Background
The campfire covers 3 streams: (i) “Raising Concerns” led by young persons/student, (ii) “Heart to Heart Exchanges” led by filmmakers and artists and (iii) “Critical Conversations” led by public intellectuals, teachers, activists, and community elders.
The Virtues in Movement (VIM) Initiative is focused on “Mobilising Our Conscience”. We understand that ‘conscience’ is a complicated, contested reality. But we do not want to shy away from exploring and reclaiming it by actively engaging with it. In addressing our individual and collective conscience, VIM is, in a small way, exploring human vices, virtues, values and the search for meaning and relevance in a world where ‘being good or grateful’ is very confusing, challenging and often difficult. What is the conscience in a very 'broken world' we live in today (as the pandemic has shown us quite clearly).
We have raised some ‘simple questions’ to guide this initiative. The growing video collection here is based on these queries and concerns. We hope to learn lessons from personal journeys of struggles, contradictions, compromises, rationalisations, analyses, and triumphs. We are not just looking for you deed/actions but how and why you got there?
Our Queries and Concerns
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“How come with so many religions, social and political philosophies, so many inspiring constitutions, international/global peace and well-being charters, vision-mission-values organisational documents, hundreds of universities, including faith-based ones, and thousands of courses promising wholesome careers, local and global events after events, and a growing number of research initiatives and reports after reports, etc, humanity is still in a big mess. Everything we want -- peace, inclusivity and compassion -- are so far from the reach of so many amongst us, including children. How come? What is that we are not getting right?
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“Why are ‘good people’ divided by politics, religion, ideology, caste, class, etc… and are explicitly or implicitly, individually or structurally, being cruel to, or hurting, one another?”
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“Where do we look for answers? How do we create and disseminate democratic and diversity-sensitive narratives? Can we recover ‘narratives of conscience’ for peace, inclusivity and compassion reaching out to the human and non-human worlds? Do we look just at society (as in the ‘external’) or self (as in the ‘internal’), or both?” Or, should we just give up, gravitate to the powerful, right or wrong? What pathways of actions do we have? How do we act “good” in an environment of blatant “ungoodness”? Can we build critical narratives of hope through self and social transformation?
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