Category: Essays

Divide and Conquer: How Propaganda Shapes Perception in Society

Propaganda thrives on negative emotion.

Do you believe in magic? Have you ever been hypnotized? What if I told you that in this day and age, regardless of what you may believe, the real answer is most likely yes.

In both subtle and obvious ways, throughout our entire lives we are conditioned. Our personalities are molded in a myriad of ways, from the meal training given in early childhood, to the steadiness or chaos of our upbringing; from the reservedness of our friends to the discipline of our schools and the competitiveness of our clubs1; from the advertisements in your periphery to the movies you watch; from social media, to the news media. Everything in your environment is going to influence you. For good or bad, there’s no way around it. But – and this is especially so with modern technology – many of these influences can be deliberately manufactured and manipulated to affect your beliefs and behaviour. The modern means of mass communication bring the entire world daily into each and everyone’s hands; the techniques of propaganda have been refined and systematized; and there is scarcely any hiding place from the constant visual and verbal assault on the mind¹. Through systematized suggestion, subtle propaganda, and more overt mass hypnosis, the human mind in its expressions is changed daily in any society¹. You are unwittingly controlled by the magician, the hypnotist, the propagandist.

Propaganda thrives on negative emotion. It stirs up powerful emotions: outrage, anger, hatred. It takes your anxieties, your frustrations, and directs them at an intended target. It subtly changes your thought patterns. It manipulates your beliefs and behaviour. All without you ever realizing – as if it were a magic trick, or hypnosis. But how does it do this?

People are not the rational creatures they think they are. Most believe that their opinions, ideas, and conclusions are all made consciously, when in actuality, 95% of human thinking is subconscious – and is a response to accustomed patterns2. Only the remaining 5% is conscious thought, and of that, only a part is a consequence of reason². And underneath it all, in the unconscious, lies a storehouse of deeply buried memories, emotion, and strivings, including many infantile and irrational yearnings, which constantly influence the conscious acts¹. Humans do not construct their beliefs and attitudes by reason. We are primarily emotional creatures that operate largely via subconscious pattern recognition. There are plenty of times when we think we’ve reached a conclusion based on logic and reasoning, but we are in fact just rationalizing an emotional reaction.

Effective propaganda (and what is now called Psychological Operations or PsyOp) therefore targets this kind of thinking. It plays on emotion, memories, desires and attempts to stimulate the subject (ie. you) into interpreting patterns in the desired way. It targets your thoughts, not at their expression, but at their construction. This subsequently shifts beliefs and behaviours.

In fact, “reality” itself hinges on one’s cultural indoctrination, education, experiences, prejudices, desires, and emotions². The sum total of all of this serves as the lens through which it is “perceived as reality”². This means, by altering these things, we may alter one’s perception of reality. Think of them as knobs or dials that can be used to tune in to, or fine-tune, one’s reality. This “reality” also includes assumptions concerning the population, both individually and as a whole, of which some are politically and culturally acceptable and others are not². For instance race, religion, sex, the role of the genders, slavery, economic systems, and political ideologies are all factors with extremely powerful influence².

So what does this propaganda look like? Let’s start with a simple, ancient technique: Divide and conquer. This strategy breaks down groups (typically opposition) into smaller parts, weakening them by preventing their unity, and allowing the divider to gain or maintain power and control. Ideally, they can then additionally use these smaller parts to impede and attack the remaining opposition. Nowadays, it commonly takes the form of one of the following: left vs right, republican vs democrat, liberal vs conservative, identity group vs identity group. These false dialectics are all a big political melodrama that play out across mainstream and social media. It’s kabuki theatre. It is the misdirection in the magician’s trick: it grabs your attention, it conjures emotional outrage, and leaves you believing in the magic show.

The target audience is identified, then fed carefully selected information, and emotions are prodded and pushed until behaviour changes. The goal here is to isolate the target audience, pump them full of outrage, and ultimately create a tribal us versus them mentality. This tribal thinking will result in such a strong in-group preference, and such a strong out-group devaluation that people will believe any lie about the other side, cheer when people suffer, and excuse things they would never excuse if it were happening in their own neighbourhood. This is the playbook for how to get otherwise decent, kind people applauding for and laughing at violence and murder on the internet. It is how a country is radicalized without firing a shot.

Identity groups are commonly used and pitted against each other for this purpose – especially in Canada. Canada is uniquely situated for this to be particularly effective, as it has a philosophy of being a “cultural mosaic,” as opposed to something like the U.S. philosophy of the “melting pot.” The melting pot means that people of different cultures and backgrounds entering the U.S. should all melt together, and become American first and foremost, prioritizing American values over any previous ones. It is a cultural philosophy of assimilation: American culture comes first in America. The cultural mosaic, on the other hand, is a philosophy where people of different cultures and backgrounds get to keep their culture and their values, and fit together like a mosaic inside of Canada (and thus Canadian culture is not prioritized – which is a large factor in why it is dying out). This has made Canada an ideal playground for divide and conquer tactics. Not all cultures are equal, and many of them have incompatible views and values. This makes it easy to pin them against each other. Canada offers plenty of identity groups to pick and choose from – to grandstand for, and to demonize. It’s no wonder that this is a go-to strategy for the Canadian government. Justin Trudeau loved to do this, invoking the LGBT community as a political shield to deflect, calling unvaccinated people racists and misogynists, or ironically calling his political opposition divisive. The Canadian government and the media apparatus that supports them largely use this technique to obfuscate problems, corruption, and crimes; and to insulate and protect themselves from accountability. Recently, the tribal mentality of Liberal versus Conservative resulted in people harassing and review bombing a restaurant in western Canada, simply for hosting Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.

But this can be taken even further. What do you think happens when the media portrays the people that disagree with you, not as your fellow citizens or your neighbours, but as an enemy or a threat that needs to be destroyed? As a danger to society? What if they suggest that violence against them may be justified? Or even necessary?

Consider the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s 1984. Citizens were forced to participate in a daily, mandatory ritual of expressing rage and hatred against a manufactured enemy on a telescreen. Collective negative emotion was thus directed away from the ruling Party and toward a scapegoat, while those participating learned to deny any counternarrative, any semblance of truth that disagreed with the Party, by hating the person speaking it:

The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching…

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party – an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought…

And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein’s specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army – row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice…

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen… In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

(Orwell, 14-17)3

There are a couple of important points in this passage that I would like to cover. First is another common technique that is readily apparent: Pavlovian conditioning. In this technique, the propagandist ties two things together in a way that makes the audience create an association between them in their mind. This is typically done in such a way as to elicit a desired emotional reaction from the target audience. Remember: what’s important here is not for the audience to consciously connect these things, but for them to do so subconsciously, and therefore eventually transplant their thoughts and emotions tied to one thing onto the other. In this case in 1984, the target of hate, Goldstein, is shown on the telescreen with enemy soldiers marching in the background. This creates the association of Goldstein with the enemy, and whatever thoughts and feelings the audience has for this enemy will end up also being connected to Goldstein. When this conditioning eventually sets in and is successful, the affected audience will have an involuntary emotional response to Goldstein, the same as they would have to enemy soldiers, but without the need for the military imagery.

Another important takeaway from this is the mob mentality – the inability to resist joining in. This can act like a sort of group hypnosis, where the individual loses their individuality, rationality, and moral compass. The more the individual feels himself to be part of the group, the more easily he can become the victim of mass suggestion¹. Since the society in 1984 is totalitarian, this group psychology dynamic gets into Mass Formation (which I will discuss more in-depth in a later post). This is a form of group hypnosis that destroys the individual’s ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically4. George Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate touches on this hypnotic effect, and reveals the destruction of ethics via the “desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer [that] seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current”³.

Thank God that was only fiction. In the real world, Two Minutes Hate is actually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is accessible at any time, from anywhere, via your favourite device – TV, computer, smart phone. Through the media, you are deliberately shown what makes you angry and hateful. They’ll show you the worst of the other side: the extreme, the fringe; the loud, the dumb; the professional lunatics. The more enraged you are, the more you will stay hooked on the narrative.

Before we get into specific real-world examples of these principles and techniques in action, let’s go over Chase Hughes’ three step formula5 for radicalization through divide and conquer tactics:

  1. Isolation: the goal here is to isolate the target audience so that they do not interact with people who disagree; they don’t date them, they don’t work with them; they cut anyone who disagrees out of their lives. (This is also step 1 of joining a cult)
  2. Echo Chambers: the goal here is to have the target audience surround themselves only with opinions that sound the same. Social media can make sure of this with its algorithms. As Yuval Noah Harari has said, “power is in the hands of those who control the algorithms.” And the algorithms serve you more of what already stirs up negative emotion like anger, outrage, and frustration. The echo chambers ensure that rage gets recycled and concentrated. (This is also step 2 of joining a cult)
  3. Tribal Script: this is the creation of the us versus them narrative. The goal is for the target audience to view themselves as righteous, while the other side is evil. Every issue is framed like a holy war – it doesn’t matter if it’s education, taxes, or healthcare; they are all treated as life or death, good versus evil. With outrage and righteous superiority, people will feel morally justified in hating the other side, silencing them, and celebrating violence. This is true radicalization.

So what does this look like in the real world? For this example, we turn to the United States of America. Let’s take a look at the following clips from the media leading up to Trump’s second term:

Notice anything familiar? These are just a few examples of the media shaping the political climate in the years leading up to where we are now. But how does this affect public behaviour?

For that, let’s turn to the recent events involving ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). ICE has been at the center of controversy since Donald Trump took office last year. In sanctuary cities, law enforcement at the local levels have been ordered not to cooperate with ICE. Local police do not hand over criminals in their custody to ICE; instead, they let them go free. This has forced ICE to go out into the streets to hunt down criminal illegal aliens. And, in turn, it has given politicians and the media the opportunity to spin the story: ICE is like the Gestapo – the secret police of Nazi Germany. Here we see the media continuing the narrative of fascist, Nazi, authoritarian symbolism and linking that to the current Trump administration. We know this is Pavlovian conditioning, but let’s examine it further.

Let’s look at immigration before Trump versus immigration after Trump. Below is a compilation of politicians speaking about illegal immigration and deportations before Trump’s Presidency, juxtaposed with politicians after Trump took office:

Unsurprisingly, tensions have been rising over the past year. Time, fear and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis¹. As such, a radicalized fringe minority has taken to the streets. Protesters have been clashing with federal agents at various ICE facilities for months. Then, in September 2025, an anti-ICE shooter opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas from a nearby rooftop, killing two detained illegal immigrants, and injuring a third. But it doesn’t end there.

To get a good look at how this really affects public behaviour, let’s talk about Minnesota. Tensions rose to a boiling point when an anti-ICE protester taunted ICE officers, ignored their commands, and then drove her vehicle at one of them. She was shot and killed. And the media finally got what it had been pushing for: a catalyst for outrage against ICE.

Below are a number of videos following this event that show mobs in the grip of propaganda’s magic, hypnotic effect. Take a look at where we are now:

Throughout these clips, we see the repetition of words like racist, Nazi, and fascist. Didn’t we hear those somewhere before? But, what do they mean? The truth is, these words have lost their communicative function – they no longer have intrinsic meaning. They have been turned into conditioners, emotional triggers, serving to imprint the desired reaction patterns onto their hearers¹. They are battle cries and Pavlovian signals¹. Just like in the passage from 1984, Pavlovian conditioning to these special words forces people into an automatic thinking that is tied to them¹. Catchwords like these help the individual to rationalize immorality and evil into morality and good¹. They are a suggestive intrusion masquerading under the name of justice or some morally righteous cause. What do you do when a fascist, or a Nazi is right in front of you? What is the correct course of action when this person is a threat to your society? To your existence? These questions, and the answers to them are all tied to these catchwords. The meaning of these words no longer matters – it is the emotions evoked by them that holds weight. The individual citizen becomes a parrot, repeating ready-made slogans and propaganda catchwords without understanding what they really mean, or what forces stand behind them¹.

Here’s another question to think about: what do you think happens when anyone and everyone who disagrees with this radicalized fringe population is called a racist, a Nazi, a fascist? These words end up losing all meaning in the common discourse as well. People stop caring about racists and fascists, because those words don’t mean anything anymore. And then there are some who will embrace the new identity given to them. They get caught up in the drama and theatrics, and feel pushed into the opposite fringe side. This polarization effectively radicalizes both sides.

To this end, the media are not showing you reality of any kind, but a narrative designed to put you on a side, keep you in a loyal tribal mindset, and addicted to their twisted version of reality. What is happening in Minnesota isn’t some side effect or byproduct of politics or the media – it is deliberate. And the outcome predictable. They show you the fringe lunatics on one side screaming about how “you’re either with us or against us,” and create a false dichotomy, pitting different groups against each other. When this inevitably escalates to a breaking point, debate breaks down, negotiations become impossible, and violence ensues.

Chase Hughes talks about the “concrete law of history”⁵: The moment your ideas require violence to enforce or spread, they are already completely bankrupt. Every tyrant, failed ideology, social collapse starts the same way: the debate dies, then violence takes the place of debate, and you can’t argue with a gun⁵.

But consider for a moment, what isn’t the media showing you? They will never show you how much you have in common with people who vote differently than you. If you strip away all the talking points, what do regular people actually want? We want safety, stability, a roof over our heads, a partner, kids, and some food to feed them – and we want some honesty from the people who claim to represent us. You have more in common with your neighbour, with the people across the political aisle that may disagree with you, than you have with media CEOs and politicians – with psychopaths and profiteers – with those parading their narrative over the media.

I bring attention to the ICE situation just as an example of how this can manifest in the real world. The goal is to look at this as a phenomena. Did you feel any outrage? There are a few questions like this we should be asking ourselves when we see things like this in the media: How does it make you feel? Are you angry? Outraged? Recognize the emotions that are being stimulated. Why does it make you feel that way? Is it the way it’s being framed? How is it being framed? Notice the choice of words being used. Is there anything missing? Think of a few questions about it. And ask yourself, who benefits from this?

The battlefield is not some far away place. It is in your living room, your bedroom, your office; on your phone, your TV, your computer screen. There is an ongoing war for your mind. So how can you best prepare and defend yourself? I think a good starting point is to follow Chase Hughes’ suggestion to pledge to yourself the following⁵:

  • Do not let the media decide for you who your neighbour is.
  • Do not let propaganda tell you who to hate.
  • Do not let political violence become normal.
  • Do not cheer for blood.
  • Choose sanity, unity, and to see the humanity in people before their politics.
  • And finally, I would like to add one more: Do not allow yourself to live in a world where there is no room for love.

Being aware of these techniques and tactics, and how this all really works will also help you recognize when this is playing out in the real world, right before your eyes. There’s still a lot more still to come on topics like this, so don’t forget to follow the blog via email or Facebook. You can also help get the word out by sharing this via the social media links below. As always, I thank you for your support.

  1. Meerloo, Joost. The Rape of the Mind. Martino Publishing, 2015. ↩︎
  2. Aquino, Michael A. MindWar. Barony of Rachane, 2013. ↩︎
  3. Orwell, George. 1984. Penguin Group, 2000. ↩︎
  4. Desmet, Mattias. The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022. ↩︎
  5. Chase Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/@chasehughesofficial ↩︎

Piercing the Veil

We have all sorts of ideas built into us, which seem unquestioned and obvious. Going forward, it is necessary for us to reexamine common sense. Our ideologies greatly influence our perception.

As I said previously, I had been thinking that there was so much to explain before I would get to delve into what I wanted to. I was going around in circles, wondering how I got into each of these subjects, and how to start explicating them; perception, consciousness, psychology, religion, culture, history, perception again. All of these things are inextricably interconnected with one another, but where I’ve decided to begin is here:

When I learned about history growing up, I used to think about how stupid people once were to make such grave mistakes, to allow certain things to happen, to kill and die in such ways. After years of studying, I have come to realize that we are not any wiser now than we were before. What I’ve learned from history is that nobody ever learns from history. But maybe I can give you something to think about. Just as in our past, today there are misconceptions underlying a lot of our thinking. The behaviour that we were brought up to believe is acceptable isn’t necessarily sane, rational, or what’s best for us. Once an ideology is accepted, new observations are seen through the lens of that ideology – everything becomes perceived in its imagery and articulated in its vocabulary. None of these new observations can undermine the belief system, and new “facts” generated by the ideology constantly lend further support to it¹. For those believers, the world becomes shaped by the ideology and their perception of it. Thus, in both the past and present, it is through certain ideologies that we humans have vehemently suppressed the truth and oppressed those who seek it – in the name of another “truth.” Part of the problem lies within thinking that the truth is something that we can cling to, as if it were some unique material object; as though it were something that you could obtain and then hold onto forever. We are all (and have always been) products of our time; different periods of time come with their own dominant modes of thinking, their own vices, virtues, and unique cultural atmosphere. The problem is that the misconceptions in our current time period are harder to spot, because being involved in the cultural atmosphere can be blinding, deafening, and numbing. The phrase “hindsight is 20/20” also comes to mind. Looking back is much different than being there. It is therefore easier if I start with an example from the past.

Let’s begin by briefly looking at the life of Galileo Galilei. Galileo was a mathematician that also made inventions and discoveries in physics and astronomy. He created a telescope that could see farther than anything people could get their hands on at the time and with it, as well as with his expertise, he discovered ironclad evidence that the Earth revolved around the Sun (as Copernicus had previously theorized). This had big implications for the knowledge and beliefs of people at the time. Everyone believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun revolved around it. As far as they were concerned, the Bible proved it in Genesis, chapter 1, verses 17-18, which said unequivocally of the Sun, Moon and stars that: “God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness”². There was not a single word about the Earth revolving around the Sun to make day and night. Galileo was mindful of the Church and the consequences of going against it, at least for a while. The discovery didn’t come back to haunt him until he was an old sickly man. At this point, he was taken in by the Inquisition and, as with all cases of heresy, his only lifeline was to abjure. Anyone who refused to do so when accused of heresy would be confirming their heresy and the only solution left was burning at the stake. In order to be given the opportunity to save oneself by rescinding, the court had to be satisfied that the defendant wished to make good his errors with all his body and soul². Torture was often used for this purpose. The only reason Galileo was not subjected to the regular cruelties of the Inquisition was because of the people he knew and the fact that he was old and ill. After he renounced his findings, he was confined to house arrest, and his book (as well as others on the same topic) was banned. The Inquisition stopped Galileo from spreading his ideas for ever. The world stood steadfast in its belief that the Earth stood still and the Sun moved around it.

Galileo was lucky in his exchange with the Inquisition. Others were not so fortunate. You see, the theologians of the Church in those days were accorded the same respect that we now accord scientists, professors, and doctors. We think that they are the real authorities; they’ve learned, they’ve experimented, they have knowledge; they’re the wisest people in our society! A few hundred years ago, so were the theologians, and they had the same sense of responsibility toward the community as our great scientists and physicians have today³. For them, the perceived problem of the time was heresy, which would damn you to hell forever and ever, all eternity, where the most unimaginable horrors would torture you without end. On top of that, it was like a contagious disease; if someone were to come down with heresy, it would soon spread to others. And so, they had to act quickly and decisively in order for this disease not to spread. Thus, the humanitarian and merciful church fathers got together to decide how to stop this. They knew there was an eternal life beyond the grave, and so perhaps, just like a cancer before it spreads and destroys the whole body, it might have to be cut out (or even burnt out). The pain on the part of the patients would be a small price to pay for having gotten rid of it. The body was thought of as only a temporary vessel for the soul, which lasted forever. If you could save the soul, what happened to the body didn’t matter. So they decided that they had to torture these people, because they might, in the middle of this extreme experience, recant. And if they didn’t recant, then they should be burned at the stake, because there’s a chance that in the agony of burning, they will finally ask God for forgiveness and everything will be alright³. They will thus be saved.

Now realize that the intentions of the perfectly responsible inquisitors was to be merciful, as they were acting on the best knowledge they had in their day³. The ostensible aim of the Inquisition was to protect society from harm, and while it flourished, it didn’t offend the sensibilities of most people¹. Don’t you see how this could happen at any time? What happened to Galileo can happen at any time. The inquisition can happen at any time. Genocide can happen at any time. These are things we humans are capable of. Each of us. These problems are an occurrence in human behaviour. It just takes the right parameters: a certain attitude, thought process and environment.

To help illuminate this next point, I wish to share with you a quote from C. G. Jung:

…if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is. Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life, it requires the greatest art to be simple. And so, acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem, and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar – that I forgive an insult – that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all – the poorest of all beggars – the most impudent of all offenders – yea the very fiend himself – that these are within me? And that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness. That I myself am the enemy that must be loved. What then?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed. There is then no more talk of love and long suffering. We say to the brother within us: Raca, and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world. We deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves. And had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.

The problem is that there is this dark side within all of us, and within the current dominant culture, nobody is willing to accept it. With our attitudes and the ways we’ve been thinking, we have this need to separate the Self (viewed as good) from the Other (viewed as evil), but what we don’t realize is that they are actually the same thing; and they are within us all. We have become divided against ourselves – in an inner conflict paralleling the conception of a cosmic conflict between an absolute good and an absolute evil³. We think we can be all positive with no negative. We deny and reject what we believe is the evil part of ourselves, and then project it onto others. And then someone arises who says, “aha! Look! I have found the bad, the evil. It is over there, in them!” and they point to a scapegoat. Then everyone, trying to rid themselves of evil, works to destroy the scapegoat without realizing their folly. And afterwards, we look back on those people as the ones having done evil the entire time. But no one learns anything.

We cannot fight this other side of ourselves. Pitting yourself against yourself creates an irresolvable problem. Attempting to remove the negative from the positive is an insoluble task. There cannot ever be only positive. How do you know positive without knowing negative? Or negative without positive? Good without evil? They are both a part of the same thing, like the two poles of a magnet. Even if you cut a magnet in half, it still has both poles. In the same way, we cannot remove the side of us responsible for what we consider evil. We have this mindset where we feel that having a war against something is a way to solve a problem. It is completely erroneous thinking, but through our culture, this is the way it’s come to be. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on Christmas, the war on the police – we’ve been bombarded with this language in the news over and over and over again. So we end up declaring war on everything; but all we’ve done is created an insoluble problem and further complicated it with poor solutions. These “wars” can’t be won; they can only be perpetual. And thus there is a war within ourselves, which we think is justified. We deny the evil within us – the part capable of the things we fear- and then we project it outwards onto others until we, ourselves, become that which we fear most. What we need to realize is that as humans, we are all capable of this, and if we don’t come to terms with it, these are the actions we will keep repeating time and time again. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions – especially when those good intentions come from a self-righteous entity. But all conflict has its resolution in an underlying unity. The one most in need of your love, kindness and acceptance is you. Unify yourself. We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

We have all sorts of ideas built into us, which seem unquestioned and obvious. Going forward, it is necessary for us to reexamine common sense. Our ideologies greatly influence our perception, and we must accept ourselves and what we are capable of wholly. In our current state, wherein we are divided against ourselves, the suppression of truth (or at least of better ideas) can happen at any time. Galileo brought forth fresh observation and reasoning, but was oppressed for it. Likewise, the Inquisition can happen at any time. Those accorded with a certain respect and prestige with regard to their knowledge can be horribly erroneous in their thinking and solutions for perceived problems. Finally, and most importantly of all, – I repeat – the one most in need of your love, kindness and acceptance is you.

yin_and_yang

Sources:

¹ Szasz, Thomas. The Manufacture of Madness.

² Næss, Atle. Galileo Galilei, When the World Stood Still.

³ Watts, Alan. Various lectures.

Jung, Carl Gustav.