmonious societies
Highlights
Music, literature and the soul of society
Understanding and appreciation of the "Other"
Roles of art in international relations
Moral and spiritual education
Education and promotion of world peace
Finding commonalities among world's religions
