There is no enemy, within or without
There is no evil, only being human.
Caitlin Johnstone says that the enemy is within our own countries and not in Iran. This is not true. The enemy is in neither.
If there is an ‘enemy’ within it’s not just in ‘other’ Westerners who happen to work in intelligence or in arms manufacture (or BAE), or for fossil fuels, animal ag or pharma (or, indeed, for the NHS, which propagates the pharmaceutical model of disease).
We all coast on the riches of society and Empire. Many of us are poor and millions of us are obese or sick, however, in general we are incredibly long lived, affluent and are working hard, not because we have to, but because our own conditioning doesn’t want us to stop and think. By this logic the ‘enemy’ must be all of us in the West.
Coasting on society is not ‘wrong’ or ‘evil’. We are not ‘enemies’ to ourselves. This is how we’ve been taught to survive: by grabbing onto riches to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. This is human.
The only way to peace is to see any problems as our problems. Because they are. We are all human and all doing what we do to survive. Until we have compassion and forgiveness for ourselves, we cannot have compassion for those we see as ‘enemies’ in our countries. Unless we can see that they are not ‘enemies’ at all: they are human like ourselves, doing what they’ve been conditioned to do to survive, we will not be able to solve any problems at all.
Not the ones in our own countries, and certainly not global ones.
The ‘enemy’ if we have one, is not a group of people. It’s a thing. An educational system. A way of life that rewards dominance over animals, women and non-whites. It’s the white western neo-colonial, racist, sexist, brutal to non-humans patriarchal Empire that we’re all brought up in and which benefits many of us.
A revolution against it would be lead by people, brought up in this system, who benefit the least from it and are therefore rebelling against it. They’re still being controlled by the system. Which is why many revolutions end up with incredibly authoritarian and violent regimes.
A revolution must start with education and awareness, compassion and forgiveness, not with the guillotine.
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