“War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes
into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.”

Ernest Becker

I found this quote from Ernest Becker quite potent in the current moment. It calls to mind a few things. One, the way this war in Iran has droned out much of the conversation around the Epstein Files. Unfortunately, it seems some of the conspiracy theorists were right--we are being ruled by a class of billionaire kidnappers stealing little children at night to sell into sex slavery. And when the masses found out, it only stayed in the news cycle for about 72 hours. No more than a week, certainly. In another place and time, the citizenry might have risen up and spent a year pelting bricks through the windows of anyone associated with the whole foul situation.

Two, it illuminates why some people who could have gone their whole lives never thinking twice about Iran, a country thousands of miles away, have found a passion in their hatred of this "enemy."

Three, it makes me think of the United States' fraught history with international affairs. I think of the way the U.S. interfered with several Latin American countries that were leaning communist, supporting more conservative and right wing governments which led directly to several brutal dictatorships, like Chile's Augusto Pinochet, to name only one. I think of the way U.S. military interference in Syria ended up providing weaponry for ISIL. I just learned that U.S. weapons left behind in Afghanistan have been taken and sold by the Taliban and are turning up in Kashmir.

Four, it makes me sad to think that so many people are so easily stoked to violence. But I do not want to dwell on the warmongering of this era and previous for too long, only long enough to learn something and move forward. And what I want to learn is how to get away from "popular hatred" and move toward popular love. If we focus our energy on love for our human and non-human neighbors, there can be no pressure valve of hatred that releases into war. If we focus our energy on creative acts that engage in a cycle of gifting and receiving, then the power of the ruling class to direct our energies is diminished.

And while we must, at times, be responsible for the deaths of others (we need to eat), if we honor and respect the being that sustains us, then there will be no "happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies." We will not mutilate because that would cause undue suffering, and there will be no true foreigners because we will honor such beings as our neighbors on this Earth. 

Zach Charles, Co-Editor