  Yup, it's that time of the year again. Where bloggers from around the world unite to try to put a simple ideal through. The Dona Nobis Pacem was started by the one and only Mimi Lenox and has taken the blogging world by storm. Quoted directy from wikipedia: So where do we start? I believe true peace cannot be achieved by having global movements or huge gatherings, but rather, it can only be achieved by starting from the lowest level, the individual. Wikipedia used 3 very powerful words to describe peace. Respect. Justice. Goodwill. Every now and then we would encounter some form of hostility or disagreement. It is part of our everyday life. But how we handle these situations refects directly on the ability to achieve that eluding "World Peace" that everyone is talking about. Imagine a simple scenario. You're happily walking along the road when somebody accidentally steps on your toes. What would you do? I believe most people would just scream "OW!!" and forgive that person when he apologises profusely to you, although some of us would engage in a shouting match there and then. These people are the banes to our ideal. But less about them, more about the majority. Now imagine the same scenario, but this time, the person walks up to you and intentionally steps on your toes, turns around and starts laughing his head off. What would you do if that punk was a petite little guy wearing thick glasses? And what would you do if he was a bulky bodybuilder almost twice your size? I can bet a million dollars that your answers for the 2 won't be the same. This is the so called intentional hostility that causes the breakdown of peace. Granted that peace is quite hard to maintain during this type of situation, but the main deciding factor is actually what happens after the conflict arises. Lets go back to our 3 beautiful words... Firstly, respect. Before you start screaming your head off about how inconsiderate and idiotic that person is, take 1 second to ask him why he did it, of course in the most unhostile tone that your current emotional state allows you to be in. Would you still be angry at him if he told you that he would get $10 donated to some charitable organisation for every person that he steps on? Or if he reaches down and lifts up a dead corpse of a tiny but fatally poisonious spider from your feet? Secondly, our good friend, justice. If he really did it for the fun of it, what would be a justifiable action to take? Maybe having a go at his toes or even a tight slap across the face? Or how about burning his house down and leaving him homeless on the streets? There's a fine line between justice and revenge. We should always be fair and non-judgemental when choosing our reactions. Always remember that revenge begets revenge, and the vicious cycle will just keep growing and growing. And last but not least, Goodwill. What would you do if you saw that same guy, on the same street, at the same time the next day, and he's walking up towards you again? Would you still be staring a hole through him? Or would you be scrambling to find any sort of weapon that you can find in the close proximity? How many of us would just stand there and see what he does this time? Now upsize the entire situation to a country to country conflict. This is what wars are made of. When 2 countries can't see eye-to-eye, and neither one is willing to give the slightest amount of compramise. If we could all just try to have these 3 important factors in mind when dealing with hostile situations, maybe, just maybe, world peace might just be attainable one day. Countries are run by governments, governments are run by parties, parties are run by politicians, politicians are individuals, therefore the problem does not lie in the country itself, but rather with the important people making the decisions in the name of the country. Let's end off with a little quote to think about... Anyhow written on Nov 7, 2007 at 7:18 PM
2 bored people said something about this
What a thoughtful post, Anyhow. You made some very good points and in a way I haven't run across yet in the blogosphere. The peace globe posts are amazing and I am making my way through them all. posted by
 Mimi Lenox : 1:07 PM |
 
 
|
