By Jerry Alatalo
mericans planning to vote on Tuesday, November 8 may find words spoken in the past helpful when considering their decisions…
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“Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things ‘which cannot be shared’, and if they raise themselves to a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of human morality.”
– JULIEN BENDA (1867-1956) French philosopher, psychologist
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“They create a desolation and call it peace.”
– CALGACUS (c. 85 A.D.) Caledonian tribal chief
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“War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace.”
– NORMAN COUSINS (1912-1990) American writer, editor
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“Until you have become really, in actual fact, as brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass.”
– FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKI (1821-1881) Russian novelist
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“This is the problem: Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?… As one immune from nationalist bias, I personally see a simple way of dealing with the superficial (i.e. administrative) aspect of the problem: the setting up by international consent of a legislative and judicial body to settle every conflict arising between nations… Thus I am led to my first axiom: the quest of international security involves the unconditional surrender by every nation, in a certain measure, of its liberty of action, its sovereignty that is to say, and it is clear beyond all doubt that no other road can lead to such security.”
– ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879-1955) German-born, Swiss-American scientist
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“There never was a good war or a bad peace.”
– BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) American scientist, diplomat, publisher
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“No one is fool enough to choose war instead of peace. For in peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.”
– HERODOTUS (485-425 B.C.) Greek historian, “father of history”*
*Herodotus was also the first muckraker; he exposed the Delphic oracle in the Temple of Apollo for accepting bribes from military leaders to predict favorable outcome of battles.
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“The Atomic Age began at exactly 5:30 Mountain War Time on the morning of July 15, 1945, on a stretch of semi-desert land about 50 airline miles from Alamogordo, New Mexico. And just at that instance there rose from the bowels of the Earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one.”
– WILLIAM L. LAURENCE (1888-1977) Science writer
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“With malice toward none: with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”
– ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-assassinated 1865) 16th President of the United States*
*Abraham Lincoln ran and won the presidency as a 3rd-Party candidate
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“Global war has become a Frankenstein’s monster, threatening to destroy both sides… It contains now only the germs of a double suicide.”
– DOUGLAS MacARTHUR (1880-1964) American general
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“For what can war, but endless war still breed.”
– JOHN MILTON ((1608-1674) English poet
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“Morality will conquer war, even as it has conquered human sacrifices, slavery, feuds, head-hunting and cannibalism.”
– MAX NORDAU (1849-1923) German writer, physician
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“Five great enemies to peace inhabit within us: viz., avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.”
– PETRARCH (1304-1374) Italian poet
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(Thank you to TruthDig at YouTube)
THE ONENESS of HUMANITY 
War is a group process; it emanates from group think. Groups, or collectives, depend for their success upon the willingness of their individual members to give up their individual power to the collective. Then the collective, necessarily requiring leadership, is directly or insidiously taken over by psychopaths, for they are the ones always salivating to gain those positions of power. They are Vampires, and collectives are where they get their blood from. Without collectives you cannot have war. You may have some murder, and some mayhem, individual against individual, but you won’t have pitched battles nor armies. You won’t have the most well-funded think-tanks, engineers and training on the planet endlessly prepping for war. All collectives are predatory. It is pointless to look for peace where there can be no peace. You inherit peace by removing all obstacles to what most people would consider a peaceful life and those obstacles are collectives. All of them. Period.
Only a world of self-empowered, compassionate individuals can ever experience peace, for such beings become empaths and by nature will seek the path that does the least, or no, harm to others, human or non. The choice, to become a compassionate being, can only be made by an individual fully cognizant of possible consequences, and the choice must be irrevocable.
Unfortunately, due to programming, the vast majority of Earthians loves all forms of violence, wherever it can be found, to thrill from or participate in. How many would be willing to give up their favourite violent TV or movie entertainment? Organized, competitive sports that reek of overt and covert violence?
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Sha’Tara,
Hello. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your very thoughtful insights. While it’s disappointing that humanity hasn’t reached “a world of self-empowered, compassionate individuals” status to the extent where war becomes extinct, only found in history books, and peace reigns on Earth, many around the world are increasingly, and potently, gaining understanding of the concepts you described. Some call it spiritual evolution, evidenced for example by the rising interest in near death experiences providing profound knowledge about ultimate reality, which personally represent the greatest form of spiritual revelation to date in human history. We may perceive differently as to the extent or percentage of humanity which embraces violence. In contrast to the “vast majority” it’s possible that of all human beings in the world today a minority look forward to the thrill or participation of violence in its various forms, from the football stadium to full-blown wars. Perhaps my rose-colored glasses have created an overly optimistic view of the world, but it’s possible the future will be better and more peaceful than we might assess. At least we pray that’s the case… Interested in learning of two or three books/authors which you appreciate and might recommend… Thanks again, Sha’Tara.
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Hi Jerry, you make a couple of points I’d like to engage. The first has to do with the “numbers” thing regarding how many people want peace versus how many want war. Well, there’s an easy way out of this one: look at the world (without the rose coloured glasses 🙂 ) and what do you see. How are things proceeding re: solving the old problems of war, racism, misogyny, child abuse, sex slavery, oppression and slave labour, disparity between rich and poor, famines, refugees and generally which way are the “great” Western and once rich nations going economically. Finally political and moral corruption. How are we doing so far?
The other, more subjective point, near death experiences. Can I assume you’ve been there yourself? I’ve only had one, but that was enough to change my life’s direction… 180 degrees, and open my mind to a cosmic awareness that did not exist for me prior that that fortuitous event. That happened on April 19, 1979. Long story, I’ll leave it at that for today. Glad to touch base with you.
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Sha’Tara,
You look so much younger in your image… 🙂 Isn’t it quite a “coincidence” that the topic of NDEs arose, and – lo and behold! – one of us has personal knowledge through having one. My experience is limited to OBE (out-of-body experience), which for most everyone will surely occur and is natural. NDEs are natural occurrences as well, but have only begun to be widely known, discussed and appreciated thanks to the internet. You might already be aware of the YouTube channel “New Thinking Allowed”, which consists of average-length 30-minute interviews with guests having deep research and knowledge on such topics as NDE, parapsychology, spirituality, etc. and other so-called esoteric, metaphysical subjects. Most of the guests are Ph.Ds and/or university professors, so one can rely on the veracity and good intentions coming from that great information source. While working in a retail store, a young man who had been severely injured in an auto accident came in as a customer (he had to buy two pairs of boots because the accident had left his feet two different sizes). Having read personal accounts of persons who had NDEs, I asked him if he’d “had a near death experience”. He said “Yes, and it was better than sex”. He then corrected himself by saying, “A billion times better than sex”. I regretted afterward not pursuing the golden opportunity to ask more penetrating questions of one who clearly had an extraordinary story to tell, but… that’s the way it is sometimes.
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Hi Jerry,
From what I gather traipsing around the cosmos, the future is not “uncertain” but it is open-ended and it can go in an infinite number of ways. As an individual it behooves me to look at those ways and choose the one that seems to fit best, based on logic, common sense and observation of beliefs, trends, and the movements of those people, or things, that hold the power to direct that future. At 70, I can say that I’ve been observing this world consciously for 60 years. In geological time that’s nothing, but in dog years, it does count. My predictions then follow my observations. How I feel, or what I believe, has nothing to do with those observations, and how I feel about the future, whether negative or positive, has nothing to do with it, and won’t change its direction. And what I see is in keeping with many others also observing. “It” is going to happen no matter what I think or do but that doesn’t mean I just sit on my butt drinking coffee and smiling stupidly. The future, from my observation post, isn’t friendly. Too many people striving for too little space and dwindling resources: that’s bad enough. But that a tiny fraction of that mob should appropriate 80-90% of what’s available just for themselves, that’s what determines how the cookie crumbles. Social injustice, not anthropocentric climate change is what is going to doom man’s world, and as long as that shows no sign of ending, then why hope for better from nothing offered?
As for reading, I don’t really know. I read voraciously, almost everything and anything, good, bad or indifferent… if someone says “read my novel, it’s free on Smash Words, then I read that; if someone says, this is great futuristic fiction, or sci-fi, I read that. Just finished reading The Hunger Games. For me it is prophetic of the dystopia that is coming upon the USA empire, the social break down, an almost certain military coup coming up, the break up of the union and establishment of a central totalitarian military government is practically a guarantee. The downfall of the US will cause great military and economic turmoil in the rest of the world as 2nd rate powers seek to assert themselves to replace the Hegemon. Well, that’s one scenario.
As for the classics, I think I’ve pretty much read them all. I’ve got thousands of books from Project Gutenberg and other places downloaded and waiting to be read. Overall, my favourite books/style of writing is in science fiction. That’s where one finds the best visions of various kinds of available futures. Hamilton, Greg Bear, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert – can’t go wrong with those guys. Someday I’m going to post (on my blog) a vision I had of what this world looks like a thousand years from now. It could surprise some people.
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You might find it worthwhile and beneficial for yourself and others to share your NDE over at nderf.org (The Near Death Experience Research Foundation). It’s somewhat puzzling to learn that someone like yourself who’s had an NDE differs in outlook for the future from most other NDErs in terms of the negative versus positive scale. You wrote, ” Social injustice, not anthropocentric climate change is what is going to doom man’s world, and as long as that shows no sign of ending, then why hope for better from nothing offered?” Was what you saw during the NDE of insufficient spiritual power to create a certain optimism about the future? Now you may ask, “are you writing a book or something?” 🙂 Don’t leave readers who pass this way in lingering suspense: please give us the details of your NDE, and what the world will look like in 1,000 years…. 🙂 Thanks for broadening the discussion.
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Very briefly: I was deep into activism when mental overload struck and suddenly it seemed everything was hopeless. The only way out: suicide. Age: 32. Good job, wife, 2 lovely daughters – and yes, to eliminate confusion, I’m a Trans, M to F. The “picture” is a drawn picture of how I see myself, drawn by myself long ago. Long story short, when I passed out I got rescued and healed, not by Earthians but by a group of aliens from a world I would get to know well in later years: they were “Altarians.” The healing was complete and conditional: no more attempts at suicide, and I would follow a course of action as the Teachings would point to. The end result, if I stuck with it would be a post-physical death “all expense paid trip” via their underground to Altaria to enter into training as an avatar of compassion. Meaningless at the time, but increasingly meaningful now. Altaria is located in the “Nexus” as I learned to call it, a hidden world in what is basically a non-place between universes. These Teachers are the real McCoy, no bullshit, and tough. They began in 1979 and stayed with me until just after 2000. From then I’ve been on my own, developing my concept or self empowerment, ideas on belief systems, freedom from the controlling trinity of religion, government and money powers. With the removal of my fears of social stigma, I “came out” as a trans at work and I learned to time travel through past lives, remembering very valuable life experiences, re-living horrible events and some good ones, touching the bits of history as my self of the times experienced it, and I learned to travel to other worlds where I exist/existed/will exist as other than human. I met a few divinities, Ra being the one that stands out; learned of personal relationships with various ancient families. But mostly the work was done here, moving from expectations of change to self change, the only valid change. I had dreams and vision showing me a dystopian nightmarish future for mankind in particular, but for the planet in general, a time of tragic downfall culminating at around 500 earth years from now with a one to one point five billion remnant living in basic stone age conditions onlyh much worse due to a depleted environment, high levels of radiation and extensive areas of scorched earth which serve as boundaries between warring factions and war lords. Then a new gradual rise of mankind, in which I participate as an avatar, teaching and explaining such mind concepts as collaboration between physically “living” people and those they think of as dead, teaching meaningful communication between these entities, and always through compassion. Our “intrusion” is resented by those in power and we are martyred first time, and second time back, but on the third some things begin to click; more “aliens” join our efforts and a new technology is offered the humans now having expanded their mind consciousness and let go of their old limiting beliefs. Some of the truly amazing technology approved of for earth: force fields capable of wrapping themselves around an entire mega city and floating it into space. But I’m ahead of myself. Though very personal, I will think seriously about posting a “letter to myself” sent to myself from my home in “Langeles” city (obviously Los Angeles) circa current calendar, year 3000. The “letter” will be on my blog at ~burning woman~ http://shatara46.wordpress.com/
I have to leave this here, duty calls.
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Fascinating… Thank you very much for sharing.
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