Scholars from all over the world convened at James Madison University in Harrisonburg this week to discuss how we as a species can continue to survive in an increasingly troubled world. And it all boils down to our core beliefs. WMRA's Jessie Knadler headed to JMU to find out more about the science behind values and beliefs and how they dictate the sort of world we live in.
Why do humans believe what they believe?
If you investigate that question, you quickly realize that a lot of what we believe is the result of social conditioning. We believe what our society, institutions, governments, places of worship tell us to-or told our parents to. They're not necessarily intrinsically true. A lot of our beliefs are simply inherited. And if you strip away those inherited beliefs, what's left? Who's left? Who are you?
Okay, I'm going to stop now.
But these are the kinds of heady questions underpinning the Globally Sustainable Self Summit taking place at James Madison University in Harrisonburg this week. Scholars, educators, students come together from all over the world to discuss how we as a species can survive on earth given all the social, economic and environmental challenges.
CRAIG SHEALY: Look at what's going on in the world right now.
Craig Shealy is a professor of graduate psychology and the Executive Director of the International Beliefs and Values Institute. He's one of the organizers of the summit. He points out that human beliefs and values dictate how societies are structured, how they function and, more pressingly, how they mal-function.
SHEALY:What are we dealing with? We're dealing with massive change to the environmental systems that have sustained life....Look at what happens with groups like Isis or Isil...Look at the state of how we educate girls around the world and the implications of that. Or you look at the political divisions in our own country....And what these are all are manifestations of where we are in 2016 as a species. So empathy is a core component of what we're trying to enhance or facilitate but really our perspective is that in order to increase empathy you have to increase understanding of what the thing in us is that feels empathy or does not, in the first place.
It's deep, big picture stuff that cuts to the core of what it means to be a human and our place in the world. I know, good luck trying to wrap that up in a summit. And this presents one of the major challenges Shealy and his colleagues face -- trying to translate these abstract concepts to a general audience, taking these ideas out of academia and into the policy arena. Until that gap narrows on a societal level, Shealy says, humanity will continue on its same course.
SHEALY:This isn't just an academic exercise...
To demonstrate this, the summit included a panel discussion titled Caring Democracy and the Sustainable Self. Representatives from local organizations ranging from the Harrisonburg Refugee Resettlement Office to Radical Roots Community Farm talked about concrete programs within their organizations that give form to the ideals the summit is trying to promote: human rights, global education, conflict resolution.
REBECCA SPRAGUE: We have the Linking Communities Program where we train local community members then we partner them with newly arriving refugee families for one year.
Rebecca Sprague from Church World Service's Refugee Resettlement Office was one of the panelists. She talked about how her organization, which resettles some 200 refugees into Harrisonburg every year, inculcates cultural understanding.
SPRAGUE: The idea is that by interacting and getting to know these families they can understand the cultures, the humanity, the children and get to know each other on a deeper level.
SHEALY:The degree to which we cultivate this capacity to care for self, others and the larger world is really the degree to which our species has a chance of - to be dramatic about it - really surviving at the extreme or at the least flourishing in a world that does not have infinite resources.
For WMRA News, I'm Jessie Knadler.
