SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
The quest for Learners has led me to a Tartar steppe of blazing
solitude with no end in sight. My awful
trip has taken me from one oasis of fellowship to the next, somewhere beyond
the horizon. I tarried at each way
station, refreshed by a few friends’ tenders of confidence and support. Then I resumed my dismal trek.
In The Language Instinct, Peter Pinker
says he never met anyone indifferent to his topic of passion. I cannot admit as much. Active indifference begot passive aggression
the moment I interrupted routine patter with Learners’ discontent.
I have a genius for raising ire.
Sexual harassment would not have triggered such bitter confrontations. My wife, Linda, suggested it was not what I
said that bought me trouble, but how I said it.
Perhaps. This work would never
have seen the light of day without the heartfelt support – if at times bemused
– of my beloved manuscript widow.
I’m so proud of my family and friends: Learner role models all. Many others furthered this work in their own
way, even if unknowingly.
I owe special thanks to the foreign volunteers and kibbutznikim
(Israeli collective farmers) at Kibbutzim
Evron and Dorot.
And to our Arab and Palestinian hosts as well, whose Muslim birthright
is Peace.
To our distant ancestors from those ancient domains: Hominids, Pagans,
Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all those in between: the ultimate survivors of
God’s wrath.
The Americas – North, South and Central – form a triad jewel. Similarly, Israel and its neighbors form an
antique necklace of infinite promise – unrealized, so far – that stretches and
flows miraculously beyond its borders, in intimate contact with other nuclei of
ancient civilization. Come ye together,
every wise Learner, regardless of provenance and language! Every wise one singing in harmony of peace: Learners assembled on PeaceWorld…
I have benefited from many blessings: Plutarch’s
passion and Voltaire’s star-field enlightenment; Bellamy’s Looking
Backward, Ursula Le Guin’s
The Dispossessed, John Brunner’s Stand
on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up,
the Dupuy Brothers’ Encyclopedia of Military History, Carroll
Quigley’s Weapon Systems & Political
Stability, and Mortimer Adler’s How
to Think about War and Peace.
I used to draw sanity supplements from The
Nation magazine. Eventually, I had
to give it up, from its galling refusal to support my project or any other of
significant social transformation, for that matter. Like other American “liberals,” its editors
whine endlessly about things they refuse to change. They and their peers in The Progressive,
Dissent, Z, Harpers, Utne Reader and other Anglo-Saxon
periodicals that dare call themselves Leftist or Progressive, despite their
stuffy, middle-of-the-road fainéantise (fainaionteez, “best do nothing” attitude). The worse things get, the more tragedies and
scandals they have to whine about in print and the greater the number of
horrified subscribers paying for their whining.
Yay! If things improved
tremendously, their kind of hands-off criticism would go out of business. In the long run, meddlesome meliorists and
atomistic progressives combine to approve the worst wreckage.
There are only two political parties in America: Conservative and
Reactionary. Democrats who haven’t had a
good idea in six decades or accepted anyone else’s in half that time, and
Republicans who never met a bad idea they didn’t love. Bad ideas that Democrats never manage to
resist, as if by black magic, or hidden desire (well-funded) to see the
Republicans succeed with their anonymous assistance. With us trapped between these two bands of
brigands. Take your pick.
The editorial formula of The Nation (if there is one, it is
carefully concealed) implies perpetual surrender of the initiative to the
reactionaries. Surrender, period. America’s political quagmire confirms my
conclusion. So-called Progressives are
more responsible for the sewer backflow of American politics, than the
reactionaries themselves. We could easily
dismiss stupid reactionaries; but the subtle monopoly and sabotage of
progressive ideals by “liberals” is a paralytic of fearsome potency.
With friends like those, who needs enemies?
Many people and publications have confirmed my conclusions, even if they
ignored the subtext of their words, intentions and deeds.
Nature has revealed heart-rending wonders to me. Each new revelation confirmed our entitlement
to peace, abundance and justice -- to the God of Love’s benevolence, the
Comforter Jesus promised us.
I am very grateful to Govind Naidu, Professor
of Political Science at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Into his lap the mails fluttered my
unsolicited little manuscript. His
thought-provoking reply galvanized this odd quest of mine. Apart from a few ephemeral phone calls, I was
satisfied with his unique inspiration.
I owe undying thanks to Ted Fagin: affable neighbor, gentleman gambler,
bibliophile, anarchist and Dog Soldier: the mentor I prayed for and now
grieve. Cheerily, he set aside his
terminal affliction and grave misgivings about the content of this book, to
mentor me English. Thanks also to sister
Leslie who lovingly landscaped the prose whose civil engineering Ted undertook,
to Karen for beckoning me beyond my comfort zone, and to Jill for her spirit of
Fairness.
Best friends Doug Dean and Paul Lackman plowed through rough drafts of
this text, and offered many more suggestions than my few attributions
suggest—Doug, from first drafts until his regretted demise (so painfully long
ago), and Paul since.
Thanks also to countless thugs, hooligans, hypocrites and fascists out there
(flaming, blaming or crypto-), for whom:
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Who cares whether they wore battledress or class-A uniforms, TV pancake
makeup or the ashes of mourning, institutional silks or the rags of
dissent? Everyone is a naked mortal
underneath. Their arrogant impunity
raised low rancor to new heights of moral rankness. Without the awful fecundity of their malice,
I’d never have found enough outrage to manhandle this project.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to the kind souls at the U.S. Department
of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Seattle, with whom I’ve worked for
so many years. And earlier, to the
dedicated people at the Damage Assessment Branch, US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), also in Seattle. They would have been better served by someone
less distracted, but found a way to tolerate my Learner daydreams.
Thanks to Alta Vista Bablefish online translation service, I got a free
means to turn an impossible dream, translating Learners into French, into an entertaining if challenging
impracticality. My dozen or so Keyword
pages, translated in as many languages, are also its result. Likewise, to Google Translation, for Arab,
Farsi and Indonesian versions. In
addition, I must thank Microsoft, Inc., and its Bowne Global Service auxiliary,
for useful if sometimes cantankerous online translation services, in their Word
2000 package. Also, http://www.wordreference.com/fr/index.htm, where I found
French translations I was too stupid to do myself; and http://www.touchon.net/annuaire-site-plans-dictionnaires.php
for synonyms in French, likewise.
I’ll never get over the fact that I never found free translation services
of high quality in the major South Asian language groups or any from Africa. Even in those translated, the quality has
been very rough at best. We are truly
unimpressive when it comes to gathering together in peace. Much work remains to be done.
Learners speaks ill of
entrepreneurial software companies.
Software delivery should be a public utility renowned for its
consistency, free service and ease of use.
In the meantime, Mr. Bill Gates, thank you for having eased my burden.
And to Jean Bacon and son, whose book and
translation of Les Saigneurs
de la Guerre (The Greater Glory)
lit my way through the skull-lined labyrinth of WeaponWorld. To all those in my Bibliography,
who set stepping stones across the sucking gore quagmire of WeaponWorld, to
PeaceWorld’s shaded grove.
To the lovely Esmeralda Arana (whom I never met), who kicked my butt at
just the right moment, if not in a direction she could predict.
I owe special thanks to Google.
Its search spiders crawled every page of my work,
keyword indexed the whole thing and sent me thousands of readers for free. Many fewer per day since I moved Learners to another URL, but thanks
anyhow. Bad move; I could have kicked
myself for moving it. Other search
engines and webmaster links have sent me additional readers (especially Yahoo
and MSN). Thanks to all of you, without
whom this samizdat would have been known by none but me.
Thank you, www.freeservers.com, for hosting my site for so many years
at low cost and tremendous levels of service.
And to arvixe.com, now.
Hardly any ideas proposed here are mine alone. Most Learner prescriptions unfold as part of
the organic Tao, as arrogant reaction collapses under its own
contradictions.
Mine all errors contained herein. Please
address your comments to me. I welcome your
corrections and thank you in advance for them.
My feeble wit is inadequate for this task; that’s obvious. It may suffice the combined awareness of this
world’s Learners gathered in the Agora of PeaceWorld; that is my hope.
Thanks to the poets, next.
LEARNERS:
On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld