Harmony of Nations

Introduction It is said that those who ignore the study of history are doomed to repeat it. As for those that study history, we're doomed to watch others repeat it. As I was entering into the world of Masonry, the old Past Masters were just becoming aware of Robert Putnam's book, Bowling Alone. The main topic of conversation was the fact that the WWII generation was barely holding on and the Baby Boomers largely skipped joining their fathers' lodges. There was a generation gap in the Lodge. The old guard was glad to see Generation X arrive. But, there was a problem. Generation X was largely raised by " checked out " parents. We were the " latch key kids, " left alone to raise ourselves. We gravitated to Masonry, if only to find out what it means to be a man in the classical sense. Bob Davis has shown us, in his Understanding Manhood in America, how Masonry can satisfy this role of helping good men mature properly. He illustrated what the mature masculine looked like. As a result, his book has sold quite well. But, as I have often said, the best place to hide information from Masons is in the Lodge's library. There's a wealth of information available, yet here we are talking about the same issues yet again.

Ananta Kumar Giri (ed.) Transformative Harmony, Delhi: Studera Press, November 2019, Chapter 4, pp. 63-77, 2019

This article offers a theoretical assessment of the idea of harmony as a potential focus imaginarius for the construction and organisation of the emerging global society as well for the social scientific study of this process. The assessment is couched in cognitive social-theoretical terms. While the limits of the idea of harmony are highlighted by drawing on aesthetic theory, it is nevertheless retained as an essential formal presupposition possessing both ontological and epistemological significance. Social-scientifically, however, the idea is located on the meta-level, counterfactual, cognitive order of society as only one among a wide range of different cognitive rules which get selectively and variably combined and used as structuring elements when distinct actor-agents in concrete social life competitively engage in the pursuit of their own particular visions of a harmonious society. The task today is to study this process in order to identify learning processes and potentials pointing toward a harmonious society that could be social-scientifically enhanced and supported.

2019

THE HARMONY DEBATES Exploring a practical philosophy for a sustainable future, 2020

A good understanding of harmony can have profound implication for peace. What I want to explore is the understanding of peace from the perspective of harmony, and the opportunities that such a conception might bring to the process of creating peace and peacefulness globally. More specifically, from reading Confucian and Greek classics it interprets harmony as containing the idea of right relationships amongst all, and argues that it is dynamic and proactive, rather than static and merely complying to a predefined universal order. In this reading, I find harmony to be harmonising, a co-creative and generative process that can help transform tension and conflict towards an infinite possibility of relation and interconnection.

Social Ethics Society Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2022

This paper explores and analyzes the Culture of Peace from the lens of Frommian Social Characterology. I uphold that a Culture of Peace is attainable if our modern social structures center on creativity and productivity which could eventually lead to human growth and development. Such is the argument of Erich Fromm, whose idea is based on the full humanization of every individual through reason and love. However, modernity is a double-edged sword and somehow institutionalized a culture of violence. It brought tensions in our conformity, freedom, and peace. This culture of violence is conflicts that assault the human individual by too much hatred, misunderstanding, unbalanced judgment, human rights violation, polarization, and others. Modernity also is an ambivalence that creates social structures that push for pragmatic and technological ways of improving human life. It gives hope to build a better life on the promise of human individualization and independence, yet it represses one's desires or wishes, which are not beneficial for growth and development. Modern ways of life one way or another paralyze the individual's capacity to be creative and productive. That is why in this paper I argue that this is all about the social characterology of modern society. Social characterology affects modernity’s social behavior and we need to be critical about this to achieve the Culture of Peace. The Social Character of modern society is the actual problem why we cannot achieve the Culture of Peace because of the instrumentalization of reason, the acceleration and dynamization of society through capitalism, the extreme individualization of life, the loss of humanity, etc. Therefore, unless we become aware of the immanent dynamics of social character and our ideals must bend towards a totalizing value system that eventually leads to behaviors towards reason and love, the Culture of Peace would just be a vision for modern society. Keywords: Culture of Peace, Erich Fromm, Modern Life, Social Characterology, Violence

In this collection, Birgit Müller and the co-authors of The Gloss of Harmony take us on a journey of insider exposure to how policy making is produced in a number of United Nation (UN) agencies. The authors, all from different traditions of anthropology, apply innovative solid ethnographic research methods to unveil how these institutions influence how "our world is governed" through policy making in international negotiation rooms and beyond.

2020

This is a special issue of the Journal of East-West Thought guest-edited by Chenyang Li an Dascha During, including the following articles: 1. Introduction by C Li and D. Düring 2. Itay Shani, The Lure of Beauty: Harmony as a Conduit of Self- transcendence 3. Jörg Löschke, Harmony, Organic Unity, and Intrinsic Value 4. Dascha Düring, Harmony and Justice 5. Tak-lap Yeung, Two Conceptions of Harmony 6. Shuchen Xiang, Race and Harmony 7. Alice Simionato, Harmony and Li (Coherence) 8. Olivier Malherbe, Gestalt, Harmony and human Action in Roman Ingarden’s Thought Book Review by Han Shu-an: Comprehensive Harmony Thomé H. Fang’s Philosophy

Harmony in Diversity. Collection of papers from the Harmony in Diversity National Conference, Sofia, 10. 12. 2018, 2018

In “Harmony, or the art of living together: a music metaphor”, the author maps from a musician’s standpoint the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition of the word “harmony” to different types of societies and societal arrangements, focusing on Canadian multiculturalism. With occasional humour, Fol traces the increasingly sophisticated notion of harmony until she compares the “interweaving of different accounts into a single narrative” to the contemporary Canadian projet de société. Whereas a little bit of musical education would help the reader to better understand the metaphor, the article can hopefully be enjoyed by everyone.