THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF DESTRUCTION

By DENNIS DEWOLF

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF DESTRUCTION is the second of two books exploring war in all its complexity. In the first book, THE BOOK TO END ALL WARS, it was posited that war acts upon the human psyche like a destructive mental virus. The first book looked into the history of that deadly virus. The current examination through THE PHILOSOPHY OF SEL

• Language: English
• Publisher: DEWOLF SERVICES
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692128022

Book preview

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF DESTRUCTION

DEDICATED TO:

PEACE IN OUR CENTURY

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Introduction

Since this second book is part two of a philosophical treatise, I think the introduction should consist of a review of what we have already come to understand about war from the first book, The Book to End All War, part one of a two-part series.

In the first book, we explored war as an ongoing situational anomaly, the product of an evolution deriving its impetus from raiding activity. Raiding was the consequence of both natural and man-made factors occurring in our species’ fight for survival as we were evolving our societies from hunter-gatherer to the sedentary forms of farming and herding.

This new immersion of social activity away from humanity’s involvement in the natural world and toward one of his own engineering had both positive and negative results. While it would give the species a more stable food source, those food sources were still the victim of the vagaries of nature such as weather, draught, or simply insufficient agricultural and animal husbandry knowledge. In the worst of times, these inauspicious conditions of desperation and deprivation brought out the basest of humanity’s animal instincts. These natural conditions could be extreme and long lasting in the areas where the sedentary societies likely had begun, the Middle East. The Middle East, which is likely not only to be the cradle of civilization but also the land where war would call its birthplace, would also be the birthplace of historical record.

Through regular use on the part of some, or perhaps a few, tribes using raids as a temporary fix to the most dreadful of situations, it became institutionalized and began to develop a momentum all its own. This created a new modus vivendi acting quite like a virus that began to spread around the planet from contact. This tit-for-tat chain reaction created its own systems, rationalizations, and philosophies mimicking life and even rationalized survival. Over the course of some time, the infection became nearly general to the species, evolving its vectors and becoming general.

Some of its vectors were actually the philosophies and even the social constructs of the human race. Yet it could be said that the virus was still in its incubation phase in a prewar period until it emerged to full maturity when the raiding evolved into war. In order to spell out the immensity of the error, I conjured a hypothetical situation in which some long forgotten political entity made the next sociological jump from a highly evolved raiding structure to full-blown war.

Beginning tentatively about ten thousand years ago, once war was installed as the guiding principle of all further human social development—and due to its urgency and efficiency as a coordinating structure—we watched as human society developed coterminous to various themes and iterations this brought into play. Considering war as a virus enabled us to track it as a live, evolving entity, both preying on human development and growing with it organically like a cancer.

Now it was time to track our nemesis historically as it evolved in tandem with social developments, being both a part of them but also at times a determinant of direction. Hopefully, by this method, we can gather the information necessary to eradicate this as yet undetected threat. I say undetected because war is still widely misunderstood to be a natural appendage to human behavior. Through a very truncated history lesson, we were able to ascertain certain elements of war’s nature while probing for weaknesses we might use to introduce antibodies. We watched war evolve through stages from prewar through early war, imperial, medieval, firearms, balancing powers, total war, up to our present situation of a mass annihilation period likely to end in self-destruction. These periods are nearly self-explanatory and involve the co-opted ability of society to adjust to war realities.

Of course, war needed accomplices if it were to survive despite humanity’s rational nature. So, from historical speculative evidence, I introduced the concept of the ancient regime. This regime is the one, and only, type of governance used on this planet—with a few exceptions mentioned in this book—that has been used as a prototype to politics on this planet from the time that war became universal. All types of governance are only various versions and iterations of the military state with varied allowances to individual freedom that are inconsequential to the overview of political life on this planet as it is viewed from the unconvinced eye.

We watched history progress through the centuries of slaughter with war accepted as a modus vivendi. In order to make this acceptance more bearable, certain psychological pacifiers had to be developed. We see this device used in the guise of the impenetrable walls, castles, the nuclear umbrella, and so many other gimmicks through history as a way to get people to accept a fate that they might otherwise begin to rebel against.

It is important to understand that AR (ancient regime) societies are constituted in such a way that the control of the society is handed down generationally. Each new generation of elites accepts the responsibility of either tightening or strengthening the control in order to retain a hold on the general population. They do this not out of any prewritten plan, but out of personal interest, a kind of invisible hand of the oppressor. The elites do this not only out of personal interest, but out of a sincere belief that society can’t be constituted in any other way. While history shows us innumerous examples of societal organization as evidence that there are many ways in which a society might be constituted politically, the thought that a society might be constituted that didn’t use war as a uniting factor would seem ludicrous to them. Is this because a society that cannot resort to violence for crowd control must always rely on popular support? Would then a more equal distribution of societal wealth follow, making elites unnecessary and reducing their status? Does it go then that it is necessary that all AR societies are elite societies, run for elites for their own purposes?

Yet during these dark centuries, mankind appears to have been rebelling—if only subliminally—from the enforced conditions of their misery. The AR situational was predicated on the design factor that only those who rise to the top of its structure would limit their suffering. This was led by some small portion of humanity who strained at their restraints, yet never uncovered the true identity of their oppressors.

Occasionally, a personality comes along that sees the way out. Mankind produces these amazing men and women, each with their own unique perspective on a way out and into the light. There are too many to name, but to name a very few, Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Jane Addams, and Martin Luther King Jr. have made their input. However, they have only helped to balance the Hitlers, Stalins, and Genghis Khans, since they have never made it clear to mankind what was the cornerstone of their oppression.

Then, through the process of education and the unstoppable growth of a worldwide middle-class momentum, a moment of incalculable import strikes the human psyche—the Enlightenment of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Enlightenment that this author believes to be an ongoing process rather than a bygone era. Since its auspicious beginnings, it has continued reshaping society toward emancipation from elite domination, though currently it is under its most aggressive assault in centuries.

The neoliberals are the most recent incarnation of elite control through AR modalities. Neoliberalism, understood correctly, is a position of last-ditch defenders of a moribund system of elite control. Their unstated goal, one they themselves don’t fully comprehend, is to take society back through the centuries to better times for the elites, times of unregulated pillage when they were respected for their abuses; indeed, even considered gods in their societies. There is no evidence that we can go back that far, but there seems to be no boundaries set for a retrograde direction, since the middle class has allowed neoliberals to take out all the stops.

Understanding all this, we can move forward in our treatment of the philosophy of self-destruction, remembering that, to an average person, self-destruction through war is out of the question, while to our elites it is preferable to a loss of status and/or wealth

As with the first book, I will avail my readers with a glossary of terms so that they might follow closely and refer to the terms if they have any question as to how they are being used in the context of the treatise.

Contents

Explanation of Terms and Concepts

Section Two: Our Present Circumstance and War Psychology

Capitalism

Empires and Misery

The Ageless Dream of Global Empire

Why Now Empires

Is the World Ready for a Global Power Structure?

Expendability and the Illusion of Protection

How to Make a Soldier

Military Obsolesence

Drone Warfare

Biological War and Mishap

War and Genetic Breeding

The Intelligence Community a Major Vector for War

The World of the Elites

Opportunism

How to Use an Idealist or an Ego

War and the Ultimate Weapon or Defense

Lingering Consequences of War

Retrograde Intellect

The Life Cycle of War

War on a Hair Trigger

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Political Continuity in Support of War

If

The Gross Misconception that Wars are Spontaneous

The Actual Cost of War

Are People Interested in War?

Defense as an Excuse for War

War’s Pretexts

The Psychology of Acceptance of War

Acceptance of Governmental Paternalism

Short Memories

The Drama of War

Positive Arguments for War

Is Fighting Wars Natural?

War as Population Control

War and American Civilization

A Society Self-Destructing

Excuses and Justifications for War

War Enables Technological Advancement

War’s Public Relations and Propaganda

Sanitizing War to Make it More Palatable

Euphemisms for War and Violence

Ideological Conflict a Guise for Other Motives

Are Wars Ever Settled

Section Three: Considerations for Peace

Wars of Various Sorts

Divide and Conquer

Politics is Not the Cause of War—Politicians Are

The Future of Warfare

The Inevitability of Social Reversal

Problems to Be Overcome to Eradicate War

The Complications to Ending War

Section Four: A Future without War

Has the World Considered Peace?

The Fertile Seeds of Peace

The United Nations

There are Societies that Don’t Wage War

What Will Happen if We Don’t Soon Change Direction

Section 5: Reformation of the Ar System with the Goal of Replacement

Looking for a Savior

Pregnant Moments of Peaceful Possibilities

Has Mankind Been Moving Away From War?

Dogmatic Religion versus Spirituality

Evolving Our Society’s Past Ancient Regime Tyrannies

What Does the Future Hold for Mankind?

Where We are and Where We Should Be

Where Are We Now and Where Are We Headed?

Tough Love Wake-Up Call

Prospects for the Future

Can We Stop the Virus?

The Demise of the Ancient Regime

Proposals to End War

Build a National and International Coalition of Peace Groups

The Un

A University of Peace

A Peace Dividend

Ideas for Ending War

Final Thoughts

EXPLANATION OF TERMS AND CONCEPTS

The Neoliberal Ascendancy

This has become the driving force in modern politics for much of what was once called the industrialized world. Since manufacturing is rapidly being parceled out to what were once called third world countries—excepting China, which has evolved out of that stage—the terms industry and industrial have become confused in their usage. All of the wealthier nations are, to varying degrees, captives of this system. This system is a product of efforts to redesign the economic system of the United States, begun initially as experimentation in the unwitting presidency of James Carter, but maneuvered into effect under the collaboration of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in Britain and the United States.

The professed impetus of the undemocratic—and therefore treasonous— adaptations to the economic systems of these two nations was the supposed necessity of dealing with what we were told were intractable economic issues. Engineered by a small cabal with a nexus in the industrial, financial, corporate, and political top echelons of the societies involved, they moved rapidly to redesign the economic structure to their advantage. Ensconced and working like termites in the superstructure of a wooden home, totally unnoticed by the general public and unreported by the media, which prior to implementation by the cabal were bought out, they began to reconstruct the national structure one system at a time, with the full collaboration of every president since Carter. Like a computer virus, they attacked one program at a time until they gained control of the entire system. Initially working through the guise of think tanks and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), these self-righteous conspirators are the vast, right-wing conspiracy that Hillary Clinton spoke of and is furtively in regular contact with.

The ascendancy grows through co-optation of powerful individuals, foreign and domestic, who can be of service to the cabal in their unstated, yet increasingly apparent, goals. The goals range from merely shearing the planet of its wealth, to creating a one-world government under their control. Except that they know they are enriching themselves at everyone’s expense, they probably see this behavior as beneficial on some level. This makes them either delusional or clinically sociopathic.

Ancient Regime

This is a term I borrowed from the French Revolution. They used the term to connote the origins of French monarchy, which they traced to the Middle Ages. However, it was too excellent a fit to explain humanity’s perpetually familiar forms of governance for me to pass up. I appropriated its use. In my use, it is used to clarify the one type of government humankind has used since before recorded history. Irrespective of the pretensions humanity has deluded itself with when categorizing its iterations, there has only been one evolving type of government ever used.

While it is quite obvious that there are differences in governments, both presently and historically, these differences are quite insignificant to their similarities. While governments have historically found every sort of nuance imaginable in their economic systems, their main form of government has always been control through force and exploitation of the many by the few. The control mechanisms used throughout all recorded history have been very similar; assumed and actual coercion.

The differences in use and methods of coercion are only nuanced according to the necessity and insistence of getting the various historical cultures to cooperate. Always, behind all methods of coercion, exceptionally violent or just implied, is the threat of a military. AR societies are all very similar in structure, with the differences small in comparison to the similarities. I will refer to the term ancient regime (AR) whenever I am referring to situations where it is necessary to make clear that this is the ancient behavior of societies that use war as the uniting factor of a society.

Matrix

The social, political, technological, and psychological mix in which we live, the contrived venue or milieu both apparent and psychological. It is the societal structure that we live out our lives in, like goldfish in a bowl. Each of us lives in the local version of the matrix, to which we are the main psychological contributors to its upkeep. There is nothing particularly real about the matrix. It is a mental construct, not truly of the essence of reality we ascribe to it. The matrix is what we individually and collectively make it out to be, and time adapts this cage perennially. When I refer to this matrix, I refer usually to the collective reality we’re convinced we perceive, which is actually not reality, but just our belief of what reality is. A child perceives Santa Claus as a reality, but is he? Or is he just a perspective parading as reality?

Neoconservatives

Neoconservatism began to congeal under the ill-fated presidency of Richard Nixon. A neurotic politician with a decided antidemocratic streak that he didn’t even suspect existed, he would foster in his subordinates a secretive and adversarial attitude toward the US electorate. By the time these subordinates had risen to positions of power within the government, they had developed a tiny-but-powerful retinue supported by the worst element in the neoliberal ascendancy.

Decidedly hawkish, poorly intellectualized, Machiavellian through and through, neoconservatives use any means at their disposal to achieve their goals. Delusional self-aggrandizers, they use the pay-to-play system to great advantage. Like the ascendancy, they make copious use of the pseudo-intellectualism of the think tanks and media, which serve really as sycophantic extensions of their agendas, to sell their ill-fated, usually rehashed imperial concepts to the public.

They have, these days, become part and parcel of the ascendancy, its right wing, with the difference being in the greater use of the Pentagon and intelligence operatives than the standard ascendancy adherent. They foresee the United States as the hegemon in a global empire. Their lack of self-examination of their own motivations and agendas protects them from facing the facts about their senseless crusades and fascistic direction. They are self-serving, power-hungry climbers who are bound to fail, and no amount of faux intellectual support will prevent it. Their antidemocratic endeavors are the very reason their efforts are doomed to failure and self-destruction in the twenty-first century, since they are out of synch with the times. Since they love war but mostly avoid personal contact, their efforts might be comical if they weren’t so inherently tragic.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

SECTION TWO

OUR PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND WAR PSYCHOLOGY

HOW PEOPLE SEE WAR

WHY DOES WAR CONTINUE

In recent years, it has become very popular to present a top ten list to answer lengthy questions. It has been a popular prop on late night television, and I’m not averse to using a contemporary gimmick to get my point across. So, I will present my top ten reasons why war continues. This list is by no means exhaustive, but the top ten format will serve us well here because these top ten are the most compelling of the reasons out there why war continues.

Reason Ten: Politics

Nearly all political systems on this planet are ancient regime systems. What that means is that they are political systems usually instituted and/or constituted as a consequence to war. In the case of the United States, after its revolution, it reconstituted itself with a constitution that afforded more authority than was then currently customary to the middle class, but it was in an AR format. Regardless of how a country reconstitutes itself, if immediately after its institutionalization it chooses to have a military or to retain one, it is an ancient regime variation, regardless of its perceived need for defense.

Hunter-gatherer society, the form of political and cultural existence for 99 percent of our existence on earth, didn’t have military organization. In modern times, Costa Rica doesn’t have a military. These are not representatives of ancient regime societies, since they have not centered their collective or national goals on aggressive behavior toward their neighbors. Non-ancient regime societies don’t conduct their foreign political and economic affairs through the use of implicit coercion.

The ancient regime systems are constructed around war and are therefore dependent upon it. Their entire political systems are geared for war at the slightest provocation. Only cost/benefit analysis and the patience of their respective populations keep them from warring regularly. Those members of the society that aspire to lead and direct AR societies accept war as an inevitability and shoulder the responsibility that, should tensions arise, they be fully cognizant of the military power they wield.

Reason Nine: Capitalism/Aggressive Economics

From its inception, capitalist economics, a form of monetary capture of the wealth of nations, was designed to replace the medieval systems of control through land acquisition and replace them with control through a legal system and legal tender.

Initially, these were used by the Enlightenment’s middle-class, bourgeoisie ascendancy to establish control by holding the old order elite system, monarchy, hostage. After monarchy’s demise, capitalists (capitalism’s elites) created a new status quo which actually restored the elite system of AR control under new ownership. Since, today, nearly all nations on earth use the capitalist economic model, even those euphemistically called communist, whose economic model would more accurately be called state capitalism, we will examine this ancient regime economic model as the modern standard. Capital is another word for money, and modern wealth is represented by its ability to be converted to money. So, capitalism is a system of wealth attainment. In all capitalist systems, state or otherwise, this wealth will be unevenly distributed with huge percentages of national wealth under the sway of social elites.

In order for these elites to retain their position, they require both protection (at its root, a military) and economic control. They maintain economic control through their control of the political system that ultimately writes the laws in their favor. All elites understand this order of things in which they control all wealth and benefits while others are there, at their behest, to contribute.

In most recent times, they disguise their economic control through a legal contrivance called a corporation. The corporation works as an intermediary for their control of the system in order to disguise their moves. They have bestowed this Frankenstein’s monster with life so that the villagers will attack the monster and not the monster’s creator, who is not to be held legally responsible. The laws, which are to be held sacrosanct by the mass of humanity, are at their behest and are regularly evaded by the elites, like so many taxes. Capitalism will always require a strong military presence, much as a Mafia figure will require bodyguards, to be safeguarded from aggressive resistance.

Reason Eight: Ruling Elites

As long as mankind allows itself to be led like a herd of sheep, in societies concocted to perpetuate elite domination, our lemming march over the precipice and into the abyss will continue unabated. All ancient regime societies are run by elites whether clearly understood or not. These elites are the consequence of the system that creates them. Were they all gone tomorrow, replacements would instantly appear. The system would see to it, and we would all collaborate in the affair.

Reason Seven: Intelligence Agencies

Intelligence agencies are the natural outcrop of elite systems. No ruling elite system can operate without information as to the moments in which the mass populace becomes aware of their latest or past machinations. If elites are to survive, they must know who opposes their actions and the best way to deal with the opposition. The elites are subject to two mortal threats, those being their domestic competitors and victims. But they must also be on the lookout for any international elites trying to subjugate them and add them to their coterie, or perhaps dispose of them as a threat if they are deemed irreconcilable. In order to keep apprised daily of the national situation, their neurosis must be placated by surveillance of the subjected population and of the foreign situation. Many people perceive this behavior as paternalistic, not understanding the true nature of it, but it is quite threatening to anyone standing in their way, either intentionally or unintentionally. As long as hidden webs and networks of elite control operate covertly, they will certainly protect war, the very basis of their control.

Reason Six: Military

This brings us to another important player in the ancient regime. The backbone of any ancient regime is the military. The military represents those members of society who are willing or coerced into taking up arms for its defense. Only at the highest levels are these people absorbed into elite society, unless they have happened to have attained this distinction by birth. Only after a long life spent being slowly scrutinized into the elite fold, do a few military-cast members find a place in the halls of power.

For most people in the military, including nearly all that make it a career, the motivations, subterfuges, and wealth distribution that characterize elite control is shielded from them except in occasional glimpses. In their minds, they understand there are wealthy recipients that benefit from their actions, but they see themselves not as protectors of elite society, which is their main purpose, but as protectors of their country. Which is really the same thing, in a very roundabout way.

This is, like the corporation, elite misdirection at its finest. We look at an old Robin Hood movie, and we see soldiers attacking peasant villages, and we clearly see this as theft and bullying. Yet if we see another movie, where those same British knights are fighting the French in the same era to see which lord gains control of the peasants, we see them as they would see themselves—as defenders, even though the lands they defend will be handed over to the nobles for the obligatory exploitation of the peasant, just as harshly.

Reason Five: Vested—Or Business—Interests

In America, I have listened as farmers have talked enthusiastically about the prospects of war raising crop prices. I have listened to small businessmen talk about how during World War II, there were contracts to be had from the government for the manufacture of nearly every type of small part imaginable. With so many men off to war, there were also plenty of jobs to be had, and workers were in demand.

Sad to say, we all benefit from war. In an ancient regime economy, which by its very nature is built around war, is it not surprising that war brings some modicum of prosperity? In America, where the elites have been allowed to run amok, completely unencumbered, this is no longer the case due to monopolization, foreign labor, and foreign investment, but for the rest of the world, America’s wars bring them prosperity.

The ill-advised exporting of manufacturing capacities and the monopolization of the remaining manufacturing will likely come back to haunt America if she stumbles into war again. Especially if it is a capable opponent that realizes this weakness. Is America aware of this? Those not under the control of corporate interests are, perhaps. Lately, the wars Americans fight are crushing their economic security. But the military and intelligence components of the society won’t just sit on their hands and let their appropriations dwindle.

Further, the neoliberal ascendancy’s business elites can’t be interrupted when they are intoxicated with acquisition, and they don’t want to be disturbed when there are profits to be made. The hope that war will even be curtailed while the ascendancy retains its tight grip is unlikely. The ascendancy is not staffed by builders, dreamers, or creators, just by profiteers and talented manipulators. After America tastes the sting of its first Waterloo, perhaps then there will be an opening up for the opportunity for debate as the society gets out its proverbial guillotine.

Reason Four: Nuclear Weapons

Since the creation of nuclear weapons, we have really painted ourselves into a corner. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate Mexican standoff, two bad hombres pointing a gun at each other with neither party able to pull the trigger or to back off. No country can unilaterally dispose of their weapons or they have no way to deter their oppositions designs.

These weapons not only feature the ability to turns millions of people into smoke in an instant, they represent the threat of a poisoned environment for thousands of years. As an ancient regime arsenal component, they are a dud. In the future, they may well prevent war more than encourage it. When everyone has them, international war must, of necessity, stop, and civil wars would be a tricky business—though they’d be all that’s left. They nullify all the reasons for which the elite war, because acquisition is not optional in a poisoned environment. Even some of the initial creators thought these weapons would one day make war impossible. Unless the world is insane, this should hold true. But this would require that everyone has them, and, no surprise, we have treaties in place to prevent that. This is the last thing elite systems would want; it would make elites an eventual redundancy.

North Korea has been the first nation to figure out how to use nuclear weapons as a form of extortion. As Hitler was once a gift to war, this backpedaling society is keeping the nuclear fixation alive and healthy even after the contrived nuclear tensions of the Cold War have since vanished. America has developed a new nuclear weapon in response, which has a warhead that can be dialed according to desired yield. I suppose they figure to keep the death toll high but the radiation low. Then it would be of use as something other than as a doomsday device.

On the lighter side, the North Korean regime is a gift to this treatise, since it not only proves the dangers of following quirky, irresponsible elites, but it also shows that any rationale for peace built on a balance of power or mutually assured destruction, so idolized by men like Henry Kissinger, is not only a pipe dream, but a road to constant vigilance and likely disaster. If everyone had nuclear weapons, it would prevent invasions, but unless mankind outlaws war it will not prevent the inventive from thinking up some other version of AR organization aimed at violence and theft.

Reason Three: Arms Dealers

As we move up our scale of threats to be overcome before global peace is attained, arms dealers must be addressed. Arms dealing is a very, very lucrative concern. Part of doing business as an arms dealer is to insinuate yourself into the military-industrial complexes of wealthy nations and then seek appropriations through PACs. Another important part is knowing who to grease (bribe—legally or otherwise).

The rest is simple. Just go from adversary to adversary, upping the ante. If that doesn’t work, seek situations that are leading to tensions, and use the media to exaggerate them. So, Monday you go to country A and sell them planes that can take out the radar from country B. Tuesday you show up at B’s door with new missiles that can shoot down planes designed to take out radar. Wednesday you’re back at A’s to sell them a design that makes planes invisible to enemy missiles.

But you say, Wait a minute. Countries can’t be that stupid! They’d hang the guy for pulling such stunts. No. Actually, they would wine and dine him and accept his gratuitous gifts. For the procurers, it’s not their problem to defend the country, just to obtain weapons systems. The actual shooting and killing is not what occupies the thoughts of politicians, either—wealth and maintaining their position does.

Reason Two: Lack of Belief in Peace

You ready? Well, I’m afraid this is where you and I must share some blame with the rest. If we do not convince ourselves that peace can be achieved prior to our finding ourselves in bunkers, we must finally come to our senses if we ever come out of those bunkers alive. I’m not asking mankind to believe we need to end war in the aftermath of some massive holocaust—that would be easy. I am asking mankind to consider peace before some massive holocaust occurs.

Mankind rarely heeds warnings about peace in the everyday work-a-day world reality in which food, water, and safety are present. Sad to say, I’m counting on this book being taken seriously by someone reading it in a bunker, perhaps after my death, when it is all too obvious I was right. I just really don’t think the message will sink in until mankind is on the verge of extinction and has no other option. If this happens, and there are still those that transgress against peace, they should be dealt with immediately and with outmost severity, regardless of how civilized and progressive we have become. Any backsliding will doom the endeavor.

Reason 1: War Has Become an Integral Part of Modern Society.

We have built our societies based on defense from the violence that we ourselves perpetrate. We built a tunnel from England to France under the Channel. We’ve considered building another under the Bering Sea from Alaska to Siberia. Why are we doing such things when Russia and the United States have been at each other’s throats for a century? Because it connects continents and makes travel and trade easier.

That is the better side of our nature, the one we must try to nurture. It is our communal side, the opposite of our primitive, fearful, and dysfunctional sides, those that we regularly feed, the ones that draw us into conflict. After England and France fought endless wars for centuries, they finally put down their swords, the same ones they excavated when they built the tunnel. Europe’s coming together and has opened its borders as never before.

All this makes no sense if it is war that truly guides our intellects. Do we somehow subliminally understand that wars are coming to an end? All countries that can now contribute to space exploration do. Why? Because that is where our future lies. Do we do this just to spread the virus of war throughout the cosmos? Should we be spreading our virus across the galaxy? Isn’t it now time to unplug war from our societal mix before we run into other species and infect them?

Societies of the elites, for the elites, and by the elites will continue to sponsor war until our inevitable self-destruction. Isn’t it time to reconsider this arrangement? We have to take war out of our politics, out of our heads, and out of our pockets. There are other ways to make a modern society function besides coercion and violence.

A lot of our energy on this planet is spent rebuilding what we have destroyed in wars. It only benefits the few at the expense of the many. It is senseless to have to replace buildings because we blew them up rather than benefiting from past construction endeavors.

We have seen ten of the top reasons why war continues, but we need to look deeper into these causes—for we understand that it is not as simple as just recognizing the causes in order to bring war to a close. Let’s dig deeper and understand our situation clearer and understand reality beyond the matrix.

CAPITALISM

The word capitalism first came into regular use around the time of the revolutions of 1848. Nobody is certain who first coined the phrase, but it’s not too surprising it stuck. It stuck because it accurately and succinctly labels what this particular economic system is all about—capital, or money.

It may not be surprising, but in keeping with my understanding of the ancient regime, I see capitalism as nothing more than the latest economic update on the supporting economic configurations of the ancient regime system. The latest improvement on war supported commerce. An improvement not for the betterment of the species, but in better logistical support. Just as war logistics has improved and evolved, so has its accompanying and supporting economic system.

From its very beginnings, the AR system of societal management sponsored the elevation of a small elite control cabal. From an elevated perch, their position of societal leadership derived from being the head of the military and economic contingents. This allowed them to institute a system of coercion that locked their position into place nearly automatically. As long as there are pockets of concentrated, exaggerated wealth anywhere on the planet, those that control that wealth will use it to subjugate those without. From this perspective, capitalism could be seen as nothing more than an accounting and logistical system for the AR establishment and elite support.

Previous to capitalism, the economic system used was labeled mercantilism. In its time, it was the latest accounting system conducive to the AR control requirements of the time, or at least the best anyone could come up with at the time. That economies evolve just as do military tactics and weaponry should come as no surprise. Some put the roots of capitalism in the mercantile era when the big item of the time was tulip bulbs.

Tulips had gathered worldwide appeal and were so highly coveted that a pan European trade ensued. Gardening was bigger then than it is today, and everybody wanted tulips. They were all the rage, so a large international trade developed which led to a sort of proto-global market. This is the beginnings of international trade and marketing.

There certainly can be no doubt that capitalism can also be called the offspring of the industrial revolution, though the industrial revolution developed a problem almost immediately with overproduction. That means that capitalism came from two originally separate disciplines that were combined into a single system, the mass manufacture of items and the need to reduce surplus through marketing. The combination of marketing and manufacture lead to an overproduction of wealth, or capitalism. So is born the present AR economic device, an absolute necessity to modern warfare.

In the same way that cities spring up in areas with a water supply and an access to transportation, AR societies practicing capitalism, a system much more conducive to AR longevity than communism, needed certain prerequisites to thrive. AR capitalist systems must be built around a prized commodity deemed worth slaughtering over, thus supporting the war effort while simultaneously creating it. These items have always been either discovered or developed through marketing into trends toward consumption. Some historic examples are salt, spices, oils, grains, incense, silk, sugar, timber, gold, copper, steel ore, and oil. Whatever humankind treasures, the AR systems must seek to control it. It is the greatest extortion scheme of all time.

The industrial revolution was well underway when the United States broke with Britain. The Founding Fathers of the United States had, most of them, been to England. Those that hadn’t were well versed in British affairs. At about the time of the rupture, Britain was falling under the sway of a fairly new legal device devised to hide and protect accumulations of wealth by the British mercantile class, so as to avoid taxation, but most particularly to obfuscate particular knowledge of who was accumulating wealth. Through the scheme of charter, later to be termed incorporation, money could be pooled, disguised, and concentrated for use in commerce as well as for political power. It was an advantage to mankind to be able to pool economic resources, but it was just as much a curse.

While the corporation has served well to concentrate efforts and resources to achieve grand designs which would otherwise have been extremely difficult, such as colonizing the Americas, their efforts always seem to fall apart if powerful players aren’t always richly rewarded for their efforts. In such an instance where they aren’t, efforts once deemed worthy somehow end up scraped as a threat to the status quo, because it would set the wrong example to do something for nothing. Taking off our rose-colored glasses and looking at the efforts capitalism has made on our behalf, without clouding the judgement through installed concepts such as patriotism, guileless optimism, or respect for leaders, inculcated in our brains since childhood, this perforce makes human advancement a series of extortions paid to elites for the positive advances of mankind. For if they didn’t profit from it, it didn’t happen unless they saw no reason to stop it.

This tollbooth to progress particular to the capitalist system in its most benign moments is bearable. It is much less tolerable in situations where social, economic, or technical advancements have to go forward against the wishes of the status quo. Then bloody slaughters are always soon to follow. If social improvement happens at a snail’s pace, military advancements are at breakneck speed and always welcomed. Though, even in military advancement, this can be brought up to disputation when it effects some powerful segment or affluent society—for instance, when the cavalry was replaced by mechanization, or the battleship by the aircraft carrier, causing their proponents power base to be threatened. The end of the cavalry was both the end of cavalry officers and the end of the lucrative business of leather and fodder supply, for example.

At about the time of the American Revolution, the British East India Company had become so powerful that it had developed, in Britain, into a government within a government. By the late eighteenth century, it had explored, through the nominal authority of the Crown, but actually for its own benefit, nearly the entire globe. Planting colonies wherever it went, it sought to exploit any type of resource of any value available.

The British East India Company—or BEI—had its own army, its own governors, and was actually only nominally under the authority of the Crown. In reality, the real authority in British government resided with the chartered corporations. Since the Crown financed itself through the returns from commerce and landowners, it found itself hostage to powerful men who represented these newly ensconced ghost organs of government. This fact was kept de rigueur shrouded, since this would not jibe with the sensibilities of eighteenth-century minds.

Since negotiations with corporations, much like today, were kept more secretive than negotiations with other countries, to the average Brit of the time it seemed odd that whatever was in the interest of the BEI always also seemed in the best interest of Britain. Any suspicions were allayed, however, by portraying the BEI as the faithful servant of the Crown. Laws were passed in Britain to help the BEI in whatever capacity they could to gain wealth, often at the expense of the British commoner, already driven off his land and into the merciless hands of British mining and other industries representing the industrial revolution.

The BEI kept Britain in constant war for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, solving the petty squabbles about trade that arose from it nefarious dealings. As other nations developed equivalents to the BEI, inter-commercial squabbles became international wars. At times, BEI also used its own hired mercenary forces in matters pertaining to disobedient puppet regimes that developed a sense of independence. In foreign nations, they controlled the levers of foreign government by simply financing those potentates and kings it sponsored into power. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the primary functioning of AR system in its historically familiar modus operandi pertaining to hegemony.

Only since the advent of the Enlightenment have the powerful been required to disguise their standard modes of operation to assuage contemporary sensibilities, and the corporation served as the perfect cloak of respectability. In their quest for plunder (profits), the BEI often started wars that Britain had to finish, therefore using the government in an auxiliary function, and most particularly passing on their costs of acquisition while retaining the profits.

Working as an agent of expansion, the Crown thereby allowed it to recuperate its investment on monies spent on taxes and bribes to recycle the wealth toward the powerful and connected. The British Crown would eventually take over control of the area the nation fought for, claiming it for the Crown, but this in no way harmed BEI. In that way, it was relieving public pressure and scrutiny on the Crown and themselves, which didn’t matter to the BEI anyway because by then they had already monopolized the trade anyway and could now count on the full support of the British Empire to protect their investment. A simple passing on of expenses to the taxpayer. A symbiotic relationship had developed between British upper society and BEI, their stock being held by most important members of Parliament and bribes were not unheard of. Though to prove that bribes copiously existed at that time in history would be difficult, so we will never know to what extent the society was corrupted. But if present times are any indication, we can assume some were significantly rewarded.

The American Founding Fathers saw this, and with a few exceptions—like Alexander Hamilton—found it repugnant. These were gentlemen farmers, and they found the whole affair despicable, beneath their dignity. They were well aware of its corrupting factor to society, having witnessed it deleterious effects in England. To country gentlemen squires, the idea of being forced to deal with rash, uncouth business types that put profit above anything sacred must have seemed out of the question. The founders did have corporations in mind when they wrote the Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, to protect against powerful government that might start to fall under the sway of moneyed control. Nearly all the signers of the Constitution, including the plantation owners of the South, wanted chartered corporations strictly limited, and they were— by convention and law.

At the time of the signing of the Constitution of the United States, only six corporations, other than banks, were allowed in the colonies, and these were mostly for large infrastructure projects. The founders realized both the necessity and the dark side of the corporate entity and sought to put a leash on them. For, as Thomas Jefferson would state in 1816, I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a show of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

The founders realized the threat to democracy that corporations represented and wanted strong oversight of them. It was an agricultural nation, and they did not want to see the sort of shenanigans played in Britain played out at home. Yet, though we originally tried and succeeded for about a hundred years in keeping them