The western world has become a cosmopolitan, incoherent mayhem of cultures. This is the chaos in which dark forces thrive. All cultures need to develop and deepen their traditions and for this purpose they need their own time and space. This gives each culture identity, community and a sense of belonging that comes from shared values, social norms and history. Left to themselves tribes developed into nations. Secure in their sovereignty, they may establish relationships with other nations.
This is how humans, whose nature in tribal, may find a way to peace. There is nothing wrong with tribalism. Like with everything else it is what you do with it, either peace and harmony or war and chaos. A multiplicity of intact cultures, that are only perhaps minimally diluted, make for a very interesting and exciting world. Of course cultures should and do continue to develop and evolve organically. This is the way of life. Unity and respect between sovereign nations is the way to lasting peace.
The Way to Peace
Nations who try to dominate other nations for their own self-interest are the problem. The motivation of predatory nations is financial gain, also through the capture of resources, and the acquisition of power over populations. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. There are many ways in which to dominate populations and nations: by persecution, disrupting their ethnic roots, culture, religion and traditions, destroying evidence of their history and even rewriting it. The final blow is to disregard their territorial integrity. The strategy of ‘divide and rule’ by stoking animosity with, what we today call, false flag operations is well tried and well known.
The best of western culture has been molded by Christian values and view of the world. Christianity itself assimilated a number of previous cultures and traditions. Goodness has been expressed on earth since the beginning of time. The Christian leadership has, however, been far from exemplary over many centuries and continues to be so today. Much like secular politicians, the church hierarchies, signal virtue but there is not much of it to be seen on the ground. Having said this, Eastern Orthodox Christianity appears to have stuck more to core values than the Catholic or Protestant counterparts.
We are witnessing a multi-pronged attack on western peoples, nations and their Christian faith. The aggressors are not outsiders but rather our own elected governments who do not recognise that they have a God-given duty of care towards their country and people, who no longer feel accountable to their citizens. Rather. they are now subservient to their masters, the global corporate and political elites, via supra-national institutions such as the United Nations, European Union and NATO.
Majority rule, which is the basis of any democracy, is now frowned upon as populism. Ideals such as flag, sovereignty, tradition, community, culture and family- men, women and children, once commonly accepted as the pillars of any society, are now considered far right views and condemned. In a number of EU countries it is a crime to be anti-war. Enemy-based ideologies are all around us.
The Way to Peace
This has been coming for a very long time, and in an accelerated way over the past decades. Too many people in western culture have been captured by technology, convenience and self-harming narratives. This has caused a huge chunk of western populations to consider their intellectual and emotional wanderings and their worldly achievements to be god-like. Their heads are stuck way down in the sand and they will not have it any other way. This mass renunciation of responsibility has created a vacuum that greedy and self-aggrandising global elites have promptly filled.
We owe a debt of gratitude and allegiance to creation, the natural world, the environment and all other species. We have been granted a certain responsibility of stewardship on earth. Once we re-establish a proper relationship with our divine origins, the safeguarding and respect for all other species becomes a given.
It is important to focus on that which unites us as there is much more of this than that which we think separates us. We should celebrate our differences and not use them to fuel discord. We are part of God’s creation that is hugely larger than we are. It is not a simple task for us to understand what the role we are to play is, in all of this. Millions upon millions are awakening and seeing through the fog of deceit. It is indeed a shock to see that so much is not what it seemed to be. It is disheartening to surmise that so much trust has been betrayed.
We may take some counsel from Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò who in his ‘The Disassembled Papacy’ suggested that “Resisting in faith ultimately means knowing how to look straight into the face of reality, without trying to conceal the deception behind which the enemies of Christ hide.”
The first peace we should make is in ourselves, and let us not be too quick to blame others for our inability to see that which is staring us in the face. This is the way to peace. This the beginning of the journey to unity.
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Also published on Substack.com