Loring Wirbel
Citizens for Peace in Space
Colorado Springs, Colorado
The widespread flooding in western Pakistan has inundated an area the size of Florida while killing at least 1800 as of Sept. 10. The sheer scope of the disaster has also serve to dramatize the Obama Administration’s schizoid policy toward this Muslim nation: supplying humanitarian aid to the flood victims while at the same time regularly launching drone missile attacks against alleged Taliban and al-Qaida operatives.
Read morePosted In: Anti-War & International Law
Celebrating 40 Years of NFP
The oldest statewide Peace & Justice organization in the U.S. will celebrate its 40th anniversary Saturday, October 16 at the 2010 Annual Peace Conference in Omaha. To commemorate this milestone in Nebraskans for Peace’s history, this year’s event is featuring keynote addresses from not just one, but two nationally known speakers.
Read morePosted In: Announcements
Linda Ruchala
UNL Associate Professor of Accountancy
Living simply, with purpose and harmony, has been an ethos for modern life in the peace community for some time. Social scientist and author Duane Elgin notes that the movement grew largely out of Gandhi’s teachings. Elgin quotes Richard Gregg, a Gandhi student, in defining voluntary simplicity as a “singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life… It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.”
Elgin distinguishes between voluntary simplicity and poverty. Simplicity is sought by choice; large numbers of very poor people globally have no choice but to live simply because they are poor. He notes that “poverty is involuntary and debilitating, whereas simplicity is voluntary and enabling. Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit.”
Read morePosted In: Environment
Date: Friday & Saturday, September 17-18, 2010
Location: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Read morePosted In: Announcements
