Courage

I'm looking at the title head, and I'm suddenly at a loss for words. What can I say about courage? Courage is maybe one of the most misunderstood things in our world. A person can be called by some courageous for hanging on in a desperate situation with no hope in sight, and others might disagree, calling that same person a fool for doing so. Or let's look at that soldier leading himself and his buddies into certain death during a battle, but planting that flag of theirs smack right on that hill. He might be called courageous too by some, or plain crazy by others. There is a clear disagreement among all of us whom to call courageous, and whom not.

Then, we have the small, inconspicuous, anonymous person who toils every day to feed his family with what he earns in a sweatshop under inhuman conditions. Is he courageous? Maybe yes, although I doubt whether he has the time or the energy to consider that. If he is courageous, then the world is filled to the brim with millions of unsung heroes. Is it courage to hang on life and not jump off a cliff or a bridge on a bad day?

My grandparents lived through the war in Amsterdam, Holland. Holland at that time was occupied by Nazi Germany, and life soon became bad, specially for the Dutch Jews which made up one fifth of Amsterdam. Not only did they hide a German Jew in their home with false papers, who made it through the war. They also defied the police when those came to pick up the German Jewish neighbors, and with success. My grandmother went weekly on her bicycle to the Jewish ghetto with a suitcase full of food, bought on the black market, and clothing, and one day almost got caught by an SS guard standing on an access bridge. She would have been sent to a concentration camp together with my grandfather, and the German Jew's cover would have been blown. Just as my grandmother was stopped on that bridge, a lorry stopped too. The German looked over to the lorry, and my grandmother took her chance and just sped away on her two wheels.

After the war, my grandfather was sent a high Dutch decoration for what he and my grandmother had done during the occupation. My grandfather wrote a note, put it with the medal into an envelope and sent it back. On the note stood: "I didn't do the things that I did, to get this."

My grandparents, God have them in His glory, are my true heroes. They are my example of courage. And maybe there we have the answer. Each one of us has their own ideas about courage. The hanger-on. The war hero. The unsung toiler making sure his family gets what they need. The selfless person doing what they can to do good, at their own peril.

Even animals can be courageous. Courage, one saying goes, is not the absence of fear. But the ability to control that fear, and do good. I agree with that.

Good evening to you all. Have courage, specially in these days hovering between war and non-war. Let's not lose hope.

Hatred

My previous blog about confusion was written just in between two manifestations of hatred - the bombing of Beirut, and the massacre in Paris. Both acts were claimed by the Islamic State in what is to be regarded as deeds of pure hatred. You can hate someone personally for something, and maybe even crown that hate with a physical act. But what do you call murdering innocent people in cold blood just to hit someone else? I wouldn't call that hatred anymore. To me, what happened in Beirut and Paris, and in countless other tragic places all over the planet, is not just hatred. It's cowardice.

That said, it would be easy to tell you all not to hate each other, give you all a good feeling and a pretty slice of personal growth, and call it a day. But it's not so easy as that. Far from it.

Self-control can be advised to any individual. Don't do it, don't hit that person, don't kill, stop letting yourself be eaten by that vile negative feeling. And so on. You can achieve a lot by talking sense into a person. Hatred is a basic emotion in any living being of any intelligence, but the moment it starts clouding your conscience and your train of thought, you become hatred, you turn into vengeance, and then it becomes difficult to stop the sequence of what is to come. Hatred and Vengeance are ugly twin sisters having one mother called Cowardice. Hating someone is easier than having the courage to face reality and solve the problem. Why waste time and effort talking to that person, when it's easier to hate them, hit them, kill them? So, talking sense into an individual gives the wished results often enough to make it worth while. I'm sure you all have had experiences in this.

The situation changes drastically when there is hatred sown and growing within a group. Mass psychology runs on a different set of tracks, and is infinitely more difficult to handle. You cannot talk to individuals, because there are no individuals anymore in a group. True to what you find in a herd of cattle of sheep, there exists only a group mentality. And when it's set on hatred and vengeance, cowardice has a good day. Because in a group, everyone feels strong. And solving issues by hateful shouting and violence is a lot quicker than by conversing and exchanging views.

So the following paradox is fed: showing force by hatred in a group, is collective strength, but individual weakness. I'll explain this in more earthly tunes: you think you're so tough and strong because you are in a group. Because you know, that when you stand alone, you would run away in fear. So, again, people who don't feel hatred when solving something, are courageous, strong persons. Solving issues through hatred is done by cowards and weak persons.

That is why populist regimes and dictatorships exploit these feelings within vast groups. Even if hatred is a negative emotion, it's a very powerful, strong emotion. Populist leaders and dictators grow on this dung of negativity, because it constitutes their base of power. The moment - and I sense you catch my drift - that people start rediscovering their inner strength and their courage, and therefore don't need to resort to hatred and vengeance to get what they need, populism is finished. And that can range from a leader in bullying at school, to a vicious populist in politics or a dictator.

It would be all so easy, if humans didn't like to act like cattle, or sheep. But they do. And what we are witnessing in this plagued, confused world of today, is the rise everywhere of people living in fear, and of leaders exploiting that fear. All over the world, democracies and non-democracies alike. Again, I'm not talking specifically about you, or your parents, or your boss or your neighbor or your loved one. I'm talking about mass psychology here. About groups of people, sensing one common goal. The easiest kind. To hurt and kill, and sense that power that comes from doing that. Little people acting as if they were giants. Microbes, cowards, nobodies.

Let us keep a moment of silence for the victims of Beirut and Paris. And those of countless other hapless places as well. Next month, new things will have happened, and Paris will slowly slip into the grey mists of history and eventually, oblivion. Only the ones who have known victims, will never forget what happened. The rest of us will just roll on and live our lives.

As individuals, it would be foolish and arrogant to think that "we" can stop violence in the world. We can't. Violence has always been part of life, and it is a dynamic force pushing this planet back and forth. What we can do, is look around us. And maybe soften that anger within us, our children and others, by just giving one big hug. Or a smile or some assuring words. Because fear, which feeds the cowardice which is the mother of hatred, has to be driven away.

How does the old saying go? To make mistakes is human. But to forgive, is a thing of God. By forgiving, we humans come a step closer to what is called divine, and that is OK. And to forgive is, as many of you will doubtlessly admit, so terribly hard to do sometimes. So what is forgiveness? A show of courage. There you are. The circle is closed. And NOW I will call it a day. Till next blog!

Confusion

We can all agree that we live in an era of confusion. Many times I've heard the remark "it's as if the world has turned upside down!" made in despair by parents, all kinds of adults and specially by young people. Some of you may have heard it too, or even made this kind of statement yourself. I, for one, have done so myself. 

What do we mean with "confusion"? Well, first of all, there is confusion about values, about moral standards, about personal identities. Young people and even children all of a sudden are questioning their own gender and their sexuality, something which I personally, as a historian, cannot recall having seen or read about it in the past. So that's an unique thing. Some days ago, an icon of confused values and identity launched the term "pansexuality". I'm still having problems with grasping the exact meaning of this neologism, as no one can explain it to me either. The confusion evoked by this word neatly sums up the murky zone in which many of our children and youngsters are stumbling along. I see gay, lesbian and bisexual (or are they all pansexual?) people popping up all around me in the social media. And I ask myself as an educator, with half a century behind me, if I have always been surrounded by so many people of the homosexual persuasion, and never noticed it? Or is it a symptom of this "era of confusion" with gay weddings and all? Are many of these youngsters not sure themselves of what they are, of who they are - or is something else going on? 

I was brought up with the idea that "true" homosexuality - not the cultural kind - comes along with conception. That is probably has hereditary roots, that it's something in your DNA, and has little to do with upbringing or education. That it clearly stands separated from what I call "cultural homosexuality", behavior adopted through peer pressure, surroundings, culture and the odd experimenting we inherited from the crazy 1960's. I guess many of you know what I mean, and why I make this distinction. Because that is what Western educated society has taught us, through reasoning and scientific proof to show that being gay is nothing to be ashamed of.  As an educator, teacher and school coach, I treated all of my students according to this principle. Being gay is no reason for discrimination, nor bullying, nor attack. 

This last point should have set off little alarm bells inside me in those less confusing days - in hindsight. I admit, as a straight man, that I still applaud the idea that true homosexuality as a state of mind is nothing to be ashamed about - Christian religion only condemns the homosexual act, but not homosexuality as such.  But the efforts made by our Western opinion makers in the last 40 years or so to sell the idea of "being gay is OK" to the world, suddenly look odd to me now. Was the true intention to sell this idea to the world, to improve and normalize the status of gays in society? Or was it all along the plan to impose the gay view on the world on the rest of us, i.e. that "straight" people are prejudiced, narrow-minded, intolerant? And that homosexuals are all the opposite, with their nice rainbow flags and their free view on morality, sexuality, religion and everything else?

Listen, I do NOT attack gays here. I do question however the true intentions of opinion makers in the media and elsewhere. I see how the gay community - homosexuals, lesbians, transsexuals, the whole lot - are being paraded around to achieve some sort of goal. I know enough gays who really don't agree with what is happening around them right now. Which should ring a bell or two with some more conservative-minded among us. 

That goal, it has now become clear to me, is to transform society into something unrecognizable to you and me. This is not about giving equal or even more rights to the gay communities, because many gays don't care about it that much. And I have more and more the feeling that has never been the intention at all. The empowerment of the gay community world-wide is only a spear-point of a complete transformation of societies all over our planet. Call it an opening salvo, an excuse to break down the gate and enter the walled city. 

Who is behind it?

There is great uncertainty about politics, about leaders, about the road the world is travelling. Haven't you noticed that our leaders in the West are suddenly moving in exactly the opposite direction? In Europe, members of the political establishment are applauding the arrival of millions of homeless persons called "refugees' to their countries. And forcing the peoples of those countries to accept it, or else. What is happening right now in the European Union, is nothing less than the transformation of a 1500-year-old culture into something never seen before. Call it transformation, destruction, whatever. The big difference between the previous migrations between AD 200 and 500, which destroyed the Roman Empire and all of romanized  Europe (causing the destruction of the Celtic culture), and the migrations of today, is that today's European leaders are welcoming it! There is only one reason for this apparent madness, this suicidal tendency of societies - there are powerful people who want to force a transformation of societies, no matter the cost. Same in the US, which is moving along similar lines. These leaders have a name, and a face. But behind them are countless others who will move forward to replace the ones you know. It's like a hydra. 

And to those observing the going-on within the Roman Catholic Church at this very moment - listen carefully and you can hear the demolition teams working in full force, banging and breaking away at the 1900-year-old structures. Today's pope seems to be gripped by a transforming fever much like his secular colleagues all over the Western world. Even the figure of Jesus Christ is now being discussed, as are the texts of the Bible. I have no doubt that within time, "new" bibles will be printed and published, adding to a total confusion and eventually, to the destruction of Rome, which will be applauded as the victory of the "new times" to come. For those hating the Catholic church and belonging to other Christian congregations - don't cheer, because the next ones to be demolished will be you. 

And after that, the other world religions will be the next ones to be "reformed". This might cause some hefty wars, as a religion like Islam will not leave the house without burning it down first, but in the mind of a politician, wars mean spring cleaning. Less persons to control, more room left. And the more violence, the better - it will fit the picture that "religions mean war and hatred". Sometimes I wonder about what triggered the war in Syria in 2011.... don't you?

There is a fire sale going on. Everything simply has to "go", it all has to be modern and new. Religion, moral values, education, our whole view on ourselves and humanity  are being reviewed, put upside down, overturned, changed. Squashed to an unrecognizable pulp. 

And all this is triggered by a select and partly hidden group of powerful persons who are interested in just one thing. More Power. New World Order, world government, world religion, illuminati, Novus Ordo, call it whatever you like. Power over all of humanity and the planet. Total power. Power over you and your way of thinking and acting. With implanting chips into everyone of us, total control will be easy. And changing our ways of thinking through endless media streams all proclaiming one "truth", managing and controlling us should become easy overtime, once the remnants of those called retrogrades, old-fashioned, intolerants, narrow-minded, stupid, have been pushed away to the margins of New Society, left to wither away. Brave New World is coming towards us, it's no fiction anymore. 

That is why there is so much confusion all around us. The confusion has been set in place to confuse us all, change our views, our beliefs, our ways of thinking. That is my firm conviction. 

What can you do about it? A lot. Make sure there is NO confusion around you. Let your yes be a yes, and your no be a no. And make sure your children, if you have them, learn that from you. As long as your own family, your own community are difficult to crack, you are earning points in this struggle. Make it as hard as possible for you to get controlled. The clue is winning time, throwing confusion back in the faces of those who spread it around. No war is being won before fighting one last battle. 

And never, ever, betray yourself or what you stand for. No matter if you're straight or gay.