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Posts Tagged ‘world peace’

A World Where Conflicts Are Solved Peacefully

Oct 20th, 2009
by ianpeatey.
16 comments

Something suddenly became crystal clear to me yesterday. What had been fuzzy and out-of-focus, in a flash became sharp and well defined. It wasn’t of Newtonian ‘apple-falling-from-tree-equals-gravity ‘ proportions – yet important for me nonetheless.

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Dreaming Of World Peace

I’d just returned from an International NVC Mediation Conference and was chatting to a friend over a coffee, sharing our impressions of the Conference. I get quite animated when talking about my dream for the future of the world – the one I state as clearly as I can in the Welcome message over there on the right:

“… a world where conflicts are solved peacefully …”

Despite my passion for this vision, I found myself apologising for it as naïve, idealistic and impossible to achieve. I could even say I was whining a bit!

Why was I apologising, I asked myself? Do I really have my head in the clouds, I wondered? It was more confusing as I’d just spent the last 5 days together with 60 people from all over the world, learning how to mediate between two conflicting sides.

Then the apple fell.

I, like the majority of people, haven’t believed that universal peace is possible:

“World Peace? Wonderful idea .. but no chance of happening! At least not in my lifetime”

But why not?

Are we doomed to a future of turmoil, hurting and killing each other? Are we really unable, as a species, to rise above that and choose love and peace instead of hatred and fighting?

Believing In The Possible

If I don’t believe something is possible then how can I expect it to happen? If I’m trying to achieve a goal without the conviction that it can happen, my energy is getting diverted. It’s half-hearted.

This last week I found the belief I was missing. I started to believe that not only is peace possible, it’s actually not that difficult!

I learned a few skills and a simple process designed to help solve conflicts peacefully. They’re not hard to learn and we all have the foundations already – for example, empathy, interrupting, asking questions, making requests, keeping track of a conversation. There’s a little more to it than that – but not much.

I became clear that anyone can learn how to solve conflict peacefully.

World peace is possible.

All it needs is enough people to learn and apply these skills. We’ll have world peace when most of us learn a little – just enough to solve day to day conflicts, and a few learn deeper to deal with the more intense conflicts.

Peace In My Lifetime

Conflict is not going away – it is an important part of life. It’s stimulating and in the tension where interests meet there’s a creative possibility greater than what the individual sides bring. Conflict – inner or outer – drives us to innovate, create and is part of being alive. I love conflict!

Peace is not the absence of conflict but the resolution of conflict with love and respect.

919567_innerpeace_1I strongly believe the majority of the world’s population want this – they just don’t believe it’s possible. Many people get a superficial kick from violent conflict – but deep in their hearts are wishing to get their kicks in ways that are peaceful.

We all want peace in our lives but we don’t yet believe it’s possible. We’ve built a world where we are constantly receiving messages designed to keep hope away and keep us believing in violence.

  • War has been glamorised to get us to support killing in the name of the nation, religion or other cause
  • Violence has been pushed down our throats as entertainment by the mass media
  • Our culture values aggression as a sign of strength.

We’ve lost our collective hope that it can be different.

Yesterday I had also lost hope.

Today I write boldly and clearly:

Help me build a world where conflicts are solved peacefully – it is not only possible, it’s easy.

The point of self development

Mar 8th, 2009
by ianpeatey.
12 comments

On my first forays into the blogging world about 6 months ago, I quickly noticed the large number of sites devoted to self development. I’ve found many great writers producing useful and insightful material among the masses of obvious and superficial. I’m guessing the honour for largest representation goes to ‘Make Easy Money’ sites, but self development still has a huge following.

This is good news for me as I’ve been ‘into’ self development pretty much my whole adult life. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, I consider myself a ‘professional’ in self development. I spent several years as country head of Learning and Development for a multinational and, apart from a few years as an accountant (of all things!) I’ve worked as a trainer, coach and consultant all my career. Now I’ve turned my hand to writing in my quest to help myself and others improve. I have an idea I know a bit about the field, and I’m humble enough to admit I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s available.

I love to evolve, grow, learn new things about myself and the world I’m in. I’ve always worked under the assumption that self development is a ‘good’ thing and a lot of it is better than a little, and a little is better than none. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but yesterday I asked myself for the very first time, ‘What’s the point of self development?”

If you’ve delved into this site beyond the front page then you’ll have noticed my main passion is for an approach called Nonviolent Communication (NVC). If you haven’t delved, now would be a good time to do so! Anyway, I was in conversation yesterday with Petra, a trainer-friend of mine, and we were talking about all kinds of stuff. One part of the conversation really got my brain in a whirl and I’ll give you a short extract:

Petra      “These things we use, like NVC, are all for self development, aren’t they?”

Me           “Well yes and no. I mean it is about self development but that’s not the purpose.“

Petra       “Uh?”

Me            (Trying to explain) “The purpose of NVC is something else. You know, world peace and all that. But it does it through self development. Like all these different approaches we love, all help us develop. Development’s just a means to the end”

Petra        “But isn’t self development an end in itself?”

Me             “There’s no point to self development if it doesn’t do something else. If it doesn’t make a difference in the world it’s a waste of time and effort, isn’t it?”

Petra          “I guess so, yes. Change starts at home. If I change myself then the world starts to change with me.”

Me               “Exactly!”

My brain hurt after that.

I care about you, dear reader, but, to be brutally honest, I don’t care one bit about your self development, your journey through life or helping solve your problems. I’m not much interested in these things for myself either. It’s fine with me if you want to stay where you are and stop learning, if you lose your curiousity and love for life or if you don’t reach your potential and chose to get stuck in the challenges of living. I’m delighted if I do inspire people to learn and change but that’s not what I care about. It’s not the reason I run workshops or write articles.

I aim to change the world.

My purpose is to reduce violence in our world. My goal is that conflicts get resolved peacefully, and every single person on this planet is valued for the unique individual they are.

Self development is what I know best and it’s my chosen path for fulfilling my purpose in this life. But I really don’t care about self development, unless it brings us a few steps closer to a peaceful world.

What’s your own purpose in self development?

Legalising marijuana is top priority

Jan 11th, 2009
by ianpeatey.
10 comments

As you may have noticed I’ve been following Change.Org for the last couple of weeks and especially their initiative to identify the Top 10 ideas to present to the Obama Administration on 16th January. I realise that I may be getting a bit pushy about this and I promise this is the last time I’ll mention it. Here are the 2 ideas I’m supporting:

I know it’s idealistic, dreamy and naive and all that. A chance to change the world, peace in our lifetime etc. blah blah blah. BUT it is an opportunity to get some new ideas in front of possibly the most powerful man in the world – at least he will be for the next few years.

All it takes is a few minutes of your time and at least if you vote you can say you did something! And with global consciousness engulfing us (ok! – lapping at our feet) Obama’s priorities are not just an American agenda. Voting closes on 15th January at 17.00 ET (I assume that’s US Eastern Time).

At the time of writing ‘Bridging the Empathy Gap‘ is currently languishing at the respectable yet completely useless position of 15th 14th overall and needs at least another 1,100 800 votes to get in the top 10 assuming the ones above don’t get any more votes. ‘Appoint Secretary of Peace’ is doing rather better at 9th 8th place but still needs support to keep it in the top 10.

By my estimation, if just one person reading this can mobilise 1,000 people to cast a vote for these 2 ideas then we’ve made it. Or 10 of you mobilising 100 people each? Or … you get the picture? I’m fairly new to this blogging and networking world and my guess is that some of you reading this are not and probably have a much better idea how to achieve voting for these ideas on a large scale? Anyone?

Now you’re probably wondering about the title of the post and what it’s got to do with any of this.

If you take a look at the current top 10 most popular ideas you’ll see there are some really great causes in there. Health, education, environment. Right in there at the top spot is that urgent and critical challenge that will surely shape the future of our species. Billions of people around the world will be breathing (or inhaling) a collective sigh of relief when they see the most popular idea. The one that will be at the top of the list presented to the new President. You guessed it…. ‘Legalise Marijuana’.

I’ll pause here for you to take this in.

…

…

I’m guessing there are sound reasons for this proposal and it apparently has a lot of support. But is this really the most pressing issue facing the new President???? Really! Come on. Let’s vote for stuff that’s important!

I’ll finish by telling you about my one and only encounter with marijuana.

Many years ago I was living in Reading, UK in a ground floor apartment with the landlord living in the apartment above. Reading is host to a major annual rock festival and my landlord supplemented his income by selling marijuana to those attending the concerts. I guess they needed it to distract them from the rain and mud that goes hand in hand with any outdoor event in the UK. He grew the marijuana in a greenhouse in the back yard of our apartments, carefully concealed by a sheet of transparent plastic.

Being somewhat curious whilst not having a clue what I was doing I decided to try it out. I waited until I was sure there was no-one around and took two or three leaves from the plants in the greenhouse and took them inside. I remember feeling very worried about being caught.

What to do with these leaves? I had some vague idea that you smoke the stuff and probably that meant the leaves needed to be dried and then wrapped in paper. I was a bit impatient to see what all the fuss was all about so I put the leaves in the oven and prepared some newspaper to put it in. After a couple of minutes I removed the leaves and I watched in horror as they turned into dust in my hands. I was too nervous to go get some more so I never did find out what all the fuss was about.

I imagine though that if marijuana had been legal then I wouldn’t have been nervous, I’d have gone for some more leaves and would today be a very different person. So you see … legalising marijuana is clearly the number one priority in order to save young men, such as I was, from making complete fools of themselves!

Plan B for World peace

Dec 15th, 2008
by ianpeatey.
6 comments

As I wait for enthusiastic calls from our beloved world leaders following up on my plan for world peace, I was inspired by this article on the BBC News website to come up with ‘Plan B’:

“A Florida pizza delivery man who was challenged by armed robbers in the city of Miramar got in first with his own weapon – a large pepperoni pizza.

Eric Lopez Devictoria, 40, flung the piping hot pizza at the gunman, then turned on his heels and ran. He made a safe getaway, according to the Florida Sun-Sentinel, despite one shot being fired as he fled.

Police later arrested three teenage suspects, who have been charged with armed robbery.”

Eric clearly read my previous post and, not having a paper firearm to hand, used the next best thing. A pizza! Well done Eric for the improvisation.

I guess the police easily identified the suspects from the pepperoni-shaped burn marks on their faces? I haven’t tested the effectiveness of other types of pizza (I hope I’m never required to do so!) but am convinced they would also work. If pepperoni doesn’t suit your taste, or for all the vegetarians out there, then why not arm yourself with a vegetarian pizza?

In the unlikely event that the cardboard gun idea doesn’t fly, the next best thing is to replace all the weapons with pizzas! (this is my Plan B – in case it wasn’t clear!).