The reason our reactions to the unknown can vary is because we have different personalities and life experiences. Despite our differences, however, we all share a craving to understand the world around us. Without a “worldview,” we would not be able to function. For some the craving is small and for others it is large, but it is a human craving that helped give birth to philosophy, religion, science, and the most fanatical ideologies in the world.
Our craving to understand underlying causes is embodied in the question “why”—a word used by children to find out why it rains, by adults to make sense of their lives, by scientists to explore the mysteries of the universe, and by theologians to question the nature of existence. New paradigms emerge when someone asks “why” to the questions so many others take for granted. “Why” is one of humanity’s most powerful ideas, an idea that can liberate us, empower us, or ruin us.
It is important to increase our understanding of the human condition, because the less we know about our humanity and the many ways our human vulnerabilities can be exploited, the easier we are to manipulate. Since the question “why” can create such a strong craving to know, we will often settle for answers that are easy, oversimplistic, convenient, inaccurate, and even made up. Knowing this about our humanity, we must be vigilant by not allowing our craving to overpower our reason. When our country encounters a tragedy or serious problem, for example, our craving to find a cause is especially strong, which gives people in power an opportunity to manipulate us with propaganda.
If you ever doubt that human beings have a craving to understand the causes of events, look at how people react when a terrorist attack happens. Virtually everyone wants to identify a cause (even if the cause is as general as “evil”), which gives those in power an opportunity to spread misleading explanations. When a mass shooting happens in the United States, people debate whether it was caused by an evil gene, mental illness, not enough gun control, too much gun control, violent media, bad parenting, bullying, a “false flag operation” (a conspiracy where our own government orchestrated the shooting), or a combination of factors. When our economy descends into a recession, there is always an intense debate to identify the underlying causes.
In our quest to understand the world around us, our desire for certainty can overpower our curiosity. In The End of War and Peaceful Revolution I discuss how children are naturally curious, but their curiosity is often repressed. Healthy curiosity and critical thinking are necessary to overcome manipulation. The Plato’s Cave allegory in my book The End of War shows how our craving to understand the world allows people to manipulate us with deceptive shadow images. These images can also hypnotize us with distractions that suppress our minds, like a lullaby putting us to sleep during a time when the survival of humanity requires us to be awake.
If human beings could move away from harmful superstitions such as animal and human sacrifice to appease the gods, can we move away from other harmful superstitions? Can we understand the underlying causes of problems such as war, injustice, oppression, racism, sexism, trauma, and environmental destruction? Can we use our heightened human awareness to work together to solve these problems? Can we make the arms of science and religion cooperate in a way that better serves humanity and our planet? And can we achieve a higher bliss than ignorance? Humanity can achieve all of this if we increase our understanding of the human condition, learn the art of waging peace, and recognize nature’s cruel kiss.
The Cruel Kiss of Mother Earth
When we search for the underlying causes of problems and arrive at inaccurate answers, it can silence our empathy. For example, if you believe a baby girl is born with a disability because she is cursed by the gods or paying back bad karma from a past life, it can reduce your empathy not only for her, but also her family. Some people have an extreme view of reincarnation and karma, causing them to believe that all our pain in this life results from evil acts we committed during past lives. I have met people who told me that when women are raped and children are molested, it is punishment for evil acts they committed during their past lives.
In 2013 I had a conversation with a woman who told me, “Everything bad that happens to children is a result of evil they committed during their previous lives.” I responded, “I recently read a news story about a mother who sent text messages to her boyfriend, inviting him to rape her four-month-old daughter. The rape led to the infant’s death. Did the four-month-old girl do something to deserve that?”26 The woman replied, “Yes, that must have been punishment for her bad karma from a past life.”
That is one example of how our human craving to understand underlying causes can result in inaccurate answers. Someone might respond, “But you cannot prove that the four-month-old girl did not cause her own rape and murder by committing evil in a past life.” However, the burden of proof always rests on the person making a claim. If I said to you, “My real name is not Paul. My name is actually Zeus, and I am king of the Greek gods. I have been disguising myself as the person you call Paul so that I can observe your human activities up close,” how would you respond?
If you responded, “I don’t believe you,” and I replied, “But you can’t prove that I am not Zeus,” you could say, “But you have the burden of proof, so you must offer evidence that you are Zeus. Until you can provide evidence that you are an immortal Greek god, I shouldn’t accept your claim as true.” In a similar way, if a person cannot provide evidence that a child was raped and murdered because of evil acts she committed during a past life, we should not accept the person’s claim as true.
But what kind of evidence should we require from people who make outrageous claims? If I handed you a fake driver’s license with the name ZEUS printed on it, would you suddenly believe I am an immortal Greek god and apologize for doubting my divine identity, or would you require more convincing evidence from me? The more a person’s claim contradicts what we know about reality, the heavier their burden of proof becomes. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”27
During an era when people believed the sun revolved around the earth, Galileo made outrageous claims that contradicted what people knew about reality, when he said the earth actually revolves around the sun. But unlike a person claiming to be an immortal Greek god, Galileo fulfilled the burden of proof by backing up his claim with strong evidence.
At West Point during my spare time, I studied hypnosis and magic tricks, becoming quite adept at these skills. Hypnosis and magic tricks showed me many ways to deceive people’s perception, allowing me to better detect when someone is trying to fool me. Cult leaders and con artists use some of these deceptive methods to manipulate others, and they also tend to prey on vulnerable people searching for answers.
When people arrive at inaccurate answers to life’s mysteries, like those who believed Poseidon caused earthquakes by shaking the world with his trident, we should not lose our empathy for them. We should not look down on the ancient Greeks or any past society that held superstitious beliefs, because as we strive to understand the underlying causes of our problems, many of us in the modern world have also arrived at inaccurate answers that silence our empathy.
In Rhonda Byrne’s bestselling book The Secret, she promotes a concept called the “law of attraction,” which suggests that we attract everything good and bad that happens to us through our positive and negative thoughts. According to the law of attraction, the cause of my father attacking me when I was four years old was not his war trauma, but my failure to think positive thoughts. Based on Byrne’s view, because I had thoughts on a negative frequency I made him attack me, attracting these traumatic events to myself. Her belief system suggests that the American slavery system and the Holocaust were caused by the victims thinking on a negative frequency. If those harmed by slavery and the Holocaust had known the secret of positive thinking