The Sword and the Shield

Sometimes I get one of those eerie, Jungian synchronicities that make me go "hmm." The last time I got one, I was thinking about the mythological Greek god(dess) Ares and Athena. Ares, the cowardly, incompetent and blood-thirsty god of war, was hated by all the other gods (including his parents), but he was especially despised by Athena, the goddess of wisdom and civilization. Yet, they were both gods of technology. They overlapped in it.

I concluded that the myth was about how war and civilization were opposed to each other, and how, contrary to its supporters, there is no wisdom in war. Otherwise Ares would be the god of wisdom, not Athena.

Their overlapping as technology gods was due to the fact that technology is amoral; it's neither good nor bad. It can be used for either, for war or peace, for destruction or creation. As Cooper's Law ("All machines are amplifiers") informs us, technology (machines) do nothing more than amplify our natural abilities. What we use technology for is up to us.

And contrary to all the Earth-Firsters and other eco-weenies, technology is here to stay. It's not going away, ever. It'll only advance, as it always has.

The "hmm" occurred when I read Neal Stephenson's massive but absorbing novel, Cryptonomicon. I found he has several pages of discussion about Ares and Athena. I even remember where it started: page 800. (That's right: page 800. The novel is almost 1,000 pages long.)

It turns out he and I have come to essentially the same conclusions.

Stephenson believes, as I do, that ancient myths embody great, universal truths. They would not have lasted if they didn't. They just need to be updated for the modern mind. It's doesn't make any sense these days to say that Athena is the goddess of weaving. It makes a great deal of sense to say she's the goddess of technology. Weaving is just a primitive form of technology.

Here's where we badly need some mythic updating. In the past, Ares was just the god of war. Today, if we apply some libertarian theory about the difference between the State and Society, he becomes much more than a mere serial killer: he's now the god of the State. All States, being based on coercion and the threat of violence, are always about war. Indeed, they are always at war, because no matter what it gets involved in, no matter what its good intentions, it will only create conflict.

Just look at the "war on drugs," which has increased crime, or the "war on poverty," which has increased broken families, or the "war on terror," which has increased hatred against the US. The State is Ares. And being Ares, he is a bungler, as all States are bunglers.

Athena, being the goddess of civilization, is now the mythic goddess of Society. Since the State is based on the Political Means and Society on the Economic Means, they are always opposed to each other, and always will be. Applied libertarian theory backs up the Greek story of Ares and Athena being enemies. Of course she despised him, just as people knowledgeable enough despise the State because they know its unalterable nature is to always war on Society, to attempt to absorb--and therefore terribly damage--it.

Athena is armed with a sword and a shield, named Aegis. The shield is the important thing: it had the head of the Gorgon depicted on the front of it, which turned to stone anyone who looked upon it. Her shield, which was created by technology, is both an offensive and defensive weapon. Against what? Apply libertarian theory again. Her shield is for offense and defense against the State. Against Ares.

The point of the myth of Athena is that Society must always have defensive and offensive weapons against the State! It can be no other way. The Founding Fathers understood this, when they created the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment, which has two purposes--as a defense against the little criminals known as people, but mostly as a check on the big criminal known as the State.

Unfortunately the Bill of Rights is just a piece of paper. The State interprets it. That's why, today, a little after 200 years of its existence, it is mostly dead. A piece of paper isn't much of a shield. And without firearms, the citizens don't have much of a sword.

In the original myth Ares had various weapons--but none were named. It didn't matter, because naming his weapons was irrelevant. Today, since Ares is the god of the State, he does have at least one weapon with a name.

That weapon is the State itself. Today, Ares cowardly hides behind the State, and uses advanced technology to attack and destroy Societies on the other side of the world. George Bush, who claims he is a Christian, is actually an Ares worshiper. So are Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Max Boot, David Frum, William Kristol and Rush Limbaugh.

The parallels in the Christian tradition (of which Greek myths are a part) tell us that although Societies may not necessarily worship God, all States, in varying degrees, do worship Satan. All States, of course, claim God is on their side, and supports their murder, lies, theft and destruction. Thus, anyone who believes in the goodness of the State cannot tell the difference between God and the Devil.

In my opinion, Ares has evolved--or de-evolved--into the archetype of the Chickenhawk--part Ares, part Satan, part Trickster. I also refer to this archetype as "the Frum," for mostly obvious reasons. One which isn't obvious is that the name has a nice repulsive sound to it, like "Gollum."

One of the reasons--possibly the main one--the Chickenhawk today can be the Chickenhawk is because advanced technology allows it. In the past, leaders were often on the battlefield. Today, never. Instead, they can sit on one side of the planet and murder people on the other side with a push of a button. Such is the misuse of technology by the cowardly modern-day followers of Ares.

Can the archetype of the Chickenhawk get any worse than it is now? Sure. If Chickenhawks, who are fascists, had their way, they'd Borgify the entire society. Conscription--slavery--might be the first thing they'd do.

Being part Ares, the Chickenhawks love war. Being part Satan, they lust after the power to rule. Being part Trickster, they'll tell every lie possible to advance their agenda. But being Chickenhawks, they want others to fight the wars.

Since Ares and Athena are always at odds, the State is continually trying to disarm Society. Gun control, for example, is an attempt to remove the technology Society uses to protect itself against criminals, whether they are of the State or outside it. It's Ares saying Athena must give up her sword and shield, and be at his mercy. Only a fool would fall for it.

It is Society, the free market and liberty, that creates advanced technology. Yet foolish people voluntarily give it to Ares, because he has tricked them into thinking he is one of the good guys. Those who understand the wisdom of Athena know differently.

These days, for the Chickenhawk, the State is the shield and the advanced technology of the military is the sword. These scoundrels hide behind the shield, wrapping themselves in the flag, claiming the State and Society are the same thing, that they represent it, and those who disagree with them are unpatriotic, indeed traitors. They use the sword to attack other Societies around the world.

What is the defensive/offensive shield that modern-day Athena has against Ares? Remember that since Ares and Athena overlap as technology gods, Ares can and will use the technology that Athena creates. But, for every threat by the State, there will be a defense by Society.

Some of the ones today are computers, software and cryptography. The Internet can be described as an anarchistic community, one in which information can go around the world in a second. The State, of course, wants to control it--to tax it, and to shut parts of it down.

It certainly wants to control cryptography, because of encryption. For all practical purposes modern-day encryption is unbreakable. People who use encryption are safe from the prying eyes of the State.

Another is microtechnology. Given its way, Ares would microchip every person in the US. Athena will find a way around that, too. Or, if people resist implantation, which will probably be too much even for the sheeple because of its "Number of the Beast" implications, there's the possibility of a driver's license with a magnetic strip on it, containing a plethora of information about the possessor. Or it being connected to a national database that says if you don't pay a $7 parking ticket in a state 1000 miles away your license will be suspended.

Fortunately, Society will attempt to find a way around these things. Athena, like Ares, must be part Trickster in dealing with him. It's an unending battle and probably always will be.

Stephenson believes the coming battlefields between Ares and Athena are "bio-, micro- and nanotechnology." These technologies, amplifiers of our of abilities, will be used by States, by Ares, for war, to control the free market, and to strip people of their freedoms.

Of course, the rationale will be that it is in the name of "security" and "safety." This is nonsense. As Chief Wiggum of The Simpsons once said, "I didn't say the government couldn't harm you. I said it couldn't help you."

Stephenson is right about those three battlefields, but there is more.

The battlefield has always, ultimately, been about ideas. That's the main battle between Ares and Athena. It always has been. "Ideas have consequences, " wrote Richard Weaver in his book of the same title. "He who works with the head, rules; he who works with the hands, is ruled," the old saying tells us.

Ares will attempt to appropriate everything for his use--technology, economics, philosophy, political science, religion. He will tell the citizens it will be for their own good. Considering States, in the 20th century, killed up to 200 million people, no one should believe this.

Unfortunately, there will never be a shortage of deluded court intellectuals working for Ares.

The wisdom of Athena tells us that Society must use technology, and intelligence, and the same ideas about economics, philosophy, political science and religion to oppose Ares and protect Society from his depredations.

The future is impossible to tell, as are advances in technology. But I do know the advances in technology by Society, whatever they are, will be used by Ares to attack and control Society. They must be countered by Society, by Athenan wisdom.

Stephenson makes the disturbing point that many people today have essentially become illiterate, that they have returned to an oral culture, one in which TV is predominant. Many believe its foolish myths. Just think "West Wing." Apparently many people can no longer truly think. What they read goes in one ear and out the other. I blame this on the State schools. Ares has taken control of them, too. That makes it easier to brainwash the populace.

A working brain, one that understands the nature of the State, and the evil it always attempts, and how to fight against it, is the most important thing. It is the ultimate sword, and the ultimate shield.

Visions of the Future

When I was in college, I took four economics courses: Principles of Macro, Principles of Micro, and Intermediate Macro and Intermediate Micro. Half of the material -- the free market half -- made sense. The other half, being Keynesian/Marxist nonsense, should have been junked 60 years ago.

The gobbledygook half consisted of equations such as Y = C+I+G, one line that is supposed to run the entire US economy. Then there were absolutely preposterous graphs such as ISLM curves. While taking these classes, I decided all mainstream economists are incompetent, and realized whatever they advise, the best thing is to do the exact opposite. That old joke is true -- if you laid them in a line, they'd all point in different directions.

The visions of the future of these economists are the delusions of semi-autistic, second-rate mathematicians who think the world can be run by a few people using simple algebraic equations and graphs. That's not much of a vision; actually it's a retrograde one. I've lost my faith -- if I ever had any -- in intellectuals. To be fair, I should say, "court intellectuals." A true intellectual is one who does not support the State.

One of the few sensible things they told the classes was that what a person makes is based on how productive he is. They left it at that. They didn't expand on it and explain it means using machines. The more a person can produce with machines, the more money he makes. A farmer is going to be much more productive with a tractor than a using a stick as a hoe, and therefore make much more money. Obviously, technology is our friend.

There is even a law that explains how machines increase our wages: Cooper's Law, which states, "All machines are amplifiers." They amplify abilities we already have.

Yet, ultimately, machines are not what increases our wages. It's our brains, which we use to manipulate our hands to build those machines. Brains -- intelligence -- is what is behind our ability to build machines. None of this was mentioned in any class I took in college.

There are other things which were never mentioned, such as the facts that in addition to brains, other things are necessary. A belief -- faith -- in the free market and liberty, even if the person doesn't understand how the free market works. But they can see the results of its wonders.

It was never mentioned the government can only harm the economy. Indeed, the exact opposite was taught, that the economy can't function properly unless the government is constantly interfering in it. I am reminded of what Chief Wiggum said in The Simpsons: "I didn't say the government couldn't harm you. I said it couldn't help you." It's an eternal truth they ignored because they didn't believe in it.

We weren't taught that technology is ultimately our friend, that whatever bad technology creates (such as pollution) it can also find a way to clean it up. Instead, in some classes we were told technology and humans damage the earth, as if we were a bunch of pre-Christian animists who believed spirits dwelled in various places, and unless we made the proper obeyances and sacrifices they would do Bad Things to us. Isn't that ultimately what the belief in earth as Gaia is about -- that if we aren't nice to it and sacrifice people to it, it'll croak us with global warming? (Thirty years ago it was global cooling being howled about.)

We were never told about the importance of creativity, curiosity and imagination in invention. Those three things, along with intelligence and freedom, are what humans use to advance themselves and society along with them. Instead it was suggested to us that humans are an overpopulated blight on the planet.

There was a time not so long ago when people were impressed by the free market and the various widgets it was constantly creating to improve people's lives. Now we've got George Bush, supposedly a conservative, telling us to "conserve" (which is what I expect from a liberal) instead of saying, "Hey, you know, the entire universe is energy. We've just got to liberate the free market, and people's intelligence, creativity, imagination and curiosity to realize a way to suck what we need straight out of the ol' space-time continuum." It's a failure of nerve, and of brains, and of imagination. It's a blinkered -- or maybe blind -- view of the future.

I have a different, and more optimistic view. It's one in which the government isn't one-third of the economy and sucking up half of people's incomes. It's a world without public schools crushing kids' spirits. It's a free world. And in that world inventions come whizzing at us like crazy. And without the government as a parasite, wages skyrocket.

Most people don't know it, but the Dark Ages weren't so dark. Read Jean Gimpel's The Medieval Machine sometime. For all the book's flaws, it gives a fascinating insight into an era that was a cornucopia of inventions. And why was that time so fertile? Because of freedom. Where would we be if freedom had been the natural condition of mankind instead of the exception? Five thousand years ahead of where we are now? All diseases eradicated? Who knows?

Why weren't these inventions pouring out of the rest of the world? Out of the much older cultures of China and India ? Perhaps they were ancient and static? It was the technological explosion in Europe , created by freedom -- especially of the mind -- that spread to the rest of the world.

Maybe it was all that science fiction I read as a teenager that gave me a more optimistic view of the future, in fact an unlimited future. The writer Norman Spinrad said it is the only visionary and transformational literature. He may be right. "What's now proved was once only imagined," wrote William Blake. "Everything that can be imagined is an image of the truth."

Look at Jules Verne. There was a Frenchman who essentially predicted every major invention of the 20th Century. Now that was a visionary man. These days, France no longer produces men like Verne, only decadent and superfluous intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre. That's what happens when people no longer look optimistically to the future, and instead blame their problems on other countries and pine for their non-existent Golden Age. I hope our time never comes.

Ninety-nine percent of the science fiction in the world comes from the US and England -- even now, the two most free counties in the world. The rest of the world essentially creates none of it. Do the inhabitants lack the vision and therefore the ability to transform their cultures? Perhaps Proverbs was right: "Where there is no vision the people perish."

"I get tired of the naysayers and the environmental extremists," says writer James P. Hogan, author of Bug Park. "We have the ability, right now, to feed, educate, and take care of every human being in the world. We have the knowledge and ability to solve all the material problems that homo sapiens faces on Earth. The imagined crises with energy and so forth that we hear all about are needless political creations, not something imposed on us by reality."

Now that is an inspiring vision of the future, based on good ideas. And as Richard Weaver wrote in a book of the same name, Ideas Have Consequences. The ideas of Hogan and people like him are far better than the moaning and groaning of the naysayer Paul Ehrlich, who hasn't been right once in 40 years and even sterilized himself because of his belief in "overpopulation." I can only add: good riddance. The next one who needs to go is Peter Singer, who sings the praises of killing infants and old people, and sex with monkeys.

Right now we have enough free market in the US to keep us going for a long time. But the bigger the government gets, the more inventions are diverted to military uses, the more people look to the past instead of the future, the more they seek to return to some fictional non-technological Garden of Eden, the more they believe in force instead of persuasion, the more they believe in war and destruction as creation, the worse things will get all around. Those are laws of human nature, and you can bank on them. Fortunately, we still have plenty of time left to turn things around, if only we have the vision.

Kids and ADD

When I was growing up, we didn't have any hyperactive kids. We certainly didn't have anyone on Ritalin. We'd never heard of the stuff. At 11, the only "drug" we knew about was aspirin-in-Coke, which was supposed to make you drunk. (We also believed if you put a tooth or nail in Coke overnight, they would dissolve. Our experiments proved this to be not true, just as we proved that throwing salt on a bird's tail didn't paralyze it so you could catch it.)

Probably the main reason we didn't have any ADD and ADHD is because we got plenty of physical activity. We rode bikes and later, minibikes. I rode horses, including one that wouldn't stop galloping while I held on for my life. We swam, we wrestled, we had dirt-clod fights, we played football with just a football and our heads instead of helmets. We had Styrofoam sailboats break apart from under us in lakes. We climbed cliffs. We jumped off cliffs into pools of water. We inflated tractor-tire inner-tubes and bounced them up and down in lakes until all seven of us flew off. I continued to do this even when the other six boys landed on top of me and shoved me down to the bottom of the lake.

We did this stuff for decades. And we never had any hyperactive kids. I don't remember one. Not one. We did have weird kids who couldn't walk down the hall without tripping over their own feet, or who would go spastic if someone so much as gently tossed a ball their way, apparently believing it would go completely through their torso like a cannonball, but we didn't have anybody who was hyperactive.

Yet, today, teachers and parents will tell you that ADD and ADHD has become much more prevalent over the last 15 years. And during those years, there has been a global decrease in language and cognitive abilities. The aforementioned disorders and those decreases are related.

Children who have been diagnosed with ADD and ADHD have different brains than those without the diagnosis. Among other things, afflicted kids show decreased activity in frontal lobes and other subcortical structures, as demonstrated by PET scans and MRIs. The prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum, and thalamus demonstrate both decreased activity and smaller anatomical size, particularly in the right brain and the left cerebellum.

The main treatment, if you can call it treatment, is with Ritalin, a drug similar to cocaine. When I think of the 11 million prescriptions a year written for Ritalin, I am reminded of the saying, that if a doctor can't cut it, drug it or burn it, he's clueless.

Ritalin supposedly "wakes up" the frontal lobes, allowing the kid to concentrate more effectively. My experience, and that of millions of others, is that lots of drugs, say booze and marijuana and tobacco, allow you to concentrate more effectively. It doesn't mean those drugs are conducive to intellectual achievement. I doubt Ritalin is, either, and no matter what the drug companies or the government says, no one knows what the long-term effects of Ritalin are. I am reminded, however, that Kurt Cobain was a Ritalin child, which led to heroin and then a shotgun.

As far as I'm concerned, 11 million prescriptions a year is pure quackery, and I wouldn't take my ingrown toenail to a doctor who prescribed it, much less my kid.

Boys are the main recipients of these prescriptions, eight to one over girls. But why?

Current research is pointing to all of these problems as being right or left brain disorders. Contra left-wing feminists, there are distinct differences between male and female brains. Males are generally right-brain dominant, with a larger right frontal lobe. Females tend to be better with left-brain skills, such as language. Females generally have a greater brain symmetry than males, which is why if there is an insult to one side of the brain, the other can compensate.

The majority of ADD and ADHD disorders affect the right brain; therefore males are more affected. Males are also more afflicted with left-brain disorders involving language, since females can compensate for any damage. In other words, boys get can get hit from both sides.

Males, being more brain-lopsided than females, have brains that are more fragile and easier to damage. The upside to that lopsidedness is that it allows men to more narrowly focus long-term on one thing, which is why, again contra left-wingers, men have invented almost everything in the world.

Now, as to why there has been such an increase in ADD and ADHD over the past 15 years: It has to do, possibly more than anything else, with lack of movement. Motoricity--movement-- appears to be the key to appropriate brain development. They are essentially the same process. Cognitive and motor functions are one and the same, because they involve the same parts of the brain. Therefore, movement, for a baby and child, develops the brain properly. Anything that moves needs a brain. It's why plants don't have brains.

So, obviously, the less movement, the less the brain properly develops. For a child--especially a boy--to spend all his time inside watching TV or playing video games, does not contribute to healthy brain development. A sedentary lifestyle for kids is not a good one. The brain remains underdeveloped. And that is scary.

Now I'll be the first to admit I watched a fair amount of TV when I was a kid, especially cartoons. It didn't hurt me. I think “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and “Fractured Fairy Tales” was truly a good thing for me. But I also got a heck of a lot of physical activity, even if it involved tumbling down hills after falling off of my bicycle.

The worst offender for improper brain development is the government--misnamed "public"--school system. Forcing kids, and especially boys, to sit for hours a day at the desk, with little movement, interferes with proper brain development. Just remember that Ritalin is being forced down kids' throats because of their behavior in school.

Let's put it this way: People like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin didn't have formal schooling. Where are the people like them today? I think there are potential scholars like them in every generation, but we lose them to the government schools. The whole system literally keeps their brains from developing properly. And the problem is getting worse. Just look at our plummeting SAT scores.

Since the lack of movement that is inherent in government schools is the culprit, this means all "reforms" are doomed to failure that don't involve getting kids, and especially boys, out of the classroom. Boys are much more affected by lack of motor development than girls.

The school system cannot be fixed. "Not paying attention" and "not doing homework" are not the problems. "No Child Left Behind" is not the fix. Sitting for hours in a class is the problem. Private schools that copy public schools are going to find themselves in the same quandary.

Not only are school not good for the intellectual development of children, it also doesn't "socialize" them, one of the main claims of government school defenders. If your brain remains underdeveloped, you're sure not going to be socialized properly, either.

"P.E." isn't the answer. I am reminded of what Woody Allen added to the saying, "Those that can, do; those that can't, teach": "Those that can't teach, teach gym." Being forced to do leg-lifts and run outside in circles is no one's idea of fun. When I was in school, the overwhelmingly majority of us wanted nothing to do with P.E., or P.E. teachers, who we thought were more Neanderthal than Homo Sapien. Yet, after school, we get plenty of physical activity.

Anything that improves posture, gait, balance, endurance, timing and synchronization of muscles will improve cognitive function. That means play, not work. And since when are government schools play?

What passes for "school" these days isn't necessary. The only one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books I have read is Farmer Boy, which is about her husband's life growing up on his father's farm. It is a book very much worth reading, and will disabuse anyone of the notion that formal schooling is necessary.

Wilder's husband, Almanzo Wilder, hated school with a great passion, and probably attended only a few months. Yet he grew up literate, and highly intelligent.

From kindergarten to a senior in high school, I cannot remember a thing I learned. I started to teach myself to read at four; in the first grade, when we were supposed to learn to read, I found Dick and Pony and Spot and Jane boring me out of my skull. Twelve years of schooling, and I learned basically nothing? For those 12 years, I mostly day-dreamed, and I still have my report cards with notations on them informing my parents I wasn't paying attention. You bet I wasn't. I was chained to a desk. I wasn't hyperactive. These days, I would be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. My fault? I don't think so.

As far as I'm concerned, that day-dreaming is what saved me, along with all the swimming and bike-riding and wrestling. I have no idea what would have happened to me without that ability to day-dream, or the minibikes and the carnival rides and all the rest of that dangerous stuff that's supposed to be outlawed in the coming Nerf World.

I'd never let my kids go anywhere near a government school, not unless I wanted their brains to be warped permanently for the rest of their lives.

Science Fiction, Wars, and a Meaning to Life

When I was 12 to 14 years old the most important thing in my life was science fiction, including the original Star Trek. I got high off of it -- I felt what is called "the sense of wonder." I don't have to explain it to those who understand; those who have never experienced it, I can't explain it to them.

In my imagination I ranged across all of time and space -- and before them, and after them. I traveled through parallel dimensions and alternative universes. I encountered a vast array of aliens -- talking cats, winged beings, and those that lived under the sea, or in space. It was heady stuff.

Because it was the most important thing in my life at that time, it was in effect the meaning of my life. Others got their meaning from sports or music. Billy Joel once said that rock 'n' roll was as close to a religion as he had.

I am grateful that I encountered SF at the age I did. I think if I had run across it a few years later, although I would have enjoyed it, I would have never felt that intense sense of wonder. I sometimes wonder about those stuck in ancient and ossified cultures like China, India and Islam, who've never been able to feel what I did. Almost all SF --as Norman Spinrad noticed, the only visionary and transformational literature -- has come from America and England, two of the most free countries in the world.

At the same age as I began reading SF, I quit going to church. It bored me immensely. I got the awe and wonder from SF. From church I got nothing but boredom. The latter held no meaning for me. How can anything be called a religion when you get nothing but boredom and meaninglessness from it?

I have for years felt that SF was for some people a substitute for religion, or, in some cases, complimentary to it. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien exemplified the latter (although, to be accurate, Tolkien wrote fantasy.) For some people it gives community and meaning. Watch Trekkies, in which one of the characters comments, "We are always recruiting."

All people seek meanings to their lives, even if they deny there is any meaning to life. Richard Dawkins may be an atheist, but obviously his obsessive promoting of Darwinism is his meaning. People will never choose something boring as their meaning in life. It must always give them excitement and a sense of community.

People who may be a bit more sensitive, imaginative and intelligent than others may be lucky enough to encounter that "sense of wonder," what the original Outer Limits called "the awe and mystery." But what about those who aren't so lucky, who are far more limited? What do they seek for excitement and community?

Sometimes -- oftentimes -- they choose war. Although, for the vast majority of them, it does not involve personally fighting. It involves cheering from the sidelines. It's a spectator sport for them. Being cheerleaders for war gives meaning and community to their otherwise boring lives. This boredom -- ennui -- has always been considered the sin known as accidie. It's what comes from their lack of sensitivity, intelligence and imagination.

Such people mistakenly see this feeling of community and purpose as patriotism, love of country. It's anything but. Indeed, it's the exact opposite. They're nationalists, and as George Orwell noticed, "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

Chris Hedges understands all of this. "The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true -- it does create a feeling of comradeship which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong," he said in a speech at Rockford College, quoting from his book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. "War allows us to rise above our small stations in life; we find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss...

"War is a fine diversion. War for those who enter into combat has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning."

Robert Nisbet, an influential conservative sociologist – and "conservative sociologist" almost sounds like an oxymoron – wrote in his book Community and Power (republished as The Quest for Community), "The power of war to create a sense of moral meaning is one of the most frightening aspects of the 20th century. . .one of the most impressive aspects of contemporary war is the intoxicating atmosphere of spiritual unity that arises out of the common consciousness of participating in a moral crusade."

Nisbet's book, indeed all of his books, is about the alienation that comes from the loss of community. Such loss always happens with the expansion of the State. As it expands, it destroys all the intermediary institutions such as religion, neighborhoods and families. Finally, there is nothing left between people and the State. There are various names for such a condition – fascism, communism, Nazism. The State becomes everything, and people become absorbed into it. Think of the Borg.

Writers such as Erich Fromm and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn have pointed out many people want to be absorbed into a group as an escape from their alienation. It gives them a sense of community and security. Nisbet adds there is something else – such people don't give up their individuality in these groups, but instead exalt their selves, as they now believe they are part of something they think is much larger than they are.

They become, as I call it, "a community of gods." They believe the group itself is god-like, or blessed of God, so they partake of that "divinity" by being part of the group. They are literally worshipping their selves, a worship that always means those outside of the group are devalued into sub-humans whose murders are dismissed as "collateral damage."

As Russell Kirk noted, "the monstrous self is the source of all evil." The Nazis, the communists, and the fascists were that monstrous self writ large. I believe this is why Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote, "'I' is from God and 'We' is from the Devil." That "We" can only be of the Devil when the State destroys the intermediary institutions, and the only "We" left is the combination of the people and the State.

During long-term warfare society becomes militarized and in doing so damages, destroys or absorbs such intermediary institutions as churches. Then we end up with disgraces such as Jerry Falwell claiming "God is pro war," which of course means God supports only the wars of the United States.

"When the goals and values of a war are popular," writes Nisbet, "both in the sense of mass participation and spiritual devotion, the historic, institutional limits of war tend to recede further and further into the void. The enemy becomes not only a ready scapegoat for all ordinary dislikes and frustrations; he becomes the symbol of total evil against which the forces of good may mobilize themselves into a militant community."

In short, war can give meaning and community – and an intoxicating power – to some people's lives. That makes it a religion, a false one based on hubris and being drunk with power. Power does more than just corrupt; it intoxicates. In The Lord of the Rings, it was that power that turned Smeagol into Gollum. The same thing could happen to people in reality.

I believe the people who are the least liable to fall under the spell of this sense of false community and false purpose are the most intelligent, most sensitive, and most imaginative. For one thing, they can more easily see both sides of an issue. The less intelligent, the less sensitive and the less imaginative cannot. They are the ones who most easily fall under the spell of "nationalism."

They, too, get high off of their nationalism -- that "lust of the eye." But I see no awe and wonder and mystery in that lust. Obviously, some highs are better than others. Awe and love and mystery and wonder are good things. Simple excitement and a false sense of community are fleeting things, not worth clinging to.

Will people change? If they ever do, it will be as it always is -- it starts right in the human heart, the place where the only true change takes place. But until that happens, people will always take the cheap thrills, the bread and circuses over the love, the awe, and the wonder -- because they don't know what it is, and because of that, don't know what they're missing.

Safe, Effective, and Illegal

For the record, my drug use consists of a German white wine called Auslese.

That's it. I don't even use aspirin, because it doesn't work on me. Minimum, I need Tylenol with Codeine, which can legally be bought through the mail from Canada . I'm too lazy to get some.

However, unlike Bill Clinton, I did inhale as a teenager, from ages 15 to 17, on weekends. Then I quit. Some years later, I realized my use coincided exactly with that prison known as high school, which drove me so crazy I did little more than daydream in school and party on the weekends.

But, I haven't touched the stuff for decades. Except . . . .

Last week, as I was walking down a handicapped ramp to my car, my feet flew out from under me and I crashed to the ground on my back. The pavement was dry, and I still have no idea what happened. It was as if the Angel of Death had grabbed my ankles and pulled from the front.

Yes, I know there is irony in the fact I was almost crippled by falling down the handicapped ramp. I was even able to smile about the whole thing after I stood up.

I hit the concrete the hardest I have ever hit in my life. That includes all the tumbles I took on ice during the winter. I found that it is an instinct to hunch your back so the back of your head doesn't hit. But I now understand how people get killed by falling down.

One second I was vertical. A fraction of a second later, I was horizontal. Gravity is not your friend. Neither is the law that mass times acceleration equals velocity.

I lay on the ground for a few seconds, wondering if I was hurt. No cracking of bones, no fountains of blood. No pain, either. Bizarrely, when I fell, I rotated my left wrist, so the soda I was holding in my left hand barely spilled.

Somehow, the keys which I was carrying in the same hand ended up 20 feet away. It took me five minutes, from the point of impact, walking in an ever-widening spiral, to find them in the grass.

The fall happened on a Thursday evening. I was fine until Saturday night. Then my left hip started to ache. Badly. So badly I was ready to go to the ER. I knew there was no major damage, just a bruised muscle or tendon. But no matter which position I was in, my hip hurt. And it hurt so badly I knew sleep was out of the question.

A few years ago I had tendonitis in my left shoulder, which is a swollen tendon. It hurt like you wouldn't believe. I ended up at the ER. The cost: $500, for a shot of painkiller. "That's all we can do for it," the doctor told me.

Fortunately, my insurance paid for most of it, but I swore I would never go to the ER again unless I was taken there unconscious. $500 for a painkiller? No wonder medical costs are out of control.

As I lay there with my aching hip, I wondered what I was going to do. I had no painkillers in the house, and nothing over-the-counter would even touch the pain I was feeling.

Then it occurred to me . . . before the State in its stupidity had made marijuana illegal, doctors prescribed it for all sorts of maladies. Lack of appetite, for one, as everyone knows. That I knew about, considering how much French vanilla ice cream I inhaled on Friday and Saturday nights when I was in high school.

When it was banned, doctors opposed it. Hemp, as it was called then, was used for too many disorders to be so cavalierly dismissed by the ignorant and incompetent in government.

I remember doctors had prescribed it for insomnia, as a muscle relaxer for pregnant women, and for pain.

So, I called up a friend of mine and explained the situation. He, of course, laughed hysterically. "So," he giggled, "you're going to be a 'hepcat' and take a 'toke' of some 'reefer,' huh? I'll see if I can find a 'lid' somewhere."

He gave me an amount about the size of a pea. He even lent me a pipe. I felt ridiculous, puffing on that tiny pipe like I was 16 again, but enough pain overcomes anything.

Much to my surprise, after about two minutes the pain in my hip started to go away. Not completely, but enough so that the pain was tolerable. And the muscles loosened up enough so that I could get up without groaning and cursing and staggering around like Frankenstein's monster. And I got sleepy.

And I wasn't high, either.

I fell asleep, and when I woke up the next morning, the injury had healed enough so I could get around with hobbling and grimacing. A few days later I was fine.

The total cost, according to my friend, if he had charged me for the amount I used, would have been a few dollars. That is obviously a heck of a lot less than $500.

Please don't tell me all about the horrors of drug use. I know all about them.

I've seen kids shoot up when I was 15 years old, I've seen them die from ODs in ditches and from sniffing paint, I've seen alcoholics act completely normal when sober and like they were possessed by demons when they were drunk.

So, the attempts to equate the responsible, occasional use of a medicine by an adult, with the collapse of society, is simply ridiculous.

As far as I'm concerned, it should be part of everyone's medicine cabinet.

Unless, of course, you have no problems shelling out $500 for an ER visit.

The Victory of Persuasion Over Force

Years ago, I adopted the scheme of the Russian writer Dmitri Merejkowski (1865–1941), who believed all religions could be divided into two basic ones.

In the first, Luciferian one, Man sacrifices Man to Man. In the second, God sacrifices Himself to Man. I am far more familiar with the first, having expended years of thought upon it.

I do know the second archetype has been around for thousands of years. Think of Prometheus, who gave mankind not only fire, but brickwork, woodworking, telling the seasons by the stars, numbers, the alphabet (for remembering things), yoked oxen, carriages, saddles, ships and sails, healing drugs, the mining of precious metals, and art. He paid for his effrontery by being shackled to a rock, where an eagle tried to devour his liver every day, after which it grew back overnight.

The second archetype was fulfilled in the sacrifice of Jesus, which, according the French philosopher and theologian Rene Girard, author of Violence and the Sacred, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, was supposed to finally put an end to the scapegoating and human sacrifice that was endemic in the pagan world, and so casually accepted. If anything, it would have truly put an end to evil, not the hallucinations of David Frum and Richard Perle, authors of the grossly misnamed An End to Evil.

Girard believed there were two functions to the scapegoat: social cohesion, and the attempt to renew society by doing violence to the scapegoat. The theologian Walter Wink, author of The Powers That Be, called the second function, "the Myth of Redemptive Violence." Both authors thought people, indeed entire societies, believed they could be made whole (a word with the same root as "healthy" and "hale") by projecting their own imperfections onto the scapegoat and eradicating it by violence.

Dostoevski, in The Brothers Karamazov, claimed that Jesus also gave people freedom, but that many more than anything else wanted to give up this "burden" for security, and to find someone to worship and provide for their every need. Their craving for a "community of worship" would lead to religious violence against scapegoats. Since it's the modern godlet State that is supposed to provide for these needs, Dostoevski's observations fit with the theories of Merejkowski, Wink and Girard. It also fits with what Chris Hedges wrote in War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning: "The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living."

That carnage, that destruction, is always based on finding a scapegoat, on human sacrifice, on believing in an Absolute Good and an Absolute Evil that always dehumanizes and demonizes the opponent. A group created by such things is what Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn meant when he wrote, "'I' is from God and 'We' is from the Devil." Social cohesion, indeed.

The US used alcohol for a while as a scapegoat, and currently is using drugs (some drugs, but certainly not those money-makers approved by the FDA, the AMA and the pharmaceutical companies). The first attempt didn't work and neither will the second. The attempt at Utopia, Heaven on Earth, the return to the Garden of Eden, whatever you want to call it, has always been considered blasphemy, and for the best of reasons. It not only never works, it always backfires. The road to Hell is truly paved with good intentions, and naive idealists have caused more catastrophes in the world than the most evil of evil people.

That first archetype, Man sacrificing Man to Man, was the scourge of the 20th century. The Nazis and the Communists danced to that tune, which ended in the deaths of perhaps 200 million people. That danse macabre is best embodied in the story of Satan, who deluded himself he could be God.

It's also embodied in the story of the Garden of Eden, where Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent, a symbol of envy. In any case it points out the first defense of people is to oversimplify and blame their problems on others, whether they are guilty or not. It is always the first defense of a group.

The first archetype is best associated with political power, what Albert Jay Nock in Our Enemy, the State, called the Political Means of force and fraud: murder, lying, theft. After all, Satan did tempt Jesus with political power over the kingdoms of the world, an offer He refused, but one which no politician ever has. Does this mean that all politicians are in some degree Satanic? Of that I have no doubt.

That first archetype -- Man sacrificing Man to Man -- is almost always associated with the Political Means (remember the Nazis and the Communists?), is often based upon envy and the avoidance of it, and is always based on the grandiose and narcissistic belief in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil. Were it not based on the fairy tale of pure good and pure evil, the projection of evil onto others could not exist.

Only with the belief in pure good and pure evil can Man sacrifice Man to Man. It is based on the belief that Man is God, and being God, can only remain God by eradicating that which is defined as evil. Those who define themselves as good always have to project their imperfections elsewhere. That "elsewhere" will always be the object of attempted annihilation.

This sacrificing of Man to Man has been going on for a long time. In the Bible the best-known example is that of Moloch, who required an occasional baby or two to hold his malice and envy at bay. This type of sacrificing even exists in the libertarian tradition, with Ayn Rand, whose popular novel Atlas Shrugged was based on her god-like heroes projecting their imperfections onto her evil, malicious, envious subhuman "looters" and "parasites," who were then sacrificed to save the purity of her demigods.

If the first archetype of Man sacrificing Man to Man is based on the Political Means of force and fraud, then the second archetype, God sacrificing Himself to Man, is based on voluntary persuasion, what Nock called the Economic Means. Not only Jesus, but every legitimate spiritual teacher has claimed that people must voluntarily change their hearts and minds. A clockwork-orangian Ludovico's Technique to bash people into being good will never work.

Alfred North Whitehead, in his book, Adventures of Ideas, had this to say about the difference between persuasion and force: "The creation of the world -- said Plato -- is the victory of persuasion over force...Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals...

"Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of these two forms: force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force."

In two nutshells this is what we have:

* FORCE: The Political Means of force and fraud.
* The fairy tale of Pure Good and Pure Evil.
* Scapegoating and human sacrifice.
* Violence as redemptive.

* PERSUASION: The Economic Means of voluntary persuasion and liberty.
* Good and Evil as a continuum.
* The extinction of scapegoating and human sacrifice.
* Violence not as redemptive, but always destructive.

George Bush has claimed Jesus is his favorite philosopher, a concept that would be amusing if it weren't so tragic, since he is ignoring that comment about "Blessed are the peacemakers." Bush is also ignoring the comment, "What does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul?"

It is clear to me that a substantial part of Christianity has been perverted, especially by Jerry Falwell and his kind. When he claims that "God is pro war" he is in his dull-wittedness supporting scapegoating, human sacrifice, the belief in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and violence as redemptive. Unfortunately there are in this country enough people like him to activate that saying about the blind leading the blind over a cliff.

Of course, this will always happen when there are enough people who can't tell the difference between God and the Devil.

A Bite of the Apple

There are many interpretations of the myth of the Garden of Eden, and I have mine.

In some versions of the story, what gets Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden is the fact they refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Adam blames Eve for making him take a bite of the apple (actually the word "apple" is never mentioned; it's just called "fruit"), and Eve blames the serpent.

What they're doing is scapegoating each other, and as M. Scott Peck pointed out in his book, People of the Lie, "Scapegoating is the genesis of human evil." And he's right.

Scapegoating is when people say, "I am good, and because I am good, I must project my imperfections elsewhere. Let's try you. That makes you evil and the cause of my problems."

It doesn't sound like much, but it is. The Nazis did it, and the Communists did it. In the 20th century I've read estimates of anywhere from 177 million to 200 million people dead because of State-sponsored scapegoating.

Today, you can see this scapegoating even in the United States. George Bush claims we were attacked because "we are good and they are evil." Since "they" are evil, of course they have to be killed. All this ignores the horrible things the United States has done to other countries, such as blockading Iraq for ten years and leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including children and infants.

Another interpretation of the story of the Garden of Eden is Innocence to Experience, and Unconsciousness to Consciousness. They are related to the scapegoating.

Adam and Eve are unaware of the difference between good and evil. They are innocent of it--unconscious of it.

Curiously, the story doesn't even suggest that evil doesn't exist, just that Adam and Eve aren't aware of it. When they eat the fruit, they then become aware of evil.

Before they eat the fruit, they are in the position I call, "I didn't know that." Evil exists, but people aren't aware of it. The example I use is to tell people that when the US invaded the Philippines in 1898, they killed about 200,000 people, and lost about 4000 troops.

Usually people tell me, "I didn't know that!" They are Adam and Eve before they ate of the fruit: evil is there, but they're aren't aware of it.

The next comment I often hear is, "I don't believe it." This usually means they do believe it, but don't want to admit it. This position isn't in the story of the Garden of Eden, but you might call it, "Taking a bite of the fruit." People are nibbling a little bit of it, and are starting to lose their innocence and become conscious of evil.

The next comment I often hear is, "Well, I agree with it." These are the people who say, "We had to kill 200,000 Filipinos, or a few hundred thousand Iraqis."

These are the people who have eaten the whole fruit. They know good and evil, but the "good and evil" they know is the limited kind that Adam and Eve knew, the kind that got them kicked out of the Garden and bought evil into the world.

These are the people who are essentially saying, "I agree with it because we are good and they are evil." That's what makes it okay, to them, to murder hundreds of thousands of people. They're scapegoating them, just the way Adam scapegoated Eve, and Eve, the serpent. It's what brings evil into the world.

A comment I occasionally hear from people is, "Yes, I know we've done bad things." That position isn't in the story of the Garden of Eden, either. But these are the people who take responsibility, unlike Adam and Eve. It's a position that moves beyond scapegoating, moves beyond saying, "I am good and you are evil and therefore are the cause of my problems."

It's a position that realizes there is no "good" over here and "evil" over there, with nothing in between. In reality, if it's anything, it's a continuum. Seeing good and evil as either white or black always leads to scapegoating, and therefore looses murder and destruction into the world, because people--and especially nations--are always going to claim they are the good guys and other nations, the bad guys.

In the story of the Garden of Eden there is a angel with a flaming sword baring the way back in. People usually interpret this to mean we can't go back to the happiness of the Garden of Eden.

I have another interpretation. The flaming sword is a warning not to return to the folly of Adam and Eve, of denying responsibility for what we've done. It's as good of an interpretation as any other, and to my mind, a better one. It's saying, "Don't go back to denying responsibility for your actions, don't go back to ignoring evil, don't go back to rationalizing it as a good thing."

Stephen Mitchell put it this way: "The clearer our insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can embody the good."

As far as I'm concerned, the Garden of Eden would be a lousy place to live.