Mar 17 2019
This week began with the fallout from the Ethiopian Airlines crash last week, then moved into a highly anticipated candidacy announcement for the 2020 US presidential elections, and ended with an event at the bottom of the world that shattered our sense of serenity. But there’s always hope, and it came through children skipping school.
(Too busy to read and click through all the article links? Listen to this podcast episode, for highlights on the go.)
As The World Turns
Seeking safety, shattering serenity
Hours after I produced Episode 7 of the Peace Matters podcast, both Canada and the US announced that they would also ground the Boeing 737 Max 8 planes. It placed the US and its aviation authority, the Federal Aviation Administration, in the unusual position of bringing up the rear on airline safety, instead of leading its charge. And because I was due to fly on an American carrier that still had Max 8 planes on its schedule, I was relieved they’d finally made the decision. The investigation into both the Oct 2018 Lion Air and Mar 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crashes continues, with early evidence showing similarities between the two crashes.
I’ve known, and personally experienced, Christchurch, New Zealand to be one of the most peaceful places on earth. This week, I recalled that I’d visited Christchurch (and other towns in New Zealand’s scenic South Island) soon after 9/11, perhaps subconsciously choosing it as a place of solace to process the violence of that September morn.
That sense of serenity was shattered when a white nationalist gunman stormed into two Christchurch mosques and killed (as of this writing) 50 people and inured 50 more.
The gunman chose to stream his killing spree live on Facebook, a video that was replicated and spread more quickly than the social media platforms could remove it. While there is the usual discussion over regulating the social media platforms, an equally pertinent question for us all is: why do we want to spread it in the first place? Have we lost our capacity to realize these are real people being massacred on the video, not an MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) or a Hollywood movie clip? Has technology removed us from our humanity this much, that we think nothing of sharing someone’s dying anguish? No amount of social media regulation will resolve that.
Kirk Hargreaves [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
I am, though, in awe of how New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden has risen to this moment of pain and shock for her fellow citizens. She has displayed grace toward the afflicted, and a steely strength toward reforming gun laws.
Om Is Where The Heart Is
And the youth shall lead us
I drank in the courage of young voices this week, as students from London to New Delhi who skipped school to take part in demonstrations calling for action on climate change. They no longer deserve our inaction. They warrant our support.
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish student, began her climate crusade in August 2018 by sitting outside the Swedish parliament almost every Friday, demanding her government realign with the Paris climate agreement.
And while adults may (justifiably) scoff that this is another chapter in Gen Z’s fickle “cause of the moment” nature, I still draw inspiration from their fierce determination to have us act.
News and Views
More humanity, please
I’m starting a new series of campaigns to revive our humanity across multiple dimensions – work, life, and everything in between. Using the hashtag #30SFH or #30StepsForHumanity, these campaigns are your invitation to join the conversation, and take some/all of those 30 steps with me, to build a more peaceful and sustainable world.
In the next issue:
I’m attending a human resources conference all of next week. It’s an event I look forward to being at every year. I will be the richer for it when it’s over, and will share some of its goodness with you here in Peace Maters.
Till then…
Live well and lead large – Maya
(featured image by David Tong) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons