Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
Sometimes a country gets involved with war. Whether it begins the war or
has to defend itself is immaterial for this topic. Let us also carefully
avoid any other kind of judgement on war. Let us just accept war as fact
which we have do deal with.
My country South Africa had been involved in a serious war the last dozen
or so years of apartheid. Here we called the other side the terrorists
whereas they called themselves freedom fighters. What we called our
legitimate government, was called by them the apartheid regime. I want to
use these names as an example to stress that during war a great
ambivalence develop in the minds of people who are affected by that war,
whether they participate in it or not.
Why does this ambivalence develop? The principal strategy of warfare since
times immemorial is for each side to apply so much destruction on the
other side that it cannot sustain itself anymore so that it has to give
up. Peace appears among destruction. To destroy anything, even a country
at war, one or more of the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity) have
to be impaired seriously. The serious side effect of this is that the
minds of most people from both sides gets affected by it. For example, if
the strategy is to impair the wholeness of the enemy to win the war,
wholeness gets impaired in the minds of most people on both sides.
In terms of my experiences in our country, I am convinced that all of this
happens subconsciously in our minds. That is why I have to articulate it
so that we can become conscious of what may happen easily to our minds.
Once we are aware of it, we then can learn how to avoid it happening.
Please have patience with my articulations.
We must (and I use deliberately the imperative from) avoid it otherwise
all the faculties of our personality will experience destructions as the
war goes on. For example, after apartheid was dismantled and the hearings
before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proceeded, we were
shocked how the morality of many people became degraded into almost
nothing. Perhaps the worst is that those people had to admit as their
honest defence that they were unaware that their morality shrunk so much.
The worst is that those who followed the hearings, whether to learn from
it or to act officially as a result of it, could not believe what they
heard. This had been for me sure evidence of two things:
* that people were not aware what happened subconsciously in
their minds and
* that people were not able to avoid it happening in their minds.
When a person tells honestly with tears of sorrow that he/she was not
aware what was happening subconsciously and we do not believe that person,
then we are unaware of what may happen and perhaps had happened
subconsciously in our own minds. How can we prevent it happening?
Let us first study two of the greatest leaders in Africa since WWII. They
are Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Anwar Sadat if Egypt. Both brought
immense healing to their countries. They also have something else in
common. During the years of war they were isolated into prison where even
there they had contact with few other prisoners. Both spent close to
thirty years in prison. They were not subjected daily there by information
on destruction, nor did they had to design frequently destructive
operations. Thus their personalities had time to heal into astounding
statures. When they were released, each had to act soon as president of
their countries. They taught me the profound "one-to-many-mapping" of
their personalities to their followers during their leadership, something
which I shall never forget.
Let us now study two other leaders.
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe had not any such a "removal into loneliness".
After he became president, he had to assist the South African freedom
fighters to wage war against the apartheid government. So his whole
personality was under endless pressure of destructions. By the time when
apartheid was abandoned in South Africa, the withdrawal of foreign
investments was rocketing in Zimbabwe. So he had to face even more
destruction. The subsequent insistence of western leaders upon him to
function like a democracy with a western rather than an African culture
made it worse. His personality began to disintegrate subconsciously.
Sam Nujoma of Namibia, on the other hand, was far more fortunate. Most of
Namibia are several deserts and it is surrounded by deserts on all sides.
These deserts isolated him from having had to give any major assistance to
other countries. Consequently he had not so much exposure to destructive
thinking. Furthermore, many of the peoples in Namibia (Germans,
Afrikaners, Namas, Damaras and Hereros) are rather of a constructive
disposition. The very reason is that many of them live in lonely places.
During my desert journeys the healthy personality of many among these
peoples often astounded me.
Yes, by removing yourself from the endless bombarding of information
containing the destructive in it, you may find some healing. But there is
also another way to follow which perhaps is even better. Here I want use
as last example another great leader of not only Africa, but of the world.
Jan Smuts, the father of holism. How this man came through three immensely
destructive wars (British-Boer war 1899-1902, WWI and WWII) with his
personality not merely unscathed, but becoming more brilliant year by
year, is a mystery to almost everybody.
Churchill wrote the following tribute to Jan's wife Issie after his
death:
"There must be comfort in the proofs of admiration and
gratitude that have been evoked all over the world for a
warrior-statesman and philosopher who was ... more
fitted to guide struggling and blundering humanity through
its sufferings and perils ... than anyone who lived in any
country during his epoch."
It is so sad that no leader (except Churchill) and no commander
in the Allied Forces were willing to admit in public that Smuts'
was their pillar for faith, hope and understanding. Almost each
of them tried to cloth himself in the glory of victory.
Smuts spent so much time during WWII overseas helping the Allied Forces
that those planning to take the country over with their ideology of
apartheid, could say that he has forgotten his own country. And after WWII
he was the architect once again like in the League of Nations to draw up
the constitution of the United Nations. The preamble of it, I think, is
the very words of Smuts. By withholding tributes to the greatness of Smuts
during the period 1945-1948, the election of 1948 was shifted into favour
for those with the ideology of apartheid. By withholding it in the period
1948-1952 (when Smuts died) those who were put into power gained
confidence in their policy of apartheid. Only when he died, for a few
days, these leaders and commanders were willing to admit his greatness.
They all had four years to nominate him for the Nobel Peace prize for he
did much to seek peace despite the wars he was drwn into.
What made Smuts so great? His almost endless thinking on "increasing
wholeness" (holism) and his constructive actions in terms of it. His
frequent visits to the wilderness to study plants. His stay on his
secluded farm Irene (Greek for peace) close to Pretoria rather than at the
official residence. His creative solutions for problems on all walks of
life, public and private. The free energy which he gained from it to
sustain his immense will power to seek the sacred in all things and to
care for the divine in fellow humans.
The constructive creativity in the leadership of Jan Smuts is for me the
most striking among all 20th century leaders, including our past president
Mr Nelson Mandela. His own sanity and wisdom grew whereas in the rest of
the world it diminished among many of its leaders subjected to insane
destructions. Dear Oubaas, I salute you with the honour that is befitting,
one which also Albert Einstein once gave. You were one of the greatest
leaders of the second millennium and during the third millennium this
greatness will become an endless source of inspiration to uncountably many
leaders. May your soul have peace!
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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