SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO & VOCAB
“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.” Cree Indian Prophecy taken from Mutant Message, Marlo Morgan “Two Hearts,” MM CO., 1991.
It sickens me to
watch stuffed-suit sociopaths cannibalize what’s left of our only oxygen
works. Here we are, packed aboard the
only submarine we know about, cruising the black ocean sea of outer space
without a chance of surfacing.
Idiotically, they insist on shooting vital components of that
unique system out torpedo tubes into the Deep.
Then they reward each other shiny bits of metal and waste paper printed
with lots of zeros for their brilliant achievement. How dim can you get!
I would favor
of PeaceWorld’s super forests over piles of WeaponWorld gold notes. Call me a tree-hugging idealist if that makes
you feel better. In reply, I’ll just call you a sociopath
or their many slaves.
The American
Constitution, as written and enforced today, can no longer be depended upon to
protect us as the Third Millennium opens. Its Bill of Rights doesn’t even mention clean
air and water. How can we cleave to
“original intent” interpretations of this Constitution? Its authors worded things so they could
declare all men equal, yet keep slaves.
Those who hide behind ‘strict interpretations’ of the Constitution are
beneath contempt. But that won't stop
them from squeezing the worst possible interpretation and outcome from the Constitution,
at least until they’ve been convinced otherwise.
Face it. The U.S. Constitution is obsolete as currently interpreted. It was an outstanding document two centuries ago, during the days of unlimited free land, the divine rights of kings, and horse and sail conveyance. Like other revolutionary instruments, it required the active defense by disinterested authorities supposed to amend it and bring it up to date regularly, in accordance with its own provisions. Like other ones, it was corrupted by special interests. Nowadays, those authorities pay vote-getting lip service to its verbiage, but violate its spirit in order to toughen their tyrannical megagovernment. The Constitution never justified megagovernment. Tactical justifications for it (to promote national defense) are rapidly disappearing.
The recent “Citizens United” decision of a radically reactionary Supreme Court, attributing legal personhood and allowing unlimited, anonymous political funding to mere corporations; and the Defense Authorization Bill of 2012, legislated by an equally vile Congress and a Weimar Republic President, authorizing the indefinite detention of American citizens by military authorities without due process; have undertaken the nailing shut of the casket of American liberties. America merely awaits final burial at the hands of its Hitlerite favorite son.
The best
government would be all-powerful but the least intrusive. Absent urgent justifications for its
interference, self-administered locals would only hear from it for
solicited advice, electoral consultation and featherweight taxation to support
global and extra-planetary projects.
Only unmanageable disasters would summon confederate intervention; such
interventions paid for dearly afterwards, to discourage repetition.
British Common
Law became hopelessly muddled during the Enclosure Movement. At that time, communal rights to English
pasturage, forest resources and shared fields were sacrificed to consolidate
large plantations for the rich.
Based on this distortion of traditional values, sovereign property
rights were rammed into the American Constitution.
Native American
Indians were dumbfounded by this legal definition of ownership. Such claims were based on little more than
certified paperwork and enough firepower to back those groundless
certifications; their outcome was genocide.
Indians were more accustomed to usufruct that they’d agreed with for
ages. Less arbitrary and debatable, it
was more akin to their intuitive way of thinking and much easier to enforce
peacefully by common consent.
During our
transition to PeaceWorld, this topic will be of sovereign importance. Learners should abandon regulations that
promote the interests of minority elites by the threat of violence, and replace
them with regulations peacefully enforced by means of mutual trust and
near-universal consent.
In truth, old
English peasants were just as flabbergasted as the Indians by the haughty
piracy of their betters—backed by the same overwhelming firepower and eagerness
to abuse it.
“Usufruct: The right to … enjoy the profits and advantages of something belonging to another, [in this case, God], so long as the property is not damaged or altered in any way.” Webster’s II, New Riverside University Dictionary.
Contractual
title-holders must over-exploit their private property to defray
outlandish weapon taxes. They accrue
profits and advantages from this raw exploitation, despite negative outcomes
and perhaps because of them. Most of
those weapon taxes should go directly to PeaceWorld’s social security; the
remainder to private capital.
Econologicians refuse to honor sustainability, the
prerequisite of good stewardship, even though this stewardship is only the
basis of legitimate use. It is the chief
means to accelerate our flight from misery, infinitely more practical than
elite fantasies about some fantasy “pursuit of happiness.” Neither the challenges nor the rewards of
property ownership would diminish under usufruct law, but sustainability would
most likely benefit.
Like a ring of
wavelets radiating from a pebble tossed in a pond, we release expanding
waves of delegated authority. From the
moment of our birth, we delegate preset affiliations of family, religion,
culture, education, business and government.
We are not ‘granted’ these liberties, privileges, responsibilities and
obligations; we choose to delegate them in a manner that seems most convenient
and attractive to us – otherwise, on WeaponWorld, in the manner least
terrifying.
Three ideas,
neglected in the past, should govern how we delegate this authority:
·
Personal
Prerogative – a healthy, mature individual is fully responsible for this
authority. It is never some
institution’s to grant back as a ‘privilege.’
·
Institutional
Limitation – every instrument should limit itself to those issues it can handle
properly and undertake no other.
·
Directed
Service – past priorities should be reversed: instruments should honestly serve
a popular function, not rich special interests through stealth hypocrisy.
It is time we re-wrote a Bill of Rights to guarantee 21st Century rights for all. Benign treatment should be mandatory—including a mandate to share power equally.
Someone warned me that malicious conspirators had
redrafted the Constitution in some Wimp think tank. I’ve yet to find a copy. Rights had become ‘privileges,’ and civil
disobedience, a mental illness.
Learners will amend the Constitution to grant equal rights to anyone who pledges allegiance to it—not just Americans. Included will be those who wish it well but refuse to swear, and those who would rather honor another text – the Koran or the Bible, for example – provided they agreed to do so cooperatively and in peace. This redraft should merit near-unanimous approval.
In the near future, political dogfights will swirl around
proposed Amendments to the Constitution—one set drafted by reactionaries to
perpetuate weapon management; the other, more progressive, endorsed by
Learners.
Learners will
leave ‘the pursuit of happiness’ to individual talents and personal conscience,
where it belonged in the first place.
Legitimate legislation will accelerate everyone’s flight from misery:
something our weapon governments have blocked with grim determination, at least
for select prey populations.
Government has never had any idea how to promote happiness. Happiness is too subjective a topic for it to handle honestly. On the other hand, misery is something a government could quantify easily and reduce through routine procedures any rational adult could recite with their eyes closed: the provision of clean air and water, adequate nutrition, clothing, housing, education, freedom of speech and assembly, justice (protections from corruption), etc. Like other institutions and individuals, government should do what it’s good at and nothing more. It should leave strictly alone those activities it has no idea how to improve.
Learners will
recognize personal rights to life, freedom of choice, justice and withdrawal
from misery. In addition, they will
honor the following self-evident rights, namely: the right to cheap,
high-quality survival necessities; the right to wholesome soil, air and
water; the right to superior health care from before conception to expiration;
and the right to pursue Learning to our utmost ability. Current rights, mercilessly
narrowed under weapons rule, will widen out and bulk up an administration of
peace.
In How to Think about
War and Peace, Mortimer J. Adler writes:
“The simplest test of a true conception of human happiness is that it should be attainable by each individual without in any way impeding or preventing an attainment of the same goods by others. Anyone who regards the pursuit of happiness as a competitive enterprise …” [suffers from fatal delusion].
In
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature,
Janine M. Benyus prescribes four steps that would turn us into more
productive symbionts within the natural world.
·
Quieting:
immerse ourselves in nature.
·
Listening:
interview the flora and fauna of our own planet.
·
Echoing:
encourage biologists and engineers to collaborate, using nature as their model
and measure [in an attempt to answer Yes to the following questions].
o
Does it
run on sunlight?
o
Does it
use only the energy it needs?
o
Does it
fit form to function?
o
Does it
recycle everything?
o
Does it
reward cooperation?
o
Does it
bank on diversity?
o
Does it
utilize local expertise?
o
Does it
curb excess from within?
o
Does it
tap the power of limits? [Nature devises
perfect poetry within phenomenal miniaturization constraints].
o
Is it
beautiful?
·
Stewarding:
preserve life’s diversity and genius [depending
on a pattern that we only partially understand].
Mark Hixon,
professor of zoology at Oregon State University, has issued ten proposed
commandments for fisheries management.
His prescriptions apply remarkably well to the management of human
assemblies: political, national and religious.
Any variance in meaning and intent is sort of funny, if you think about
it, since he is talking about managing a food source and we’re talking about
running a source of mayhem if mismanaged.
Please insert appropriate political jargon that applies to human
societies, where needed.
“‛The first commandment – what they call the basis for all the others – is to keep a perspective that is holistic, precautionary and adaptive’, Hixon said.
"We must consider whole systems, we must fish with more caution, and we must learn by testing new approaches," Hixon said. "Instead of talking about ecosystem management, we refer to 'ecosystem-based' management, because it's misguided to think that we can totally understand or completely control entire marine ecosystems. However, a great deal is already known that could form the basis for broad actions which would greatly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of marine management,” Hixon said, “and it's not really even a question of funding—many of the necessary steps could be done within the context of existing knowledge, approaches, and regulatory mechanisms.
"As much as anything, the real challenge here is changing our world view," Hixon said. "We must accept the need for change in how we approach fishery science and management. There are still many people who think we can accomplish our goals in the oceans by managing one species at a time, if we just do it right. But the weight of the evidence is now showing that only consideration of entire ecosystems will succeed in the long run.
“Even on a single Pacific Northwest topic such as salmon management,” Hixon said, “the reality is that a successful approach must consider dams, terrestrial water quality, forest management, spawning habitat, marine food sources and predators, changing ocean conditions and global climate change.
"This may sound overwhelming, but given the right mindset, many ecosystem-based tools are ready to go," Hixon said.
"That's why my colleagues and I developed these action items to help get things moving in the right direction."
Their ‘second commandment’ is to question every assumption, no matter how basic it is or what the conventional wisdom suggests. For instance, Hixon considers the traditional fishery goal of ‘maximum sustainable yield,’ which has been in place for decades, to be a flawed concept. A better approach is careful monitoring of catch characteristics to assess whether fish stocks are being sustained.
Among the other commandments:
· Maintain an ‘old growth’ structure in fish populations, since big, old, fat, female fish have been shown to be the best spawners, but are also susceptible to overfishing.
· Characterize and maintain the natural spatial structure of fish stocks, so that management boundaries match natural boundaries in the sea.
· Monitor and maintain seafloor habitats to make sure fish have food and shelter.
· Maintain resilient ecosystems which are able to withstand occasional shocks.
· Identify and maintain critical food-web connections, including predators and forage species.
· Adapt to ecosystem changes through time, both short-term and on longer cycles of decades or centuries, including global climate change.
· Account for evolutionary changes caused by fishing, which tends to remove large, older fish.
· Include the actions of humans and their social and economic systems in all ecological equations.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221093217.htm
In Fragile Dominion:
Complexity and the Commons, Helix Books, Perseus Books Group, Reading,
Massachusetts, 1999, pp. 199-206, Simon
Levin attempts to clarify modern ecological thought in all its cabalistic complexity. Headache city. At the end of his book, he lists eight simple
commandments of ecological management.
They apply just as much to environmental science, to information
politics and to the creation by Learners of PeaceWorld.
·
Reduce
uncertainty (through more research).
·
Expect
surprise.
·
Maintain heterogeneity (Vive la différence!).
·
Sustain
modularity (as opposed to oversimplification for its own sake).
·
Preserve
redundancy (lots of separate preserves with a similar mix of plants, not one
“model sanctuary” surrounded by devastation).
·
Tighten
feedback loops (foresee unintended consequences).
·
Build
trust.
·
Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you.
LEARNERS: On the Way from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld