Reception of Macro-History in Sweden

CENTER
FOR RESEARCH
ON GEOPOLITICS          C R G
                                                   
______________________________________________________



Research Paper No. 1996

RECEPTION OF MACRO-HISTORY IN SWEDEN

Bertil Haggman


2009

________________________________________________

Center for Research on Geopolitics (CRG), SWEDEN.
Director: Mr. Bertil Haggman, LL.M., author. E-mail:
bertilhaggman@hotmail.com


Introduction

My personal view was that macro-historian Oswald Spengler did not have a very positive response in Sweden if any. This was partly based on the fact that his great work The Decline of the West was not translated into Swedish until 1996.

Now at last we know better. James Cavallie, author and former with the Swedish National Archive, has documented the Spengler reception in Sweden in a very detailed book, Spengler i Sverige – Den svenska reception av Oswald Spenglers teser om världshistorien och Västerlandets undergång (Spengler in Sweden – The Swedish Reception of Oswald Spengler’s Theories on World History and the Decline of the West), Stockholm: Hjalmarson & Hoegberg, 2009, 304 pages). Cavallie has extended his presentation to the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and it covers the period from the 1920s to the present day. The author shows that a large number of leading Swedish cultural personalities have published about the German macro-historian. He has even had some influence on Swedish fictional works and on Swedish architectural theory.

Another recently published book by Per Landin, an author and liberal journalist also partly deals with Spengler in Dietrich Eckharts onda oega – essaeer (The Evil Eye of Dietrich Eckhart – Essays), Stockholm, Atlantis, 2009, 228 pages. In typical liberal fashion he assures the readers that conservatism presently is looked upon as reactionary. Maybe so in Landin’s own liberal circles in Sweden. In the new book Landin deals with several conservatives in what in Gerany is labelled as “revolutionary conservatives” in the Weimar Republic. Spengler was of course never a part of  “revolutionary conservatism”. He was a pessimistic individualist and Landin’s view of Spengler is not only negative. The author admits that it is hard to classify the German macro-historian. There is a certain connection to Nazism, according to Landin (although he does not go deeper than that. Spengler does not belong to any political ideology.

Spengler's Baltic Journey

It had been a hectic year for Oswald Spengler. In February 1924 he had published "Politische Pflichten der deutschen Jugend" and in May "Neubau des Deutschen Reiches". In the beginning of October he lectured at the Orientalist Conference in Munich. Then also in October he published "Altasien" and "Nietzsche und sein Jahrhundert", a lecture at the Nietzsche Archive at the 80th birthday of the philosopher. These were only a few of his activities that year. Already before Spengler’s visit to Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia in 1924 there had been a number of reviews of his work The Decline of the West.

When he undertook the Baltic journey he probably wanted to continue to Russia but was prevented from that by erupting violence there.

The notes underneath are from Spengler's own hand on cards preserved at the Spengler Archive now at the Bavarian State Library from a visit of mine in Munich. The English translation from German is mine.




" 27.10.1924

Early Berlin

29.10.1924

Lund

10.29 in the evening arrival after an enjoyable see journey.

30.10.1024

Lecture: [d.] The Origin of the Great Cultures. (Academic Society) "German-Swedish Academic Union." Introduction by Professor E.A. Kock.

31.10.1924

Lecture: The History of Language in the History of the Development of Human Life (?) (Philosophical Society)

In connection discussion: Nilsson, (?), Larsson, Ljungdahl, (?).

1.11.1924

Lund

Postcard to me via Halle and Berlin (?)
Lectures in Lund.



11.1924

Uppsala

Lecture at the "Aesthetic Society" with the couple Cornell (?), Dr. Stavenow and Dr. Mannheimer.

Photographed (newspaper).

7.11.1924

Back at the end of November.

7.11.1924

Interview with Svenska Dagbladet.

9.11.1924

Lecture on peoples, spaces and languages.

In the evening with Sundwalls ?

Newspaper of 10.11.1924

10.11.1924

Helsingfors

Arrived in the evening from Aabo. Rommen. Gave interview.

12.11.1924

Helsingfors

Lecture "How the Great Cultures Originated".

13.11.1924

Received postcard.

On 15th crossing to Reval.

Lecture at the Finnish-German Society about the Fate of the Cultures of Antiquity. Afterwards
Banquet.

14.11.1924

Helsingfors

Last lecture: Races, Peoples, Languages in the Great Hall of the university

16.11.1924

Reval. Car journey into "the interior of the country"

18.11.1924

"Tomorrow Riga"

24.11.1924

Riga

Received Postcard.

27.XI.1924

Trotzki is deposed

1.12.1924

Communist coup in Reval, Estonia. General Laidoner given martial law powers. Executions. 17 Dec. new cabinet.

2.12.1924

4.12.1924

Munich"

In February-March 1925  Spengler travelled to Italy.

My research in the list of names of the Spengler Archive has produced indications that Spengler exchanged letters with a few Scandinavians:

Knut Hamsun

Sven Hedin

Martin Persson Nilsson

Johann Sundwall

Cavallie describes Spengler’s Swedish and Finnish lecture tour in great detail and points out that the Baltic tour was the last lecture tour of the German macro-historian outside Germany. Later tours to Argentina and Spain were cancelled.

In a short concluding remark Cavallie points to Francis Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington (who recently passed away) as possible modern successors of Spengler and Arnold Toynbee (who is also treated in a fair way in “Spengler in Sweden”. Fukuyama claimed that the questions had been solved with the collapse of the Soviet empire and the free enterprise had been victorious. There were no greater problems in the world unsolved. What Cavallie does not say is that Fukuyama could well be correct. The present onslaught on the West by islamofascism could well be a rearguard fight of reaction and autocratic extremists in the Arab world. If the creation of market economies in Afghanistan and Iraq are successful they could well be further steps of global liberty and democracy. In the long run American policies between 2009 and 2012 could just be a short term pause in the dominating ongoing American that started with Wilsonianism after the First World War.

On Huntington Cavallie is equally careful in his remarks. He notes that  Huntington believed that after the collapse of the Soviet tyranny there will be new tensions and conflicts this time between the seven or eight civilizations described by the American professor. The somewhat pessimistic view of Huntington was that the influence of the West will decline. Perhaps those views makes for a Spengler Redivivus in America. Unfortunately we will not be provided with more visionary views from the American Spengler. He passed away at 81 in December 2008.  Huntington was of course correct when he wrote about the coming new phase of world history. The question is if the future clash between America and China will be a clash between two civilizations. There is much evidence today that there is a separate American civilization that in many respects has surpassed European civilization. The coming clash will more likely be between American civilization as the hegemon of the West against a communist regime in Peking that desperately clings to power and uses nationalism as a tool. The conflict has already begun to heat up. In March 2009 China called for a new global currency to replace the dollar. In late March 2009 a new Chinese book, Unhappy China, singled out the United States for special scorn and called for Chinese strengthening of reliance on technology and innovation as well as bolstering the military.

Moeller van den Bruck and Macro-history

The works on the Weimar Era German conservative Moeller van den Bruck (1876 - 1925) have generally taken little notice of his interest in the philosophy of history. He did not believe in the decline of the West and thought it necessary to refute Oswald Spengler in his historical-philosophical works. It was important, he believed, to popularize a "metaphysics of reality", which implied synthesis of the main traditions of western philosophy. Van den Bruck was a nationalist and therefore primarily saw the different peoples as the agents of history.

Landin in his Dietrich Eckart’s Evil Eye devotes an essay to van den Bruck but concentrates on the Weimar author’s creation of the term The Third Reich, which appropriated by the Nazis. They later, however, found out that the author in no way represented Nazi views on history. Already in 1922 he had taken a stand against Hitler. The Nazis took their time to discover the real van den Bruck. As late as 1933 he was still described as the Prophet of the Third Reich. After a few months, however, Bruck’s books on Russia were forbidden and confiscated.

In Das Recht der jungen Völker (1919) van den Bruck established a new outline of history. It was not only a struggle between young and old peoples. There was also a spiral movement without end. Van den Bruck based his new model on older ones. A source was Geschichte der Farbenlehre by Goethe, who also claimed that there was a spiral development in world history. But the most important influence was that of the German historian Kurt Breysig.

The rotation of world history resulted in geopolitical changes. Van den Bruck's model also provided indications of migration of history northwards, which gave it a spatial, geopolitical essence. Later, however, van den Bruck expressed the belief of migration toward the east (in which he differed from a general myth of history that civilization had from Babylon migrated in a westerly direction, eventually to America). But the view of the easterly direction had taken root among 'conservative revolutionaries' in Germany after World War I. It was a pretty common understanding among them that after the Russian revolution the center of gravity of world history would be placed in the European east. In the coming decades development would be based on what was happening in the western part of this area (Germany was after World War I still a country to a great extent based on its eastern territories: Pommerania, Brandenburg, Silesia and East Prussia).

The rotation had gained speed and the south had already joined the west as periphery. The change was turning into revolution. In the pessimistic climate of Weimar Germany  it was important to the conservatives to instill confidence in the future. Thus Germans and Russians were described as "young peoples" of the future. The Germans had a great will to life. This would be important in the coming era of the world revolution. Overpopulation was working to the advantage of Germany and would strengthen her during the 20th century. The decline of the West was not Germany's decline. The future was determined by the "young peoples" which were throwing off their shackles. Thus the Germans were described in reality to be in the same category as the colonial peoples.

Conclusion

It has been claimed that Oswald Spengler’s great macro-historical work, The Decline of the West  caused a stir similar to that caused by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. The great men were about the same age when rising to fame (Spengler was born 1880 and Einstein 1879). Both stood for changes of the way the world was viewed. Spengler’s book in Germany has been published in more than a quarter million copies and is widely translated.

Spengler in his great work did not set out to describe the death of Western culture. Instead the work is Spengler’s views on the end phase of our culture (rising around the year 1000 AD) as it turns into civilization. Neither is it a prophecy of the death of mankind. Man will live on without the West. What was shocking for the readers in 1918, most of them believing that the 19th and 20th centuries represented the height of development, was that someone could describe the West as being in a final phase.

Dr. John Farrenkopf, an American scholar, has recently provided the academic community and all interested in Spengler’s work with Prophet of Decline: Spengler on World Politics and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001, 304 pages). After the attacks of Muslim terrorists of al Quaeda on the United States on September 11, 2001, this book is of increasing value, although the manuscript was completed and the book published before the attacks. Muslim terrorist actions and views are a threat to the present state system and ultimately the West.

Spengler is timely in 2009, both internationally and in Sweden, and especially Cavallie has provided a fine overview of the legacy of Spengler in the one Scandinavian country that has treated him seriously.

Tunnelling Techniques of Totalitarian and Authoritarian States

By Bertil Haggman

The discovery recently of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza for the purpose of smuggling weapons is reveals the modern use of tunnelling in the Middle East. One must keep in mind the Oriental technique of “tunnelling” the enemy’s both spatial, political and psychological terrain. This art originated with the Mongols, and was copied and perfected by the Ottomans. There is, however, also a physical  aspect to tunnelling. Here will be treated three cases of this use of psychologically oriented warfare of Oriental origin.
North Korean Tunnelling

There is a long history of North Korea attempting to undermine Seoul and take over South Korea this way. There is an extensive literature both in the United States and South Korea on the attempts by the regime to tunnel under the border between South Korea and North Korea. Several Palestinian terrorist organizations in the 1960s established close ties with North Korea. Another example of North Korean contacts in the Middle East area in general was the Turkish People’s Liberation Army (TPLA). A historical link perhaps to the Ottoman past.

Ottoman Tunnelling

The Ottomans in the 1450s used undermining technique during the last phase of the siege of Constantinople. This was described by the Venetian ambassador Nicolo Barbaro in his diary  (W. Carew Hazlitt, The Venetian Republic, 2 volumes, London 1915). Neither bombardments nor scaling the walls, nor pitched battles at sea was so disheartening as the daily discovery of new tunnels being dug under Constantinople. Indirectly it was an attack on the willpower and identity of the Byzantine empire.

The Ottomans learned the tactics of tunnelling from the Mongols. Psychological warfare was common not only in the pre-Islamic and Islamic times in Persia, the Ottoman empire and among the Arabs.
Viet Cong Tunnelling

The infamous Viet Cong (VC) tunnel system was located 15 miles north of Saigon in the Iron Triangle. It comprised around 125 square miles of jungle and rice paddies. The United States forces in January 1967 in Operation Cedar Falls attempted to destroy the tunnel system. Residents were evacuated from the area and the system of tunnels was destroyed. The communists did return, however.

The United States had special soldiers who fought the VC and the North Vietnamese in the tunnels and the bunkers. Only the 1st and 25th Infantry Divisions had formal units of the Tunnel Rats, but the units were small. The 1st  Division had only two squads.

The basic equipment was a .38 caliber revolver, a flashlight, and a knife. Standard procedure required three men in the tunnels at a time. The biggest success was in 1968 when 3 VC soldiers were killed and 153 forced backward out of a tunnel into captivity.

Outside these formal units mostly volunteers were employed. One important complex of tunnels was some 25 miles north of Saigon. It was probably the prime VC lifeline to Cambodian supply areas. There was a headquarters complex at Cu Chi. This vast complex was discovered by United States forces already in 1966. The 25th Infantry Division later established its base camp in Cu Chi and assumed the task of clearing the system. Different approaches used were tear gas, acetylene gas, and explosives. The American “tunnel rats” were almost always small in stature and had minimum equipment.

Tunnel networks were later discovered in other parts of Vietnam. In 1967 the Cu Chi tunnels hade been cleared, an example of tactical ingenuity and tenacity facing the United States Army in Vietnam (Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, St. Barbara 1998, 3 volumes).

As seen from the three examples above it is not hard to detect the background of Palestinian tunneling to smuggle arms to Gaza. How large these systems are and where is not in the public domain. American experience has shown that tunnel complexes can be dealt with.

SIR HALFORD MACKINDER, EURASIA AND UKRAINE

Below is an article by Swedish geopolitician Bertil Haggman on the growing importance of the geopolitical thinking of Sir Halford Mackinder.


The London Times in 2009 claimed, rightly so, that the Edwardian Scottish geographer Sir Halford Mackinder, (1861 – 1947) Oxford professor and Member of Parliament, is ruling the world of ideas. He was the intellectual architect of modern geopolitics founded by Swedish Uppsala professor and conservative member of the Swedish Riksdag Rudolf Kjellén. Mackinder also put the idea of “the Heartland” at the centre of global diplomacy,“


In the twentyfirst century he is more relevant than ever. Mackinder’s realpolitik is back. Few may recall his name but the world’s foreign policy is played out today according to his geopolitical rules, together with a few other geopoliticians.


Mackinder’s fame came from a  lecture delivered in London in 1904, entitled The Geographical Pivot of History. His proposition number one: the globalised world — crisscrossed by steam, telegram and train — was a closed system. The world was now a unitary space with every strategic advance by one nation necessitating a rival power to retreat. Diplomacy was a zero-sum game and geopolitics meant successfully squaring political power with geographical setting.


Also the key to world power lay in “the Heartland of the Old World”, the Eurasian land mass. This vast land mass included the Iranian upland in the southwest and part of the Mongolian upland in the southeast. The core constituted, however, the Russian Empire. In centuries past this terrain had been the pivot of world history as the Huns, the Mongols and the Magyars swept into Europe. Ranged against this “Heartland” were the sea powers — Great Britain, the United States and Japan. And what geopolitics came down to was an ongoing struggle between the Heartland and the sea powers. Mackinder was worried that an expansionist Russia would act to the detriment of British imperial interests.


Mackinder’s geopolitics was further explored during the 1919 Versailles peace conference in his most significant work, Democratic Ideals and Reality (republished in 2009 under the Faber Find imprint of Lost Classics). Mackinder argued that the First World War victors should base the new world order not on lofty ideals but the hard geopolitical realities underlying history. The most pressing of those realities was the threat posed by a united Russia and Germany. Mackinder’s thesis was simple: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; who rules the World Island commands the world.”


To prevent the land powers to take over he advocated a cordon sanitaire of independent states in Eastern Europe — Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary — to act as a bulwark between Germany and Russia.


Sir Halford warned that a protective measure was needed in Eastern Europe from the Adriatic and Black Sea to the Baltic Sea: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and the other states of the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. Mackinder after World War I met with a number of leading politicians (especially Anton Denikin) whom he tried to persuade to recognize the newly created states in Eastern Europe. An anti-Bolshevik coalition was needed. Mackinder’s plan was turned down by the British government. It was also rejected by the War Secretary Winston Churchill.


Mackinder now came out of retirement and warned that “the territory of the USSR is equivalent to the Heartland” and that “if the Soviet Union emerges from this war as conqueror of Germany, she must rank as the greatest land power on the globe”. To secure the maritime democracies from Eurasian aggression, Mackinder proposed a North Atlantic alliance to provide a “bridgehead in France, a moated aerodrome in Britain, and a reserve of trained manpower, agriculture and industries in the eastern United States and Canada”.


Mackinder’s vision of geopolitics contributed greatly to American postwar defense strategy.


At the time the Yale international relations expert Nicholas Spykman wrote that Mackinder’s influence was palpable in US plans to counter Soviet expansion — from the establishment of Nato to the Marshall Plan to intervention in Turkey, Malaya, even Korea :


The policy of containment or encirclement of the USSR was evolved as a direct response to the threat seen to arise from Soviet domination of the Heartland”.


Mackinder later, however, fell out of fashion. During the era of the Vietnam War geopolitics was regarded as a bloody and arguably amoral approach. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan suddenly geopolitics and geography was back. President Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski — raised on the northern edges of the Heartland in Poland — had studied Mackinder. Brzezinski had a reputation for controversial methods.


 In the 1980s Mackinder’s belief in reality over idealism continued to hold sway in Washington and London as both administrations dropped détente to confront head-on the “Evil Empire”. President Reagan’s nuclear proliferation adviser, Colin Gray, was himself a leading scholar of Mackinder.


Many of those who worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses — Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney among them — brought their geopolitics back to bear as part of the Bush Administration in 2000. With hundreds of US military bases stretching from Iraq to Afghanistan to Kyrgyzstan, a bid for the Heartland underpinning much 21stcentury Pentagon thinking can be seen.


After 1991 geopolitics is now discussed in the Heartland itself. Russian securocrats have been working to block NATO and US expansion into the former Soviet republics. Putin has long been reaching for his Mackinder. In 2014 he wages war in Europe over Ukraine.


In 2000 Geopolitics: A Textbook was published in Moscow with much of Mackinder’s work translated into Russian for the first time. In Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, think-tanks and diplomats are now surprisingly studying Sir Halford’s geopolitical philosophy.


In Georgia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and even Iran, an overt and covert battle for the Heartland is again being fought.  As in the 1930s, 1950s and 1980s decision makers are once more in the twenty first century reading Mackinder.


Halford J. Mackinder’s Democratic Ideals and Reality has been published by Faber and Faber. For an introduction in Swedish to geopolitics see Bertil Haggman’s book Geopolitik – en introduktion (2009;in Swedish).

Yoga Life Column by Ashok Malhotra

Yoga Life Column (June 2014)
Meditation in Action

Janaka was a famous king of India who had mastered the art of meditation in action. Having perfected a number of meditation skills, a monk boasted that he was as good as King Janaka. To test his special capabilities, the monk approached the king and said, "I have mastered the art of meditation in action and am as good as you. If you want proof of my mastery, put me through a test." After listening to the monk intently, the king replied, "I am delighted that you have mastered the art of meditation in action. There is a simple way to check it out. Here is a task for you. Take this wine goblet filled to its brim. Walk through every nook and corner of the palace and come back to me without spilling a single drop."

As the monk picked up the wine goblet, he told himself that he would fix his attention only on the goblet and would not let anything to distract him. With this determination, he walked through the entire palace, watching very carefully his every step so that not a single drop of wine spilled on the ground. Since he was successful in his concentration, he came back to the king and boasted that no one on this earth was equal to him in meditation.

After listening to the monk, the king said, "I am impressed with your power of concentration. You have proved your skills but there is another part to the test. Now take the goblet of wine and walk through the entire palace, make stops to talk to the guards, watch the dancers, look at the paintings and chandeliers, observe the cooks preparing a delicious meal, watch the royal children learning their lessons in the school, smell the flowers in the garden, talk to the ministers, and hold discussion with the justice of the peace. While you are enjoying the panorama of royal life within the boundaries of the palace, see to it that not a single drop of wine spills. If you can accomplish this simple feat then you have perfected the art of meditation in action."

Moral: Live your daily life as meditation in action!

Yoga Life Column by Ashok Malhotra

Yoga Life Column (July 2014)

What is the real meaning of the Yoga, which is so popular in the West? This question was asked by a student who was taking my course on the Philosophy and Psychology of Yoga. He offered me an opportunity to go beyond the philosophical definition of yoga to present a more general understanding of the concept. I started thinking about how to talk about this very important concept in the most genuine way while still keeping its profundity intact.
The word "yoga" comes from the root "Yuj", which means union, harmony or balance. Yoga can be understood as the union of the ordinary-day-today (socially constructed) self with the real self. It can also be grasped as harmony in the three parts of the human being consisting of the bodily, emotional and mental self. Furthermore, it can also be construed as the balance brought about through the physical postures, harmony in the emotions through the breathing exercises and serenity of the mind through the meditation exercises.

Balance is a simple as well as a complex concept. It is simple because it means bringing together different parts so that once they are joined together, they will not topple. This concept becomes complex when it means harmony, togetherness, fitting into each other diverse parts and much more.
Let's look at it in a simple way first. When yoga uses the term balance, it means the fitting together of diverse parts.

For yoga, a human being is a complex creature. It is made up of three parts of the body, heart, and mind. All of these make up one's day to day ordinary self. But there is also another aspect of a human being, which is one's silent self. This silent self is called variously as one's essence, one's soul, one's mind or one's spirit. The three parts of the body, heart and mind make up the psycho-physical aspect or ordinary self of a human being. However, the silent self is the spirit or conscience part of a human being.

The goal of yoga is to bring harmony in the person by offering physical exercises (asanas) to form good habits of the body, breathing exercises (pranayama) to form good habits of the heart and meditation exercises (dhyana) to form good habits of the mind. Once these superior habits of the body, heart and mind are formed, the entire person will be able to achieve a sense of balance. This harmony in the diverse parts of a human being creates a perfect balance in the physical and psychological organism. In the yogic terminology, this perfection in the psychophysical self makes the body and the mind a perfect mirror to express the silent self, which is our conscience or spiritual self.

However, there is a big difference between expressing the ordinary or psycho-physical or talkative self, which is conditioned by the social norms and the silent self that is full of joy, happiness and contentment. The ordinary-talkative self is the stressed-out one, which is full worries and anxieties and is often confused, whereas the silent self is happy and joyful. It experiences the delight of the very fact of existing. In contrast to the ordinary-talkative stressed out self,  the silent self is content. The ordinary self represents imbalance whereas the silent self is the embodiment of balance. According to Yoga, a person who is balanced is together, is healed, is whole and thus is holy.

Exercise for this month:
Caution: This exercise is offered as a suggestion. If done correctly on a regular basis and for a long time, it might help.
Sit in the easy posture. Put your thumbs on the index fingers and place your hands on the knees. Close both of your eyes. Breathe in and out. Observe the flow of your breathing. It will feel good. As you breathe in, think about the sound SO. When you breathe out, think about the sound HUM. While you are breathing in SO and breathing out HUM become aware of the sounds around you. Notice these sounds but do not linger on them. Go back to breathing in SO and breathing out HUM. Continue with breathing in SO and breathing out HUM for a few minutes and then stop. Take a break for one minute. Then continue with breathing in SO and breathing out HUM for two more minutes. It will feel very good.
Start your day by doing this exercise every morning and end your day by doing this exercise every evening for five-six minutes. Power up the engine of your life with this simple exercise each day!

Yoga Life Column by Ashok Malhotra

Yoga Life Column (August 2014)

Students of yoga are usually curious about how to define or grasp the concept of health. In the West, the notion of health is intertwined with our emphasis on running, jogging and spending time on the tread mill. The goal is to bring the heart rate up by speeding the blood flow to different parts of the body so that they will be cleansed. However, the yoga system does not emphasize running or jogging or going on the jogging belt. Instead it offers very simple stretch exercises as a way to sound health.
The Western view lays stress on running and jogging. This points in the direction of vigorous exercise so that the heart keeps going. Whereas the yoga system emphasizes the slowing down of the entire process so that the inner changes in the body or the entire organism take place.
The two outlooks are based on similar concepts of health but offer different ways to refurbish it. Both in the West as well as in Yoga, the goal is to restore to the human being perfect health so that one could live a long life of contentment and joy.

However, there is a difference. The Western view is based on the idea that a human being is a unique entity that is set apart from the world. Its job is to understand the laws of the universe in order to control and lord over the external world. Using this model, the Western emphasis on running, jogging and walking on the treadmill to speed up the heart rate is understandable. By controlling one's metabolism, one controls one's body and health.

Whereas the idea behind the yoga system is that we are organically connected to this earth as well as to the entire universe. Thus we need to work with the external world by getting recharged with its energy to improve ourselves and others in harmony with nature. In contrast to the Western view, Yoga's emphasis is on the eco-logical balance rather than control of nature.
Yoga follows the view of health as understood by the ancient Indian system of Ayurvedic medicine. It believes in three doshas or humors that control our health and well-being. These three doshas are a combination of air and water; water and fire and a congealed form of air, water and fire. If there is an imbalance between and among any of the three doshas, it leads to disease and ill-health.
The goal of physical postures (asanas), breathing exercises (pranayama) and meditation exercises (dhyana) is to correct any imbalance among these three doshas so that a person stays healthy and strong and enjoys a long life of contentment and joy.

Note: We might devote some of the future columns on how to achieve physical balance through moderation in eating foods, emotional balance through breathing exercises and mental balance through the meditation exercises.

Exercise for this month:
Caution: This exercise is offered as a suggestion. If done correctly on a regular basis and for a long time, it might help.
Meditation on Sound and Silence: Sit in the easy posture. Keep your back, neck and head straight up. Close your eyes. Breathe in and out. Become aware of the sounds around you. Pay attention to the sounds followed by silence, followed by sounds, followed by silence and so on. Keep your mind on the rhythm of sound, silence, sound, silence and so on. After doing this for two minutes, go back to normal breathing.
When you are trying out this meditation exercise the first time, practice it for two minutes. Go back to your normal breathing for two minutes. During the first week, practice it for a total of ten minutes at each sitting with a break for 1-2 minutes of regular breathing. You can also do this meditation exercise while you lie down on your back or sitting in a chair. This exercise comes in handy when you are taking a long flight.

Will Pakistan Become a Failed State or Change Its Direction?

Will Pakistan Become a Failed State or Change Its Direction?
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian
August 9, 2014

Did the US go to war with the wrong countries when we took on Iraq and Afghanistan? Perhaps we should have gone after our “good allies” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who were really responsible for 9/11. This is, of course, wishful thinking considering the many ways that we need relations with these two countries, so we hold our noses and deal with them as “frenemies,” not friends.

Pakistan grows more troubling by the day, with the Islamists increasingly violent and the secular society under constant threat. The Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) has long used Islamists to carry out their agendas in Afghanistan (they created the Taliban) and against India (terror attacks such as the horrific one in Mumbai a few years ago).

It is important to understand why the ISI does this. Their notion of protecting Pakistan is based on a long-standing fear of India, their much larger and ultimately more powerful neighbor. Both countries have developed nuclear capability: Pakistan, out of unreasonable fear of India, and India out of reasonable fear that the Pakistanis are crazy enough to consider using such a weapon. Both countries have spent money on developing nukes to intimidate each other while failing to spend the money educating their young and cleaning up their air, water, and crumbling infrastructure. The paranoid Pakistanis don't realize that India is afraid of China, also a nuclear power, more than they fear Pakistan.

Pakistan began in 1947 as a secular breakaway state where Muslims would be safe. India, also in 1947, became a secular state where all its multi-ethnic, multi-religious population could enjoy the freedoms of the modern world. India's long romance with the Soviet Union hampered its development, but when the Cold War ended and India came out of its fog, it began the long-delayed process of joining the modern secular world. They still have far to go, but they are on the right path.

Pakistan, however, is in a downward trajectory, ever since one military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, found it politically expedient to promote a most backward form of Islam. During his reign, Sharia law replaced much secular law, with consequences such as the growing floods of “honor killings,” blasphemy executions, and assassinations of journalists, academics, or politicians whose views Islamists didn't like. They also have the honor of being the last repository of polio; cynical  clerics claim that polio vacine is a western plot to make their children sterile.

Their latest horror is the public stoning of a pregnant woman who married a man her family did not like. They beat her right outside the courthouse and then finished her off, stoning her to death with bricks. Her murderous father justified this as an honor killing of a disobedient woman, and said he had no regret. He thinks his religion justifies this. What an embarrassment to Pakistan!

Pakistani immigrants to the British Isles have taken their terrible values with them with dire consequences. The British only now realize that their indulgent immigration policies threaten their very survival as a modern state. Canada has also suffered from Pakistani immigration, as have many European states. In addition, the danger does not come from Pakistan alone, but from a global Islamist movement that lures the young. Every modern state is in danger.

But there is a glimmer of hope. India has just elected a new Prime Minister (Narenda Modi), someone with backbone, who invited the Pakistan's PM, Nawaz Sharif, to attend his inauguration. If these two can develop a relationship, much could change.

When India no longer threatens them, there is no need for the ISI to support Islamists. By stopping anti-India propaganda, these two nations could benefit each other. Secular Pakistanis love India's movies, foods, and TV. If India no longer had to fear Pakistan, India's own Muslim population would just be Indians, not perceived as potential agents of Pakistani terror.

Even Afghanistan might be able to get out from under when Pakistan no longer poisons its survival. This could be a win/win for everybody (other than Islamists). Are Pakistan and India smart enough to do this?

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Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of God's Law or Man's Law.  You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.