Comparative ideology on the prowl

Sometimes I wish I could have little nations, nations no one would miss, to test out particular ideological ideas and observe the resulting effects. The procedure would go something like this: 

One would seal the borders. One would ensure that compliance with the test run ideology was met with enthusiastic support from the populace. One would then begin to watch the test subjects actually conducting their economic affairs as though they were implementing or even just trying to implement any of dozens of ideologies, as happy as clams. Even trying counts! Trying is data. 

"You, Lithuania! Yes, you. Steady-state economics. And you, Guatemala. It's Henry George's Single Tax for you! Good luck!" one would say encouragingly, as if blissfully unaware that a freshly-sharpened Sword of Damocles was now hanging over the inhabitants of the test areas.

After the first series of test runs it would be possible to refine the run design so as to take observed factors into account. "Mmm, yes, mm, so social credit policies managed to control inflation in the Neu Sealand test area better than expected before that final incandescent crescendo, but maybe if we tweak some of the policies of the Economics Directorate..."

Some of the test areas might experience difficulty, but we at the Ministry of Comparison and Contrast see the information thus gleaned as of supreme importance to the cause of constructing eudaemonic social patterns in the noise of human flux. Any victims may be assured of their contribution to the advance of empirical comparative ideology. Let the tests begin!

This is MY vote! Notes on the Nonexistence of Democracy

Terms like soft totalitarianism or enlightened despotism begin to convey the situation of representative oligarchy, which is one the strangest ideologies ever to arise. I spend a lot of time thinking about it, not always from the standpoint of aversion but sometimes even from grudging respect.

But my respect for 'democracy' is not based on its existence, since I have never known one to exist in all of human history which was not the inclusive rhetoric of an oligarchic class. Rather, such respect as it has pried from my white-knuckled fingers is due to the very license that the mass presumption of its existence entails.

The belief that freedom of expression and other rights are a bulwark against tyranny ignores the fact that autocrats have always understood the role of a limited degree of license, and never so sophisticatedly as at present; for there are subtler ways of controlling people than overtly crushing them.

Overt suppression spooks the herd, wastes resources, sours foreign relations, and discourages not only those activities on the part of the population which might be construed as negative but also those which might be construed as positive. Societal traumatization results in a regression in all classes of behavior, including those which rulers in general desire, those classes of behavior tending to preserve their power base while still affording the peons the opportunity to stretch their legs.

Social atomization? Meet freedom of speech. Freedom of speech? Meet social atomization. I’ll sure that you’ll have much to talk about.

The 1886 Ghost Waka of Lake Tarawera: anomalistic analysis and accompanying poem

I want to share one of my favorite Neu Sealand anomalies: the waka-tainua or ghost waka that was supposed to have been seen by a mixed audience of Pakeha and Maori before the famous Tarawera eruption. The sighting preceded the destruction of the Pink and White Terraces in the late 19th century. Those in the boat were supposed to have been wearing traditional flaxen clothing; to have taken no note of hails from the tourist party and their Maori guides; and to have been sailing exactly towards Tarawera, like the needle of a compass, roughly a week before the eruption. In addition, the waters of the lake rose significantly and then subsided on that very morning prior to the tourist outing's departure from the shore.

I was so fascinated by this New Zealand story, and also so taken at the same time by what is called "tectonic strain theory" or "earth lights" in their psychological aspects, that I combined the two; to my knowledge, the event was never taken seriously in that way before, but I have a habit of taking witness testimony seriously enough to credit the existence of at least an actual stimulus, whether it be exactly that apparent or not.

This is because I do not ridicule anything by nature, and know well the tendency of human beings to ridicule rather than to analyze. It is a waste of precious witness testimony on the bumpkin satisfactions of incredulity. I regret that so much reportage of anomalous events is automatically dismissed as though it cannot be considered from a broader point of view. This is the “more things in Heav’n and Earth” approach of anomalistics, the rigorous, applied study of anomalies; and it is exactly the sort of anomaly that I seek out wherever I find myself. 

The deliberate seeking out of anomalies can never fail to tell me basic things about the psychology and the sociology of the place in its cultural aspect, and so I am at least in that wise repaid by my interest. But it is precisely among the anomalies that one may find the sort of ball of yarn that unravels to yield a new vantage point on the universe. This is the elusive prey I seek, the realm where time losses and machine stoppages are analyzed openendedly without forcing the whole of multifaceted reality to be either “aliens/ghosts” or “hoaxes/photographic artifacts”. 

"Tectonic strain theory" -- as enunciated by the likes of researcher Paul Devereux or the book Space Time Transients and Unusual Events -- basically states that humans -- like animals -- are capable of sensing electromagnetic fluctuations related to seismic or volcanic activity; but, being visual creatures, the human brain would appear to mediate the sensation of this flux by way of externalized images. Hallucinations, in a word, that are as exactly spurred from without as the internalized images of dreams are from within. The fact that the apparition was reported to have been sailing towards Mount Tarawera is highly significant, and indicates that humans have not only an inherent relation to electromagnetic flux but also the ability to determine the direction from which is coming.

The 1886 Ghost Waka at Lake Tarawera

"...earlier on the same morning the waters of the lake rose suddenly over its whole expanse, and as unexpectedly subsided again in a matter of minutes." 

-- Te Ara Encyclopedia

Pressure clad in ghostly clothing
nudged those visual people there,
choosing images as dreams do,
painting these on willing air:

They were wearing flaxen clothing.
They did not respond to hails.
They were bound for Tarawera
as if gliding there on rails.

Analysis of the Spanish and Ukrainian Anarchist Revolutions of the early 20th Century

The Spanish Anarchist Revolution did not succeed long enough to draw a final conclusion about internal drift towards oligarchy before being destroyed from without. The same was true in Ukraine. The main examples of mass revolutionary organisation on anarchist lines in the early 20th century seem to suggest that outside forces will generally nix it before internal drift can. This puts me, personally, in mind of the saw about which aspects of teleporting to Mercury would kill one first. It seems that the heat would kill one first, but that lack of oxygen would eventually represent a problem...

Similarly, while it is natural for the Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists themselves to regard the collapse of their Revolution as the result of deliberate malice on the part of various Statist actors, I believe that the situation is easier to understand if compared to the flow of surrounding air into a pocket of vacuum. Yes, real Statists flowed into that vacuum, which was itself comprised of real Anarchs, but I prefer to take a broader and more abstract view of the matter because the naked process -- and understanding it from as distilled a point of view as possible -- is as important as remembering those living, breathing human beings. (Most people forget the ideas; I will try not to make the same mistake from reverse, but at the same time think that ideas have fewer champions.)

Well, these are not final thoughts but exploratory ones, and it is to be regretted that neither the Catalonia nor Ukraine test runs ran for longer . While not an anarchist, that ideology has an extremely useful body of history and thought in terms of a touchstone for one who is wishing to understand oligarchy, the legion of various forms it can take, and its exact role in relation to civil wars and revolutions. The touchstone is simply that the node of anarchism-- as a sort of plasmic or intermediate form -- sets the States into sharp relief. 

My intention is to process ideological material of the most various kind and abstract general principles from it, this being a mode of inquiry which feels very natural: most of the ideological material in question -- be it history or theory -- is known mainly by the relevant partisans... and people like me who read the work of those who would rip one another to shreds if they found themselves in the same room. 

Blowback/Caliphate

(2014)

I have often wondered whether Western and Zionist intervention in the Middle East would eventually provoke the most extensive blowback of all, a territorially extensive Caliphate; so the recent flurry of ISIL-related news items & moving photographs of tearful Yezidis has renewed my interest in this matter.

The Caliphate was extraordinarily, impressively mobilized for war in its heyday, and a resurgence of such a Caliphate is the scenario which the divide-and-conquer tactics of the West are presumably supposed to stop. It is this interventionism, often in the name of universalism as was Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, which allows the ongoing plunder of the region's resources to continue uninterrupted as the State of Israel makes concurrent commercial, demographic, and territorial gains. 

The problem with this suppression campaign is not so much the amount of blood that it spills on the sand, from the standpoint of realpolitik, but the very real danger that the campaign will backfire so severely (“turning and turning on the widening gyre”) as to induce the revival of a Caliphate which is just as vigorously mobilized as ever its predecessors were, in addition to armed with nuclear-tipped MIRVs. 

Naturally the remarks above about realpolitik are to be distinguished from my own private views and reactions to the spilled blood in question. I make no apologies for looking at things as if I were a historian of contemporary events, anymore than a zoologist apologizes for accurate depictions of predation, parasitism, and what have you. Humanity is more like an ecosystem than any other known species on this Earth, and sentimentality regarding the geopolitical situation prevents clear apperception.

I close with this consideration, that a law of diminishing returns may attend continuation of the divide-and-conquest strategy. At the very least a reassessment of the likely consequences of continued interventionism is in order. For the very artificiality of the engineered national borders of the Middle East after the defeat of the Ottomans is the basis out of which a new layout of lines on the map may arise in the coming decades. The possibility of large-scale blowback is only too real, and it makes sense to stop throwing rocks at the hornet’s nest.

Could we have a better collective plan, please, than reenacting the Crusades?