SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
Let me begin by burying myself alive in my own identity politics—if only for full disclosure and perfect simplification.
If you are emotionally invested in your own identity politics, you may dismiss me as just another of those soon-dead American guys: rich, white and straight.
Unclean!
If you are just as fed up as I am by this trivia, please jump to my discussion of identify politics in general, much more interesting than my insignificant particulars.
Soon dead, give or take the decades you’re probably looking forward to, while I look back on them.
Rich: give or take the 95% of planetary wealth we should be sharing at the grass roots, but aren’t, since we’re too busy squabbling over our precious identity positions. Instead, we should be cooperating in the struggle against monolithic weapon mentality. It never bothers with such trivia, except to entangle us deeper in it, rip us off royally and send children off to perish.
Somewhere, sooner or later, pandemic weapon mentality will burn down homes and disappear victims. Be it by nukes and scalar weapons, by mortar rounds into the neighborhood, or up-close and personal with fire brands and mahchehtteh, take your pick.
Someone wrote: “If the oil runs out and food stops getting shipped into London, it would turn into Darfur within a few weeks.” The same could be said of any community that relies on supermarkets for sustenance―the world’s breadbaskets included.
I’d say I am comfortably off, if not rich. I have worked at unimportant jobs when I had to, and enjoyed a few years of adult leisure while I was adventurous enough to enjoy them. Prolonged leisure is wasted on the elderly, while that free time is a vital for young victims of first love and those raising babies.
I have composed this text for free and by myself, as an act of love and sweet artistic compulsion. The rest of the time, I worked without much enthusiasm. The best jobs on WeaponWorld involve bailing out the Titanic with a bucket instead of a colander.
If I hadn’t been so well off, I couldn’t have found enough free time to furnish you this text, now could I? You will find that people who make the most interesting and decisive discoveries are neither starving nor obscenely rich nor dependent on their invention and willing to compromise it for their livelihoods.
White, even though I carry the same fifty million genes we share in common. On official forms, I’d rather register myself as “Race: Other”. Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Jean-Marie Le Pen and their small town rabble are ‘White’: the color of chalk and death. They’re welcome to that label, since their monstrous example has turned it into an insult. Dead or alive, I will never identify with their rotten kind.
I consider all the races my brothers, sisters, ancestors and children; none are not. Nothing is more brutal than a fratricidal fight. I suppose I should include those “white” freaks, too. Patience, patience…
I get more of a rush from the designation Other. I celebrate the wandering Bantu, Maya, Berber, Mongol and Bushmen genes that grace my genotype, like any other human’s. Mongrel stock is the strongest, as any good farmer will tell you. Go ask a weed.
American: actually 50% French, 25% German and a quarter Irish. My parents were born in Madagascar and in Queens; and I myself, in the American Hospital on the outskirts of Paris. In other words, I’m a Yankee Doodle hybrid, a cosmopolitan internationalist and proud of it. I spent my youth defending America against French and international bigots of my own age and older, and the rest of my life defending France and the rest of the world against the same kind of bigot in America. How countless they are, those imagination-starved bigots who fester like maggots everywhere! And how sick I am of their cud-chewing identity politics.
Since the Kennedy assassination and the war in Vietnam, I have spent my life agonizing over just how despicable America had to become to force me into the hills bearing an automatic weapon. I’ve also spent my life as a grateful public dependent (army brat) and a proud public servant. Life is paradox. I’ve come to fear I might be just another good German and submit, in the name of peace, to the worst fascism that Republican fatheads can dream up. Like hell!
I am just as ambivalent about being Franco-American as about anything else. The last minority that American crypto-fascists can insult safely in public—at least while I’m not around. A noble and ambitious breed, those Franco-Americans: scions of the richest, most powerful, most reactionary and backward-looking nations on Earth … a drag on international treaties of peace, human rights and the environment, instead of being their foremost sponsors. Birthplace and nursery of most magnificent ideals humanity ever aspired to, as well as the foulest deeds carried out in their name. Just as capable of amplifying those ideals, if only they so desired. We should be frankly leading here; everyone except those opposed to those ideals, who should be managed with extreme care.
German: Mozart and Himmler; Kultur, passion passionately suppressed, pretzel logic, science and civilization … and the constant stink of military latrines. And Irish, finally, to cook a fine, mad, mulligan stew from all this malarkey.
Man: guilty as charged, last I checked.
Straight: how happy my wife and other pretty women make me, each in her own fine way!
Or, as I'd rather wear on a printed T-shirt:
Learner:
Not of this species,
Not from this planet.
So sue me.
I realize that the easiest way to make a fool of myself (besides writing an autobiographical chapter) is to generalize about human ethnicity and race. As if that would hold me back!
As far as I’m concerned, the terms bigot and identity politician are synonymous. It is merely a question of which sub-identity you choose to be prejudiced for or against, and how passionately you believe you would benefit by harming the Other―while everyone plays no-brain, zero-sum games (what I must win, you must lose).
By now, you should realize that I have nothing good to say about identity politics – having suffered from its backhand slaps – and much to criticize. Walk away, if you’re so inclined, or stick around and hear me out. Just recall that every time you are excluded, punished and denied something important for reasons other than your merit and the content of your character (as the great Martin Luther King so aptly put it), someone else’s identity politics or your own were at play. Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Any conclusion that one sex is responsible for peace while the other sustains war, is another weapon myth and a hopeless simplification.
A partial (cursory and biased) list of names might help refute this prejudice: Nehanda of Zimbabwe and the Berber Al Kahina, Queen Ya Asantewa, the same Unzinga, Catherine the Great of Russia, Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth the Great of England, Joan of Arc, Maria Theresa, Rebecca Felton, Margaret Thatcher, Trung Trac, Trung Nhi, Phung Thi Chin, Trieu Au, Tsu Hsi (Cixi, the Empress Dowager of China), Mulan, Zenobia, Boudicca, Semiramis and Indira (versus) Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, Ashoka and Martin Luther King. Forgive me if I left out your favorite female conqueror and peaceable man.
The ultimate power of women should reside in their right to forbid, categorically, the stupidest decisions men make. If that consideration were obeyed, the worst decisions would never have happened and would not be possible in the future.
While most alpha-dominant males rely on aggression to begin with, many women tend toward cooperation and consensus at their own expense, at least until their family is in danger. Then, look out! At that point, alpha-dominant female aggression is much more virulent than the stereotypical male version. Once their alpha-dominant menfolk had fallen in battle, female leaders often held leadership positions and fought battles, sieges and wars of annihilation to successful conclusion (or extinction).
Until recently, progressive leaders have recruited more females than the forces of patriarchal reaction. Nowadays, those reactionaries have discovered they can recruit raving maniacs just as easily among women and minority members, as from among rich, old, white coots.
Progressives should abandon their diffidence and replace it with the unconditional ferocity of females defending their young. “They’re threatening the kids; let’s go get ‘em!”
Our schools are pillars of weapon regimentation; to a great extent, they are run by women. In the absence of peace mentality, female chauvinists might differ slightly from their male counterparts, but rule no more wisely. Even though many women fill modern military service roles, their leadership remains marginal. Grooming women for war has exploded the female criminal population.
“These examples are not intended to suggest that women have played no role inside the structures of power. There have been remarkable queens, heads of government and ministers, just as there have been scientists, painters, writers and so on. Today, more than ever, women are occupying positions of influence. However, in the past they have been the exceptions to the rule and were usually obliged to hold on to their power by deforming themselves into honorary men or into magnified archetypes of the female who manipulated men. It still is not clear that women can successfully become part of the established structures without accepting those deformations.” John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Vintage Press, A Division of Random House, 1991, p. 35.
Like other pit-falls of identity politics, gender-based explanations of institutional degeneracy are merely divisive. The crux lies elsewhere. Why dispute the relative merits of pacifism over feminism―or any other identity issue, for that matter? That would be an exercise as pointless as declaring one leg of a chair the most important, or one tree in the forest.
What I mentioned about women applies to every abused minority: racial, ethnic, religious and sexual. Women rarely constitute a minority, but weapon managers mistreat them as such, (part of the Plant Trap, recall). The existence of harmless minorities has never validated persecution. Such abuse just turns harmless minorities into dangerous ones: another global intention of weapon management.
In any case, the ultimate female political power resides in vetoing male initiatives before they’ve gone off the deep end. Behind every successful man stands a woman sharp enough to tell him when to quit while he’s ahead. We have ignored this authority at our peril. I repeat myself here because this idea is so important.
Another weapon myth, upheld on both sides of the aisle, is that homosexuals form some kind of progressive vanguard. This myth leads to a giant misunderstanding – shared alike by reactionary homophobes and progressive gays – that one must somehow be homoerotic to entertain progressive ideals.
Gay progressives maintain this mistake to encourage themselves; reactionaries, to tar progressives with a label that's particularly abhorrent to them, of being gay. Both parties realize they are lying to themselves. It’s obvious that there are just as many reactionary gays as there are progressive ones, and a lot more progressive straights than progressive gays.
The same could be said about the progressive beliefs of any other identity group, compared to the remainder.
The only difference is that reactionary gays must shut up about their erotic preferences that their reactionary allies loathe; whereas progressives of all sorts feel lesser intolerance and neither silence nor banish their homosexual allies.
There is no point in giving up on general progress in favor of one’s advancement or that of one’s narrow identity group. Even to the point of surrendering potent progressive symbols, like Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, so that gays could adorn themselves with it exclusively; and losing vital battles like the 2004 Presidential election over whether gays may enjoy same-sex marriage ceremonies before anything else.
Whose mucus membranes get to rub up against whose with full public approval: that priority would be fine and harmless if we did not face a thousand more crucial ones. But this non-issue serves weapon mentality as a perfect distraction from other, more important topics.
Congratulations on your self-indulgent identity politics! Just don’t dare claim to be progressive! You might as well have embezzled the Progressive Party’s funds to fly yourself and your buddies First Class to Maui. Like Bush to Bin Laden and vice versa, the reactionaries thank you for your approach: “We couldn’t have gotten away with our power-grab without your assistance.”
The same argument applies to people whose minority status is based on some other criterion. For example, the politics of pro-choicers and right-to-lifers. Who cares how many adults and children get cluster-bombed while you hash out this other argument! Unbelievable and inadmissible on any planet but this one.
We are progressive because we believe in Progress, not because we belong to some random identity group supposed to be superior. Those who side with progressives merely to advance their downtrodden cause, who would sacrifice important progressive issues to further those of their own identity group, and who turn into raving conservatives (or the miraculously apathetic), the moment they get the upper hand, are just reactionary wolves in sheep’s clothing.
And we are all Learners, regardless of our identity position. All of us! Whether we choose to loathe or admire some other group, its members are Learners like us. Every Learner should be just as dear to every other one, by definition.
I am only pretty certain of the following. I was born without wanting to and will die without wanting to. Against my better judgment, I was parachuted onto this planet. It was colonized quite some time ago by an overwhelming majority of simpletons, has been governed by shadists in love with their corruption, and endowed with a culture fit only for complacent slackers, and is doomed to deliberate self-destruction en masse. According to the same herd of clueless idiots, no other alternative is ‘realistic.’ It would take a lengthy series of miracles to get around so much institutionalized stupidity.
In the meantime, I entertain myself by learning and refusing to learn everything I can. As everyone does. Find me someone who doesn’t. We are all Learners.
The induction of women into modern worker and warrior status is a direct result of weapon technology.
Weapons had become terribly lethal by the late 1800’s, so much so that universal (male) conscription had to be adopted to meet enormous body counts. Weapon lethality has multiplied a thousand-fold, since. Thus, modern combat demands more and more bodies of women, of the elderly and of children to top off the stack. These so-called non-combatants) find themselves more and more often among the shock troops and shocked amputees of modern combat.
This exponential upshot of "non-combatant" casualties is nothing new. The weapon myth of risk-free, non-combatant status – that warriors reserve mayhem for their armed adversaries – is just a weapon myth and nothing more. On the contrary, many ancient societies annihilated entire nations: man, woman and child.
Modern warfare kills tens and thousands of civilians for every soldier it kills. It is easier to gun down people who cower in the crossfire and don’t shoot back; or simply deny them food and other necessities that the military can always find good reason to expropriate.
Face it; we are all combatants. The question becomes: are we Learner combatants, properly armed and motivated, who stand a chance at legitimate self-defense (as do the Swiss)? Or a disarmed rabble of human livestock ripe for police-state slaughter? Carefully divide-and-conquered by the self-sabotage of our identity politics? You tell me.
A fundamental rule of victory is Concentration of Effort. Those who try to defend everything, defend nothing; those who attack everywhere, win nowhere. Instead of attacking in penny packets across the length of the enemy’s line, or defending every point with equal resolve and exposure, one must find a weak spot in the enemy’s layout and fling a strong force against it. This reserve is accumulated by skimping dangerously elsewhere. Once the enemy’s line is shattered, additional reserves must be hurled through the gap. These powerful reserves can also serve to counter-attack any assault the enemy makes, assuming he thinks himself more powerful than we.
Weapon dissidents have abandoned this ideological holism. Instead, they have taken to defending their pet identity positions preferentially, thus forsaking all-important concentration of effort and any hope of success. Thanks to narrow-minded, self-serving identity politics, weapon elites have become the only minority left in power.
We have failed to square off against our worst sins of racism, sexism and ageism. Instead, we've allowed professional equivocators to flounder, and political compromisers to sidestep human rights, with the poise of long practice.
I ask you: what have identity politics brought us? True, we have universal suffrage. But we also have George W. Bush and his inestimable peers brought to power by ‘universal suffrage.’ Ditto for other social benefits: all of them radioactive from the fallout of weapon mentality.
I beg you to think this through more carefully: who are your real opponents and what are your real political goals?
Why not uphold every education quota and equal opportunity mandate until each minority and gender achieves proportional representation? For every minority percentile within a population, the same percentage of minority candidates should become judges, executives, business people, police, governors, legislators and professionals—or chaos could loom from their absence. Simple merit would promote the best-qualified from each identity group. Mediocrities, incompetents and especially sociopaths would have a much harder time justifying their authority, in the absence of their toxic identity politics.
Others claim that the adherents of the USA, the Western or Northern Hemisphere, the white race, Judeo-Christianity or some other dominant tribe are responsible for every social evil. Meanwhile, the claimants' people consist of blameless victims and vengeful terrorists, completely justified.
In perceived environments of dearth, those who play zero-sum games form small, coherent groups of Winners that can browbeat a majority of pre-defined Losers. The leaders ('Winners') of each abused minority, point to the ethnic majority as the source of their Losers' ills.
Racial segregation is a sorting device of this kind, as are other segregations: national, religious and ethnic – largely cosmetic. Usually, a majority of “minority” groups of Losers is set up to hate each other, even though they have more in common with each other than with their respective Winners.
In the end, info elites of every kind abuse info proletarians of every kind, especially their own. Rich whites have always exploited poor whites (practice makes perfect). Reactionary Hutus hunted down every progressive Hutu before they turned to massacre their Tutsi neighbors. Given the chance, reactionary Tutsis would do likewise with their own progressives.
Replace your own identity militants in the same statement. Note how well those shoes fit them.
In the real world, human agglomerations select their leadership from their individual members. From then on, those organizations do exactly what they intended to do from the beginning – otherwise, what they had to do, given constraints beyond their control – insofar nature permits, accompanied by their leader’s cheerleading or despite his displeasure. Tolstoy concluded as much. Any evaluation of personal leadership beyond this limit must be absurd.
More often than not, this selection is based on pheromones, looks, birthright and self-selection for aggression. The political charisma of an Alexander or Napoleon, and the sexual attraction of a Casanova or Cleopatra, may have been the outcomes of irresistible body aroma; and other factors, mere reinforcements or detractions. We are attracted to them instinctively, the way a hive of bees would be.
I begin to suspect that those personalities so noteworthy during their era in history, might have attracted many souls in free-fall after death, to reincarnate into their famous life. We could assume that these reincarnations transcended time and space, and thus didn’t need to be sequential in time or nearby in space (i.e., the supposition would be irrelevant that one could only reincarnate in a body born after your death and close to it). This may be the source of their charisma: millions of souls reincarnated in them and resuming life behind their eyeballs.
Don’t be so quick to put down all those crazies who call themselves Napoleon or Cleopatra. They might be telling us some version the truth, and it might be we the ones alienated from this truth.
Hitler, Stalin and Mao may have born a scent just as attractive, if not more so, than history’s most saintly sovereign. Military history demonstrates that this political perfume and sanity do not necessarily correlate—and perhaps the opposite: only psychopaths and sociopaths might benefit from it.
Or it might be a purely negative trait: the ability to suppress the bodily release of stress hormones and their unmistakable scent, the absence of which would soothe and attract normal people in stressful situations. I am just guessing along these lines.
This process of holistic and subliminal democracy occurs in most human hierarchies, regardless of other details—and completely overlooked by political science. It is often irrational, counterintuitive and counterproductive; but remains sovereign.
There may be another basis for racial and ethnic prejudice, in addition to the odor-mediated one or just a bit more subtle. Positive or negative, this bias might be based on immunological and neurological factors instead of (or in addition to) sociological ones.
The human body could be seen as a dusty rag mop that releases clouds of dead cells every time it moves, breathes or is touched. Rather than appearing as a rubbery, cohesive covering, skin consists of layers of cells, the outermost of which are no longer attached to the body—ready to fall off and scatter at the slightest provocation.
Let’s assume that each of these cells contains one or more distinctive markers: trace biochemicals that identify the individual it was attached to: their race, hygiene habits, diet and/or sexual attributes among other ethnic or behavioral distinctions.
Nowadays, when people are crowded together or enclosed in poorly ventilated spaces, they breathe in each other’s detached skin cells. Personal prejudice (race, ethnic, etc.) might be a very subtle form of immune reaction to those cells’ biochemical markers, trace elements of which might cross the blood-brain barrier in minute quantities and trigger a fight-or-flight reaction; perhaps just as easily as those of family affinity, clan loyalty and sexual attraction.
Under certain conditions, human crowds start acting like one collective organism beyond the rational control of its separate members. Likewise, groups of females housed together tend to synchronize their estrogen cycles and have their periods simultaneously.
Biochemical, neurological and immunological mechanisms, like those listed here, might offer a more accurate description of these behavior patterns. Humans may react to these biochemical markers, the way insects react to theirs. Human versions may be as much more complex, compared to theirs, as our societies seem more complex than theirs.
It may be that ‘charismatic’ people and great historical leaders retain Type-O trace markers in their skin cells, accepted by all and sundry, that foster obedience and adulation.
On the other hand, violent bigots might suffer from an ‘allergic reaction’ to trace markers of their target ethnic group. Their prejudice might be a symptom of a subtle immunological disease, enhanced and reinforced by societal norms of prejudicial judgment and behavior.
This text suggests how to rationalize this process. We might have a better time by quickening Learning and self-selection for excellence in our topics of passion, making use of the world’s Virtual Agora to filter these neurophysiologic factors from our politics. Otherwise, we could acknowledge, study, put them to the best possible use and regulate their misuse—as with all our other peace technologies.
Not so long ago in the American South, white bigots sat around doing nothing much worthwhile, waiting for someone black to say or do something forbidden, (there were thousands of opportunities to do something wrong). At that point, they could vent their pent up rage, mob their chosen victim and hurt them real bad. Nowadays, the least creative people of every minority sit around doing not much of anything, waiting for someone outside their narrow identity niche to say or do something they might disapprove of, and try to ruin that person’s life. They are not much good for anything else.
Bigots are racists are xenophobes. Shadism doesn’t give a damn about the skin color, bone structure, habits, origins or religions of bigot aggressors and their victims—just as long as they’re different and vulnerable. Sociopaths and their imitators (the rest of us at our worst) need victims with no way out; racism serves perfectly.
No whole race or nation figured out how to promote racial equality. Only enlightened and heroic individuals have managed to do so, from across two or more races―often interracial soulmates and their mestizo children. Their example inspired social acceptance or triggered their extinction.
On the other hand, racial segregation is not inflicted by a few brazen individuals, but by an entire race seeking unfair advantage from some coincidental strategic benefit. The same applies to any other identity bias including religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity.
Who would be the worst racist? The dominant bigot who flays his soul and inflicts misery on others, his obvious equals? Or his victim seething with repressed anger and waiting for payback? Does it matter? The poison they share is still poison. The point is to discover the antidote, not assign blame or score points.
Racial equality comes about through personal enlightenment based on private experience: "That fine person of the other race and his noble bearing showed me they aren’t all as bad as that… That man is my partner; back off and stop insulting him!"
Racial bias and segregation are based on cultural norms perverted by identity politics: "Since I was a kid, I’ve been taught that they are all worthless scum. My experience with them has confirmed that fact because I forgot every occurrence that contradicted it."
Identity politics is the central problem. Those who base their personal value (superiority) on identity politics are dangerously self-deluded. Being proud to belong to a certain identity group, that is fine. Feeling superior about it and debasing others for no other reason—that is not.
Personal responsibility is the solution. Those who base their actions and beliefs on a personal assessment of each individual, promote racial equality. In so doing, they demonstrate the nobility of their own identity position. On the other hand, racists make their race look bad, as well as all their other ideals, no matter how valid.
There is no escaping this truth; no matter how comforting its denial may seem to you. If you hate the words I write, feel free to call me a racist. That may make you feel better. Others have done so, confirming my argument. The racist is you, and the racism is your precious identity position, at least until you decide to change your beautiful mind.
What does all this have to do with the current ethnic situation in France? Here is what I propose.
Ethnic bias is a cultural phenomenon based on individual belief. Ethnic equality is a series of spontaneous decisions by individuals, helped along by cultural norms. This reversal of dominant and secondary sources of belief is very important.
One can reduce racism by introducing laws and institutions that contradict it, or strengthen it by proposing the opposite. But we can’t create equality unless we permit people to persuade themselves. Racism may be overcome by force and law; equality is not so easily enforced.
Human misery and inequality have this in common. Government can elevate or diminish them at will, since they are predictable, quantifiable and vulnerable to institutional meddling.
Human happiness and equality have the opposite in common. They exist within the mind of the individual directly involved, and don’t have any real meaning as far as government is concerned, or vulnerability to being raised or lowered by government decree.
Here is what happens when one attempts to force equality. Dutiful female students are forbidden to obey the wisdom of their religion and parents. Forbidding them to wear the veil, in the name of equality: what pure folly!
I beg my French readers to grasp this fact before unanticipated consequences overwhelm them. The ultimate podium of public equality is the guillotine—to which the French must readily admit.
When it comes to human happiness and freedom, and government’s obligation to (do something with them, essentially indefinable and absurd – Defend them? Support them? Push on a rope with them?); those are favorite topics of George W. Bush and others with nothing better to talk about.
That brings us to an interesting fork in the trail through this linguistic bramble. Misery is not the opposite of happiness. It can be quantified (how much food and water have you had today; how long have you been in pain; how many nights did you have to sleep out in the rain?). Happiness cannot be quantified in this manner – go ask a suicidal heir to fortune or a panhandler whistling just because the afternoon is so fine.
Similarly, equality is not the opposite of discrimination. Would equality be the same between the following pairs: identical twins, brother and sister, good friends, total strangers and members of two races? Describe the difference in twenty-five words or less.
Whereas discrimination: “They are all inferior to my people,” that is pretty straightforward.
So what are the linguistic opposites?
· Misery – Satisfaction
· Happiness – Sadness
· Equality – Unfairness
· Discrimination – Proper Judgment
For the moment, I have no idea what conclusion this tabulation must lead to, but I suspect it is vital when discussing government functions.
The trick would be, never again to support racist aggressors, whatever their identity position—even if it were the same as our own and thus very tempting.
It would be better for everyone concerned if we belonged to a group much larger than theirs, more confident, influential and benevolent; one we believed in, that we could count on to forbid us from meddling in identity aggression and that shielded us from it just as dependably.
Up ‘til now, our basic pattern of political conflict has been between in-groups and out-groups. Every Learner should rally to one cherished in-group, then invite into that in-group every info proletarian and ex-info elite, leaving no one behind unless he or she wished to remain so peacefully. As for those who wish to, brutally: infantile identification, exclusion from authority and lifetime treatment.
No community, no matter how well conceived, could immunize itself from ingenious, ambitious and persistent Conspirators of Greed. In a weapon civilization, racial politics would be as futile as gender politics, transsexuality and any other identify position. It is just as pointless to distinguish the skin tones, riches and sexual proclivities of the oppressed, as those of the oppressor. If the situation were reversed and previous victims achieved dominance, a similar bell curve of abuse and cooperation would emerge.
If you claim membership to a minority and assume your leaders would behave less disgracefully than the current crop, you would only need to review the long-term outcome of every weapon revolution to verify your error. If you shifted your scrutiny further back in history, you would be horrified to discover your own minority dominant somewhere and just as brutal to its subordinates. The only exception: PeaceWorld.
Learners will not seek dominance limited to themselves. Instead, they will look for commonalties everyone may share fearlessly. Learning is a commonality every human may share in mutual peace and abundance. We would stop talking about replacing one information elite with another (that conformed better to our identity position). Instead, we would create a Learner Commonwealth that upheld universal equality. No one would be left outside, who would rather come in from the cold.
“Stranger: Then you
think that it is a waste of time, talent, and pecuniary means for the poor to
contend in opposition to the rich and powerful?
“Founder: I do;
because if these who are poor today become powerful … they will then oppress
those who may become poor by the change, and act just as the rich and powerful
have always done ... from the beginning to the present moment.” Robert Owen, Dialogue, 18-20. Taken from The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen, by A.L. Morton, 1962,
Monthly Review Press, NY, p. 125.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld