Zoe Weil
Zoe Weil is the co-founder and present of the Institute for Humane Education(IHE). In addition to creating the M.Ed. and certificate programs for IHE and leading IHE’s Sowing Seeds and MOGO (Most Good) workshops, Zoe Weil is the author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education (2004) for educators, Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times (2003) for parents, and Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life (January 2009). She has also written books for young people, including Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs (2007) about 12-year-old activists inspired by an eccentric substitute teacher who’s really a humane educator, and So, You Love Animals: An Action-Packed, Fun-Filled Book to Help Kids Help Animals (2004). She has written numerous articles on humane education and humane living and has appeared frequently on radio and television.
Zoe speaks regularly at universities, conferences, schools, churches, and in communities around the United States and Canada. She has also served as a consultant on humane education to people and organizations around the world.
Zoe received a Master’s in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School (1988) and a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania (1983). She is certified in Psychosynthesis counseling, a form of psychotherapy which relies upon the intrinsic power of each person’s imagination to promote growth, creativity, health, and transformation.
Zoe lives with her husband, teenage son, and several rescued animals at the Institute for Humane Education in Surry, Maine.
“In order to align your life choices with your values, you will need to inquire about the effects of your actions (and inactions) on yourself and others. Although we are always stumbling upon new knowledge that shifts our choices and life direction, bringing conscious inquiry to life means that we continually ask questions that lead us to the information we need to make thoughtful decisions. Asking questions is liberating because we develop great understanding and discover more choices with our new knowledge.”
“Someday, I hope that we will all be patriots of our planet and not just of our respective nations.”
“All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.”
“Each day we wake up and make myriad choices that affect others. We clothe ourselves with shirts, pants, and shoes that may have been sewn together by women working in factories fourteen-plus hours a day for a nonliving wage; we buy products manufactured in ways the destroy forests, pollute waterways, and poison the air; we wash our hair with shampoos that may have been squeezed into the eyes of conscious rabbits or force-fed to them in quantities that kill; and on and on. As Derrick Jensen has written in his book "The Culture of Make Believe", "It is possible to destroy a culture without being aware of its existence. It is possible to commit genocide or ecocide from the comfort of one's living room”
“I am grateful to realize that my desires do not entitle me to add to another's suffering.”
“Mogo living brings about true freedom. When you have the inner conviction to do the most good and the least harm, you are free to say no to media, social, and peer pressures. You are free from a nagging sense that your life does not have value or meaning. You are free to imagine and then create a truly successful (in the deepest meaning on the word) life. You are free to be at peace with yourself and all those whom your life touches.”
“Live your epitaph”
“In order to make most good, least harm choices, and create a humane and sustainable world, we are going to have to become adept at making connections. Single-issue thinking and taking sides when issues are presented to us in simplistic terms will have to give way to far more nuanced research, consideration, and decision making.”
“Reverence is an emotion that we can nurture in our very young children, respect is an attitude that we instill in our children as they become school-agers, and responsibility is an act that we inspire in our children as they grow through the middle years and become adolescents.”
“If the traditional Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) are the basics that we want our children to master academically, then reverence, respect, and responsibility are the three Rs that our children need to master for the sake of their souls and the health of the world.”