Swedes demonstrate against Russian invasion in Ukraine | Photo by Frankie Fouganthin via Wikimedia Creative Commons
Life and this world we live in is full of trauma, but there is also enough love and goodwill in humanity to mitigate its ill effects.
The human impulses for conflict and war have been a scourge since man walked the earth. It is a human imperative in the fight for survival. The spoils of war and the trauma they spawn have become part of the human condition. When we turn the TV on and read the headlines in newspapers, it’s hard not to notice that conflict of one sort or another is happening around the world.
In this highly interconnected world, the trauma of one is the trauma of many as we soak our senses with the horrific images unfolding before our eyes and taking place remotely. Something inside us is triggered, and depending on our personal histories, we experience varying levels of negative emotions from anxiety, depression, fear to anger, or all of the above. Some resort to denial or a flight from reality through chemical highs or other forms of escape.
Since conflict is prevalent and stretches far back in human history, assuming different forms, such as colonial subjugations, slavery, sexual discriminations, religious persecutions, crusades, jihads, genocides, holocausts, ethnic cleansings, various wars, and famously (or infamously) the two world wars, our forebears and our recent ancestors including our parents have suffered from different forms of trauma directly or indirectly. They are the vectors of transmission of the residual results of historical trauma that are passed from generation to generation through epigenetics and the socialization process.
“Wars and conflicts, big or small, that we initiate or the drive to amass wealth and other possessions is a reflection of our inner wars between our fragmented selves.”
It’s easy to dismiss the notion that historical trauma can possibly affect our present lives when they are far removed from the present. However, traumatic events have far-reaching consequences that span generations, as I have already said. Let’s not forget that trauma also happens in our everyday lives, such as getting into an accident, being a victim of an assault or abuse, abandonment, experiencing natural or man-made calamities, losing a loved one, etc. One doesn’t have to be the direct victim of trauma to suffer its ill effects. Exposure to a traumatic event, directly or indirectly, has similar negative consequences, especially when it occurs repeatedly.
Indeed, trauma is pervasive; and its adverse effects are perpetuated in the way they mold our brains via the inherited genes from our parents and our parents from theirs, extending back to the remote past of our ancestors. Our external environment and life experiences act upon, shape, and reshape these potentialities. The most crucial of which are early experiences with parents or caregivers and their ability or inability to provide care and facilitate reciprocal attachment between them and the newborn. Out of these early experiences, the child is provided with important survival tools to navigate his constantly evolving physical, social, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual environment.
Our primal survival impulses are power-oriented, designed to dominate our environment. The quality of our early attachment and relationship with our caregiver, particularly when characterized by warmth, affection, empathy, and a sense of security, enhances our humanity moderates the baser impulses for power and domination. These early experiences set the stage for the child’s emotional self-regulation cognitive, and social skills. Our ability to empathize with other humans and cope adequately with the vicissitudes of life is set early in life.
Wars and conflicts, big or small that we initiate or the drive to amass wealth and other possessions, reflect our inner wars between our fragmented selves. Symbolically, it’s an external manifestation of a desire to achieve inner cohesion of broken, incomplete, or missing.
“Human suffering is rooted in our collective trauma. Like Lord Jesus, the Buddha did not stop in only explaining human suffering, both also preached the overcoming of it through love and compassion.”
Trauma, when unmitigated, is self-perpetuating. We see how people who are victims of abuse become abusers themselves or continue to re-enact the same abusive situation again and again in a futile hope of achieving a resolution to the brokenness of their lives.
We live in a world, a space now inter-connected like never before, rife with the simmering effects of accumulated trauma over the centuries. This tinder box continues to explode in different corners of the world and now in Ukraine. The naked, cold-bloodedness of unleashing weapons of war on a peaceful country and its citizens spells unimaginable terror, adding to the already saddled world from the trauma of death and devastation from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The outpouring of sympathy to the beleaguered Ukrainians is not lost in the clouds of war. While the rest of the world watches helplessly, in the same breath, we can’t help but feel that we are one and that we live in the same world soaked with pain and suffering.
The Lord Buddha showed his deep understanding of human nature and the human condition when he proclaimed the Four Noble Truths as follows: the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. Human suffering is rooted in our collective trauma. Like Lord Jesus, the Buddha did not stop only explaining human suffering. Both also preached the overcoming of it through love and compassion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Fernando B. Perfas is an addiction specialist who has written several books and articles on the subject. He currently provides training and consulting services to various government and non-government drug treatment agencies regarding drug treatment and prevention approaches. He can be reached at fbperfas@gmail.com.
