Why the Warmongering?

An interesting article by Ralph R Reiland titled Warmonger Rationale quotes from Lawrence H Keeley's book, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage.

From it:

"Essentially states are class-stratified political units that maintain a monopoly of deadly force – a monopoly institutionalized as permanent police and military forces," writes anthropologist Lawrence H. Keeley in his book, War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage.

For a minority ruling group that's coercively siphoning off resources and lowering the take-home pay and living standards of the majority of the population, war, argues Salerno, has the advantage of directing the attention of the majority to an outside enemy, a foreign state, a foreign ideology.

"Convinced that their lives and property are being secured against a foreign threat, the exploited taxpayers develop a 'false consciousness' of political and economic solidarity with their domestic rulers," writes Salerno. Persistent war making by a nation's governing elite against allegedly threatening aggressors becomes "a perfect way to disguise the naked clash of interests between the taxpaying and tax-consuming classes."

War, rather than being a mistake or an aberration, is as unavoidable as death and taxes because it serves the interests of the governing class, according to Salerno's analysis: "A permanent state of war or preparedness for war is optimal from the point of view of the ruling elite, especially one that controls a large and powerful state."

My thought about war isfrom that book called the bible: "there shall be wars and rumors of wars but it shall not come nigh thee." Maybe I'm paraphrasing? There have always been plenty of conflict for those seeking it, for whatever reason. Ego, the little ego of man's separation psychosis may be fearful, may be glory seeking or both. How many deaths does it take? How many lives spent in madness? Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

May you be at peace in your knowledge of what Is and has always been. One thing, that being perfect, perfect being, not the seeming to be, which can never be.

Peace.

P.S. Did a spell check for nigh and look what I found.

Spirited away: why the end is nigh for religion by Carol Midgley

Christianity will be eclipsed by spirituality in 30 years, startling new research predicts. Our correspondent reports on the collapse of traditional religion and the rise of mysticism....


...Those who think they can find the god within are swiftly put right. “To try to find the solution in oneself is bound to fail because human nature is fallen,” says Maiden. “Christianity isn’t about us trying to make ourselves better people. It is about God trying to do something for us 2,000 years ago which redeemed people.”

Perhaps he is right, but some of those losing their religion were brought up with just the kind of dogmatic beliefs that Maiden is describing. Take Julie Wise, 44 and a mother of two, who was raised on a Lancashire farm in the Church of England tradition. Three decades of religion failed to touch her, she says, and it was only in her thirties, when she went to an exhibition in Manchester and saw a man performing Infinite T’ai Chi, that she felt truly spiritually touched. “It was like divine intervention,” she says. “It was one of the most beautiful, meaningful things I had ever seen.” She is now an Infinite T’ai Chi practitioner and performs “soul readings”, a way, she says, of seeing life patterns and energies that haven’t been released in the past.

I lost my religion,
don't want it back anymore
Going to go on from here
through love's open door.

me in he EE