War and Aging

After going through hardships as a young man, I felt that my eyes on the world had changed. I was less envious of the better, and I remembered Keynes saying that if I see someone who will compete with me, people will die eventually. Sometimes, I shook the center of my friend's mind by saying, 'Let's compete harshly with me' to my competitive friends. Then, I smiled.

 

Looking at the leaders of each country who are changing rapidly these days, I assume that their individual narrow minds are making it difficult for them. Paradoxically, I felt comfortable while doing manual labor, factory labor, or cleaning labor as a young man. Perhaps at that time, I had learned the technique of actively abandoning desire and killing my mind. Later, I was misunderstood as a religious person, but in fact, it was because I didn't want to bear the burden even when I was old and sad.

 

I gave artificial intelligence counseling about my parents, who have too little desire for life or too strong an obsession due to war trauma. Then, I even jumped to the story of the chronicles written on the appearance of the leaders of each country that I had closely observed for more than 30 years.

 

 

War and Aging

Greed makes war. Anxiety makes us old.

 

1. Every Great Cause Has Been a Wrapper for Greed

There is a pattern that runs through all of human history. Behind every great clash of ideology or religion — beneath every declared cause — the actual force at work has been the greed and hunger for power of a small few.

The Crusaders marched in God's name, but the real business was expanding papal authority and seizing territory. Communist revolution proclaimed equality yet produced new privileged classes. The Cold War, fought under banners of freedom and justice, served the military-industrial complex on both sides. The Korean War was no exception: the lives of the Korean people were pawns placed on a strategic chessboard by great powers.

Much of what appears to be ideological conviction is, in reality, a drive to dominate, an urge to make others submit, a narcissistic need to be proved right. In some ways this is more dangerous than calculated greed — because it believes itself to be pure.

Religious power and ideological power operate by the same mechanism. Both claim absolute truth, both divide the world into insiders and outsiders, both designate those who question as enemies. Within this structure, the first thing crushed is always the ordinary life of ordinary people.

2. Why Do the Many Yield to the Few?

If we begin from the premise that human beings are equal, the recurring structure in which the greed of a few dominates the many is difficult to accept. Yet this structure has its own cold mechanics.

The first is the asymmetry of time. The ordinary majority are consumed by survival. The power-hungry minority concentrate all their energy on acquiring power. They strike at precisely the moment when people are most vulnerable — when they are anxious, lonely, or have lost their sense of meaning. This precision is made possible by leisure.

The second is the psychology of belonging. Alongside the human impulse toward equality runs an equally strong impulse to follow someone. When a strong leader, a clear enemy, and a simple cause are offered together, the majority will often mobilize voluntarily. Those who possess greed exploit this psychology with accuracy.

But this structure does not last forever. Enlightenment — the spread of awareness that sees through the structure — has slowly changed history. Every transformation in human civilization has begun with those who first possessed this awareness.

3. The Loneliness and Aging of the Powerful

The loneliness of those at the peak of power is structurally unavoidable. They are surrounded by people — but all those people either want something or fear something. No one speaks honestly. In the end, the powerful hear only their own echo.

Putin's loneliness has hardened into paranoia. Xi Jinping's grew from the wounds of the Cultural Revolution into a compulsion for control. Kim Jong-un was designated heir at so young an age that he has never experienced a normal human relationship. Trump cannot acknowledge his loneliness at all — he requires the constant roar of crowds. All four share this: they attempt to fill loneliness with power.

And all of them are aging now. The inner cost of maintaining power shows in the body. Those who are isolated from reality age in the mind first, and the body follows.

Suppressing loneliness and accepting it produce different rates of aging. Loneliness that is not resisted does not consume energy. Loneliness that must constantly be denied exhausts it. Aging does not lie.

4. Only Peaceful Action Is Truth

If everyone were at peace, the mind would have no reason to be driven. We would feel less lonely. Aging would come more slowly.

This is not an abstraction. It is a reality that can be confirmed in the body.

Religion says: hold the right belief and you will be saved. Ideology says: realize the right system and humanity will be liberated. But history has proven repeatedly: these beliefs and systems do not create peace — they are the first to destroy it.

The sequence of my conclusion is different. It is not belief or system that creates peace. Peaceful action itself is salvation.

Not an abstract cause, but action taken here, now. To see through the structures of greed without abandoning faith in human beings. To belong to no camp, yet see clearly through each one. 실사구시— practical realism grounded in reality. This is the only truth that actually exists.

 

Only peaceful action is truth.