AUSTRALIA MYTHOLOGY
The Soldier and the Rescue Worker
The declared purpose of an army is to protect its community from an external enemy. But an army can also become an instrument of political pressure.
Australia has sent soldiers into other countries and cultures even when Australia itself was not under invasion. Those soldiers returned carrying consequences that remained with them long after the political purpose had ended.
During my working life, I entered many Australian homes while offering my service. I met veterans of Vietnam and later wars in the Middle East. I also met former police officers and even a pilot who had operated so high above the ground that he could not directly see the results of his actions. Many of these people appeared unable to return completely to ordinary social life.
Now compare the soldier with a person who rescues victims or clears the scene of a road accident.
That person may see blood, an amputated leg or a body without a head. They may cut open a destroyed vehicle to recover parts of a human body. The image, the smell and the immediate presence of death may remain in them forever.
Yet there may be an important difference.
The rescue worker encounters destruction while trying to reduce its consequences. The soldier may encounter the same destruction while participating in its creation.
Is the physical image the only thing that creates trauma? Or does the meaning of our own action also become part of what remains within us?
A pilot may not see the blood, but physical distance does not necessarily remove awareness of the result.
This does not condemn every soldier, police officer or government employee. It raises a question about the system that gives people instructions, uses their actions for political purposes and then leaves them to carry the human consequences.
The Body as Feedback
There is a Polish saying:
People in love do not become ill.
It is not literally true in every case, but it contains an old human observation. A person’s inner condition can affect the condition of the body.
Love can create meaning, energy, security and a desire to live. Fear, internal conflict and the continuous violation of one’s own values may create the opposite conditions.
The nervous, hormonal and immune systems do not exist in complete separation from one another. Therefore, I ask whether the consequences of our actions may reach more deeply into the body than we presently understand.
Short-term dieting is another example. A person fights against the body through deprivation and willpower. As long as that person has enough energy to continue the fight, the body changes. When the struggle becomes exhausted and the underlying condition has not changed, the body often returns towards its previous state.
Perhaps we try to correct the visible result without understanding the information from which that result developed.
Apollo and Aphrodite are not merely symbols of superficial beauty. In this thesis, they represent the healthy expression of masculine and feminine existence. The neglect of Apollo or Aphrodite means a departure from one’s natural values and function.
In old age, the loss of physical form and the declining function of cells and organs may belong to the natural process of ageing. But when a young person begins to lose their natural form, should we only attack the visible body? Or should we also ask what long-term conditions, conflicts and beliefs are being expressed through it?
I am not saying that the appearance of a person proves their moral character. I am not saying that every illness is the fault of the person who experiences it. A child is not guilty of the conditions into which it is born.
We inherit more than possessions. We inherit genes, culture, behaviour, fear, social structures and the convictions of previous generations. I am asking whether some consequences may be carried between generations in ways that we do not yet fully understand.
The Recidivist
Society isolates a recidivist because that person repeatedly harms others. The purpose of isolation is to prevent further harm.
This creates another question.
If free will allows a person to continue harming society, perhaps the Universe cannot remove that free will. But could the larger consciousness of the Universe withdraw some of the support that maintains the person’s physical existence?
Could the loss of natural bodily form be an early stage of such feedback? Could hormonal, metabolic and immune dysfunction be later stages?
I do not present this as established medical knowledge. I present it as a possibility arising from a chain of observations.
Perhaps illness is not a punishment imposed from outside. Perhaps it can sometimes be the physical expression of a long process involving inherited beliefs, internal conflict, personal action and the suffering produced in other people.
If this possibility is false, honest examination will expose its weakness.
But what if it is true?
What if systems already exploit parts of this truth while protecting the status quo that benefits them? What if social confusion, fear and propaganda prevent people from recognising the relationship between what they produce and what eventually returns to them?
I do not ask the reader to believe me.
I ask only that we do not reject every possibility before we examine it.
This is not a completed theory. It is one Lego block of understanding and an invitation to look again at the relationship between responsibility, consciousness, society and the human body.
