Peace | Our relationship with nature

I’m just a nomad writer. I don’t pretend to be an expert. I observe events through the social media lens same as everyone else. But I have been around. And I’ve seen stuff that makes me question the world. Here are some of my questions: What do you rate as valuable in our society? Is it human life? Community? Progress? Profit?

Or arms deals?

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture.
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.
— Ira Byock, The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life (Avery, 2012)
quoted in; https://medium.com/@ismailalimanik/the-first-sign-of-civilization-95bc3f44f956

When I was in Canterbury for Christmas in 2017, I passed people wrapped in rubbish bags as I went to the Cathedral for the carol service. This was the heart of the Church of England in winter and homeless people watched the worshippers off to worship, and on the other side of the town, queues forming for the crazy-fun panto just around the corner. How is this civilised?

When I was in Hamburg in 2018, the tour guide told us this was the richest city in Europe, the place with the most billionaires, a city based on trade and bristling with container cranes. And I saw homeless people, even one poor women in a wheelchair, hunkered down in a doorway against the autumn chill. Why wouldn’t the richest city in Europe be able to house everyone?

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At this time of year our thoughts turn to Peace and Love.

http://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/peace.html#details23748010

Anne Deveson wrote a book called Waging Peace. She’s thinking about waging peace. She’s thinking about Baruch Spinoza, who said, ‘Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.’

She’s thinking about Ariel Dorfman, who said peace was: ‘The deep well of truth of what we all want, each man, each woman, each child on this earth; that the small space that surrounds our fragile bodies be respected, that our right to some minimal territoriality or identity or autonomy be afforded recognition by those who have the power to smash and invade it.’

She’s thinking about Jane Mayer, who wrote an article called ‘Contract Sport: What did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?’ Halliburton, one of the largest oilfield corporations was awarded a US$7.7 billion contract (the only bidder). Dick Cheney, the ‘Vice’ President, won US$44 billion and retired with a US$36million severance package. Big money in 2000. Still big.

http://www.msf.org.uk/country-region/afghanistan-kunduz-bombing-latest

I’m thinking about the Americans bombing a hospital. In the December 2015 edition of ‘The Pulse’, the quarterly magazine of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Australia, the editorial is entitled ‘Even war has rules’. 42 dead.

MSF are calling for an independent inquiry.

https://twitter.com/MSF_uk/status/651431062250352640/photo/1

MSF want combatants to follow the rules. As though it was sport. Is a war a game? What a revolting thought.

It’s more like a business.

If it’s a game, or even a business, FOLLOW THE RULES!

If it’s a game, pack up your bat and ball and go home.

If it’s a business, change.

Let’s think about Immanuel Kant who wrote Perpetual Peace: A philosophical text. Anne Deveson says that Kant believed that humans were evolving towards peace by embodying moral law through its institutions.

Evolve.

Wage peace.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/literalsalmon/2213269497

Our relationship with nature

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Tag Archive | Peace

How would you improve Australia with 270 Billion Dollars ?

Waging Peace