ONLY LOVE CAN KNOW LOVE!

As I write today humanity is beset by a number of very urgent and potentially dangerous issues, so dangerous that I think they threaten the very existence of human civilizations.

The most deadly component of this situation is that most human beings are oblivious of the danger inherent in these threats.

Such a danger is global warming, we should be doing everything in our power to counter this threat; that is rapidly attaining proportions and gaining a momentum that will cause its effects to be irreversible - if action, urgent decisive action is not taken to reduce the impact the burning of fossil fuels is having on our environment.

Another issue of grave concern is the conflict in Iraq, a conflict that has been so bungled in its handling and prosecution since its genesis that what was the serious threat of terrorism has become the likely precursor to World War Three.

There are other issues that are being handled so badly that the only logical conclusion that would explain this remarkable phenomena is that these issues together constitute a blind area in the human psyche; a sizable and critical component of reality to which the vast majority of human beings cannot apply the intelligence, the higher mental processes, that ensured the survival of the human race.

In the richest nation on Planet Earth there is a palpable and pervasive incapacity to educate children to the attitudes and aptitudes that would cause them to be productive well adjusted adults.

There are several species of organisms on this planet who reproduce and, as soon as this process is complete, their young are on their own, their survival or otherwise is up to the dictates of chance.

There are other species, notably mammals, where the young have to learn those skills which will make it likely they will survive to be adults and in turn reproduce, to ensure the survival of the species.

The most powerful motivation driving any living organism, sentient or non sentient is the need for their species to survive.

Thus, prides of lions, and herds of buffalo, are powerfully driven to do what is necessary to survive, and up to the present, these species have passed the ultimate test of function and existence, they have survived.

The drive that impels these animals to do what is necessary for survival is instinctive, it is unconscious, they, every single one of them are components and unthinking actors in a pattern and scheme of things, a natural system that evolved to perpetuate life on Planet Earth; each and every one of them is incapable of overcoming that powerful instinct that prompts them to do all in their power to survive, they are incapable of committing suicide.

Only the members of one species have evolved to the point where they are capable of taking their own lives, of overcoming the powerful instinct to survive.

Only the members of one species have transcended that ubiquitous natural order and have become capable of such actions that would not only result in destruction of their kind, but could conceivably destroy beyond easy repair the natural order that is the all embracing and pervasive matrix of circumstances from which all life springs and which is the shelter and, thus far, unassailable and indomitable fortress protecting and perpetuating existence on this planet.

It is clear to me from the elements and components of the ongoing drama that human beings have made of existence on this planet, that the ultimate tragedy is in the offing for the human race; that the actors and actresses are on stage participating and creating an seemingly inevitable set of circumstances and events that will precipitate, in the not too distant future, a destiny of ultimate tragedy and bring down the final curtain on this chapter of burgeoning scientific and technological achievements.

I have dedicated my life to forestalling this tragedy, to creating a world view among human beings, one that permits them to transcend the mindlessness that pervades the existence of cows, tigers or other animals; while developing the intelligence and appreciation of life that would make suicide anathema, totally impossible for them for them to contemplate.

This transcendent enterprise, thus far, has been an exercise in futility, but before the twenty one thousand troops depart for Iraq and ignite the conflagration that will certainly and inevitably result in World War Three - I again present a petition to my race, I ask them to take a moment from the pressing, very distractingly and very debilitating concerns of the social milieu we have created; one that is so replete with apathy, hopelessness, mindlessness and anomie that suicide has become the solution for many; and, consider objectively, rationally and, most of all, intelligently, how we have reached this point, how we have descended into the chaos that threatens to overwhelm and destroy us?

I have wrestled with this problem for three decades and humbly present my conclusions as a starting point for this transcendent intellectual exercise.

I suggest that the evidence at our disposal indicates that no human being chose to adopt the mind set that is the root cause of our descent into chaos; that this mind set was imposed upon our race by events and circumstances that determined the course of future events.

That this is the ultimate paradox and consummate irony of sentient existence; all life must perforce begin in a ‘state of nature,’ on a newly formed planet on which conditions exist which could generate and sustain life.

Out of the numerous life forms that evolve in such a matrix of circumstances, and, the numerous adaptations that occur in these organisms impelled by momentous and destructive events, cataclysmic episodes that must be the experience during the formation of a stable environment and collection of an atmosphere around a planet; for example, ice ages and the impact of meteoroids; there eventually emerges one life form that achieves a critical and definitive adaptation, it develops a capacity for language and learning.

This adaptation will likely cause this life form after many eons to become the dominant life form on that planet; with the discovery of agriculture and they will begin to build civilizations.

But here is the rub, the very capacity that allows any sentient race to transcend the jungle, the rule of fang and claw in which might is right, and only the strong survives; causes them to be habituated to rely on coercion to motivate the other and consigns them to create and recreate interminably the ‘state of nature’ in which existence had perforce, its genesis.

So intense and powerful are the circumstances that together form the crucible in which culture is learned, in which the conscious and unconscious premises for thinking and action is learned; and so lengthy is the period that is required for the evolution of sentient beings that the culture of the jungle is learned beyond its extinguishment in the psyches of the vast majority of sentient beings.

Thus the future of the sentient race is determined; interminably they create and recreate in social systems that contain exponentially increasing numbers a ‘state of nature;’ civilizations which rely on coercion to motivate the other to act, which has as its ethos competition, in which power, economic, social and political power is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, which are plagued by cycles of conflict, of resistance and suppression; in which poverty, crime and suffering are constant, unchanging and enduring characteristics of existence.

What I suggest, perpetuates this status quo to endlessly and interminably perpetuate itself is the fact that minds of human beings have two compartments composed of the conscious and unconscious, and individuals have the means to consign experience to either compartment.

With the development of ethics, the premature development of ethics; at a point when the physical environment would still be so unstable that it produced a totality that could only be tamed by the application of unlimited force; human beings to survive consigned to the unconscious all aspects of experience concerning the application of coercing the other which was increasingly proscribed and limited by the development of a gentler and more civilized world view.

Thus, human beings were driven up the steep incline toward civilization and continued to function under increasingly brutal regimes.

Eventually in the cycles of resistance and oppression, the forces of resistance armed by circumstances notably Industrial Revolutions, became too powerful to be overcome and new accommodations and adaptations occurred; but the engine perpetuating the status quo, the habit of repression was not broken, and human beings did not know what they were doing; the insulation that permitted the growth of civilizations driven by coercion was not stripped from the collective consciousness, indeed, the delusion that it created grew more and more powerful.

At this point the logic of this presentation demands that we examine in some detail the effect of relying on coercion to motivate the other, the engine that generates conflict and competition; that endlessly and thus far interminably produces cycles of resistance and oppression with the attendant violence, suffering and misery.

What occurs in the relations between husbands and wives, parents and children, teachers and students, governments and citizens, nation and nation, is that the possessor of superior force imposes its will on those who are in a subordinate position, and causes that inferior to act to satisfy the wants and needs of the superior.

This imposition is one that no human being can long accept; this diminution in personal autonomy has been the source of conflict down the ages up the present day.

It is the paradoxical relationship that built the Sphinx, that civilized the New World; that has driven every conflict since the beginning of time; it is based on the view that the other is prey, a source of energy; and is therefore not entitled to the respect, compassion, justice, sympathy or any human emotion that would ameliorate or limit predation.

The attack on Iraq was redolent with this mind set; one nation the United States of America, because it could, without any real justification has engaged in an act of naked aggression against another sovereign nation.

As a consequence of this attack this nation has been laid waste, its physical infrastructure destroyed, a half a million of its citizens killed, and several millions more disabled, wounded or converted into refugees.

The President of the USA admits that mistakes have been made; but instead of attempting to rectify these mistakes escalates the attack to create order out of the disorder and chaos, conditions precipitated by this wholly and unjustified attack.

What is the root cause of the civil war in Iraq?

This nation is going through the process of finding a leader to replace Saddam Hussein, whose power and position was usurped by Allied Forces and who was summarily and deplorably executed as a result.

It is a tender of the abysmal ignorance and stupidity of the Bush Administration that they do not understand that they cannot stop this process, that they can only prolong it and make it more deadly and destructive.

The split that created Shia and Sunni factions in the Muslim world, a schism that occurred some two thousand years ago, which had its genesis in the conflict that was the cultural imperative and mechanism that was used to create a successor to the Prophet Mohammed.

In the USA executive power devolves to the winner of an election in which the forms of democracy, if not the substance of democracy, are the accepted rules of engagement by all parties.

The people of Iraq have a different tradition, which we must respect, because it is a cultural imperative that cannot, will not be denied.

The puppet regime created and buttressed by the Allied forces cannot withstand the ubiquitous onslaught and monolithic momentum of this cultural imperative specifically because this government is not in any way representative of the diverse and diametrically opposed factions in this nation; as was made clear by the cell phone video of the execution of Saddam Hussein.

It is clear to me, that with the escalation of the attack, the rational components of the insurgency will disappear from Baghdad to reappear in other areas of Iraq, consistent with the principles and strategies developed by General Giap; who masterminded the victories of Vietnamese forces against the French in the Fifties, and later the military forces of the United States of American in the Sixties.

We are a race without a future; just the past, the tragic bloody past, happening over and over again.

But there is a path to the future and I have blazed that path by adopting the discipline of truth.

I have become a gentle, civilized human being by applying the dictums of living in truth with the other; and, emphasizing positive reinforcements in all my social relationships.

Telling the truth dispelled and destroyed the repression that insulated me from perceiving the existing social reality; it has caused me to know, to become aware of the consequences of my actions.

It made me aware that to act within the dictates of my conscience and create function in my life I had to become proficient in the use of positive reinforcements and completely reject the application of any form of coercion.

It made me aware that my life up to the moment when I adopted the discipline of truth had been determined, and that when I made the choice to tell the truth I embarked on the journey towards freedom and independence.

It is a torturous path but one that each individual must take - if we are to avoid destroying the civilizations we have constructed.

It is the means, the only means, to dispel the repression that lames the intellects of the vast majority of human beings and produce the creative intelligence that will create a future for my race and a brand new world.

I am compelled and interminably impelled to engage in this exercise in futility because I have developed the capacity to love, to never treat another human being as prey; and only love can know love.

William E. Virtue
3222 Airways Blvd
Memphis TN 38116

Ph: H 901-332-3800
W901-266-7669
C 901-201-8090