WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin
- MINE FART QUOTING HITLER OUT OF CONTEXT -
Every soul runs its own trip, right? Subject to Karma? Yours, mine, to each their own: managed more or less deftly until its fatal end nobody wants? Hitler and his henchmen ran theirs, too. Some new tyrant, lurching downtown like Godzilla, could smash ours like a docked yacht in a hurricane. History has warned us.
Learners tap into everything known. That makes them smarter. Smarter people, fewer mistakes; fewer mistakes, less pain; less human pain, greater productivity. Rapid investment for limitless profit. Can we call on enough Humanity and Duty, per Mencius, to see this through? Do we have guts enough to attempt it?
Have we become too cagey for our own good? Have we found it safer to believe in no new ideology, whatever the cost? Fanaticophobia: what a sorry habit! “The opposite of illusions is not disillusion but the truth.” A Course in Miracles, Foundation for Inner Peace, p. 438.
So here’s my agenda. First things first! World peace first!
Abog in denial, I shout this from the rooftops, so far left unheard.
You may have noticed four phenomena merging for the first time in history.
1) The Corona virus has turned all of us into life-or-death allies against a common enemy. For the first time in history, we are waging total war on the same side and not against each other.
2) We have global communication networks. Our alien and alienating nation-states are merging into One People and One World. “Me Tarzan. Me tie message to Internet vine, throw to you. Catch!”
3) Regardless of ethnicity, nationality and creed, like-minded Learners who share a craving for peace crowd this planet. Overqualified and ready for anything, the count of conscientious Learners outnumbers by 24 times that of tyrants and sellouts (moral conscience amputees).
4) Finally, we teeter on the cliff-edge of omnicide ("Kill everything!") that grows closer every day in alarming ways.
Why not exploit this window of opportunity, recruits and crisis, barely cracked open? Since we lacked essential peace components in the past, it was sealed shut against us. Failed efforts in the past convinced us peace would always fail, with or without those essential components. This window of opportunity will slam shut again soon. We have only this fleeting opportunity before the evil-twin of peace finishes us off.
We need to rally around a shared ideal unfamiliar to us so far, but acceptable after careful consideration by everyone sane. It would embrace the best and worst of who we are; brace us to fear and exclude no-one and nothing; shield us from ice storms of recrimination, blame games, cruelty and untruth. Finally, it would let us forgive everyone and everything, ourselves included, and the worst we have done as individuals and communities in the past. Could we forgive ourselves, atone for our unholy wars and make honest amends? What would that take?
Learners will call that high ideal “PeaceWorld.” For the first time, we dispose of the means, motive and opportunity for peace. Once the baton drops for the first note, our peace chorale will drown out the bad brass band blare of WeaponWorld.
Quotes from:
http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/Online-Book-Initiative/Adolph.Hitler/unpacked/mkv1ch04.html.
[Author’s note: a neutral, academic web site, now offline. I will not refer you to a Nazi one. My family fought the Nazis, tooth and claw; I despise them. However, this is WeaponWorld and I must harvest my quotes where I can find them. Learner will pry open your mindedness beyond the comfort zone.
“In every case where there are exigencies or tasks that seem impossible to deal with successfully, public opinion must be concentrated on the one problem ... Only in this way can public interest be aroused to such a pitch as will urge people to combine in a great voluntary effort and achieve important results.
“This fundamental truth applies also to the individual ... He must always concentrate his efforts to one definitely limited stage of his progress, which has to be completed before the next step be attempted … This systematic way of approaching an objective is an art in itself and always calls for the expenditure of every ounce of energy...” Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. I, Chap. 10.
“… all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be repeated persistently until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.” Vol. I, Chap. 6.
“The more the militant energies of the people are directed towards one objective, the more will new recruits join the movement, attracted by the magnetism of its unified actions, ...” Vol. I, Chap. 3.
“Any Weltanschauung (world view) though a thousandfold right and supremely beneficial to humanity, will be of no practical service for the maintenance of a people, as long as its principles have not yet become the rallying point of a militant movement.” Vol. II, Chap. 1.
Hitler’s idea of militancy was the panic-struck brutality of gangster allies. The Learners' version will be the cooperation of self-confident mutualists … thus much stronger.
Will America hold its title as political lighthouse of the world? Or must it degenerate into the world’s recent Centurion? Why not nurture our legendary idealism and transplant it into the Old World whose only crop up to now has been weapon mentality?
This country has been a test bed for lofty new ideals. Its citizens have taken up the most radical and risky ideologies and transformed them into working models of downstream abundance. Around the world, idealists, entrepreneurs and common folk alike have fallen in love with our results and beaten a path to our door. It is what we are most admired for, what we do best. And yet, when we ape some Old World tyrant, they begrudge us our second-hand despotism and strike back hard. That is entirely justified: those gladiator-movie clichés never worked out well for five thousand years, as everyone knows perfectly well.
The time has come to establish PeaceWorld: our obvious calling.
“To these three forms of law a fourth links up, foremost of all. It’s not chiseled in marble or bronze, but in the heart of citizens. It is the true constitution of the State, which gathers strength every day. It revives and replaces other laws when they reach their expiration date or exceed it. It holds a people to the spirit of their institutions and quietly replaces the power of authority with that of habit. I speak of mores, of customs and above all of opinion: the overlooked part of our politics yet upon which everything else depends, the part that secretly preoccupies the great statesperson who only seems intent on specific regulations. Those are but the girdle of the dome of which mores – brought forth more gradually – form the unshakable key.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social, (The Social Contract). Book II, Chapter 11.
I can invite you into PeaceWorld, but not shove you into it. All I can do is suggest the melody and hope you choose to harmonize. Everyone, sing along!
How will PeaceWorld repay us? Will we get to bask in its glory?
Our conscience at long last revived, glory to the God or not of our choosing, proper reverence for ancestors, the well-being of posterity and our military honor as guarantors of Peace, that should be enough.
IN FRENCH
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COMMENT? markmulligan@comcast.net
