The Universal Peace Federation Australia (UPF), an NGO in General Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations maintains that a national visions for a Voice in Parliament cannot be achieved through political compromise alone but must involve a commitment to personal change and shared values.
One of the problems we face today, is the separation between values and actions. Ignoring values, has led to unethical practices of individuals and businesses, technological development and political action. We propose a summit to discuss how we can create a voice that will be embraced by all Australians.
Neither left-wing ideology, nor right-wing ideology will work. We need a movement through which a new advanced right-wing type can be supported by the left-wing and a new advanced left-wing type that can be supported by the right-wing. Dr S M Moon, UPF Founder.
Headwing – Moving Beyond Political Divides
The Universal Peace Federation’s founder Dr Moon suggested that to address these challenges we need to new mindset and paradigm he called ‘Headwing’. He argued that in order to find solutions to the critical challenges of our time requires us to move beyond the political, ideological and economic theories and policies of left and right. We need to move beyond these divides and find shared values. Through restoring morality and cooperation we can move towards better outcomes.
Headwing – A Common-Humanity Identity
For activists seeking reform and bring about change in society the lesson of ‘headwing’ is to find common ground which may have views that are different than yours. We need to mobilise the power of our shared sense of a common humanity and destiny.
The terms common-humanity identity politics and common-enemy identity politics were coined by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (Haidt, 2019). Common-humanity identity politics was practised Dr Martin Luther King who took this approach to unite blacks and whites to achieve civil rights by appealing to the shared American ideals of life, liberty, and happiness.
Dr King took the approach of humanising their opponents and appealing to their humanity. Lukianoff and Haidt maintain that if we want to create welcoming and inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down this tribalism of “us versus them” and turn up the sense of our common humanity.
Anti-Headwing – Us Versus Them
The opposite is an anti-headwing, common-enemy identity politics where people adopt the worldview of ‘us versus them’ which causes them to lose a sense of the values we share and what binds us as people.
The common-enemy identity politics tries to unite a coalition using the psychology of us versus them which leads to a mindset that life is a battle between good people and evil people, which is opposite to the view that we should try and understand the views of others and find common ground. Conditions of peace and prosperity generally turn down the tribalism mindset.
When a community succeeds in turning down tribalism, there is more room for individuals to construct lives of their own choosing and there is more freedom for creative mixing of people and ideas. When the tribal switch is activated, we bind ourselves more tightly to the group, we embrace and defend the group’s moral values and stop thinking for ourselves.
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