What Makes People Tick?

Sometimes it feels like the world is, to use a phrase I like the sound of, going to hell in a handbasket. Which is, as strange an explanation as this is, why it's been such a long time since I wrote anything for this blog. Not sure I still wanted to, in all honesty. Did I lose my faith, my conviction, my drive? Certainly not. However with the world being as it is, the question "Why do I even bother trying to make a difference?" crosses my mind more and more. I pray, I read scripture, I meditate, I try to do good, be kind, give charity, love others. I write about equality and love for our fellow human beings, I write that as far as I am concerned we are all equal and the same - human beings: people of flesh and blood. I want to write about religion and faith, want to encourage people to seek a closer bond / relationship with God / The Divine, want to explore the many similarities between different religions and speak about the beauty of compassion, kindness, love, hope, ...

Lately, I've been reading a lot of books focusing on religion and spirituality. Books written by believers and practitioners, but also books written by outsiders and scholars - religious tourists, sociologists, anthropologists... One thing that strikes me over and over is that so many accounts from different religions have common elements or are even a re-telling of the same story but updated or changed to reflect the history, religion, language or culture of the ones telling the story. Reading accounts from different religions in regions that, as far as we know, never interacted before white Europeans started sailing around the world, laying claim to lands that were never theirs to lay claim to, and seeing how similar these accounts are, how many common factors there are, it makes me realise that when it comes to how we view religion and the divine, when it comes to the stories we tell regarding not just our own creation but the creation of the world and all living beings, we are ...

It is time for humans the world over to unite. It is time for us to come together through the Internet, through Social Media and through Technology. It is time for us to come together and collectively say NO. It is time for us to come together and collectively say NO to war, NO to corruption, NO to consumerism, NO to living in a plastic-fantastic society, NO to intolerance and the spreading of misinformation, NO to governments not delivering on their promises, NO to religious intolerance, NO to discrimination, NO to rape, NO to torture, NO to inequality, NO to hunger, NO to living a life dedicated to the pursuit of material things and NO to one more person having to live in poverty or suffer for one more day. It is time to come together, to collectively stand up for what matters and to tell those who care more for money and power than people and the planet that they need to WAKE UP before it is too late. The internet, social media and instant global communication as we know the...

The world today is a mess. By that I mean that humans have made it into a mess. War and disease in Africa, rape and murder in the Middle East, social and economic upheavals in the west. People hate, murder, rape, abuse, lie to, threaten, torture and mistreat others. When it comes to looking at the world as a whole (not on a local or community level), I believe it is fair to say that we don't help each other, we don't think of the whole world as one family of humanity and we often treat other people as if they were less than us or beneath us. Even though we have thousands of years of history to learn from, it seems we just keep repeating the same mistakes. Even though we can do a quick online search to read works by authors such as Homer and Hippocrates, it seems we can't learn from them. Even though we can read about campaigns of Roman leaders who lived more than 2000 years ago, it seems we can't learn from them. Events in the past few months have shown me that we ...

I am very glad that this video is only fictional.  Way too many people dead in Gaza, among them many innocent non-combatants. Shortages of water, food, electricity and just about everything else. Rockets being launched from inside or next to mosques, schools, hospitals, houses. The threat of being forced into being a human shield ; of being executed for disagreeing with the establishment, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of that is very real .  What is also very real is the threat that Hamas and groups like it pose. It is time that the world stops blaming Israel for a conflict that is being caused by radical fundamental Islam. The "Islamic State" in Iraq and Syria has crucified Christians, has killed fellow Muslims, are attempting to exterminate the Yazidi people. Remember the horrible events of 9/11? London subway bombings? Suicide bombings throughout Israel? Dutch documentary-maker Theo van Gogh killed in Amsterdam while riding his bike? Pro-Palesti...

If you read anything at all today, read this. The story of these people deserves more attention than it has been getting up to now. More attention from the international media and from international aid organisations as well. This 25 July 2014 article from The Wall Street Journal opened my eyes to a side of the MH17 crash that I'd barely given any thought to up until now. Then the plane crashed. The cabin's second-row overhead compartment is in a tree across from the village hall—and suitcases and clothes are in backyards and gardens of square-windowed cottages.  Villagers dashed into their basements, fearing a bomb attack. Residents in a nearby village ran for the church, certain that the world was coming to an end. A colleague of Ms. Voloshina screamed after being nearly hit by the plane's cargo hold.        Days later, the 43-year-old mayor found the bottom half of a man's body in the shrubs next to her office. She has barely slept since then.  ...

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of Hamas founding member Sheikh Hassan Yousef. After realising that Hamas was a violent organisation that he did not want to be a part of, he left Hamas and eventually moved to the United States. Mr. Yousef is also the author of the book " Son of Hamas " published in 2010. Judging by the reviews on Goodreads, it looks to be a very interesting book. I have to admit that I'd not heard of this book nor of Mosab Hassan Yousef until about an hour ago when I was alerted to the video below. In this video , Mosab Hassan Yousef speaks to CNN about his decision to leave Hamas and explains candidly why he could no longer be a part of such a brutal regime. If you watch anything today, watch this video! "In the mosques Hamas taught us that without shedding innocent blood for the sake of the ideology we wont be able to build an Islamic state. They were preparing us from the age as young as five years old.   This is the ideology that Hamas w...

Vox.com presents an interesting article with 40 maps that show the start and spread of the internet. It looks like it all started in America, spreading from there to Europe and beyond. Reading this article made me wonder - didn't Dan Brown once write that the internet started at CERN? (Or some part of the technology that makes the internet possible anyway... Heck, it was a long, long time ago that I read his books...) "The internet increasingly pervades our lives, delivering information to us no matter where we are. It takes a complex system of cables, servers, towers, and other infrastructure, developed over decades, to allow us to stay in touch with our friends and family so effortlessly. Here are 40 maps that will help you better understand the internet — where it came from, how it works, and how it's used by people around the world." Source:  40 maps that explain the internet , Vox.com Maps 14 and 15 shows domain names around the world. The first map shows E...

Dutch television just showed an interview with a Ukrainian man who explains what he saw and heard yesterday after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a rocket over eastern Ukraine. The interview was subtitled in Dutch, the translation to English is mine. The images belong to Dutch NOS television . "An explosion and a bang. Then people fell from the sky. People started appearing right out of the clouds. A large piece of wreckage landed at the end of the street. People fell on the rooftops of houses and on the asphalt." Two hundred and ninety-eight innocent men, women and children. Dead through no fault of their own because they were dragged into a conflict they had nothing to do with. Dead because ... Because why? Because what?

The Wire reported yesterday that rising sea levels in the Marshall Islands are disturbing the dead as well as the living. According to the article, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, recently announced that 26 skeletons of World War Two soldiers have washed up. Rising sea levels have caused the graves to become exposed. The bodies are believed to be those of Japanese soldiers. The Marshall Islands are particularly precarious in their perch; the nation, made up of 29 atolls, is roughly just six feet above sea level. With sea levels predicted to rise by three-to-six feet by the end of the century, the alarm is obviously growing.  Source: Rising Sea Levels Are Exposing Bodies of Buried WWII Soldiers , The Wire The Marshall Islands are a prime example of the damages global warming can cause. As our world becomes warmer, ice caps melt and sea levels rise, causing extreme damage to low-lying countries such as the Marshall Islands. In the same article, Marsh...

Nineteen-year old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat has found a way to remove plastic from the world's oceans. Having spent a year researching his plan, he has now presented it to the world. And what a master plan it is! Since first coming up with The Ocean Cleanup in 2012 while still in high school, Slat has spent a year researching the feasibility of implementing his idea. He presented his findings to the world in New York on Tuesday. Boyan Slat believes that his invention can be implemented by 2020 in an area between Hawaii and California, one of the most polluted locations in all the world's oceans. Speaking about the area in question, Boyan explains "We can remove almost half of all the plastic from that area within ten years." Slat's invention has long floating arms over a 100 kilometres long and 3 metres high, arranged in a V-shape and attached to the ocean floor at specific locations. Sea currents move the plastic towards the point of the V-shaped installat...