Reflections on Peace, Philosophy, and Life
There used to be a British game show called Take Your Pick. Contestants were faced with a simple choice: take the money offered by the host or gamble it for the contents of a mystery box. The box might contain a luxury holiday or a brand-new car — or it might hold a rubber duck, a tin of beans, or some other “booby prize.”
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There’s a lot of talk about trust — in politics, in business, in relationships. It’s one of those words that everyone uses, but few really stop to examine. “You have to trust me.” “I don’t trust the government.” “Trust has to be earned.” The word gets tossed around as if we all knew what it meant. But do we?
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There is a symmetry in madness: the distortions that unhinge an individual also, when amplified, unravel civilizations. In Cosmos, Carl Sagan warned that advanced life may extinguish itself before reaching the stars—because technology without understanding is lethal. The same stages that mark a mind’s collapse seem to map disturbingly well onto humanity’s current trajectory.
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One of the oldest and most persistent patterns in human affairs is the way form begins to replace substance. Something fresh, alive, and meaningful takes shape in the world. Over time, it becomes wrapped in procedures, appearances, and rules. Eventually, the outer form takes on more importance than the inner meaning. The packaging overshadows the gift.
This is not just a quirk of history. We can see it everywhere around us today.
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Recently, I’ve had conversations with people here in Switzerland who, like me, admire the teachings of Prem Rawat — a man who speaks tirelessly about peace, about seeing beyond the noise of the world, about recognising the illusions (maya) that keep us from knowing ourselves.
And yet, in these same conversations, I’ve heard support for ideas like “10 million people is enough for here” — a slogan used to push anti-immigration and anti-asylum policies. I’ve also heard someone who worked for RUAG, Switzerland’s state-owned arms company, for over a decade explain that it was fine because “Switzerland is a defensive military.”
To me, these positions seem at odds with the essence of what Prem Rawat teaches.
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We pride ourselves on being modern, advanced, even sophisticated. Yet if respect for human life is still missing, how modern are we really? From Switzerland to South Africa, from the U.S. to Canada, femicide and violence reveal our primitive side. And yet, there are places—like Spain—showing that progress is possible.
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