“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” Henry Adams, historian and intellectual, descendant of two US Presidents

History from the most cynical perspective is a cycle of the rise and fall of societies, from Detroit to Rome, represented by shifts in who wields power. Diffusing knowledge for the sake of empowering only facilitates this ongoing dynamic even if takes centuries for some of the powerful to fall and others to rise. Educators truly changing the world is breaking this cycle by teaching Harvard College students and kids at Bessie Buker Elementary that the other is equally valuable as oneself.

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In a December 2014 interview with Esquire, Micah White, one of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) founders said, “My thinking is moving away from protest. Instead, I’m more interested with…getting large numbers of people to change their behaviors, to de-pattern themselves…” He realized what he had been doing wasn’t working.

For any of our activism to bring into effect the hoped for ideal of long-term systemic change, it would have to follow the lead of the likes of women’s suffrage. It would go beyond making ourselves feel better in the short-term and aim for changing the character of our imagined enemies. Martin Luther King calls this the double victory:

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you… Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory.’”

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“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation…want rain without thunder and lighting. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Frederick Douglas

All the work of the women's suffrage movement was calling people to commit to something they already knew was virtuous, to demand of people that they abide their better angels. In order to commit though, men and women had to be willing to advance the interests of women and society as a whole at the perceived expense of their own interests in control and security.

Susan B. Anthony and thousands of others led by disciplined example. They stood in solidarity against great odds. Most political movements last a decade, but their vision was for 150 years or as long as it took. Most importantly, the identity of the women's suffragists was in a cause, “Not for Ourselves Alone.”

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“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Louis Brandeis, US Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)

A Just society values the individual based on something intrinsic to her humanness, not based on performance or position. We value the newborn child and dying grandfather, the homeless and poor, the wealthy and commercially productive. A Just society’s value for the individual derives from its belief in the individual’s implicit or explicit commitment to act beyond the confines of her own interests. Citizens of a Just society believe in the individual’s capacity to prioritize others over self, and they build institutions to facilitate that.

Making that leap to prioritizing others depends on losing ourselves in something greater than ourselves.

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“Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence.” Elihu Burritt

Aristotle said “‘Power will show the man;’ for the man in power is at once associated with and stands in relation to others.” Left to our own devices, those of us with relative power will endeavor to meet our own needs, sometimes at great expense to others. Millions still in slavery today; hundreds of millions killed in wars; incomprehensible inequality. There is nothing inherently wrong with the desire to meet our higher-level Maslovian needs, except when it comes at such massive expense to others. By establishing our self-interest as the priority requirement for our leaders, we are responsible for the systems that perpetuate this injustice.

Aristotle calls Justice the “whole of virtue” because it is the one Cardinal Virtue whose foundation is human relationships. Every Justice theory speaks to the interests of one party versus another. It tries to determine a proper, harmonious, right, fair, or equitable way for these interests to be addressed. We are the ones who create the imbalance to these scales that manifests as today’s apocalyptic horsemen of War, Famine and Pestilence.

The Gates Foundation really is eradicating Malaria and Google really is making information accessible to under-resourced people around the world. Jamie Dimon and his compatriots at JP Morgan Chase have made markets more efficient and generated greater profits for the poorest in Africa and the wealthiest on Wall Street. These are not merely drops in buckets. These are real and good and long-lasting world-changing people and activities. But they are only addressing symptoms, not root causes.

The root issue that manifests itself as Injustice is simply the virtue or lack thereof that makes us value others less than ourselves.

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“Religion can be the enemy of God. It's often what happens when God has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship.” Bono

None of us today are able to have the same physical face-to-face relationship with a mentor the likes of Jesus from Nazareth. I am a disciple of my business partners, my friends, my family members and so many others who have shaped me hopefully more into the image of God. A religious leader's role is to reflect back to us this commitment beyond self and to co-labor with us as we make good on that commitment.

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“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” Robert Fulghum, author of Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

When I got a call from the principal asking if I was available to come to school “right now” to help comfort my daughter, my heart sank. When I arrived, I could hear her screaming from down the hall. As I stepped into the room, she was highly agitated, not in control of her emotions, wandering around the room tipping over chairs and screaming about how she hated this place and her teachers. I was heartbroken for her pain and panicked not knowing how to quickly de-escalate things in this public space. We survived the immediate crisis, left the room and headed toward the car. As soon as the door shut, I could no longer hold back the tears, full of sorrow for what she was going through. My emotions were so raw and uncontrollable. According to the research, it was because my brain chemistry was literally changing. The natural human imperative is for ourselves to become less as others become more.

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Conviction is the art of character building – painting by numbers only takes us so far. It is not conviction in the disciplined, committed, deeply held belief sort of way. It is the realization that we are somehow lacking, something less than perfectly innocent. 

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“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.” Norman Schwarzkopf, US Army General (Ret.) led Desert Storm

The one characteristic of the greatest teams is so uncommon that few even consider it. This may be because none of us really knows how to engineer it. When Seattle Seahawks lineman, J.R. Sweezy takes beating after beating for 60 minutes at a time, day after day, breaking bones and tearing cartilage, it isn’t just for the money and the fame; it’s because he actually cares about running back Marshawn Lynch. He takes the abuse so Lynch doesn’t have to. As popularized in the movie, Lone Survivor, Medal of Honor winner, Lieutenant Michael Murphy of Seal Team 10, having already been wounded multiple times, purposely ran headlong into direct enemy fire in order to reach high ground where he could call for help for his friends. He completed that call, but was shot again through the chest and back and died. In his research into great companies, Jim Collins, of Good to Great fame, outlines an Aristotelian view of the most effective leaders as “ambitious first and foremost for the cause, the organization, the mission, the nation, the work – not themselves…” It is this virtue of putting others ahead of oneself that makes the greatest leaders and the greatest teams.

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Valuing others means their progress is our progress, their success, our success, their power, our power. Succeeding in this depends on defining ourselves relative to someone or something greater than ourselves.

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