War, Artists, Poets and Psychics

Perhaps never before in human history have we needed artists, poets and psychics more than we need them now. For these connect us with our hearts. Art, poetry and the intuitive speak to that part of us that is human. They bring it all back home...to the heart.

Take war. It is one of those few times when people are given license to kill other people. These days, war has become more and more removed from our American consciousness. During the Gulf War of 1990 the bombs, explosions and destruction appeared on our television sets almost as if they were in a video game. The war was all numbers, lights and blips on our screens.

The media, government and military speak in terms of numbers. This started in Vietnam where the government spokesmen would give us "body counts" every day. Language starts to have a new meaning. During the last Gulf War, for example, we heard of "collateral damage" and "friendly fire". When we thought of what it meant we realized that "collateral damage" meant the death and maiming of six year old girls, ten year old boys, grandmas and mothers. And this was all an "accident"-the result of not so smart "smart" bombs.

The role of the media, military and government has become increasingly to remove the human element from war-to render it sanitized. The job of the artist is, regardless of political ideas, to help connect ourselves with that which is most human. And we must particularly never forget that role in time of war. We cannot rely on the engines of war to give us truth about it. Neither can we rely upon the media which in this, as in all other wars, becomes a cheerleading squad for the juggernaut.

Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman was known for his famous march to the sea. In this, Sherman and sixty thousand men marched to the sea through Atlanta, Georgia and north through South Carolina. They burned everything in their path.
People have considered Sherman the first modern general since he waged war against civilians. And Sherman was the one who said that war is hell. "There is many a boy here," said the General, in a lecture to young men, "who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations to come." Since Sherman's march, the hell of war has burned hotter.

When the Nazis tried out their smart bombs and destroyed the Spanish city of Guernica, the German High Command saw the efficiency of the Luftwaffe. Pablo Picasso, in one canvass, portrayed the horror of that instant. And each time we look at Picasso's "Guernica" we are reminded that war is hell-that real, living men, women and children are destroyed forever-that hearts are torn asunder and futures snuffed out.

The statistics are chilling. M. Cherif Bassiouni, professor of international law, estimated that eighty-six million people have been killed in conflicts of a non international nature since World War II. Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book,Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, estimates that 167,000,000 to 175,000,000 people died in the last century in what he called "politically motivated carnage". Of these at least fifty million people were civilians. Each of these was a human being with hopes, fears, and desires. Just like you or me.

We can get all caught up in "wrong" and "right". It is a time to remember that many an atrocity has been committed by people with God "on their side". The assassins on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center thought that they had God on their side. The spokesmen and women of the American government claim that the United States has God on its side. So far, nobody has claimed to have heard the voice of the Deity in a bombed out building let alone a burning bush.

What does this have to do with the psychic? What does it have to do with the intuitive? The artist, the poet and the psychic speak from their own inner truth. They do not speak for tribe or ideology. They are, by definition, individualists. Most important, artists, poets, and intuitives can only function through connection with the heart.

It's amazing what the mind, alone, can inflict. A scholar of the Nazi period once remarked that a large percentage of the officer corps of Hitler's S.S.-the Nazi killing machine-had Ph.D.'s. The mind without the heart is the original loose cannon. Everybody thinks that they are "right". And righteousness may well be the major curse of the human race. For it is righteousness that separates us from our fellows. It is righteousness that sees all evil as coming from outside of us. And it is righteousness that blinds us to our own vulnerability.

Oliver Cromwell, himself a very righteous man, once had the eloquence to state to his fellows, "I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken." This plea resounds down through the three centuries since it was uttered. Judge Learned Hand of the United States Supreme Court once said that he would like to see these words inscribed "over the portals of every church, every courthouse and at every crossroads in the nation." This is not only a plea for those who disagree with us. It is, profoundly, a plea for us to recognize that our righteousness can lead us into places that are most deeply wrong.

At this time, perhaps more than any other time in the history of our wonderful human race, do we need to be in touch with our hearts. We need to be in touch with our humanity. The lesson of Nazi Germany is clear: it is those who dehumanize others who lose their own humanity.

We are all artists, poets and intuitives. It is our birthright. As humans, we each have the ability to seek and connect with our most human qualities. Among these are love and compassion. In these lie our divinity, our humanity and our survival.

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