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LEWIS CARROLL – PREDATOR : PART TWO

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LEWIS CARROLL WAS JACK THE RIPPER

Jack the Ripper was a notorious serial killer in the 1800s who committed a series of gruesome murders that were never solved.  His victims were all prostitutes who worked in the Whitechapel district of London, which is why the murders became known as the Whitechapel murders.  Jack the Ripper was suspected of having committed eleven killings between 1888 and 1891, of which five are considered ‘canonical’ Ripper victims, meaning they were definitely attributed to him.  The name Jack the Ripper came from a series of letters that were sent to the Central News Agency supposedly by the killer, mocking the police for their inability to catch him.   Jack the Ripper is still considered one of the worst serial killers in history due to the brutal nature of his murders.  There have been speculations over the years about who could have been the killer, with several names put forward as possible suspects. 

In 1996, Richard Wallace wrote a book, Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend, in which he proposed Lewis Carroll as Jack the Ripper.  His theory was thoroughly mocked and outrightly dismissed by people who called themselves experts on Jack the Ripper.  Even though today Lewis Carroll’s name is included in the list of possible suspects, he has always been considered among the least likely to have been Jack the Ripper.  This just tells me that the people who consider themselves ‘experts’ have no idea what they are talking about.  If they were indeed experts, then Lewis Carroll would have been considered among the most likely, if not the actual, culprit in the Jack the Ripper murders.  Once we look at the evidence, it should be obvious that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper, and any reasonable person should consider the case finally closed.

Let’s look at the evidence.

  1. Lewis Carroll identified himself as Jack (aka the Knave) in Alice in Wonderland

When I first encountered the idea that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper, I dismissed it outright, as most people do.  But gradually, as I started entertaining the possibility, I wondered to myself, why Jack?  Where did this name come from?  And then it hit me.  Did you know that in a pack of cards, the ‘J’ stands for Jack?  I didn’t know this until quite recently.  The J, which is also known as the Knave, actually stands for Jack.  The K stands for King, the Q for Queen, and the J for Jack.  In Alice in Wonderland, the main characters are derived from characters in a pack of cards.  There’s the Queen of Hearts, the King of Hearts and the Knave of Hearts.  The Knave is the one who undergoes a trial in the last chapter of Alice in Wonderland for stealing the tarts that the Queen of Hearts had baked.  For those who know the real story of Lewis Carroll, we know that something happened to cause a rupture in his relationship with the Liddell family.  If you read the first part of this series, then you know that the rupture was most likely caused by Carroll being accused of molesting the sisters.  This is what he is referring to when he talks about a trial in which the Knave is accused of stealing the tarts.  By identifying himself as the Knave, Lewis Carroll is telling us that he is Jack.  This is where the name Jack comes from.  This, to me, is the smoking gun.

2. Lewis Carroll alludes to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in his diaries

In November 1888, at the height of the Jack the Ripper murders, Lewis Carroll refers to himself as Dr Jekyll in his diary.  Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a Gothic horror novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886.  It explores the duality of human nature through the story of Dr Henry Jekyll, a respected London physician who creates a potion to separate his good and evil impulses. The result is Edward Hyde, a smaller, younger, and physically repulsive man who embodies Jekyll’s repressed vices and violent tendencies.  As Jekyll uses the potion more frequently, Hyde grows stronger and increasingly uncontrollable. Jekyll loses the ability to transform back at will, and Hyde begins appearing involuntarily. The novella is narrated through the perspective of Gabriel John Utterson, Jekyll’s lawyer and friend, who investigates the mysterious connection between Jekyll and the brutal crimes committed by Hyde. The story culminates in Jekyll’s desperate attempt to reclaim control, ultimately failing as he becomes permanently trapped as Mr Hyde.

The phrase “Jekyll and Hyde” has since entered the common language to describe someone with a sharply contrasting public and private persona—respectable outwardly, yet cruel or immoral in private.  So why would Lewis Carroll refer to himself as Dr Jekyll in his diaries, during the same period when the Whitechapel murders were taking place in London?  It’s obvious.  It’s because his alter ego, Jack, was the one carrying out the gruesome murders.

3. Lewis Carroll’s love of letter writing and ability to change his handwriting at will

Lewis Carroll loved writing letters.  He had hundreds of child-friends, to whom he wrote thousands of letters during his lifetime.  He kept a meticulous register of all the letters he wrote, estimated to have been 98,721 letters over 37 years.  This love of letter writing is something he shared with Jack the Ripper. 

The Jack the Ripper letters were sent to various recipients, primarily in London:

  • Central News Agency – The infamous Dear Boss letter (25 September 1888) and the Saucy Jacky postcard (1 October 1888) were both addressed to this news agency, located in London’s City district. 
  • Scotland Yard and Police Officials – A significant portion (67%) of the hundreds of Ripper letters were sent to law enforcement, including Scotland Yard, Sir Charles Warren (head of the Metropolitan Police), and Inspector Abberline. 
  • George Lusk – Chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, received the From Hell letter (16 October 1888), which contained a human kidney. 
  • Newspapers and the Public – Some letters were sent to other news outlets, private firms, schools, or private citizens, while others had unknown recipients. 

If Lewis Carroll was indeed Jack the Ripper, then it’s not surprising that he would send hundreds of letters to gain notoriety.

Lewis Carroll also had an uncanny ability to change his handwriting at will.  For this, we need look no further than the handwritten copy of Alice’s Adventures Underground, which he gave as a gift to Alice Liddell.  The entire book was written in a childlike handwriting, which was not Lewis Carroll’s normal handwriting.  The fact that he could accomplish such a feat means that he could have written the Dear Boss letter.  Lewis Carroll alludes to this in the last chapter of Alice in Wonderland, in which a set of verses supposedly written by the Knave is read during the trial.  One of the jurymen asks:

“Are they in the prisoner’s handwriting?”

“No, they’re not,” said the White Rabbit, “and that’s the queerest thing about it.” (The jury all looked puzzled.)

“He must have imitated somebody else’s hand,” said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)

The final clue concerning the letters is found in Lewis Carroll’s habit of underlining certain words for emphasis when writing letters.  We can see this in the letter he wrote to Alice Liddell after he borrowed her copy of Alice in Wonderland.  In the Dear Boss letter, which is one of the few that were confirmed to be from Jack the Ripper, we see the same habit of underlining certain words for emphasis.

4. Lewis Carroll had a split personality

Lewis Carroll was the pen name for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer of mathematics and an ordained deacon at Christ Church College, Oxford University.  The interesting thing about Charles Dodgson was that he went to extreme lengths to distance himself from Lewis Carroll.  Letters addressed to Lewis Carroll that came to him would be sent back.  To enforce this separation, Dodgson created a printed document known as the “Stranger Circular”, which he sent to collectors and inquirers.  It stated clearly: 

“Mr Dodgson is so frequently addressed by strangers on the quite unauthorised assumption that he claims or at any rate acknowledges the authorship of books not published under his name, that he has found it necessary to print this, once and for all, as an answer to all such applications. He neither claims nor acknowledges any connection with any pseudonym, or with any book that is not published under his own name.”

This might at first appear as a humorous personality quirk, but I believe it went much deeper.  I believe Lewis Carroll suffered from a split personality, which meant that he could separate his identity as Lewis Carroll from his other identity as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.  In his mind, these were two separate and distinct people.  Once we understand this, it becomes easier to understand why he would take on the identity of Jack the Ripper.  This was another split in his persona that came from an intense desire to commit the crimes that Jack the Ripper committed, which he could not do as either Lewis Carroll or Charles Dodgson.  Jack the Ripper was born for purposes of committing murder, which meant that Charles Dodgson could continue living his normal life without acknowledging his criminal identity, just the same way he tried to live his life without acknowledging his identity as Lewis Carroll.

5. Medical Knowledge

Jack the Ripper was believed to possess medical knowledge because of the way he carried out his murders.  He removed internal organs—such as kidneys and uteruses—from several victims, and the precision and speed of the mutilations suggested familiarity with human anatomy.  However, Dr Thomas Bond, who conducted a detailed post-mortem analysis, concluded the killer had no formal medical or surgical training, noting the ragged, unskilled nature of the cuts—inconsistent with a surgeon or even a butcher.  He believed the killer lacked technical precision, despite knowing organ locations.

While Lewis Carroll obviously did not have medical training, we know that he was interested in vivisection, even writing two influential essays about it: “Some Popular Fallacies About Vivisection” (1875) and “Vivisection as a Sign of the Times” (1875).  This suggests that he studied the subject extensively.  Another clue can be found in the fact that Lewis Carroll had an extensive medical library.  We know this because after his death, his prized Medical Collection was bequeathed to his nephew Bertram James Collingwood, 1871-1934, a physician whose father had died just days before Dodgson.

The above is consistent with Jack the Ripper, who, while not having technical precision, knew where organs were located.

6. Mysterious clergyman who went to look for Mr Lusk

While researching Jack the Ripper, I came across an interesting fact that was reported by one of the witnesses.  Miss Emily Marsh reported encountering a mysterious man dressed in clerical attire on October 15, 1888, at her father’s leather shop on Jubilee Street, Mile End Road, shortly after 1:00 PM. The man inquired about the address of Mr  George Lusk, president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and asked to be directed to him.  When Miss Marsh suggested he visit Mr Joseph Aarons, the committee’s treasurer, the man declined, saying he did not wish to go to a pub. She then read aloud from a newspaper article that listed Lusk’s address as Alderney Street, Globe Road, without a house number, which the man then wrote down in his notebook. 

The man was described as about 45 years old, six feet tall, slimly built, with a sallow complexion, a dark beard and moustache, and wore a long black overcoat, a soft felt hat, and a Prussian or clerical collar. He spoke with what Miss Marsh perceived as an Irish brogue.  She and her father, along with a shopboy named James Cormack, gave a detailed description of the man, who left without calling on Lusk.  This encounter occurred one day before Lusk received the infamous “From Hell” letter and a preserved human kidney.  The letter did not have the house number on the address.

We know that Lewis Carroll was six feet tall, slim and had a sallow complexion.  The beard and moustache were obviously a disguise, which Lewis Carroll must have been good at from his photography work (he had all sorts of costumes that his subjects would wear at his studio).  But the most important clue is that the man had a clerical collar.  We know that Lewis Carroll was an ordained deacon and that he used to wear a clerical collar.  This is what one of his child-friends, Princess Alice, said about him:

“As a little girl, I once arrived at a children’s party and saw a pale old clergyman in black clothes. I glumly assumed that he would spoil everything. Yet, the party soon became Mr Dodgson’s party.”

What this means is that the tall clergyman who went to look for Mr Lusk was in fact Lewis Carroll.

7. Lewis Carroll’s frequent trips to London

It has been said that Lewis Carroll could not have been Jack the Ripper because Lewis Carroll was vacationing at Eastbourne at the time.  This overlooks the fact that Lewis Carroll frequently travelled by train to London to meet with publishers, to meet with relatives and to go to the theatre.  We know that he used to make trips to London to attend the theatre even when he was vacationing at Eastbourne.  So, the idea that he could not have committed the murders because he was at Eastbourne is baseless.  London already had a very well-established railway system in the 1800s, so nothing would have been easier than to take the train to London, commit the crimes, then take the train back to Eastbourne.  The distance between London and Eastbourne is around one hour by train, and this was a trip he frequently undertook.  Therefore, this supposed alibi is not an alibi at all.  It would not be the first time that a serial killer travelled to a different town or city to commit a crime.  Many serial killers do this.

8. Lewis Carroll’s hidden sadistic nature

Consider the passage below, which Lewis Carroll wrote to Enid Shawyer, a child-friend, dated April 7, 1891.

“So you think you’ve got the courage to come for a walk by yourself with me? Indeed! Well, I shall come for you on April 31st at 13 o’clock, and first I will take you to the Oxford Zoological Gardens, and put you into a cage of LIONS, and when they’ve had a good feed, I’ll bring you to my rooms, and give a regular beating, with a thick stick, to my new little friend. Then I’ll put you into the coal-hole, and feed you for a week on nothing but bread and water. Then I’ll send you home in a milk-cart, in one of the empty milk-cans.”

Some might say that this is just a humorous letter, but someone else would rightly ask, why would anyone write such a letter to a child?

This is what he wrote to Isa Bowman on September 17, 1893.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty little culprit! If only I could fly to Fulham with a handy little stick (ten feet long and four inches thick is my favourite size) how I would rap your wicked little knuckles. However, there isn’t much harm done, so I will sentence you to a very mild punishment—only one year’s imprisonment. If you’ll just tell the Fulham policeman about it, he’ll manage all the rest for you, and he’ll fit you with a nice pair of handcuffs, and lock you up in a nice cosy dark cell, and feed you on nice dry bread, and delicious cold water.”

Did he love his child-friends, or did he want to imprison them in dungeons and feed them on bread and water? 

The last proof of hidden sadism can be found in his book, Alice in Wonderland.  Have you ever wondered what the chapter about the baby turning into a pig was all about?  I wondered about this for a long time because it didn’t make any sense, and seemed to be an example of the nonsense he was so famous for.  But I discovered that the chapter had a deeper, darker, more sinister meaning.  To understand what the passage was all about, we need to first understand who the duchess was.  The duchess, just like the Queen of Hearts, was Mrs Liddell, a woman Lewis Carroll loathed, which we can tell from how she is portrayed in the book.  What many might not know is that Mrs Liddell lost a baby in infancy in 1863, around the time when the rift with Lewis Carroll occurred.  The chapter about the baby turning into a pig and trotting away was alluding to the fact that Mrs Liddell was such a bad mother that she allowed her child to die due to neglect and mistreatment.

Let’s take a look at a passage from that chapter.

“Oh, don’t bother me,” said the Duchess; “I never could abide figures!” And with that, she began nursing her child again, singing a sort of lullaby to it as she did so, and giving it a violent shake at the end of every line:

“Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.”

CHORUS
(In which the cook and the baby joined):
“Wow! wow! wow!”

While the Duchess sang the second verse of the song, she kept tossing the baby violently up and down, and the poor little thing howled so that Alice could hardly hear the words:—

“I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he sneezes;
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!”

CHORUS
“Wow! wow! wow!”

“Here! you may nurse it a bit, if you like!” the Duchess said to Alice, flinging the baby at her as she spoke. “I must go and get ready to play croquet with the Queen,” and she hurried out of the room. The cook threw a frying-pan after her as she went out, but it just missed her.

Alice caught the baby with some difficulty, as it was a queer-shaped little creature, and held out its arms and legs in all directions, “just like a star-fish,” thought Alice. The poor little thing was snorting like a steam-engine when she caught it, and kept doubling itself up and straightening itself out again, so that altogether, for the first minute or two, it was as much as she could do to hold it.

As soon as she had made out the proper way of nursing it (which was to twist it up into a sort of knot, and then keep tight hold of its right ear and left foot, so as to prevent its undoing itself), she carried it out into the open air. “If I don’t take this child away with me,” thought Alice, “they’re sure to kill it in a day or two: wouldn’t it be murder to leave it behind?” She said the last words out loud, and the little thing grunted in reply (it had left off sneezing by this time). “Don’t grunt,” said Alice; “that’s not at all a proper way of expressing yourself.”

The baby grunted again, and Alice looked very anxiously into its face to see what was the matter with it. There could be no doubt that it had a very turn-up nose, much more like a snout than a real nose; also its eyes were getting extremely small for a baby: altogether Alice did not like the look of the thing at all. “But perhaps it was only sobbing,” she thought, and looked into its eyes again, to see if there were any tears.

No, there were no tears. “If you’re going to turn into a pig, my dear,” said Alice, seriously, “I’ll have nothing more to do with you. Mind now!” The poor little thing sobbed again (or grunted, it was impossible to say which), and they went on for some while in silence.

Alice was just beginning to think to herself, “Now, what am I to do with this creature when I get it home?” when it grunted again, so violently that she looked down into its face in some alarm. This time there could be no mistake about it: it was neither more nor less than a pig, and she felt that it would be quite absurd for her to carry it further.

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. “If it had grown up,” she said to herself, “it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.” And she began thinking over other children she knew, who might do very well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, “if one only knew the right way to change them—” when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

Exactly how much did Lewis Carroll hate Mrs Liddell to write such a cruel passage about the child she lost? 

9. Lewis Carroll’s reincarnation as C. S. Lewis

My final submission is going to be controversial for those who don’t believe in reincarnation.  If that is you, you may skip this section altogether. 

C. S. Lewis was born ten months and 15 days after Lewis Carroll’s death, in November 1898.  The two men share several uncanny similarities:

  • Both Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis studied at Oxford University – one at Christ Church College and the other at Magdalene College.
  • C. S. Lewis was a lay theologian of the Anglican church, while Lewis Carroll (Dodgson) was an ordained deacon of the Anglican church.
  • Both of them wrote popular children’s fantasy books – the Alice books and The Chronicles of Narnia. 
  • They both created fantasy worlds, i.e. Wonderland and Narnia, in which animals could talk to humans.
  • In both Wonderland and Narnia, the protagonist is a little girl (Alice and Lucy), and authority figures include an evil woman (the Queen of Hearts and the White Witch)
  • C. S. Lewis was born in Ireland, while Lewis Carroll had Irish ancestry through his grandfather and great-grandfather.

You may be asking yourself, so what if C. S. Lewis was Lewis Carroll reborn?  Well, apparently, C. S. Lewis insisted on being called Jack from the age of four and would not answer to any other name.  He used the name Jack for the rest of his life and said it was because he hated his real name (Clive Staples).  Isn’t this just a little bit too much of a coincidence?

Do you agree with me that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper?  Let me know in the comments.

LEWIS CARROLL – PREDATOR : PART ONE

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LEWIS CARROLL WAS A PAEDOPHILE

A lot has been said and written about Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the author of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass.  One thing no one seems able to agree on is whether he was the shy, beloved author of children’s books or a predator, preying on children and hiding in plain sight.  After going through the evidence, there’s no doubt in my mind that he was the latter.  Here was a man who managed to fool everyone about who he was, managed to molest children while posing as a serious don and clergyman, and went on to confess his misdeeds in coded language in his famous book.  I have read a lot about how the Victorian age was different from our own, and how he should not be judged by today’s standards, but all that is nonsense, much like the nonsense he wrote.  Predators existed even in Victorian times, and just like today, they blended into society so convincingly that they could commit their crimes unnoticed for years.  That’s what Lewis Carroll did. 

Let’s look at the evidence.

1. He liked children – but not little boys

The first and most obvious clue about his true nature is the fact that he supposedly loved children, except boys.  This outrageous idea should make it obvious to everyone that his love for children was not genuine.  If he found children innocent and adorable, then logically, he should have loved all children, not just little girls.  The fact that he tirelessly looked for little girls everywhere he went, and lured them with games and puzzles – much like predators today lure children with sweets and ice-cream – tells us that he was not an innocent lover of children but a shameless predator.  Not only did he love little girls, but he also photographed them nude.  Why would anyone think of this as innocent?  The defence usually given about this behaviour is that it was common in Victorian times to photograph children in the nude, and in fact, other photographers like Julia Margaret Cameron did the same.  I’m quite sure that Julia Margaret Cameron did not walk around with little gifts to lure children to be photographed.  This is the behaviour of a predator.  Even in Victorian times, Carroll’s obsession with photographing young girls was problematic, which led to his abandoning photography in 1880.

2. Rift with the Liddell family

When Alice was 11 years old in 1863, a rift occurred between Lewis Carroll and the Liddell family.  Lewis Carroll was briefly suspended from Oxford before returning a short while later.  While his relationship with the parents was restored later, it was never the same, and he was never allowed near the children again.  We do not know exactly what happened to cause the rift, because the diary pages during this period (June 27–29, 1863) were cut out.  Many theories have been put forward about what could have happened, but the one clear thing is that his relationship with the Liddell family changed after that.  The parents maintained their relationship with Carroll to save face, but they must have discovered something serious enough to cause them to ban him from seeing the children.  A relative of Dodgson later inserted a note indicating that the missing diary pages were about a rumour regarding Dodgson’s possible interest in either the governess or Lorina.  To me, this doesn’t explain why Dodgson was suspended and why he was never allowed to see the children again.  The logical conclusion is that he was found out and banished, and the incident was kept quiet to protect the reputations of the girls and of the University.

3. Missing diaries

Dodgson’s diaries between April 1858 and May 1862 went missing sometime after his death.  The family claimed that the diaries were lost during a move, but this is not a convincing explanation.  Why this specific period? What were they trying to hide?  The period corresponds to when Alice was 6 to 10 years old.  What did Dodgson confess to that was so egregious that his family chose to destroy the evidence rather than allow it to fall into the wrong hands?  It must have been serious enough for such a drastic action to be taken, given how famous Dodgson was.  Logically, the family would have wanted to keep his diaries for future reference, maybe for biographies or just a record of his life.  Why did the family remain mum over the years, refusing to give interviews?  What was the sin that Dodgson continually referred to in his diaries when he said he was a ‘vile and worthless man’?  Is it possible he was referring to the fact that he was a paedophile?

4. Isa Bowman

Isa Bowman was one of Dodgson’s ‘child friends’ (aka victims).  In 1899, after his death, she wrote a short memoir about him.  In it, she gives an incident in which Dodgson “kissed her passionately” when she was about 10 or 11 years old.  If we are to assume that this is how he treated his child friends, then it’s clear that his relationships were anything but platonic.  He used to holiday with Isa in Eastbourne, and she “was always at Oxford”, where she would visit him and stay outside Oxford, then spend her days with him.  Clearly, he had unrestricted access to her, which meant that he could do whatever he wanted.  It’s not clear why this damning evidence has always been ignored.  Instead, a fiction was created in which they met for the first time on 27 September 1887 when Isa was 13 years old, which directly contradicts what she says in her memoir.  It appears that there are people out there who are so determined to protect Carroll’s image that they are ready to dismiss a clear indictment by one of his child friends.  They then went on to say that none of his child friends had ever said anything negative about him, but the one person who did was immediately dismissed. Also, why would anyone want to confess to being molested by Carroll, given how society, even today, always protects the perpetrators, especially if they are powerful?  Why would anyone want to risk damaging their reputation?

5. Full frontal nude photograph of Lorina Liddell

A few years ago, a BBC documentary claimed that a full-frontal nude image of Lorina Liddell had been unearthed, attributed to Lewis Carroll.  The photograph was found in a museum in France.  The BBC went to great pains to verify that the photograph was of Lorina Liddell, and they concluded that it was indeed her.  The photograph was the right age and used the same technique that Lewis Carroll used in his photography.  The documentary was viciously attacked by defenders of Lewis Carroll, and the BBC was forced to stop airing it any further.  But the damage was already done, for those who cared to listen.  The photograph could only have been taken by Dodgson, which should be obvious to anyone who is not biased.  This tells us that his interest in children was not innocent.

6. Confession in Alice in Wonderland

There has always been some controversy about Alice in Wonderland, leading to the book being banned in certain parts of the world.  Apparently, the book is not as innocent as it appears, and in fact is not a children’s book at all.  Consider this passage.

“Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice’s first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate, it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!

Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway; “and even if my head would go through,” thought poor Alice, “it would be of very little use without my shoulders.”

Do you see it?  A curtain with a little door behind it.  A small passage not much larger than a rat-hole.  The loveliest garden you ever saw.  Alice (Lewis Carroll) expressing frustration at not being able to fit through the door.  If this isn’t a coded description of a paedophile’s frustration at not being able to access a young girl’s private parts, I don’t know what is. And please remember, in the book, after much effort Alice (Lewis Carroll) is eventually able to enter through the door. What does that tell you? And this isn’t the only sexual innuendo in the book.  The book is so full of sexual innuendo that it was banned in the US in the1900s. 

7. Alice in Wonderland is popular with paedophiles

Society may have refused to acknowledge what Alice in Wonderland was really about, but paedophiles certainly didn’t.  They knew full well what the book was talking about, which is why Wonderland Club, an international online network of paedophiles involved in the production, distribution, and live-streaming of child sexual abuse material, existed between 1995 and 1998.  The club, named after Alice in Wonderland, facilitated the trafficking of children through the creation and exchange of over 750,000 images and 1,800 videos of abuse.  On 2 September 1998, 104 suspects were arrested worldwide.  The case prompted significant legal reforms in the UK, including the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which increased maximum penalties for child sexual offences to 10 years (which, in my opinion, is still too lenient.  It should be life in prison surely, for such crimes.)

Conclusion

We live in a world where predators are protected while victims are punished.  Just look at the Jeffrey Epstein saga.  After the release of millions of files, with multiple mentions of perpetrators, no one has been arrested.  Despite direct witness testimony of criminal activity, including abuse of minors, nothing has happened.  The perpetrators continue to walk free, while the victims are re-victimised and endangered through the release of their unredacted information.  That is the world we live in.  It should therefore not surprise anyone that Lewis Carroll has been vigorously defended, and his open paedophilia denied.  We live in a world where people like Jimmy Savile can operate openly, without consequences.  Lewis Carroll was a predator, and the world protects his reputation because that’s what it does.  In his hubris, Lewis Carroll went ahead and told us what he was doing in Alice in Wonderland, almost as if he was telling us to ‘Catch me if you can.’

(Part two of the series to follow)

Africa : A Wounded Continent

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Imagine living in a continent where everything about you is seen as inherently ugly, primitive, uncivilised and savage.  Imagine being seen as backward, dirty, poor, and diseased.  Imagine not being mentioned in the news in any other context other than war, famine, chaos, disaster, and corruption.  Imagine being the object of scorn, pity, disgust, and revulsion.  Imagine being looked at as less deserving, less competent, less qualified, and less intelligent.  Imagine being seen as corrupt, dishonest, untrustworthy, and suspect before you even utter a word. Imagine being seen as inferior, sub-human, and maybe even an animal.  That is the reality of being an African today.  It’s a wound we carry with us every second of every day, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep.

Somehow, the world conveniently forgot all the crimes that were committed against Africans and blamed us for our suffering and trauma.  The fact that we cannot get it together, mere decades after the trauma of slavery and colonialism, is used as evidence of our inferiority.  Colonialism, slavery and the hidden structures of neo-colonialism are never mentioned as a valid explanation for why we remain poor and in constant chaos.  The same people who colonised us give us lectures on good governance and democracy.  The perpetrators are now our saviours.  They are the heroes, and we are the beggars. 

Our History Erased

Africa is a continent without a history.  We started existing when colonialists came.  Before that, there was nothing.  No trade.  No education.  No governance.  No civilisation.  No knowledge.  Nothing worth mentioning in history books.  At least, that is what the world wants us to believe.  We were a bunch of cavemen, running around with clubs before the white man came to civilise us.  We have always been and will always be slaves and good only for extraction.

And yet, we keep getting fragments of a history forgotten, whispers in the wind that we are more than the world would like to admit.  There was once a library of Alexandria – an unparalleled wealth of knowledge and information that was burnt down by the Romans.  Queen Cleopatra, one of the wealthiest people on the planet during her time, scared the Romans so much that they chose to destroy her rather than admit that a woman was about to outwit them in their own game.  The Queen of Sheba presided over a queendom that spanned the Horn of Africa, her lineage ruling over Ethiopia uninterrupted for millennia.  Mansa Musa, a West African King, was so wealthy, he is still considered today the wealthiest man who ever lived.  Long-forgotten Kingdoms speak of a people with strong governance structures that needed no lectures on governance from anyone.  Trade routes and currency existed long before the colonialists came to build infrastructure that was meant for extraction.

The truth is, we had a history which was buried because the best way to psychologically destroy someone and get them to submit is to tell them they are nothing and have always been nothing. 

Our Spirituality Destroyed

Before the cruel and vengeful gods were introduced to us, we had our own loving gods who protected us, provided for us and cared what happened to us.  We had places of worship in forests, on sacred hills and groves, and in the mountains.  We prayed to these gods when we needed rain, and we thanked them when children were born and harvests were bountiful.  We had a priesthood that told us what the gods wanted, and we trusted them with a childlike innocence.  God was like a parent who cared for his children and provided for all their needs through nature.

We were told this was primitive.  The true God is angry, cruel, and vengeful.  If you disobey him, he will send you to hell to burn for eternity.  The true God has a chosen people to whom he shows his love through war, death, and a murderous rage.  The true God wants you to be humble, submit to slavery and colonialism, and respect authority even when authority abuses you.  He wants you to ask nothing of life because you will have true happiness once you join him in heaven, where you will spend eternity singing his praises.

Our Culture Dismantled

We had ways of doing things.  Marriage rites, birth rites, initiation rites, planting rites, harvest rites.  We had kings and queens, chiefs, and councils of elders.  We had ways of relating to each other that made sense to us.  We took care of the environment because all our needs were met through nature.  Everything was in abundance, and there was no need to own or hoard.  One seed produced a hundred-fold.  One animal reproduced in due season, providing the meat, milk, eggs and skins we needed for life.  When a couple got married, the community built them a house.  There was no need for thirty-year mortgages to pay for the roof over your head.  There was no need for anyone to slave away for a corporation to survive.  We had a way of doing things that was not perfect, but was in harmony with nature.

All this was set aside for a civilisation that drains your life-force, just for the privilege of existing.  The civilisation that replaced our primitive cultures thrives in brutality and predation.  The weak are crushed by the strong, and no one blinks.  Progress is measured by steel structures, not the ability to care and provide for the citizens.  Systemic failure is blamed on the individual.  Education systems prepare people to submit to authority and never question what the leaders are doing.  War and aggression are the norm, and humans are nothing more than workers, serving the system.  Maybe we should start by defining what civilisation means, because I don’t see anything civilised about how the world works today.

Our Bodies Seen as Inherently Ugly

We look in the mirror, and a black face stares back at us.  This is not the image of beauty the world recognises.  The world sees beauty as white, straight-haired, and colourful eyed.  It’s in every movie you watch and every magazine you flip through.  It’s in social media, in the curated images and videos we are fed.  It’s in the news and in reality shows.  It’s in the billboards we stare at and the mannequins in shops.  It’s the Barbie dolls our children play with and the cartoons they watch.  No one needs to tell you what beauty looks like.  They just need to show you.  Over and over and over again, until you get it.

Black bodies are all wrong.  Butts are too big.  Hips too wide.  Noses too flat.  Protruding lips.  Bad skin.  Everyone knows that black is bad.  Black sheep.  Black market.  Black magic.  God must have been confused when he created us, or maybe he didn’t get the memo.  Our kinky hair is all wrong and is supposed to be hidden in wigs, weaves, braids or plaited lines.  It is unpresentable in its natural form, untidy, and unprofessional.  No African mother ever sat her daughter down and told her that her hair was unacceptable.  But every girl knows it.  Even the youngest girls are subjected to scorching blow-dryers by loving mothers, whose own mothers used an infinitely worse method of straightening hair known as the hot comb.  Alternatively, the hair can be cooked in a painful, torturous process that most black women know only too well.  This is done using chemicals that burn and scar if left on too long, which they invariably are.  The process has to be repeated regularly as the natural kinky hair seeks to reestablish itself, a phenomenon derisively known as ‘growth’.  Hairdressers regularly berate women for appearing at the salon with unacceptable levels of ‘growth’, a sure sign of neglect.  Never mind the fact that straightening hair costs money, which we don’t always have.  In fact, the process of making African hair presentable costs a lot of money.  It damages hair and messes up hairlines.  But we seem to agree that it is worth it.

Who decided on this standard of beauty?  We don’t know for sure, but everyone has submitted to it.  That is why there is a thriving market for human hair, targeted at the black woman.  You don’t have to endure the shame of your natural kinky hair when you can hide it under the straight hair of some Asian woman.  That is why there is a thriving market for skin lighteners that promise transformative whiteness, but instead destroy your skin gradually.  Black women consider this a worthwhile price to pay for that momentary glimpse of what it feels like to be light-skinned, if not white.  The world does everything in its power to help black people solve the blackness problem.

How this Impacts Us

If someone were to study the psychology of Africans, I wonder what they would find.  I suspect it would be self-loathing.  Feelings of worthlessness.  Anxiety.  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Depression.  Anger.  Confusion.  Stockholm syndrome.  Internalised inferiority.  All stemming from the trauma of violence, forced displacement, and systemic oppression experienced during colonialism, slavery and neo-colonialism. The psychological impact is not limited to those who directly endured the trauma; it extends across generations through intergenerational trauma.

Because we are traumatised, we continue recreating the same brutal structures that abused us, no different from someone who was abused in childhood, ending up in a cycle of abusive relationships.  We were taught to hate ourselves and see ourselves as unworthy, which is why we continue choosing leaders who abuse us, long after the colonialists left.

We blame ourselves for the fact that we are underdeveloped, echoing what the dominant societies tell us.  We are corrupt.  We are incompetent.  We are the cause of our own misery.  We need help.  We are less intelligent.  We have nothing of value.  We will never develop.

Because of our Stockholm syndrome, we look to our abusers to save us.  We believe what they tell us about ourselves.  We copy them.  We cooperate with them in our own destruction.  We continue inviting them into our countries, even when they disrespect us and despise us.  We allow humanitarian workers to come gawk at our suffering, then return to their homes to international acclaim and medals for the work they do that never seems to accomplish anything. We are trapped in trauma bonds that keep us open to our abusers to continue abusing us.  We have zero defence mechanisms for keeping abusers at bay.

Our internalised inferiority means that we despise our accomplishments and see them as nothing.  We continue looking to others to tell us what to do, rather than coming up with our own simple solutions that can be refined over time.  We accept without question other people’s agendas even when they don’t benefit us.  We allow others to extract our wealth and leave us with nothing.

Healing our Wounds

If Africa were a person and went for therapy, the therapist would probably point out how our lack of self-love and self-worth is causing us to repeat the same patterns of trauma that are so familiar to us.  They would point out that our leaders today treat us with the same lack of empathy our colonisers did.  They would point out that we have no boundaries.

The first step in healing is to admit that we are wounded.  Just because the colonisers left does not mean that we immediately went back to normal.  Once we admit that we are wounded, we must start the long walk back to wholeness by talking about what happened to us and recognising how it affects how we behave today.  We need to grieve for what was done to us and what was taken away from us.  We need to grieve for having lived through the disdain and lack of empathy the world treats us with. 

Then we must start loving ourselves.  Loving ourselves means choosing leaders who treat us with love and empathy.  It means choosing leaders who are gentle and kind towards us.  It means leaning more towards the feminine energy that has been suppressed, but which we need to heal.  It means choosing female leaders to balance out the masculine, aggressive leadership we are currently experiencing.  It means keeping out anything and anyone that does not serve us.  From people who come to extract from us, to humanitarian aid that we don’t need and does not help us.  It means knowing who our friends are and who our enemies are.  Not everyone who smiles at us is a friend.  We must ask for reparations, apologies, restitution and dismantling of colonial-era structures that still hold us back today.  We must demand an end to neo-colonialism, interventions, and debt slavery.

The Psychology of the UN Security Council

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The UN Security Council is made up of five permanent members.  The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain.  These five countries are the most powerful countries in the world, in terms of economic might, military strength, including the fact that they are all nuclear powers, and geopolitical influence.  Two of these countries – Britain and France – are former colonial powers, with vast empires that spanned large areas of the globe.  The United States is the world’s richest country, followed closely by China.  Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and was, until the 90s, part of the Soviet Union.  As permanent members of the UN Security Council, these five countries have immense powers, which include intervening militarily in any part of the world and vetoing anything they don’t agree with.  You could say that these countries run the world.  It is, therefore, in my opinion, imperative that we look at the psychology of these countries, because of the powerful place they hold in the running of planetary affairs.  The rest of the world is held captive by the actions of these five countries, including their so-called ‘great power competition’ and their ability to veto all other countries of the world combined.

What do I mean when I talk about the psychology of these countries?  It is an observable fact that countries have a national character, the same way human beings have an individual character.  People who live in a country tend to behave in a certain way that is unique to that country.  That is why whenever someone visits a country, they usually come out with an impression of how the people of that country are.  The people themselves may or may not be aware of their national character, but visitors to the country often leave with an impression about the character of the inhabitants of the country.  We often hear people comment that Kenyans are like this, Americans are like that, the French are like this, etc.  Due to similarities in culture, language, education systems, beliefs, religion, etc, a country will have a national character that is observable by others.  This is what I am referring to when I talk about the psychology of the UN Security Council.  These are my impressions of the countries that make up the UN Security Council and how their psychology affects how they run the world.

The world is currently in chaos, and has been in chaos for a very long time.  The UN Security Council seems to either be unable or unwilling to bring about the peace that most people on earth aspire to, even though this is supposed to be their core mandate.  I think it is fair to say that the Security Council is exhibiting dark triad traits.  Any rational person observing how the most powerful nations behave on the world stage will conclude that these countries are not mentally sound.  Whether it’s through the exercise of their veto powers to oppose any attempts at peace-making, their military interventions that invariably make matters worse or their endless debates about the wording of some statement while the situation spirals out of control, the UN Security Council keeps proving time and time again that its members are of the dark triad.

For those who do not know what the dark triad is, it is a combination of three dark personality types – narcissism, psychopathy/sociopathy and Machiavellianism – in an individual or institution.  I am expanding the definition to include an institution, in this case, the UN Security Council.  These three personality disorders make up the dark triad, which is one of the most dangerous disorders a person can have.  Each of these disorders on its own is bad enough.  The combination of all three disorders in one individual or institution is a dangerous, destructive, and scary phenomenon that no one should ever have the misfortune to encounter in their lifetime.  Unfortunately, all of us on the planet are subject to a dark triad institution in the form of the UN Security Council.  This explains why, despite so much effort by so many institutions, including regional bodies, NGOs, humanitarian organisations, religious institutions, and the UN General Assembly, we never seem to achieve world peace.  We always seem to default to war and chaos.  The UN Security Council, the very institution that has the power to immediately end all wars and bring about the peaceful coexistence we all long for, seems to constantly dig us deeper into confrontations, wars and diplomatic failures.

The Psychopath

Psychopathy is characterised by superficial charm, manipulativeness, lack of empathy or guilt, impulsivity, and a fearless, high-risk-taking disposition.  The United States is the psychopath of the UN Security Council.  We see it all the time in how the US vetoes resolutions that would bring about peace, for example, in the case of the war in Gaza.  We see it in the US’s resolute defense and support of Israel, even while Israel is being accused of genocide and its leaders wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity.  Clearly, the US believes it is above the law.  We see this in the US refusal to be part of the ICC and its sanctioning of the judges who delivered an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  We see their psychopathy in the way they keep the world supplied with weapons, even while presenting themselves as a force for good.  They have no conscience and no empathy for the people they destroy.  We see the US’s psychopathy in how they overthrow democratically elected governments and how they threaten to go to war with countries that refuse to submit, for example, in the recent case where Nigeria was threatened with invasion.  We see it in their refusal to participate in global forums that do not bend to their will, for example, the recent COP30 and the G20.  The US is so convinced of its superiority that it does not realise how its behaviour on the world stage comes across as embarrassing for a country that claims to be a superpower.  Even the notion of a country being a superpower is an embarrassing, egotistical claim that a mature, rational country would never claim to be.  The US’s psychopathy is also clear from its history of slavery and the racism that persists to this day.  The Americans seem completely incapable of accepting that black people are equal to white people, the same way they are unable to accept that the US is equal to other countries.

The Sociopath

Sociopathy is characterised by a pervasive disregard for the rights of others, lack of empathy, and persistent rule-breaking.  The condition is associated with a profound lack of conscience and can lead to difficulties in relationships, employment, and legal issues.  The sociopath of the group is France.  Unlike psychopathy, which is a genetic and biological disorder, sociopathy is a product of nurture.  This means they are more likely to display antisocial behaviours, such as problems with the law and an inability to fit into society, whereas the psychopath is more adept at wearing a mask of sanity.  France’s sociopathy can be seen from its history of slavery, its colonial past, and its neo-colonial present.  France was known for its extreme brutality towards its enslaved and colonised people.  The way France treated Haiti, for example, is particularly horrifying.  France was known to be so brutal towards Haiti that new slaves coming to work in the sugar plantations would last a mere ten years before dying from the grim working conditions. When Haitians fought and won their freedom, the French took this with characteristic vengefulness.  They forced the Haitians to compensate them for the loss of their ‘property’ (the slaves), a debt burden that has inflicted generational poverty upon Haiti that has persisted to this day.  In their West African colonies, France was also known for its brutality, but it is the way they departed from the former colonies at independence that particularly stands out.  With the same mafia-like vengefulness they displayed towards Haiti, France forced the West African countries to join Françafrique, which is the political, economic, military, and cultural networks that France has maintained with its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa since independence, often described as a form of neocolonialism.  When Guinea refused to join this grouping, which was supposedly voluntary, it was utterly destroyed and sabotaged by the departing French.  For years after independence, France carried out almost non-stop military interventions in the former colonies to keep them in check. This level of lawlessness on the part of France can only be described as sociopathic. To this day, Françafrique has kept several West African countries under the control of France, although these chains are starting to weaken.  France is not taking this new development well, with brutal attempts to hold on to this neo-colonial structure on display.

The Machiavellian

Machiavellianism is a personality trait characterised by manipulation, emotional coldness, and a cynical worldview, where individuals prioritise their own self-interest and use deceit or exploitation to achieve personal goals, often at the expense of others.  The Machiavellian of the group is Britain.  Despite its brutal colonial past spanning centuries and covering vast geographical regions of the planet, Britain still somehow manages to come across today as the paternalistic, benevolent benefactor of its former colonies.  The commonwealth is an attempt by Britain to maintain control of its former colonies, without the nasty, neo-colonial overtones of France.  It’s an attempt to look fatherly and concerned for the former colonies, a father figure wanting nothing more than the advancement of the former colonies.  This is blatant deception, because Britain is only concerned with maintaining its control of the former colonies.  Britain’s Machiavellianism can be observed from its monarchy, an institution that pretends to have no power or influence over what happens in the UK or the world, while pulling the strings in the background.  It is a well-known fact that the monarchies of Europe started retreating into quasi democratic arrangements after the brutal overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789, out of fear that the same fate would befall them.  In these new arrangements, power was supposedly held by democratically elected governments, while the monarchies only held ceremonial power.  But we all know that this is not actually the case, but a Machiavellian deception of the masses.  The monarchies still pull the strings in the background, and it is naïve of anyone to believe that they simply handed over power and accepted their new roles.  The monarchies are, in reality, the puppet masters, while the governments are the puppets being controlled from behind the scenes.  Britain has perfected the art of appearing to be one thing in public, while being something else entirely in the background.  Let’s not forget that when Ukraine was about to arrive at a peace treaty with Russia, a few months after the war began, it was Britain that rushed to Ukraine and stopped the treaty from happening.

The Narcissist

Narcissism is defined as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for excessive admiration, and a lack of empathy.  Russia is the Narcissist of the UN Security Council.  Russia has been engaged in a great power struggle with the West for as long as anyone can remember, and seems unable to define itself other than in relation to the West.  They seem to constantly be trying to prove that they are as good as the West.  Russia has been engaged in a passive-aggressive confrontation with the West since the days of the Cold War, which almost resulted in nuclear annihilation of the planet during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The entire war with Ukraine came about because Ukraine wanted to join NATO.  While Russia seems to believe that this would be an existential threat, it’s not clear how Ukraine’s joining NATO would affect Russia.  The idea that there must be a buffer zone between NATO countries and Russia shows a grandiose self-image on the part of Russia.  The truth is, Ukraine joining NATO would be neither here nor there.  But for a country steeped in grandiosity, this feels like a red line that must never be crossed, even to the point of going to a destructive war that has caused untold suffering not just to Ukraine but to the world.  We are also seeing Russia’s narcissism in its passive-aggressive attempt to gain influence in Africa.  It’s one thing to want to trade and cooperate with Africa from a genuine desire to advance mutual interests, but in the case of Russia, it is only doing this as a passive-aggressive, egotistical stance meant to goad the West.  Russia’s inability to simply live its own life as an independent country, not at odds with anyone, exposes it for the narcissist it is.

The Sane one

This brings us to the final member of the UN Security Council, China.  As far as I can tell, China is the only sane member of the UN Security Council.  But unfortunately, China has a see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil attitude, which means it has failed to live up to its potential.  China remains silent as the other members of the UN Security Council run amok, causing havoc everywhere they turn.  China, in its dealings with most countries, refuses to take a moral stand, preferring to quietly trade without standing up for human rights.  This is a failure on its part and a waste of its huge potential.  When Israel started its genocidal campaign in Gaza, it was South Africa that brought a case to the ICJ.  South Africa is still suffering today from the wrath of the Americans, who are staunch allies of Israel, through the false accusations of white farmer genocide, and the US boycott of the G20 meeting that was held in South Africa.  China is powerful enough to stand up to any country on the globe, but this potential is going to waste.  China also boasts of having lifted millions of people out of poverty, while a rich country like the US has people living in poverty, in a land of plenty.  China has the moral authority that the US falsely claims to have.  Not that China is perfect – we all know about its authoritarianism and the suppression of individual rights.  But if there is a non-aggressive country that does not have a history of slavery or colonialism and is quietly working towards the economic uplifting of not only its own citizens but citizens of the world through its Belt and Road Initiative, it is China.  China needs to step up, as the only sane member of the Security Council and as a respected partner of many countries in the global South.

Bonus: The Sadist

The dark triad is sometimes referred to as the dark tetrad when sadism is added to the mix.  For purposes of my analysis of the UN Security Council, I used the dark triad because none of the members of the UN Security Council display sadism.  But as a bonus, I am adding Israel to the list, a country that is not part of the UN Security Council but takes the sadism crown.  Sadism is defined as the derivation of pleasure from the infliction of physical pain or psychological suffering on another person.  It is characterised by a persistent and intense pattern of fantasies, urges, or behaviours involving the suffering of others.  In Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, we see their sadism in full display.  They seem to enjoy the suffering of the Palestinians, even going as far as randomly shooting and killing Palestinians who show up to collect food at humanitarian centres.  Their sadism is displayed in their intentional killing of children, which has horrified the world.  While killing is never a good thing, no matter who is killed, most people have an instinctive urge to protect children.  Israel seems to deliberately target children to cause maximum psychological suffering not just on Palestinians, but the entire world that is constantly bombarded with news and images of the killings.  We have seen Israel’s sadism in their denial of humanitarian aid to Palestinians, going as far as killing aid workers who are desperate to supply aid.  What Israel is doing goes beyond war, which is horrifying enough.  Israel seems to enjoy inflicting unnecessary pain and suffering on others.

Conclusion

Now that we know that the forces that run our world are dark triad in nature, what can be done about this?  The only way to stop such people is through raising the awareness of the public as to the evil nature of these dark triad institutions.  The world right now is at a very low state of awareness, meaning that most people don’t see anything wrong with how the world is run.  Most people don’t see anything unnatural about world leaders who scuttle peace efforts, who start wars and threaten to start wars, who exhibit inflated egos and believe themselves above the law, and who keep the world in never-ending chaos.  When we start seeing that this is not normal, then we will stop remaining silent and start demanding change.  It’s like growing up in a family where the parents are mentally ill.  When you are young, you accept their unstable behaviour as just how things are, because that is all you have ever known.  But when you grow up, and the true horror of your parents’ behaviour sinks in, you can finally break away from their control as you recognise how much chaos and suffering their mental illness has caused you.  This is what needs to happen in the world.  We need to start understanding that the chaos in the world is not accidental.  It is being caused by individuals and institutions with dark triad personality disorder, and it is time we broke free from their control.

The Ghost of Jeffrey Epstein

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The whole Jeffrey Epstein saga reveals why it’s so hard for the world to eliminate sexual abuse.  Let’s consider the facts.  There are around 1000+ women who have complained about being abused by Jeffrey Epstein through his vast sex trafficking network.  Even though investigations have taken place for years and continue to take place, the only person to ever be convicted is a lone woman.  Let that sink in.  One woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, has paid the price for the abuses of thousands of men.  It’s almost as if the world has never moved on from the witch-hunting days.  We are still hunting witches and burning them at the stake.  In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, a woman was burned at the stake for the crimes of men, and the world wants us to move on and accept that this is justice.  There is a complete refusal to release the names of people implicated in these abuses.  Their privacy must be protected.  The most high-profile person to be exposed, Prince Andrew, was never arrested or prosecuted.  Epstein himself committed suicide before he could be tried for his crimes, thereby escaping accountability.  Therefore, in this vast network of sex trafficking and abuse, only one woman has been held accountable for her crimes.  One. Woman.  All the men, many of them powerful, who did the actual abusing, have not been held accountable up to today.  At every level of accountability, they are protected.  The media does not reveal their identity.  The police do not arrest them.  The justice system does not try them and convict them.  They still retain powerful positions in society.  There is zero accountability.

What is the real problem here?  Does society believe that it is okay for a woman to be sexually abused?  Do we see sexual abuse as a problem, or are we comfortable living in a world where sexual abuse is common?  Is sexual abuse just an unfortunate incident that is best forgotten?  Are we okay with the suffering of women?  It’s very telling that the only person to be punished in relation to Jeffrey Epstein was a woman.  Does it mean that women have a higher threshold of pain?  Do women even feel pain?  They seem to go through childbirth easily enough, whereas we all know that if it were men who had to give birth, we would have perished as a species.  So, it must mean that women don’t mind pain.  It must mean that women’s pain is not serious.  We all know that there are people out there who believe that black people don’t feel pain.  I guess the same goes for women.  They don’t feel pain.  That’s why we have 1000+ victims and not one man convicted.  I guess men wouldn’t survive in prison.  Men should not be expected to pay for their crimes.  They are too fragile, and also, they are just boys being boys.  Who would want to punish boys for being boys?  Especially white boys?  Their reputations!  Their careers!  Their prospects!  Their future! Their families!  Their children!  Quelle horreur, to subject a man to such pain.

Why does society have no problem sending one woman to prison for 20 years for the abuse of thousands of women, and not a single man?  Are powerful people too big to convict? Will society fall apart if powerful people start paying for their crimes?  I tend to think society will become better if we started exposing these powerful people and forcing them to pay for their crimes.  They should be locked away and the keys thrown away.  After all, the most powerful people commit the worst crimes.  Crimes that affect entire populations.  Crimes that impoverish entire populations.  Crimes that kill entire populations.  Crimes that cause entire populations to live without basic needs.  And these are the people we choose to protect?

We need to have a reckoning.  The kind of reckoning that is taking place in France, a country steeped in rape culture.  We need to have a Gisèle Pelicot-style reckoning, where tens, hundreds, thousands of men are held accountable for their crimes against women.  Men should be held accountable (arrested, tried, imprisoned – just in case it’s not clear what I mean by ‘held accountable’) for raping women in colleges, in slums, in homes, in the workplace.  For raping children.  For incest.  For sexual harassment.  For domestic violence.  Instead, we have a culture of protecting the perpetrators and punishing the victims or those who try to protect the victims.  Only a small minority of cases reported to the police are taken seriously.  Jeffrey Epstein abused girls for years, and even though they kept reporting to the police, nothing was done for years.  Only a small number of cases make it to trial, and only a small number of those are convicted.  At every turn, there is a concerted effort to protect the perpetrator, to excuse his actions, to minimise them, to hide them.  Victims are revictimized by a system that is optimised for allowing the perpetrator to get away with his crimes.  Victims are shamed, as if it were somehow their fault.  What we have done is we have allowed society to be shaped by the worst among us, rather than the best.  The standards of how we live and what we accept are set by the worst people.  We must change this.  We must let the most gentle among us, the most loving, the most tender, the kindest among us, set the standard for how we should live as human beings on this planet. 

Laws of War (International Humanitarian Law)

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“Another Rule of Battle, that Alice had not noticed, seemed to be that they always fell on their heads, and the battle ended with their both falling off in this way, side by side: when they got up again, they shook hands, and then the Red Knight mounted and galloped off.”

(Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Saw)

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) or laws of war is a set of rules that govern how war is conducted, supposedly to balance humanitarian concerns with military necessity.  It is an attempt to limit the savagery of warfare by creating the concept of ‘protected persons’ i.e. people who are not party to the conflict and are therefore supposed to be protected.  IHL also limits the choice of methods and means of warfare and recognizes ‘legitimate military targets’ that can be attacked during warfare.

Like many who have criticised this attempt at making rules of warfare, I am of the view that the only thing that is achieved by these rules is to make warfare a legitimate activity rather than trying to abolish it.  It is almost as if the people who made these rules believed that warfare can never be eliminated, and therefore the next best thing is to come up with rules on how it should be conducted.  This is of course a fallacy.  War can be eliminated, just like any other evil on the planet can be eliminated, if we put our minds to it. 

The problem with trying to come up with rules of war is that you end up with a situation like the one described by Lewis Carroll in his book, Through the Looking Glass, where to an observer, the rules appear to be nonsensical.  The destruction and unnecessary bloodshed of warfare cannot be justified by the fact that some rules were being observed.  It is no comfort to anyone caught up in warfare that the destruction is limited to legitimate military targets.  After all, who is to say what a legitimate military target is?  We are all aware of how Israel has defended its attacks on hospitals and civilian areas by claiming that Hamas fighters were hiding in these areas and using them as human shields, which made them legitimate military targets.  Therefore, in effect, anything can be defined as a legitimate military target by those fighting in the war.

Another criticism of IHL is what we are all observing in real time, which is humanitarian organisations being more concerned with delivering humanitarian aid to victims of war than in calling out their governments for supplying the weapons and money that are used to keep the war going.  It always strikes me as rather hypocritical when humanitarian organisation from the same Western countries that provide weapons of warfare, scream about not having humanitarian space.  It is almost as if all they care about is being allowed to do their thing, because otherwise why else do they exist?  If there was no war and suffering on the planet, would there be any need for humanitarian organisations?  Do humanitarian organisations really care about ending war and suffering if this would be an existential threat to them?  Or are they more concerned about playing their part, which is to ‘ease the suffering of people’ while governments play their part, which is to cause as much suffering as possible?  Does this seem a lot like a symbiotic relationship, or am I just being cynical?   It kind of reminds one of the symbiotic relationship between Christianity and colonizers and how they went hand in hand, each making it easier for the other to operate.

I think it is time we put an end to this farce of laws of warfare and instead start imagining and calling for a world where there is no warfare.  If humanitarian organisations really want to help, they should start by taking on their governments for the part they play in keeping these wars going.  They should put as much energy into calling out their governments as they do in calling for humanitarian space.  Unless of course this would upset the very cozy relationship they currently enjoy with their governments.

The Gravest Danger to Humanity is Nuclear War Not Climate Change

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A few decades ago, the idea that the climate was changing in ways that were dangerous to humanity was floated out of nowhere and suddenly, the entire planet was in a state of panic because supposedly we had very limited time to change our entire way of life before some calamity befell us.  No one was allowed to question the “experts” and anyone foolish enough to do so was labelled a climate denier and roundly ridiculed.  This alone should have been enough to raise suspicion because any scientific claim should be open to debate and should be provable through experiments that can be replicated.  This is science 101 which everyone should know and yet we continue to allow ourselves to be bullied by the people who claim to be the lords of science.  We saw this same tendency to bully anyone who tried to question “the science”, with the anti-vaxxer label being given to anyone who questioned the Covid vaccine dogma. The same people who caused panic with their climate change hysteria also gave us the solution: net-zero. According to the so called experts, we need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to zero in order to save the planet. This idea is so ridiculous, it is quite simply laughable. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of biology knows that this is a bad idea. The problem with human beings is that when we panic, we usually forget everything we know and believe without question what the “experts” tell us.

Some of us may be familiar with the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle, which is whereby human beings take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while plants take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen (during photosynthesis).  This balance between plants and humans ensures that the two coexist in balance and harmony.  The idea that human beings are enemies of nature or are not part of the cycle of life is a ridiculous idea that we are being deceived into accepting without question.  There is an aggressive push by the global elites to force us to accept the idea that we are foreign bodies that are separate from nature, a virus that needs to be controlled or eliminated.  Instead of seeing the planet as our God-given home, we are being asked to see ourselves as parasites that are upsetting the delicate balance of nature.  This is the same aggressive message that was pushed by Agenda 21 and is being pushed today by Agenda 2030 – that human activities like production, consumption and economic activities are inherently bad for nature.  This idea is being aggressively pushed at the grassroots level without people understanding what is being done.  The idea is to separate us from nature and cause us to see anything we do as bad for the environment.  The idea is to suppress our natural desire to thrive by limiting ourselves to a backward and simple existence.  This makes us much easier to control for the elites.  This is why we are being forced to give up fossil fuels without any viable alternative because apparently the environment thrives when we are cold, hungry and miserable.    

This is the same aggressive message that was pushed by Agenda 21 and is being pushed today by Agenda 2030 – that human activities like production, consumption and economic activities are inherently bad for nature.  This idea is being aggressively pushed at the grassroots level without people understanding what is being done. 

One of the main proponents of the climate change agenda is Bill Gates, that old philanthrocapitalist who has turned himself into an expert on everything from global public health to global agriculture to climate change.  In a Ted talk he gave some years back on CO2 reduction, Gates claimed that the following equation summarizes the pathway to net zero:

CO2= P x S x E x C

(CO2= PEOPLE x SERVICES PER PERSON x ENERGY PER PERSON x CO2 PER UNIT ENERGY)

According to this equation which we are all supposed to accept without question, CO2 has to be reduced to zero in order to save the planet.  According to Gates, the experts say so and so naturally, it must be the gospel truth.  But as I pointed out at the beginning of this article, we must question what the experts say.  I’m not sure what kind of expert came up with such a ludicrous idea.  Without CO2 in the atmosphere, plants would not exist because they would not be able to carry out photosynthesis.  Why would we allow clowns like Bill Gates to lecture us on things they have no clue about?  We have developed such a culture of money worship on this planet that anyone who has a lot of money is automatically assumed to be superior in intelligence.  They must know something the rest of us don’t, which enabled them to accumulate such vast amounts of money.  In reality, the only qualification these people possess is ruthlessness and aggression.  This is what allows them to do whatever they need to do and step on whoever they need to step on in order to get to the top of the food chain.  It does not matter to billionaires like Bill Gates that the rest of the world has to wallow in poverty so that they get to keep their billions.  According to such people, that is exactly how the world should work and they have every right to take everything and leave nothing for everyone else.  Furthermore, in their view, their wealth gives them the right to tell the rest of us how to live our lives, hence the current push for a Global Reset, which is nothing more than a power grab by the elites.  If you believe that these people have our interests at heart or are capable of doing anything that benefits anyone other than themselves, you are being naïve and have not been paying attention. 

Coming back to the Gates equation, once we accept without question that CO2 has to be brought down to zero, the next step is to look at which of the four elements (P, S, E, C) can be reduced to zero in order to bring CO2 down to zero.  Gates deceptively makes a show of looking at each of the four elements, although any thinking person can see that S (Services), E (Energy) and C (CO2) all depend on P (People).  In other words, as long as there is P, we cannot reduce S, E or C to zero.  Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that P has to come down to zero for the equation to work.  This idea is subliminally communicated to us as it becomes increasingly clear that none of the other elements can be reduced to zero while there are people.  Once you watch this Ted talk, all the accusations about Gates having a depopulation agenda suddenly make sense.  This is a person who is so obsessed with the idea that human beings have to be eliminated from the planet that he dedicates an entire Ted talk to explaining this to us.  Because essentially, this is what he is saying even though he tries to couch it in all manner of scientific language.  As Jesus’ said: “let those who have ears hear.”  The elites keep telling us that we are not wanted or needed on this planet and we continue applauding them even as they say this in increasingly plain terms.  The so-called philosopher and intellectual Yuval Noah Harari has been telling us this for some time now.  Human beings are supposedly on the way to being made redundant by technology.  Can you imagine the sheer arrogance it takes for a person to tell billions of people that they will be rendered useless by technology because there will be no “jobs”?  Is this the only purpose human beings have, to work for the elites?  No wonder they call us human resources.  As far as they are concerned, humans only exist to serve them and therefore when AI and robots replace us in the workplace, there will be no more need for us to exist.  We will become “useless eaters” who only “play computer games”.  It never occurs to these people that AI and robots could make our life much easier, freeing us to pursue higher-level goals like self-actualization. No wonder all their future scenarios are dystopian since they cannot imagine a future in which everyone is healthy, wealthy and happy.  They keep fretting about overpopulation because their limited vision cannot allow them to imagine a future in which technological advances allow us to have all our needs met in new ways that are yet to be discovered.  The only future they imagine is one in which human beings fight for limited resources.  No wonder they want to kill us all, these no-imagination swamp creatures!

Who is Gates to tell us that we should be aiming at net zero?  What gives him the right to lecture humanity?  Is it because he has a lot of money?  Does his money give him the right to subject us to his ridiculous, insane ideas?  What has Gates ever accomplished with all his money that would give him the right to lecture humanity?  Everything Gates touches has been an unmitigated disaster, from the agricultural transformation of Africa to disease eradication in parts of Africa to research on GMO food.  One of the reasons the world was unable to come up with a “people’s vaccine” for Covid was because Gates quickly inserted himself in the process and insisted that intellectual property had to be respected.  All he was interested in was profit even during a pandemic.  The pharmaceutical industry has Gates to thank for the billions they raked in.  His greed for profit cannot allow him to do anything beneficial for humanity.  Now he has turned his attention to the great reset of food systems in the West and we should expect this to be as disastrous as everything else he does.  Is this the guy we want lecturing us about climate change?  How ironic that the same people claiming to want to transform the planet are the same people who have the most to lose from an end to the status quo.  In the end, all they do is give an appearance of action while in reality taking us round and round in a senseless merry-go-round that takes us nowhere.  These actions are only meant to preserve the structures that resulted in 1% of the population owning 82% of the global wealth.  We should automatically assume that anything they tell us is a lie meant to preserve the status quo.

While the corporate media is busy screaming about a non-existent climate change apocalypse that is supposedly right around the corner, no one is talking about the real danger facing humanity, i.e., the threat of nuclear war.  This is a much more immediate threat that we have been conditioned to ignore.  The reality is that as long as we have nuclear weapons on the planet, it is only a matter of time before we use them.  It is as simple as that.  We should not allow ourselves to be deceived into believing that nuclear-armed countries are spending all those billions of dollars on weapons without any plans to use them.  The only reason a country would have nuclear weapons is that they can foresee a situation in which nuclear war is the only option.  Humanity has allowed itself to be lulled into a false sense of security by the myth of nuclear weapons as a deterrence and the myth of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).  The acronym itself says it all:  it would be MAD to assume that no one would be insane enough to use nuclear weapons because of mutually assured destruction.  This naïve idea does not take into account that the people running the world and making the most important decisions on the planet are insane, child-abusing psychopaths.  One only has to look at how the United States and NATO are currently engaged in provocative actions against Russia to realise that these people have no limits to what they can do.  How long before these provocations turn into an actual war between nuclear-armed nations?  The fact that we are busy fretting about climate change while psychopathic world leaders threaten nuclear war is simply incomprehensible.

The acronym itself says it all:  it would be MAD to assume that no one would be insane enough to use nuclear weapons because of mutually assured destruction.  This naïve idea does not take into account that the people running the world and making the most important decisions on the planet are insane, child-abusing psychopaths. 

Why aren’t we more concerned about nuclear war even though it is the most imminent threat to our survival?  It is because the powers that be have deliberately minimized the danger of nuclear war in the collective consciousness because this is the only way they get to keep their nuclear arsenals and continue projecting their power.  Nuclear weapons allow the power-hungry elites to bully everyone into submission with no accountability.  These people are not about to give up this level of power easily.  The reason the West led by the United States can strut around the globe doing whatever they want, forcing everyone to abide by their “rules-based order” is because of the power these nuclear weapons afford them.  Without the nuclear weapon, their words would be nothing more than the pathetic rantings of spoilt brats that no one would have to listen to.  With nuclear weapons, whatever they say is backed up by the massive threat these weapons represent.  The corporate media never draws our attention to the very real threat posed by nuclear weapons except in ways that cast some countries (North Korea, Iran) as rogue nations that are the only real threats.  Once these nations get rid of their nuclear weapons we are told, then the world will be free of nuclear threats. We are supposed to believe that the West is the sole party that is responsible enough to bear nuclear weapons, even though we all know that the United States is the only country to ever have used nuclear weapons on another country.  The corporate media never challenges the idea that some countries are allowed to have nuclear weapons while others are not.  Who decided this?  What makes the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain so special?  It is this very special status as the “official” nuclear countries that has allowed these five countries to dominate the United Nations and either drive or sabotage whatever agenda they choose.  How can we ever hope to live in a just world when just five nations are allowed to dictate the agenda of a body like the UN?  Not many people know today that the United Nations passed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2021 which prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory.  The corporate media does not talk about this.  A majority of countries have signed the treaty, but several countries including all the nuclear-armed countries have refused to sign the treaty.  If more people knew about this treaty, they would pressure their governments to ratify it.

The Western world is currently engaged in a proxy war with Russia that is playing out in Ukraine.  Every day, Russia issues veiled threats about the use of nuclear weapons which the West doesn’t seem to care about.  Meanwhile, the United States and NATO are doing everything in their power to escalate and prolong the war.  Every day that the war is fought represents another day that the safety of humanity hangs in the balance.  Russia has just taken steps to escalate the war, meaning they are starting to face the fact that the war is with NATO, not Ukraine.  The West doesn’t seem to care and is sending ever more deadly weapons to Ukraine.  At the same time, the West is involved in risky escalations with China over Taiwan.  It seems that as the West loses its control over the planet, it is becoming more and more dangerous and willing to do ever more insane things.  One would be excused for thinking that the West is trying to start World War 3 against Russia and China simultaneously.  This is the only logical conclusion we can draw from the West’s actions.  The West is so used to being the dominant actor on the global stage that they would rather blow everything up than allow anyone else to take this position.  At the same time, it is becoming increasingly harder for the global elites to hide their crimes, from the JFK assassination to 9-11 to the covid-19 global coup.  This makes them extremely dangerous.   What will it take for Westerners to finally confront their governments and say no to this madness?  While they are usually quick to take to the streets to protest everything from abortion to racism to inflation, they do not seem to care that their leaders are trying to start World War 3.  What they should understand is that this time, the violence will not be limited to faraway places while they sleep safely in their warm beds. 

Excerpt from my upcoming book: ENDING WAR (2)

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Chapter 7: Personal Responsibility

One of the most unfortunate things about war is that the people who fight are ordinary people who somehow become convinced that they need to take up arms against an external enemy who presents an existential threat.  Wars are not fought by the elites who pass the laws and make the decisions that send people to the battlefield.  They are not fought by the politicians who decide that a certain country presents a threat that needs to be neutralized or by the journalists who write opinion pieces glorifying war.  They are not fought by the think tanks who come up with slick arguments in support of war or by the weapons manufacturers who churn out the instruments of death.  They are fought by ordinary people who are brainwashed into blindly and unquestioningly believing what they are told.  The soldiers who sacrifice their lives on the battlefield are unfortunately seen as nothing more than a mass of disposable bodies that are used to forward the agendas of the elites.  Their lives mean nothing to the people who send them out to die.  They are treated as nothing more than numbers, not people with families, dreams, ambitions and a higher purpose.  The death of a soldier is not viewed as a tragic and avoidable loss of life but as an expected consequence of war.  Since the work of a soldier is to fight an enemy who is just as determined as they are to kill before getting killed, the death of a soldier is deemed a normal and acceptable part of war.  While the death of civilians is treated as regrettable and to be avoided at all costs, the death of a soldier is treated as if it is unimportant. This dehumanization is what allows wars to continue and we have all been brainwashed into accepting this as normal. 

War is nothing more than a scam that makes billions of dollars for certain people.  This is something that is acknowledged even by former soldiers who connect the dots once they see the reality of war and how meaningless it is.  When they compare the propaganda they were fed during training with the reality on the battlefield, those who are capable of reflection usually end up with moral injury.  They discover that the ideals they thought they were fighting for are nothing more than a mirage that completely vanishes on the battlefield.  Unfortunately, this reality of war is rarely talked about in the mainstream media that is completely captured by the war complex.  The ordinary person is only exposed to the narrative that calls for more and more war and rarely gets to hear any opposing ideas.  The only way we will come out of this rabbit hole is by people taking responsibility for themselves and thinking for themselves.  We have to reject the idea that we are nothing more than bodies that can be used to serve the agendas of the elites.

Should you join the military?

If people knew the truth about the war industry, no one would ever volunteer to join the military which is why they go to such great lengths to hide the reality of it.  The military is sold as a noble institution and working for the military is portrayed as a heroic service to your country, an act of valour which protects our freedom and democracy.  In the West, the military is supposedly the institution that guarantees Western hegemony, which in turn maintains the so-called “rules-based order”.  It is assumed that this rules-based order is what we all want, even though no one ever tells us what these rules are, who wrote them and why we should obey them.  A military “career” – if killing people can be considered a career – is seen as prestigious and lucrative, with benefits that include travel to various exotic locations around the world.  But nobody tells the young men and women who join the military exactly what they are signing up for.  Before you decide to join the military, you need to understand that it is not an adventure that opens doors for you to explore the world and earn good money while you’re at it.  It is important to consider all the facts, not just what the PR machine churns out.  The thing no one mentions when they carry out their recruitment exercises is that joining the military is akin to signing a contract with the devil.  You are committing not only to killing people when called upon to do so but also sacrificing your own life in case you end up on the wrong side of the barrel.  Before signing such a contract, ask yourself if you are okay with that.  It’s not just about the money and the adventure but about the deeper questions that arise from such a commitment.  Is killing people something you agree with or would even think of doing in the normal course of life?  If not, why sign up for a career that requires you to do just that?  Such ethical questions are never addressed during the recruitment exercise.  This is about taking responsibility for yourself and the decisions you make.  You cannot wait until the day you find yourself on the battlefield to start asking questions.  When you join the military, you need to understand what you are signing up for.  You have to see beyond the enticements and see clearly what you will be getting yourself into.  Do not be fooled by the rosy picture of travelling the world and earning a good living for yourself and your family.  At some point, you will be called upon to fight, meaning you will be required to kill other people who are also trying to kill you.  This is what the military is at its core.  If you have watched a war movie, you know that the battlefield is a horrible mess of blood and gore.  Why would you consciously subject yourself to this?   Why would you volunteer for this when no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to do so?  Is any amount of money worth the psychological suffering you will experience after seeing the reality of what war entails?  Are you ready to give up your limbs in service to someone else’s delusional and insane agenda?   Because the idea that war is a noble service to society is pure lunatic ideology.  Everything they tell us to justify war is pure propaganda and lies. We have been manipulated into believing that there is an enemy out there trying to destroy us when in reality the enmity is dreamt up by the very people who ask us to fight.  It is all for their benefit. 

The thing no one mentions when they carry out their recruitment exercises is that joining the military is akin to signing a contract with the devil.  You are committing not only to killing people when called upon to do so but also sacrificing your own life in case you end up on the wrong side of the barrel.  Before signing such a contract, ask yourself if you are okay with that. 

If you are lucky enough to escape death or bodily injuries on the battlefield, you need to consider the psychological wounds you are likely to suffer once you experience war.  Killing does not come naturally to most human beings and hence you cannot escape the consequences of going against your God-given nature.  When you kill others, you may tell yourself that you have done nothing wrong because we have been taught to justify evil for the “greater good”.   But the reality is that when you hurt others, you are hurting yourself first and foremost because we are all connected.  We have been taught to see ourselves not as spiritual beings but as slightly advanced animals.  But this is not true.  We are extensions of our creator and we are all connected at inner levels.  This is why many soldiers simply fall apart when they leave the battlefield.  We know that many soldiers suffer from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when they leave the battlefield.  They experience guilt, grief, regret and inner torment for their part in the war.  Many of them experience moral injury as a result of the things they saw on the battlefield.  These are the real effects of their attempt to deny their spiritual nature and the spiritual nature of those they harmed who are also created in God’s image.  The resulting trauma is undeniable, which is why we have high levels of suicide among soldiers.  The military of course pretends to study the cause of these suicides while ignoring the obvious cause which is that human beings are not wired to be killers. 

The other thing no one ever tells you when they recruit you into the military is that sexual assault and harassment are rampant within the military.   Why would you join an institution where your chances of being sexually assaulted are much higher than if you stayed out?  Why would you take an action that is against your own self-interest?  The military is a den of the worst human beings on earth and you need to be aware of this before you sign up.  The majority of people who join the military are decent people who unfortunately become deceived by the PR machine into believing that they are serving their country.  But we would be naïve not to expect that sociopaths would be attracted to a career in the military because it offers them the opportunity to harm people and get paid for it.  Therefore, before you join the military, be aware that you are joining an institution that is home to some of the worst people on the planet.  You can expect behaviours that are normally associated with sociopaths to be rampant in the military.   Before you sign that contract, ask yourself what the consequences will be for you personally.  Forget what everyone tells you.  Once you join the military, you will be on your own facing the consequences of your choices.   There will be no one to blame for whatever happens on the battlefield because no one forced you to join the military.  And if you think you will be able to quit if you don’t like it, think again.  The military is not an institution you can simply walk away from like any other institution.  You don’t get to quit just because you don’t like it.  You will have to see your contract through to the end.  Therefore, think twice, thrice, a hundred times before you decide to join the military. 

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Raise your awareness

One of the biggest problems we face concerning war is that most ordinary people simply feel that it has nothing to do with them.  We are programmed to believe that such topics are best left to the experts and that we have nothing to contribute.  The so-called “experts”, unfortunately, only lead us in one direction which is more war.  Their only qualification, in reality, is that they are the most aggressive people on the planet and therefore their voices are the loudest.  These people speak out aggressively and authoritatively about war, making everyone else feel as if they have nothing important to say.  We are made to feel as if our opinions do not matter.  Our opinions are made to look naïve and uninformed, so most of us simply lose interest and stop focusing on such issues, leaving the “experts” to say whatever they want.  The reality is that war is not a complicated subject that the average person cannot understand.  The reason we are made to feel like we don’t understand this subject is that the logic used to justify war is fallen logic, where good is made to appear evil and evil is made to appear good.  As an example, in the Russia-Ukraine war we are told that the West is sending massive amounts of weapons to Ukraine to support freedom and democracy in that country.  This doesn’t make sense.  We know logically that sending weapons to Ukraine only worsens and prolongs the war.  We are also told that the West is leading an economic offensive to punish Russia, even though we can see that the sanctions are only causing suffering to the West and the entire planet.  This action is completely illogical.  Because the logic used to justify war does not follow common sense, we are made to feel that it is too complicated for the average person to understand.  If anyone attempts to challenge this logic, they are viciously attacked and accused of all manner of things, which serves the purpose of silencing dissent and discouraging people from expressing their opinions for fear of being attacked.  This is the main reason why the topic of war is dominated by the most aggressive voices that keep the planet permanently at war.

As an example, in the Russia-Ukraine war we are told that the West is sending massive amounts of weapons to Ukraine to support freedom and democracy in that country.  This doesn’t make sense.  We know logically that sending weapons to Ukraine only worsens and prolongs the war. 

What is your responsibility in all this?  It is to keep yourself informed on what is happening on the planet and trust your ability to understand and form an intelligent opinion.  Read extensively on the wars that are currently taking place and find out what the issues are.  Use your common sense to form opinions and draw your own conclusions.  You do not need to rely on the opinions of so-called “experts” because chances are that the opinions expressed by these experts are the opposite of what common sense dictates.  The people currently in positions of authority making the most important decisions on the planet are the least qualified to do so which is why they must make whatever they do sound complicated.  Anyone with common sense can understand whatever is happening on the planet and make logical conclusions.  Your responsibility is to educate yourself and use your logic to understand war.  It is not too complicated:  war = bad; peace = good.  Anyone who tries to spin this any other way is outright lying to us and we have no obligation to listen to them.

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Let your voice be heard

One of major problem facing the anti-war movement is that anti-war voices are not being heard.  The aggressive narratives promoting war are the only ones being heard, mainly because such narratives are amplified by the mainstream media.  As a result, even though most ordinary people do not want war, we continue having wars because our voices are not heard.  Any anti-war voice is portrayed as naïve and unrealistic.  Aggression and violence are normalized while being anti-war is made to look like a radical, unusual idea.  The word “pacifist” is a dirty word in today’s politics.  The few voices that attempt to speak out against war are viciously attacked.  This state of affairs has become so outrageous that even though we are one miscalculation away from nuclear war, no one seems interested in talking about peace.  In the United Kingdom, it has become customary for anyone aspiring to become prime minister to unequivocally state that they are willing to use nuclear weapons.  Nuclear war seems almost inevitable at this point.   We remain silent because our world has been turned into a place where being aggressive is normal while being rational and cautious is abnormal.  Those who oppose war must start to speak out otherwise our planet will be destroyed by people who have lost the ability to think rationally.  Your responsibility, therefore, is to let your voice be heard.  Speak out against war and be silent no more.  If enough of us speak out, then we will eventually drown out the voices of the minority who are the loudest and most aggressive.  There are many ways to speak out; you only need to be creative and do what you’re comfortable with.  You could start a blog in which you talk about war or you could write an article or two about war in an existing blog.  You could write letters to your local politician expressing your views.  You could write letters to your local newspaper.  You could take it upon yourself to forward any interesting anti-war articles or videos to your social media groups. 

As you speak out, remember to raise awareness about the prospect of nuclear war we are currently facing.  We are in an extremely precarious position but the world doesn’t seem to notice.  We have unfortunately been lulled into a false sense of security by the myth of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which is nothing more than a lie that keeps us passive.  We have been led to believe that nuclear war can never happen because no one would be insane enough to risk mutually assured destruction.  But we know for a fact that we have psychopaths in positions of power who would not hesitate to destroy the entire planet if pushed to a corner.  We know that many elites today are building underground bunkers in preparation for some sort of apocalypse.  Why do you think that is?  What do they know that the rest of us don’t?  We must understand that the ruling elites do not see themselves as one with the rest of us, which is why they would prepare underground bunkers to protect themselves while not caring about the rest of us.  Rather than do the sensible thing which is use their power, wealth and influence to avert such a catastrophe, what they are doing instead is preparing to burrow underground like the rats they are while the rest of us are destroyed.  This is the mentality these people have and they are the ones currently controlling the planet.  Going by their behaviour, I would say that nuclear war is imminent.   As long as the world remains silent under the false belief that nuclear war could never happen, we are simply sleepwalking towards our collective annihilation.  Therefore, make it a part of your speaking out efforts to talk about the potential for nuclear war and the need to ban nuclear weapons from the planet.

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Abortion: Beyond Pro-life and Pro-choice Narratives

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The pro-life and pro-choice narratives have been used to describe the very complex topic of abortion and it is time we started questioning this.  Any time you find a complex topic being narrowed down into two opposing narratives, you should immediately smell a rat because you can be sure that someone somewhere is taking advantage of the ensuing division.  In the case of abortion, the polarization has greatly benefitted politicians who take advantage of people’s almost cult-like belief in whichever side they happen to believe in.  In the US, abortion has been raised in status to almost the single most important issue during elections.  Many people there vote for candidates based on this one issue, with considerations such as integrity or other more important issues fading into the background. 

Abortion has been portrayed as a black or white issue with only two possible angles from which it can be viewed.  You are either for it or against it.  There is nothing in between.  There is no space for a nuanced view of such a complex topic.  This extremist view can only cause division while the real issues get lost somewhere therein.  It’s interesting to note the complete lack of compassion in the debate.  We might as well be talking about an inanimate object for all the compassion that is shown.  While the debate is supposed to be about the rights of women, the result has unfortunately been to reduce women to simple, uncomplicated beings who need to be told what to do with their bodies.  The debate has become about two opposing views fighting for supremacy and the woman who is supposedly being fought for has somehow faded into the background.  A woman’s fertility is not and never has been a political issue.  And yet it has been politicized and turned into a battleground that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with women anymore.  Are we still talking about helping women control reproduction?  If we are, why is abortion the only option on the table?   We have to focus our attention on women and ask ourselves what they want and what they need.  We also need to look at the false narratives and assumptions that are preventing us from holistically looking at this issue.  As long as the foundation on which we base our argument is wrong, we cannot expect to arrive at the right conclusions.

The debate has become about two opposing views fighting for supremacy and the woman who is supposedly being fought for has somehow faded into the background. 

Someone once said that if you want to keep people passive and obedient, all you need to do is strictly limit the parameters of acceptable opinion and then allow lively debate within these parameters.  This gives people the impression that there is freedom of speech while reinforcing the system that creates these limitations.  This is what has happened with the abortion “debate”.  The only thing we are allowed to talk about is whether we are pro-life or pro-choice.  These are the parameters that define almost every discussion on abortion.  The truth is that there are many different ways to look at this issue and the right conclusion can only be arrived at by considering all the angles rather than forcing people to choose a side.

False assumptions

The abortion debate is based on several false assumptions.  For example, the question of when life begins has been used to determine when it is acceptable to have an abortion and when it becomes unacceptable.  But the idea that life “begins” is itself a false assumption that immediately sends the debate in the wrong direction.  The reality is that life is an ongoing process that does not begin or end when one enters or exits the planet.  Once we understand that a person does not start existing at the point of birth and will not cease to exist at the point of death, then we can start looking at abortion with more rationality and without the hysteria.  Many of us have an inner knowing about the ongoingness of life, hence the concept of previous lifetimes.  The concept of reincarnation is held by many people although it is very much denied in the Christian religion.  If we could only be open to this idea, we would start seeing through the false assumptions that underline the abortion debate.   Once we understand that people are constantly coming into embodiment and leaving embodiment, then we will understand that life does not begin at conception or some point thereafter.  The person who is being born already existed before they entered into embodiment.  The answer, therefore, lies in looking at human beings as spiritual beings and life as an ongoing process of birth and rebirth that allows us to have different experiences that lead to our growth.

The abortion debate is based on a lack of understanding of what a human being is.  One of the central questions of the abortion debate is whether the foetus is a human being or a mass of cells.  This is the result of a materialistic way of looking at human beings.  If you think about it, this very mindset is the source of many of the problems on this planet, from racism to inequality.  When we look at human beings as if they are nothing more than the bodies in which they reside, we cannot help but treat them differently based on their outward, observable features.  But when we acknowledge that human beings are spiritual beings and the bodies we occupy are simply the vehicles that allow us to interact with the physical realm, we can then be ready to look at the abortion debate in a higher way.  If we consider the fact that “we are made in God’s image”, then we realize that God is not a physical being but a spiritual being.  This is the mystery behind the idea that we are made in God’s image.  We are spiritual beings like our creator and we do not have our beginning or end on this planet but we have an existence beyond this planet.  Therefore, the question of whether life begins at fertilization or after the cells start multiplying is a false narrative that is used to confuse people and trap them in a lower way of looking at things. 

It has been said that you cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness in which it was created.  You have to go to a higher level of consciousness to solve the problem.  People are obsessed with exactly when life begins.  Pro-life advocates insist that it is at fertilisation while pro-choice advocates insist that it is at birth.  None of these positions is correct.  As mentioned earlier, this argument comes from a lack of understanding of what a human being is.  A human being is not the body they inhabit, therefore asking when life begins is asking the wrong question.  Am I, therefore, saying that the body does not matter?  Of course not, the body matters because it is the vessel that enables us to exist in this world.  My purpose is to correct the foundation on which the abortion debate is based.   Once the foundation is correct, then you can hope to arrive at the right conclusion, not by looking at the issue simplistically as is currently being done but by considering all the assumptions that go into discussion.

The free will of the mother

Pro-life advocates and some governments insist that the foetus has a right to be born.  Once conception takes place, the woman has set herself on an unstoppable path and she has no choice but to bring the child into embodiment.  But if we look at the issue from the standpoint that the child already existed even before they were born, we realize that bringing the child into embodiment is something a woman takes upon herself as a loving act of service towards the child.  Bringing up a child is not a joke as I pointed out in my previous article.  Bringing a child into the world is a commitment you make to spending a large chunk of your life supporting the child in order to allow them to experience life on this planet.  This is not a small matter and therefore it cannot be forced upon anyone. If a woman falls pregnant by accident and for whatever reason feels that they are not ready to commit to bringing up the child, then no one can or should force them to do so.  The foetus does not have a right to be born by someone unwilling to do so.  If we lived in an ideal world, there would never be the question of anyone becoming pregnant against their will.  Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world and many people do get pregnant against their wish.  It is therefore an unfortunate fact of life that many women do need to get an abortion to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy.  This is the area we need to be focusing on: why is it that women are still unable to control reproduction today and still find themselves needing abortions?  We have to look at this issue in the long term and come up with better solutions for women.  But the underlying fact is that the foetus does not have a right to be born by a woman who in some way is unable or unwilling to take on the task.

Right to choose?

Pro-choice advocates often talk about a woman’s right to choose.  A woman indeed has a right to choose, but this should not be confused with a woman’s right to an abortion.  These are two completely different things.  A woman’s right to choose is often portrayed as the same thing as a woman’s right to an abortion but they are not the same thing.  Abortion is just one means by which we enable a woman to control reproduction, but it is not the only way or even the best way.  We need to separate these two issues in our minds.  Those who supposedly fight for a woman’s right to choose are not giving her much choice.  They present abortion as the only option while glossing over any other options that might make abortion unnecessary.  It is almost as if abortion has developed a life of its own and become an end in itself, not a means to an end.  Have we forgotten that the real goal is to help a woman choose when and how many children she wants to have?  What other options exist for women?  What about birth control?  Why aren’t we out there fighting for free, safe, government-provided birth control if we are serious about a woman’s right to choose?  Why do we have tunnel vision that leads to abortion as the only thing that guarantees a woman’s right to choose?  I don’t think any woman sets out purposefully to have an abortion.  Women look for abortions only because they find themselves cornered with a pregnancy they do not want.  How can we help women not end up in this position in the first place?  Our role should be to support women in controlling reproduction as painlessly and efficiently as possible.  The focus on abortion to the exclusion of everything else is a distraction from what the real focus should be. 

Is abortion right or wrong?

Whether abortion is right or wrong is not the point.  When we focus too much on this, we lose sight of the bigger question which is: why do women seek abortion in the first place?  Why would a woman want to terminate a pregnancy?  The reason women seek abortions is not because they want to have a painful procedure (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually) just for the fun of it.  It is because they find themselves in an untenable situation.  The reasons are many and varied including:  too young to be a mother, do not want more children, birth control failure, unstable relationship, wrong timing, change of mind, ashamed, cannot afford a child, rape, incest, the relationship ended, etc.  We cannot know all the reasons women want the procedure.  Trying to moralize is not going to help them out of the situation.  The rightness or wrongness of abortion should not be the focus but rather how to help women solve the problem and how to ensure that going forward, women are not finding themselves in this situation.  Should we accept that women should continue experiencing the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual toll of abortion or should we find ways of helping women control reproduction in ways that ensure they never find themselves cornered into seeking abortions?  How do we ensure no one ever has to get to the point where they need an abortion by equipping women with the tools necessary to control their fertility?   When we treat abortion as a religious issue or a legal issue or a women’s rights issue, we miss the bigger picture and come up with bad, myopic solutions.   If we could only put ourselves in the shoes of women seeking abortions, we would understand that it is not something anyone would do willingly. 

Women are unfortunately used to being talked down to and being told what is and isn’t right for them.  People always feel the need to tell women what is and isn’t right, rather than giving them solutions that work and are healthy for them.  Our bodies are seen as are objects that people feel entitled to control and make rules for.  This is something that continuously works against women because we end up with solutions that are not in our best interest.  It is as if our bodies are the battlefield for forces that do not care about us or our well-being but only care about power and control.   The abortion debate is not really about our well-being but about who gets to control us and profit from us.  If it was about us, then we would not be having discussions that centre around legislating our bodies.  Those who are against abortion want to make rules about what we can and can’t do with our bodies.  Those who are for abortion seem to be fighting for our right to have a harmful procedure instead of effectively equipping us to not need to have one in the first place.  The discussion seems to be based on the assumption that someone needs to make laws concerning women’s reproduction.  Why is it that in the 21st century when all other areas of life have advanced so much, we still have not managed to control reproduction and have to rely on crude methods to manage it?  It is because women are not a priority on this planet.  It is because it is acceptable for women to experience what would be unacceptable for men.  I’m quite certain that if it was men who carried pregnancies, we would not be discussing whether or not to allow abortions because technologies would be in place to ensure no one experienced unwanted pregnancies in the first place.  We continue blaming women for their fertility instead of enabling them to control it.  We need to get past this acceptance of bad solutions for women. 

Our bodies are seen as objects that people feel entitled to control and make rules for.  This is something that continuously works against women because we end up with solutions that are not in our best interest.  It is as if our bodies are the battlefield for forces that do not care about us or our well-being but only care about power and control. 

Violence against women

It says quite a lot about our state of evolution that we still cannot control reproduction and have to rely on crude methods to get rid of pregnancies.  Reproduction seems to have been left behind in the dark ages when we used to perform crude operations on the human body.  All other aspects of medicine have developed to the technologically advanced practices we have today.  Meanwhile, we continue to rip babies out of mothers’ wombs as a form of birth control.  Is this really what we deserve as women or can we demand a better level of care?  Our bodies have always been the objects of violence.  Why is it acceptable that women should experience yet more violence under the guise of controlling reproduction?  Because it doesn’t matter what anyone says, abortion is a form of violence against women in that a child has to be forced out of the womb.  It is not a gentle procedure by any stretch of the imagination.  I understand very well that it is all women have at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at its merits and demerits.  By politicizing the issue, we are forced to hide the fact that abortion is not a pleasant experience and only look at it as something to legislate.  Why is it acceptable that women should routinely have unpleasant procedures?  Why can’t we demand better for ourselves?  Is this the best we can come up with?  We always hear about the sanctity of the unborn child, but what about the sanctity of the mother?  As much as I support a woman’s right to choose, I find it hard to accept that abortion is the best we can come up with.  If we put our minds to it, we can come up with a much better, universal method of birth control that ensures that no woman ever has to suffer through an unwanted pregnancy or abortion.  That truly is something worth fighting for. 

The shame surrounding women’s bodies

Women are taught from a very young age to feel ashamed of their bodies.  We are taught to hide and be secretive about our bodies because our bodily processes are supposed to be shameful.  We feel shame when our bodies start changing and we suddenly become subject to the male gaze.  We feel shame when we start menstruating.  We feel shame when we become pregnant, especially young women who become pregnant before their time.  We feel shame during childbirth when strangers peer at our private parts.  We feel shame when we go through menopause with the cliched portrayal of menopausal women as angry and somehow repulsive.  Women carry a lot of shame and it is this shame that surrounds the topic of abortion.  Why do some people fight so hard to stop abortion?  It is because of the desire to punish women by forcing them to bear the consequences of their secret misdeeds.  Female reproduction is not taken as a natural part of the human experience.  It is considered a shameful experience and it has been used to keep women down.  There is usually a lot of disgust directed towards women’s reproduction.  We express disgust towards women who have more children than they can take care of, especially poor women in developing countries.  We express disgust towards young women who get unwanted pregnancies.  We express disgust towards women who experience their sexuality in ways we do not approve of.  We express disgust towards women seeking abortions as if a woman wanting to get rid of an unwanted, unplanned pregnancy is something we cannot comprehend.  Is this really what women deserve for their God-given ability to bear children? 

Way forward

In my opinion, the first thing we need to do is educate people on how to manage reproduction.  Let us stop approaching reproduction as something shameful that needs to be controlled through legislation.  We need to educate both boys and girls about how to prevent pregnancy from the time they reach childbearing age.  Let us openly teach about birth control methods in school so that everyone is equipped with knowledge on how to control their bodies.  This should not be approached as something to be ashamed of, as if pregnancy is something unnatural.  Today, parents have to keep their fingers crossed when their children become teenagers hoping that they make it through this period without getting pregnant.  We need to stop crossing our fingers and take practical, common sense measures. Secondly, we need our governments to provide safe, long-term, preferably non-hormonal birth control to all women from the time they reach childbearing age.  We don’t need to wait for girls to become pregnant and then punish them or wring our hands in despair.  We need to approach female reproduction as a natural part of life that should be dealt with realistically.  Mothers should be empowered to lovingly introduce their daughters to birth control as soon as they reach childbearing age, with no shame attached to this.  Governments should facilitate this process by providing free birth control. This is how much we need to normalize birth control and teach girls to take charge of their fertility, just the same way we teach them to take charge of other aspects of their bodies.  Last but not least, abortion should be a last resort when all else fails.  It should not be presented as the only way or even the best method of controlling reproduction.  We have to openly acknowledge the shortcomings of abortion, even as we accept that it is all we have at present to deal with unwanted pregnancies.  We need to focus more on prevention rather than cure.  After all, pregnancy is not a surprising or unexpected phenomenon.  With education and the provision of free birth control, we can control reproduction such that no one ever has to experience an unwanted pregnancy or abortion. 

Trauma Bonding: 17 Signs You’re a Victim and How to Break Free

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Trauma bonding is a bond that is formed between an abuser and their victim due to a recurring pattern of punishment and reward that keeps the victim tied to the abuser and unable to break free.  It is a kind of conditioning or programming that causes the victim to respond in unhealthy ways to a toxic person.  The beginning stages of trauma bonds are formed when the abuser love-bombs the victim, causing a massive release of feel-good hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin.  The love bombing is quickly followed by narcissistic abuse which appears suddenly and unexpectedly, plunging the victim into a downward spiral of shock and betrayal that can be compared to a drug addict going into withdrawal.  The victim is left longing for the high, just like a drug addict longs for the high they receive from drugs.  Thus begins the cycle of punishment and reward that traps the victim in a neurochemical bondage, no different from drug addiction.  With time, the abuse gets worse while the rewards become rare, meaning the victim has no reason at all to remain in the relationship yet they find themselves unable to leave.  When trying to understand why the victim doesn’t simply leave the abuser, we need to understand that the victim is struggling with an addiction, the same way a drug addict struggles with drug addiction. 

The beginning stages of trauma bonds are formed when the abuser love-bombs the victim, causing a massive release of feel-good hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin.  The love bombing is quickly followed by narcissistic abuse which appears suddenly and unexpectedly, plunging the victim into a downward spiral of shock and betrayal that can be compared to a drug addict going into withdrawal.

Most of us have grown up with an idea of “falling in love” that comes from the media, which equates falling in love with being under someone’s spell – thinking about them constantly, longing to be with them all the time, being unable to think rationally and giving up your autonomy for the sake of the person you fall in love with. This unfortunately sets us up to form trauma bonds with narcissists.  If we expect love to look like the version we see in movies, we become prime targets for narcissists because we mistake the neurochemical addiction that occurs with love.  We need to understand that love should not feel like an addiction and should not be painful or an emotional roller-coaster.  Love should be joyful, harmonious and fulfilling. 

Signs of trauma bonding:

  1. The victim defends the relationship even though everyone around them has a negative reaction towards it.  When friends, family members or others tell you that they don’t like the person you’re in a relationship with, it is wise to listen to what they have to say.  If you find that you constantly have to defend your relationship, then there may be something you are not seeing.  Many times, people outside the relationship can be more objective than you can.  The reality is that many people, especially those who have been brought up by a narcissistic parent will not be able to detect when they are being emotionally abused.  They may be so used to living with narcissistic abuse that they lose their ability to see it when it is happening to them.  However painful it may be, listening to what others have to say about your relationship, especially those who love you and have nothing to gain from breaking up your relationship is the smart thing to do.
  2. The victim is obsessed with the abuser even after they leave.  A victim of trauma bonding will be unable to forget the abuser even when they abandon them.  The victim continues longing for the abuser, missing him and hoping he will come back.  The victim becomes trapped in an unending cycle of abuse, abandonment and betrayal followed by love.  The victim is unable to move on as they are left longing for a return to the loving times.  This means that the victim remains suspended, waiting for the abuser to give them the love they so desperately crave.  Even though the abuser caused them immense pain, they feel like they cannot live without them.
  3. Others are horrified at something that has happened but the victim isn’t.  The abuser may physically hurt the victim or engage in unacceptable behaviour, but the victim is unable to see the seriousness of the matter.  The victim may insist that the abuser has changed or has apologised and they do not seem to be aware of just how serious the abuse is.  This is a clear sign of trauma bonding.
  4. The victim feels loyal to the abuser and hides secrets that would be damaging to the abuser.  The victim shows loyalty to the abuser even though it is completely undeserved.  The victim identifies with the abuser and protects them, keeping the truth about the abuse to themselves.  In this way, the abuser goes on with their lives and even abuses others without the threat of being exposed. 
  5. The victim continues to seek contact with the abuser even though it will cause them pain.  This creates a cycle of breaking up and coming back together or the on-again-off-again type of relationship.  Even though the abuser constantly betrays and hurts the victim, the victim is unable to stay away.  This is why they say that it takes seven attempts before a victim finally breaks free from an abusive relationship.  Even though the relationship is bad for them, they keep going back.  The victim essentially becomes alienated from themselves and is unable to protect themselves.  That instinct of self-preservation that motivates us to protect ourselves from harm is broken and the sense of self is shattered.  The victim becomes conditioned to act in ways that are contrary to their own self-interest. 
  6. The victim becomes drawn to dangerous individuals.  As a result of being in an abusive relationship, the victim develops a pattern in which they seek out or are attracted to dangerous individuals.  It is almost as if they want to keep replaying their initial abuse or find such relationships thrilling.  This is why it is so important to take time to heal after an abusive relationship before getting into another relationship.  If you were in an abusive relationship and managed to get out, it is advisable to take time to understand why you ended up in such a relationship in the first place and to heal whatever wounds caused you to end up with such a person.  Failure to do so risks repeating the same pattern over and over again.
  7. The victim tries to change or save the abuser instead of just walking away.  Many victims of abuse find themselves obsessively trying to change the abuser or feeling like they are the only ones who can save them.  They develop a martyr complex which causes them to feel compelled to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the abuser.  They are convinced that the abuser is a good person deep inside and that if they only make enough of an effort, the abuser will eventually change.  But the reality is that abusers rarely change.  The idea that you will change them is delusional.  The best thing is to walk away and realise that it is not your responsibility or burden to change a toxic person.
  8. The victim will go overboard in helping the abuser.  Many abusers not only treat their victims badly but also commandeer their resources such as money or property.  You will find victims who go out of their way to give money to the abuser or get them out of all sorts of situations.  Even though the abuser has consistently proven themselves untrustworthy and unreliable, the victim will continue going out of their way to help them.    In the end, the abuser may even take over the victim’s resources leaving them completely at their mercy.
  9. The victim cannot leave the abuser even though they do not like, trust or care for the abuser.   Trauma bonding is like drug addiction.  Even though the victim does not like, trust or care for the abuser, they find themselves unable to leave.  They will find ways to justify their continued attachment to the abuser, but the reality is that they are trapped in a cycle of reward and punishment that keeps them longing for the ever-decreasing crumbs of love that the abuser tosses their way.  Even after they see the abuser for what he is, they still find it difficult to break the bond.  It takes an almost herculean effort to break the emotional ties that bind the victims to the abuser.
  10. The victim continues to play along even when things become dangerous or destructive. The victim is unable to leave the abuser even when their physical safety is compromised.  Despite physical or sexual abuse, or even when loved ones beg them to leave, they continue staying with the abuser.  They lose the desire or ability to resist the abuser, which is why in extreme cases, victims end up being killed by the abuser. 
  11. The victim continues trying to get the abuser to like them even though they clearly don’t care.  The victim will try to do nice things for the abuser to get their attention.  They will be kind to the abuser and become almost a doormat in an effort to please the abuser.  They will walk on eggshells around the abuser, afraid to do anything that would anger them.  Even when the abuser clearly shows that they do not care about them, the victim does everything in their power to get the abuser to show them the love they once showed them.
  12. The victim trusts the abuser again and again even though they have proven unreliable.  The victim uses emotional thinking when it comes to the abuser, i.e., they are unable to think logically or make logical decisions.  Whenever the abuser abuses them, they manage to find ways to excuse the abusive behaviour – the abuser didn’t mean it, he was tired, the victim did something to annoy him, he will change, the victim just needs to try harder, no one understands the abuser, etc.  The victim gives the abuser opportunity after opportunity to hurt them and never seems to learn from past actions.  Just like drug addicts, they lose their ability to think rationally. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to overcome this way of thinking and stop making excuses for the abuser.
  13. The victim chooses to stay in conflict with the abuser even though it would cost them nothing to walk away.  The victim becomes so attached to the abuser that they engage in explosive fights with them rather than simply walk away from the relationship.  Even when the relationship becomes so toxic that it makes no sense to continue in it, the victim stays put.  They become afraid of losing the relationship even though they do not benefit in any way from being in a relationship with the abuser. 
  14. The abuser’s talent, charisma or contributions cause the victim to overlook destructive, exploitative or degrading behaviour.  When the abuser is wealthy, a celebrity or in other ways an important person in society, the victim convinces themselves that they need to remain in the relationship.  They view the abuser as superior to them and are unable to appreciate their own self-worth.  They feel flattered by the abuser’s attention which causes them to ignore the abuse.  This is why we hear of celebrities abusing people with impunity.  Their wealth and position in society shield them from being answerable for their crimes. 
  15. The victim stays in a relationship longer than they should.  Long after the relationship has become toxic and unbearable, the victim remains with the abuser using all sorts of justifications.  They may have children together, joint property or businesses, or they may be unwilling to leave due to their history together.  The victim is unable to see themselves as an individual deserving of happiness and a fulfilled life.  They see themselves only as part of a couple.  They are unable to envision life without the abuser.  They may become so accustomed to the abuse that they normalise it and minimise it.  Their self-worth is completely shattered by years of emotional abuse. 
  16. The victim sees how the abuser abuses others but thinks of themselves as the exception.  In some cases, the victim is so convinced that the abuser loves them that even though they see how badly he treats other people, they still believe that they are the exception.  The victim is unable to see that they too are a victim of the abuser.  They think the abuser would never treat them badly because they are special or loved.  Getting them to open their eyes and see the abuser for what he is may take quite some effort.
  17. The victim internally sees the abuser as their controller.  This causes the victim to constantly have internal conversations in which they justify themselves to the abuser.  Whatever they do, they see the abuser as the one whose approval they need.  They see themselves through the judgmental eyes of the abuser, feeling shame when they feel like they are letting them down or feeling as if they need to live up to the abuser’s expectations.  The abuser becomes like God to the victim, the person they see looking over their shoulder in everything they do.  The abuser is given too much power in the victim’s life, causing them to always conform to the abuser’s wishes.  It takes intense introspection for the victim to become aware of the amount of control the abuser has over them.

How to overcome trauma bonding:

  1. Recognize the trauma bond – One of the greatest barriers to overcoming trauma bonding is recognizing that you have one.  Even though we may be aware that we are in a toxic relationship with someone, in most cases people just don’t realize that they have formed a trauma bond with the person.  They do not understand that the reason they cannot simply leave even though they recognize the abuse is that they have formed a trauma bond with them.  People who have been brought up by narcissistic parents are particularly prone to this.  People in close relationships with psychopaths are also blind to their abusive nature due to their charming facades.  If you’re in a toxic relationship which you are unable to leave even though you would like to, you should consider that you may have a trauma bond with the person. 
  2. Therapy – Breaking a trauma bond sometimes requires therapy.   This is especially true for people who are trapped in abusive relationships with people who won’t easily let them go.  Many abusers will not just casually let their victims go – the reason they abuse their victims is precisely because they want to keep them bound to themselves.  In extreme cases, some people could be trapped in cults or other organised groups that ritually abuse them in order to control them.   These abusers will not just let them go without a fight.  Such trauma bonds cannot be broken through sheer willpower – they require therapy from knowledgeable psychologists.
  3. No contact – Once you realize that you have a trauma bond with someone, the best way to break it is to break off all contact with the person.  Trauma bonds are the hardest relationships to break because of the emotional, addictive element.  The way we respond to the abuser is a conditioned response.  The brain is conditioned to bypass normal, rational thinking and therefore breaking free is as difficult as breaking a drug addiction.  It will require great determination to break off contact with the person.  You will need to block them on all social media, email, phone, etc.  It might mean changing your phone number so that the person can’t reach you.  It may be difficult at first but with time it gets easier as the brain adjusts to functioning without the constant highs and lows. 
  4. Limit contact – In cases where it is completely impossible to break off contact, for example if you are co-parenting with the person, try as much as possible to limit contact with the person.  Don’t talk to them unless it is absolutely necessary.  Avoid face-to-face meetings or phone calls that could devolve into shouting matches.  Determine the most impersonal way of communicating such as email or short, factual text messages and stick to that.  Create as much distance between the two of you to weaken and eventually break the trauma bond.
  5. Stop emotional thinking – The reason many people keep going back to abusive relationships is that they develop emotional thinking which keeps sabotaging their efforts to break free.  Rather than use logic, they default to a way of thinking that allows them to justify going back to the abuser.  Even if the person has proven again and again that they are unreliable, the victim still convinces themselves that this time will be different.  Even if the person has clearly shown through their bad treatment that they do not love the victim, they continue telling themselves that the abuser loves them.  Even if they have shown themselves to be an abusive, cruel person, the victim still tells themselves that deep down they are a good person.  In other words, the victim is not using logic because their brain is bypassing the logical, analytical mind.  If you recognise this type of thinking in yourself, you’ll need to counter the lies with cold logic based on an observation of the abuser’s behaviour.    
  6. Honour your feelings – Another reason it is so hard to break trauma bonding is that the victim learns to bury their feelings and does not trust that what they feel is valid.  They learn that their feelings are unimportant and therefore they learn to suppress them.  If they were brought up by a narcissistic parent, this process would have started from early childhood and will be their default way of being.  To break this pattern, you need to recognize that your feelings are just as important as anyone else’s.  Listen to what your body tells you and know that it is valid and should not be ignored. 
  7. Enforce boundaries – Victims of abuse usually find it hard to enforce boundaries.  They have learnt that their needs are not important and that they should put other people’s needs before their own.  Therefore, they allow people to treat them badly over and over again.  One of the hardest things for such people is to say no to bad treatment.  They are reluctant to appear rude or hurt someone else’s feelings.  What they don’t understand is that the person they are so eager to protect has no similar feelings towards them.  The abuser will have no qualms about hurting them or treating them badly.  It is therefore their responsibility to enforce boundaries and make the decision not to accept abusive behaviour.