SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO
& VOCAB
At this point, Learners’ assumptions branch out in all
directions.
Interstellar space offers
something like a savanna ecology (just scaled-up) that could provide plenty of
sustenance to those who learn to harvest it.
Once we will have evolved beyond the vegetative, static, planetary
phase; it promises unlimited stellar energy and hydrogen, more than enough for
a sun-powered, plant-like civilization like ours, which uses (with great waste)
a ridiculously small portion of available stellar energy.
Current human technology
pegs us as microbial ‘decomposers’: global leaf mold, if you will. Indeed, we juggle sunlight, plants, animals
and various forms of dirt to produce cities, armies, waste heat and light,
carbon dioxide, methane, rust and impermeable membranes of concrete and asphalt. In so doing, we’ve created a witch’s brew of
toxic refuse, sewage and unending tons of human flesh.
“The pattern of human population growth in the twentieth century was more bacterial than primate. When Homo sapiens passed the six billion mark we had already exceeded by as much as a hundred times the biomass of any large animal species that ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another hundred years like that.” Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002, p. 29.
Earth-bound civilization
may liberate itself from such primitive routines. In that case, we may stray into the living
space of other herbivorous civilizations.
Let us hope each side will have graduated from its atavistic weapon mentality
and rejected heroic hysteria.
Then again, there may be
predatory civilizations out there, fast, stealthy and lethal by design. “They may act toward us,” Paul Lackman
suggests, “the way European colonists acted toward the rest of the world.” I had in mind a more lethal interaction: like
that of a big fish towards a smaller one, or like worms devouring the
soil. Their hunger might tempt them to
engulf all life that showed the slightest weakness, down to planetary bedrock.
Today, an electromagnetic
signal bubble pulses louder and louder from the Earth. As we speak, its radius spans one hundred
light years: more than twenty-five times the distance to the nearest
stars. This bubble is spreading outward
at the speed of light: the radio signature of a second sun that’s not there,
plus 2,056 electromagnetic pulses from idiot-savant nuke tests, (http://www.mayomo.com/103218-time-lapse-map-of-all-nuclear-explosions-since-1945)
and unique kinds of bangs and thumps from more recent particle
accelerators. If any hungry entity could
sort our signal from the background crackle of cosmic radiation, they
could. Our ultra-primitive radio signals
might attract them, the way a bleating calf, hidden by its mother, might betray
them both to hungry hyenas.
Their biosphere
consumption, however, might become lethargic if we put up a proper fight to
begin with. Defense against this kind of
predation may be the only justification for our inbred ferocity. For the same reason, rams bash into each
other during courtship rituals—the better to fend off mountain predators.
Robert O’Connell’s study of weapon management, Of Arms and Men, concludes that most battles are ritual duels
fought between equal armies. They
resemble courtship duels among ungulates and other beasts. Like rutting males, each army risks the
damage of a tolerable number of its soldiers (cells) only to withdraw and
perish unfulfilled if the business goes sour.
He called this phenomenon
“intra-species warfare” interspersed with “extra-species” fights during which a
heavily armed aggressor dehumanizes and exterminates its victims until weapon
parity, attrition and/or genocide bring on martial exhaustion.
We could face both
challenges in the future, whether fighting among ourselves or against aliens.
In his compilation, A History of
Warfare, John Keegan presents two kinds of warfare: true war and real war.
True war is the
Clausewitzian ideal, chock-full of weapon justifications: the Chinese School of
Law, Realpolitik and Machtpolitik (the politics of “realism”
and raw power). True war boasts of
elaborate battle preparations; the self-sacrifice, professionalism, noble
bonding and peacock panoply of professional soldiers; the elitism that lets
them set themselves above non-combatants; etc.
Real war is the art form
of the bully and the tyrant. It involves
routine massacre, vandalism, rape, terror and subversion of conscience. It is the disgraceful way we express our
reptilian neural wiring and paleomammalian sensations that govern human fear,
authoriphilia (love of authority) and aggression.
Weapon mentors take great
pains to disguise real war as true war.
John Keegan characterizes
as typical of Western combat, the face-to-face, fight-to-the-death rituals
‘invented’ by urbanized Greek farmers.
He distinguishes them from cavalry/missile duels fought on the steppes
of ancient Asia and during modern tank battles.
To him, those are
examples of ‘sissy’ war. He prefers the
symmetrical geometry of steel-thorn hedges of foot soldiers stolidly harvesting
each other's flesh and of Enlightenment regiments playing ‘firing squad’
against each other in tightly packed checkerboard squares.
This preference may be a
matter of taste or, perhaps, atavism. A
case may be made that the first ‘battles’ (aside from intimate murders and
Freud’s assassination of the Father?) were fought between lines of
hunter-gatherer-scavengers who confronted each other during the harvest season,
across precious patches of wild barley, potable water and fishing holes. Did they wield the first generation of
weapons adapted from hunting, gleaning and fishing gear?
More probably, the
tactics of warfare – like the techniques of fire and most other proofs of
sentience – were first tried out as child’s play (perhaps inspired by a
shaman’s crazy improvisations?). The
most useful of them were taken up more methodically by their mothers and elder
sisters, then adopted by young males, and finally made commonplace when those
young males took over from grizzled elders who never accepted those newfangled
tricks in the first place. This
according to The
Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes, at http://www.spiritual-endeavors.org/free/100monk-pre.htm.
This is a common thread
of primate adaptation, the standard path of Learner revolution. I expect that the same thing may happen with
respect to World Peace, once all those die who never wanted anything to do with
it in the first place. Hopefully,
they’ll pass away quietly, without dragging the rest of us down with them and burning out
the planet in the meantime.
Note Hitler’s last wish:
to take everyone down with him once his master plan had failed. Another characteristic of psychopaths. Likely they wish to see the entire planet
sterilized if they can’t possess it entirely (read rape it, and us) before they
die. Thus, climate “skeptics.”
Paul Lackman reminds us
that Roman Legions fought with a short sword (gladius). Zulu Impis (regiments) did so with a
short-handled spear (assegai), some of the
deadliest edged weapons ever forged, along with Nepalese kukri and perhaps the most deadly, the
rounded fransisca of the Francs.
These nations intended
their warriors to close with the enemy in hand-to-hand combat. This, despite their recruits’ sensible
aversion to that option. Throughout the
ages, weapon mentality has propounded the “spirit of the bayonet” regardless of
the casualties piling up on both sides.
Shaka Zulu punished any
warrior who lost his spear in battle. He
did not want his soldiers to throw them (the traditional fighting method); they
were to thrust and slash with them in close combat. Shaka’s recruits could not take a wife until
they had killed an enemy in battle: another example of sublimation of the sex
drive into military violence.
The Zulus suffered from
runaway population growth and resource depletion: the same problems we face
today. So did all the South African
tribes at the time of the Mfecane
(“Crushing”). Entire valleys were
carpeted with human bones, during this Zulu-initiated genocide of neighboring
Bantu tribes and then aggravated by them as they fled from the Zulus. This devastation took place just before a new
wave of European tribal immigrants arrived to compound the military problem of
Africa.
If forced to choose
between these fighting styles, one could favor the swift-mounted herder of
helpless foot soldiers into static herds ripe for slaughter. Over the course of countless mobile battles
of annihilation – Carrhae, Adrianople, Angora, Liegnitz I, Mohacs, Little Big
Horn, Kursk and the Southern Golan – this aspect of the threat formula was
hyper-refined. Unlike Keegan’s
pedestrian ideal, modern combat emphasizes mobility, long-range missile attack
and distancing from the target, both physical and psychological. From this point of view, infantry exists to
occupy ground, deny it to the enemy, abuse local civilians and get ripped apart
by devastating volleys of mobile firepower (including roving roadside IED
bombers).
Ultimately, we should
consider such quibbles secondary to Learner purposes. From the playground to the parade ground and
kindergarten to kindermord (baby
murder), our institutions subtly lure us into the meat grinder.
Even though we’ve been
taught a lot about the warrior king Shaka Zulu, another African leader demands
our attention. Weapon mentors have
ignored him while they’ve flooded our collective conscience with books and
movies about the warrior psychopath, Shaka.
Moshoeshoe (Moshesh,
Mosheshwe or Mshweshwe – pronounced moh-shwayshway)
was a prince of the Basotho, born in 1786.
As a young man, he was angry and impatient. So his father sent him to Mohlomi, a famous
chieftain who taught him dignity, self-restraint, patience and leadership. Moshoeshoe learned the value of hard work;
that powerless people deserve justice and the poor, compassion. These lessons served him well, under the most
trying circumstances a successful ruler could face.
After a great drought
brought on the mfécane or lifaquane, Moshoeshoe withdrew with his
people to the mountain fortress of Buta-Buthe.
When Tlokoa tribesmen invaded his territory in overwhelming numbers, he
withdrew with a few survivors to Thaba Bosiu or Bosigo (the Mountain of the
Night) from which he would never be dislodged.
His warriors captured
Tlokoa cannibals who had eaten his grandfather when he fell behind during the
retreat. Moshoeshoe forgave them and
gave them land so they would give up cannibalism. He said he had to revere the resting place of
his grandfather.
Thanks to a series of
brilliant military campaigns and diplomatic coups, he defeated a succession of
aggressors against his people. He threw
back triumphant forces of the Tlokoa, the Ndebele Zulu (after whose defeated
troops he sent cattle and rations, wishing them peace – they never attacked him
again), Voortrekkers and British Regulars.
Any army too powerful to defeat, he would negotiate its destruction or
divert it against some other group. He
was a better general than his enemies and a better negotiator than his
neighbors. All his wars were defensive. What he held, he never gave up without a hard
fight. Always, he sought peace.
He welcomed refugees from
all over South Africa and multiplied twenty-fold his few thousand
survivors. He forged the Basotho nation
and held it together through every adversity, despite its traumatized and
scattered constituents. His was perhaps
the only place in South Africa where a homeless refugee and his family could
find security and justice. In return,
they offered him their loyalty and desperate valor. No other place thereabouts stood up so well
against the tests of time and man.
In 1838, some wandering
priests arrived from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society. He welcomed them, encouraged them to create
an alphabet for his language and set up schools for his people; he sent them to
negotiate on his behalf with Queen Victoria.
Though he could quote Bible verse, he never became a practicing
Christian.
When Voortrekkers finally
defeated him in 1868, he turned his nation intact over to British
protection. They took his best
land. Eventually, the truncated
remainder became the country of Lesotho.
Moshoeshoe died in 1870.
There are warriors we
should admire, and the remainder. Learners does not advocate we despise
warriors; however, we should denounce dishonorable ones who delude themselves
that anything less than permanent peace is victory. Victory means permanent peace: anything less
is no more meaningful than a train wreck; it insults the sacred memory of the
dead. Without permanent peace, there is
no victory; without victory, no honor.
Without honor, there shouldn’t have been any fighting to begin with,
except in the most extreme case of self-defense.
Moshoeshoe understood
this exactly—as everyone should. And,
whenever possible, he accepted and welcomed the Other, the unknown stranger,
the way all of us must learn to do.
In the distant past,
alien garrisons may have posted various solar orbits, a hypothetical planet
orbiting beyond Mars (that may have blown to fragments) and other orbital
platforms.
Orthodox astronomers
believe that billions of years of gradual meteoric activity caused the random
planetary craters we survey by telescope today.
On the other hand, extra-solar flotillas might have herded swarms of
asteroids and comets – both as shields and as missile weapons – and pummeled
planets with them. If this bombardment
lasted months instead of millions of years, cumulative impact forces might have
shattered planets, shifted continents, topped off or bailed out marine basins
and planetary atmospheres, and left the planetary pockmarks we observe today.
Only recently have
geologists concluded that geological layers on Earth, thought to represent
centuries of volcanic activity, were laid down during a few brief cataclysms
and their erosive aftermath.
Venus is devoid of
tectonic features and cratered with absolute randomness. It seems to have undergone a crustal failure
so complete that its entire surface liquefied and turned inside out. Mars bears an enormous crater in its Southern
Hemisphere, as if a moon-sized chunk had struck it
there; and a reciprocal deformation of the planetary surface on the opposite
side, raised above the average altitude of such a sphere along the strike path,
and sucked lower along its outskirts.
According to some astrophysicists, the Pacific Basin was carved out by
the ejection of a Moon’s mass during another cosmic collision between the Earth
and a Mars-sized planet. Scientists may
unearth unforeseen new findings on the timing of trans-species die-offs and planetary morphology (see De Grazia, 1981).
A hail of cosmic
fragments may have snuffed out, all at once, the late Bronze Age civilizations
of Akkad, the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Greece, Israel, India, Afghanistan and
Hongchan, China. A similar flurry may
have annihilated the Early Iron Age civilizations of the Mycenaeans, the
Hittites, the Egyptian New Kingdom, as well as Late Bronze Age Israel and the
Shang Dynasty in China. This second
kill-off occurred a thousand years after the first. Once again, it smashed all its victims almost
simultaneously. Otherwise, we may be
talking about super El Niños. The Society for Interdisciplinary Studies at http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/
is a good source of material on this topic.
It is interesting to
picture the synergistic effects of a relatively modest (and thus more frequent)
asteroid or comet impacting on a seismic fault line or a volcanic hot spot on
Earth. Enormous lahar beds in India and
Siberia may have formed in this manner, as well as the traumatic separation of
Java from Sumatra.
Other cosmic collisions
may have scored civilization-wrecking Tilts on the terrestrial pinball. Psychiatrist
Velikovski (Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds
in Collision) is famous for his speculation that a massive celestial
pass-by took place some 3,500 years ago.
The planetary turmoil it overshadowed might have included the
Exodus. The scientific community
dismissed his findings. In like manner,
positivist reactionaries (“I’m positive you’re wrong.”) dismissed the first
reasonable speculations about plate tectonics, as well as many other scientific
hypotheses that turned out to be correct despite their denial.
One of these days, I may
get around to typing up a chapter on the official sabotage of scientific truths
in favor of a status quo confirmed fallacious.
At least those instances I could recover. Chapter?
Archives, rather! I refer you to
those reactionaries described above, whose job it is not to learn anything new
and forbid anyone from doing so, as long as they can forbid it.
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
