Greed & Gain - Underlining Causes for Wars; How to handle unexpressed, ignored, and denied aggressiveness? Violation against nature, life or the earth

Malaysiakini is not at war with the MSM as it exits not for Greed & Gain and is more concern with news and views that matter

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The article Wars are not acts of God; By SUZALIE MOHAMAD ANTANG; Fellow, Ikim, STAR Dec 18 2007 (see Bottom) lacks an understanding of the nature of aggressiveness in violence, necessity and underling causes of wars and the violations of human kind.

The problem of war will sooner or later teach you that when you kill another man, basically you will end up killing yourself. The call on the scientists to halt the production of weapons of destruction is a futile attempt if we fail to understand the underlining causes of wars. As long as you fight for greed and gain, there will be no peace

What is usually forgotten is the real nature of aggressiveness which in its truest sense simply means forceful action. This does not necessarily imply physical force but instead the power of energy directed into material action. Aggressiveness is the base of the magnificent bursting of creativity. Many individuals in time of war may imagine himself killing the enemy with the greatest feelings of holy joy and righteousness.
The problem is not how to deal with healthy normal aggressiveness but how to handle it when it has remained unexpressed, ignored, and denied over a long period of time. It is impossible to try to erase true aggressiveness. To do so would obliterate life as you know it. Any attempt to impair the flow of true aggression results in a distortive, uneven pseudo aggression that causes wars, individual neurosis and a great many problems in all areas of our life.

Wars are self-perpetuating because they combine both natural and unnatural guilt, compounded and reinforced by memory. Conscious killing beyond the need of sustenance is a violation. The collection of unrecognized artificial guilt builds up through the centuries has lead to the build up of repressed energy that its release has resulted in violent actions in wars. Thus the hatred of one generation of adults whose parents were killed in a war generates the next one.

The animals seemed to have a better sense of justice and their instincts and their natural situations kept their numbers in bounds and with unconscious and unknowing courtesy they made room for all others. Thou shall not violate against nature, life or the earth and the principle applies to life and death. Overpopulation is a violation. In both war and overgrowth, the human species has ignored its natural guilt. When a man kills another, regardless of his other beliefs, certain portion of his conscious mind is always aware of the violation, justify it though he may.
When women give birth in a crowded world they also know a violation is involved. And when we are destroying other species and disrupting the natural balance of the environment, consciously we are aware of the violation. When such natural guilt is not faced other mechanisms must be employed. Presently we have the condition in which overpopulation is compensated by wars and if not by wars then by diseases.

Yet who must die - the young who would be the parents of children? A better understanding of the nature of natural guilt integrity would save us from such predicaments. As creatures we are part of nature. The change of thoughts, feelings and beliefs into physical, objectively perceived phenomena is as natural as water changing into ice under certain condition. Interior events can appear in physical reality in quite different form than the original. We are taught that faith can move mountains yet many find it difficult to accept your own relation with the environment. Our beliefs cause many wars as a war is one kind of natural event brought about as feelings and beliefs interact at one level just as a natural catastrophe at a different level. And mind does move matter as each of us participate in the creation of rain, thunderstorm, flood or an earthquake.

The reality we have in this world is a replica of our thoughts. If you do not like the world, you must change your thoughts. No exterior manipulation will change the face of your experience one iota if you do not change your dreams and your thoughts.

Our own preoccupation with arms, as a country, is received by others and they do the same. Our own thoughts create wars in our minds and these are materialized and must be faced by our own flesh and blood.
Very unfortunately we equate aggression with strength and we are afraid to elect a peaceful man. And all the other countries feel the same and follow suit and are afraid to put into power, by whatever means, peaceful men as leaders. And the present world situation is the result of our individual beliefs, en masse.
The answer is to elect people into power who believe in the active nature of peace and NO longer believe that Good is Weak and Evil is Powerful.

Another cause is an overall sense of powerlessness that makes nations to initiate wars regardless or world dominance. The Second World War erupted into a mass blood bath on a grand scale. Many who entered the world feeling powerless were given advantages after it was over like incentives and education which were denied them before. They returned home as heroes though many were disillusioned but learned something from their experiences.
Wars can be likened to illnesses; a war is a small infection and a world war would be a major massive disease.
Wars would finally teach us to revere life and natural catastrophes will remind us that you cannot ignore your planet or our creature hood. Who will ultimately shoulder the great privilege and joyful responsibility for our behavior, welfare and destiny of mankind but the innate wisdom of our own individual being? If you want PEACE, prepare for PEACE and NOT War. Peace to all.

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Tuesday December 18, 2007; STAR

Wars are not acts of God; By SUZALIE MOHAMAD ANTANG; Fellow, Ikim

The essence of peace is embedded in us. But due to a misrepresentation of the truth, the evolution of the human animal has been the evolution of violence and power struggle as we destroy ourselves, each other, and the very foundations of our lives. WHEN wars and violence are waged against governments and nations, it is the citizens who suffer the most. Between Aug 12 to 19, 2007, Opinion Research Business (ORB), an independent British polling agency, conducted a poll on civilian casualties during the war in Iraq and found that 1,220,550 citizens were violently killed.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad once said that “war is about killing people”. The former prime minister reiterated that killing people is regarded as a crime in any human society claiming to be civilised. Even if the killing were justified, it would be wrong, it would still be a crime, it would be murder. No one may take the law into his own hands and execute a person even if that person were a murderer. This explains that depriving someone the right to a peaceful life is a crime against humanity. The biblical maxim “an eye for an eye” (Matthew 5:38-39; Exodus 21:23-27) is explained further in the Quran (al-Baqarah, verse 178) in relation to the law of equality and law of mercy. The verse stipulates that it is permitted for the heirs of a murder victim to demand for exact and equivalent retribution (Qisas), but at the same time, mankind is encouraged to accept less compensation than that inflicted upon them, or to forgive altogether. Islam does not deny man his God given right to seek retribution; but it also promotes forgiveness and acceptance of blood money, not as a mandatory requisite but rather as a good deed that will eventually be rewarded.

This is to prevent mankind from falling into the trap of ‘returning evil for evil’, which will never end. According to my understanding, if you must take a life for a life, at least there should be some measure of equality. The killing of the slave of a tribe should not involve a blood feud where many free men would be killed, but the law of mercy with reasonable compensation would be better.

I believe such a principle is meant to save more lives as well as the innocent from suffering the repercussions of retaliation, which leads to more problems. In this connection, the Quranic verse (al-Maidah 5:35) says: “On that account: We ordained for the children of Israel that if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people. “And if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them our apostles with clear signs, yet, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.” This verse was directed to the Jews who rebelled against God, who murdered prophets with a universal message. The important lesson we can derive from this verse is that the continued promotion of a culture of peace is incumbent upon us all. But how would it be possible to promote peace if our inner selves are not at peace?

The religion guarantees the protection of all life. It is nothing but protection and the divine love, and the divine will of Allah expressed in the form of human existence, and the original purity of the human spirit. The spirit of all life originates from God. There can be no enemy greater than oneself. Thus, we are back to our discussion that the essence of peace is embedded in us. Due to a misrepresentation of the truth, the evolution of the human animal has been the evolution of violence and power struggle as we destroy ourselves, each other, and the very foundations of our lives. Our self-defences have gone awry, and we are rapidly regressing down the road to self-destruction.

The argument is that violence in humanity is inevitable, and the claim that we are governed, without choice, by instinct honed over millions of years. But to blame the violence of today on animal instinct is a convenient escape from responsibility, denying the very thing that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.
The same creative intelligence endowed by God with the capacity for survival has graced human form with creative spirit, compassion, and the unique power to learn and reason. But when this creative flow is developed with negative intent, the results are destruction and violence. At the touch of a button millions of people may die, whole cities may be destroyed, leaving the poison to defile the earth for generations to come. We cannot see and feel the pain of the enemy.

Our hands are clean, not stained by their blood, but the invisible stain on our spirit can never be erased. The enemy is not human, it feels no pain.
The destruction and violence of war, no matter how far we may be removed, is obvious. But within our daily lives there is an insidious violence which is perhaps not quite so obvious, and is just as surely affecting our consciousness and is destroying our world. The destructive channels taken by the instincts of aggression are reflected in our modern institutions, the negative symbols of our culture. The complexities of law enforcement agencies and the overflowing penal institutions are indicators of fear and hatred. Requirements for hospital beds and mental institutions are increasing at an alarming rate as our minds succumb to the pressures of insecurity and the stress caused by modern life.
Sanitation and waste disposal systems are overburdened with waste which cannot be disposed of. We are burying ourselves and our world under a mountain of garbage, an exchange of abundant natural resources for overwhelming waste. Driven by greed and thinking selfishness, we have forgotten the beauty of nature’s great economical recycling system. Humanity has become a global parasite. Robbing the earth of its riches and the lives of other existents, we create poison, an economic dead end. What is the way out?

We are an educated society, but there is a flaw deep within our system of education. Following our example, and following the education they receive, and the standards by which they are judged, our children are overloaded with desire for material success. In the drive for material security, we have lost the excitement, wonder, and spiritual richness of close communion with nature. We have lost our souls. Albert Einstein once said “we must inoculate our children against militarism, by educating them in the spirit of pacifism. Our schoolbooks glorify war and conceal its horrors. They indoctrinate children with hatred. I would teach peace rather than war, love rather than hate”. Therefore, since wars begin in the minds of humanity, it is in the minds of humanity that the defences of peace must be constructed.

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