Over at StreetProphets, check out a heartening exchange of letters between Muslims and Christians, as initiated by senior members of the international Muslim community.
It’s easy to get lost in forever trying to mitigate the latest crisis and forget about the ultimate goal: a just and peaceful society. Our grinning corporate overlords fear nothing in this world so much as they fear a citizenry that will stand up together for the common good.
What do you think are the most important steps towards peace on Earth?
I think the most important step is that each and every one of us accepts responsibility for creating peace on earth — in our thoughts, in our intentions and in our actions.
Disarming and sharing resources.
That makes me a semi-communist or socialist I suppose.
Finding an equitable balance between the operational needs of corporations and the survival needs of workers. To remove the predatory nature of corporations. Profits are one thing, but global domination of workers and poor countries are another and what is pitting one another against us. Abolition of religion works for me too but then I’d really be a communist.
I agree with all you stated, but would add that education and proper information is imperative.
An educated population is a must, meanwhile education budgets are slashed and the population at large is being dumbed down by mindless reality shows and soap operas – concurrent with a full out assault on NPR and PBS.
You agree? Really? I have this problem. I imagine I’m most coherant in the morning but usually only find incoherance when I re-read what I write!
Re. dumbing down of media and entertainment, combined with the assault on public television and radio and education funding, it’s like a viscious circle where the less educated people become the more they seem to enjoy the garbage that media sells and selling garbage equals higher profits. And since there’s no profit in non-profit television or radio those institutions come under pressure. Not to mention the pressure being put on them ideologically to end the fictional liberal media meme.
The crux of fixing so much that is wrong and going more wrong is the people themselves. They are the only solution now and they, in general, seem the least prepared or even willing and able to resist their own slow boil lobster fate.
It’s quite disheartening.
My religion comments are biased obviously and I have no more right to say that it should be abolished than a bible thumper has to tell me that I’m going to hell if I don’t get my tail saved. But there’s no denying the damage that all organized religions have wreaked on societies all along and their warring with one another again now. Religion and resources. The two biggest obstacles to peace, I think.
Abolition of religion is both a violation of free will and pointless. One might as well abolish sculpture or music. It also ignores the contributions of people like Gandhi or Dr. King, whose ideas about social justice and peaceful resistance were deeply entwined with their faith.
But there are a lot of things that can be done to decrease the likelihood that an institution can be appropriated for the advancement of an authoritarian agenda. Making sure that there’s social justice in the first place, for example, reduces people’s need to rely on religion for a bulwark against an ‘inherently’ bad and dangerous world in which the only beings with agency are supernatural. Providing a social safety net reduces the impulse to tribalism in which oneself and ones church members can be portrayed as an embattled underdog group at odds with the world.
In short, making sure that people’s basic survival needs are addressed, that they don’t feel threatened, prevents people needing to use religion as a shield from reality. The less likely they are to use it as a shield, the less likely they are to use it as a club. It makes it more likely that when they turn to religion, they do so out of a desire for positive socialization and self-actualization, which motives can produce very laudable outcomes.
You’re right of course and I just copped to the ignorance of my first statement.
Sharing.