The Art of War

[Mark Kohut]

Read "The Republic" or again if you already have. Made me feel worse than your 
posts. 


"Thus Friedrich Nietzsche attacked Plato's moral and political theories, ..... 
Karl Popper argued in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that Plato's 
alleged proposal for a government system in the Republic was prototypically 
totalitarian. Leo Strauss is considered by some as the prime thinker involved in 
the recovery of Platonic thought in its more political form."

They weren't the only ones...i'll change the word to totalitarian if 'fascist' 
reminds you too narrowly of Mussolini.

There are societies, cultural groups within countries that do not and have not 
waged wars....
AND there can be no 'fact' that there will always be wars that is now true of 
the future .....
by definition.

You also can have no realistic idea of what India and its people would now be 
without Gandhi. Therefore an argument contrasting the real world after Gandhi 
with an alternative universe without him is science fiction. Maybe a nice 
reactionary alternative history.........so write it.

Me: 
"Plato was an overt crypto-fascist."  OR Plato was an overt crypto-totalitarian 
and not so crypto when you close-read the overtness....



According to Modern definitions of the word "fascist", anyone who
believes they think or exist beyond the confines of language is a
"fascist".  I live right outside of Berkeley and hang around their
frequently and engage in many of the high level grad students, and
when questioned about their use of the word "fascism" they have no
idea what they are referring to.  I see no way how Plato or any US
Gov't institution resembles Mussolini, the man credited for the
reemergence of Fascism into our contemporary lexicon.

Gandhi's non-violence is suicide in too many ways to mention, which is
why he's not worthy of philosophical discussion and in many ways not
addressed Philosophically.  He altered the teachings of Buddhism and
Hinduism to his own liking.  Sure, he's cuddly and friendly and allows
some of us sleep at night, but he's not a theologan or philosopher,
just a rebel.

"That war will always be inevitable is an unprovable hypothesis."

This is not a hypothesis, it is proven fact.  It is a fact in a way
that all humans have sex, eat, breathe, defecate, and worship one
thing or another.

Mike





On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Plato was an overt crypto-fascist. There are others who weren't.
>
>  India, despite whatever it is, is a soverign country moving forward.
>
> [Gandhi's ] Non-violence is AT LEAST its own reward.
>
> That war will always be inevitable is an unprovable hypothesis.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Michael F <mff8785 at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, December 29, 2010 12:26:32 PM
> Subject: Re: The Art of War
>
> Ian,
>
> War is a modern problem?  Very much to the contrary, war is a human
> characteristic.  "Peaceful ruler"?  If one is "peaceful" one cannot be
> a "ruler" or will not be a "ruler" for long.
>
> "The impulse to violence is a result of selfish orientation, and
> history celebrates tyrants precisely because they successfully enforce
> their will over others. We start selfish and only by great luck
> survive to move beyond selfishness and into historical obscurity."
>
> This is the greatest paradox of our age: secular, anti-Christian
> thinkers in academia (and card designers for Hallmark) posit
> "selflessness" as a center of "being" and even confusedly "becoming".
> Is there anything more Christian or anti-secular than proselytizing
> "selflessness" to everyone else or the masses?
>
> Gandhi?  The action of Gandhi has resulted in a more fractured,
> violent, confused state of India than before under English rule.
> Gandhi is the modern poster boy for Plato's "Charmides", an important
> dialogue about a future tyrant who wants to be a "ruler", Plato surely
> knows that the actions of Charmides(or Gandhi) will result in even
> more confusion and violence than before.  Plato's Socrates leaves them
> be, knowing he can't change them.
>
> "It is a result of chauvinistic nationalism,
> which may or may not be on the decline. Contemporary warfare is based
> on the economic needs of the complex that drives capitalism in the
> modern world."
>
> I've always enjoyed Neil Young, a favorite song of his is "Cortez the
> Killer."  Sure Cortez a nasty, old white man who killed, but so did
> those natives that he killed, and so did every other surviving Native
> American group that survived.  Revisionism is the product of a fiery
> mind and produces fiery, angry minds.
>
> I wasn't able to understand why Dostoevsky's "The Demons" is so
> ignored or glossed over in academia until I was finished reading it.
> It tells an interesting tale.
>
> As for Pynchon, his texts posit contemporary man in the middle of this
> revised historical debacle that we call contemporary History.  Where
> else does one begin when discussing the intellectual and material
> history of the contemporary history?  Pynchon's setting say it all:
> Berkeley, Tesla's laboratory, the homes and minds of America's
> forefathers, Northern California.  I'll neglect Los Angeles, I still
> can't take Inherent Vice seriously.
>
> Mike
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> 
>wrote:
>>> Without "war", Idealists, Progressivists, and Pragmatists would have
>>> no use and wouldn't even exist.
>>>
>>> The whole call to end war negates the entirety of Modern thought.
>>
>> War is hardly a "modern" problem; neither is opposition to war. How
>> many Pharoahs ruled the ancient empires of Egypt? That is a history of
>> thousands of years and we know only the names of the conquerors and
>> controversials. The majority, ostensibly peaceful rulers, faded into
>> obscurity. Hatshepsut's reign was notably without wars, and even young
>> Akhenaton was no warrior king, both, however, were violent in the
>> imposition of their ideas. All war is violent, but not all violence is
>> war. The impulse to violence is a result of selfish orientation, and
>> history celebrates tyrants precisely because they successfully enforce
>> their will over others. We start selfish and only by great luck
>> survive to move beyond selfishness and into historical obscurity.
>>
>> When Gandhi adapted Thoreau's civil disobedience to a 'non-violent'
>> means of protest, he opposed the English and brought a shameful end to
>> the shameful English colonialism in India. And his end was violent.
>> Likewise, when Pitt and Wilberforce brought down the English slave
>> trade, they did so by acts of profound contention.
>>
>> I think violence is inevitable. We experience the world subjectively,
>> and it takes an awful lot of practice to develop the sort of empathy
>> required to lead others out of self-service and into common welfare.
>> Then the leadership itself is controversial and inspires violent
>> reactions.
>>
>> War is not inevitable. It is a result of chauvinistic nationalism,
>> which may or may not be on the decline. Contemporary warfare is based
>> on the economic needs of the complex that drives capitalism in the
>> modern world. If the economy is based on the production of arms, the
>> government will be obliged to employ those arms. Doesn't really matter
>> against whom our children go to fight.
>>
>> But what about these kids that go to war? Can there be a way of
>> addressing them? After all, the war nobody shows up for is no war at
>> all, right? The anti-war movement of the late 60s and early 70s ran
>> afoul youth culture because of many paradoxes and obstacles. Most of
>> the people in the rallies had multiple, conflicting reasons for being
>> there, the dominant ones being that it was hip to protest, so you
>> could get laid by protesting, and you got to skip class and smoke lots
>> of pot. Only a minority of the protesters were actually against the
>> war on any moral grounds. Those few are the ones that interest me. How
>> did they at such tender years reach the stage of development necessary
>> to see that war is wasteful? Whatever informed their early development
>> seems worthy of study for use in childhood and adolescent education.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Michael F <mff8785 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> "They recognize universal values or ethics
>>> but fail to consider how pluralistic ones often create paradoxes and
>>> deadlocks."
>>>
>>> Paradoxes and deadlocks are the result of positivistic and pragmatic
>>> thought attempting to rhetorically glaze over "what is."  This goes
>>> back 500 years or so.
>>>
>>> Blood Meridian's Judge is a hyper-Modernized man and the evil that is
>>> at the heart of "us"(Modern Man: contemporary, both vociferous
>>> conservatives and liberals, and self-proclaimed university humanity
>>> profs).  We, Modern Man, all love war; gun-toting or protest sign-
>>> wielding or essay writing not mattering.   The Judge says it all on
>>> page 249:
>>>
>>> "All other trades are contained in that of war.
>>> Is that why war endures?
>>> No it endures because young men love it and old men love it in them.
>>> Those that fought, those that did not."-The Judge
>>>
>>>
>>> It amuses me to know end how outspoken positivists, pragmatists, and
>>> idealists want to end war, but the tools they employ are the essential
>>> tools of the war trade, just not as sharp.  Blunt tools, but not as
>>> sharp.
>>>
>>> "This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and
>>> authority and the justification."-The Judge
>>>
>>> Without "war", Idealists, Progressivists, and Pragmatists would have
>>> no use and wouldn't even exist.
>>>
>>> The whole call to end war negates the entirety of Modern thought.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:56 AM, alice wellintown
>>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Young soldiers and students are ignorant. They know little about
>>>> history, life, love, war. What little they know about the past allows
>>>> them to condemn its evils. They recognize universal values or ethics
>>>> but fail to consider how pluralistic ones often create paradoxes and
>>>> deadlocks.
>>>>
>>>> This is how the young look at history.
>>>>
>>>> It is relatively easy to look into the past and draw lines, seperate
>>>> the good from the bad.
>>>>
>>>> Formulating ethics for current problems and setting criteria for what
>>>> is good or bad action, or even defining what is evil in our current
>>>> affairs is not so easy.
>>>>
>>>> Unless we are merely talking about these as if they were a football match.
>>>>
>>>> Not when we are called to act.
>>>>
>>>> Once criteria are formulated, if we are required to act,  we must
>>>> accept that we will need to constantly improve our actions.
>>>>
>>>> Moreover, we can not reduce the war in Afghanistan & Pakistan ...to
>>>> old problems and ignore the emerging ones.
>>>>
>>>> More knowledge of history doesn't alway help as it often obscures
>>>> persistant problems or oversimplifies emerging ones.
>>>>
>>>> We can go on and on...but one thing even the young may see with ease,
>>>> war compounds and does not solve. Communication, not love,  is the
>>>> answer.
>>>>
>>>> We are in the middle of a revolution in communications (not
>>>> technology). So, we are everyday better able to communicate, to talk
>>>> our problems out and work toward solutions.
>>>>
>>>> Young soldiers and young students can understand this. Can you?
>>>>
>>>>> Is war Freudian? Attempts at return, or mimicry of the return to the
>>>>> mineral stasis through disintegration and decay?
>>>>> I wondered sometimes as I watched young students who had enlisted
>>>>> prepare to ship out whether it was duty or the hope for death that was
>>>>> the call they answered--a convenient and socially condoned suicide
>>>>> attempt. A way out for misfits who couldn't opt for the arts as a way
>>>>> to dump the parents, like Jim Morrison, etc. If you can't beat 'em,
>>>>> die. All the young men and women coming home now, alive by some ill
>>>>> fate, who turn the barrel back on themselves out of despair at having
>>>>> survived. There's a hole in the American heart.
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "liber enim librum aperit."
>>
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