Articles by Robert J. Burrowes
We found 251 results.
Legacy of War
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Apr 2015
Sometimes when we reflect on war, we talk about sacrifice for a good cause. Other times, we talk about the cost, in lives or liberties lost. Occasionally, we talk about the horror. Sometimes we talk about the gains, nationally or internationally, for freedom and democracy. And rarely, we analyse the causes of war and lament that one day we might end it.
→ read full articleNonviolence Charter: Progress Report 6 (Apr 2015)
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D., Anita McKone and Anahata Giri – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Apr 2015
20 Apr 2015 – Here is the latest six-monthly report on progress in relation to ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and a sample of news about, and reports of forthcoming events by, Charter signatories.
→ read full articleSaving Passengers of the Good Ship Titan… Earth
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Apr 2015
So what can we learn from the sinking of the Titanic and its huge death toll that can help us to avert sinking the Good Ship Earth and killing off most, if not all, humans and many other species besides? Let me consider each item above in turn.
→ read full articleVykom: Strategic Nonviolent Action against Untouchability – A Review
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Mar 2015
King is well qualified to undertake this study of the previously neglected Vykom satyagraha. She participated in the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr and has been a prominent scholar in the field of nonviolence ever since. Moreover, she is thorough, as the extensive footnotes in her book illustrate.
→ read full articleViolence against Women: Why We Keep Getting it Wrong
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Mar 2015
So let me briefly explain the fundamental cause of violence in our world, including the cause of violence against women, and invite you to do something very personal and effective about it.
→ read full article(Italiano) Perché è inevitabile l’estinzione del genere umano a breve termine
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2015
L’espressione “estinzione umana a breve termine” è relativamente recente nella letteratura scientifica, ma a differenza di altre realtà che le ‘élite’ nazionali e i canali d’informazione dominanti sono riusciti a soffocare, questa continuerà a filtrare finché non inizierete a sentirla regolarmente. Perché?
→ read full articleWhy Do We Fear Challenging Authority?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2015
I want to ask you three questions: Are you scared to make your own judgment (irrespective of the number of others, including experts, who make a similar judgment)? Are you scared to be labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’ if you believe something contrary to the official (that is, the elite) narrative? And why?
→ read full articleTerrorism: Ultimate Weapon of the Global Elite
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Feb 2015
The usual definition of a ‘terrorist’ is simple: a person who uses violence in the pursuit of a political objective. By this definition, the two major categories of terrorist are those political leaders who perpetrate state terror by attacking other countries (ranging from launching a war, perhaps following a false flag operation, to conducting a drone strike).
→ read full articleWhy Do We Fear Love?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Feb 2015
Why do human beings fear love? That is, why do we fear loving ourselves and others, and why do we fear being fully loved ourselves? Where does obedience fit into all of this? It doesn’t. Those who require obedience are frightened. And fear is the opposite of love. If you want someone to do what you want, you are frightened, not loving.
→ read full articleThe Importance of Being Angry
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jan 2015
If we want obedient and hardworking students, reliable and pliant employees/soldiers and submissive law-abiding citizens, then we must terrorize people out of being angry. Social control is not easy with people who are powerful and you need your anger to be powerful.
→ read full articleWhy is Near Term Human Extinction Inevitable?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
The expression ‘near term human extinction’ is relatively new in the scientific literature but, unlike other truths that have been successfully suppressed by national elites and their corporate media, this one will keep filtering out until you start to hear the expression routinely. Why?
→ read full articleNonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Dec 2014
I would like to identify ways in which the risk of police or military personnel using illegal and violent tactics can be minimized and, in many cases, thwarted, wherever in the world the nonviolent action takes place. If we are going to take the necessary risks to save our world, we might as well do it strategically.
→ read full articleThe Psychology of Victimhood: Obama, Cameron, Netanyahu, Clinton, Kissinger
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Nov 2014
All children are victims of chronic violence and while a rare individual survives this violence, most acquire a victim status that leaves them psychologically crippled for life, doing a lifetime of soul-destroying work that is far removed from any pursuit that might be described as ‘Self-realizing’.
→ read full articleViolence against Children: UN Gets it Wrong
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
The United Nations has just issued a report, ‘Why Children’s Protection from Violence should be at the Heart of the Post-2015 Development Agenda.’ This is a worthy ideal. Unfortunately, the UN Report does not identify the fundamental cause of violence. Given that human violence now has us on the brink of precipitating our own extinction, it is time we faced the truth and responded meaningfully to it.
→ read full articleUnderstanding and Defeating Resurgent Fascism
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Oct 2014
As fascism is being intruded more widely and deeply into key areas of world politics, it is important to identify this trend, to explain the psychology of fascism and to nominate key elements of any strategy to defeat it.
→ read full articleNonviolence Charter: Progress Report 5 (Oct 2014)
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D., Anita McKone and Anahata Giri – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Oct 2014
Here is the latest six-monthly report on progress in relation to ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and a sample of news about, and reports of forthcoming events by, Charter signatories.
→ read full articleCreating a World Culture That Is Nonviolent
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Oct 2014
As we celebrate Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday on 2 October, the International Day of Nonviolence, we have the chance to reflect on our progress in creating a nonviolent world. Culture is not just something we inherit; it is something we create. It can be violent or nonviolent. What sort of culture do you create? Happy birthday Bapu. We are trying!
→ read full articleTackling the Climate Catastrophe Strategically
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Sep 2014
If you like to ask or beg your oppressor to go easy on you, then you do not need to read this article. And if you like to do what makes you feel good at the time, irrespective of its strategic impact, then this article is not for you either. My interest in tackling violence has always been to take action that leaves the perpetrator powerless (but, hopefully, a convert too).
→ read full articleDefeating the Violence of Psychiatry
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Sep 2014
As the movement to abolish psychiatry continues to gather momentum it is worth reviewing its delusional foundation, the history of its violence and its function as a weapon of elite social control. According to research, in the USA ‘prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer’ and it ‘is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good’.
→ read full articleNisteling: The Art of Deep Listening
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Sep 2014
I believe that this is the essential foundation step in any strategy to end human violence (in all of its manifestations).
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to My Palestinian Friends
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Aug 2014
I wish to acknowledge the sensitivity of some Palestinians to suggestions from those of us who are only Palestinian in the sense that ‘We are all Palestinian’. I did not choose my nationality. I did choose to study, exhaustively, strategic theory and nonviolent strategy so that I could share them with those who might be interested. I have no interest in doing more than offering this suggestion and my help.
→ read full articleHow Can We Destroy Love?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Aug 2014
What is love? In essence, love is a feeling. It is not something you experience as a thought, although a thought might arise from the feeling… Self-love is true love. The individual who does not truly love her/himself cannot love another.
→ read full articleElite Insanity on Display in Ukraine
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jul 2014
There are some standard and frequently repeated dysfunctional behaviours on display here with the usual unconscious emotional drivers of this behaviour hidden from view. Let us then consider some obvious aspects of the conflict and analyse them from a psychological perspective.
→ read full articleThe Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jul 2014
Whether or not activists achieve their political objective is strategically irrelevant. This is because an effective nonviolent action is designed to achieve its strategic goal, irrespective of the response of opponents or the authorities to the political objective of the action. Whether or not activists achieve their strategic goal, however, is always strategically determinative.
→ read full articleWhy Are Most Human Beings So Powerless?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jul 2014
Unless someone lives in a cave secluded from all news, the evidence that human beings are in deep trouble – with violence in its many forms intruding on all aspects of our lives and threatening our very existence – is readily available.
→ read full articleThe Great Human Delusion: All Parents Love Their Children
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jul 2014
Evolution’s great trick was to connect reproduction with intense but transitory sexual pleasure, not love. Many children are conceived outside the loving long-term relationship necessary to nurture a child and even those children who are conceived within this framework will routinely suffer parental violence.
→ read full articleThe Journey to Self-Awareness
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jun 2014
What causes this damage? Terror. And what makes a mind react with terror thus disrupting all other functions simultaneously? Violence. And particularly the unrelenting onslaught of ‘invisible’ violence and ‘utterly invisible’ violence inflicted on children throughout their childhood.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Cecily McMillan
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 May 2014
It is apparent that our strategy to remake society in accord with principles of justice and love must include recognition of the fact that the legal system is part of what must be removed. More sophisticated methods for dealing with conflict and violence – ranging from listening and needs-based processes to truth and reconciliation commissions as well as nonviolent action – have long existed.
→ read full articleHuman Intelligence or Human Awareness?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 May 2014
The Self-aware human being is intelligent because their mind is integrated. In contrast, an ‘intelligent’ individual who is unSelf-aware, because their mind is disintegrated, might engage in activities that are destructive of our species and the planet. I am sure that you can think of many examples.
→ read full articleHuman Emotions: Genetically Programmed or Socially Learned?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 May 2014
It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that each human being has a more or less identical range of emotions. This is not so. The outcome for each individual is based on the unique genetic potential of that individual and, more importantly, the social terrorisation experience of that individual within its particular culture, community and family.
→ read full articleForgiveness is Dysfunctional
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Apr 2014
Certain religious traditions, including Christianity, emphasise the importance of forgiveness. I want to explain why forgiveness is misconceived and, therefore, a bad idea. And why there are important psychological reasons for this.
→ read full articleThe Struggle for Humanity
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Apr 2014
Insanity is widely understood to refer to a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behaviour or social interaction; it describes someone who is considered to be seriously mentally ill. And this is an accurate description of the global elite and those who serve it whether they be in political, business, legal, psychiatric, corporate media, academic or other circles.
→ read full articleWhat Do Children Need?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Mar 2014
Apart from having its physical needs met, the primary needs of children are for stimulus and attention. The most important form of attention that anyone, including a child, requires is listening. Listening, in this context, has a precise meaning and it is invariably done extremely badly, particularly by parents in relation to their own children.
→ read full articleWhy Do We Fear the Truth?
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Feb 2014
The bottom line is this: Can you still hear your inner voice? And do you, like Gandhi, have the courage to follow it ‘whatever the consequences’?
→ read full articleThe Global Elite is Insane
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2014
As anyone who pays even the slightest realistic attention to the global elite already knows, the elite’s efforts to maximise its political and economic clout, and hence its wealth, at the expense of everyone else and the Earth itself, are carefully crafted. And this is not going to change on our recommendation or because we talk to them, or even because we listen to them. Moreover, the reason is simple. The global elite is insane. And it is incredibly violent.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Soldiers with ‘Mental Health’ Issues
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2014
Are you a soldier or veteran who is supposed to have a ‘mental health’ issue such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia or PTSD? If you are, then I have some suggestions for you to consider.
→ read full articleFundamentalism: A Psychological Problem
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2014
While religious fundamentalism is recognisable to most people, fundamentalism has many non-religious manifestations as well. These are widespread, even if they often occur in less readily identifiable ways.
→ read full articleDefeating the Violence in Our Food and Medicine
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2013
Apart from exposing the medical industry, there has been much effort to expose the way in which the pharmaceutical and agribusiness food industries (particularly the meat industry) have ensured that little in the way of health-enhancing advice and treatment is available to patients who risk all by subjecting themselves to a ‘doctor’.
→ read full articleLobbying Elites: The Fast Track to Extinction
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2013
The evidence teaches us that elites want us to lobby (or vote for) them so that they can ignore us, and that mobilizations of people in one place provide easy targets for repression. So we need to develop strategies that primarily allow us to organise collectively in small local groups, to work with people whose values we share and to minimize the opportunities for military and police repression.
→ read full articleWhy Don’t We Try to Understand and End Human Violence?
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2013
Most of us want to use violence when it suits us and to ‘get away with it’ when we do. This is why most of us find ways to inflict our violence in socially legitimized ways or we do it in relative secrecy. Apart from inflicting violence on our own children and the natural environment, society has created whole sectors of activity in which ‘legitimized violence’ can be inflicted.
→ read full articleMy Promise to Children
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2013
Every day, human adults kill 35,000 of our children. We kill them in wars. We kill them with drones. We kill them in our homes. We also kill children in vast numbers by starving them to death in Africa, Asia and Central/South America because we use military violence to maintain an ‘economic’ system that allocates resources for military weapons, as well as corporate profits for the wealthy, instead of resources for living.
→ read full articleThe Struggle for Meaning in a World of Violence
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2013
What is the measure of a human being? Is it their wealth? Their wisdom? Their spirituality? Is it something that can be measured from the outside? What if it is something else altogether?
→ read full articleHuman Violence: Understanding it. Ending it.
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2013
What is violence? Let me define this phenomenon more precisely so that we might tackle it more effectively. It is social interference in the genetically programmed feelings, thoughts, sensing and/or behavior of another organism. It might be inflicted by an individual or an institution.
→ read full articleLife on the Line: Can Humanity Survive?
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2013
As we approach the International Day of Nonviolence on 2 October, which recognizes Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, one challenge we face is to celebrate his life in a way that Gandhi himself would have found meaningful.
→ read full articlePsychoanalysing Psychiatrists and Psychologists Who Torture
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Sep 2013
Moreover, in a recent article, ‘Hawaiian Mind Games: American Psychological Association Fiddles While Psychology Burns,’ Roy Eidelson and Stephen Soldz again expose the complicity of US psychologists in researching, designing, implementing, supervising and providing ethical cover for torture inflicted by the CIA and the US military on ‘national security’ prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere.
→ read full articleThe Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2013
While diverse but eminent historical figures such as Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas K. Gandhi all wrote critiques exposing the injustice and violence of legal systems, the delusion that the law is a neutral agency that delivers justice still widely prevails.
→ read full articleDo We Want School or Education?
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
The tragic reality of human life is that few people value the awesome power of the individual Self with an integrated mind (that is, a mind in which memory, thoughts, feelings, sensing, conscience and other functions work together in an integrated way) because this individual will be decisive in choosing life-enhancing behavioural options (including those at variance with social laws and norms) and will fearlessly resist all efforts to control it or coerce it with violence.
→ read full articleThe Destruction of Barack Obama
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
Some people have been surprised or disappointed by certain decisions of President Barack Obama. His war-making, his use of illegal drone strikes, his failure to close Guantanamo, his failure to genuinely help those ordinary Americans who voted him into office, and even his pursuit of whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have all raised concerns among those with the audacity to hope that he would be different.
→ read full articlePeople Who Pretend to be Your Friend: Collaborators and Traitors
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2013
One version of this occurs when collaborators justify their collaboration with perpetrators of violence in terms of an ‘obligation to obey’, although many collaborators will characterise their obedience as ‘loyalty’, ‘support’ or ‘helpfulness’ to mask the fear driving their submissive behaviour.
→ read full articleWhy Do People Lie? And Why Do Other People Believe Them?
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2013
The purpose of fear is to suppress awareness of the truth. People always lie for the same reason: fear. But the precise fear that makes a person lie in one circumstance might be different from the fear that makes them lie in another.
→ read full articleThe Race to End Violence before We End Life
Robert J. Burrowes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2013
Can we take meaningful action to prevent our own extinction without ending human violence first? If you think it is time to end violence before we end life, you can join this movement. You can read and, if you wish, sign the pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ online at http://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com/
→ read full article