Learners is available in English and in French.
LEARNERS:
On the Move from WeaponWorld to
PeaceWorld
Please refresh the
pages below – I update them often.
My Blog: Escape from WeaponWorld
“We are confronted
with the fierce urgency of now.” Martin
Luther King quotation. Invitation to
read and translate Learners.
Summary of Learners: World
Peace
Still working on
this 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 admit
this fact, we may open wide the doors to Peace World.
Table of Contents
(you are here.)
Drawn from each
chapter. A more fractal, quantum jumpy
and fuzzy logic description of Learners
than these wordy, Newtonian sentences.
Also easier to machine-translate into other languages.
I will wake again in
darkness / Je veillerai tantot dans l’obscurite --- For the Kiddies
Gunned Down / Pour les gosses abattus ---
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 leur place / Take their Place
Please provide a
link from your site to mine, and email it to me.
We need a whole new
political vocabulary. Our range of
topics here 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. He stipulated that it requires
step-by-step development. His intent
was toxic; ours could be benign. The
mechanism remains, to use or abuse.
The Collective Superconscience
Do we share a
collective superconscience? Have we
polluted it with our violence? Could we
flood it with Peace?
Darwinian selection
for better military states. Leadership
in its weapon and peace contexts.
Innate human evil or
ultimate good? Nature, nurture and
other good things.
Pick your constellation
of political metaphors: historically pure or dreaming up tomorrow. 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 celebrate.
We should be celebrating Learners, not sacrificing victims.
What
I Think of the Rapture, Man
Jesus never used the
word Rapture; it is nowhere 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:
flouting 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 during the opening phase of the Inquisition.
Identity, conflict
and community. Adherents of different
identity positions could turn into Learners.
This identity they shared could shield everyone from human rights abuse.
Our constellation of
political metaphors is chock-full of weapon myths. What if we replaced them with PeaceWorld equivalents?
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 every one of
them is improved, 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 is like discussing orbital mechanics in the
absence of gravity. Economics is just
another sub-branch of info flow. That
flow is infinitely renewable and exponentially profitable; it could be
multiplied by millions of times, once 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 could liberate.
The development of
the threat formula: Body Count times (Distance over Time) squared; instead of
the armchair formula that accelerates thought (see below).
Let’s walk a mile in
the boots of an average grunt.
The links between
crime, warfare and governance.
The two paths of
Capitalism and their consequences.
America’s weakness
and ultimate power.
Among the best
preserved historical writings, one out of ten authors survives, and one of ten
of his works. Did you know that the
Iliad and the Odyssey were actually two thirds of a trilogy?
More book burning,
up ‘til 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 a massacre, you have picked the perfect attack dog. Choose another pet, more docile.
How do we make the
leap 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 output out of balance with its
neurological awareness. It wanders blind,
breaks limbs and starves in the produce section of a grocery store. That is our world. Implant it with an elephant’s brain and watch it dance. That dance could be our lifeline to
PeaceWorld.
Education as Pathology vs. the Armchair Formula
Modern education is
about triage and restriction. Learner
education would gift each child with at least one doctorate by puberty: the way
we treat prodigal musicians today.
Accelerate info flow instead of rationing it. Turn the hierarchic ziggurat of education upside down, into a
cornucopia of Learning: anarchistic but self-filtering for excellence.
The rules that
regulate our communications by means of a constellation of political
metaphors. Free speech and profit
centers. Greater, more anarchistic
dialog bandwidth and a lower 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 it induces. Suggested peace technology applications of
knowledge-value that may balance affluence and poverty, objective value and
knowledge-value.
Laocracy as a direct
and perpetual referendum substitute for the indirect and sporadic service of
representative democracy. A suggested
architecture for the World Agora and its info politics on PeaceWorld. Sociopathocracy: the rule of WeaponWorld by
sociopaths (see above).
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 your fireworks
entertainment.
Peace technology
applications of science and superstition.
A complementary
aspect to his theory of evolution.
Amer-Ind as a
universal travelers’ language in addition to birth languages. On cultural ecology: its suffocation by
corporate weapon culture and its appreciation on PeaceWorld.
On the fine art of verifaction:
the search for 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 that 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 already saved. 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 real-time?
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. 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 fine-tuning of
rights on PeaceWorld.
The best means of
population control is as many of children and old folks as possible healthy and
well cared for—and far 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 chapters of Learners
into your own language, if you 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.
Street litter is for
WeaponWorld hell, not the New Jerusalem of PeaceWorld. Litter control should become a sidewalk sport; recycling it, child’s play.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld