Global Peace Centre
All Paths to Peace and Love
A New Spirituality Integrating Ecology and Technology
www.newparadigmjournal.com
www.globalcitizensforpeace.com
Humankind has reached a state of development in which old modes of thinking and behaving threaten to destroy our planet. We can either view our present situation as one which can be repaired through cosmetic surgery, with arms agreements and so on, or we can see it as a turning point in history and an opportunity and challenge to create a better world through reappraisal of what it means to be a human being in harmony with the environment.
The Global Peace Centre rejects the idea that the human being is inherently evil, destructive and untrustworthy and believes the time has come to get the heart, head and hand working together to create new ways of thinking, being, communicating and acting. To speak from the heart means to end the domination of cerebral manipulative thinking.
Thirty two thousand nuclear weapons with a destructive force equivalent to several thousand megatons of conventional explosives are still deployed. The risk of nuclear war by accident may have increased and new threats include war between newly declared – weapon states and the construction by terrorist groups of crude but effective devices. It is not enough to remove nuclear weapons. We must remove the ideas, the obsolete thinking, that created them in the first place, and replace them with new attitudes based on respect, co-operation and understanding. As a UNICEF declaration puts it, “If wars are started in the minds of men, then peace must be reconstructed in the minds of men”.
We are treating our planet in the same way as we treat ourselves, with no kind of respect. Every day we hear of some new ecological disaster. Climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet.
The warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level. The tropical rain forests and huge tracts of woodland are either being chopped down or destroyed by acid rain with disastrous effects on the health of the planet. Arable lands and the genetic diversity of plants and animals are disappearing at an alarming rate equivalent to a sixth phase extinction of the biosphere
The Global Peace Centre believes that it is our thinking that has got us into such a mess and proposes developing a new paradigm – a new vision of reality that will bring about a profound change in our thoughts, perceptions and values.
Aims and Activities
Description
The Global Peace Centre is an Organisation of committed individuals of good will who seek new ways of thinking, being, relating, communicating and acting, embracing all levels of living and working together, in the home and the workplace and in national and international politics, that will eliminate the threat or us of violence as an instrument of policy in international relations and the exploitations of the environment for short-term gains.
The mission of the organisation of The Global Peace Centre is to move this realisation from the margins of our political dialogue to its rightful, central place within our national and international understanding. The humanitarian impulse to foster brotherhood and justice is not just a utopian ideal; it is an issue critical to world security and wellbeing.
Our aim is also to initiate the formation of a Commission for Peace and Non Violence in Australia and Departments of Peace or Commissions For Peace throughout the World. Domestically, the Commission for Peace and Non Violence will develop policies and allocate resources to effectively reduce the levels of domestic and gang violence, child abuse, and various other forms of societal discord. Internationally, the Department will advise Parliaments on the most sophisticated ideas and techniques regarding peace-creation among nations.
Method
The Global Peace Centre will re-appraise what it means to be a human being in positive terms, such as the state of being creative, whole, alive and self-sufficient. It also aims to examine such primary needs as the need for food, clean water, primary health care and shelter. In a world so dangerous, The Global Peace Centre believes that the only way to be is open, constructive, peace loving and responsible and rejects the idea that the human being is inherently evil, destructive and untrustworthy.
The Global Peace Centre will study and promote a genuinely holistic approach to social, economic, political, health and ecological problems.
The Global Peace Centre will study the nature of life and consciousness and their relationships to each other.
The Global Peace Centre will investigate and look to solutions for a new human agenda, including the humanisation of educational systems, the fair distribution of medical resources throughout the world, the abolition of poverty, the safeguarding of personal freedoms, the creation of an open, caring society, East and West, North and South, and the creation of the conditions necessary for a sustainable peace and health for all in the third millennium, including the establishment of a steady-state eco-relationship with planetary resources, the protection of species diversity and populations, the removal of all toxin, waste and radiation hazards from the environment that threatens the health of the planet, and the abolition of all nuclear weapons.
The Global Peace Centre will not commit itself to any political or religious ideology. It will be open to all suggestions from whatever quarter, consistent with its aims. People of all political persuasions will be welcomed into deliberation with The Global Peace Centre.
The Global Peace Centre will serve as a catalyst group or “think tank” for all other sympathetic groups.
The Global Peace Centre will encourage an openness of dialogue irrespective of class, race, politics or philosophy.
The Global Peace Centre will offer a resource centre (and later, local resource centres) where it will share relevant skills, information about new thinking and about the activities and opportunities offered by other groups concerned with the peace and health of the world.
The Global Peace Centre is in agreement with the World Social Forum (held in Porta Alegre, Brazil, 2002) that the “Global Commons” should be public common property protected in perpetuity from privatisation and ‘commodification’. Such areas include the world’s genetic and biological heritage, basic needs like water, the atmosphere (to prevent carbon trading to tackle climatic change), public services (particularly health and education), the airwaves and the land.
We feel that if these major principles and directions are instigated we may be able to prevent the global catastrophe to which we are currently headed.
Our core objectives are :
- To awaken all humanity for the need for the greatest project ever initiated on this planet, An Apollo Project to Save the Planet for future generations. This requires the involvement of all governments and all humanity. This includes the formation of Ministries of Peace and also a major department in the United Nations devoted purely to peace. Further details of these aims are seen on our website www.globalcitizensforpeace.com
- To establish centres for governments, politicians and diplomats to learn the art of conflict resolution and the Art of Peace, seeing this as integrated with the major aim of healing the suffering of humanity.
- The provision of gifts and tithing of money to the developing world and those people in society who are marginalised and unemployed requiring essential supplies of food and clothing and medical care. Please see addendum-
- Manifesto for Gifts For Peace and Humanity – and also, 5, Ambassadors For Peace .
- We require a concerted effort, with a massive public relations program in order to draw the attention to the media and governments to our significant initiative. Please see our You Tube –We can save the planet. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSe3jfJx-Ic
- The appointment of our Ambassadors For Peace.
- Ambassadors For Peace create Humanitarian relief partnerships which are based on a true understanding of the cultures who are being aided.
- All governments devote attention to, for example, debating their “defense capacities” – but there is very little attention (let alone equal attention) to debating “peace capacities”. The idea for peace cadets or a peace force for Australia was suggested by Dr Stella Cornelius and Dr Keith Suter over 20 years ago in their Peace Book. There is a real need for people (Ambassadors for Peace) to be able to express an integral approach to humanity and to be trained in this approach that can be called the Art of Peace craft as they deliver goods and services to the needy and impoverished in the developing world. Ambassadors for Peace also serve on the national, regional and global peace councils. They stand on the common ground of shared values, promoting reconciliation, overcoming barriers, and building peace.
- International Peace Concert – will include some of the world’s great artists. The music will be interspersed with videos highlighting the projects of The Global Peace Centre. Performances will include local and interstate school children. A vivid blend of performance and enactment of significant conference themes, it is planned that artists will present a dazzling array of performing arts. Woven with the music will be singing, dance, poetry and drama.
Addendum
Manifesto for Gifts For Peace and Humanity
We need to get together and think globally and act locally. First we need to assess what is actually working in terms in the creation of peace, sustainability, good governance, health and wellness, environmental sustainability, community and education.
I think that the biggest problem confronting us is the tremendous inequity in the world and the fact that one third of the population exists on less than $1 dollar a day and that a child in the developing world dies every few seconds. The global market place functions like a giant casino and produces wealth for a global ‘monetocracy’ for a very powerful wealth elite. This tremendous amount of wealth is siphoned off from the global military industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industry which together account for trillions of dollars a year.
Ultimately, all the material wealth that we see around us, and the capitalist chain of inequity that is based on the planet having infinite resources, is actually causing the irreversible destruction of living and non-living resources. We are killing our future generations and at the same time forcing billions of people to scavenge for morsels for survival from a dwindling environment. What is also clear is that the major problems of this world are based on exclusion, marginalisation, unemployment and disempowerment where religious fundamentalism leads to segregated cultural collectives that are not able to integrate into the new era that is now upon us.
Indeed we need a new view of humanity based on the respect for the sanctity of all life which outlaws war and inhumanity against human beings and respects all cultures creeds belief systems and races and yet sees them all connected under a philosophy of oneness and a respect for the sacredness of life.
The Global Peace Centre has the aim of creating circles of like minded people (Our Ambassadors For Peace) who have a common mission. Their common mission is to set up transport systems including boats and large aircraft to deliver essential supplies of food and equipment to deprived and compromised communities around the world. The exchange rate of currencies in fact belies the value of commodities so it is best to supply commodities rather than currencies. At the same time commodities will come with professional people who are able to deliver supplies directly to source. In a way these people would be rescuers of the planet as they transcend all differences of race religion and culture. Their only mission will be to offer their knowledge, expertise and to open the heart of humanity to an understanding of our connectedness with each other.
As Einstein said – Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty’
“I am interested in your concept. You seem to be seeking a combination of Niels Bohr’s ‘openness’ between individuals and between nations, with Einstein’s conviction that ‘we cannot solve the problems of the world with mechanisms, but only by changing the hearts and minds of men and speaking courageously’. Their concern was with life as a whole, an earth, as expressed in the concept ‘Gaia’, and especially with the attitudes of homo sapiens towards the planet.” - Sir Mark Oliphant, distinguished statesman and physicist who worked with Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. (deceased)
“Love alone is capable of uniting living beings is such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. Understanding, co-operation and love are the keys to human survival.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
‘We cannot solve the problems of the world with mechanisms, but only by changing the hearts and minds of men and speaking courageously’. – Albert Einstein
The highest wisdom has but one science – the science of the whole – the science explaining the whole creation and man’s place in it.
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Over the last 20 years, we have seen a huge growth in the presence of Buddhism in the West and what it has to offer as a way of life and a means for transforming suffering in the world. In the course of the Chaplaincy Program, faculty and students study suffering, its causes, the end of suffering, and the way that suffering can be transformed (the Four Noble Truths). Our studies, practices, processes, and projects are all based in the profound motivation to end suffering in the world and in our lives. The “how” of this altruistic intention is the heart of our training.
