No discussion with delusion

There are ways to pierce the delusions.

Seeking the truth is the primary means of piercing delusions, as it removes all the obfuscating layers of false dependencies upon that which we cannot control. By following the truth, we can take back our power to make decisions that serve ours and others best interests. It allows us to rationally choose who can help us, or whom we help, and what actions we can take with them to make meaningful changes. It also allows us to see the limitations of ourselves and others, so that we can work within them to maintain a workable momentum towards what we are trying to achieve.

Having clear principles allows us to navigate the complexities of the many situations we may find ourselves in. Principles help us to make decisions because they bias our thinking and approach. For example, following a principle of harmlessness means that the actions we choose must favour preserving the life and wellbeing of others and ourselves. Those actions are then not selfish whims, changing with how we feel at the time, but consistent and deliberate steps towards a world that is not based upon conflict and suffering, but cooperation and trust. Those who are under the influence of those who seek to harm them, but have doubts, are more likely to take a leap of faith and trust someone who is consistently favouring harmlessness, just because they can see that the results of their actions are a measure of peace.

Harmlessness does not mean meekness or weakness of character, but a determination that any actions will be conducted with the least amount of harm, and with the goal of the least ongoing harm. That is not always easy to do, and we are unable to be fully capable of doing it all the time. We can only do what we can do, but under the guidance of harmlessness, we will build a better world around us.

Another good principle is fairness, as it means that we will tend to favour actions that do not just serve ours or others selfish desires, but balance the needs of all involved. Thus decisions based upon fairness will need due consideration and be far less likely to create inequalities or favour some in preference to others, regardless of our personal biases. Under the guidance of fairness, we will build a better world around us.

Selfishness is the driver of conflicts.

Seeking truth, and guided by the principles of harmlessness and fairness, we can then look at modern and historical conflicts and see clearly how they started and how their continuation exacerbates the suffering of all involved. What is clear is that selfishness always results in unfairness and harm to those discriminated against, but also predisposes those favoured to act in the same way, if only to maintain what has benefitted them. Thus, selfishness creates a feedback loop that feeds itself to the detriment of everyone caught up in the sphere of influence of the selfish.

However, we are all caught up in our desires, so it is difficult for us to be truly selfless. But that does not mean we cannot try to live more harmlessly and fairly. It also does not mean we cannot take action to stop others creating harm or acting unfairly. We learn to be better by acting better, and such situations show us the way we can be and act better, despite the selfishness that may often guide us. We get to step up and show ourselves that we are not ruled by our selfishness. We show we are not just seeking short-term gratification, but looking to a future beyond it.

Looking at major conflicts in the world, we see how much extreme selfishness is driving them. There may be a lot of propaganda that tries to make out that high principles are driving their actions, but the key players feeding the conflicts are clearly driven by their own selfish desires. Most conflicts are driven by desires for resources, be they land, people or minerals. Such people will persuade or coerce many others into supporting their ambitions, often to their deaths. Such is the world of the supremely selfish, and we need to use truth to pierce their veils of propaganda-fed delusions.

We can see that the driver of most of the current situation in Israel is selfishness, wrapped up in supposedly altruistic goals.

Like most peoples, Jews have done things in their own way, largely fed by the idiosyncrasies of a bunch of opinions known as a religion, and which purports that they are favoured by the divine over others, and so due to more than those others. Having a core doctrine of unfairness is not a good start to harmoniously living with others, but most religions have such sentiments favouring those who follow them and othering anyone else who doesn't. Here an intrinsic lack of fairness is predisposing to conflict.

Fortunately, most don't want conflict, and so will tend to find solace in the less selfish aspects of their religion. But all it takes to call to arms those who accept most of a religious doctrine is to invoke the most violent and selfish expressions of it, such as Netanyahu invoking Samuel 15:3, which recounts who can only be a psychopath claiming that God had told them to commit genocide. We wouldn't trust anyone we don't know coming up to us and claiming that, so why do many trust a supposed person from the past they also don't know?

Biblical texts bestowed upon the Jews the right to land that forms modern Israel, which of course put them on a collision course with other greater empires similarly fed by supposed divine right to rule over others. One seminal action that put Jews on a collision course with the future was to be involved with the murder of the founder of a future religion that similarly claimed divine favouritism, but which could also use the same texts that the Jews relied upon. For many of the future adherents of the new religion, Jews became the ones to blame for their own misfortunes.

This, and that Jews did their own thing, led to a lot of persecution by those with a history of gross selfishness looking for scapegoats to distract those they ruled over from looking at their own mode of rulership. Jews were denied from pursuing many careers and locked out of access to many positions in societies. It is an irony of history that the few industries that Jews were allowed to be in were ones that became monumental aspects of modern life and culture, but which many are now claiming that the Jews have somehow manipulated into dominating. Othering does not obey logic!

The ongoing persecution persuaded Theodor Herzl and others to found what is called Zionism to find a country that could be the homeland of the Jews so that they could be free of that persecution. While many lands were possibilities, including in a Kimberly area in outback Australia, the most obvious was Palestine. After all, that was supposedly what God promised them. The major problem was that there were plenty of people already living there. Their solution was to enlist the then champions of settler-colonialism, the British, to get them it.

They expected resistance from the Arab population, and the British had to slow down immigration. Then came Hitler and the genocide of the Jews, so spurring on the effort to takeover the land, often by forced removal and massacres of the Arabs, but now with the help of the US. This genocide has continued to this day, largely obscured by the Israeli media feeding lies to their own people, and Western governments wanting leverage over the Arab states in the Middle East using their own media to feed lies to their own people.

Here we have the selfishness of a peoples, colluding with the selfish in other countries to commit genocide. This is the extreme result of selfishness, yet we are still being fed propaganda that it is all in our best interests that Israel be supported and that the genocide is the price for that. If we didn't have alternative media streaming the genocide, we would still be oblivious to it, so the goal of the propaganda is now much more obvious to us, yet many choose to ignore that those who perpetrate the genocide are just as dangerous to our safely.

We have been damaged in our thinking by those who are motivated by selfishness. Having a land where Jews are free from persecution may seem like a selfless goal, but only from a Jewish standpoint. For everyone else, it is extremely selfish, favouring Jewish lives over the lives of those who would share the land. This is neither fair nor harmless, and relies upon lack of truth for it to continue. It thus fails all the criteria for peace, and so leads to death and destruction.

However, this genocide is not supported by all Jews, despite what the Israeli propaganda linking criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism implies. We are seeing Jews throughout the world standing up to oppose the death that Zionism requires. They want true peace and understand that it cannot result if Palestine is not a home of fairness and harmlessness. They understand that at this time, sharing the land freely is what is required, from the river to the sea.

Propaganda is lies designed to obscure the truth, and without truth, there is delusion.

We need the truth so that the decisions and actions we take will result in the outcomes we want. We will never be privy to all of the truth, but we need enough of it to plot our path. Conversely, delusion means we cannot see reality, so we cannot see where we really stand, and so we cannot see a path that has a plausible outcome. We are fed so much propaganda in the form of advertising that promises us a better life, but which will not be available for all of us because it does not scale up to actually support us all.

Our governments feed us propaganda that what they are doing ensures our safety, but it is always at the expense of the safety and lives of others whose lives are obscure to us, or portrayed as a violent threat to us and our culture, despite most of those in those lands being just as ignorant of us, and having their cultures, lands and lives obliterated in our name. And then when those ventures fail, or whistle-blowers show us the truth, we begin to understand that the violence was not protecting us, but feeding the extreme selfishness of the few.

Government have been hijacked by the few through donations to favour their businesses and lifestyles. They use their vast media empires to peddle more propaganda to obscure what they are really doing. We are fed trivia and our news is nothing more than entertainment to keep us distracted. To see the truth, we have to ready ourselves to see through the veils, and to disengage from the thought processes that keep us trapped in a seemingly never-ending stress treadmill. By disengaging we pull away the support that keeps the delusion happening.

We can choose careers that don't exploit others. We can buy goods and services that don't damage us or the earth. We can simply choose to consume less so that we don't have to lust after large incomes that we supposedly need to live a good life. We can simplify our lives, and busy ourselves with what we are really interested in. We don't have to completely cooperate with a politico-economic system that does not serve us or our wellbeing.

We can work with others to gain the numerical strength to challenge the dominance of those who want to control us. The future is in our hands, and we can strip the delusion of its hold over us to build a better world.