For many however such commendable desires for world peace are often tempered with their own indoctrinated ideologies. Many falsely believe the path to peace and harmony lies exclusively within their own particular faith. Increasingly we seem to be witnessing examples where those ideologies appear to be so entrenched and perverted that those captivated under their spell abandon reason and humanity in violent and bloody pursuit of their own deluded notions of Nirvana.
Imagine if John was still with us today, it’s easy if you try. The rolling news coverage on any given day may well lead him to conclude that his admirable 1968 proposal is not going as well as he had hoped. We tried staying in bed. We tried painting our naked bodies in psychedelic patterns and flouncing around to Jefferson Airplane whilst shoving flowers down the barrels of rifles, but it didn’t really work. More recently we tried retaliating against terror with well financed “Shock and Awe”. But that didn't seem to work out too well either.
Now what? Are we all out of ideas? Do we just cower behind our enhanced airport security and knee jerk anti-terrorism policies and wait for it to go away? Do we redefine our goals for peace to be a little more localised?
I think not. I think we’ve just been retaliating with the wrong weapons. I propose a fresh assault on terror. Not with guns and bombs but with satire, sarcasm and ridicule.
Let’s rip their ideology apart with cutting satirical warfare; let’s rain down cogent and piercing ridicule on their fragile dogmas. Let us unleash the weapons of mass derision. Put down your swords, pick up your pens and let’s make the fundamentalists of all faiths into morons rather than martyrs. And let’s indiscriminately deploy the same sardonic sortie on our own more familiar ideological claptrap.
NB: Extracting urine from deeply held yet completely ridiculous ideologies does not contravene your diversity training
