As a dual citizen of both the United States of America and New Zealand I suppose I have divided cultural loyalties. The New Zealand to which I emigrated over twenty years ago was, I thought then, a kind of America without the dark shadow of its murderous deep state death machine that had brought us Vietnam and scores of other ‘conflicts’, including the devastation of Iraq in the 2000s. I had imagined New Zealanders to be a kind of ‘rough and ready’ bunch of benevolents who prided themselves on “No. 8 wire” can-do and a sort of rugged individualism to boot.
Then came Covid and, alas, the rest is history — history that has yet to be accounted for here … Need I mention the casual amnesia that has erased our vax apartheid, or the ongoing persecution, relentlessly undertaken by the government-backed New Zealand Medical Council, of doctors whose great malfeasance was helping patients in accordance with their professional obligations?
Memorial Day in the States marked the beginning of summer, the opening of the Jersey shore, a holiday celebrated and filled with the prospect of play and warmth, with little actual memorializing of the soldiers who died to make such holidays and prospects possible.
So I got to thinking today about soldiers and causes and deaths in the great wheel of History. Should one celebrate the soldier who died in the cause of a nation that had embarked on conquest and ravishing? The soldier who died after a napalm run in Vietnam? I’m personally more keen to admire those early Revolutionaries who fought at Lexington and Concord, or those who expired during George Washington’s miserable winter at Valley Forge, not far from where I spent most of my life. Whilst I believe that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are unique documents in human history setting out principles of marvelous freedom and wisdom, I fully acknowledge that the country founded upon these principles has engaged in horrific acts of murder and war.
And while I hope that the current American administration has embarked on a mission to restore the country to those founding principles — and here I will pause to reiterate that the most important move in that restoration is ensuring the integrity of the voting system, a position I have been advocating for decades and which included the abolition of machines in favor of paper ballots — I understand fully that this road will be rocky, contradictory and will also be prey to the usual forces that are consequences of power.
I am told that those of the Baháʼí Faith believe that it will take humankind five thousand centuries to achieve enlightenment — a realm of peaceful and harmonious and godly existence. I think that estimate is wildly optimistic.
Everything I have gleaned about human nature from my own life, and from my studies in psychoanalysis and art, from my own observations as a wayfarer and healer, tells me two essential facts:
that the capacity for evil resides in every human being, and
that institutions invariably betray the principles upon which they are founded
Let’s take the psychoanalytic movement, for example. What began with the momentous discoveries of the much-maligned Freud (and I’ll get to the malignment in a moment) — discoveries about the myth of childhood innocence, and the ubiquity of unconscious forces linked to childhood development — morphed into a variety of splits and breaks among the various psychoanalytic groups into something today that has almost no true connection to those discoveries. Lest you think I am being extreme, let me explain myself: virtually all current psychoanalytic institutions have abandoned those early Freudian insights about infantile sexuality and the child’s murderous wishes for a kind of potage about narrative and self. In short, there has been a clever and steady whitewashing.
This explains why Freud will forever be anathema: he showed us, in a way, what had already existed in plain sight. That the human being was driven by forces forged within the very tissue of humanity, searches for sensual pleasure and the exercise of power. And we can only be relatively ‘good’ or decent human beings if we recognize these forces.
The State, however, that political collective into which we are all of us born, like it or not, has as its principal duty the monopolization of force. The State is by nature at war with the claims of individual freedom, and what the American idea brought us is really a kind of compromise between individuality and State control.
Nonetheless, States wage wars, for causes that are good or bad, depending on perspective and time, though I question in my heart of hearts whether any war can ever be any good. The realist in me recognizes that wars will continue to be waged, and that some may be necessary as lesser evils.
The Globalist Deep State cartel that brought us covid and many forever wars, that same cartel which hijacked sovereign nations, should be dismantled. They need to be fought. But let us remember that with the creation of every institution a shadow entity is born, an entity that arrogates to itself extraordinary powers seeking to rein in the individual.
If you’ve ever sat on a school board or city council or any organizational panel, I think you’ll fully understand what I mean.
The greatest achievement to be hoped for from our human institutions is for a stay on the exercise of the enormous power they are accruing, thanks to collectivist human ingenuity — powers of computation and efficiency and organization and ‘intelligence’.
I do not have faith that institutional humanity will exercise such restraint. But I know of someone who did.
Subjecting oneself to the most painful, excruciating, humiliating and perverse exercises of human power ever devised — Roman crucifixion — was an act of supreme faith. Whether one believes in the divinity of Jesus or not, one cannot question the strength of His faith in a people who made murder an art, and whose good, when weighed against its opposite, is wanting.
After this unique sacrifice the world went on. The church founded upon the principles he enunciated during His itinerant mission would go on to massacre peoples in His name, and abuse the little children He sought to protect: “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” (Luke, 17:2).
I do not possess the faith of Jesus in humanity, but I believe in advancing the cause of good when possible, knowing that in the end it may be a losing one.
Which, I suppose, is what faith is all about: fighting for and believing in something that is uncertain.
Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.
May 2026
The last sentence is interesting, it holds an unseen key in using the term “uncertain” in context faith is the good of man and faith in something that is uncertain. Until you remember Dr Garcia that you mentioned the Ba’hi faith five thousand centuries to achieve a certain state. When you consider this comment in context of Faith it actually means constant application looking to achieve the result. This actually employs a little-known technique for achieving Goals in your life aka Manifesting your Reality. It can be applied individually but is best applied as a human collective. I won’t get into that though, wanted to link personal manifestation with how Faith works. In this Time-Space Reality when we ask the Universe for something it needs to be performed the correct way. We are all Manifestors of our reality when we ask we receive. The problem is we use Time in the wrong way which if we ‘expect’ what we ask for we limit that end result by wanting it within an expected time. This is the law of ‘Lack of’ not the law of ‘Having’. When we limit the result we are subconsciously employing lacking the very thing we are asking or wanting. Limiting Beliefs govern us subliminally. Limit your reach and you will not reach. Extend your reach past what you want and you always reach it on the way through. This applies in the golf swing when you hit at the ball instead of swinging through and the ball is hit because it’s in the way or, same principle Karate uses; you do not hit the timber slat to break it you hit past the timber slat so your punch ends past it, the timber slat breaks on the way. The Ba’hi Faith uses this principle. Do not expect enlightenment now, apply faith as an ongoing application. As spiritual gurus like to tell us there is no Enlightenment Retirement but a Journey on the way is the key.
Time is our killer. We expect with a time limit. In doing so we operate from a position of lacking the very thing we say we are asking for. The way rouand this hurdle is not to limit the asking but have faith it will happen. You ask and you receive. Vibrating at the ‘lack of’ means you are focusing in the wrong place. So what if you already have not lack? In some small Gratitude we may already possess a thing and want more. So have Gratitude for what already is and your focus is then already there. You get more of the same. Reiki 5 Principles employs this for modern man to understand and Faith plus trying again is the key - constant mindfulness with focus on a goal as in trying not giving up. Mind, body and soul improvement through constant application. This is Ba’hi faith in operation.
Light to you
Hi Mannie, thanks as always for another fine article. It is much appreciated. Your comments on war made me think of the song "Universal Soldier" written by Buffy St. Marie. I was quite young when I first heard it sung by Donovan, and even back then, it struck a chord with me. I watched an interview with Buffy St. Marie and she said that she was sitting in an airport in Canada and saw soldiers returning home during the Vietnam war. Many were missing limbs and even those that looked intact, were scarred forever mentally. This is what drove her to write Universal Soldier.