The cruel events in Ukraine confront us with primitive forms of conflict resolution, namely the idea of using force and superior military strength to subjugate an opponent and impose one's own wishes on him. The law of the strongest had already largely disappeared from the civilized world, overcome by legal systems at the state level and by international treaties and supranational organizations at the global level. But not all players abide by the rules, and when one of the powerful ones breaks away and violates the rules, the entire system disintegrates and has to reorganize itself.
The logical consequence is then that the other players must regress to the more primitive level in order to restore balance there. A state currently uses its armed forces to expand its own borders and subjugate another country. This is a form of power politics that has been outlawed worldwide since World War II, because any rational person can learn from the massive destruction of that war that violence does not solve problems but increases them. It should also be clear from historical experience that wars of aggression lead to the escalation and engagement of other powers and bring no long-term gain. But when a state uses more primitive means to advance its own interests, the other states must counterattack at that level, whether they like it or not. If they do not, they themselves become victims of the attack machinery.
So there must be armament everywhere. Money that could be used for the further development of the social and health system, for education and for the development of new technologies against climate change must be put into weapons, where they serve no other purpose than that of deterrence. Weapons are developed and built with a great deal of intelligence and raw materials, at best for then rusting away over time. This is valid until a more stable world order with effective control mechanisms is implemented and, at the same time, democratic mechanisms are installed everywhere to prevent megalomaniacs and paranoids from rising to political leadership positions.
The Repetition Compulsion
What is happening right now has all already happened in a similar form, in the middle of Europe and elsewhere in the world. There would be no need to repeat again what we know from history including all the tragic consequences. We already know how it will end. But if the past has not been processed and understood, it sets the directions and steers action rather than the apparent rational calculations used to weigh the costs and benefits of aggression.
We know from trauma psychology that unprocessed traumas urge repetition and re-enactment, and this is true of collective traumas as well. So we are witnessing a gigantic collective compulsion to repeat, its destructive force and its compulsiveness. As the omnipresent object of comparison Adolf Hitler shows, there is no turning back on this track, there is only final victory or final defeat.
The Logic of Evolution
Life progresses from one stage of development to the next. The later stages incorporate the achievements of the earlier ones and organize them into new structures with new qualities. This is the course of things and the inherent urge of all life to grow, or, in the language of physics, the generation of order from chaos (negentropy). Such developmental steps are most clearly visible in children and adolescents. They show up, for example, at birth or during adolescence.
It is similar with societies and mankind as a whole. They, too, move from one level to the next in order to better master new challenges. The model of the evolution of consciousness describes the development of these successive organizational models and their inner interrelationships. In the process, advances in complexity and differentiation occur. In the favorable case, these processes proceed organically.
Regression and Instability
But there can also be disturbances when it comes to progressing to a new stage, so that the process gets stuck. The preserving elements and the elements pushing on come into conflict. When the preserving forces get the upper hand, regressions occur, that is, withdrawing to earlier levels of development. If we look at the model of the development of consciousness, it sometimes seems as if the regression happens by several levels at once. It is as if we suddenly have to set new priorities, priorities that have been long forgotten to us for a long time and that seem outdated and primitive. We realize that we are suddenly sliding back, in feelings and in thinking. We have fallen under the influence of collective traumatizations. We lose the stability of the developmental stage we have already reached.
Traumatization and excessive stress lead to regression. Let's take the example of diseases: when viruses or bacteria cause inflammation in the body, it switches to emergency mode, and we regress and become weak and helpless like small children. Regression serves to ensure survival by simpler means. All resources are expended to remove the danger and return the body to healthy self-regulation.
Societies also react by regressing to earlier levels of stress and conflict management when massive threats occur that cannot be mastered, or seemingly cannot be mastered, by existing means. In the current case, we can see that it does not take real threats at all to activate primitive reaction patterns. Already fantasized threats are sufficient, as they are known as trauma consequences. Dictators and authoritarian leaders tend to distort reality and blur the lines between fantasy and reality, in their propaganda and in their worldview. The fears to be mobilized by such conflations come from the past, from the field of collective traumas.
Forced Regression
The regression into which the states of the West are moving is forced, but it can be reversed if it is done with awareness and not as a trauma reaction. Societies that are sufficiently grounded at the level of systemic consciousness can even suspend certain basic rights in an emergency and then return to normal once the emergency is over. Advanced systems are more flexible; regressive systems are more rigid.
The rearmament results as a system constraint, which on the whole is useless, but has become necessary so that the aggressor will be deterred from continuing his repetition compulsion. The perfidious thing about the present situation, then, is that policymakers have no choice but to strengthen the armed forces; anything else would be irresponsible and grist to the war-mongers' mill. The appeasement policy of the 1930s motivated Germany to launch World War 2. This experience must not be repeated.
Breaking the Power of Collective Traumas
We escape the pull of the repetition compulsion only if we perceive the power of collective traumas and face them consciously. All the feelings that are stored in these fields must be accepted and experienced. On the rational level, it is important that there are no cognitive distortions and other sprinklings of trauma energy. In this process, the view of history moves away from blame and moral judgments and toward a deeper understanding of the connections between actors, systems, and patterns of mentality. The findings of the historical sciences form the standard for a rational and balanced evaluation of historical processes. For example, research commissions staffed by historians from the countries between which a conflict has existed or exists, or museums in which different views of history are presented, serve this purpose.
As long as the past rules the present, no free relationship to the current reality is possible. This also makes it difficult or impossible to resolve actual conflicts. Any form of sustainable peacebuilding is based on coming to terms with collective traumas. Peace with one's own past is the indispensable prerequisite for peace in and with the present (this is true on the individual as well as on the collective level). Peace in the now is the basis for the ability to act in a constructive and creative way to shape the future in a humane way.
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