629b - testing the limits of my intuitive reasoning capabilities
So, I'm sitting here pondering something else I saw this morning. Somebody passed me with a sticker that said "Peace '08" and it kicked the wheels into motion. I guess that just caught me at the right time. Let me first say that I'm almost never in favor of violence. Even though I am a military officer and have been kind of a fan of military hardware since I was a little boy (who isn't, when we're all conditioned that way), the last time I felt any positive sentiment toward its actual employment was the beginning of OEF when Afghanistan got the shit kicked out of it as punishment for having been enslaved by a gang of hypocritical fundamentalist thugs from western Pakistan called the Taliban, in concert with a genuine, high-powered, well-funded terrorist organization called Al-Qaeda. My sense of justice, not the actual image of bombs falling, made it a fairly exciting thing for me. We were gonna set things straight and I was gonna be part of it. Yay. Woo ha.
Since then, my sense of justice has been completely outraged and the illusion that wars are fought by good guys against bad guys for all the right reasons in any time or place except history books has been totally obliterated. And even a just war (if such a thing exists) is a worse thing than no war. Nonetheless, peace advocacy has never lit a fire under me. It's like something was missing, something that made it seem inadequate and ineffective.
So what's wrong with peace movements and peace protests? Nothing really. Aside from the fact that literally millions of congregated bodies and voices of the moderately free and empowered worldwide seem to have no effect on the ability of politicians to aim their weapons and troops at whoever they care to, paying lip service to the victims of the crossfire while lacking the right kind of vision to understand the deeper patterns and reverberations of today's wars.
What is war? The paradigm (shut up! I had to use that word! damn you...) that developed in my head this morning while chugging coffee at 60 down Governors Drive was a dual one... two ways of explaining a deeper pattern that cannot quite speak for itself. In a word, synergy. Haha... you probably guessed I was going to throw it in there. It's just how I compensate for never being able to hit the bullseye. The midpoint between the impacts of my projectiles is the point I'm trying to send you to.
Point A: War is a path to ground from voltage. It is simply a means by which potential becomes entropy. It exists because it can and it continues because it has not been superceded by a more viable option. Humans especially, but even tribes of "lower" primates and creatures as "simple" as ants, have learned that a collective struggle is more effective than single combat, more rapidly facilitating the bleed-off of excess accumulations of energy. This energy is expressed as material wealth in our societies, though ultimately it derives its basic power from such simple things as fossil fuels and biomass and the ability to apply them in effective (though largely inefficient) ways. The net effect of wars is to reduce these stockpiles, though oddly enough its proximate cause in the mind of the instigator is usually the goal of accumulating more. Territory, whether controlled by ground troops, alliances, or unwritten subservience, contains energy and/or means of manipulating, storing, and directing energy. Populations of living people and animals, farmland, oilfields, legal systems, I don't want to muddy the waters by drawing the circle ever outward but you get the point if you've read this far. War is a path to ground. It happens because it can. It's like lightning... the movement of charge from point A to point B, or from several points A/x to B/y, will happen at some point. Since our ability to hurt each other long ago passed our skill at feeding and enriching ourselves, the potential only grows until it finds a path to ground. How and where is a matter of opportunism and politics.
Point B: War is a means of satisfying an appetite. If war is a banquet, peace is dieting. Dieting is an ugly word for most of us. The ability to abstain from simply satisfying a craving is not something that has largely served humanity well, with isolated exceptions. Scientists know that we tend to overeat because before modern industrial farming it was advantageous to accumulate energy in the form of extra biomass on your frame (Fat!), informed by the genetically programmed biological (if not always conscious) knowledge that times of scarcity would be survived by those with the predisposition for such accumulations. Telling a normal human being (let alone a "decider guy" in a three-piece whose entire perceived value to the world is in decisive action) to ignore the potential for consumption directly in front of him is futile. Especially when you have a chief exec who lacks the restraint to eat things like pretzels without choking. But seriously... war feeds a need within us - several, actually. The need for resolution, the need for validation, the need (in some of us) to demonstrate superiority, solidarity with our overgrown tribe, the craving for Lebensraum, even my sense of justice. Peace leaves us unfulfilled because, going back to my first mark, it leaves the potential in place, ripe for exploitation - potential energy awaiting another path to ground. Entropy waiting to happen. "Don't cut the rope" is a well-intended but useless answer to the problem of a crushing weight hanging from a great height.
If we compare this martial appetite to a bodily one, an interesting contemplation occurs: what is the alternative to both overindulgence and self-imposed moderation? How do we "eat ourselves thin", avoiding both Mutually Assured Destruction and the totally impossible prospect of simply choosing not to fight over anything?
Unfortunately, this meditation falls short, at this time, of reaching a verdict or a plan of action. This is a part of my struggle to develop and synthesize a worldview all my own and project what I can of it out into the arena of free thought for review, feedback, annihilation, you name it. It gets what it deserves. Hopefully it makes the cut.
Tell me what you think.
Since then, my sense of justice has been completely outraged and the illusion that wars are fought by good guys against bad guys for all the right reasons in any time or place except history books has been totally obliterated. And even a just war (if such a thing exists) is a worse thing than no war. Nonetheless, peace advocacy has never lit a fire under me. It's like something was missing, something that made it seem inadequate and ineffective.
So what's wrong with peace movements and peace protests? Nothing really. Aside from the fact that literally millions of congregated bodies and voices of the moderately free and empowered worldwide seem to have no effect on the ability of politicians to aim their weapons and troops at whoever they care to, paying lip service to the victims of the crossfire while lacking the right kind of vision to understand the deeper patterns and reverberations of today's wars.
What is war? The paradigm (shut up! I had to use that word! damn you...) that developed in my head this morning while chugging coffee at 60 down Governors Drive was a dual one... two ways of explaining a deeper pattern that cannot quite speak for itself. In a word, synergy. Haha... you probably guessed I was going to throw it in there. It's just how I compensate for never being able to hit the bullseye. The midpoint between the impacts of my projectiles is the point I'm trying to send you to.
Point A: War is a path to ground from voltage. It is simply a means by which potential becomes entropy. It exists because it can and it continues because it has not been superceded by a more viable option. Humans especially, but even tribes of "lower" primates and creatures as "simple" as ants, have learned that a collective struggle is more effective than single combat, more rapidly facilitating the bleed-off of excess accumulations of energy. This energy is expressed as material wealth in our societies, though ultimately it derives its basic power from such simple things as fossil fuels and biomass and the ability to apply them in effective (though largely inefficient) ways. The net effect of wars is to reduce these stockpiles, though oddly enough its proximate cause in the mind of the instigator is usually the goal of accumulating more. Territory, whether controlled by ground troops, alliances, or unwritten subservience, contains energy and/or means of manipulating, storing, and directing energy. Populations of living people and animals, farmland, oilfields, legal systems, I don't want to muddy the waters by drawing the circle ever outward but you get the point if you've read this far. War is a path to ground. It happens because it can. It's like lightning... the movement of charge from point A to point B, or from several points A/x to B/y, will happen at some point. Since our ability to hurt each other long ago passed our skill at feeding and enriching ourselves, the potential only grows until it finds a path to ground. How and where is a matter of opportunism and politics.
Point B: War is a means of satisfying an appetite. If war is a banquet, peace is dieting. Dieting is an ugly word for most of us. The ability to abstain from simply satisfying a craving is not something that has largely served humanity well, with isolated exceptions. Scientists know that we tend to overeat because before modern industrial farming it was advantageous to accumulate energy in the form of extra biomass on your frame (Fat!), informed by the genetically programmed biological (if not always conscious) knowledge that times of scarcity would be survived by those with the predisposition for such accumulations. Telling a normal human being (let alone a "decider guy" in a three-piece whose entire perceived value to the world is in decisive action) to ignore the potential for consumption directly in front of him is futile. Especially when you have a chief exec who lacks the restraint to eat things like pretzels without choking. But seriously... war feeds a need within us - several, actually. The need for resolution, the need for validation, the need (in some of us) to demonstrate superiority, solidarity with our overgrown tribe, the craving for Lebensraum, even my sense of justice. Peace leaves us unfulfilled because, going back to my first mark, it leaves the potential in place, ripe for exploitation - potential energy awaiting another path to ground. Entropy waiting to happen. "Don't cut the rope" is a well-intended but useless answer to the problem of a crushing weight hanging from a great height.
If we compare this martial appetite to a bodily one, an interesting contemplation occurs: what is the alternative to both overindulgence and self-imposed moderation? How do we "eat ourselves thin", avoiding both Mutually Assured Destruction and the totally impossible prospect of simply choosing not to fight over anything?
Unfortunately, this meditation falls short, at this time, of reaching a verdict or a plan of action. This is a part of my struggle to develop and synthesize a worldview all my own and project what I can of it out into the arena of free thought for review, feedback, annihilation, you name it. It gets what it deserves. Hopefully it makes the cut.
Tell me what you think.