The Inevitability of Peace: Resources
Most of us long for a peaceful and just world, yet the rise of war and injustice can leave us feeling uncertain about how to help. In 1985, the governing body of the Bahá’í Faith addressed this challenge in a letter to the peoples of the world, The Promise of World Peace, declaring that “world peace is not only possible but inevitable.” This landmark document explores the root causes of conflict and offers guidance on the attitudes and actions that can lead humanity toward peace. In this presentation, Sharon will highlight key insights from The Promise of World Peace and explore practical steps we can take, individually and collectively, to build a more peaceful and just world.
LINKS, PODCASTS, VIDEOS…
- The Promise of World Peace, 1985, Letter from the Universal House of Justice
- Building Resilient Neighbourhoods – Building Resilient Neighbourhoods
- Resilient_Streets_Toolkit.pdf
- How to Create a Moral Revolution
- How to Save Democracy – Podcast – Apple Podcasts
- A Citizen Future, Jon Alexander, with video clip Time to Citizen (2:47 min.)
- Global Democracy & Justice Lecture Series
- Pray the Devil back to Hell on Netflix
- Soldier’s Without Guns – link to full movie is not available at this time.
- Education for Peace
CITIZENS’S ASSEMBLIES
- Citizens assemblies: Definition and standards, website from Poland
- Citizens’ assemblies: Pioneered in B.C. 20 years ago, they’re a growing pro‑democracy tool: article on The Conversation website
- Citizens assemblies in Ireland (website)
- The Irish Citizens Assembly (audio, 64 min.)
ONLINE CONSULTATION – TAIWAN, POLIS, DECIDIUM
- Lessons From Consensus Building in Taiwan
- Taiwan’s Transformation (audio, 54 min.)
- The Computational Democracy Project designs, engineers and maintains Polis,
an open source, real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words.
- Polis is a platform for a conversation, in which participants submit short text statements, or comments, (<140 characters) which are then sent out semi-randomly to other participants to vote on by clicking agree, disagree or pass. (currently) up to hundreds of thousands or (conceivably) millions of participants.”
- Decidim is an open-source digital platform for citizen participation in creating and refining legislation.
CONSENSUS GOVERNMENT – NUNAVUT AND NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
“Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are the only two Canadian jurisdictions that pursue a consensus approach to government. This approach has often been described as a fusion of Westminster-style structures and aboriginal views of deliberation and decision-making.”
- What is Consensus Government? (NWT) Overview, one page
- Audio-visual tour of the NWT Legislature (30 min.)
History, Distinctive Features, civility & decorum (see p.6)
(video, CBC, 1:56 min.)