My world is very small.
It's very small because for most of my life I did not ' have a room of one's own'.
No room, no space.
So, at this time last week I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo.
Neither had I heard of Julian Huxley.
In just a week I have evolved from being ignorant of the existence of Charlie Hebdo to being an 'I am Charlie' like most of you reading this piece, to questioning myself why I am Charlie, and not Charlie's killer with whom I thought I had a God in common, at least till last week.
The brilliant lampoonists were sipping their coffees, dipping their gluten free biscuits and cracking jokes, while they surveyed their novel ingenious creations.
The Cheebok girls were cosily tucked in their dormitory beds, exhausted after a day's strict schooling and endless after-work. Some of them were fast asleep dreaming of the brilliant future that must await accomplished, educated girls.
The Pakistani schoolboys had just finished their packed lunches and gone back to their classrooms, to resume assimilating the knowledge that would propel them onto a safe landing into the future.
The women in Baga, Nigeria but close to Chad, had just finished feeding their children and cleaning up their respected elderly.
And the children of Baga, tummies full and carefree were playing and dancing barefoot on the rusty orange dry soil while they sang their timeless songs.
The carpenter was hammering in the last nail to complete the chestnut chest that would bring in enough to feed his family.
And the beautiful woman with raven black hair and dazzling green eyes was just about done from carrying home her share of water rations.
There was a rush of running legs on booted feet, carrying heads and torsos and arms all covered in black. They had dead eyes and deadly weapons.
Within minutes, continents and oceans apart, thousands of kilometres apart, weeks or hundreds of years apart, the cartoonists were torn to shreds, the girls condemned to sex-hell on earth, the Pakistani boys riddled with bullets, the carpenter burnt at the stake for blasphemy, and the green eyed beautiful 'witch' tortured mercilessly to 'confess' until the Inquisitor's sado-masochistic cravings were amply satisfied.
All in The Name of God and his counterpart Allahu Akbar.
Boko Haram, al Shabab, Inquisition , Ku Klux Klan, Isil, Taliban, Al Qaeda, National Socialism, extreme right, extreme left movements etc etc have one common god: unsatiable hunger for total power, total control and homogenisation of the human race by annihilating the 'individual'. They empower their 'god' by scapegoating the 'God' or the lack of 'It'.
This is where the British academic Huxley comes in.
I like his famous words:
'As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it."
There is a New World Order in the making. Unless we act now, individually, and as groups, nations, and blocs, to drill the upholding of respect and dignity to each human being, by practising unprejudiced justice, social justice, gender equality and proper distribution of global wealth and resources, we are not going to like the New World Order.
We might not even be allowed to see it unfold to the full, just like Charlie, the girls and boys,the Huegenot carpenter and the raven haired Peruvian beauty. It is up to us, really, it is.