Preface
Listening to Others

      It is most typical in our world today to deny reality in any and every way we can. When our world seems to be falling apart we cope by pretending that its not, thus reality sneaks up from behind even though clear trends are well visible. It now appears certain that nothing is going to remain the same and the one aspect of life that surely will not be taking any breaks is the pace of change. What is coming? Where is the world headed and what effect is it going to have on our own and our children’s lives? The following pages will give you a good idea and this volume, and those that follow it, will give ideas of what we can and cannot do about it. Part of The Many Faces of Terrorism is really a report, offering a penetratingly deep look at where the world is now and where it is headed in the near future. Another part opens up a vast new framework, a World Psychology, a new basis to view ourselves, our lives, lovers, friends, children, work, economy, education, medicine, ecology, sexuality; taking us in a modern way to the roots of our existence.

     World Psychology represents a powerful confrontation with all that is wrong with humankind piercing into domains of the mind that have been imprisoned by the world’s fundamentalist leaning religions and the predominant paradigm of tremendously greedily and selfish corporate capitalism that is now successfully controlling almost all facets of modern day life. Capitalistic forces have merged with all the predominant types of political systems; even communistic China is now basically capitalistic. And though much is still being made of freedom and democracy forces outside of their control are destroying them, even in The United States of America, the home of the brave and the free. As columnist Robert Scheer warns: "We ought to wake up to the reality that business greed is subverting the American way of life – and hurting the image of American capitalism and democracy - more effectively than the ploys of any foreign enemy."

     Only the fool cannot extrapolate the direction of current events and yet in mass we remain foolish because we are pretending to the maximum of our ability that everything is going to be all right. We remain focused on only the most superficial realities hoping to get by. It does seem like there was truth to NYU Media Studies professor Neil Postman’s statements that said Americans are ‘amusing themselves to death.’ It seems like there is no shortage of foolishness in the world, no end to the denial of reality and the creative ways of doing so. The world was dancing when Noah was building his ark and it is still dancing, still denying what cannot be denied any longer. And worse, our mass media, the watchdogs of society, are hypnotizing and keeping us sleep, everything geared to keeping a dying system functioning.

     The first volume of this series is about the terror of every kind of terrorism that is now threatening the total quality of our collective existences on this planet. In reality it is a good thing that a war on terrorism was declared but those who started it have no idea of how broad a war this needs to be. After we look at all the major forms of terrorism, all the major ways people hurt people; we will change our views and feelings about terrorism forever. In the end we will see many non-violent forms of terrorism and how truly terrible they are. There are certain things that people and large organizations do, non-violent in nature, which brings on terrible violence and suffering in others. It is possible to create peace and comfort for us while creating violence, disease and bad feelings for others. It will probably surprise you to discover how common this dark psychology actually is.

     We as individuals and as a race find ourselves highly vulnerable at this particular moment in history, vulnerable to hurt, pain and suffering which is being heralded in by a collective fear that seems to slip so easily from our lips. The sense of security has evaporated even in the rich first world countries, and all the pretending will not bring it back. Patrick Sullivan seems to have captured the essence of this with: “There is a restlessness and anxiety in all people that I know and am meeting. It is like the vertigo of walking along a cliff’s edge. Apathy and despair paralyzes most people’s hearts, closing them down to the point where only the mind, controlled by the images generated by the current world consciousness cluttered with power, war, hate, and greed, and empire building is left.”

     It is known that changing anyone is a super human task and changing humanity ranges on the impossible for it is very difficult to pull people out of their traditional ruts. It is not with intellect alone that we will change anything it is with feelings that we stand a chance of moving the ship of humanity. Even though we live in the atomic and now digital age people still do not want to change their mode of thinking yet it is now required if we are to survive past the end of this century. This should be the obvious conclusion one should reach after reading this book. Feeling responses usually do not lie but intellectual ones often do and thus this book uses arguments and communications that appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect.

     This book and series harnesses the collective wisdom of many of the most intelligent and insightful beings on the planet, those who are still here and those who have already gone. It is written with a type of group consciousness in mind that gives it a power and a depth that is not possible from any individual consciousness alone. The greatest geniuses know enough to stand on others shoulders and then catapult themselves to new heights that can illuminate humanity in a more powerful way. I have integrated the following beings seamlessly into this work. Many are my co-authors, together, with intelligences and beings combined, offering a gift to humanity, to us all. As you will see in this work, listening offers us the vital key, and it is by listening to such men and women you find below that I have founded World Psychology. The wisest man or woman after all is the one who listens the most and it is the most violent who do not listen at all.

When the unheard voice is heard,
when the un-honoured voice is honoured,
when we learn to listen to each other,
 then will we embark on the road to peace.

     Albert Einstein, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, John Lukacs, Martin Luther King, Jr, Christopher Hills, Carl Jung, Victor Frankl, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ralf Waldo Emerson, Patch Adams, Steven Shachtor, Diana Richardson, Barry Kaufman, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Jefferson, Brent Croback, Steven Taylor, Douglas Nelson, Daniel Goleman, J. Krishnamurti, Martin Buber, John Holt, Seymour Papert, Stephen S. Roach, Josefino Comiso, Tom Agnew, Edward O Wilson, George Tenet, Jonette Christian, Patrick Sullivan, John Gannon, Bob Herbert, Nicholas Kristof, Andrew Sullivan, Patricia Cornwell, Tony Judt, Charles Ward, David Reynolds, Scott Peck, Joseph Stiglitz, Senator J. William Fulbright, Sri Swami Sivananda, Buddha, Dr. Kyle Pruett, Saint-Exupery, Peter Kaufman, Luciana Valentim, John Pilger, Dr. Alan Watkins, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Peter Salovey, Robert Sternburg, Howard Gardner, Dr. Max Luscher, Hafiz, Aristotle, Senneca, Carlos Castaneda, Chung-Tzu, SushilYadav, Dr. Scott Peck, Horace Walpole, Hugh Prather, William Blake, Thich Nhat Hahn, John Bowlby, D. W. Winnicott, John Cage, George B. Bach, Henry Ward Beecher, Thomas Secker, Sri Swami Sivananda, Dr. Grossarth Maticek, Pema Chodron, Alex Censor, Jerry Lempousky, Marshal Rosenberg, Fred Bennett, Belen D Alampay, Sharon Sullivan, Hannah Arendt, Amy Cohen, Vickie Bell, Paula Fordham, Jonette Christian, Michelle, Karen Peregoy, Linda Russek, Bob Herbert, Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Nicholas Kristof, Matthew 25:40, Paul Krugman, Charles Nqakula, Peter Fraenkel, Andrew Vachss, John Taylor Gatto, Charles Mercieca, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, Yaron Ezrahi, James F. Holwell, Thomas Paine, Gary Schwartz, John Chuckman, Ralph McGehee, Reinhold Niebuhr, Douglas Adams, Gore Vital, Richard Dawkins, J.W. Smith, President Obasanjo of Nigeria, Lester Thurow, Woodrow Wilson, Dr Adabayo Adedeji, Andrew Jackson, Michel Chossudovsky, Fred Goldstein, Richard Dawkins, Michael Klare, Joseph Farah, Hillel Fradkin, Bill Keller, Dr. John Beresford, Judge James L. Oakes, Peter McWilliams, Leonard Schapiro, Elliot Leyton, Dr. John Beresford, US Surgeon General, Everett Koop, Doug Casey, Andrew Vachss, Joseph McNamara, Dale R. Gowin, Clark Heinrich, Patrick Callahan, Paul M. Bischke, Thomas L. Johnson, Peter Meyer, Osmara Bin Laden, Jesus Christ.

There are no answers in a world
that does not want to listen.
One cannot listen if one’s ego is in the way.

     The above list might seem like a collection of separate individuals but I present them here as a unified whole made one in feeling by all of the above peoples’ intent to make this a better world. World Psychology offers a step in evolution achieving a synthesis of separate egos, fusing together minds and hearts into a wholeness of being. A kind of divine marriage takes place when the individuals of society, like the individual brain cells, begin to function together to create a higher level of organization and accomplishment. The human race, acting as one, can accomplish goals like going to the moon, which no genius, however enlightened he or she may be, can accomplish on their own. The fantastic thing about going to the moon was not the trip itself but the fact that human cooperation can achieve anything that it imagines.

     This is the hope of World Psychology, that no matter what we are up against, and we are up against a lot, the impossible is possible, yet we need the insights and courage of heroes. There is a tremendous amount of shoveling we need to do and the heroes’ task of cleaning out the Aegean stables, which was Hercules job, is now ours but the manure of the ages has piled miles higher and thus no one man or woman is up to the job. This book describes the depth and width of this mountain of garbage (human negativity and terrorism) that sits inside the collective consciousness of humanity but it presents it all with the hidden knowledge and insight that the negative is nature’s way of teaching us to become positive. So all the negativity in the world, all the terror and terrorism that we will face together in this book and in life need not be rejected or denied as worthless and darkly depressing though it is painful. It can be manure in which all of our finer selves can eventually flower. The difficulty of what we need to face need not throw us into a pit of negativity because there is a hope beyond hope. My hope is that World Psychology offers the first step, offers a model of getting minds and beings together into a more powerful group consciousness.

     This book offers a mirror of life that we all have to look into. Most people are not aware that the outside world is only a mirror and it does not send us anything as a race that we ourselves are not putting out. The situation is difficult because we humans are difficult. It is now evident that science and technology will not save us for it does not change us. It will be one of the fundamental points of World Psychology that the process of human communication, which needs to be dramatically improved, can only be improved if we improve the quality of the consciousness that listens and communicates. Without better people no system of human organization is going to work. The punch line of World Psychology is that we all have to change because we are all sick in one way or another.

     After reading about all the forms of terrorism, and after reading The Psychology of Insanity and the Insanity of Arrogance, we will come to the conclusion, according to the definitions inherent in this book, that we are all terrorist, or have terrorist tendencies (like not listening to others) and when all people realize that is the day when all the terrorism in the world will begin to fade. World Psychology defines terrorism as anything that provokes suffering to others and in this there is hardly a saint among us.  Certainly some people and certain organizations perpetrate much more suffering, violence and terror for the human race than others, but without doubt, Bin Laden’s Islamic fundamentalists and the Palestinians are not the only terrorists on the block. To believe this is to turn a blind eye to a vast sea of terrorism that exists in our own backyards. There are people and organizations who actively work against the better interests of humanity and they do this aggressively to protect their own selfish interests and for some reason the masses allow it all to go on.

     Many people cannot understand that guns cannot be silenced by guns but only by changing the minds that pull the triggers or ignite the bombs. The path to changing their minds though is not through some kind of massive campaign of propaganda, such changes will come when we all begin to change and face the imperfections inside of each and every one of us. It is just the one person who cannot see the terrorism inside of his or her own mind who acts in the world as a terrorist. The greatest terrorists do not see themselves as terrorists. The rapist of child sexual abuser does not see him or herself as bad. The saint is the opposite, he or she is super sensitive to each and every imperfection, they know the score, they live with reality, and they work hard on themselves while engaged in some kind of social action.  

     Humanity needs to plug into some kind of strong evolutionary energy but this will only happen when we are strong enough to look for the cause of the world’s problems inside of ourselves. Within our own consciousness are problems and answers and it is exactly on this point that World Psychology is founded. There is no separation in reality between the problems and their solution and thus if we avoid looking at the problems, avoid in any way looking at any of it, the solutions will remain abstract and distant from view.

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