Please interrupt your reading in the vicinity of quotations: introduction to the ideas that follow or confirmation of those preceding. After a thoughtful rest, resume your reading.
Please interrupt your reading in the vicinity of quotations: introduction to the ideas that follow or confirmation of those preceding. After a thoughtful rest, resume your reading.
WORLD WAR COVID:
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld,
Learner begin
- INTRO & VOCAB -
“Your isolation is not so much the direct result of enemy action as of the fact that when you travel this road your experiences are shared by fewer and fewer people, until at last there’s no one to whom you can make yourself understood.” Sarah Patton Boyle, “Spit in the Devil’s Eye: A Southern Heretic Speaks,” from the October 20, 1956 issue of The Nation magazine © 1956. The Nation Company, LP. Reprinted with permission. Also found in The Nation 1865-1990, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Ed., p. 214.
Secretly throughout history, weapons and peace mentors have diced for our wealth, talent, faith, bodies, posterity, sanity and Holy Spirit ― the whole caboodle. The former wanted to protect us militarily from the Other and protect themselves from us; the latter, get us to accept ourselves and each other in peace.
You will find the same conflict between weapon mentors and those of peace ― among whites and blacks; Chinese, Argentineans, New Zealanders and Greenlanders; capitalists, communists, socialists and fascists (progressive or reactionary); among atheists, agnostics, deists, Christians, Muslims, Pagans, Hindus and Buddhists (fundamentalist or ecumenical); as much among jungle dwellers knapping rare flint as among city workers managing (or managed by) a frenzy of info technology.
Is that fully understood?
This contest cuts right across every social divide we hold dear. Age, sex, ethnicity, class, religion, ideology, geography and politics ― mere distractions from our primary task: making PeaceWorld happen.
The Weapon/Peace Dialectic regulates our political dialog across a rigid, Cartesian coordinate system. Each of us speaks with a forked tongue, as do our nation-states. Its two tines (one controlled by weapon mentors, the other by peace mentors) share three communication traits. They are:
· dialectical: parallel along the axis of understanding;
· antithetical: at right angles to each other's beliefs; and
· antinomical: directly contradicting each other’s methods and outcomes.
This three-fork tongue-tie creates the Weapon/Peace Antinomy: absolute disparity between methods used, goals sought and results achieved.
My example will be the term “utopia.”
Along the first, dialectical axis, Utopia is a venerable text whose author, Sir Thomas More, describes a “perfect” social order. Everyone agrees that his utopia is not an accurate historical representation, is not relevant to present circumstances and not possible in the future. What a perfect model! But this is the nearest that most Western scholars dare approach the idea of PeaceWorld. There are a handful of later texts just as obscure and poorly thought out.
WASP (white Anglo-Saxon protestant) reactionaries and progressives agree that this is all the documentation they require to determine the relative merits of weapons and peace. Might as well try to cross the Rocky Mountains using a map of Pangaea.
If you’re interested, Lewis Mumford summarizes about two-dozen primary texts in English (several thousand pages worth) in the first 150 pages of his book The Story of Utopias. Don’t ask me what he intended to say in the latter half of his book.
Along the second, antithetical axis, the word utopia signifies for weapon mentors, “that (place) which can never be.” Utopia is their favorite reference text on this subject. Taught in every high school and college, it confirms their prejudice that peaceful and benevolent societies are impossible. For peace mentors, utopia means “that (place) which is not, but might be.” Utopia is a speculation upon which to build a better peace.
Don’t ask me why progressives haven’t published a half a hundred better works, since. Craven subservience to weapon mentors, flawed imagination, subconscious approval of the status quo or mere mental inertia? The reason for their failure eludes me.
Along the third, antinomical axis, weapon mentors use the word utopian like an adverbial clause: “When pigs fly and hell freezes over.” Any idea branded utopian can be dismissed by reflex without further consideration. Peace mentors use it to describe a social scheme that intends to improve current reality, whether it is doable or not. In other words, the peaceful version of the word utopia means "something good we should strive for," whereas the weapon version is "a horror to be avoided like the plague.” Not only useless but somehow toxic.
Thus, along the antinomical axis, the intention on each side is in total opposition. What was once a conversation is now a tug of war.
Nowadays, weapon mentality dominates our words, arguments and intentions, just as much as weapon technology dominates our material lives. We try to survive in peace despite the dominance of weapon thought.
Our synchronization of meaning, definition and intent – and the clarity it may bring to public discourse – promise us security, abundance and fellow feeling surpassing our understanding.
Our institutions and cultures retain a few peace remnants we should cultivate and a majority of weapon memes we should render vestigial.
In this book, we will use the words “weapon” and “weapons” interchangeably. Rather than use them simply as nouns, we will wield them as modifiers: weapon technology and peace technology. From now on, “weapon” will go before words that begin with a consonant, and “weapons” anticipate those that begin with a vowel.
The text below separates the weapon/peace antinomy into three word-pairs:
· weapon mentality
· peace mentality
· weapon technology
· peace technology
· weapon mythology
· peace mythology
Weapon mentality relies on fear, and fear rules our world.
“… [The English historian, Thomas] Carlyle said that the great element missing from our attempted entry into the past is Fear; he set himself to re-enact it, and succeeded extraordinarily well. His syntax is designed to embody a distracted groping for certainties in a fog of rumour [sic] and of events at best only half-understood, in moods of acute anxiety, rage and sometimes dangerous exaltation.” John Burrow, A History of Histories: Epic, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2008, page 362.
Trying to shield its adherents from their overwhelming dread, weapon managers develop threat deterrent weapon systems they believe so ghastly that no-one will dare challenge them. Alas, WeaponWorld ordains this challenge: “The best defense is a good offense.” In the long run, no-one’s agonizing death has deterred anyone from anything; it has only given momentary satisfaction to psychopaths.
In this text, we’ll avoid terms like “war mentality” and “warfare mentality”. War mentality is to weapon mentality what road rage is to defensive driving. Neither weapon managers nor defensive drivers prefer a violent collision.
Only rarely will we use terms like militarism or fascism as substitutes for weapon mentality. The latter is much more widespread and subtle; it infects “free” democracies as much as dictatorships. Indeed, free citizens of free republics are better weapon technicians than slaves of a dictatorship. A people that calls itself peace loving can manage its killing more skillfully than another that thirsts for foreign blood.
If you consider yourself a lover of peace, pure beyond reproach – even though you’ve never bothered to sort out your peace and weapon priorities – you’re actually a weapon fellow traveler and a pillar of the weapon status quo.
Like alcoholics in denial, we worsen our addiction to weapon mentality insofar we deny it.
Weapon mentality inflicts social distortions on purpose. Poverty, rigid hierarchy, injustice, inequality, underemployment, nurtured criminality, substandard education, malnutrition and class arrogance ― the list goes on and on. We mistake weapon mentality for a regrettable combination of stupidity, bigotry, insanity, greed, crime, honest error and disaster. We refuse to believe those things fester on purpose to further its goals.
Social reformers imagine they can improve things reductively, gradually and incrementally ― problem-by-problem, identity position by identity position and topic by topic. Using the same scattergun methods and birdshot reasoning, they’ve promoted nothing but war for the last five thousand years. “Sorry about that!”
The categorical solution to this problem would be holistic, simultaneous and global peace mentality – agreed upon by almost everyone – followed by a swarm of atomistic and reductive fixes. Long-term success is impossible in the opposite order (as currently practiced), since each minor fix for peace is paralyzed by the holistic, simultaneous and global repression of weapon mentality.
Society measures itself against a constellation of political metaphors its members agree to share. Ours is crammed with weapon myths. Many common policies and beliefs of religion, law and morality constitute weapon mythology: the popular explanation for our irrational policies and institutions. Since the basic values of weapon mentality seem insane to any lover of peace, weapon mentors impose their own mythical vocabulary and syntax to shield themselves from peace mentors' reasonable criticism.
For weapon managers to succeed, they must be incompetent at peace. Military technology is the only field at which they must excel (mercilessly graded on the battlefield by Darwinian selection). Other endeavors can be ventured with deliberate ineptitude and still fulfill their requirements. The worse they manage peace, the better they will succeed at war. Weapon technicians have ruled for thousands of years, for it is much less bitter to fail at peace and triumph at war, than to succeed at peace and lose at war.
A common weapon refrain is, “You’re not paid to think about such things; we are.”
Information proletarians are enslaved by their lack of valid information. Junk data, served piping hot to them every day, maintains their servile status. Most often, you and I fit in somewhere here. At other times, our loyalties sparkle between these meta-groups like energy quanta between the atomic shells around a world-sized atom.
As information proletarians learn, work and play, they create wealth while sustaining themselves and their beloved. Much smaller groups (called information elites) seize most of this wealth in the name of military security, and use it to defray the anti-profit costs of their weapon technologies.
These costs go well beyond peacetime expenditures for weapons and soldiers, far beyond that. When comparing the economics of a peaceful society to the econologic of a weapon society, a more precise distinction would be between the wealth of Geneva and the poverty of Mogadishu — or the strength of an Olympic runner winning his favorite race, versus that of a soldier carrying his wounded buddy to the rear.
I’ve considered opting for the terms opinion elite and opinion proletariat to emphasize the fleeting nature of these prejudices and the information elite's paradoxical lack of merit. Opinion elites hold that their prejudices are a cut above everyone else’s; opinion proletarians are convinced that their preferences are second-rate compared to those of the opinion elite. Well-entrenched in the media and schools, opinion elites stress this inferiority complex.
This could be the root cause why an overwhelming majority of progressives (relying on reason) never prevails over a tiny minority of weapon managers (shamelessly reliant on sociopath lies). Ah yes, I nearly forgot! That, and the knee-jerk reflex of reactionaries, to kill and torture people at random if they feel seriously challenged ― either in the cellars of the secret police during mass unemployment, or in the trenches of a war arranged for that purpose alone, or both as often in succession as they deem necessary to renew the proletariat’s reluctant submission.
Info elites and weapon managers are interchangeable among different nation-states, religious affiliations and political organizations. They include our rulers, their staff, media workers, judges, teachers, priests, politicians and other key misinformation and disinformation professionals ― whether or not they understand what they’re doing and why they are doing it. They consider themselves superior to their proletarian hosts – from whom they spring and upon whom they depend – the same way a precocious youngster might scorn his humble guardians.
At first, in times of weapon chaos, info proletarians picked their elites from among themselves; thereafter, once things became more organized, their replacements were promoted from the info proletariat by the elites. It did not matter whether this happened through princely privilege, democratic election, religious hierarchy, Soviet nomination, robber barony or whatever. Nor did it matter if the political setting was a kraal of mud huts, a stinking feudal barony or a continent spanning, multi-ethnic, military-industrial empire. No matter whether weapon managers were enslaved or free, secular or religious, centralized or profit-oriented, plebeian or noble, criminal or authorized, professional or amateur. Identical weapons elites emerged in any case, with remarkably similar mind-sets, attitudes and reflexive behaviors. Their talk might have changed over time and under different circumstances – cynically, opportunistically and with prejudice – but their walk never did. Except, perhaps, for honor and glory: the first at great sacrifice, the second by reckless success.
Learners must make foremost appeal to them, to those of my father, of every noble warrior, that cleanse him of his filth and confirm his valor. A real warrior will recognize them at once and defend them against any crazy denier, lethal as he may be. Glory will stem from PeaceWorld’s success; honor will uphold it fiercely thereafter. Those and Learning should become one. After all, honor is learned until glory ensues.
Info elites assert that their weapon management best suits everyone’s needs (an obvious lie). They employ:
· weapon mentors to broadcast this lie during pseudo-peace, and
· weapon sectarians to do so more forcefully in times of war.
The information elite is no wiser than the info proletariat from which it springs. Its members merely promote weapon mentality and themselves in the short term. They censor important information and drown this censorship in babble and lies. Those scrupulous enough to criticize this poor bargain are marginalized.
This triage “in the name of obedience and loyalty” dumbs down those chosen (and self-chosen) to monopolize power, collectively and automatically. Holding to this course for a while, weapons elites run aground on reefs of their social contradictions. Quite predictably, they sink into ritual cruelty, institutional terror and routine corruption (see the chapter “Ritual Stupidity”).
Info elites can practice one of three broad categories of info politics. The first two categories simplify information content; the third complexifies it. Transitions between these categories are gradual and flexible; they can go backward or forward ― they need not be categorical, abrupt or progressive.
1. Politicians (or elites) of misinformation broadcast as many lies as possible. This is standard behavior for tyrants modern and ancient. Sooner or later, anything not a forbidden truth turns into a mandatory lie. Misinfo politics create top-down weapons elites optimized for war. Think of the regimes of Stalin and Saddam Hussein.
It would be a relatively simple task to sort what remains of the truth from the misinformation broadcast through official monologue media. In most cases, the exact opposite of what was announced is closer to the truth.
Misinfo politics breed paranoia, suspicion and terror. Nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. Under this claustrophobic compulsion, the info elite shrinks to a minimum and then purges itself beyond that. Brain-dead dogma becomes manifest reality, repeated mindlessly across every medium. Rather than merely manipulate mass opinion, misinfo elites fantasize they can transform reality itself ― as on paper, so in reality. They murder and terrorize every proletarian they can lay their hands on until their fantasy replaces common sense.
While gangsters rule, self-blinded misinfo politicians wage holy war against Learner creativity. The end result is brutal warfare abroad and intellectual decimation (every nine readers beat the tenth to death) at home to validate official propaganda: the ultimate simplification of public reality. Society runs on its own inertia and feeds off its last reserves until it grinds into chaos and ruin.
We can rate misinformation by its “hardness.” How difficult has the elite made it for the info proletariat to survive? The harsher the tyranny, the worse the politics of misinformation.
“Softer” tyrannies are richer, they replace misinformation politics with disinformation politics. Disinformation is much more subtle and difficult to manage than misinformation.
As weapon states mature, the defects of misinformation politics become obvious. Lies yield nothing but stolen wealth and its entropy into chaos ― sustainable wealth only grows from the truth and its public trust. Thoughtful reformers attempt to weave a few strands of peace mentality (including a few straws of info politics) into the rotten basketwork of weapon management. This mix of opposites cannot hold together for very long. Instead, it pits corrupt weapon managers against frustrated weapon dissidents in a centrifuge of disinfo politics. Here we are, ruled by...
2. Disinfo elites include a mix of so-called populists and moderates with a hard core of reactionaries who rule in the end on every important topic. They broadcast their semi-monologue through extensive hierarchies of corporations, governments and/or religions. Unlike misinformation politicians, they permit carefully screened feedback in minute doses, like a therapeutic poison. On the other hand, information politicians would prize it as the staff of life.
The keyword in disinfo politics is "but", as in: "We hear your calls for reform. We understand that true morality, morale and efficiency dictate that we do things better; but …” there follows a long list of excuses why inefficient and immoral practices must remain routine.
“Please be reasonable, ladies and gentlemen. What you propose is impractical, too costly, subject to abuse by thugs, harmful to ancient protocols, political heresy (socialistic for capitalists and vice versa), would encourage our enemies, etc., etc....” Ephemeral religious dogma, ideological gobbledygook, distortion of history, exquisitely composed literary blather, commercial advertising, sports babble, arena violence, empty show trials, soap opera trivia, “scientific” data and “mathematical” conclusions that wind up being utterly false: the whole broadcast through robotic monologue media ― nonstop, from as many sources as possible, in lavish detail, with painful exactitude and at full volume.
Matters of significance are lied about obsessively, usually by omission. This trancelike state becomes hypnotic and self-reinforcing. Producers and spectators alike refuse to sort obvious lies from the truth. Disinfo elites are just as vulnerable to their own disinformation as the host proletariat. Destructive activities increase while real wealth evaporates. The populace ignores its greatest strengths and perils (political and economic) in favor of successive elaborations of trivia. It is easily convinced of its imaginary wealth when on the verge of bankruptcy and vice versa. Public policies become arbitrary and dithering, without ethical or ideological basis. The regime improvises as it goes along and outcomes suffer accordingly.
Superfluous information becomes easier (cheap or free) to find and more profitable to mass-produce, while the useful kind gets harder to broadcast and acquire: more and more expensive, laborious, censored and declared “non-commercial”. Belief in anything but rabid commercialism, faith in anything but naked greed and senile dogma, all but those are forbidden by universal consent and popular decree.
Disinfo elites turn into bloated Mandarinates. As soon as certified mediocrities and authoritative conmen are actively promoted, gifted Learners get relegated to info proletarian status and sub-creative frustration. These habits of deliberate misunderstanding, consensus oversimplification and social mediocrity are only reversed in times of war when many frustrated talents are recruited into revitalized weapon cadres.
I recall a photograph of American shipyard workers heading home at end of shift during World War II (sic). An enormous sign stood above the front gate: “Tell us your good ideas!” No such sign would have graced a similar factory gate at the same time in history, had it been between wars.
Just as a slap in the face may stop a fit of hysterics – and a deep kiss, likewise – mass trauma is the usual method to put an end to this delusional state. Without warning, disaster and warfare strike because no one bothered to answer vital questions. Everyone is so surprised when their sand castles come tumbling down. Thereafter, disinfo elites declare war ― a much simpler task than promoting abundance and fellow feeling. Mass murder becomes the norm once again. At that point, it’s too late to adopt peaceful info politics, since went to waste the wealthy and serene populace needed.
Learner – by the way – is the kiss.
On rare occasions, peace dissidents overcome this social inertia and spread the good news that everyone should share Learning evenhandedly. As info elites begin to pay miraculous attention to this idea and broadcast it, they work themselves out of the job of restricting information flow. At that point, info elites and proletariats merge into an information (or learner) commonwealth.
3. Politicians of information generate truth and lies without prejudice or favor on every topic, for Learners to sort out among themselves. A Learner commonwealth emerges through unrestricted public discourse and extensive dialogues between self-selected info-jurors. They pursue their topics of passion without regard to wealth or status ― since those would be theirs by right in an Information Commonwealth.
Many stories that appear to be lies are just more complex elaborations of the truth. Whether through literary fiction, new ideologies, academic postulates, inventions, discoveries or reinterpretations of ancient dogma: the truth prevails because it is more profitable in a peaceful setting. People revalue information content because it seems more important to them than expensive artifacts and mythmaking about military security.
Taking the opposite tack, misinfo societies opt for nothing but lies and terror. The truth becomes worthless because its pursuit will get you killed. No such choice remains in disinfo societies where white noise drowns out everything else, until the World Trade Towers come tumbling down in controlled demolition. Then everyone resumes the deceptive chatter of reassuring normalcy, thus exposing their neck to the axe without doing anything to ward it off.
In politics of information, expanding communication systems develop more interactive, complex and adaptive exchanges. People engage in many more dialogues across new media, instead of submitting to top-down monologue propaganda from “superior” elites. They are more interested in their topics of passion than in the mass media’s messaging for the most part personally irrelevant thus useless.
TV is a monologue medium, as are radio, print media and non-interactive web pages. You know, those worthless corporate and bigot propaganda web pages stripped of Contact links?
The Greek Agora, Town Hall meetings (unscripted… Gotta add that, now that Bush the Lesser’s disinfo technicians have scripted, rehearsed and hand-picked Town Hall audiences as a matter of routine), telephones and postal or electronic mails: all of them serve as examples of dialogue media.
It is a question of satisfying the armchair formula (see the chapter The Threat formula versus the Armchair formula ). Dialogue media could carry more useful information and much more inspiration across the same bandwidth than monologue media. The sum of useful communications equals real wealth (divided by the sum of useless and/or noxious messages?). I’m talking about the same amount of hard cash available today, only much more valuable without inflation.
“Your intent is noble, but your appeal misguided. If you talk to these emperors about profits, and in their love of profit they stop their armies – their armies will rejoice in peace and delight in profit. Soon ministers will embrace profit in serving their sovereign, sons will embrace profit in serving their fathers, younger brothers will embrace profit in serving their elder brothers – and all of them will have abandoned Humanity and Duty. When these relationships become a matter of profit, the nation is doomed to ruin.
“But if you talk to these emperors about Humanity and Duty, and in their love of Humanity and Duty they stop their armies – their armies will rejoice in peace and delight in Humanity and Duty. Soon ministers will embrace Humanity and Duty in serving their sovereign, sons will embrace Humanity and Duty in serving their fathers, younger brothers will embrace Humanity and Duty in serving their elder brothers – and all of them will have abandoned profit.
"When these relationships become a matter of Humanity and Duty, then the sovereign is sure to be a true emperor. So why mention profit? Mencius, translated by David Hinton, Counterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 219.
It is up to us to create a Virtual Agora, a vast cultural network that spans the globe. The World Wide Web is the startup prototype of this Learner virtual agora. Insofar it spreads, it bodes well for us.
With few outside threats and lots of surplus wealth, a mature society would allow Learners to complexify information politics.
Since social complexity increases the likelihood of turbulence, it risks bursting the levies of social convention intended to contain and regulate it. Therefore, info politicians must improve vocabularies and habits of communication. Otherwise, the roar of chaotic argument may decline back into misinfo politics.
The latest temptation of info elites, to censor the Internet from the top down, and of proletarians, to cripple it from the bottom up (trolling, viruses, hacking, flames, spam and other info-trash) are pathetic denials of an ever-expanding information universe. Think of a colicky baby who twists away from a spoonful of strained peas. Disoriented individuals and groups re-simplify their existence by weaponizing recent complications they consider vulnerable to their abuse.
In pursuit of abundance, the best practitioners of disinfo politics tend to disarm unilaterally and thus invite military aggression.
Some earlier societies grew into info politics, but were destroyed militarily and wiped from the historical record (they became “prehistoric”) because their senior managers promoted internal wealth and peace while hungry strangers lingered outside: poor, militant and jealous.
Note this tendency in the United States, where military casualties used to be political poison. This public aversion, to military casualties in particular and to militarism in general, tempts aggressive outsiders and internal militarists to inflict more damage. As their assaults grow bolder, better coordinated and more destructive, survivors revert to politics of misinformation and overt weapon tyranny: tempting options on a hypermilitarized planet where knee-jerk panic often trumps rational thought.
Weapon technology includes the mechanical hardware and flesh-and-blood wetware of warfare: military forces (weapon technicians); intelligence agencies, both foreign and domestic; weapons industrialists and workers, their enormous capital plant and inventory of weapons. Nowadays, there is one personal fireharm for every ten inhabitants of Earth, and two or more bullets cast every year for each soul. Just in case the first one misses…
Weapon managers discriminate against everyone and everything they can blame for their many policy failures (since they are mediocre peace managers at best, by definition): the poor, women, non-heterosexuals, children, liberals, ethnic/religious minorities, migrants and immigrants, primal myths, human nature and nature itself. The smartest of those managers begin recruiting reactionary candidates from among despised and abused minorities. That way, they can pay lip service to pluralism while stimulating all kinds of social abuse.
There is no recruit more faithful than an outsider recently converted, and no downtrodden population more loyal than one convinced its members can win some implausible lottery to success, provided it be at the expense of “inferiors.”
“The more justly constituted the society, the more admirable its political form, the more war [weapon mentality] threatens to weaken its institutions and to pervert them. And it is also true that the best form of government is that least adapted to the exigencies of war.” How to Think about War and Peace, Mortimer J. Adler, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1944, p 42.
Weapon managers get battle elites (about a 10% minority of weapon technicians) to do their jackals’ share of the dirty work. Educated officers or enlisted slaves: it doesn’t matter. Half genetically damaged and half the issue of childhood fears of abuse or neglect, battle elites thrive on both sides of the battlefield, riot zone, jailhouse bars and Belsen wire.
The remaining 90% of weapon technicians? They serve as logistics and morale supports for battle elites on their side, and as easy prey on the other; finally, as firepower multipliers (artillerists and such) on both sides. Whether in peace or in war, battle elites do the close-up killing and the rest do the dying.
Battle elites cannot readily bring their aggression under control. This makes them valuable assets on the battlefield and costly criminals elsewhere. We all share some battle elite traits, even though most of us keep ours under strict control. Call it good manners, good taste, conscience, civility, delicacy, decadence or mere cowardice: most of us are not hard-wired to thrive on the battlefield and in bar fights, the way battle elites are.
We can split battle elites into two groups.
· The Dirty Dozen of born warriors, gunmen, bullies and outcasts who often outgrow their aggression with proper maturity and loving-kindness.
· The Himmler Subgroup: primarily civilians, ostensibly good parents, spouses, neighbors and administrators ― and quite often, brilliant cowards. Charming and seductive as long as it suits them, they look forward to wreaking havoc on a world of Others they despise. They seek the highest rungs of power, from which they can get away with as much mayhem as possible, shielded by their rank.
Just as a shark grows rows of spare teeth in reserve, info proletariats nurture info proto-elites eager to overthrow the current info elite. Proto-elites are a motley crew of ambitious clerks, students and subalterns — employed by authorities or not, but covertly dissenting from them. These frustrated rebels only cohere clumsily once the failure rate of their elite maxes out.
It is important to note that this apparent sea level of frustration is preventable along with its shifting tides of dissent. By prioritizing weapon requirements and limitations, WeaponWorld creates a bottleneck of positions of responsibility too narrow to fit every mind avid for such responsibility. On PeaceWorld, those frozen out of weapon priorities will stake their claim to responsibility in other topic-of-passion networks they choose. More connection and responsibility, less frustration, less dissent.
Eric Hoffer analyses proto-elite leaders in his book, The True Believer. Unfortunately, he indulges in the sorry habit of biographical reductionism. He turns the intricacies of global social movements into an inventory of their leaders’ personal idiosyncrasies.
Herodotus treated history and current events as cults of personality, as have many historians and journalists since. Everything happens because some poor slob and his flunkies – officially designated Leaders – made it happen exactly the way they foresaw.
“By the mid-4th century, there existed a large and well-known body of Greek literature that had as yet no convenient name – it was not yet called Historia – but was generally described as the “writings of the deeds of war” or “inquiries about the deeds of war’: it included Herodotus, Thucydides, the several continuations of Thucydides, which went under the title Hellenica (Affairs of Greece) (only Xenophon’s survives), and the accounts of the western Greeks by the lost Syracusan writers Antiochus and Philistus, which went under the title Sicelica (Affairs of Sicily). It was taken for granted that this literature was the source of knowledge for anything about war, diplomacy or interstate relations. P. 85.
“But what of the historians? The 5th century had bequeathed two major narrative styles, the linear epic style of Herodotus and the antithetical realistic style of Thucydides, which were associated with two different views of the world ― the encomiastic Herodotus world of moral achievement and cosmic law versus Thucydidean pessimism and irony….” Doyne Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1996, p. 95.
This sort of narrative is about as convincing as that which follows. I’m driving a car and in absolute control. So I’m going to flip into carefully preplanned slots every car in a hundred-car pileup on a freeway in the fog, and thus make sure that my car and those that follow mine loyally roar out the other end without a scratch. Sure, buddy, it could happen! Yet that would be a rather simple problem, compared to running an entire country. See the leadership section in the chapter “Identity Politics.”
- WEAPON DISSIDENCE -
After thousands of years of crushed dissidence, progressive organizations are Balkanized, which means chopped to pieces and rendered vestigial. Many social activists worsen their political impotence through exclusive identity politics, mutual ostracism, special interest bickering, petty private grievances and nit-picking ideological puritanism. As a result, much more pragmatic, disciplined and cohesive weapons elites defeat them in detail.
Rejecting holistic transformation, weapon dissidents opt for endless hairsplitting, moral compromise and existential despair. Indifferent to genuine peace and progress they believe beyond their grasp, they turn into conformist adherents of a “loyal opposition.” They are emotionally invested in token resistance against a robust weapon state that thrives from their trifling resistance. Too bad for those who challenge their patchy conformism!
Recall that body builders push and pull their muscles like taffy against resistance. In roughly the same way, weapon states grow stronger by exploiting their weapon dissidents. Thus, the clichéd yammering of the average weapon dissident makes his weapon state stronger, subtler and more difficult to pull down.
Occasionally, a breakthrough peace movement manages to dissolve its weapon state. This lopsided relaxation of weapon technology is usually fatal for the society involved, given the prevalence of hungry outsiders armed to the teeth. So success at peace was never encouraged in the past. Today’s fashionable “community activism” is a carry-over of thousands of years of ineffectual (indeed, inversely effective) weapon dissidence.
My mailbox bursts from a flood of rival solicitations for my paltry charity, each appeal more heart-rending than the last. Nothing more is sought than a check that magically disappears with the promise to support some worthy cause, probably with more solicitation mail and its bureaucracy.
On the other hand, our institutions suck fortunes from our weekly pay packets to deploy the means, justify the motives and develop further opportunities for mass murder. The beneficiaries of thousands of years of successful propaganda, weapon managers plan massive projects and carry them out. Their international transactions and expenditures are holistic, pseudo-voluntary, free spending and for the most part independent of outside influence.
During the Franco-Prussian War, the leadership on both sides of the fight had more in common with each other, during their minuet of death, than with their own info proletariat lined up for massacre.
Those who disapprove of their goals will be marginalized into a political minority equally voiceless and trivial (by definition, not by numbers), no matter how numerous they are or how sensible their proposals, thanks to our historical incoherence and hysterical paralysis.
After thousands of years of defeat, rejection and Balkanization (and the rare, absolutely lethal success), standard-issue weapon dissidents are divisive, elitist, holier-than-thou, miserly, exclusive, reductive and atomistic. They satisfy themselves with empty dramatics, ritual bonding in adversity, moralistic self-indulgence and existential despair. Thus have we honored our long tradition of defeat. Most of us would rather keep it that way indefinitely. Why trouble ourselves with real, transformational power? The prospect frightens me too. So what? As if we had any other choice but successful transformation at this point in history.
Thus – every hour on the hour – the media announce more weapon triumphs and peace tragedies. Progressives will never master the political mainstream until they rally around a hyper-complex platform of inclusive, cooperative and mutualistic reforms under the control of local progressives who are expert in these domains. In other words, until Learning is established planet-wide.
Restart - INTRO & VOCAB -
Some text – perhaps this one or something better? – may catapult to world power its international, interdenominational and interethnic adherents of every age, sex and class. Much more likely than you might think. Like other hidden truths, it is just a question of time and numbers: the time it would take to broadcast this understanding and the number of those who understand.
Preempted by psychopaths who always sucker punch first and cave in soon after, the innocents may be packed off to extermination camps. Like all those whose life was cut short in the past, our passionate lives and agonizing deaths may go up in smoke as cosmic archetypes. Nuclear war likewise, wholesale.
The organized resistance of massed Learners will block that outcome. As during WWII (sic), Nazi wannabes who seek extermination will be stopped by the overwhelming, conscientious majority. In post-massacre Rwanda: coward bullies became militarily helpless. Like a vampire caught out in daylight, weapon mentality cannot survive exposure to the truth.
Three world heroes: Stanislav Petrov, James Blunt and Vasili Archipov, set their careers and bodies between the world and its annihilation by thermonuclear war. How many more Smiths, Joneses and Duponts did so without being recognized?
This transition could prove as abrupt as the U.S.S.R.’s perestroika. Modern-day leaders – suddenly checkmated by the exhaustion of “inexhaustible” energy supplies and/or orthodox power structures – could abandon their posts all at once. In the absence of an organizational framework like the one in Learner, this transition could turn horribly destructive ― simply put, the mafia takes over the world and the worst political horrors roll out like clockwork. Does that bring current events into focus?
Independent ideologues and anonymous polemicists are hard at work at this task, each bringing different insights and talents to bear. But it is almost impossible for us to broadcast our findings ― especially among weapon dissidents. Paradoxically, they are more closed to new ideas than weapon managers who will adopt novel improvements (reluctantly but assuredly) into their robust and self-confident weapon management schemes. The shaky ground progressives must tip-toe across does not allow them such open-mindedness, at least until they’ve grasped and steadied that ground for that purpose. Let’s hope the dissident community allows its best ideas to be disseminated, as opposed to the current practice of mutually assured ineptitude. Otherwise, worse ideas will take their place.
As our civilization polarizes between luxuriant minorities and restless majorities, as reason and rights fade from public discourse, raw greed becomes the final arbiter. But even shifty greed must find a rightful place. Well-regulated cooperatives of plenty will welcome private enterprise – that wellspring of innovation and abundance – provided in the meantime every citizen obtains withdrawal from their primary misery, based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs ; not to mention outpourings of public and private moral conscience.
Despite their inflated privileges, info elites are just as vulnerable to false beliefs – both self-inflicted and out-sourced – as info proletarians. To secure dependable benefits for themselves and their dearest (as opposed to rickety perks they have to defend at gunpoint), info elites must find new ways to generate sustainable abundance and adopt harmless rituals that redirect fearful aggression, destructive diligence and bad ideas.
Among the tools info elites adopt to manage their partisans, greed is second only to fear. Learners won’t tempt them away from their conspiracies of greed until our shared vocabulary and purpose outsmart their hysterical avarice. Learner doctrine must be clear, concise and immune to prejudice, cupidity and panic. There must be a plan or a series of plans most people will adopt because they see in them a better chance to benefit cooperatively (or merely survive, for lack of anything better) regardless of their original beliefs and status.
The belief is obsolete that ordinary folk can be punished into better behavior. Rewards work much better. The more penalties imposed, beyond a necessary minimum, the more resistance ― automatically. Weapon managers alone benefit from this tailspin of coercion and defiance.
Peace mentality sustains our souls. Like a spiritual physicist, Gandhi found its nucleus was the fusion of Truth and Non-violence. Our souls sparkle around this nucleus like electrons around a vast atom. Every moment every day without cease, a still, small voice whispers “Love fearlessly” at celestial amplitude from across the cosmic void. We just need to listen and obey.
Even though peace mentality burns brightly in idealistic young minds, it sputters in middle age and often gutters out in unlucky souls. Almost everyone would pick peace mentality over the weapon variety on an even playing field. However, our opportunities to practice peace are as fleeting as our weapon practices are diverse, forceful and tempting. Given so much negative conditioning, only an enlightened few approach the mastery at peace.
Peace technology pays its own freight and that of its weapons evil twin. Despite countless obstacles imposed by weapon priorities, peace mentality trucks on. It transcends life and death, much less the shameless narcissism of disinfo politics.
Peace technology includes:
· our flight from misery (above and beyond any Constitutional “pursuit of happiness”);
· our run at abundance, health, human rights and sustainable agriculture;
· our worship of nature and supernature;
· our quest for learning: play, entertainment and enlightenment;
· our pursuit of:
o Peace enforcement,
o Sound philosophy,
o Valid enterprise and
o Useful professionalism, as well as other life-affirming activities.
Without such exemplary modifiers (in italics), we needn’t consider these things valuable in and of themselves. After all, they easily revert to organized bullying, wordy nonsense, greed satiation and naked elitism: giveaway signs of weapon mentality.
Peace mentality has one categorical imperative: raise the children well. Everything else takes back seat to this effort or impedes it. They say, “It takes a whole village to raise a child.” Raising a healthy child requires everyone’s cooperation. The goal is not to raise many children indifferently; that is a weapon requirement. Peace management would demand that every child be cocooned in optimal surroundings. Their health and Learning would take absolute priority, as would the civil rights of their mother.
“Young children all know love for their parents. And when they grow up, they all know respect for their elders. Loving parents is Humanity, and respecting elders is Duty. That’s the secret. Just extend it throughout all beneath Heaven.” Mencius, translated by David Hinton, Counterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 240. Bibliography
It seems obvious that every social good flows from cherished children growing up to become good citizens. Logically, we might conclude that the opposite is also true: that bad citizens proliferate when more children are abused. At gut level, we delight in the happiness of children, suffer heartache when they come to harm, and sigh intense relief when they are delivered therefrom. We needn’t be parents to feel such things, nor particularly sensitive.
If you believed in reincarnation, you would have to be crazy to support any social habit that did not pamper every child without exception. Otherwise, you’d be signing a warrant calling for your torture during future incarnations. Totally bonkers… Another reason to uphold this belief.
Those who resist this empathy are deeply disturbed, as is our whole society since it flouts this basic truth. We let children perish by the million, let billions more grow up to be stupid adults through malnutrition, neglect and chronic abuse.
We should make good these lethal scandals. Such travesties would be unthinkable on PeaceWorld ― unheard of since a barbarous past (our present). Any instance of them would trigger government meltdown and a complete overhaul of leadership. Ex-leaders would withdraw in disgrace from public service, paralyzed with shame.
Today’s weapon leaders are not likely to live up to such peaceful ideals. The best of them might, under ideal circumstances. Once we’ve convinced ourselves, they must be likewise convinced or replaced.
A political homily drones on in my mind. Humans cleave to three broad categories of political behavior. Regardless of other allegiances, we fit in among Ex-Herbivores, Ex-Carnivores and Omnivores (oft-reincarnated herbivores and carnivores who’ve learnt the futility of their old ways).
Ex-Herbivore: “Hey, there’s plenty of good grazing out here. Grass ain’t brain food, so let’s make babies and munch away ― what we do best.
"We live in the present. If we get an itch, we scratch it. Our universe is in that scratching. Anything more ― it’s just too complicated for us.
“Gee, our carnivores are pretty scary. They hunt us, kill us and eat us. But they do chase off other carnivores that might be worse. Who knows; things could be worse. Anything that really scares us, well, our blind stampede will make it disappear, won't it? Why bother to vote? Just let us be happeeeee.”
Ex-Carnivore: “Behold this beautiful body of mine, strong, lean and hungry. My mind ticks over, lethal and remorseless. I live in the future when my darkest needs will finally be satisfied.
“I am an expert at magical thinking. As long as I carry out a precise series of steps in exact order and with perfect timing, I may feast indefinitely, which must be paradise and proof of my status as the Chosen One of God. No-one can stop me, and I’ll kill anyone who tries. If I fail, it will be from lack of self-perfection. No matter how many times I fail, I must succeed in the end or die trying.”
This obsessive-compulsive condition is experienced by a lion at his hunt, a hierarch during his cult devotion (bloody or otherwise), a tycoon during his stock transactions, a science doctrinaire performing laboratory tricks or an author ruminating his prose.
“My reincarnations have been more or less rewarding in these settings and others. My universe is centered on the sacrifice of prey and my self-perfection in so doing. Nothing else matters, and neither God nor I need have mercy for anyone less obsessed. My sires taught me how to use this money, these fancy institutions and novel gadgets to satisfy my hunger. Anyone slower, weaker and more ethical than me is fair game. Anything I can claw down is mine to dispose of as I please. If I don’t claim it, some hungrier carnivore will.
"End of discussion; it’s time to pursue happiness.
“I know! Let's run for Congress!”
Omnivore: “Salads are fine in their place. My peers and I can neutralize any piddling carnivore at will. It’s fun ― plus what’s left is good eats.
“We coordinate the past, the present and the future to improve our personal success. We’re not so much interested in anyone's pursuit of happiness ― that’s their business. We are interested in accelerating their flight from misery: a political duty ex-carnivores keep neglecting in favor of their exclusive pursuit of happiness.
“Under the impulse of natural selection, we evolve to learn. The more complex our information universe, the more we owe it our success. The exponential growth of this wealth could distract ex-herbivores and divert ex-carnivores until they’ve grasped the fundamentals of Learner civilization.
“After five thousand years of bloody compromise, we’re just hitting our stride; that’s exciting! Our information potlatch promises to supplant the rigors of the stalk and the rights of spring. Everyone merits abundance and security: the best, most obvious way to secure our own.
“You, fated ex-herbivore deprived of imagination! Look up beyond your cud.
“Hey you, shifty ex-carnivore! Your aggression betrays your weakness. Go ahead, make your next lunge. It will fail, sooner or later, as it has always done in the past.
Both of you! Rejoin us on PeaceWorld!”
But this is mere EZ listening. Learners will take a closer look at the physiology of social behavior and public responsibility. They will find clearer details of human motivation.
“Paul MacLean tells us, ‘We are the possessors of a triune brain – not one brain but three, each with its own way of perceiving and responding to the world.’ Richard M. Restak, The Brain: The Last Frontier (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979). In ascending order on the phylogenic scale, they are: (1) reptilian (central core), (2) paleomammalian (limbic system), and (3) neomammalian (cerebral cortex). The first of these, the reptilian, is the most primitive; MacLean has also labeled this the “R-complex.” It is comparable to much of the brain found in [fish and] reptiles. And it includes the hypothalamus. Surrounding the reptilian R-complex is the next level, the limbic system which is associated with the brain found in early mammals...
“In effect, we appear to have been ‘pre-wired,’ at least partially, by the reptilian brain to be ritualistic, to be in awe of authority, to develop social pecking orders, and perhaps even to develop obsessive-compulsive neuroses ...
“We appear to have been pre-wired in the case of the limbic system as well, to respond emotionally to threats to self- or species-preservation …”
Dennis J. D. Sandole, “The Biological Basis of Needs,” Conflict: Human Needs Theory, John Burton, ed., Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1990, p. 71.
Of course, the scientific community has gone to great lengths to naysay this theory, asserting that non-mammals have other brain structures that serve the same purpose. They cite cephalopods and birds (though not reptiles) that display surprisingly advanced mental capacities. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=one-world-many-minds. But this theory is still useful to illustrate political priorities.
Once our models of human awareness improve somewhat, better evaluations of human motivation and better treatments for violence-, greed- and fear-driven deviants may help us love one another better ― at last!
Debra Niehoff reviews criminal correction in her mindful book, The Biology of Violence, The Free Press, New York, 1999, “Picking up the Pieces”. Herself the victim of a brutal crime (as I was, at gunpoint but less brutally; and you too, no doubt, just as often in this age as sorry as those in the past), she downplays violence as a criminal deterrent and suggests more thoughtful methods of behavior modification. Her research reveals that police terror and penal brutality do not so much suppress criminality as increase it. This is the constant aim of weapon mentality: boosting crime and aggression.
We live on WeaponWorld dominated by man and bereft of God’s Peace, mutual welcome and care. Why not re-establish the PeaceWorld of God? The One I believe in abhors war and loves peace. God will reward faithful Learners eager for peace as genuine offspring and saints. That reward will translate into miracles.
Let’s say you were neither a rock bed atheist nor overly devout – often just as closed-minded – and sought to verify the existence of God solely for your own satisfaction. What better way to do that than to transform WeaponWorld into PeaceWorld and witness God self-reveal in a shower of miracles of approbation? After all, we would do what God had always wanted us to do, instead of what God forbade – in defiance of aberrant commands by weapon fundamentalists and ideological liars for thousands of years: “Kill, lie, rob your neighbor, despise him, and pray in public. We order you to obey the commandments of mere men even though they’re forbidden by God.”
Those miracles would be God’s substitute for our perfectly scientific, perfectly orthodox, perfectly serial disasters. We could pour into PeaceWorld all the sanctity left pent up in our heart, and benefit from miracles of wisdom and loving kindness. Learners could become brothers and sisters on PeaceWorld ― beyond our capacity to imagine it.
We would be acting our part in a play, except all the props, costumes and lighting would conform more closely to peace and improve over time. What’s more, the play’s sponsors, cast, crew and audience would have changed their mind – that WeaponWorld was not so hot – and all of us would be better off on PeaceWorld.
Imagine that!
Every Learner could assume – with more liberty, zeal and fellow feeling; with greater ease and thrift; less troubled by hazards and fear; using greater artistry, passion and devotion – the bearing of God’s massed saints: athirst for, drunk with and filled by the Peace of God, until God secured God’s Peace.
From birth to death, we are all Learners. As political, moral, spiritual, and pragmatic entities linked in love and family devotion to everyone– for better or for worse – we are the Chosen ones in this continuum of space-time. Of God, of Allah, of Fate or Nothing? Whatever you choose to call it. I call it God, and us, God’s, including every other manifestation of the sacred.
Does that metaphysical jumble bother you? Why? Your favorite God (or lack of such) would be included automatically.
Instead, we subsist as WeaponWorld slaves. Caught up in a tap dance of perpetual war and ephemeral peace, we improvise as we go along, paying homage to two contrary sets of values: weapon mentality and peace mentality. Suffering from mass schizophrenia and hostage to it, we become nothing more than asocial sheep and incompetent wolves … God’s spoiled brats, instead of God’s saints.
What a sorry waste!
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