SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
In the text below, replace the term ‘Fascism’
with ‘modern political thought.’
“Fascism
contemplates above all the future and the development of mankind merely from
the vantage point of political reality and believes neither in the possibility
nor the usefulness of eternal peace. It
rejects therefore pacifism, which under a pretense of magnanimity hides the
renunciation of combat and cowardice.
[Author’s note: pacifism hides the renunciation of cowardice,
indeed! Mussolini typifies those moral
cowards whose life-meaning collapses the moment they stop inflicting pain on
someone, anyone]. Only war brings human
energies to their highest tension and ennobles those peoples [that] dare to
undertake it. All other tests are only
substitutes, which never put men before the highest decision, that of the choice
between life and death [Russian roulette, Your Predaciousness? Be my guest!]. Therefore every doctrine which starts out
from a premeditated revolution for peace is foreign to Fascism.” Mussolini, quoted by Alfred Vagts
in A History of Militarism, Greenwich Editions, 1959, p. 437.
Replace
the term ‘Fascism’ with ‘modern political thought.’ A choice you were forced to accept without
any alternative. Do you get the picture
now?
Weapon
mentality is the operating system that drives the hardware/wetware of weapon
technology through the application program (constantly upgraded) of weapon
management. This management takes great
pride in the finality of its cruel and arbitrary dictates. It is more interested in its routines and
traditions than in the moral consequence of its acts. It would rather maintain the illusion of its
perfection than resolve its most persistent contradictions.
Weapon
mentality and its outcomes are not aberrations or errors. Learners should defy that weapon myth. Greed, psychosis, stupidity and gross
criminality (those eternal bugaboos) are mere symptoms of the problem, not its
cause. The chainsaw logic of weapon
mentality is consistent; its barbarity, fully justified and ‘moral’ within its
own frame of reference. Wherever weapon
mentality prowls unchallenged, it distorts every facet of life. Paraphrasing Churchill’s quip about German
imperialists, weapon managers are either groveling at our feet or lunging for
our throats.
Weapon
mentality is a parasite lacking creativity, which manifests nothing beyond its
compulsion and terror. Incapable of
independent productivity, it relies on peace technology for sustenance. Unable to destroy humanity’s innate sense of
dignity and grace, it twists those root truths just enough to suit its own
purposes.
First
off, it crams our constellation of political metaphors with weapon
myths.
As
far as weapon mentality is concerned, human compassion is an unnecessary
burden. Vicious battle elites find rank,
power, comparative wealth and imaginary security by acting as faithful servants
of weapon mentality. Anyone who takes a
moral stand is co-opted, marginalized and attacked. Promotion is based on willingness to
compromise basic principles and inflict the maximum allowable harm. A promising career, and often professional
survival, decree that good conscience be abandoned.
The
biblical tale in Genesis 22, in which God demands that Abraham sacrifice his
son, is a good analogy. Except that,
unlike merciful God, weapon mentality sees that this sacrifice gets carried out
to its bloody term, by the book.
Parable
of the Old Man and the Young
So
Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And
took the fire with him, and a knife.
And
as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac
the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold
the preparations, fire and iron,
But
where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then
Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And
builded parapets and trenches there,
And
stretchčd forth the knife to slay his son.
When
lo! An angel called him out of heaven,
Saying,
Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither
do anything to him. Behold,
A
ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer
the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But
the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And
half the seed of Europe, one by one.
--
Wilfred Owen died in battle in November 1918, a week before the Armistice
Weapon
mentality is stoical, discipline enforcing and contagious. It is anti-moral though very moralistic. It operates in direct contravention of peace
values. Like a virus, weapon mentality
guts healthy peace management cells to replicate its own kind. Gathering whatever it finds most handy and
culling the rest, it crosses with impunity every barrier of empire, race,
religion, nationality and ideology. You
know, all those notions heroes routinely died for? Weapon mentality treats them like the
phantasms they actually are.
Abusing
its ascendancy in a Darwinian struggle for the survival of the deadliest,
weapon mentality perverts human culture and obstructs every overture of
peace. It has done little else
throughout history, with our consent.
What’s more, weapon mentality remains ‘fixed’ in human history. Dependable peace has never endured. Prior to today’s global communication
networks, no prototype peace technology could spread fast enough through the
weapon cults that surrounded it.
Peace
technologies weaken under attack, even as their adherents strengthen themselves
in suffering and sacrifice. Only a few
civilizations made peace their first priority.
Without exception, they succumbed to the weapon technologies that
surrounded them. They became
‘pre-historic,’ forgotten by everyone.
Since
I’m much less of a man than Gandhi, I cannot call myself pacifist while I serve
hard time on this hell-world among these simpering killer primates. Every nation secretes an inescapable battle
elite of vile
individuals. It is our
repulsive obligation to practice selective violence against them, smother their
toxic influence and shelter the children—provided we redistribute wealth and
power in peace.
The
tendentious designations of Pacifist and Militarist have been explained to
death elsewhere. Their rivalry has been
mere mouse skittering compared to the legionary foot-tread of common weapon
stalwarts.
Similarities
between pacifists and militarists are striking.
Both enlist small groups of sullen fanatics on the margins of
society. Both rely on powerful, charismatic
patrons to dispel routine lethargy, shatter petty deadlocks, reroute police
scrutiny and advertise widely. Both
share moral attitudes that are chronic in modern society and that turn acute in
high-stress situations—rather like herpes virus in a stressed individual or the
latent TB that may bring me down some day.
Both make noisy claims during periods of social turmoil. During these stressful times, one group
redecorates our courtrooms and punishment cells with the outcome of its
reawakened conscience, while the other inks the latest pages of history with
the blood of its next victims. Both rely
on mass media to multiply their small numbers and amplify their impossible
demands.
Pacifists
range from those who would rather starve than let their bodily defenses kill
off microorganisms naturally, (as many Jain elders opt to do), to conscientious
objectors who may or may not fight for a cause they find just, or cooperate
with their nation when it goes to war.
This form of reluctant cooperation defines the common mass of weapon
stalwarts, whether or not they’re killing each other at war.
Finally,
many cosmopolitan people – such as I – seek PeaceWorld. More often than not, they support some less
coherent, less than feasible alternative.
Their hope tends to dwell on wishful thinking about peaceful nationalism
(a patent contradiction) and touchy-feely sentimentalism rather than the nuts,
bolts and binding washers of a pragmatic global peace.
Pacifism
serves as a term of law to designate another group of people who impede weapon
management in times of war. Along with
them come spies, rebels, deserters, draft dodgers, traitors and aliens. These people aren’t considered ‘pacifists’ despite
their routine allegiance to cosmopolitan peace.
The
term pacifist was coined to create a legal pigeonhole for a few thousand
conscientious objectors who protested against World War I on the record and
thus the hard way. They earned equal
shares of contempt and brutality from Allied and Central Power bureaucrats.
Rarely
having been shot at, (that I know of), I suspect that everyone who comes under
hostile fire becomes a devout pacifist.
“There are no warmongers in foxholes!”
To
date, organized pacifists have insulated themselves and their cherished ideals
from the mainstream of society. Usually,
the weapon media paint them as decadent, pasty-faced, ‘morally superior’
outsiders and wise guys. Many pacifists
embrace these labels, to the detriment of their cause.
The
term Militarist encompasses those who advocate serious military preparedness
and/or preemptive aggression. The
essence of military preparedness is aggression, since battlefields are the only
valid training ground for real armies, and mortal enemies, their only real instructors. It includes proponents of any weapon state
except our own. Our nationals, of
course, are peace loving, anti-militarist and free.
Sure
thing, buddy.
Weapon
states may remain overtly militaristic, even though they’ve spent decades at
peace with everyone but their own minorities.
Some of the biggest empires – bloated with war booty, conquered
territory, devastating firepower and drone populations of slaves, warriors,
warlords, convicts and disenfranchised victims – simply deny their own
militarism. That takes care of
that!
Militarists
often call themselves patriots: “The last refuge of the scoundrel,” per
Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
Like
most weapon terms, these designations are useless―as clumsy as they are
vague.
Pacifists
usually seek their shade in center-left politics, while militarists hunt
opportunistically from the far right (their usual turf) through the middle
ground to the far left—wherever they can pull down the most cash. As hobbies go, weapons technology is quite
expensive.
I’d replace these first terms (the usual
expressions) with the ones that follow, from Learners’ vocabulary.
·
Militarists: weapon mentors, weapon sectarians,
weapon managers, battle elites, and weapon technicians (depending on their
actual job assignment).
·
Pacifists, opposition activists, and random,
reductive meliorists: weapon dissenters.
·
Most people, for the most part peaceful, who
would march off to war if asked nicely.
And their children, taught to expect war, not a better life in peace and
more success at it: common weapon stalwarts (the crushing majority of
humanity).
·
Useful transformational revolutionaries:
Learners.
It
all depends on the people in question: whether they know what they’re doing and
why. My terms focus on results rather
than intent. I hesitate to pigeonhole
specific people and institutions based on their political packaging and outlook
rather than their results.
People
tend to respond flexibly to complex and often paradoxical circumstances,
internal as well as external. Many
people say one thing and do the opposite, then applaud the paradoxical outcome
of their behavior. Too many more claim
the best intentions, scrutinize their means compulsively and yet accept
horrible outcomes as inevitable.
The
weapon/peace dialectic endorses two conflicting definitions of anarchy.
In
misleading us this way, that self-contradiction matches most of our political
metaphors. Two contrary definitions
serve to render a term meaningless and therefore useful to weapon mentality. Deeper meanings of truth and peace are poison
to it. Weapon political metaphors do not
require specific meanings beyond those needed to lie and kill.
For
peace mentality, words like justice and liberty have a specific meaning that
corresponds exactly to real-time behavior.
Either there is justice or there isn't justice. Simple.
For
weapon mentality, mushy words like that are just reassuring noise everyone may
parrot mindlessly, about actions which it can transform into their exact
opposite whenever it is more convenient, and still call them the same. There can be injustice and it can be called justice. No problem.
The
supreme commands: lie, kill, sacrifice, etc., must always be shouted loud
enough and understood immediately by everyone on the national parade ground and
in global firefights. No conflicting
expressions need be so accurate or consistent.
The
main function of classical philosophy is to render all the other (non-military)
terms as amorphous and meaningless as possible, in the most confusing manner
possible.
The
clarity you might find in Learners, despite its middling prose, is
forbidden by classical philosophy and chased from its primary texts. Elaborate protocols and wordy formulae are
developed with the twin goals of neutralizing valid ethics and preventing
peace. The facts to be established
indisputably by classical philosophy are that the yearly starvation of millions
of babies is inevitable, and that world peace is impossible and unwise. Your grades as a child and the publication of
your adult manuscript will depend on the beauty of your prose admitting these
revolting principles and your solid logic in confirming them.
Reactionaries
define anarchy as the following nightmare scenario. Learners calls it chaosism, and its
practitioners, chaosists. A chaosist may
commit any crime he can get away with, based on his ruthlessness, strength and
firepower. During periods of chaosism
(reactionary anarchy), no bourgeois may doze off at night, confident that his
throat won’t be slit, his property stolen/vandalized, and his family enslaved
before he reawakens.
Don’t
bother to remind reactionaries that this is exactly what happens to those
caught in the path of armies in wartime or to the poor in times of peace. They won’t listen. According to reactionaries, anarchists
promote this kind of anarchy. Shooting
them like rabid dogs would be salutary.
Anarchists
have a different view of anarchy. In
their version, every rule of property and class should be discarded in favor of
self-discipline and fellow feeling, which would lead to absolute justice and
equality. No poverty, no bigotry, no
inequality, war or vice. In short:
Neolithic hunter-gatherer freedom. They,
in turn, consider property-owners rabid dogs, etc. …
Learners uses the
term ‘chaosist’ to describe the whipped-children-turned-into-adults who’d rise
and fall like yo-yos during chaosism (chaos for its own sake). Think of the Thirty Years War or Rwanda at
its worst. Some individuals might have
survived, but no they would recognize, survived. Victims and murderers, survivors and the
dead: everyone’s core identity from the past was brutally struck down.
Also
included under the designation chaosist are many whackos
unbalanced enough to want to make that chaos happen: people like the Unabomber,
various Book of Revelation fanatics,
those who applaud bloody jihad (holy
war on behalf of Islam), and just about anyone else on a really, really bad
day.
Learners
would reserve the term ‘anarchist’ for iron-willed utopians like Bukharin,
Kropotkin, Tolstoy and Gandhi: the most decent men this indecent world has
produced.
Anyone
who would run around setting garbage dumpsters alight, smashing plate glass
windows and upsetting the cars of innocent bystanders, in obedience to his pimply,
teenage, glandular hyperactivity – all in the name of Glorious Anarchy – is
obviously an amateur chaosist. Suicide
bombers, likewise. Professional
chaosists tend to pass their unarmed neighbors under the mortar and the
machete, and send young suicide bombers out to die, while they remain safe and
smug at home, preaching from their Good Book.
If someone comes looking for them seriously armed, they run and hide
like cowards.
The Learner Commonwealth will be neither lawlessly brutal nor evangelically lawless. Chaosists will be neutralized and sent along Learner pathways more theatrical, therapeutic and useful; and moral anarchists, held to their highest standards.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld