Excerpts from The Cause of War & Aggression
Book 1:
p. xvii: “We hear that ‘the world will never be the same’ due to the World Trade Center events of September 11, 2001. We are told that individual rights are no longer a luxury that we can afford. Warlords throughout history have said the same thing as they tyrannized their own citizenry and established pretexts to invade other countries to satisfy the goals of imperialism and colonialism.”
p. xvix: “Psychologists who study human behavior are not consulted collectively in military circles and foreign affairs as to whether or not war is instinctual and how aggression can be avoided. Such a discussion would open up both the question of leadership by military minded people and the question of the need for military preparedness. The space between these two disparate realities denotes a vacuum or void, a black hole in politics, particularly in nations with warlike attitudes.”
p.43: “In the eyes of each side, the killing becomes justified. Thus, the mental maneuvering to justify one’s violence is common to all wars.”
p.99: “The fundamental deception of division is perhaps most prominent at the national and international levels of politics. . . . Thus, political leaders find considerable support from their constituents when exclusively attributing evil to other nations.”
p.105: “Many countries claim to uphold intellectual freedom while maintaining, in practice, a vast array of indoctrinating principles.”
p.117: “Violence materialized in child-rearing practices adds to and becomes woven into the fiber of aggression engendered by the nation’s delusion of truth. Aggression stemming from child abuse acts as a tributary to a nation’s overall tendencies toward violence.”
p. 124-5: “Many nations imbue their children with a blind belief in adult authority. The children as young adults can then be more readily ordered to go to foreign lands and kill people they have never met, an equivalent form of headhunting.”
p.147: “A tenth ego defense is blaming the victim. Throughout history, the poor, certain ethnic groups, or other sects have been victims of social injustice. When this happens, any remedies to help those injured are often blocked. The poor, for instance, are habitually blamed for economic inequality. The poor are told that they have asked for it, that their laziness is the sole factor in creating extreme disproportion in incomes‚ and thus‚ they receive exactly what they deserve.”
p.188: “Exploitative individuals are not forestalled by moral or legal sanctions and will engage in a variety of techniques to get what they want‚ including seduction, bribery, threat,
and physical violence. On a grander scale, these individuals manipulate groups of people and organizations, sometimes evoking large-scale subjugation and playing pivotal roles in wars.”
p. 245: “Imprisonment is not a viable option, as aggressors fit in to society, especially violent cultures whose social character admires rough and tough individualism. Of the millions of crimes associated with empire builders, only a few individuals at the bottom of the power structure ever go to jail. Aggressors seize as much power as they can, making sure to be exempt from laws they seek to impose on others.”
p.388: “The culturally approved policy of child abuse is age-old. Consequently, aggression and war are age-old. Beating children predisposes them to aggression in adulthood. We should not be surprised to see the most damaged children leading troops away to their deaths.”
p.408: “We must shift our consciousness away from praying for peace while paying for war, hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Warmongers and their military-industrial complex constitute the most lucrative business in the world. They need enemies to keep their business alive.”
p.410: “In the earliest times of human existence, our vigilance would have been on high alert. Something changed.”
p. 410: “Over many centuries our perceptual options have become confined and ritualistic. We are numbed by our dogmas, which destroy our ability to perceive danger clearly. Humanity is at war … because…”
