Huddersfield hosts peace lecture with David Gee
David Gee delivers the annual peace lecture at Huddersfield Meeting
Forty people came to hear Quaker David Gee deliver Huddersfield Meeting’s annual peace lecture this month on ‘Rethinking Security’. Robin Bowles, from Huddersfield Meeting, told the Friend that the talk on 3 October was ‘fantastic’ and ‘some people called it “transformative”’.
Among the points the author made was that our prevailing understanding of security is skewed to the state and towards those who profit from war, and that security should be built ‘not on dominance but solidarity’.
He also talked about the importance of five areas of humane engagement around security: economic, ecological, physical, political and existential (can we be who we are?).
The author also discussed hope, which he defined as ‘being capable of facing the world as a tragic place and not being scared’.
According to Robin Bowles: ‘It was grounded and what we need to hear, because hope is in short supply at the moment. David said the people with least have the most to say to us about hope, such as asylum seekers, as they have to remake hope everyday. He also described our global problems as a degraded hope, which can be reversed, and said hope helps us evaluate things. He also urged Friends not to be discouraged: to do your bit, and let others do theirs. There are millions of us.’
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