Silver Dove Congress 2000
from IVU News, March 2000

Report from the first day
By Katharina Bless

Chiang Mai, Thailand, February, 2000 - On the first day of activities of the Silver Dove Congress, I am happy to say that it is already a success. Adding to the excellent meals, we also experienced the performance of traditional Thai dancers, musicians, a group of blind young singers, and many other entertainers. Life is so pleasurable in Chiang Mai at this time of the year.

The first day's session started with James DeMeo Ph.D. (demeo@mind.net) who discussed why humans struggle with compassion to the sufferings of others.

Following on from this, I was able to demonstrate the root cause of our problem with violence in our society, by showing how more than 6000 years earlier when north Africa and north China faced a desertification process, tribes were forced to decide between starvation or warfare in order to get food, land and water.

Thom Hartmann Thom@ThomHartmann.com then talked about the perils of pushing our children to learn to read and write before the age of 7 years. According to his studies, he explained that it can make the left side of the child's brain develop faster than the right side and consequently lead to emotional imbalance.

... the country that has the most child deliverances at home is Poland and this country is also the one that has the lowest mortality...

He reasoned that children that are pressured to learn these skills early on are much more likely to develop violent behavior.

Julia Jus M.D. who lives here in Chiang Mai and works with colon hydrotherapy, naturopathy, homeopathy, chi kung and Taoist meditation, talked to us about the problems of child deliverance we are facing today at most of modern hospitals.

She gave the example that if a mother animal was separated from its baby for longer than 2 hours the mother would reject the baby and the young animal would simply die.

Reasoning with her, I understood that the common practice of separating babies from their mothers for up to 72 hours in most modern hospitals makes it almost impossible for the mother to develop a strong emotional bond with the baby. Thus begins a series of problems like post-deliverance depression for the mother and other related problems.

Dr. Julia Jus also pointed out that the country that has the most child deliverances at home is Poland and this country is also the one that has the lowest mortality rates for babies and their mothers.