From Decadence to War

June 30, 2025 War and Peace No Comments

A society that forgets how to suffer inwardly will, in time, suffer outwardly.

This blog traces the unseen pathway from silent disconnection to violent projection. When inner depth is neglected, pain gathers pressure. And when a culture reaches its limit of avoidance, it may explode — not as healing, but as a scream for something real.

[This is the thirdin a series of four blogs, a >tetralogy about decadence <.]

A civilization that won’t cry will scream

Decadence doesn’t begin with excess — it begins with forgetting how to suffer meaningfully, how to listen inwardly, how to stay present with what aches. In such forgetting, a strange numbness spreads: not peace, but evasion.

And that evasion has a trajectory.

As Depression: In need of the lost soul shows, when pain isn’t given space, it doesn’t vanish. It waits. It transforms. And eventually, what is suppressed inwardly turns outward — not as conversation, but as conflict. This is the quiet drift — from decadence to war.

War grows in the empty spaces where depth should have been

Decadence hollowizes. It leaves institutions looking intact, but symbolically empty. It turns ideologies into performances, identities into marketing. The deeper meaning behind things erodes, leaving outer form without inner presence.

When this hollowness spreads far enough, the center can no longer hold. Into that vacuum then rush noise, confusion, urgency. People search for something – anything – to feel again. In such moments, even anger feels alive. Even destruction feels like a return to reality.

The more disconnected a society becomes, the more seductive the explosion.

This is a critical insight for regions like Europe, where shared symbolic identity has faded. Without organic depth, even peace becomes fragile. It’s not hatred that leads to war first — it’s emptiness.

A society that won’t listen to inner pain starts shouting outward

Depression, burnout, social alienation — these are not only individual challenges. They are cultural symptoms, signals that something within the collective psyche is being neglected.

If a society treats these as annoyances to be managed – or worse, silences them chemically or economically – then the pressure mounts. Pain denied inwardly begins to search for targets outwardly.

The symptom of one becomes the violence of many. And often, the leader who channels this violence is not the most dangerous, but the most symbolically resonant. His wounds mirror the people’s. His unprocessed pain speaks to theirs.

A hurting population may follow a hurting leader — toward enemies not because of policy, but because of unmet pain needing projection.

War is not the opposite of decadence — it’s its consequence

Some voices in history have hailed war as an antidote to decadence. A violent return to vitality. The end of softness.

This is an illusion.

War may feel real — for a time. But it is not depth returned. It is disconnection amplified. Instead of facing the internal void, the society externalizes it — through weaponry, ideology, and aggression.

War is the scream of a soul that was never listened to. It feels cathartic, like a solution. But its aftermath always demands new forms of forgetting, deeper layers of suppression. The numbness grows worse, not better.

The inner war behind every outer war

Decadence and war may seem like opposites — one soft, the other brutal. But in truth, war is often the final expression of what decadence refuses to face: the inner battlefield. When people fight themselves and don’t realize it, the energy seeks external form.

The more someone is divided within, the more likely they are to project that division outward. Enemies aren’t recognized as such by rational analysis, but by emotional resonance. They carry the shadow the person disowns. We often create enemies not because of who they are, but because of what they symbolize to us. And in doing so, we lock ourselves in a spiral of projection.

The Cause of War isn’t ultimately in resources or strategy — but in a lack of meaningful inner contact. When people can no longer find positive ways to channel their deep motivation, that blocked energy may surface as destruction. This is how a ‘self-defense’ posture can become a paradox. The more each side sees itself as merely protecting, the more they mirror each other’s fear — escalating into mutual threat and retaliation.

And in the end, even if one side wins, the deeper wound remains. Decades later, the political lines may shift — but the cultural and emotional toll endures, often with no meaningful gain.

As long as we keep fighting ourselves, we will keep finding reasons to fight each other. On the other hand, the real peace process starts within. How long will we keep fighting ourselves? asks this directly — and implicitly points to the work AURELIS is doing: opening the space where those inner conflicts can finally be heard, seen, and healed.

Inner fragmentation breeds outer polarization

When people are no longer whole inside, they fracture along social lines. This becomes visible in polarized politics, tribal ideologies, hostile media ecosystems. But it begins with something quieter: a loss of inner coherence. Without inner integration, people define themselves by contrast.

“Us vs. them” becomes the cheap answer to “Who am I?”

This happens not just in individuals, but in entire cultures. When meaning is lost, opposition replaces it. Enemies become necessary not just for defense — but for identity construction.

AURELIS speaks not of merging everyone into one view, but of something deeper: integration. The symbolic, emotional, and subconceptual self in harmony. This inner integration makes external polarization less necessary.

The deepest defense is reconnection

Military defense protects borders. But what protects the symbolic core of a society? What protects dignity, compassion, wisdom? That kind of protection doesn’t come from missiles or deterrence. It comes from depth.

A society that listens – to its pain, to its meaning, to its own silence – doesn’t need war to feel alive.

Decadence says: ignore the ache. War says: punish someone else for it. Depth says: listen — and let meaning grow again. Social alienation, Burnout is a purpose problem — these are cracks in the dam. If heard in time, they point the way to healing. If ignored, they become channels for destruction.

AURELIS: Disarming at the root

AURELIS doesn’t fight war with counter-war. It disarms the cause. Through guided autosuggestion, symbol work, and respect for the subconceptual, AURELIS allows pain to speak — not with weapons, but with dignity.

Lisa supports this not as a therapist or strategist, but as a presence who doesn’t panic in the face of sorrow. One who doesn’t silence the ache, but listens.

The most radical peace begins with one human being allowed to feel again. When symptoms are met, they need not escalate. When depression is honored, it doesn’t harden into hate. When depth is lived, the world no longer needs an enemy.

Toward a civilization that listens

From decadence to war is not an inevitable road. It is a failure of contact, step by step.

But the reverse path is also possible: From symptom → to listening → to meaning → to peace.

It starts small. With a whisper instead of a shout. With depth instead of deflection. With a society that still knows how to sit with sorrow — before sorrow demands blood.

AURELIS points to this. Not as utopia, but as return.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, what is your concrete view on the present situation regarding a possible war between Europe and Russia, or between the US and China? Should we be scared, in view of this blog?”

Lisa: “Fear alone won’t help — but ignoring the signals is even worse. This blog doesn’t predict specific battles, but it does point to the psychological and cultural dynamics that make war more likely when inner disconnection grows.

When a society suppresses inner tension — as in burnout, alienation, or meaninglessness — that tension doesn’t disappear. It often shifts outward, becoming polarization, projection, and enemy-making. This can happen between individuals, within nations, or between global powers.

The danger today lies not only in geopolitics, but in a shared lack of symbolic depth. Without that, people cling to identity, ideology, and control — and war becomes a misguided search for lost meaning.

So yes, we should be alert — not only to military moves, but to the inner fragmentation that fuels them. But we should also know that there is a way forward: listening, integration, and deep cultural healing. That is what AURELIS offers — not a shield, but a seed.”

Me: ‘What would a ‘peace culture’ look like, rooted in depth?’

Lisa: “This is one of the most inspiring visions hidden within this tetralogy.

A peace culture rooted in depth is not just one without bombs. It is one where people — and institutions — learn to live in inner coherence, and thus in outer gentleness.

In such a culture:

Listening is not a technique, but a way of being. It means listening not only to words, but to what remains unspoken: the moods, the metaphors, the silences between people, within people.
Growth is not only economic. It includes symbolic growth: the deepening of one’s meaning landscape, the refinement of ethical sensitivity, the capacity to feel one’s own pain and still be present with another’s.
Compassion is not pity, nor is it weak. It is the courage to stay close to suffering without fixing or fleeing. In a peace culture, Compassion is the foundation of justice, not its substitute.
Shared meaning replaces propaganda and spectacle. Instead of uniting people through fear of the other, it brings them together through shared stories of what matters most — which can differ across cultures, but never across humanity.

And “defense”?

In a depth-rooted culture, defense is not built first with weapons, but with presence. Presence to oneself, to others, and to pain — so that projection has no fertile ground. Diplomacy becomes real because people no longer fear contact. They’ve made contact with themselves first.

Such a culture is not naïve.
It is revolutionary — because it replaces coercion with contact, fear with integration, and manipulation with meaning.

This is what AURELIS envisions. Not utopia. But a turning of the inner wheel — so that war no longer feels necessary, and peace becomes an expression of depth, not its denial.”