SUMMARY OF
LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
“We are being taught by all the foregoing to assume as closely as
possible the viewpoint, the patience and the competence of God.” Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, St.
Martin’s Press, p. 251.
During the Second (sic) World War, every
European faced the same choice: defy the Nazis or accept their creed. Today, it’s up to you. No time is left to duck key issues (a
favorite human pastime) and nowhere is left to run and hide. From New Zealand to Novaya Zemlya, your
choice will lie somewhere between mortal risk and moral bankruptcy, unless you
become a Learner worthy of the name.
This text provides an opportunity to weigh your options before push
comes to shove.
But first of all, you will have to heave some
mental ballast overboard. The mental
payload you should consider ditching has three layers, each including the
former and making it worse. You can
choose to be:
Nescient:
“I can only trust those ideas I have heard at least a hundred times
before. Those concepts are least likely
to get me in trouble. Nothing else
matters.”
Credophobic:
“I don’t believe any of the BS they’ve shoveled into my brain, but I
can’t afford to believe anything else.”
Fanaticophobic: “I can only trust those who repeat familiar
ideas to me. Anyone who testifies
otherwise must be a fanatic, a crankcase or a snake-oil merchant. No one can con me; I’m way too cool and
classy for that.”
These days, almost everyone has turned into a
fanaticophobe. What about you?
You can reject those reactions and put up
with the social ostracism that will come with your rejection. Strike out on your own, for a change. Make up your own mind to take constructive
risks. Only you can unplug your ears to
new ideas (“Only you can prevent forest fires…”). That takes guts and mental discernment.
Do we have what it takes? I believe you do, since you have read this
far.
The prevailing orthodoxy bids us attend a
“New World Order” based on international corporate paternalism. This text calls these World Imperialists,
Wimps. Current events reveal ongoing
Wimp control exercises. Our spiritual
hollowness, the environmental holocaust we witness against our will and the
rise of militant chaosism – both micro/criminal and macro/military – reveal the
corporate econologic that drives
them. Televised thought-control beams
industrial quantities of Hollywood trivia and Madison Avenue materialism into
our brains. It does this to amplify our
Wimp madness and veil its worst consequences.
From now on, when you think of a corporation,
think of a capricious, enduring, licentious and dangerously stupid
monarchy. Learners will deal with
multinational corporations the way European republicans dealt with
monarchies. Primitive, violent overthrow
just provoked a more violent backlash, but intelligent and gradual substitution
brought permanent improvement.
On the other hand, old school troglodytes
maintain that a few ‘chosen ones’ should ‘return’ to some dreamland of
uncertain provenance while the rest of us surrender to Wimp servitude. Hypnotically, these Prisms imprison themselves in their favorite ‘ism’. Be it individualism, libertarianism, ‘strict’
constitutionalism, nationalism, Nazi/Italian/Japanese national socialism,
Soviet/Maoist national communism, American/Corporate national capitalism,
radicalism, anarchism, racism, tribalism, religious fundamentalism or some
other simplistic cure-all; it just means
assembling with imaginary superiors and sacrificing imaginary inferiors
who are completely similar—that’s all.
By their Prism shall
you know them.
The title Prism fits many miscreants. It applies to military autocrats, politburo
absolutists, religious fanatics, government-paid and extra-governmental
terrorists, ethnic genocides, crime barons and their secret brothers in the
secret police, military-industrial extortionists, reactionary politicians and
their know-nothing supporters—as well as you and I on a bad day. In search of soothing simplicity, such
activists dehumanize their enemies by turning them into philosophical
abstractions, the better to kill them.
In The
Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York,
1959, J. Glenn Davis lists several warrior types and the way they abstract the
Other into a perfect enemy.
Professional soldiers prefer to fight
competent and courageous enemies; they hold lesser adversaries in
contempt. Paradoxically, their enemies
are to be despised and destroyed with professional efficiency as long as they
resist, but treated honorably once they surrender. When civilians are tortured and killed, as
they must be in war, (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), this must
happen with ceremonious reluctance on the part of professional warriors.
Racist warriors turn their enemies into
sub-humans. There is no room for mercy,
human decency or redeeming values in their attitude—which adds a mechanical
drudgery to war’s other insults.
The enemy of religious and ideological
crusaders is not only subhuman but an Incarnation of Evil. He is in unimaginable revolt against God, the
Leader or some other lofty principle.
Killing him is not only a crusader’s filthy obligation, it is his divine
calling. Expect even less mercy from
such mass murderers.
In addition, compared to the glory of the
abstraction they adopt, everyone’s well-being and survival are irrelevant, be
they opponents, innocent bystanders, partners and even themselves—even if the
adopted ideal forbids such aggression.
For example, Shias and Sunnis fight each other even though they are
practicing Muslims and forbidden to do so in the Koran. Mohammed would not have been pleased.
May Learners
never be so debased! You deadly cowards
advocating mass murder will have no excuse, this time around.
On the other hand, irredeemably reasonable
people consider their opponents fellow human beings and victims of forces
beyond their control—especially during warfare.
Contradictions between their healthy attitude and the brutal
requirements of combat make this attitude (and sanity) difficult to maintain
very long on the battlefield, where hesitation often leads to casualties and
defeat. Jesus or survival?
Professional soldiers are particularly
critical of this attitude. From their
point of view, scorning the enemy simplifies the dangerous task of killing him
and subduing his survivors. Thus, they
prefer reflexive contempt (despite its mercilessness) to any undermining sense
of fellow feeling. Since it’s hard to
keep sharp focus while thinking two opposite thoughts, they feel equal contempt
for anyone outside their military clan.
In This Thing of Darkness: a Sociology of
the Enemy, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1994, pp. 36
et seq., James A. Aho lists five steps required to reify ethnic
hatred. Reification means turning an
abstraction, like bigotry, into a concrete thing.
1.
Naming:
a false characterization of one individual as a model of an abstract evil
category.
2.
Legitimization:
validating this lie by subverting official findings.
3.
Myth-making:
creating a false history to confirm the lie.
4.
Sedimentation:
embedding these legends into the next generation’s memory as part of a group
bonding dynamic.
5.
Ritual:
the traumatic, theatrical extinction of victims, often by ritual torture and
the entrapment of their family.
6.
We might
add a sixth element, Martyrdom: the sacrifice of minor bigots to horrified
authorities after the above-described Ritual, and their canonization by senior
bigots who got away clean. God, how they
love to feel sorry for themselves!
Especially when they’ve gotten away with some incredible atrocity.
These habits are no doubt twisted versions of
peace-equivalent ‘mixing bowl’ rituals.
With a few minor rewrites of the theatrics involved, we could probably
use them to promote mutual respect and social tolerance. Like most weapon rituals, they could be
converted to the uses of peace with a little finagling.
It is interesting to note that, during
frenzies of intertribal warfare, the most warlike tribes adopted prisoners of
war to replace their heavy casualties.
Thus, the most deadly bigots became experts at the art of turning bitter
enemies into blood brothers. Life is
paradox.
Today’s elite fanatics look forward to an
ultimate orgy of Prismatic violence that would climax with the planetary,
pan-toxin gangbang for which everyone’s been preparing these last few
decades. The
bio-chemo-nano-nuclear-scalar extermination of every hated Other, as well as
the fearsome Other Within. Each of us
denies our part in this upcoming disaster which could never have come to term
without our devoted collaboration. Peace
will gradually deteriorate until total war erupts spontaneously and unstoppably
– unless we take vigorous steps to thwart it in the meantime.
Both Wimps and Prisms rely on weapon
mentality. Their ethics are equally
corrupt; their odds of long-term success, nil.
Sooner or later, their power trips will degenerate into a blood
bath. It is merely a question of time
and weapon sophistication.
Fortunately, most people’s beliefs (or lack
thereof) can be harnessed to peace struggle and Satyagraha, of which more in its own
chapter.
This text proposes a different ideology,
upheld by an army of one (me). It claims
no sponsorship from the Skull & Bones, the Mujihadeen, the International
Monetary Fund or any such stealth cut-throats.
I hope this disclaimer tempts you to rally to the cause.
Learners will require the complete
infrastructure humanity has assembled today, which must remain intact,
flourishing and properly refined. What’s
more, we will require that fewer and fewer people be deprived of home,
homeland, security, livelihood and life.
Learners will address the needs of the rich
with as much care as those of the info-proletariat. In other words, a thousand times more
skillfully than weapon managers ever got away with. Unlike weapon dissidents, Learners will
require the enthusiastic cooperation, expertise and capital management of
current info elites. Without them, none
of this transformation will be possible.
Humanity has barely accumulated enough
capital and mutual good will to undertake this Learner transformation. Any massive societal breakdown (of the kind
weapon dissidents keep longing for) would drive us to lower Levels of
weapon barbarism and eventual annihilation.
We cannot afford any more mass destruction, pilferage and terror of the
type we’ve agreed – sigh! – was regrettably
unavoidable.
As for those
who would seek to annihilate civilization while they hone their personal and/or
Good Book survival skills, I stand in awe of their panic. Whether they adhere to the Unabomber’s
screed, to some fundamentalist’s rant or to murderous voices in their head,
their traumatic simplification of reality bodes ill for everyone—themselves
included. May Learners revive their
petrified imagination and cure them of their craving for lethal
simplification!
I recall reading about a young mountain
tribesman who got arrested for enforcing a blood feud. When the police asked him why he had murdered
an innocent stranger, he told them he had done it because his mother had urged
him on. Women are just as lethal, in
this context, as are men—and perhaps more so.
They can serve the uses of peace even more vigorously.
So-called ‘primitive’ shamans once informed a
foreign observer that the main difference between men and women is this. Men hunt, fight and chop down trees; women
tend children, men and gardens. Thus,
men and women are entitled to their natural differences in talent, strength and
aptitude. But, most importantly, women
must tell men when to stop. We have
forgotten that dependable veto.
Nothing is as permanent as it seems, not even
annihilation. During the next Paroxysm
of soiled underpants panic and mass stupidity, we may destroy the biosphere,
the human race or just human civilization.
It would only be a matter of the megatonnage we chose to offload, laced
with additional deadly disease, twisted weather and weapon grade
nano-tech.
Those dismal outcomes are largely moot to
someone who believes in reincarnation. We’ll just have to re-enact the entire
vicious farce of history, to reach current levels of peace potential. After the radioactive rubble has stopped
bouncing, we can take a few thousand years the re-enact the entire history of
weapon civilization, or millions since the Dawn of Man, or billions more since
life took hold on Earth.
Take your pick, you pompous bombardiers! You’ll have to wait awhile longer before you
have bombs big enough to drive us further back in time. That’s all your malicious panic can do, just
delay things a little longer, during life’s near-infinite time span.
How much more time do we wish to squander on
historical re-enactments? How many more
devourings, rapes, suicides, crucifixions, pogroms and massacres must we
witness for our dining and dancing pleasure—before we start doing things right?
You can read all about war in newspapers and
history books. What you will never read
is this. After every war, things pretty
much return to the way they were before the war began. Survivors interact, love and hate one
another, care for lucky youngsters and go about their business. No war, no matter how “glorious and
significant,” changes much of anything.
The same result (a better one, more likely) could have been achieved
during an equivalent peace. The only
real difference resides in the decades of work it will take to replace the
wealth and trust that war squandered and its irreplaceable casualties.
Everyone loses every war; there are no
winners except weapon elites.
During the primeval of terrestrial life,
multi-cellular organisms underwent one dramatic transformation. Primitive colonies let central cells starve
out and suffocate. Surrounded, as they
were, by layers of 'selfish' cells along the outer rim, they couldn’t get
enough food and oxygen to survive. More
complex, three-dimensional life forms couldn’t evolve until ‘privileged’ outer
cells collected surplus nutrients and oxygen, and passed them into the ‘poorer’
center. Then they had to transmit this
talent unto latter generations.
Anyone who spouts "survival of the
fittest" dogma of Social Darwinism had better contemplate "survival
of the most generous.” Nature supports
the most complex community of sharers that can tailor their lives to mutual
support in this environment. See Peter
Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.
“Over millions of years, nature’s ecosystems engineers have been
especially effective in the promotion of overyielding
[my italics]. They have coevolved with
other species that exploit the niches they build. The result is a harmony within
ecosystems. The constituent species, by
spreading out into multiple niches, seize and cycle more materials and energy
than is possible in similar ecosystems. Homo sapiens is an ecosystems engineer
too, but a bad one. Not having coevolved
[author’s note: in intimate proximity—a peace technology we could cultivate] with
the majority of life forms we encounter around the world, we eliminate far more
niches than we create. We drive species
and ecosystems into extinction at a far higher rate than existed before, and
everywhere diminish productivity and stability.” Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 112.
Once a Learner creed takes hold, info elites
with surplus wealth will discover the titanic profits they may achieve
(pragmatic yet fully moral) once they sustain the rest in superior equity. Compared to this abundance, their latest,
most grandiose achievements will look like slumlord flops.
While everyone merits modest comforts, those
who excel may outstrip that minimum by no more than five to one between the
highest and lowest fifths of the population, and fifteen to one between the
highest and lowest income percentiles.
Thus, the higher the comfort ladder the poorest climb, the more luxuries
the rich may permit themselves in good conscience.
Here I go again, making pronouncements when Learners’ only real goal is to trigger
global transformation, then step aside and let experts and specialists optimize
their topics of passion. I should let a more qualified Learner do this
work for me.
“Socioeconomic Democracy is a model socioeconomic subsystem in which
there is some form of Universal Guaranteed Personal Income [UGI] as well as
some form of Maximum Allowable Personal Wealth [MAW], with both the lower bound
on personal material poverty and the upper bound on personal material wealth
set and adjusted democratically by all society.” Robley E. George, Socioeconomic Democracy:
An Advanced Socioeconomic System, Praeger Studies on the 21st Century,
Praeger Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, London, 2002, p. 91.
Learners will seek neither absolute economic
equality nor unlimited economic opportunity.
For that matter, it will be the nature of Learners to shun almost every
absolute. Everything in moderation
(except wisdom, beauty and elegance), well balanced and promoting peace.
Stalin and Pol Pot demonstrated that the
former alternative leads to absolute poverty and millions of dead entrepreneurs
of all kinds. Whether civilian or
military, bureaucratic or professional, farm or factory managers; everyone who
tried to get ahead was killed, and many more innocent of such ambition. The United States and Victorian England
demonstrated the unhealthy polarization of wealth and poverty when the former
is embraced without exception.
A golden mean must be found, so that everyone
may live comfortably, entrepreneurship may be allowed its creativity and
rightful gain, and a much healthier moral conscience prevails within society as
a whole and each individual. It is a
question of unearthing more wisdom: the ultimate goal of Learners.
A healthy conscience is the ultimate luxury,
as much for the rich as the poor.
Compared to it, their shining treasures and ringing honorifics are mere
baby baubles and babble; all their sacrifice and suffering are a waste of time
and energy.
I’m not talking about the satisfaction one
may derive by clawing one’s way to the top of the human meat pile; or of that
experienced by a few rich people who struggle for the rights of the poor. I’m talking about real self-worth, a healthy
conscience and legitimate well-being. At
one time sacrificed on the weapons altar, those things are worth a thousand
times their diktats and conspicuous consumption, or our submission to suffering
or rebellion against it―once we realize what we have missed.
All those prior political designations
implied dogmatic stasis and linear thinking, not real-world political
flexibility. They pinned us like
butterflies on corkboard, the better to ‘control’ our choices and behavior.
We have never coined the term for such a
flexible political entity as a Learner.
We are nameless and therefore powerless because we reject better
doctrine. We expect to muddle along
somehow, despite our refusal to refine our political discourse.
Indeed, our constellation of political
metaphors is a patchwork of obsolete buzzwords and rusty clichés that may have
held some promise in the distant past, but none today. These mushy euphemisms (democracy, left versus
right, capitalism, collectivist, phtui!) do nothing but worsen our errors and
compound their ill effect.
Politics-as-usual forbids us to tinker with the creaking boilerplate of
civilization. This text notes this
obstacle to progress and sidesteps it.
“These principles, therefore … are to be submitted to the dispassionate
and patient investigation … of those individuals of every rank and class and
denomination … who have become in some degree conscious of the errors in which
they exist; who have felt the thick mental darkness by which they are
surrounded; who are ardently desirous of discovering and following truth
wherever it may lead; and who can perceive the inseparable [connection] which
exists between individual and general, between private and public good!” Robert
Owen, Catechism, Cole, 205-7.
Taken from The Life and Ideas of
Robert Owen, by A.L.
Morton, Monthly Review Press, 1963, p. 128.
One cannot cheat at Learning, lie about it or
avoid it. Bullies learn evil; victims,
endurance; and progressives, if they’re lucky, patience and compassion. Everyone learns to do it better the next
time. Learning is hard-wired into
us, our favorite game. From conception
to death (and perhaps beyond), our consciousness burns to learn.
The verb ‘to learn’ is missing its active
voice, to supplement the passive one we’ve grown accustomed to. We need to upgrade its original intent, from
‘passively absorbing information’ to ‘exchanging information freely.’ “I learned to read … My school-marm learned me
to read.” In addition, the term
Learners, as understood here, includes the packet of information each of us
requires to get on with civilized life.
I claim my share of Learners and hope to trade it with yours.
The words ‘teaching’ and ‘education’ carry an
overburden of compulsion and regimentation that has nothing to do with the
‘Learning’ we’re talking about here.
While the index to Theories of Learning –
A Comparative Approach has many entries under punishment, conditioning and
suchlike compulsions; there are no entries under “play and games.” Interestingly, the only reference to play
occurs in the Preface where its editors explain how much play they indulged in
while they “worked on the problem” of learning.
Even though this book may address an unsuspecting
mass of Learners (“Who, me?”) it seeks those special people who recognize the
Learner within themselves, the instant they scan these lines.
Learners!
Rally here!
We are all born Learners; none may
abstain. The body of Learners embraces
infant and elder; rich person and poor; victim and tormentor; know-nothing,
academe and self-taught alike. Age,
race, sex, abilities and other identity issues are one and the same on the
playground of Learning.
Once the Learners on this planet recognize each other and rally to their topics of passion in keeping with their talents and interests, the stars will be ours for the asking.
LEARNERS:
On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld