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The Neo Con Movement
Welcome to another episode of The Short Forms - small summaries of big topics.
Today we focus on the NeoConservative - or NeoCon - movement. I'll outline it's history, participants, rise to power and why it is so harmful to humanity.
The first thing to realize about the NeoCon movement is that it and its tributaries have been building and going on for a long time within the United States.
In 1949, a man named Leo Strauss began teaching political philosophy at the University of Chicago. Among his more esoteric concepts on the subject of esoterics, he instilled in his students two strong beliefs which make up the core of what has later been dubbed as Neo-Conservatism - via the following statement:
- Groups of people require two elements to become and remain a Society - 1. a strict adherence to certain Virtues and 2. a Unified Purpose. -
While this statement alone seems benign and realistic, his beliefs behind his elements are what you'll find flawed and more than a little crazy.
The belief behind Virtue, Strauss taught, is that Liberalism (aka, Freedom, or Liberty) is the enemy of Virtue. I'll say that again.. he taught that Freedom is the enemy of Virtue. He said a Society cannot be healthy and it's citizens cannot be virtuous or strong in the face of unbridled Freedoms. Freedom in his words, makes people weak and sinful, ultimately leading society to an utter collapse of structure and purpose. He taught that nothing would remain but a writhing animalistic chaos and a tyranny failing to rule it. Virtue he thought, could only exist through fear of God, countless personal restrictions and an unwavering obedience to authority... which if you bother to realize, means his path to virtue is through tyranny. Maybe he figured his strict Tyranny would be better than a free tyranny? I don't know.. I've never heard of a free tyranny. Anyway, that was the key to his first crackpot belief.
Behind the second element of Unified Purpose lies his second belief, which goes
- In order to inspire a Unified sense of Purpose, the Elite must tell the nation a Grand Lie - or in his words, a "Noble Myth". A Lie strong enough for people to believe in, to kill for, and die for. Strauss' preferred myth for any Society is "the never-ending fight between good and evil".
So he taught his students to tell us the following: The U.S. is the nation of Good, other nations are nations of Evil. Evil is to be feared and hated. Because it is Evil's nature try to destroy us, we the Good must band together in national pride to battle and conquer them first.
With the considerable weight Strauss puts on Virtue, his Second Belief is surprisingly devoid of it - in fact, making use of two Deadly Sins (Pride & Wrath), breaking two Cardinal Virtues (Courage & Justice) and breaking two Commandments (thou shalt not lie and thou shalt not commit murder). So I guess it's a bit of the old, "do as I say, not as I do" - sort of thing.
Now, in order to make this Lie sustainable, the nation or ideology chosen to represent Evil must be one which we can never realistically defeat. If the battle never ends Strauss thought, our sense of Purpose can remain Unified.
And that's it.. The two core ideas of Neo-Conservativism.
So of course his students, his elite, soon graduated with their heads full of this madness. They went off to work in our nation's capital and did their best to implement Strauss' teachings. The first group chosen to represent Evil was Communism. Democracy was chosen as the word to mean Good. Communism and Democracy were portrayed as opposites and the Cold War was on, followed by a good-old-fashioned arms race.
With nuclear annihilation keeping the U.S. and Soviet militaries in a constant stand-off, this looked like the never-ending battle between Good and Evil they were hoping for. With element 2 in place, neo-cons were free under that ultimate threat to strengthen the Military Industrial Complex for the private interests at home and organize countless brushfire wars abroad. They didn't get so far with Virtue yet but the grand lie was definitely working.
An important conflict for the NeoCons became the war going on in Afghanistan against the occupying Soviet forces. This was where our Evil Enemy of the future was being created by our CIA and Military by way of Afghani soldiers, the BinLaden family, and Arab convicts from surrounding countries. The CIA trained, armed and funded this random bunch, preparing them to fight the Soviets with terror warfare techniques they'd been studying and testing. Things like hidden bombs, indiscriminate casualties, assassination, and torture.. The NeoCons told Reagan to called them Freedom Fighters, and they were nearly ready to fight.
Then though, a surprising thing happened. USSR economically collapsed from the inside out.. and promptly, their military pulled out of Afghanistan. Suddenly there was no Afghani war, and what's more, no more endless Cold War enemy.
The Neo-cons called it a victory for Democracy and Freedom Fighters everywhere and then abandoned the arabs they'd been supporting.. not bothering to disarm them or put them back in prison. They were busy anyhow, they needed to find a new group to call Evil. They tried their best, making mountains out of mole hills in South America, demonizing any remaining nations that were communist but nothing much was sticking.. not for a while.
They were also losing more ground on Element One with many successes in the Civil Rights movement but they kept at it, bided their time, and looked around for possible allies in the Christian Right and such.
Not much happened for a while besides shady deals and secret unions, so I'll talk a bit more about Strauss, and his Islamist counterpart, Sayed Kotb (Sayyid Qutb).
So Leo Strauss claimed his answers for society were deduced by adhering to the unwritten wisdoms of Socrates and Plato. The thing is, they more readily coincide with contemporary practices which power tyrannical structures of people. For example, the following structures utilize similar brands of fear, myth, obedience, and so on..
Military Forces
Organized Religions
Corrupt Governments
Educational Institutions
Most Corporations
and Many Families
Strauss had experienced poignant forms of these structures throughout his life. He was born in Germany to a Jewish mother, attended famous schools and universities of his homeland, served in the military during World War I, then left for Cambridge England during the rise of Nazi-ism. Shortly thereafter, he immigrated to the United States.
So having firsthand knowledge of Judeo-Chistian faiths, Military, Combat, Nazi Germany, the Intellectual Elite, and the Socio-Economic Elite.. it's not too hard to hard to tell where these "esoteric truths" he claims to have gleaned from the ancients, actually came from.
To give a snippet of just one of these sources, I'll paraphrase Hitler's right hand man, Hermann Goering speaking at a war crimes trial:
"...the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.. yadda yadda.. It works the same way in any country."
There's your Noble Myth right there..
So with Strauss spewing his idiocy from Illinois in 1949, that very same summer brought the misfortune of Mr. Sayed Kotb to Colorado.
Kotb was sent from Egypt to study within the U.S. school system. He spent his time here being disgusted with U.S. culture and forming delusions which were remarkably similar to Strauss' views on the evil of Freedom and the need for the Elite to lead the masses by use of Fear toward Virtue. He took this ideal back Egypt, and when home, he spotted all the things he hated about the U.S. infecting his own country - primarily through it's secular, British rule at the time. While I'm not going to defend U.S. culture in the 50's or anyone being under British rule, Kotb did take things in an unfortunate direction..
He joined a Brootherhood trying to form an Elite to replace their current government. The coup was successful but the new regime didn't want religion dictating government policy, so the religion-based Brotherhood turned against the regime change they just backed.. Unfortunately for them, the new regime had the our CIA on their side..
Kotb and the others were then captured and tortured using early CIA techniques. With these years of imprisonment and torture stacked with his already questionable mental health, Kotb lost any and all remaining sanity points. Of course, he continued to write as he lost his mind. And all of his hatred of Freedom, human behavior, Western society and the oppression they've inflicted, he summed up in a word called Jahiliyyah. He wrote that the only way to counteract this sickness was through violent Jihad or "holy war" by any means necessary. All of this he wrote in hope of forming a single Arab Nation, ruled by Islamist Elite, leading the arab masses to his vision of being Virtuous, Pure and True.
Though Kotb didn't have students, he did have readers. One of the most prominent fans of his writing was Ayman al-Zawahiri. He teamed up with Osama "Money-Bags" BinLaden to try and become Kotb's dream of the Elite Vanguard - To unleash Jihad on all the middle-eastern governments and fellow Muslims infected with Jahiliyyah.
al-Zawahiri's Jihad came in the form of hidden explosions and surprise attacks on current government leaders in arabic nations. Their purpose was to show the masses that these leaders were right to die, since they were the infected bringers of further Jahiliyyah to the region.
The problem was, this message was not as clear as the rising death toll. They were certainly feared but also, misunderstood. Their hidden bombs started not only blowing up public officials but also random citizens. The Kotb/al-Zawahiri mentality meant EVERYONE but themselves, the Elite, needed to be shown they were infected by Jahiliyyah by use of explosions. For a while it seemed their efforts would peter out into obscurity.. But they and their NeoCon counterparts would soon get world-wide recognition.
So here we go back to what the Strauss Elite were up to..
The year is 2000. The world didn't end and the computers that run our economy didn't all crash and burn.. in short, nothing horrific happened after such a buildup of Y2K hype and impending end-of-century doom. Bush Jr. had swindled his way into the Presidency and his ratings were falling as his ability to lead, and particularly his ability to speak were both so obviously disappointing. The NeoCons were running out of ordinary distractions. They needed something big, something horrific. Something that, well, actually a few of them had already written into their game plan called the Project for New American Century. They wrote that they'd need a second Perl Harbor. A real or imagined attack on the U.S. to fuel a new Grand Lie against a new and different Enemy. But who could they get to make such an attack?
As luck would have it, al-Zawahiri's financier Osama BinLaden had a long standing grudge against the Bush family for long standing debt that W had borrowed and never bothered to pay back. Now, Osama was still an operative for the CIA and other members of his family were still dealing regularly with Bush Senior through the Carlsyle Group.. but he was also still angry and pretty involved with al-Zawahiri's Jihad against.. well, nearly everyone in the world at this point, but in particular, Western cultures.. especially the U.S. who's CIA had tortured Kotb and abandoned al-Zawahiri's militants.
So here they had a group who openly hated the U.S. A group that attacks in a way most westerners consider cowardly and terrible - with the very same methods that the CIA trained them to use - surprise attacks, non-standard bombs, terror warfare that often kills civilians. A group that their new friends in the Christian Right and THEIR new pals, the Zionists also openly dislike. A group that with a little PR, could be seen as a new WORLD WIDE enemy.. because unlike Communism, this enemy doesn't need an entire country to be run by it. It's an enemy that could potentially set up shop anywhere, with just a few individuals per location. An unbeatable enemy, because it could be anyone, anywhere with a bomb. All you need is anger from inhumane U.S. foreign policies, a few weapons, and a little encouragement.
The time is September 11, you all know the year.
Now, I don't really know how much of this was planned and how much was simple opportunism on the part of the NeoCons and the Gobt-ites.. but every time I look into it, there's more evidence and testimony pointing toward the NeoCons planning and executing everything that happened to the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.. with their only glitch being the plane headed toward the White House, getting shot down by accident. But regardless of which group did the most and which group jumped at the opportunity, both of them did so.. and it fueled the fires for change on both sides.
So all this crashing into things went down and there was a quick scramble. The NeoCons pointed fingers to the general area of Arabia. The al-Zawahiri-ites piped up and were proud to take credit. The NeoCons hired a PR firm in New Jersey and Judith "must protect the Scoot-meister" Miller to interview some pathological liar from the middle east and make up a profile for their new enemy. They called it, Al Qaeda.. and in a single news article, they suddenly turned this isolated group of Kotb reading nut-jobs into a highly sophisticated, world-wide terrorist network with "cells" in every country. Al Qaeda would represent the new enemy, the terrorist enemy, the Muslim enemy, the new Evil.
The NeoCons sent W to stand on piles of rubble and spout off their new Grand Lie to the nation and the world. The message was clear - They hate us because we are good and they are evil. They want to destroy us, so we must conquer them. Over the following months, the Bush Regime's message became clearer.
"They" are terrorists. Their name is Al Qaeda, they hate us for our Democracy.
They got the news to play footage of the attack 24 hours a day, week after week, for months after the fact.. They did this for one simple reason - instill The Fear. Where there is fear, close behind is Anger, Hatred, and Violence. And when all four are present, people are easily influenced. The masses of the U.S. were easily convinced that we should retaliate, attack, invade.. Somewhere, anywhere, just find the enemy and televise our army blowing it up.
The NeoCons pointed in all directions, Al Queda.. it's over there, over here, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in.. everywhere that's got oil under it. And HERE! Right under our noses, Al Queda is here in the U.S.! And with that, they got bills through congress that no one bothered to read, bills that not only opened the door for indiscriminate military action.. but curtailed our civil rights. This time they not only got element 2 in place but also element 1, Virtue through lack of Freedom. And they didn't stop there.
Since 2001 they've been corrupting every branch of government at a frantic pace. Pushing through no-bid contracts for the Military Industrial Complex, removing Civil Freedoms from the County, then State, then Federal levels. They've removed countless barriers for Industry to pollute and oppress. Leveraging two Presidential terms attained through massive voter fraud, they've taken over the Senet, the House, and now the Judiciary. They've leveraged the popularity and financial power of the Evangelical Christian Right to work with them in polarizing every issue into a question of Virtue and Patriotism. They're doing everything they can while the distraction of their new Grand Lie is being broadcast, over and over from the out through the television.
It's been several years now and they're still every bit in power as they were before, ripping our laws and policies to shreds and doing their damnedest to turn the bulk of U.S. citizens, and the rest of the world into slaves of the Strauss Elites. An uneducated, fearful, breading, christian mass of human consumers to be controlled and used for whatever purposes of empire building which suit the whims of the rich, the Elite.
They're in control now.. but I doubt they will and I certainly hope they won't continue to be for much longer. The reason why, is because their ideology is intrinsically flawed. It's an ideology that will anger too many people in too many places. Their methods can only work for a short period because their Grand Lie is so obviously a lie. Their form of Virtue doesn't follow along with the founding ideals of this country - that Freedom means Civil Rights & Liberties, and most of all that Freedom, is GOOD.
People are realizing that the NeoCon / Bush administration is working very hard against us, on a level not seen in this country for a very long time.. and people in greater numbers are getting informed, fed up, and spurred into taking our government back. Back to the needs of real live people in the real world.. and away from the NeoCons' evil fantasy land and the inhuman corporate interests who keep their undivided attention.
We can't let them continue on this course. There is more at stake now than ever in history. The number of people and places who will face indefinite suffering as a result of the NeoCon agenda will be unthinkably high if they remain in control.
Now that you know why they're doing what they're doing, you can't start too soon to do what you can to thwart their plans.
Thank you for listening to The Short Forms: The NeoCon episode.
Produced September 11th, 2006
The Short Forms, copyright 2006 Hoby Van Hoose, some rights reserved.
Totalitarian Structures
Welcome to another episode of The Short Forms - small summaries of big topics.Today I'll bring you a short history of totalitarian structures, from small to large, ancient to current.. why some are necessary, most are bad, and what you can do about them.
So, what IS a totalitarian structure? Let's look at the many synonyms:
It is a dictatorship
a tyranny
a fascist regime
it is oppression
despotism
authoritarianism
and autocracy
The meaning, in plain terms is best described by recounting the origin of the word, Fascist. It comes from the word 'fasces' which were Roman era status symbols and weapons - poles bound together around an axe. Men in charge carried the ceremonial versions, while gate guards held the larger, deadlier ones.
The situation was this: A few powerful men or a solitary man would be inside the gates, deciding the fate of the city around them. You, a citizen of the city, want to get inside to voice your opinion. The guards at the entrance would lower their fasces across your path to block you, and if you tried to force your way through, to kill you.
And here we have the essence of Fascism: They are inside, you are kept out. They are making decisions that effect you, which you have no say in.
That is how the term Fascist grew to describe not just what they carried, but what they did. They abused their authority through a mixture of secrecy, segregation, and threat of force. In doing so, creating fertile breeding grounds for corruption and cruelty.. abuses which need not even emerge from malice - but from the very isolation that the structure creates.
You might be wondering now, where would this awful structure come from? Mean people? Evil incarnate? Space aliens? Well, it turns out that it comes from a much simpler place and out of necessity.
The Family
Why so? Because when we're born, we humans are especially incapable of surviving alone for the first several years of our lives. We NEED parents to decide for us, to tell us what to do, and provide for us.. often against our wishes but for our own good. Otherwise we'd starve or get eaten, fall injured or die in countless ways. The younger we are, the more that parents must dictate our lives. It's true today and it was especially true in the distant, primitive past.
Now.. the one caveat in this situation, and this is critical - is that as we mature, that need fades away. Problems arise when this structure persists beyond the need.
For example, this can be when a parent makes decisions which are of no benefit to the child.. when a parent abuses their child.. or when a parent otherwise imposes their authority after the child has clearly matured.
This structure and its pitfalls range from a single child and parent, all the way up to clans and dynasties. And when certain clans and dynasties became more powerful than others, we arrive at the interfamily version of the family structure.. the intrinsically flawed system of ruler-ship called:
The Kingdom
In this system, the people of the domain are treated as the children and the King's family, the Royal Family are treated as the parents. The King himself, he is treated as some kind of supreme parent - all decisions are made with him and cast outward through the entire kingdom.
While there could be in this vast system of dictatorship, the same kind of caring, teaching, and recognition of maturity that can occur in a single family.. the chances are too slim. The King and his kingdom are not related, there is no parental bond, no recognition of maturity, and no way for the king to even HEAR the concerns of his entire kingdom. The potential for abuse is extreme..
As time drew on and the in-breeding of royalty took greater tolls, Kings leading Kingdoms have largely been replaced by Ministers and Presidents from other gene pools, leading the next form of wide area society:
The Nation
Nations have a greater potential for avoiding fascism - but as yet, for the most part, this potential has not been realized. Some current nations are reportedly Democratic, some are openly Autocratic most all are dysfunctional mixes of the two.
Regardless of the degree to which some Nations offer sprinkles of democracy - they still for the most part utilize the same, tired, structures of fascism caused so much tragedy in the past. But for some, even that is not a deterrence and try to scale this structure even larger.. When kingdoms and nations combine, they form the largest fascist structures known to man:
Empires
These have been responsible for the most widespread abuses in ever recorded - because, well, they cover so much more land. The Empire is a sort of holy grail of totalitarianism. It can cross borders and span the globe, blanketing the entire known world with a single oppressive force. It is this level of fascism that realistically hopes to attain world domination.
But strangely, an Empire is also a fragile thing. It can crumble as fast as it forms. Most Empires based around territory have suffered this fate. In a minute though, I'll explore a couple which haven't yet collapsed.. Empires based around intangibles.
Remember again that in these vast societies - even a well meaning ruler is doomed to subject his or her people to oppression, cruelty and suffering. The dictator need not be evil - though that can certainly speed the process.
The main thing is, the larger the number and stratification of people, the more extreme our isolation in these systems become. Whenever too many or too few people share the same space with one another, disparity arises. On a personal level, this leads to feelings of loneliness, indifference, paranoia and so on. On a societal level, these feelings usher in the acts of fascism and tyranny.
Now that we've discussed governance, let's quickly highlight two other tyrannical ingredients of society.
Military and Education
The military is obviously a totalitarian structure, very openly so. It's debatable whether this makes the organization more or less effective because it depends on what you consider effective. If you define that as being a horde with which to inflict mass slaughter, then you would argue "yes". If though, you'd call effectiveness the ability to peacefully and quickly extinguish conflicts and invasions, the answer would be "no".
Educational institutions are also totalitarian. Again this is out of the necessities of instruction but also again, this can't scale well through all maturity levels. Freedom DOES increase as a student rises to through to College, however, their level of Democracy does NOT. Maturing students should have increasing say in their learning experience.. this lack of dialog makes pedagogy far less effective for all but a few people.
The next two I'm going to lump together. Not because they are the same but because they inter-relate in a unique way.. and because they both pose the greatest modern threats to the human conditions of freedom and democracy.. (and by that I mean REAL freedom and democracy.. not the myths perpetuated by the NeoCons). Anyway, they have repeatedly perverted and dismantled democratic structures from the inside out and the outside in. They are the two largest totalitarian structures that persist today:
Religion and Business
Like other social structures gone wrong, these likely started out as a kind-hearted effort to take care of others in a community but were co-opted by the selfish and power-hungry..
Business allows some people to specialize in growing one kind of food, provide one kind of service, or make one kind of widget. Trade allows these products to be available in exchange between members of the community. Money allows trade to continue while seasonal bartered goods are not practical.
Religion aims to put assurance to unanswerable questions and standardize lifestyles. In its various forms, it advises people to cope with misfortune, gather frequently, follow a set of hopefully wise practices, and some forms encourage people to treat each other fairly, seek enlightenment, better themselves and their community.
But as I said, they haven't stayed so beneficial to all - and in doing so they even added their own twist to the fascist method.
While Kings and other dictators of state primarily direct people's fear, awe, servitude toward themselves - the leaders of Religion and Business cast themselves as worthy agents of a greater imaginary entity.. an ethereal parent. And THAT is the object to which they direct people to pledge some of their strongest emotions. It is a parent that cannot be involved in argument or conversation, that cannot be punished, slain or even fully understood.. The parent is whatever the Preacher or CEO tells us it is. So while the public's attention is clouded by whatever they imagine that entity to be, the Priest or the Banker is free to dictate as they please.. it allows extremely powerful men to portray themselves as not so powerful, merely humble servants who pass on the word of Gods or the direction of the Company - those elusive parental mirages that are said to hold the answers all of our worries. For Religion it's the promise of life after death, interconnectedness, and a clear conscience. For Business it's the promise of material wealth, trust in trade, and the welfare of loved ones. But for these promises to ever deliver (and in the case of death, we have no way of knowing if they have) the public must do things, often terrible things, in order to stay on good terms with these imaginary parents.
These structures transcend every other social structure, including each other - operating as sort of meta-Empires. They cross borders of all Nations, states, towns and villages. They take root in families of all types, individuals from every culture. Preachers may affect Economists and vice versa.
But in every case, commands are uttered from the mouths of the high and mighty to be solidified in contracts, bibles and brutal actions. What they say is what you must do, or suffer now and possibly forever.. banished from their all-powerful imaginary parent.
It is by no mistake that the leaders of Nations have aligned themselves with the powers of Religion and Business. When Nationalism is mixed into the fold, you can cover the entirety of all we might fear. You can tell people not only their home is threatened, but also their possessions, profession, community and beliefs.. you've got them, lock stock and barrel. For example, if people believe that they and their children will go to Heaven if the Nation sends them to die in war - they're much more likely to let that happen. What's the difference between that and being sent on a suicide mission? Not a whole lot..
Business and Religion are major, persisting forms of modern international fascism and tyranny.. and the really dangerous part is, most people don't consider them to be so. They've been brainwashed by the New Royalty into taking it all for granted.. that, well, that's just the way the world works and there's nothing they can do about it.
Wrong. We can and we MUST do something about these legally sanctioned authoritarian regimes. They're already sending us into a modern dark age, a dystopia worse than our bleakest dreams.
These Modern Kingdoms have wormed their way into the inner workings of nearly every Nation.. feeding off people, policies, and politicians like a tumor. Dictatorships and Democracies alike are influenced by Religion and purchased by Business.. in time, the desires of their lobbyists are the only voices a Nation's leaders will listen to and take action for.
They need to be stopped and replaced with viable alternatives. What kind you ask? Well, fascism is not the only way societies have formed. Structures based around voting consensus, flattened hierarchies, diversified authority and autonomous cooperation have been invented, re-invented and cultured throughout human history.
The problem is, most of these open structures which haven't been broken and corrupted, have remained as they started out - small in scale. Often, they aren't found in groups larger than Tribes and Villages. Why is that? Well, let's examine these groups.
Tribes are often used to describe transient societies, while Villages usually mean that people stay put. Both share two qualities.. they're fairly small and around the world, these communities have come up with a variety of governance methods - many of which are the beneficial structures I mentioned.
One of the reasons why open societies can persist in a small tribe or village has to do with a bit of biology. Studies have shown that the human mind is only capable of easily recognizing and regarding a maximum of around 150 people.. People who fall beyond those numbers.. (and this doesn't have anything to do with how nice the person is), they just won't matter as much. They won't seem as real to us. Because this limitation is also found to be present in monkeys, it is sometimes called "the monkeysphere".
So if you're living in a village of 50, even 100 or so people, they fit within your monkeysphere. You'll be able to remember, know, and empathize with each and every one of them. But if you live amongst hundreds or thousands of people.. you can't. They just don't fit inside your monkey-sphere.. most of them will be strangers to you. This limitation effects everyone, from me to you, to chiefs, kings, and congressmen. From janitors to CEOs and from the police to the Pope.
Because of this trait, if Democratic structures are to succeed untainted when scaled up to the populations of modern Societies - they need to be comprised of these monkeysphere sized groups. And these groups need to be collaborating with each other, like cells in your body. It's how we should plan all our communities, whether that's a collection of buildings or a social web site.
A major key to undoing totalitarian abuse is to thwart their power in the same manner they've infected Democracies - by starting Democratic structures INSIDE THEM! Unions for instance, provide workers a say in the conditions dictated by business fascists. Public Product Ratings allow customers to voice their concerns about products and services that are being promoted to them. Co-ops are a kind of business model that are built around democratic process from the ground up. In their purest form, every employee votes, every employee earns the same wage, and every employee has equal ownership of the business. If they stay small and cooperate, they're infinitely sustainable.
These are just a few of the many empowering structures you can use to replace fascist empires. Please find out more about them, join them, create them, use them to make our world a better place.
So now that you know what these totalitarian structures are, you can hopefully realize that the vast majority of people have grown beyond the need for them. As children, we need the family structure. But this structure just does not work well beyond raising children. As mature human beings, we need social and societal structures that recognize maturity and work with our monkeysphere limitations. We need interconnected community clusters that provide equal say in our own fates, where our voice is welcomed and utilized. We need these structures to be pervasive in every realm of society: in governance, trade, education, and production.. in discovery, cultivation, and every other arena where fascism can be harmful to us.
No one should have the fasces lowered before them, stopping them by fear, by death, or by secrecy from participating in their own society. There are many ways to put fascism in check and there are better structures to build societies upon. There is always a better way.. a way that can start out small and grow to replace any tyranny. That is the main lesson that must be learned about totalitarian structures and what you must realize to undo the suffering they are bound to create.
Thank you for listening to The Short Forms: A Short History of Totalitarian Structures.
Produced February 5th, 2008
The Short Forms, copyright 2008 Hoby Van Hoose, some rights reserved.
Why
Welcome to another, shorter episode of The Short Forms.
Today I'm going to talk a little about why I'm doing this podcast.. and what I hope to accomplish.
So.. I'm making an episodic audio program about taking issues that I think are important or rarely discussed, or discussing social theories that I'd like to put forth - and trying to cram them into as few minutes as possible for people to digest whether they're paying full attention or listening while doing some other activity.
Some might say.. why bother?
It all comes down to how I feel about the spread of experience.. and the importance of how that happens. How with the right balance information and emotional states, we can accomplish the most amazing things.
Right now, we are facing some very large, complex problems.. problems that are rooted heavily in the past and if not dealt with in new ways, threaten our personal, immediate future, as well as the future of all living things on this tiny speck of a planet. Many of the problems may be old but they've been scaled up, made more potent with technology, population, and duration.
So we need to overcome these problems.. but how? I think we can work our way into solving these issues in progressive, organic ways that really - essentially - come naturally to us. They just need a chance to flourish.
As I see it, education (in the largest sense of the word) begets challenging the status quo in a positive way. A very large portion of resistance to abuses of power and solutions to previously unsolvable problems have originated in places of learning and research. I think this happens because when you mix Critical Thinking with Knowledge, you gain greater Awareness. Taking that Awareness and Assessing a situation will frequently lead to Action. And an Informed or Enlightened Action can be a very, VERY powerful thing.. particularly when it is done in collaboration with others.
The more diverse the collaboration and deeper the knowledge, the more holistically aware a person can be. And with that, the better they can make the world around them.
So what I hope to be providing here.. is.. a starting point. A seed of summary that might soon grow into a University in your head - a catalyst that sparks you into a journey of Illuminated Actions toward the common good.. toward a future where we might not only have survived - but succeeded.. a future in which we've overcome the obstacles of our own creation and arrived at a more sustainable, empathic, and cooperative world of people.
That may seem like a lofty goal but, well, everything has to start somewhere.
Thank you for listening to The Short Forms.
Produced March 5th, 2008
Copyright 2008 Hoby Van Hoose, some rights reserved.
