Life First – a little deeper!

To promote placing Life-First, when taking action of any
kind,
is the primary focus of the movement.

But what does this actually mean?

If you haven’t yet read our introduction to the Life First ethic, please click here.

The Children’s Fire Movement (CFM) is founded upon peaceful pragmatism, not blame or judgement – as how can we create a truly peaceful future for our children if it is blame and judgement that inform us in our daily lives? As Mahatma Gandhi said, we need to “Be the change that [we] wish to see in the world.”

There are two important concepts, inspired by the Children’s Fire, informing the Life First ethic that the movement is founded upon…

In this moment everything is perfect – it is what it is!

This is a call to view the world objectively, to see what really is – to not get caught up in judgements and labeling things as right or wrong, which can cloud the situation. Judgement fragments us as a people and distances us from both the challenges and the solutions. Likewise, putting all our energy into blaming others only serves to dis-empower us and strip us of our ability to respond.

Seeing the moment as perfect does not however mean to condone activities that diminish life, or to be apathetic towards behaviours that threaten our future generations.

This moment is constantly evolving – the only constant in the universe is change!

Each moment contains the element of choice and the option to do things differently. This is a call for us to use a high measure of discernment (rather than judgement) when considering action on behalf of our future generations. This is a measure that goes beyond the subjective “is it right or wrong?” and asks “does this belief, thought, word, process, action, behaviour, policy, law etc support the continuation of Life and our future generations? Or, does it diminish Life?”.

Please note that when we speak of the continuation of Life we are referring to a scenario where Life truly thrives – we are not talking about mere survival here.

It can be good to get angry!

Looking at life objectively and suspending judgement does not  mean we must become dispassionate, cold-hearted robots! Of course, as humans we feel passionately about things and experience anger at the way things are from time to time. Our emotions can be a powerful ally when aligned with an objective, centred and appreciative mind. After all, emotions are what kick-started this movement for peaceful, democratic change!

Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are. – Augustine of Hippo

We felt it important to add theses words as we are living in tense and unsettled times with blame and resentment firing off in all directions – there is even talk of revolution here in the UK (you can read our own take on rEvolution here). We hope this page gives a more balanced insight into what Life First is and we will be compiling a list of specific examples of what Life First IS and what Life First ISN’T in our blog.

 

resilience - trust - community - democracy

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