Et Capital Culture

Immediately

“If the enemy leaves the door open, you must rush in.” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War 11.65)

If the US initiated a draft today, what proportion of those eligible would be deemed fit for combat? Given obesity rates and mental health trends, if 1 in every 5 American males aged 18 to 26 were fit for combat, the Nation would be very lucky. (1:5 was the proportion of draftees fit for combat going into WWII)

“Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is super abundant and where it is deficient.” (Tzu, 6.24) 

If the US is deficient in this respect, there are two actions that must be taken immediately without any significant additional burden being placed on the citizenry. 

“The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.” (Tzu, 12.16) 

One, females aged 18 to 26 ought to be included in the mobilization process. This means that females need to be assessed like males to determine if they are fit for combat. The proportion of fit females may not be great (I don't know), but as a grand figure, overall, US manpower ON PAPER would increase substantially. This of course is a petition for females to be required, by law, to register for the selective service. It is inevitable. Do it NOW. 

“Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain the truth of their reports.” (Tzu, 13.17) 

Two, if the Nation is truly in poor health, our enemies ought not to know it. The CDC should disseminate obesity and illness reports to those scientists and strategists internal to institutions assisting in fields of research which require exact data in order to conduct fruitful analysis of American health and the means to help ratify the current state of affairs. The public numbers should reflect a Nation that is strong and healthy (within reason) and ready to fight. This should be a gradual process, taking years, accompanied by massive federal programs to inspire exercise and healthy eating. The infrastructure is set, so all that would need to happen is a ramping up of funding and public relations campaigns.

Veiling the public from the true numbers would have no effect on the public's health. The fact is that the public's current knowledge of the truest figures does nothing to change their eating habits or exercise routines. If anything, it imperils them. If our enemies see weakness, they may act to exploit it. If we feign strength where we are weak, we may prevent travesty. 

“Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.” (Tzu, 1.19-20)

If the US incorporates females into the selective service and feigns, smartly, the health of the Nation, then the Nation will be less likely to inspire enemies to exploit weaknesses related to wanting numbers and health.

A few follow-up questions arise:

Do the numbers and health statuses constitute serious weaknesses with regards to the Nation's war-making and diplomatic postures? Do they undermine what Joseph Nye calls "smart power"? Namely, the deliberate use of hard (military) and soft power (political-economic-cultural) to advance the interests of America and her allies. 

Are autonomous warfighting machines advanced enough to replace flesh on the battlefield?

Is cyber the new king of battle? That is, can out-of-shape individuals with asthma operate the new machines of war? It is not out of question that an obese nation could win in a war of machines while also being outnumbered 4:1 by way of fleshed personnel. 

The above suggestion is only one of many that the American Nation can take to sow doubt into our adversaries. And quite naturally we reflect upon the most famous of Sun Tzu's wisdom: 

“All warfare is based on deception.” (Tzu, 1.18) 

Let us implement a strategy based on this wisdom. Whatever route we chose, it must meet our needs. Show weakness where strong. Show strength where weak. But most of all, sow doubt into the minds of our adversaries. Make them make the wrong move. 
...

1993

It is of little significance to you that he was born in 1993. In that year, millions were born and millions died. In those figures, many died at or soon after birth. Perfectly healthy people crashed their vehicles resulting in their premature deaths. People with an appetite for the surreal became addicted to meth and cocaine, virtually killing themselves. Gangs spilled blood for "territory" a fraction the size of the land seized daily on the Western Front in 1915. Women wore shoulder pads and men wore Picasso inspired shirts. 
The stock market faltered slightly and a new president took office. This new president would oversee the continued unravelling of the Soviet Union (officially, since 1991) as well as the spring of a new union of European States. In the year 1993, a little boy was lucky to be born in a middle class home of two hard-working, college-educated, morally-abiding, American parents. He would be raised in the sprouting years of the 1990s, the heyday of optimism. 
In the years following, the United States collected North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies further east than any Western State had ever achieved (peacefully, that is). Nations long shrouded by the veil of governmental censorship opened up to a world that had long surpassed them: technologically, economically and politically. Under the bright light of the Western model, the East (and many other nations elsewhere around the world) created new governments and new institutions: Albania (1991) Angola (1992), Armenia (1991), Azerbaijan (1991), Benin (1990), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995), Bulgaria (1990), Belarus (1991), the Republic of Congo (1992), Croatia (1991), Czech Republic (1993), Estonia (1991), Ethiopia (1995), Georgia (1995), Germany (1991), Kazakhstan (1991), Latvia (1991), Lithuania (1990), Macedonia (1991), Madagascar (1992), Mauritius (1992), Moldova (1991), Mongolia (1992), Mozambique (1990), Namibia (1990), Nigeria (1991), Russia (1991), Solvokia (1993), Slovenia (1991), Tajikistan (1991), Turkmenistan (1991), Ukraine (1991), Uzbekistan (1991) and Yemen (1990). Not all successfully marched to democratic capitalism, but many did. 
Families were reunited. Civil society was free to grow anew. Optimism had never been so high. As Francis Fukuyama famously declared in 1992, the end of history was upon us. Humanity had reached the single highest moment of political achievement. Liberty and freedom appeared to be the destiny of all of mankind. 
In the late 1990s, the DotCom boom ushered in a new era of improved computer hardware and enhanced computer processing power. The burgeoning digital network grew at lightning speed. No one quite knew what was to come, but everyone was happy to see it arrive. 
The digital age sprung upon mankind a network of information so diffuse and decentralized, that in comparison to historical precedent, for example, telegraph lines had seemed like mere assemblages of strings and cups. Mankind was used to fast-flying information across the globe, but never was it so cheaply accessible to the average man. A computer was available to every American, either at home or at his local public library.
A young boy remembers sharing a slow dial-up network connection on one computer with his family of five. The youngest of them, he was the lowest on the totem pole. The natural position of the youngest, weakest and least cognitively-developed member. When he eked out time to use the glowing box, he used it for two principal activities: playing cutting-edge videogames and looking up definitions and synonyms on dictionary.com. He played videogames that inspired an interest in history as well as the basic mechanisms of governance. He looked up exotic words that later instilled in him the desire to collect and read old dictionaries. This young boy enjoyed so much of his childhood, yet, ever looking up to his older brothers to grasp what they saw, he longed for the future, always. 
He assumed the gaze of his older brothers, for they knew better. In assuming their gaze, then witnessing his own life unfold, he learned that the stages of life, set first and foremost by age, led every member of society to learn the tricks of life in neat little group epochs. Or at least, so it was the case for this young middle-class lad born in the milky clouds of optimism. The future was bright, perhaps too bright. 
The attacks of 9/11/2001 changed the zeitgeist. There is no doubt about it. At the innocent age of 8, this young boy learned to distrust men in turbans (to learn 6 years later that this was too sweeping a prejudice), for he saw the videos of Osama Bin Laden, the perpetrator of evil. He still remembers the attack. Most of all, he remembers the look on his mother's face as he and his brothers jumped to their feet to point at the tv screen to two burning towers. Her bag fell to the floor. Her hand swung to her mouth. Her brow bridged in shock. It was then that he learned the significance of the attack. 
At grade school, he pledged allegiance to the flag every morning. Every 9/11, coincidentally the day of his mother's birthday, he and his classmates would form around the flag and pray in silence for the safety of the Nation. In every other moment, this young boy and all his friends and classmates didn't bother with patriotism. They simply did as children do and that was important. 
A boy was born in 1993 lucky to be alive. Lucky to have his family. Lucky to learn humility and filial piety. Lucky to enjoy a rich education. Lucky to trick-or-treat on Halloweens. Lucky to open presents on Christmas. Lucky to grow up with people of all races and creeds. Lucky to share in the optimism of a bygone era. Lucky to know what patriotic fervor looks AND feels like. Lucky to have a real life before he had a digital one. Lucky to meet exemplary people in every step of his life.

This particular young man is grateful. It is high time he pays it forward. This, he has begun to do.

...

A New Romanticism

A new Romanticism is the best alternative to two popular worldviews, postmodernism and marxism. While the postmodernist denies objectivity (pyrrhonian skepticism) and the Marxist bends over backwards to conform history to a theoretical framework (the superstructure), the Romantic accepts the world, and he who occupies it, with all his passions and intellect, wholly, with due respect to the circumstances which inform his perspective and evoke his passions. In the study of man, new Romanticism is the best way forward.

The subjective experience is equal to the absolute value of one.

Moving forward, I first ask: 

Is there an objective end that everyone can agree upon (happiness) and is there a universal means to that end? No. As far as I can tell, 2500 years of wisdom shows that humanity is bound to disagree with the end and the means to that end.

The Romantic listens and learns from the truck driver and the professor.

The Romantic is not interested in manufacturing a universal way or principle. 

Order and esteem are fractured by passions and ego. What better a philosophy than one that acknowledges the nature of this. There may be a nature of absolute orderliness. There may be absolute facts of geometry and genetics, but never is mankind ever to be perfectly orderly. 

History shows that man is somehow both categorizable and uncategorizable. He is predictable and unpredictable. We can only state what is probable. In this simple, very simple, observation the Romantic balks at odes to universals.

The Romantic studies consensus and wants to know why it comes about. 

In the end, when consensus is made, he does not ascribe nature to its origin. 

Not to the avail of a theory or of a half-baked utopia, but with an open hand to life, the Romantic sympathizes with billions of hearts that are weaved together in the web of time and space. In this gesture, he does not forget himself, nor does he indulge too much in himself. The Romantic’s only mission is to understand.

He is not trying to reduce complexity to simplicity or to ‘discover’ guilt and shame. He is not dead reckoning to ‘discover’ justifications to increase government budgets or expand governmental powers. He seeks to produce history that reveals a sympathetic recounting of events. 

He is open to the power of passions. He is convinced that the well of human feeling is deep and nourishing. Love and hate, not power, invigorate mankind.

Love, hate and apathy play a much more significant role than the naked ambition to control others. However, ambition and ego play a significant role in the dynamic of man's ongoing epic to exact his purpose. Undeniably, many a man define his life by the exertion of power (Capital, in our times) over his brethren. This is not evil, but it is particular to him.

The Romantic strives to reconcile the existence of harmony and chaos. He is bored by the paradox of constant change and the idiom that man is everywhere the same.

He recognizes rationality as order-building and irrationality as the engine of masterpiece, which is often order-destroying.

The Romantic accepts the limitations of human sense, but he is also a witness to mankind's mechanized creations and the programs, policies, algorithms and systems that establish the rules of their use. With every enhanced sense and every new insight, tentative as the conclusions and implications drawn therefrom may be, as the eye of man digs deeper into the cosmos and zooms closer to the most basic atoms of life, he nonetheless presses his hand to his heart and remembers that he is still just a man. Just one.  

From his own pulse, selfishly, he discovers himself in relation to others, sympathetically. 

Man wakes in a den to a people whom he owes his life and for whom he accepts duties and responsibilities. He enjoys rights insofar as he confers them to others. Such is the foundation of communal life. 

Everywhere, man is born to a context. Everywhere, passion, intellect, war, rape, lying, cheating, stealing, passivity and zealotry inform the variables of communal life. No law can effectively rid humanity of these basic variables that contribute to the thoughts and actions of man.

Forever, man is bound to wrestle the derelicts to the ground, chain and exile them. But how many chances does any one person deserve before the execution of such punishment is just? 

The Romantic recognizes mankind's capacity to benevolence and malevolence. He recognizes what is harmful, false and malicious. He may say what is evil and revile it. Yet, in judging evil, he reserves a speculative eye to the good which may spring therefrom.

In contrast, there is the classic understanding of what it means to be good and evil. Or rather, how we generally evaluate the actions which manifest good and evil. What of the neutral?

To shove a knife into the air is an empty action of little consequence. No one, not even the wielding party who expended the energy to perform the action, is witness to a marked consequence. Is the action good or evil, valuable or valueless, virtuous or vicious? Well, consider the classic two-part evaluation of action:

Behavior conducive to nobility is virtue. 

Behavior conducive to ignobility is vice. 

Are not the tears which well for the National anthem evocative of the fictive bond among citizens? Does this song not serve a purpose? Patriotism and civil religion are instrumental in binding a nation together. Without emotional connections, the will to sacrifice the self for the whole is insufficient. I digress.

There is no instrumental value in thrusting the knife. However, if the action is included in a dance or ceremony, there may be aesthetic or cultural value. Who is to say that there is no virtue in artistic creation? Must there be absolute agreement one way or another? No.

As the saying goes, everyone has at least one vice. Even a disciplined man who acts diligently toward an end is permitted, by the grace of humanity's shared experience, to vent his vicious impulses, occasionally, to, in turn, concentrate his efforts to nobility. The Romantic concludes that vice can be good.

It is like fire. A fire bears salubrious properties including warmth, light and the capacity to cook meat (and kill bacteria). But obviously, our skin is sensitive to heat. It burns the skin. Burns leave scars. The larger the burn the more unrecognizable the body part or the man. But even a poke of an ember will leave a scar. 

In a cold climate, man bundles before the flame side-by-side his brethren. The flame brings people together, by necessity. Warmth brings comfort and in extreme cases, life. 

In a warm climate, man still uses the flame for light and cooking. Light prolongs the day. With more time, man enjoys more recreation and commodious exchange. And as the saying goes, the kitchen is the heart of the home.

With all this said, it is tempting to conclude that fire is only a good if it is controlled. After all, an uncontrolled fire kills and destroys. But can we not also find good in an uncontrolled flame?

But first, what about the peculiar act of sacrifice? Man is known to burn himself alive. Self-immolation is a sacrifice of one for the betterment of many. The flame is controlled, but it kills. It is the purpose of the action, self-sacrifice. Is the action irrational? Is it bad? There is a loss of life by suicide. Tradition would say this is act is irrational and unholy. Speaking of unholy.

Man is known to burn others alive. Heretics were burned at the stake for crimes against the Church. Faith in a higher power and the transgression against it, compelled zealots to burn men and women alive, desecrate their graves or exile them.

Zealotry is a hot flame. And I ask, is there any passion hotter than faith? Counterwise, is there any passion that is hotter than the betrayal of faith? Such is the countervailing force of love and hate and faith and betrayal: fidelity contra infidelity.

Without faith, we cannot trust. Without trust, we cannot let our guard down. Constantly vigilant, man is stressed and paranoid: like a man walking through high grass teeming with poisonous snakes. He can only do it for so long without straining his heart and mind beyond repair or losing himself to fear and distrust as second nature. 

Passion is the fuel to the engine of mechanized civility. It ignites innovation as well as envy, pride and vanity. There is grace in an end which is a product of irrational forces- of people gone mad with love, hate, jealousy and fear. 

Yet, passions are not the stuff of creation. Gasoline fuels an engine, but gasoline itself is not a productive force. Unleashed, gasoline, if ignited, brings nothing but destruction. 

Destruction brings new space. Forest fires spread seed and nutrients across large swaths of land. Life is lost in the inferno, but life grows anew. 

Passion and irrationality are conducive to innovation and destruction. They are confined by convention, decorum and law. Nonetheless, no prescription (legal or social) can contain human passion and irrationality. 

Expressions of passion and irrationality are not good or bad in and of themselves. The Romantic acknowledges this and studies mankind with an open mind to the butterfly effect.

Bound by the world he occupies, he is invested in the expressions of mankind's passions, perceptions, goals and expectations- his lifeforce. He is not discontent, but he is anxious to grow. He is not arrogant, but he gushes with pride. He is not depressed, but he is abundantly empathetic. He is not satisfied, but he is grateful. 

He values moderation, because it promotes longevity, but recognizes that excessive energies and steadfast devotion to work (or love and hate) promote innovation as well as cataclysm. Extremes are like that. They create and destroy. They bring feast and they bring famine.

Aristotle's mean is ideal, but it also denies the potential benefits of excess. The Romantic does not enjoy acts of malice, but is still tentatively prepared to accept that in evil actions and moments, good may come. 

With the help of statistics and modern science, the Romantic seeks to leave out emotive judgement. He portrays history as the complex thing it is. 

...

The Bird's Eye View​

Some people snore when they sleep, others whisper through their noses and still others make no sound. The chainsaw snorer is kicked in dream to shift. The twirling cold-body is yanked at and spooned. The hot-body is sequestered to the other side. But the temperate-bodied light-whispering sleeper is always left alone. 

A partnership between two such sleeping beauties makes for one cozy den. It’s neither too hot, nor too cold. There is no siege and pitched battle over the blankets. No minds are harried by the drill of gargling throats or heavy breath. All is quiet, warm and comfortable.

All the while the sun arises and falls. Clouds glide, puff and fade. Caterpillars inch, encase and transform. Rivers, creeks and streams swell, dwindle and dry. Trees fluff with leaves in spring then shiver them off in autumn’s fall. The world of dreams is made of these, the rudimentary bore of nature’s daily tasks.

We awake. Some of us thank the earth ‘we have made another day.’ Blessed, cursed or somewhere in between, we rise with the sun, then consume and burn his energy. By the drip of coffee or the clank of a cereal bowl, we fuel. Then out of the door we step to work and to play with our fellow man.

Ah, what do we see? Birds peck and fly. Squirrels hop and scurry. Ants encumber the world on their shoulders. 

We too peck, hop and encumber the world, ours for the making one-by-one. The world is among us, yet we feel its weight amassed in our minds. And we get lost in it. 

Oh, and there are so many kinds of lost. Under the columnade of tall glass towers. Mindful of the knives in passing pockets. In the trenches of traffic, dodging passed, screaming and scoffing at cars, buses and trains. Mindful of the pistols in glove compartments. Death lurks about every corner, yet we persist to the station of our individual daily duty. 

Most of us. 

Whizzing through the morning humming off caffeine and hot presses. Digging the mines of emails with greetings and salutations, ‘Good Morning’ I am ‘Yours Respectfully.’ Counseling creation and remodeling the created. The day goes by click by click with every tick, tick, tick... 

Behind the scenes the others toil too. Twisting the wire, hammering the board, soldering the metal, picking up, dropping off, sowing, tilling, sweating and groaning. In any and all cases, there is a task at hand. The objective is clear and attainable. Narrowly, we seize the objective. 

It is exhilarating to be needed yet deadening to work. Inside, outside, at the office, at home, house to house, job to job, contract to contract, it can all become a bore. The rudimentary bore of humanity’s daily task. 

So much in this world needs doing. 

In so doing we foster the growth of a place that is habitable, moral and prosperous. In time, with an ethic however characterized, our place is chiseled. Some from marble, others from limestone, and still others from sand and mud. 

We all have our place. Our allotted square feet we call home. Our earned income, we call our budget. By these factors and an abundance of others we shall in time discuss, our lives are duly shaped. Without pretension, we carry forth all the same. Mindful or not of life’s gifts, but wholly aware of its poisons. 

There is of course a long list of facts that make up the lives of us all. Perhaps, though, the multitude mean very little to me or you. What we aim to discuss here is uniquely a subject of you, me and the history of what brought our lives, thoughts and ways together. 

What we value to learn is a distinct choice. To remember it at the fore, to purge or to regurgitate it is entirely up to the variability of chance.  And if you’re lucky by the simple focus of your will. I, the hopeless pedant who lectures in his briefs, hold my hand out to you. 

I have sifted through encyclopedias, disputations, treatises and the pablum of news and reports of humanity’s life and conscience to deliver this work to you. I offer a topic that at once is obvious in its lowest resolution and incredibly intriguing in its highest. 

The best part about it is that you may carry forth all the same. I have belabored through the research to save you the trouble. Clasp my hand and sally with me. We shall make an adventure of it!