True Peace Hopefully
Belongs to the Present
Century
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
Sometimes factors
are left unexamined which are more important than those everyone talks about.
While the conventional media often report on spectacular and theatrical military operations on the part of terror organizations, few are those who ask themselves:
“What are the political and economic interests that
prevent journalists from fulfilling their duty and investigating the Causes of
these short term events?”
A few examples should be given.
Everyone can see that Islamic terrorists are well
funded. They need millions of dollars to keep and expand their worldwide
networks of suicide-murderers. They use huge fortunes and expensive weapons, in
order to present their shows of killing innocent civilians in choreographic and
media-attractive ways. Negative events can fascinate entire nations. Mass
hypnotism is on the agenda, and the conventional media is eager to follow the
lead of those who hate mankind and furnish them with catastrophic images. Other
facts, however, are scarcely known:
* What banks do terrorists use?
* How exactly do they get such fortunes as they have
been using?
* Who sells weapons to them?
* What factories make their weapons?
* Who is willing to investigate and reveal the truth
behind the show, and who is not, and why?
There must be a reason for the media to systematically
avoid discussing the authoritarian character of mainstream Islamic ideology,
according to which every “unbeliever” should be killed, women must be treated
as slaves, and Jews have to be expelled from their ancient and modern home,
Israel.
Active and hysterical forms of despise for life, as
the Nazi-Fascism of the 20th century and the radical Islam of recent years,
cannot live on their own. They must feed
on passive or silent forms of despise for other beings. Implicit love of death makes
it possible for an aggressive feeling of hate for life to occur and to spread.
The present-day cult of machines and robots belongs to
the passive side of collective
disconnection from life. The worship of money, of fame and short-term pleasure constitutes
another factor. These deviations lead to a comfortable yet disastrous denial of
human duties towards the natural environment, animals, forests, trees, our children,
the rights of generations yet-to-be-born and the whole creation.
Despise for life has been a cyclic event in human
history. It usually leads to the end of societies which have ceased to serve
the evolutionary purpose. Erich Fromm wrote:
“Lewis Mumford has shown the connection between
destructiveness and power-centered ‘megamachines’ as they existed in
Mesopotamia and Egypt some five thousand years ago, societies that have, as he
has pointed out, much in common with the megamachines of Europe and North
America today.” [1]
Could beautiful cars become gods?
Referring to the daily worship of machines and the voluntary
degradation of life in our time, Fromm mentioned the subconscious devotion to
money:
“All over the industrialized world there are men who
feel more tender toward, and are more interested in, their automobiles than
their wives. They are proud of their car; they cherish it; they wash it (even
many of those who could pay to have this job done), and in some countries many
give it a loving nickname; they observe it and are concerned at the slightest
symptom of a dysfunction. To be sure a car is not a sexual object - but it is
an object of love; life without a car seems to some more intolerable than life
without a woman. Is this attachment to automobiles not somewhat peculiar, or
even perverse?” [2]
Fromm wrote decisive pages on Necrophilia or the worship of death and of lifeless objects. He
showed how disrespect for life lies at the source of the apparently innocent
cult of technology and machines.
Taking his point of view into consideration, it is not
too difficult to see that phenomena as Terror, War, Corporate Disrespect for
Democracy and Financial Frauds are not entirely separated. They all put money and power above Life. They
must be rigorously fought through multidimensional efforts which address their
Causes, too, and do not remain limited to effects.
While fighting the effects has great importance, this is
not enough; for terror leads to War, and War is big business. Military
conflicts provide huge profits for more than one economic group, and some of
them are politically influential.
It won’t be easy to get rid of such a vicious circle,
but there is no other way to follow. Appeasing terror or its religious ideology
is not the way. Appeasing the merchants behind the terrorists is not, either.
True peace hopefully belongs to the present
century. In order to obtain it, however,
mankind needs among other tasks to improve the ethical substance of its economy.
And the main foundation of a sustainable economy is the consistent practice of
respect for all life.
NOTES:
[1] “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, Erich Fromm,
copyright 1973, Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, 576 pp., see
p. 380. See his books “The Heart of Man,
its genius for good and evil” (copyright 1964), and “Escape from Freedom”
(copyright 1941 and 1965).
[2] “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, Erich Fromm,
p. 381.
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One might also take
into consideration Sigmund Freud’s essays “Thoughts
for the Times on War and Death” (1915), and “Civilization and Its Discontents” (1929).
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The above article
was first published on 17 November, 2015, in our blog at “The Times of Israel”.
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In September 2016, after a careful
analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided
to form the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in
the different dimensions of life.
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