On November 12, 2022 the IF Board of Directors officially closed its doors at a farewell event that included all who have worked on IF projects, events, and publications as well as former Board Members. The event celebrated its achievements in over 46 years and remembered the many who could not attend or have passed away.
About the Publication Integrities
Integrities was issued quarterly, published for 32 years, by IF (a public benefit nonprofit corporation) which fosters hopeful alternatives.
Integrities, published quarterly since 1990, prior to the launch of "Integrities Online"
(www.integrities.org). Integrities Online is still available.
Human rights issues, as they affect our freedom and that of people around the world, were openly discussed in this scholarly forum moderated by Bill Cane, Ph.D.
"Integrity" is usually pictured as personal. "That person has integrity," we say, meaning that he or she has values and lives according to them despite the costs involved.
But for some people, integrity has grown beyond the personal to include the trees and the oceans, the way nations relate to each other, and the very fabric of life on earth. Such people feel overwhelmed and lonely at times, but they are the ones who are capable of sowing seeds for an integral culture. Their work is done in a cloud of uncertainty and often without institutional support or approval.
Our purpose was simple, to further the sense of integrities which is taking shape in our time, and we wish to communicate the stories of people who are struggling to live their lives in an integral fashion.
Integrities was issued quarterly, published for 32 years, by IF (a public benefit nonprofit corporation) which fosters hopeful alternatives.
Integrities, published quarterly since 1990, prior to the launch of "Integrities Online"
(www.integrities.org). Integrities Online is still available.
Human rights issues, as they affect our freedom and that of people around the world, were openly discussed in this scholarly forum moderated by Bill Cane, Ph.D.
"Integrity" is usually pictured as personal. "That person has integrity," we say, meaning that he or she has values and lives according to them despite the costs involved.
But for some people, integrity has grown beyond the personal to include the trees and the oceans, the way nations relate to each other, and the very fabric of life on earth. Such people feel overwhelmed and lonely at times, but they are the ones who are capable of sowing seeds for an integral culture. Their work is done in a cloud of uncertainty and often without institutional support or approval.
Our purpose was simple, to further the sense of integrities which is taking shape in our time, and we wish to communicate the stories of people who are struggling to live their lives in an integral fashion.
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Greta Thunberg* was born in Sweden in 2003, and realized the enormity of climate change when she was eight years old. She has addressed the United Nations Climate Conference and the World Economic Forum in Davos. Click on the publication to read the story. |
About the Cover:
Dennis Dunleavy, who was a photojournalist in Central America during the war years, took this photo on September 11th and sent it to us as a commentary on the aftermath of the Twin Towers. Its focus is on his young child Liam surrounded by darkness, innocently seeking the light.
The Fallen Towers
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"Those towers represented human triumph over nature. Larger than life, built to be unburnable, they were the Titanic of our day. For them to burn and fall so quickly means that the whole super-structure we depend upon to mitigate nature and assure our comfort and safety could fall. And without it most of us do not know how to survive. We know, in our bones, that our technologies and economies are unsustainable, that nature is stronger than we are, that we cannot tamper with the very life systems of the earth without costs, and that we are creating such despair in the world that it must inevitably crack open, weep and rage. |
The towers falling were an icon of an upcoming reckoning we dread but secretly anticipate. The movement we need to build now must speak to the full weight of the loss, of the fear, and yet hold out hope. We must admit the existence of great forces of chaos and uncertainty, and yet maintain that out of chaos can come destruction, but also creativity." Starhawk, "Only Poetry Can Address Grief." |
The Aftermath
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Not since the Civil War has so much blood been shed on US soil. Abraham Lincoln, toward the end of that war, pondered our country's suffering and tried to reconcile it with divine providence. Everyone was aware, he began his Second Inaugural Address, that "slavery was somehow the cause of the war." Then he continued:
'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through God's appointed time, God now wills to remove, and that God gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' |
Lincoln had a deep sense of what we might call "karma," a sense that even in historical time there comes a great leveling. The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine.
As we ponder a more recent horror, we could use Lincoln's far-reaching view of history. Like Lincoln, we are overwhelmed by what we cannot comprehend. As a people who felt ourselves immune from threat, we have suddenly been thrust into terror. Europeans still alive remember running from the bombs of World War II. Jews remember the holocaust. The people of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Northern Ireland, Palestine and Bosnia live in the midst of terror. Now we too have joined the vulnerability of the larger world. Lincoln made no pretense of understanding. He could only "suppose" why there was so much horror. And he supposed that it had somehow to do with America's refusal to face its dark side. The Founders had been acutely aware of slavery as an unresolved issue. Their successors in government chose to ignore it and finally to live in denial about its ultimate consequences. When John Quincy Adams insisted on introducing petitions for the freeing of slaves in the House, Congress silenced him by instituting a gag rule. The problem could not even be mentioned in the halls of government. |