The world has become a smaller and more dangerous place.

There was a time when bullying amounted to calling someone names, chanting rude rhymes across the playground to those being picked on and some coordinated physical nastiness. 

Our modern age has graduated to cyber bullying, much harder to avoid than the old kind. 

Bullies want the world to be run their way. 

And increasingly we have bullying on a major scale in the form of terrorism. In France they have been having a minute's silence today for the journalists killed in yesterday's attack on Charlie Hebdo. 

None of us has the right to impose our way of life on others. We may object to the way things work but we cannot march in and change things wholesale. Similarly, no one has the right to impose their laws and their punishments on another country. You do not prove a criticism or satire erroneous by killing those who carried it out. 

We tell our children to ignore name callers; rise above it we say, ignore it or prove that the name callers are wrong. Lashing out only puts you in the wrong. 

The world appears united in its condemnation of the attack and yet no one seems to know how to prevent something similar happening elsewhere. 

When we were young the world was a wide open place, full of potential for change. We saw campaigns against apartheid and prejudice. Tolerance appeared to be becoming the norm, for most of us anyway. Maybe we were too naive and innocent, believing such things were possible. 

The world has become a smaller and more dangerous place.