The Planetary Power of Peace
For PEACE, when all religions unite
Will they help create a consciousness that PEACE is also a life-improving might?
For PEACE when national governments everywere unite
Will they help create a consciousness that PEACE is also a human right ?
For PEACE, when educational systems everywhere unite
Will they help create a consciousness that PEACE is also a local-global education light ?
For PEACE, when national security systems unite
Will they help create a consciousness that NONKILLING PEACE will replace all types of destructive fight ?
DIGNITY IN AMBITION: A Checklist for Dignifiers
Ambition: A key concept-term?
A look at a recent comprehensive work in the field of Conflict Studies, showed that AMBITION is conspicuously absent from its Subject Index, yet it is a very common lexical item for expressing a continuum that ranges from earnest/desirable to questionable/undesirable. How would studies in human Dignity and Humiliation deal with Ambition? Humbly to contribute to that research goal, a brief Checklist is presented, and readers are asked to add to it, probe it, and reflect on the nature and uses of Ambition from the multidimensional perspective of dignity.
Dignity in AMBITION: A Checklist
1. How is AMBITION described in dictionaries across cultures? Is dignity associated with AMBITION in lexicographic definitions?
2. What types of AMBITION are locally/globally approved/disapproved? Why?
3. By what principles/values are types of AMBITION inspired across cultures?
4. To what types of destruction/violence, killing may what types of AMBITION lead?
5. What AMBITIOUS efforts in government/politics are frowned upon by the people as violations of human dignity? Why?
6. Where is AMBITION located in the positivity-negativity continuum of emotions?
7. How is ambition described in world religions/spiritual traditions? In English, one comes across such phrases as “worldly AMBITIONS.” What do such expressions imply?
8. In Diplomacy, how is a country’s territorial AMBITION dealt with?
9. How can everyday phraseologies reflect language users’ perceptions and
intended meanings of AMBITION? Why should AMBITION-focused phraseologies be investigated across languages?
10.Is professional AMBITION included in organizational descriptions of desirable personality traits? Why?
11.What does current interdisciplinary research concerning AMBITION cover? Is the interaction of dignity-ambition being probed psychologically, linguistically, politically, economically, socially, or environmentally? Why or why not?
12.What could a dignifier’s AMBITIOUS goals be? What could such goals contribute to the dignity of Humankind? Why?
Dear readers: Please add your suggestions to the Checklist and explore the dignifying dimensions of AMBITION.
Rhymed reflections by Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace linguist-educator from Recife, Brazil. Dedicated to the International Day of Peace, September 21,2014
fcardosogomesdematos@gmail.com
Co-Founder ABA GLOBAL EDUCATION
This article was published on 21stSeptember International Day of Peace, in Global Education Magazine.
