There have been hundreds of wars in Africa, India, China, South and Central America, The Soviet Union, and the Middle East. In addition, there were the wars of Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Hannibal, The Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, and at least thousands more.
Records made by then living participants and witnesses have documented wars as far back as 2700 BC, and there is archeological evidence of much earlier tribal violence.
This history has created features of our emotionality that were cultivated in ancient times and which persist to this day. In every country of the world, cultures have accepted as normal, and even useful, what I call destructive feelings. They include resentment, fear, envy, anger, revenge, blame, hate, hostility, arrogance, selfishness, and the desire to control others.
Just as a person's values affect that person's wellbeing and happiness, the values characteristic of the cultures of the world affect the wellbeing and happiness of all the people on Earth.
When I was in my twenties, I talked with a college counselor about being blamed for something I didn't do. I was angry. He slid over an empty chair in front of me and asked me to strike the seat of the chair with my fist. I did so three or so times. In addition to some release of tension, I felt somewhat like a victorious combatant; but before, during, and after these strikes my feelings were far from compassion, empathy, and peace. The kind of relief I experienced was not nearly as beneficial as not becoming angry in the first place.
Throughout the world, cultures convince citizens to believe that they are entitled to their personal feelings, however destructive. There is another way.
Tranquility is widely regarded as something that happens to you because of favorable circumstances and not something you can learn to be. The lack of tranquility, the prevalence of combativeness, the dishonesty in competition, the endemic lack of cooperation, and the ease with which populations can be made fearful tend to make war something that many of us vote for.
It is not socially taboo to be angry in public. All of the destructive feelings can be welcomed in speech and print. They are not regarded as feelings that one should purge. If we came into this world with the ability to have these feelings, they could not be accepted more fully than they are in the world today.
Few realize that most feelings are not congenital. Infants exhibit attraction and withdrawal at birth. They are attracted to comfort and pleasure, and they withdraw from unpleasant stimulation. We learn more complicated feelings, including the destructive feelings, from our parents and guardians, just as they did. It is an emotional plague. This emotional plague plays a major role in divorces, destroyed childhoods, unplanned murders, political corruption, membership in criminal organizations, and many other cultural disasters.
We have been misled by many invented concepts and wrong definitions. Instinct is an example - a supposedly innate pattern of behavior in animals. The Academy Award winning movie Born Free reports a true story showing conclusive evidence that even lions need to be taught how to kill. Lions have no inborn instinct to kill for food.
Like people, lions are born with the ability to express avoidance when presented with unpleasant circumstances, and they show attraction and acceptance when presented with comfort and pleasure; but when raised without being shown how to kill for food, they have no inclination to do so.
Unlearning feelings - even those that we were not born with and that do not enrich our lives - may seem to be a daunting task for an adult who has grown up in our culture; but we have a very effective ability to change our feelings and reactions.
People have actually invented new feelings. This happens when an artist paints a scene that feels different from anything then known to people. Many times, musical composers have invented feelings that never existed before their composition was created. Some people revisit a place that they once had been in order to relive a unique feeling they had while standing in a particular place. We can learn and unlearn feelings just as we can learn and unlearn inclinations, beliefs, or supposed facts. What is usually missing is giving them a name.
There are thousands (not billions) of people in this world who have unlearned anger.
Let us compare two jurors who are listening to a prosecutor tell them of a horrible crime that a defendant is accused of committing. One juror becomes afraid to let this defendant loose on the public. The other juror - having mastered tranquility - waits for the evidence. There are many ways that destructive feelings can befuddle the mind and make the mind more controllable by manipulators. Brainwashing is an example.
A long time ago in a country that no longer exists, a brainwashing experiment was conducted in which the people in a isolated town were told a story which was an intentional lie. Some months later, they told those same residents the truth - disclosing absolute proof in clear and logical language. Nonetheless, 30% of them never believed the truth, but firmly believed the lie that they were originally told.
The success of brainwashing typically depends upon inspiring feelings such as resentment, fear, envy, anger, revenge, blame, hate, hostility, arrogance, selfishness, or the desire to control others.
Many in education and psychology suggest that we are entitled to our feelings (whatever they are), and only certain features of our behavior should be unlearned. This is due, at least in part, to their belief that they themselves are entitled to their feelings, whatever they may be.
If you can inspire anger about a supposed injustice and inspire fear of what villains might do, you are well on your way to making a lie seem plausible. Our cultures make life easy for the ill-intentioned by accepting destructive feelings as natural.
While destructive feelings are an engrained part of almost all cultures, most people hope for a life of peace and joy. They seek a life that is not filled with destructive feelings, but filled with accomplishment, love, and beauty.
Seeing your new-born grandchild for the first time can be an overwhelming experience of love (one of several kinds of love).
As a very young child, I saw another child accidentally injured with a sharp knife. I felt a chill, as though my blood was suddenly cold. I later learned the word for this kind of feeling. It is empathy.
Love and empathy exist. We know that from our direct experience.
Some of us are fortunate enough to have known people who, to some degree, are caring, compassionate, or forgiving, or generous, grateful, honest, or humble, or kind, trustworthy, or moral. Like love and empathy, these are also part of the goodness that most people value.
A culture in which the desire to control others is considered natural and acceptable inevitably falls victim to legal oppression. Historically, the feelings of fear, resentment, combativeness, and the wish for power over the decisions of others have influence our political structures since ancient times.
Since before the building of the Egyptian Pyramids, the pursuit of happiness has been severely constrained by extreme centralization of decision-making power. The shape of a pyramid is now the famous metaphor for the structure of almost all organizations - whether governmental, commercial, or charitable. The top of the pyramid consists of one or a few decision makers, and the base of the pyramid geometrically symbolizes the great mass of people to whom those decisions apply.
Such a structure presumes leaders. Some potential leaders have successfully developed themselves to be a person having much to offer, and the intention to help facilitate the wellbeing and happiness of every person.
There is also a type of leadership that does not need a pyramidal structure or rank. This is the person who leads by example.
On the other hand, another kind of leadership is common. This kind of leadership is motivated by the respect and perquisites inherent in a pyramidal leadership. In the extreme, it is simply a matter of the leader gaining as much power over others as can be contrived.
There is such a thing as a leaderless organization. Several structures have been invented and some are facilitated and even encouraged by State laws in America; but the culture has moved only very slightly in that direction.
Following self-serving leadership is a fate made more likely by the manipulation of language. The accurate appreciation of the meaning of words is essential to the kind of reasoning that leads to correct conclusions; while intentional misinformation about the meaning of words is an essential part of propaganda.
Being courageous, in service of a worthy goal, is good. Your willingness to risk your life, or risk losing something that you value in order to achieve a desired goal, is the meaning of courage; but whether that courage is part of the goodness that you want in your life is determined by whether the goal it serves is good.
When I was nine years old, my life was saved by a boy who was about 15 years old at that time. He did this at great risk to his own life. He had nothing to gain for himself. This act of courage is very different from the willingness to take such risks in service of oneself (such as to gain power or wealth).
Confidence does not mean arrogance. Confidence is a sense of oneself as capable and worthy. Arrogance is an air of superiority that is used to assert dominance over others.
I hear people using the word balance as though the concept of balance is to be revered and upheld in all cases. This is far from the truth. All of the legitimate balances in our diet, for instance, are balances between things that are good. Each of the substances in the balance are ones we actually need. The culture does not use the word exclusively in this way.
People balance poison with food, fear with courage, and hate with love. There is no good balance between bad things and good things; yet, you might sometimes be given a friendly invitation to such a balance by a misled person. Such is the understanding of the word balance in our culture.
The term moderation has been similarly bent to promote bad things. These bad things are supposedly acceptable so long as one partakes of them moderately.
For a few years, sea salt was sold in health-food stores at high prices to give it some respectability. After that, it became popular with grocers because salt from dried sea water in salt mines is less expensive than purified salt. The century-old practice of removing all toxins from sea salt before selling it for consumption has been largely defeated. I asked a grocer why he participated in this outrage. He said "All things in moderation."
There is no moderate dietary dose of uranium, cadmium, and several other elements in sea salt. Bad tricks work more effectively with a little help from misleading clichés.
The availability of information that is accurate and inexpensive has long been a challenge. Information is essential to making decisions that affect your life and the lives of all people. You must be able to process information about bad things without engaging in destructive feelings. For instance, you can address an injustice much more effectively if you don't get angry about it.
When I was 23 years old, I met a clergyman who listened to me describe my wish to be less nervous and more confident. He described a method of changing my feelings and behavior in any way that I might wish. The method is called the Daydreaming Method. Here is the method:
Daydream for a short while, imagining a social situation in which you behave and feel differently from your usual self. See yourself as having the characteristics, mood, and feelings that you would want to have in those imagined situations. Keep the daydreams short, but do them several times each day.
I used this method for weeks before I realized that people were reacting to me differently. Later in life, I learned that this method is being used in anger management training. I also learned that it is known to groups of spiritualists who use it to purge destructive feelings.
Purging destructive feelings is aided by some pretty obvious observations. You can remind yourself that any destructive feeling is not a pleasant experience; and as you use the Daydreaming Method, you can realize that you no longer identify with those feelings and the behaviors that they precipitate.
This method may take months to work for complicated changes or changes that you are not sure about. It also is not limited to admirable goals, but if you want to create a change for the better, this is one way to do it. I have used this method many times over the decades, and it usually takes about two months to fully achieve a desired result.
I used this method to see myself as a tranquil person - feeling tranquil in circumstances most would find dreadful.
Once in recent years, I was very sick. During the illness, I was lying down and felt my neck muscles strangling my throat. I did nothing. In about two and a half minutes, I felt a small leak of air coming through my throat. You see, if you are not breathing, your brain dilates all of the arteries and veins in your body. This is because it detects too much carbon dioxide in your blood. I lived. I'm not sure it would have gone well for me if I had panicked.
I met a tranquility-trained plumber who was called to a house that had a serious water leak on the second floor. A couch and other expensive furniture in the living room below was being drenched. The owner was extremely upset, and in a very loud voice asked why the plumber was so calm. The plumber was absolutely tranquil and clear headed. There was nothing to do but fix the problem. You don't need to work slowly to be tranquil.
As is typical, I have been wronged many times by others. In recent years, my feelings and reactions have not been those of anger, or those of any kind of resentment, or those of any of the other destructive feelings. Reflecting on what I know about how people get to be the way they are was my first step. Later, I more fully realized the connection between anger and violence, and the violence often prompted by several other destructive feelings. Violence is always destructive. Other insights followed.
Unlearning destructive feelings is essential to achieving inner peace.
Chapter 1 - Violence and Feelings
Chapter 2 - Involuntary Memories
Chapter 5 - Achieving Tranquility
Chapter 8 - Cancelling Limitations
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