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On June 11, 2007, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released the SIPRI Yearbook 2007. Chapter 8 of the Yearbook states that in 2006 worldwide military expenditures have reached an incredible USD$1,200 billion (yes, there is no extra zero there, it really is $1,200,000,000,000).

Meanwhile, in June 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated the number of undernourished persons worldwide to around 860 millions.

I was wondering how much it costs to feed one person for one day. I was able to estimate it by using the data provided by the World Food Programme. They say that an individual needs at least 500 grams of food daily, or 182.5 kilograms per year. I took a look at their figures for the year 2004. They delivered a total of 4 millions tons of food. The total cost of their operations, including buying the food and the other supplies needed, transporting it and managing everything, was $2.9 billion.

Let’s do some maths. $2.9 billion divided by 4 millions tons equals $725 per ton of food. $725 divided by 1000 kilograms and multiplied by 182.5 kilograms needed to feed one person for a whole year makes $132.31 per year to feed one person. This is what the World Food Programme is able to achieve. Now let’s multiply this by the 860 millions undernourished persons in the world and that means we need $113.8 billions to feed all of them. This is 9.5% of worldwide military expenditures.

There is not much more to say about this. The figures say it all. If only a small amount of the money spent on weapons and war was used to help undernourished people, it would be easy to help them. I have not done the maths for the other world issues but I am sure all this money spent on useless armed forces would be much better spent trying to make this world a better place.

Have you been struggling with a problem lately? Maybe you or someone close to you is sick? Has death taken away a loved one? Perhaps you just broke up or had a fight with your lover? Do you have too many debts? Is your job jeopardized because the company you work for is in trouble? Are you unable to achieve a goal you have been trying to reach for weeks, months, even years? Are you feeling lonely or rejected by others? Has smiling become so hard you can only fake it? Are worries overwhelming you?

Most people will at some point in their life answer yes to at least one of these questions. We all have to deal with problems we may think will never go away. They may affect us so much that they make us unhappy, even depressed. Sir Winston Churchill once said: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Can being optimistic in front of problems really help you? While it may not actually help you solve the problem (though it often can), I strongly believe it can help you to achieve happiness while you go through those hard times. Let’s see how one could react to two of the above life challenges: a sick loved one and an endangered job.

How can you react if someone close to you has a serious illness? Pessimists will believe that all is lost and that their loved one will not survive. Optimists however will think that, depending on the illness, their loved one will either fully heal or at least they will get much better and be able to get back to a somewhat normal life (some illness are indeed still impossible to fully cure). Let’s now consider the possible outcomes of this challenge. The worst case scenario is that your loved one will suffer a long time and eventually die from that illness. A maybe slightly better outcome, though not good at all, is that they will die quickly without suffering too much. A better outcome is that they will never completely heal but will be strong enough to stay alive. A yet better outcome is that they will take a long time to heal but eventually do so completely. The best outcome would be for them to heal quickly and fully. Overall we can make things simpler by grouping the outcomes into two groups: either your loved one will live or die. With two possible state of minds (optimism or pessimism) towards the illness and two possible outcomes (life or death), we have four possible state of mind / outcome pairs.

If you are pessimist and your loved one ends up staying alive, you will have been negative, fearing something that didn’t happen. Would you have been helping your loved one by being negative all that time? Not really. They probably made it through because other people were positive. Being negative and fearful for them would have had absolutely nothing to do with them living through, except maybe making the healing longer.

If you are pessimistic and your loved one ends up dying from the illness then your fears would have been confirmed. However, is negativism really the last thing you want to live with them? Researches have shown that being positive helps people heal. How can your loved one be positive if everyone around them is pessimistic, believing they are going to die? Your pessimism surely wouldn’t have helped and could actually have made things worse!

On the other hand, if you are optimistic and your loved one still dies, you would have actually been wrong thinking they would have lived on. However, your optimism would have allowed you to be somewhat happy during that time believing in the best outcome. This happiness would have been a relief for your loved one, making the suffering easier to live with, for them and for you. You would have enough sadness coming from your loved one, you wouldn’t have needed to star being sad before it actually happened. Your optimism would give you happy memories of the last moments with your loved one - not sad memories of hopelessness.

Finally, if you are optimistic and your loved one lives on, your positivity will be confirmed. You would have had nothing to worry about and that would have been exactly what you would have done. You would have kept your happiness (and your loved one’s too) through the hard times and then it would simply be bad memories, actually not so bad since they would be filled with hope.

As you can see, whatever the outcome, being pessimistic while having to face the illness would do nothing good. Being optimistic may not help your loved one to heal (though researches do show that it could help at least a little), but it will help you and them to keep hope and happiness. If they are going to die, they surely want to be as happy as possible during the short time remaining.

What if your challenge is something else? What if the company you work for is in trouble and your job is endangered? This is something many people have to deal with and it may be very stressful especially if you have a family that depends on you and if you know finding another job may be hard in your area.

You could be pessimistic and look for another job right away without trying to see how things turn out. You would lose any motivation you had to work there and would only be willing to get away from there as soon as possible. However, it could take weeks, even months, for you to find another job and meanwhile you would probably keep your current job. Keeping a job you only want to leave will only make you less happy and you will not be as productive as you may have been before. Also, you would probably also be pessimistic towards finding another job and that will surely not help you finding one! Even if you do find another job, how can you be sure that it will be better? Being pessimistic, you would probably expect another unsafe job.

You could also be optimistic and make your best to be as productive as possible to help the company. You may still start looking for something else if you have people depending on you and if you expect that finding a new job may take long, but you would not do so willing to leave your current job. You would keep informed on how things are going for the company and how you can help it. You would keep your motivation. If you eventually lose your job, your optimism will surely help you find another great job, maybe even better than the one you had. If things get better and your job gets endangered no more, you will be happy to have stayed and to have participated in making things better. You may even be rewarded for that.

As you can see, whatever the challenge you are facing, being pessimistic never helps. Be optimistic and keep your happiness through challenges. I am currently personally dealing, along with other challenges, with the two examples I gave and I can honestly say that keeping my optimism is really what allows me to keep smiling everyday. However, I often see people facing less than I am that are unhappy, even depressed. This is why I wanted to share this with you. May optimism help you all when life seems too hard to be lived. The glass of happiness is half-full and there is not that much left to fill it.

One last note: even if optimism is a good thing, beware of overoptimism which can be dangerous. Optimism should not ignore realism. If your loved one is going to die no matter what, stay positive, but accept that fact and do your best to make those last moments as happy as possible. However, do not be overoptimistic about not having a crash if you drive at twice the speed limit. The whole point is to keep hope and stay happy as much as humanly possible when a problem arises, not taking risks and believing everything will be all right.

In the past few years, we have been hearing a lot about global warming and about how it affects the weather. The future does not seem too bright. However, have you ever taken the time to think about how wonderful our dear Earth is? Have you noticed how unique and perfect it is?

Our planet is really fine tuned to host life. It orbits around the Sun at an average of 150 millions kilometers. This is the perfect distance to keep a viable temperature. Just compare the Earth to the 2 closest planets: Venus and Mars . On Earth, the minimum temperature ever recorded was -88°C, the maximum was 58°C and the mean temperature is 14°C. On Mars, where scientists believe life may have been possible in the past, the minimum temperature ever recorded was -87°C, the maximum was -5°C and the mean temperature is -46°C. On Venus, which orbits only 42 millions kilometers closer to the Sun than Earth, the average temperature is 462°C. As you can see, both Mars and Venus could not currently bear life. Venus is far too hot and its atmosphere is actually filled with toxic gas. Mars is actually close to having a viable temperature but it is a bit too cold. The Earth is therefore at the right distance from Sun: if it was a bit closer, it would be too hot and if it was a bit further, it would be too cold.

Another great thing about our planet is its rotation speed: it rotates every 24 hours (actually 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds). Just think about how life would be if it was rotating slower, like some other planets (Venus’ rotation is the slowest lasting 243 days). Nights could last so long that the temperature would drop very low and everything would become an icy desert. Then the Sun would rise and the day would last just as long and it would become incredibly hot. Life with such a climate may not be exactly impossible but it would sure be hard. Also the human body needs rest every night and if days and nights were longer I don’t think it could bear with sleeping only at night.

Surrounding our planet is the atmosphere which is just as perfect. It is composed at 21% of oxygen, which is the exact proportion humans and animals need to breathe. With less oxygen breathing would be harder. More oxygen would be dangerous as breathing an high concentration of oxygen for too long is toxic. Also, the higher concentration of oxygen, the easiest combustion occurs. Therefore, with more oxygen, anything could set on fire much more easily. The carbon dioxide concentration around 1% is also just perfect. A larger concentration would be poisonous to humans and animals. However plants and trees need carbon dioxide to achieve photosynthesis and 1% if just enough for them. Also, high in the atmosphere is the ozone layer that acts as a natural shield against the Sun’s deadly radiations making life on Earth possible. The whole atmosphere also acts as a shield against the thousands of meteoroids that cross Earths’ orbit. Thanks to the atmosphere almost all of them burn completely before reaching the ground. It also prevents the heat from the Sun from simply being reflected on the Earth’s surface and getting lost in space. The gases composing the atmosphere keep a good part of this heat so the temperature does not get too low at night.

The location of our Solar System in the Milky Way and in the Universe is also the best we could hope for. We are located in an external arm of the galaxy where stars are further apart from each other. Therefore, the closest star to Earth apart from the Sun is so far away that it has no gravitational effect on the Sun or the Earth. This allows for all planets in the Solar System to have a very stable orbit around the Sun. This stability could not be achieved closer to the galaxy’s core where stars are closer and gravitational forces are very strong. Also, more stars means more radiation. We are far enough from other stars not to receive any significant amount of radiation from any except the Sun. The Earth has a good shield against this radiation but it would not be as efficient against a larger amount of radiation.

Our Sun is also the best star to hang around. Unlike many other stars, its combustion is very stable and it has a very long life. This means it can provide us with a constant amount of energy for a very long period. And this energy it gives us as heat and light is just the perfect amount. Also, many stars are part of a pair or group of stars orbiting one around the other. This is not the case with our Sun. If it was, no planet could have a stable orbit around the Sun as it would be constantly attracted by other stars.

Our Solar System has 8 planets: 4 inner planets and 4 outer planets, also known as the giant planets. Those giant planets are many times larger than Earth and have a strong gravitational field. If they were closer to Earth, their gravitational field could affect its orbit. However they are orbiting far enough from the Earth to have no bad effect. They are actually quite useful as they act as an outer shield from external celestial bodies they could eventually collide with Earth. Their strong gravitational fields keep most of those bodies from ever reaching the Earth.

Earth’s closest neighbor, the Moon, is not only beautiful at night, but it also has an important effect on life on Earth. Its gravitational field has a key role in tides which are essentials to maintain ocean currents that keep our climate. The Moon’s gravity also acts as a stabilizer on Earth’s axial inclination to keep it at 23.5°. If it wasn’t for the Moon, the axial inclination would vary a lot. Since seasons come from the Earth’s axial inclination, a variable inclination would mean extreme seasons differences and no stability at all.

It really is amazing how everything around us is made so perfectly to allow us to live on this planet. Life is not only possible but it comes with and incredible variety and complexity. Our good old Earth is really a sweet home that we have to take care of.

What have you been doing in the past hour? Reading blogs, surfing the web, chatting with your friends, listening to music…? Have you thought of using that time to do something more useful? What about killing someone? Doesn’t it sound like fun? Not really. Nevertheless, in the past hour 21 human beings in the world were killed by war. By the time you are done reading this text, there will be two or three more of them, killed by soldiers whom we are told to support.

Who is the next person to be killed in the name of peace? Maybe they will not be killed by one of our soldiers. Perhaps they are going to be killed by soldiers from another country; another country where people are also told to support their troops, that is. Everywhere in the world, people are told to support their soldiers. Everywhere in the world, people are told their army is doing the right thing. What exactly are all those soldiers doing that deserve support?

Have you ever thought of what is the main purpose of an army? Why do armies exist in the first place? Why do most of the nations in the world (with a few exceptions) have an army? The answer is simple: armies exist to protect a nation against other nations, against their armies. So armies actually exist because armies exist. Not a single nation in the world would ever need an army if there was no army to defend from. The need for an army actually comes from a false idea that wars between nations are normal. For a nation to accept this idea and build its own army to take part in wars is to support the whole concept of war, of men killing men in the name of peace. How can war bring peace? War has never and will never bring peace. It only brings violence, injuries, death. Enrolling as a soldier is to support the army and therefore to support war and what it causes. Then why would I support our troops? Why would I support people who are taking part and supporting all of those wars that are tearing our world apart? I will not support our troops. I will not support our army. I will not support war. I will only support peace.

However, though the main purpose of an army is to defend the country, most armies also do some good. They usually take part in rescue missions when natural disasters occur and we can’t deny they are doing a good job there. Some people will say that this is exactly why the army is so important. If this is the true purpose of the army why then are the soldiers carrying guns? Why are they trained to kill? Why is there so much money spent on weapons? Why aren’t soldiers called “rescuers”? Why isn’t the army called a “Rescue Force” then?

Instead of spending lives and money on training soldiers to kill, nations should really review their priorities and use those resources better: train those people to do useful things such as helping their fellows and use the money for health and education instead of weapons that are only good at taking lives.

Peace will never be achieved through an armed force even with the best intentions in the world. At some point nations will have no choice to survive but to follow those wise words: “They will have to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

This goes out to every single person whose life has been destroyed by men’s insane wars.