Is it really that hard to comprehend? With every year that passes, I am increasingly convinced that humanity is caught in some collective bipolar disorder.
On the one hand the average Jane and Joe see the seeds of love germinating as they bring up their own children, appreciate the supreme importance of it, and how it can transform lives, or break them when absent. We know this, we see this.
There are also many teachings that talk about love and compassion being the most important and powerful forces that we should embrace. The Good Shepherd had talked about the most fundamental commandment of all, to love our neighbour.
But somehow so many people and leaders across the globe suddenly switch to a different personality when it comes to relating to the outside world beyond their immediate family and tribe.
In a globalised society, our neighbour is essentially our fellow human being, wherever he may be. Yet there is still talk of racial and other divides, when there is really only the human race.
Political Darwinism has reinforced the concept of the survival of the strongest and most powerful nations and families, in a society where the big fish keep gobbling up the rest. But I think that as the global brain becomes more conscious, it is more about the survival of the keenly aware. Our physical survival is thus predicated upon our mental clarity and understanding of our world.
We must stir from the collective amnesia caused by a bipolar condition, where we show love and compassion to the immediate few, and animosity to the others across some artificial divide.
We forget that war is the ultimate negation of compassion, and that it takes various forms, some subtle enough to fall outside our mental radar.
Military attacks are the most obvious and extreme form of heartless wars, to blow other people’s lives to pieces, in the name of some Pharisee-like moral imperative.
Economic wars are another form, not to be underestimated. They create untold misery, as well as animosity and contempt for the perpetrators, which fuel more hostility. When not sanctioned by the UN, they are in blatant breach of article 41 of the UN Charter, and constitute an illegal act of aggression against another state.
This is where collective amnesia sets in yet again, as governments peddle sanctions with impunity, in the people’s name.
There are wars on information. Knowledge is power. Disempowering the masses means keeping them in the dark through misinformation, distortion of facts, and propaganda wars. It includes amassing millions of classified files and secret archives that remain unavailable even to researchers, years down the line.
It engages in wholesale destruction of files, to ensure that they never see the light of day or unmask a nation’s crimes. All these distort both our perception of the present, and our recording and understanding of the past. It is a war on the collective mind of humanity that is thus kept in a dark age of ignorance and bigotry, while knowledge, like any other wealth, is retained and controlled by the few.
There are monetary and financial wars. I have written about the struggles between the petrodollar, euro, Chinese yuan, and the attempt to launch an African dinar.
I have also written about the greatest heist in history, through the control of central banks, international finance, and the utterly insane system of fractional reserve banking. These have essentially created financial feudalism that has enslaved people, businesses, communities and nations, in the bottomless pit of global public and private debt.
For any war to be successful, it must adopt strategy and tactics. Total war necessitates an integration of military, economic, financial and information wars. One of these cannot be fought and won in isolation. Hence the importance of a blistering information war to keep people ignorant of the forces at work and their agendas.
It is a war on the collective mind of humanity that is thus kept in a dark age of ignorance and bigotry
It is this misinformation that is fuelling our collective amnesia and bipolar behaviour, where we forget the moral imperative of love and compassion for others, as we stumble into a corresponding collective hysteria that leads to conflict.
Of course, anyone who attempts to bring this to light is branded. This forms part of yet another type of warfare, that of destroying characters through pigeonholing, labelling, ridicule, and character assassination. If all else fails, there is an even more sinister form of warfare, usually reserved for those who make it to positions of power; warfare through assassination of leaders.
Nothing written here is new, that has not been taken up in the past, by the likes of the Kennedies, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Dag Hammerskjold, Yitzak Rabin, Benazir Bhutto, Archbishop Romero, Salvador Allende, Chico Mendes and so many others. It has been an age-old tactic to have sharp shooters take aim at enemy leaders on the battlefield. Even during the Great Siege of Malta, the corsair and tactical genius Dragut was spotted on Mount Sciberras, identified as some important commander by his movement, retinue and robes, and cut down. This may well have changed the course of the siege. Tacticians know this well. In the same way the death of these assassinated leaders has changed the course of contemporary history.
The only weapon we the people have against all manners of warfare, which are abhorrentto the human spirit, lies in our own hearts.
Fear not when you are chided, called naïve, ignorant of realpolitik, ridiculed as a conspiracy freak, labelled a radical, a dreamer, an anarchist, a quisling, an agent for the other side. These are all sly tactics to discredit and demonise people of good will who have the courage to speak out against the evils of conflict, be it economic, military, or any other type.
US Vice President Mike Pence came to Europe recently to peddle his masters’ version of a world order based upon illegal sanctions, breaking international commitments on non-proliferation of weapons, reneging on arms treaties, and the like. He used another old tactic, stating that people need to choose sides. They are “with us or against us”.
This is just a surreptitious attempt to stifle dissent. Many of our leaders have already bought in to this hogwash, while others vacillate or keep mum.
As citizens, we need to use the only weapon at our disposal, non-violent protest against the evils of all forms of division and warfare. We also need to arm ourselves with discerning awareness, refuse to believe the webs of lies that are spun, and the misinformation and propaganda that are financed, if you please, with our own taxes and cable subscriptions.
But we cannot do this by simply listening to any individual writer, speaker, or leader. We must use the best tools that we have, our own minds, and most of all, our hearts. And question the official narrative. Always!
Those of us who read law study the principles of natural justice as forming the most fundamental basis of society. Many go on to become leaders, lawmakers, drafters of laws, teachers, campaigners, writers, researchers, in fields that form that basis.
But knowledge of natural justice is innate in us all. We need not be versed in the law. We only need to adopt the principles that come so naturally when we tend to our young. We do so despite the endless sacrifices, out of love.
That same love needs to seep into our hearts and minds in our relationship to people of all races and ethnicities, to all living creatures, and to the earth that has delivered and sustained us.
Only then will the world overcome the hardships being endured by victims of division, trade sanctions, wars, illegal occupations, economic injustice, and regime changes. These are all engineered, make no mistake about it, to fuel political Darwinism of the rule of the mighty and the powerful over the weak.
When we act on our hearts, opening to all our global neighbours, true compassion and a genuine yearning for natural justice will conquer the abomination of war and conflict in all their forms.
Rodolfo Ragonesi is a lawyer and researcher in history and international affairs.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece