|
Reflections
on the New Year
By
David
Krieger
President, The
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
TFF
associate
January 9, 2002
The turning of a year is always a good time to take
stock of where we are and to look for lessons of the past
that may guide us into the future. Here are a few
thoughts as we enter this New Year.
We share a single, beautiful Earth, the only place we
know of in the universe that supports the miracle of
life.
We are one people, one great humanity, capable of
cooperating to turn this planet into a paradise for
all.
We may have different histories, but we share a common
future. We will rise or fall together.
By the greed and lack of care and vision that is
integral to our current economic system, we are poisoning
our Earth, destroying other species at a prodigious rate,
and foreclosing possibilities for future generations of
humans, including our own children and
grandchildren.
We have penetrated the power of the atom and created
technologies capable of destroying most life on Earth,
including human life. Our current world order, based upon
nuclear ìhavesî and
ìhave-nots,î is not sustainable.
Life has existed on Earth for some four billion years,
and in just a matter of decades, hardly a tick on the
geological clock, we humans have placed the continuation
of life in jeopardy.
Albert Einstein warned: The splitting of the atom has
changed everything, save our modes of thinking, and thus
we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
And yet, we have chosen leaders myopic in vision and
committed to military solutions that have placed humanity
on a collision course with catastrophe.
With this leadership, we are abrogating our
responsibility to humanity as a whole and to future
generations.
The challenge to humanity is to come together to end
the great disparities and ill will that divide us and
find a way that all individuals can live with
dignity.
We can start by recognizing that we are all citizens
of Earth with corresponding rights set forth in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with
corresponding responsibilities. Among these
responsibilities are:
- To end the continuing threat to humanity of
nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
- To redirect scientific and economic resources from
the destructive pursuit of weapons technologies to the
beneficial tasks of ending hunger, disease, poverty
and ignorance.
- To break down barriers that divide people and
nations and, by acts of friendship, reduce tensions
and suspicions.
- To live gently on the Earth, reclaiming and
preserving the natural beauty and profound elegance of
our land, mountains, oceans and sky.
- And to teach others, by our words and deeds, to
accept all members of the human family and to love the
Earth and live with peace and justice upon it.
Our starting point is to put aside our apathy,
complacency and cynicism and to choose hope, hope that
leads to engagement. It is only in our hope and by our
actions that the world will change.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).
Read about (and buy) Krieger's most recent book here
(amazon.com):
Choose
Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear
Age
Or here (amazon.co.uk) : Choose
Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear
Age
To become a free on-line participating member of the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation,
click here: https://www.ndic.com/wagingpeace/mbrshp.html.
©
TFF & the author 2003
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
|