Tag: Cooperation

Counting on … Lent 19

31st March 2025  

Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Genesis 2:5-6

Without water there is no plant life; without bodies of water there is no rain. The creation story in Genesis understands that God provided the water that was essential for life, providing a source of water which we now understand is continually circulated via plants and rain cycles. If we treasure life then we also need to treasure the natural balance of the water cycle, not over extracting water from inland  seas and aquifers. Misusing water can see too much water diverted for industrial or intensive farming purposes such that both people and the natural wildlife suffers. 

A press release from UNESCO underlines the importance of handling water systems  with fairness and cooperation. 

“Nearly every water-related intervention involves some kind of cooperation. Growing crops require shared irrigation systems among farmers. Providing safe and affordable water to cities and rural areas is only possible through a communal management of water-supply and sanitation systems. And cooperation between these urban and rural communities is essential to maintaining both food security and uphold farmer incomes.” https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/imminent-risk-global-water-crisis-warns-un-world-water-development-report-2023

Green Tau reflection

The Psychology of Peace

14th February 2025

The other week I went to the Imperial War Museum to see their exhibition ‘War and the Mind’ which was exploring the psychology that prompts people to go to war, the psychological impact on both combatants and noncombatants, how army leaders maintain moral, ditto for civilians in war zones, how people try and look after their own mental well-being etc. Towards the end of the exhibition one display focused on how the UK government set out to persuade British people to reshape their view of German people (distinguishing between war criminals and the ordinary person) and to understand the need to provide both jobs for the German populace and an education for the children so that they wouldn’t behave as their forebears had. 

This struck me as so important. We can’t make peace until we see the other as someone of equal value as ourselves, until see the other as our neighbour to be loved. There can be no place in peace for revenge or hostile discrimination. Yet even in the UK there are still people willing to make jokes about Germans referencing the war, to make jokes that are predicated on the British being some sort of superior victor – or a British Bulldog. 

Such attitudes then filter into other areas of life – that Britain is obviously a world leader in any and every field of endeavour, that we have nothing to learn from others, that we have no need to cooperate with anyone else, that the way we do things must be the best – the only – way.

This blinkered view that can only see self as right and everyone else as wrong, is repeated in other nations and other conflicts around the world. Can there be peace in Gaza until everyone sees the other as a brother or sister? Can there be global cooperation and agreement until everyone sees the good in everyone else? 

So the question is how do we change we think and act both as individuals and as communities and nations?