peace begins inside

just came home from a meeting/gathering of like minds to discuss ideas for a short film about peace, inspired by a speech one of the women present had written.

firstly, thank you Barbara for writing those words and sharing them with us. our discussions brought many things to the surface ... here in NZ there is heated debate occurring about a soon to be passed amendment to legislation that will make it illegal for parents to smack or hit their children and defend it as being "reasonable force". i fully support that change and the suggestion behind it that we all have a think about why it is "ok" to smack our children for punishment or "prevention of greater harm" ... when it is NOT ok for us to hit anyone else to punish them or save them from harm.

and why is it ok for us to only hit the youngest, most vulnerable children and then resort to other strategies once they are big enough to hit us back.

that was a tiny part of our conversation .... but we also brought up issues about war - how it relies on dehumanising the other side - and on stereotypes of evil. it is not natural for us to try and kill or destroy total strangers without creating an image in our minds of evil and "wrongness" on behalf of those who are "other" to us. When human minds are trained that way, they are apparently able to forget the humanity of their opponent ... that the opponent was once a small child, loved by their parents ... a child learning about the world, making mistakes, discovering new and exciting things ... learning how to be independent and venture into the world - to be blown to bits by someone who sees them only as an enemy, not as a fellow human making his or her way in the same world.

we also talked about the peace that lies within us - or the potential for it ... and how essential it is that peace begins with each of us as individuals. i commented that many women in particular, who are highly sensitive to our world, suffer from over-empathising and that can bring us into a place of mental and emotional dis-ease ... which all too often is suppressed and controlled by medication. i suggest it is actually more normal to have dis-ease in the world we live in right now, than not to have dis-ease.

more on this later. peace out.