Learners is available in English and in French.
LEARNERS:
On the Move from WeaponWorld to
PeaceWorld
Please refresh the
pages below – I try to update them often.
My Blog: Escape from WeaponWorld
“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.
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.)
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.
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
Please provide a
link from your site to mine, and email me.
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?
Darwinian selection
for better military states. Leadership
in weapon and peace contexts.
Innate human evil or
ultimate good? Nature, nurture and other
good things.
Pick you
constellation of political metaphors: historically pure or dreaming tomorrow
into reality. You choose.
Take a break. Contact me.
This is hard.
Why are we in this
mess?
Are we too
cooperative or too competitive? Why?
Wars are not open and
shut, warfare is eternal. Those who
resist it best, die the fastest.
The science and
craft of warfare in history and the present.
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?
What made perennial
peasants and nobles revere these heretics instead of their Catholic clergy,
fully mature?
My attempt to
rewrite the Cathari catechism lost in the opening phase of the Inquisition.
Identity, conflict
and community. Adherents of different
identity positions could become Learners.
Their shared identity could shield everyone from human rights abuse.
Our constellation of
political metaphors is full of weapon myths.
We could replace them with peace myths.
A list of suggested
does and don’ts (or at least not too often).
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.
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.
The development of
the threat formula: Body Count times (Time over Distance) squared; instead of
the armchair formula that accelerates thought (see below).
Walk a mile in the
boots of an average grunt.
The links between
crime, warfare and governance.
Two paths that
Capitalism can take and their consequences.
America’s weakness
and ultimate power.
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?
More book burning
until now. It is ecumenical in history
and sickeningly omnipresent.
Are fascism and
modern political philosophy too similar?
Why?
The institution of
righteousness. We have our precedent.
Failure to heed
warnings until it is too late, typical of weapon mentality.
A partial list of
lies by type.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Information handling
by peace technology.
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 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.
For maximum justice.
How to list topics of passion
and their adherents.
Some problems with
large-scale governance.
Your picture is as
valid as mine. Let’s build ours
together.
On the benefits of
extended travel.
Ancient Abundance & Little Green Men
Laughably
unscientific speculations and outlandish hypotheses for you fireworks
entertainment.
Peace technology
applications of science and superstition.
A complementary
replacement to his theory of evolution.
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.
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?
Gandhi’s ideas on
Satyagraha, conflict resolution and non-violence―gratefully lifted from
Mark Juergensmeyer’s book.
A poem on Satyagraha
and verifaction.
Try not to evaluate
the economics of peace technology according to the econologic of weapon
mentality.
What should we
expect once we reach PeaceWorld?
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?
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?
More outlandish,
pre-historic speculations for your dining and dancing pleasure.
We must have a
thousand times more medics. Weapons
impediments to public health, and peace technology applications to health care.
Alternative
transportation hardware and the formal interdiction of nuclear war.
Good ecology as a
constitutional right.
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.
The best means of
population control is as many children and old folks as possible, healthy and
well cared for—and many fewer exceptions.
“The Constitution
calls for a well-regulated militia,” … Harm Forces on Peace World.
Convivencia, learning to live together.
Urban design and environmental protections.
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!
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.
Litter control as a
sidewalk sport. Garbage is for
WeaponWorld slums, not PeaceWorld’s New Jerusalem. Recycling it should become a child’s game.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld