SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO &
VOCAB
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it.”
An Upton Sinclair quote, taken from the syndicated column of Mike
Mailway (pseudonym for L.M. Boyd, now defunct) in the now-defunct Seattle Post Intelligencer. All that’s left is that reactionary rag, the
Seattle Times.
Please read “The Future” first.
One way or
another, this grim era is grinding to a halt.
The time has passed when weapon managers could tease more profit
from warfare … even false profit. That
time has long gone. The energy we have
wasted on weapon myths are no longer surplus.
No justification remains for knee jerk ignorance, deliberate poverty,
preventable disaster and runaway overpopulation: by far the most expensive
social policies. Better substitutes would cause us less
regimentation and suffering, and thus offer more profit. Better yet, they would reduce the ill will
that plagues us.
We are rapidly running
out of petroleum. A dozen or so years ago, we were forced to
jump off a cliff of increasing oil demand and reduced supply: a jump that none
of our officials bothered to warn us about.
The inertia of
WeaponWorld is too massive to be stopped; it has turned us into cartoon
characters suspended over a precipice and windmilling our feet to keep
level. There is still enough time
(though precious little) to choose what we will take with us over that
precipice.
We can take the
jump bearing the latest flame-thrower apparatus WeaponWorld could
devise: death at the touch of a button, that’ll fry anyone who would dare pry
it from our hands. Costing a
fortune. Why not several, why not
self-propelled on tracks and heavily armored?
That will make a nice flash and a satisfying bang when we land hard on
the floor of the canyon. A quite spectacular
fireworks display: smoking body parts and bits of junk flying everywhere!
Otherwise, we
could take a parachute: carefully woven, tested reliable, sensibly packed and
deftly secured to the body; train long and hard to use it well and land
softly at the bottom like expert smoke jumpers.
I suspect that we will take this jump equipped with something halfway between these extremes: our moth-eaten emergency parachute to hold up a medium weight flame-thrower tank.
If only we had looked deeply into this problem back during the 1950s when we had sufficient oil reserves to cushion our fall! If only a more convincing and vivid predecessor of Learners had been broadcast in millions of copies a few generations ago.
But people in
positions of WeaponWorld authority were too stupid back then to do the right
thing; and their modern-day replacements show no sign of being any
smarter, on the contrary. They are just
politically correct enough to satisfy us idiots.
Tending toward
flame-throwers: the sacrifice of the Other; tending toward parachutes: the
celebration of Learners.
It is not mere
profit we should seek, but Learner commonalities that we may share: the
Humanity of World Peace and the Duty of Learning (per Mencius).
Society’s worst
habits jeopardize our future: elite presumption, proletarian ignorance and our collective
submission to error. Prejudice,
panic and greed threaten everyday wisdom; ignorance, mental sloth and
self-isolation, short-circuit common sense.
The suggestions
contained in Learners demand serious
consideration; better alternatives, STAT application. There is barely enough time left before it’s
too late; so let’s hustle!
Powerful private
interests may resist (are resisting) this transformation; they may jam (are
jamming) infant Learner Networks – especially the Internet and corporate media
– with meaningless babble. Info elites
will continue to peddle their meaningless priorities across tiers of
monologue mass media. Conspiracies of
Greed will crouch behind private property rights and other weapon myths so that
they may violate the Commons with impunity.
Once Learners
prevail, weapon technicians (globally bad peace technicians), will find
distasteful their newfound vestigial status.
They will suffer clinical withdrawal from so much money, authority and
prestige—this last, the ultimate military perk.
Battle elites may balk at
honoring their host proletariat’s newfound priorities. They may refuse to cooperate with erstwhile
enemies, except to wreck more havoc.
Today’s religious
fundamentalists are resurrected carnivores in sullen retreat. They’ll find no sustenance in Learners for their self-worship. Preaching the patent contradictions of
religious bigotry and blessed mayhem, they accurse themselves and those who
follow them. Yet exactly the same people
could choose to celebrate more often and sacrifice less, help more
people and anger fewer, thus render due devotion to peace and to their
God.
So too, those who exult in catastrophe. It doesn’t matter whether they draw inspiration
from the Bible's Book of Revelations, from some
rabid misinterpretation of the Koran (Qran) or from
some other source they’ve rendered toxic.
They act like a bus driver who daydreams of a fiery crash that will
consume all the passengers entrusted to his care. The trick would be to never again hire such
people as our guides.
It is
awe-inspiring miracle that we should be playing with, like chuckling infants on
the floor—not unstoppable catastrophe.
You, indignant
social activist! Snap out of your hypnotic
fascination with dead-end clichés; shake off your dead-end lethargy, the busy
futility and vehement emptiness you have inherited. Take up instead the golden yoke of
Learning. Watch radiance blossom along
every furrow you and the rest of the world would till.
We who have been routed by the forces of
reaction, let us sound the rally call so that our scattered friends and allies may
link up with us from the very ends of
the Earth. We who share no common
vision beyond our worst fears, let us rally around Learners and stand our ground until reactionary
arguments shatter and bog down against this impregnable bastion, and their
results turn out to be nothing but the worst.
Then we may counter irresistibly, once and for all.
This book proposes just a few preliminary answers to our worst problems. Expect better solutions to emerge, once new Cooperatives of Plenty rouse Learner creativity. Once these creative coops emerge, we will gain a new say in every problem our curiosity illuminates. Every baby step, every resolved antinomy, both personal and institutional, will win another round for Learners.
First off, we must winnow our constellation of political metaphors of its weapon content; only then may we free ourselves from the Thousand Year Reich of weapon mentality.
We could establish Learning Casinos: lavish recreational facilities where game masters, programmers, graphic artists and fellow contestants would gather to create and play video arcade games, virtual reality simulations, gambling, card and board games, theatrics and interactive simulations in forms transcending our awareness.
Those whose talent would be to assemble and manage these scenarios will find all the adulation and reward they might seek—much the way painters of the Italian Renaissance, playwrights of Shakespeare’s London, classical music composers of Vienna and cinematographers of the 20th Century did. See Marc Prensky’s book, Digital Game-Based Learning, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001, for a preliminary sketch of these new games.
Social problems will be played-through for innovative solutions. Political games will familiarize voters with complex social issues. Learners will sign up for critical judgment scenarios―mundane or life threatening, personal or sociological; on scales of play micro, macro or cosmic.
According to a
Chinese proverb, it takes ten thousand war dead to establish a general’s
reputation. Contestants at these new
Casinos will deepen their wisdom much more cheaply; their disastrous
mistakes will only have ‘paper’ consequences.
Virtual reality software and
interactive videos will simulate a vast array of alternative probabilities. Outlandish social proposals will be gamed
publicly to review their long-term outcomes in detail. Players will root out weaknesses,
misconceptions, unintended consequences and miscreant loopholes. All their results will be matters of public
record, subject to scientific research.
Learner Casinos
could run a ‘probability stock exchange’ (first described in John Brunner’s
The Shockwave Rider, among many more
of his proposals included in Learners). There, as part of the world’s rewired neural
network, contestants would predict social trends as a profitable spectator
sport. Such Casinos may coordinate their
activities with Learning Networks, World Militias, Renaissance Learning
Centers and other Administrative functions: some suggested in this book and
many more yet to come.
New Learner
ceremonies could dissipate warlike and homicidal hostility—perhaps with
live-fire militia exercises. Ernest
Callenbach’s book, Ecotopia, portrays
this ritual form of pseudo-battle.
Create a bounded playing field. Wall it off from curious bystanders and forbid idle spectators. An underground “Dome of Pain” might be best.
Set no rules. Arm naked antagonists with two-by-four staves spiked with nasty nails. Fill emergency rooms with the results of their rage. Begin with the fifty foremost representatives – political, military and religious – of each militant assembly, then fifty more replacements, then fifty more until no more were left outside hospital wards. Let them express the full scope of their hatred and rage! This might be far preferable to quietly sending innocent, patriotic children to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war with modern military hardware and our social blessing, against equally innocent victims from the other side.
These days,
arena-style and televised violence pander to disgusting human traits without
serious analysis or catharsis. Learner violence games will exclude voyeur (voy-uhr, Peeping Tom) thrill
seekers. Such artificial
confrontations may turn out to be superior to the crime scenes, prisons, and
battlefields across which we’ve let our accursed rage range freely.
In exchange for
voluntary and anonymous participation, they would provide:
·
mystery
and initiation;
·
a real risk
of sacrifice, serious injury and death;
·
a
mystical quest for mutual understanding and forgiveness;
·
elaborate
ceremonies of mutual pardon and ritual cleansing; and
·
a
mystical rebirth into the real world, where such atavistic cruelties were no
longer tolerated.
As an extreme
example, the Maya staged sacred ball games so challenging that the rare winning
team took all the onlookers’ belongings and the losing (winning?) team’s
captain sometimes sacrificed his life.
Such confrontations might stem from duel-challenge, provided the
challenged party could call upon volunteer and mercenary champions.
Outer space
offers a handy death arena for those who must have their mortality served to
them piping hot.
“The particular combination of physical and mental empowerment, retreat
from and return to the ordinary world, and spiritual renewal that adventure
offers, bears a close formal resemblance to classic warrior myths. And with care and thought, it should be
possible to design adventures that could serve as initiation ceremonies for
boys making the transition to manhood.
Undoubtedly, activities not based on adventure, and myths not based on
war can also be developed that would similarly move men forward toward maturity
and transcendent experience. To assert
that myths meet human needs and that we need new myths, does not imply that the
Age of Enlightenment is over, just that rationalism has limits: it can take the
world apart, but not put it back together.
Only stories and visions do that.”
James William Gibson, Warrior
Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America, Hill and Wang, A
Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1994, p. 308.
These realtime
wargames might parallel today’s battlefield reenactments and paintball
wargames. In highly structured,
ritualistic environments, people might act out their atavistic urge to
fight, flee, posture or submit. As in
martial arts sparring, overt violence might cause a few serious injuries and
the exceptional fatality. The violence provoked would vary in
proportion to the severity of local disputes, the numeric proportion of
which could be controlled by the number of real bullets issued, compared to
blanks. The first death and wounding
from this ceremony would end it – as determined by female and shaman
referees. However, deliberate
risk-taking and sacrifice would form an integral part of this psychic
process. All such activities strictly
forbidden outside these arenas.
These cruel
dramas could be turned into a basic lesson in civics. Emerging from these hermetic rituals,
their shaken participants would shun further violence. They would gladly undergo lengthy stretches
of medical care, ritual purification, psychological healing and repatriation
into peace. They’d never revisit these
‘Arenas of Suffering’ unless they suffered the urge to re-explore their craving
for violence.
Those (male and
female) hopelessly addicted to such violent games would become paid managers,
cult priests and priestesses, and permanent inhabitants of these taboo
facilities. They would also serve as volunteer
and mercenary stand-ins for weaklings called upon to duel. Everyone could find a rightful place on
PeaceWorld, even the most violent ones among us.
Alcohol, drug,
prostitution, gambling, and other human addictions appear to multiply social
costs, especially when legalistic prohibition makes them scarce and expensive
(and profits thereby). In that case,
they should be legalized, subsidized and heavily regulated to reduce their
social overheads. Addicts should get
their kicks for free; indeed, they should receive special subsidies for
their addiction. In the long run, these
outlays would be much less costly than forcing the innocent victims of petty
criminals to support their drug habit in person, directly and
disproportionately, by armed robbery or burglary.
New religious
ceremonies will demonstrate to young Learners the pathos of their immorality. Learner rituals may re-enact ancient morality
plays of excess and the Pandora’s Box they release. Mystery cults served the same function in the
past; likewise ancient Dionysian rites of mandatory drunkenness. Once
society provides secure havens of initiation, intoxication and recovery,
we may curb public intoxication and harmful addictions. They will become unthinkable public faux
pas (foh-pah, “missteps,”
numb-nut strategies) to most members of a peaceful society.
Likewise, Learner society will encourage personal research into revelatory hallucinogens. Friends will gather in legal Kivas where they may share cheap, legal, high quality drugs, and meditate together on Dreamtime: safe Kivas for these activities. Yet personal responsibility would never diminish for the public abuse of drugs and alcohol. On the contrary, drug-aggravated crimes would draw stiffer penalties from Learner juries. After all, those jurors would have been there and done that, themselves, without harmful consequences.
It has been at
least ten thousand years since humans began dosing themselves with such drugs. Arbitrary prohibition is rabid folly. Street drugs should be regulated to ensure
their quality and reduce their toxicity.
The designation “Sativa,” in Cannabis
Sativa, is a multi-thousand-year-old Sanskrit honorific reserved for rice
and other beneficial plants (fennel, grape).
Properly cultivated and administered, its medicinal and Dreamtime
qualities outweigh its risks. High quality marijuana reduces nervous
tension and stress—as opposed to the mind-numbing trash the police and
criminals have conspired to refine. It
promotes socialization and philosophical discourse, without jeopardizing our
quest for the Muse. Learner peace would
welcome this inspiration.
There are two
reasons why recreational drugs remain illegal. First off, what to do with all the
spear-carriers of the War against the Druggies, once they’ve been fired: all
those narcs, vice cops and petty criminals?
The “War on Drugs” has created legions of undercover agents, snitches,
street dealers and kingpins for whom every social abuse has become
routine. Finding other work for them
would unleash a backlash of sophisticated criminality, the like of which
afflicts Russia since its secret police lost its license to terrorize the
populace in the name of Revolution.
The second reason
why the “War on Drugs” is waged against us?
The huge profits reactionaries have obtained by flooding world-class
banks with drug cash. These last few
decades, reactionaries have financed their media-driven ascendancy from
this criminal cash flow. All these fascistic spin-offs would dry up if
we decriminalized drug use. Every new
prison, drug law and illegal purchase increases their profit margin and power
base. Think about that, the next time
you score your favorite high.
These days, some
irresponsible people commit crazy crimes and lay the blame for their horrifying
outcomes on drugs. Info elites coach
these self-serving penitents so that their horror stories can demonize
victimless drug criminals. The same goes
for grieving survivors of suicide victims who took drugs. However, this careful choice of scapegoats
and spokespeople cannot invalidate recreational drug use. Those
who panic over ‘drug abuse’ by adults should understand its essential
neutrality. When the abuse of drugs
releases destructive urges, it only magnifies deep-seated psychological
conflicts, notably our subconscious defiance of the weapon/peace dialectic. Slamming shut more psychic gateways is not
the solution for these problems.
Instead, we should wrap sufferers in stronger, more flexible and
gentler safety nets.
I have little use
for most mind-altering substances. Once
such drugs are legalized, I would rather grow the most benign of them in my
garden and have friends share them from theirs.
All recreational drugs, however, should be legalized. This would reduce secondary crimes and
invasive police intervention: far worse evils in the long run.
Like eating too
much chocolate, the prevention of drug-related mishaps would become a primary responsibility
of local barefoot
doctors dedicated to the Hippocratic Oath: “Do no harm”—not an armed,
invasive and trouble-stirring police force.
Minors should deny themselves such drugs, by choice. They should demand some better alternative. They would rather ‘save themselves’ for graduated ceremonies of age-set initiation: much more potent shapers of their destiny. Imitating ancient tribal ceremonies, Learner rituals would promote intense kinship among age-set peers. This clan membership would endow its novitiates with well-timed, well-deserved rewards of maturity and social responsibility.
Local crime
control would become one of their primary responsibilities. Children would assume adult privileges, once
they were ready to assume adult responsibilities but not before. Some
police responsibilities may default to young children in advanced peace
societies where unfettered violence would not have been heard of for years.
This text invokes
the reform-idealism of youth―call it revolutionary fervor, for
lack of a better term. Everyone
moderately sane shares a kalotropism: an innate attraction to the good.
Our conscience will guide us through it quite reliably, once we stop
suppressing it.
Today, this fervor lies dormant with no permissible outlet. Weapon mentality converts this healthy fellow feeling into Prism exclusivity, rabid nationalism, parochial prejudice, personal hatred—and ultimately, willingness to soldier. Under this all-pervading misguidance, the mother’s milk of human kindness curdles into frustration and rage. Hypnotized since birth by expert weapon mentors, we have rejected new ideals and resisted real progress. Then we’ve asked ourselves why our little piece of the puzzle refuses to fit!
Most people defy
these perversions, at least in the privacy of their own thoughts. Their defiance, however, relies on an
obsolete vocabulary, outmoded politics and feeble appeals for circumstantial
justice. Our liberal, atomistic and meliorist mindset has stalled and been taken
over by sociopaths. To jumpstart it and
shake them loose from power, a vast majority of Learners must form
cooperatives of abundance everywhere on Earth.
Peaceful Learners
will turn this reform-idealism into a dynamo of social transformation. Once we make full use of it, we are bound for
glory.
Given a
knowledge-value loom stout enough to shuttle the thousand-thread-count sheet of
reform and stiffen it with ribs of revolutionary fervor, we may mend our
tattered social fabric within a few years and reweave its broadcloth of many
colors in a single generation.
The best souls have bound up their bruised conscience in empty mysticism and bombastic positivism; swaddled it in pseudo philosophies and parafaiths; poisoned it with drug abuse, pathosex and the compulsive meaninglessness of Prismatism and Wimpishness.
We’ve read and reread endless reams of weapon mentality books and magazines, spent years watching television programming that just underscored our powerlessness and social futility. We’ve indulged in “scientific” closed-mindedness, inertial paralysis, post-modern nihilism, groundless fundamentalism and religious faith in the impossibility of significant progress. We’ve taken flight in personal cool, evasive jokes and refusal to take anything seriously except our carefully fattened ego. In desperation, we’ve clung to a succession of addictive denial mechanisms.
We pay too little attention to anything, any longer, but that which maintains our superficial comfort by confirming our worst prejudice. For fear of becoming ‘fanatics,’ we reject any new hope or inspiration. We have turned into hopeless credophobes: too hung-up and ‘cool’ to believe in anything new.
Weapon mentality thrives on the waste of talent and
intellect; it prefers the clamminess of your cool. As for the mentality of peace, it would favor
the torchlight of your Learning.
Don’t count on any grace-benefit – homegrown, store-bought or book-learnt – until global peace has prevailed. Five thousand years of unilateral self-perfection, bloody nation building, futile dissidence and fanatical cult revival—all there is to show for our history: untold time and painful effort poured down the drain.
These outgrown
notions have been granted their
best shot, more than a fair chance to succeed; much more latitude than sane
prudence would dictate, given their disastrous outcomes so unremitting. They have failed as miserably as they were
cunningly advertised and fanatically adhered to.
It is time
they were swept from the scene like musty rags; either that or carried to
rooftops and washed in floods of clean water and soap suds, then sunned through
the heat of the day, that their colors might come out more brightly.
We must improve
the global stage tremendously. Other
remedies, so difficult to achieve in the past, will turn out to be
self-starting and sustaining once Learners rearrange these things first.
Learning alone
may raise the living standards of common and uncommon folk alike. Developed wisely, real abundance will replace
the hardship and terror we have settled for in the past, until we share every
essential in peace. Peace and abundance will become our
birthright, for which we’ve already paid in full. Any remaining threat or dearth will be
an isolated problem subject to swift resolution—not another unintended
consequence expertly swept under the rug by our senile institutions.
The poor of today
take for granted some things for
which ancient Emperors would have traded a kingdom: telephones and
vaccines, for example. In a Learner
world, the poor will claim security and comforts far surpassing the pitiful
luxuries besieged millionaires boast of today.
This text
delivers to ambitious proto-elites and smug elites the only challenge
worthy of their braggadocio (strutting
arrogance). Their enthusiastic
cooperation is vital in the planning and execution of this endeavor. Their current accomplishments are trivial in
comparison, and doomed to fail in the end, unless followed up by this
endeavor. By supporting Learners, they
will ensure that their descendants enjoy more wealth, power and luxury
than they ever dreamt possible, even after every legitimate need has been
met.
And so, to
work! Let us forgo the paramilitary
consumer display we’ve mistaken for success, abandon suicidal wealth-and-poverty
ratios beyond fifteen-to-one and five-to-one.
Instead, we should offer everyone the choice between moderate
serenity and the riskiest adventure that Learners could find use for.
We Learner
proto-elites are just reawakening to our responsibilities. Reacting to every stimulus in turn, we are in
turn Wimpish, Prismatic and Chaosist; info elite and info proletarian;
progressive, moderate and conservative.
Moreover, we’re unwilling to jam our political identity into such
cramped pigeonholes. We reject old values, but are baffled by
current events. No valid vision of the
future inspires us; our hearts embrace no sustainable conviction. Infant-like, our attention fixates on flashy
baubles. No matter how hard we try, we
cannot seem to focus on legitimate progress.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” The Bible, Corinthians 13-11.
Learners will find willing allies on both sides of every social divide. Relieved of their fears, many loyal associates will emerge, disposed to make friends, from sandbagged gun pits of wealth, class, ethnicity, nation, religion and occupation. Every remaining barrier in a Learner world will show off some cultural and artistic uniqueness—little more. They’ll turn out to be like the German Oktoberfest or American Indian Powwows: sources of pride and comfort, instead of hostility and suspicion. Most of our alleged opponents will turn out to be natural allies. The sullen remainder’s mightiest resistance won't even delay Learner progress.
The chapters of Learners aren’t engraved in stone. Treat them as a discussion agenda and a stage
in the round to help us plan a brighter future.
Dedicated professionals and gifted amateurs should reconsider every
assumption found therein; discussions that may engender a brilliant
Learner Commonwealth. Our first and last question should be: “What if the sky were the limit?”
Either Learners
will drag humanity kicking and screaming into PeaceWorld, or WeaponWorld will
sleepwalk us, hand-in-hand and smiling stupidly, into military disaster.
You. Yes,
you! Quit stoking the WeaponWorld
Jive Drive. Defy weapon mentality
wherever you find it. Be anarchic, in
your own incomparable way, or join a new collective to ensure your
chosen project’s success. Devote your
life to quiet saintliness, as your ancestors once did, or quietly trip up the
next bully who chases a victim past your door step.
In any case, stretch! The miracle we’ve hungered for, since the beginning of time, is just within our reach.
“Our conception of justice and truth is bound
to be surpassed, no doubt, in the ages to come.
This much we know. And, far from subduing
our courage, this hope and conviction are the prime stimulants of our current
drive. Each generation’s strict duty is
therefore to draw as near to the truth as it can, to the limit of what can be
glimpsed—and cling there grimly, as the absolute truth had been reached. Mankind’s progress is at such a cost.
“The lifetime of one generation is nothing more than an striving that follows and guides the rest. Well, friends, our generation did its bit.
“Peace be upon us.”
Roger Martin du
Gard, Jean Barois, Edition Gallimard,
Paris, Le livre de poche, 1921, pp. 327-328.
Well, now, what more are we waiting for? Let the Learner debates begin!
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld