In the run up to Remembrance Day on November 11th, I would like to share this summarised excerpt from Alex Caldon’s book “The Quest for Truth… on finding the Grail”. Alex (aka Chris for those who knew him) was a peace campaigner, a published Earth Scientist, Greenpeace activist, a member of Mensa … and a carpenter. He lived an ethical and minimal life on a canal boat and was an inspirational friend who shared his truths gently and generously.
In the summer of 2004, two light tanks rolled in to a field, in England. A school summer fair was taking place. Hundreds of children were there having fun, most of the children were aged from 4-7 years.
In amongst the tombola, the cake raffle and the boot throwing arrived two armoured killing machines complete with rotating gun turrets and grenade launchers. The children were too young to properly understand the situation, and many of the adults were also unwilling to see the truth – the bizarre juxtaposition of killing machines in a school celebration. On that day several hundred children were conditioned to think that war is a glamorous adventure.
This story illustrates how truth and the persecution of truth connect events in everyday life to global conflicts. Events on the micro scale which escalate up to generate an unhealthy Global Psyche.
The map of reality inside our minds is programmed by the information reaching it from our senses. But it can also be programmed by information we receive from other people, whether that information is correct or inaccurate. The accuracy of our mind-maps varies between individuals. When our map is accurate we are mentally healthy: when our map of reality differs significantly from actual reality, we are suffering from the mental illness of delusion. Inviting the tanks to the summer fair was distorting the children’s mind maps with incorrect information; the event was creating in the young minds the mental illness – delusion. They were taught that war is fun. In reality, war is the exact opposite of fun. The reality of war is millions of grieving families and life-long physical and psychological trauma. Understandably the reality of war was kept from the children at the fair, and this sheltering from the truth allowed the delusion to persist. It may be argued that the delusion caused is mild, but this is not the case. The difference between “fun” and “war” could not be more extreme and therefore the delusion given to the children at the fair should be classed as severe.
The delusion of war as glamorous actually creates the mental illness – war.
We create this delusion in our children when we allow them to play with war toys, and when we allow them to watch violent war-oriented television programmes and films, and computer games.
The armed forces actively promote the same delusion through their public relations units. Look at the advertising. How often do you see soldiers in promotional material doing exciting things like abseiling or travelling the world? Army recruitment units can be seen out and about encouraging young people to think war is fun – wooing them in with such innocuous and irrelevant events as paintball competitions. They do not show us in their promotional material the reality of body bags, mutilation etc. The forces actively pass on their mental illness to anyone with a weak enough mind to take on their delusion. But we can be strong and see the reality behind the falsehood.
This distortion of the perception of war is what most of us adults also received in our childhoods, and many of us apparently rational people are actually suffering the delusion that war is an acceptable part of life. It is because the adults who invited the tanks to the school fair were already suffering from the delusion that they themselves were unable to see the insanity of putting killing machines in amongst hundreds of young children, even after the insanity was pointed out to them. At the fair the illness was passed from one generation down to the next. As things are going the next generation will also grow up with the same delusion and then they will pass it down the line to the generation after them. And this process will continue unless we see clearly what is going on, and act to break the cycle.
Breaking through our own conditioning is a great challenge. The neural pathways in or minds give us our false perception that war is okay. By the time we are adults, these pathways have become strongly developed and can be more difficult to re-program. The inaccurate programming in our minds becomes our ego, and as adults we are reluctant to let go of this ego by admitting we were wrong. When we admit we were wrong, we are scared of looking foolish or guilty. Being told “war toys are wrong” is likely to dent the egos of those adults who made the mistake of buying toy guns for their kids. And instead of making a better world by accepting this truth, those people will often defend their public image by persecuting the truth. In order to put war into the past we have to surrender our egos, admit we have been getting things wrong and be receptive to change. When we want to change our opinions, it is easier for our incorrect neural pathways to be re-programmed. When we recognise that changing shows great inner strength and when we overtly praise people who change, we will want to change. So it is absolutely vital for our future for us to praise openly and passionately those people who choose to change. Praising people who change for the better is a crucial part of the campaign to stop war.
The concept for stopping war may be deemed to be impracticable – it may be suggested that a pacifist country cannot possibly protect itself from an aggressor. If a country correctly conditions its population to become pacifists, how, it may be argued, will we deal with aggressive tyrants like Hitler? But a pacifist country can stop wars. At first sight, fighting an aggressive war-mongering nation by teaching our children that war is mad seems to be impossibly hopeless. But it is not, it is the most rational hope. Stopping war by conditioning children is not a unilateral action, it is a multi-lateral solution. When the system is correctly applied, the minds of the aggressive nation will also be programmed to know that war is irrational, and then when a dictator calls on his people to go to war, they won’t! The war situation can and must be prevented: when war breaks out it is already too late.
When discussing the insanity of war-toys, one can often hear the response: “Well it never made me want to go out and shoot someone”. It is true that any particular individual may survive all this insane conditioning, and never actually go to war, but the fact remains that millions of people who are introduced to the idea of war really do choose to go out and shoot someone! The cold reality is that the people who do go out and shoot people were at some point introduced to the idea of war by war toys, tanks in schools and military propaganda. The fact that there are people in the military proves that people do get seduced into this irrational behavioural pattern.
We can use Kant’s morality test here. What would the world be like if everyone was conditioned not to go to war? Well obviously, there would be no war! Sounds too easy doesn’t it?
A situation exists whereby the mentally healthy people, who campaign to stop war, are in the minority, and the people who consider war acceptable are in the majority. The majority persecute the truth – just as Jesus was persecuted for declaring such basic truths as promoting peace, looking after the poor etc. John Lennon, one of history’s most active peace campaigners experienced this, and described it in a television interview when he said “They think I’m mad, but I think they’re mad”. Being in the enlightened and loving minority was also experienced by Gandhi – the most ardent advocate of truth and non-violence in living memory. “Even if I am a minority of one, the truth is still the truth”, is how he described it.
Lennon, Gandhi, and Christ all paid the ultimate price for following truth – yet we can look back and realise they were right.
The World Health Authority (WHO) is the highest body responsible for the world’s health and therefore should take it upon itself to implement a strategy for curing the global mental illness – War - and take responsibility for promoting good mental health which will prevent wars of the future.