There are three different aspects of promoting Psychological Well-Being and Behavioral Health.
- Primary Prevention
– Study the mental disorders or events in their natural habitat and prevent human suffering and occurrence of mental disorders. - Secondary Prevention:
– Provide treatment for the patients with mental disorders or psychological pain. - Tertiary Prevention:
– To reduce the impact of illness
– Provide Rehabilitation Services
The mental disorders occur in the context of human civilization. Therefore, this section will also discuss all the systems of our civilization that impact psychological or behavioral health. It will also include writings about treatment and rehabilitation of the persons who are damaged by the dysfunctional civilization.
Primary Prevention
Nothing creates more human suffering, mental and physical distress than war. Prevention of war is the most important contribution to primary prevention of human suffering and promotion of health and psychological wellbeing of a community.
- Majority of “One” Perspective
This essay identifies the people who need to be healed rather than be judged. Our social paradigm to judge and punish people has had very disastrous consequences for human civilization
Can we prevent the Imminent Possibility of Total extinction of Life on This Planet?
Let us begin by contemplating on the following:
Germany was on top of the most advanced modern civilization in all fields of human endeavor: Science, Technology, Music, Literature, Philosophy and so on. How can one man, Hitler, transform this society into the most brutal murderers in human history?
Have you found your answer? Please jot it down for your reference. Let me share mine for your consideration. After World War I, Germany was totally destroyed and humiliated. The victorious Allied forces were jubilant and imposed serious economic reparations to be paid to the Western Alliance countries. Germans were living in dire poverty under the rubble of the destruction of their country. Then comes Hitler, and tells them that he was going to make Germany great again. He spoke to German people, how they were the superior pure Aryan race. He violently tried to suppress all the people by scapegoating them as the cause of Germany’s humiliating defeat and the dire circumstances they were made to live under. The tragic consequences of such a geo-political situation are well known to all of us.
Have we learnt anything from that experience? My answer is a big No. We continued building up military alliances and manufacturing more and more devastating weapons of mass destruction. We continued the economic system that was totally motivated by exploiting the people and the planet’s resources for the benefit of the few at the expense of others. There was proliferation of divisive social constructs: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism and Conservatives, Progressives, Blacks, Whites, Men, Women, Gays and Lesbians, Patriots of different countries and different religious affiliations, etc. etc. Our conversations centered around the same narrative that has caused pain and suffering to everyone concerned.
Did we ever think that we are all human beings, residents of the same planet? Everyone and everything in this universe are made of the same elements; Water, Earth, Fire, Air and space. Everything in this universe is interconnected and interdependent. We are One. If we destroy any part of it, we destroy a part of ourselves. If I become a part of this infinite universe, I become an all-inclusivemajority of One.
Delusional Thinking of the World Political-Leaders Has Brought our World to the Verge of Extinction of all life on the Planet
I am not going to present anything new to you. I just want you to focus on the facts that are well known to all of us. We know that none of the world political leaders trust each other. Every country has their secret services to spy on each other; the larger and more powerful the country, the more powerful the spy network. They not only get information but are able to topple governments that they do not like. Almost every country spends a substantial part of their resources in defense budgets. They have created a paranoid civilization. A Paranoid person believes in the irrational grandiose sense about him/herself and develops a cobweb of beliefs that others are out to get them.
What have we accomplished so far with our leaders who graduated from the top universities of their countries? We had many impressive revolutions that all still managed to yield disastrous results. To solve a problem, we have to diagnose it correctly. We can see the results of our efforts. We are at the verge of extinction of all life on our planet. Majority of our fellow human beings are living in poverty. We are in a constant state of war in different parts of the world. Humanity is completely divided into bits and pieces. In spite of all this, we continue to follow the same paradigm and narrative for our civilization that brought us to our current state of affairs.
We follow the same method of feeling secure by the dynamics of power manipulation to dominate the “others”. Different countries develop their military alliances to protect themselves. Right now, there is one most powerful alliance, and that is the Western Alliance of the European Union led by the United States. There used to be two global Super “Powers”: The United States and the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, only one Super Power remains: the United States of America. The people of the world were happy that we will have the benefits of the Peace Dividend because there are no more conflicting Super Powers. This did not come true. The ruling elite developed their own vocabulary to maintain the position of privilege and promote the misconceived vested interest of the few. They invented new enemies around the world. I will discuss some of those in the following paragraphs.
We Promote Democracy and Our Values
Yet whose values are promoted? It is not those of the inhabitants of a nation, but those of the multinational corporations and the Greedy Money Lenders (Wall Street). For example, the illegal invasion of Iraq that was supposed to promote democracy had nothing to do with democracy or interest in the wellbeing of the people of Iraq or the United States. Just ask one question whenever such interventions occur: who profited from it? It is the military industrial corporations and the fossil fuel industry Greedy Profiteers who truly benefited. Before the war, Iraq had the best public health system, education and infrastructure in the Middle East. Now it is completely destroyed and millions of people were killed and their museums and cultural institutions were destroyed. Who benefitted? Not Iraq or the United States. In the United States it created more poverty and less resources for education, health, human welfare. It created distraction from dealing with the catastrophic Climate Change and the epidemic of gun homicides and suicides. Who benefitted from the invasion of Libya? At present, who is benefiting from war in Ukraine? The military industrial corporations and the fossil fuel industries are showing record profits. The rest of the world is suffering from inflation and many parts of the world will suffer from hunger and famine because of the war and our financial and trade embargo of Russia.
Our media, which is also supported by the beneficiaries of war, keeps promoting the unrealistic and the most destructive conversation of the people who created the situation in the first place. For twenty-four hours a day they are interviewing military and political leaders. They are doing the same thing Hitler’s propaganda machine was doing. Political and military establishments created the situation in the first place. It is asking the man who perpetrates domestic violence to tell us his justification for it. In my practice to bring peace in a family where there has been domestic abuse, most of the abusers are referred to me by the courts. They never come voluntarily because in their minds they are provoked to be violent. Who can send the violent abusers who are destroying this planet and its inhabitants? Only if the people who are being abused begin to question their behavior and start protesting against the war-maniac oligarch-rulers of the world. There is plenty of knowledge and effective skills available to resolve conflicts peacefully. No one seems to be interested in it because it does not serve the purpose of the persons whose misconceived self-interest is being served. They do not realize that ultimately, they are going to be destroyed with everyone else. They are not a happy bunch either. They are the same way as an unhappy man who indulges in domestic violence who was abused himself and creates pain and suffering for everyone concerned. The solution is not to make punitive judgments on them. Like an abuser in domestic violence case these leaders need to be healed. They need to ask for help for themselves than to continue this violent pattern of destruction of this planet and their inhabitants.
If we promote our values without understanding and respect for other countries values is a cause for conflict. It is better to have respect and understanding of each other’s values.
Promotion of Democracy
Let us look at the history of the nations that claim to be promoting democracy. At least for the last five centuries, the European powers have gone around the world to conquer other countries or colonize them. They have gone as far as robbing their resources and destroying their cultural and educational institutions. The United States is built on the genocide of the Native Americans and destruction of their language and culture in the most brutal way. All of Europe, in general, and the United States in particular thrived on the foundation of brutal slave trade. To this day there is systemic racism and the minority-rule because of gerrymandering, suppression of votes and the Electoral College.
There is a substantial opposition to teaching the accurate history of the United States in our schools. The Congress and the Senate are bought by the profiteers and do not represent the people. For instance, there is a majority of people in the United States that support Child Care, Public Education, Universal Health Care, deal with the epidemic of gun violence and the catastrophic climate change but the ruling elite cannot pass any legislation to support what the people want. There was a serious effort to destroy democracy in the States. There is even a major political party who still promotes the same agenda. How can we claim promoting democracy elsewhere when we do not have it at home? Recently the Congress had no money to deal with the Pandemic but they have a bi-partisan support to promote Ukraine war by finding 75 billion dollars for military aid to Ukraine. To this day, we support brutal dictatorships and colonial governments who support our multinational and Wall Street interests. We toppled democratically-elected leadership because they wanted to work toward their national interests. For example, toppling Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh of Iran and replacing him with the Shah of Iran. There is a history of regime change, toppling democratic governments and replacing them with dictators in Asia, Latin America and Africa, who allowed our corporations to rob their country’s resources and do our bidding.
White Supremacist?
We usually talk of a fringe element in the United States and Europe. In fact, it is a reality the
“whites” are a superior race if we consider power to dominate the world. They ruled most of the world. It is all through during the 20th century when the colonized countries struggled to get independence. Even after achieving independence, they are being financially exploited by the West through financial power. They are still not equal in a real sense. The concepts of whites, blacks, women, and all kinds of generalized thinking is created to serve the interests of the profiteers. It has nothing to do with being White. The whole world is ruled by their local oligarchs. The Western Alliance found more effective ways to create a worldwide oligarch alliance to create misery in this world. Ninety percent of people in the world want to live in peace around the world but a small minority of ruling oligarchs create all kinds of divisive language to serve their purpose.
President Eisenhower said that the people of the world want peace only if the governments would get out of their way.
I have a little bit of disagreement with the President. It is not the Governments. It is the profiteers who control the governmental agenda. Let me just take one example. It was the East India Trading Company that initiated the colonization of India. It was after a century of East India Company’s colonization of India that in 1857 Queen Victoria became the Empress of India. This continues to this day. John Perkins, who worked for the United States National Security Agency to promote United States’ economic interests explains it well in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the United States to make sure that lucrative projects were contracted to U.S. Corporations. The tools used include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex and murder. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the United States Government, World Bank, and other US-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks – dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission. When the profiteers cannot succeed in exploiting the resources of a country, then they get governmental military assistance. This is why there is a bi-partisan support for the military budget and foreign policy because the Profiteers want it that way.
Let us review recent history after the colonized countries were supposed to have won freedom from profiteer’s control. The Western Alliance used their economic power to dominate the world. Any country that did not do their bidding was destroyed. Iran was just one example. Let us take the Iraq war. President Bush, Vice President Dick Chaney and their associates had created a white paper, The American Century. They were just waiting for an opportunity to implement their intentions. There was a general understanding that the United States Government could have prevented the Nine Eleven attack on the World Trade Center. The ruling elite and the media rationalized that the government could not connect the dots. The recent revelations make it clear that the President and the Vice President did not share the actionable information with the persons who could have taken action. Since the press is also owned by the profiteers, there has not been a public discussion to hold our political leadership accountable for such a treasonable act.
The same leadership used that opportunity to start a state sponsored war of terror around the world. The person who made the false reporting to the United Nations Security Council was not a White Supremacist. He was a black secretary of State General Colin Powell. It is the ruling establishment that creates divisive vocabulary. Women and people of color are also instruments of the same policy, as seen with popular figures like Hillary Clinton and Madame Albright, and even former president Barack Obama. We used the strategy of demonizing the leader of a country that we do not like and attacking that country to bring freedom and democracy to the people. This policy of regime-change has been going on for two centuries with disastrous consequences for everyone, except the Profiteers. At present, our country is attempting a regime-change in Russia. This is going to have the same result as before but much worse because Russia has more destructive power.
Ukraine War
It is a continuation of the same paradigm of geopolitical leadership promoted by the profiteers.
The war in Ukraine has very little to do with Ukraine. There is a saying in Punjabi: When bulls fight, the grass gets trampled. Ukraine is being destroyed because of the Western Alliance’s need to dominate the world. When the Soviet Union was dissolved, there was a clear understanding between Gurbochov and Reagan that there would be no need for the expansion of NATO. As we all know, NATO has continued to expand their military alliances up to Russian borders. The NATO alliance claims that it is a defensive alliance, yet in practice they have invaded countries that had presented no threat to the West. This includes Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Russia wanted Ukraine to be neutral and be demilitarized.
Majority of the Western press is in high gear in conducting war propaganda. They are just the mouthpiece of the war profiteers. They do not educate people about the complexities and consequences of this war. NATO leadership said that every sovereign country has the right to choose their alliance partners and Ukraine has the same right to join NATO. Is Cuba a sovereign country? We were risking a nuclear war because we would not allow Cuba to have Soviet Military Basis on their soil because it was too close to home. When we encircle Russia with military bases, when Putin Protests against this encroachment then he is a maniac and irrational person. We demonize him to promote our policy to have regime change in Russia. Our Defense Secretary is not white. He is black in the service of the Profiteers. Our explicit policy of regime change in Russia is to demonize their leader, create an intense set of economic sanctions and trade embargo to starve its people who would rebel against him, and finally we would install a puppet regime. We are destroying Ukraine to fight our proxy war. We are providing military aid to arm the Ukraine Army to be victorious over Russia.
Our Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that Putin is not given the right information. The Russian Oligarchs are scared of him. What about our oligarchs? Approximately twenty individuals possess more wealth than the 50% of the rest of the American population. They run this country. Putin does not allow any oppositional press. What about us? Anyone who exposes the lies of the ruling elite is either dead, financially destroyed, rotting in jail like Julian Assange, or living in exile in Russia like Edward Snowden.
The Consequence of Promoting this Proxy War
We know from the history of our attempted regime change around the world that it destroyed the country, created regional instability and refugee problems. The world is still dealing with hunger, poor health services and lack of educational facilities in the victim countries. The only winners were the profiteers. Regarding the Proxy war for regime change in Russia, the stakes are intolerably high. Russia is no Iraq, Iran or El-Salvador. It is a nuclear power. I heard that a reporter asked Putin if he would use nuclear weapons. Such nuclear exchange will cause total destruction on this planet. He is reported to have said, what is the world without Russia?
This war, along with our economic sanctions and trade embargo against Russia, is already causing inflation around the world. Countless nations and people with insufficient means will suffer famine and starvation.
We know what happened when we rejoiced our victory over Germany in the First World War: It created a monster that ended up in World War II. Similarly, we can win the proxy war if Ukraine is successful in destroying Russia, but the consequences may be that there will be no world left to have a Third World War.
Freedom and Survival
The only way to survive and reduce the pain and suffering in this world is to realize that we are One and a part of the infinite universe. When we destroy a part of it, we destroy a part of ourselves. We need to start immediately and diligently to reduce the alienation from our One Self. There is ample guidance from humanity’s elders and ecologists all around the world and throughout history who have warned us of the dangers of the attachment to the pursuit of individual greed, power, fame and prestige and of alienation from our Cosmic Self of Oneness.
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- Thanks to Nimarit S. Walia for editing this manuscript and adding a very crucial statement that the profiteer people are also a part of us. They learnt to be what they are because of the dysfunctional human civilization history, and need to be healed rather than be judged and punished
- P.S. 5-29-22: There has been a lot of hue and cry about recent mass shootings in the states of New York and in Texas. There is a lot of discussion about gun control laws and NRA. Nobody talks about the huge arms industry that supplies arms domestically and around the world, kills hundred-thousands of people every year and Arms suppliers make huge profit. They promote violence at home and abroad through their influence on the political decision makers.
- Our basic approach to resolve conflicts through violence at all levels of society and internationally needs to be changed from power manipulation to developing better mutual understanding. Our attachment to divisive social constructs, greed, power, privilege, and promotion of self-interest over the wellbeing of every one and preserving the planet needs to be changed.
