SUMMARY OF LEARNERS INTRO &
VOCAB
“Better yet, the most extreme measures, the bloodiest combat tactics, the most appalling acts are kindest in the long run, for the simple reason that they hasten the end of hostilities and thus reduce the sum of people killed and equipment destroyed. This point of view was defended by the famous Marshal Hindenburg when he said: ‘The more merciless the war, the more humane in reality, since it will end more quickly.’ This remains the thinking of our finest strategists today. Jean Bacon, The Greater Glory, Prism Press, San Leandro, California, 1986, p. 36 [retranslated by me].
“A soldier’s behavior must be modeled on that of a rat: kind and understanding towards members of his own group, cruel and ferocious towards strangers. Lose this delicate balance, tip the scale the other way and disaster looms. The war machine – at one time well oiled – grinds to a halt. The one word that strikes terror among generals, spreads quietly through headquarters: ‘fraternization’.” Ibid.
Regardless of a
modern state’s idiosyncrasies – ideological, religious and technological – its
adherents obtain the most privilege by contributing to the nation’s war
effort. Family wealth, seniority,
dominant race and political allegiance are primary criteria for recruitment to
positions of privilege and prestige.
Intellect, talent and ethical judgment are at best secondary
considerations.
Aversion to
warfare is a grave liability for ambitious candidates, it guarantees their
ejection from the corridors of power.
All the
governments of today are masterworks of weapon mentality. The ruthlessness and ideological
idiosyncrasies of national elites correspond to the vividness of the
threats they feel surrounded by. The more an info proletariat can be made to
fear those threats, the more tyrannical its elite may become. Its power base, impunity and malice
correspond to the projection of its fears onto the proletariat.
Given current
danger levels, the ever-present threat of instant bionuclear and meteorological
annihilation authorizes the worst kind of weapon tyranny. By gradual increments of terror, we have set
ourselves up to be ruled by a succession of hyperactive Hitlers.
Every state
exists because it has maximized its weapon technology. Otherwise, its neighbors would have
saturated its countryside with guerrillas, invaded it and replaced its
government with one more open to weapon mentality.
The majority of nation-states
are powerful enough to deter conventional aggression; routine international
relations can head off most of
them. Future terrorist attacks will
provoke those states just enough to aggravate their weapon tyranny.
Weapon mentality
justifies its existence by erecting barriers between nation-states ruled by
rival but identical elites. In a cyclic process throughout history, these
barriers (or membranes) have ballooned outward. Within were the prismatic family, village,
metropolis, culture, race, religion and/or nation-state to which allegiance
was owed; outside are bogeymen that may be attacked when convenient and abused
the rest of the time.
The toughest membranes and tightest prismatic groupings cluster in isolated wastelands – mountains, jungles, swamps and deserts of sand, stone and ice – remote places where sheer survival poses a major problem. The swiftest hitchhiking and the most generous hospitality can be found in the poorest countries. They are more difficult to obtain if not entirely forbidden where the police are vigilant, the climate mild, the cars new, and their drivers sleek and self-absorbed.
In wastelands, any stranger could be seen as a lethal menace, yet it is here that the laws of hospitality and protection are most strictly obeyed. Once you are under their protection, their inhabitants would rather die than see you harmed. That is their law. It should be ours as well, regardless of our cushy circumstances.
Extending from prehistoric family units, these membranes have ballooned outward. Gathering different peoples into unified wholes – brutally or otherwise – they have spread out, their growth nourished by the arterial supply of growing communications systems.
Now that
sub-continental populations share a common membrane, now that any two voices at
opposite ends of the world are separated by .6 seconds by telephone, we
are a mere quantum jump from global unity.
Actually, this political process resembles the growth of one large
bubble from a froth of smaller ones—and probably obeys a similar set of surface
tension laws.
Federal authority demands that districts subordinate themselves to a powerful central government. In confederations, central authority exists for more restricted purposes. Confederate leaders seek the consent of diverse peoples by leaving them as undisturbed as possible.
At first, I
thought Learner civilization would honor Panch
Shila: five principles of confederacy articulated by Jawaharial Nehru and
Chou En-lai, and ratified by their Third World supporters during the
Bandung Conference of 1955.
·
Non-intervention
·
Mutual respect
for territorial integrity and sovereignty
·
Mutual
non-aggression
·
Mutual aid
·
Peaceful
coexistence
I used to think
that the World Court alone could rescind these rights and obligations, and then
only temporarily, according to the verdict of randomly selected juries fully
briefed by an adversarial system of international pleadings.
Since then, each of us has witnessed far too many atrocities both foreign and domestic. Governments and their associates have indulged in them under armored umbrellas of non-intervention and national sovereignty. Since then, I read Mortimer Adler’s How to Think about War and Peace. His much clearer analysis of the politics of PeaceWorld (published in 1943 and ignored since) includes the following directives. I quote them to you in their entirety:
“With respect to any plan proposed for maintaining ‘peace in our time,’ the following conditions should be satisfied:
· That they commit no political or economic injustice, by way of inequitable distributions or unfair discriminations.
· That they contemplate no alliance which will, directly or indirectly, preserve a status quo built upon already existing injustices.
· That they use power, whether or not through the methods of coalition, to support international good faith, not to supplant it; to safeguard freedom, not to suppress it.
· That they anticipate the direction of social, economic, and political changes, so that no measures positively taken will operate as impediments to progress anywhere in the world, and so that some positive measures be taken to facilitate it.
· That they permit, encourage, and even perhaps institute international agencies, such as the League of Nations and the World Court, not because such institutions can by themselves postpone the next war, much less perpetuate peace, but because such institutions provide men with the image of an international community, and with the political experience needed for the formations of the future.
· That they multiply such agencies and the International Labor Office, which deal with problems common to all nations from the point of view of a common good that transcends national interests; and, in this connection, that they create an International Office of Education for the purpose of equalizing educational opportunity throughout the world at the highest level [author’s note: which is Learners’ primary intent], and to guide education everywhere in the training of citizens.” pp. 290-291.
Along with the technical means to exterminate a certain population comes the ability to administer it in peace. The Pax Romana (Peace of Rome) extended only as far as Roman Legions could troop their Eagles. Just as everyone could be exterminated everyone on Earth within a few weeks; we could also extend dependable abundance and justice to the same number of people.
Only battle
elites thrive in a fractured society.
Picture yourself
visiting a booming Renaissance port. Its
inhabitants disposed of surplus capital, ships, goods and luxury orders they
could only fill abroad. However, a stable government had to guarantee
the investors’ stake in foreign trade.
Their profit margins needed to remain reasonably secure despite long periods
spent in idle apprehension, awaiting their cargos’ return. If
random gangs of armed hooligans could control the docks and commandeer any
freight and passengers passing across them, no merchant would have gambled his
savings on such a risky enterprise.
Everyone on Earth
faces the same predicament. The United Nations recognize the sovereignty
of about two hundred convoluted street gangs, each entitled to hold its
citizens hostage at knifepoint and attack any other gang it can get away with. It doesn’t even necessarily need that
excuse.
Meanwhile, at
least five thousand nations – finalists of ten thousand or more that
ceased registering in what is left of recorded history – compete for those two
hundred certificates of sovereignty. No
wonder the world is filled with so many guerillas and terrorists!
Like any other polis (police, “citadel”, city-state),
the Earth needs the equivalent of one City Hall, one Justice of the Peace and
one duly appointed Police Force. Not
two hundred glorified street gangs disguised as Prism
governments; not a combination of 180-odd recognized governments and the
best-organized criminal/corporate gangs competing with them for
military/economic power. And certainly
not the worst Wimp gang whipping all the others in protracted rumbles
until it, too, collapses from its internal contradictions.
“In a dark period of five hundred years, Rome was perpetually afflicted by the sanguinary quarrels of the nobles and the people, the Guelphs and Ghibelines, [author’s note: pro-pope and imperialist, respectively], the Colonna and Ursini: and if much has escaped the knowledge, and much is unworthy of the notice of history, I have exposed in the two preceding chapters, the cause and effects of the public disorders. At such a time, when every quarrel was decided by the sword; and none could trust their lives or properties to the impotence of law; the powerful citizens were armed for safety or offense against domestic enemies whom they feared or hated. Except Venice alone, the same dangers and designs were common to all the free republics of Italy; and the nobles usurped the prerogative of fortifying their houses, and erecting strong towers that were capable of resisting a sudden attack. …
“… Whatever is fortified will be attacked, and whatever is attacked may be destroyed … ‘The houses,’ says a cardinal and poet of the times, ‘were crushed by the weight and velocity of enormous stones; the walls were perforated by the strokes of the battering-ram; the towers were involved in fire and smoke; and the assailants were stimulated by rapine and revenge.’ The work was consummated by the tyranny of the laws; and the factions of Italy alternately exercised a blind and thoughtless vengeance on their adversaries, whose houses and castles they razed to the ground. In comparing the days of foreign, with the ages of domestic hostility, we must pronounce that the latter have been far more ruinous to the city, and our opinion is confirmed by the evidence of Petrarch. ‘Behold,’ says the laureate, ‘the relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! Neither time nor the Barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons; and your ancestors (he writes to a noble Anibaldi) have done with the battering-ram, what the Punic hero could not accomplish with the sword.’” Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Allen Lane Ltd., the Penguin Press, London, 1994, p. 1073-5.
Every nation and
ethnic group should be permitted to reclaim its political independence
and sovereignty through legal means and without war. That way, they would stop breeding hot spots of intractable
military friction: Tamils, American Indians by tribe, Karins, Kashmiris, Kurds,
Palestinians ... a list that can get real long, real fast. This
option is closed to us today because criminal activities are certified
legitimate once they’ve grown huge and profitable enough for a few.
Thus modern
states may kidnap, torture, loot local resources and economies, starve
and exterminate minorities, wage guerilla war against them. Their leaders may play bait-and-switch games
with profitable drug trade and repressive drug wars, for no good reason. They may raise more murderous terrorists
with each new generation, simply by terrorizing their families (drone wars
forever!)—and no one in the world community so much as sneezes.
You! Do you imagine your rights can remain
secure as long as some tyrant may play games like these with other people’s
indignation? You are next, poor dummy.
Here is the main
question of politics: whom to trust?
The People? Can we arm them, give them sovereign
political rights, access to all the information they need and freedom to
do their best in total peace? The United States’ Constitution is founded on
that trust: the wellspring of its greatness.
Our crooked leaders are shifting more and more resources to the
weapons alternative, as follows.
We can mistrust the People and entrust some elite minority instead (an information elite). It should remain disinterested, artificially hyper-educated, supremely class-conscious and well adapted to run a military dictatorship whenever it feels the need and can justify it with enough war propaganda. Without finding anything wrong in that.
Then they will
have to arm some minority police or paramilitary (a battle elite) to enforce
their illegitimate leadership.
Thereafter, they can ruin us by paying it more than generously so
that it will cause as little damage as possible; or let it run riot on the
cheap, destroy society and the environment for short-term profit.
In either case,
the nastier the battle elite, the safer the information elite feels—even
though reality dictates exactly the opposite: less aggression, more security.
In the end, we
can pray that Mafia thugs don’t take over and replace those same elites. That takeover, a Darwinian certainty that
has already happened; in case you hadn’t figured it out yet.
The People or the
Mafia? You choose.
Military and
criminal organizations share intimate and subtle co-dependencies.
An illustrative
military/criminal order is the Hashashin
of ancient Syria. Their rest,
recreation and training zones were sited in remote mountains where the
lavish abuse of drugs and young women persuaded novice assassins that they
could live in earthly paradise while they served the Hashashin, and go directly
to heaven by dying in their service. Meanwhile, their leaders graduated through
laborious steps of mystery and initiation, into the central, revealed Truth of
the Cult. “This whole thing is nothing
but a patchwork of lies and power hunger: enjoy.”
Today, generic
death squads fester across the planet.
Usually, they serve as Gestapo-like security thugs and/or revolutionary
enforcers. Similar organizations
clutter the history books: the military religious orders, (Buddhist martial
monasteries compacted like bonsai plants into criminal clans by government
suppression; knights Templar, Hospitalier and Teutonic); Westphalian Vehmgericht (vehmic courts of medieval Germany);
Japanese Ninja; Indian Thugees; KKK lynch mobs; Hermandad of Spain and Acordada of Mexico; and highland Scots,
Colombian and Afghan tribal clans, among others.
Also, various
secret animal clans: Werewolves in Germania and Scandinavia, African Lion and
Leopard societies, and Asian Tiger equivalents. Since the summary execution of social deviants became less and
less acceptable to local communities, these clans evolved to permit it. Victims of execution would be found torn to
shreds, the tracks of big predators all around their bodies – torn apart
by iron claws, the tracks made by craftily carved sandal heels. No one knew whether it was a predator that
had claimed another victim, or the most dangerous predator of all: man.
Nowadays,
“right-wing death squad member” is a routine job description in many
countries, entitlement to earn one’s keep—not a term of loathing and
ostracism. If you know people who know
the right people, you can get someone bumped off for the price of a few drug
fixes or a trendy pair of tennis shoes.
Such nations disgrace themselves.
Criminals mirror militarists. Both sides share the same battle elite penchant for murder. You will find similar traits in all
three camps: risk-taking,
clannishness, expertise at violence, rituals of dominance and submission,
fiercely contested chains of command, the demand for perfect obedience, power
grabs by force and cunning, contempt for outsiders, fondness for deceit,
and a compulsion to foment pain, torment and terror―preferably on
defenseless innocents.
Once warfare
breaks out, prisons, jails and crime syndicates erupt into the Army. In peacetime, criminal courts often force
wayward teenagers to choose between jail and the military. Several murderers-for-hire solicited new
customers through Soldier of Fortune
magazine.
Another weapon brotherhood
goes unrecognized: that between criminals and the police. Snitches and petty larcenists in Victorian
Era capitals were the first recruits into the police forces of
Europe. The information elite’s
reasoning went thus:
·
the best hunter
of a criminal must be another criminal; and
·
why not hire
the smarter half of the worst aggressors, track them with vigorous oversight
and call them “police”—rather than attempt to suppress both sets of
scoundrels with another, less-qualified force?
Interpol, Europe’s
central police agency, was founded on Gestapo files and informant
networks. It is worth noting that the
first functional agency of the European Economic Community was the last
one of Nazi-dominated Europe: its police force… Just like the last gasp
of the Roman Empire was its body of laws.
Quite recently, Interpol officially purged itself of the worst aspects of its Nazi contamination. Unlike the American government, which neither admitted nor retracted its post-war fondness for fascist operatives and their dirty tricks… up to and including the unpunished assassination of John F. Kennedy, a standing President of the United States.
In a real
democracy, this crime alone would have set off a civil war until every
elite conspirator had been dragged into the light of day and publicly
condemned. The American leadership
lied, executed who knows how many honest witnesses, and protected the bastards
responsible, to avert this catastrophe.
According to
current weapon thought, new production efficiencies will deprive enormous
civilian labor pools of employment and legitimate income, as those necessities
are misunderstood today. Rather than
install Learner Networks to generate new livelihoods for these
people, reactionaries are organizing massive trivial-crime and prison-building
programs. There are way too many
prisoners in the USA alone (one percent of the population and still
growing). Too many more people
are required to hunt, process and guard them.
Stalin would have been proud of
the triumph of his ideological successors.
These stupid substitutes for gainful employment typify weapon
management.
No army, criminal
syndicate or police force, no matter how brutal and well equipped, can
enforce obedience that exceeds local majorities’ willingness to impose it upon
themselves. Without a corresponding
Learner transformation, revaluing the common currency of public responsibility
is an exercise in futility. It is a
waste of time—be it at gunpoint or using non-lethal weapons and mass
propaganda. Getting the police to suppress legitimate dissent through sheer
personnel and firepower supplements (by stepping up trivial arrests and illegal
surveillance) just refines the state of corruption and induces more
victims among the innocent.
The most effective police departments are peace instruments. They are unlike secret police, intelligence agencies and armies; those are weapon technologies. Well-run police use minimal force to suppress violence. In order to operate effectively, they must be backed by efficient social service agencies. Ideally, they submit to an honest and wary judiciary controlled by juries through tiers of public review and private appeal. At best, this police force should be recruited from an ethnic mix similar to the population they are patrolling, and live in the same neighborhoods they are assigned to patrol.
Civic problems
should be handled by social, legislative, voluntary and entrepreneurial
interventions—not just pummeled by brute force. If legitimate grievances generate a mass
demonstration, they must be dealt with constructively. New channels of communication need to be
opened on the basis of their legitimacy.
On the other hand, armies are trained, organized, and equipped to inflict the utmost damage and mayhem in the shortest possible time—this regardless of rights and wrongs. They demand absolute sovereignty in their field of destruction and recognize no law but their own. Ordering the military to use discrete increments of force – to provide disaster relief and social assistance in civilian settings, for example, or impose non-violence on antagonists who reject cease-fires – betrays a complete misunderstanding of weapon management.
Every time info elites have confused police and military functions, every time they’ve attempted to merge police and military functions into an armed bureaucracy, they’ve abused their proletarian hosts through overzealous brutality and/or bungling neglect.
Go take a look at Iraq from 2003 to 2011: our model of
WeaponWorld things to come. Faluja =
your hometown. Does that turn you on?
As the quality of
life deteriorates, criminal punishment loses its effectiveness. When the quality of life improves,
especially among the poor, criminal deterrence recovers.
The least stupid
criminals find that they have too much to lose – and too many good alternatives
to pick from – to settle for mere criminality. Once they opt for the
straight and narrow, they turn into allies of the forces of order, or at least benevolent
neutrals.
Once punishments
are reduced, the following results can be expected. Far fewer, less competent criminals confront law-abiding
majorities and their natural allies: a more-or-less honest police force and a
jury-controlled judiciary.
Otherwise,
so-called criminals are just disguised guerrillas: fish in a sea of cooperative
victims. The populace and its
criminal minority become reluctant allies standing should-to-shoulder against
their ‘anti-crime, law-and-order’ oppressors.
This is the optimal recruitment ground for battle elites and the
preferred outcome of weapon management.
In weapon states,
an active conscience is for slaves, old veterans nursing nasty dreams, and rapt infants listening to bloody fairy
tales. Weapon mentality makes the rest
of us betray our conscience on command.
It teaches us to tolerate the intolerable—much the way the Nazis taught
Europeans to ignore the Holocaust, at gunpoint.
What we
laughingly call 'modern culture' is our pathetic attempt to justify this
massive aberration of values. By what
right or duty do we shore up this travesty?
Let’s switch to
something more fit!
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld