The Magic of Kindness
How to transform the darkness of the world
This morning began like every morning since October 7. I wake up and dive into the small screen. First stop: Facebook notifications. Reaction: disappointment at the lack of reaction to my posts here on Substack or shorter posts, purely on Facebook. Next stop: YouTube. Reaction: mounting anger and despair at the failure of the UK and US governments to call for a cease to Israel’s obscene obliteration of Gaza. Next stop: mounting rage as the machines start up on the building site across the road, the barking of dogs that have been barking throughout the night, and the mewling of our cats for their breakfast. My inner world collapses to a small, angular shard, a piece of broken glass, a blade. It wants to cut.
Yesterday, the UN voted overwhelmingly for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the release of all hostages and for emergency services to be given unfettered access to those who urgently need their help.
It is—I don’t know what it is, save not surprising—that the US voted against a ceasefire. The UK abstained. It is disheartening, if again not surprising, that Albania, Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Republic of Korea (i.e. South Korea) Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Tunisia and Ukraine abstained. Nor is it surprising that Austria, Croatia, Czechia and Hungary voted against. In some of those countries, the rise of hard rightwing sentiment and islamophobia is well documented.
It is surprising that Finland and Latvia abstained, and that Fiji, Guatemala, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Tonga voted against. One can only speculate that their reasons for doing so include US pressure, likely threats to reduce or remove economic aid or trading, or a demand to distance themselves from Russia or China.
Israel’s response to the outcome is staggering. On October 24, they called for UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierres to resign after he made this statement:
The Hamas attack on October 7 in which 1,400 people were killed “did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
In response to the overwhelming vote for a ceasefire, Gilad Erdan, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, made this statement:
Today is a day that will go do in infamy. We have all witnessed that the UN no longer holds even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance.
A glance at Mr Erdan’s X (Twitter) feed reveals an aggressive stance. It seeks to rob our only global institution, the UN, with all its failings, of credibility, smearing anyone who dares to oppose Israel’s war crimes as antisemitic, and leverages the Jewish holocaust to justify its increasingly isolated position.
The world, save the US, UK and handful of other nations, perceives Israel as over- extending its “right to defend itself” to brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and collective punishment of civilians for the brutal attack on Israeli civilians on October 7.
Realising this, Israel is trying to reverse the narrative of victim and oppressor, tarring majority opposition to its collective punishment of Gaza as antisemitic and sympathetic to terrorism. To understand this from an abstract perspective, see my explanation of adaptive strategies in The Madness of Intelligence.
But let’s roll with the Israeli narrative.
What would they have us, the world, the UN, do? What would not be “antisemitic”? Unanimous green light for the erasing, oppression or incarceration of all Palestinians, under due suspicion of support for Hamas? The neutralisation of future “terrorists” by burying them under rubble in their infancy? The neutralisation of sympathisers by drastic offensives against any country that might harbour them? This includes all muslim countries, and countries with significant muslim populations, including the US, UK and India.
Let us try to understand Israel’s increasingly entrenched position. Everyone hates them. Everyone hates Jews. QED the expulsion of the Israelites from Egypt. QED the Jewish holocaust. QED October 7. QED Iran. QED the mob at the airport in Dagestan. QED the millions marching across the world in support of antisemitic terrorism. QED yesterday’s vote at the United Nations. QED anyone who opposes Israel, including Jew-hating Jews who will not defend Israel’s right to defend itself against a world gone mad. A world that wants to wipe it from the face of the earth. A world of Nazis.
As George W Bush once said, “You’re either with us or you’re against us.”
As our adaptive strategies game shows—from the very great remove of a mock cell diagram—with and against, System and Attacker, have a certain symmetry, like interlocking gears. Tooth by tooth, the mechanism turns.
In bed with a coffee, I reviewed an exchange with someone on Facebook, who had responded to my call for everyone who objected to genocide to use the platform to call for a ceasefire. My correspondent replied that it was everyone’s choice to respond or not as they pleased. And anyway, what good did Facebook activism do? Wasn’t it virtue signalling? And what right did I have to shame others with different views? Their responses were measured and respectful.
I have been active on Facebook, addressing posts that appear to imply symmetry between Israel and Palestine with references to the 1948 Naqba, the massacre at Deir Yassin, the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, the wildly imbalanced numbers of mortalities and so on.
It’s tiring, even in my tiny echo chamber. What good is my writing doing? What satisfaction is there in 2 or 3 likes on Facebook? What good is it doing me or anyone else?
I stared at the ceiling as the tentacles of depression reached for me. A depression that swirls in cycles of violence against myself, spawning suicidal ideation, coupled with the self-hatred of knowing I wouldn’t act upon the idea. Hanging. Drowning. Jumping from a high place. Driving my borrowed scooter into a wall at high speed. It would take a courage and conviction I do not have.
Yesterday evening, I spent half an hour under a sacred waterfall, washing away the heaviness and foreboding of it all, and already the absolution had gone.
Feeling me, my partner, who happens to have the same name as this Facebook correspondent, turned to me and suggested I move away from all this. It was consuming me, taking my joy, collapsing me to shard of broken glass. She said it with kindness, her hand on my heart as she spoke. Something changed.
As a facilitator of human transformation, as a shaman, familiar with energetic battles, as a karmic astrology and Gene Keys practitioner, I must walk the talk. I must examine myself. I must apply my critique of adaptive strategies to the System and Attacker within.
My initial reaction was to abandon writing anything about Israel/Palestine, if not writing altogether. This is of course just that—a reaction, one which advocates repression.
Reaction and repression are the twin poles of the shadow. We either react, seeking to transfer our pain onto someone else, or repress our pain and stuff it into the body, where it may eventually manifest as disease.
To borrow from Jung, and the well-known document of masculine archetypes, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, the precursor of the King is the Divine Child. We are born into a universe of our own. Like the kings of old, we are the ruler of its four corners. Life challenges our rule.
The reactive child rejects that challenge. We throw our toys out of the pram. We hurl our food to the floor and twist our bodies in an ecstasy of revolt and refusal. This is the shadow of the High-Chair Tyrant. And/or we collapse, a premature supernova shrinking to a self-consuming black hole, in which we wallow. This is the Weakling Prince.
Depression and self-hatred result when we punish our Divine Child for his failings. Growth and evolution result when we approach him with kindness. (His and him as we’re talking about masculine archetypes.)
The King archetype is the epitome of kindness. He casts a loving eye over his kingdom and extends a firm but kind hand to its matters arising. When he falls, the shadow takes hold and, react or repress, he must eventually feel its pain.
He is often restored by the kindness of the Queen. He is held to her breast and loved unconditionally.
Unconditional love is the manna that feeds the Divine Child, who then becomes the fertile soil from which the King grows, extending boughs of kindness across the land. Do not underestimate the power of the Dark Side, but do not underestimate the power of kindness either.
It might seem far easier to work on oneself than on anyone else. Go with it and see. Easier, harder, we have to do this work before we can reach out across our Kingdom.
To all those, then, who take up the good fight—king, queen, tyrant, witch, weakling prince and armchair bitch—for goodness’ sake remember kindness. That is our rod and staff, whose gentle touch works magic.
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