See this:

http://bvs-europe.blogspot.com/

and my favourite web-site. It's great for political updates and a electoral map:

www.electoral-vote.com

Long awaited post

Well Hello,

I've been meaning to post on the blog for some time. So here goes.

Last week marked my, and many other's, 7 month celebration of being in N. Ireland. Time, as the old adage goes, sure does fly when you're having fun. So far my BVS time has been great. The conventional BVS wisdom is that the volunteer will learn and change more than the environment in which they are placed. It's true.

What have I done with my time in Northern Ireland? I've been to prison--through work--and heard stories of Ex-British Soldiers and a Republican(Hard-line Catholic) becoming friends and act in a drama together. I've seen Noble Laureate, John Hume, speak and see him walking around town. I saw former IRA-man, turned politician, Martin McGuinness, Deputy First-minister (equivalent of NI deputy prime-minister) speak. I've learned how to spell words correctly that Americans habitually misspell: globalise, neighbourhood, defence and the list goes on. I've seen transformation. I've seen people not wanting to change in the slightest.

What is my favourite thing about NI? With out a doubt, the people. Life is slower. As my boss says, "I work to live. I don't live to work." Life is meant to be enjoyed. Relationships are much more important that productivity (yet it is still crucial that there is a level of getting work done).

I've changed. I've grown. I sure have learned more in this seven months about the world, America and myself than I ever could have imagined. The life of a full-time volunteer is something that I am truly grateful to have experienced. BVS has truly ruined me for life. But I would never go back.

Discrimination or inconvenience?

So this blog represents my last journal entry for my nonviolence class. This post deserves some background before I begin. At Juniata a few weeks ago some students approached the student senate about creating a permanent seat for the LGBT community. We preach diversity and inclusion on campus, so I thought this would be a no brainer. To get a permanent seat the senate needed to approve the proposal and send the issue to the student body for a vote. However, the senate failed to approve the measure because of varying arguments, the first of them being, “well then any minority can request a seat.” How horrible of a day would that be when every minority group on campus would have voice!!! (Sorry for the sarcasm.) I think that it is more a problem of wanting to maintain the status quo more than anything else. People are afraid of change.

The LGBT community could not be silenced. To get another senate vote required the signatures of 100 students. The LGBT community and supporters got over 400! LGBT and friends raised awareness about the issue and started a campus wide discussion. The Senate overturned their previous vote and brought the issue to the student body, where they needed a majority. They designed a campaign to raise the appropriate number of votes to get a seat.

This background brings us to the point of this post. I was eating dinner last week and I got in a discussion about this with on of my friends. He made the argument that I stated earlier, that we can’t do allow them to get a seat because it sets a precedence. He continued, “with this argument, men should have a seat on the senate because they are a minority.” Man, when I heard this, and he was being dead serious, I was floored. How can we have come so far, yet people still do not understand what it means to be a minority. Men are well represented on the student senate. They don’t need to guarantee a permanent seat. Men are not ostracized from society. Men are not in danger of loosing rights and discrimination.

Our conversation progressed to a bathroom in the Physics wing. The men’s restroom was converted to a unisex bathroom to accommodate a transgender physics student. My friend told us that he did not understand why he the bathroom needed to be converted. He said that with the unisex bathroom, he felt compelled to lock the door to prevent anyone from walking in on him. He said, “I don’t understand why I should be inconvenienced.” Inconvenienced? What is the difference between this line of thought and discrimination? To me, when a person wants to be able to do something that would make them equal to everyone else and is unable to do that, it is discrimination. If a person refuses to allow this to happen because of change of the status quo, or inconvenience, that is discrimination. Yes it may inconvenience my friend, but his beliefs represent a form of discrimination. It is these beliefs that I hope can be changed by nonviolence. A recurring them of this blog occurs yet again: it is hard to change these core values. But, change needs to occur slowly and nonviolence is the vehicle for this to occur.

Academic Relevancy

So today was the second Annual Liberal Arts Symposium (LAS). I participated as a presenter and an observer. I presented my math senior research this morning. I took a previous social model (simulated on a computer) that was arguing for the importance of religion by showing that under certain conditions competitive players fared better than nice players. We took this model and tried to apply a social network to this model. We found that the social network is important in determining the effectiveness of various strategies.

As part of my obligation to the LAS I needed to stay to listen to the rest of the presentations in my group. I was in the natural science group. I was struck by the presentations by the lack of applicability to these problems to seemingly global problems, such as clean water, food, shelter, and other things that make for peace. I am not trying to bash Chemistry, because the students and professors can do things, and say words that I don’t even begin to comprehend. But my problem is that if a student can synthesize a new molecule, so what? Is the world better? Is the world better because of my research? Probably not. We have all of this intellectual brain power in college, what are we doing with it? I have done so many mindless projects that don’t get read by anyone other than the professor. Yes I have learned a great deal. I think the best thing that I have learned, is I have learned how to learn. I can research a topic in no time. But so what? How does me writing a paper about Islamic Scripture make the world a better place? How does me studying classical music make the world a better place? I know more. But would college be better if we would work on real world problems? Why don’t we in class we spend half of the class learning about historic roots of problems and the other half applying ideas to today to make the world better? I know that we must understand the world to make a difference. But can we ever achieve knowledge? I am a senior and for the first time I am applying what I am learning, by organizing the candle light vigil. I apply what I learn about peace to conflicts of today. But mostly, that is on my own time. I wonder what we could accomplish, academia that is, if we would work to apply more of our time to the problems of today. How can we achieve academic relevancy? Even if we could make chemistry problems, for example, less esoteric, personal endeavors, but made them relevant to today would be great. I hope we can figure out a way.

What's the point?

Sometimes, lots of times, when I think about all of the problems of the world, I feel despondent. In the end, we, as Americans—and believe me I am just as guilty as everyone else—only care about ourselves. We are concerned with happiness and gratification now. If our actions mean that a person in some other part of the world can’t eat, or can’t survive, it doesn’t matter because we don’t see the effects. We are willing to spend countless amounts of money on entertainment—movies, clothes, alcohol, going out to eat, (include your favorite material passion here)—but how many of us college students give money to charities? What could be done if we used 10, 20 or 50% of the money we would have used on entrainment and used it on the helping people have clean drinking water? What would that world look like? How do we make us aware of our actions to the point of caring about the world? Most of the conversations in which I engage, or I hear, revolve not about working on major global problems but about the trivialities in our lives. Does it matter, in the end, if we talk about the upcoming storm? Does it matter who is wearing what? We are incredibly fortunate! Why do we need to buy? Because we can! As Vroom, a band that I quite enjoy, sings,

I don't believe that you've got nothing to wear
I've seen your closet, decadence resides there

We buy not because we need, but because we need to feel special. However, to be special is to exist! Purchasing destroys our uniqueness. We consume to feel important but by consuming we become just like everyone else.

What’s the point? “The world’s so big and I’m so small,” a Juniata Peace Studies professor once sang. Does “One person at a time do it all?” I hope, but there is no incentive to change. We know the world is strained, through global warming, through increased oil demand, through over 1/6 of the world’s population, ONE BILLION PEOPLE, living on less than one dollar a day! 2.7 BILLION people live on less than $2 a day (World Bank’s website see link at the end). All of these troubles in the world and our actions show that we really don’t care! It breaks my heart. It makes me despondent. I try to talk to people to raise awareness about the problems of the world. But when at the end of the day, we all would rather have fun than worry about Global problems. How do we change this? How do we make people realize the consequences of actions? How do we show people the causality: if you drive everywhere, you are harming yourself and the world? The structures in place have been there for a long time. The structures of violence are so big. How do we change them? I hope that we are able to realize the causality of actions. We must. The world is such pain right now, it is not sustainable. We must find solutions. I hope that nonviolence is the way. It should be the way. It must be the way!

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20153855~menuPK:435040~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367,00.html

A must read is Thom Hartman’s Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, (2004) http://www.amazon.com/Last-Hours-Ancient-Sunlight-Revised/dp/1400051576/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/103-0919875-4079043?ie=UTF8&qid=1176621270&sr=1-1

Easter part 2

Just as I finished my post I was looking at the BBC and found this article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6536773.stm

It is story covering the Pope’s comments about Iraq. He said, “Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.” I was pleased to see world religious leaders coming out and denouncing the war. I wonder if the Pope’s message is similar to messages of international religious leaders and that American religious leaders are taking a markedly more American approach to politics. I think that we need to increase the dialogue between people around the world especially with religious undertones of conflict in the Middle East. Hopefully with dialogue we can bridge conflicts and misunderstanding.

Happy Easter: Did Jesus give our government a blank check for violence?

Last night I was watching a CNN Easter special about Jesus and the host was asking a range of theologians about what would Jesus do in today’s world, especially with regards to politics? I was shocked to hear more than one theologian say that God was a God of war and that Jesus would condone the Iraq war. One Theologian said, “There are some things worth dying for […] freedom is one of those things.” I began to question how someone could say that. I was reminded of Wink’s concept of Jesus as trying to use active nonviolence to work for justice. How could people’s understanding of Jesus be so different? For me, I cannot fathom how people can use Jesus to justify any wars. When Jesus said “Love your Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself,” I think that it’s pretty clear—love everyone. He also said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” How can you say yes I love my neighbor so much, I want to kill him? I cant fathom Jesus coming to earth and leading us to war. Maybe I am wrong, but I believe that we are all one. We all are children of God. As Tony Campolo once asked can you imagine Jesus dropping a bomb on another Jesus? I can’t imagine Jesus ever resorting to violence. The Prince of Peace came to bring peace and preach love. How can we have missed this message so much?