Say what you will about Gangsta Rappers or the Mafia but you gotta admit they just totally, totally, lack ambition.
After all, they only aspire to waste a few dozen victims over their lifetimes.
But each of the three ganger-bangers dictators of the 1933 to 1953 period aimed much higher.
Each individually 'wasted' tens of millions of people during their reigns.
These were those millions upon millions of people they neither killed during combat nor set out to deliberately and directly murder by gun, rope or needle.
These were all the people that these three dictators figured they could afford to kill off fairly quickly by starvation, neglect and overwork , because the value of their continuing physical labour and brainpower was judged less valuable than the minimal cost of providing them a little more food and care.
Against the minimal numbers of low level people these three killers judged were actually needed in a Mechanical Age and a Mechanical War , there seemed lots more expendable human hands still pouring out the pipeline.
But, in fact, all three lost their wars ( including Stalin) because of their desperate shortages of 'manpower'(ie people) actually needed to successfully impose their will upon Mother Nature and upon other nations.
Forget their millions of deliberate murders - these three spendthrifts 'wasted' more lives than they murdered : even if they had never murdered one soul during their reigns, their Crimes Against Humanity would still make the stones cry out....
Monday, March 5, 2012
Can our world, particularly our world at war, get along without natural resources (such as most people) - substituting pure mental ingenuity instead?
Which is to ask, " was the war of 1939-1945 better labelled 'SOLOW'S WAR' ?"
Fundamentally, the leading lights of the Allies , as well as those of the Axis , would have agreed.
(As would the elites of most of the Neutrals, if they had been asked to think about it).
They all thought that, in the end, human mental MINDpower could surmount anything MATERIAL that Mother Nature could throw at them : be it a feast of bad weather or a famine of natural rubber.
Now nobody started an aggressive war (or conducted a defensive war) between 1939 and 1945 because of the economic theories of Robert Solow.
He was only 15 when the war began and he didn't utter his immortal quote that:
Besides as which, the theory hardly originated with Professor Solow --- it would be far, far better to lay credit where credit is due , at the feet of English Chemist John Dalton and his multitude of disciples in all the scientific and quasi-scientific disciplines.
But Solow is the one who has made the concept famous in contemporary times and who can say whether Dalton might have changed his views, in the lighter of newer scientific knowledge, if he had lived that long.
Robert Solow is still alive, has never fundamentally denounced this claim and so let him wear it.
Solow and Dalton's theory is basically a re-statement of The Good News Law (the First law of Thermodynamics) without the awkwardness of The Bad News Law (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) raining on the parade.
One could call The First Law of Thermodynamics the apogee of human hubris, just as the Second law of Thermodynamics is its nadir.
But haven't I already used that line to describe WWII ?
And your point being ?
Fundamentally, the leading lights of the Allies , as well as those of the Axis , would have agreed.
(As would the elites of most of the Neutrals, if they had been asked to think about it).
They all thought that, in the end, human mental MINDpower could surmount anything MATERIAL that Mother Nature could throw at them : be it a feast of bad weather or a famine of natural rubber.
Now nobody started an aggressive war (or conducted a defensive war) between 1939 and 1945 because of the economic theories of Robert Solow.
He was only 15 when the war began and he didn't utter his immortal quote that:
"If it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then there is, in principle, no problem. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources.
("The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics.") Robert M. Solow. The American Economic Review, Vol. 64until 1974, 35 years later.
Besides as which, the theory hardly originated with Professor Solow --- it would be far, far better to lay credit where credit is due , at the feet of English Chemist John Dalton and his multitude of disciples in all the scientific and quasi-scientific disciplines.
But Solow is the one who has made the concept famous in contemporary times and who can say whether Dalton might have changed his views, in the lighter of newer scientific knowledge, if he had lived that long.
Robert Solow is still alive, has never fundamentally denounced this claim and so let him wear it.
Solow and Dalton's theory is basically a re-statement of The Good News Law (the First law of Thermodynamics) without the awkwardness of The Bad News Law (the Second Law of Thermodynamics) raining on the parade.
One could call The First Law of Thermodynamics the apogee of human hubris, just as the Second law of Thermodynamics is its nadir.
But haven't I already used that line to describe WWII ?
And your point being ?
Sunday, March 4, 2012
A war history that isn't just about the clash of WILLS -- impossible ?
I hope my account of WWII is a gripping, paper-turning, human-interest story - but I hope it isn't of interest to humans because it is all about humans and all about humans only.
When War History ( capital W, capital H) is seen only through the prism of the clash of human wills, it ends up as just university-level navel gazing : navel-gazing with tenure.
War can be more accurately seen as the clash of various human wills with other human wills and all of these wills clashing with the material limitations of Reality.
I really would have loved to entitle this blog as:
"1939-1945: REALITY's side of the story."
But I feared that it would simply come across as just another tell-all recounting of this perpetually popular 'epic clash of human will' .
Reality merely being a codeword for 'yet newer archival revelations about human conduct'.
Now describing Reality, that Universe we all swim in, as Nature clearly has its dangers.
(Because when Reality is reduced to Nature , it is as if its limitations are seen as existing in a lesser, parallel world from the limitless mental world of us humans.
That is our familiar delusionary world of 'name it and claim it', 'dare to dream', 'mind over matter' , 'where there is a will there is a way' , etc.
Thankfully in much of today's conventional thought , The Natural World is often seen as extending to include everything just short of human mental thoughts - ie it does included our mortal fallible bodies and their material needs.
That is a definition of Nature I can sort of live with, though I personally believe our mental activities are just as much a part of the Natural World as my pet dog's daydreams.
So when reading this blog, recast your image of Nature to encompassing everything in the Universe, including our mental reveries, and you'll do just fine....
When War History ( capital W, capital H) is seen only through the prism of the clash of human wills, it ends up as just university-level navel gazing : navel-gazing with tenure.
War can be more accurately seen as the clash of various human wills with other human wills and all of these wills clashing with the material limitations of Reality.
I really would have loved to entitle this blog as:
"1939-1945: REALITY's side of the story."
But I feared that it would simply come across as just another tell-all recounting of this perpetually popular 'epic clash of human will' .
Reality merely being a codeword for 'yet newer archival revelations about human conduct'.
Now describing Reality, that Universe we all swim in, as Nature clearly has its dangers.
(Because when Reality is reduced to Nature , it is as if its limitations are seen as existing in a lesser, parallel world from the limitless mental world of us humans.
That is our familiar delusionary world of 'name it and claim it', 'dare to dream', 'mind over matter' , 'where there is a will there is a way' , etc.
Thankfully in much of today's conventional thought , The Natural World is often seen as extending to include everything just short of human mental thoughts - ie it does included our mortal fallible bodies and their material needs.
That is a definition of Nature I can sort of live with, though I personally believe our mental activities are just as much a part of the Natural World as my pet dog's daydreams.
So when reading this blog, recast your image of Nature to encompassing everything in the Universe, including our mental reveries, and you'll do just fine....
Saturday, March 3, 2012
the upcoming "PROGRESS versus the PLANET" conflagration...
NATURE bites back (gently) : "Vita Com Mensa"
World War Two, that Very Bad News War, can now be seen as the peak of NON-RENEWABLE MODERNITY, both the apogee of the Modern Age and also its nadir.
Since then, people have wondered just what belief system would and should replace Non-Renewable Modernity.
I believe Non-Renewable Modernity's best replacement can be described as " VITA CON MENSA" .
That is the view that that 'all Life dines at a common table' .
In other words, Commensality, in its broadest and most generous sense.
Yes I admit much of this can also be seen asPost-Modernity.
But its almost 75 years after Kristallnacht and Munich.
We have been Post Modern almost longer than we have been Modern !
Isn't about time this new era got a name of its own, instead of just being the negation of its predecessor ?
Isn't time for Humanity to admit that it isn't beyond and above Nature and its material limits.
Isn't it past time that we accept that we are embedded in Nature and Nature in us, like it or not.
And shouldn't we accept that all life forms are interdependent on each other for their very survival.
I believe before we can begin saving this burning planet from ourselves, we must learn to think and feel differently.
We must cast off all traces of Non-Renewable Modernity and start embracing Commensality as our new credo.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
That Pitbull Bites --- as did WWII....
Cancer bites - Mosquitoes bite.
Insects, cancer: they all suck, they all bite.
Getting bitten by a pitbull bites.
All these things have two closely related meanings:
They are all metaphorically dreadful and they are all literally painful.
Just as 1939-1945 (aka WWII aka MODERNITY UNLEASHED) was.
WWII bites, WWII sucks, because it bit 60 to 75 million people and bit them to death.
And that sucks, Big Time ----literally and figuratively....
Insects, cancer: they all suck, they all bite.
Getting bitten by a pitbull bites.
All these things have two closely related meanings:
They are all metaphorically dreadful and they are all literally painful.
Just as 1939-1945 (aka WWII aka MODERNITY UNLEASHED) was.
WWII bites, WWII sucks, because it bit 60 to 75 million people and bit them to death.
And that sucks, Big Time ----literally and figuratively....
"NON-RENEWABLE Modernity" was an "AUTARKY Modernity" wannabe
Modernity actually and always aspired to Total Autarky in relationship with Nature : reducing all Biology and Life to a matter of Geology, making absolutely everything , including Life itself, synthetically out of rocks - the famous "air,water and coaltar" of 1940s chemistry.
But until that glorious day, Modernity knew it got its energy from non-renewable energy sources.
It was non-renewable in a peculiar sense of that phrase, at least in today's eyes.
Modernists didn't really feel that the world itself was about to run out of coal, gas and petroleum - not at least for many many centuries to come --- but they all fretted that their nation - and their's alone - would soon run out, before their enemies or competitors did.
This is what gives that special frenetic, panic-stricken, edginess to the supposedly optimistic Age of Modernity .
Could their nation learn how to break up atoms to produce endless amounts of energy and new elements, before their country ran out of its reserves of fossil fuels ?
Ultimately, Modernists like Hitler and Stalin and Churchill believed that the only real energy in reality was human mental energy, the Triumph of the WILL, but until the human mind unlocked the secret of the atom, petroleum would have to serve a very poor second....
But until that glorious day, Modernity knew it got its energy from non-renewable energy sources.
It was non-renewable in a peculiar sense of that phrase, at least in today's eyes.
Modernists didn't really feel that the world itself was about to run out of coal, gas and petroleum - not at least for many many centuries to come --- but they all fretted that their nation - and their's alone - would soon run out, before their enemies or competitors did.
This is what gives that special frenetic, panic-stricken, edginess to the supposedly optimistic Age of Modernity .
Could their nation learn how to break up atoms to produce endless amounts of energy and new elements, before their country ran out of its reserves of fossil fuels ?
Ultimately, Modernists like Hitler and Stalin and Churchill believed that the only real energy in reality was human mental energy, the Triumph of the WILL, but until the human mind unlocked the secret of the atom, petroleum would have to serve a very poor second....
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