Recently, the Economist Intelligence Unit created the Global Peace Index -- a ranking of countries according to their level of peacefulness.
It's hoped the Index will further the study of how the world can achieve peace. But the Index seems to have a major flaw: It does not track violence done to women and children. Hence, countries in which great violence is done towards women and children show up in the Index ranked deceptively high for "peacefulness".
From the Christian Science Monitor:
That certainly is "putting it mildly". Overall, violence towards women and children creates a "cycle of violence" in which the children tend to perpetuate violence towards others when they grow up. Two infamous cases where that happened were Hitler and Stalin -- both of whom grew up in violent households. It's hard to believe you can accurately measure the peacefulness of a society without taking into rigorous account the society's treatment of women and children.The first-ever study ranking countries according to their level of peacefulness, the Global Peace Index, was recently published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Sensibly, its basic premise is that "peace isn't just the absence of war; it's the absence of violence."
The index uses 24 indicators such as how many soldiers are killed, the level of violent crimes, and relations with neighboring countries.
Yet it fails to include the most prevalent form of global violence: violence against women and children, often in their own families. To put it mildly, this blind spot makes the index very inaccurate.
I recently came across a thread on a forum that asked the question, "If your children had to see one or the other in a movie, would you prefer them to see violence or nudity?"
I humbly submit that any morally sane person, given that choice, would prefer their children to see nudity, rather than violence. Yet, some people responding to the question stated they would prefer their children to see violence. Apparently, the myth that nudity can be equated to violence, or is even worse than violence, is still with us.
All of history shows that moral sanity does not come to a society without a struggle. Therefore, none of us can expect society to take a morally sane position on nudity unless we are willing to struggle out of our clothes each Monday to blog in the nude. The logic is irrefutable! All that remains is for you to participate in the rapidly growing Nude Blogging Movement today!
On Monday, 33 people died of senseless violence in Virgina. Yesterday, 171 people died of senseless violence in Baghdad.
I'm sick of the killing.
Stumble It!
