Hello, bloggers!
I’m back in Ireland after a very intense but wonderful time in England at the University of Bradford.
The Chancelor of the university is a very distinguished man named Imran Kahn, who is a former cricket player and current political leader in Pakistan. He has touched the hearts of many of the people in that country. I was able to speak to him about the institutions at Bradford that have brought together support systems from around the world in the service of peace.
I also spoke to the students about how important partnerships are for the peace process: that together we can protect each other; apart we will be destroyed.
There are powers that do not want peace, because there’s no money and no power in peace. Peace is a very scary thing for some segments of the human species, because so many of the leaders control people by keeping them apart. Peacemakers are killed; peace initiatives are destroyed.
I have proposed that we bring together as many of the universities of the world as possible in a loose federation, so they’ll become one voice for peace.
Peace has many, many manifestations. What is peaceful to one culture is not to another. Where we make the mistake in peace is in trying to impose it. Peace has to be lived within the culture it exists in. In peace, we all stand together under the same umbrella.
We say: “I don’t like your attitudes and ideas, but I love you and accept the fact that you have those ideas and live that way.” The other person says the same thing. And now you have peace.
Peace is not about cloning everyone. We are all free to love, hate, heal, be cantankerous... We question and debate and pull everything apart; we doubt everything and we think differently on different subjects. We have to add into the equation that we must love everyone no matter who and what we are.
We have never gone down those roads to explore that. That’s why I call for the New Los Alamos.
But there are so many quagmires in that philosophy that have to be discussed and figured out. All of the hot-button issues that everyone shoots off their mouth and their guns about, have to be dragged out at some point by people who know what they’re doing and can come up with a plan of how we can live together.
It can be done. It will be done. The alternative is the destruction of the planet.
That brings me to the celebration earlier this week of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing...
When Neil Armstrong said, “One small step...” the reality is that we still have to take one huge step for mankind. And that step is the New Los Alamos. If we don’t take that step, maybe there won’t be any more steps, just the Big Bang all over again.
We seem to be able to do the impossible when there is an underlying will that is not apparent, but is felt all over the world. The moon landing was thought to be an impossible task, but we achieved it as a nation and a species. The New Los Alamos must also be an impossible task that we must figure out how to carry out—even if we have to crawl to it.
Matt