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A COMMUNIQUE FROM PROF. RAJANI KANTH (TRUSTEE) TO OUR
ATTENDING PANELISTS
I take great personal pleasure in welcoming you to our
planned Peace Congress this Summer of 2007.
Few would doubt, I think, that we are living through some dark times when much
of common humanity appears at risk in terms of want, insecurity, and indignity.
As such, there is much to be achieved at our Congress where, we the organizers,
hope that we can all put aside our rank, status, professional orientation, and
national origins, to see ourselves as mere planetary denizens committed to commencing
some new dialogs that will keep the peace, enhance mutual welfare and evince
respect for viewpoints other than our own.
For too long, we have left it to states and governments to safeguard our welfare:
perhaps it were time that we, the peoples, took responsibility and declared
commitment to achieve the same ends by starting to build direct, personal links
within the human chain.
I know you will all contribute toward this end, and we thank you for your investiture
of confidence in our efforts.
We are non-Partisan, non-Denominational and unconnected to any Sectarian model
of social/political discourse.
Instead, we hope to foster a new openness to new ideas and initiatives that
takes our common humanity as its starting point .
By January of 2007, we will begin furnishing more detailed information in this
regard as we complete our initial preparations for the Congress.
Please bear with us until then: and keep checking our Website –
www.congress2007.net – for on-going information.
Let us all be the change we each wish to see in this world.
With warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Professor Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
Helen Sheridan Chair/UMass-Amherst
Trustee, Congress 2007.
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CONGRESS 2007
: A DIALOG FOR OUR TIMES
Communiqué#2 from Rajani Kannepalli
Kanth, Trustee
Years ago, acclaimed Physicist and Cosmologist, David
Bohm wrote thus, in context of another gathering:
"The weekend began with the expectation
that there would be a series of lectures and informative
discussions with emphasis on content. It gradually
emerged that something more important was actually
involved — the awakening
of the process of dialogue itself as a free flow of
meaning among all the participants. In the beginning,
people were expressing fixed positions, which they
were tending to defend, but later it became clear that
to maintain the feeling of friendship in the group
was much more important than to hold any position.
Such friendship has an impersonal quality
in the sense that its establishment does not depend
on a close personal relationship between participants.
A new kind of mind thus begins to come
into being which is based on the development of a common
meaning that is constantly transforming in the process
of the dialogue.
People are no longer primarily in opposition,
nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they
are participating in this pool of common meaning which
is capable of constant development and change. In this
development the group has no pre-established purpose,
though at each moment a purpose that is free to change
may reveal itself.
The group thus begins to engage in a new
dynamic relationship in which no speaker is excluded,
and in which no particular content is excluded.
Thus far we have only begun to explore
the possibilities of dialogue in the sense indicated
here, but going further along these lines would open
up the possibility of transforming not only the relationship
between people, but even more, the very nature of consciousness
in which these relationships arise."
D. Bohm, Unfolding Meaning_,p.
175
This Congress is imbued with the spirit,
and the sentiment, of the Bohm Dialog, as referenced
above, and as it has since come to be known.
It is Open-Ended, it is Self-Directed - and
Self-Realising.
The only targeted Issue in
the Conference is the fact that it openly
purports to be a Peace Congress, where
we are all being asked , albeit from within the ambit
of our own varying lenses of talent, skill and
profession, to step out and define the Parameters
of World Peace, in creative
engagement with points of views, and perceptions, other
than those we ourselves cherish.
This will involve a small investiture of minimal
effort to overcome parochial , professional, prejudices
[stemming from rank, station, status, and
accomplishment] that usually serve to divide thinking
people from each other.
It is hoped that such a Face-to-Face Dialog narrows Difference ,
and enhances Mutual Understanding; perhaps, at a stretch, even mutual
respect.
Even more , we may perhaps , howsoever serendipitously, reach
tentative agreement in many areas that affirm our common
anthropic natures, whilst simultaneously affirming legitimate
differences of opinion , orientation, and perspective.
The Congress Meetings are organized with a view to facilitating
the aforesaid by allowing for various Protocols
of Interaction between Panelists , and between
Panelists and Participants, so that Individual, Group,
and Collective Representations i.e. the Three
Modalities of Societal Life, complement,
and engage, each other.
The Congress Dialog commences
with Panelists first presenting their
own personal viewpoints, within the confines of their Individual
Panels, in face of a small, if highly Interactive,
Audience of Select Participants.
Next, they face the entire Congress Gathering , as
a whole, to both present, and be confronted
with , various other viewpoints.
Then they retire behind Closed Doors,
within Individual Panels, to resolve
and/or define differences, after which
they will formulate a Majority Opinion and
a Minority Opinion [wherever the
latter is needed] that will constitute
a set of agreed-upon Policy Recommendations[Caveat:
each and every Panelist can opt also Not to be associated with Either the
Majority Or the Minority Opinion, by exercising
the Right to Abstain: and such Abstentions will
also be Noted/Recorded as per the preference
of the Abstaining Panelists].
Then, in the Final Stage, Panelists
will articulate , and defend, these Policy Pronouncements
to an Assembly of the Whole which
will then accept or reject each Proclamation ,
by acclamation.
In effect , we are planning not merely the usual ‘talking
shop’ sort of Conference , but
also a Convention that enumerates calls
for Creative and, it is hoped, Original, Plans
of Action .
It is this Final Set of Accepted and Rejected Propositions that
will constitute the real Bounty of the Congress that
will be presented to the World, even as Plans are
additionally made, on site, to continue
the Dialog forward, armed now
with Clear Propositions, on a similar
basis, but elsewhere in the world , in years to
come.
I know each of you, albeit within your own Frames
of Reference, can and will help realize this Vision – indeed, your Vision
- of what is possible , when
we choose, in an atmosphere of Convivial warmth and sincerity, to care
about our Common Fate(s).
Even if you strongly disagree with this Mission,
we hope you will still come ,endowed with even more enthusiasm ,
to energetically articulate your own Dissent (that is , in
fact, exactly what the Congress2007 Dialog is
all about) which may help us all design the next such Congress with
even greater diligence.
Our Collective Futures , as a Species, may
well be contingent upon such Efforts.
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CONGRESS 2007
: A DIALOG FOR OUR TIMES
Communiqué#3 from Rajani Kannepalli
Kanth, Trustee
Dear Distinguished Invitees:
I take great pleasure in forwarding Congress Panel Allocations,
arranged by Theme, by Attachment.
Please note that
the Overarching Motif of the Congress is Peace , via
the Medium of Understanding both our Commonality and
Difference(s). Each Panel engages within the Terms
of the General Theme indicated, interpreted very broadly.
How you choose to present your Argument, be it Formal
or Informal, Structured or Unstructured, is rather
up to you.
It is Content that is of import: and the
Will to communicate.
I urge you all to think Old ideas
afresh, and, if possible, to think also of New ideas
left unexplored by the inertia of inherited Paradigms.
This
is also a Cross-Dialog: so many of you will be challenging,
and be challenged by, Panelists in Fields quite
other than your own.
I have nominated Provisional Moderators
for each Panel: but each Panel is free to choose another,
as it pleases.
I urge each Panel to get to know one
another long before you arrive in Salt
Lake City so that the Dialog commences earlier. To
this end you will receive Contact information on each
other very shortly.
It were also useful, and
important if, leastways temporarily, during the Congress,
that considerations of rank and station, honor and
achievement, not to mention egos, were shelved as a
prelude to free and unfettered discourse.
For
us , you are All celebrities: but that’s only
a point of departure. Once here, we will All be a Community
of Equals, with important work to do.
Finally, this is
Your Congress: We, the Organisers, are merely Facilitators
- and we can only hope that you will come inspired to
give of yourselves to as many Common Causes as you can
help each other Identify in the 3 Days of the Congress.
I feel quite strongly, despite the risk of hyperbole,
that the Future of our Species, in considerable jeopardy
in these troubled times, may well depend on such efforts
and initiatives.
With all good wishes,
Professor Rajani Kannepalli Kanth
Trustee-Congress2007
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