I ended the last post with an except by Walter Lippman on the absurdity and insanity of war, and in this case, WWI. Now did the common people really have any specific buy-in to the Austro-Hungarian Arch-Duke who was assassinated, in recently annexed Serbia, at the end of June 1914. Hierarchical squabbles and political intrigues might have been upset, but did the local farmers, bakers, tailors, candlestick makers, et. al. really feel they needed to go to war 4 weeks later and consequently murder over 20 million people to show they were put-out by the political events of the time? Then in 1939, to show how much we enjoyed mayhem and murder we did it again (WWII) and prompted the murder of 60 plus million people, because it was justified this time to stop Axis totalitarian leaders from winning. And all this while trying not to think about the one allied totalitarian regime (USSR) that had recently murdered over 26.2 million of its own people to enforce a mindset that obviously wasn’t working quite as well as the revolution in 1917 had hoped it would. And despite a mere 13 million killed during WWII, went on to kill yet another 22.4 million of its own citizens after that war (see link).
In a recent post I talked about war a little (Miscellaneous Musings – Part 15: War: What is it good for? {October 2023}). It’s easy to say that the USSR had been an oddity in its killing behavior. Yet, while the Nazi holocaust had shown how barbaric people can be when the hierarchy convinces them to kill the ‘other.’ There are numerous examples before and since (see link). People can be riled up to kill ‘the other’ for all manner of things (see the Mark Twain except about Witch hunting in my last post). I can confidently say that whenever you look at any bunch of people going out to kill another bunch of people (pick your favorite reason) there is always a psychopathic leader prominently somewhere in the picture riling them up to do so!
Bennett Sherry of the OER Project writes; “Genocide is organized murder. There are many conditions that leaders must exploit when they start killing civilians within the borders of their country. However, it is the indifference or collaboration of people in other countries that allows genocide to continue. Protection of national sovereignty has repeatedly trumped the lives of civilians. In most cases, the great powers of the world and the United Nations have either failed to act or acted to fail.
Organized violence against groups of people is common to most places and time periods. You’ve read about the Armenian genocide in the early twentieth century. But in the second half of the twentieth century, the international community reaffirmed “the dignity and worth of the human person” in the United Nations Charter. The UN passed a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide in 1948. But it was not enforced until 50 years later, when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda tried those responsible for the Rwandan genocide. Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Sudan, and Myanmar were all party to the convention while genocides occurred within their borders
Why Does Genocide Still Happen? Again, and again, the powerful nations of the world have turned a blind eye to atrocities. Why? In each of the six cases above, a member of the UN Security Council restrained UN action. In several cases, powerful nations—states with the money, power, and influence to prevent genocide—actually gave aid to those killing civilians. Genocide still happens because the post-WWII international system was not only designed to protect human rights; it was also designed to ensure the power of the powerful. The veto power of the Security Council ensures that the UN cannot act meaningfully to stop genocide if even one of the five permanent members disagrees. Again, and again powerful countries decide to protect the concept of national sovereignty or to advance their own international agendas rather than stop the mass murder of civilians. The international system is not failing. It is operating exactly as it was designed. If the common language of the international community is indeed human rights, and genocide continues to happen, what does that say about human rights and the collective morality of our global community?”
So how do we finally get past the urge to go to war and kill people, and start to ‘Take Back Our Power’ and live peacefully!!! There are a lot of books out there to help understand this strange psychotic violent aspect of human nature, which I believe was driven by psychopathic leaders using extreme propaganda through recorded human history. My own observations and studies come down to something that happened many millennia ago and started changing for the better over a century ago. The ‘paternalistic system,’ which seems marked by the start of empire civilization some 5-6000 tears ago, very slowly ‘started’ to break down. The sacred feminine, lost so long ago, is coming back to balance out the sacred masculine that has dominated for so long.
Women began to take back their social and political power, no longer willing to be a whispering voice only within the home. Women are infinitely more than home slaves and receptacles for male penises. In many indigenous cultures and long before paternalism arose, people worshipped the Goddess, because only women were seen to create life. And woe betide any men who tried to go to war without consulting the ‘wise mothers’ beforehand. Between 1848 and 1920, the Suffragette movement saw women begin to gain a little political power (if voting is power). But little really changed for women with an entrenched paternal system. The second wave of feminism occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, focusing more on issues of equality and discrimination. This is disturbing for many men as their role has been changing from protector and provider to equal partner within relationships. And that also includes child-rearing of offspring from birth.
Long, long ago, when I first started working, one of my volunteer duties was a casualty first aid officer. During that training, I still vividly recall having a morning of ‘emergency childbirth’ – a lot like a horrendous version of ‘Call the Midwife.’ I said then that even if technology ever allowed men to give birth, I doubt any man would ever birth more than one baby! For millennia, women have been conditioned to give up their sons (and more recently their daughters as well) to the war machine, because of some strangely accepted notions of duty, valor and honor. After all, what else would convince anyone to willingly go to their potential deaths when the best outcome is surviving. People who do serve in the military have my highest gratitude – they just do what they are ordered to do by the hierarchy. But after listening to my female family and friends over the decades, most women do not agree with war, destruction, unnecessary death, and all the traumas that come with it. The paternalistic hierarchies that create wars rarely fight them. If men had babies, they wouldn’t be as eager to send them off to kill and die. They would recognize, like do most mothers, that Life is profound and sacred.
A step in ‘taking-back-our-power’ is to know ourselves physically and spiritually. We all need to explore our androgynous selves. We need to have dialogues about emotions that are not forever compartmentalized into emotional separation. Emotions are a part of everything we do, not only when we feel them as a reaction to some external event to our ego-selves. Men must come to terms with vulnerability, courage, generosity, and compassion and be able to discuss emotions openly without feeling reduced in any way. Even when we think we are in charge it is OK not knowing the next step. It’s a standard joke that most men refuse to ask directions when lost, but that is the change that is occurring. It’s not weakness to discuss issues. Men feel expected to know how to deal with issues. Then the paternalistic system that is hierarchical and set up with structures of power can begin to break down and allow us all to become deeper, wiser, more loving, compassionate, more noble human beings.
The androgenous human will readily say, “Stop, something doesn’t feel right here, I don’t know what it is, but we need to sit and discuss it,” instead of blundering blindly forward with ill-conceived ego-based plans. You rarely hear that because everyone (especially men) are so busy trying to prove they know what to do to keep their egos placated. Just imagine if the goal of true decision-making was to sit and listen to all voices, and let knowledge and solutions emerge organically – that is what an androgynous, more feminine world would more look like than the paternalistic world in which we are currently engrained. Imagine discussing how to not go to war and to find solutions that help everyone thrive. Taking back our own power is what it’s all about, but we have to overcome the ingrained patterns of fear perpetuated on us by psychopathic hierarchies.
To Be Continued ……………
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