It is from little that you twist the cucumber

The following is a text with lots of intermixed ideas. Some ideas are old, while others only appeared in the final part of my travel - with my contact with WWII history and with my acknowledgement of the current [dangerous] state of things in Europe and the world.
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Kinder garden and breaking the intercultural/racial gap.

While current TV programs already display some concern regaring inter-racial integration - by showing kids of various origins and diferent skin colours "which likes to play, just like you" - they cannot enter the realm of inter-religion understanding.
I think that kids still in kinder garden age are simply too young to understand the concept of religion. But even at this age they are already receiving the "facts" about their parents' religion.
Inter-religious understanding and the creation of a global-ethic can only be done by the parents at home - we hardly have parents outsourcing the teachings about religion...
But! Thinking about it... parents simply aren't informed about other religions. So, the best place to teach about a global-ethic would be in school (a religion neutral one).

This last idea raises some interesting issues:

• How to handle the differences between the teaching kids receive in school and back home?
• What teachings should the children receive, the parental or the school ones?
• If it is the school ones, to what value system are they mapped to - the national values or some global, humanity ones?

Who has the power in a free think/speech nation to dictate what kids should learn?
In other words, to whom do the kids' minds belong to? Touchy!!!

I think that a solution for this mess rests within every religious power. If people follow the religion then they will follow their teachings. As such, the problem is reduced to a matter of improving those teachings inter-religion wise.

The religion representants could provide guidelines for the parents (to use while teaching their religion to their kids).
Critic mode: In the case of the catholic religion - the one I'm familiar with - I think that there's a total lack of information regarding other religions, including on the sunday school manuals and on the Masses.

So... time to talk to some religious liders! :)

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You might be wandering were did this text came from...
The truth is that this is a subject that has accompanied me for some years now.
In economic terms I would say that religions suffer from a resources problem:

• a limited number of human minds;
• several religions feeding a "go and spread the word" approach to getting new followers;
• "my religion is the right one" mindsets;

Mix all of these together and you'll get Inquisition, Crusades and people sanctified for killing the unfaithful.
Editor's note: I just found out that Jihad does not mean "Holy War"... Fucking media... :|


Well... while in Berlin I had the luck of hearing about a Global Ethic and surprise, surprise, to have my concerns in the words of others. Apparently there has been work towards this global ethic by part of the various religions since has early as 1993, with the Parliament of the World's Religions, where "The Declaration of a Global Ethic" was signed.
Curiously enough... WHY THE FUCK HAVEN'T WE HEARD ABOUT THIS?!?
Clearly religious liders aren't focused on spreading the word, the important one at least...

The text you just read if a followup on the subject. I think a lot of people have to do a Auschwitz tour to open their eyes to the dangers of letting things be and not providing youngsters with the tools to think for themselves - with a global ethic serving has a base for any though regarding others.

Well... to finish I would like to share the sentences I've found in Berlin:

"There can be no peace among the nations
without peace among the religions.
No peace among the religions
without dialogue among the religions"
(Hans Kung, 1993)

While looking for this quote I found a interesting site, check it out if you have time. :)