SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
“Man has constantly to sum up experiences and go on discovering,
inventing, creating and advancing. Ideas
of stagnation, pessimism, inertia and complacency are all wrong.” Mao Tse Tong.
Up until now, ruling the seething mass of humanity was a practical impossibility. Even the best-run states tarnished their virtue with lies, and their justice with violence. Given the white noise blare of weapon mentality, abuse and terror became the only customary methods of social control. There were so many competing demands, distractions and contradictions to deal with; any expectation of wisdom and fairness became ‘unrealistic.’
“One reason the Kennedy and Johnson administrations failed to take an
orderly, rational approach to the basic questions underlying Vietnam was the
staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced. Simply put, we faced a blizzard of problems,
there were only twenty-four hours in a day, and we often did not have time to
think straight.
“This predicament is
not unique to the administrations in which I served, or to the United
States. It has existed at all times and in most countries. I have never seen a thoughtful examination of
the problem. It existed then, it
exists today, and it ought to be recognized and planned for when organizing a
government.” Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of
Vietnam, Times Books, 1995, page xvii, (reprinted by permission; italics
mine).
The Chinese government has often held the dubious distinction of governing ten times more people than the next largest state on Earth. It was also hammered by waves of weapon barbarians. Among others, the Hsiung-nu and Hsien-pi in the 4th century CE, the Toba in the 5th, the Khitan in the 10th, the Kin the 12th and the Manchu during the 17th—who overran all of China in just five years.
The most candid expression of Chinese weapon management emerged during the Warring States period of weapon chaos, circa 450-300 BCE, during which tens of millions of Chinese died from all-out war. It was called the School of Law. Shang Yang, Prime Minister of the Chin Empire, listed two government functions: warfare and agriculture. His so-called Legalist philosophy was comparable to modern Western ‘Realism.’ It reduced governance to two key activities: regimenting as many killers as possible and feeding them.
Weapon mentors of the Chinese Warring States might have found congenial company comparing notes with modern reactionaries―assuming such racist paranoids could agree to converse freely with strangers.
Dollar democrats may be Banana Republican, Corporate Democrat, Neo-Liberal (thus corporate aristocrats), Conservative, Labour, Radical Populist, Institutional Revolutionary, People’s Party cadres, feudal monarchists, fascist militarists or imperial totalitarians. At the bottom of every Dollar Democrat’s calculations lurks his morbid fear of war-to-the-death between the haves and the have-nots. The only difference between left- and right-wingers is their projection of who would be more likely to ‘win’ this war, even though no one, rich or poor, has ever won such a stupid and destructive conflict.
This said, most Chinese political thought is devoted to peace, social harmony and a sober and sane personal outlook. The bamboo-like flexibility of traditional Mohist and Taoist doctrines rival any offerings of advanced philosophy elsewhere.
Weapon managers have published the work of many weapon philosophers (and not much else). Mencius stands head and shoulders above them all. His work is one of China’s greatest glories, which a culture less magnificent than China’s might have discarded as mere peace mentality.
“Emperor Hui of
Liang said: ‘I’ve devoted myself entirely to the care of my nation. If there’s famine north of the river, I move
people east of the river and grain north of the river. And if there’s famine east of the river, I do
the opposite. I’ve never seen such
devotion in the governments of neighboring countries, but their populations are
growing by leaps and bounds while mine hardly grows at all. How can this be?’
‘You’re fond of
war,’ began Mencius, ‘so perhaps I could borrow an analogy from war. War drums rumble, armies meet, and just as
swords clash, soldiers throw down their armor and flee, dragging their weapons
behind them. Some run a hundred feet and
stop. Some run fifty feet and stop. Are those who run fifty feet justified in
laughing at those who run a hundred feet?’
‘No, of course not,’
replied the emperor. ‘It’s true they
didn’t run the full hundred feet, but they still ran.’
‘If you understood
this, you wouldn’t long to have more people than neighboring countries. Look – when growing seasons aren’t ignored,
people have more grain than they can eat.
When ponds aren’t plundered with fine-weave nets, people have more fish
and turtles than they can eat. When
mountain forests are cut according to their seasons, people have more timber
than they can use. When there’s more
grain and fish than they can eat, and more timber than they can use, people
nurture life and mourn death in contentment.
People nurturing life and mourning death in contentment – that’s where
the Way of Emperor begins.’
‘When every
five-acre farm has mulberry trees around the farmhouse, people wear silk at
fifty. And when the proper seasons of
chickens and pigs and [livestock] are not neglected, people eat meat at
seventy. When hundred-acre farms never
violate their proper seasons, even large families don’t go hungry. Pay close attention to the teaching in
village schools, and extend it to the child’s family responsibilities – then,
when their silver hair glistens, people won’t be out on roads and paths hauling
heavy loads. Our black-haired people
free of hunger and cold, wearing silk and eating meat at seventy – there have
never been such times without a true emperor.’
‘But you don’t think
about tomorrow, when people are feeding surplus grain to pigs and dogs. So when people are starving to death in the
streets, you don’t think about emptying storehouses to feed them. People die, and you say It’s not my fault, it’s the harvest. How is this any different from stabbing
someone to death and saying It’s not me,
it’s the sword? Stop blaming
harvests, and people everywhere under Heaven will come flocking to you.’” Mencius,
p. 6.
Confucianism, however, overemphasizes the application of power in private and public settings. Until the advent of Communism, Chinese politics skipped administrative requirements entirely. It relied on Mandarin ideals to mold a homogenous, centralized bureaucracy that would penetrate society from top to bottom. This cookie cutter approach favored individual perfection, forceful government and rigid social cohesion through inflexible father figures and submissive subordinates at every level.
For China and other complex empires, the only apparent alternatives seemed to be:
· Centralize decision-making. Drive control out of the hands of those at the grass roots, with the best grasp of the situation. Operate by fiat and suffer inevitable command-control delays.
· Decentralize control. In the absence of rapid and efficient communications, let competing interests alienate one another, let dearth and surpluses accrue in different regions, and let parochial conflicts reach chaotic levels of turbulence.
· Give up. Throughout the ages, horse, chariot and boat-borne nomads waited in the wings, eager to overturn any Chinese dynasty whose devotion to militarism faltered. During China’s recent past, the first Western industrial nations assumed the same role vis-à-vis China.
· When civil war did not induce the requisite weakness, some combination of famine, flood and plague would do the trick http://www.physorg.com/news198301240.html.
Even though China is famous for the energy, genius and self-discipline of its people, this passive-aggressive dilemma caused frequent bouts of warlord anarchy. The lack of valid alternatives brought on seesaw conflict between centralized blindness and decentralized rapaciousness. It has always induced this seesaw in complex societies.
No absolutism can resolve every dilemma of the human condition. As it stacks up paternalistic commands “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not” in an attempt to micro-manage the infinite complexities of the human experience, they wind up colliding with and derailing each other.
Authoritarian doctrines are contemptible attempts to simplify complexity with inflexible dogma. Might as well learn how to swim wearing cement overshoes; or, as the Chinese say, “Bind your feet to prevent your own progress.”
Unrestrained global Learning may be the only way to remedy our regrettable habit of reducing fractal reality into a simplistic dogma we find more comforting. Rather than jam every personality into some narrow mold of acceptable behavior; strong, flexible and coherent social frameworks should buttress everyone’s unique talents; they should illuminate those aspirations, recognize and reward the most passionate contributions.
By Learners’ forecast, many developing nations will erect giant, city-swallowing mega-structures described in Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside. A miniature, working model may be Paolo Soleri’s arcology, Arcosanti.
We may witness an orderly and just ingathering of massive populations within those enormous structures, set on stiletto footprints compared to the flatfoot sprawl of current cities. In that case, outlying territories could be rededicated to agriculture and ecological restoration with much-reduced human populations. Personal safety and collective security in these giant conurbations will depend on luxury accommodations, both physical and political, that the transferees will find in their new homes. Enthusiastic cooperation on their part will be required to maintain the good life. Halfway measures and cost-cutting compromises, overlain with habitual doses of compulsion and regimentation, will bring about disasters exceeding Khmer Rouge scales of lethality.
Likewise, the USA, Europe and the Tigers of Asia will bootstrap the inhabitants of Africa, Latin America and what used to be Communist Eurasia from their miserable afflictions up till now. These new Marshall Plans will resemble in cost and affect the economic development plans that yanked Western Europe, Japan and the Little Tigers back to their feet after the ravages of World War II. Good old self-interest will dictate that healthy new economies sprout from these pauperized regions. They promise enormous new markets for First World goods and services.
We must reinvent our energy industries before they choke us. Third World Energy Learners will sustain this tropical front of renewal.
Gaviotas, a commune in Columbia, is a remarkable scale-model of such native-born transformation. See Alan Weisman, Gaviotas: A Village to Rebuild the World, Chelsea Green Publishing Co., Vermont, 1998. Paolo Lugari’s blessed Gaviotas. Also Nader Khalili, with his Dome of Rumi in Arizona.
Learners will duplicate and refine these brilliant first efforts in millions of developing communities. They will make us rich beyond imagining—and even wiser.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld