Speak Directly to Love

Those of us interested in self-improvement are always looking for ways to become a better person, to boost our well-being, and go after things that are bigger and larger than us. We search for inspiration, and for guidance, and we push ourselves to the very edge of limits to overcome the odds.

We search for the laws to life to follow, life lessons to learn, taught from those that have been there and done it, and we are constantly reading as much as we can about life in an bid to get closers to ourselves.

And this is the key - not that somehow we are broken people that need fixing, or "bad" people who need "bettering" - but people that have yet to find their true self. It is not about being a better person per se; it's about being a more authentic version of your true self. Experts advise that the most sure-fire route to achieving this is through love.

In order to love someone, you must love yourself. Sometimes we feel as if our lives rely on one person. We think "If I do this, he or she will like me?" We tend to waste time avoiding those certain people, and regret it later. We miss them, yearn for their love, and even waste birthday wishes on them.

And we spend so much time waiting to be loved, hoping love will find us, searching, yearning for that special love that we feel empty and lost without it - and we distance ourselves from it. We want someone to give us love and fill us up. In my series of articles "The Science of Twin Flames" we took at look at love at the cellular level, but although that may explain the origins (or the theories for it) it doesn't explain the intensity of its effect and/or absence.

It is not that the big emotions we feel - love or lust or loyalty - are more mystical than their biological origins but exactly that they are far more material; the experiences and associations and memories we make with others repeatedly outnumber our genes. The mechanism of life may be set in motion by our genes, but the feelings we acquire are unique to our own wobbly walk through time.

Our feeling may just be metaphors of the things we colour with our perceptions, but some believe these metaphors touch the edges of actuality. That love makes sense, and no sense, equally; it throws a spanner into the mechanical works of our minds and bodies. We see this, with heartbreaking clarity, in those people we know, or read about, and in ourselves in relation to our relationships. The joke our genes and our years play on us is to leave us with a column of figures scribbled on our souls, ones that make no sense, no matter how long you squint at them or how hard you try to make them work. They don't add up, and yet they are the parts and the sum of you.

Even if we try and block it out, it cannot be denied easily, and always at a cost. For example, love and sex is a touchy subject among Israel's highly conservative ultra-Orthodox Jews. Ultra-Orthodox boys and girls are educated separately, and have little interaction with the opposite sex until their marriage night, when they are expected to consummate their union. Physical touch with the opposite sex - even something like a handshake - is only permitted with one's spouse and close family members. Access to films and the internet is often restricted.

Although Judaism regards sex as something positive, sex is only appropriate within a marital context and beyond that it's not talked about. Because of that, it's become very difficult for people to have any kind of dialogue about it. Unfortunately, that's not usually how life works well. Sex, marriage, family, love - these are not religious duties to be performed for the appeasement of some deity; they are avenues for you to discover your authentic self. Opening up to others, allows you closer inroads to the real you. But before you can train yourself to love others, and how to make love with another, you need to open up to yourself.

Loving yourself is mainly having self-respect which is the only dependable way to create love in your own life to share with others. When you expect love from an external source, and someone or something does not fulfil your void and fantasies, then you will feel worse than before. To be able to be loved, you must love and respect yourself as much as you do others.

Understanding the effects of loving yourself will only enhance your ability to love others. By doing so, you are enabling positive energy and allowing for great situations to occur in your life. And we need to create plenty of them as the mistakes of the past means in the second decade of the 21st Century we are living in fractured societies. Racism is still a prominent issue; and our politicians even make public policy amidst fiscal concerns out of our fear and mistrust (and hatred) of people culturally different than ourselves.

Our minds have narrowed in sync with our living spaces, and we feel suffocated. But the real part of us that can't breathe is our souls. We have suffocated and starved our spirit by limiting our interaction with ourselves and other people - and more importantly, by how we interact.

Technologically we invent and advance, and while doing so we re-evaluate our past, but how innovative are we in our relationships with one another. We might understand the ergonomic importance of our everyday gadgets, but how can we maximise our interactions for more productivity between people?

If you visit the United Kingdom's Science Museum, you will find four aeroplane hangars filled with a mind-boggling collection of hundreds and thousands of inventions, all of which have changed our world. Everything from steam engines to some of the very first computers. It's an inspiring place as a reminder of how inventive we can be. Behind these inventions are pioneers of science shaping our future, men and women that continue to change our world through their passion and belief in themselves.

Because it's not just about the inventions, but the people who are the driving force pushing the boundaries of science. What inspires them? How do they drive their ideas forward and ultimately end up with a ground-breaking invention? In the last 150 years, the pace of inventions, from planes to rockets to smartphones, has been extraordinary in its speed, and it shows no signs of slowing down. In the United States alone, more patents have been filed since the year 2000 than in the previous 40 years combined. More scientific papers are being published globally year on year, and more countries than ever before are getting involved.

Today anyone can innovate, anywhere in the world, whether that's in England in a garage or in Istanbul on a mobile phone. In the example of Google, it was two guys from Stanford University wrote a very simple algorithm that now is a multi-billion dollar company. In terms of great innovation, we are only at the beginning of our journey, and for those that like new ideas and change, there is no better time to be alive.

The best innovators are not the ones motivated by money, but passion; good inventions are not just good ideas, they are great passions driven by curiosity that construct the inventions of most practical use today. Revolutionary approaches require a whole new way of thinking, and scientific research is unified by not just one mind in one country funded by one state, but thousands of minds sponsored by private donors all working together for the betterment of humankind.

The speed with which ideas move around the world is one of the defining characteristics of invention today, but another is the sense of unity, community and healthy competition that spurs people to work together towards a goal. When you think about all the science that lies behind innovation today, it's so complex and so advanced it does seem impossible to stay on top of everything. So, to keep the pace of invention up, scientists have to work in a very different way to that of lone scientists in the past. Indeed the simple categories in science we remember from school have now multiplied into a complex web of interconnected fields, each with their own highly specialised subject areas.

One thing is clear - in a highly specialised world, scientists and technologists have to collaborate to create the next generation of inventions. This brings people from different scientific disciplines together, known as the interdisciplinary approach. Drawing people together is an immensely powerful way of driving innovation in 21st Century science. It opens up opportunities and avenues that previously did not exist.

This approach sees the scientific world as an orchestral piece, working together to produce something harmonious, with each individual player achieving much more than they could have done alone. This can provide a blueprint for the rest of the world, especially in politics, and in our personal lives, too. If we act as a team with a unified purpose, supporting and sustaining each other, then we can do collectively far more than any single individual. This interdisciplinary approach is a concept that once we begin to utilise on a global scale will mean we can tap into the true power of planet.

Read how to unite global consciousness.

Contributions of mind, time, money and effort are also done through the internet; the free not-for-profit exchange of ideas is known as open-hardware. The only condition is respect - to credit original owners and to use the information to further the project. This is human interaction on a whole new level; it flips the system of profit on its side, putting the focus on the goal spurred on by the combined passion of hundreds of individuals bringing their own expertise to the table in a framework of respect and unity. This makes the interaction a priority, rather than a means; and this forces us to start thinking differently.

As our inspiration comes from nature, and our understanding of the natural world, it's also in our nature to push boundaries and solve problems, and if we unify towards these aims we are on the cusp of great things. The more challenges we have in life, the more exciting life is when we rise to the challenges. Although the most important part of innovation is still having a simple idea, having a bold vision and the drive to implement it, it will materialise by increased collaboration and intellectual globalisation.

The importance of collaboration across different fields is becoming a global conversation, with many minds interacting, sharing ideas, making the seemingly impossible, possible. And the speed with which this is happening is changing our world more quickly than ever before. Today humankind is (whatever we think of the moral and ethical implications) re-engineering nature for our own benefit, working to colonise other planets, to control the power of evolution and to dictate our own destinies.

It is part of a new culture of openness and sharing that's reshaping how we look at human interaction and boosting its productivity. Thanks to the open source movement interaction is now worldwide; selfishness and disputes over price tagging ideas are being replaced - sharing is the future, where ideas are thrown out to see how they can be grown a nurtured by others. In a very real sense, love is helping to shape tomorrow's world.

This has created tension between the world of business and making money and the world of sharing for the common good, but someone somewhere has to earn something, too, and the next level of interaction, some say, will be to achieve a balance between the two - to create businesses that are driven not by money but by their ideals and the services they provide. With a severe economic crisis and a breakdown in confidence making profit and gain a generational problem, and banks becoming distant from the communities they serve, it's time for a rethink on how to reconnect business and people.

Read more about money-making gurus.

And at the heart of the open source movement is our ever-increasing connectivity. Today 2.3 billion of us are online; the internet and social networking is making us interact in different ways, shortening physical distances and allowing minds to collaborate in ways unimaginable before. The internet has become more mainstream; it's possible to connect with more people in a more profound way than ever before, on a global scale.

Some say there is a danger of becoming too dependent on the net, and rather than using it as an aid to interaction, it is taking over our lives and has begun to replace human interaction - especially in our personal relationships - or that the internet is threatening individualism via cultural globalisation. Notwithstanding that we can simultaneously be proud of our individual culture and our global family, we should not fear coming closer together. The wider the chasm between people, the less understanding there is, and the more we all suffer as a result.

Instead of allowing the net to isolate us in our homes, when used as an aid to enhance connectivity, such technologies are not a choking point in life, they help open us up to new horizons. And we need those new horizons now more than ever before. But we need to look up from our smartphones and stare at each other in the eye. We need to start to see life differently, to change the life we see.

When we look at news reports, we see the human face of war, at how death divides and loss unites. Nevertheless, violence and terrorism appear to be on the rise, as people take life indiscriminately and breed it into our young - placing them in the army to learn how to better kill at an earlier age, instead of teaching them the sacredness of life. It's obvious violent influences and alienation plays a large part as to why do some choose the path to destruction, and, worse, it seems a strong factor as to why we have become callous and cruel in pursuant of our causes.

War is easy, peace is hard; is this why so many today forgo peaceful protest? When politicians talk about temporarily suspending human rights, it's they that become the danger to society, so of course we should have a healthy cynicism about those who are so placed above us, and protest when we feel the need to make our voice heard, but do we have to kill to get a message across?

Still, is it so surprising, when we are the descendants of eras that suckled on the teat of terror-focused media, and made money out of people as though they were property? Although we are still in a great recession from which the economy has never recovered, for some it's still all about the big sell; and we have created cosmetic societies where there have been plenty of cases of high-profile people - who would think have it all - struggling to control their tempers. Even our animals need to go into rehab. It feels like we have fallen out of love with ourselves, the world, and all the lives within it.

Yet that is just one side of the story. The UK Peace Index has written that the country has become "substantially and significantly" more peaceful. Rates of murder and violent crime have fallen more rapidly in the UK in the past decade than anywhere else in Western Europe, researchers say. However, although there is no commonly accepted explanation by criminologists for the fall in violence, not just in the UK, but in many of the world's regions including the US, Western Europe, Eastern and Central Europe, why doesn't it feel like it?

We read about how insensitive we have become with our dealings with others, and how murderous - in England we have seen the biggest-ever joint prosecution of a gang over a killing of a 15 year old boy, parents murdering their children, while in America the Boston bombings themselves have been overcast by the news of shootings elsewhere in America in quick succession. And across the border teachers incensed by sweeping education reforms have attacked the buildings of political parties in Mexico's south-western Guerrero state.

Social reform changes are materialising, too, but slowly, painfully and with much protest. France is now the 14th country to legalise gay marriage after New Zealand; it is also the ninth country in Europe to allow same-sex marriage after legalisation in the traditionally liberal Netherlands and Scandinavia, but also in strongly Catholic Portugal and Spain. It has been met with strong protest, but some argue this is the most important social reform in France since the death penalty was banned in 1981.

Meanwhile others grumble that countries are becoming more "female countries". Take Australia, for instance, where the prime minister, the governor-general and the richest person are currently all women - changing its political landscape and outlook. When tens of thousands of unmarried, mostly teenage mothers, said they were coerced into signing away their children by Australia's forced adoption policy between the 1950s and 1970s, the country issued an apology to the people affected. Which shows that even though there is resistance, we are succeeding to shine a light on our areas of shame, to make apologies where necessary, and to reach out when we can.

There is a general air of reconciliation brewing in the air; and there are areas of the world that are tranquil. For instance, the Norfolk district of Broadland has been named the most "peaceful" area of the UK. Some suggest it is so, because it is a place of community. People are friendly, they look out for one another, they have a different outlook on the world. Sometimes it's a case of looking forward, not back. And if we begin to look differently at our world, we will see how there are small signs of kindness and good works going on everywhere.

We just need to take the time to look. Such as the daily trip to a local coffee shop that gives you a chance to do a small good deed, or like the American boy who send bikes to India's outcast children. These and others are signs of inspiration being put up everywhere - showing us how the human spirit can overcome challenges with dignity.

There will be times when we can feel like a blank canvas on which others project their own emotions, and this can create very strong feelings; we can become disillusioned with the world. But when that happens, look at all the ways we are getting better, too. Of course we are far from perfect; we make mistakes. And we will make plenty more. Our human history is filled with them. But everyday, there are people coming in and out of the world, we need to remember that and spend our time wisely.

Part of that means we need to respect ourselves and others, and the space which we all have to share together. It's about creating a pluralist society, where there is no particular privileged position for one colour, creed or tradition. It's not about dominating space, it's about owning our own lives, and allowing others to do the same. And never think that you're living your life for nothing. As human innovation and kindness shows, your life is a voice that, when it speaks directly to love, can change the world.

Yours in love,

Love Will Be the Superpower

One reason why writers write and readers read books is because they are one of few mediums that are free of advertisements. You choose the interludes; you come and go as you please. You are alone with the word and the writer's extraordinary capacity to engage your heart. The best do it honestly, even if that means it has us grasping at stinging nettles, because it sings true to the rhythms and patterns of life - which is something to care about, believe in, and learn from.

The same can be said of articles that try to hold their moral compass to the true north, when everyone else is still down south. In regard to the recent Boston Marathon bombings, the best article I found was Adam Gopnik's piece for The New Yorker. It somewhat bravely turns a critical eye on America rather than the bombers, and touches upon the tragic story of how America can turn such events into a hysterical and insular overreaction that snowballs into a sole narrative akin to a national lynch mob - which has already claimed innocent victims over the bombings thanks to social media outlets.

Gopnik shines his light on what he describes as the toxic combination of round-the-clock cable television, and an already exaggerated sense of the risk of terrorism, turning a horrible story of maiming and death and cruelty into a national epic of fear. "What terrorists want is to terrify people," Gopnik writes, "Americans always oblige". And what is even more telling is how those self-same Americans have left comments under Gopnik's article vilifying him for his opinion piece.

"Insensitive and arrogant" writes one; "vomitous" (sic) and "liberal nonsense" decries another, and the long list of comments continue in the same vein. The most interesting is the one that accuses the article's voice of having "a lack of compassion". As a British reader, I for one found it filled with compassion, and great insight. Foresight that comes from a divine perspective may sound as though it lacks compassion because of its objectivity, but quite the opposite, it has the compassion to be able to see without cultural blinkers. And a few would argue that the ones middle America wear are some of the heaviest.

Neither that last statement, nor Gopnik's piece is an attack on America; indeed it is said in the spirit of love for America, and the freedoms it stands for; were the restrictive regimes in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia or North Korea superpowers that influenced a large part of the world, we in West, so used to our freedoms, would feel threatened.

This is not to whitewash America's genocidal treatment of its indigenous populations, or its historical trade in slavery, or its foreign interventions overseen by its Central Intelligence Agency, becoming almost a colonial presence in many areas of Asia and Middle East to cultivate cultural and historical bad blood, such as setting up concentration camps and supporting programmes of ethnic cleansing and torture cells for political expediency back on American soil.

Probably this is why to a large extent to many of us the economic rise of China is so disturbing, because we fear its influence as an re-emerging power could spread its inherently racist and totalitarian values to other countries. We know what a superpower at its most inhumane can achieve.

But it is America that is a superpower, and has been so for many decades, and even if economically that is no longer the case, culturally, its "soft diplomacy" has worked into the global conscious for too long to be erased so quickly. If America reacts with compassion, the world will sit up and notice. If America becomes as bad as the people it blacklists, then the world will notice that, too. America needs to show that its freedoms do not just apply to its white population, or indeed just to its own citizens - but those ideals are for all humans everywhere. American aggression, like its regression, is infectious.

Relevantly, America's film industry has become very retrogressive, as well. In the Hollywood blockbuster "Olympus Has Fallen" we see the White House in the wake of a terrorist attack with the new bad men du jour North Korea and the Middle East. The film doesn't pretend to be anything but an action movie that harks back to the eighties era, and you get your money's worth of violence.

Gerard Butler single-handedly saving the American way of life in "Olympus Has Fallen"

If you have a soft spot for films filled with quotable one-liners, where an action hero kills about fifty bad guys, escapes unscathed, and in the grand finale, has hand-to-hand combat with the number one bad guy, saves the destruction of the country with three seconds to go, and manages to take swipes at foreign countries, then this is for you.

The film is an American propaganda piece, and in its maniacal hatred of anything un-American it regresses even further to pay homage to the Red Scare - the term used to denote the promotion of fear of a "perceived" potential rise of communism or radical leftism, used by anti-leftist proponents in the United States. The intensely patriotic fervour of the 1940s and 50s that gave rise to the anti-communist fear in America brought with it many causalities amongst its own citizens. Societies were divided as people were encouraged to spy and inform on one another.

This similarity didn't go unnoticed when "Olympus Has Fallen" was reviewed by British newspaper The Guardian. A key scene where one of the North Korean baddies is despatched with a bust of Abraham Lincoln is described as being indicative of the "Go Team America" mood of the action film. After the subtleties and nuances of the Oscar winning film "Lincoln", here you have the face of Lincoln smashed down on a North Korean bad guy.

It's not meta-textual, it's just in your face, and what might be more worrisome is how North Koreans and South Koreans aren't really separated ideologically - simply because they are from the same race. And that lack of compassion is woven throughout the whole film. On this point, Catherine Shoard makes some insightful comments in the Guardian review:

It's a film about the fallacy of compassion. There are several points at which they have to make a decision about whether or not to spare somebody's life, one person's life who's in pain in front of them, or put the "greater good" first. And they make the wrong decision, twice ... It's a film about "manning up" in a very aggressive way, dealing with pain and just not being a pussy.

In my "The Winds of Love" article, I opine that compassion has been sidelined in society, but I don't do so because I am some liberal romantic that believes we should just tow any line a terrorist happens to draw. I am both a romantic and a realist. War has been an evolutionary necessity at times, and has also advanced our knowledge in science and medicine. But today we need better justifications for saving lives, rather than in the arena of taking them first.

Besides showing compassion and forgiveness for your enemies takes balls. It is the hardest route; but if we hold on to anger, we hurt ourselves the most, and the violence will never end. This is the wisdom of a modern, enlightened world - that the lines drawn across our planet all have our fingerprints on them. Obviously, individuals need to be held accountable for their actions, but the race or religion they come from shouldn't be held accountable - not unless we are prepared to take a good, hard look in the mirror.

Before I am accused of being too idealistic in the flurry of emails that is sure to come after this post, I am aware of the futility of a "bleeding heart" in a world that has become increasingly "cold-blooded". Hugging a terrorist is not likely to end the violence, but neither is becoming as bad as one going to achieve the aim, either. Interestingly in the same Guardian film review is a documentary about a group of activists who appear clueless as to how they can save the world, when they can barely look after each other.

In "Fuck for Forest", activists use porn to raise money to save the rainforest by singing, stripping and having sex in public for cash. You may think charging strangers to watch you (or join you) as you have sex for a good cause is innovative, but just how novel an idea this is begins to look suspect the further we are taken into the film. When the activists head from Berlin to Brazil to bring their ethos to the native population, they are made to look like self-deluded hippy-like liberals in the culture clash that ensues with the actual community living there.

Once in the Amazon Basin, they meet the people they are allegedly raising the money for and get rejected, and it turns into a farce. It is not clear whether the travellers from Berlin are activists or exhibitionists, and the documentary turns into a showcase of unappealing people making a spectacle of themselves. Does such a grand faux-pas come from a real lack of compassion for their cause? Is the lack of merit because it's just people who want to have sex in public for money, within the pretext of a good cause?

Because liberalism for liberalism's sake can be used as a pretext for sex with strangers, just as conservatives can use the abhorrent acts of two men to arm up and go on a witch hunt. As one commenter wrote under Gopnik's article, tone is important, sometimes it's not what is said but the tone that matters.

Sometimes it's not what a film says, but what it doesn't say that resonates the most. Although, when all is said and done, films like "Olympus Has Fallen" are just movies, it is achingly indicative of the ignorance that plagues America. It rings false of too many people in glass houses throwing stones, without realising the effect American foreign policy (and films such as these) has slowly sown to reap the results we see today. It's surely no accident that the 10 best places to live peaceably in the world today - as listed by RD Magazine - are those countries either isolated from conflict due to geography, or have kept out of global conflicts because of political neutrality.

Critics of peace will say that wars needed to be fought for our freedoms, it was a dirty job, and it needed to be done. But when you are no longer fighting for freedom, but to become a large player in the world, then you lose the moral high ground. And if the West fears that the vacuum left by its passing will be filled by countries such as Russia and China, with worse human rights records, the ends don't justify the means if we are no better than people we turn into comic strip baddies. When the motivation to war becomes so self-serving, none of the technological or scientific advancements spurred on by military needs can justify the lives lost down the ages - especially when the money now is being diverted to warfare from the innovative sciences. America has streamlined most of its space exploration programmes, while the military technology now being built is for the sole purpose of making war, like killer drones.

Surely the aim of war should be to keep down casualties on both sides? And to continue fighting a war that should have been long over, to remain locked in a mentality that has passed, makes you as irrelevant as an outmoded piece of technology from the decade you are stuck in. You become a caricaturisation. And as Boston returns to some type of normality and the American public feed off such films, buoyed by the Boston bombings, America doesn't realise that it's satirising itself. Like the documentary "Fuck for Forest", the joke is on them, but it's not funny, because the joke is on us, too.

The real tragedy of the Boston bombing is that although it should be remembered for the heroic acts it inspired and the heroism of that day, and for the loss of innocent lives cruelly cut down short, many will remember it more for the lynch-mob mentality, and the lives that were damaged or taken, not by the bomb blasts but by the American public themselves. Innocent people targeted and attacked simply because of the colour of the skin. In this, as in the past, the public's witch hunt mentality has murdered or imprisoned more than one innocent person.

The incident also acts as a warning for us to all beware half-truths and misinformation. Conspiracy theories aside that the FBI had been following the bombers for two years, and this is just a staged incident to keep the "Islamic" terror alive in the minds of Americans; in the real world, rather than making the Boston bombings an attack on America's national identity, the country's best thinkers need to throw a light on how and why two apparently likeable boys became cold-hearted killers. But when no one wants to listen, making social statements is hard. When it goes against the rhetoric fashionable for the day, many will switch you off. However, it makes it no less true for all that.

To minimise the risks of this happening again, we all need to engage in social conversations that go on to spark progressive change. But it is a game of catch-up. Change, like the roots of terrorism, can grow gradually. For example, in America the issue of gay marriage is due to activism that started decades ago. Sometimes it's slower than activists want, but their work does count. What needs to change next is how we treat people different from us, and how we treat differences in general, because when we demonise a whole group of people, we can't then be surprised when they produce a few.

And every society has its demons, as America can attest to in recent months. Out of all the mass shootings, it is the Newtown shootings last December that stick with me the most - the murder of twenty 6-7 year olds in their schoolrooms by a white, American male. The Boston bombings took the life of one eight year old, a Caucasian American boy took the life of twenty - and each is as bad as the other. No less, or worse, but equal, because all life, even one, is sacred and precious, and when taken so young, just as meaningless. And in another Gopnik article - this time for the BBC about the infinities of parental love - the death of a child is the one common emotion that can reconcile enemies in grief. He writes:

One of the rules of mathematics and physics, as I - a complete non-mathematician - read often in science books, is that when infinity is introduced into a scientific equation it no longer makes sense. All the numbers go blooey when you have one in the equation that doesn't have a beginning or an end.

Parental love, I think, is infinite. I mean this in the most prosaic possible way. Not infinitely good, or infinitely ennobling, or infinitely beautiful. Just infinite. Often, infinitely boring. Occasionally, infinitely exasperating. To other people, always infinitely dull - unless, of course, it involves their own children, when it becomes infinitely necessary.

But many Americans, and the media, will not make the connection, of the children that were killed in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan - and that seeing their own child murdered, a lack of compassion means that people can easily murder the children of others. Some have called this the selective grieving of the West, and it's hard not to agree when you look at the statistics. Assed Baig writing for the Huffington Post explains:

On the same day as the Boston bombings at least 33 were killed and 160 wounded in a string of bomb attacks across Iraq. Attacks which did not take place before the US led invasion of the country. The same media coverage was not afforded to the dead in Iraq, nor did Obama seek to comment on the issue.

Looking down the news feed of news organisations, it is obvious what news takes priority. It is, of course, the three deaths in Boston. All life is precious, sacred and equal, but as far as our media and politicians are concerned, some is more precious, sacred and equal than others.

There will be no interviews with families, work colleagues or pictures for the victims of the 315 drone strikes carried out by Obama in Pakistan. People in Pakistan have been subjected to drone strikes, not knowing when or where they will strike, not knowing who they will strike, the distant hum of the drone could be the last thing they hear. Where are the media and politicians to show their condolences for these victims? To ask for prayers? To share their thoughts? To voice their disgust and indignation?

Nothing can condone the murder of innocent people, and that means all people, no matter where they live, or what creed the follow. For the Chechen people, from which the Boston bombers come, they too have experienced the mass slaughter of their children - as early as 2004, when Russian soldiers trying to end a siege of a school resulted in the deaths of over 180 children in Beslan.

Still, although the death of a child is something we can all understand, it is does not affect us all in the same way. Indeed the death of those twenty young children in Newtown hasn't even spurred enough impetus for major change to the gun laws in America. Arguably, it is the same attitude that generates the comments found under Gopnik's article; when such incidents occur immediately grabbing for your flag or gun, or screaming out the anthem is not the solution, but part of the problem.

There are many things America would like to change about the world, to eradicate the terrorists that would threaten its national security and the freedoms that we all dearly cherish in the West. But America has its own changes to go through, too, and it will ultimately need to reach out to people different from them. Because although America may influence the world, the world is more than the sum of America - or indeed the West.

Case in point, Margaret Thatcher - not known for being a champion of democracy or freedom outside of her own borders - was known for her intense dislikes, especially of the Irish, infamously branding them as "all liars". Thatcher was the United Kingdom's prime minister during much of the Northern Ireland troubles in the eighties and was the subject of an assassination attempt by the IRA in the Brighton bombing that killed five people.

The life and death of Thatcher.

A lady of extreme contradictions, it is said she took it hard that innocent people died by a bomb meant for her. She took a tough line against negotiating with dissident Republicans, including hunger strikers in prison, but she also signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement giving Ireland's government some say in the affairs of Northern Ireland, which paved the way for later peace.

Similarly, America needs to teach its citizens that we will not build bridges by burning them with misguided patriotism, and like it or not, one day those bridges will have to be built, for the good of our entire species. Rather than "Team America" against the world, we need to start seeing the whole world as on the same team.

The same goes for those that believe they can justify the terror they cause to innocent people. One day, the superpower will not be America, or a China, or any other single nation. It won't be terror, either. But only if we go out and do good, and do what's right.

We only have one shot at life, but for a life lived right, one lifetime is all we need. If we can generate far more material associations, allegiances, experiences and memories in affirmation of the protection of life, rather than the murder of it, then the future superpower will be love - in all its infinite forms.

Now that's a world worth living, not dying for - because who wouldn't want to stick around in a world where the superpower of love reigns supreme? I'm sure "bleeding heart" liberals and "cold-blooded" conservatives would both agree that's worth a front seat ticket any day of the week.

Yours in love,

The Winds of Love

We will have all experienced a night like this: where we are huddled in our home listening to the incessant howling of a strong wind outside, appearing like a hungry predator from the fairy tales, trying to blow our house down. I write this as the wind wails at my bedroom window, and that wind could just as easily be a metaphor for the wind that is currently blowing across our world.

As dozens of people are reported injured and others are trapped in burning buildings after an explosion at a fertiliser plant near Waco in the American state of Texas, it follows on the heels of a murderous Monday with bombings in Boston and Baghdad, major earthquakes that have rocked three parts of the world, and China facing an epidemic with bird flu yet again, while news reports say that cancer continues its rise in the West. A report has forecast that the number of people in the United Kingdom who will get cancer during their lifetime will increase to nearly half the population by 2020.

Seen within a bigger picture, it looks like the wind at our window howls ever stronger. We are still stuck in the economy doldrums; unemployment in the UK continues to rise, as does our mistrust in big banks and big business. Large companies continue to go bust, with many economists believing it is a close call whether the economy will slide back into recession. But even economists get it wrong and so do the politicians that rely on their advice; we are having to become more inventive with our commodities as a result. Do money matters really matter, however, with all the inhumanity we see let loose on the world?

For some of us, it can all get too much. Others thrive on the edge; we still see many countries trying to determine their future through bloodshed, which ignites a fire that the winds will blow across borders to spread rapidly. Violence cannot be easily contained, and unlike fire - you cannot light an even greater one to contain it. Violence has been a key word in recent years; it feels like anyone who wishes to take up a just cause and protest, needs to do it violently. What then, differentiates them from people that cause violent disorder for its own sake?

Is war an innate part of human nature?

Some social historians believe this violence - long a necessary part of our evolution and inherent in our genes - has been the great inheritance of more recent decades, where our violent side has been glorified through politics, while compassion has been sidelined. This has been a major criticism of Margaret Thatcher, the first female British prime minister's time in power, who died recently and was buried with ceremonial honours.

In attendance was Queen Elizabeth II, in similar fashion to the funeral of great wartime statesman Winston Churchill. And Lady Thatcher is also the recipient of another honour not bestowed since Churchill's death: The bells of Big Ben and the Great Clock at Westminster went silent during her funeral. It is an extravaganza that has cost the British taxpayer millions of pounds, at a time when the government is cutting back on the care it provides for the most needy in society on the excuse it can't afford it.

The life and death of Thatcher.

Lady Thatcher, nicknamed the "Iron Lady", was prime minister between 1979 and 1990; it was a time of immense social and economic change. It's safe to say she inspired the man on the street and politicians alike, just as much as she divided them on policies that have been labelled as warmongering, jingoist, and centred on putting money ahead of people. Thatcher was the lady who famously said that nobody would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only good intentions, without having money as well.

She also said there was no such thing as society, but during her funeral yesterday as the nation came together to pay their last respects, I was struck by a reading from Thatcher's funeral that said: "After the storm of a life led in the heat of political controversy, there is a great calm. Lying here, she is one of us, subject to the common destiny of all human beings."

This message resonates in many different ways: Firstly, it is a stark reminder of how much we struggle with dominating life, rather than living it, and secondly that, while it will be up to history to record her failings, it falls to us today to mark the passing of a fellow human being.

As much as she is appeared to have been hated, she was still a human woman, a sometimes absentee but beloved wife and mother, who liked to cook dinner for her husband and was outspoken over climate change. But Thatcher was also a woman who described feminism as "poison", while at the same time conversely becoming the definitive superwoman, before the phrase was coined, showing that a woman could have a career and a family. Although it seems the superwoman image was just an image - she regretted not being closer to her family, which she complained had abandoned her in her old age.

Her life's regret was rarely seeing her children and grandchildren. "It's very sad," she told a British magazine in 1998. "It's something that I thought would never happen." Daughter Carol rather candidly responded to her mother's admission: "A mother cannot reasonably expect her grown-up children to boomerang back, gushing coziness, and make up for lost time. Absentee mum, then Gran in overdrive is not an equation that balances."

Thatcher's adult children have all made unfortunate headlines with their criminal dealings, but of course death changes all that. Now Thatcher is laid to rest, her children are said to be "humbled" by the reaction to their beloved mother's death - a woman that abandoned the apron strings for the purse strings of government. Paradoxically she was the grand dame of frugal government that focused on self-made wealth, made any way you could get it, even if that meant climbing over others to do it - an era in which many believe the seeds of today's economic crisis were sown.

The funeral also resonated with the hypocrisy humanity has come to expect of politics; while the Conservative leadership have used this week to praise Lady Thatcher, they have also used it as a metaphor to bury the idea that all their party needs is a revival of her ideas and her style of leadership. It was goodbye to an era, but some argue that such a token show of "respecting the past" by celebrating the burial of one of its most iconic symbols while distancing oneself away from it at the same time, belies the sleek footwork of a snake.

But whatever Thatcher's political legacy, whether she was a better stateswoman than mother, she dominated at a time when men were still very dominant, and these would have been her role models. In politics there have been a number of men whose lives were destined to mould, indeed to shatter, much of the 20th Century, and Thatcher was as much a child of them, as we in Britain today, are of hers - whether we like it or not.

There were protests over the nature and cost of Lady Thatcher's funeral

So is it so difficult to see why many of us appear to lack compassion? It beggars belief how soon after the Boston bombings, hoax clips appeared on the web making fun of the event. In bad taste and insensitive, it seems there are many members of our species that enjoy causing emotional and physical mayhem. Worryingly, it also seems to be on the increase.

For instance, as we try to come to terms with the deadly attacks of last Monday, a letter apparently containing a lethal toxin addressed to US President Barack Obama - who is disgruntled over America's reluctance to give up the gun - has been intercepted, while in a different part of the world, divers have been caught trying to cut the physical cables that deliver the internet.

As more of our digital lives move into the cloud, it’s easy to forget that what we know as the internet is still quite dependent on physical objects, such as cables and servers. Now it appears that alongside dealing with hackers focused on breaking into networks using the internet as a vehicle, we have people compelled to go straight to the source to cause as much disruption as they can. It seems our lack of compassion for each other means there is no end to what we will do; if we are of a mind to cause death and destruction, what is there to stop us?

This widening absence of care seems to have warped our attitudes towards sex and relationships, too. We have taken primal things such as lust and violence and merged them, celebrating them in art. For example, the nude is timeless, because human sexual nature evolved before the stone age, but the nude in art can be turned to pornography. Our historical excitement with the human body can be the excrement of celluloid we label as porn, or it can be the latest version of the Kama Sutra sexed up for the 21st Century with its erotic poses in 3D. It just depends on who you are speaking to - or which app you download to your smartphone.

There's nothing wrong in liking a bit of sex with our entertainment, but we have objectified men and women to the point of dehumanising them in our desire for sex; we read of mass rapes, or of human traffickers of women, treating them like cargo swapped and traded in brothels across the world; we sign up to porn sites to engage in sexual activity over webcams rather than connect with our partners, or we use websex as a cure for loneliness.

A corrupt view of sex ties in with broken relationships, broken societies, broken people because we have a lack of compassion. Insecurity dominates the lives of millions, and naturally, we should be free to do what we want with our own bodies, make our own decisions as to our own destinies, because it is when we feel we are not in control that frustrations arise. The policies of Thatcherite governments at their core was about empowering people to make their own decisions, to trust in their own abilities and not rely on support. But experts are all beginning to agree that holistic approaches work best for many of the modern "ills" we are faced with today.

Namely, that we must be the owner of our lives, but have compassion for ourselves and others and in living our lives, understand that we are not islands unto ourselves, but part of a whole; what we do can affect others, and in doing so, affect ourselves. We are all aware that there is no comprehensive manual to life; it is a sacred journey without maps, a geological construct with many challenges we must face. The human species, however, seems unique in showing its "heart of darkness" to add to those we already tackle as part of a violent cosmos.

In an evolutionary context, life is a war zone. Biologists tell us that the living world is like a tree filled with distant cousins divided into camps of predators and prey. It goes against everything the prevailing god-based theories say about life's origins, but science says we are all mutations of earlier species, and thus we are all connected, all related on the tree of life, sitting on its divergent branches sharing a common ancestry. Within every living thing is proof of this evolution, but despite everything we have in common, we can't help fighting each other.

Science says that nature is the driving force for us being the way we are - and why for some life is a breeze, and for others it's a storm, with some of us enjoying long healthy lives, while others suffer a short and brutal existence. In its evolutionary way, nature is weeding out the "weak", so that only the "strong" survive; our planet has been a war zone for millions of years - an arms race between predators and prey. And this race is also believed to help to make species stronger.

There is also a type of co-evolution where the predator and prey evolve together because of their violent interaction - a tit for tat complimentary evolution where changes in one causes change in another. For example, snakes evolved venom as part of their eternal war with opossums, while snake-eating opossums evolved venom-resistant blood. What doesn't kill you, does make you stronger in evolution terms; these violent clashes are seen as part and parcel of the drive of evolution. War might be hell, but passiveness is death, some say.

However, where violence may have once given us the edge to survive in evolutionary terms, because of the extremes the human species has elevated it to, it's now a clear threat. Even our violent dislike of other cultures is a threat, as for reproduction purposes mating within only a small population erodes the genetic material of our species. And it appears we have ensured the survival of this "threat" by passing down our inherent violent ways by keeping them active in our genes - some say as a direct result of our sloppy choices in sex. Sex and reproduction is the evolutionary climax; life is dedicated to it because it's how the genes are passed from generation to generation and how the gene pool deepens.

We can imagine what this gene pool will reflect in the future when we see which members of our societies are reproducing the most today. While enlightened caring people, who would make good parents, are making conscious decisions not to have young, statistics seems to show that the ones most active in reproduction are those that do so without proper family planning. People casual in sex, or brought up within a violent way of life (a recent BBC documentary revealed that young offenders were 5 times more likely to be fathers than others of the same age), or single mother teenagers with no sense of the importance of raising children - in short, kids bringing up kids in broken family units to produce a generation of problems for the years ahead.

It gives a stark connotation to the phrase "survival of the fittest"; as our violence is genetically past on, and our inherent compassion is left to remain "dormant" in our genes, it's all too easy to see why conspiracy theorists believe we are rushing to our own extinction. Others believe we should just let this happen, as species extinction is a fact of life.

Death will catch up with all species; statistically speaking we're lucky to be here anyway as 99% of all species that ever lived are extinct. We have had five mass extinctions already killing off 75% of life each time, and humans have become so deadly, we have helped in the (un)natural selection by killing off almost 900 species since the 1500s. The extinction of such a predator as ourselves would be beneficial to the plant, some argue, besides being a fait accompli - meaning that the extinction of the human species will run its course as part of the natural event of things whatever happens.

No wonder then that some of us search for other inhabitable planets, or want to leave the planet and not come back, while many put their faith in a better "life" after we exit this one. Religion, too, has become an opium we have used to try and control the uncertainty of life; churches can become "opium dens" where we become hooked on sermons that preach intolerance and the domination of man. Drug-induced we have died for such beliefs, and killed for such beliefs, and in opposition to such beliefs have created cults just as worse.

Two such examples are believers in Scientology and Thelema. The latter is the religion created by occultist, practitioner of "sex magic", "wickedest man in the world" and former head of the Order of the Oriental Templars, Aleister Crowley, based on the central tenet: "Do what thou wilt." In practice, this means rituals based around sexual exhaustion and, for the highest level members of the Order of the Oriental Templars, instruction in secret techniques for masturbation, heterosexual and homosexual sex.

The religion states that adherents, who are known as Thelemites, should seek out and follow their own true path in life, but the absence of compassion and trusting relationships, and the focus on selfishness, does not operate in harmony with our true nature. We should follow our own path, but we should focus on compassion; its absence leaves a vacuum that sucks the purpose out of any cause. Followers of Crowley would argue that true believers do indeed follow the motivations of their true nature, rather than their egoic desires, but it is open to abuse as all religions are.

It is the same with all things; the innovations of humankind can be used for good or for ill - it is in our hands. It's time for an genetic upgrade. We can choose the beneficial mutations in our genes that should survive and reproduce. We can make our violent genes become "dormant", by making sure our societies are not based on violence, because our habitat also spurs our evolution - as well making sure we raise healthy children in loving relationships, within a society that supports caring parents, for what is one of our most important roles in life. And there are parents out there (same-sex couples, too) that have raised our future heroes.

While social networks have been filled with hoaxers and amateur detectives over the identity of the Boston bombers - leaving innocent people fearing for their safety - many have tried to aid in the investigations responsibly; officials investigating the Boston Marathon bombings have used public help alongside surveillance camera footage. And in the aftermath of the explosions, although many people just ran for their lives, heroes did emerge that thought little of themselves as they rushed in to help those in need. As much as violence is a reality in our world, it is also a reality that on a balance of probabilities the good will always outnumber the mindless few.

Read how the Boston bombers were captured.

When we work together, united and resolute, as a strong community and part of a compassionate society, then we can be a barrier against any strong wind that comes - one that can stand fast in times of crisis. But the biggest components of compassion are love and respect - for ourselves, for each other, and for all life on our planet in equal measure. Without combined love and respect instilled into the very fabric of our societies - to value human life - we will stand as single trees unguarded in the storm, rather than as a forest that acts as a shelter from it.

And though many of us will try to put aside our concerns for these mindless acts of violence, in the hope for something better, what we need to do is face those concerns and transform them into something better. Because it's the inability of a species to adapt to the changing world around them that in effect signs their death warrant. If we don't accept the changes we have wrought to our planet, and adapt to them, we are heading for a head-to-head with evolution itself. And make no mistake, until our scientific capabilities double a hundredfold, evolution will always win.

Although modern science has tried to answer such questions as to whether we can bring back extinct species from DNA, the reality is that extinctions are part of the evolutionary process. In a very real sense, evolution is just about species trying to do the best with whatever the world throws at them; "survival of the fittest" doesn't mean we need to strive to be perfect. Even the Iron Lady, the ultimate conviction politician, had to admit: "We can never be perfect" but that we should try "very hard to do things right". On that, if on nothing else, I assume her admirers and her detractors would agree.

And until we can achieve this, it seems we shall have to yet wait to come into the real light out of the dark ages of violence. But as we allow compassion to deeply impact our lives, it has the capacity to restore our beautiful planet. Every heroic act that rises up in the face of adversity shouts it can be done. It tells us that, though the winds may blow their hardest, the roots of love will dig in deeper.

Yours in love,

Make Progress with Love

Progress takes hard work. It takes passion, it takes dedication. The inspiring kind is almost never straightforward, but then life never is. As humans we always have a knack of turning the "bad" into the "good", but we also have a great propensity to destroy what is beautiful.

We can act as high ladders to achievement, or be the craggy rocks in its way. We can push progress, just as much as we can hinder it. The only problem is that it appears we find it easier to destroy than to create, even if it isn't as fulfilling. A whole lot of factors push us towards the negative option, reminding us that our humanity is still very much a work in progress.

To many of us, our lives can feel like living with a fatal condition, unaware of the risk it poses - until the icy grip of disillusionment cracks and you get your "wake up call". It felt a little like that today, upon reading news reports about the planted explosions that claimed lives at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in the United States. Horrified at the loss of innocent life, my heart went out to the victims of this bombing as well as their families, and I momentarily fell mute. What can one say that adequately expresses such loss?

Being speechless in the face of such news is only natural; a profound dignity and deep respect can be expressed through silence, and while the London Marathon will need to be more aware of security following the bombing of the Boston Marathon on Monday, my twin flame and I have decided that in a show of support we will attend the London event to participate in a 30-second silence at the start of the marathon on Sunday.

However, after the dust settles, we also need to talk - as a community and as a whole, to ask the right questions when things go wrong. And though we may wish to raise our voices against violence, no matter who is at fault here we cannot generalise; we need to talk about where the root of this lies.

Towards this aim then, I ask: Is this to do with the current political turmoil we find ourselves facing in the second decade of the 21st Century? Politicians are yet to learn how to "reign" rather than rule, thereby providing background stability rather than aggressive leadership, and so be role models for open societies on how to deal with bringing issues out from the personal into the public domain. Peaceful protest is the way to make your opinion heard, not by taking the lives of innocents. Politicians have yet to learn, too, that while traditional values may work in the home, it rarely works in politics, because a representative government will - like it or not - have to represent all sections of society.

Only half a decade ago in the US, homosexuality was punishable by up to 10 years in prison in some states. And the issue of same-sex relationships is still controversial thanks to puritanical politics - so much so that it remains the marker of American limits, even in the tolerance shown by its entertainment industry. Is this progress?

And women feel the lack to progress more than their male counterparts. It's an unfortunate truth that women are sexually harassed, and sometimes assaulted, the world over. But in India they have a special nick-name for it; "Eve-teasing" is treated as a kind of male sport by the Hindus. Is this progress?

Meanwhile in England, teenagers are murdering homeless people for a dare. It's certainly a sad reflection on our society's children that they can be party to serious violence purely for the sake of it - because it surely isn't progress.

Highlighting the lack of progress of teenagers in British prisons, "Prison Dads" is a BBC documentary following young fathers in Britain's biggest young offenders institution, and their partners on the outside, struggling to keep together their fledgling families. Contrasting the serious crimes of grievous assault and robbery and causing loss of life, the BBC documentary shows the perpetrators trying to come to terms with teenage fatherhood.

Revealing a thought-provoking statistic that these young men are 5 times more likely to be dads than others their age, watching the poignant documentary made me feel as though human progress is still going to be an issue for generations to come. Although we need to hold ourselves (even if only partly) accountable for the extremely challenging circumstances we face, listening to the childhood stories of the young offenders was like hearing a repeat performance of their parents - and there is a danger that we can demonise those sections of our society we don't easily understand.

Similarly, with the deadly blasts in Boston, although the main issue should be the loss of life, many will be quick to want to blame someone, and usually in the deep dark pit of our hearts, we want to blame someone with an opposing view - as though this will somehow cement our beliefs as being "right".

Rest assured politicians will try to use this tragic event to blame whatever convenient enemies are most advantageous for their government. If the bomb blast is the work of Muslim sympathisers, then the word "terrorism" will come out of the closet; if the bomb blast is the work of an American citizen with a misguided conservative or "patriotic" attitude, then it will just be seen as the work of some mad individual we cannot understand, nor condone, but will be unwilling to demonise.

Boston bombers captured.

Worrisome as it is, this should be treated as a horrible, reprehensible fact of life, rather than something that undermines a nation's sense of self. It doesn't matter who is at the bottom of the blasts, in comparison to the loss of life and the damage done to the people there. In one sense, somewhere down the line, we are all responsible for the attack, and I felt disappointed that our humanity had let us down once again. Likewise, when I watched BBC Panorama's documentary on North Korea, the most rigidly controlled nation on Earth, I felt disappointed and embarrassed at reporter John Sweeney's apparent fixation with the country's poverty - as though this was some obvious sign of it being "wrong" and dutifully punished.

Naturally, North Korea's inhumane treatment of its people, its dangerous, aggressive polices against neighbouring countries and the US, and its racist, Nazi-like control over the minds of its citizens is worrying and it's no wonder the Western media tends to fall back on clichés. But Sweeney just kept pointing out the power cuts, the lack of commercial adverts, the lack of shops and the freedom to spend, hammering the point home by juxtaposing it with the gaudy, energy-sucking, and almost eighties-like irreverent opulence of South Korea.

Notwithstanding that the documentary has been criticised for using students as a human shield - by using 10 London School of Economics students as a cover to secretly film for eight days in the country - I found it jarring for its apparent relish at holding up North Korea's refusal of capitalism, rather than its appalling human rights record. With Europe and the US facing austere times due to the economic crisis we are still struggling with (and power cuts not such an impossibility in Plymouth as it is in Pyongyang), it is clear that neither communism nor capitalism has made much progress.

Neither have we as humans, it seems, if we still put issues such as money and revenge above the value of human life. So, again I ask myself: Are we progressing to the enlightenment we so often talk about, or are we regressing back to our caveman roots? Or have they always been there under our human pie, lurking underneath a thin crust of civilisation?

Because whatever we invent, we can always corrupt. Inventions can help us make use of our energy, or help us abuse it. For instance in America, a seemingly rational, intelligent 25-year-old man has freely made available the technology to "print" a gun using new 3D printing in the comfort of your own home. So, be you patriot, terrorist or slightly unbalanced, you can now now create a semi-automatic firearm at will, to use at your pleasure. The same human drive for innovation that tries to regenerate human organs to prolong life, paradoxically also has the charismatic savvy to ease the method in which we end it.

There are so many natural dangers that threaten life, why we want to add to these, I have no idea, and yet we end up being our own worse enemy. But although this may all sound like a huge chasm of progress, terrible things do bring people together to advance stronger. If an over-abundance of assault weapons were the precursor for the apocalypse of our species, we'd already be there. To put it in perspective we've had the technological capability to destroy entire cities with nuclear weapons since the 1940s, and yet here we are still, progressing as best we can. That says a lot for the toughness of the human spirit to survive.

Each of us is unique, but I think it's fair to say that every one of us has felt frustrated at one time or another by what appears to be a lack of abundance in our lives - and yet we don't all go grabbing for a gun, or try to build a bomb. Tragedy is the exception rather than the rule of daily living, but it has the greater impact on our memory. What we focus on is what fills our lives. It can also limit the way we perceive the world and ourselves. If you have a limiting belief about life, it will cause you to constantly repel the good things when they do come our way, despite our very best efforts to achieve it.

When tragedy strikes us, we shouldn't get carried away on the currents of automatic thinking; the human mind likes to associate things, and stereotype and label things, but this can often be a very discriminatory way of behaving. This doesn't mean we should ignore difficulties or problems for the sake of causing offence, but we should always focus on the solution, not the negativity. If we use positive words on ourselves and others, it's more likely that is what we'll receive back. We need to stop putting others down, and ourselves down, too.

We need to start reinforcing the positive messages in our lives, to nourish the positive and beautiful in ourselves. We are all more beautiful than we think. We should be more grateful to that natural self; it impacts the choices and friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children - it impacts everything. It couldn't be more critical to your happiness. As we pay attention to the goodness in the outside world, we strengthen it in ourselves. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because every time we pay attention to something, we energise its presence within us.

Consequently, the only way to defeat terror, is to refuse to be terrorised by it; to turn our back on it and refuse to allow our minds to be hijacked by it, or let our actions be corrupted by it. We should be saddened, horrified and angered by the act, but not allow ourselves to direct that anger as a channel (for ramped-up patriotism) to cause more anger. Rather than revenge, when tragedy occurs, we should look for reasons, and we should questions ourselves, too.

If we're willing to be really brave, and shine a little light on some uncomfortable inner dialogue about how we can really progress, then we'll already be halfway there. We need to ask the right questions, and of the right people - and trying to understand people that appear to despise your way of life will eventually come to the question of why we had to ask that in the first place. That dialogue will need tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness, all the traits we associate with love.

Let love be the superpower.

Some say love is a state of mind, and ultimately, the more we respond with a "like for like" attitude will depend on how quickly we progress in our human evolution to some sort of enlightenment towards the sacredness of life. We know life is precious; we invariably want to spend this precious commodity being happy. This means we need to start seeing each other as human beings, and let our strengths, not weaknesses, determine our human history.

We must give ourselves the credit of our good intentions, and the wisdom of our mistakes. There is no fixed meaning in life, except the meaning we bring to it. It is about a choice. In the BBC documentary about the tragic tales of young offenders, one of them revealed a moving tattoo he had drawn on his back, leaving an indelible warning for us all in regard to that choice. It wrote that death leaves a heartache no one can heal, but love leaves memories that no one can steal.

Or even more poignant is the image of eight-year-old Boston Marathon bombing victim Martin Richard, which has emerged online, holding up a handmade poster inscribed with the words: "No more hurting people, peace". In his memory, let's start leaving more memories with love, because when we do we'll realise that true progress, to a world where children no longer needlessly die, can only be made through love.

Yours in love,