Today's Rotary Action Group on Mental Health Initiatives (RAGMHI) zoom meeting reported on its accelerated growth at last month's Rotary International conference in Taipei. RI hosted all of its 26 RAGs (Rotary Action Groups) in which participants within them need not need be a Rotary member. Nearly 20 of these RAGs focus on a specific health issue committed to expanding the work of serving others in need globally. Most needs are obviously in the poorest nations. But Rotary leaders and members within this Mental Health group - two vital things became urgently clear. Global chaos is accelerating, increasing stress on each of RI's seven pillars (Disease prevention and treatment; Peacebuilding and conflict prevention; Water, sanitation, and hygiene; Maternal and child health; Basic education and literacy; Community economic development; and Environmental Protection). Interest in this mental health group's growth over the last few years is clear evidence that more people are recognizing the value of mental health in every aspect of our lives.
"There can be no health without mental health." Rawle Andrews Jr., Esq. Executive Director American Psychiatric Association Foundation. July 2023
Even within those doing humanitarian work the mental health stresses are growing.
As more 'forever wars', violent extremists, genocides, refugees, extreme weather conditions, corruption, declining species, new/reemerging/evolving/& human engineered pathogens, unsustainable government debt related to reactionary policies, due to a lack of wise investments in prevention, and now declines in their funding -even those committed to 'service above self' are struggling mentally. This is seriously unhealth. And it has a specific name - moral injury.
“Mental health is the ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.” – M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled [1978]
The printed December 2022 issue of Scientific American under the title “Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions” by Elizabeth Svoboda, it explores how moral injury affected not only military veterans but also healthcare workers, teachers, and others during the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing that moral injury arises when people are forced into situations that violate their deepest moral values. A concise definition: Moral injury is the deep psychological, emotional, and spiritual distress that can occur when people witness, participate in, or feel unable to prevent actions that violate their core moral values or sense of right and wrong. Unlike fear-based trauma like PTSD, moral injury is often characterized by guilt, shame, betrayal, loss of trust, and a struggle to find meaning or reconnect with others.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare workers experienced moral injury—the anguish of being forced to make impossible decisions, lacking the resources to provide the care they believed patients deserved, or witnessing preventable suffering. The article highlighted this distress that often stemmed not from personal weakness but from systemic failures that placed people in ethically impossible situations. While PTSD is often driven by fear after life-threatening events, whereas moral injury centers on violations of one’s ethical beliefs and values.
In 1959, Carl Jung was interviews in a BBC Face to Face TV series. In it he said, “One thing is sure, a great change of our psychological attitude is imminent. That is certain.” And why? “Because we need more — we need more psychology. We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil."
Too often, we see ourselves separate from others and nature. Albert Einstein defined this as a "delusion". Because we are connected, interdependent, and extremely vulnerable to most things in the known universe. But on our goldilocks planet life is a blessed miracle, but our minds have now become our greatest problem. Originally, the mind evolved as an amazing problem solving tool. And our tribes grew within a natural world by founding ways to protect ourselves and those close to us. The mind created concepts like religion, politics, and/or economics to bond us into larger tribes. But it also invented weapons to defend those concepts. And with the invention of nuclear weapons we needed to grasp the reality that our minds needed to outgrow our defense of concepts, and unite as the social species that was originally encoded into our DNA. Our capacity to collectively, cooperate and coordinate with compassion for all life that supports our 'health' and sustainability as a species. Health of mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment, government, economy…
This will take a transformation of modern thinking...and using our intelligence (with AI) for solving our global problems with wisdom instead of the reactionary thinking that enabled our species to get this far. Most minds have the capacity for systemic thinking, but our education, economic, and political systems have failed in prioritizing this use of our minds. Instead we defend our selective and varying mental identities (religious, national, race, ethnic..) to the death of our body and spirit - by the hundreds of millions - with little regard for the nature that provides us with everything we need to survive, thrive, and flourish.
Earth has had the capacity for doing this for as long as our species has existed. And many trends in our way of living have simply become unsustainable. This is literally the insanity of humanity on an dead-end track with only one way to stop. A change in our mindset and selfish spirit.
This is not a new concept. And it keeps popping up. Unfortunately, our minds favor staying the same, defending what we believe, and feeling good about it. Instead of being good and doing what's right.
“We are called to be the architects of tomorrow. Not its victims.” R. Buckminster Fuller
“An Alternative Global Perspective” is available and needed. The first thing to grasp is that there are "Truths" that we should all hold "to be self-evident". Like gravity. Math. A child should not die before their parent. We are free to keep our personal religious and political truths. But failing to abide by "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" things will not end well and suffering is predictable. The troubles now growing in the Middle East started with one religion using the Bible as a real-estate manual. And the injustices one all sides have the potential to turn life on earth into back into the star dust all of us and this planet was created from.
“Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....” Jen Easterly. CISA director. Oct. 29, 2021. [the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency is our nation’s newest federal agency established by the Trump Administration in 2018]. It was hacked early in 2025. And the word "everything" is autological. It means every cell and strand of DNA in your body and every computer code we or AI can engineer.
Below is an Oct, 10, 2022 email exchange between myself and a colleague I’d only known by email.
“I loved the call today. But not your health situation with Lyme disease and the cerebral effects of a viral infection. I’m guessing you don’t want everyone to know about it...if that is your wish. I did promise you this old printed artifact from my files, “An Alternative Global Perspective”. I don’t expect you to read it...just to know this has been an ongoing need for decades. I’ve been a part of it. And given several professional opportunities to contribute ideas. But only in the last 25 years have I started to understand why it has been so difficult. And it’s mostly been the cognitive resistance of my liberal colleagues to changing their own minds (or organizational priorities) due to the fact that funding their own efforts/priorities/missions relied on perpetuating the existing political systems...and failing to think about the whole...as Konkankoh eloquently expressed. No need to respond to this email. You have bigger fish to fry... Cw
ERIC - ED116993 - An Attainable Global
Perspective., 1975-Nov
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED116993
An Attainable Global
Perspective. Hanvey, Robert G.
A more complete understanding of
global perspective is provided in this essay through an examination of the
modes of thought, sensitivities, intellectual skills, and explanatory
capacities which contribute to the formation of a global perspective. With an
emphasis on both a formal and informal educational level, the essay is divided
into five sections which examine the requirements for an attainable global
perspective. Section 1, Perspective Consciousness, underscores the need to
recognize the concept that everyone's perspective is shaped by subtle
influences and that others may have different perspectives. Section 2, State of
the Planet Awareness, examines the problems and solutions for increasing the
ability of individuals to intelligently interpret information about world
conditions. Section 3, Cross Cultural Awareness, describes the different
degrees of cross-cultural awareness and the necessity to reach a stage beyond
empathy where one has the capacity to imagine oneself in a role within the
context of a foreign culture. Section 4, Knowledge of Global Dynamics, analyzes
the world as an interdependent system where the issue of growth may be the
predominant contemporary problem. Section 5, Awareness of Human Choices,
emphasizes that increased global perspective will require difficult value
decisions about the solutions to our world problems. (Author/DE)
Descriptors: Conceptual Schemes, Cross Cultural Studies, Cultural Awareness, Decision Making, Elementary Secondary Education, Futures (of Society), Global Approach, School Role, Social Studies, Teaching Methods, Values, World Affairs, World Problems
Center for War/Peace Studies, 218 East 18th Street, New York, New York 10003 ($1.00)
Publication Type: Books
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: N/A
Sponsor: National Endowment for the Humanities (NFAH), Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: New York Friends Group, Inc., New York. Center for War/Peace Studies.; Denver Univ., CO. Center for Teaching International Relations.
An Attainable Global Perspective Robert G. Hanvey
CONTENTS Introduction Dimension
1: Perspective Consciousness Dimension
2: "State of the Planet" Awareness Dimension
3: Cross-cultural Awareness Dimension
4: Knowledge of Global Dynamics Dimension
5: Awareness of Human Choices
This essay is a beginning effort
to define some elements of what we call a global perspective to flesh out some
of the things- we will need to know and understand, if we are to cope with the
challenges of an increasingly interdependent world. The views are those
of the author, published here to begin the discussion, debate, and analysis
which will be necessary for a widespread and more complete understanding of
what global perspectives are and how they can become part of the school curriculum.
************
“Archery, fencing, spear fighting, all of the martial arts, tea ceremony, flower arranging ... in all of these, correct breathing, correct balance, and correct stillness help to remake the individual. The basic aim is always the same: by tirelessly practicing a given skill, the student finally sheds the ego with its fears, worldly ambitions, and reliance on objective scrutiny - sheds it so completely that he becomes the instrument of a deeper power, from which mastery falls instinctively, without further effort on his part, like a ripe fruit.” — Karlfried Graf Durckheim*
“The man, who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus, the aim of practice is not to develop an attitude which allows a man to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble him. On the contrary, practice should teach him to let himself be assaulted, perturbed, moved, insulted, broken, and battered – that is to say, it should enable him to dare to let go his futile hankerings after harmony, surcease from pain, and a comfortable life in order that he may discover, in doing battle with the forces that oppose him, that which waits him beyond the world of opposites. The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life, and to encounter all that is most perilous in the world. When this is possible, medication itself becomes the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which arise from the unconscious — a process very different from the practice of concentration on some object as protection against such forces. Only if we venture repeatedly through the zones of annihilation can our contact with the Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man learns while heartedly to control the world that threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming Opened.” Karlfried Graf Durckheim*
* Karlfried Graf Dürckheim: a German
diplomat, psychotherapist, and Zen master who served as a cultural envoy
in Japan before and during WWII, promoting Nazi ideology while studying Zen
under teachers like D.T. Suzuki and Awa Kenzō. Imprisoned after the war, he
experienced a spiritual transformation and returned to Germany to develop
“Initiation Therapy,” blending Zen practice, Christian mysticism, and depth
psychology into a holistic path of self-realization. Born Oct 24, 1896 (Munich). Died Dec 28, 1988 (Todtmoos Germany)
In June 2023, Bank of America Chair & CEO, Brian Moynihan spoke on the state of the economy, the U.S. financial system, and capitalism. He said, ‘the SDGs will cost approximately’ “$6 trillion annually”. “Governments are too debt burdened” and “charity is insufficient”. “Business leaders” “like the oil companies” and others must step up and prioritize a balancing of ‘short-term gains’ with ‘long term interests’. ‘Profits must be good for business and society all the way down to the community level’. “Capitalism” “requires a greater purpose than making more profit.” Neither capitalism or profit making is sustainable without these SDG goals being achieved.' C-span covered this interview hosted by the City Club of Cleveland. Program ID: 529044-1 https://www.c-span.org/video/?529044-1/bank-america-ceo-remarks-city-club-cleveland
“A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their laws; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government. – Thomas Paine, Rights of Man [1791]
What's needed now is a Movement of Movements to overpower the rigged systems we have put up with. But "...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." 1776 Declaration of 'separation' from Great Britain. Because the word independence was never in the original title or text of that profound document.
