BUSH'S WAR -- CORPOCRACY STRIPPED NAKED -- A THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE FROM A READER

BUSH’S WAR – CORPOCRACY STRIPPED NAKED

A THOUGHTFUL RESPONSE FROM A READER

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© March 31, 2008



MY OBSERVATIONS:

The people in my email address book are doers. They have lived well, worked hard, and conducted their lives with honor and a sense of duty. They have been loyal to the programming of their souls. Unfortunately, this has left many echoing the rhetoric of their church or school, or, indeed, of one political party or another.

We desire our leaders to be our heroes. Often, without realizing it, we parrot the truth as it is dictated to us; even have a clash of wills when someone differs with our programming.

It is the purpose of my writing to uncover some of the truths disguised under all the rhetoric by bringing together a multitude of ideas and letting what is truly meaningful to us and for us to surface. The piece that follows represents the thoughts of one of my emailers.

Sigmund Freud wrote in the "The Future of an Illusion" (1927), addressing the question of religion, something that gives us pause regarding the question of truth:

"The truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth.

"The case is similar to what happens when we tell a child that newborn babies are brought by the stork. Here, too, we are telling the truth in symbolic clothing, for we know what the large bird signifies. But the child does not know it. He hears only the distorted part of what we say, and feels that he has been deceived; and we know how often his distrust of the grownups and his refractoriness actually take their start from this impression.

"We have become convinced that it is better to avoid such symbolic disguisings of the truth in what we tell children and not to withhold from them a knowledge of the true state of affairs commensurate with their intellectual level."

We are bombarded with information often devoid of any consistent symbolism with the truth buried in an avalanche of words.

The key idiom to the "Bush's War" piece that I wrote, as with many others, is an attempt to make truth naked so the reader will see it as he or she perceives truth.

There is some method to my madness. My approach is on the fallacy of the design. This finds me generating ideas not getting lost in information; on creative thinking not deductive reasoning; on provocation not on description; on movement off the dime not on judgment of the dime we're on; on looking at our problems holistically not in parts; on nonlinear thinking not linear logic; on systemic indicators not elemental meanings; on a way forward often by looking back; on challenging those in positions of power not on defending their actions; on gleaning some wisdom not on appearing clever; and on a pluralistic view not on a single perspective.

My whole purpose in writing in this genre is to encourage my readers to participate in this exercise.

We seem lost in a search to do the "right thing" rather than designing a way forward. The emailer here is aware of that. He is laying down a possibility of what may unfold rather than a polemical attack on "what is." He is working out a conceptual framework of understanding of what he perceives as a possibility. He is concerned, and rightly so, but is more interested in action rather than with description. He provides much food for thought.

A peculiar thing happens when we take the time to think our own thoughts rather than what we are told to believe is so. We become creative with information organizing itself around our ideas instead of the other way around, as is problematic of our culture. This comes out of creative thinking and self-organization instead of aping the words of the media, or our cultural programming.
JRF

AN EMAILERS REASONED REACTION TO “BUSH’S WAR -- Corpocracy Stripped Naked"

Some thoughts:

I think the clash between Islam and the West is much deeper and broader than Afghanistan, Iraq, Al Qaeda, the media, etc. It is something akin to a tectonic collision of philosophies, analogous to the earthquake-making, mountain-forming collision of continental plates. The resulting upheaval in human affairs is inevitable; the combination of modern technology and the sheer size of Islam are destined to make this a mighty storm.

To look at Iraq, or any of the battles, on its own, is thinking tactically. That is the most common mode of thinking, but often misses the big picture.

I suspect the WMD debacle was the attempt to create the simplistic and emotional rationale for public consumption, in the same manner that the “slavery” issue was used to rally northern sons to die for what at the root, were economic issues. It was weak to begin with, no WMD’s were found, and it collapsed to the detriment of the Administration.

The success or failure of “Bush’s War” will depend on whether or not democracy takes root in Iraq, spreads to other countries, and offers the Arab people an alternative to the current strain of Islam. That's one hell of a long shot, in my opinion.

In addition, the American people are not known for endurance and stamina in the face of extended difficulty, especially the current generations. To embark upon such a long commitment with the scaled down military, which the Administration inherited, was a bad choice; they're running out of steam.

We can only hope the other side runs out of steam first, and that may happen. Again, we just get lucky. Even if the Iraqi government achieves internal peace, they then have to be strong enough to fend off invasion by Iran or Syria or both after we leave. What are the odds?

None of this is to say there was not a goat rope within the Administration. Clearly, there was. But then, it has been my experience that every human organization is a goat rope to some degree. Some get lucky, others don't.

The winners write history. Both combatants believe they're ‘right’ as they wage conflict. The winner's view of ‘right’ goes on and the loser's is forgotten. It's the might that determines the winner, not their righteousness.

There seems to be very little ‘leadership,’ as you and I would define it, in our species. Rather, we have the summation of billions of tactical decisions made by individuals, with the resultant cacophony of outcomes. Because they are organized and persistent, Islam might conquer the world, seventh century thinking included. The technology magnifier might effectively end our species as part of this. Should that happen, nature will give yet another species their shot at world domination.

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