Thursday, November 19, 2009

Kofi Annan


One essay that caught my attention is The United Nations in the 21st Century (2001) by Kofi Annan. The most powerful theme in this essay is peace and how leaders and people of different cultutres, religion, and wealth status could all come together for the greater community and pursue peace in the world. In the essay, paragraph fourteen, Annan talked about how in every scripture or all of the faiths that people have encouraged peace and tolerance among each other. One qoute that stood out the most to me in this essay is, “people of different religions and cultures live side by side in almost every part of the world, and most of us have overlapping indentities which uniteus with every different group.” “We can love what we are, without hating what and who were are not.”Another theme that is very important in this essay is the arrogance and thirst for power in certain nations that leads up to the deaths of millions of people which

2 comments:

  1. I really liked this speach a lot. It really stood out to me. What I appreciated about him was that he not only discussed one religions ideas about peace and prosperity but several including Islam, Judaism, Budhism, Hinduism, and christianisy. There are so many different cultures and religions that it is important to include most if not all of them in a speach about peace. He truly seems to want peace among groups and it will take a lot of work for people to just get along and understand each others differences. Great response! :)

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  2. I enjoyed Annan's speech the best of the Nobel Peace Prize winners whom we read about. Paragraph eight was the strongest for me, beginning: "A genocide begins with the killing of one man-"

    It was a pretty strong call to action to the UN and mankind on the whole. I also loved the line that read: "We can love what we are, without hating what-and who-we are not."

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