a higher level of awareness

I decided to start this blog because I felt like I had something to say. I thought I had thoughts people should reflect on, facts they should chew on. But as I started, I remembered a quote I once read, about how you can’t really teach anyone anything he doesn’t already know. And that is evidently true. I can’t tell you anything you haven’t already heard before, or known deep inside of you anyway. I could write about anything that occupies me, mostly it revolves around the desperation and the crisises in the world, concerning hunger, poverty, discrimination and missing development. But you all know about that…
I think it’s important, and that’s how the quote went on, to bring things to a higher level of awareness. I can’t teach you anything you don’t already know, I can only try and bring it to a higher level of awareness. So for my first blog entry, I’m going to give you a cross-section of what interests me, as in what I’m going to try to bring to a higher level of awareness.
You know about how religious discrimination takes place. So you probably know that elimination of religious minorities still takes place today.
The about 300.000 followers of the Bahá’í religion build Iran’s biggest religious minority. Seeing as it is historically younger than Islam, it isn’t a true religion, or so the fundamentalistic understanding of the Qur’án as the ideal, whole and complete word of God says. For the Bahá’i the Qur’án isn’t the last word of God, but there are words to follow. In the eyes of muslim fanatics this is an unforgivable heresy. But the religious persecution is denied. Instead the Bahá’ís are accused of being a political party aiming an overthrow of the islamic government. The right to higher education is denied to all Bahá’is and between 1979 and 1998 more than 200 Bahá’ìs were killed or executed and hundreds more were wrongfully imprisoned. Thousands were fired from their jobs without a reason, except for Membership in a religious community that isn’t in agreement with the islamic, fanatic understanding that prevails since the revolution.
Apart from all the racial and religious discrimination, that doesn’t have to take that degree (but also happens here in Europe), we are facing much larger problems today. Everyone knows about development aid, but it’s success is controversial. The European Union (EU) and it’s aid in African states south of the Sahara is failing miserably. It’s effort with regard to political diplomacy, financial economics and security and safety demand measures that are understandable, but difficult to collaborate with for the population. It’s not easy going through the technical, intellectual, spiritual and mental development we Europeans went through during industrialisation, whilst having soldiers with AK-47s roaming up and down your streets.
All forms of development and humanitarian aid have weaknesses and strengths, but we must deal with the problems that we are facing, or no change for the better is in sight. John F. Kennedy once said: “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”