1950s Style
Social Engineering through Short Films
Film Review: Atomic Age Classics Volume 2:
Troubled Teens, color and black and white, DVD (2005).
This disc features several short
films from the 1950s and 1960s: the golden age of educational
cinema. Widely considered to be lost relics having been thrown
into the trash by schools everywhere with the advent of video
cassette technology some of these short films, intended to
educate kids and
mold their
behavior, have been rediscovered and transferred to DVD. These
films hold the distinction of being both entertaining and
historically informative by revealing the dominant values and
expectations at the time as well as the methods used to convey
these values and to manipulate the audience into conformity -
always with the most noble of intentions, of course.
They run the gamut from totally lame time-wasters to
surprisingly intelligent efforts at ameliorating common social
problems, so here are a few reviews mixed with appropriately
sardonic commentary:
You
think this is real funny don't you? You're probably even
laughing right now!
In trademark style Sid Davis’ Name Unknown is
intended to
scare some sense into too-smart teen punks but ends up being
an alarmist and not particularly credible little film since it
plays up the worst case scenario and makes it look like an
everyday event. Even in Southern California two teens in love
parked outside a moonscape of oil wells do not typically
get forced into the trunk of their car at gunpoint, even as
Sid Davis tries to convince us in over-the-top fashion that
those two were the lucky ones!
Getting Along With Parents actually does a
well thought out and realistic job of portraying mundane
family life problems from the viewpoint of parents and
teenagers but we’re left wondering how much of an impact this
kind of rational dialogue will actually have on emotionally
sensitive teenagers. Getting Along With Parents is
especially gratifying, for some of us, when viewed with the
thought that those pimply faced mixed up teens throwing
tantrums because they can’t go to the dance or drive the car
could as well be your parents.
Smarmy, preachy and full of unrealistic
interactions Unto Thyself Be True presents a religious
message to parents and their troubled teens; teenagers that will lie
through their teeth to police and parents alike just to get
their oily mitts on a steering wheel.
Parents beware!
Any Boy, USA portrays a pre-pubescent Midwestern hay seed that
tires of the country and decides to set out for the big city.
About five steps away from where skinny kid string bean
starts out he meets ‘Old Mildew Whiskey’ personified by an
oddly convincing character actor. The two proceed to stagger
down the road together and through a series of stock-footage
clips the film reveals its true intent: a bizarre anti-alcohol
and pro-church message. Country boy with the corny hat finally
makes it to the city and finds only ruined buildings and
alcoholics littering the streets. Fortunately the boy wakes up
from his nightmare, saved from the ravages of alcoholism – for
now.
The sound depth is very limited and I had to
use headphones to adequately hear many of the films and, not
surprising considering the age, the video quality is poor on a
few. Anyone fascinated by this time capsule into the 1950s and
social hygiene films in general will enjoy this DVD despite
the mostly minor sound and video limitations. For an excellent
guide to these films and more read Ken Smith’s book Mental
Hygiene, 1999. The history is frightening and fascinating
while Ken's writing is hilarious. 13.02.07
Film Review: Atomic Age Classics
Volume 1:
Manners, Courtesy & Etiquette
In Everyday Courtesy (1948)
Room 10 presents an exhibit on courtesy
featuring rules for doing just about everything the courteous
way, yes even rules for using the phone, lots of rules.
Remember to answer the phone quickly because you don’t want to
make the other person wait! Speak loudly and clearly in order
to make the phone call more pleasant! Yes indeed, this film
reveals the proper way to perform a multitude of mundane
tasks, all
explained in excruciatingly boring detail. Don’t know how to
introduce another person? Constantly befuddled and thrown into
a personal crisis not knowing which person in a group to
introduce first? Well, watch and learn knuckleheads because
these skills can affect the quality of your entire life, that
is if you believe the narrator. “Remember the
order?!”
he intones after describing the elaborate rules for
introductions done in the 'proper' sequence.
Everyone looks very thin in this film, both the
kids and the adults. Looking back fifty years in comparison to
today and it’s easy to see the effect of the high-calorie diet
on the American waistline. So, the kids back in Europe were
picking through the rubble of their homes destroyed by
American B-29s, searching for scraps of food to eat but Room
10 back in the cheery US of A had plenty of time to learn allll about courtesy. And they all grew up to be the most
courteous, unselfish, and well-balanced generation of
Americans ever!
Exchanging Greetings and Introductions
is dated 1960 but it looks more like 1950. Yes kids it’s yet
another film devoted to educating you through rules, rules,
and more rules on how to introduce everyone to everyone else.
This film seems especially ridiculous considering how young
the kids in the film look, they can’t be more than 3rd
or 4th graders, and the number of rules and
guidelines they're supposed to learn from watching it.
Remember these rules:
“Be Sincere”,
“Speak
Clearly”,
“Identify
Yourself”,
“Start
Conversation”,
Introduce the
“Ladies
First”,
introduce the oldest first
“Respect Your
Elders”,
and
“Other people
will notice your skill”.
“You will be
admired if you master the simple skill of exchanging greetings
and introductions. Practice different kinds of introductions
at school, at home, and with your classmates.”
Uh, teacher, teacher, shouldn’t we be learning
math or history or how to use scissors or color in the lines?
What a time waster.
|
Drink in the smug satisfaction that comes
from delivering a proper introduction - and the rest of your
class will envy your skill!
Yeah right, more likely he'll get a
severe
beating
on the playground during recess.
Enjoy it while you can buddy! |
 |
By
Jupiter
(1946):
After a hard day of being rude to everyone he
meets and having it thrown right back at him, average Joe Poindexter
finds himself on a commuter train
contemplating the difficulties of his day.
At one point
on his way to work in the morning Poindexter recalls how he
tried to buy a three cent newspaper using a five dollar
bill but the vendor didn't have enough change!
Observing the
pitiful ruminations of Poindexter the god Jupiter, complete with terrible costume and backstory, decides to
see if he can convince the grumbling Poindexter down on Earth
to be nice to people and thereby make his life less miserable;
all of this on a bet from his nagging wife. During private conversation with Poindexter on
the train Jupiter proposes the idea of being nice to others
not just because it is ‘proper’ (Poindexter demolishes that
view with his flippant remarks), but out of selfishness since
by being nice to others they will be nicer in return. By
Jupiter starts out stupid enough with Jupiter and his wife
but by the end the film reveals a charm, intelligence, and
useful message that makes it worth watching even 60 years
after it was made. Maybe now we know where Ayn Rand got her
inspiration. 2.22.07
Film Review: Atomic Age Classics
Volume 3:
A-Bombs, Fallout & Nuclear War
Living
With the Atom - With Irwin A. Moon, Moody Science Institute (1957).
This one is like some kind of experiment in religion
subverting science! The film starts out benign enough with
some lessons in basic science focused on atomic energy. The
speaker, Irwin A. Moon whoever that is, goes out of his way to
credit the
“creator”
for all the wondrous scientific advances he’s described. The
film then abruptly transitions into a series of nuclear
weapons testing clips and when we return to the speaker in his
library/studio we discover that our formerly cheerful
character now has the frowny face of seriousness as he drops
the real bomb: God! Duck and cover, incoming message!
“In unleashing the power of the
atom science has set before us a tremendous challenge and at
the same time has brought to our attention the fact that the
paramount issue is the rightness of our relationship with God,
and every other issue, however important it may be, becomes
secondary beside it.”
A little online research reveals the plan behind this film.
The Moody Science Institute was affiliated with the Moody
Bible Institute;
“[I]t was California pastor Irwin
Moon who first developed the concept of using science to
illustrate the Gospel.”[1]
Radioactive
Fallout and Shelter,
produced by the U.S. Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, undated. This film, in gloriously
garish off-balance color, features the standard guy-in-a-suit
speaker who over-enunciates his words in an office/studio
decorated with a fake-looking plant and two neatly framed
photos of mushroom clouds from atomic bomb tests! The 1950s
style four-frame-per-second animation is classic. One scene
shows a dark cloud of radioactive fallout descending upon a
bucolic scene of a farmhouse and silo!
The title panel drawing shows a man’s shadow, presumably
seared into the ground by an atomic flash as he foolishly
attempted to run from the bomb blast instead of doing the
‘duck and cover’.
Scenes like these could be ironic if they
weren’t the honest product of American naiveté. But apart from
the unintended comedy the film is mostly just an elaborate
vehicle to demonstrate how to 'safely' wipe radioactive
fallout off of food, presumably so the viewer can consume it
while spending
“up to two
weeks”
in a bomb shelter.
The film host emphasizes that you CAN survive
and defeat nuclear fallout. Yeah, just like you CAN win the
lottery, but you probably won’t. Authorities knew that an
actual nuclear exchange focused on the population centers
wouldn’t leave many survivors but they had to come up with
some kind of program, even if it was mostly a hollow sham, in
order to maintain the American public’s support and confidence
in eventual war victory. It’s tragic that even as this
government produced film goes to great lengths to explain to
the American people how to minimize the damage from
radioactive fallout, numerous above ground atomic tests were
being conducted unannounced in Nevada, spreading massive
quantities of real radioactive fallout downwind and across the
country. Southern Utah was hit particularly hard, sending
cancer rates skyrocketing. American’s were so busy being
afraid of the communist Soviet Union that they never realized
it was their own government that was actually
endangering and killing them! The Soviet Union didn’t kill any
American’s with nuclear weapons but the United States
government did - all in the name of ‘national security’. This
threat misdirection strategy should seem familiar because
today terrorism is the new communism.
The Atom Strikes! is an undated post-WWII military film made by the
‘War Department’ Army Signal Corps detailing the devastation
wrought by the two atom bomb attacks on Japan. The film is
full of surreal scenes like the footage of people walking
around along the streets amidst total devastation as if it was
just a typical business day in Hiroshima. The shadow of a
vaporized pedestrian burned onto a bridge is unforgettable; a
soldier outlines the mark with white chalk for added effect.
Trucks loaded down with American soldiers drive slowly through
the ruined cities liberated with the awesome new power of the
American war machine. ‘The Japanese attempt to rebuild using
whatever materials they can find’, the narrator blandly drones
as we see footage of Japanese peasants using scrap material to
build shelters in the middle of rubble piles. Nagasaki
experienced
“nearly 42
and a half square miles of damage” exults the disembodied voice, highlighting the effort of the film
to quantify the damage inflicted upon Japan by the two atom
bombs.
On a lighter note, the stock footage used to
depict the Japanese war industry features some comically small
tanks, one Japanese soldier barely fits his lower body into
the turret as they parade down main street; I’ve seen lawn
tractors that look more formidable!
The Atom Goes to Sea - A General Electric Excursion
in Science
(1954). This is a very fascinating short-film made by General
Electric that details the construction and testing of the
United States’ first atomic-powered submarines the Nautilus
and the Sea Wolf. According to the film footage a giant sealed
steel sphere was constructed in New York state just to test
the nuclear reactors inside it. 01.03.07
Film Review: Atomic Age Classics
Volume 5:
"C" Is for Communist
What
is Communism?
(undated) presented by Herbert A. Philbrick a former undercover FBI
agent, anti-communist agitator, and film personality.
Philbrick explains communism in his own populist style and
describes communists using just a few descriptive terms like
lying. How can communists lie with a straight face?
“Nothing is a lie if it helps the communist party”.
Dirty; communists are blamed for fomenting race riots. Shrewd;
Philbrick asks how many Americans would volunteer for the
‘Communist Army Division? But they will volunteer when it’s
called the ‘Abraham Lincoln Brigade’ (a Spanish Civil war
attachment). Godless,
“to me, this is perhaps the most frightening word of all
because it accounts for every other bad word that describes
them.”
In practice communism is a belief system, clearly indicated by the
previous statement,
nothing is
a lie if it helps the communist party.
It wasn’t God that was communism’s competition it was the
church institution and its authority structure, just as
were civic leaders and intellectuals, competition that
communists murdered wherever possible.
In fairness many of these tricks were, and
still are, used by non-communists and governments too. The
fear of communism was exploited mercilessly by authorities to
justify their own forms of oppression and a warped economic
system that led to the imperial war machine the entire world
is dealing with today. As a side note, the introductory
narration of this
Jerry Fairbanks Production
sounds like Orson Welles!
The Red Myth (undated) is a brief but informative and
academically oriented history of communism from Marx to the
USSR and WWII, featuring the words and ideas of key figures
such as Trotsky, Lenin, Bukharin, Kamenev, and Stalin (actors
in low-budget costumes). The internal strife within communism
is a major factor that is largely ignored or forgotten today.
The history of the COMINTERN is also described. Social
Democrats (an increasingly popular ameliorative, as opposed to
revolutionary, political party in Europe) are seen as
counter-revolutionaries and attacked. The Polish guy that
provides the academic content is tough to understand through
his thick accent but he’d be hilarious as the voice of a
cartoon character. It’s not clear what the ‘myth’ of the title
refers to but perhaps that’s revealed in the second part of
this short film (not included in the DVD).
Yankee
Go Home – Communist Propaganda
(undated).
This film reviews Soviet propaganda films, broadcasts and
related material as well as the elaborate process behind the
production of it all with a focus on how it all pertains to
the United States military. After viewing a clip from a Soviet
propaganda film portraying American soldiers as drunks and
idiots (the General can't figure out how to use a pair of
binoculars) the co-presenter asks in drawl,
“Mr. [George] V. Allen how can we compete with this Soviet
Propaganda?”
A better question would be, why bother? The
propaganda was such poor quality it’s hard to see how it would
convince anyone that’s ever met an American, even domestic
Soviet audiences probably thought it was entertaining.
The unfortunately titled Crusade Report
is a little piece of home-brewed propaganda from the U.S. of
A. about the “freedom” bell made by “free” men and then put on
a European “freedom” tour. Did you miss the message? Yes it’s
freedom, we’ve got it all and they don’t have any! The
shots of the German soldiers guarding the new U.S. funded
radio broadcast stations (against communist saboteurs) are
unintentionally funny. They look about half as formidable and
professional as the average minimum-wage rent-a-cop guarding
your local mall!
If you’re just in it for the laughs then you’ll
probably want to skip this volume but for anyone interested the films are still
fascinating historical vignettes .
17.03.07
The genius of the current political
system is to render policy irrelevant, with advertising and
the media concentrating not on "issues" but on "qualities"
like the candidates' style, personality, and other
irrelevancies. The political parties devolve into marketing
systems for candidates. - Noam Chomsky
The War on Drugs as a Mechanism of Social Control
The question was
asked of Noam Chomsky in a recent lecture, why does the War on
Drugs continue even though it has continually failed to
achieve its stated objective of eliminating drug abuse?
Chomsky concluded that the War on Drugs is just a phony cover
story for a form of social control. [1]
Yet if the War on
Drugs (WOD) is a form of social control over the underclass of
society, then why does it seems so arbitrary? Why is the use
of one drug officially approved, like tobacco and alcohol,
while another disapproved, like marijuana? Could the
arbitrariness be intentional to create a test of obedience to
the rules with an understanding that some kind of drug is an
inevitable, even necessary, component of every society? All
drugs can’t be banned but by choosing a few to ban a set of
standards is established and by enforcing those rules a test
is created. Still, as a tool of social control the War on
Drugs is pretty pathetic, what’s the point? Just to test an
individuals law-abiding qualities?
Perhaps this is
looking at the issue from the wrong perspective. The more I
think about it the more the War on Drugs seems like an
antiquated war on dissent. It has Nixon administration written
all over it. Indeed, could it be that high-level political
leaders, outraged and disgusted at the growing youth rebellion
movement, determined that about the only way they could
legally squelch politically conscious youth dissent, since
freedom of speech and public expression is Constitutionally
protected, was to catch them on some other angle. Since drug
use was an integral part of this 1960s era youth rebellion
identity, it only seems logical that at some point this common
element would be exploited considering the antipathy it
generated amongst the political establishment.
So when were some
of these infamous drugs first criminalized? Different drugs
have been criminalized at different times usually in response
to some sort of public outrage combined with opportunistic
politicians. Marijuana, for instance, was criminalized way
back in 1937. “In 1937, Congress passed
the Marijuana Tax Act which criminalized the drug. From 1951
to 1956 stricter sentencing laws set mandatory minimum
sentences for drug-related offenses. In the 1950s the beatniks
appropriated the use of marijuana from the black hepsters and
the drug moved into middle-class white America in the 1960s.”
[2] Also of note, from this brief historical
description we can see that the laws have been progressively
tightened over time, usually in conjunction with greater and
more widespread use; but which action actually causes the
other? The criminalization of LSD, an almost stereotypical
drug of the 1960s youth rebellion, is more recent.
“In 1966 the Grunsky Bill was passed by
Congress, which prohibited the possession, manufacturing, sale
and importation of LSD.” [2]
More to the point,
the basic law that matters here is the ‘Controlled Substances
Act’ of 1970. "The Controlled Substances
Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention
and Control Act of 1970, is the legal foundation of the
government's fight against the abuse of drugs and other
substances. This law is a consolidation of numerous laws
regulating the manufacture and distribution of narcotics,
stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, and
chemicals used in the illicit production of controlled
substances.” [3] So who was President in 1970? You
guessed it, Richard Nixon. My instincts were correct.
After the CSA was
enacted the system of drug laws developed into another
bureaucracy and assumed a life of its own. Subsequent
administrations, particularly
Reagan and Bush, used the WOD to build a popular platform in
the Republican Party, to
financially and politically benefit their cronies through
federal funding of prison construction and staffing, and as a
tool for achieving certain foreign policy objectives.
Many alternatives
to the current WOD system can be imagined and implemented, it
is foolish to continue the current self-defeating and socially
dysfunctional system. Instead of a punitive WOD that puts
anyone with a small quantity of illegal drugs into prison for
years, why not turn that idle time locked up into community
service? Instead of a WOD we could have a new Works Progress
Administration (WPA) that was popular and successful at
building infrastructure in the United States during the Great
Depression of the 1930s. But brilliant thinking like that
would require an intentional negation of the diseased belief
in financial profit for private gain at the expense of public
welfare that has infected all levels of national government.
Changing the
punitive drug laws is another path that needs to be
investigated. In the spring of 2006 President Vincente Fox of
Mexico, nearing the end of his term in office, nearly
implemented a surprisingly smart and socially progressive
improvement to the legal system that would decriminalize
possession of small amounts of currently illegal drugs to free
up the over-taxed criminal justice system. [4] However, once
the Bush administration got word of this plan they went
ballistic and immediately put massive pressure upon Mexico to
back off and reject the new drug laws; Fox predictably
crumbled and the bill was never approved.
This kind of
concern at the topmost echelons of political power in the
United States is not an accidental or random product. Clearly
the establishment is gaining something desirable from the
continuation of current punitive drug laws and enforcement
commonly referred to as the War on Drugs. 10.06.06
1 Distorted
Morality: America's War on Terror?, by Noam Chomsky, DVD,
2002.
2
A Social History of America’s Most Popular Drugs,
PBS/Frontline, 1995-2006.
3
Controlled Substances Act, US Drug Enforcement Agency,
undated.
4
US asks Mexico to reconsider 'stupid' drug law, by
David Fickling and agencies, The Guardian, May 4, 2006.
The
Smokescreen of Media Bias
Determining
whether the mass media has a liberal or conservative bias is a
common issue of public discussion. Yet the debate to decide
who is really giving out the facts and who is just spinning
the news to serve a partisan political agenda merely serves to
obscure more critical matters. Really, to have multiple
competing biases in the mass media isn’t the primary problem,
and in fact given the sad state of affairs now it's
practically an ideal!
As long as
newspapers, radio and television news have been around certain
news outlets have been known to favor one side over the other.
In the United States for instance it used to be that every
major city had two newspapers, one with a Republican bias and
one with a Democratic Party bias. Then as audiences and
revenue sources changed and the business environment became
more competitive, newspapers began to merge. Now, most cities
have just one major newspaper and sometimes it retains a
certain political bias but more often than not it strives to
be as completely inoffensive and middle-of-the-road as
possible in order to upset as few readers and maintain as
much advertising sponsorship as possible. Consequently the
former industry that served to inform the public on current
events and issues of public debate has been reduced to nothing
more than a profit-driven money making machine that seeks to
enhance shareholder gains without regard to much of anything
else, except of course avoiding a libel suit.
It used to be that
newspapers, and even TV news sources, were eager to
investigate wrongdoing and to uncover and explain issues of
public concern but anymore this industry is afraid to
investigate because of where it might lead and the people it
might implicate.
The
few reporters that actually try to do their job either get
fired for being ‘loose cannons’ or quit in disgust as their
reports are continually watered down and negated by
management. Now because of business competition, entertainment
is used as a substitute for news and information. So, the
former divisions of news and entertainment have merged to such
an extent that it’s practically impossible to discern the
difference anymore. Turn on any local TV station in the
country and you’ll quickly realize that the nightly news is
driven at least as much by sensationalistic entertainment as
it is by reporting current events to inform an audience.
The fact that the
public is being fed a steady diet of trivia, one-sided
propaganda and sound bite, instead of facts and objective
context, is not nearly as serious a problem as the fact that
alternatives to this drivel are so totally lacking from mass
media outlets!
When cities had two alternative newspapers the news may have
been biased but at least the public had a choice in the
mass-market and there was an incentive to form and publicly
express a dissenting opinion. Now, contradiction, argument and
dissent are labeled ‘extremism’ and quickly locked out of the
public forum.
The spectrum of
dialogue and potential solutions is being truncated to such a
very narrow range of inoffensive and inconsequential topics
that in most cases no practical solutions to contemporary
problems can be found in the range of acceptable public
debate. Concern over real or perceived media bias is
essentially irrelevant when critical facts and information are
not even reaching the realm of public awareness due to the
sandbox of discussion deemed safe and acceptable by
risk-averse business management and influential authorities.
When the mass
media outlets all say the same thing, that’s when we
need to get very concerned!
The conformity
factor compelling the news and entertainment industry has gone
so far as to convince a majority of the public that any
person, idea or concept that falls outside the exceptionally
narrow range of mainstream acceptability should be immediately
rejected in totality; discussion of anything labeled ‘extreme’
is disallowed. Media managers, commentators, and consequently
the public as well, are exceptionally concerned with how
‘extreme’ an opinion is in order to eject it from the realm of
debate, when they should really be concerned with the actual
effectiveness of the solution to the given problem. If you
have an illness or an injury that will lead to your death in
short order if left untreated then you don’t argue with the
doctor about how ‘extreme’ the cure is, you worry about
whether it will work or not!
Another deleterious repercussion
from excessively narrow range of debate is the issue of public
disenfranchisement. People that feel like their views and
ideas are being ignored will refuse to participate in the
process, creating social discontent, loss of trust, antagonism
and serious long-term problems including rebellion. Regardless
of whether it is a government agency or a private company, any
institution that has a mission to serve a general audience has
a responsibility to be as inclusive and receptive to input and
suggestion as is reasonable possible.
If the public desires a functional
and democratic form of government representation then they
must have free, fair and open access to all of the information
critically necessary for the formation of opinion, judgment
and action within that democratic process. These sources of
information can be unbiased, they can be biased, they can be
up down left or right. As long as a wide diversity of choices
are equally accessible then the necessary level of popular
inclusion in critical discussion and decision can occur.
Functional
solution seeking is a process that requires open,
inclusive and unencumbered debate, because without that we lose the capacity to adapt
and improve ourselves.
So, considering that a democratic form of
society cannot function properly without the free-flow of
information and considering that the private sector, as
previously indicated, is woefully inadequate for this task, it
seems only logical that the public sector must step in to
rescue democracy, community and open debate. The United States
already has a federally funded worldwide news agency called
the
Voice of America (VOA). If foreign audiences appreciate VOA, why
shouldn’t domestic audiences as well? Or what about a program
for subsidized community news? Why not have free (subsidized)
classes on journalism standards, the process of news
collection and reporting, or how to identify and understand
propaganda techniques? Even unsubsidized individuals can make
a positive impact. I’ve tried to do my small part at the
Daily Irritant news headline page. Given the widely
dispersed, worldwide audience it’s not practical to run
headlines that are overly localized so I tend to focus on
issues of broad impact. But there’s no reason this concept, or
something more advanced, cannot be employed elsewhere.
Media bias is, like most of the issues allowed
to circulate in the public consciousness, merely a calculated
diversion. The elite, meaning the very wealthy few that
possess disproportionate influence upon the political and
corporate decision-making structure, find it much safer for
the public to remain fixated upon trivia and misleading
problems rather than consequential substance that could
potentially lead to unrest and >gasp< a redistribution of
wealth, power and influence. 21.08.05
The closer the consequences are to the original
action the better off we will all be. This is because people
are better able to judge what action to make next when
subsequent reaction they will experience is simple and
unambiguous.
The Global War on Terrorism as
an effort towards Worldwide Unity
There is a possibility that Cheney and the rest
of the Neo-cons concocted the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)
knowing full well the futility and superficial absurdity of it
all but with the real intention of manufacturing a singular
and perpetual enemy to rally a divided country together. Both the defense industry and the Pentagon
planners themselves have often rued the good old days of
simple black and white, us versus them mentality of the Cold
War. The invasion of Iraq is supposed to be a part of this GWOT but as another year begins American troop numbers are at
the highest levels since the start of the invasion and the
insurgents continue to become more proficient at killing
American and Iraqi troops as well as civilians caught in the
middle and nothing seems to be changing to America’s
advantage.
GWOT as unification is a hypothesis that must
be considered for the sake of completeness and after all,
worldwide unification under the influence of the United
States’ authority is the basic premise of the Neo-Cons
unilateralism. It seems ridiculous now given the actual
outcome of the invasion of Iraq but for an ‘elite’ full of
their own hubris and very poor students of history this may
have made enough sense at the time to have been a genuine
motivation.
Worldwide unification focused on the United
States has already happened with the first Moon landing in 1969.
However the unification only lasted as long as the telecast
before the world went back to what it knows best – fighting
each other. The 9-11 attacks were a similar unification moment
that lasted about as long. The point is this method of
manipulating the world through powerful symbolic acts and
emotions, like fear and awe, really doesn’t work because it
can’t last. No matter how many times it is tried or who tries
it the Wizard of Oz ‘magician behind the mask’ method to
control the populace through smoke, mirrors and lies, always
ends up with the same inglorious ending. Transparency in
conduct is very important otherwise rumors, conspiracies and an
unstable environment of suspicion spreads like an infection.
Substantive change requires long-term focus and
consistent effort to alter the fundamental underlying patterns
and motivations that create events to begin with.
01.01.05
Anarchy and Rule of Law: The Iraq Example
Events in Iraq
have been an intriguing demonstration of anarchy in action, or
at least what happens during a mass-breakdown in civil rule.
Looting, violence, vigilante justice, and general disorder
characterize the moment. But before we soundly condemn the
lawlessness, let's think about why the Iraqi people are doing
this, or indeed why any group of people would act in
this way. First of all the Saddam regime was an authoritarian
one and not unlike a pressure-cooker pot it kept things
together but only through force, intimidation and state controlled
violence. Saddam's power structure kept a lid on much of the
ethnic and religious divisions and basically held a very
divided country together. This is the basic definition of a
modern state, and the greater the internal divisions
the greater the need for centralized, oppressive authority to
keep it together. However, such systems do have advantages in
that they can redistribute collective resources in directions
which would not happen on their own in a more natural,
disordered social system. A state can build museums, provide
health care and public parks but it can also build
secret-police torture chambers and drag young men off to fight
in foolish wars.
In the spring of
2003 the United States military machine along with trusty
sidekick England, proceeded to force Saddam from power using
their collective, admittedly formidable war-machine. This
objective succeeded, however its success was never in doubt
anyway. The Iraqi people, free of Saddam's despotic rule faced
an unusual situation, they no longer had anyone telling them
what to do or threatening them with prison, torture or death
if they didn't obey the law. Simultaneously their personal
needs for food, water and other domestic concerns remained
static regardless of who wins the war or indeed anything else.
These two forces of collective and individual desires are in
constant conflict everywhere but after April 9th 2003, with
the state out of the picture, the Iraqi public no longer had
any significant force compelling them to mitigate their quest
for sating personal needs - no artificial law, no police
force, etc. The obvious result - wholesale theft and violence,
was only barely minimized by personal discipline (if any) be
it religiously oriented (fear of a 'higher authority'!) or
otherwise while greatly magnified by the years of repression
and built up anger from Saddam's regime.
Social Engineering
a Solution
So it's fairly
clear why people follow most laws - fear of discipline from
authority. But if people only follow laws because of fear of
authority then what does that really say about the law itself?
If the only laws that can be employed are ones that are built
on fear and intimidation than the authority employing them is
doomed anyway, the only variable is the time frame. The Saddam
regime certainly fills this category nicely.
The traditional
state's authority is built upon fear and the public sacrifices
individual freedom for the security and stability provided by
the state. This is largely because the people in the state
have no choice but to join. A voluntary state is a more
radical experiment and in theory relies upon the desire of its
constituents to voluntarily cooperate with the rules because
of the collective rewards promised to them in return -
Rousseau's Social Contract concept. The ideal state would be a
voluntary association but in practice such situations just
don't occur for numerous reasons such as the fact powerful
states are quick to quash the competition, people are
generally unable to move where they want, etc. Any law in
which people don't wish to obey is one which is flawed to some
degree. Any regime which uses these sort of laws to maintain
order is unsustainable. The only sustainable laws are those
which cannot be abrogated (like gravity) and those which
people follow automatically because everyone sees a need and
benefit to cooperation. Further if an authority desires to
have a sustainable rule and they cannot come up with a law
that meets these requirements then the necessity of the law
itself needs to be questioned.
So if the law is
not one in which most people see a need to follow it then
something is breaking and it is probably not the public but
rather the rulemaking authority which is failing.
It's also worth
mentioning that certain cases arise where even with every
player following the rules chaos and undesirable situations
still result. Think of 'rush-hour' commuter traffic on the
highway - all the individual decision-makers are law-abiding
in the sense they are in a legal place at a legal time but the
end-result is a system failure, in this case because too many
made the same decision for a path at the same time. So
clearly, simply mandating a law does not solve a problem
anymore than insisting the sky is green change its true color
from blue.
The only thing
left is to craft an authority structure based on rules that
people want to follow, and in order to want to follow
them people have to be able to follow them. In the case of
post-Saddam Iraq, even if the public had desired to be law
abiding they would have been forced to break the laws anyway
for without employment, income and food what choice did one
have besides looting? A law abiding Iraqi in would be a very
hungry, probably dead one. People have to be able to follow
the rules.
Three factors must
be met in order for a law to be sustainable.
-
People have to
want to follow the law because they see it is in their best
interest.
-
They must have
to the capacity and ability to obey the law.
-
Their personal
well-being has to be directly impinged by a failure to
follow the law.
The goal is to
craft a situation where all of this occurs automatically and
instantly without the need for an authority to discipline
anyone or even get involved at all, indeed a situation where
authority is unnecessary for the occurrence of a harmonious
outcome.
A substantive
answer remains elusive but suffice to say that information
is a key element, it is the limitation of forming such a
system and the solution to collective authority. Cheating has
to be absolutely minimized with the assumption that anytime
someone CAN cheat they WILL, in other words close the
loopholes, remove the ability to cheat. If everyone is
watching everyone else they will not misbehave because of the
instant judgment of their peers. Conversely they may pick up
bad habits if they see 'everyone else' doing it. But if people
know what others are doing they can react in positive and
negative ways. Positive ways mean they can say drive on a road
that is not congested. But the point is that this is why a
'Social Contract' is doomed because not only are people
dishonest at times but also at times incapable of making a
lawful decision, as in the case of the hungry Iraqis, if you are
hungry and you have no food then stealing may be the only option.
Further this is why information is critical, if everyone
realizes that someone is hungry they can both understand their
actions and help them out. 12.03
