Learners is available in English and in French.

 

LEARNERS:

On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld

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My Blog: Escape from WeaponWorld

 
Title Page

 

Start Page

“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”  Martin Luther King quotation.  Invitation to read Learners and translate some of its chapters into the reader’s mother tongue.

 

Summary of Learners: World Peace

Still working on the Summary.  What a bored, stressed, aversive or overworked reader might find too much to handle today, a dozen generations of meticulous scholars may pore over, harvesting shortfalls.

 

Sociopaths (most important!)

 

Warnings!

We are trained as children against peace.  Once Learners understand that fact, we may unlock and open wide the doors to Peace World.

 

Table of Contents (you are here.) 

 

Keywords

Includes those to each chapter.  A more fractal, quantum jumpy and fuzzy logic description of Learners than these lengthy, Newtonian sentences.  Also more easily translated into other languages.

 

Poems, mine and others'

I will wake again in darkness / Je veillerai tantot dans l’obscurite --- Chanson d’automne / Paul Verlaine / Autumn song --- By not loving you / En ne t’aimant point --- Ballade des pendus / François Villon / Ballad of the hanged --- The second coming / W.B. Yeats / Le second avènement --- Nobody is blocking world peace, but you / Personne ne bloque la paix au monde, sauf toi --- I have a rendezvous with death / Alan Seeger / J’ai un rendez-vous avec la mort --- L’ame du vin / Charles Baudelaire / The soul of wine --- What questions about when? / Quelles questions sur quand? --- Blue Energy Water / L’energie bleue dans l’eau  --- Grimpe / Climb --- Darkness, Darkness / Jesse Colin Young / Noirceur, Noirceur --- Go Find It / Va trouver --- Global Atlantis / L’Atlantide globale --- Dover Beach / Matthew Arnold / La plage de Douvres --- What Is All This For? / Pourquoi faire, tout ça ? --- Come to me, Eureka / Viens-moi, Eureka --- I’m in hurry to get high/ J’ai hatte de me defoncer --- We are all the Grizzly Man / Nous sommes tous l’homme grizzly --- I cannot trust you if / Je ne te fais aucune confiance si --- An Irish Airman Foresees his Death / W.B. Yeats / Un aéronaute irlandais prévoit sa mort ­­­­­­­­­­--- World Peace, Jobless Washer Woman / La paix au monde : lavandière désœuvrée --- The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower / Dylan Thomas /  La force qui à travers le fusible vert dirige la fleur --- La peine que j’induis, je dois ressentir / The Pain that I Induce, I must feel --- We Win / Nous Gagnons --- Pavane pour une planète défunte / Pavane For A Dying Planet --- J’entends les oies / I Hear the Geese --- One Art / Elizabeth Bishop / Un art --- Prends sa place / Take its Place

 

Dedication

 

Acknowledgements

 

Links

Please provide a link from your site to mine, and email me.

 

Intro & Vocab

We need a whole new political vocabulary.  Our range of topics will be encyclopedic and our first treatment of them, insolently superficial and subject to mythic dismissal at every page turn. 

 

Mein Fahrt, Quoting Hitler out of Context

Hitler understood that an ideology needs a simple message that everyone can understand and agree with.  It requires step-by-step development.  His intent was toxic; ours could be beneficial.  The mechanism remains, to use or abuse.

 

The Collective Superconscience

Do we share a collective superconscience?  Do we pollute it with our violence?  Could we flood it with Peace?

 

Survival of the Deadliest

Darwinian selection for better military states.  Leadership in weapon and peace contexts.

 

Can We Be Good?

Innate human evil or ultimate good?  Nature, nurture and other good things.

 

You Choose

Pick you constellation of political metaphors: historically pure or dreaming tomorrow into reality.  You choose.

 

Stop

Take a break.  Contact me.  This is hard.

 

SECTION I – WHY

Why are we in this mess?

 

Weapon Psychohistory

Are we too cooperative or too competitive?  Why?

 

Paroxysms

Wars are not open and shut, warfare is eternal.  Those who resist it best, die the fastest.

 

Weapon Technology

The science and craft of warfare in history and the present.

 

Know them by their Fruits

Sacrifice or celebration?  Weapons religions promote sacrifice; peace religions, celebration.  We should be celebrating Learners, not sacrificing victims.

 

What I Think of the Rapture, Man

Jesus never used the word Rapture; it is not in the Bible.  Christ forbids Christians to pray in church and in public.  See for yourself in Matthew 6-5.  What are ‘Christian’ fundamentalists up to: disobeying His direct instruction, leading the faithful astray, turning the uncertain away in disgust and thus perverting Christianity?

 

Cathari

What made perennial peasants and nobles revere these heretics instead of their Catholic clergy, fully mature?

 

Hypothetical Consolamentum

My attempt to rewrite the Cathari catechism lost in the opening phase of the Inquisition.

                  

Identity Politics

Identity, conflict and community.  Adherents of different identity positions could become Learners.  Their shared identity could shield everyone from human rights abuse.

 

Weapon Mythology

Our constellation of political metaphors is full of weapon myths.  We could replace them with peace myths.

                  

Heaven and Hell, on Earth

A list of suggested does and don’ts (or at least not too often).

                  

1984 Syndrome

The Syndrome: government is bad, let’s make it slow and stupid.  The cure: government is as good or bad as the nearest Mayor’s office.  See to it that Mayor’s offices are better, more often than not.

 

The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

His social contract lacked the consideration (legal term) that would have triggered and guaranteed it: World Peace.  Rousseau’s genius recognized the limits of communications during his day.  Those faulty communications cancelled the influence of his social contract on international relations.  Using technologies that he lacked, we could reduce that cyclopean wall into a puff of air.

 

Carl Marx

The fatal mistake of Marx.  Describing information politics without the weapon/peace antinomy would be like discussing orbital mechanics in the absence of gravity.  Economics is just another sub-branch of information flow.  It is infinitely renewable and exponentially profitable.  It can be multiplied by millions of times, when set to chaotic and anarchic dialog mode instead of centralized and government-promoting monolog mode, much less productive.  An untapped abundance resides there, that Learners can liberate.

 

Threat Formula

The development of the threat formula: Body Count times (Time over Distance) squared; instead of the armchair formula that accelerates thought (see below).

 

Combat Infantry Warrior

Walk a mile in the boots of an average grunt.

 

Criminal Warfare

The links between crime, warfare and governance.

 

The Capital Option

Two paths that Capitalism can take and their consequences.

 

Paradox America

America’s weakness and ultimate power.

 

Burning Libraries (BCE)

One out of ten authors survives and one of ten of his works, among best-preserved historic writings.  Did you know that the Iliad and the Odyssey were actually two thirds of a trilogy? 

 

Burning Libraries (AD)

More book burning until now.  It is ecumenical in history and sickeningly omnipresent.

         

Weapon Mentality

Are fascism and modern political philosophy too similar?  Why?

 

Ashoka

The institution of righteousness.  We have our precedent.

 

Ritual Stupidity

Failure to heed warnings until it is too late, typical of weapon mentality.

                  

Several Big Lies

A partial list of lies by type.

         

Pick Your Poison

Weapon mentality is lethal by design.  It cannot help itself; that is what is does best.  If you want to massacre everything, you have picked the right pet.  Choose another one, more docile.

 

SECTION II – HOW

How do we get from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld?

 

Peace Mentality, Weapon Mentality

Superficial growth with deep roots, explosive growth from shallow ones.  Concerning deep roots and fruitful growth.

 

Learning to Dance

The World Elephant is run by a cockroach mind: its muscular power out of balance with its neurological awareness.  It wanders around blind, breaks limbs and starves in the produce section of a grocery store.  That is our world.  Graft an elephant’s brain into it and watch it dance.  That dance would be our lifeline to PeaceWorld.

 

Education as Pathology vs. the Armchair Formula

Modern education is about triage and restriction.  Learner education would honor every child with a doctorate by puberty, the way we treat prodigal musicians today.  Accelerate information flow instead of rationing it.  Turn the hierarchic ziggurat of education upside down, into a cornucopia of Learning: anarchic but self-filtering for quality.

 

Further Communications

The rules that regulate our communications by means of a constellation of political metaphors.  Free speech and profit centers.  More anarchic dialog bandwidth and less frequency of official monolog.

                  

The Library

Information handling by peace technology.

 

Knowledge-Value

Taichi Sakaiya wrote about perceived abundance and the objective value judgments that arise from it; he wrote about dearth and the knowledge value judgments that arise from it.  Suggested peace technology applications of knowledge-value that will balance affluence and poverty, objective value and knowledge-value.

 

Laocracy vs. Sociopathocracy

Laocracy as a direct and perpetual referendum alternative to indirect and sporadic representative democracy.  A suggested architecture for the World Agora and its information politics on PeaceWorld.  Sociopathocracy, rule by sociopaths (see above) over WeaponWorld.

 

Jury Duty

For maximum justice.

 

Computer Yellow Pages

How to list topics of passion and their adherents.

 

White Noise

Some problems with large-scale governance.

 

Conceive Our Future

Your picture is as valid as mine.  Let’s build ours together.

 

Travel

On the benefits of extended travel.

 

Ancient Abundance & Little Green Men

Laughably unscientific speculations and outlandish hypotheses for you fireworks entertainment.

                  

Learner Science

Peace technology applications of science and superstition.

                  

Beyond Darwin

A complementary replacement to his theory of evolution.

 

Language

Amer-Ind as a universal travelers’ language supplemental to birth languages.  On cultural ecology: its strangulation by corporate weapon culture and its appreciation on PeaceWorld.

 

Satyagraha and Allah

On the fine art of verifaction: the search for the truth on both sides of a conflict.  On Islam.  What if the two agreed perfectly?

 

Some Basic Rules

Gandhi’s ideas on Satyagraha, conflict resolution and non-violence―gratefully lifted from Mark Juergensmeyer’s book.

 

Ode to Truth and Non-Violence

A poem on Satyagraha and verifaction.

 

Costs

Try not to evaluate the economics of peace technology according to the econologic of weapon mentality.

 

SECTION III – WHAT

What should we expect once we reach PeaceWorld?

 

The Future

Could we turn the Earth into a larger, better model of Victorian England?  The Earth as a squireship.  Factory towns fringing Earth orbit instead of the sea.  Outer space, the colonies?

 

The Cosmic Serpent

Is the living voice of DNA the voice of the serpent of Eden, the devil?  Or is it the Holy Spirit that Jesus left us as a Comforter, pending His return?  DNA is very old and very wise; our souls are saved already.  Why not tap into that titanic database to unearth answers to our worst problems?  DNA in other incarnations has already survived them and turned them to advantage.  Why not share them here and now in realtime?

 

Aliens & Cavemen

More outlandish, pre-historic speculations for your dining and dancing pleasure.

 

Doctors within Borders

We must have a thousand times more medics.  Weapons impediments to public health, and peace technology applications to health care.

 

Plus LTA, Minus Nukes

Alternative transportation hardware and the formal interdiction of nuclear war.

         

Is Ecology Constitutional?

Good ecology as a constitutional right.

                  

Planet Overwatch

Another list of keywords: urban renewal, urban forestry, tectonic remediation, covered cities, elevated walkways, solar power.  Grass roots surveillance of large-scale activities.

 

Your Rights or Their Privileges?

The accord of rights on PeaceWorld.

 

Population Control

The best means of population control is as many children and old folks as possible, healthy and well cared for—and many fewer exceptions.

 

World Militia

“The Constitution calls for a well-regulated militia,” … Harm Forces on Peace World.

 

Peace on Earth and Goodwill

Convivencia, learning to live together.  Urban design and environmental protections.

 

What Can I Do?

Be kind enough to translate your favorite chapter of Learners into your own language, please?  A more or less fatuous list of personal suggestions.  How dare I?  Because my sister asked me.  Make up your own!

 

Is It Too Late?

 

Conclusion

Sustainable development through peace technology, activism, social commentary, futurism, prophecy, politics, political theory, ecology and peace, idealism, urban renewal, global management, global federation, the world vision we lack.

 

Trash Soccer

Litter control as a sidewalk sport.  Garbage is for WeaponWorld slums, not PeaceWorld’s New Jerusalem.  Recycling it should become a child’s game.

 

Bibliography

 

LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld

 

CONTACT PAGE