Mutual Paranoia of our Leaders

In his book “The Monstrous Anger of the Guns”, Jeremy Corbyn asks, “Does security come from spending vast amounts of time, energy and skills of brilliant people on producing ever more sophisticated weapons, or is real security the ability to live happy, fulfilled and healthy lives?”

The answer is that real security for all of us is the ability to live happy, fulfilled and healthy lives, but that we are forced by world politics to spend increasing amounts of our hard earned tax money on military hardware. We have no choice. The existence of Putin makes us do it.

Why is this? Why are we, all of us, Brits, Yanks, Europeans, Ukrainians, Russians, Chinese, Israelis, Yemenis, Africans, everyone on this planet, forced into this military escalation, into spending more and more on arms, including nuclear weapons that can kill millions of us in a day, and plunge us into darkness that lasts for ten years and brings our civilisation to an end? Why? Are we mad? Are humans insane?

The answer is, yes, we are mad. Or rather, we ordinary, sane humans are living in, and consent to, a world based on an insane system which is of immense benefit to arms corporations, to the military-industrial complex, and of immense threat to the security of all ordinary people. 

This madness can be called Paranoia Mutualis Caesarium, the mutual paranoia of our leaders. It has been growing over centuries like a cancer in our collective brains. 

It is paranoia - a belief that our Enemy is out to kill us. 

It is mutual - in that our Enemy believes that we are out to kill him (and yes, it is mainly a man thing, though not exclusively so). 

And it belongs to our political leaders. 

Ordinary people just want to get on with their lives when it just comes down to it, but we live in a mad world.

Is Paranoia Mutualis Caesarium curable? Yes, if we set our minds to it. The first step is the hardest, which is to persuade ourselves that we ordinary people can actually overcome the paranoia. There is a very deep belief in everyone’s brains that we are powerless to do anything. That it is useless. That humans are all mad. We are doomed.

This is called the Corporal Fraser position. The first step is to allow ourselves question and uproot our Corporal Fraser.

The second step is to read up the situation. The Monstrous Anger of the Guns is a good introduction. Get it here:  https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745350363/monstrous-anger-of-the-guns/ There is a shorter piece on a web log, the Mabinogogiblog, written by a psychiatrist, on the causes and prevention of modern wars, which can be found here: https://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/causes-and-prevention-of-current-wars.html . And if you want to get active right away, there is a letter to MPs about nuclear weapons that can be found here: https://www.medact.org/2024/actions/nuclear-war-questions-write-to-your-mp/

The third step is to organise ourselves. I am no good at this, so I will leave it to others to explain this step. It begins with talking about it. 

I apologise that this is so long, but it is a bit difficult to write about saving the human race in a single tweet.