We talk everyday with each other about the ways of world, God, the Meaning of Life, human experience and Truth, without ever reaching definitive answers of course, and wonder if others are having similar conversations
Two hours of my day are spent in reading and studying, and about an hour walking across fields in the open countryside. This is when I commune with nature, with the trees and the insects, and my clearest thinking happens. This Blog will be my means of sharing my thoughts and questions to myself with others who may be asking themselves similar questions, and happen to stumble across it
I don't know yet what it will become, or what its main purpose will be, because there are other things I'll want to talk about from time to time, such as my film project for nuclear disarmament (www.talkworks.info) which I do in association with Anne Piper and Andy Russell of Different-Films.com
This is what TalkWorks is:
We make short films for the internet of influential people explaining why they are backing a radical step-by-step programme of global nuclear disarmament, leading to zero. Security experts and policymakers from across the political spectrum have become newly alarmed in recent years at the dangerous crisis ('Nuclear Tipping Point') the world has reached with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons left over as a legacy of the Cold War, and the uncontrolled spread of nuclear materials and technology into 'unsafe' hands and to very unstable parts of the world.
We want ordinary people to know about this, and to join in the call to get rid of nuclear weapons once and for all because, as one of our contributors Sir Jeremy Greenstock says in his recent interview for TalkWorks, political leaders cannot do it on their own: they need strong public demand behind them in order to drive such a complex international policy as nuclear disarmamenent through.
I've worked on nuclear disarmament and the non-violent conflict resolution for the past 30 years, ever since I left teaching and joined the Oxford Research Group in 1982. It is my singular passion for the 21st century that the monstrous invention that has cast its terrifying shadow over the second half of the 20th be dismantled and outlawed, and the enormous scientific and financial resources that are expended in feeding the monster be turned instead towards creating and applying constructive new technologies that can help to save the planet.
At the same time, of course, human awareness (or lack of it) and the thinking patterns that created the nuclear problem, and the other man-made messes we've landed ourselves in, have to change fundamentally. 'Consciousness changing' is what my mentor and former colleague at Oxford Research Group Scilla Elworthy works on now, with her fellow global peacebuilders and consciousness raisers, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and their fellow Elders, an initiative Scilla helped Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel to set up.
For the moment, I am simply aiming with TalkWorks to raise awareness about the nuclear threat, so that the commitment made by President Obama in his Prague Speech in April 2009 to work with other nuclear nations, by a series of concrete steps, towards a nuclear weapon-free world in the 21st century has a chance of being fulfilled
It would have been my brother Simon's 59th birthday today, and it is also the anniversary of our mother Pat's death in 1999. They are the inspiration for everything I do — at least that is what I'm feeling as I start this blog on Saturday 24th September 2011
 |
| Simon Truman Houldsworth, violinist b. 24th September 1952 d. 4th July 2001 |
 |
| My mother Pat Joan Dench-Houldsworth, artist on the terrace at Burnaston Cottage c. 1995 |
 | |
| in her studio at Bourne Street, London SW1 c. 1993 |
 |
| Woodcut expressing the struggle of living, which proved too much for Simon — and (below) Simon and Irene with our youngest nephew Sebastian aged 9 meeting our middle nephew Dominic at Heathrow airport for Christmas 1999 |
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment