Millions of Mountaintops
My colleague and I met at deli between the towns where we each live. It’s not a huge place, around twelve tables, all full on that weekday at lunchtime. The line at the counter was long, and a pretty eclectic crowd for the part of the state where I live. Men and women in ponytails and crew cuts. Muddy jeans and sport coats, work boots and high heels.
Two tables from where we sat, four men who looked to be in their 80s, two in worn workpants and suspenders, sat quietly together. Once in a while one would speak and the others would nod. Across the room five young women crowded around a small table, laughing, one wore a burqa, two were in dresses, the others in slacks. In the corner, a lone person read a book they held open on the table, one hand resting on the top of a coffee cup.
At our table, my colleague was arguing for the need to focus change efforts on achieving a collective worldview, one that sees structural inequities and the impact of history on the present. The world would never know peace or justice, he said, until everyone embraces and aligns their actions with those realities.
I looked around the room – at the old men and young women, the solitary reader in the corner and asked, “Everyone? I mean, do you think everyone in this room must be convinced to see the world the same way?” He nodded, “Everyone in the world. It’s the only way.”
But who are we, I asked him, to decide what others believe, how they will see the world? Can that even be possible?
Recently I happened on a website for a group of anonymous thinkers that calls itself Real Illuminati. Its homepage declares the group’s intent: “to help humanity learn how to break the chains of ignorance that hold the people of Earth in captivity to corrupt powers. We desire that every human living on Earth know what we know, and be enlightened as we are illuminated.”
That declaration is not far off from my colleague’s. Like them, he is convinced his perspective is correct. He’s convinced that his worldview is the best informed, as are the real illuminati, who describes themselves as, “the most educated and experienced people upon Earth”.
I don’t disagree with my colleague, or even the real illuminati, about the arguably desperate need for change so all people might thrive in peace.
But human beings sit on at least a million mountaintops. They look from those into the valleys, and across to each other, and see at least a million worlds. How can that possibly, ever change?
Books can be banned, but people have always told each other stories and ever will. Religions can be enforced or forbidden, but humans have always been curious about their relationship to the rest of universe, and always will be. Beliefs, cultures, and even loves may be forced underground, but people will always find their tribes. All of that, even, aside, the simple fact of geography – hot and cold, dry and wet, deep inland and close to the sea – makes for a million mountaintops.
Even so, we try, because from each perspective can be found a subjectively true path to peace, which most (not all) humans so longingly seek.
To be sure, perspectives will change – many people do listen; they watch the world, they change their minds. And still, it’s dangerously ironic to assume that one worldview rises above all others to light the path to a more just and inclusive world. That’s why so many are asking the question: in a world with a million mountaintops, what strategies will lead to all people thriving as who they understand themselves to be?
That’s the question that drives the work of the ILI. It’s why we came up with a resource for schools that leads with compassion and curiosity, that insists on the possibility that every can thrive and learn in school as who they are and who they’re becoming, and that all the adults there can thrive too.
It’s why we work with organizations to reframe equity in terms of behavior and experience, with skills and practices that reliably drive systemic change. Working with systems dedicated to arts and environment, community and faith, commerce and government, we see change that means tomorrow, more people – with countless perspectives, histories and experiences – can thrive more than they could yesterday.
There’s reason to celebrate those millions of mountaintops, the myriad ways of expressing humanity, and a future bound to bring many more. There must be ways to hold on to that gift in an ever more just and peaceful world.
Lucinda Garthwaite
Founder & Executive Director, ILI