Gideon Polya, “New Year’s Resolutions. SIX GRACES”, MWC News, I January 2007, not cached by Google.
For an image of the huge painting “Truelove” (1.3 x 2.9 metres) used to illustrate this article see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/4289097962/ . For other related paintings see Flickr: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/home .
New Year’s Resolutions. SIX GRACES
2007 has arrived and billions of people have made soon to be broken Resolutions for the New Year. One way of ensuring that we keep our New Year’s Resolutions is (a) by keeping them general rather than specific; (b) making these general resolutions important as our own personal contributions to Humanity; and (c) devising an Acronym to enable ready application and simple recording of our adherence. With these notions in mind I have devised 6 New Year’s Resolutions that are encapsulated by the Acronym GRACES, these Capital Letters successively standing for Greenhouse activism; Recording adherence; Altruism; Choice; Exercise of Mind and Body; and Speaking out. Doing the 6 GRACES daily will ensure that you make a small, conscious, personal contribution to a better world every day.
The philosophy behind the 6 GRACES is unexceptional: that all men are created equal and have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and, if there is a purpose to life, one could not do much better than to use our lives to promote Beauty and Truth. As English poet John Keats (1795-1821) said in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” The rationales behind my 6 GRACES are outlined below.
Greenhouse activism. Global warming due to man-made (anthropogenic) Greenhouse gas pollution (mainly carbon dioxide) is the most serious problem facing Humanity today. Global warming transcends the major problem of Global Inequity (16 million people die avoidably each year, of whom about 10 million are under-5 year old infants) – and simply because it is already severely exacerbating the problem, especially in tropical and subtropical regions. The Chief Scientist of the UK has declared that hundreds of millions of people will die in the Third World unless urgent action is taken to address global warming. The recent UK Stern Report says that if urgent action is taken now to tackle global warming then atmospheric carbon dioxide may be contained to 500-550 parts per million (ppm). However Professor James Lovelock FRS in his latest book “The Revenge of Gaia” asserts that at 500 ppm carbon dioxide there is a major failure of the ocean phytoplankton system (vital for global temperature balance) and the Greenland Ice sheet disappears. We can make our own personal daily contribution to energy efficiency in all kinds of ways (short showers, turning off lights, walking rather than driving etc) – in addition to personal and collective activism through advocacy.
Recording adherence. It is very easy to record your daily adherence to the 6 GRACES on a calendar. Do all 6 and you can mark the date with a simple tick. Any GRACES you miss out on can be simply represented by crossing out the appropriate letter in GRACES. Of course qualitative adherence is just so easy - you can very easily do something to satisfy complete adherence. Resolute adherence will have the effect of making the 6 GRACES protocol a standard daily routine.
Altruism. Each day you can do some small kindness to other individuals – a kind word, a kind deed, even as little as a peck on the cheek or a pat on the back. Of course you can be even more generous after the wonderful examples of Bill Gates and George Soros – the sky’s the limit.
Choices. The Bush-Blair War on Terror has so far been associated with 3.0 million post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories – mostly Women and Children and largely due to gross Occupier violation of the Geneva Conventions that demand that Occupiers do everything within their power to keep their Conquered Subjects alive. The Bush-Blair War on Terror is in harsh reality a cowardly War on Women and Children.
Racist Zionism (RZ)- and Bush-ite-promoted anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is exacting a heavy price in terms of Western civil liberties and an even heavier toll in US-backed Wars. UK-US-backed Israeli State Terrorism continues to wreak havoc in the Holy Land and its environs. Thus in 2006 Israel was still illegally occupying all of the Holy Land and part of Syria after nearly 40 years of such occupation and was involved in devastation of both Lebanon and Gaza. The post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory total 0.3 million, there are 6 million Palestinian refugees, 85% of Christian Palestinians have fled and 80,000 Palestinians flee each year – an ongoing Palestinian Genocide from the perspective of the UN Genocide Convention. Peace is the only way but decent people are obliged to act ethically in their personal and business dealings with those complicit in such horrendous abuses of humanity – with obvious ethical responses including personal or collective, intra-national or international Sanctions and Boycotts applied to those responsible or complicit. Further, it can be estimated that it would cost about $1.4 trillion annually to bring all countries up to an annual per capita income of $1,000 (at which level excess mortality can be abolished if there is also peace and good governance). Decent people can do their bit by opposing any personal or national involvements in the following 5 industries that each have an annual global market value of roughly $1 trillion: alcohol; tobacco; illicit drugs; arms; and unhealthy processed foods.
Exercise. Physical exercise is good for you. There is currently a Western obesity epidemic and the associated Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes conditions are major health problems. Thus 7% of Americans have diabetes (85% being Type 2 diabetes). For those with diabetes, exercise is extremely important in dealing with the disease (together with diet, monitoring and appropriate pharmaceutical products). However exercise of the Mind is also vital. It has been ignorance, superstition, xenophobia and mental sloth that has permitted the United States, a country with great humanitarian traditions and boasting more Nobel Laureates that any other, to fall into the clutches of the Racist Religious Right Republican (R4) Bush-ite primitives. At an even more refined level, some Mind exercises can be personally transformative. Thus 6 months ago I was introduced to “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron (a book designed to help artists and writers overcome an artistic “block”) and commenced doing the prescribed daily “Morning Pages” exercise (several pages of spontaneous writing daily). Doors opened in my mind and my painting changed dramatically. Indeed my anti-war humanitarian message of Peace and Respect for Mother and Child was transformed into “saying it in pictures”, with my other huge pro-Peace paintings being exhibited with explanatory text on MWC News.
Speak out. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people are obliged to inform others about abuses of human rights. That obligation to speak out becomes acute when horrendous avoidable mortality is involved. Thus a quick check of UNICEF on the Web (see: HERE ) will quickly establish that 0.5 million under-5 year old infants die each year (90% avoidably) in the US Alliance-occupied Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories i.e. 1,300 per day and one per minute. Yet the Mainstream media and public figures of the complicit Western societies steadfastly ignore this horrendous holocaust in continuing acts of Holocaust Commission and Holocaust Denial.
Write letters to elected representatives and the media, write carefully researched articles for Alternative media, write blogs, or just simply inform your friends and associates – we cannot walk by on the other side. Speak out – at least tell someone each day.
Try the SIX GRACES (or a version you can tailor for yourself) and do your bit to help save the Planet. Have a happy and productive New Year!