Generally speaking you can't force people to change an attitude. For example, historically the Church used to murder witches, but those killings didn't stop witchcraft or peoples' belief in witchcraft. The effective way to change an attitude is to set a good example. If the Church had showed kindness, love and tolerance towards witches and everyone else, then many of the people finding acceptance in witchcraft would also have found acceptance in the Church. But witchcraft was driven further underground, thus ensuring it's survival. A result the Church did not want, but got, because of the intimidation and killings it committed.

It's a strange example I know, but the principle applies to most aspects of life. The best way to get someone to do something good is to do something good yourself. Trying to force someone to do something good is counterproductive, trying to influence someone to do something good is being manipulative, trying to shame someone into doing something good means you're doing something bad in order to get someone to do something good.

The best way of all to have someone else do a good act, is to do a good act yourself. Result = if someone is genuinely interested they will notice what you do, and you will be copied.

This is the area where the churches, and indeed all religion, has failed miserably over the centuries. They try via coercion and threats of eternal damnation, to make people do good things. In other words they do bad things to try to get people to be good.

The best and most effective thing for good that 99.99% of people can do is to simply do a good act themselves, and do those acts again and again and again etc. Sure, the world is full of disinterested people who couldn't care less, and a smaller number of people who are simply bad people, but overall nothing works for good better than seeing another person, or persons, do a good act. This is so because the vast majority of people are basically good, not bad.

Dear Hasbeen,

Many people hold the view that nuclear weapons
have helped to prevent war.

This has encouraged the widespread view that
the best way to avoid war is for each side to hold
the other's population as hostage under nuclear
threat. The drawback to this approach, of course,
is that the threat of mutually assured destruction
is an "all-or-nothing" gamble with the highest
stakes imaginable. As long as the threat "works,"
war is avoided; but if the strategy fails -
through design, miscalculation, or error, then the
result is the obliteration of the societies that
depended on it.

Moreover, a strategy of mutually assured destruction
is most likely to work if there is a balance of power
between the two main nations or blocs. If the
contending parties are evenly balanced, neither will
be likely to strike first, for there can be no certainty
of victory. On the other hand; if one of the parties gains
(or appears to be gaining) superiority, war becomes
more likely - either because the superior power is tempted
to take advantage of its position, or because the inferior
one is tempted to strike before its own position deteriorates
further. As a matter of historical fact, that is
precisely the situation that precipitated many wars of
this century, most notably World War I.

Unfortunately, reliance on nuclear deterrence means a
continuation of the arms race and the constant threat
of annihilation. Nuclear weapons do not guarantee that
war cannot happen - only that it will be calamitous if it
does. They do not so much defend as threaten, and in
threatening, they elicit still more threats in return -
as the world's growing stockpile of bombs and missiles
attests. The obsessive focus on the threat of weapons as
the way to avoid war also blinds us to the central
question:

"Is anything that Russia or the United States values so
important that it justifies risking the destruction of
both societies, the murder of hundreds of millions of people,
and the jeopardizing of our very species?"

cont'd ...

The point that I'm trying to make is that
ultimately, the prospects for peace depend on
the collective action of ordinary people.

This may seem paradoxical at first, as individuals
often feel powerless in the face of distant
governments and mighty arsenals. Yet if sociology
has a central lesson, it's that societies, together
with all the social institutions and social behaviour
they contain, are continuously created and re-created
by the acts of countless individuals, whether these
individuals realise their role in the grand sweep of
history or not. If a modern society goes to war, it
isn't just because the leaders have opted for war, but
because the people have implicitly or explicitly done
so also - or at least, they have not opted for peace.

In the US the public actually places informal,
unspoken restraints on the ability of the leaders to
wage war. For example, although the US has tactical
nuclear weapons that it could have used in local
conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars, it hasn't
employed these devices - primarily because such a resort
to nuclear weapons would be unacceptable and immoral
to the American people. Similar restraints operate in
other countries, although they are felt most strongly
in democracies.

If more and more nuclear weapons are built, and if more
sophisticated means of delivering them are devised, and if
more and more nations get control of these vile devices
then we surely risk our own destruction. If ways are
found to reverse that process, then we can divert
unprecedented energy and resources to the real problems
that face us, including poverty, disease, overpopulation,
injustice, oppression, and the devastation of our environment.

We may hope and trust that our ultimate choice will be to
enhance the life on the bright and lovely planet on which
billions of us share our advneture.

Attitudes can change, all we need is the right leadership,
and a will to succeed. And of course persistence!

Nicnoto:

"As most may agree, I look around and what I see is destruction, war, murder, rape, shootings, robbery's the list goes on"

Well, this is what YOU see - if you say so, how can it be disputed? But what I see is beauty!

So if I may suggest, get rid of your TV - I think the council has special collections for those boxes (mine does). Looking for compassion in advertisement of all places?? there is compassion all about you, so why do you need to suffer those filthy ads in the first place? go out and breath the frest air! It is wonderful!

It's all in the eye of the beholder - everyone gets what they ask for, for how could there be any wrong or evil in God's own world :)

Nicnoto writes:

<< I look around and what I see is destruction, war, murder, rape… >>

Yuyutsu retorts:

<< But what I see is beauty! >>

You are both right. There is the most extraordinary beauty and the most terrible aspects of humanity, all mixed in together.

This is indisputable. It is not just my perception.

It is not just in the eye of the beholder.

Mother nature allows everything - - - - war, peace, murder, life, beauty, ugliness etc etc. Mother Nature has no overriding conscience. With Mother Nature what is - - - IS.