World Flag – John d eccles

earth_flag — PROJECT BY OSKAR PERNEFELDT The International Flag of Planet Earth is a graduation project at Beckmans College of Design (Stockholm, Sweden)

Unless you live on the dark side of the moon you will know this has been a bad week. This time last week the unthinkable happened in my favourite city in the world. Innocent people got killed and injured for no justifiable reason.

The resultant fallout has been scary to say the least. People have become more tribal in their thought processes which is very depressing. I have sympathy with people who have lost loved ones, I have undying admiration for the broken hearted husband who will not allow Isis or whatever terrorist organisation carry out indiscriminate acts of violence change the way he thinks of people no matter what religion they are.

Now I am a humanist, I try to treat people in a way I would like to be treated myself and it has served me well through the years.

I can also see the other side of the argument from people who think they have been treated unjustly. But I cannot reconcile indiscriminate bombing no matter which side is carrying out this atrocious behaviour. In a problem that has become so complex with people on both sides thinking they have the moral high ground it will be difficult to see a way out of this.

Millions of people on Facebook have placed the tricolour flag on the profile pictures and I applaud them for thinking about the people of Paris. But what about the other people on the planet. The Palestinians, the Syrians and the many people in Africa all who are suffering in equal measure.

A few months ago I stumbled on a website that had a flag that represented us as a whole, the earth flag. Which is something that every nationality could stand under and become one.

Just think for a moment what if aliens dropped down to Earth tomorrow and started attacking us, how long do you think it would be before we all joined forces against a common enemy to protect our beloved planet.

I suppose our planet is a little like a family, we all fall out and squabble but at the end of the day we all stand strong if anyone threatens our dearly beloved, I hope that our collective position is just like that.

So instead of alienating innocent people for the random act of violence which is dominating our media at the moment lets take a leaf out of the french gentleman’s book who has lost his wife in the Paris attacks.

He has said he will not let this indiscriminate violence change him into something he is not. That way the perpetrator’s have not won, they have not made rational people fear people just because the colour of someones skin.

This coming week I am going to make a concerted effort to make sure I give everyone I meet my best five minutes, treat everyone as I would be like to be treated and hopefully this behaviour may be contagious, it may even lead to other people acting in the same manner.

In the words of Morgan Freeman “How do we change the world? “One random act of kindness at a time”

So here is my challenge to you, be kind and watch carefully how life suddenly gets a great deal better with the added benefit of that it makes you feel great in the process.

PROJECT BY OSKAR PERNEFELDT The International Flag of Planet Earth is a graduation project at Beckmans College of Design (Stockholm, Sweden) — PROJECT BY OSKAR PERNEFELDT
The International Flag of Planet Earth is a graduation project at Beckmans College of Design
(Stockholm, Sweden)

I saw this flag on the most beautiful blog I have ever seen and It got me thinking about how we see each other in the grand scheme of things.

We all like to feel we belong, to be a part of something bigger. If we are lucky we are surrounded by family who infuriate us and make us proud in equal measure.

On the next level we like to see ourselves as part of a community, like your village or town, and on it goes. We become quite tribal the further up the scale we go.

For example I live in a village that has belonged to both Yorkshire and Lancashire over the centuries and people can’t agree on which county we live in even now and I have seen it lead to some heated conversations in the local pub.

At the next level when it comes to your country most of us become very patriotic and often become a little suspicious in the first instance of people from other countries but the more I meet strangers and the more I travel the more I discover we all have more in common that we like to admit.

So when I came across this flag it sort of puts the whole tribal thing into some sort of perspective.

The Earth is our home and we should look at it as a global entity. We all have an impact on each other no matter what race or religion we follow.

With this in mind as we start to explore beyond our planet we should have an identity that will be instantly recognisable should ET ever get in touch. I think the design is inspired but then again I am just a simple soul.

Visit http://www.flagofplanetearth.com/#intro-shift and look at the photography and read the logic behind the design, it is breathtakingly simple and I like simple.

I wish my blog could look this good but I am not that talented.