Ideological beliefs can always divide other human beings and nations into good and bad. Believers in ideologies imagine that everything within the borders of their ideology is entirely light, while everything outside those borders is entirely dark. Ultimately, by projecting their own inner shadow onto the Other and imagining the Other to be emptied of light and humanity, they make it easier to accept—and even to regard as necessary—the taking away of that person’s right to life. In this way, believers in ideologies can create absolute mental borders between “us” and “others,” sow the seeds of destruction and crime, and still wait for the fruits of salvation.

They do not even need to accept responsibility for projecting their own darkness outward. They imagine that by believing in something they regard as good, they themselves have become good human beings made of light. This becomes the starting point for seeking darkness in the external world instead of searching for it in the labyrinth of one’s own soul.

All the wars of the world begin from this blindness, and every battle left unfinished in the inner world inevitably becomes a cruel and violent war in the world outside.

Aydin Areta