The Red Elephant Foundation Tools To Help Build A Peaceful Society

November 16, is celebrated as International Day of Tolerance. But, is it enough to be compassionate and accepting for just one day in a year. Like a farm cannot be grown by watering it just once a week, a free and tolerant society cannot be built by celebrating just one day. Society needs to be inherently tolerant and open to different ideas, religion, gender or choice.

With this perspective as outline, The Red Elephant, a youth-led initiative dedicated to peace building and gender equality in the society, came up with an interesting idea of encouraging a peaceful and compassionate society on world tolerance day. The initiative released an interesting post on social media that had pictures of imaginary tools which can help in building qualities that will lead to peace and compassion. These tools were only an imaginary definition and modified name of simple technical instruments like telescopes, mouthpiece, binoculars, magnifying glass etc. that are mainly used for communication. Their aim through these pictures is to show that society should not be just tolerant but more than that to allow peaceful existence of different ideas and identities. Using these tools or qualities, a person can become a peace builder in society. Read on to see the interesting peace building tools of the society and how they are important.

Key Takeaways:

• Society should not just be tolerant but more than that to allow a peaceful existence of different identities, says The Red Elephant.
• The Red Elephant is a youth-led initiative that aims at peace building and gender equality in society. 
•  On International Day of Tolerance, the Red Elephant released a series of images of tools that can help in encouraging peace and compassion in society. These tools are imaginarily modified instruments that are used for communication. 
• Empathyscope, Equalifying Glass, Feminist Lens, Compassion pones, Factoculars, Respectacles, Mouthpeace and Conflictionary.

Empathyscope: A device that can help you lead a life with empathy

The Red Elephant Foundation

Jackson Brown rightly said, “Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.” Empathy is a lens that allows us to look into the other’s life and find how struggles of their lives are similar to ours. The only difference is in the way they deal with it. Therefore, through empathyscope, the red elephant encourages society to harbour empathy for each other so that the difference in idea or identity has a firm understanding.

Equalifying Glass: A device to help you build an equal world

The base of a peaceful society is equality among people. Be it gender, caste, religion or colour, no one should be discriminated on the basis of their identity. The equalifying glass that resembles a magnifying glass aims at encouraging judgement and scrutiny based on equality.

The Red Elephant Foundation

A person’s cultural identity or anything that makes him/her different is a strength and not a ground for discrimination.

The Red Elephant Foundation

Feminist Lens

A lens that helps to see the world from a feminist perspective is the need of the hour. Among all the discriminations that prevail in the society, the discrimination based on gender is the root of all. It is the feminist lens that will allow people to respect each gender and its choices and celebrate its diversity in every corner of the world, be it home or workspace.

Also Read: Empower women for a healthy society

Compassion phones: A device to help you listen to others

For any debate or discussion to conclude effectively, the other side should be allowed to speak and listened to with patience and compassion. Every person has a different opinion and voice that needs to be heard before issuing judgements based on our assumptions.

The Red Elephant Foundation

Often, the argument and intolerance among people are due to the lack of patience to listen to what the other wants to say.

Factoculars: A device to help you separate false information from the truth

Falsity or fraudulence is the root cause of many conflicts. Filtering the falsity from the truth or vice versa becomes difficult when a person is not aware of the facts. In order to not be fooled by false information, being aware of facts and truth is an intelligent solution.

The Red Elephant Foundation

Respectacles: A device to help you see and treat other living beings with respect

Respect is important to build a peaceful society because it praises the mere existence of a person with or without a conflicting context. If respect is built inside every person, arguments, fights and conflicts will not haunt the society. Criticisms will be constructive and not with the intention to disregard the thoughts of the other.

The Red Elephant Foundation

Mouthpeace: A device to help you communicate with kindness and non-violence

Right speech is the best way to build compassion in society. Words have the power to heal age-old wounds if they are spoken rightly. It is imperative for society to thrive in peace, kindness and non-violence. And these qualities are reflected in the way we conduct ourselves in society, through our actions and speech.

The Red Elephant Foundation

Conflictionary: A tool to help settle conflicts and arrive at amicable solutions

Conflicts in opinion and ideas are inevitable and imperative for a society that is built on freedom and equality. But, conflicts should not be a reason to debar the difference of ideas. Knowledge thrives in resolving the conflicts and coming up with a conclusion which is an amalgamation of different ideas. In this way, new ideas can be formed that will push society towards development.

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Today marks the #InternationalDayOfTolerance. Why don't we go a little further than mere tolerance? We invite you to play in the sandbox of life with our peacebuilding toolkit to get started. Link on our website :-)

A post shared by Red Elephant Foundation (@theredelephnt) on Nov 16, 2019 at 6:34pm PST

Indeed the pictures and the ideas reflected through them are appreciable. Had the harbouring of these qualities in the society been so easy as wearing special spectacles, it would be a dream come true. But, if it is not easy, it is not impossible either. This is what the pictures also show. There are no such devices existing in reality, but it all depends on how we want to look at them - embrace them as an inspiration or forget them as utopian imagination.

Picture Credit: The Red Elephant

Rudrani Kumari is an intern with SheThePeople.TV

Also Read: Why Are Women The Chief Sacrifice Officers In Our Society?