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The Psychology of the UN Security Council

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.

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

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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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Excerpt from my upcoming book: ENDING WAR

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Who shapes our worldview on war?

Human beings have very specific ideas about what the world is supposed to look like. Some of these ideas are so ingrained that we never even stop to question them. Our political systems. Our geopolitical systems. Our education systems. Our social lives. The way we work. The way we love. We accept that the world is the way it is because that is the way it is supposed to be. But have you ever asked yourself where we get our ideas about what the world is supposed to look like? Are the systems we have the only possible systems we could have on the planet? The truth of the matter is that the way the world works today is the result of ideas that come from human beings. There is nothing to say that these systems are necessarily the best systems or the only possible systems. Neither can we say that these systems come from God because they seem to contradict everything we know about God’s nature. Our world is based on a competitive model in which the winner takes all. This is not the only way that our world could be structured. We could have a world that is based on co-operation, whereby we see ourselves as being in the same boat, therefore needing to cooperate with each other in order to survive and thrive. Unfortunately, we have been brainwashed into believing that being competitive is the only way human beings can exist. From the day we are born, our parents pass on these attitudes to us. They do their best to prepare us to exist in a competitive world by doing whatever they can to give us a head start. In this way, they are already telling us that we will need to fight to survive. When we go to school, it is the same thing. Our education system is structured in a way that teaches us to always compete with each other. We are taught to see our fellow students as competition that we need to beat. We are taught to see ourselves in comparison with others. not as human beings in our own right. We are taught that we are not good enough unless we are ahead of others. We are taught that our worth comes from scoring the highest grades and being at the top of the class. If, God forbid, we do not perform well, then we are taught that we have less value than those who are at the top. This same attitude extends to the workplace where we are taught that to get ahead, we have to be better than everyone else. We have to work harder than anyone, produce the best results and do anything to please our bosses. If need be, we should be willing to step on others or ride on their backs to get ahead. Outside of the workplace, we are taught to compete with others in society; to buy the latest cars, live in the best houses and wear the most fashionable clothes. This is done not to live our best lives but to keep up with or outdo our neighbours. We want our marriages to be picture-perfect and our children to attend the best schools, all so that we feel that we are better than others.

Our world is based on a competitive model in which the winner takes all. This is not the only way that our world could be structured. We could have a world that is based on co-operation, whereby we see ourselves as being in the same boat, therefore needing to cooperate with each other in order to survive and thrive.

I hope you can see where I’m going with this. We have been brainwashed into believing that life is a competition against others. Instead of living life in ways that make us happy, we drive ourselves almost to death in order to be better than others. We live life in comparison to others and in the process, we lose ourselves. Where does this idea about life come from? What happened is that over time, we allowed the most aggressive people amongst us to be the ones deciding how the world should be structured. These people see life only as a competition and they somehow managed to get the rest of us to look at life this way. They deceived us into looking at life the same way they look at it and into structuring the world in a competitive rather than cooperative way. The most aggressive people captured our collective psyches and instilled in us the idea that human beings are supposed to compete with each other over scarce resources. The very idea that the world has scarce resources comes from these same aggressive beings. Every day we are told that the world is running out of resources to support human beings. The truth, however, is that we have a distribution problem, whereby the world’s wealth and resources are hoarded by a few, meaning the rest have to do without. If these resources could be distributed equitably, we would not have people going hungry or living in poverty in certain parts of the world. The idea that the world has limited resources is a false narrative created by the most aggressive among us who would prefer that no one questioned the fact that they have amongst themselves almost 90% of the world’s wealth. These are the same people who meet every year at Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) and pretend to come up with solutions for the world’s problems. This is akin to a meeting of wolves trying to solve the problem of sheep getting eaten during the night. Or as someone once said, it is like attending a fire fighters conference where no one is allowed to talk about water. It is no surprise therefore that the kind of solutions these people come up with include dystopian scenarios in which we own nothing, have no privacy and are happy about it. This is simply an expression of their disdain for humanity, that they could come up with such ideas and seriously put them forth as solutions to the world’s problems.

When it comes to war, our worldview is equally shaped by aggressive people holding leadership positions in policy making institutions. How else do you explain the fact that even though most people do not want to go to war and are innately anti-war, we continue having wars on the planet? How do you explain the fact that even though most of humanity is horrified by the idea of nuclear war, we seem to be marching closer and closer to a nuclear confrontation between nuclear-armed nations? The people driving the agenda are lost in a delusional worldview in which having the most powerful and destructive weapons equals being the most powerful nation on earth. These lunatics who have zero ability to reason intelligently are the ones driving the agenda and they keep taking us closer and closer to annihilation. It is no exaggeration to say that the people leading our world are mentally ill in the literal sense of the word. They are psychopaths and narcissists who should be locked up in mental health institutions or at the very least under psychiatric care, not the ones making the most important decisions on earth. How humanity allowed such a situation to exist is something we will have to grapple with for a long time as we start waking up to the reality of our situation.

The people driving the agenda are lost in a delusional worldview in which having the most powerful and destructive weapons equals being the most powerful nation on earth.

The ideas we hold about war come from the war industry which is run by the most aggressive, war-like people on earth. The same primitive ideas our forefathers held about fighting for land and resources are still held by these people today, at a time when we should long ago have transcended such ideas. The days of fighting others for land and resources should by now be part of our forgotten history, together with things like making fire from sticks. In our modern world, no one should be thinking about stealing land and resources, and in all fairness, most people on earth don’t think like this. But those who run the global agenda still do. They are like toddlers in adult bodies, fighting each other over toys. We can therefore conclude that the ones running the world have the lowest consciousness among humanity. These people are driven by greed for power and profits, the same way wild animals are driven by the urge to kill prey for food. Instead of using their God-given intelligence to temper this desire with reason, they foolishly follow their lower instincts and they drag the rest of humanity along with them. They spread their ideologies through think-tanks that push their aggressive ideas to the rest of the world. They lobby politicians to pass laws and policies that favour their war-mongering. They buy up the mainstream media and use it as a conduit for their narratives. And they brainwash us through the entertainment industry that glorifies war and violence. This, in a nutshell, is how they infect the entire human race with their primitive worldview.

The System is Rigged to Favour the Most Aggressive Among Us

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The world we live in today is structured in such a way that the most aggressive among us always end up on top. According to Darwin, this is the natural order of things. Survival for the fittest. From politics to business to geopolitics to the workplace, the people who are willing to do anything to get ahead are the ones who ultimately end up winning. The ones who are the most relentless, persistent, aggressive, ruthless, cunning, willing to lie, cheat and bribe in pursuit of a goal are the ones who end up on top. The world rewards such behaviour. But if you think about it, is this the ultimate way for our world to be structured? Because let’s face it, who among us are the ones most likely to thrive in such an environment? Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.

Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.

When we hear the word psychopath, most of us immediately think of is the Ted Bundys and the Hitlers of this world i.e., murderers, rapists and the criminals of society. But today we know that psychopaths can be very high functioning individuals and can live their entire lives without being detected or called out for who they are. They are masters at creating convincing façades that hide the truth of who they are. While they spend most of their days dishing out emotional and psychological trauma to the people around them, they will nonetheless keep their psychopathy hidden behind charming personas and the image of success. Unfortunately, we have been conditioned to admire outward displays of success to the point that if someone is successful, we believe that they are worthy of admiration and emulation. And psychopaths can be among the most successful people due to their driven nature and single-minded focus on getting ahead. They are well represented among CEOs, politicians, lawyers, surgeons and business owners. You will also find them in professions we have been taught to revere such as policemen, the military and believe it or not, church leaders. Hence the kind of abuses you hear about in churches for example the paedophilia in the catholic church or the abuse of children in the Canadian residential schools.

How did we end up having a system that is rigged to favour psychopaths without us even being aware of it? First and foremost, psychopaths are the ones who have been writing the rule book. It is said that history is written by the winners and if the winners are psychopaths, then they will manipulate the narrative to suit themselves. So, for example, the imperialists who go out and conquer faraway lands and subdue people through brutal force become our heroes. The countries that take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else starving and poor become the admired countries while the poorer countries are despised and blamed for the condition they are in. The billionaires who siphon all the wealth leaving everyone else to make do with the little that is left over are held up as the models of success that we should all strive to emulate.

Secondly, psychopathy is a condition that hides in plain sight because we are not trained to see it. Psychopaths have an outward, superficial charm that easily deceives most people. They are the people who tell the funniest and best stories and are fun to be around. But when you spend enough time with them, you start noticing that they are not really who they say they are. You will notice that their behaviour is not aligned with the way they portray themselves. You may notice how they bully people and emotionally abuse people and how they seem to induce fear in those working close to them. Psychopaths have an uncanny ability to abuse without the object of the abuse being aware that they are being abused. They may make you feel that you are special to them but suddenly turn on you and attack you. This causes your mind to go into denial because you cannot believe that the person you’ve come to trust could turn on you so ruthlessly. Psychopaths are also pathological liars. They will say one thing today and later completely change the story. They lie so much and change the story so much that they are not even able to keep up with the lies themselves. And so, their reality just keeps changing to become whatever is most convenient at the time. If confronted, they will just create a new version of events and the new version becomes the new reality. You can never win with them because their version of the story is the truth and that’s the end of the story.

Below are some ways in which psychopaths have managed to infiltrate the system and rig it in their favour allowing them to dominate the planet to the detriment of us all:

Politics

The political systems in most parts of the world are designed to favour the most aggressive, rewarding them for their ability to do whatever it takes to win, their ability to eliminate the competition, their ability to mount aggressive campaigns, their willingness to bribe voters, etc. Even in countries with so-called ‘mature’ democracies, the most aggressive people still manage to find their way in and rig the system in their favour. Money talks in politics and those who have the most of it can influence the outcome of elections. You end up with situations where people are manipulated into seeing themselves as being on one side of the divide in opposition to those on the other side. What they don’t see is that it doesn’t matter which side wins, the elites ultimately end up winning and everyone else loses. Voters are manipulated into thinking there are only two options and they must choose the lesser of two evils. We are manipulated into thinking that the obscure candidate who represents the kind of qualities we want is a loser not worth wasting our vote on. And so, we continue voting in the same aggressive types because we don’t see any other option. I think it would be better to abstain from voting than to vote for someone you don’t want just because they represent the lesser evil.

Business

Does profit have to be the only motive in business? We have been taught that profit and maximizing shareholder value is the only motive for business, but is this a sound idea? What is the result of this ideology? It’s what we see today, businesses mindlessly pursuing profits at the expense of integrity, the environment and their employees. People are viewed not as human beings but as human resources. Have you ever wondered where that idea came from? If you put human beings at the same level as capital or land and you see them as resources, then you have a right to treat them as a resource and not as human beings. You have a right to ruthlessly cut down on staff whenever the need arises to save on costs. You have a right to pay them as little as possible because it is none of your concern how they survive on the little you pay them. Your greatest concern is keeping as much as possible for the owners of the business. You don’t need to be concerned about what happens when they fall sick because you don’t need to think of a resource in such terms. You don’t need to concern yourself with what happens when they give birth. You don’t need to concern yourself with how they manage to get to work at 8 am every day and how they get home when they leave at 5 pm. You don’t need to care for them, you just need them to work and deliver the results you need. You view them as workers, not partners. But if you think about it, is it possible for a company to achieve anything without every employee doing whatever it is they are supposed to do? From the top person to the lowest-ranked person, everyone has to play their part for the business to run smoothly. If the cleaner doesn’t clean the office, can we work? Employees should be seen as partners, not as resources that are there to serve the owners who see themselves as the important ones.

Workplace

Starting from the point of recruitment, the system is completely rigged to favour the most aggressive. When we recruit, especially for leadership positions, we look for the most confident, outgoing personalities and we overlook the more gentle, reserved people as if they have less to offer. The person who can express himself or herself with confidence and charm easily finds their way into leadership positions. What about career advancement, who is the most advantaged? It’s the most aggressive and assertive people. The more willing you are to show off your achievements, flaunt your credentials and take credit for other people’s work, the more likely you are to climb up the corporate ladder. So, the system ends up supporting the most aggressive people and by the time you reach the top of the ladder, you find narcissists and psychopaths being very well represented. I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door. Our processes for promoting staff should also be more discerning, not just looking for the most outspoken people and assuming they are the only ones capable of leading. Even that very soft-spoken, timid person given a chance and the right training would surprise everyone with just how capable they are to lead teams and add value to the organisation.

I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door.

Geopolitics

The world is structured in such a way that some countries are extremely wealthy while others wallow in poverty. And it is accepted that this is just the way the world is and it can be no other way. The ones with the biggest weapons have a right to take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else to scramble for the few remaining crumbs. The most developed countries have a right to forcefully change regimes and foment wars in the name of bringing democracy to the people. They have a right to do this while loudly condemning others for human rights abuses. They have a right to bomb other countries and call these ‘righteous strikes’ because everything they do can only be righteous. They have placed themselves in positions whereby they judge everyone else’s actions but no one can judge their actions. They have given themselves the monopoly of violence in the name of maintaining world order. Does it seem hypocritical that western nations consider it acceptable to have ever-increasing numbers of nuclear weapons but consider it a crisis when countries like Iran or North Korea acquire these weapons? What makes it okay for them to have nuclear weapons while everyone else is not allowed to have them? Is it because they are the most responsible and unlikely to start nuclear wars? No, the opposite is true; they are the ones continually starting wars in different parts of the world and therefore they are the last people anyone would want to have nuclear weapons. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling.

Mainstream Media

What is the role of the mainstream media in rigging the system? It is to normalize all this. It is to report on all these things as if they are normal and that is just the way the world is. The media teaches us to be observers of events, not participants. We are taught to be passive consumers of news, never really looking too closely at what is happening or questioning what we are told or analysing things too deeply. We are given a certain worldview in which there are people out there who are the experts, who know what is happening and who are the deciders of what happens. The media divides the world into those who make the news happen and the rest of us who are the consumers of news. So, if for example, war breaks out somewhere, we are supposed to just assume someone somewhere had a good reason for deciding that the war should start. We don’t question this. We don’t ask what are the issues, why isn’t diplomacy being used, why do some countries have the power to veto things at the UN? This is the role of the media, to help you accept that the world created by psychopaths is normal and there is absolutely nothing to see here, just go back to your daily grind and let the important people make decisions on your behalf. The media also keeps us distracted while important things are happening on the world stage. They distract us with sports, entertainment, celebrity news, etc. We become the proles who concern ourselves with mundane things while big brother manages world affairs.

Education

Our education systems teach us from a very tender age that life is a competition and we should view others as our competitors. We are taught from a young age to see ourselves as competing with other people and this is done through exams and ranking systems and reward systems, etc. Our education systems program us to accept the idea that the person who wins is somehow better than everyone else and therefore deserves to be rewarded. This is called meritocracy, whereby you need to prove yourself worthy of the good things in life. In other words, just the fact that you are a human being does not qualify you to enjoy the good things in life. You have to prove your worth. Instead of education systems being places where our creativity is allowed to flow in whichever direction it wants to flow, we make it places where we have to prove our worth as human beings. So, we learn to aggressively pursue academic excellence as this is what guarantees that we will have the best lives afterwards. Instead of each person seeking to discover what makes them tick, what they enjoy doing, what they excel at, we have this competitive spirit out of which the most aggressive emerge as the best people. Everyone else then has to make do with second class lives because the system is already separating and weeding out the weak and rewarding the strong. Is this Darwin at work or is the system deliberately rigged to work this way? Is it survival for the fittest or is it the most aggressive creating a system in which they are the most likely to thrive? We need to question some of these very deeply held ideas and ask ourselves whether they are true or whether they have been made true by the ones who make the rules.

Hollywood

Hollywood plays a very important role in creating a reality in which the most aggressive people are the most admirable people. They portray an upside-down world in which the guy who goes shooting everyone in pursuit of something is to be admired. The cop who turns the city upside down, destroying property and killing people to catch the ‘bad guy’ is an admirable person. Soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. The idea that we should thank soldiers for their service and give up our seats for them is presented as a valid idea. So, we learn to view things in an upside-down way, where wrong becomes right and right becomes wrong. Those who refuse to fight wars are cowards and wanting peace is a cowardly thing. And what about all the dystopian movies they keep churning out? Have you ever noticed that Hollywood never imagines a future in which the world is in a utopian state? It is always a future in which the world has been destroyed by some catastrophic event. It’s always a future where some people wallow in poverty while others exist in some technologically advanced state. Hollywood never seems capable of imagining a good future for humanity, it is always the worst possible vision of a dystopia that no one would ever want to exist in.

Could our world possibly be structured differently such that the system favours the majority who are just normal people trying to live their lives? I believe this is possible when we start to understand how the system is rigged against us by the minority. We need to reject the idea that human beings are inherently aggressive beings and that competing with each other is a normal state for us to be in. We can cooperate and create a world in which everyone thrives. There should be no need for anyone to have to prove their worth. If we could just see through the programming and change our mindset regarding how we exist with other people, then, we could surely end up in a world where the most aggressive could not possibly dominate and enslave the rest of us.

Mainstream Media: The (Broken) Lens Through Which We View Our World

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There’s an interesting series currently airing on Netflix called Midnight Mass which I watched recently and it got me thinking and drawing some parallels between it and the mainstream media. The series is about a sleepy Island whose residents number slightly more than 100 where a series of horrific events unfold, culminating in a macabre scene where most of the island’s residents turn into vampires and go on a murderous rampage. It’s a horror series, but the events unfold so gradually that it’s not until towards the that you start feeling afraid, which is good for people like me who don’t enjoy horrors. The story is a combination of tragedy and comedy – a tramedy if you will – and many are the times I burst out laughing at the ridiculous beliefs the islanders seemed to accept without question. If you have ever wondered how the catholic church came to commit atrocities such as the witch hunts and the inquisitions, then wonder no more. This series will show you step by step how the most bizarre and evil ideas can take root in a group and spread like wildfire, resulting in events that historians and future generations alike will look at in wonder and marvel at how people could be so gullible as to fall for such obvious lies.

In case you’re wondering why I’m talking about a Netflix series about vampires when my article is about the mainstream media, it’s because one of the characters, a lady called Beverly to me personifies how the mainstream media gets us to accept without question ideas that in our normal state of being we would instantly see through and reject. Beverly is an ardent believer, supporter and spreader of the ideas that result in the islanders turning into vampires. She takes a bizarre and evil idea and somehow turns what starts as a laugh-out-loud ridiculous idea into something that is accepted as biblical truth by the gullible islanders. While any rational mind would dismiss as sheer madness the idea that a murderous priest could somehow be acting on God’s behalf, Beverly manages to present this as a normal and rational idea and even finds a way to explain this with the help of bible verses quoted out of context. Within no time, she gains the support of a few people, eventually spreading the madness to the entire island.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible? They take an idea such as war and make it seem normal that a group of people in one part of the world would one day decide to go on a murderous campaign in another part of the world and this is a normal and credible idea. They take an idea like capitalism, a system whereby a few people have billions while everyone else is either poor or just getting by and they make this appear like a normal and desirable thing, while any other system like, God forbid, socialism is portrayed as dangerous and something to be feared and resisted. They make the idea of people living in hunger and poverty in other parts of the world seem like distant events that have nothing to do with us.

If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible?

The mainstream media tells us how to think about the world we live in and gets us to give up our ability, our responsibility to think, to analyze and to question. George Orwell referred to this as orthodoxy, which he defined as a state in which one does not think, does not need to think. Someone tells you how to think and you accept the reality that is presented without question. We may have assumed that Orwell was talking about some dystopian existence in the future, but he might as well have been referring to our current state, only now it’s the mainstream media, not the government that tells us how to think. We have become unconscious, accepting what is presented to us as reality, as the only way to think about the world we live in. We don’t question because we don’t need to question. We don’t ask ourselves why should this be so? Is this a normal way to exist? Is any other existence possible?

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
George Orwell, 1984

How does the mainstream media achieve this?

Normalizing ideas

One of the powerful ways in which the mainstream media affects our worldview is by normalizing ideas. You’ve seen the way news is reported by the mainstream media. They could be talking about a war breaking out somewhere, about bombs being dropped in some distant parts of the world and it’s like the most normal thing is happening. Maybe we get a cereal commercial right afterwards. No big deal. There is no hint in the newscaster’s voice or manner that would suggest that this is an abnormal event. No questions asked. Just report and casually move on to the next news item. What does this do to us? It kills our compassion. It makes us unconscious beings just taking in without question what is being fed to us. The nonchalant manner in which the most insane things are reported lulls us into a false sense that these are normal events and that’s just how our world is. That’s just how it is and that’s how it has always been and that’s how it will always be. No need to question how such a thing could be normal. The thing is, would any normal person one day decide oh, I’m going to kill my next-door neighbour before they get a chance to kill me because I have a feeling, they are planning to one day attack me and take away my freedom? Only psychopaths think like that, which makes one wonder whether our planet is run by psychopaths. Think of the immigrant crisis and the utter insanity of allowing people to drown in the seas rather than give them a haven from whatever it is they are running away from. Is this a normal thing that normal people do, this utter lack of compassion?

Disseminating ideas

One only has to look at the coronavirus pandemic and how it has changed the world in slightly less than two years to understand the power a new idea holds and the power whoever disseminates that idea holds in shaping our worldview. Whoever gets the story out there first determines how we think about a new idea. I remember the almost non-stop coverage by the mainstream media that first month when the pandemic started. I was watching the news almost non-stop and I’ll never forget how anxious that made me feel. It got to a point where I had to stop listening to the news because I felt like I was going to get a panic attack if I continued watching. It was clear that the mainstream media had one agenda and one agenda only, to make us as afraid of the virus as possible in order to get us to comply with the authorities. This idea was projected so strongly and so relentlessly, at some point I started wondering to myself whether the media had ever heard of something called mental health. Is the mainstream media an expert on public health? No, I don’t think so but this didn’t stop them from shaming anyone who questioned their views, including dissenting scientists who were publicly shamed and cancelled. My point is that the mainstream media has the power to disseminate ideas, but what if their worldview is fear-based? How does this affect us as the ones absorbing these ideas twenty-four seven? With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.

Asking the wrong questions

The mainstream media is notorious for asking the wrong questions and leaving the right questions unasked and therefore unanswered. Take the issue of the so-called nuclear button that the American president has to have close by at all times in case he suddenly needs to start a nuclear war. Now, what kind of questions does the mainstream media ask? Oh, do we want Trump to be the one with the nuclear button? Really? That’s the question you’re going to ask on that issue? How about, oh I don’t know, WHY SHOULD SUCH A BUTTON EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE? Who thought up this crazy, psychopathic idea? The idea that nuclear war is something that should take a split second to start is the most insane idea ever invented. Only an insane mind could come up with such an idea. Not to mention why nuclear weapons should even exist in the first place. What kind of psychopathic, insane person would want a weapon that could destroy our entire planet in an instant and have that kind of weapon in anybody’s hands? Why doesn’t the mainstream media ask such questions? Maybe because if they did, we would realize that our world is run by psychopaths.

With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.

Providing “expert” opinions

The mainstream media is very much invested in you feeling that you are not an expert and therefore need to be told how to think about the world we live in. Let’s say you own a media house and you are very much invested in maintaining the capitalist system because it benefits you personally, what kind of economic experts are you going to invite? Obviously, experts who agree with your viewpoint and will not threaten the status quo by giving alternative views on this issue. The same goes for any issue, from climate change to education systems to governance systems. All you need to do is ensure the “wrong” views never see the light of day and instead the “right” views, your views, the ones that support the status quo are the only ones we get to hear. It’s not hard to get an expert to support any viewpoint. For every expert who supports one view, you will find another who supports the opposite view.

So, what conclusion do we arrive at after all is said and done? That the mainstream media is a broken lens and we need a new lens. That new lens is you and me, observing the world we live in and writing what we see and think in our blogs and when enough of us are doing this, then the world will start changing.

The Objectification of Human Beings by the War Industry

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If there’s one thing human beings have been programmed to believe, it’s that we are not capable of analyzing issues and coming to our own conclusions. Everything has to be broken down for us by experts. Human beings have been taught to believe that we should always wait to be told by authoritative figures how to think about certain issues, be it politics, economics, unfolding events, even what we should eat and how we should live our lives. That’s why whenever we read news articles, we always find references to what the experts have to say about the issue at hand. The idea is basically to tell us how we should think about the issue, thereby eliminating the need for us to think critically and come to our own conclusions. Whenever a newsworthy event happens, we get the panel of experts to chew the facts for us and feed us with the proper way of thinking about the issue. This programming is so deep within us that many of us automatically shy away from thinking deeply about ideas or events that are happening around us and prefer to take at face value whatever the experts are saying.

It is in this context that I originally shied away from writing this article because I thought to myself, well what do I know about war? What do I know apart from what I see in the media about wars breaking out here and there and soldiers being sent to battle in various parts of the world and bombs being dropped in faraway places? I assumed as many people do that military decisions are made by war generals and political leaders who surely know better than any of us what needs to be done. How many times have we seen decorated war generals solemnly and authoritatively declaring that this and that war is being fought for this and that reason and it never even occurs to us to question why this is so and whether this person actually knows what they are talking about? How could anyone question such an authority figure? He is the expert on such issues after all.

Or are they? Maybe that’s just what we’ve been led to believe? If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars? How comes these so-called experts always say that the war will achieve this and that goal, but this is never the case? Doesn’t that surely tell us that these people have no clue what they are talking about? If they did, why do we have situations such as the ones in Afghanistan or Iraq in which wars are fought for decades and end up making the situation even worse than it was before? What about the current wars going on in the world such as in Yemen or Syria or in some African regions? If the decision to fight or intervene in these wars were made by experts, people who supposedly know better than all of us, then why are things so much worse than they were to begin with?

If the people who make decisions about whether or not a country should go to war are the experts on such things, then why is the world in such a mess with endless wars being fought everywhere and nothing much ever coming out of these wars?

Let’s talk about why these wars are even possible in the first place. Where do the weapons come from? Where does the ammunition come from? It is common knowledge today that both sides of a war are usually supplied by governments or corporations that stand to make huge profits from the sale of these war supplies. Sometimes even both sides of a war could be supplied by the same people. The most shocking thing of all is that the developed world that is always quick to condemn countries that go to war are the same ones that supply nearly all the weapons being used in wars around the globe. It doesn’t take an expert to see that war is a huge calamity for humanity as a whole and that anyone who makes the decision to send people to war whether a president or a parliament or an army general is essentially condemning a lot of human beings to death without caring too much about the individual human lives that are going to be lost.

Let’s be clear about one thing: war is the extreme objectification of human beings, because human beings stop being seen as individuals but as objects to be used to achieve whatever objective the decision makers want to achieve. The end thus becomes more important than the human lives that are going to be destroyed by the war. Soldiers are seen as resources to be used in fighting wars, no different from the weapons and the fighter jets and the bombs that are used in war. The humanity of these people is denied and deemed to be secondary to whatever objective the war is supposed to achieve. The people who are killed in wars become nothing more than statistics for us to briefly reflect on during news reports before quickly moving on to other news. The people who are displaced by war, the millions who are forced to emigrate to foreign lands where they are greeted with hostility and hatred are seen not as the human beings they are, but as destabilizing elements that need to be kept out of the clean and civilized societies into which they attempt to enter. We refuse to see their humanity and choose to see them as different from us and as threats to our way of life.

It’s no big secret that the reason war exists is because war is an industry and a very profitable one at that. Profit is the only reason wars are fought. This is pretty much an open secret today. Of course, those who benefit from war will always try to hide this from the population and they will always find ways to justify why this and that war must be fought. What about the massive expenditure by governments on their military? How could this be justified if no wars were being fought, if there were no enemies to fight and protect ourselves from? These huge budgets could be used for the welfare of the people, but instead they are used to prepare for and fight against real and imagined enemies. Why is this still going on? Why do we, the people who are hurt by wars, who don’t benefit in any way, who have everything to lose from war allow this to continue?

It’s because we have been programmed to see the world in this way. We have been programmed to believe that war is a natural part of being human and the idea of a world without war is never even presented as an option, leave alone debated as a serious possibility. But if human beings can envision a world without poverty, if people can envision a world without disease, why can’t we envision a world without war? We’ve also been made to believe that every country must have an army for the sake of self-defense because supposedly we are surrounded by enemies who are just waiting for an opportunity to attack. But did you know there are countries that have no standing armies such as Costa Rica, Mauritius and Panama? How comes no one is attacking them?

A journalist by the name Hannah Arendt who reported on the trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the final solution during the holocaust wrote a book about what she called the ‘banality of evil’. The banality of evil basically means that the reason people commit acts of evil is because they refuse to think for themselves. They mindlessly take on ideologies and follow orders and commit acts that are evil because they do not take time to analyze and think about what they are doing and question what they are told. We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves. As an example, consider the idea that is aggressively pushed by Hollywood that soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. We all know the atrocities that are committed during war, so how are these people heroes? Why do we accept this idea? Are these people heroes or are they pawns in a game that is so masterfully played that we have all been fooled by it for far too long? If only every soldier who thinks about joining the military could pause and think for themselves and ask themselves whether it is justified to kill another human being and whether this is something they personally want to do, then maybe we would start seeing a change in terms of people becoming unwilling to subject themselves to this objectification.

We are so accustomed to being told how to think about everything that we do not actually take time to think for ourselves.

Wars are not a necessary or inevitable part of life on this planet. There are people who would prefer that we continue to think about war in this way, that we continue to view war as an integral part of being human, something that can never be eradicated because it is human nature. But we know that it is not in human nature to kill other people, in fact it is so contrary to human nature that even those who are trained to do so end up being severely traumatized by it.

The worst part about war, despite all the propaganda, is that war never achieves the goals that it sets out to achieve. No war ever goes the way it was supposed to go. People who were thought to be weak turn out to be not so weak after all. Armies that were seen as invincible turn out to be not so invincible after all. The one thing that is certain about war is that it results in casualties and death. So essentially, the value of a human life is made secondary to some obscure goals that will in all probability not be achieved. If we viewed the soldiers who go to fight wars and the people who are affected by wars as human beings who have a right to live long and meaningful lives, we would never allow our governments to send anyone to war. It’s time we said no to this objectification of human beings by the war industry.