the development writer.

“ The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion ” – Albert Camus Over the past five years of world travel I have had many conversations much like this one between myself and Ari (Any Random Individual). Ari : Wow! You’ve been traveling the world for years?! It must be great to have such freedom. Me : Yes, it has been an amazing experience, though anybody can be free. You don’t need to travel to have freedom. Ari : I don’t know about that. It’s too hard to make money here to go anywhere. Me : Well, as I said, you don’t need to travel to be free, though it certainly is a good representation of freedom. But many travelers are not free either. Actually, most people are not free because they don’t know what freedom actually is. Ari : What do you mean? In Canada I assume everybody is free. There’s no slavery and there’s democracy and everybody is rich right? Me : Welllll….everybody is ce...

“ If we are to reach real peace in this world we shall have to begin with children .” – Gandhi In the world in which we currently live, the ideas of aid, charity, humanitarianism and activism are becoming extremely popular. You can find some charity or NGO (non-governmental organization) doing anything you might consider ‘good’ somewhere in the world and they will be more than happy to accept your donations. Also, most people will have some cause that they, at the very least, have some kind of inclination towards supporting. But the question is: what problems in the world need outside intervention to fix? I’ve been moving around the world for four and a half years now and everywhere I go I meet the local people and look for the apparent problems in the area and try to think of the root of the problem and how it can be fixed. Through my observations, individual study and research, and deductions, I have come to see that there is only one root problem in the world that, if addre...

Why are we here? What is it all for? What is the meaning of life? Why were we given the ability to ask ‘why?’? These are the questions that have plagued humanity since the first intelligent thought. The answers may be all around us, but if they are, we have not yet learned how to decipher them. So, we work with what we have and this leaves us with an answer that is both simple as well as complicated. I will make some simple, logical assumptions to open the path of understanding but then I have to contradict them later to present the bigger picture. Assumption #1 : There is no Supreme Being Before you burn the object that you are reading this on, please read further; this will be one of the statements that I will contradict later. However, statistically speaking, you will never be presented with direct evidence of a higher power. Also, the authorities who claim that there is a God have lost all credibility through corruption of the message and the organizations that deliver the...

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."   --Mahatma Gandhi Before I begin, I would like you to recall all the great things you have been able to do with your life. Think of all you have learned, the friends and relationships you have made, the accomplishments you have, the places you have been, maybe the family you have raised or anything else at all that you feel you have been extremely lucky or blessed to have done or to have happen to you. Now, take a moment to think of all the amazing things that have been done by so many other outstanding individuals out there as well – great advancements in science, humanity, music or the arts; outstanding feats of strength and courage in battle; pushing the body beyond limits we thought possible in sport; and anything else that you feel demonstrates the near unlimited potential of humans as a species. The human being has climbed mountains, swum oceans, flown the skies, seen into deep...