Cooperation is the way of the future

When you have grown to a level of discernment where you recognize that there are forces outside the democratic world who want to destroy democracy, you can take an important step. It may seem like many countries have already taken this step, but they have not taken it fully and the step you can take is to recognize the value of cooperation. Now, some will say that the democratic world is already cooperating, the democratic countries have been cooperating for many years and decades and they have, but there is a higher level of cooperation that you can reach when you have these realizations.

In a sense, most people in the democratic world who are what we might call the more aware people—the leaders, the media, the scientists, the politicians, many among the people who have studied history—they are aware of this, but are they really aware? Has it really clicked in them how important this is?

Again, you can be in a state of consciousness where you are seeing yourself as a separate being, you are in opposition, you are in conflict or competition with other people and you are all focused on yourself. Then you can go through this transition period where you have had enough of this way of living and you can make the shift of recognizing that ‘Do unto others’ will take you to a higher level and now you shift into another state of consciousness where it can be difficult for you to remember how it was before, how it was in your old state of consciousness.

You tend to treat people based on the assumption that they have gone through the same shift you have gone through and you want to be able to treat them that way, as was the case with the Western treatment of Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union. Because of this shift in your consciousness, it can be difficult for a time to be aware that many people have not shifted and what that means. When you reach a higher level of discernment, a higher level of awareness, you can now begin to gain a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic in the world.

Many people in the democratic world really cannot lock in to or imagine what it was like to live in certain past ages. You have grown up with a sense of freedom, a sense of relative safety and you tend to think that that is the way it is. You also tend to think that everybody wants this. Many people are aware that there are countries in the world where they do not have democratic rights and freedoms, but they do not really think about why that is. They think it is probably some kind of anomaly that will go away soon. Sooner or later, these dictatorships will disappear and democracy will rule the world. This is not an incorrect assumption in the sense that democracies will end up ruling the world and dictatorships will disappear, but they will not disappear by themselves. They will disappear only if a critical mass of people in the democratic world, and even in dictatorial nations, understand the dynamic that will be explained here.

Consider the question, why is there evil in the world? At almost any given time, somewhere around this planet is a small child who says: “Mommy, why is there evil in the world”? It is a question that has been around for as long as there has been evil in the world, which there has not always been. The democratic nations may not recognize the teachings about manipulators, but nevertheless, the more aware people in democratic nations can step up to realize that there is a dynamic in the world where there is something that causes people to have a fundamentally different approach to life than what most people have in the democratic world.

The consciousness that is willing to take from others

You can see it in the democratic world, for example, in criminals. You can see it in what you call criminal gangs, the mafia, where they have an entirely different worldview than most people have. You might say they are dishonest, they are criminals but it is more than that. It is that these people are completely centered on themselves and they look at everything relative to themselves; their view, their desires, their physical interests, their physical safety, their prosperity, what they want. And they have the attitude that if they want something, they have a right to take it, even if it means taking it from other people. This is basically the essence of this mindset: “I have a right to take from others.”

You can see it throughout history, where this has been there, it has always been there in criminals who are willing to steal or perhaps even kill other people to get their possessions but you see it on a larger scale with empires or nations which have been willing to take from other nations, to plunder. You go back, you had Genghis Khan, you had Attila the Hun, you had the Vikings, you had the Roman Empire, many who felt completely justified in taking with force from others. You can even go back to the Old Testament times, and what was the credo? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. What was this born from? It was born from this very consciousness, the fact that the population in those times was dominated by this mindset: “I have a right to take from others.”

There was also, behind this credo – an eye for an eye – a recognition that if everybody takes from others, everybody will have less. In other words, a society will descend to a very low level of security, prosperity, material life, when everybody is trying to take from others. Even the Old Testament is based on this recognition that if everybody does not take from others but follows certain rules, society will do better. That is why you have the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill, steal and so forth.

What was the purpose of an eye for an eye? It was to scare the people who are willing to take from others into stopping their aggression for fear of retribution, for fear that something bad would happen to them. And you see that this has carried over, even into the modern world, where you still have people who will only restrain themselves for fear of punishment, for fear of consequences, being put in jail, being executed, whatever.

What democracies need to recognize is that, despite the fact that the world has made progress, despite the fact that democratic nations have made progress and have become better at cooperating, there is still very much the consciousness in the world that is willing to take from others. There are many people in the world who are trapped in this consciousness and there are nations in the world that are trapped in this consciousness.

Any dictatorship is trapped in this consciousness because the dictator, in order to become a dictator, must believe he has a right to take from others, meaning his own people. He has the right to take power, money, their lives if they do not obey him, he has a right to forcefully take from others. The democratic world needs to recognize that this force is there, this consciousness is there and there are many people who are trapped in it and democracies have ignored this, because they have been hoping that it would gradually go away.

Democratic nations need  to draw a line and stand united

Now, again, it is not a wrong hope. This consciousness will gradually go away as the collective consciousness is raised and certain people are no longer allowed to embody on the planet. But if the democracies continue to ignore it, it will take much longer than if they awaken to the need to defend democracy against this mindset and this means that democracies need to look both out and in.

They need to look at, to take the obvious present example, Vladimir Putin. He clearly has the attitude that he has a right to take from others. What has he done during his political career? He has taken the wealth of the natural resources of Russia away from the people, concentrated it in his own hands and the hands of a small elite, and he has in return for that required them to support him. He has no compunction whatsoever of taking from his own people. He has taken their democratic freedoms, he has taken even their sense of safety and their hope for a better future. He has taken almost as much as the leaders of the Soviet Union, almost as much as the worst leaders, namely Stalin, almost as much he has taken from his own people.

So far, the democratic nations had hoped that this would be a temporary phase and that it would not go too far. Now that hope has been shattered and now it is necessary to recognize that Putin also believes he has the right to take from others. Why did he send his forces into Ukraine? Because Ukraine has something he wants, and he believes he has the absolute, unquestionable right to take it by force. What other explanation is there when you look at the most simple possible explanation? Of course, there are other factors, but really, he believes he has the right to take from Ukraine their independence, their statehood, their wealth, their production capacity, their natural resources.

The democratic world needs to recognize that there are nations in the world who have this mindset. China is another, the Arab nations, other dictatorships around the world, they are willing to take by force if they think they can get away with it. What do the democratic nations need to do? They need to make these people think they cannot get away with it.

If you had listened to Putin, you could see that he has not really been subtle about his intentions. Nobody believed him but he has stated many things. In 2014 when he took Crimea, the Western nations could have said: “Now it is time to draw a line so that Putin realizes he cannot get away with any further adventures.” That line was not drawn. Now he is in Ukraine. Now, the Western nations have realized they need to draw a line, they need to say: “Thus far and no farther.” But they need to continue this and not think that: “Oh, hopefully the war will be over and we can go back to some kind of normalcy.” As long as Putin is in power, you cannot have any kind of normalcy with Russia.

You also need to go further and say: “Can we really have any normal relationship with China?” Xi Jinping has almost openly declared his intentions to bring Taiwan back to the mainland. He has built up the Chinese military, spending billions and billions of dollars on building ships and airplanes and rockets and this and that. Is it not obvious that if the Western nations want to avoid a situation where there suddenly is a Chinese attack on Taiwan, they need to demonstrate to the Chinese leadership that they cannot get away with it? Some are tuned in to this. Even President Biden said on his recent trip that the US was prepared to defend Taiwan militarily, something other US presidents have been reluctant to do but more needs to be done.

Defending democracy against crime and internal authoritarian movements

This is as far as the external goes but now comes the internal, which is, of course the more important and a more complex issue. You see in certain democratic nations an increase in crime and criminal gangs. Some of these are international gangs, some of them come from nations that are not democratic, but nevertheless they are there. This is, of course, something that the democratic nations need to make a greater effort to stop, to basically defend our nations and our people from crime.

You also have on the Internet more and more cybercrime, which is also people who are willing to take by force. But what you also see is that there is an emerging force in at least some democratic nations, of people whether it is politicians or media people, who clearly do not respect the democratic process. Now, they will claim and sometimes even believe themselves, that they are doing this for the benefit of the nation because the nation is going in the wrong direction and these people know better, they know better how their nation should be run and they are better at taking it in that direction (which is epically important) than anybody else. Therefore, they have not only a right, but even an obligation to take power by force and suppress the opposition. This is a movement seen in many nations to varying levels of intensity.

You see the emergence of political parties, political candidates, media people who do not respect democracy. It is something that nations need to become more aware of, and that the populations need to become more aware of, so they can avoid this movement going as far as it has gone in the United States with Trump.

If you look at this neutrally, what did Trump do after the election? He showed a clear disrespect for the democratic process and a desire at least, even if he did not carry it out, to take the presidency by force. There are many of his followers who supported this, which is why they took Congress by force. You can see in other nations where there are similar tendencies, with the emergence of leaders who show a disrespect for the democratic process; they limit the freedom of speech, the freedom of the media, they limit the influence of the courts so that if they have the governmental power they can exceed the authority given to them by the constitutions. You see media outlets who are basically functioning as propaganda branches for these people, such as Fox News in the United States, but others also in other nations. This is something that these nations need to become more aware of because it is defending your own people against those who will use the democratic freedoms to take away the democratic freedoms from the rest of the population.

The importance of inalienable human rights

There has always been a certain challenge in a democratic country. People vote and the majority decides the outcome of whether it is an election or a referendum, so in a sense you can say, as has been said many times, majority rules. Nevertheless, all democracies are based on certain rights, that people have rights that no authority on earth can take away from them or should be able to take away from them. Not even the government defines the people’s rights.

In a dictatorship, such as China and Russia the leaders firmly believe that they have the right to define the rights of their people, there is no higher authority than them, but a democracy is based on the existence of some higher authority. You do not have to call it God or nature’s God, as the founding fathers in America did. You do not even have to see it as a deity. You just have to respect that there is some kind of principle that gives people rights and a democratic government cannot take those rights away from the people. You can say this is a natural law that simply demonstrates that a country functions best when there is this respect for an authority beyond the worldly governmental authority. Once you recognize that there are rights in a democracy, you see that there is a limit to what a majority can rule on. A democracy cannot become a dictatorship of the majority and therefore you need to recognize that there is a need for the tolerance of differences.

Paradox of tolerance: to tolerate or not to tolerate?

Even this can be used against democracy. For what will the people who want to undermine democracy say? “Well, why are not you tolerant towards us? We should have a right to be different just like gays and lesbians have a right to be different.” However, people have a right to be different if they do not undermine other people’s right to be different, or rather other people’s democratic rights. There was a recent incident in the United States where the state of Texas wanted to create a law that said that social media such as Facebook or Twitter did not have a right to limit conservative viewpoints. In other words, they wanted to say that they should be able to post anything they wanted on these social media networks, including non-factual information about vaccines or wearing masks or about the election and that Trump should not have been banned from Twitter and this and that.

But what happens if you enact something like this? You are allowing also Russian troll factories to post anything they want on there. There has to be some evaluation here. What is the intent? Is there an intent to take by force, to take the democratic rights from the population by force? Then you need to limit this in order to defend the rights of the majority. This is a very delicate thing because it can lead to censorship if it is taken too far but this is what you also recognize at the higher levels of awareness. As long as the duality consciousness is in existence on earth, you need to avoid extremes. You need to find some balance where you are neither in this extreme or that extreme, nor for that matter in between the extremes, but you are stepping back and looking at the bigger perspective, the higher awareness perspective. Democracies need to wrestle with this.

How do you defend democracy and democratic rights against those who are willing to take it by force, or by deception, which is also a form of force? This, of course, also extends to the area of the economy where democratic nations need to realize that they need to defend the equal rights, the equal economic opportunities of all citizens from the power elite that wants to take it by force and have achieved incredible success in taking wealth by force from the population. This is clearly anti-democratic and it is the responsibility of a democratic government to defend its citizens from this.

Cooperation against the anti-democratic forces

Once you start doing this housecleaning, so to speak, in democratic nations, you open up for another very important consideration. When you are below the basic level of humanity and you do not respect “do unto others,” then you cannot cooperate. But once you step up to that basic level of humanity, you can start to cooperate, which is what the democratic nations have been doing for a long time but there are higher and higher levels of cooperation that will be manifest in the Age of Higher Awareness. There are stages of this cooperative process and the stage that is the most important right at this time is that the democratic nations come to the recognition that they need to cooperate in order to defend their nations and democracy as a whole against the anti-democratic forces.

If you want to avoid a military confrontation between NATO and Russia, then the democratic nations need to be united in imposing sanctions. There are currently some European countries that are so dependent on Russian oil and gas, that they cannot just break it off from one day to the next but they need to be united in phasing out Russian oil and gas as quickly as possible. Because the only way you can avoid a military confrontation is by imposing sanctions that will cause Putin or other people in Russia to realize that they cannot get away with this, that it is self-destructive to continue these military adventures. Otherwise, you run the risk that there will be a military confrontation between NATO and Russia and this could then escalate in various ways that none of the democratic leaders really want to see happen. 

The same with China, if you want to avoid a situation where China attacks Taiwan, you need to demonstrate unity, that you will not accept this. You also then need to work together to shut out the anti-democratic undermining from troll factories and other forces. There are many of these forces where Russia has made an attempt to finance various movements in the West that are anti-democratic in nature. Some of these right-wing movements that you see even in Europe, clearly do not respect democratic principles.

The whole is more than the sum of the parts

This is the level of cooperation that is there right now but beyond this is a higher level that again, relates to higher awareness. When you rise to higher levels of discernment you start seeing beyond the differences, you start seeing the underlying unity, the underlying oneness. And that is where, when you begin to sense, even if you do not talk in those terms, even if you do not understand the deeper principles, but you begin to sense that something happens when people and nations cooperate.

It goes back to Jesus’s parable about those who multiplied their talents and received more in return. Even though this is expressed in what has become a religious setting, it actually describes a universal principle and natural law, if you will, and you can observe it in the democratic nations. You can observe that, when the entire world was dominated by the mindset “I am willing to take from others” wealth, prosperity, the standard of living was much, much lower than it is today. Even today, you see that the standard of living is universally lower in dictatorial nations than in democratic nations and this is of course inevitable, partly because the dictator always takes from the people, so how can the standard of living of the people be raised as much as you can in a democratic nation where you do not have that?

This is also because there is something that happens when people and nations cooperate. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. There is some kind of multiplication factor so that people do better when they cooperate, than the sum of their individual achievements and this is something that needs to be recognized.

Cooperation vs. selfishness

There are a few economists who have started to recognize this but it needs to become much more prominent in the coming decade and more, where you recognize that there is clearly some multiplication. Again, you cannot really explain it in the materialistic paradigm and that is one of the limitations that prevents people from recognizing this, but you can find a somewhat universal explanation and simply say: “We do not understand why but we observe that when we cooperate, the whole is more than the sum of the parts and there is more—more wealth is created.” This can then gradually spread and lead to a shift where the democratic nations can cooperate in a higher way because they have transcended their remnants of the focus on self.

If you look at the attitude: “I am willing to take from others” it is a complete focus on self. In the democratic nations you have transcended the willingness to physically take from others, but you still have many groups of people, many nations who are looking out for themselves first or looking out for number one, as the saying goes in the United States, which considers itself number one among democratic nations. You see that there are still many, many nations that are focused on themselves. Why did Britain withdraw from the EU? Their focus on themselves, they thought they could do better in some way without cooperating with the EU. Why is Hungary, why is Poland, withdrawing from some of the rules of the EU, they think they can do better alone in some way than they can do by cooperating. Can they?

Well, if you look at narrow self interest, you will think that you can. But there is a greater principle. If you cooperate, if you seek to raise the whole, if you step up from the narrow self interest to enlightened self interest, then the whole will be raised to a whole new level and then there will be more for everybody.

In other words, if the EU could step up to a higher level of cooperation than they have today, then the amount of wealth in the EU countries would be increased so much, that every country would do far better than they are doing today and this is the realization that will break through in the Age of Higher Awareness. We can do so much better by cooperating. In fact, we can do so much better for ourselves by participating in a selfless effort to raise the whole because the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

If you cannot cooperate, all you have is the parts and maybe you think you have a bigger part than somebody else but what if by cooperating you can double the part that you have? Wouldn’t that be better for your nation and for your people? Cooperation is the way of the future. You can say: “What is going on in the world? What is one of the basic dynamics taking place in the world?” It is that the world is moving out of the era of division into the era of cooperation. The world is moving away from the: “I am willing to take from others by force, I am only considering my own narrow interest, me first mentality” into a selfless desire and willingness to raise the whole. It is cooperation versus selfishness, selflessness versus selfishness.

You cannot really say versus because if you are selfless, you cannot be in opposition to those who are selfish. You are just unselfish and you are just working for the whole without seeing any opposition. Again, we have this very delicate discernment. You could say: “Well, have not the democratic nations been in that state where they have not acknowledged any opposition? And that is why they gave Putin a free pass.” And yes, that is true. But again, there is that lower level where you are not acknowledging opposition because you are not seeing it. It is not that it is not there, but you are not seeing it because you have applied a certain principle in an unbalanced way. That is why again, wise as serpents, harmless as doves. The democracies have been harmless as doves to a large degree but not wise enough to the serpents.

One for all and all for one

Again, you need to recognize that you do not have any aggressive intent towards other nations, not even towards democracies but you recognize that they may still have an aggressive intent towards you and you cannot simply ignore this. You see how NATO started as a defensive alliance to defend the nations of Western Europe against Russia, the Soviet Union. But now Putin claims that NATO is an aggressive alliance that has the intention of attacking, conquering or destroying Russia.

You can see how those in the self-centered mindset will turn everything around. NATO is meant to defend against Russian aggression, but now Russian aggression says that NATO is attacking Russia, is a threat to Russia. These are things you cannot simply ignore and therefore you need to step up and say: “What do we then do about this”?

Well, we cannot treat Putin or Russia as a democratic nation, when it clearly is not and therefore what can we do? We can draw a line and stand united. The purpose, or the credo of NATO is the Musketeer oath, one for all and all for one, if one nation is attacked, all the others respond. Well, you could extend this to general cooperation between democratic nations, that if one democratic nation is attacked in any way, not just militarily, but also economically or through propaganda, they all stand together in defending democracy.

There is of course, much more that could be said about this, there are deeper and deeper levels of cooperation that can be achieved as we move further into the Age of Higher Awareness. The dissolution of nation states, the creation of regions and other things but this is something that is quite some distance into the future so what is important in this time is the shift that has happened in the democratic nations as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.

It is a very significant shift that has happened as a result of this invasion. The democratic nations have so far shown a decisiveness and a willingness to cooperate and it is very important that this is maintained for as long as it takes. It is very important that it does not simply dissipate once the outer situation is somewhat lightened, but that it is transferred to other areas as well and used to build this recognition that the democratic nations will do much better by standing together, by uniting, by cooperating in ever higher degrees.

Cooperation is vital because without it, how can you counteract this force of anti-democratic countries and people that surely could take one country, one democratic country at a time, if they were allowed to do so. Just as you had the creation of NATO because there was the realization that no country in Europe could alone defend itself against the Soviet Union and it is the same with the cooperation that is there. Because what you have in Russia, what you have in China, what you have in many of the Muslim countries, is still this willingness to take by force, by deceit, to cheat, to look at others and look at the West and say: “Oh, they are decadent, they are rich, they should not really be so rich, they have taken it from their colonies so we have a right to take it back. It is okay if we cheat them, it is okay if we plunder, it is okay if we do this, so that we have a right to do this because the West is the great Satan and so forth.”

It needs to be recognized that this mentality is still there and that the democratic nations represent the move away from this self-centered: “I am willing to take from others” force and that the future of the world really depends on this. Can we actually move into an age that is not ruled by force and ill intentions? Can we move into an age where there is freedom, there is security, there is prosperity, there is the ability to build a better future and continue to build a better future and keep what has been attained, can this happen?

NEXT: How to live up to our democratic ideas