Introduction

Walking from Gate 3 to Gate 24 at a modern western airport terminal, sitting in a bus, watching a barefoot hawker sell his mini packets of peanuts in Africa, reading the news, stimulates my mind to a myriad and changing slew of questions and answers – such as:

Who are we?

What do people believe? Why do they believe what they believe?

Why are things the way they are? (Why is oil so important in today’s world?  Why do wars happen?  Why is religion so important?  Why do diseases like bird flu appear out of the blue?  Why do we need passports and visas to travel? Why is Africa poor and America rich?  Why are there billionaires and people starving? Why are we so successful that we have become the most widely distributed species of land mammal on the planet? )

Is this inevitable?  Do we have an effect on these things?  Is our destiny fate or are we in the game of life where our own actions can effect how the outcome materialises?