Endless War

This is a war universe.  War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war. . . .  --William S. Burroughs

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We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.  Paul Harvey, 5/23/05 Commentary

That we live in a war universe seems to be axiomatic and yet it is also rather disconnected from the rather buffered lives of most educated, liberal bourgeois. This disconnect, this delusional sense that the relatively peaceable life that they live is normative and that violent conflict is aberrant, is precisely what allows the bad guys to win.

Who are the bad guys? The people throughout history who lie, murder, assassinate, liquidate, purge, cleanse, avenge, or do whatever it takes to make sure their interest group--be it family, tribe, race, party, class--nation stays on top. It's the compulsion to stay on top and to use any means necessary to achieve it that is at the root of the problem. It's called the will to power. It's what makes the world go 'round. Who are the good guys?  Those who refuse to submit to the logic of the will to power.

Paul Harvey, that icon of Middle American conservatism, tells it as it is. American ideals about fairness and justice are "sugar candy" for people with his will-to-power mentality. By definition such people are not to be taken seriously once any threat to the "preservation and prospering of the American way of  life" arises. For this mindset, the preservation of that way of life requires a defense based on pre-emptive attack because the world is full of people everywhere who hate Americans for their "freedoms".

There is always a lofty rationale to justify the most primitive of our compulsions. But the exercise of freedom we are justifiably hated for is the freedom of the master to do as he pleases, which is contrasted with the unfreedom of him who serves the master. Ask a typical Yankee-hating Latin American why he hates Americans for their freedoms. Maybe it's because the exercise of American freedom comes at the cost of the restriction of his own.

So this poses a problem for the rest of us who are not obsessed with staying on top and who refuse the logic of the will to power.  We'd prefer not to fight. We've got more interesting and productive things to do than to play at this primitive game. For me, it's fundamentally uninteresting in its idiotic crudity. And yet we are playing in the game whether we choose to or not because we are living in a 'war universe'. So we have four options about how to live in the war universe: One, the monastic option or an option like the ones the Amish have chosen--the stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off option. Two, the option to live in the world and just go along with whoever is in power and not think about it too much. Three, the I-understand-how-bad-it-is-but-am-just-going=to-mind-my-own-business option. Four, the option to resist, the stand-and-fight option.

if we choose to fight, it won't be a fair fight. It's asymmetrical by definition. We're dealing with people who are merciless, who lie, cheat, steal, murder, bribe, coopt--people, in other words, who are possessed by the will to power, and who see any means as justified to achieve and maintain that power. So do we have to play the game on their terms? I would say that has to be avoided at all costs, but that means fighting with some other source of power that rejects the will to power. I think we saw how that might work in South Africa, and we saw it in the American South in the 1960s. But those were situations in which the bad guys were so obvious, so cartoonish, and where the historical abuses were suffered for a very long time, and obvious to anyone with an ounce of decency. But it's not about decency; it's about power and the the will to resist those possessed by the will to power.

I'm certain that  eventually we will see conscience-driven resistance movements arise again. But the will to push back seems to require a period of severe suffering from those who are not possessed by the will to power--and that's probably the way it's going to play out for us in our current predicament. Because for now the people who are most acutely aware of and appalled by the current configuration of power are for the most part are choosing option 3. I'm one of them because I don't see a viable, conscience-driven option for 4. Or maybe I just don't want to see one. 

Comments

[Mike Whelan]

Hi Jack,

How about "Be ye wise as serpents and gentle as doves." The ancients knew more about the nature of power than we ever will, in spite of the fact that we live in the most powerful country in the history of the earth. We are just conflicted with the idea that we can do something about it on the macro scale. That strikes me as an inverted form of a "will to power" to "do good". I think the "resistance" that you allude to in option 4 is more subtle. Not suicide, resignation or moral triumphalism - rather thought, speech and action informed by gentleness with no illusions about "the way things are". There are battles to be won in the microcosm.

I've been following your posts for a couple of months now. There are times when they actually "make my day"

Your brother.

Mike

[Jack Whelan]

Hey Mike--I"m delighted to hear you're a regular reader--and I hope you become a regular commenter.

I understand what you mean, and I suppose if I thought that we were just going to revert to some kind of oligarchical status quo ante, I'd be more resigned and content to fight the small battles in the real concrete world in which I live. There's plenty for me to attend to there for sure.

And I agree that the will to power as the ancients understood is essentially the same spiritual animal now, but I think there are two things that make it different now. The first is technology. It magnifies that animal by who knows what factor and it changes the nature of the game in a very fundamental way. I'm just not talking about surveillance and military weapon technology but about the kinds of biotechnological challenges to our traditional understanding about what it means to be human. And I don't see yet where there's a counterbalance to what seems to be what I called the other day the default option, and I see this as the option for barbarism unless something else can rise up to temper it, tame it, humanize it.

The second thing that seems to be significantly different is the fragilization of tradition and custom. People behave decently when things are going reasonably weel, but there's no real ballast in the culture. The superstructure of Christian and humanist values is a rickety thing that will blow over when a storm arises. There are individuals every where with integrity and courage, but as a society, we're rather in a Weimar anything goes mode. This is what the All Things Shining authors don't seem to grapple with in their celebration of polytheism--it leaves us divided and conquered at a time when humanists need some basic commitment that can unify them to resist the coming barbarism. And it's this basic commitment that I'm groping for, not just for myself--I know what my commitments are--but for a collective effort that can provide an option 4 united front. I'm all for subtlety and gentleness, but I'm also for effectiveness.