War

We are all in the middle of several great wars which have been fought for centuries – The War Between The Rich And Poor – The War Between Influencers and Influenced – And The Great War Within Ourselves

Internal conflicts – there might be a bloody battle between your moral code and sexual needs for instance; or between what you allow yourself to feel and the self-healing process which attempts to release childhood pain; or between intellect and body needs or emotions. Conflict can also occur between your personal drives and the social, political or economic regime you live in. The war might represent a battle going on between your own gender identity and the opposite gender; between yourself and another person, or your conscious attitudes and your unconscious biological processes and intelligence – between body and mind.

Jung reports an interesting fact that men involved in actual war scenes, or people involved in threatening ongoing everyday life, seldom dream about it. During the first world war, if men began to dream repeatedly of the war scenes they were involved in, it was considered that their psychic immunity was breaking down and it was time to take them away from the active front.

After the Second World War a new world order fought to emerge amidst continuous bloody conflicts and political struggles for power and control.  The emergence has not been easy.  The psyche of individuals, the control of individuals, has been fought over by competing influences.  And we have managed to slowly grow in stature and awareness.

As with the emergence of anything new, old structures, old habits and systems have resisted change. I, like you, I am partly a product of my times.  As dearly as I would like to believe that my mind and opinions are my own, they are of course largely what I have inherited.  They have been shaped by the social structure in which I was born.  Without realising it I have inherited a way of life that I was largely unconscious of and took for granted.  As a child I was beaten by my teachers with canes as thick as walking sticks – 1930’s.  It is only looking back that I see I was part of a punitive society, and I was on the wrong end of the stick.  It was a society in which you either conformed or you were punished.  And that was how school children were trained – to conform.  The schooling for the children of the ruling class was completely different.  They were trained to wield the stick.

Idioms: In the wars; on the warpath; war of nerves; declare war. See: Attack; Fight; Soldier; Bomb; Air raid; What on Earth is Happeing