Greetings!

It's a holiday but also the anniversary of my spiritual vows. What would be politically correct would probably be to pay homage to the alleged "bravest and best" but I question the thesis and the way slogans are used to trick people into making unnecessary sacrifices, not for their country but for the corporate billionaires who profit from wars. However, let's rewind a bit.

For countless centuries, actually many thousands of years if we include archaeological evidence, humans seem to have attempted to solve their problems through violence, thereby suggesting that we are not using our alleged intelligence much less our spirituality in ways that would differentiate us from wild animals. If we take a very ancient look at war, then it was generally either used as a retaliatory action against perceived wrong, i.e., a vendetta or act of revenge, or it was predatory, such as foreign forces invading Egypt to seize the rich agricultural lands of the Nile Delta to feed the hungry in the surrounding deserts.

There is at the root of everyone a point where spirit and matter are bound together in an attempt to maintain life in the physical body. We are designed to survive certain stressors and challenges, not to die for worthless causes. There may be causes that have merit, but we were given intelligence so that we could try to resolve issues without banging each other on the head with rocks or killing thousands or millions so as to bring down one or two psychopaths.

What the purposes were of the two world wars, the Korean War, the "conflict" in Vietnam, or modern incursions in the Middle East should make us ponder. I spent 19 months in Vietnam during the height of the conflict and never saw a reason for being there much less a will to prevail. It seemed utterly purposeless; and as I looked around, I often said to myself and occasionally others, "They are going to have a hard time in Hollywood trying to make films of this mess." The reason was simple, there were few, if any, heroes, and no ideology worth a drop of anyone's blood. Unlike the Middle East with its oil, the main export of Vietnam in those days was duck feathers, Agent Orange having already destroyed the rubber industry. Well, I suppose we could ask who benefits in an insane situation like that, perhaps the makers of synthetic rubber?

Since we know now without a shadow of doubt that there never was a Gulf of Tonkin incident, just a lot of yelling and screaming by the usurper of the White House, we have to believe that at the highest levels of politics, Vietnam was just a means to distract attention from domestic issues such as the Kennedy assassination and integration. Some believe that the conflict was an extension of the Cold War and that behind the scenes, there was maneuvering to force the collapse of Soviet Union. That the word "communism" is used to engender negative feelings is also a way to protect the wealth and prerogatives of the super rich. Jargon can therefore also serve as distraction because a country like the United States really ought not to care about the economic philosophy of any other country. Until recently, we were essentially xenophobes and isolationists.

Everyone on the Planet has a right to care about security and therefore to have adequate means of defense, but how exactly the economy is structured is really not a military or political issue, unless, of course, the bankers and economists have control of the government.

We cannot understand banking without reference to the history of money. There are some interesting videos on youtube.com about money. Civilization was able to function without money for a long time. Once money became the primary instrument of exchange and ultimately of ownership and control, the influence of money and banking became a political issue and gave rise to a variety of theories of exactly how wealth ought to be distributed. Communism is simply one theory of economics, one that relies very heavily on concepts of class struggle and the role of governmental power in this ongoing issue between those who have not and those who have in excess.

When I first wrote, circa 1972, that the United States was heading towards becoming a post-industrial agrarian society, many people thought I was a lunatic. After all, we were allegedly winning the race in space and countless other technology races so the idea that we would become an agrarian society made no sense to most people; therefore, few bothered to ask why I was suggesting such would happen. I thought it was obvious: if we do not invest in education but rather in wars, then a day will come when we cannot maintain the lead. At that point, the race will focus on how to maintain power through military might rather than technological advantage.

Given the nature of the weapons that might be used to maintain power, whoever pulls off a surprise is the ostensible winner, providing there is no blow back or time for a second response. Since this cannot be guaranteed, we have been semi-blessed by a stalemate. I.e., the fact that many possess the same horrific weapons makes for a deterrent against nuclear war so more or less "conventional" wars are fought in which those who want to win feel that their hands are tied.

With the deterrent in place, wars can go on and on; but, based on recent history, it can be argued that no country actually needs to fear losing a war to the U.S. They do however have to fear bombs, death, and destruction. It is impossible to see how anyone who achieves a position of dominance through such dastardly methods could ever win a popularity contest so this means that control has be seized; and elections, if even held, will be mockeries of the idea that there is actually choice. Finally, a time comes when the pendulum has swung too far and the people want to take the power away from the politicians and invent a system that is equitable, just, and hopefully also peaceful. Then we see that the sacrifices were made for no reason at all. Moreover, with the swing of the pendulum, it is easy to believe that balance will only come by embracing at least part of the philosophy we once hated, including the idea that being more clever or working harder justifies earnings that are hundreds to thousands or even millions of times higher than survival wages that now afflict a significant portion of the world's inhabitants, including probably 40% of the U.S. population. In short, we would see that plutocracy creates social ills, and we would seek something humane and fair.

What is left after war is land. Wealth might have been redistributed and titles to property may have changed, but the land itself will still be there, probably desperately in need of conscientious caretaking. With our budgetary incompetence, it is possible that many titles to land will be held by foreigners. So, what generally happens is that a new leader emerges who promises to nationalize everything — banks, factories, and land — and, then depending on the prevailing winds, there is a redistribution, i.e., socialism, or the government tries to control everything that was once part of the private sector, and then we have communism, and it will, of course, fail because incompetent people who love power more than human rights will end up at the top. This seems to happen in politics regardless of the name of the party and the philosophy touted by the party.

So, what really happens in war? The outcome is determined by a combination of will and might. If the two energies were found on the same side, the outcome would be entirely predictable, but for some time now, the might has been on one side and the will on the other. In fact, this would tend to be the case because aggression, injustice, and wasted lives make excellent propaganda for the victims and therefore tend to strengthen the will to oppose. In theory, and it is merely a theory but one I saw in documents in Vietnam, there is a point beyond which no one will make further sacrifices. In our love for quantification of subjective factors, we believe we can come up with a percent that discloses the point beyond which surrender is the only option because the line between willingness to sacrifice and the will to survive has been crossed. In reality, what we saw in Vietnam is that the Vietnamese line was much higher. I.e., the Vietnamese would probably have continued to wage a guerrilla war even if a million, two million, or five million died in the process because they had the propaganda advantage. That read something like, "We are not bombing your cities, why are you bombing ours?" You can see how easy it is to recruit with slogans like this. However, for the U.S., the line was much lower. First we had the dissidents who refused to be part of the war, and then we had the low morale of the military which had already exceeded the maximum sacrifice that could be tolerated. No one knows the exact numbers but let us say that the U.S. lacked the will to persevere when a fraction of one percent of the population was posted in Vietnam, more than 95% of whom returned home without bodily injuries. All probably suffered psychologically. I am not making light of war. I am pointing out the absolute insanity of the notion that might makes right or that any issues can or should be solved by intimidation, force, or war.

Obviously, the first thing people do when I spew my pacifistic words is to bring up Hitler or the Holocaust. The reality is that people are complicit in atrocities, and truth would set them free from the myth that serving a psychopath is somehow patriotic. The game is over when the capacity to recruit is over. Going back to the Vietnam days, the flower children did the world a huge favor by choosing not to participate in a war created by people with an agenda that was secret. The agenda must always be secret because no one would cooperate if the truth were known.

Since Vietnam, I increased my study of history and am totally convinced that the reason we study wars and elect generals to office is because of a serious flaw in the psyche of the psychopaths . . . who control our propaganda, from education to mass media. By nature, psychopaths have to control, and the more evil they do, the more paranoid they become. The more paranoid they are, the more they feel the need to control. Insanity is the only possible outcome of this spiral.

The human heart and the divine soul would never kill another human being, but the lust for power or assets makes some people crazy enough to put whole nations at risk, even the Planet itself. Thus, I declare this day a day of remorse for mistakes made by members of our species. It is a day to grieve until compassion is born in the heart and all desire to dominate and control is rejected. It is a day to acknowledge the universal right to peace and safety. It is a day to put away all sense of entitlement and reach out in friendship to everyone.

If everyone tried this just one day, the world would probably be transformed in a week.

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2014

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