We need to talk about peace!

We need to talk about peace!
The “Academy of Thinkers” provided a platform for a multi-perspective view of what peace is and how humanity can achieve it.

[This article posted on 9/27/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/wir-mussen-uber-frieden-reden.]

A unique event took place at the “Academy of Thinkers” (1): renowned thinkers from different faculties answered students' questions on the subject of peace. What is the essence of peace if it is to be more than the absence of war? This question is clearly too complex to be answered from a single perspective or discipline.

by Marcus Zeller

With the aim of clarifying this question, the lecture series “We need to talk about peace” took place at the “Academy of Thinkers” last semester. The aim of the event was – and will be in the coming semester – to create a broad knowledge base that encompasses theology, philosophy, history, psychology, linguistics and political science, as well as journalism. We were able to interview Daniele Ganser, Gerald Hüther, Ulrike Guérot, Katerina Stathi, Jürgen Fliege, Michael Esfeld, Claudia von Werlhof, Franz Ruppert, Jochen Kirchhoff, Patrik Baab, David Engels and Sabine Lichtenfels. After the talks, the participants had the opportunity to engage in an open exchange with the speakers. Here is an overview of the contents of the event:

Man is in a state of discord, comprehensively and fundamentally. He is at odds with himself, with his fellow human beings, with his home planet and with his place in the cosmos. War is merely the pinnacle of this state.

“In war, from a psychological point of view, there are no winners, only losers. Violence does not solve problems, but continually creates new ones.”

This almost mundane statement was made by trauma therapist Professor Franz Ruppert, a lecturer at the “Academy of Thinkers”.

So how can it be that after a century of the worst destruction by the human hand of war, there is still no peace? Have we not yet been able to create the conditions for it, or do we not even know them? Or is it the isolated political “villains”, the unteachable neurotic aggressors, who repeatedly provoke the world conflagration by igniting it and for whom war seems inevitable as a last resort? What causes the violence with which our species interacts with its environment?
Non-condemnation and freedom

“What am I willing to be shot for?” This question is considered central by historian Professor David Engels. It contains the realization that the citizen allows himself to be objectified: in reality, he does not fight for his own values, but allows himself to be instrumentalized. In this context, economic philosopher Professor Michael Esfeld emphasized that in a free and democratic basic order, however, man must never be functionalized as a means. The principle of non-aggression prevails, which precludes any agreement on self-determination. Rather, the basis of the constitutional state is its duty to protect civil liberties. It may not set anything as a general good – that is, as a binding “truth” – either internally or externally. Thus, it also has no right to per se portray other groups, factions, parties or nations as “evil”, because: Not everything that a state presents as “right” is right. If it did so, it would be totalitarian.

But, as Engels said again, civilized societies are mass societies, post-cultural entities that can hardly be creative on their own anymore, but are themselves subject to the existing system rules, on which they are completely dependent. The “billionaire socialists”, in reference to Oswald Spengler, are the modern Caesars who define the balance of the world in their power. However, they are not free either, because none of them can get out of the system and its momentum.
The hypnosis of fear

The “mass society”, which forms the system that has become inescapable in its momentum, lives in a “hypnosis of fear”, as the peace activist and co-founder of the peace research center “Tamera”, Sabine Lichtenfels, emphasizes. “We believe that we are acting in freedom, when in reality we are hypnotized,” she said in the conversation. War is the expression of long-lasting oppression. The way out would be a question of consciousness. Who am I in the world? What do I really want? Real ethics can only come from within. And this “within” is part of this world in which we no longer have a real home.

“The order we create and the order that created us must come together” (2).

The philosopher Jochen Kirchhoff also thinks in this direction. A person who does not know who he is also does not know how he should behave in relation to this world. He will never fundamentally perceive himself as a transcendent being, which has an eternal character, whereby death becomes banal: it has no “karmic” or “otherworldly” effects, because it is a total end. Thus, war and strife are the “normal” consequences of a purely biological struggle for survival (3).
The role of patriarchy

Sociologist and matriarchal researcher Professor Claudia von Werlhof describes the consequences of such a silent conviction, which she explains in detail in her new comprehensive work “Fathers of Nothing – the Delusion of the Re-Creation of the World”: patriarchy replaces the existing, uncontrollable world with an artificial, machine-like world of things that humans can shape at will. This transformation is so comprehensive that it has become virtually invisible. Technology and, in the final stage, transhumanism, are the new alchemy. Machines and machine-like systems are becoming second nature. This disconnection from the natural will inevitably end in self-destruction, because it is universally based on destruction. It pursues its own goals and therefore cannot be life-friendly, since it is precisely the living that is to be overcome and replaced.

The psychologist Professor Franz Ruppert, on the other hand, is of the opinion that “no mentally healthy person is capable of waging war”. The healing of deep traumas makes one's own motivation visible. The brain researcher Gerald Hüther, who, along with Sabine Lichtenfels, also dares to approach the concept of love, takes a similar view. It is the sick ego that acts destructively in the world as compensation for a lack of love experience and ability. It gives itself meaning and a right to exist through performance.

Now, we undoubtedly live in a world made up of individuals who are only conditionally capable of love, but are predominantly traumatized.

This can be seen in a concept of tolerance that has become completely deformed. Intolerance begins where fixed tolerance ends. “The truly enlightened person is tolerant and listens,” says historian Dr. Daniele Ganser (4). There can be no fixed corridors of opinion, outside of which the ‘untruth’ exists, from which the citizen must be protected. Thus, the ideology of one's own values would be missionarily transferred to the whole world, morality would show itself through action rather than spirituality, according to theologian Jürgen Fliege. But this cannot be integrated, because the ideology knows the way. Nature, on the other hand, knows no “good and evil”, so we can only trust in existence; it is greater than us. In his view, religion is the realization that we lead a dependent life, a realization that I consciously have to agree with and that can make me humble accordingly.

In such a life, violence becomes obsolete. All violence is ultimately directed against life itself – a life that includes death and therefore cannot be controlled. Transhumanism is the most visible symptom of this struggle against life itself, the attempt to free oneself from the living and to achieve a semi-living existence that makes hope, faith, connection and intuition redundant and replaces them with calculable surrogates. In this context, war games and war are no longer distinguishable.
Language and Reality

Language reflects our thinking, and our thinking creates language. But there is a lot of violence in it: gendering is a drastic example, because it did not arise from natural language change, but is the product of language manipulation that no longer sees people as its focus, but an ideology. The simple equation of gender and sex overlooks the fact that the characteristics of words are not the same as the characteristics of people. A grammatical structure cannot be discriminatory, explains linguist Professor Katerina Stathi. There is a lack of language education, of knowledge about the effect and function of language. This makes it possible to reduce reality further and further to phrases and to simplify complexity.

Political scientist Professor Ulrike Guérot sees this as the cause of the manipulation of society. She spoke of a society in a state of “wartime stress”: first the fight against the virus, then Ukraine, now Gaza. A narrative is needed that makes the state of emergency credible and motivates a society to do things it would not otherwise do. This makes the restriction of the opinion corridor appear voluntary and obscures its media preparation. There are framing mechanisms that create an apparent consensus while at the same time the ability to analyze is lost.

Patrik Baab, journalist, author and Ukraine expert, made the theory tangible: What is it like to be in a war zone, to see destruction and death with your own eyes? Most people lack the concrete experience, because those who have experienced war themselves no longer want to become “fit for war”. Baab quoted Günther Anders, who as early as the 1950s denounced the prevailing “apocalypse blindness”:

“The atomic bomb is not a political end, because it destroys every end itself.”

War is irrational. The rifts between peoples can only be bridged by shared positive experiences; otherwise the old prejudices and paradigms remain. Past suffering cannot be erased! Only through new shared experiences can history be changed. Interestingly, Baab said that most people have not worked through the Oedipal conflict, as Freud called it; they are uncritical and thus create the post-democratic age in which they follow authorities unconditionally.
Conclusion?

Have we been able to fully illuminate the topic? Would I now be able to write a recipe for peace? Yes and no. No, because at the level of analysis and reason alone, we will never be able to fully grasp and describe war and peace, harmony and disharmony, love and fear. Yes, because if we were willing to implement the majority of the insights gained, war would at least abate over time, the ground would be pulled out from under it and the responsible subjects would gradually become superfluous. Questions about meaning and about an existence worth living for all people would be asked anew, because a unifying consciousness would replace what divides us. Compassion, consideration and empathy can establish a new trust in our species. We would reach a new maturity as individuals, granting others the same rights as ourselves. We would become more cautious with judgments and focus on what unites us, knowing that there can never be an ultimate “right and true”.

Perhaps we humans have forgotten that every front side requires a back side. And that is why we divide the world into “right and wrong”, a world that in reality, however, consists precisely of the balance and relationship between these two polar sides. Then our way of perceiving and interpreting the world would be the real cause of discord. A finer adjustment of our perception would then look more for relationship and resonance than for distinguishing features. But we live in an “I-world”, not in a “we-world”: we define our own individuality through our differences to others, not according to our anthropological and thus fundamental equality. It is hardly surprising that we also understand the external world from this self-perception.

Peace can only arise from the maturity of the individual.

In the coming semester, we will continue to explore these questions, again in exchange with the above-mentioned and other luminaries: the path to peace begins with each individual.

Sources and notes:

The “Academy of Thinkers” wants to encourage people to think independently. It offers a “Studium Generale” and unites a broad spectrum of topics and renowned lecturers under its roof. More information at: http://www.die-akademie-der-Denker.de
The interview with Sabine Lichtenfels
The interview with Jochen Kirchhoff
The interview with Daniele Ganser was conducted by Maximilian Ruppert, founder of the Academy of Thinkers

Marcus Zeller, born in 1973, is an educator. He grew up in a Christian fundamentalist cult. After his release from it, he dealt intensively with the psychological mechanisms of self- and external manipulation. Today he lives as a carpenter and coach on La Palma in Spain. For more information, visit ausstiegsberatung.com.
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