Venu's Thoughts Series

Which  World   are you from?   Third , Second or First ?  And are you sure there is no fourth , fifth or sixth worlds?   And are you from the Developed World , where presumably, from the title, development is now a thing of the past? I cringe every time I hear the term Third World or Developing World   in spite of the fact that I currently live in what many might think of as the First World  or the Developed World . (Don't get me wrong - I'd rather live here than anywhere else.) I find the terms very derogatory  and arrogant .  If I were to be living instead in this so-called third world, I would be very upset at such a reference.  Third on what count?  GDP?  Military might? Family Values? Per capita murder rate? Terms like these stem from long-held sub-conscious feelings of supremacy - feelings that reduce one's openness to understanding others, and get in the way of everyone...

May all of you have a wonderful new year, and may all your wishes for 2015 come true. Here are some of my own wishes for the coming year, in no particular order. May this year end more wars and begin new peace initiatives. May everyone understand one another better and be less fearful of differences - whether in political views, forms of government, race, religion, ethnicity, color, and how one acts, walks, talks, or dresses. May we have real-time video transmission from every airplane so we will always know what happened inside. (With a good codec like H.264, and a low frame rate (3-5 fps), we could likely send the video with about the same bandwidth as a satellite telephone call). May the world have less police brutality. May the world have less unarmed and armed robberies of stores. May the world have less double standards both towards , and within , every community. May we have video cameras on all police cars on all sides and inside as well. Then add body cams as well - th...