Successful Relationship Reading Corner
 This week, we wrote about spreading peace and that we are all connected. We found so many fascinating writings from a number of different angles that we are sharing four links this week. We think you'll finding them inspiring.
Promoting Peace "This section is about peace – a most fundamental asset to community building, to personal growth, and to the very survival of our planet. At the heart of many faiths, practices, and cultures, advancing peaceful co-existence is essential to ensuring productive, meaningful lives and sustainable societies. After providing a working definition of peace, our main focus will be on practical steps one can take to advance peace, so that we can strengthen ourselves and our communities."
We Are All Connected "Why does a negative person poison the emotions of everyone around him/her? How can a wonderfully charismatic person raise the energy, mood, and productivity of a group? Why do you laugh more at a funny movie when you’re in a theater full of laughing people? Our ability to affect others is not a coincidence. Let’s look at the science behind human connectedness."
What Can We Learn from the World’s Most Peaceful Societies? "Given the grinding wars and toxic political divisions that dominate the news, it might come as a surprise to hear that there are also a multitude of sustainably peaceful societies thriving across the globe today. These are communities that have managed to figure out how to live together in peace—internally within their borders, externally with neighbors, or both—for 50, 100, even several hundred years. This simple fact directly refutes the widely held and often self-fulfilling belief that humans are innately territorial and hardwired for war."
Spirituality, Religion, Culture, and Peace "This paper is about different spiritual and religious traditions in the world and how they have or could in the future contribute to the creation of a global culture of peace. As the above quotations indicate, almost all of the world's religions, in their own sacred writings and scriptures, say that they support "peace". Yet it is a known fact that war and violence have often been undertaken historically, as well as at present, in the name of religion (as is discussed further below). Yet religions profess to want peace. So what is 'peace'? And how have religions historically helped to promote peace, and how might they help create a more peaceful world in the 21st century? These are a few of the questions that this paper will attempt to explore."
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