World Peace, and Other Fourth Grade Achievements (Edie)

Hopefully, this title won't make you incredulous. You were once nine years old, after all, and you dreamt and hoped. By nine, I figured that life would be just grand if I lived out the rest of my days in a gigantic tree house. I would take baths in chocolate milk and walk around barefoot and dig really deep pits in the sandbox. I would stay home from school. I would invent things to make people's life easier. I would become a writer, and write books for other people so they could figure out their own problems, too, because by then I would have pretty much everything figured out for myself.

So, think about the dreams that you had when you were nine. They were extraordinary, weren't they? Larger than life, larger than anything you could see in front of you. What do you think about them now? Can you see them, see them happening in your life?

Keep these thoughts in your mind, and watch this video:

John Hunter, the man who is this class's guide, is a beautiful, caring person. Watch his TED talk, and then we'll be able to discuss the point of my ramblings:

We all want peace. John Hunter wants it too: probably from his earliest days he imagined doing something great, making not only his life but the lives of others around him more meaningful. We all want that. Why is a person like John Hunter capable of such greatness? How is he able to not only dream his dream, but live his dream? Simply put, how?

I want to know your thoughts on these questions (or any other aspect of the World Peace Game.) I personally think that his teaching philosophy includes a portion of the mind of Socrates: according to Ian Johnston, Socrates believed that:

"we have within us the means to knowledge; our souls, as it were, possess already everything we need to know.  We are at present unaware of the content of that knowledge, but we can come to recognize it.  It can be drawn out of us, so that we realize the truth of something we possessed all along.  If we focus on this task, we can discover the truth and falsity of what we think we know.  Learning is thus not a matter of accepting as true the various opinions our culture hands over to us.  It is much more a matter of self-examination so that we unlock (or re-discover) the knowledge within us."

John Hunter does not have the answer to world peace. Life isn't about that: it is the task for us, as a global family, to work together to figure these issues out just as this fourth-grade class did. John Hunter believes that we have the knowledge already within us: it is peace, not hatred, that is our equilibrium.

Maybe, peace lies in recognizing the truth in John Hunter's words: "I'm here, standing on the shoulders of many people. I'm not here alone." 

(To learn more about John Hunter and the World Peace Game, go to: http://www.worldpeacegame.org/)