Historical Heroes and Villains:
Another valuable source of wisdom is historical figures. What qualities made heroes and villains what they were? What did those people do to accomplish whatever they’re remembered for? Did they succeed? Why or why not?
As many people of all different backgrounds say, in order to defeat your enemy, first you must understand him. Some of the most valuable wisdom you can find comes from your enemies, because evaluating the admirable qualities of your enemies forces you to decide what it is about yourself that causes you to dislike these people in spite of their good qualities. Let me take the most extreme example of all. (I like to use extreme examples, because if this code to humanity can’t explain extreme examples just as easily as it can explain any other examples, then the code isn’t universally applicable to everyone—and that would prove it didn’t work.)
Hitler. What can we admire about Hitler? First of all, he lived in a country that had fallen on desperate times, because the war debts the victors of World War I were forcing the Germans to pay absolutely crippled their economy, as any history book will tell you. Second, he figured out how to solve those problems. Third, he figured out how to get most of the people in the country to cooperate with him. Fourth, in the end, he did accomplish what he set out to do, which was to improve the living conditions for Germany. He didn’t accomplish what he did in an admirable way to put it lightly, and he didn’t even accomplish it in the way that he hoped to. But what came about as a result of his rise to power? Ever since then, the United Nations (supposedly) has done all it can to ensure that no country’s situation ever gets so desperate that another Hitler could arise.
What lessons can we learn from Hitler’s mistakes? His biggest mistake must be that he completely refused to recognize any redeeming qualities at all in millions of people. Basically everyone in the world hates Hitler to this day, and remembers him best for that one mistake. Considering that basically all of humanity hates Hitler for that “quality” of his, that’s a pretty good indication that the “quality” contradicts humanity. That means that in order to avoid making the same mistake, we must be able to recognize good qualities in any person, no matter how despicable that person is. See why Hitler makes such a good example now?
A related mistake that I think bears mentioning was that in Nazi Germany, only governmentally sanctioned thought was allowed. As anyone who has ever owned a Volkswagen can appreciate, Germans are well known for their ability to improve upon existing technology (for some cultural reason I’m not going to speculate at here). Resulting from the Nazi party coming to power by the strength of the working classes, a lot of the intellectual elite of Germany were hunted by the commoners like so many witches. As the events of World War II demonstrated, the Germans were able to improve upon existing technology then as now. However, they suffered a serious deficiency in developing new technology, which they had inflicted upon themselves. Even if they hadn’t killed a bunch of their own people who could’ve invented new technology to help them, and even if they hadn’t driven more of those people to flee and side with their enemies (Albert Einstein was from Germany, for instance), by limiting their intellectuals to governmentally-approved thought, they still would’ve skewed the statistics of the war against themselves. I’m jumping ahead several chapters here, but it is the nature of all people to seek out the best use for their abilities, which means that simply by trying to limit the thought of the intellectuals, he would’ve driven them to relocate to somewhere where they would be allowed to think all they wanted. The British and the Americans didn’t do that, so they ended up with a preponderance of the intellectuals of the day on their side.
In short, Hitler’s primary crime against humanity resulted from his decision that many people had no human qualities whatsoever and deserved to be systematically eliminated. His downfall resulted from his attempt to control thought.
Here’s another villain I’m sure everybody’s going to love to hear me talk about: Osama bin Ladin. Since Mr. bin Ladin is the arch enemy of the United States right now, let’s suppose that means that he stands for everything the United States opposes, and he opposes everything the United States stands for. I’ve never met him, but I have been listening to the news for the past several years, so I think that’s a fairly reasonable bet. What better way to assess your own point of view than by comparing it to the point of view of someone who completely disagrees with it? That tug of war between opposite points of view helping to move society forward is also (supposedly) the whole reason we have a two-party political system in America, isn’t it?
Of course, it is entirely possible that Mr. bin Ladin is simply the Charles Manson of the Middle East and he’s a total f*cking psychopath, but for the purposes of discussion, I assume that he’s perfectly sane. I assume that this war, like most wars in history, isn’t entirely the fault of one side or the other, and that it could’ve been avoided if the two sides would’ve been willing to settle their differences by peaceful negotiations. After all, if you truly want to end a war, you have to figure out why it began in the first place. If the only way you can figure out to end a war is to bomb the f*ck out of your enemy until he has no more men left to fight with, all you’ve done is to end the war until he recruits more men. If you want to stop a war instead of pausing it constantly, you have to solve the problem that started it in the first place, even if part of the problem is your own.
As I’ve said before, the only way for us to win this war is for all of civilization to evolve. For the first time in history we are fighting a war against an enemy who has no country to invade or capitol city to capture, which means that the traditional ways of ending a war aren’t going to work this time around. Before we can even try to win this war we have to figure out how we can win it.
So for the record, I’m not a terrorist sympathizer, but I might seem that way to some people just because I’m not an American sympathizer either.
Another valuable reason for admiring your enemies’ good qualities and thereby forcing yourself to determine why the person is your enemy in spite of his good qualities, is that in the process you might come to realize that the person isn’t doing anything to make themselves your enemy, and that the person is your enemy simply because you don’t like them. Here’s another favorite enemy of a lot of people: Marilyn Manson.
Marilyn supposedly was the role model of the kids who committed the massacre at Columbine High school. But that was a gross misinterpretation on their part. Marilyn has never told anyone to kill anyone else or to shoot up their high school, his message has always been the same as mine: be yourself, don’t act like a sheep, and don’t let people treat you like a sheep. People who commit violence like that and listen to nihilistic music are attracted to the music for the same reason anyone is ever attracted to any kind of music—because it resonates with their spirits. In the cases of people who commit suicide or go on murderous rampages, they do exactly what everyone else in the world does, which is to listen to music that creates a soundtrack to their life. If the music pushes them over the edge, they were already seriously emotionally unhealthy anyway.
I think I’m qualified to say that, because I listen to a lot of evil-sounding music and so do a lot of people I know, but I’ve never wanted to kill people as a result, and nobody I’ve ever known has killed people as a result either. I’ve never met anybody who listens to Marilyn Manson who thought the Columbine murderers were heroes or were carrying out orders, or anything of the sort. For that matter, Hitler lived long before Marilyn Manson or even Black Sabbath, and he killed plenty of people without the influence of heavy metal. Charles Manson listened to the Beatles for god’s sake. Remember, kids, music doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
Anyway, back to Marilyn Manson, it came as no surprise to me to see his interview with Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine, in which he explained everything I just said in his own words. He didn’t feel responsible for what happened there, but he cancelled his upcoming concert in Denver anyway, just out of respect for all the grieving parents who thought he was responsible. Meanwhile, Charlton Heston, virtuous patriotic defender of the Constitution and the American way of life, and president of the National Rifle Association, refused to cancel an NRA rally in neighboring Denver just five days after the shoot-out. Meanwhile, the largest rocket engine plant in America operates just outside of Denver, where a lot of the parents of the Columbine victims had gone to work that morning to build propellant systems that would be used in missiles.
Meanwhile, just one hour before the shoot-up at the high school, U.S. warplanes launched a bunch of missiles into a building in Kosovo, on the orders of the President of the United States, which had been thought to be a weapons manufacturing plant, but which turned out to be a school full of children. Isn’t it funny how the media forgot all about U.S. warplanes shooting up a school in a foreign country by order of the president an hour after it happened, and focused its attention for the next several years on two teenagers who shot up a school in America and listened to controversial music?
Did the media pounce all over the Columbine story because Americans care so much more about their own schools being shot up? Or did Americans care so much more about their own schools being shot up because the media pounced all over it? Were they quicker to blame a musician than they were to blame the president because the media pounced all over the story? Or did the media pounce all over the story because the musician was so much more controversial than the president? Are the blind leading the blind? What has Marilyn been saying all this time about “quit being such a bunch of sheep”?
Who’s really setting the examples in the world, and who’s just writing the soundtrack? Marilyn Manson didn’t become an international superstar by forcing people to listen to his music, he became an international superstar by writing music that many people could identify with. Just a suggestion, but maybe people who want to solve the worlds’ problems should quit blaming him for them and start figuring out why his music appeals to so many people.
When you look into the eyes of your enemy, you never know what you’re going to find looking back at you.
Here’s one other example of the eye of the enemy that I use frequently throughout this book: Christianity. I’m a Pagan. Christianity has been the enemy of Paganism for two thousand years, and in that time a lot of Christians have resorted to a lot of dirty tricks to try to rid the world of my people. I don’t believe in anything Christianity has to say, or at least, if I do agree with something Christianity has to say, it’s completely by coincidence. Therefore, in demonstrating how complete my universal formula is, I explain it in Christian terms as much as possible. Lots of people throughout history have come up with explanations for the world that were written for their own people and that their own people could understand. So what better way to prove how universal my explanation is than to show how much of it was written by my supposed enemies?
That approach serves two other purposes. First, since Christianity is the most successful religion in the world and is the dominant religion of the dominant culture of the world, then for the group of people who have the greatest amount of power to change the world, this book shouldn’t be difficult to grasp, should it? If I explain as much of this book as possible in Jesus’s own teachings, and demonstrate how those teaching apply to the modern world, then all I’m really doing is reminding Christians of what they already believe in, aren’t I? And of course, as we all know, that’s exactly what Jesus did in his own day.
Second, for the 2/3 of the world’s population who aren’t Christians, I’m demonstrating what the dominant religion of the dominant culture of the world believes in. Whether those 2/3 of the people follow the teachings of Mohammed, Moses, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Dekanawidah, any other leader, or they just figure life out on their own as they go along, like I do, you just might be surprised at how much the dominant religion of the dominant culture of the world has in common with your own. It’s no coincidence that human beings all over the world have figured out the same basic things about life, like “People can work together a lot better when they aren’t busy trying to kill each other”. Is Christian culture supposed to be so much better than yours? Or is yours supposed to be better than theirs? But how can that be, if you both believe in the same things? So if you can explain your own way of life, whatever it is, in the terms of the dominant religion of the world, the dominant religion of the world won’t be able to tell you you’re wrong, will they?