Dear Terrorists
How Play beats Terrorism in effectiveness.
Hi guys and girls bend on violence towards certain ‘evil’ people. You are convinced you know who ‘they’ are. Put down your gun and inner fire for a few minutes to read this and then decide how to move forward.
You may act from anger, or righteousness, and consciously plan violence killing citizens, or uniformed people or whomever you consider the enemy. You may be reading this, calling yourself a Muslim, though, I fear, a large majority of all Muslims wouldn’t agree with that notion. Or you may think yourself to be a defender of the ‘Free World’, whatever that is, and have the rest of the world see you as aggressive profit seeking barbarians. I might agree with that assumption actually. With all the media in a few corporate hands, we can’t say we get to hear much truth about either side. We only see things escalating and more innocents on all sides are getting hurt. Clearly current tactics have no one ‘winning’. Here are four aspects to reconsider your tactics. Yes, these suggestions go for all sides caught up in the violent struggle to hurt ‘those evil them’.
- Are you really working/dying for the right thing?
- Focus on those that benefit from the war. Only take them on.
- Special tip for effective Martyrdom. (stepping stone to 4.)
- Play Beats War. (my favorite one)
1. Find out who really wants you to attack anyone.
This may sound simple, but it isn’t. Both sides lie, both feel they have to, in order to make their point stick, especially to their general public.
~The role of the West
(Yes, we too can and do act as terrorists. We may call ourselves peacekeepers, but when innocent children die, and nobody seems sorry, something is deeply wrong with our values) On the one hand there’s the ‘Free World’ (Wow, what a marketing term that, since Trump, has less and less truth to it). The United States has a history of False Flag operations and CIA interventions; among them Vietnam, Grenada, Venezuela, El Salvador, Chili, and most famously the second Iraq War. Such operations help push people to support wars far from home. The USA claims to attack the Middle East to keep the USA safe. And because of bought and corrupt media the general populace believes it as hard truth.
It’s quite easy to find documented proof that the USA actually armed first Al Qaida, then helped bring ISIS into existence. Yes ISIS people, you may fight America, but actually help the arms industry with their agenda! By now it’s clear the fight in Syria is actually about American interests vs Russian interests. The whole war is not about religion, it’s about oil and power. Yet the muslim fear has now so deeply set in the Western collective mind, most fully believe it and won’t hear otherwise. Because, hey, it is impossible ‘we’ are on the wrong side!
I wrote this on April 5, Published April 6 and what do you know. Check this report out of April 7, about Gas attack in Syria. Please wonder why main stream media isn’t asking about it.
~Aggressive Imams
If the previous is true, than does that mean hating the West, especially the ‘great devil’ USA, is the right thing to do, as a ‘devout’ Muslim? Well, what does the Quran say about the act of hating? If you’re a radical Islam group armed by Americans or Saudis, who are you really fighting for? And did the wars not escalate because of Muslim, Tribal and political infighting? Didn’t it get worse, because the revengeful Americans get all these excuses to attack some more, each time a ‘terrorist’ hits the West at home? The lies, the West tells it’s own people, are, sadly enough, not disclaimed by Arab behavior. It very much looks like they stopped being lies.
And incidentally, should those Imams who call for attacks be obeyed? There are fundamental Muslims who say, the only way to Allah is through personal connection with the Beloved. For them, all Imams telling you to die, or fight for your faith, actually lead you astray. Perhaps such Imams use you for their lust for power and self importance. With their worldly demands they distract you from your direct connection with the Highest Authority and break the Islam (Peace). And this is not even including those Imams who receive money to incite war in the interest of some bigger nation. But of course, that wouldn’t happen to honest Muslims, that only happens in the corrupt West.
~The role of your own side in the conflict
So the call to attack may be incited by parties, on your own side even, who really seek to benefit from it. In short they might not be really on ‘your side’. They might be using you, for profit, power, false beliefs, etc. So find out who on your own side wants the war and propagates it. Follow the money. Take them on. Because, practically, those on your own side seeking war are way closer. You speak their language best. You can reach them best. Stop them. And if they stop, possibly the whole war stops. Protest, call them up, refuse to aid them, reveal them as war mongers. Or, if the previous is too unsafe, ignore them as best as you can.
If after this, you are still really bend on hitting on the ‘other side’, then first answer this question. Why kill some random civilians, or badly paid soldiers? Why not take out the real culprits, the heads of the dragon? Might it be that we so rarely do, because the instigators of war, wouldn’t like you to consider that option ever, for their own safety? Or because then ‘they’ might strike back in a similar way. How would war change, when all we ever did was seek out the head of the dragon, and no fights between soldiers ever happened?
Or might it be, the instigators, on both sides, benefit from the ongoing fighting? Read on the one side the arms industry, and on the other the addiction to being the ‘saviour’ of your people, filled with justified anger. Fear of ‘them’ gets support and votes few other stories can. And once hate, fear, cold rationale against ‘them’ is alive, doves (as opposed to hawks) are mostly seen as pathetic wimps. Most often being a war monger has political advantages, until people are really, really fed up with the war.
Wouldn’t the best approach be: Stop playing part. Little people get armed and told to attack others. Thus violence grows and many get hurt. Consider that many ‘terrorists’ in the Middle East grew up in decades of war. Many will have trauma’s. So don’t believe more violence is going to solve the hurt. There is no such thing as ‘bombs for peace’. Those feeling hurt then get told to commit revenge or about the need to defend. It only prolongues the rage. Perhaps the real enemy are all those, on your side, who shout: “‘They’ must be attacked”.
2. Disarming tactics
There’s more benefits from finding out who benefits or seeks to prologue bitter conflicts. There is more to gain from knowing which (corporate) people or radical zealots benefit most from the war. I say don’t kill them. That’s asking for violent revenge. Spook them. Alienate them from their own business, politics and followers. Tweet them naked as gay. Send right wing politicians Arabic love letters, full of code. Send a radical Mullah’s a dossier with plans for their next operation, postmarked as ‘TOP SECRET’ by the CIA. Send Trump’s assistants ‘thank you’ cards, with some code words, from ISIS territory. The truth is messy. Make it messier!
And perhaps at the same time, or instead of, demand more and better truth from your own side. Push your own media to tell the truth. And I mean really tell and show the truth, instead of all the propaganda and distraction of what really happens. Have the truth come out on your own countries and poltical parties dirty secrets. The antidote to chess politics (seeing every action as a move on a chess board) is integrity and honesty.
It’s strange that we accept and cover up our own war criminals. Why do we protect them even, while we cry out against any of the other side behaving as such? If we don’t dare to scrutinize our own side, the other will never trust us. If we don’t take out our own monsters, then we are the monsters! This also goes for even ‘simple’ things as the US election. When many claimed fraud happening in the Democratic pre-election, Hillary Clinton should have, as true democrat, called for an investigation. That she didn’t, showed power was more important to her than truth and honesty. It may have cost her the election. And each time when white police walks away freely from another black innocent life, the message really is: those in power don’t care. They just protect their preferred order of things. Each time an ‘Muslim’ suicide bomber blows up, his leader actually seems to say: “I don’t care about my followers life and youth, nor about his family. I care more about my objectives, my power, my sense of meaning.” Yes, you may believe the sacrifice gets the attacker 72 virgins in heaven. I strongly suspect them to be ancient grey bearded Catholic monks.
3. Special tip for radical suicide attackers.
With blowing yourself up, you’ll mostly kill a few rather innocent bystanders, some of whom might even be part of your ethnical and belief group as well. This happened in places such as Paris and Pakistan. Never a smart idea. And the effect: it gets revenge violence directed at your families, friends, countries & belief groups. For the few thousand victims of 9/11 unreasonably more, deep into hundreds of thousands, died in the Middle East. Or for the Western fighters, since the start of your ‘War on Terrorism’ changes of such attacks have gone over 4000% up! Not effective either. What could be way more effective?
This next tip really goes for the Muslims. Remember how Christianity boomed? In the first century after Jesus the early Christians rather let themselves be eaten by Lions, than retort to violence or bow to an Roman ‘God’ Emperor. That got them huge respect. Because of this respect they became the dominant church. After that they grew fast to a huge, and sadly corrupt, power in Europe. But they got their street credibility through Non Violent Martyrdom. Also Non Violence got Martin Luther King more rights for Blacks and helped Gandhi to kick the British out of India.
So what can we learn from this? Non Violence is a power in itself. So when you really want martyrdom, then you can use it also the modern media way. Wouldn’t it be way more effective to walk unarmed into hide outs of Neo Nazi’s, Rednecks and ask them, if they are willing to be converted to Islam, for the good of the world, for peace. Keep friends with hidden camera’s filming while they rip you to pieces. This kind of martyrdom will be more rewarding. Now it’s the ‘Christians’ who are visibly the bad guys, while you died as a clean believer. And the West will have to face its own demons, rather than put the blame on believers from the Middle East.
4. Play Beats War.
We all know bullets can’t be stopped by unarmed people. Thus bullets are way stronger. Yet, compared to the whole of history of mankind the amount of wars actually reduced. Strange as it sounds, the world as a whole is safer than ever before; except for a few lunatics with access to a certain red button. Yet, while there is peace, a few men with a gun or bomb can rip a whole country apart, in anger and hurt; certainly with the help of biased media and populist politicians crying out. As we have seen, it mostly makes matters worse.
The ‘Us vs Them’ seems hard to resolve. We seem to be caught in our fight, flight or freeze reactions to danger. The escape from that is play. Play takes you out of the ‘Us vs Them’ logic. The road to peace is much faster when you don’t protest for peace, but just start to have fun, make art or music. It confuses the powers that be. If you don’t take them serious, they lose their grip. They understand protest, outcry, resistance. They love people to hide, or get angry at ‘them’. That they can deal with. Yet how to intercept someone having fun, for the fun of it?
People who play can’t be bribed; they enjoy the here and now. They can’t be threatened; they have so little buttons you can push. They can’t militarized; no one will want them in their army, nor will playful people want to join one, unless it’s a paint gun tournament. You can’t kill them, because that makes you look very very bad. Perhaps (crazy thought) the USA needs poverty to fill up its armies. Like in Europe it looked like people rather played and studied, so the ‘owners’ orchestrated an increase in poverty. Now the army is one of the few options left. (I dearly hope this thought has no truth to it.)
In most action or war movies one side really wants to kill the other. In reality the huge majority of people dislike killing others. They’d rather not have to. Thus such movies really must make the enemies in the movie seem like pure evil people. Such people hardly ever exist in real life. In fact more people in the world, at any given moment, are involved in play than in actual war. People love play. Sports, board games, card games, computer games*. Turning protest into play, war into play might be the most revolutionary and effective way to deal with those, whose outlook on the world is limited to ‘Us vs. Them’ and winning through force.
Here’s an earlier post of how play and ‘foolishness’ can beat powers bigger than yours. Here’s a post how to Gently Revolt, yet have huge impact.
- ) And the many war games, you might ask? Well, we play a lot of these for three reasons. 1. Cultural Biology. We’ve been playing Chess, Checkers and such for ages. We see the world as battle between sides, we treat is as such, and thus train our mindeset to stay with that ‘truth’. Boys love it more. Probably also because the root of war is the hunt, the struggle, the wrestling. If feels as if you’re honing skills and proving worth in such a game, in ways a spiritual dialogue seems to lack. Which of course is nonsense, yet for our biology such a dialogue may lack tension and exitement. 2. Propaganda. Indeed the military offer budgets, for it, most known is the Arma series. Also governments heavily invest to promote nationlism through gameplay. Their most preferred area is sports. Not many people are aware that almost all team sports are ritual warfare. As governments and leaders benefit the most from you thinking in countries and sides, in Us vs. Them. 3. Design. Among the earliest games, after Pong and Pacman were Shooters. Almost all early computer geeks were boys. So what did they think of when making the first games? And what was doable? Shooting in an game arena is so much easier to develop as a game, than social interaction. Shooting is lineair. You hit or you miss. Very measurable. (23% damage done) The visuals and options of what you shoot with, with what effect may have become quite complex and still it’s nothing compared to Social life, letting alone having conversation the thrills of an action game. Conversations in games are limited (unless online with other players) and scripting all options soo much more complex. Open dialogue may wander in any direction, and thus game boundaries (unrealness) become way faster experiential. And even then it never comes close to reality, where one wrong remark may suddenly spoil a love interest. There are just way too many factors, like smell, language, class, looks, shared interests, etc. All that influences the outcome of any conversation, has too many variables to gamify….yet.
- The hope is that one day this becomes possible and we get way more complex relationship games, without any real ‘bad’ guy to beat. That approach would make peace talk games possible, and games where the objective is to end wars, through peace. I’d say such a game is really needed.
