Every year, my friend Simon Peace throws a min-festival of love, hope and peace in his back garden in Hertfordshire. It’s called PeaceFest.

At Peacefest, the festivalgoers are strongly encouraged to get on stage and contribute performance art.

Last year (PeaceFest 2012) we decided we needed some theatre, so I scanned the internet for a free 10-minute play to stage. I was unable to find anything appropriate, so I wrote one Read more »

Hello

Since publishing my book, I’ve made it my business to ask anyone using the noun ‘God’ (and who is up for discussing such things) to define what they mean by the word.

My experience (and at this point I’ve asked quite a few people) is that the only available (coherent) definitions are: ‘a man’ or ‘the Universe’. Read more »

Religious institutions have always been in a state of evolution. They will continue to be so, and in the long run, contemporary theism-atheism debates will come to be seen as an argument over semantics.

Once upon a time I used to describe myself as an agnostic. Then, during a two-year, round-the-world adventure I took it upon myself to read the Abrahamic scriptures. Read more »

The Jolly Pilgrim called for a longer term view of civilisation.
This follow-up article argues that environmentalists should be more imaginative
about the possibilities for economic evolution

PDF version: Sustainability and economic growth are not mutually exclusive_Peter Baker

In the past two centuries, human civilisation has experienced an unprecedented increase in global gross domestic product (GDP) – economic growth associated with a precipitous rise in material prosperity, which has left sixth sevenths of Earth’s population enjoying living standards beyond those of all but a small minority who lived prior to the Industrial Revolution.

Read more »

The Jolly Pilgrim, Part 7, musings 32

This excerpt deals with the fact that our historical context, and our brains’ internal hardwiring, leads us to think about the world in a certain way. Climate change is used as an example.

Every night on my way up the east coast I was pouring out my heart into the weather-beaten and black gaffer-tape-reinforced notebook I carried. Since visiting India, I’d stopped writing poetry.

By this point I was on a mission. The notion I’d absorbed during my travels was that there’s an approach to thinking about the world – a modern approach – which is ready to be synthesised by someone with the interest, time and head space. So that’s what I’d do.  Read more »