SUMMARY OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
“The systemic decay of a military-industrial society is a
phenomenon of counter-modernization—an abrupt reversal of the key developments
that have characterized all industrial societies to date. This form of social degeneration was provoked
in the Soviet case by the anti-innovative aspects of the economic system
coupled with the self-destructive character of its military-driven
modernization. The system’s devolution
can be factored into four interconnected processes: technological stagnation
and declining productivity; decline in the complexity of social structure and
the stagnation in the division of labor; the system’s inability to develop new
needs, beliefs, and values – all necessary for progress; and finally, waste of
resources and ever-spreading ecological damage.” After Empire:
Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building; the Soviet Union and the Russian,
Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, Edited by Karen Barkey and Mark Von
Hagen, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1997, p. 81.
The text above is Victor
Zaslavsky’s after-the-fact explanation of the Soviet Union’s
collapse. The same criteria apply to
soon-to-collapse Western gerontocracies almost identical. According to him, the collapse resulted from
the Soviet Union’s inability to assimilate native majorities in Central Asia
and unwillingness to turn its military technologies into peaceful
alternatives. Learners predicts that Western societies will soon undergo the same
collapse because of their inability and unwillingness to embrace foreigners in
a peaceful, global cooperative, and their “Après Exxon, le déluge”
(adapted from the Louis XIV quote: “After me, the Flood.”) refusal to promote
massive research in technological alternatives to the burning of fossil fuels
a) rapidly running out and b) likely to parboil the biosphere. Unlike the Soviet Union’s crash, there will
be no compensating foreign aid or global vitality to cushion this catastrophe.
Let’s look at another weapon myth. It asserts that the Scientific Method evolved
from alchemy: a systematic attempt by sophisticated Learners to convert base
metals into gold. This anal-retentive
fantasy turned out to be a great waste of time and money for cunning charlatans
and their willing, royal dupes. Even if
such a transmutation were workable, collapsing gold prices would render it
worthless.
Even more obtuse: the alchemist’s search for an
alkahest or universal solvent that no container could hold. Other items on the alchemical wish list
include:
·
Homunculi (“little men”). Why bother?
·
Palingenesis: the restoration of plants from
their burnt ashes. From this fantasy, it
might seem but a short step to restoring life from death.
·
A Spiritus
Mundi, which dissolves gold and triggers
other magic.
·
The Active Principal or Quintessence of
Elements. Sounds like a great way to
rekindle the Big Bang. Who would
volunteer to survive another Big Bang?
·
The ultimate
alchemical absurdity would ensure human health with a potable liquid gold
called aurum potabile—another
worthless ambition.
One key difference between Hell and this Earth is
our opportunity to live well, die well and reincarnate
in Christ. Weapon management's
crowning triumph would be to immortalize our richest tormentors’ senility. It would also be obscene vampirism as long as
so many people went starving. Ditto,
120-year life spans while some populations average a quarter of that. How can the rich allow themselves such evil?
I would not criticize these hobbies, (extracted from
Manly P. Hall’s encyclopedic The Secret Teachings of All Ages, The
Philosophical Research Society, Inc., Los Angeles, 1977, pp. 154-55), if they
did not take so much irreplaceable time and talent from our foremost tasks:
namely, making warfare illegal across the planet and restoring world
peace. I’ll never get over the open
range of trivia people distract themselves with, otherwise.
I am fascinated by alchemists’ insistence that their
earthly formulas are one of four separate formulations. To take effect, all four must occur
simultaneously on three spiritual planes and this earthly one—or so they
believe.
Once Learners resolve our problems of warfare and
peace-fair, we may turn turnips into marigolds or earn big bucks to chase a
ball across a playing field―obsess over it, if we wish. We may pursue our topics of passion without censure, wherever
they may lead. However, the last five
thousand years of human hyperactivity leading nowhere are a disgrace for every
Learner. Lost little children
distracting themselves with trivial games.
Long before alchemists, weapon technicians practiced
‘the scientific method.’ They used
inductive and deductive reasoning, trial and error, repetition and confirmation
of results, the extraction, refinement and admixture of standard elements into
consistent compounds, and other clever laboratory tricks.
The first scientific applications were for military
technologies. More and more demanding,
higher-energy weapons (and even harder weapon-making tools) were smithed from
available materials: bone, limestone, flint, quartz, copper, arsenical copper,
bronze, iron, steel, stainless steel, uranium, plutonium, titanium and
ceramic/plastic composites―mostly to make more and ‘better’ weapons.
When digging into the Earth, one conclusion comes to
the surface. Weapons define the Stone,
Bronze and Iron Ages; they define the Pyrotech (fire) Era we are crossing at
full steam, and the Biotech (life) Millennium just charging into view. This new era may last less than a generation
if we're not very, very careful.
Otherwise, our survivors may have to go back to chipping radioactive
rocks―assuming any living thing will have survived our unintended consequences,
beyond, maybe, weeds, cockroaches, and deep-stratum bacteria …
I feel no need to reincarnate as a deep stratum
bacterium – the closest ecological niche I can imagine to biblical Hell – and
re-evolve in endless agonies into something approximating human awareness. No more so as a glowing-stone-chipping mutant
primate(?).
Just imagine, in a future devoted to peace, living
awareness might evolve into something as superior to humanity on WeaponWorld,
as it would be to deep stratum bacteria!
Though the contrast between these realities may just be a question of
scale and marginal details, nothing more…
We have finally emerged into the Biotech Era because
scientists have finally taken biological weapons seriously. For a science to become ‘hard’ it must show some
promise as a new source of weapons.
Weapon technicians have produced the most
sophisticated, durable and expensive inventions: hunters’ and warriors’
state-of-the-artifact―as they have always done. Weapons have been crafted to rigorous
standards of excellence, used the most challenging, hardest and most hazardous
materials available. Weapons have been
more revered than idols and hoarded more greedily than treasure, squandered
during military spending sprees. The
most refined of them have been named and cherished in large numbers and given
more care than many throwaway children.
The social status of ironsmiths versus that of
warriors has long fueled scholarly debate.
Tyrants enslaved the best smiths to make more weapons. Weapon smithing was an arcane craft imbued
with religious, mystical and magical overtones.
In Africa, ancient smiths held a magical status, for better or worse.
For example, red-hot blades of the finest steel were
bathed in fresh human blood drained just beforehand from terrified human
sacrifices. Quenching these blades in
heavily oxygenated hemoglobin (liquid carbon) produced the ‘finest’ sword
steel, you see. Apparently, this method
produced enormously strong and flexible carbon nanotubes, like those found in
Damascene sword blades made from ferrous ingots of wootz: a special ore that retains certain trace elements. This at least according to an article from Le Monde, currently archived and
therefore inaccessible to me. See
Google: wootz.
The more technicians, equipment and cash available,
the deadlier the final product. Warrior
chieftains had to reward their smiths royally, yet keep their craft a state
secret. Thus, “alchemists.”
So tell me: modern science is supposed to have
evolved from alchemy, and not from some unmentionable weapon technology,
right? That transparent lie is taught to
every schoolchild without exception, duly memorized and repeated by each of us,
no matter how peace loving we may call ourselves. Taught deliberately, mind you, to hide the
absolute sway that weapon mentality holds over our cultural norms, and its
technology holds over all the stuff we own.
The devil’s greatest triumph resides in convincing the whole world that
he does not exist.
How many more lies, just as vicious and absurd, has
weapon mentality crammed into our skull?
How much more noxious junk will weapon technology foist upon
us―when we could have perfected the jewelry of pure peace technology
instead? Just how clueless are we? Read on.
In Technics and Civilization, Lewis Mumford
discussed the technical influence of miners and mining. He was indeed correct. To make weapons, smiths required metal ore;
to pay for them, tyrants required gemstones and precious metal. Siege warfare was an elaboration of primitive
mining techniques. The first steam
engines – and later on, the first reciprocating ones – pumped water from
flooded mine pits.
Poor peasants became familiar with bolt-action
rifles long before they saw a light bulb, picked up a fountain pen or straddled
a flush toilet; even though these novelties were invented around the same
time.
In our supposed civilized age, we spend titanic sums
on the arts and crafts of war. The USA
just spent fortunes it could ill afford, to develop the latest fighter-bomber
variant. This space-age wonder will then
be launched by the squadron, flown by million-dollar-trained pilots, against
the world’s cheapest infantry.
According to Stanley Kubrick, we could have launched
a manned spaceship to Jupiter in the year 2001.
He wasn’t a stupid man; that feat may have been entirely within our
means. Instead, we chose to send three
hundred fighter-bombers and a Commando Division to Afghanistan. What intellect, what creativity, what
genius! I ask you.
Or just look at a simple handgun. It is a thing of chilling beauty, superbly
crafted for manslaughter alone.
Manufactured en masse, it can be priced dirt-cheap or handed out
"for free." People can get
paid to use it, instead of having to earn an honest living. Note also the circuit-guided munitions of
this Silicon Age, and military satellites boosted into high orbit to direct
them unerringly.
Yet we find nothing wrong or strange with any of
this. Our killer ape habits have merely
grown more convoluted. Killing is the
first human activity that embraces complexity—and just about the only one at
which we are consistently good.
Warfare is stupid by definition, no matter how
technologically complex we make it. It
demands that we suspend disbelief in its ultimate outcome, demands magical
thinking. Peace is much more cerebral
and complex, no matter how unachievable we may make it seem.
A second forerunner of science was ceramics: at
present, a spacey military technology.
Given the male chauvinism that prevails today, it may seem tempting to
dismiss pottery, basket weaving, textiles and cooking as trivial, female
pursuits. Yet potsherds and remnants of
the hearth are reliable indicators of ancient cultural achievement. The more creative and receptive the cookery,
the more dynamic the civilization. What
could be more ephemeral than a meal?
Despite the patriarchal arrogance of recorded
history, real civilization appears to revolve around the kindred arts of
medicine (especially midwifery and herbalism), carpentry, washing and therefore
plumbing, plus cooking; followed by the psychic/religious/entertainment
permutations of divination, storytelling, astrology and geomancy. Those epics we ought to be reciting around
the campfire (read the mass media).
Ancient skills that gradually decayed into our weapon religions and
ideologies. We have cast aside ancient
wisdom in the newfound blindness of our scientific positivism. “I am a certified scientist, and, as such,
positive you are wrong—no need for proof!”
A third ancient source of science was animal husbandry:
at first, the breeding of hunting dogs, then of food animals, chariot mules and
warhorses, among other domestic species.
Many adult farmers and adolescent naturalists took up botany and zoology
as their topics of passion. Such in-depth peace studies attracted much
more Learner curiosity in realtime than alchemists’ putrid alembics, though
much less in the historical record.
We, sorry to say, rely on the booty ledgers of
greasy warlords to sort out our past.
For all we know, gene splicing may have been a
prehistoric, mortar-and-pestle cottage industry. Sorta like Mendel and his pea-pods, but
thousands of years prior. All you’d really
need would be some kind of magic potion to strip the cell wall from its nucleus
and core DNA—then lots of patience. You
could study your results by microscope pretty fast, or by crossbreeding
organisms into their macro scale capacities.
As they say in genetics, phylogeny.
This would take more time and require generations of hereditary human
vocation, clan-craft and priesthood to chronicle experimental results for
ongoing analysis.
Then again, earlier species of animals or insects,
and perhaps other hominids, may have made observations on microscopic scales
and performed quicker analyses. The
smaller the species, the likelier its vision would penetrate microscopic scales
and speed up this analysis. What else
would they need? Some intra-species
chemical communication system? Insects
(and especially microbes) are experts at such.
Any land or amphibious species could have exploited the magnification of
water droplets, or some lens-making plant might have served. Nowadays, these plants are extinct. But in the past, plants could have grown
blisters as organic lenses to magnify solar energy, and some other species
could have benefited from them.
The seeming uniqueness of human intelligence and
communications, and the inferiority of other species past and present, are
prejudices not supported by evidence sufficient to confirm or deny.
Learners must never underestimate the genius of life
and the crushing pressure cooker of evolution’s selection over time. Let us humbly study them instead,
anticipating greater depths of complexity and startling feats of ingenuity, no
matter how sophisticated our science becomes.
We should mime it as minutely as possible. In that sacred worship, in that unconditional
love like that of a small child for its parent, humanity’s survival may be
found. Meanwhile, our understanding of
life is as clear as mud: just sufficient to try to destroy it. We should know this, at least.
The scientists of today won’t rush to humanity’s
assistance (the way we expect them to, disappointed on a daily basis), until
they embrace some ideology more fitting than flatulent certitude, sneering
nihilism and academic narcissism. They
lack sacred wonder, and are the lesser for it.
For a fixed fee, chosen scientists can make deadly
evil look promising, cloak grand larceny, engineer mass misery and turn off
valid alarms. They’ve done little more
for two centuries, compared to what Learner scientists could have
accomplished in their stead. Given
enough grant money, distinguished doctor-professors may affirm that social
incompetence, pollution, warfare and ecocide are cryptically beneficial,
unavoidable or “insufficiently studied—let them continue nonstop.” Ego-driven public quarrels can paralyze
scientific communities that might otherwise be immune to outright
corruption.
Like seasoned prostitutes, professional scientists
serve Conspiracies of Greed: the only topics of
passion that weapon states subsidize.
While some hookers may have a heart of gold – and many scientists,
ethics adamantine – it would be unwise to entrust our fate to their care
without extensive popular supervision.
Might this common wisdom not be sophisticated enough
to appreciate the complexities of science and oversee it effectively? This would be the fault of information elites
and their ridiculous
academic protocols, much more so than of popular wisdom. We could throw this train wreck into reverse
in one generation.
The IQ exam is our crooked yardstick of brain
smarts; it was first developed to sort World War I conscripts. Nowadays, its results are used to dignify
racism, especially in works of anti-genius like The Bell Curve.
“It is a truism that
all of the wars drive forward science and technology. As many historians and philosophers have
asserted, weapons always preceded tools.
The first machines were battering rams and catapults. The oldest profession in the world is not the
usual one of prostitute, but that of smithy turning out weapons. The first roads were strategic paths; the
first canals served a military purpose.
Credit emerged from financing mercenaries, and surgery developed as a
result of military campaigns during the 19th century.” Translated from Jean Bacon, Les saigneurs
de la guerre, Éditions l’Harmattan,
Paris, 1995, p. 139.
Such luminaries as Archimedes, Da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Cervantes, Dürer, Descartes, Lavoisier, Goethe, Eli Whitney,
Somerset Maugham and many more, made their reputations as soldiers, spies,
fortification engineers, armorers, military industrialists, reporters and
bureaucrats: the main career paths of a weapon civilization.
Roman Legions were some of the first factories,
producing loot and slaves on an industrial scale (according to Marshall McCluan
in Understanding Media).
Time and motion studies first rationalized the
thrust and parry of swordplay, then the thirty-odd steps it took to fire a
clumsy harquebus (primitive shoulder cannon)—long before factory tasks required
such analysis. Diderot’s Encyclopédie, upon which the
Enlightenment was grounded, was a “How To” of primitive heavy industry; in
other words, of weapon technology. The
Blanchard Lathe, the premier design tool of modern industry, was first used to
machine-sculpt standard wooden stocks for Kentucky (Jaeger) Rifles.
All the political transformations our historians hold dear: from tribal allegiance, to city-state (whether Tyranny or Oligarchy), to empire, to royal domain, to ‘representative’ democracy, to today’s corporate/industrial military slave market, were outcomes and accelerators of weapon technology.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to
PeaceWorld