JAPW part 2 == Just Another Policy Wonk

Just Another Policy Wonk    part  2 of 2

 

                        Last Week I ventured somewhat off course from the usual entertaining esoterica to explain a bit of how and why things happen in terms of which people are made celebrities and which are not. The process begins long before the public is aware of it and what is more the would be celebrity insists all the way up the ladder that they are not interested in fame and fortune, but only want to do their job as well as they can. Gosh that’s nice.

                 Although it's actually impossible I try to remain as far away from mere opinion as possible. Gandhi or Kim Kardasian - they are all the same in the sensorium. In fact I was amused in watching a DVD of a Bogart movie to discover that although he'd been around for years, both as a stage actor and a film actor, playing mostly “heavies” still it was thought necessary at a point we consider the middle of his career to run him though the publicity process.

           The entire question of who we like and why is one far vaster then I propose to cover – other then obviously pretty people have good hearts and ugly people are meanies – because God don't make mistakes!

In the modern era it's easier then ever to create virtual persona because, let's face it – the odds of you or I ever getting to really know our heroes and villains are slim to none. Add to this we have to state that were sort of on a cusp or borderline where the advent of the virtual personality is, if not already with us, then certainly around the corner. Then again as the Tudors, the royal family of England would say “We are as we are perceived.”

                     Again, I am forced to limit my remit as to the topics covered because it is so omnipresent. We are after all speaking of the construction of the known reality. The Hindus have a word for it, “The immensity” meaning the universe and all other universes and anything one can think of.

Fortunately much of our task is mush simpler – the identification of garden variety thieves and snakes will do for a start nicely. And if mankind can survive the next century that would be nice as well. Suffice to say technology is indifferent to human survival.

What is more our main subject is the conflict of personalities and self. In short try not to let others do your thinking for you

There was needless to say insufficient time for reader to go into depth as to why this sort of thing is done – and what is more, basically it’s not my job to convince you as to the motives of the persons involved. Your core beliefs were established long ago and I am under no delusions that I will change them – in particular through such a vague thing as rational argument.

Like it or not the questions we face often come down to who’s ox is being gored. Which is to say that there’s no happy medium here. If I win you will lose and vice versa, which is to say I don’t expect everyone to come out of this wearing a smile.

                   A key reason why I feel justified in going over this topic, having covered it in detail for over fifteen years online, is that I feel I know can communicate the basic story without needing a few hundred pages. Part of the reason why, as I just said, is I no longer see the need to convince you or anyone that there is an urgent situation. That’s the sort of thing one finds in bus terminals. What is more one of the beauties of what I am about to propose is that it’s not an all or nothing deal.

                   Indeed some could well suggest that it bears strong resemblance to what a lot of other firms are trying to do. I’m no spring chicken however and recall with laughter the many attempts at building online communities – all under the aegis of some corporation or another and how that could never happen because eventually the corporations inner cravings to serve the GOD Profit show through.

In other words the framework of the new virtual community has to be something like a government – it takes in a little money but is not primarily a money making entity

                                The first choice of texts, last weeks, might be an odd thing to consider thought of at first hand, but in retrospect I believe I know now why it managed to break through and serve as a cornerstone – because it goes to the very issue of opportunity.

                     It’s a case where I believe, looking back at unjust societies though out history, what really did them all in the long run was their inability to provide satisfaction to the wants and needs of their most talented people. These were the ones who did not become drunkards or addicts or succumb to despair.

                           And actually the percentage of people that an unjust society can destroy is quite high and conversely the percentage of people who survive and come through at the end with set notions of culpability is small. I did not come to my awareness overnight. Who knows, but if only one or two of the promises made had come true I’d feel differently, but they did not, because they could not because the rule of a crooked game is not how you play the game, but he who dies with the most toys wins.

                      We keep hoping that we will be the exception – that somehow we can keep ethical and make money at the same time and we discover the law of context. Everyone in Hollywood is looking for the whore with the heart of gold and no one has found her yet.

                           In recent days I’ve been thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. I had the opportunity to read some of his lesser known sermons and this was a man who knew himself, who did not have to rely on crutches or props to think what he felt. He was well rounded as a person. I admire that.

               And so the last section here today is about weaponry, the psychic weapons that people use to shoot you down. Make no mistake – they cannot enslave you with physical power – they never could and they never will . Their method is far more devious, they convince you that you do not merit freedom and thus you, yourself forge the very chains that enslave you throughout your life.

               Beware of  Greeks bearing gifts.

                     And so on with the show

 

                              Having somewhat inadvertently ventured off topic last week I’m going to stay off topic for another venture forth. I do this because of one of the side topics of the Tamlinmediaco deserves a little more attention. Plus it’s been around so long that I finally am beginning to feel comfortable enough to think that I might be able to explain it in a way that average people can understand. This sounds condescending but much of the background material is post graduate University level material that would ordinarily be reserved for people in the trade. Within the general purview of politics then it concerns itself with economics, national security, strategic planning and what we may call the preservation of the social order.

           Since it’s always good to begin these heavy dissertations with a joke I’ll tell one (albiet a  poor one). The joke is a half dozen powerful men are sitting around discussing what the world will look like in five years and an aide chirps up, “But what will the people think?”

              That is the joke. “The “people” except to the degree they can be manipulated, have virtually no input into the decision making process. The second part of the joke is the same situation occurs and the same fool stands up and asks. “What about the ethical considerations?” In a world where Henry Kissinger can get the Nobel Peace prize that joke is self evident as well.

             I hope I am not becoming too Machiavellian in my thinking. My purpose as far as It can be stated is to move things along a little in the direction of democracy and maybe, if we must kill to be called peacemakers we might kill a few less people along the way.

            It would hardly be fitting to repeat what was said last week but the most important think may have been the idea that to think outside the box the only method is to find a parallel circumstance and see what happened there. What Wittgenstein discovered was known by Locke a long time ago, namely that if the only way to describe say, the taste of an apple, is through simile then perfect description is impossible and so language must perforce remain imperfect.

Let’s begin then.

                   We live mostly in nation states and we abide by the laws of them. In the past if we were not satisfied with conditions where we were we could either try to change them or move. Neither of these methods is to be taken lightly. Imagine though if you could live in a nation and under a set of laws that you were comfortable with, without having to be physically present in that nation.

       We'll call this place “Nutopia.” In Nutopia the drug laws are very lenient, taxes are low but education and healthcare have to be provided by the individual. Nutopia doesn’t worry a great deal about being invaded because it is a virtual state. If terrorists were to blow up the computers that list the members of Nutopia in a matter of hours the entire “state” could be restored from back up computers. It goes without saying that your child would never have to die in a war since there’s no land to protect.

As you travel across the old bricks and mortar nations you’d show your passport which is exactly what you’d do in any other case. Since Nutopia does not pay for health care, or national defense, or education or even dog catchers the cost of keepin it going is miniscule.

                  In actuality this sort of state already exists. The only problem is you have to be either a corporation or a very wealthy person to partake of it’s advantages. It is no surprise that a great number of the wealthy do just this sort of nation juggling to keep their fortune growing. The French when threatened with higher taxes move to Portugal. American financial firms establish trade in Bermuda or the Caymen Islands. This has been going on for awhile but the advent of electronic funds transfer has expedited things.

Suffice to say, the wealthy can still get speeding tickets – they are still subject to the laws of behavior of the states where they reside, but more importantly, they can shop around for the places where they want to pay taxes, if at all. Likewise I hardly need reiterate the fact that corporations can make their products in one nation and sell them in another.

These advantages of the new economic order are well known. Some praise, some condemn and there are many different terms such as New World Order, Globalization, Neo-Liberalism and I , personally am not here to make the case, pro or con. I like getting cheap manufactured goods from China.

I recall the idea that a person in Rome in the second century CE could get goods from the entire known world just by going down to the market place. It was swell and there was metal from the north and wine from Gaul and Grain from Africa all of which might be described as contributing to a system in perfect balance, but such was not the case. I only lasted a hundred years and when the system collapsed it fell very hard. One of the most telling images is through out the former empire in the next few centuries people would build their campfires on the mosaics on the floors of the destroyed Roman Villas, obvious to the lifestyle that had existed there hundreds of years before. Where once people read books, ate fine foods, and lived long full lives they now grunted a few words, wearing animal skins and dying all too soon.

Suffice to say here at the Tamlinmediaco we have a two pronged approach to the virtual state, one is as a positive, let’s call it a club, like the masons, or the moose club and the other is as a defensive mechanism, meaning a way of establishing and maintaining lines of communication in the even of socio-economic breakdown. We have to stress that this by no means a revolutionary or reactionary notion. The last thing we want is to take power. If any thing, think of what I am saying as a meaning of conserving power and limiting it’s usage. It is the classic idea of finding a new territory and making a place to live out of that – the difference however is that the physical land is all claimed and not we have to create spaces to evolve in a virtual sense.

The social networking sites are all well and good but what we’re talking about is the transfer of goods and services of actual value. This leads to the second major concept today, after the virtual state, which is, of course, zones of privacy.

                   Let me back track just a little first. There are different labels applied to different economic orders. There was colonialism, the first world, the second world and the third world. Sometimes these notions confuse one. World war One saw the breakup of the Ottoman empire, the Russian Imperial court and Germany’s hopes of equaling England viz colonial possessions. Franklyn Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin essentially carved up the post world war two world. Roosevelt agreed to help the British only if the British would give up their colonial possessions, the jewel of which was India, Stalin agreed that he would halt his invasion of Europe but the other allies would have to give to him Poland, and all of eastern Europe including half of Germany.

                  The former colonies around the world often rushed into what they felt would be first world behavior – manufacturing and heavy industry. The results were bad, simply because you cannot build skyscrapers on sand. The two countries with the oldest and most advanced cultures, China and India, also had problems with becoming industrial powers at first, but when the industrial age began to give way to the post industrial age, or information age, they reaped the rewards that could be gain by locating and educating the smartest among themselves.

               The United States of course is blessed with a huge market and a great deal of arable land. I don’t feel really qualified to describe it in too much detail inasmuch as there are many others of greater knowledge then I , but the stated advantages of the US tended to diminish the perceived need to improve the human capital. In any case, almost surprisingly we have stumbled and passed through the post industrial era. What is interesting is there are some cultures , often regarded as comparatively primitive, which are in actuality verbally oriented which seem to make the leap over the second world and third world and post industrial levels to the information age.

                      Conversely the ability to write, or read may not be as critical as it once was. In short – people don’t have the time to read. They want information presented in new ways. Observe if you will that in Plato’s time he lamented the loss of ability to memorize which was coming about because of the advent of the printed word. It calls to mind my old physics teacher warning us not to bother with memorizing things and instead to focus on knowing where to find them.

                        Leadership has at times been described as the ability to find a parade, jump out in front and then convince everyone that you are controlling the direction of the parade. To a large extend this is the case with the so called swing to the right in the 1980’s. The shift to centralized corporate power was a fait accompli, brought about by technological advances and it happened that the liberals wanted to mitigate some of the imbalances that were created.

                      One seemingly unavoidable problem was that the shifting of money in terms of photons across borders drew the attention of the best workers in finance. By 1990 it was evident that leveraged buyouts and hedge funds, which contributed little to economic growth were here to stay and the US was particularly vulnerable to them due to the mature state of it’s capital markets.

What is interesting is that the solution to a world gone mad was already in the wind. The Cyberpunks, primarily located in Stanford and Berkley Universities in California had already envisioned a world dominated by corporations, where the nation states had ceased to play the roles they once had. It was only a small logical jump to realize that currency of the new world, which is much the same to say as the weapons of the new world, was information – and specifically information concerning persons.

                  A ghastly aspect of it is that we now have a nearly infinite number of delineations of the human condition. People are valued for some things and not for others. They are marketing targets or conversely they are road kill – of no use to anyone.

                    A critical philosophical perspective has to be reached at this point. What the technostate, which is the term we use to describe the technologically enhanced control of citizens by the old nation states, wants is for citizens to be involved. It wishes people to feel that they are important decision making members of a society, Above all it denies the notion that the people live to be exploited by their superiors in the social hierarchy. Therefore given the choice of revolutionary or non involved they would prefer the revolutionary. The revolutionary give validity to the state and as we know much of the time the revolutionary is only tomorrows reactionary.

                        The establishment of zones of privacy was, ironically enough, an easier sell in the 80’s then today, because today there has be found a justification to eliminate privacy – namely the terrorist. There’s a touch of apples and oranges here. We fight terrorists, and are opposed to them because we believe in certain freedoms, but if we have to give up those freedoms to defeat terrorists then what have we won?

It’s valid, but I’m not about to get hung up on it. We make these compromises all the time.

In more practical terms privacy when given the individual as well as to the corporation would level the playing field a little. Use your imagination. We speak about transferring goods over networks unknown to those who would seek to tax them. Likewise via bartering we might establish actual free markets instead of the shams we face today. As Confucius would say, Reciprocity is the key to mans harmonious dealings with man.

             I realize some of the implications of what I am saying.

                      A wife with two husbands is bound to have problems, no matter how virtual the one may be.

As well it’s worth realizing that the optimum conditions for what I am hinting at have not come to pass, and perhaps hopefully, will never come to pass. The more conditions deteriorate the more likely that these networks will come into being. The carrot will be more enticing and the stick will be less of a threat. The simple fact is that they will not appear because you or I or anyone lays out a blueprint, they will seem to appear by spontaneous generation.

                                   I say “Seem to appear” because we know that many so called “Grass roots movements” are anything but that, however there is a certain elegance to the virtual state in that it offers a means of developing a new social organization without have to first tear down the old one, which is often a undesirable idea.

 

Epilogue:

A fascinating fact about early human life is that for tens of thousands of years the population of Europe was about a million people, and this population was spread out over the entire continent from Italy to Norway. In other words within what to us may seem a small population there was a vast diversity of lifestyles and foodstuffs. As well while I’m not really qualified to speculate one may include the possibility that the area was cohabited by both Neanderthals and Troglodytes for some period.

I mention this because suffice to say we can at least imagine this would put human life at something of a premium. It contrasts with the notion of human sacrifice and suggests that such sacrifice was not an everyday thing. It also raises questions as to just how desirable warfare was perceived as. The entire continent was a single primeval forest and the numbers alone suggest that there hundreds of square miles for every man woman and child.

                   As well, what we do know of primitive warfare raises interesting questions. For the purposes of the Tamlinmediaco investigations the primary technology we deal with was established by Lewis Mumford and is the city. Actual three things happened in roughly the same time, the coming of agriculture, the development of the city and the advent of the nuclear family. This happened roughly five to ten thousand years ago. The religious implications which as always, mirror the social structures, we’ve gone into in some detail.

                          Prior to the advent of these three aspects of “civilization” mankinds major task, other then keeping food and shelter available, was the development of the spoken language. It being , if anything, a consensual task, required the interaction of at least minimal numbers of people in a social environment. Terrence McKenna suggests that the periods of optimal growth were when the human race engaged in what were essentially drug induced orgies. For our purposes we need not prove this true or otherwise and I mention it only in passing.

                What we know of primate hierarchical establishment suggests it is a matter of mostly all bark and no bite. Meaning that posturing, howling and even the stereotyped chest thumping are the means of the establishment of social dominance. It’s not that harmless a procedure however since the price of losing is to be banished from the “tribe” and such banishment from a primate group is nearly always accompanied by death. As well there are cases where among chimps for instance, once a chimp has lost a showdown with a dominant chimp it is then set upon and killed by the rest of the group.

There are human tribes that once fought “wars” in essentially the same way. They’d confront each other, shake their spears and then go home. Fortunately, as in so many other instances, we have from the Irish actual records of how things were done from periods bordering on the late stone age.

The two armies would line up opposing each other and then send a champion out to fight in hand to hand battle. After the decision was reached, either by wounding or death, another individual battle would ensue and this went on until enough blood had been shed to make the decision of the battle apparent.

What we currently think of as warfare is described in detail in the old testament of the bible. It is only possible in the presence of cities and tribes, meaning civilization and involves the taking over of the location of a city by one group or another. It is at this point that we begin to hear about the extermination of tribes and the putting to death of all inhabitants of a certain region or city.

This is made necessary because of genetic association. Seppuku (or Hari Kari) continued in Japan for centuries because it allowed a warrior to save face and preserve for his family whatever possessions he owned. Some family went so far as to keep Seppuku swords around for the purpose. In the Italian vendetta tradition a person believes he must not only kill the opponent but as well must kill the child of the opponent, who would otherwise grow up to exact vengeance.

                The present era presents us with something of a historical conundrum. Msser’s Fukuyama and Friedman are at least partially correct in suggesting that the values of man have become comparatively standardized – but they are unclear about another aspect of the unified world order, which is that, given the presence of nuclear weapons, global war such as that waged in the last century is no longer an option.

However desirable this may seem it also raises the question as to where did the causalities and purposes of warfare go? I’m afraid I must leave this question unanswered as well and turn instead to a strategic aspect of cowboy Movie gun battles.

                         The first example is one that is associated with mystics and in particular with mystics of the highest order. It also is an example of how the same process can be viewed in two separate ways, and hence be two separate things. To the vulgar it’s called surrounding the enemy to the enlightened it is called “the circle dance.” The difference is critical, and not only that but the mystics understanding of the process is far more efficacious in assuring victory.

                 Let us say we have two people contesting for control of a hilltop. The current owner has a submachine gun and the opposition has a pistol. This incidentally was exactly the case in many world war one battle fields where the defenders had heavy machine guns while the attackers had only rifles and pistols.

The actual contest we speak of here is far more common then warfare. It is the everyday battle between the wealthy, empowered, man and the non empowered. In this case, if the game can be set up so that challenges to the thrown occur singularly, that is challenger A then challenger B and so on then the battle can go on, presumably all day, everyday with the empowered man gunning down his opposition continually.

In the same way if you or I were individually to challenge the power and authority of a wealthy man the odds of success would be so small as to be non existent, but if the opposition to the king were to join together and encircle the man with the machine gun, then he’d have to fire, spin the weapon around to locate the next target, fire, and so on. It is no wonder that a king would describe such a battle, in court for insurance as unethical. He could claim that in measuring one’s true ability, or competitive value the only fair contest is one against one.

The mystic element comes to play when, on other planes of existence, so to speak, one is both one and not one. The two figures most associated with this dance are Black Elk, Oglala  Sioux medicine man and Jesus Christ, Jewish messianic figure.

             The next element of strategic gun fighting can be seen in the Sergio Leone Spaghetti western, “Once upon a time in the west”. Incidentally George Goodman was a popular economics writer and television personality who went by the stage name of Adam Smith. (This was in the days before the market began to symbolize all that is evil about the technostate.) He used to refer to the various traders and brokers as “gunfighters” as well. For the record my usage of the term is both more inclusive and more specific. I refer to the power to sway men’s minds. Those who can effectively via controlled perceptions make others work for them willingly are the modern gunslingers of the information age.

                      In “Once upon a time in the West” the situation is reversed from the first case I presented. The movie opens with three killers waiting at a train station to meet a fourth, who they are under orders to kill. Hence in example A the king had superior weaponry, in this example the bad guys have superior numbers.

One of bad guys says “Looks like we’re short a horse.” The bad guy says, “No, you brought two too many.” Then they shoot it out and the good guy, Charles Bronson, kills all three bad guys.” In this case, as in the previous one, the element of geometry comes into play, namely, if Bronson had been much closer to the bad guys, assuming their aim was not as good as his, then the odds would have shifted in the bad guys favor.

If you can reliably hit a target at one hundred yards and your opponent can’t then you want to stay as far distant from them as possible. To move in closer in fact is to squander one’s advantage. It’s only common sense and what it says, in effect, in strategic terms is if you have a clear advantage over yor opponent do not lose it by inviting them into close range. This is one of the stronger methods used to maintain the technostate.

What they say when questioned as to why there appears no opposition to their policies is “We’d be glad to discuss the issues but in fact there is no opposition – they don’t exist.” I reminds me of what a conservative politician said in the middle eighties – “The game is over. Everyone agrees that we won and we don’t even have to bother considering alternative ideas.” Meanwhile he and his cronies were systematically removing all opposition to their power where ever they could find it – in entertainment, in publishing and in organizations.

One couldn’t help but wonder if the revolution was so successful why were they spending so much time and effort to combat any notion that it was not?