Tag: Johan Galtung

Global Projections of Deep-Rooted U.S. Pathologies (1996) | Johan Galtung | NotebookLM

This report presents a psycho-political analysis of United States foreign policy, positing that U.S. international behavior is driven by a “collective subconscious” rather than purely rational calculation. Drawing on the “Chosenness-Myths-Traumas” (CMT) and “Dichotomy-Manicheism-Armageddon” (DMA) syndromes, the text argues that deep-seated cultural archetypes compel the U.S. toward recurrent violence and a rejection of nonviolent alternatives. Through the examination of historical case studies — including the atomic bombings of Japan, the Cold War, and interventions in Latin America and the Middle East — the author illustrates how these pathologies manifest as a “repetition compulsion.” The report concludes with a prognosis of potential imperial decline if these syndromes remain unaddressed and offers a “therapy” focused on bringing national narratives to light, disarmament, and the strengthening of global civil society.

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The Rupture: Diagnostic Lessons from the Global Frontline | NotebookLM

This Deep DIve podcast explores a 2026 global “rupture” where the established international order has fractured, leading to a clash between technocratic realism and nationalist populism. It contrasts Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s strategy of “variable geometry” and shifting alliances with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “fire and brimstone” call for industrial restoration and civilizational defense. To diagnose these shifts, the text applies Johan Galtung’s CMT syndrome, which analyzes how myths and trauma drive aggressive foreign policy, and John McMurtry’s philosophy regarding the “cancer stage of capitalism.” McMurtry argues that current systems prioritize a “money sequence” of endless accumulation over a “life sequence” that sustains the biosphere and social commons. Ultimately, the overview questions whether these competing political leaders are solving global crises or merely serving as symptoms of a systemic pathology that ignores ecological reality. The discussion concludes by highlighting the tension between building national fortresses and protecting the civil commons essential for collective survival.

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Cultural Violence and the War-State Paradigm – Diagnosing and Transforming Recurrent U.S. Pathologies (2024–2025) | ChatGPT-5 & NotebookLM

This white paper synthesizes Johan Galtung’s concept of cultural violence and his archetypal diagnosis of U.S. foreign policy pathologies with John McMurtry’s analysis of the war-state paradigm. It applies this integrated framework to four contemporary cases — Gaza and the ICJ genocide proceedings, the Red Sea crisis, NATO expansion in the Ukraine war, and U.S.–China technology geopolitics (CHIPS/AI).

Findings demonstrate that the patterns identified by Galtung and McMurtry are repeating: myths of chosenness, Manichean binaries, and projection mechanisms legitimize escalation; the war-state’s closed circuit of necessity drives opposition into annihilation; structural lock-ins of the arms economy and alliances perpetuate militarization; and cultural rituals and necessity narratives obscure alternatives.

The risks are multi-dimensional: erosion of humanitarian law, escalation spirals, arms-driven inflation, democratic erosion, and cultural normalization of annihilation. Yet history shows that cultural codes can shift, arms races can be interrupted, and civil commons can be rebuilt.

We conclude with a layered package of therapies: delegitimizing cultural violence through education and symbolic reform; breaking the war-state’s lock-ins with diplomacy-first triggers, legal guardrails, and budget rebalancing; and reconstructing the civil commons as the basis of life-serving security.

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From Conviction to Coherence: Regenerative Peace Beyond Ethnic Blame | ChatGPT4o

This white paper explores Johan Galtung’s seminal principle that it is both possible and necessary to oppose destructive ideologies — such as fascism, imperialism, or colonialism — without collapsing into prejudice against the peoples or cultures associated with them. Drawing from Galtung’s “convictions for peace,” the paper articulates a regenerative coherence framework that integrates symbolic literacy, life-value ethics, somatic awareness, and systemic analysis. By examining cases where critique has been misinterpreted as cultural or ethnic antagonism, the paper offers a refined grammar of regenerative opposition that allows for principled resistance to injustice without reinforcing cycles of blame or fragmentation.

Through symbolic recursion, developmental grammar (TATi), and somatic-systems coherence, the paper proposes a regenerative approach to peacebuilding. This includes educational reform, diplomatic training, intercultural dialogue, and institutional design grounded in discernment, compassion, and structural clarity. The aim is to reframe peace not as pacification, but as an active, patterned process of restoring coherence across cultural, systemic, and symbolic domains. In doing so, it affirms the sacred dignity of all peoples while confronting the structures that undermine collective flourishing.

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TRANSCEND – Galtung Track Record on Conflict Solution/Mediation: 1958-2018


The TRANSCEND Method uses dialogues with all parties to identify their goals, testing their legitimacy, and for visions of a new social reality meeting legitimate goals. Diagnoses focus on conflict and trauma, prognoses without or with intervention, therapy on visions of solution and conciliation; proposed, propagated and realized.

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BACK TO THE ORIGINS: ON CHRISTIAN AND BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY by Johan Galtung (1986)

Back to the origins, that sounds like a program. And in this introductory effort to explore relations between methodology, epistemology and cosmology this program will be pursued taking the word “origin” in two senses. Religion has a way of trying to comprehend the nature of the universe, perhaps not the very origin in doing so, but certainly shaping and being shaped by people’s minds much before anything called explicit and systematic science entered the arena. And then there is “origin” in the second sense: the origin of the universe, how did it all start?

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ON THE CAUSES OF WAR AND ITS ABOLITION | Johan Galtung (2007)

Causality is, as often said, not a law but the form of a law; a discourse used to bring some understanding to a chaotic world. In that discourse the two words “cause” (C) and “effect” (E) are subject to rules of speech: E cannot precede C in time. And the connective relating them, an arrow, like C–>E, translated as “C causes/leads to/is followed by E”, or some synonyms, is two-way.

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The Cocoyoc Declaration (1974) | Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service | International Organisation | Le Monde diplomatique

October 8-12, 1974 a symposium on “Patterns of Resource Use, Environment and Development Strategies” was convened in Cocoyoc, Mexico by the directors of United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Maurice Strong and Gamani Corea. The rapporteurs were Barbara Ward for resource use and the environment and Johan Galtung for development strategies. That part of THE COCOYOC DECLARATION—adopted by the participants–is reproduced below, with a certain sadness: it is as valid today, more than 30 years later. The two directors received a three feet long cable, from the US State Department, rejecting the declaration entirely. Signed by: Henry Kissinger.

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A MUST WATCH! The End-Game-Plan of our Social Cancer Stem-Cells Revealed! / The Need for a Peace-Keeping Life-Valuing Media Alternative as a Counterbalance to this Social Cancer!

Below are two emails I penned yesterday and disseminated which I am reproducing here (with minor spelling and grammatical corrections). Dear Colleagues: It is fitting that this be shared as I have been following Prof Werner’s work over several years and there is life-value consilience between McMurtry’s (LVOA), Galtung’s (Peace Studies), Eisler’s (Cultural Transformation Theory),… Read More