War and Peace

I firmly believe that the aggression that lives in every human soul can be overcome or strengthened. That it is that aggression that ultimately leads to wars. Again, I still see us as humanity as civilised human beings who - that is, we are human beings who are civilised, who no longer immediately inflame into anger at every occasion, but that we have developed an ability in ourselves to then perhaps have certain emotions, but not immediately turn them into actions.Watch Video on YouTube

We are recording another video. Of course, at the time of the corona crisis, it was all so difficult that many people like me tended to say something about it in public from time to time. Those days are thankfully over for now and we are now dealing with other current affairs. What is, of course, most important is the two wars raging in the world and I wanted to share my thoughts on that. Not in the sense of taking a stand, but much more the phenomenon of warfare by human beings per se. When I was a little girl in Amsterdam, I often went to the Cineac in Reguliersbreestraat with my mother. There was a continuous programme there. I don't know why she did that because she disliked television and films and things like that. But she did it and we would watch one programme there and it was always a news service, a newsreel and there were also nature films, maybe she thought that was good for the little girl. In any case, I did gain some wisdom - perhaps I may say so - there, because what I absorbed very strongly in those nature films, which were then mostly about animals, was the power principle in the animal kingdom. What you saw there was actually constant terrain defence and the struggle for power within the species, but then then the struggle for power in the territory. That has united with my memory, and now when I observe all that is going on in terms of the threat of war, of course that comes up very strongly again, because you see that there is something present in human beings that is so animalistic that it leads to, on the one hand, trying to gain power within the species and, on the other hand, terrain defence. I actually always find it very difficult to see and hear people engaging in such processes, human beings in a civilised world, that's what we are about the world by now anyway. The fact that this animal principle still prevails so strongly, from time to time, is still very difficult and then you don't even talk about the disasters that then start to play out in people's personal lives. Of course, that is really something terrible. What I experience especially strongly then is that in the media a certain mood is created, that a war, a world war, is imminent. As a doctor, I have always learned that you should never think such bad scenarios on the basis of the 'hope springs eternal' principle, because you draw them towards you. Now of course this is perhaps a somewhat spiritual point of view, which you can't use with politicians. But we as human beings who, let's say, have to endure the media, we can of course reflect on this process and become aware that when you start to get scared, that something like this that is constantly talked about, that this is going to take place, that this fear in itself is an amplifying factor. That is the one thing. On the other hand, you are more or less forced to choose a certain party, as if you were dealing with a football match where you are for Ajax and not Feyenoord. So that is how you have to take your stand in the big world order, that you are for that one and against that one. So then we have completely forgotten that in both cases you are actually talking about human beings with their individual lives, their families and sorrows and happiness. That no longer plays the main role in war. It is then about other things and so you apparently have to make a choice as a human being for one camp or the other. Of course, this is a well-known phenomenon in history and one that is quite understandable in the course of human development. But if we as civilised human beings, who have a Second World War behind us, which is history - if we had to determine our position on war now, we would say that we would cherish the positions taken just after the Second World War - namely that such a thing must absolutely not be allowed to happen again - we would want to try with all our might to prevent such a thing from happening again. As humans, we no longer have any idea how strongly we ourselves, each human being for himself, help determine what happens in the course of world history. I have already recorded a video here about the role of human beings in the deterioration of life in nature. Thus, we as human beings, each individually, also have a role in the manifestation of human aggression, which then eventually leads to war. I firmly believe that the aggression that lives in every human soul can be overcome or strengthened. That it is that aggression that ultimately leads to wars. Again, I still see us as humanity as civilised human beings who - that is, we are human beings who are civilised, who no longer immediately inflame into anger at every occasion, but that we have developed an ability in ourselves to then perhaps have certain emotions, but not immediately turn them into actions. When you look at war, you actually see that the opposite happens and that yes, that is actually more or less touted as patriotism, for example. Again, that may have a place in world history, in human development, but it seems to me that it no longer has a place in our time - also because humanity has at its disposal certain means of battle that have such a destructive power in them that you know: yes once that burns loose then it's over with humanity on earth. That also forces us into a certain civilisation. But I want to look much more to ourselves. It goes without saying that if we as human beings continue to allow ourselves to become judgmental and aggressive towards people who think differently, feel differently and want differently from us, we are in fact perpetually waging war in miniature. Then you can cry aye and woe when you see the soldiers going up against each other and doing the most terrible things to each other, but you forget that in miniature you are living out the same processes in your own soul in a certain ferocity. And again, just as man is a creature of nature and as a creature of nature helps to determine nature in its development, so is man also a political creature - Aristotle already proclaimed this with his concept of zoön politikon, man is a political animal, not a human being, but is in an animal form in a 'soul form' you might say actually still wild, but with the help of the mask of politics that human being knows how to pretend to be decent. Yes this is how world politics is created. So my appeal today is: Human beings, let's not put everything outside ourselves and let's see - and this is really in every human soul - that there lives a source of aggression that makes wars possible. If those sources were not there, there could be no war. In the animal kingdom, that defending of territory arises because it is an instinct. Surely, we human beings have largely outgrown our instincts. We need to recognise them and we need to use them where they are good and fight them when they are bad. So that's my call: Humans, know yourselves and start looking at the world happening from that self-knowledge. Assume that war cannot happen if enough people see within themselves that wariness resides in the personal human being!