CEASEFIRE!

This is a true story! On one level, this is an autobiography about myself and three generations of my family's active involvement in war, terrorism, political, and social conflict. On another level, it is about the tragic emotional and psychological consequences that my family and I have endured as a result.

In 2009, as an Australian academic with expertise in global terrorism and a one-time aspiring federal politician, I fled to France to try to deal with clinical depression, and associated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I was fleeing the nightmare of a destroyed career and a shattered family. As I tried to battle the 'Black Dog' of depression, suicide was a very real option for me. But first, I decided to write a book about my research and involvement with Muslim 'terrorists' and revolutionary guerrilla groups in the Philippines. It was a way of combating a public media smear campaign that destroyed my professional and private life. But to do this, I needed to retrace both my own and my family's earlier experiences with conflicts elsewhere, which influenced me to choose such research. In so doing, I discovered new realities about the psychological condition I was battling and how it impacted on, and haunted, my own extended family over generations, and all due to war and social conflict with horrific human consequences.

Ultimately, I conclude I'm certainly not alone in my struggle. I'm merely another casualty of a brutal, primeval human phenomenon, which continually infects the psychology of the next generation. It is the phenomenon of the subconscious human struggle for the survival of the fittest. Now with a greater understanding of my condition, I have, at least so far, managed a 'stand-off' with the Black Dog. I realise it wasn't spawned by any particular condition of my own, but rather the very nature of human society. So far, society still fails to take responsibility for spawning such a condition and instead still promotes the current dysfunctional and indeed deadly nature of what we consider as 'being'. If we do not challenge and change our notion of what it is to 'be': then forget the Koreas, ISIS, nuclear warfare, etc., humankind will self-destruct from within.

How did I come to this realisation? It all played out in a small village called Ouroux En Morvan, in France.

Dr Ivan Molloy