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 ...

I would like to tell you the story of a girl who was one of my best friends when I was a teenager. I'll call her Anon (anonymous) and keep the details vague to protect her privacy. Anon was born in the part of Kurdistan that lies in Iraq in the days when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. After several family members and friends were taken captive and/or murdered by Hussein's regime, Anon and her family fled Kurdistan before they too would be murdered. The initial flight to safety took several weeks if not months while it would take years before they found a new home in the city where we met. My friend was a young girl when she left Kurdistan, yet when she talked about her childhood it was clear to see that the memories still haunted her. She'd get this far-away look in her eyes, as if she was looking at a movie of her own life, replaying images from her childhood on a screen only she could see. Anon is one of the kindest and gentlest people I've ever met, someone always ther...

The Rock Test: A Hack for Men Who Don’t Want To Be Accused of Sexual Harassment You've probably heard of it and if not, this is your chance to read about it. Because yes, this deserves attention and yes, speaking as a female who's been harassed, felt up, assaulted, insulted and more, this approach is perfect.  "While navigating professional relationships can often require that dreaded thing known as “any amount of work at all”, there is hope. You see, by following this one simple rule, you too can interact with women as people. It’s as clear cut as this: Treat all women like you would treat Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I know, this sounds weird, but trust me, this is a visualization exercise that will work wonders in your dealings with the women in your workplace. When a woman approaches you, just replace her in your mind with The Rock. Then, behave accordingly." Source: The Rock Test: A Hack for Men Who Don't Want To Be Accused of Sexual Harassment |...

The Dalai Lama writes an amazingly inspiring and insightful piece which puts into eloquent words that which I stumblingly hope to confer to the world in my own way through this blog - we are all human, we all think and feel, we all need to learn to share our planet and we all deserve to live with dignity and respect. I originally started writing this post in February 2015, then attempted to continue it later that year, before abandoning it again. It is now October 2017 and after resetting every password for this blog and the associated Twitter account, I've come back to it after barely thinking about it for more than two years. There are things I want to say, things I want to speak out about, things I want to write about... Doing that under my own name isn't always the smartest idea in this day and age, which is why I created this blog in the first place. What I write about however isn't all that controversial - equality for all, humans from different backgrounds underst...

Read an article today that got me thinking. Sharing the first paragraph of the article here. Hope you'll head over to the Jewish Press to read the entire article. It's worth reading and the question the article asks is worth thinking about, no matter what you think about the Israel / Palestine situation. With the BDS movement gaining momentum, many on the Israeli Left are increasing their calls for negotiations under the premise of a two-state solution. In their minds, the two-state solution is the only practical solution that could end the international isolation of Israel and lead to peace. But in the midst of the exhausted political ping-pong of whether or not the two-state solution is actually viable, the most important question often goes unasked – what if they are wrong? Source: What if they are wrong? | The Jewish Press | 22 June 2015 Now, whether you went and read the article or not - and I hope you did, it's worth reading - do yourself a favour and use your i...

Religion pic.twitter.com/FmByPLkuUu — Mahatma K. Gandhi (@GandhiWisdom) June 19, 2015

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...

I firmly believe that all people are equal because we are all human. Whether one believes in a Big Bang and gradual evolution or believes that we were created by a Higher Power and the first of us were Adam and Eve - one cannot deny that we are all equal, all the same, all human, all part of the same family. We are all individuals - We are all people who think, dream, imagine, smile, laugh, love and cry. We all feel emotions, we all have families and friends we love, we all have hopes and dreams and aspirations. While we are all unique, different and individual, we are also all human. In the end we all want the same for those we love and care about - we all want them to be happy, safe, loved and protected. I myself want the same for my family and friends - I want them to be happy, to be free, to be able to speak their minds, to choose their own path in life, to know they are safe, to be free from persecu...

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.  ...

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...

The Earth is 4.6 billion years old.  Let's scale that to 46 years. We have been here for 4 HOURS. Our industrial revolution began 1 minute ago. In that time, we have destroyed  MORE THAN 50% of the world's forests. Source:  Science Alert Facebook Page I find it unimaginable that so few listen while environmental agencies the world over are screaming about climate change, global warming, the need to reduce greenhouse gases and CO-2 emissions, the effects of the industrial revolution and really - the overall negative impact humans have had and continue to have on our planet. Wars, famine, floods, crop failures, droughts and the like - these are always localised events. An entire country or region or continent may suffer the effects of a flood or a war, yet in other parts of the world people simply continue on their daily business, oblivious to the suffering of people they don't know who live in a country they may have never even heard of. Global warmin...