It is easy to get discouraged in the face of all the violence in the world, including the violence perpetrated by our own governments.
But individuals can make a difference. You can make a difference.
One initiative that you can endorse is The People’s Charter To Create A Nonviolent World, launched in Australia in November 2011.
Here are some excerpts from the Charter to whet your appetite and stimulate your optimism:
“Recognising that:
1. The United States government dominates world affairs and is engaged in a perpetual war (sometimes presented as a ‘war on terror’) to secure control of essential diminishing natural resources (including oil, water and strategic minerals)….
2. The United States government (sometimes together with pliant government allies in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, America and Australia) maintains occupation forces in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and the Mariana Islands…..
10. The use of nuclear materials to generate electricity and create weapons of mass destruction exposes humankind and other species to unnecessary and unacceptable risks of radioactive contamination….
14. Many people devote their energy to the design, manufacture and/or use of weapons and torture equipment in order to harm, mutilate or kill fellow human beings….
21. It is human violence – against ourselves, each other and the Earth – that threatens to cause human extinction….
This Charter identifies eight aims of a nonviolent strategy to mobilise ordinary people, local groups, communities, non-government organisations and international networks opposed to these and other manifestations of human violence to explicitly renounce the use of violence themselves and to take nonviolent action to strategically resist this violence in all of its forms for the sake of humankind, future generations, all other species on Earth and the Earth itself.”
Please take a few minutes to read the complete charter, and sign it if you wish.
If you do so, you will learn that as of December 21, 2012:
936 individuals from 45 countries have signed the Nonviolence Charter pledge, and 59 organizations from 19 countries have endorsed the Nonviolence Charter.
Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology