Hi, so I have a couple of questions. I'll start with one of them, seeing that I'm also from Israel originally. It's what's going on right now in Israel. It's quite disturbing. And I thought that some of the legal reform that's been tried since already a few months, some of them actually made sense. And I saw one of your show that was, I was glad that we had the very similar opinion that some of them made sense and some of them not. And finally, with all the protests, they are now going as one by one, if at all. And now that they're going on these reasonable cause or whatever to call it, I thought that it's made sense because it's what they try to cut is the political involvement of the court, not legal. So legally, the court, if the government decide to do something against human rights or the rights of citizen, the Supreme Court still have the same. But politically, they cannot get involved in who to put as a minister or some political decision, which I think makes sense. And to my knowledge, there's no country in the world that have this kind of crazy clause. But in the last episode that I saw a couple of few days ago, you kind of mentioned, so I was not sure what is the reasoning because I see logic in what they're doing. So the fundamental problem in Israel is, there is no right solution here because there is no constitution. There is no fundamental standard by which they evaluate. There's no standard of individual rights. There's no standard of, so they have this reasonableness standard. But that's completely subjective. It's not well defined. And when the court has been, and the court has been over the last 20 years, very left, reasonableness for a left wing court is very different than what it is maybe the rest of Israelis and so on. So I can completely understand the motivation of getting rid of it. The problem is that my understanding, and maybe I'm missing something, in my understanding is by getting rid of this, you are basically making impossible for the court to decide that a law, not just an appointment, but a law is unreasonable. That is, it violates the basic law, or it is so, again, it's not anti-constitutional because there is no constitution. This is the problem. There's no standard. So the challenge is you can't really reform the system in any kind of reasonable way without asking the fundamental questions of why do we have a court system, a Supreme Court in particular, and what oversight does it have over the government and over the parliament? What are the boundaries of that power? How do we figure that out? So these are little band-aids that have the potential to do more harm than good, and it depends on how they're interpreted and how they're used and by whom they used. I think the last thing that stimulated this was the governor that appointed as a minister, a guy who had been, if I remember right, you know, found guilty of fraud on a number of occasions from the political party shots, an ultra-orthodox political party, and the Supreme Court said, look, it's not reasonable to put somebody in the government as a minister in the government who has committed fraud. First, what I understood again, and I saw some showing Israel that they were actually showing that the Supreme Court has different ways for, again, if it's infringed on the citizen or the human rights. So they do have it and we still have it about this minister, which I know what you're talking about. Again, as much as ethically is wrong, and I agree, but if legally it's okay, the Supreme Court cannot say, don't take this minister because as long as there's no legal law that forbids a minister to serve, it's not their business. First, have a law, then follow it because their job is to interpret and protect the rights of their citizens. So I agree with that. So if the law, if what they're trying to pass right now is limited to that extent, that is it just applies to these political issues, then fine, then the government should do it and I'm not sure what the protests about. I mean, the protests have taken on a life of themselves. I mean, there's a dynamic of that. But I mean, the protests also worried about the slippery slope that passed this one, we don't do anything, then they'll pass another one because they think they won't do anything, which is probably true. I mean, this is probably a test balloon. If it passes, Netanyahu is going to try to do other ones. He wants to see what the response is. And look, I don't think Netanyahu wants any of this. This is all just because he promised his coalition partners who are pretty bad. So yeah, I don't disagree with you that this particular law probably isn't as bad as it seems. It's the package that is problematic. I don't know if you know, but I actually debated the guy from the Knesset, from the Israeli parliament who heads up the legal commission. Yeah, Rotman. Rosemann, I debated him in Israel. I didn't see it. I was looking for it, but I couldn't find it. I was really curious to see it. Somewhere up. I'll have to ask Boaz if he's got it up. But anyway, what was interesting was, I said things like, I agree that the way judges are pointed in Israel right now is completely arbitrary and it doesn't make any sense. And so why not have the entire parliament vote just like in the United States? Have them come and interview the nominee and have them vote just like in the U.S. they vote rather than this committee which is now going to be tilted towards the government. The government gets complete control. Make it a parliamentary thing. Yeah, but the parliamentary, sorry, the parliamentary will be worse. Nobody will accept it because whoever has the coalition has the vote. So imagine the protest that will go. Yeah, but that's what happens in the U.S. right? Right, right. And in Canada as well. I mean Canada and it's the right way. I agree. You got to do it. I agree 100%. He said, yeah, but it's a mess, but it's better than the government, the executive branch in a sense, doing it unilaterally. At least you get parliamentary discussion and debate. And he said, yes, you're right, you're wrong. And then I said, it's ridiculous that the Supreme Court cannot overturn laws that you pass. And he started to say that in America, that's the case. And I said, you don't know what you're talking about, right? The Supreme Court can and does all the time. But there was a number of things that he actually agreed with me on. And I said to him, so why don't you propose those things? And he rolled his eyes in the coalition. He can't get everything he wants. But yeah, it's Israel's a mess. And as I've said many times, this is all just a, the real issue is what kind of state should Israel be? Should it be a Jewish state or a state for Jews? And until that is settled, this is going to end constitution. Yes. And you need a constitution to formalize it and put it into writing. And you won't get that because you'd have to come to a conclusion about the world of religion in the state. And there's no way that will happen in Israel. Right. Okay. Thanks.


The best known landmark of the Berkeley campus is the Sacred Tower, better known as the Campanile. The tower rises majestically to a height of 307 feet and is surmounted by a cologne of 61 bells. We welcome you to the university and hope you enjoy the inspiring view from the tower. Yeah, this view is definitely the best. Oh, that's the best. Yeah, that's the best. That's the best. All the way over there. Yeah. Tell me how many stories this is. No. Two. Five. That's 31. What? Wrong answer. But we only walked up three stories. Oh, I didn't know. Please? Yes. Okay, let's go. And that's a student household through there. We can see it. She wants to see it. Let's go. Nine minutes. That's the perfect line up here. Maybe they won't release all the bells all at the same time. Maybe they'll start up with the small bells just to give you a warning. Yeah, a warning. I have just wanted to see me pet you. It's super well. Oh, yeah? Yes. Beautiful. Yeah. So are you from, are you local? Yeah, I actually got to start school here. Really? I see something nice too. Go bears. Yeah. Go bears.


Well, thank you, Brendan. It's a very kind of you in elaborate introduction. Just to say clearly, I'm Geriria, this is John. We come to studying China from long academic careers. I was at UCD for 30 years. John Blair was at the University of Geneva for 30 years. We were both teaching American studies because we were already importing what was quite a foreign culture in the 70s into Europe. Mae'r gwahoddiad yma yw yw ni'n mynd i'r ffrindio'r grwp o'r cyfnod i'r Chynedd yn ffwrdd i'r cyd-y-ddyl. Ond mae'n mynd i'n ffrindio'r ymddug o'r rhaglen Cymru i eu hunain yma, ac maewn i'r ysgrifennu i'r cynnig ar gyfer'r ymgrifedd, mae'n gwneud o'r ddysgu'r llunydd. Mae'n gwaith yn oed o'r ymddug o'r Ysgrifennu. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. gwaith. John Blair had been there before in 1988. He was able to guide me through it, or I think I would have packed up and left in two months, but we taught a course, invented a course, really, for our university, which is called Beijing studies, Foreign Studies University, an elite university, small, teaches every language known in the EU, including Irish, by the way, now. And it also prepares the diplomats and foreign service personnel. We taught in the School of International Studies and English, thankfully in English, to the best, reputedly, the best 200 English speakers in China. Well, it was actually 220 in our class. And the first discovery was we could not teach Western civilization there. It was so weird. It was so strange. And particularly since the Chinese students didn't know their own culture as partly the result of history, the cultural revolution, but they had been deprived. We knew more about Confucius and Zhuangzi than they did. So it was a bit like teaching French to people who didn't know what a preposition was in English or a participle. You had to begin where they began. So we teach through Chinese culture. We decided to make this our project. Over 3,000 years, a comparative course, and it's a small quarter. Initially, the course was one year, then it was reduced to one semester. So if we're given to large generalizations who understand why, two huge civilizations, if you call it the West and China, over 3,000 years. But we did see very clear patterns in both. We saw them because we had to make them the stepping stones to get from one to the other. So we were quite clear what we could teach and what we couldn't teach. There's some things you only learn very painfully, like the language. There are other things like the concepts and divides. So we also decided after the first year that, and when John Blair taught the course and I sat in the back, I didn't quite heckle, but I prepared a critique. Which, on Friday morning, was delivered over, so he very clearly took the advice of Machiavell and keep your enemies close and asked me to teach with him. So we then teach comparatively, which leads another view because we don't think quite differently in many ways. So I'm going to hand it over to John. If there's a lot of back and forth, it's because we have a slideshow in which we teach. You have a screen there, so I don't know where you can see that. This is the cover of a book published in the United States in 2013. It's the American edition of this Chinese book published in Shanghai by Fudan University Press. That's the third edition. These are the readings from the last 3,000 years or so in the West and in China. Of course, according to us, if you want to study these civilizations, we want you to buy our book. What we're going to distill for you in over rapid fashion is what we've come to understand in this process of spending part of every year in the last dozen years in China, teaching, lecturing and so on. Many of you have been to China already. You will have your own basis of experience and knowledge to test our generalizations, but let's give it a try. So it's misunderstanding China, as Brendan says. Cultural barriers, which we think are major, and we think the usual Western responses to these barriers are not helpful, and we would want to suggest how it might be done better, and you see what you think. So how is it that the West doesn't understand China? There are more than 200 books in English published every year, these years, about China. Two to 300 of them. And most of them approach China using Western categories rather than Chinese ones. Obviously, we think that's a poor idea because it creates something we call an echo chamber. If you try to understand China through Western modalities, here's what happens. You take information, quantification, causation studies, that's what we've learned how to do well in the West, and you try to make them work on China. You discover that it doesn't, because the information is not readily available or it's skewed for various Chinese reasons, and you cannot possibly understand China in terms of a single cause for any event. If you ask Western questions, you're likely to find China lacking. That is, China's not the West. Simple as that. But the books keep coming out and say China ought to become like the West as quickly as possible so we can get on with business as usual. That's not going to happen. The echo chamber effect is our phrase for trying to see China as Western or approach China in Western terms. It does not recognize the specificities of China, and hence any negotiation, any collaboration, for example with the climate crisis that's on us now, are not going to succeed. So another specific reason why the West doesn't understand China is because we, most of us, believe in universal laws and principles. We're going to talk about some of the key words that keep being repeated in Western discourse, like democracy, equality, freedom, science, causation, all of them. They do not apply in China. That is, they can be learned by Chinese as part of what they learn in school, but they do not grow out of Chinese culture. They're part of Western civilization, not natively part of Chinese civilization, according to us. So the West, as we view it after these years of trying to compare the civilizations, is primarily shaped by Judeo-Christianity. Maybe that's controversial. I don't know. If you, like many Westerners, many Irish people feel you are living in a post-Catholic world or a post-Christian world or a humanist world, you have every right to categorize your worldview as you choose. But according to us, all of the worldviews common in the West are based fundamentally on Judeo-Christianity, even for people who now consider themselves to be atheists. And we'll discuss that if you want to ask about it. It makes a big difference because in the Chinese world, as you'll see, these things do not apply. The West operates from first principles. That is, Plato got it started talking about ideal forms and people still talk about ideals, the things that ought to be. The rule of law, the rule of law is the Western way of putting it. If the Chinese use the terminology, it will be a rule of law. What's the difference? A rule of law implies there could be several different versions of rules of law that would apply, but if you have the rule of law, there's only one. And that's usually understood to be us, our particular version of that. And the universal laws don't extend to China. Many of you know the American Declaration of Independence, famous Western political document begins. We hold these truths to be self-evident. In China there are no self-evident truths. There are some observations about the nature of things which are widely held. For example, everything changes and everything is connected. But that gives you a modality for coping with the world, not for deciding how people should believe about it. So there are no self-evident truths in the Chinese world. Therefore, obviously, Western authority systems that we're used to in politics and business and elsewhere are radically different from what works in the Chinese world. So our goal, then, is to try to explain better what happens in China. Here's Michael Axler. This is a summary in a nutshell of what we don't understand about China. There is no Creator God. Obviously, that comes to us from our Judeo-Christian and even from the Greek myths. There's no Creator God. What does that imply? Who creates you then? Your parents. All the kind of reverence we Christians have for God is transferred onto the parents. They are the ones who made you. To the extent that Confucius said you cannot do anything to your body, for instance, piercet, have tattoos, because your body belongs to your parents. Now that's Confucius in traditional teaching. It led the eunuchs, for instance, to preserve those bodily parts which were taken away in Mercury so they could be buried with them. It leads now to a resistance to organ transplants. So your parents, your reverence, and all the ancestors before who gave you life, you would not be here except for the millennium of ancestors before you. You have no eternal essence or immortality. You have no self or soul that is not given to you, in this case, by others. What does that mean? Your immortality rests with your children, your ability to prolong the family. In this case, for China, it's the one child, which is one reason why so much weight is put on that child, so much pressure on that child. That is family's immortality. That is their prolongation through millennia. Also, of course, longevity is very important. In other words, no independent transcendental world. There is a kind of vague realm of spirits and ghosts and so forth, but it is not, as we see it in Judeo-Christian, it is not a city of God. There is not a civil service of angels up there, and so forth and so on. The sort of world that Milton describes in Paradise Laws. There's not a one world in all the stable first principles that can appeal to the famous painting of Raphael in the stanzas of Plato pointing upwards to truth. When we teach this, people look at it as if we start to teach the history of Christianity, we have to do it to visual things we usually do to the Sistine Chapel. In the end, this makes China sound very weird, but when you're in China, actually it's the West that seems very weird, believe me. When you're suddenly in a world in which these things are not automatic beliefs, you wonder how you're totally disoriented. This is the outcome of this. Why do we think of China as weird? In fact, since the reordering of the world over the last 10 or 20 years in which the rise of China is increasing visibility of the rest of the world, one of the things that has been evident through investigation, in this case by social psychologists, is it is not the rest of the world that is weird. It is, in fact, the West. The West is very particular in many fields. Now, I'm going to cite you. On a handout you have, it's the third item there. I have an outdated handout. We don't have it on the handout. We were posted on the website. This is weird. Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. There are very few countries in the world that have all those qualities. Some are rich, but not democratic. Some are educated, but not industrialized, and so forth. The West, in fact, according to these sociologists, there are three social scientists that made a study. It came out in 2010, very recently. It's taken off in terms of the animals of reading about the West. It says that in these domains, now I'll list them, they were able through big data for the first time to look at huge studies in social psychology across all sorts of civilizations. One was an anthropologist working in small civilizations. They thought the following domains are in contest. The concept of fairness, the concept of equality, the concept of cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential reasoning. We'll see that in a minute, how people form categories. Moral reasoning, very different in the rest of the world. Reasoning styles, very different in the rest of the world. Self-concepts and related motivations about who you are and what you want out of the world. And visual perception. So the rest of the world, in contrast to the West, sees the world literally very differently. This could be established, as I say, through psychological tests. Now I'm going to give you one test which has been given widely, in this case by an American who is cited here, Richard Nisbet. A very interesting thinker, a social psychologist called The Geography of Thought. And the conclusion of these Western ways cannot be privileged for the rest of the world. Because traditional Asian ways which China shares with the rest of the world, most of the traditional Asian ways of thinking and acting. So in fact, it is not China that is weird at all. It is we in the West who are most particular. But the difficulty is, of course, is others aimed to become rich, say, in Brazil, in Mexico or in China. That we also think they're going to become weird. That is democratic. And that isn't necessarily so. The two do not follow. Now I'm going to give you a test to show you how one arrives at these presumptions. And I'm going way back to when you were four, if you can remember that far back, some of you. This is a test that was given by Richard Nisbet to four-year-olds in America, a wide variety of them. One group of Americans, one group of Asian children and one group of Asian American children. And because they were only four and could not read, he had to show them pictures. So he showed them four pictures, one of hen, one of cow, one of grass. And he said to them, please tell us one by one which two belong most comfortably together. So I'm going to try it here. Okay, friends, which two belong more comfortably together? Does the hen belong to the grass? How many would vote for that? No takers. Does the hen and the cow belong? Is there specifically just one link? Just one link. If you had to put the two together in one go, which would you put the hen and the cow together? Okay, there's one person. And who would put the cow and the grass? Well, gosh, I know you're Irish. We all don't cows eat grass in America, they don't know that anymore. They keep them in birds, you know. Well, what he discovered, of course, was the western. Then we only have one westerner here, fully acculturated. First of all he discovered, you must realize by age four you're fully a member of your culture. You will not change in the way you think. You can think in the other way, but you're effectively in culture. The western way of thinking, immediately, the four-year-olds, this is amazing. Had an invisible concept up there in the cloud called an animal. Now none of us have seen an animal. It doesn't exist. We've only seen instances of animals. In this case, a cow and a hen. The western children were terribly sophisticated in their reasoning. That's very interesting. This transcendental world is being built by four-year-olds. This cathedral we carry around with us of first principles and ideas and categories. All in hierarchies. Where is the Chinese and the Asian children saw them and saw things? Sorry. Where is that graphic? It's not coming up. What is wrong with this? What I want to do is show you a circle which should have been there. I don't know where it's gone. Of the cow eating the grass, producing milk which feeds more cows. You all know this circle. There's twice as many cows. There are people now in the washroom. We know this. But in other words, it goes way back to learning the mother tongue. Language is a key here.  Look a bus. They're both transporter machines or whatever. They enforce that grouping through categories. They point to objects and nouns. Or that is a teddy. Hand mummy the teddy. Whereas parents from East Asia, mothers in particular, also grandparents, reinforce relationships. They don't care whether it's a teddy bear or a toy truck. Give to mummy, I give to you. They teach verbs. They teach exchange. Here's a picture that maybe speaks more than the words. The western mother trying to teach her baby to read. It may be six, eight, nine months. Look at the distance. She's holding up an object.  Not with his body.  Back and forth. What is the emphasis there? A world of nouns versus a verb. We live in a world of objects and nouns versus a world of verbs. So we have cultural divides here that are very large from a very early age. So this slide just tries to summarize what's been implicit in our focus on acculturation, which is a condiment in anthropological emphasis. How do cultures get passed along without changing very much from one generation to another in China and the West? Even though there are enormous numbers of changes going on in the world, and in the world, and in the economy, and so on, the mentalities don't change that much. So the Western world is focused on categories, principles, oriented to systems, very detailed and very abstract. And children learn to get along, because they want to talk with us, their parents. And we call on transcendental universal values maybe because we've had centuries of the West dominating the rest of the world, coming to believe that the West does things is automatically the best for all human beings. Highly doubtful, but in any case a common assumption on the part of Western people. And finally, if there are hierarchies involved, we so emphasize the notion of equality, that the hierarchies are in the other world, the transcendental world. In China, quite the opposite. It is oriented to this world, that the values are focused on relationships in context, very concrete values. There are pointing to more and more complex interactions between people, families, clans, villages, ultimately a nation. And finally, there are many hierarchies, but they're in this world, not in some other world. So, if you take that, those fundamental cultural differences in orientation, you begin to think about governance. This is the way Western governance seems to work for most countries today. It presumes really from the first principles, and some of them are words that we are familiar with already, the language that represents them, and these are Judeo-Christian in origin, as articulated through the Enlightenment a couple of centuries ago, and the key words, you all know them, I think you probably use them. Democracy, equality, freedom, individuals, there are others, science, rationality, reason, so on. And in our world, debate and confrontation is considered constructive because individuals are competing with each other to define what is true or worth believing. In the Chinese world, confrontation is destructive because it challenges the solidarity which is presumed to be most important to be maintained. So, in the West, it's okay to confront and have differences of opinion because it's an impersonal process. It is a principal process. Debate is our standard word for it. Debate is very difficult for the Chinese, and if there's time after... Do you want to tell the Chinese professor's story about disagreeing with him publicly? I think the story about your teaching your class how to debate is more... Okay, well I have to teach my class how to debate it, but it's very, very difficult. You're not both debating. Right, right. Who's going to give the example? Right, well, I'll start. They didn't want to debate because they would lose faith if they disagreed with each other publicly in the class. I want to teach them critical thinking. That's how we think critically. They were even more concerned when I said I'll give you a controversial topic, but you won't be free to say what you're going to debate for or against it. I'm going to throw a coin. You prepare both sides and be prepared. In the end, they said that's not acceptable. I said, okay. I divided the room up and I said, next class you're going to debate and the proposition was China's becoming too westernised.  Two days later we met up and the debate went as smooth as cream. They were all very polite to each other. They were all so forth and so on. I said, what's going on? Oh, we prepared this. They rigged the whole meeting. Because they didn't want to disagree with each other. But then when I got them beneath the formal debate there was almost blood on the floor. In that one minute. So it is clear that the trouble is that if you disagree with people in China, it's true here too. If you disagree with people, they lose face or respect. I learned never after a talk if I was asked to comment on a talk because you often are in academic circles to say what Professor Wong said is very interesting but I think I would take him up on two or three points here. You never say that. What you say is he's very interesting but maybe I'd like to supplement it with a few observations. You never disagree with a Chinese person and I'm sure as I say that Ireland's very much the same. The idea of our assumption about governance in China is that it is highly centralized and top-down, which of course it is, but we assume that that means it's inflexible. That's wrong. It's extremely flexible. It is in constant negotiation on different levels and it's very complicated especially for outsiders. It does depend on being respectful towards superiors. It's within the family and beyond the family that is probably the most widespread and important continuing value in Chinese life. Therefore we assume that the authorities are in control and control means suppression and repression and indeed citizens have few ways to come back against the authorities and indeed they do not have the checks and balances of western modes of governance. That does not mean that they are free or real. It does not mean that those in authority have the power which we presume we would have if we didn't have to stand for elections and things of that kind. Here is a western stereotype of Chinese governance. I think you recognize this comes from the Simpsons cartoon. It's your children and grandchildren that watch it even if you don't. The background here is from a Chinese poster. We have the three representatives of People's Liberation Army, and there are some the factories are laid behind and the robotic soldiers in the front lower right implying that that's the way the Chinese function. Only robotically following the orders that are given from above. Of course Homer Simpson is gagged he can't possibly express himself and that looks bad. He's being marched off to prison I think. The western stereotype of the Cold War vision of China. Here on the other hand is a vision in the other direction which is well damn.  Which has plenty of problems of its own. Of course you recognize this is focused on American politics, the symbols of the two major parties battering each other, neither giving up, neither making progress and governance as a process ceases to function adequately under those conditions. So if you were speaking to a Chinese audience this would be a perfect example of why China should not attempt to move in any western democratic direction because this is what is likely to happen. The next slide is really a question of if you move into the Chinese world what kind of an image would you select to represent governance as it works in China? We selected a very controversial image it's been controversial ever since it arrived by Hong Yong Yu some of you will know this. The Chinese here is a very familiar saying to anyone in China Zhang Yi Zhe Rian Bi Zhe Rian which means one eye opened, one eye closed. I'm sure that we in Ireland recognize this. It is only the wing, whether it's winking or whether in fact this was shot in my mouth this came out near the end of the revolution, was highly controversial. Is this a critique? Everything in art is regarded as political. I mean there's no separate political sphere. In fact the owl image goes back to the book of O to the book of songs which is extremely ancient Confucius cites it and it was taken as political then because the owl was a raptor. This was shown to Mao everyone was prepared to go out and prison the people and the artists in particular and Mao looked at and shrugged his shoulders and said everyone knows that I will sleep with one eye open, one eye closed and in fact he's right.  I mean they're also hunted. Now why is this an important image if you want to look at the cultural debate in China? It partly has to do with the way that the systems work or don't work and we as I say are quite familiar with the way. The owl is a metaphor clearly and it's how to preserve face. If you're very concerned a central concern in all dealings with China is preserving the other person's face or respect. Why is that? The only self you have in this world is face. It's not the image you construct for yourself. It's the image that others give you. It is the respect that others give you.  If you don't get that you do not exist. It's a kind of social suicide not to have face. The saying is a person without face in China is like a tree without bark. The tree still stands but without bark the tree will die. Everyone who knows about trees knows that. This is one eye open in the publicly visible events which you can't deny but one eye closed to whatever interferes with the appearances to avoid conflict and trouble. It's often ambiguous situations where you have a choice. Let me give you an example. When we lectured together it's a good thing because I can keep my eyes open when John Blair is talking to the audience and they being students of course the phones come out they start texting or maybe the computer goes up I caught one looking at friends now there were very few these being very attentive Chinese graduate students but it does happen right.  If I do that I lose face because it means I'm calling attention to people who are not paying respect to me and therefore it becomes self-evident that some respect is not being shown to me so I go down a bit whereas if I ignore it and catch them after class you don't ever do that again right or avoid if you don't come to class. This is the way one maintains a certain authority we all know if we've been in positions of authority either as parents or teachers or professional people if there are certain occasions you just say forget it it's not worth calling other occasions you think I can't do that. I can't do that. Protecting not only yourself and your own appearance but those others in your your guanchi. Your guanchi are your networks but they are your networks of people who trust and who are loyal to you. It begins with your family where it's presumed and moves outwards. Now once guanchi is very important you move around with this kind of mob if you want but an example of how guanchi loylties work this is a network of loylties and trust in other words of exchange. In guanchi you do something for someone they do something for you you're always very careful in China to pay back eventually and not as punctilious as Japanese in keeping count of what you owe them but you do owe them so if someone helps you out you take them out to lunch you always lead with gifts everyone knows that when you go to China. So there is a famous incident of Confucius in the Annex who is being visited in his village by the governor of Shure. The governor of Shure is very proud he says I come from the you can't teach me anything about moral righteousness Confucius I come from the most moral village in the whole country. Confucius looks at him and says really and he says yes I'll show you how moral we are if a father steals a sheep his son will report him to the authorities and Confucius is horrified he says what? He said that would never happen in our village in our village the father covers his son and the son for the father now to us that spells when I open when I closed or is it loyalty that leads to what we call corruption which is by the way our corruption is not the same as other people's corruption as you all know if you've done any business in China you know we have a corrupt little society here they have a corrupt big society there what is corruption in this case loyalty is the primary rule that you are always low but from feint compliance is necessary in what pretends to be a top down centralized system which isn't really in control now feint I mean strategic compliance you make the gesture of compliance and go ahead and do what you want and every Chinese person is very strategic in every decision they take they are no understand how to game the system it is not regarded as immoral it is what you do in a rigid top down hierarchical system to get by you know and it involves a great deal of intelligence that's why strategy is so highly developed in the Chinese kind of tradition people like Sun Tzu didn't come from nowhere they came from a tradition which the emperors word was law and you had to learn how to work around it it's a work around so it isn't necessarily corruption it is you make the gesture everyone understands the gesture and lets it go and that's very important in terms of governance so we move on to a big issue power in China power in China of course is not centralized as we all know first of all is so un-centralized that there is a dual system of governance in place not even our Chinese students knew about this we managed to get a document that set this out every position of authority in China everything even in our university has a shadow we wouldn't even call it a shadow because it's a twin and every state position has a party official every party official has a state person they watch each other they make decisions together they are their checks and balances so in our university the vice dean, the dean, everyone the president for instance the party secretary they are permanently in our university over the last 12 years the presidents have changed three or four times the party secretary is always the same he and the president arrive at decisions about the university together so it's actually a Leninist model and it's unchanged since some people would say unreformed but it's unchanged it clearly works also powered structures that anyone who's worked in China knows this are very diffused they're diffused for many reasons a lot of delegations to local authorities are highly localised which means that centralized mandates become spotty implementation becomes a difficulty and how they're implemented is often left up to the authorities and if the mandate from central power is ambiguous how do you follow it? also influence is a very important thing in Yuan's Guangxi for instance in the army we know someone whose brother-in-law it was a general in the PLN that doesn't mean his influence is lessened we're told once a commanding officer always a commanding officer so any important decisions are being made in his branch of the army in Shanghai a phone call is made what do you think about this what should I say to the committee so influence is very hard to track what does this lead up to the result is very hard to assign accountability for any decision made first of all it would be made by consensus with at least two people there are no clear lines of command it's not a military structure it's not robotic as the westerners think in fact it's far more flexible and far more sophisticated and far more complicated as everything gets in China very complicated very quickly because you're not dealing with one person you're dealing with a Guangxi we're making a lot of decisions behind your back this is where we lead to how then do you govern such a country at the very top of the people's republic is the standing committee of the public there are now seven men they are presumed to disagree freely with each other but none of these debates ever surface there is a decision made by some kind of consensus among the seven and that establishes the position which is broadcast for everyone it's only rare in recent decades when controversy on the level of the standing committee surfaces the last time was a Tiananmen incident of 1989 which was so embarrassing to the authorities in China that they tried to cover it up ever since so there is conflict but we don't know what it is because it is for reasons of face kept out of sight because if it were to become public as it would in the west sooner or later that would lead to the loss of face the loss of credibility of the party the whole edifice would be threatened so criticism overt criticism is very dangerous and is very often suppressed long prison sentences or whatever so the governance in China as it works works through seen heart mind the poor translators who go from Chinese to English have a problem because in English there is no heart mind word a translator of this word has to use a mind word or a heart word something about feelings or something about thoughts this is true in all western languages because for centuries now we've presumed we believe in our weird way that you can separate your thinking processes from your feeling process Chinese don't believe that it's all connected you can't think without feeling you can't feel without thinking that's what it means to be a human being so governance then works through human nature in this way the greatest fear is a feeling matter a the thinking matter to it's Luan chaos the most recent time of extreme chaos and Luan was the great cultural revolution no one we've met in China is interested in going back to that period whether they're on the governing side or the side of the governed they say this was a terribly destructive because all the structures we came around to allow us to live were brought into question so the mantra of government in that world is control control control it doesn't have control but it keeps insisting that it does and it's only naive westerners who believe that kind of statement and the control the attempts at control are exerted through carrot and stick both sides their promises of prosperity and stability national greatness space program nine dash line in the South China Sea many recent instances or threats threats if you don't follow the line established by the authorities there will be poverty there will be instability Luan there will be punishment and shame for individuals who deviate too seriously too visibly from the public line so scene becomes translated as the feelings of the Chinese people as William Callaghan who spoke here some weeks ago has written sometimes there are statements from the foreign ministry in China translated into English as the feelings of the Chinese people are hurt by some western diplomatic initiative that sounds silly from the western point of view because we don't think feelings are part of diplomatic interactions but in the Chinese world because China is so central to the idea of human nature the feelings are intimately connected with the reasoning processes that go on so in negotiating with China in all kinds of levels the west typically evokes first principles of physics and I think you've heard metaphors like distraction leverage pressure these are Newtonian physics which went out for the physicists centuries ago but still seems dominant in western thinking about how you manage the world you try to have causes and effects and outcomes and it is hopeless as an approach to a complex world like China it's not useful to analyze complex situation in terms of single causes or predictable outcomes because there are many causes and there are multiple outcomes simultaneously at the same time China instead evokes personal relations the metaphors that they use are based on respect the negotiations follow Guangxi networks if you'd like to ask a question about Zhou Yong Kang and Bo Xilai we'll have time to show how that works in the networks of influence and hierarchies within the Chinese world the one thing that the west and China have as a shared tradition which is the greatest source of hope we see in the negotiations to come is pragmatism that is the common emphasis not on ideology, not on abstract principles which the westerners tend to believe in but nobody else tends to believe in them but rather concrete problems which maybe can be eased by negotiating some particular concrete specific non-abstract change in the way things are done if we can be sufficiently pragmatic together we have a chance of coping with the climate crisis if we don't we have no chance and the focus then is on we as human beings not just we as westerners which is where we began and we as human beings are now in the same boat there's the boat and you can see that it is of course a western boat because it's way down by western ideals and western power structures denial of climate change economic growth pdf rises in pdf no matter what despite the flaws in pdf wealth, keep our wealth I have the greatest wealth here in that elsewhere the rights as in human rights very complex issue worth commenting on in consumerism and all of these the weight on all of these the end of the boat where most of the people are out of the water but the man on top is saying, why don't you row otherwise we're going to drown and of course this boat is not going to escape that that is where we end this is our greatest preoccupation right now we need to understand we need to understand each other we have reached a critical point on this earth that if we don't the two biggest emitters are US and China right now of CO2 emissions China is even overtaking the EU now in terms of per capita emissions if we can't sit down and talk in concrete things about what's going to happen in the next 20 years we are indeed as a species we're in for a very rough time and that means our future and the future generations but we have to find common ground and we cannot have common ground if we insist in our arrogant way on them doing it the western way we have to find a common human solidarity and I think that actually the Chinese way of understanding this is a heart mind issue this isn't just a mind issue and it is a matter of one's heart mind it is a matter of one's posterity and then it is a matter of using all the cultural resources that we have in both civilizations to try to bring and we do have a long pragmatic tradition even America does of actually sitting down and saying this is the situation now let's just get on with seeing what common ground we have so I'm sure you have a lot of questions because we have covered a lot of ground


I, C.K. Spray, I, Logan Stoy, I, Henry Ney, I, Danielle Williams, I, Jeffrey Dupre, I, Katherine Dupre, and do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies born into messes that will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I will take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.


Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Dorit Bergen and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors.  Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. So if you would like to learn more about the sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house please meet near the large glass window on the left side of the auditorium immediately after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service however because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment our child haven and commons are excellent places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas and speaking of noise this would be a good time to turn off all those electronic devices that might cause a disturbance. I'd like now to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. Our lay minister this morning is Tom Boykoff.  Please note the announcements in the red floors insert in your order of service which describes upcoming events of the society and I have two special announcements. Last year over 120 people joined us for a June evening with the Mallards so we are doing it again this year. The game is this coming Thursday June 4th and tickets are $15 per person which includes all you can eat and drink at our tailgate grill out at Warner Park Shelter. It's Star Wars theme night and children of all ages are welcome. Contact Jean Sears for tickets and feel free to invite your friends who are not members. Today we are honored to have a guest music director here with us. Martha Swisher is completing her ninth year as music director at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist congregation in Oak Park Illinois. Marty is a popular voice teacher, choral conductor, clinician and notorious music instigator who empowers singers to delve deeper into the joy of music making. We are so grateful to have her here with us today. Again welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. This is a Souto song from South Africa that I learned two years ago when a group of music educators from all over the world went to Cape Town and learned all of these about 32 songs in 10 days. And with that we were instructed to never write down the music, to never use our Western notation to put some of these words down and to carry on the oral tradition. This song is a song, Kanalimona, about honoring, in this case I'm using the word weina, a man. And in this case we're honoring the man that is our music director here at FUS. You can always also sing this at a wedding and you can sing it about your bride or your room or your partner or your dog. But we are singing it that way for our music director. Kanalimona! We come together today seeking a reality beyond our narrow selves that binds us in compassion, love and understanding to other human beings and to the interdependent web of all living things. May our hearts and minds be opened to the power and the insight that we have together the scattered threads of our experience and help us remember the wholeness of which we are a part. Please rise now in body or in spirit for our chalice lighting and join me in unison with the words printed in your order of service. We light our flaming chalice to illuminate the world we seek. In search for truth may we be just. In search for justice may we be loving. And in loving may we find peace. And now I invite you to please turn and greet your neighbors. I am for all ages and I would like to invite any kids that we have here with us today to please come forward. Come on up. I'm going to gather around because I've got some pictures to show you with this story. So did you know that there is a version of Time Magazine for Kids? I didn't know that at all, but I ran across it yesterday when I was looking for a story to tell you about Nelson Mandela who we will be singing about in a little while. So I wanted to give you some background of who this man was so that you know who we're singing to. This is an article written by Justin Chan and a few extra details were thrown in by me. Nelson Mandela was known for ending a system called apartheid. And I'm wondering have any of you ever heard that word before, apartheid? So apartheid was a system that was similar in some ways to segregation here in the United States. You don't know what segregation is. Segregation was a system in which men and women of color were separated from white people. We're not allowed to participate in society and in schools and things. Precisely, yeah. So that was how things went here in the United States, but something very similar happened in a country called South Africa to a man named Nelson Mandela and to other people in his country. And so Nelson Mandela was a black man who fought against apartheid and was locked up for 27 years for his work trying to free his non-whites in his country from their oppressors. Now I'm wondering did any of you see the big box that's out there in the commons? That really, really big box. So that box is a kind of jail cell that people are sometimes locked up in here in Dane County when they're put into something called solitary confinement. And that basically means that a person doesn't get to spend any time at all with other people, which is really, really hard and lonely, right? So Nelson Mandela, who lived very far away from Wisconsin in a country called South Africa, was also, though, thrown into prison just like some people here when he was working against apartheid. And he was sometimes put into solitary confinement just like some people here sometimes are. This was a way of trying to break a person's spirit, but his spirit was not broken. Instead, after 27 years there, when he was finally released, he became South Africa's first democratically elected president. Our own president of the United States, President Obama, described him as a hero for the world. Nelson Mandela was born on July 18th, 1918. So here's a picture of him as a little boy. And if you want to pass that around, you can all look at it. Put it right here. And he grew up in a small village, herding cattle. And when he was nine years old, he was adopted by and sent to live with his father's friend, who was a prosperous clan chief. In school, he learned about African history and his ancestors' struggles against discrimination. And he wanted to help his countrymen. So in 1948, when the government introduced apartheid, he realized that there were not very many opportunities left for the country's majority non-white population. And in response, he traveled throughout South Africa and encouraged people to take part in nonviolent demonstrations against the government's racial segregation policies. And he was arrested for doing that work. And again, as I said before, he was locked up in jail. But when he got out, he was then elected as the country's first democratically elected president. In 1994, for the first time in South African history, non-whites were allowed to vote in democratic elections. Mandela was elected president by an overwhelming majority. While in office, he worked to promote, to improve housing, education, thank you, and economic opportunities for the country's largely black population. Even though he had gone during his life from being a cattle herder in a small village to the president of the country, he still remembered the wisdom that he had learned as a cattle herder. In 1994, the year he was elected as South Africa's president, he described leadership in this way. When you want to get a herd to move in a certain direction, you stand back, in the back with a stick. Then a few of the more energetic cattle move to the front and the rest of the cattle follow. You are really guiding them from behind. That is how a leader should work. Mandela stepped down from president in 1999, after only one term as president. And over the years before his death, he continued working to promote peace around the world. What does what mean? Term. So a term is a period of time that a person spends in a leadership position. And so we like to have those terms be short so that many people can participate in leadership. So this is what he looked like closer to the end of his life. So we're going to continue our time together for just a little while longer now as we're gonna teach you the song about Nelson Mandela and we'll later be then singing that song as you go out to your summer fun classes if you're gonna do that. But for now, stay here. We're gonna learn the song together. Good morning. I'm going to teach you this song that actually is not a folk song. It's a pop song in South Africa. And as Nelson Mandela was getting more and more ill and his health was failing, the country wanted him to know that they were sending him love and support and honoring him with the song. So the young people actually, a college group from the University of South Africa got together and they started to make the song. I'm going to ask you to sing some words that are very different from the words that we use in its Osa and it's a part of Nelson Mandela's language that he was speaking when he was growing up. Can you make that sound? Everyone please with me like this. And right behind that click, there's a vowel O, O sa, O sa. So you click and you open to that O, O sa. Yeah, it's really important that they have the clicks. It took me a long time to practice to do that in order to do that for you now. But I think it's really, again, in the spirit of authenticity and honoring Nelson, we wanna try it, right? We wanna try it. Now I'm going to ask you to, this is a call and response song, so I'm going to say, Nelson Mandela and you're going to repeat. Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela. And here's the tricky part. Repeat after me. Ahona, ahona, yaswana, yaswana, leena. Yaswana, leena, leena. Those G's are just like H's. So it's ahona, ahona, yaswana, leena. Leena, yaswana, yaswana, leena. Yaswana, yaswana, leena. Nelson, Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela, yaswana, yaswana, leena. Do it again. Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela. Yaswana, yaswana, leena. And the next thing that will happen is look at that next word, that long word that starts with an R. Roli, plop, plop. Roli, plop, plop. Do you hear that air coming back? Plop, plop. That was his name, his given name. Instead of Nelson, it was Roli, plop, plop. Interesting. Roli, plop, plop. Roli, plop, plop. Ahona, yaswana, leena. And so we're going to sing more of that. But I wanted you to hear the teaching of that. I'll take you out to your classes then on this song as everyone in the congregation sings it. So if you need to go to your summer fun classes today, which is summer fun, you're free to go do that now as we sing you out, okay? Thank you. Nelson Mandela, Mandela. I can bishop former anti-apartheid activist and social rights activist. 25 years ago, people could be excused for not knowing much or doing much about climate change. Today, we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction. We are already feeling the effects. This week in Berlin, scientists and public representatives have been weighing up radical options for curbing emissions contained in the third report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The bottom line is that we have 15 years to take the necessary steps. The horse may not have bolted, but it's well on its way out the stable door. Who can stop it? Well, we can, you and I. And it is not just that we can stop it. We have a responsibility to do so. It is a responsibility that begins with God commanding the first human inhabitants in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it. To keep it, not abuse it, not destroy it. The taste of success in our world gone mad is measured in dollars and francs and rupees and yen. Our desire to consume any and everything of perceivable value, to extract every precious stone, every ounce of metal, every drop of oil, every tuna in the ocean, every rhinoceros in the bush, knows no bounds. We live in a world dominated by greed. We have allowed the interests of capital to outweigh the interests of human beings and our earth. Throughout my life, I have believed that the only just response to injustice is what Mahatma Gandhi termed passive resistance. During the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, using boycotts, divestment and sanctions, and supported by our friends overseas, we were not only able to apply economic pressure on an unjust state, but also serious moral pressure. And this second reading is called The Return of Earth She by Christopher Sims. The earth has returned. She is living, breathing, realizing her breath was leaving. She was needing us to remember her worth, to recognize her worth all over again. We used to be her friends. We used to help her heal us. Help her heal us. Help her heal us. And then she lost all trust and faith in us. She has returned, mad, saddened. However, she's empowered by this new commitment we're signing on to. She wants you, me, and the rest of human beings who populate this planet to never take her for granted again, to never take her for granted again. If she is dying, then who wins? If earth is dying, who really wins? She is providing for species. We live in a cycle that provides for one another. You and I, we are earth sisters and brothers. We must take care of each other. Her lungs are smothered with toxins, radioactive chemicals, and plastic. She cannot digest.  We have polluted earth to death. Unless we take a step forward and reverse our damaging effects, our next steps should be radical movements that peacefully change things. We have the ability. Earth is alive.  I want my earth back. I want my earth back. I want to take each of our solutions, then spin them into 180 degree revolutions. We all have effective contributions. We need to turn our passion into action execution, drum circles, live spoken word theater, or even getting arrested.  Immediate action is needed. What about our children? What about future generations? Who is going to save the lungs of the ecosystem? Toxic water slaughters the frogs and the fish. Imagine how they wished we didn't pollute their habitats. Clean water, clean air. Imagine that. We need our earth back. She returns. We need our earth back. It is her turn. South Africans would communicate with each other, sort of in secret. They would do it through the guys up singing at church. But what they meant very often, when they said, Lord, we praise you, or Lord, we bless you, but we are joining in our religious solidarity is we need each other. We short each other up. Because they couldn't be criticized for communicating at church. The messages and the translation. Oh, you don't see a translation that you see. Lord, we praise you, we rejoice in you. Messiah, we hail you. This was a secret language of reaching out to each other. Help me, help each other. We can do this. And so when you hear these words of the Christian faith, it is very much the underlying soothing speak of the South Africans. Maudimaria hoboka, the choirs will sing for you now. And this is what a soothing song they sang during some of the unrest. Religious studies major and later a seminarian. I would have first heard the word ubuntu in a classroom somewhere. Though it is as much a cultural and political term as it is a religious one. And perhaps I did learn about ubuntu in a classroom. And it simply went in one ear and right out the other as so many things sadly do. So no, I did not first hear the word ubuntu in a religious studies context. Instead for a long time, I thought ubuntu was simply a Linux based open source operating system used by people much cooler and much nerdier than me. Later I came across the word again when reading a transcript of President Obama's eulogy for Nelson Mandela, following Mandela's death in December of 2013. While I had known that ubuntu was not an English word and even had a vague sense that it might be an African concept, that was about as knowledgeable as I was on the topic. But there in that eulogy, President Obama put the word ubuntu into its cultural context for me as well as traced the connection between the concept of ubuntu and the anti-apartheid work of Nelson Mandela. He said, there is a word in South Africa ubuntu, a word that captures Mandela's greatest gift. His recognition that we are all bound together in ways that are invisible to the eye. There is a oneness to humanity that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others and caring for those around us. Now ubuntu is a concept that belongs to the people of South Africa, not to us. But it reminds me a little bit of our Unitarian Universalist Seventh Principle, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are apart. Another confession, when I used to think of the justice implications of each of the principles, I used to think that the Seventh Principle calls us primarily to the work only of environmental justice, not of social justice. You see, I used to think of the interdependent web as, say, the universe or the planet or the biosphere or the ecosystem. And even though the principle flat out states that we human beings are a part of the interdependent web, I nevertheless used to think of it as something outside of human culture. I thought nature and culture were separate things. There are some cultural reasons why this is so. Here in the United States, we often place nature and culture into a system of binary opposites. When we are stressed out or overworked or just caught up in the vast pace of modern life, we often need to get away from society and into nature.  Whatever we do, we try to leave the cultural spaces of our hectic modern lives, get away and immerse ourselves one way or another in nature. So there is an implication here that nature in its purest form is untouched by human cultures or that human cultures are in some sense unnatural. We talk frequently about what is natural and what is man-made, as though human beings and the things we produce are not part of the natural world, unlike birds and bees or their nests and honey. Yes, we can produce some pretty nasty things with our technology, but the natural world is not all sweet apples and fragrant lilacs. It has its venoms, poisons and toxins. Yet these are seen as natural because they were not made by human beings, while household cleaners, plastics and pollution are seen as unnatural. Yet in reality, we human beings are just nature's biggest, most selfish polluters. And that has serious implications for those of us who still insist that social justice and environmental justice are completely separate things. If nature is in culture and culture is in nature, then the well-being of human beings is an environmental concern and the well-being of the earth and it's other than human life is a social justice concern. I'm on an email list for a national anti-racist network called Showing Up for Racial Justice. A few days ago, anti-racist organizer, Chris Crass, posted an interview he conducted with Reverend Ashley Horan of the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Action, sorry, Social Justice Alliance. In the interview, Ashley described her theology of salvation by interconnection, one in which we are all born with inherent worth and dignity from a wellspring of love that desires our interdependence and health and has endowed us with the power to be agents of that salvation right here, right now, on this earth. In organizer language, I'm trying to get people to understand collective liberation and to sense both the blessing and the responsibility of claiming a belief that none of us is free until all of us are free, end quote. I've got to tell you that when I read those words, I felt a sense of exhilaration because that's very much what I believe too and it is part of what I'm trying to do as a person to make a commitment to keep anti-racism central to my life and my ministry. And yet in preparing this sermon, I found myself thinking also of the implications of such a theology of salvation by interconnection for work at the intersection of environmental and social justice. Our first principle refers to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. But what if we also affirmed and promoted the inherent worth and dignity of every plant, animal, and ecosystem of our planet? Our second principle calls for justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. But we can go further and also choose to relate to other than human beings and our planet with justice, equity, and compassion. Our sixth principle names the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. And for all need not mean just all people, but all beings. But what does that look like? What does it look like when we allow our seventh principle, the respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part to inform how we live out the other six principles? It looks a bit like the way Desmond Tutu has applied the principles of Ubuntu and anti-apartheid work to the problem of climate change. Again, Desmond Tutu is a retired South African, Anglican bishop, former anti-apartheid activist and social rights activist. In an article titled ECO Ubuntu, he wrote, Ubuntu emerged from the African experience of long habitation in this place, this land. The African environment is uniquely challenging to human survival. Humans don't survive or thrive as individuals. We survive or thrive as communities. Ubuntu merely acknowledges that we are, biologically, not individual beings. We evolve as social beings. This is the literal meaning of the expression which defines Ubuntu. A person is a person through people. He goes on to say, as the circle of Ubuntu widens to include all people, and Ubuntu is taken up as a guiding ethic by people of all cultures, one might ask, how wide does the circle go and how deep? Does it include animals? Does it include plants, earthworms, soil? Ubuntu rose as relatively small groups of people cooperated to survive in a challenging environment. But in this time, when technology and growing human numbers have changed the face of the earth, humans no longer have to fight nature. Nature has been defeated, succumbed. We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction event caused by humans, with other species disappearing 100,000 times faster than the natural background extinction rate. We also face planetary crisis of climate change, water availability, and pollution. This suggests a need for change in our relation to the web of life, for a new gentleness and appreciation. We are totally dependent on the ecosystems which support us. So to see these ecosystems as us, as a system that we are embedded in as an extension of our being is pragmatic and accurate. If Ubuntu encourages us to cultivate and care for ourselves, for our family as in our brethren, so too should we care for our larger extended body, the bush, soil, air, water, and the wetlands. Again, Ubuntu is a South African concept, deeply embedded in its land, its people, and its history. We do not share that history. But Desmond Tutu's argument really resonates with me and my growing understanding of our seventh UU principle. And I wonder if it resonates with you too. We UUs want to create a better world, a more just, compassionate, and sustainable world. A world with peace, liberty, and justice for all, community. A world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. Our communities are never only human. For instance, our pets are part of our communities. Your family, like mine, may include pets who depend on you for food, shelter, and affection, who need you to take their needs into account as you move through the world and make decisions about how to live your life. As a case in point, my partner, Smoky, and I will be moving to Raleigh, North Carolina here soon. One thing we have been taking into consideration as we plan how to move is how best to transport our little Calico cat, Devi, to her new home with maximum comfort and minimal stress. For us, yes, but mostly for her. Why? Because she is part of our family. She's part of our community. But our communities are not more than just human because of our pets, but also our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our shops, doctor's offices, are all situated in the ecosystems, however disrupted, that include local wildlife, however displaced. Meanwhile, the quality of our food depends upon the health and wellbeing of the living creatures we must eat. This is true whether we are eating healthy and ethical diets or simply doing the best we can with limited time and money. We are healthier and the earth is healthier when the plant and animal life we eat was raised in healthy ways. And the very air we breathe, pause for a moment and breathe it in and feel its weight in your chest. That air was created by the life on this earth. And even our bodies, our ecosystems supporting and being supported by countless microorganisms. Creepy though it may be to pause and think about that for a few moments. Yuck, but cool and amazing. Human beings are relational beings, always tied to other life around us no matter how self-reliant or alienated we may perceive ourselves to be. If we live our lives in ways that preserve our privilege at the top of the food chain, while oppressing or destroying other life, we not only harm other lives in our planet, but also ourselves. But if we make decisions that promote the well-being of all life instead of attempting to look out for the needs only primarily of human beings or only primarily of the environment, in the end all people and all lives on this planet benefit. In cry of the earth, cry of the poor, Leonardo Boff argues that a community that recognizes and promotes the full flourishing of all its members requires an extended and enriched democracy that is centered on life and regards all members of the community, humans, plants and animals as new citizens, sharing and participating in the great common life. Creating such a great common life requires us to enter more fully into relationship with those we previously considered voiceless and powerless. But how can we best allow the needs of other than human life to guide our conscience and our actions? This requires the ability to learn to listen to and honor a wisdom that may seem alien to us. That is alien to us because it literally is not human. The task may seem impossible or even nonsensical at first. After all, non-human beings cannot speak to us in the way that human beings speak to one another and cannot tell us what they need or argue their case with us as people can. Yet this is not to say that it is impossible or nonsensical to try to listen to the best of our ability, even recognizing that we may not always get it right. Leonardo Boff had some wisdom to share here too. He touched upon how we might discern what nature is communicating about its own identity, ways and needs, claiming that the entire universe and each being as tiny as it might be is filled with history. They can tell their story and deliver their message that speaks of the grandeur and majesty of creation. Other theorists working at the intersections between ecology and liberation theology argue that indigenous people all over the world learn through generations of direct observation of and relationship with the natural world. What is best for a given plant or animal species and for other life, human and non-human life, that is in relationship with it? Exercising our right of conscience and participating in those democratic processes that I've mentioned in previous sermons and that Leonardo Boff was talking about, those processes create communities that are life-giving and life-sustaining for all members of the community and requires deep listening and deep relationships. If we can learn to hear what, say, local wildlife is telling us about what our affections and decisions do and how they can and should affect them, then we can learn to listen to other human beings too. If you take one thing away from you today, take this. We live as you are all well aware in a world marked by extreme environmental devastation and near environmental collapse, as well as the oppression and exclusion of billions of people, many who disproportionately suffer the worst consequences of environmental devastation. I believe our seven Unitarian Universalist principles are strong enough to guide us in responding as people of faith and as citizens in many overlapping and interdependent communities to the central spiritual, humanitarian, and ecological crises of our time. However, it requires a radical reevaluation of the meaning of community. It requires a new understanding of peace, liberty, and justice for all. And it requires new practices to help honor and uphold all life on this planet so that we can share together in the great common life. We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope. To this time and this place we bring our whole and at times our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seek here a place where they might be received, shared, and celebrated. We pause now to acknowledge that Carol Ferguson had her foot surgery on Thursday at UW Hospital and was home and resting on Friday afternoon. We send her our best wishes for a quick recovery and know that she may have actually joined us online. And in addition to the one just mentioned, we also acknowledge any unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us and as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts. Let us sit silently for a few moments in the spirit of empathy and hope. By virtue of our brief time together today, may our burdens be lightened and our hopes expanded. And now I invite you to share in this morning's offering. Today's outreach offering will be shared with One City Early Learning Centers, a new early childhood education initiative opening its first facility in South Madison. The center will serve children ages six weeks to five years old preparing them to enter school on pace to read, compute, and succeed at grade level. Please give generously. See that we still have the basket going around. Not soon though. May we hear the melody of life and find ourselves singing harmony. I'm sorry, we have a closing hymn right now. That seemed a little bit early to me. I hand it over to you. The choir just sang is a very famous Zulu song. It's sort of like the equivalent of our rock-a-bye baby. Only, only that this is a mother singing to her child and consoling the infant that the infant's father will return and come back and will be safe. She's telling herself, she's telling her child and she's singing this over and over again to both of them, right? Now it's important that I know you're going to see so a lot of Zulu up here, but I'm going to ask you to sing along with us. And I'm going to ask you to try one time to sing that text if you would. If it is something you would appreciate just by listening, we understand. For example, tula-tul, tula-baba, tula, that's a mistake, tula-sana. Could you say that with me? Tula-tul, tula-baba, tula-sana. Tula-baba, uzo-boya, ekuseni. Tula-u, tula-sana, ekuseni. And then we repeat that. Tula-tul, tula-baba, tula-sana. Say that? Tula-tul, tula-baba, tula-sana. Tula-baba, uzo-boya, bu-ya, ekuseni. Tula-baba, uzo-boya, ekuseni. The second part, wow, this is kind of scary, isn't it? Cookin' kind, let me say it, you don't have to sing this part. Cookin' kan yezi, zi-ho-le-l-u-baba. Zikan ye-sena, ind-le-le zi-kaya. Zobi-si-ko-na, kabon-ke-ba-sho-yo, bayati-bu-ya-la, u-bu-ya-le-kaya. And then at the end, I will ask you to sing with me. Tula, sing that with me. Tula-tul, that first part, and I'm gonna just sing the, and then if you'll join us at the end to what you just sang, maybe we can let some of that comfort and consolation wash over us. In South Africa, they don't have pianos and organs. When you don't hear accompaniment, it's not because we don't think about doing that. It's supposed to be that way. It's supposed to be that way. Can we hear the melody of life and find ourselves singing harmony? Maybe we be open to the dissonances in the song of the land and its people. That we may be part of the world's urging toward justice, peace, and love. May we feel in our bones the rhythms of life and the land and find ourselves dancing. Amen, blessed be, and go in peace. Please remain seated for the choral closing. In the 70s, when things started to heat up and the resistance was rising and the unrest was almost too great to contain. Itembalam is a Osa song that was sung in the churches, in the schools, after schools, at parties, at the ends of celebrations, saying, keep fighting, keep fighting. Nikon Itembalam. Nikon Itembalam, Nikon Avalokos, Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. Itembalam. He said, he said, come and do this, let me go. He said, he said.


Russia lost five military aircraft in three days. They were destroyed by UAVs. Ukrainian military intelligence has been coordinating several undercover teams to carry out UAV strikes, targeting strategic bomber aircraft deep inside Russian territory, and informed source told Ukrainian N.V. media outlet. In the last few days, these sabotage groups have disabled five Russian military aircraft that were part of Moscow's terror bombing campaign against Ukraine according to our source. Early in the morning on August 21, two bombers were damaged at Shchaikovka airfield in Russia's Kaluga Oblast. These drone operations are coordinated by military intelligence and have inflicted significant losses on the enemy's aviation, the source said. And most importantly, these planes TU-22M3 strategic bombers are no longer produced in Russia. On August 19, agents working with Ukrainian military intelligence attacked a military airfield in Saltsy Novgorod Oblast with drones. One TU-22M3 bomber was destroyed and two other planes were damaged. Moscow eventually admitted that the attack left one aircraft damaged even though a widely shared photo showed the plane completely engulfed in flames. The Saltsy airbase is more than 600 kilometers from the borders of Ukraine, indicating that a long-range drone was dispatched for the attack. Since the Ukrainian counter-offensive was launched, Kyiv has exponentially enhanced its long-range attacks on strategic Russian assets and civilian and military installations.