If every Learner on WeaponWorld
Cast off misgivings and worked to the same plan,
We could build PeaceWorld in a single generation.
FIRST THINGS
FIRST,
WORLD PEACE FIRST!
Before, nothing new, all is grim;
During, exponential progress;
Afterwards, grace.
INTRO & VOCAB TABLE OF CONTENTS
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words ‘Too late.’ There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. ‘The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…’ We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. This may well be mankind’s last chance to choose between chaos and community.” Martin Luther King, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community, 1st ed., 1967, “The World House”, http://ww.forusa.org/nonviolence/MLK_WorldHouse.html
CAUTION: What follows is a pretty long BOOK of free ideas and inspirations we’ve been deprived of. Rest assured; I’ve divided it into about seventy chapters more digestible. Despite the demands of Web orthodoxy, it’s got no MP3s, no hooks, gimmicks or come-alongs. The sum of these chapters is long and hard to read (my fault). That’s really too bad. I’d rather invite multi-media Learners to contribute a ground-breaking mix of Internet images and music so as to adorn this overlong screed with the splendor of good stained glass and cantatas. Ah well, another project beyond my reach without outside help…
From your favorite book to the Bill of Rights to the Space Shuttle Flight Manual, a text doesn’t become influential until many good people agree to share it. Until then, it is just another string of symbols, powerless, empty and ignored by the world. If you want to share liberty, launch liftoff – or World Peace, for that matter – you and many others must agree to study the same basic text, give voice to it and act on it.
No text is perfect. That means refining a lot of raw ore to come across a few rough diamonds worth polishing and showing off to your friends. Impressed, they may rally to the cause and contribute to its crafting.
A revolutionary text is like any other tool. It may seem awkward at first to your virgin mind, the way some new tool might seem in your untrained hands. Only frequent trial and error will make it familiar and useful to you. Be patient and work hard. I assure you, this is worth it. You Learners I’ve been waiting for so impatiently, here is what you were waiting for so patiently.
Those of us (too few, at present) who crave World Peace more than we fear it, need to share a specific text. This one, perhaps, or another? LEARNERS’ chapters/web pages may just be stepping stones towards some better plan.
We must ponder the same topics, argue the same ideas over and over again, and more of us in time—to achieve anything useful. For or against them, that doesn’t matter; sharing the same ideas and the same vocabulary, that matters. Until then, we limit ourselves to miming divergent ideas and fantasizing at cross purposes to no constructive end.
Look around you. The world is getting sicker every day. It misses the healing influence of many voices preaching peace in unison and of our healing touch guided by shared purpose.
Try not to interpret LEARNERS with your inner voice alone; overdub instead a massed voice as if from millions of allied Learners. Without them this text is feeble, no matter what message it intends to convey. With them the ideals of World Peace will evolve from wishful thinking into down-to-earth reality. When you reach my age, your grownup children will take for granted the fantastic assertions of LEARNERS, whether they agree with them or not…
Wait and see. We are at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius: one of many cues. For the time being, study these pages carefully and share them with your friends, that we may serve Peace as best we can.
Also, I’d like to remind every beloved Learner – global and domestic – that there are quite a few of us here in America who aren’t troglodytes and born-again Huns despite current events that suggest otherwise.
If it were in my power, I would get experts to translate this text into every language so everyone could contribute to this project. If I could, I would get every government on Earth to sponsor a free translation web page from every major language into every native language and back again. One you’ve already paid for with your taxes. The one your nation’s secret service uses daily. So everyone on Earth could engage in peaceful debate like civilized beings. But that’s another chapter.
As usual in human existence, creative Learner anarchy will have to make up for institutional failure.
I would rather many foreign language speakers (You!) took their favorite chapters from LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld, translated them lovingly into their mother tongue (as I have, as best I could, many quotations in French and English) and uploaded them to the Web, crediting me as author (my name appears at the bottom of this page and the Title Page, nowhere else in LEARNERS) and themselves as translator—so that their fellow language speakers could share this PeaceWorld project as welcome peers in the global Agora. Please do this for me, for yourself and for our common glory, but most especially for them.
No one may be left behind, regardless of his or her language skills. Fifty major language groups embrace 99% of the world’s population. I need 50 gifted Learners, giving of themselves, to form the vanguard of this revolution. What are you waiting for? Get reading and get to work translating these chapters for the benefit of your neighbors! Just as it was for me, this is the task you’ve prepared for all your life.
You’re welcome, my friend.
I’m making use of the WWW to transmit this message, the same way Erasmus used the printing press to transmit his. I am using you, Learner idealist, just the way Erasmus made use of every humanist on Earth to translate and disseminate his dream. We shall see what world-shaking deeds we ‘trivial idealists’ may achieve once we rally.
One last thing. No need to waste a lot of time to achieve literary perfection before you upload your translation of the LEARNERS chapters you chose to the Web. What I ask from you is honesty, passion and haste. There will be plenty of time, later, for you or someone else to do a perfect translation and defend it from those who would misinterpret it with reactionary intent. None of this will detract from your glory as visionary and first benefactor of your people. For the time being, upload your draft translation immediately, no matter how clumsy it may appear to you, and then take your time to perfect it through many rewrites, as I am doing with the original text. We have little time left; time is of the essence.
Tell me about your translation uploaded to the Internet, so that I can link to your work in my Tables of Contents.
I did not write this text, nor did you seek it, to stoke the WeaponWorld Jive Drive, distract you from your Learner responsibilities or reassure you that weapons elites should make every vital decision without you. That has never been sane policy. Learners would include everyone’s decision, naturally.
In pursuit of why, how, and what to expect of PEACEWORLD,
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
by mark mulligan