Category Archives: Adventure

Each substantial new entry in the World Peace Adventure will be searchable under this category.

Chapter 36: Genocide

A basic definition of genocide could be: mass-murder on a huge scale; the planned and systematic elimination of an entire racial, ethnic, religious, cultural or national group.

A rather longer legal definition is that adopted by the United Nations: “Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The above is pretty broad, so pinning down exactly what we mean by genocide is half the battle in this area. At heart, the act – and intent – of genocide has existed for millennia, ever since tribal groups of humans first started hacking each other apart to assert dominance over each other and making sure the defeated party didn’t come back for vengeance later. However, the concept wasn’t defined, and didn’t have a name, until the mid-20th Century. Continue reading Chapter 36: Genocide

Chapter 35: Anti-Semitism

Definition: Anti-Semitism is a term that has come to describe expressions of racism, prejudice, hatred or discrimination against Jewish people as an ethnic, religious or racial group – both at individual level and in terms of organised attacks against whole Jewish communities.

Caveat: The term ‘Anti-Semitism’ is actually a misnomer popularised in 19th Century Germany as a palatable euphemism for ‘hatred of Jews’. Although the phrase ‘Anti-Semitism’ now tends to exclusively encompasses anti-Jewish prejudices, historically and ethnically there are a whole range of Semitic people who are not Jewish – Arabs, Ethiopians and Assyrians are all technically Semitic. For the purposes of this chapter, however, the term will be used as defined above.

So where and why did Anti-Semitism come about? Continue reading Chapter 35: Anti-Semitism

Adventure 34: United States of America

The United States of America (USA), often shortened to the United States (U.S.) or even just America, is a federal republic of 50 states and a district in north America situated between Canada and Mexico, except for Alaska (north of the other states, between Canada and Russia) and Hawaii (an island in the Pacific Ocean). The U.S also has various non-state ‘territories’ in the Pacific and Caribbean. Continue reading Adventure 34: United States of America

small thought on UK migration

Crisis on pesky foreigners trying to cross ‘our’ borders from Calais again. People are people, this is foolishness. What gives some the right to live in a place and not others? We need a world health service, a world benefits system and a world law enforcement and justice system – locally administered – and we need to make it happen now, together. Today’s world is a global village, we don’t live in the Middle Ages. We need to allow for free movement of people and we need to make it happen now, together. More importantly, we need to embed shared world history and we need to embed shared world identity for every nationality, every ethnicity, every religion, and we need to make it happen now, together, to embed respect and trust between all – otherwise we’re headed for disaster. This divisive nationalistic sense of entitlement is sickening. We’re the same people, for God’s sake.

Chapter 33: Humanism

Humanism? What kind of crazy ‘new age’ religion is this?

Humanism’s actually been around for centuries, and has in many ways become the opposite of religion. It’s a philosophical and ethical stance emphasizing human beings thinking for themselves using logic and evidence rather than blind acceptance of doctrine or religious faith. Its meaning has shifted over the years, at times more focused on the notion of “human nature” but, today, the humanist movement is pretty much aligned with secularism, looking to science not religious dogma to understand the world. Continue reading Chapter 33: Humanism

Chapter 32: European Religious Wars

What possible relevance could the European Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th Centuries have to world peace in the 21st Century, you may ask? Well, other than the fact it’s a fascinating period of history full of Game of Thrones-like intrigue and power struggles, it’s also the period that redrew the religious and political map of Europe from the old Roman Catholic Empire to something resembling the modern community of sovereign states we know today. Plus, with sectarian religious violence raging across today’s Islamic world, it’s not the worst time to look at the sectarian Christian struggles of yesteryear. Continue reading Chapter 32: European Religious Wars

Chapter 31: God

‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain,’ said John Lennon. I’m looking for more specific detail here, though, as this World Peace Adventure we’re all on is, one way or another, going to succeed or fail based on God. So let’s go with this: God is the concept of a supreme supernatural being believed in and worshipped by religious people on Earth as the principle object of their faith. Continue reading Chapter 31: God

Chapter 30: Eternal Life

Immortality. Being able to live forever. The afterlife. Reincarnation. Pffft to all of it, you may say – the one biological certainty in life is that we won’t live forever, right? Yet humankind has fought against this certainty since our earliest history and across all ages and cultures, seeking ever-more inventive ways to convince ourselves that our inevitable end-outcome may not actually be the end – through folklore, religion, magic and science. Continue reading Chapter 30: Eternal Life

Chapter 29: Christianity

We’ve already covered 1) Jesus Christ, 2) Catholicism (a term interchangeable with Christianity in the Church’s early years) and 3) the Protestant Reformation that split the Church in the 16th-17th Century. I do think it’s worth a separate entry on Christianity as a whole though, because whoever Jesus Christ was or wasn’t, the religion of Christianity is a fully human construct that evolved wholly independently of Jesus after his death. That construct has been highly effective: a third of the planet’s population remains Christian to this day. Continue reading Chapter 29: Christianity

Chapter 28: Globalisation

So…..Globalisation. The word means many different things to many different people. From the opening up of all the world’s peoples, cultures and ideas (and the endless possibilities for learning that creates), to the inevitable distillation of thousands of cultures into one overarching way of life due to modern global communication networks (and the explosive clash of religious and social viewpoints that creates), to the sinister imposition of capitalism and commercialism onto every untouched corner of our planet (and the fierce political resistance that creates).

Whichever angle you’re coming from, globalisation’s an evocative word. Because of its myriad interpretations and connotations, using the word either positively or negatively can often end in miscommunication and resistance. Let’s try to break it down and try to understand whether globalisation’s an enabler or a hurdle on the World Peace Adventure. Continue reading Chapter 28: Globalisation