SUMMARY
OF LEARNERS INTRO &
VOCAB
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government,
except all the others that have been tried.”
Winston Churchill.
Democracy unimproved
cannot serve peace management. Even
though current reactionaries and progressives support it with equal fervor, it
will never serve us in this way. Reactionaries
support it because they know that cleptocracy, oligarchy and corporate fascism
– the politics of disinformation that democracy conceals – are repugnant,
morally indefensible and sterile in the end.
Progressives do so from bankrupt imagination after thousands of years of
serial defeat. Thus do masters and
slaves reinforce their degenerate relationship.
Neither side takes note of the unforeseen consequences of its monumental
self-deception.
At best, modern
democracies are elitist and representative-based. They promote professional politicians, an
over-specialized breed supposed to have mastered the complexities of civic
power and popular opinion. Yet they’ve
achieved very little, in the final tally, beyond electoral shenanigans and
masterful tricks of campaign finance.
Laocracy requires absolute
private equity, personal emancipation, elaborate safeguards against internal
and external exploitation, and lots more free time to philosophize. It requires that we raise rare and beloved
children into healthy adulthood. It
requires that an enlightened public heed ethical warnings in order to reduce
unintended consequences. Finally, it
requires that everyone value their own Learning above
all.
In a Learner Laocracy,
politicians will have strictly defined and limited roles. They’ll satisfy their need to be admired,
trusted and chosen on a competitive basis by the people— after all, that’s
their topic of passion. They will serve
as social antennae, sounding the people out to understand their problems and
unmet requirements. Then they’ll submit
the problems they’ve found to the intellectual community of Learners whose
topic of passion is to solve that particular problem. They’ll forward those solutions back to the
people involved, for them to adopt or reject by vote. Never again will politicians be held
responsible to legislate solutions of social problems they were neither trained
to resolve nor passionate enough to care about.
Instead, they’ll serve their constituents in the same way honest judges
should serve their juries: as specialist guides and intimate advisers without
decision-making powers. Decisions will
be left to randomly selected juries, tamper-proof through human honor and
accepted orthodoxy of longer and longer repute.
We’re not speaking here of
a spotless paradise, but of reducing sacrifice and multiplying
celebration. Pick a celebration, pick
many and celebrate them! Avoid
sacrificing anyone but yourself.
Celebrate yourself and others, do it better!
Democracies let the very
rich handpick political candidates to suit their needs. Any politician failing this simple test is
out of the running. Therefore, the
strong-willed, charismatic populists we await at every election usually fail to
appear.
The few good leaders who
evade this constraint, rich sociopaths neutralize with the deftness of long
practice. From the Gracchii to the
Kennedys and from Martin Luther King to the next popular leader in line,
Conspirators of Greed co-opt, marginalize and assassinate them with yawning ease. Oftentimes, these public murders are not even
seriously investigated, for fear of civil war.
Societies that ritualize capital punishment (or simply make protestors
‘disappear’) reserve certain execution for their best civil servants. Every time proletariats have stumbled upon
superior justice and abundance, this miscalculation was soon washed away in the
blood of its mastermind.
What is the most dangerous
job in America? Alaska King Crab
fisherman? Bomb disposal expert? No; it is to have been a successful progressive
politician in recent years. The
following people have suffered fatal plane wrecks before, during and after
having served in office. The Kennedy
family gets its own column.
|
Ernest
Lundeen Clement
W. Miller Birch
E. Bayh, II Nicholas
Begich Thomas Hale Boggs George
W. Collins Jerry
Litton George
T. Leland Mel
Carnahan Paul
Wellstone |
1940 1962 1964* 1972* 1972* 1972* 1976 1989 2000 2002 |
Joseph P. Kennedy Katheline Agnes Kennedy Cavendish Michael Joseph Kennedy Ted Kennedy (injured, aide died) John F. Kennedy, Jr. Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy Lauren Bessette |
1944 1948 1949 1964* 1999 1999 1999 |
* Same plane wrecks: one in 1964 (Bayh survived unscathed), the
other in 1972 (four fatalities).
In many cases, these people
were not only progressives, but leaders of the pack: unique doers and shakers,
confirmed leaders of the Democratic Party or being groomed as such. The only confirmed right-wing politicians who
died in recent plane wrecks were Larry MacDonald, whose Korean Airlines Flight
007 was shot down over Russia in 1983 (a transparent conspiracy, even by
American standards); John Tower, Chairman of the Tower Commission that
investigated the Iran/Contra Scandal in 1991; the same year John H. Heinz
crashed and died.
There were other political
casualties, but their political orientation was vague and they probably died by
accident. Given how few true
progressives are allowed to serve in American politics and how many more reactionaries,
mortality probabilities per capita become even more astronomical. Some actuarial scientist should make a
scientific study of these disturbing anomalies.
It is interesting to
juggle these figures. While 14 Democrat
Congressmen suffered plane wrecks and ten Republicans; if you replace Democrats
with Democrats/confirmed Progressives and Republicans with
Republicans/confirmed Reactionaries; then break those numbers down before and
after 1950, here are the results:
|
DEM/PROGRESSIVES |
|
GOP/REACTIONARIES |
||
|
Pre-1950 |
Post-1950 |
|
Pre-1950 |
Post-1950 |
|
4 |
10 |
|
4 |
6 |
Given that the Democratic
and Republican Parties were much less polarized before, say, 1940, we can probably
shift 2 or 3 so-called progressives into the reactionary column, Pre-1950. Those political tendencies were carefully
disguised back then. This would give us
the following tallies.
|
LIBERAL |
|
CONSERVATIVE |
||
|
Pre-1950 |
Post-1950 |
|
Pre-1950 |
Post-1950 |
|
2 |
10 |
|
6 |
6 |
This is not taking into
account auto wrecks (easier to engineer than plane wrecks) and other ways of
dying in office, all of which Democrats suffered disproportionately (two to one
or higher death rates). Compare this
with suicides while in office.
REPUBLICAN: 7
DEMOCRAT: 3
Presumably, reactionaries
had something more to hide.
Democratic elections are
falsified with impunity. Longstanding
special interest groups are entrenched in electoral oversight agencies. What a coincidence! The older their authority, the fewer
questions are posed about their legitimacy and the more infractions they may
permit themselves without serious investigation and correction, much less
direct penalty.
During this twenty-first
century, popular elections have been falsified shamelessly. Even when obvious transgressions are
uncovered, they go uncorrected, from the richest to the poorest of nations. We permit every democratic swindle and never
challenge those swindlers for abusing our indulgence. We’ve ruined democracy by honoring it, since
we refuse to bicker with these influential creeps. Their tyranny grows worse every time they
commit another wrong—all in the name of 'sacred democracy.'
Revolutions in the name of
democracy overthrew royal tyranny. A
Learner revolution will overthrow our ‘democratic’ tyranny. This time, for a change, we will replace
weapon tyranny with a strictly peaceful and orderly government—not the latest,
most flashy version of weapon tyranny.
Democracy is politically
ideal for mature weapon states but hostile to peace values. Weapon governments gain four advantages from
democracy:
·
Within
carefully defined parameters, recruitment and promotion are based on service
and loyalty to the elite. This setup is
slightly better than hereditary replacement by sick, slow or crazy nobles and
their sycophants.
·
Compared
to most weapon tyrannies, democracy permits a more orderly transition to
power. While elected figureheads replace
one another with placid regularity, back-room power brokers may determine whose
turf gets to shrink or grow in accordance with the interest of the largest
fortunes. Fewer messy riots and
rebellions ensue and not too much infighting.
At least in theory, at least most of the time.
·
Democracy
grants the rich much more influence than their small numbers warrant. The richer they are and the fewer they are,
the more powerful they are in a democracy.
This gives them inordinate political advantage, despite the selfish
rewards they monopolize pursuing petty, private interests. The smaller the pool of decision-makers, the
narrower and clumsier their solutions.
Simple arithmetic.
·
Democracy
gives info proletarians the illusion of a say in government with no practical
consequences. Institutionalized
ignorance bars most proletarians from valid decision-making. Upholding a sham of grass roots power,
political campaigns degenerate into sound bite sloganeering, irrelevant
anecdotes and personality smears. By
universal consent, nothing of importance is discussed in public.
Ralph Nader exposed this
fourth defect quite clearly. During his
2000 Presidential campaign, he was a strong reform candidate backed by a well
staffed grass-roots political outfit, the American Green Party. He had significant popular support in every
State of the Union. He offered a battery
of carefully studied proposals to resolve current problems. Unlike his slippery counterparts, he
described his position clearly at mass rallies.
His run-of-the-mill opponents confessed they could never drum up the
size and enthusiasm of his audiences.
He was not allowed to
debate with orthodox candidates. He was
never granted proportionate time in the media.
He was barred from orthodox Party conventions. And worse still, he was ignored by the
populace. The mass media persuaded them
that their votes would be ‘wasted’ if they dared vote their conscience.
In mature democracies,
anyone who threatens to debate policy in a serious manner must be barred from
public discourse. He will be ignored
with equal obstinacy: from above by the media and from below by majority party
members.
“As a form of government, democracy belongs to the future. It has so recently taken shape in the affairs
and in the minds of men that it is still but a shadow of what it will
become. Moreover, it is a form of
government which will not exist in fact until social and economic, and even
cultural, changes that have not yet occurred take place. … Mr.
Henry Wallace speaks of the century of the common man—the democratic century—as
a thing of the future. It has been well
said that ‘the reason men feel that the democratic world must survive is not
that it is perfectly realized, but that it is scarcely realized at all.’” Mortimer
J. Adler, How to Think about War and Peace, Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1944, p 186.
The word democracy comes
from the Greek term demos. Generally translated, the word demos means a parcel of rural land, the
owners thereof and the ‘free’ (property-owning) citizenry. It can also mean the popular assembly, the
township and the commune. Finally, it
means the people’s authority or the state’s will.
Laocracy comes from the
Greek word laos: a crowd of people,
the common folk, the enlisted soldiery, the subjects of a prince and the masses
in the Marxist sense. The Greek word laos is more useful than idiotes (people who won’t vote): the
sport-and-soap-opera drivel addicts who pass for free citizens these days.
Here’s how Democracy
differs from Laocracy. Democrats call
themselves realists because they consider injustice and social contradictions
inevitable and proper, whereas Laocrats would value freedom and justice as self-reinforcing
and mandatory necessities that must be encouraged without exception.
Democrats dread the mob:
the final arbiter of democratic injustice.
In a Learner Commonwealth, the so-called mob would become a bountiful
source of tranquility, refinement, elegance and abundance; it would be the
framework that contained, through its massive stability, Laocracy’s numerous
gyroscopes spinning at dizzy rates.
Learners would find better ways than mob violence to turn political
frustration into revised legislation and significant political improvement.
The word ‘laity’ derives
from the Greek word laos, which
describes the mass of non-professionals.
This is the difference between a layperson and a professional. Amateurs waste a lot of time and energy in
their first efforts, many of which go sour through inexperience. Thereafter, laic performance improves
dramatically. Talented amateurs are
limited only by the time and effort they are willing to spend to improve their
skills and by their tendency, over time, to adopt the professional liabilities
listed below. Their achievement curve
differs radically from that of professionals, whose first efforts achieve
maximum results and follow-up efforts achieve less and less.
Professionals do
everything poorly from the get-go: the only way their professors taught them to
do things. Doing anything differently –
for better or worse – raises a howl of professional controversy. Greater efficiency threatens the collective
rice bowl. They are taught to compromise
their ethics in favor of internal cohesion and discipline. Faltering colleagues are protected at the
public’s expense even though their competency and honesty may fall short of
some pre-determined standard of mediocrity.
In ancient times, record
keeping required elaborate technologies and fragile media. It always needed them; it does so today. Back then, literacy was a rare and expensive
skill. A handful of young scholars
underwent brutal training. ‘By-the-book’
solutions were etched onto their minds through a series of exhaustive
examinations. Only one rote solution
rated a passing grade, in an attempt to ensure consistent control across vast
distances.
Most graduates were
dispatched out into the cultural wilderness, bearing a skull full of weapon
clichés and a basketful of scrolls or clay tablets. Travel from central schools was difficult,
dangerous and expensive. Once arrived,
they were supposed to govern a community of illiterate info proletarians in an
information vacuum. This dusty silence
was only broken by the occasional pony express rider bearing info elite
proclamations, steadily groaning new tax burdens and the rare, new business
deal. Unlucky scholars were paired off
with brutal strongmen. Armed with
military and police powers, these warlords enforced decisions after listening
to scholarly advice—in theory.
My friend Paul Lackman mentioned Theodoric, (yet
another ‘Great’ butcher) who sacked Rome with his Ostrogoths and then returned
surviving Latin administrators (like Cassiodorus) to their civic
responsibilities. Theoretically, he
confined his Goths to military duties.
He only plucked the random wise guy like Boethius from his glass and
ivory tower, and had him executed. The
condemned had dared suggest that free intellect might be superior to weapon
management. History is full of such
edifying executions.
A monolithic Mandarinate
emerged in China. No one could join the
information elite without first passing the imperial exams. The resulting
bureaucracy became haughty, inflexible and rooted in past precedent. It became a rigid orthodoxy stubbornly
opposed to creativity, complexity and change.
Mandarins tended to fling up their hands (if their overgrown fingernails
permitted) when changing circumstances stumped their stockpile of memorized
clichés. They abandoned vast overseas
markets and fumbled a technological edge centuries advanced beyond that of the
West. They submitted to aggression,
parochialism, misery and corruption—all in obedience to the weapon dictates of
their mandarin certification.
Brilliant Learners initiated
a Golden Age of Western technology. They
nearly sparked a comparable Golden Age in Manchu China. Instead, China declined under mandarin
control. Nothing deadens creativity like
mandatory academic certification for positions of responsibility. It is the next worst alternative (though
perhaps the tidiest) when changing circumstances demand social
transformation. Of course, the worst
alternative is promotion through violence: the alternative weapon cultures resort
to automatically during wartime crises and ordinary revolutions.
Common characteristics of
Mandarinates and university systems show up as dependably in ancient China as
in the modern West. Form and appearance
supersede content and results; permissible means justify lamentable ends. In both societies, packaging becomes more
important than content. The questions
‘who’ and ‘how’ overshadow ‘what’ and ‘why.’
There is a universal obligation to prove good intentions (especially
that the boat not be rocked). It
prevails over threats of unintended consequences and their disastrous
results.
We are going to have to
rock the boat a little and radically rearrange our load, just to keep from
swamping when we pass the next set of rapids rapidly approaching.
“The ends justify the
means.” First coined by the Roman poet
Ovid; Machiavelli
used this phrase in The Prince. Later, Hitler and comparable henchmen would
abuse it. In other words, heroic
outcomes justify horrific methods. For
Hitler and his peers, ends and means became equally insane. Thanks to them, our debate over ends and
means has reached a dead end. Today, any
discussion of worthwhile ends dissolves in favor of microscopic examination of
trivial means—preferably litigation-driven.
Hitler’s self-contradiction is goose-stepped out whenever someone
advocates fair ends for their own sake.
Please tell me, when we debate moral values, what are we doing quoting Hitler to each other?
I quote Mein Kampf
in some chapters of this book, and do so rather carefully for two reasons. First, I quote him directly when he says
something peripherally relevant (usually by accident) about some topic brought
up here. Secondly, when he casts a nasty
shadow over the subject in question and betrays in a manner too obvious to miss
the contrast between his weapons insight and this book’s peaceful intent. Quoting Hitler out of context will
no doubt earn me censure from both sides of the aisle. I suspect that people who’d never accept this
work in any case, or read any part of it before doing so, will use this as
their excuse. Too bad. I am flattered to be rejected by such people.
All I can say is
this. WeaponWorld is where I live; I
must take my material where I find it.
If I’d restricted my analysis to nothing but viable peace texts, I’d
never have assembled this work. By and
large, they have almost never been allowed to survive. The ultimate literary peace prize on this
planet is to get your book blacklisted by the publishing industry, burned by
some fanatic or banned by one or more mass religions and ideologies. I am flattered to be thus rejected.
Actually, the real-world
formula for this debate is much clearer, based on outcomes. The ends parallel the means. The quality
of the ends justifies the quality of the
means. If adhered to consistently, good
means bring forth good ends and bad means beget bad ends. Good ends don’t justify bad means, nor do
they result from them. In turn, bad
means almost never achieve good ends.
The first appearance of bad means, uncorrected, leads to the take-over
of bad means. No need to wait for
inevitable bad ends before intervening instantly to restore good means and
ensure a good end.
All this should be obvious
to us already. But it isn't, thanks to
our industrious abuse of Hitler’s quote.
Misusing this weapon myth, weapon mentors have gotten everyone to
conclude that every means must be acceptably mediocre and every end may be
dismissed. According to our most
up-to-date prejudices, good ends are irrelevant and our best means,
impractical. This is how one manages to
starve millions of babies a year without effective opposition.
An interesting
illustration of this weapon myth is Dostoyevsky’s paradox concerning
utopia. I believe it’s in “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter of his
book The Brothers Karamazov
in which one of his characters asks another something to this effect:
“If you could guarantee
utopia in perpetuity by torturing an innocent little girl to death, would you
do so?”
The correct answer? “There is no way the goals of utopia would be
furthered by torturing an innocent child.
On the contrary, such a crime would automatically set back utopia and
its goals. Your paradox is another weapon
myth. Shut up, you shameless reactionary
and smith of weapon myths, and quit poisoning this conversation.”
Nowadays, Learners could
call upon unlimited consultancies. Many
info proletarians grasp their topic of passion better than equivalent
professionals do. A thousand amateur
experts wait to be summoned from the nearest telephone and computer modem. Every social decision could be a unique,
perfectly crafted custom job. Laocracy
is practically on the horizon.
Like other treasured
institutions, democracy is the end product of weapon mentality. Weapon managers have polished democracy for
thousands of years, until it has become a multi-purpose tool in their
blood-softened hands. Smug hypocrisy is
all we can expect from ‘democratic’ weapon managers. They foretell new miracles of canned
knowledge and computer management systems and then turn their backs on Learner
alternatives obviously better.
Like most of the global
peace technologies we need, we can pull better alternatives right off the
weapon technology shelf.
LEARNERS: On the Move from
WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
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