Persuasion and marketing

Watching the Glenn Beck program on 13 JAN 2011 was a fascinating experience as the topic was Edward Bernays and marketing.  Mr. Bernays was one of the first admen to develop advertising campaigns based on psychological methods to create campaigns.  To do this he relied on the works of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, who identified basic drives of the body that are part of the unconscious human psyche.  Those advertising campaigns introduced the utilization of these drives (survival, thirst, sex, hunger) as part of their basis, so as to appeal to multiple levels of the unconscious mind and to utilize imagery and words that would linger in the association with whatever was being pushed.  Additionally he used an 'appeal to authority' by paying for studies that would 'show' certain scientific based concepts (ex. that hunger is better sated at breakfast with a richer meal including bacon and eggs) then send those to either other 'authorities' or to local individuals involved in that area of work (for the bacon example it was physicians).  Throw in some study generated numbers, an important institute or doctor and you have an advertising campaign.

It works, too, this appeal to the lowest part of the human psyche: sex sells.  Reading Frederik Pohl's works (both science fiction and some his autobiographical pieces) we get to see how this had worked by the 1950's, to the point where admen could sell magazines to doctors offices that didn't want them.  The process of advertising and market grows up around the concept of the animal part of man (that is natural man) wanting to be led to the successful conclusion of his desires.  That is why sex appeal sells, as well as campaigns for getting people to eat more or drink more, and even campaigns to get you to 'switch' brands are based on things other than the actual product being sold or are secondary to that product by slapping a label on it (like 'healthy' or 'diet').  This concept of a herd driven mentality towards products was utilized in politics to sell political parties, programs and ideologies.  We went from a Nation that had politicians not doing much, and rarely being reported on, to one in which they were on the airwaves, giving 'photo ops' of things they don't do in their daily life, and generally drying to mold the mind of public opinion on a constant basis.

Bernays recoiled from how these concepts were used in wartime Germany as they utilized the full suite of Freud and found it to be successful.  That suite of drives goes beyond those I've already listed and includes the 'death drive' or 'destrudo'.  This is part of the Freudian view of human psychology, and while psychology has varied from that even in the Freudian side of things, when one utilizes the concept of base human drives the destrudo is a functional part of that view.  The Nazi Party utilized symbology and iconography to enforce this (ex. the death's head symbol as part of the concentration camp SS insignia) and through the concept that the next generation would be fiercer and 'do what is necessary' for the problems of Germany.  This also worked and very effectively, to the point where Germans were turning their heads at cattle cars full of Jews going to the concentration camps.  At a subliminal level they had been marketed this idea since the late 1920's as the NSDAP rose to prominence, and part of the idea was to 'perfect' Germany's culture by subtracting the 'unwanted' portion of it.

Here, as James Burke would say in Connections, I could follow many paths.

I could follow down the line of books on The Making of the President XXXX where the year would be in the X's.  Those works offer insight into campaigns and reviewing them allows for a longer perspective of how marketing has not only changed political discourse and elections, but change the type and kind of people who run for office.

Or I could examine the way companies have utilized marketing to influence public opinion and then turned a small portion of their dollars into the industry of marketing their ideas to government.  That forms a cycle of public funds going to favored companies that have good insider contacts so as to garner those public funds via the appropriation process, and then 'reward' that legislator by putting some jobs or work in their district and sending campaign contributions to them.  By getting the idea you can 'regulate' something via appeal to public unconscious drives, legislators then push their programs forward and can find not only electoral success but money from those they regulate.  This is usually done through the venue of fear, so that people come to believe they have something to fear about the activities of companies... sometimes you do and other times it is just marketing to push an agenda.

I could even look at the intrusion of marketing into grief, as was done at the recent Tucson, AZ memorial service that, for all the pleasant sounding words of the speech given by the President, the symbology and reactions clash in discord.  But I've already done that, and it is actually a spin-off that I put out first to help gel a few ideas.

Instead I'm going to look at that complex between science (or at least scientific sounding) work with marketing and the problem of politicians not understanding that the Freud animal driven complex is not the be-all, end-all of psychological analysis.

The problem with going into the animal based subconscious as being the primary driver of man is that it runs into the problem of rational thought.  This is driven by the irrational motivations of the body, in the Freudian venue, but has a wholly different perspective under a different school, that of Carl Jung, say.  To become a functioning individual you must integrate the rational and irrational, the conscious and unconscious, and retain conscious autonomy so as to be an individual: you are not a beast in a herd but a conscious animal able to integrated and control base desires with the conscious mind.  The horror of subliminal advertising, then, is to approach only the unconscious mind if the conscious mind does not have the necessary understanding to properly tag the subliminal content so that the unconscious mind can weigh the import of any given message.

Jung then posed a second part of the human psyche that was not wrapped up inside individuals, but was held by all mankind as part of our natural background.  In this view of the unconscious there is also the archetypes of characters that are the pure forms of those beings we have come to represent through mythology and stories.  These forms reside within us unconsciously, and we seek out these archetypes when we are troubled in our lives.  As someone said of Batman: 'When I was in danger of losing my life I sought to find the answer Batman would have to my situation, and then did that action'.  You rarely, if ever, reach into that storehouse on a conscious basis, and yet it is always available to your unconscious mind.  Asking 'What Would Jesus Do?' is doing just that: reaching for that which is Jesus in all of us, so as to find his answer and implement it.

Now to show how this works, we have seen the slow erosion of our political and economic systems via the foundations built by the Progressive movement integrating Freudian concepts into campaigns and pushing agendas.  As Bernays said, the end result was to have an elite class that would be a benevolent dictatorship to the masses.  If you listen to all the Marxist rhetoric, you would expect people to take to the streets, demand ever more, as that is their base natural desires being denied by the act of government after getting them used to living at the government teat for such things as welfare, unemployment, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid... the list is long.  This is what is going on in Europe, by and large and is an age-old, archetypical tradition there that stretches back for centuries or even longer.  When the King withholds a good to the populace, the peasants revolt... and then are put down and submit to the ruling order.

In America, however, the concepts of thrift, patriotism and each individual making their own way in life has created a force counter to the Freudian driven addictive force for more government: the Tea Party force for less and more accountable government.  The elites are being seen as failures not only on the personal scale (where government programs must win adherents) but at the National level as well.  When 70% of the population does not want the debt ceiling raised for the country, they are not drawing upon a Freudian drive but a Jungian archetype that we remember from our Founding and Framing eras.  America started in debt and only got out of debt when Andrew Jackson was in office: he was the first President to preside over a debt-free country, and he then proceeded to remove the National Bank from the government's rolls so that it couldn't manipulate the economy directly again.

In the realm of fiction there are very, very, very few authors that even attempt this sort of thing.  The best that I've read is Gordon R. Dickson who utilizes this throughout his large Childe Cycle of works but most impressively in his novel Way of the Pilgrim.  In that novel Earth is taken over by a kindly but really quite powerful alien race... we get a benign despotism to rule over us.  We are handed the 'hope' that in a few generations we will become skilled enough so as to be 'brothers' to them.  Mankind, as a whole, slowly begins to reject this but not openly.  The first sign to show up is a simple stick figure of a man in a cloak with a staff.  He is called The Pilgrim.  The Pilgrim, as an archetype, exists across humanity and soon, very soon, people start to take up cloak and staff.  First it is scattered, then there are more and more.  The aliens don't know what to make of this, it is beyond them.  Then The Pilgrim begins to manifest directly in one man and he has no conscious knowledge of what The Pilgrim does when it manifests.  The message that is carried: mankind rejects your authority and wants you gone from our planet and we will all die in pursuit of this goal.  By then there are millions upon millions across the globe wearing cloak and carrying staff:  The Pilgrim has come.  Unwilling to commit genocide and unable to deal with something they don't have, they are forced to leave: they have no pool of archetypes to draw upon, no deeply shared unconscious capability, for all their power they have met a power greater than theirs in a realm they can't even go into.

This is why the appearance of the Tea Party is such a shock to the political Left and those who invest strongly in man as a barely rational animal: we are not just animals with a thin veneer of rationality, but a rational mind deeply in contact with our own unconscious not just for our bodily needs but for our outlook in life.  This is beyond the realm of politics, marketing, or even advertising as there is no way to influence our archetypes.  Those who are integrated individuals are not dictated to, but they tell you they wish to live their own lives in peace and to get the hell out of their faces.  We know the ways of the Rattlesnake and it is always fair in its warning and you always get it.  The message is clear: back off or suffer the consequences of your ill-thought out actions.

How else can one explain the quick spread of the Tea Party movement, from nothing to political force in less than 2 years?  This is a remarkably American phenomena because of our storehouse of archetypes, which is a 'can do', 'if you want it done do it yourself' and 'get the hell off my lawn' formation that is NOT present in any other Nation on this planet.  Anyone with the integration capability with their unconscious that has some rational basis for these sorts of ideas CAN get in contact with these archetypes: they are universal to mankind, you just have to be flowing into their formation for them to manifest.  And once an archetype catches hold, especially in times of danger, it spreads like wildfire without even the need for conscious intention beyond the need for the answer which only the archetype can give.

Now if that isn't enough to scare the socks off the 'market it to their gonads and their minds will follow' crowd, the next part will remind you of how Einstein described quantum physics: 'spooky action at a distance'.

The concept of the Noosphere is given by Vladimir Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin as the 'sphere of human thought'.  This concept of a 'hive mind' has been around for awhile, that being a conscious construct shared by the entirety of humanity.  With that said the physical outlay of it is already happening with the World Wide Web teamed with a new set of laws based on computing, networks and the re-utilization of concepts at different scales (which I go over in this article).  The reason I say this is that the World Wide Web is a construct that allows our conscious minds to interact with each other in an asynchronous, multi-media mode.  This is not, perhaps, what was envisioned for this concept when it was first proposed, but the interesting parallels between the Web and the Noosphere are obvious.

With that said there is a definite unconscious part of the Noosphere that is only reflected in the consciously available material on the Web, and the rest of the material appears to reside elsewhere pre-Internet era. The Noosphere is used to explain how individuals pick up skills and knowledge faster than those people before them, and this is not even a 'direct teaching' form of learning as something like how to fashion bronze looks to be something less than a 'spread' of knowledge and more a 'multiple learning events' sort of knowledge.  This is closer to quantum theory and 'spooky action at a distance' than the relativistic view of information spread via slow word-of-mouth spread.  There are similarities in stone structures across the world (ex. pyramidal structures in Egypt and Central to South America) that have physical understanding as their basis, which is to say the angle of repose for particles cannot exceed a certain angle that depends on density, particle size and surface roughness.  The ability to organize relatively modest populations to complete these tasks is one of convergent understanding at a distance: dissimilar cultures find similar ways to organize to complete similar tasks without referents to each other.  That is the unconscious part of the Noosphere at work which is a mirroring of Jungian views on archetypes, though expanded to daily process knowledge (i.e. how to do things, make things, and the necessary skills involved for them).

This, like archetypes, is not something you can market or advertise to so as to influence an individual as it operates independently of the physical basis for mankind as it requires conscious and rational thought to allow access to it.  That physical basis coupled with rational thought would then be the necessary 'keys to the kingdom' to have access to this shared knowledge from individuals within cultures across cultural domains.

Where I have some disagreement with the Noosphere and individuals like Kurzweil, is the idea of a 'unity' formation of conscious minds to form one larger, complex, cross-cultural mental structure.  To date there are no indications of consciousness either by activity nor by messaging of this Noosphere.  The biologically based portion of it has acted more as a reference storehouse of knowledge than a communication system: more library with knowledge available than individual actively sharing knowledge by intent.  The dissemination of process information and cultural archetypes has been, instead, a form of dissemination far better described by quantum physics ('spooky action at a distance' between entangled particles sharing information at faster than light speed) than by complexity theory.

What the Noosphere does allow people to do as individuals is to process information faster.  This is part and parcel of the Feiler Faster Thesis (FFT) which I have examined as a phenomena multiple times.  It is represented, at first, by our ability to 'catch up' with the news cycle on a faster basis over time, which is to say that the rate of our rate of adaptation is increasing.  This is a 'meta' formulation of examining a process or creation of an artifact, so that meta-thinking is thinking about thinking and the meta-rate of change is the change of the rate of change.  Col. John Byrd (USAF) described this as getting within the 'OODA loop' of someone else in combat: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act.  Getting 'inside' and opponent's OODA loop is an essential part of combat operations and Col. Byrd's application of it to USAF concerns has proven to be a single instance within a huge category of human activity.  That is to say the OODA loop thesis can be widened in scope (utilizing the Gould scale applicability concept) to encompass how businesses operate, how you drive a car safely, how a chess match operates between human opponents, and, indeed, how you absorb information from the news.

The FFT is the process of tightening the individual's OODA loop to be within that of the overall news presentation cycle so that you are less surprised by future outcomes than the news presenters are.  Similarly you are better suited, as an individual, to understand the implications of new technology or world events due to the ability to tap into the Noosphere storehouse and find the way to hone your own perceptive skills so as to implement the FFT, since learning to do so is, itself, a skill.  If you wonder why government officials, regulatory agencies and such fall out of step with the way of world events or even just social realities, it is because their outward structure cannot incorporate the Noosphere and, thusly, the FFT.  Government is an external management system for the basics of ensuring safety for societies, it is not an operative system for enhancing knowledge or disseminating skills.  In fact the failure of those governments that try to do this is littered with millions dead in the vain attempt to create something in the physical realm that we already share in the conscious and unconscious realms.  What government is, however, is a physical safeguard of a culture and its territory and it is lent the negative powers that are granted to us by having a physical being by Nature, and we then take oversight of this created power structure for the good of all individuals within society.

Here is where the Jungian concept comes fully into play with the Noosphere: the Noosphere isn't a way to create a mass cognitive structure, but a way to allow the individual to create an individual identity within all of human culture and to find the necessary archetypes and process information so as to allow creativity to expand the overall knowledgebase and enhance archetypes, or even create new ones.  Thus the individual melds their physical bodies from Nature with their rational thought system keyed to their culture to allow them to better gain individuality and creative expression of their individual self.  Thus, if this is correct, we are heading into the steep learning curve era of enhanced individuality re-asserting its power over the social power structures we know as government, and not just within the USA, either.

For if we apply the Noosphere to the human condition with the understanding that it is to enhance human expression, and therefore human liberty, one must be free to utilize their positive liberty freely.  That requires the greatest liberty of all: freedom to utilize your positive liberties outside of the negative power oversight of government.

If you wondered how chapters of the Tea Party can form up in the UK, Germany, Italy, Israel, Russia and Australia, now you know.

The FFT is now in play on a global basis.

Gaining one's liberty from the State has always been fraught with danger.

What happens when this goes on a global scale?  My dearest hope is we do not get the kind of carnage of 1775-1783 for 10% dead and 15% fled where the 15% have nowhere to go means disaster.  There are better ways to do this as Gandhi and Aquino found, as well as some of the faster transitions of power in Eastern Europe with the fall of Communism.  I do hope those in power will learn from the Noosphere that it isn't worth the bloodshed to grasp power to the bitter end.  There is just no teaching some people, however, for they refuse to learn from the mistakes and lessons we have learned.

For The Pilgrim will not be denied.

Sphere: Related Content

A simple agreement

From Glenn Beck's website:

Denouncing violence from all sides including your own does not make your movement any less just.  To quote Martin Luther King:

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

I challenge all Americans, left or right, regardless if you’re a politician, pundit, painter, priest, parishioner, poet or porn star to agree with all of the following.

• I denounce violence, regardless of ideological motivation.
• I denounce anyone, from the Left, the Right or middle, who believes physical violence is the answer to whatever they feel is wrong with our country.
• I denounce those who wish to tear down our system and rebuild it in their own image, whatever that image may be.
• I denounce those from the Left, the Right or middle, who call for riots and violence as an opportunity to bring down and reconstruct our system.
• I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system – regardless of their underlying ideology – whether they come from the Hutaree Militia or Frances Fox Piven.
• I hold those responsible for the violence, responsible for the violence.  I denounce those who attempt to blame political opponents for the acts of madmen.
• I denounce those from the Left, the Right or middle that sees violence as a viable alternative to our long established system of change made within the constraints of our constitutional Republic.

I will stand with anyone willing to sign that pledge.  Today I make a personal choice.  I urge leaders of both sides and all walks of life to join me as all Americans joined hands on 9.12.2001.

Do note that this goes along with my agreement to The Manifesto Against Islamic Totalitarianism, with the provisos I outlined for that.

In this case the following I see as being recognized as being fully in accord with political non-violence:

• The right to defend myself via my civil rights against those who seek to do me injury or go after my loved ones or property. 
  
• To hold myself accountable in all such instances as is necessary for the continuation of a civil society by the rule of law when I must exercise the right to self-defense.
  
• The right to have and utilize my physical property without any interference so long as I present no danger to any one and the right to tell others to get off my damned lawn and keep their grubby fingers from my stuff.
  
• Likewise I respect the rights of others to their property and will respect their right to it and abide by their wishes for it as this is necessary to have a civil society.
  
• In all cases I abide by the Law of Nations which is universal and will resort to the positive liberty of war to defend myself, my loved ones and property from the violence and depredation of those seeking to bring savage war to me.
  
• I reject the savagery of personal warfare without sovereign sanction, denounce it in all cases and shall never exercise that so long as we maintain our civil society.
  
• As a citizen from a Nation that comes from the Great Peace of Westphalia via the colonizing power that started it, and in recognition of the great good of religious freedom, I extend the coverage of non-violence to religion as I have done previously for speech, as violence is never a prerequisite to religious belief or adherence.
  
• Anyone impugning violence as derived from speech must show a clear and demonstrable linkage between the actions and the speech involved and cannot assert that any atmosphere, iconography or 'feeling of hatred' is a cause to violence.  Crosshairs on districts is not a call to violence, nor is looking for a smaller and more accountable government. There is a distinction between evidence and hyperbole, and I do not misunderstand the latter for the former.
  
• Do note that violence propagated for political means is seen as savagery under the Law of Nations, and my unalienable rights do apply.

Not a single item on that list is a threat.

They are a solemn promise to you from me.

Just because they come from someone you don't like doesn't invalidate the promise behind them.  I am willing to take such a promise as it is an inherent exercise of my positive liberties to do so without regard to the source asking for such be it Glenn Beck, Cthulhu, Christ, Odin or that poor fellow down the street predicting the coming advent of the influx.  This is the responsibility of citizens to have a civil society, and I accept this burden gladly.

Can you do the same?

Sphere: Related Content

Future, Past

This is still a vanity blog as I said when I started it at the end of DEC 2005: this is not a dialogue blog, nor one that particularly entices commentary. I added the comments feature at the behest of a few individuals who then, of course, rarely commented. It is not that sort of blog, not a social blog. For the most part I am not a social person, and rarely did I go out when I was well and now, in worse straights, those times are limited still further. The social gatherings I did go to were rarely those to 'blow off steam' but, rather, had a point to them: conventions, interest meetings and gaming sessions. I dearly love society and those that keep it going. Unfortunately I am not refreshed nor renewed when partaking of it.

Also while I may write about current events it is in no way to assert that they should be read now, in the present, when these things are current. This blog has not been about the now, the present, but about a time after now, a time when these messages in bottles dispersed into caches around the globe will be available to those who need them. I desperately want them to not be needed by those in the future who will stumble across them.

Hope, while many things, is not a strategy.

It has been my pleasure and my horror to examine the 'problems' of the modern world in regards to terrorism. The horror, beyond the activity itself, is the degradation of our language, politics and even how we conceive of such things as society as we head down a path that is unmoored from the past. The past is to be our teacher and, as a teacher, she is not necessarily nice, sweet, kind, decent and even has some rather harsh concepts to get across to us. If we tremor in fear at those lessons, seek to say 'we are much better now' or to do worse and say 'what bad people these were in the past' we then distance ourselves from who and what we are as human beings. The horrors of the past are sometimes done in ignorance of what it is that is being done: the Children's Crusade began with such fervor over the innocent going to war, their fate, however, could have been predicted by any military expert who stepped away from the ideology and just looked at the skills and logistics of those going to war. World War I was taken on with the full and complete knowledge of how warfare had fundamentally changed as seen in the US Civil War and, yet, that was all discounted because we were (after all) Americans and uncouth. Yet the brutal logic of rate of fire, increased accuracy at far further distances and the invention of the machine gun all had precursors in the US Civil War that saw the first static trench warfare of the modern era in the Siege of Richmond. Europe had decided to ignore the past in that instance and in that of the Children's Crusade, and the result was horror beyond belief. Today the sensibilities of the effete elite are queasy even at the mention of war and what it is, as a function of Nation States. This does not get you an era without war, but an era with old forms of warfare that were being crushed when we were civilized now finding new root and growing quickly.

Those who wish to point out the cold facts of what warfare is, in the modern sense, are shunned by those who dare not even let themselves think of human conflict. When it is pointed out that the civilized rules of war that we have created to ensure the absolute brutality of war is kept at a minimum, they scoff, at once, and point to Dresden or Hiroshima. Yet the logic of Total War is that public military forces are but a representation of their Nation State and that mass war requires mass production which, in its turn, requires that the commerce of the Nation State be put into the battlefield to support the logistics of mass warfare. In a very real sense World War I and II were not won on the battlefield, but in the factories, mines, dams and productive capacity of the Nations involved to field forces. Soviet Russia moved entire factories to the Urals lest they be over-run and the Nation lose its production capability. Germany was at once blocked from resources and then had their productive capacity bombed and that was in retaliation for Germany doing the same thing to the UK. Japan did not realize the true wealth of North America in her resources and idled factories, and the fact that the Nation had to buy much of the steel seen in its aircraft, tanks and ships from the US before the war, speaks volumes about the inability of the island Nation to last through a long war. That is why they went after Manchuria, raped Peking, and went after Dutch and British holdings that had oil fields attached to them: the resources were necessary to run a modern war.

This logic of war cannot be glossed over and say that we are less civilized for waging it this way, and any student of history will look back at the 30 Years and 100 Years Wars and see that even without modern productive capacity, the populations were not exempt from the ravages of war and, in fact, were often the targets of war, though not due to industrial might but due to religious concerns. The absolute horror of 20% of Europe dead due to the 30 Years War started the Western Nation State into the idea of civilizing warfare and examining just what war was in the era of the Nation State. Here the differentiation of the powers of a Nation State and its government were put in context of society and discourse between Nations so that it could be examined, reflected upon and codified. The logic of those time still exists, today, in Total War and we consider it brutal beyond all knowledge to attack those who do not take part in the support of armies in the field... even when Total War requires that same commitment due to the logic of industrialized warfare.

Now we live in a post-Total War era: where the weapons are so horrifically capable that those of Mass Destruction must be aimed at population centers as they are the productive capacity of a Nation State. Yet, with all that power, the recent fights in the world have been of the small scale and of a different tone, tenor and type than we have seen in the interim period of the late 19th through the last quarter of the 20th century. We cannot return to those days as they are gone to us in our technical genius. Yet that same technical genius has put into play the most corrosive and destructive type of warfare known to modern man and it is not that of Nation States but individuals and bands of same, fighting without sanction as zealots and warlords. This most abhorrent kind of war we have tried to call 'terrorism' but even those on the political Left admit that 'terrorism' is just a tactic. With that said none dare call this type of war that 'terrorism' is a part of by its proper name.

It isn't because we fear that name. We should be so lucky!

It is because the political class of the 20th century has seen fit to try and divest our societies of their understandings of the nature of war, Nation States and Empires, and so they have decided that the term of 'piracy' deals with ships, booty, parrots, rum and an era long, long gone. Yet they exist not just as 'pirates' but as this thing known as 'terrorism', and they both come under a larger term that describes all this activity that you can read about going at least as far back to the fall of the Old Hittite Empire all the way to Soviet paratroop forces in the 1920's going after a bandit army in the hinterlands. The logic of what to call this category of activity, call it 'piracy' or 'terrorism' or 'bandit armies' or 'barbarian hordes', is known by the activity they do in pursuit of their ends.

If Public War, that thing we do as Nation States with solemnity, votes, declarations and such is what we know and it is the sanctioned use of force to assert the will of a Nation, then what is its opposite?

It is not Total War, that is Public War at its terminal conclusive stance in the system of Nation States.

This other form of warfare is done by individuals, without sanction, without pomp, without accountability, without public assent, without uniforms, without chain of command, without any trappings of establishing a Nation State or at least a State so that we may call them 'rebels' and at least offer them the sanctuary of the civilized rules of war. Those who disdain all of that are the enemies of not just their targets, but of all civilized means as they set themselves up to be judge, jury, executioner and they have no codified stance so they mete out such things at whim.

The term for this is Private War and it is the scourge of mankind as it is the harbinger of civilizations about to collapse or on the brink of same.

The Bronze Age saw this happen and the records are in numerous places with only Ancient Egypt surviving, and then only after losing all of its holdings East of the Sinai and West into the desert and coastal areas of North Africa. The Old Hittites, Assyrians, and Achaean Greek civilizations all fell. Ancient Egypt survived under Ramses III who would defeat the Sea Peoples and secure the coastline of Egypt. The ravages of the Sea People are still in evidence on inscriptions in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Crete and as far west as Gibraltar including Greek colonies in Sicily and the Italian Peninsula. The Linear B alphabet was lost due to this, as was literacy amongst the Greeks. The New Hittites would never establish the depth of power of the Old Hittites and never assemble anything close to the Old Hittite diplomatic archive. Egypt was destabilized and only pushing the Sea People and their land based confederates back to the shores saved the core of Ancient Egypt.

What fell was, of course, Troy, but more importantly the Old Hittite trade web that stretched beyond Egypt to what we now call Ethiopia all the way out to Mesopotamia and perhaps even to China, northeast to Siberia, north to the Baltic Sea and West to modern day France and Gibraltar. Troy was the major trade-hub of goods going from the Black to Mediterranean Seas, and goods going from Asia minor to Europe, and the islands and southern coast of Asia Minor represented a wealth of Hittite affiliates and colonies that plied their trade with the Greeks and Egyptians. They probably used many languages for trade, but only one was kept in baked clay which now has piles of shards in the Eastern Med and can be found scattered across some parts of the Western Med and even along the old Hittite trade routes into Asia: Linear B. Once deciphered Linear B proves out to be Greek and the shards are parts of shopping lists. There are still unmarked piles of shards of Linear B to this day, out in the open, they are that common. When you see a pile a foot deep, and more in the surf in the shoreline and further piles and scattered pieces along trails, you begin to get the idea of just how common shopping lists were and just how often they were used. The vast trade complex at Troy, with the perfect winds and shallow (now silted in harbor that is a field) plus scores of out-buildings, secondary wall, moat... all of that was a trade city of vast wealth that would dry up with the harbor and the moment trade was no longer safe through it. A decade long war to deprive Troy of its satellite support cities worked very well: Troy fell. So did the trade web.

Troy fell to war as we more or less know it, although without civilized refinements it was Public War of the 'attrition' sort.

What came after you can read about in the Odyssey: men on ships going to far shores for wealth, trade goods and even just for food. There is evidence that at least one Old Hittite city depopulated completely with its people set to sea who would then migrate West after ravaging the Eastern Med. After those times of troubles the resettling of all these peoples onto the shores of the Med would lead to new peoples arising (like the Phoenicians) and start to set the basis for much of the later history that would come about because of this set of migrations. What actually set them to motion may be multi-causational: the Lukka people lost their city when they went against their former Hittite allies, the Denyan's were possibly the Israelite Tribe of Dan exiled to ships, a somewhat drier and cooler climate regime changed fertile agricultural zones from where they had been, a plague ravaged the Old Hittite Empire, a number of smaller trade cities on Anatolia suffered from war and invasions, the possibility of earthquakes hitting a major city or a volcano erupting cannot be discounted... what can be said is that when civilized ways collapsed the uncivilized ways of warlords, pirates, brigands and roving peoples began. This may have gone on for as long as 300 years, but the transition from relatively stable City State and Imperial relations to roving Sea Peoples is, perhaps, all of two generations at the starting end. Call it less than 100 years, and probably less than 60 years.

It takes a number of items to bring down a civilized set of interactions between States. Today we have the breakdown of international trade due to absolutely insane forms of spending and borrowing not just in the US but across Europe, Asia as well. Unwilling to pay for government services up front, governments go into debt, money systems become destabilized and when this spreads into the interiors of Nations, then the ability to actually trade based on debt starts to decline, often rapidly. Building magnificent projects or spending huge amounts to 'help the retired' does not mitigate the debt that piles up that is to be paid off: trade suffers as debt is a very hard thing to trade with as its real value is in the negative, not the positive. Today thousands of ocean going freighters are at anchor in parts of Oceania and a 19th century clipper ship delivered goods faster than today's transports because it isn't worth spending the money to go fast. A President wants a railroad system as fast as it was... in the 1920's. Hooking people on government handouts turns them into beggars in their own land, waiting for handouts from the benevolent tyrants who have impoverished them with the very best of intentions. Strife of the Private War kind restarted, with great vigor, as ideological in nature, fostered by the USSR and other 'Red' Nations. Now, that has spilled over into religion and there is a religion on the move: Islam. Just as the Sea People move, so do they, and they bring their culture of strife with them, which gets you strife in your own land. It is not civilized to treat women as property, kill daughters because they dare to seek companionship of someone you do not approve based on religion, and to put forward that your religion will dominate all others and be the only religion on Earth.

Christians had some very nasty wars to go through to finally realize that the God of Reason does not speak in such ways but through persuasion of the mind. Yet that very ability to reason is now put at odds with an age of unreason in finances, debt, services, and a high twisting of what it means to be civilized so as to never criticize one's own degeneracy in not opposing the downfall of it. If we cannot oppose that most degenerate form of war, Private War, in which all Nations are at peril, then how, praytell, can the effete elite ever think about actually paying for the goodies they so dearly want via other people's money? Government is not made because man is 'perfectible' but because we are beings of nature with the flaws of nature within us and the very best we can do to safeguard ourselves from our fellow man is to create accountable governance. If we could be perfected by spending, we long ago would have reached that point and turned into perfect beings. Or at least convinced the poor that they should seek to not need a handout in perpetuity and to help their fellow man by working for what they eat... unfortunately the fruits of one's labor are readily taken by government with ever expanding appetite and power.

Government is built upon the ruins of paradise not because we are evil, but because in Nature and without society, there is no difference between evil and good. When man reverts to Natural Man by conscious design, he becomes that horror able to do anything at whim, including wage war on the rest of mankind. When we are able to reason we stop being amoral animals and become moral creatures who seek society so as to protect one's family, oneself and then those that are agreeable to common ways. All government is self-government, and must start with the individual. When you wish others to pay for your goodness, you are not upholding your part of the bargain: seeking to have government steal from others to 'do good' is an evil act in and of itself as it seeks to allow one to wash oneself of the responsibility to care for their fellow man in common society. That is not a 'noble' cause, even when nobles practice it: it is a degradation of your moral character, by you, because you are afraid to do good. Government is a necessary evil due to our fear of our fellow man turning into a creature of Nature once more against our society. When government is turned by those who do not uphold their compact with the rest of society, then government becomes evil and divorces itself from the role of being accountable defender of society and becomes the tyrannical dictator to society. The only governments ever able to sustain itself on that basis is called an Empire and they don't last long when more than 1% of the population is literate.

Which is why you aren't taught history, or much of anything else of value, and learning math and the natural sciences is demeaned in favor of the ideologically driven 'social sciences' which have no standards they must adhere to. For all that is taught, little is learned, and slowly the wedge of unreason is driven into our society by no longer teaching what civilization rests upon: YOU.

This is a vanity blog as I do have my points of vanity from time to time.

It is not a blog of unreason, unthinking or uncaring: I do my best to tell you what I see, how I see it and why (that part left out by so many) I see it that way.

I send out no negatives on anything save for those with negative behavior, negative attitudes and negative actions. Those that degrade and corrode society deserve criticism, as does their favored means to do so via our government. Yet for problems I bring up I do try to show a positive means out of them, or at least show they are part of the human condition beyond the ability of any government, at any time, to ameliorate because they are part of the Nature of Man. That is the civilized way to do things and to be civilized one must be civil.

Being civil to each other is our duty.

If you lose a civil tongue you are becoming uncivilized and no matter how good that feels at the start, it winds up with all your cherish gone from you as when you are in need you will find the milk of human kindness has run dry for you... because of what you have said and done in life. Screaming and churning your guts in hatred because someone dares to think differently and disagree with you in a civil manner is just the opposite of being civilized.

I have found that when all is in chaos, being a bastion of order gives calm to those around you.

It is not easy nor without cost to be civilized.

It really is cheaper than degrading yourself to let government be civilized for you, however.

Physically and mentally I am better off than I was when I started: this blog has helped me to recover.

Now there is hard work ahead to continue civilization, and I am busy within the limited energy I have.

Posting will be light. My prior posts show much of where we are going and what is needed to get through.

You cannot think your way to survival, you can only do your way to survival.

Now I do as I say.

Say what I mean.

Mean what I do.

Sphere: Related Content

All I needed to know to fix things was to read Instapunit

It seems I've been reading too much Instapundit these days as the good ideas on how to change the accountability system in DC is coming via his front page.  Now since he gives you what other people are saying, he acts as an aggregator of items... thus the Insty link will be first, his link out second, and any text by his readers or at the linked site will then be brought out. I will add commentary as needed.

Going in reverse chronological order!

Insty - Referencing an earlier post gets an e-mail from TaxProf Paul Caron:

This is the 14th year in a row the GAO has been unable to give a clean auditor’s opinion on the Government’s books!

One wonders why the 112th Congress does not try to extend Sarbanes-Oxley to Congress and treat members as “signing officers” for the U.S. Budget, subjecting them to liability for the GAO’s inability to opine on the Government’s financial statements.

As Insty said: Fat chance. But heh.

Do note that Congress exempts itself from health, safety, workforce rules, and all sorts of other items because... it can!  I didn't know we had an aristocracy in charge of our government.

The GAO hasn't been able to verify the books for 14 years, which means the last time it could do that was 1996.  This is not 'Bush's Fault', but he certainly didn't help, either.  Note that Clinton's vaunted economic mojo didn't prevent this, so I'm not pining away for a renewed Clinton Administration, either. 

And Congress is the 'signatory authority' on spending via the US Constitution.  Every contracts officer in every agency in the federal government is given the OK by Congress to spend.  So, yes, Congress should be considered for liability, too.  Hit them in their own pocketbooks for mismanagement.

 

Insty - CHANGE: 111th Congress Created More National Debt Than First 100 Combined.

Stop the spending!  You will hear that a lot from me... so simple that even Congress can't figure out how to do it, but a Caveman sure could.

 

Insty - DAN MITCHELL: Why Can’t We Copy those Radical Free-Market Canadians and Privatize the Air Traffic Control System?

And we could do the Post Office, too!  Although Canada hasn't figured that one out, yet.

 

Insty - SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Long Term Unemployment” Extended to 5 Years.

Note that this was done for inflation during the Carter years so as to lessen the analysis of what was really going on.  Now we have 'core inflation' which is energy and one or two other items, and the rest of it which is food and daily living expenses.  We used to track all of it, now its all about 'core inflation'.  Remember, when those in power see bad statistics they don't explain them, they change how you measure them.

 

Insty - UNEXPECTEDLY! Consumer Confidence Shows Surprise Drop In December. “Consumers’ labor market assessment worsened. The ‘jobs hard to get’ index rose to 46.8 percent in December from 46.3 percent last month, while the ‘jobs plentiful’ index dropped to 3.9 percent from 4.3 percent.”

After 'stop the spending' applying to governments there is 'No Shit Sherlock' or NSS applying to the obvious. Insty uses sardonic and sarcastic lead-ins instead, which works just as well.

 

Insty - MORE ENERGY CORNUCOPIANISM? Drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea.

Yes there is lots more of the old style of energy resources out there than anyone had ever thought.  'Peak Oil' is a static system analysis based on the known... what wasn't discovered must change that analysis as well as how we consume energy playing its role.  But then I'm for solar power satellites and getting off of stored energy reserves and having to go through intermediary sources (like bio-fuels or algae).  We have a lovely fusion reactor that is always on, so why not use it?

 

Insty - FINANCIAL TIMES: Non-US banks gain from Fed crisis fund: Half of emergency credit facility cash went to foreign institutions. Healthy ones in many cases — because the Fed didn’t want weak ones to be stigmatized.

Yes, we are bailing out Europe.

No, it isn't working.

Yes we are penalizing the taxpayer and screwing up our economy in search of doing these things, instead of letting the rule of law put things through normal foreclosure and bankruptcy proceedings.

Stop the spending and NSS.

 

Next is a long one as it tripped off this story idea...

Insty -

JERRY POURNELLE: “The most important event of 2010 was the election, when the country, having turned the Republicans out and confirmed that in the election of Obama, turned the Democrats out as well, and sent a number of newcomers to Washington in the hopes that they would not be captured by the system. Washington meanwhile made ready for them, planning to absorb them into the Iron Law mechanisms that have always been so successful. The most important event of 2011 will be the response of the new Congress to the manipulations of the Creeps and the Nuts, who remain with considerable influence, and the argument that ‘this is the way things are done’ in Washington.

UPDATE: Reader Tim Scott emails:

I see that you have a quote from Dr. Pournelle’s CHAOS MANOR website that was posted yesterday. In my opinion you should have quoted this instead:

Whether the Republicans will stand up to this is questionable. They have the power: they only need to insert “No monies appropriated under this Act shall be applied to the enforcement, regulation, application, implementation, or in any other way of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act popularly known as Obamacare”. The Obama Patient Protection etc. act gets its own appropriation, which can be done with considerable care. This will require patience and discipline among Republicans in the face of united scorn from the establishment Country Club Republicans, the mainstream media, and all of the Creeps and the Nuts.

We’ll know soon enough how this will go.

Spread the word on THAT one and see what happens.

Okay.

Yes!  As a fan of Jerry Pournelle, I do agree with him on much and this is one of those times.  Notice that it doesn't matter how you refer to Congresscritters, Left/Right, Dem/Rep, liberal/conservative, Creeps/Nuts... they all fit.

Definitely a NSS moment.

 

Insty - FLEECED: The upper 1% earned 19.6% of total income before tax, and paid 41% of the individual federal income tax. “No other major country is so dependent on so few taxpayers.”

We have the most 'progressive' tax code on the planet, to the point where, for the government of all the people less than half the people pay for it.  That is not right and even the poor should pay something to our common government as it protects them as well as the rich.  Otherwise you get a government of, for and by the rich... which is where we are headed.

 

Insty - JACQUES ATTALI: The West And The Tyranny Of Public Debt.

I'm just giving you the link, the text is worth reading.  Our debt is going to destroy the way we live and work, if we let it.

We must Stop the spending and pay off our debts and be responsible fiscally as a Nation as much as we expect ourselves to be.  And we, as a people, understand that we are to blame for our own fiscal insanity, so to we come to see that government is but a dark reflection of us.

 

Insty - CAN THIS SURVEY BE RIGHT? In The Worst Economy Ever, People Are Quitting Their Jobs With Nothing Else Lined Up. “While the unemployment number is growing, there is also a growing number of people who don’t see their joblessness as a bad thing.” It’s not unemployment, it’s funemployment!

And his reader replies on the topic say that, yes, this is right.  Not just 'Going Galt' but, also, 'Going Looter' as the public dole looks better than having a real job.  This is how you lose your liberty: it takes a government to 'help' people to do it.

 

Insty - MICKEY KAUS: Obama And Income Inequality: No New Brazils! “The question is then what makes Brazil Brazil. Is it wild riches at the top, or extreme poverty at the bottom? It seems pretty obvious. . . . The solution is tight labor markets. Get employers bidding for scarce workers and you’ll see incomes rise across the board without the need for government aid programs or tax redistribution. A major enemy of tight labor markets at the bottom is also fairly clear: unchecked immigration by undocumented low-skilled workers. It’s hard for a day laborer to command $18 an hour in the market if there are illegals hanging out on the corner willing to work for $7. Even experts who claim illlegal immigration is good for Americans overall admit that it’s not good for Americans at the bottom. In other words, it’s not good for income equality. Odd, then that Obama, in his ‘war on inequality,’ hasn’t made a big effort to prevent illegal immigration–or at least to prevent illegal immigration from returning with renewed force should the economy recover.”

Via the government minimum wage we have made it so that productive jobs cannot be done by Americans at that minimum wage.  Others can and will take those jobs - illegally.  And if you 'legalize' all the 'illegal immigrants' then they will not be able to keep their former low-paying jobs as... they are citizens!

Why doesn't 'comprehensive immigration' ever get traction?  Imagine the unemployment rate skyrocketing the month after it is passed.

You can't get to a place where citizens can't get jobs because it is illegal to do them at a certain wage... only a government can do that for you.

 

Insty - JOHN TIERNEY: Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet.

Good, good reading!

The short term is nasty.  The long term is bright so long as we get rid of the over-burden placed upon our goods, services and liberties.

I like that bet.  Surviving to the long-term is the problem, however.  Rome could have been corrected (as Augustus saw in his last days) if it had leadership willing to turn it back into a republic.  The tightly woven trade structure of the late Bronze Age, however, could not be saved by any single thing.  One came to depend on centralized power, the other centralized and supportive trade... which are we closer to, today?  Or is it neither?  Or both? 

Still, the 5 year bet is a good one if you see how the markets work.

Government is screwing up the market mechanisms.

Our choice: Rome, Greece, or trusting in our liberty and holding people and companies accountable without telling them what to do via regulation.  One of these works, and well.  The others, not so much.

 

Insty - CHANGE: Cash-Strapped Cities Hit Tax-Exempt Nonprofits With Plethora of ‘Fees.’

Note that 'non-profits' that serve as major income points to make a few individuals rich is something that, really, isn't a 'non-profit' just a limited profit arrangement.

And that takes us to 27 DEC 2010!

 

In two days we have seen the macro-economic scale: Energy and Trade are most likely to recover and expand.  In the long run things are never as bad as they seem.

Government has been lying to you for decades to try and absolve itself of problems and keep an over-regulated system afloat.  This is not working and is a countervailing force to the longer-term good trends.

In the very short term our people are being corrupted by a system that supports non-work, supports diluting the population by forcing citizens not to work, and then encouraging productive citizens not to work.

Some of the simplest solutions have come in a mere two days!

First - Congress is to be held accountable, personally, for the spending they pass.  They are the originator and that is what they wanted... unless they tried to write themselves out of the bill, in which case there is a Constitutional case to be brought.

Second - There must be a standardized way to examine consumer spending and cash flow.  The current system is being gamed and no one trusts it any more.

Third - Obamacare must be attacked via non-funding on all fronts by the House, all the way to provisos in each spending bill for that so that Obamacare becomes its own, separate, entity.  The States are doing the Court route, which is independent of this, but the massive change to healthcare must be ended.  Ditto this on the 'financial' system that the outgoing Congress is trying to set up.

Fourth - Energy is there for the taking and will lead us to more energy sources over time.  Apparently the planet has a lot of goodies stored away for us... if we dare to use them.

Fifth - Government must stop thinking that it can 'do good' by saying how little a man can make, giving freebies to the 'unemployed' and sucking the lifeblood from this Nation to pay to 'support' other Nations that couldn't figure out fiscal rectitude if they tried.  Paying good money after bad is a bad idea, and 'unemployment' must be limited to encourage the search for new jobs and new types of jobs.

 

Yes, Stop the spending!

The things that 'regulate' the economy and our lives are now acting contrary to all good sense.  These organs of society started with the best of intentions, but fell into Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.  Thus, acting to their own ends for more power, such cancerous organs must go to save the patient which is the Nation.  We will have problems after we get rid of such comfortable cancers, but we will be able to get up and move around and pick up the pieces.  Better that than to succumb to the cancer, now, isn't it?

Regulation only works for regulators.  We now get more authoritarianism, less liberty, less freedom and less personal accountability because government is willing to 'help' us with such lovely, soft chains.  Soon you will live and die at the behest of bureaucrats, there to 'help' you.

But you were born free.

Sphere: Related Content

Merry Christmas!

May your Christmas me joyful and bright,

Merry Christmas to all.

Sphere: Related Content