Next time you are in daylight, step outside and realise this :- the light you are seeing is made up of photons. These photons originated on the sun and have traveled for 8 min over a distance of 93 million miles of space at the speed of... well light, and entered your eye, hitting your retina causing you to see!! Just think about that, photos from the sun, traveling 93 million miles and ending their journey at the back of your eye?

 Now step out during into the night and realise that photons from those stars, that are millions of lights years away, are also ending their journey in your eye! Think about it. Every single moment you have particles (or waves) from the stars hitting you, photos that are millions and millions of years old.

We truly are star people!! 

I was interested when watching Dragons Den about a common reaction to some of the ideas proposed. (Dragons Den is a TV program in the UK where people pitch their business ideas to a group of millionaires for investment).
 
The dragons often comment and reject an idea saying '...you are trying to find a solution to a problem that does not exist...'. What struck me is that this is a large part of capitalism. ie Think of a product no one actually needs, pump out masses of marketing to convince the public that without this product they are less than .. whatever... and then sell it by the ton. Have a look around you or when you are out xmas shopping. How much rubbish in the shops can you see that we don't actually need and is essentially worthless?
 
To me, what the dragons are saying is that the idea has no merit either because they don't want to be involved in that type of product OR they know that the amount of marketing that would need to be done for that one product will not bring a return.
 
This is a symptom of a capitalistic society where so much value is placed on wealth and business that in order for so many millions of people to make money and be successful, so many people end up selling products that we don't need and worse than that, damaging society by essentially degrading people to push them into buying products so that they can seem important or accepted in society...
 
This is big business!

I was asked, during  an AB process on  course recently :- ‘If you cou ld ask God for one thing, what would you ask for?’.  We all sat in our groups and discussed the thing we would ask for and then we shared our thoughts. As I would have expected, almost everyone asked for ‘World peace’, ‘An end to Hunger’, ‘Freedom’ etc etc etc. In other words, the usual answers you would expect from a group of people trying to better themselves and the world around them. The sentiment of these responses is commendable and as I know most of the people in the group I know that they truly mean it. I could also understand that having these desires was a good place to start.  But I struggled with this one. It just seemed too easy. The answer that we were supposed to give was what our passion needed to be – ie where should we focus our energy. This was all very well, but still this did not work for me. The world seems to be in so much trouble (and indeed seems to have been in so much trouble since man learned to bang two rocks together). Asking God for one thing seemed to miss the mark somehow. It occurred to me that if we simply asked God to wave a Magic Wand and, ‘Puff’, world peace exists, that this would not really solve the issues of the world. Who’s world peace? Everyone’s?  Is everybody’s ‘World Peace’ the same as everyone else’s? I think not. If we all had the same idea of world peace then surly we would have no war. Would ‘World peace’ then also mean changing everyone’s perception of what world peace is?

The other problem is the ‘World Peace’ does not cover thinks like poverty, pollution depression etc . We can be in peace but still suffer. It does not cover the continued rape of our planet. It does not cover health, (mental or Physical). Has anyone ever really sat down and tried to work out what ‘World Peace’ actually is. Again, I think not. The point of all this is that the answers given are the simple answers, the easy answers, the ‘hand the responsibility on to someone else’ (in this case God) answer.

What if God did wave his (or Her) wand? Would we know how to deal with it – would it last? Would God keep check on us and enforce peace? And would the enforcement be a type of oppression. Or would we all be changed into something so completely different that we would not be human any more. I find it really hard to look at the population of today (or the past 100,000 years or so, for that matter) and see a society that is really capable of true peace. I am not convinced that we even really know and understand what true peace really is. 

Of cause, if we were to ‘get God to do this’ why has it not happened when millions of people pray for world peace, end of poverty etc each and every day? It would appear that millions of mass prayer goes unheard all the time. If God was ‘all powerful’ and a God that loves his children, then surely he would have waved his wand a long time ago – or perhaps it would never have needed waving in the first place. This, apparently, was the case until Eve ate the apple (original sin), but still, even then, wouldn’t an all powerful God be able to fix that? It seems to me that there must be a reason why God does not wave his wand. Either he is not as powerful as we would like to think he is or there is another plan in progress or we simply have the wrong idea about God. Im not sure that I can just keep blind faith that all is going as God intends.

So, when asked what I would ask of God, I replied ‘Blue Roses’,  with the hope that this might cause a shift in thinking. Actually, I’m not that fussy if it’s Blue Roses or Green skies or whatever. The point is that it needs to be something that makes the world as a whole stop and take a step back. Something to break our current thinking pattern. We need to be pushed into the thought process of ‘Perhaps there is something about the universe we don’t understand!’. It would also be of upmost importance that this ‘Miracle’ could not be attributed to one religion or group of people, in case they use it as ‘proof’ that their god/religion is the correct and powerful one. The last thing we need is a ‘See – we are right and you are wrong’ situation. No, we need some peaceful (ironic?) way to stop the world and make us think differently or at least to stop assuming that we know anything. My hope would be that this would get people  to think that the world as they see it is not actually the world that is. That what they thought they knew is not even close to what really is. Hopefully this would lead to more soul searching, less arrogance, more understanding, patience and the will to truly change ......

I think that, only in admitting that we have no clue what so ever, can we begin to design a new world where peace can truly exist – and I don’t think we would recognise it if we did.

I was on my way home the other day, crammed into the Northern underground in London. Those of you who know the London tube, know that rush hour involves millions of tired people, struggling to get into over packed tubes day in day out. People either listen to their iPods, stare trance-like into space or read the free newspapers that are shoved at you when entering tube stations.

I usually don't read the newspapers, preferring to either listen to music or listen to e-books. But its always tempting to peer over at the paper my co-traveler is reading or to see the odd headline. As you can imagine, the free newspaper is much like any other news paper, full of bad news with the odd bit of interesting news scattered around the morbid pages. Well, I was struck by one heading 'Psycho Dad Microwaves His Baby', in big bold letters, with a picture of the 'dad'  being lead off by some people. My very fist reaction, like everyone else I imagine, was one of shock, but only for about a millisecond. Not having the paper right in front of me, gave me the opportunity to ponder over news heading in general. So my second reaction was , Why the hell would anyone actually WANT to read that story?

What exactly is the benefit of having stories about such terrible things? How does knowing that information change the world for a better place. When a newspaper editor chooses what article to print, what exactly goes though their mind? I'm sure it not a case of thinking that people need to know it. Its is, as is obvious, just sensationalism, and the editor knows that that kind of story is what people want.... or is it?

 I wonder, if you ran a poll, if more people would prefer more factual, interesting information in a newspaper? I know that i would prefer articles about science, biology, progress, life skills, philosophy and just plain interesting stories. Now, not everyone would enjoy my selection, but is that not why we have so many different newspapers and magazines - yet they all have the same stories, albeit from a slightly different angle (sometimes).

 I just feel that the trip home on an over packed London tube would be just a bit better if people were not making themselves more miserable by reading the tripe. I do think that the media industry has a huge responsibility and effect on the general public - and so I ask the question  - do we actually need to know that some person microwaved his baby? Surly just the police need to know?