West Versus East - What Next?

Dear Reader,

As we can all see, Ukraine and its people are already so badly damaged to the extent that it is hard to believe what Russia will gain out of it apart from a bloated ego.

At the same time, surely it is wrong to blacken the name of all Russian people, a country that has produced the likes of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and Solzhenitsyn. The ordinary people have suffered hard and long and it is their great misfortune that the leadership of their country has usually been found wanting. 

Yet it would seem that serious attempts are being made in some quarters to tarnish all Russians because of their ego-centred leader.

Is the West so good? When we think back to what has been perpetrated by the West in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya (all under 'false flags'), apart from the Syria situation, I can only think that Putin has been looking at what has been done by the 'good' West over the whole of his reign as Russia's president and has decided, "Well, if they can do all that and get away with it, then so can I".

It's not that many years back that we can look at the USA's involvement in Vietnam (thank God Harold Wilson kept us out of that one) and place another big question about the West's morality, let alone the even earlier Korean War.

We seem to have forgotten the so-hard learnt lessons of the two Great Wars, 1914-18 and 1939-45, and so much since, including the Cold War. What many fear is the approach of an even bigger conflict. Is this likely to occur?

For an intelligent conversation about the Ukrainian war and its ramifications see Colin Brazier and Peter Hitchens on GBN. It is a mature debate and really worth listening to. 

However, the world - and its inhabitants, of all kinds - have surely had enough of war. We have lately become aware of all the wrongs man has perpetrated on Mother Earth and its inhabitants resulting in what has been termed Climate Change. And that's on top of a still-rampant Covid.

Enough is enough. It is now time to address the real cause of all these problems and re-educate ourselves accordingly, although what was thought to be the vehicle to such education was launched over 75 years ago.

Just after World War Two, back in November, 1945, UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) was launched at a conference in London, at which the recent new UK prime minister, Clement Attlee, declared in his keynote speech, "Wars begin in the minds of men". At that time there were serious words said and great promises implied. Serious newspapers wrote hopefully of this promise.

UNESCO, at the launch, gave the very serious impression that it could go far in changing the mentality of man and seriously help to stop wars, declaring "that since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed". However, war has been raging ever since, virtually non-stop.  

Instead of ways being found to inculcate peace in man's mind, increasing attention has been put on widening education for the specific cause of GNP (Gross National (and world) Product). Seeking peace and satisfaction through material wealth has been deemed to be the answer to the world's plight, citing poverty in Third World countries as a prime motivator. Materialist motivations succeeded in bringing Vietnam to being in harmony with the West and also Russia too for a time, following the self-implosion of the USSR.

What has happened has largely resulted in more poverty and, worse, rising sea levels that threaten to submerge island and low-lying lands, apart from the loss of much wildlife, despite many fine attempts to regenerate and protect. 

Back in the 1970s, there was much being said about Gaia (another name for Mother Earth) and how we should learn to work with our planet's natural systems. Since then, materialist pressure groups have succeeded in producing democratically-elected governments that support materialist interests. It was done simply by promising their voters that they could have more. It is a potent argument, but a venomous drug.

Any semblance of real intelligence being applied to solving problems died. At least until Climate Change was finally recognised. Yet the warnings about the potential for all this started to be made 100 years ago. And serious reports on this matter were made public by the early 1970s.

Well, it's no use looking back at what might have been done. The past serves only as a reminder of how stupid as a race we humans are. And we blunder ahead, ignoring what real education is - to find the sustainable values by which we should live.

It would seem to me that three things should now happen for the future of the world and mankind:

  1. To agree (belatedly) to Russia's demands for recognition of the Crimea and the annexation of Ukraine's two most eastern states that have been effectively controlled by Russia anyway BUT also with the agreement of Russia to some NATO-imposed condition to ensure that Russia does not impose itself elsewhere;
  2. That NATO and Russia should both scale back their posture of animosity, particularly by a new generation of arms reduction and retrenchment of NATO bases.
  3. That UNESCO should be taken and set free (once self-educated) as the vital vehicle to set an educational system to include the sustainable values by which we should live, and that these values be set higher than materialist values. If this is in place then there would be greater hope for peace between nations in the upcoming and next generations.

We should recognise that such 'sustainable values' have been set in scripture and the teachings of spiritual beings for millennia, in the words of Jesus and the Buddha, the Vedas of India, Jainism and elsewhere.  That "elsewhere" includes the depths of Islam, not the Islam that people tend to think it is.

They say that every problem presents an opportunity. This is our opportunity to remove ego from how we think and what we do. The removal of ego is the task of our life would we know it.

Thank you for reading this.


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