Confused about the State of the World?

The fundamental calamity of the modern world is that every nation is run by politicians.

They fight each other for power by selling competing dreams to voters and non-voters, who then accept their control over their societies.

Every few years, there we are, screaming with delight as we wave our flags of loyalty to another politician with another dream called hope.com.

We never seem to notice that whether we are offered new stars for the show or the same old ones, those colorful dreams soon fade into black-and-white, and nothing really changes.

Year in, year out, the sorry-go-round continues.

Eventually, enough people complain. So, round we go again. More screaming. More flags.

Out with the old. In with the new. And nothing really changes.

Apparently it wasn’t Einstein who said that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” but it could have been. Or perhaps it was his fox terrier, Chico! Or any of the rest of life on planet earth that has earned its evolutionary success by adjusting intelligently to changing situations.

And not robotically repeating the same failed strategies in the face of the same challenges.

Perhaps we should have a raffle for outstanding examples of human stupidity in this area.

The current top entry is the group of US-Americans who are devoted to a politician who claims that Global Warming is a hoax, while huge swathes of the planet are on fire! (Hey Nero, this could be your break!)

A close second is the British public who thought they could row off into the Atlantic to escape the European hordes, and find their old empire, which would be full of grateful natives calling out for the return of Memsaab.

Of course, you can call them the deplorables, but that is an understandable emotional reaction, not a diagnosis. And not helpful.

What is really going on?

The real problem is that we are caught in an almost invisible loop.

Everything is framed by the belief systems that everyone is persuaded to accept as the truth.

So, every question is seen through a frame that prevents the actual truth from being seen.

For example, if an individual kills several people over an extended period of time, they are regarded as serial killers. The labeling triggers the belief system that some people are just intrinsically evil and are labeled as psychopathic personalities.

Just mention “The Silence of the Lambs” or “American Psycho” or any of the other Hollywood depictions of this kind of individual, and we all shudder at such inexplicable horror.

What happens if Trump stops USAID, which results in the death of literally millions of people^{1, 2, 3, 4}, including millions of children? Or supposing he arms some proxy in the Middle East who commits genocide. And then attacks another country that objects, by assassinating their leaders?

The belief system says that this is simply political policy.

No one is suggesting this is the work of a Hannibal Lecter. But why not? What is the difference?

Those innocent victims of this “policy” also have friends and families… and their deaths are no less significant, just rather more numerous.

But this is not Trump alone. Don’t forget he has 30 million devotees who hang on his every word. Beyond the immediate followers are also all the rest of the voters in the US. When does all this carnage start to matter to them? Ah, yes, the price of gasoline is increasing. Now, enough is enough!

And what about all the other governments around the world, full of politicians, which are supporting that genocide, or at least are not condemning it?

And there is nothing particularly US-American about this. There is the small issue of missiles raining down on Ukraine! How many of these same governments condemned that? Hanibal Putin is also not alone.

When does the average Russian start to be concerned? Ah yes. When the price of gasoline starts to go up. Now, enough is enough.

Ok, so let’s look just a little wider at this.

Who is supplying the jackboots for the Myanmar goon squads? Sorry, I mean the democratically elected government officials who are accused of genocide against the Rohingya people, but only Crimes Against Humanity against the other ethnic groups they want to destroy in that country.

According to the Geneva Academy ⁵, there are 110 armed conflicts in the world.

So let’s add just one more: Sudan.

With just these few examples – 4 out of the 110 conflicts going on today – the pattern is clear.

World governments are responsible for enabling today’s conflicts and genocides through direct military funding, commercial trade, diplomatic shields, and deliberate inaction. And the UN has failed repeatedly to make a dent in the prevention and perpetuation of these atrocities.

All these state entities are ruled by politicians… and all of them are complicit in one serial killing or another.

And that is just using these four killing zones as the criteria. Suppose we were to use other criteria, like the reduction in aid, as in the example with USAID above. So many countries have also taken that route, and the resultant deaths are in their millions.

Or what about the countries that caused most of the CO2 pollution that lies behind the climate devastation so many people on the planet are now suffering from?

Or who is going to pick up the pieces when some AI-fueled Loonie creates a lethal pathogen and releases it into the world? You think Musk’s trillions will be available?

Yes. The proposition is that the world is run by Hannibal Lecters who run their own walled kingdoms called countries.

And the reason you find this to be a ridiculous notion is that everyone in every walled kingdom is persuaded to believe that their own particular Hannibal Lecter is really a good guy who is on their side. Or at least he is our Hannibal Lecter.

That is how we see the world, yes, you and me! Once we are drowned in the hypnotic fog of belief, we can’t see anything beyond that belief. It looks true to us.

Our blindness is invisible.

That is why we are inevitably confused about the state of the world.

It is called conditioning, indoctrination, programming, persuasion, socialization, brainwashing….

Once you stop and look around, you realize that essentially, only people brought up to be British are British. Take any baby, stick him or her into any cultural milieu, and hey presto, you have the perfect German, or American, or Indian, or Chinese…. Or anything else in your cookbook!

And British people choose politicians to tell them what to do. That is what we all do.

That is an integral part of being British. And British politicians create gangs, so if by chance you get tired of one politician, it’s not a problem. We have another one waiting in the wings who is similar, but better. And when you have tired of one gang, not a problem, we can offer you another. Then things will really change. Believe it or not.

Osho helps complete the picture:

“You cannot separate yourself from that which you grow up with. That is why you are unable to know your body as separate from yourself – because you grow up with it. Hence the identity, the oneness with the body. That is why you do not know your mind as separate from yourself: because one grows up with it, identification happens.

“Here the sage and the disciple raise the first question in this Upanishad: What is bondage?

“Understand it like this: the disciple is asking the sage, ‘What is this bondage?’ This Upanishad is a deep dialogue, a conversation. If he who is always in bondage can recognize his bondage, he can then have an idea, a dream, a concept, or a sense of freedom.

“The person who has always lived in prison, in his chains, cannot understand a positive definition of freedom.

“He can understand freedom only as an absence of chains – when the walls of his prison will cease to exist, when there will be no guard with a gun to prevent him from doing whatever he wishes, to prevent him from going wherever he wishes to go. He can understand only by such negative definitions. But before he can understand this, it is also necessary to recognize that there are walls to his prison, to see the prison itself, to see the guards at the gate, the chains around his hands.

“A great mystic from the Caucasus, Gurdjieff, used to say: I have heard about a magician who had tamed many sheep. Every day he would have one sheep killed in order to prepare his food. Hundreds of sheep stood and watched this, but even then it never occurred to them that if not today then tomorrow they would also be killed.

“A guest who was staying with that magician said, ‘These sheep are strange. You kill a sheep in front of all the other sheep every day, and even then they are not worried. Can’t they conceive of their own death the next day, that any day the dagger will be plunged into their necks?’

“The magician replied, ‘I have hypnotized them and told them individually that they are not sheep, that all the rest are sheep; all the others will be killed, except them. That is why they are carefree; they don’t run away when they see others being killed.’

“The guest asked, ‘And it is even more surprising that you do not tether them. Don’t they go astray? Don’t they get lost?’

“He said, ‘I have also told them that they are totally free, they are never in bondage – because one wants to run away from bondage, but when one is already free there is no question of running away. The desire to run away comes when one is in bondage, but when there is no bondage and one is totally free then fleeing is not needed.’

“Gurdjieff used to say that man is almost in this situation: he considers his prison to be his palace. So there is no question of leaving it; in fact if someone comes to help him to get out of it, he defends himself as though against an enemy who is trying to get him out of his palace.

“Man treats his chains as his ornaments, they are a decoration for him. If you want to take away his ornaments he will stand with his sword and fight.

“We do not crucify Jesus without reason, we do not poison Socrates without reason. They are our enemies because they try to take away our ornaments. What they call our chains are our ornaments, and what they call our prison is our kingly abode; what they call our slavery is our life, and what they call our sorrows are our pleasures.

“So Gurdjieff used to say, the first thing a prisoner must know if he wants to be free is that he is a prisoner; everything else is secondary.

“If a slave is to get free, he first needs to understand that he is a slave.

“This should penetrate his consciousness so deeply that he feels an acute agony and becomes filled with a longing for freedom.”⁶

END