Saturday, August 2, 2008

Dreamboarding, not waterboarding

I saw this post today, and the first thing that I thought of was waterboarding. It turns out that the two have nothing to do with each other, except for the coincidental use of the term "boarding," but what if...

Dreamboarding is a technique for presenting your dreams or aspirations in a visual format. Kind of like a scrapbooking/collage/dreamcatcher mash up. It's supposed to be done to celebrate the full moon, with the hope that the dreams will come true.

Waterboarding, in the other hand, is a torture technique. I blogged about this previously, but essentially it simulates drowning by pouring water into the victim's mouth and nose.

What if dreamboarding was a peace-building technique where you poured dreams into your enemy until they drowned in them? By immersing him or her in one's hopes, fears, aspirations, love, joy, sorrows, and nightmares, one could win over hearts and minds, rather than alienate them. War is waged only against the "other," that is, against those who are not one of us. There is no "them," there is only "we." Resources, territory, and power are not zero sum games. Peace is not just the absence of war, it's the presence of a stable, just, and fair community of people who are fed, clothed, healthy, and sheltered.

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