FAQ

 
See also: "We need to calm our fears and build our capacity to hope."

A strong word is needed to encompass what is required to move the world toward greater justice and sustainability. Dictionary definitions are less important than perceptions and impact. 

"Hope" is such a word. We use a definition based on the one in the Cambridge Dictionary: Noun: A confident feeling about what will happen in the future. Verb: To want something to happen or to be true, and usually have a good reason to think that it might. Here is a definition based on consensus in the field of positive psychology: 

“Hope, optimism, futuremindedness, and future orientation represent a cognitive, emotional, and motivational stance toward the future. Thinking about the future, expecting that desired events will occur, acting in ways believed to make them more likely, and feeling confident that these will ensue given appropriate efforts sustain good cheer in the here and now and galvanize goal-directed actions.”
 

Usually the first question people ask about this initiative is whether it couldn’t just be added to existing official global designations of heritage sites. Unfortunately this isn’t possible. 

The top tier of heritage designations is the World Heritage List, which now includes over a thousand sites in 167 countries. World Heritage is a highly successful program of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). To be listed, properties must meet certain stringent criteria; decisions are made by a committee composed of representatives of national governments. 

In order to protect the World Heritage List from “political and nationalistic uses,” the committee discourages nominations concerning “historical events or famous people [that] could be strongly influenced by nationalism or other particularisms.” Since governments can disagree about what constitutes nationalism or a “particularism,” the committee goes out of its way to avoid dealing with such issues. For instance, none of the six places described as examples of proposed Global Beacons is on the World Heritage List. 

This will be explained in more detail in an online paper. The bottom line, however, is that for the purpose of choosing the places we are calling Global Beacons of Hope, a nongovernmental initiative is needed.
 

Places that represent positive values can have negative aspects. Descriptions of them should include the downsides for purposes of intellectual honesty and because the contrast helps in understanding the positives. 

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote: “We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion.” 

The novelist W. Somerset Maugham had a different way of looking at these negatives: "I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that there is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues." 

On the other hand, this can go too far. Former U.S. President Barack Obama said in a 2019 speech, "I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, that the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that's enough. That is not activism, that is not bringing about change," he said. "The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws."