How did the United States take such a wrong turn?

As the song says, “War, huh, good God, y’all, what is it good for?” Something war most certainly is, is the violent introduction of some, if not all, of humankind’s most ill-conceived, lowest frequency, motivations into the spiritual/physical realm of our planet. Into our communities, into our lives.

The act of war, or acts of violence on an interpersonal level, without exception result in vibrations of dissonance reverberating within our energetic/spiritual environment. The traumas which war produces can, and too often do, resonate within generations becoming a self-perpetuating source of hatred and violence. The result is traumatized people blindly acting out of impulse to perpetuate more trauma and on and on.

How different our world would be if following the Second World War the United States had decided to “be the change we (the vast majority of people on Earth) want to see in the world.” How different the world would be if the United States had decided to model what an evolved, educated, caring nation could be instead of deciding to try to accomplish global domination via military might. How did a nation so blessed as the United States in the period after the Second World War take such a wrong turn? It isn’t what the people wanted. In 1960 we voted for a man who promised to take the path of an evolved, educated, caring nation. The early 1960’s with John F. Kennedy in the White House and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the pulpit, held so much promise for an enlightened future for humanity. Under Kennedy, foreign policy meant constructive cultural exchange. What we have seen foreign policy devolve into the past few decades is vicious attacks upon whatever nations aren’t getting into lockstep with the wealth/power/control aspirations of a coalition of a relative few of the world’s wealthiest and most politically powerful.

We, as a people in the United States and around the world, need to stop engaging in, or supporting, the madness of materialism, imperialism, competition and profiteering that has become commonplace in our world. We are, all of us, children of the Universal Divine Creative Spirit. We are all brothers and sisters in the spirit. We are all connected by the energy/spirit that we are made up of and that we live within. Sooner or later the cruelties expressed and the suffering taking place anywhere in the world are going to touch all of us.

At our core, our needs as human beings aren’t all that different. We do have differences in appearance: skin color, hair color, eye color, height, weight, and other physical attributes. We also have differences in the way we relate to the world. Some people are more intellectual, some more physical, some more visual, some more auditory. These differences may affect one’s values, likes and dislikes. They can affect who we seek out for companionship. All of these differences together lend each of us a certain uniqueness. And thank goodness, what a drab, boring place this Earth might be if we all were in lockstep with how we view the world, our likes and dislikes.

However, at our core, we are all of the same ilk. In order to be healthy, we all need clean air, clean water, nutritious food, shelter from extreme weather conditions. We all need to have other people we socialize with, share our thoughts and feelings with. We all need to love and to be loved. While we all may enjoy periods of isolation, some may say they don’t need socialization or love at all. However, that condition, if it exists at all, is rare. Abraham Maslow recognized these shared needs among people and produced his “Hierarchy of Needs” to help us all understand them, and ourselves.

Our natural way of relating to one another is copacetically. Babies and young children don’t want war. They know instinctively that it is not good for them. It’s only after we become acculturated into competition, envy, jealousy, greed, hate, essentially all the things that trauma and deprivation (also a form of trauma) nurture in the world that we as adults begin to imagine that there is gain in violence and war. When we know love, belonging, we don’t want to throw that away to go kill someone, somewhere, in order to try to achieve some ill-begotten, grandiose plan. Or more ridiculously to devote our lives to support someone else’s ill-begotten, grandiose plan.

We cannot fully develop as human beings when the higher functioning capabilities of our brains are diminished due to trauma. Do we want to keep living in a manner more suited to the beasts of the field while we live in a universe of unlimited possibilities? If so, all we need to do is build and sustain a culture of competition rather than cooperation. To keep on warring instead of working together. To keep on destroying each other rather than honoring the innate kinship of all of humanity, of all life.

It is when people are mistreated, traumatized, deprived, destitute, suffering, and/or deluded that fear, greed, callousness, and myriad other negative thoughts/feelings/and motivations arise. Competition as cultural norm breeds these all of these things and more. Within a framework of a few basic laws, within a culture of people who are thinking in terms of mutuality, trust, fairness, and compassion, the wondrous possibilities of this world are endless.