"Nel mezzo cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita".
However, I don't need Dante to know that compassionate activism is the best path for the second half. Time to just get on with it...
, beyond the cynicism and the power games, that we all share...
"These party leaders may day-dream of glory, but at night they dream of sons and daughters they can no longer hold" - Judith O'Reilly
...as argued for by Jeremy Rifkin, which claims that we we need to adjust our minds to the demands of our time.
Tracing our history from familial, tribal to religious to national communities, Rifkin proposes that we now come full-circle, rediscover the human ties and feelings of compassion soft-wired into our system and extend them on a global level.
Let's connect all the 7 billion people alive today and all the 110 billion people who have ever lived.
The mighty pen-pal via The Obvious? by Euan on 6/21/08 "What I
Recent studies suggest that compassion is rooted in our brain and biology.
By the beginning of the new decade, in early 2010, it became clear that more and more people were becoming anxious about joining the ranks of the homeless, whose plight was exacerbated by extreme winter weather throughout the northern hemisphere.
...in many parts of the world, while we sit here blogging, tweetng, facebooking and passing the days in other, ever-novel forms of self-indulgence.
For example, in Ghana, children burn electrical components to melt off the plastic and reclaim the copper wiring - releasing toxic chemicals into the environment in the process while, in Brazil, man-made fires clear land for cattle or crops. (Thanks to Greenpeace for this salutary reminder.)
The newly-launched Charter for Compassion asks people of all religions and moral codes to recognise the core value we share - that we wish to act toward others as we'd like them to act toward us.
Halcyon recently had the privilege of visiting the orphanages and street projects run by FACE in Cairo.
