Together We Stand

Home, and the only one we have so cherish it, nourish it.

I believe someone needs to address the issue of race, in that there is one race and it is Human, and the word 'ethnic' in that the dictionary term means 'people of non Christian or Jewish faith' and them being heathens, or people with common features from a common homeland.  If this is the case then we are all from the same home, Earth, and have common features such as eyes, nose, mouth ears etc.

Too many times in the past I have sat and listened to, not just the BBC, but all media outlets categorise people in to groups by race or colour.  The crowning of Lewis Hamilton as the first 'black' formula one world champion for example, is one in a long line of media reports that serves to irritate me and others I know from so called 'black and ethnic minority' backgrounds.

As a human with a white mother and black father I find it shocking in the 21st century that someone successful from from a similar background gets referred to as being the first black formula one world champion, completely ignoring the fact half his family is in fact white.  This goes back to the old 'one drop rule' from America many years ago whereby if you have any African heritage make up then you are grouped as such.  Another example of this is of President Obama who was America's first black president but in fact he has white family too.  He famously quoted in 2006 that he had "family that looked like Bernie Mac and family that looked like Margaret Thatcher" yet the news outlets still to this day refer to him as the first black President.  I realise not everyone may understand my personal distaste for this, and neither did my own family once upon a time but I put it to them like this.  As a previous budding rugby player seeking a career  I wondered how they would have felt if I had made it and been given the honour of captaining England, only to be referred to as the first black England Rugby captain.  It was at this moment the point was understood.

The continued term of the word racism and the grouping of successful people into certain 'ethnic' groups gives a sense of specific belonging to people which is wrong.  At a recent Black and Ethnic Minority Members meeting within the FBU, I argued the point that a good role model to children should and could be anyone that demonstrated good morals or values and that this is not explicitly limited to colour.

Why can't a white male be a good role model to a black child? Or vice-versa?

In summary I believe that someone needs to take a leading role in changing this deep seated indoctrination that has gone on for too many years.  People claim to be looking for a socially accepting diverse culture, but this will not happen so long as we all keep empowering terms such as 'racism'.  The sooner mankind comes to realise we are one species, the sooner peace will come, and by media outlets moving to reinforce this message of togetherness by addressing the ways in which they talk about people in the news, the sooner it will happen and I for one would be happy to follow.

White is Actually Alright?

A row has recently erupted over 'race' and an ITV bosses claims that the the successful mid-afternoon show 'Midsomer Murders' success hinged on the fact there was an all white cast.

The producer Brian True-May called it the ''last bastion of Englishness' and that 'racial diversity in the show would not work'. The row erupted as he said that he would not use Black or Asian people in the series because 'it wouldn't be an English village with them'

'Mr' True-May was suspended and then seen being chauffuer driven away by an Asian.  Fans of the show have rallied in support of the under-fire producer with a Daily Mail poll suggesting that 91% of people think that he should not have been suspended.

The main point however has been missed.  The issue of race is, and has been over, for some 200 years thanks to a gentleman named Charles Darwin, who is the man most commonly known to be repsonsible for the 'Evolution Theory'.  If it had not been Darwin then it would have been someone else such as Alred Russell Wallace who had his mind blown away by a trip to Papa New Guinea.  We are one human race, the human species, all connected.

'Racism' does not exist. It is ignorance.

This week sees the annual world drink up known as 'St Patricks Day' where people will claim all manner of connections to the Irish fellowship in the name of guiness (a weak excuse for an alcoholic beverage) before resuming nationalistic hostilities this weekend in the rugby 6 Nations finale where England play Ireland for the Grand Slam. The out dated idea of nations once again highlighted through gladiatorial sporting contests. Maybe one day we will have national human day....

The way forward to combat this ignorance is for an overhaul of the way we educate people, the way we educate our children, by pointing out our similarities to people of different cultures rather than our differences. Not by pointing out height, weight, intellectual or financial differences. Remember no one is born 'racist', a child does not know to differentiate people based on colour from birth, it occurs as a result of their environmental upbringing and experiences. These can be changed.

"An organism at war with itself is doomed....we are one planet" Carl Sagan- Cosmos

It is time for the world to come together.


Quotes came from BBC News and The Daily Mail, March 16th 2011

ZDay 2011- London

Having taken the time to watch 'The Zeitgeist' docu-movies by Peter Joseph over the past couple of years I took it upon myself to attend the recent ZDay conference in London this week and have decided to give it a bit more attention than the BBC or ITV. 

ZDay is a world wide event with each chapter hosting seminars on the current progress of the movement. This year focused on response to the latest effort by Peter Joseph, 'Zeitgesit- Moving Forward'

The Zeitgeist Movement is a collaboration of free thinking individuals that see there is a need for change in the way the world currently conducts itself.  For example people starving in the 21st century and the myths around overpopulation and the often self projected, but not backed, claim or notion that there is not enough food for an ever increasing population.  This is just simply not the case, access to resources, as the movement highlights, is the problem.

"Among the key causes of hunger are natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. Recently, financial and economic
crises have pushed more people into hunger." A quote taken directly from the World Food Program website.  No sign of overpopulation being a cause of hunger.

The day itself ran for 8 hours with talks from various CAD technicians (responsible for designing a new way of housing people and buildings that will be more efficient in their design and use) members of the linguistic team (who documented the sheer volume of work that goes into translating the docu-movies for 6 billion odd people that aren't English speaking first language types) to the man himself, Peter Joseph, who gave a speech tackling some of the negative media that the Zeitgeist movement has gained in recent months following an incident in America earlier this year and his vision of what happens next.

One of the things taken from the latest effort from Peter Joesph is the accessibility of the material for some people.  We all address the level of our communication in accordance with the person or group we are talking to yet the nature of some the material will daunt some people but it is worth sticking with it I assure you.  Another point is the duration of the docu-movie, which at 2hrs 41 Earth minutes is a considerable lump of 'time' out of your day and I confess it is pretty heavy going at certain points, particularly if this is your first foray into the world of the Zeitgeist Movement. Fortunately however there are a series of short clips (which I shall link at the bottom) from the docu-movie popping up on YouTube which will serve to remove the problem of duration and hopefully the heavy going nature of the piece.  I recommend the first part, 40mins in duration, if nothing else as it gives a grand insight into the 'human nature vs human nurture' debate if you have never looked into it personally.  Environment is everything.  We are all a product of it.

Entire factories automated from picking to packing

Some skeptics will point to the technological aspect of the Zeitgeists Movement and its association with The Venus Project , such as machines or robots replacing humans in the workforce to free us to actually LIVE our lives rather than just exist, and claim radical notions of machines taking over the planet or ruling our lives.  This just is not the case.  To some extent machines already rule our lives.  There is a reduced workforce in industry, replaced by automation.  The human that has had a pace maker fitted to regulate their heart beat.  Traffic signals. Complex navigation systems for aeroplanes. Mobile phones, you may even be reading this on such a device?  The list is endless and yet it could be exponentially increased, further reducing the need for us to submit our time and labour in a Resource Based Economy.

The Automated Shop, a step up from tills

The fear of an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Will Smith like apocalypse is just unfounded.

It cannot be denied, The Zeitgeist Movement is gathering pace.  The number of people awakening to the things wrong with the world and that are now actively engaging in doing something about it is on the increase.  The number of chapters that have opened up, even since ZDay 2010, is up by more than double from 400 to 1000.  People claim to 'know what is going on' but do they really? Or they feel powerless to do or act and this is the furthest thing from the truth.   The number of people at the bottom rung of the ladder, struggling to keep pace with their human needs is growing and their ability to tread these murky, treacle like waters is becoming ever more difficult.

"We have eyes and we see, we do not have eyes so we can see"

If once born we were locked in a dark room with no light our nerve endings would not develop and we would be blind.  To this end our eyes only give us the ability to see what is there and humans cannot imagine what they cannot see.  Pause for a moment and ask yourself this; in the year 2000 would you have imagined that the phone in your hand, where the extent of its ability was to send and receive sms text messages and play 'Snake', would one day enable you to sit and watch live sport and movies, or send and receive emails or pictures on a touch screen iPhone? No.  Rewind sixty years and colour t.v would have been ridiculed, let alone a flat screen HD3D LED that we can consume today and sixty years before this the idea of a t.v or even a radio would have most likely led to a return to the witch burning days and so on.  Imagine where our technology may take us ten years from now...sixty years..or one hundred?  The difference however is that things made in the past were built to last due to the scarcity of resources where as in today's cyclical consumption society obsolesence is built into the system so we must continue to buy.

Just as Globalisation is a fact so is the technological revolution.  Feynman said in 1959 that there was 'plenty of room at the bottom' and the discovery of Nanosciences in the 1980s has proved this. We cannot deny it. We should embrace it.

If you went to a ZDay event give your experiences here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvfutuv6LP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbdIGnhskYU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4FQaO8zmhI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my1pNszQ3zM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AM6dX_dwYk