SUMMARY OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
George Orwell’s
masterwork, 1984, describes
a hyper-Churchillian nation-state so powerful that it could adopt pure peace
technology. Instead, it dedicates itself
to endless global warfare. More or less
at random, it rejoins or fights with its continental equivalents overseas. In this way, it overtaxes the discipline
and resources of its misinformed proletariat.
Post-Orwellian
weapon mentors have convinced us that the best way to safeguard human rights is
to keep the government as clumsy as possible.
According to them, the more efficient a government becomes, the worse it
would crush justice, peace and liberty.
This is the 1984
Syndrome, enshrined in weapon mythology.
Actually, this myth promotes crypto-fascism (fascism that won’t
acknowledge itself). Narrow-minded
governments get themselves into jams.
Stupidly, they will try to extract themselves by piling terror on
top of hardship.
We could avoid
this unhappy outcome by developing super-efficient local Administrations
over-watched by the best World Government we could devise.
In our weapon
religions, God reigns peremptorily from his storm cloud on high, without debate
except among His select hierarchs.
Similarly, in pyramidal weapon hierarchies, commands descend without
appeal from ranking info elites to the bottomed-out proletariat.
In a weapon state, responsibility and intellectual creativity are rare privileges reserved for a trusted few. Weapon hierarchs find aid, comfort and advancement in arbitrary promotion criteria, departmental clannishness and pecking orders. Popular review of controversial topics is forbidden. Weapon managers rely on by-the-book solutions—no matter how lame those solutions may be. Regardless of real-time rights and wrongs, problems are dealt with by fiat, based on irrelevant traditions and misapplications of past precedent.
These weapon hierarchies come with built-in redundancy of personnel. They make life-and-death decisions (even bad ones) without debate, despite the high-stress, high-mortality environment and information chaos of combat.
For example, in
Queen Victoria’s day, noble families openly purchased officer commissions. The more money they could tender, the more
prestigious the unit their candidate could sign up for, regardless of his
merit. Thanks for this reminder, Paul Lackman.
Nowadays, not
only are military entrance positions open for sale to the richest families, but
so is the Presidency of the United States and every position of responsibility
below it. Good luck with that kind of
weapon leadership, absolutely incompetent at peace.
Weapon
hierarchies promote authoriphiles who submit to superiors and tyrannize
inferiors; they marginalize authoriphobes who challenge management
prerogatives and empower their subordinates.
Competence and job skills are at best secondary
considerations. No criminal genius
passes unrewarded through a weapon civilization.
Another sad
tendency trips up the most competent weapon managers. Sooner or later, their weapon policies back
them into intolerable policy corners.
Attempting to turn around the worst of their unintended
consequences, they treat each evil symptomatically, as if in a vacuum. “Today,
let’s discuss child abuse; tomorrow, local hunger. Next day, we’ll tackle traffic congestion;
and next fiscal year, perhaps, corruption.” Each lunge at progress gets swamped in social
contradictions that swarm around it.
Leadership grows
from respect. Respect can be founded on
admiration or on fear. Terror is the
final arbiter in weapon hierarchies where indifferent leaders flourish
through counterfeit competition adjudicated from above, with little concern for
the needs of the led. Weapon leaders boast of rewards acquired at
the expense of the led. They use riches
to insulate themselves and their dependents from the worst consequences
of their despotism. This misrule forces
weapon managers to rely on tyranny, unwholesome materialism, snowballing
incoherence and hypocrisy as substitutes for valid ethics. When
good ethics become less essential to run things, greed grows more
brazen. Hierarchical leaders shatter
bonds that should bind them to the led: social, emotional, economic and
informational bonds. Each broken link
subtracts from their ability (and willingness) to lead honestly and
effectively.
“In proportion as the chiefs become detached from the mass, they show
themselves more and more inclined, when gaps in their own ranks have to be
filled, to effect this, not by way of popular election, but by cooptation, and
also to increase their own effectives wherever possible, by creating new posts
upon their own initiative. There arises
in leaders a tendency to isolate themselves, to form a sort of cartel, and to
surround themselves, as it were, with a wall, within which they will admit only
those who are of their own way of thinking.
Instead of allowing their successors to be appointed by the choice of
the rank and file, the leaders do all in their power to choose these successors
themselves, and to fill up gaps in their own ranks directly or indirectly by
the exercise of their own volition.”
Robert Michels, “Political Parties, 1911”, taken from Princeton Readings in Political Thought,
p. 526
Primal societies tended to compartmentalize their peace and warfare decision-makers. They delegated two leaders and two or more separate councils – blessed with different talents and sensibilities – to handle these clashing responsibilities. Most often, a complex, clannish and shifting network of womenfolk, revered elders and shamans controlled the peaceful aspects of society. Young hotheads and heroic veterans only did so during rare days of battle.
Peace leaders
relied on open debate, consensus, voluntarism and cooperation. Leaders and led shared rewards, values and
available information freely. In
short, they gossiped shamelessly.
Qualified leaders recruited, challenged and replaced one another in a
steady stream. If they overvalued the perks they had acquired at the expense of the
led, they lost the respect upon which their authority was based, and
sacrificed any claim to that authority.
Their power base deflated like a worn-out balloon.
No such selection
process remains in weapons hierarchies where blatant incompetents and
sleazebags rule without hindrance—indeed, come to dominate society
through the cumulative mentoring and replacement of like-minded malefactors.
Communications are reduced to pompous speeches, massive campaign
contributions, empty promises and capricious demands.
Peace hierarchies would promote playful creativity under token time constraints in a tranquil setting. Ideally suited to generate real, cooperative wealth under stable conditions, they are unsuited to the time-slaved rigors of warfare—much less the cutthroat, zero-sum competition of weapon management between its inevitable wars.
Popular
aspirations must take precedence over hierarchic perks, and leadership must
find its own reward in its noble conduct, self-sacrifice and public honor.
If the led
are not accustomed to respect these traits by long tradition, if they have been
pistol-whipped into blind obedience to terror and arbitrary decision-making,
then peace mentality cannot endure in that weapon milieu without collapsing
into chaos. Everyone must be carefully
retrained in peace.
A society may be
materially poor, yet thrive under peace leadership. Its neighbor may be aswim in material goods,
yet pauperize and lobotomize itself at the command of its corrupt weapon
managers.
The best
alternative would be a longstanding peace culture based on tradition, whose
leadership benefited from unlimited abundance shared equally. The worst is our alternative: interchangeable
weapon managers hoarding wealth and power at the expense of a crushingly large
but politically crushed majority, while wielding maximum firepower and
not much else except the promise of future misery.
You choose.
LEARNERS: On the Move from
WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld