The mass media's way of communicating war is basically to put fake tough-guy narcissists on your TV screen speaking to the equivalent of a pre-oedipal 2 year old: “There are scary people out there...you need to be terrified...heroic saviors will attack and destroy their bad countries for you so you can maintain your mental fantasy that you're safe. All you need to do is keep shopping, buying your little toys, while daddy keeps you safe.”
You can already see psychology and spirituality issues in that dialogue. But what about economics? One of the Council on Renewal's tenets is that we currently live in a world where economics reigns supreme over every other dimension of life, including spirituality and psychology.
This is literally embedded in the fabric of our legal system which says that the interests of private capital holders trump everything else in our system...everything...towns, counties, states, nations, families, individual humans. Given this system where economics reigns, to understand the truth behind almost anything, you simply have to follow the big money to see what's driving it...
So who makes money from war?
- Mega banks in the cartel behind the Federal Reserve.
- Military suppliers (Eisenhower called them the military/industrial complex).
- Private mercenary contractors.
- National media cartel.
- Mega infrastructure and oil/mineral/resource corporations.
That's pretty much all that needs to be said to understand why we're in a perpetual war. But there's a particular psychological element to it as well...
Who gains power from war?
- Royal families and the sick narcissists who pursue political power to rule the populations of the world.
This nexus of monetary gain (economics) and narcissistic power (psychology) explains most of human history, especially war. And what is the impact on individual spirituality, psychology, and economics?
Spirituality: our sense of meaning in life is increasingly tied to whichever war-fighting nation we're stuck in. Our very identity starts to depend upon the battle, much like diehard sports fans get meaning in life from their team's victories and their heroes (i.e. look at the angst suffered by so many because 1 random dude Lebron James chose a new employer).
Psychology: the infantilizing nature of war on national populations is profound. War allows the corporate media to keep the masses in perpetual fear, and like a child in an abusive family, such fear results in oppressed psychology. It sets up the daddy/child, strong/weak, savior/sheep mentality, which just fuels the narcissistic structure of society where psychopaths rule and everyone else hopes they keep them safe.
Economics: the population is forced into deeper debt slavery in war. It's just a big transfer of money from the masses to the political narcissists and corporate/banking psychopaths, as
Marine General Smedley Butler said.
So war is a great example of a negative economic system feeding negative cycles in spirituality and psychology as discussed in
Lesson 6 part 3 of Renaissance 2.0.
How to stop it? Of course fixing the monetary system is the most important step since the math of debt-money is what fuels the imperial oligarchy. But when it comes to the issue of war specifically, we simply need to remember what founder James Madison said instead of listening to idiots in the media:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.... [There is also an] inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and ... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.
Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
Pretty simple, isn't it? Permanent standing armies are bad news. The Swiss have understood this for hundreds of years–the people must be ready to defend themselves in community rather than outsourcing their security to a few tough guys. Adult human beings must discard the notion that other people will keep us safe or we are simply infantile, child-like creatures. Free people provide for their own freedom. Otherwise by definition,
they are not free.
Damon has had two fairly different lives—one as an overachiever serving the financial empire, and another as a hopeful advocate for the victims of the empire: local community, indigenous population, the American republic, and the individual heart. He graduated from the United States Military Academy, served as an officer in the US Army, then graduated from Harvard Business School, took a short detour on Wall Street, and had a career in Silicon Valley in several leadership positions in technology corporations. Since leaving empire service, he became a mountaineer, attended Mars Hill Graduate School, and now works toward redemption as a writer and post-neoclassical economic philosopher. See the beginnings of his course on Renaissance 2.0 here.
Damon can be reached at: strabes23@gmail.com
