Boris, Angola, Changing Times and Mental Health

 

Dear Reader,

Everything is constantly changing, whether we realise it or not, though only those who have lived at least 70 years will be all too aware of how much has materially and socially changed in such a short space of time. The amount of change in the last 70 years is surely unprecedented in human history.

In the way we lived back in the days post-WW2, there was considerably more neighbourliness, though perhaps that consciousness has been returning in the COVID outbreak. It is interesting that whenever there is a hardship that people experience in common with one another, teamwork suddenly seems to take over.

Materially, however, I was brought up in a time when very few people had TV, and even then there was only one channel and that was in 'natural colour' (black and white)! Supermarkets were a thing of the future, and air travel was for the rich. Only 30 years later, by the mid-1980s, all that had changed, and people were even complaining that five TV channels were not enough - as though more would produce better quality. And now, what do we find in 2020...?

A significant example of a change in knowledge can be demonstrated in a TV programme I saw earlier this week, in which historians were investigating the cause of the 1665 London plague. One lady historian made a very significant point: that when she was at school it was vigorously emphasised that the source of plague is in rats. She said she was told at school that there was irrefutable scientific evidence for that. But only now science has proved that fleas are almost certainly the real cause. Hence, as bodily cleanliness in the western world has improved, the threat of plague has diminished.

Similarly, when I was at school (so long ago!) I challenged the teacher by pointing out how it may have been possible for the continents of Africa and America to have been inter-locked, a suggestion the teacher immediately refuted. Yet even as the teacher spoke, scientists investigating the ancient formation of the Earth actually came to the very conclusion I had suggested - that the continents were, a very long time ago, inter-locked.

The western sciences, therefore, only move ever so slowly to the truth of all things, and they only do so by looking for physical evidence and evolving deductions from such findings. How, therefore, can they know what really occurred (say) millions of years ago, without taking other factors into account - the sciences that are indicated in the oldest scriptures extant, such as those of India, Egypt and China.

In fact - as revealed in the COVID outbreak - the scientific world has been forced to admit that it does not know everything. Science tends, however, to purvey the view that only mental activity will derive the truth. For those who want to have certainty in everything there is a problem, but it is not to say that there is not a right way forward.

It is now clear that the materialist drive towards prosperity over the last 300 years, using the inadequate knowledge contained in physical sciences as its base of ideology, has been massively flawed as - with the phenomenal increase in population - the world's physical resources (both mineral and animal) have been utilised to the detriment of the future of the planet.  To the extent, now, that more western people are coming to understand...

The earth needs our prayers more than we know. It needs us to acknowledge its sacred nature, that it is not just something to use and dispose. Many of us know the effectiveness of prayers for others, how healing and help is given, even in the most unexpected ways. There are many ways to pray for the earth. It can be helpful first to acknowledge that it is not “unfeeling matter” but a living being that has given us life. And then we can sense its suffering: the physical suffering we see in the dying species and polluted waters—the deeper suffering of our collective disregard for its sacred nature. Would we like to be treated just as a physical object to be used and abused? Would we like our sacred nature, our soul, to be denied?

by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee.

It's strange, isn't it, that those people that were not that long ago labelled as "savages" and other derogatory terms, fully understood the concept just given, yet those people were subjugated or even massacred in the name of material "progress".

While the people that forced through such a great change in western life did not always do it for personal gain, the majority did it for profit and did not bother to ask questions, it would seem. But perhaps the required consciousness had just not evolved at that point - the moral issue was hardly considered, essentially because formal religion had not clarified our relationship with the planet. All this has left in its wake a sorry state to behold - and Climate Change.

On top of all that, the richest people in the world have only got richer while  - even in a pandemic - the less well-off suffer. The rich classes, meanwhile, exert their pressure to run the world their way, which - some suggest - is based on some form of bizarre masonic ideas.

Boris Johnson's very recent but belated plan for the UK to 'Go Green' has much to commend it, but that plan is still based on old ways of thinking. For example, that the car industry is to continue to be fully supported, albeit that they must produce electric ones. 

In other words, the general idea is that the economy of the future should be based on the same model as before, though we are to change our orientation in the kinds of products we are using. Western politicians, of course, are more guided by big business than by truth. Popular opinion is generated in favour of such a policy if the voters can see an improvement in their material lives. 

The politician is not overly worried about philosophical truths unless pushed to do so. Will they be pushed to look at the Daily Mail investigation that has just brought to light that the cobalt utilised in the manufacture of all these new car batteries for electric cars is produced from the mining labour of youngsters as young as 11, working for a pittance in Angola?

Not only should we be concerned about the state of children in Angola, but the very fact that huge quantities of material still needs to be extracted from the planet to feed our material consumption. Not just cobalt, but the materials that are used to make the car bodies.

They have been very clever to make us think that we are tackling Climate Change by reducing CO2 emissions and less dependence on oil when a major part of our problem is the continual extraction of materials from the planet.

With Climate Change and all else that increasingly surrounds us, I would suggest that a major aspect of adaption needs to take place. Shouldn't the manner of how we think be re-orientated so that we see 'outside of the box' more; to understand what is around us and how we depend on our environment, and other people. Even to examine the idea that humankind has a special, stewardship, role.

That thinking must then influence the economic model. Only by a holistic method will we see a new direction for the economy to develop in an ecological and sustainable manner. But though 'systems thinking' is already a positive form of approach, is that approach willing to incorporate moral thought? Most would cringe at the thought of putting a ceiling on our materialistic desires, and the politician knows that. 

So, Boris has set his stall for changes which - though they are not entirely to be knocked - seem not to comprehend the true needs of mankind and of future generations. Big business is still winning. But for how long?

What is worse, in my opinion, is Boris's additional announcement that enormous additional backing is to be given to our armed forces where expenditure is now set to top £60bn over 5 years, mainly on high technology stuff. And this will be used for what? Isn't this a nonsense when confronted with the problems facing humankind which, surely, must be the first priority?

Instead, Boris seems set on reducing foreign aid and support to the most needy.

We seem to be led down a trail towards increased madness. Enlightened education is surely needed to prepare for the future.

It may be that our educational system has improved in many ways over the years. However, that improvement has perhaps made it just more slick, therefore continuing to mislead students.

My feeling is that the educational system is ultimately still orientated towards producing people who are to feed a materialistically orientated culture. However, what is needed, surely, is for students to be emphatically told that science does not know everything. They should know that science is like a 3-year-old toddler, still, in finding its way by trial and error: by experimentation. Scientific findings must only be treated as provisional data. 

Further, what is also needed (I assert) is to inculcate the firm idea that as human beings are clearly the only species endowed with sufficient intelligence to significantly modify the world we live in, that we have a special responsibility - even to invoke the notion of good stewardship as a fundamental basis of living. And that notion to permeate the thinking of everyone, not just the more highly educated - we all have our part to play.

Nearly all people inwardly understand the effect of empathy and compassion. Therefore, the fostering of empathetic, compassionate, human and ecological relationships is surely the priority issue rather than going into the world assuming that science and technology is the primary way to steamroller into the future. The current thinking is, surely, mainly an utter fallacy. Most seem to believe that only the love given to their own families is worthy of consideration.

In addition, we have the issue of the orientation towards entertainment as being a major industry. While the media seems to generate a brain-dumbing effect, we insist on absorbing it. We let our minds be shackled by it, and many parents seem to have lost the will to say to their children: "No".

The answer really lies only within ourselves. When are we going to transcend our mechanical and sometimes animal state?

A universal philosophy needs to pervade our lives even though it may not seem attractive. Why? Because we have been told again and again by people of wisdom over millennia that it is the way. Instead, their advice became perverted, and so we prefer to follow others against the laws of the universe - and suffer as a consequence.

Hitherto, history seems to show we seem to prefer violence, both towards others and towards planet Earth - even amongst football supporters.

When are we going to stop and understand that the physical is only an outer reality; that there is also an inner reality which enables us to lead to a unification of minds? Our mental health and our well-being and international harmony, we will find, will automatically improve with that shift in thought.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, in 1967: 

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.

And as Einstein once said:

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

It seems that back in the '50s and 60s, following the harrowing experience of two World Wars, there were people pursuing sane tracks of thinking. Remember CND and the protests against American nuclear airbases in the UK? Also, as far back as the 1960s there was considerable information available about the dangers the world faced through industrialisation and the rape of the Earth's resources.

Those movements eventually had to be listened to and people that listened sometimes clamoured for sanity. Do people of true peace, insight and foresight get listened to today? It seems not as the media pushes its own agenda, prompted by business moguls and spin doctors.

Well, I believe that the warmongers and materialists will ultimately be put in their place. Their grotesque provisions for war and robotic technology will not materialise in the way they think.

We are created beings - or have we forgotten that? And so, if we were created, there must be a reason behind that creation. What was thus intended by the Almighty will come to pass - though we may have to endure much in-between.

If we can inculcate a vision of a higher self, that Love, Hope and Charity will rule, then it can happen. But we need to be active in right practise to get there. Not to do so is likely to produce unwelcome results. Not to do so will worsen our mental health, let alone the state of the planet - and the lives of our children.

However, the Cree Indians did prophesy:

When the earth is sick and dying,

There will come a tribe of people

From all races

Who will put their faith in deeds,

Not words, and make the planet

Green again.

I once met a Cree Indian. They had/have immense wisdom in their culture.

Love does rule - OK? It is the task of mankind to tap into that universal love.

Thank you for reading this.