Thursday, September 20, 2012

Creating More Peace in the World

Dear All,

Tomorrow, September 21st, is International Peace Day. I would like to use the opportunity to invite you all to think about peace - as well as to do your part in creating a more peaceful world.

Peace has many forms and aspects and can be achieved on many levels. Any form of cultural exchange and/ or cultural sharing, for example - from sharing food to sharing music, poems, or philosophical traditions - is likely to promote global peace. But peace does not only mean international peace, it also includes peace with the natural world, in particular building a sustainable  relationship with the environment and treating other species (animals and plants) in a respectful, responsible, caring, and compassionate way. Of course, peace plays also an important role in everyday life, both in our interaction with the people we meet on a daily basis (family, friends, classmates, co-workers, etc) and in our relationship with ourselves (inner peace).

I would like to invite you to share your thoughts about peace here - either in the form of personal statements, general arguments (short speeches or articles), or creative expressions (poems, stories, artworks, songs, etc) - as well as to tell us about more action-oriented projects you are planning to organize in order to promote peace in today's world.

Please have a look at some of the websites dedicated to Peace Day if you would like to get inspired and, of course, involved, for example:

http://peaceoneday.org/
http://www.internationaldayofpeace.org/
http://www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/

Thank you - and Happy Peace Day!

gudrun

9 comments:

  1. Hello, everyone, hello, and thank you very much for coming here today.

    First off, I just want to thank you all for such a great turnout today. So many of you here all united under a common goal: peace. It truly is a wonderful, beautiful thing!

    Now, I’m going to be honest here. This is not the speech I was originally planning to give here today. I finished it, read it over, and promptly threw it out. The problem wasn’t that it was awful, not at all. No, the problem was that it didn’t cut to the core of the issue. I realized something very important that day.
    I realized that it isn’t my job to come here and speak to you so that you may all go home content with the fact that you’ve done enough to spread the word of peace in the world. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. My job today is to say, here in public in front of all of you, that not you, not I, not a single one of us has done enough. Not a single one.

    It’s true that you all have come here in the interest of peace, and I thank you for it. I thank you so much that you could take a few minutes out of your oh so busy schedule to come here today. Heavens forbid you should miss the new episode of the X-Factor.

    Meanwhile, while you’re so concerned about who’s going to be eliminated next, a man and his partner are being beaten because of their sexuality.

    Meanwhile, while the foremost thing on your mind is the girl you met in chemistry today, an Indian woman is being excluded because of the colour of her skin.

    Meanwhile, just next door, a man is sexually abusing his daughter.

    Meanwhile, you’re watching Big Brother and lamenting the NHL lockout.

    Make no mistake, my friends; we have not done enough in the advocacy of peace in this country. Not by a longshot. Make no mistake; we human beings are a plague! I speak not of a plague on the Earth, oh no, but a plague upon our own species!

    Too long!

    Too long have we abused one another!

    Too long have we abandoned those that mean the most to us in their time of need!

    Every single time we make meaningful headway on the frontier of peace, we take two steps back for every one we took forward!

    But too long, I say! The time to change is now. It starts with us. Not a single one of us here has done enough, and I don’t claim innocence, but I know that today I shall commit to change, as shall every one of you!

    One needn’t dig deep to see that the human population has never been one to change on its own. The human population thrives on emulation. It thrives on mimicking those people whom we see as superior to ourselves. Look at the everpresence of popular culture. It is not coincidence that it is one of the largest industries in the world today.

    So today, I say, enough! The celebrities have had their time in the limelight, let it be our turn! Let us be the ones to lead humanity out of this dark cave in which we have become so hopelessly lost! Let us spread the message that now is not the time for us to exclude one other, for us to hurt one another, for us to kill one another! Indeed, that time shall never come!

    The time for action is today my friends! The change starts with us! Let us lead the world off of this slippery slope which we are on, and onto the summit where peace awaits us like brilliant daybreak!

    Thank you, everybody. Before I go, I’d like to ask one thing of you all. Leave today with a purpose. Do not go back to the same life you have lived day in and day out thus far in your lives. Go with a purpose, so that when next we meet, you can say, “I have done enough! I have done enough!”

    Thank you all, and good night!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Excellent speech, Kyle! You have done SOMETHING by posting it! Not sure if it's enough but it's a great start! Thank you very much! gudrun

      Delete
  2. Wow. . . I can see why no one else posted a speech; no one wants to be the one to follow that.
    I think it is a very powerful speech and I thought the “meanwhile” parts were especially effective.
    I think you’re right about this being a problem. Many people pretend there isn’t, that we’ve become more accepting and we behave better now, and maybe that’s partly true, but really what’s happened is that we’ve just become better at hiding it because it is no longer socially acceptable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Peace is the mother of progress. Without peace a nation cannot make any progress. So peace is ever desirable. Modern war involves atom bomb and hydrogen bomb. So, war should always be avoided for world peace. The ancient battles were confined between two opposite armies. They were limited within a field called battlefield. But the modern warfare is totally different. The fight is not confined in a field or within the armies. The war-aeroplanes destroy the civilians by dropping bombs from the sky. On the 6th August 1945 the allied army dropped a small atom bomb on a Japanese city, Hirosima. The whole city was destroyed within a second. Nagasak,i another city of Japan, got the same fate on the 9th August 1945. These two bombs with the brightness of thousand suns performed their monstrous destruction. This opened the eyes of the whole world. So, UN was established and it works hard to establish permanent peace in the world. Except some war-mongers, the whole world is in favor of peace.
    World-peace is absolutely necessary. The public opinion of the world is in favor of lasting peace. None in the world approves of the military action of China in the border of India. It is hoped, world-peace will gain ground.

    ReplyDelete
  4. “Fight war not wars, fight power not people”. In our world today, it is not only difficult to implement a voice advocating peace but also practicing that voice in situations of adversity. In order to practice peaceful actions one needs to learn the true meaning of wisdom. Wisdom is a term often linked to knowledge, experience and age. Often you hear an elderly person to be considered as wise and all-knowing, but seldom do you hear a young child being called wise. Lao Tzu once said that “wise men hear and see as little children do”. He couldn’t have put it more accurately. Wisdom is gained from virtue; wisdom is gained from innocence and most importantly wisdom is gained from the lessons we learn as a child. And as a result, we all learn the nature of peace at a rather young age but as we enter the period between childhood and adulthood; commonly referred to as youth; we begin to lose some of that virtue, some of that innocence and as a result some of that peaceful notion. And as we step into our adult lives, the clarity of our thoughts is somewhat altered with the ever-competing world’s ideologies.

    Flushing the waste away: When we learn this etiquette in childhood we don’t tend to link it to anything outside the four walls of our bathroom. However, the truth is that, that is one of the essential components of peace. Have you ever thought what it actually means to flush? Well, we all probably know by now that flushing away waste is a way of cleaning the toilet. Well why don’t we apply that to other real life situations? Why can’t we flush away anger and build in love? Why don’t we flush away prejudice and embrace diversity? For example, don’t you believe that it this world would be a much better place to live in, if each one of us flushed away the discrimination we have against other racial or religious groups completely from our systems? Moreover, if middle eastern countries and the western world could flush out the current warfare and nuclear power race from their political ideologies, then maybe, just maybe our future generations will not have to face the smoke of tear gas canisters; blurring their minds projector, obscuring and distorting their vision and along with it their ability to make wise decisions. Maybe we would be able to implement world peace only if each one of us learns how to flush.

    I have definitely heard Barney’s (for those of you who don’t know, Barney was a friendly dinosaur in a popular kids series named Barney and Friends) message that “sharing is caring”, but the truth is how many of us truly share and truly care? Sharing pencil crayons seemed easy back then but has a peek into the selfish world we live in today. It is a constant battle. There is a battle for a position at a workplace, or the highest grade in class. For instance, think of the most powerful nations of this world; where do they get most of their resources from? From other third-world nations that do not have the ability to fight back this form of exploitation. Instead of sharing these resources, human nature has the tendency of snatching it away from others. It is all for me, and none for you. Sorry, better luck next time! So what happens to these nations? Well, either they die from the increasing poverty or if lucky they get involved in some sort of low-income job that will help them feed their family; even if it means just being able to provide one meal per day. So what happened to the sharing and caring? What happened to being wise and fair with others? What happened to implementing a peaceful notion in the world?

    One simply needs to revive those lost memories of childhood; those lost teachings and integrate them into your life as a youth and then apply them as an adult to your life, your society, and your government and see how quickly the world steps aside to watch the radiance emanated from you. In order to create a peaceful world, we need to step up to the plate and initiate simple tactics of peace and wisdom.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is my portfolio entry on 'World Peace'.

      Delete
  5. I think something is sadly absent from the world is ideological peace. Humanity has come so far in the past couple of centuries. We've come to tolerate so many human traits like skin colour, cultural background, and even sexuality, yet when it comes to ideas and preferences we act with incredible hostility toward each other. I've witnessed heated debates from some of the silliest things that people can possibly argue over such as technology preferences and sports. But I'm not here today to tell people are ridiculous for debating Lionel Messi versus Christiano Ranolda, or Apple versus Samsung, but rather a more serious issue. I'm talking about the hostility that arises when people have conflicting religious beliefs.I fully understand that people hold a lot of their ideals closely to them, and are brought up in them. But what disturbs me is all of the war and chaos that has erupted due to the intolerance and ignorance some people show. Many people like to turn to religion and blame, since that is what some people use a an justification for war and murder. Even as an atheist, I don't think it is religion's fault that these people fighting. In fact I think if I were to go through religious scripture, I wouldn't find much on killing people who disagreed with the teachings. Something I like to envision is how almost all religious deities seemed quite peace loving and would never judge or tell people what to think. A lot of the hot button issues around the world can be dealt with democratic and dignified manners rather than barbaric killing in the name of a god or deity. Now I'm someone who doesn't like to interfere with the upbringing of children when it comes to cultural and religious influences, but I do think something can be done to ensure a more peaceful tomorrow. The very first thing that comes to mind is how elders can pass on more of a tolerant, accepting, and open minded persona. People should put less emphasis on what to think and more emphasis on how to think. Let's allow future generations put themselves in the perspective of how they would feel if someone were to scorn them with ignorance or intolerance. However, I do understand that there are some issues that cannot be resolved simply by accepting other ideas, for example the land disputes that occur in Israel and Palestine. Though I may not be able to say too much since I'm limited on what I know, what I do know is that there are other solutions that senseless killings. The war that they have waged has gone on for centuries and it has clearly not done anything except intensify the conflict. Like I said earlier they are civilized, peaceful and democratic approaches to this issue.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The world seriously needs to adopt ways to control anger and frustration. If a friend of mine were christian, I wouldn't see how it would be a detriment to my life.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Peace is a word that seems to have lost meaning to people in today's greedy, power-hungry world. A message of capitalism from many of the world's powers has lead to a society that bases all of it's happiness on paper money. I feel like the view of peace has been lost at all levels, inner and outer, as well as on a global scale. It seems that even at an individual level people don't seem to be at peace. Constant fears have run over the lives of everybody. When's my deadline? Why is my insurance so high? "I'm in never ending debt because of my studies and now I can't find a job." These thoughts constantly race through the mind's of the majority of people living in the western world and they all seem to have one basis:time. That's right, time, the constant race against time that never seems to end. It seems as though that the concept of time has almost driven some men insane, there never seems to be enough of it. We need to conquer this weird fear against time in order to reach an inner peace. We need learn how to manage with it and not allow it to take over our minds. I'm a firm believer in that peace starts individually and only then can it spread to the outside world.

    It feels like that there has been some sort of war raging on since the turn of the 19th century. It has become a constant in people's live and that is not right. War hold's no place in today's modern world, though it seems that some people are unwilling to let go of it. What seems to be at least somewhat part of the cause for every war? Differing views and beliefs on spirituality. Really? Why do people feel entitled to force their spiritual and religious views on people of differing beliefs. I believe that it has been established that any one person has the freedom of speech and the freedom of thought as long as it's not detrimental or harmful to anybody. But it seems that people are abusing that very freedom of thought and turning it physical, for example in the current day situation of Palestine. People need to realize that in today's age that is no longer acceptable. Put yourself in the shoe's of those that you are harming and think about how you would feel if that happened to you. Society as whole seems to be ready to move on, but there are some people holding us back. Education in my opinion is the key. Let's educate those in places who don't have the same access and move forward. Let's create a new peaceful world.

    ReplyDelete