Sunday, May 27, 2007

The Insanity of War

I just saw a rather controversial documentary about 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq. The documentary is called Fahrenheit 9/11, an alteration of the title of the book by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451. My guess is that the director of the movie, Michael Moore, probably wanted to draw parallels between the society depicted in the book and what has happened in our society since 9/11.

There has been great controversy over the movie with a great deal of political polarization. Unfortunately politics has become a spectator sport and if something is perceived to be critical of one side then all the supporters of that side defend their team to the last breath, no matter what.
So having said all that, I'm not going to pass any public judgement on the movie. Like every other source of information you should evaluate it carefully - not just blindly accept or reject it.

What I do want to say in this post is that back in 1950, in the book Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard said something about war that is 100% applicable today:

Wars never solve the need of wars. Fight to save the world for democracy or save it from Confucianism and the fight is inevitably lost by all. War has become associated in the past with competition, and it has been believed, therefore, by shifty logic, that wars were necessary. A society which advances into a war as a solution of its problems cannot but depress its own survival potential. No government was ever permitted to enter a war without costing its people some of their liberties. ... A democracy engaging in war has always lost some of its democratic rights. As it engages in more and more wars, it eventually comes under the command of a dictator. ... So went Greece, so went Rome. So goes England. So goes Russia. And so goes the United States and with it goes mankind.

Technology changes, times moves forward, perhaps societal attitudes change, but man basically is man and what was said over 50 years ago is just as applicable today. Mankind MUST stop engaging in war. When the Iraq war began it was heralded as a "conflict" that would be over soon and was being engaged upon to "save the world from WMDs." Back then it was obvious to those supporting the war that it would be a short war and we'd be out of Iraq in just a few months. Several years later we see that the reasons given for the war were ... how shall I put it? ... inaccurate and the idea that any war can be over in a few months is, to put it mildly, short sighted.

Before the war we were told that it was a solution to certain problems and now we are told we can't pull out because it would create even bigger problems. I think anyone who has studied history would have seen the inevitability of this mess from the start.

There is a solution to the insanity of war. It's a solution that will take a lot of work and effort, but I think any amount of effort is better than the millions of deaths that accompany a war.

As L. Ron Hubbard said:

Man is now faced with weapons so powerful that man himself may vanish from the Earth. There is no problem in the control of these weapons. They explode when and where man tells them to explode. The problem is in the control of man.
...
There is a higher goal, a better goal, a more glorious victory than gutted towns and radiation-burned dead. There is freedom and happiness and plenty and a whole universe to be won.

Dianetics has the tools to bring rationality to man. It is the answer to war. Learn about Dianetics and use it and let's make this world a better, saner place!

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