We have been given this gift of life, a miracle of biology made manifest on Earth, perhaps unlike any other life-form. No doubt there are many diverse and multi-dimensional life-forms in this vast, infinite Universe.

On this planet, we have been gifted with a veritable cornucopia of species of plants, trees, animals of every stripe and color, each life-form designed to play a specific role, shaping a magnificent interplay in this complex and compelling larger ecosystem.

It’s a remarkable dance between eating or being eaten, flirtation, showmanship, reproduction, nurturance, play, and life and death. About this awesome process, we feel nothing short of amazement.

The human animal, ahh, but with a gift of consciousness

And yes, it could easily be said that humans are yet another animal in the kingdom, albeit one of those with a bigger brain. It could also be said that the gift of consciousness that we have has given us an opportunity to also develop conscience and self-awareness, which may distinguish us from other animals—the verdict about this remains unresolved.

It cannot even be said that our ability to experience compassion, empathy, and have a sense of moral compass distinguishes us from other mammals. It appears that the bonobo, not to mention the bear and the elephant, to name but a few, have developed emotional intelligence equal to or possibly surpassing our own.

Despite those good and worthy questions, we humans hold dear a famous line attributed to one of the greatest spiritual leaders in all of human history, Jesus Christ, the Rabbi from Galilee, “What you do to the least of us, you do to me.”

Of course, this connotes that we need to be kind to everyone, no matter their socio-economic rank. We aspire to kindness, love, compassion, and generosity, virtuous activity, demanding as that may be, so as to set a standard for human life everywhere.

Wisdom & indigenous traditions teach us

Wisdom traditions East and West, indigenous traditions the world over, speak of these virtues as the pinnacle of human attainment and the acme of personal achievement. It calls for the development of the intelligence of the heart.

Hence, the Tin Man in the classic book and film, The Wizard of Oz, who so sincerely sang from his depth: “If I only had a heart…” He aspired to fulfill his Tin Man’s potential.

Yet today, we have a world in which this perennial wisdom that has permeated pre-industrial society from one end of the earth to the other is utterly ignored or, even worse, repudiated. It is as though these are not the aspirations of every society, every group, clan, tribe on Earth from the earliest of times up to this very moment. These are Biblical; these values are ensconced in the Old and New Testaments, the Upanishads, the Tao-Teh Ching, and the Koran.

On having no head

The heads of the political and economic elite ignore and disavow, turn their noses up to international law, to the simplest code of ethics that children learn in kindergarten, and to God’s law itself.

Douglas Harding’s book, On Having No Head, is far more advanced than any “head of state” would ever conceive—I only wish that their heedlessness could match what Harding was referring to, which is a liberated state according to the teachings of Zen.

We would at least be encouraged if this elite had some sense of heart.

They are unapologetic about their hunger for power, money, and control, which they seek to achieve at anyone’s expense. They make up stories such as Hamas is hiding behind every corner and rock.

Therefore, governments can act with reckless and immoral abandon. They can shoot at children and women. They can destroy churches, mosques, and hospitals with hubris and impunity. They can ethnically cleanse a people whom they hold as the enemy of the Jewish People despite the fact that Biblically, they are a half-brother.

They are our brothers and sisters

Why is this blood relationship forgotten? Why are all of the sacred, fundamental tenets of protecting life that are embedded in Jewish law completely ignored and overridden when it comes to the Palestinians?

The anger and wrath are palpable in the Middle East, in Russia and Ukraine, in Sudan and Yemen, and they serve no one. Entire ancient cultures are being decimated while the world stands by. All, in one way or another, are, as a result, guilty of either war crimes or the most extreme negligence.

What purposes do anger, resentment, wrath, and revenge serve other than the indulgence of a momentary sensation? Nothing long-lasting, a toxic rush of cortisol and downstream consequences no one wants to face or reckon with.

We can no longer normalize the abnormal and the pathological in our society

What is going on in this world? Why are killing and war acceptable aspects of daily living under any circumstances, let alone the extreme cost to human life, the eco-system in which war is “staged”, and the financial cost, while over 18 million children1 in what is called the richest country in the world, go to bed hungry every night?

Except that we are inundated by horrors, immoral atrocities everywhere, day by day, so it truly becomes difficult to manage, and about which we often feel so helpless to act to correct. It’s a veritable tsunami.

There are over 8.2 billion people on the planet as of 2025. There are 193 member nations at the U.N., of which 37 are deemed to have developed economies, primarily in Europe, the U.S., and some in the Pacific Rim. Of these, a small percentage of materially wealthy countries have political leaders who care mainly for their own power at the expense of the 8.2 billion others on the planet. Maybe 10? Of business leaders, for instance, who are members of the World Economic Forum, we can add another 500? An awesome ratio through which we can see who really has the power, yet doesn’t realize it.

Humanity wants peace; sociopaths, our leaders, want war

99.999% and more of humanity simply want peace and embrace an attitude of “live and let live”. The last thing we all want is the disruption, destruction, and deaths of loved ones from war or any cause except when people naturally pass on.

Despite the wish for Democracy, we see that a handful of bully-like political heads of state call the shots along with their financial backers. They are currently bombing Ukraine and decimating the Palestinian people, always with a story that justifies their actions, a self-interested way of lying to themselves and to us, another form of propaganda.

Do we have the luxury of mincing words at this point? Every day, the Israeli Army is bombing apartment buildings2 and taking over Gaza City.

The Israeli government will not let the food trucks in3—they are stacked up by the hundreds, and the food is rotting while mothers and infants are starving.

In what kind of sick world is this okay? Tolerable for even a minute? Yet it’s been going on for over two years.

War against Yemen, one of the oldest cultures and poorest, has been waged for years. Ukraine and Russia, also ancient and rich, dignified civilizations for so long, have been warring for years. Sudan, Rwanda, Myanmar, to name a few of the 110 military conflicts in the world4 at this moment.

Leaders seek to grab power at the expense of the people they are supposed to protect and represent. To have a heart in this world can be extraordinarily joyful, but due to the horrific, inhumane choices this small group of politicos makes, it is overwhelmingly painful and, from a true, human point of view, unacceptable.

Enduring

We see that the incompetent, corrupt, and self-interested leadership in a handful of the most powerful nations is literally hell-bent on power, control, money, war, and destruction. They seek to destroy each other economically if not militarily, so that they may dominate, and like an immune system turning on itself, it destroys even its own organism, its own people, in a terrible act of a form of suicide.

We need to deeply cognize the ratio of 8.2 billion of us to perhaps 5,000 of those who are seeking to control all of the levers of power. Do you think we could possibly leverage our power?!

A department of war or a department of peace, which do the people want?

This Administration just changed the name of the Department of Defense back to the name it was before and during WWII, the Department of War.

If the Tin Man had a heart, it would be rightfully called the Department of Peace, as former Representative and Presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich and former Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson called for.

We are called upon to stare boldly and soberly at the current situation before us, which can clearly be characterized as this Administration’s threat to not just Democracy but to everything this country and culture holds as sacred: equality, liberty, freedom, and all of the tenets of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. We hold dear the three branches of government and their balance of power. We hold sacred freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Yet the two other branches of government, Congress and Judicial, have become obsequious to a felon, a cult leader with a bone spur that never served in the military a day in his life but insists upon costing the taxpayer some 100 million dollars for a parade in his honor.

Yet the formation of DOGE is to save us money and cut out waste. Back to basics. Oh, and is such a parade so essential, or a $200,000,000 golden ballroom, as might have been built in Rome before it fell?

If the Tin Man only had a heart, he’d want to provide housing to those without, food to those who are hungry, and jobs to those who are jobless. He wouldn’t throw parades in his honor or build ballrooms for the rich and famous with American taxpayer dollars.

A president wouldn’t attack our cities but would provide building blocks for their renewal, youth activities to constructively engage them, but there isn’t enough intelligence to spread around Washington, D.C., where it is obviously in short supply.

What is going on is unprecedented because it’s completely unpresidential. It’s unheard of. As Dr. Robert Lifton said, “the man is a solipsist”. And a felon who wants to see himself reflected everywhere in the most favorable light, which he doesn’t deserve anywhere. He wars on everyone and wants a Nobel Prize for Peace! And perhaps is the only one in history who has actually publicly asked for one!

It’s an embarrassment through and through, and the rest of the world can’t wait for this Administration to be over in the hope of greater stability and a semblance of normalcy.

Qualifying for office – do you?

Qualifying to run for high office as we have it today in so-called civilized nations is a bit primitive. As former Presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party, Dr. John Hagelin suggested nearly 35 years ago in an interview I conducted with him, each candidate should have to take an EEG test to see if they have sufficient brain coherence for the job.

I suggest that they take a heart-coherence test as well. They should take a U.S. and world history test as well, throw in one on civics, and yet another on civility.

A candidate should qualify for office, not just run. It’s a job. Can you imagine walking into a corporation to interview for the top job of CEO without a qualifying resume? It would be unheard of. Yet our system allows for anyone to run, qualified or not.

Should women rule the world?

This was the name of one of my articles. The conclusion was that it wasn’t women necessarily, although the probability of fewer wars and power-grabbing, I believe, would be vastly higher, but that we as a species need to invoke the love-wisdom embodied in the energy and archetype of the Feminine.

It has long been denigrated in our male-dominated society.

The “If I only had a heart” motif was invoked here as a way of lightly calling attention to the fact that so many of today’s leaders are heartless, self-interested, and therefore, a much less developed example of the human species, yet they dominate because people aren’t recognizing enough of their own power.

We now have politicians to demonstrate against, as well as the power of AI.

People are indeed waking up quickly to the reality that they have been relegated to the bottom of the dung heap, and as Howard Beale said in the classic film Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Notes

1 Food Security in the U.S. on USDA.
2 Israel destroys second high-rise as assault on Gaza City intensifies on BBC.
3 Israel says hundreds of truckloads of aid are waiting to enter Gaza. Why can’t the UN bring them in? on AP.
4 Today’s Armed Conflicts ON Geneva Academy.