the war to end all wars

Over the past few years I’ve been thinking about what it means to be British now, looking at identity, class, belief and values – both explicit and deeply buried. The bulk of this post was written in November last year.

Recent research has been focusing on the possibility that personality, states of mind and health can be affected by the experiences of previous generations – in a way that does not rely on the currently known methods of DNA transmission, but instead uses a methylation process to pass on responses to extremes of stress. As a New Scientist article puts it – the sins of our grandfathers are visited on us today.

In the spiritual, healing and esoteric world, it has long been commonly acknowledged, whether through past lives, or ‘karma’, that families have ‘patterns’, encoded behaviours that operate way below a conscious level, and colour our experience of the world and other people around us.

The 20th century has contained near unparalleled misery, loss and deprivation, the effects of which still reverberate, and yet I am unsure that we have learnt any lessons from this. As a person from a family with significant military service on both sides and yet a personal commitment to promoting peace and non violence, I have been moved to explore this both in my experience and in the wider world.

After much reflection I believe what it comes down to is this: that we are still fighting a war for base survival, when we should be celebrating our freedom and state of abundance and working to ensure that other share it. Right now many of us have a level of personal security, liberty and access to communications tools that our ancestors could only dream about. For a long time, we have had more than enough resources to feed, clothe, house and educate our the whole planet – and yet so far we choose not to do so.

Right now it’s time to look into our family and cultural closets – and say hello to the skeletons – and to listen to them. Ancestor worship has been relegated to a form of black magic and necromancy, when for much of human history, it has been a way of both honouring those who have made our lives and freedoms possible, and of ‘checking in’ with them, imagining looking at ourselves with their eyes.

As we come up to the anniversary of the ending of the First World War, let us place ourselves for a moment in the minds of those who fought, and those who lived through it. For them it was the ‘War to end all wars’ a cavalcade of slaughter and waste with a heavy price that many believed was worth paying. Whether it was seen as the Great War for England and Empire or as a spat between royal cousins, all agreed that it that should, and could, never be repeated. On the journey through the mud and disease filled trenches that scarred Europe, the spirit of chivalry, the best of men, and the best part of England and other countries was lost. We are still identifying and intering the dead.

As victors, instead of rejoicing in the resulting peace and long desired ongoing access to the oil of the middle east, our grief, our shattered collective consciousness led us to conspire with other nations to impose the extreme, punitive conditions upon Germany that led to economic depression and the rise of the Third Reich. We resented the slow grinding return to prosperity, and for many the disruption to the social orders was as step too far - the end of the world they knew.

It is my opinion that this pattern of behaviour has continued, and it is what has driven us to war after war ever since. It therefore is our generation’s job to learn from our culture's past mistakes, and above all to learn how to enjoy a more equal society, to live in relative peace, to share our earth’s resources, and to address the future effects of climate change before even more vicious wars do it for us.

It was our national thirst for more oil and political alliance with the US that led us to take part in the recent Iraq war – and bring our own nation to its knees economically. As the mother of all democracies we have now set an new example, a template for antagonism and short sightedness the effects of which we can only begin to imagine. Our actions continue to create extremism, polarity and to propagate mistrust. We now ask: Have we and our leader’s ‘lost the plot’ and has the art of diplomacy ‘died’? Did the war on terror created the very thing it set out to eradicate? Has our quest to ‘liberate’ other nations left us with less freedoms ourselves? Would we have taken such a strong interest in Libya if it was not so oil rich? Is the technology facilitated Arab Spring a new more peaceful and inclusive beginning, or will time prove it to be the spawning pool of new extremism?

The wars of the 20th century have left scars deeper than we can imagine – and yet, as in the deepest parts of human myth, hope remains.

As we pin our poppies to our lapels, and the last of the living World War II veterans prepare to gather at the cenotaph to honour their departed comrades, let us pause for a moment. The best way to honour our war dead is this; to ensure that they did not die in vain, and that we learn the true value and responsibility of being the victors, and of sharing the spoils, the ‘peace dividends’.
 

With the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of WWI looming, it’s time to break the karmic chains, and stop fighting old wars.

If you wear a red poppy this year, do it for remembrance, not glory.