Category Archives: 25 days for Peace (2015)

Like a bug…(DOP #19 2015)

I spend a lot of my time thinking about how impossible it is for me to really change anything in the world.  It can be a big downer, especially as I spend time writing about peace and realizing how little I can do to bring change the big issues.

I only have so much time, money, and influence.  My resources are limited.

Of course that isn’t the whole story.  While I realize how powerless I am to enact sweeping change, I look at the people around me who are also working towards peace and I am encouraged.

We are all small people, but together we can achieve much.

In Haiti, I kept running into ants.  Small little bugs, that can’t really do much on their own, but together I watched them carry a cracker larger than all of them combined towards their home.  One day I’ll post the video from it, it was mesmerizing to watch.

We are small, but if we find a common goal and strive towards it, we can do huge things together.  The more people involved, the more possible world peace becomes.

Star Wars (DOP #18 2015)

I haven’t seen the new Star Wars movie, so you don’t need to worry about spoilers.  With that said, I am a big fan of the original trilogy and what used to be known as the expanded universe books.  I won’t be seeing the new films until they are all out, but I read a nice article today about how the new movie fits the nostalgia of the originals.

There was something magical about the first 3 films (IV, V, and VI) that seemed to get lost in Episodes I, II and III.  I personally don’t think I have watched the newer films more than once all the way through.  They just don’t have the same feeling.  I have been looking for a way to quantify the difference for the last few days, and I think I finally struck on something today.  In fact, I found something seemingly prophetic.

In the prequels, the enemy is two fold.  There is a Intergalactic trade group that has seemingly endless resources and the other enemy is the dark side of the force.  I think the struggle between the two sides of the force is a far more compelling story, but I think the other enemy is a far more accurate depiction of our society today.

Maybe George Lucas had far more up his sleeve than we give him credit for.

As I look at Episode I with fresh eyes, I see an enemy that uses its endless droid armies to fight it’s battles for them.  The lives behind that side of the conflict are protected as they send robots to fight and be destroyed in their place.  The only pain they feel is in their bank accounts as droid after droid is destroyed by a hapless gungan and a marauding cast of other characters.  In a way, the clone troopers fall into this category of enemy as well.  There is no true cost because you can always clone more.  How do you defeat an enemy?  You either destroy them completly, or convince them that their fight is no longer worth the cost.  An enemy with no real skin in the game is invincible in the short term.  (After this point, to win the war you have to deny the other side resources.  A long and drawn out process.)

My understanding of the newest film is that the sense of magic is restored.  It feels like the original Star Wars again. To my knowledge, no one is facing a giant inexhaustible army of droids, but rather the battle is between flesh and blood. Between light and dark.

So what does this have to do with pursuing peace?  Allow me to say this in the most patriotic way possible.  I love you America, but you have lost your way.  When we, like the trade federation in Episode I, can choose to send robots to do our fighting and killing for us we have become a form of terrorists.  We are the unbeatable enemy, we are the short-term invincible.  Ultimately, we may even become the Empire.

Perhaps George Lucas saw this coming.  Perhaps he saw America as a droid army, using technology to take all the cost out of killing.  Seperating ourselves from the battlefield by bits and bytes.

If we want to make America great again, as some politicians are so fond of saying, we need to stop killing people by remote control.  We become the terrorists when we send robots to do our killing for us, keeping our own lives out of the reach of those we justly or unjustly seek to destroy.

If it isn’t a conflict that our free thinking soldiers would willingly give their lives to protect us from, perhaps it isn’t a conflict we should be having.  If giving up our pursuit of death by drone creates an unacceptable risk of loss of life, we should end the conflict.  If we seek to be honorable in conflict, both sides must share an equal cost.  If there must be war, at least pursue it as honorably as possible.

I think some of the nostalgic feel of the newest Star Wars is due to the return of forces of flesh and blood battling to decide the future.  Our future also belongs in the hands of flesh and blood heroes, who will willingly risk their lives in a just conflict.  Our future, our greatness will not be preserved by a Predator drone.

End drone warfare now.

 

An update from 2014! (DOP #17 2015)

 Last year the community of readers who followed this blog donated $900 to fund a clean water project.  I got this update today.  By this time next year there will be a well in Ethiopia paid for in part by you beautiful people!

Thank you all so much for being a part of this project this year and last!  You’re beautiful people!  Peace can change lives!

update
An update on the your mycharity: water campaign
WE HAVE AN UPDATE ON
YOUR CAMPAIGN
YOUR CAMPAIGN AMOUNT RAISED WHERE YOUR MONEY WENT
#25daysofpeace $900.00 Ethiopia
You joined mycharity: water to bring clean, safe drinking water to Ethiopia. We want to update you on the work in progress!
REMIND ME, WHERE ARE THE PROJECTS IN ETHIOPIA?
The projects you helped fund are in the northern most part of Ethiopia.More than 5 million people live in Tigray but only 54% of the population has access to clean, safe drinking water. Thanks to your help, we’re working to change that!
Tigray, Ethiopia
WHO’S MAKING IT HAPPEN?
Our local implementing partner, Relief Society of Tigray (REST), is working everyday to help bring clean water to communities.Meet Daniel Hagos, Director of Rural Water Supply at REST.
Daniel Hagos of REST
Daniel has spent almost 21 years working for REST. He’s from Tigray and leads a staff of over 200 employees that work on constructing our water projects. That includes five drilling teams and 150 hand dug well and spring protection technicians.Our team asked Daniel what keeps him passionate about his job. Why not work for a large, for-profit company in Addis Abada instead?

His response?

All of us at REST, we’re committed to our people here in Tigray. All of us lost family and friends during the war – and watched the famine deteriorate our livelihoods. I’m here to continue to serve my people.

You can learn more about Daniel and REST’s work in Ethiopia through our video series called The Journey.

We can’t wait to report back next year and show you the impact your campaign made for those in need!

— your friends at charity: water

You’ll never believe this one weird trick to pursue peace in your life! (DOP #16 2015)

I don’t have “real” internet in the apartment.  I use a T-Mobile hotspot that has a 10gb a month limit.  I bought it when I was out of the country for pretty much a whole month, and knew I needed to be able to check email and write posts.   It works pretty well, so I decided to just keep it instead of paying Comcast or Verizon big money for the same thing.

Unfortunately, I ran out of internet on Monday night.

It isn’t really a big deal, it just means that I am going to make the 5 minute drive to where I work, use the internet there for a few minutes from inside the car, and then drive back.  I have permission to use the internet there even after work hours.  It is really just inconvenient, not really a serious problem.

Here’s the thing.  I found out about a month ago that one of my neighbors has an unlocked network, and I can get on pretty much anytime I chose to.  I found out by accident, when a desktop I don’t often use suddenly installed updates when I didn’t have my hotspot turned on.  It had connected to a network with the same name before, and connected itself without my intervention in the apartment.

Again not really a big deal.

The thing is that right now I am sitting here and thinking about my neighbors open network again.  It would be so easy to connect to their router, and upload my post for the day without having to go out in the wind and cold again.  “I am trying to do a good thing, surely they wouldn’t mind.  Anyways isn’t it their responsibility to lock their wi-fi if they don’t want anyone else to use it?”

It is so easy to justify our actions.

It is so easy to overlook our own wrong doing if we can’t see the victim of our crimes.  It is so easy to convince ourselves that we aren’t REALLY doing anything wrong.  It’s just wi-fi.  Everyone does it!

The thing is, our actions can have unintended and unexpected consequences.   Maybe using my neighbors wi-fi would be perfectly acceptable.  They may not ever even find out.  Or maybe by using their connection, I’ll cause them to drop an important skype call, or they will miss out on a connection with their cousin on facetime.  Maybe they have left their network open so they can steal personal data from people who use it.  Or maybe they have a data limit too and I could put them over!  The options are endless.

It doesn’t really matter if there would be consequences or not.  What matters is that I do not have permission to use their connection, and to do so without their permission is theft.  Even if it is such a seemingly small and victimless crime, it is wrong.

Sometimes we need to expand our perspective and look outside of our own borders to find a way to encourage peace in the world.

Sometimes we just need to look inside ourselves.

If we work to correct our own misdeeds, we are one step closer to leaving in peace with each other.

Now I just have to work on all the other things that I am guilty of wrongdoing in.

Forgiveness (DOP #15 2015)

December 7th is one of those dates that I don’t easily pass over.  I have no real personal connection to it, but I know that our country was suddenly and deliberately attacked on that day 74 years ago.  It lead to our involvement in World War II.  I don’t do much to commemorate that day specifically, but it is a yearly reminder of what the costs of war are.  It is December 15th, so why bring this up?

I was really shocked by the amount of people who were posting about Pearl Harbor this year.  I saw it all over the various news feeds I skim daily.  Everywhere people were posting about it, saying things like “Never Forget”.  Since I notice the day every year, I can clearly remember that there have never been this many people posting something about it.  I wondered if my friends list had changed significantly, but I don’t think it really has. I haven’t been on a patriotic friend recruiting frenzy. It was so surprising a change that in the back of my mind I’ve been questioning the sudden interest all week.

In a flash of insight last night I think I struck on an answer.

I think that we as a nation have forgotten how to forgive.

It hurts to be attacked.  It seems far worse when it is a surprise.  Whether we were attacked by Japan more than 70 years ago or by terrorists in the last 15 years, we are shocked by the gruesome realities of war.  It never gets easier.  As a nation we remember the pain forever.  Remember the Alamo, remember the Maine, remember Pearl Harbor, remember 9/11…the list goes on and on.  And we should remember, because these events are catastrophic and we want to do everything in our power to avoid them.  We want to honor the sacrifices of the brave people who died that day.  We should never forget the people who ran towards death in hopes that they could help someone else.  We should never forget the lives of those who had so much more to offer.

At the same time, we must forgive.  We can not hold what happened 70 years ago against Japan forever.  We can not hold on to the desire for revenge any more.  Revenge has such bitter fruit when it is harvested.  During Pearl Harbor more than 2500 brave lives were lost, most of that number were soldiers.  These are terrible numbers, but they pale in comparison to the end results.  At the end of World War II, nearly 500,000 American lives had been lost.  Of that number, 12,000+ were civilians.

Am I suggesting that those lives could have been saved by refusing to enter the war?   I don’t know.  I can’t know.  No one can really know what would have been if we had chosen another course of action.

In one fateful day in December, thousands of lives were lost.  One fateful day in August of 1945, it is estimated that more than 70,000 were killed.  3 days later, at least another 40,000 lost their lives.  2 bombs dropped on civilian cities in Japan.  With no warning.  The costs were incredible.

This is where war leads.  To escalation.  To staggering costs.

This is where unforgiveness can lead.  To war.  To a staggering cost.

I know that we were attacked by terrorists 15 years ago.  It happened, and the costs were high.  The costs for our enemies were even higher.  It is estimated that at least 26,000 civilians were killed in the time we were in Afghanistan (many of them killed by their own people).

If we are ever going to find peace, we must defend ourselves against attack, but not pursue revenge.  We must seek reconciliation and forgiveness.  This cycle of violence will never stop otherwise.

It seems too simple, and too impossible.

Can we ever find peace?
Japan and the United States have found common ground, and have committed to an alliance together.  This would be impossible without forgiveness.

(Disclaimer, this is a DRAMATIC oversimplification of incredibly complicated conflicts.  We could argue all night about the choices made by all sides in any war.  I didn’t want to get bogged down in who was less evil.  Essentially that is all the argument could have hoped to be.  I also want to state that in no way am I passing judgement on those who have fought in any conflict, I simply want us to find a better way out in the future.  Maybe there is no better way, but I hope we are at least willing to try.)