Projection 2

Violence and fighting is often about projections rather than realities. Vietnam and Afghanistan are two examples.
The Vietnam war was an effect of the projection of fear. The socialist North Vietnam was feared to defeat South Vietnam and start a domino process making the other countries in the region communist dictatorships.
The war was long, intense and meaningless. After the war, Vietnam has turned into an Asian liberal economy.
The situation in Afghanistan is much the same as it was in Vietnam. So there is hope.
The present war is caused by a projection of fear. It is a mirage, with many casualties. The real problem is to find a social order in Afghanistan and the whole region including Pakistan.
A war is likely to create new tensions, distrust and aversion between families and regions in Afghanistan.
At the same time, there is a profound will to have peace and order after decades of conflict.
The primary aim of any foreign "friendly" military campaign is to be able to leave the country. In Vietnam, the last foreign troops left rather hastily. In Afghanistan the withdrawal could be planned and conducted in a more systematic way.

Self made

As we have no self, we can be self made...
If we had a given self we could not change. As we have no given self we can change. When we have changed we can call this new situation self made - we made it ourselves.
The argument is something like this:
The personality we have now is decided by our body and mind. Mind is most important. It contains our experiences, our knowledge and our hopes for the future.
According to Buddhism there is nothing more. This is different from our spontaneous feeling and from most religions, which claim there is a self or soul which is the supervisor of all we do.
If our personality is nothing more than the effect of our present knowledge we might as well improve our knowledge and thus get a better self.
To change personality is not easy. It is not a superficial thing. But it can be done.