Parcequedonc - Political Will

Political Will
& Interjections

Introduction (Working Class)

My position is this....
I know I'm compromised;
I've got stuff to love....

I know that what change I try to initiate
I do so at my own, perhaps self-indulgent, pace.... But
until I hear from you,
until you've noticed what's going on,
until you're ready to do something,
I'll, more than likely,
stay this way......
Don't get me wrong...
I'm not doing nothing...

I'm just doing it in my own bourgeois way;
at my own bourgeois pace...
But,
I am waiting.....
I'll wait for as long as it takes....
But as long as you take
to realise what's actually happening,
they're enjoying themselves.....
They're pigging-out at the trough.....
They're plundering the collective wealth........
They're stuffing their fat faces with privelege
and glutting themselves on all the benefits
of this potentially wonderful age
that generations upon generations of people like you
have been instrumental in creating....
The longer you take to realise this,
the happier they are....
They know what's going on....
They know
that they've got nothing to lose and everything to gain while you sleep......

And they know
that they've got nothing to gain and everything to lose
if you ever wake up.....

Back to the top....

HISTORY OF ENGLAND          Part I.

The Queen is Queen by convoluted consensus.....
People kneel
because, historically, it was the only way
the Robber Barons
could agree to stop trying to kill each other
and each other's Peasants.....

Initially,
amassing bands of Peasants and Lackeys
and flinging them at the bands of Peasants and Lackeys
amassed by the other Robber Barons
in defence of arbitrary claims to pieces of ground
was the most important pastime
of the Robber Barons.....
They used to have a good time
because it kept them fit
and the Peasants could always be relied upon
to co-operate.....
If ever this became too much of a strain
on a Robber Baron's Peasant resources,
he had to forego the pleasures of this, the most noble, pastime
and settle for amassing bands of dogs and horses and chosen Lackeys
and flinging them at foxes and stags.....
This would give the Peasants a chance to rebuild the economy:
get the crops going again, rebuild the wagons, refire the forges,
rebuild the roads and fortifications, and most important,
reproduce.....

The Barons had no difficulty controlling the Peasants.....
They simply entrusted chosen Lackeys
with their flogging.....
It is the peculiar nature of a Lackey's character
that allows this to take place.....
Lackeys are people with little or no internal self-esteem
who are constantly on the look out for someone in "authority"
who can provide them with some (self-esteem).....
By careful manipulation
of this supply of synthetic self-esteem
the Barons were able, and still are, to call upon the Lackeys
to do the most outrageous things,
including flogging Peasants
into producing the wherewithal
for their own destruction.....

But things sometimes got out of hand
such that the battles became larger and more drawn out
and began to render
stabilisation-of-the-economy periods impossible
even for the most diligently flogged Peasants
to the extent that
even the Barons' own standard of living
began to be affected.....
So, in order to preserve and maintain
this fundamental aspect of the economy
(the Barons' standard of living),
they the Barons, found themselves needing to agree
to revere
a third party..... A separate office.....

Into this office, with the suspicious support of the other Barons,
was placed a Baron
whom the other Barons agreed to call King.....

This King walked on thin ice.....
He could only "lead"
where none of the people who'd agreed to let him lead
had any vested interest.....
This usually meant Foreign Wars.....
But,
this position of compromise
was delicately balanced.....
Initially meant as a means of ensuring
that no particular Baron should suddenly acquire undue power,
start grabbing land again,
and thereby endanger the stability
that everyone with any power comes to crave,
the decision gradually took on a meaning of its own.....
The King gradually became the office through which
all righteous action in the name of stability
came.....
And gradually
it became impossible to determine
whether the righteous action emanated
from one or more of the supporting Barons
or from the King himself.....
Thus the King accumulated more power
until his "divine right" became inargueable,
incontestable,
because no one could afford, or was willing,
to stick his neck out.....

Things kept on in this way for some time.....
But eventually, as must happen,
all good things must come, if not to an end,
to at least an apparent transformation.....
What happened was
that the Peasants began to get Religion.....
Christist Religion.....
The bit of the story about Christists
which warmed the hearts of the Barons
was the bit which taught people to know and appreciate their place.....
This was good for stability
which, as it happened, was good for Barons.....

But some of the Peasants noticed
that, besides teaching appreciation of place,
Christ also taught equality of humans.....
Then some Peasants also noticed
that the Barons and their Lackeys were generally quite pleased with this Religion
unless the notion of equality
came up.....
Then they became distinctly displeased
and killed, maimed, and deported (depending on the degree of their displeasure)
any Peasants known or even thought to be
giving this radical and unruly notion
any undue consideration.....

After a period of time in which many Peasants
suffered and died in great loneliness
the rudiments of Peasant mobilisation,
fuelled by this unruly concept of equality,
began to emerge
and began to demonstrate some of the awesome power
that Peasants, working together,
actually have.......

The concept of "King" began to crumble
and many of the Barons were at first very shaken.....
Many of them stuck to the "divine right" principle,
because it was the only one they knew or could think of,
and got killed.....
Many of them were more cynical and detached and waited out the storms.....
When "Parliament" began to emerge,
the surviving Barons pressed for their "rights"
as only Robber Barons can.....
So effective were these surviving Robber Barons
in pressing for their "rights"
that they were able to justify, through Enclosure Acts and the like,
driving the now less governable and therefore less profitable Peasants
off the land altogether
and bring on to the land vast quantities of sheep
to replace them.....
This made life much easier and more profitable for the Barons.....
and much more difficult, as usual, for the Peasants.....
They were crowded into the cities
where the new "industry" was beginning to gain momentum.....
The Peasants, now completely cut off from the land,
unable even to grow their own food
(and maimed and killed when they tried to do it
on the few tiny parcels of "common land".....)
were forced to compete with each other
in search of work at the new monolithic manufacturing establishments,
the Factories.....

Because the nature of their predicament changed so drastically
in the "Industrial Revolution",
what headway the Peasants had only just began to make in their rural settings
was lost.....
The nature of their exploitation by the Robber Barons
changed.....
Instead of having the Peasants flogged by their Lackeys,
the Barons de-humanised them

by depriving them of the land
and making them the servants of Machinery.....
The Lackeys were put in charge of the Machinery
and instead of flogging the Peasants,
they manipulated them by threatening to cut them off, individually ,
from their new, enforced, and only means of sustenance,
the Machinery.....
The fact that the Machinery belonged to the Robber Barons
was a direct consequence
of the Barons having, for generations,
killed and flogged people
who questioned their ownership of the land
and its produce.....
The currency they were able to concentrate
enabled them to "purchase" the Machinery
("purchase" here meaning paying Peasants subsistence wages or less
with currency derived from generations of Peasants' labour on the land
to build the machinery).....

This now subtley altered predicament
caused the Peasants much anger, suffering, frustration and disease.....
Being forced to compete (there were so many of them driven from the land)
for subsistence wages
meant, inevitably, taking less than subsistence
for impossibly long working days.....
It meant living in overcrowded and neglected dwellings
(also, unsurprisingly, belonging to the Robber Barons and their Lackeys)
and sending their children out to find work.....

It took many years for a new Mobilisation to develop,
but Peasant history is full of brave men and women
who, right from the start,
set to work trying to correct the balance
and who were sacked or maimed or killed.....
Because of the determination and courage of some of these people
the concept of Combination came into being
and became the Peasants answer to the Machinery.....
Combinations were the forerunners of Trade Unions.....
They were organisations of people who would agree
not to service the Machinery
for less than a subsistence wage.....
These organisations were declared illegal
by Parliaments full of Robber Barons and Lackeys
and many Peasants were fined and beaten and imprisoned
for even discussing such organisations.....

Such were the appalling living and working conditions
that the Peasants had no choice
but to persist with their Combinations.....
This sometimes meant taking action against fellow Peasants
who, without considering what they were doing to Peasants in general,
would continue to compete for work
and take less than subsistence wages.....
These were bad and unhappy moments.....

But the Mobilisation continued to gain momentum
and finally emerged
with some "rights" to organise
and even
some Parliamentary representation.....

But the going was slow
and tortuous........

Back to the top....

Introduction (Middle Class)

I just wanted to tell you
why I think
you lack the political will
for change....

You lack the political will
because
a) you've become compromised by your material "wealth",
your careerist ascendencies,
and your commitments to 'family'
(almost as much evil has been wrought upon the world
in the name of the Western nuclear family
as has been
in the name of Christianity....),
b) you've been exhausted
by your magnanimous efforts so far,
and c) you're disillusioned, confused, and (so you think) excused
by the changing nature of the problem....

Well, here,
interspersed with sundry tangents and distractions
(all of which, I hope you will find,
have their parts to play),
is my attempt to expose a) for what it is
(indirect self-indulgence),
ridicule b) in the context of historical precedent,
and discuss and clarify c)
through an unfettered, guilt-free,
non-preoccupied-with-'balance' presentation
of the real history of England
and thereby dis-excuse you
and, perhaps,
resuscitate
your flagging political will....

Back to the top....

Introduction (Ruling Class)

Keep your heads down,
motherfuckers....

Back to the top....

HISTORY OF ENGLAND          Part II.

The Peasant Mobilisation continued....
Their Combinations, now becoming known as Trade Unions,
began to be accepted by the Robber Barons,
their Lackeys,
and the Parliaments they tended to dominate....

There are any number of complicated explanations
as to why these Unions eventually became acceptable...
Some would have it that the Peasants had become an irresistible force
which would have toppled the new industrial system
had not concessions been made....
Some would have it that the Barons and Lackeys themselves
relented
and allowed these organisations to proliferate
because they could see, in them, a new potential
for far more effective manipulation
of the Peasants....
Some would have it that the emergence in force
of a new character,
the Merchant,
brought on, in their own interests,
social changes which made the acceptance of Trade Unions
seem virtually insignificant....

It seems likely that all these explanations, and others,
were at least partially correct
and contributed in their own way
to the legitimisation of Peasant organisation....
But at this point
it is important to recognise
the way in which
the emerging Merchants
began to carry their own struggle....

Merchants were people who,
in the midst of the new industrialisation,
the new urban stress,
perceived ways of escaping
the direct rule of the Robber Barons on one hand,
and the inexorable slide into Peasant poverty and exploitation
on the other....

What they perceived was
that,
in separating the Peasants from the land
the Robber Barons had effectively
separated the people who were doing all the work
from the further responsibility
of distributing
the produce of the work....

This is an important point and needs clarification....

When the Robber Barons had their Peasants on the land,
the Peasants tilled the soil, herded the livestock,
developed the crafts, and generally got on with things....
All the Barons had to do,
aside from occasionally flogging or killing Peasants,
was to sit back
and let their "share" of the produce
flow into their castles....
The Peasants not only produced everything,
they even brought it all
to the very tables of the Barons....
Not only that,
the Peasants also fed and maintained themselves
out of their own meagre portions
of what they produced....

So,
when the Barons kicked the Peasants off the land
and into the factories,
certain administrative problems arose....
The Peasants could no longer feed and maintain themselves
out of their own produce;
nor could they bring produce
to the tables of the Barons....
This was because they no longer lived right there
on the land supposedly belonging to the Barons....
They couldn't grow potatoes and carrots
and bring the best part of it to the Barons
by way of "rent"
because they weren't there any more....
Instead,
they were crowded into the filthy cities
and showing up at the Factories
where they would do their work at assembly lines
and then go away again....
Their lives weren't inextricably wrapped up
in their work anymore
the way it used to be when they were on the land....
They were separated from the produce....
The manufactured goods would come out
at the end of the assembly line,
often never even seen by the Peasants doing the work....

The Barons and their Lackeys began to realise
that the good old days of letting the Peasants do everything
had gone.....
The Peasants weren't distributing the goods
because they were no longer so completely immersed
in the whole process of producing....
They were just showing up for their daily shifts,
being paid their pittances,
and going away again....
They weren't even able to bring any of the produce home
because, a) you can't eat steel or wool
and food was all they could afford,
and b) they were only handling the Machinery;
they rarely even touched
the finished product....

So,
because the Peasants were no longer able to feed and maintain themselves
in the course of their regular work,
and were also unable to bring produce
to the tables of the Barons,
a whole new system of distribution
had to be set up....

This is where the Merchants came in....
The Merchants were, for the most part,
Lackeys with delusions of independence
and non-synthetic self esteem,
but were also, later on, Peasants
with specialised crafts and skills
and delusions of betterment....
What they saw was
a whole area of administration
over which the Barons could not possibly
exercise complete control....
So what they did was
offer to undertake this task of distribution
but on the basis of taking a share of the produce
for themselves....
Thus was born
the middle-man....
And thus was born
the large scale introduction
of "credit"
and "common currency"....

The Merchants soon discovered
that the "value" of any given thing
is not necessarily related
to what it might have cost to produce....
In a "Free Market Economy",
the "value" of a thing
is whatever you can squeeze people, especially Peasants,
into paying....
On this basis,
many of the Merchants became extremely wealthy
and, thereby, extremely powerful....
The most ruthless of them began,
in some ways,
even to rival the power
of the Robber Barons themselves....

While all this was taking place,
the bulk of the Peasants
were still plodding on
with their Trade Unions....
Through a series of long, drawn out meetings and campaigns,
failures and successes,
they began finally to emerge with the rudiments
of a national organisation....
This took the form of a Trade Union Congress
and, later,
a Labour Representation Committee
which developed, gradually, into a new parliamentary presence,
the Labour Party....

Unfortunately,
human communication being what it is,
there began to emerge a discrepancy
between those wielding economic power
in the form of large sums of credit or currency,
(ie The Barons, Lackeys, and Merchants)
and those wielding, or trying to wield, social power
in the form of support from memberships
(ie The Representatives - a new character)....

The thing about economic power
is that it is very, very easy to wield
(money doesn't ask questions)....
And the thing about social power
is that, done properly, it is very very difficult to wield
(members do ask questions)....

For example,
a wielder of social power,
or Representative,
wanting strategically to deploy one hundred members
would have first to draft a letter calling for a meeting....
This letter would have to go to all the members
who would, hopefully, find time to attend....
At the meeting,
the Representative would have to explain
the entire policy and rationale behind the deployment....
The members would discuss and question the entire issue
and would then vote....
If the vote was in favour
and didn't require referencing back or further reports,
the physical task of deploying the members as agreed
could be embarked upon....

An extremely efficient Representative
might get through this process
in about four weeks....

By contrast,
a wielder of economic power,
whether Baron, Lackey, or Merchant,
could strategically deploy one hundred thousand pounds
in less time
than it would take a Representative to draft the letter
calling for a meeting....

As the discrepancy
between the wieldings of economic and social power
grew,
so did the problems in communication
between the Peasants and their Representatives....

Back to the top....

Political Will       Interjection 1.

Political will
is the determination
to apply attitude
through the deduction of purpose
and the employment of strategy....

(see Guide for Infants, "Light", - same author.....)

Flagging political will
is the tendency to use family
and/or domesticity
as an acceptable excuse
for compromising ideals....

It is also the tendency
to compound that compromise
by using the search for 'qualifications'
as a legitimate demand on your time....
Particularly when you do so
in the face of the knowledge
that your time is actually required elsewhere
in the pursuit of your supposed ideals.....

Carreerism
is the middle-class privilege
to indulge
in processes of supposed self-betterment....
It is the 'non-materialist' escape hatch
for petty ideological materialists....
It is the delusory ladder
up which otherwise well-meaning should-know-betters
are diverted
by already cynicised should-know-betters
who have already sold themselves
to the capitalisation of human knowledge....

Human knowledge has become a commodity
just like oil, coffee, and uranium....
Supposed centres of knowledge
have simply become stock exchanges
specialising in the trading of this commodity....
There are even established currencies....
Certificates, degrees, fellowships, research grants
are all trading units
of the commodity....

And all the jobbers and brokers
furiously scuttling about trying to control the market
have as their reward
credibility
and its material trappings......
They get offices and telephones;
secretaries and filing clerks;
subsidised travel and club memberships;
research assistants and sycophants;
not to mention secure and adoring home lives.....
These are the rewards
of cornering
an aspect of the market....

Now you'd expect the sons and daughters of the ruling classes
and the ignorant or indifferent members of the middle classes
fully to endorse this racket;
fully to savour its material rewards....
But what of those of you who don't claim to be
either of these....?
Those of you who are supposedly enlightened and caring
seekers after knowledge for knowledge's own sake....?
Why are you playing this stupid game....?
What's your real excuse.....?

Yes, of course,
there's the family and mortgage and mouths-to-feed angle;
there's the incremental scale.....
And, of course,
there's the 'change-from-within once the credibility is achieved' angle....
But really,
who are you trying to kid....?
That's like saying boycotting South Africa
is damaging the Blacks....
It's an excuse........

What we have all been slow to realise
is the way we have been materialising human knowledge;
the way we have staked it out and tried to attribute to its sections
a capital value.....
It is not the vast communal resource bank we pretend it is.....
It has just become another aspect of the wheeling and dealing for power;
the male dominated preserve
of extending the ego.....

Some of us have become so prostituted
as to sell our intellects
to the pursuit of particular forms of knowledge
because that's where the heavier capital
can be found.....

We seem to have lost sight of the fundamental fact
that processes extend themselves
through the processors....
We play these prostitution games thinking we're in control
and that our personal ideals can remain intact
until such time as we've 'reached'
some illusory stage in our lives
when we can take our 'hardwon' credibility out of the game,
again act 'independently',
and then, finally, begin to live up to our ideals.....

But it can't be done....
We're not that profound....
We place ourselves in situations of prostitution
and become prostitutes.....

Back to the top....

HISTORY OF ENGLAND          Part III.

As the problems in communication
between the Peasants and their Representatives
grew,
so did tensions......
The unwieldiness of the Peasants
as a force for deployment
created misunderstandings among both the Peasants
and their Representatives.....
The Peasants began to lose faith in their Representatives
because of what they perceived to be
the Representatives' inability to respond successfully
to the initiatives of the Barons and Lackeys...

The Representatives
began to experience conflicts of interest
between what, in the interests of rapid, successful response,
they knew to be right for all Peasantry
and what they could successfully communicate
by way of rationale
to that selfsame Peasantry....
The Representatives felt that if they limited themselves
to carrying out only those policies which they were able, successfully,
to communicate to their members,
they would effectively,
in view of the prevailing levels of ignorance and lack of sophistication
among Peasants,
be tying their own hands behind their backs....

Out of this conflict of interest arose a sincere frustration,
and out of this frustration
arose, among some of the Representatives,
a sort of paternalism, a sort of superiority,
a sort of feeling that there was not really much point
in trying to keep the Peasants informed....
That, in the interests of rapid response to Barons' initiatives,
it was more effective,
without lengthy and time-consuming consultations,
simply to make decisions,
and to issue directives.....

This, of course,
gave way to a distancing
between the Peasants and their Representatives....
And this distancing, of course,
gave way to feelings of disillusionment
and disenchantment
and, gradually, certainly among the Representatives,
to the rudiments
of righteous contempt....

This didn't make many people happy,
but you can bet it made the Barons and Lackeys happy....

So happy did the Barons become,
that they even began cynically to commiserate
with some of the 'top' Representatives....
Such was the Barons' fear of the Peasants
that they strove to make these commiserations as public as possible
the more successfully to drive the wedge
between the Peasants and their Representatives....
Such was their fear,
that they even stooped
to making many of the more pliable of these Representatives
into Knights and Lords;
thus placing them, in a hollow sense,
on a par with themselves.....

Such was the stupidity of many of these Representatives,
and such had the distance now become
between themselves and their Peasants,
that they actually accepted these dubious honours
- they actually assented to this peculiar reversal
of the Social History
that had been and still was
O so long in the writing....

So now the problems of the Peasant Mobilisation
were twofold.....
On the one hand,
there was the discrepancy, in terms of speed and efficiency,
between the strategic deployment of social power
and the strategic deployment of economic power....
On the other hand,
there was the stress and distancing that this discrepancy created
between the Peasants and their Representatives
and the ways in which it was exploited to the full
by cynical Barons and Lackeys....
But there was more to come....

Somewhere along the line
the Printing Press came into being
and into more and more regular use....

At first, this looked good for the Peasants....
Here was a way of disseminating information
speedily and accurately....
Maybe now, communication among Peasants
and between Peasants and their Representatives
could be brought to a reasonably efficient level....
But,
as is so often the case with new technology,
the use to which the printing technology was put
was determined by it's "owners"....

And who, one might ask,
were the "owners"...

Well,
it hardly needs explaining
that, in much the same way as they had "owned" the fields and the produce,
and, later on, the Machinery and the Factories,
the Barons, coincidentally,
ended up "owning" the Presses as well....

This is not to say that the Peasants had no access to these Presses...
In fact, it is probably fair to say that
they were first to see the usefulness....
They started banging out leaflets and posters,
pamphlets and treatises,
popular histories and broadsheets,
until even the Barons and Lackeys couldn't avoid
noticing the potential here....

With their superior economic power fully wielded,
the Barons and Lackeys were able to commandeer the Presses....
Not only that,
they were able to commandeer a whole new class of "Professionals"
(more about Professionals later),
the ""Press" itself....
The Press consisted of various 'educated' (they could read and write)
offshoots of the Lackeys and the Merchants
who specialised in having an interpretation
of any given event....
There is nothing inherently wrong with people having interpretations,
but people of the Press,
being almost exclusively in the employ of and, in effect, descendant of
a particular section of the population (Barons, Lackeys, and Merchants),
their interpretations tended to reflect and protect
with astonishing consistency and accuracy
the views and vested interests
of this section of the population......

Such was the strength of the economic power behind these people
that they were able far to outstrip the few struggling Peasants
and Peasant Combinations
in terms of producing and distributing
interpretations.....
This meant of course
that not only were the Press able, in a sense,
to write history on their masters' terms
but also to re-write past history
in the same way
until, eventually,
their particular view of events past and present
came to be accepted, almost unwittingly,
by the bulk of the population
as the way things actually were.....

This was, as usual, good news for the Barons....
And, as usual, bad news
for the Peasants
and, more particularly,
for those of the Peasants
who were still struggling to present
a Peasant interpretation of events....

Added to the problems of communication
already faced by the Peasants,
the Press presented an enormous advantage
to the already preposterously advantaged side
of the wielders of economic power......
Control of the Press also meant
that the Barons needed no longer to fear
the broadening electoral franchise....
After all,
when you control the formation of opinion,
what does it matter how many people
are allowed to contribute to the opinion.....
Let them all "vote"....
Even people without property....
Even women....
Even Black People.....
In fact,
if you can delude people into thinking they are in control
they are less likely to want to seek it.....

Clearly,
Peasant Mobilisation was beset with difficulties.....
The rifts between Peasants and their Representatives
became even more fraught.....
But, almost as if to prove that God either doesn't exist
or, if he does, that he hates Peasants,
a strange process began to emerge....

You will have noticed how, throughout the course of this History,
the social ranks below Baron have gradually become more fragmented....
At first it was just the Barons and Lackeys at the top
of the heap of toiling Peasants....
But now there are Merchants, the Press,
and even at times the Representatives as well....
But others began to appear too,
as part of this strange process...
The strange process was of course
the one whereby significant sections of the population
where seduced into being pleased with themselves
for not being a Peasant.....
It didn't seem to matter where on the fragmenting scale of control
these people found themselves
just so long as they weren't on the bottom....
Among these people,
interest in preserving the status quo
would become as rabid
as the highest Barons' in the land....

The prime example of this tendency
was the Professional.....

The Professionals
were another category of offshoot
from the Merchants and Lackeys (and sometimes the Barons themselves)....
Like the Press, they could read and write....
But unlike the Press, they chose to specialise in particular,
believable skills....
Many of these skills were, on the face of it, important,
and their pursuit could, on the face of it, be lauded
in terms of collective social benefit......
However, due to the nature of the prevailing obsession with rank
and the fact that the ranks were to a degree fragmenting,
many of these Professionals became caught up
in the nonsensical compulsion
to determine where in these ranks
they fit
and then to defend their positions vigorously......
The skills and their pursuit became, therefore,
secondary issues
to later aspirants to Professionalism......

So concerned were some Professionals with the preservation of their "status"
that they devised closed groups and associations
to exclude from their skill area
anyone they considered might not have the same commitment
to the preservation of their status......
In many ways,
these associations and groups
parallelled the Combinations and Unions of the Peasants,
but, because they were already committed to the preservation of hierarchy,
none of the Professionals were maimed or killed or deported
in the way many of the Peasants were.....

So,
from the Peasants' point of view,
things were again going badly....

Just as they had begun to wake up
to the fact of their horrific exploitation
at the hands of the Barons and their ilk
- the fact that they, the great majority,
were being screwed, blued, and tattooed
by a tiny minority
of gluttons and power-mongers -
their own solidarity
became impossible to maintain
because more and more of the population
were finding cosy places in the hierarchy
between the majority at the bottom
and the minority at the top.....
And,
far from being critical of the minority at the top,
all these people with their cosy places
were becoming critical of the majority at the bottom
for "rocking the boat"....
To these people,
their petty cosiness was far more important
than that great and prevailing injustice
which had been strangling and stifling society
from the very beginning
and was continuing to do so
by ever more sophisticated and devious means.....

But all the Peasants could do
was to keep on relying
upon brave individuals among them
to keep abreast of the changes
and develop appropriate strategies in response
and to carry on the historical struggle
for fairness and justice........

Back to the top....

It's Quite Simple Really       Interjection 2.

You get born;
you seek comfort;
you seek understanding/sympathy;
you seek gratification;
you seek success;
and, finally,
you seek enlightenment....

Then you realise
that enlightenment, too,
has an economic probability basis...
i.e. Those living at a certain standard
stand a statistically better chance
of ever approaching
any enlightenment....

So you realise that self-enlightenment,
like self-success, self-gratification, and all the others,
is just another form of self-indulgence
in the face
of vast injustices
preventing many many of our people
from indulging
in the same way
and, thereby,
preventing all of us
from realising the full potential
of enlightenment seeking on a really impressive scale;
from finding out once and for all
what collective endeavour on a global scale
can really deliver.......

Back to the top....

HISTORY OF ENGLAND          Part IV.

Even though they had everything going for them;
even though all the advantages were on their side,
the Barons were still very rattled
by the efforts of some of the Peasantry.....

Information was, by and large,
being disseminated far more efficiently and effectively
and a broad recognition of the extent of the exploitation
was, possibly, beginning to emerge....
Even the self-interested Merchants and Professionals
were beginning seriously to question
some of the "fundamentals"
of the system......

But the Barons were not through yet....
They began to devise the biggest confidence trick
the world had ever known.....

To get the scale of this "con" into perspective,
one must understand
the ways in which the Barons and their favourite Lackeys
had been applying their expertise in exploiting Peasants
to the rest of the planet.....
While the Peasants in England had been trying to win some rights,
the Barons, inspired by the Merchants,
had been maiming and killing Peasants the world over
in order to get them, too,
to produce the wherewithal for their own destruction....
Many of these Peasants, because they were darker of skin,
were treated even worse
than the English Peasants
who at least had the good fortune to have the same colour of skin
as the Barons......
These darker Peasants suffered appalling living and working conditions
as they drew from their own land
the raw materials needed by the white Barons
to build themselves lifestyles of unimaginable self-indulgence
and machines of war to protect them.....

But, coincidentally enough,
there were other white Barons from other European countries
indulging themselves in the same sorts of things.....
Quite often,
they would bump into each other and, for a bit of sport,
get back into the old game
of flinging Peasants and Lackeys at each other....
The old game was made even more exciting by the inclusion
of some of the new machines of war
that their opulent life styles had allowed them to develop
in the course of killing and maiming
the darker Peasants.....
But this was, after all, sport,
and the gentlemanly white Barons could always overcome their differences
to share some self-indulgences
and to discuss how uppity some of the Peasants 'back home'
were becoming.....

The enormous "con"
really arose informally
out of these games in the farflung corners of the globe....
The Barons began to notice a curious willingness
among all the strata of the societies at home
to immerse themselves in a sort of hysterical fever
called "nationalism".....
Such was the desperation of many humans,
even many Peasants it must be said,
not to feel at the bottom of the social heap,
that they were happy to join in the euphoria
of denouncing whole other societies,
particularly ones made up of people with darker skins,
as being lower than the lowest Peasant
in their own.....

Many people found this refreshing and exhilarating
and the Barons could sense this....
So they hit upon the fantastic idea
of building up all this hysteria
into
a World War.........

The world had never seen a war like this one.....
It was called "The Great War";
the "War To End All Wars".....

It began in the minds of the Barons
as just another gentlemanly fray....
Nobody of any importance would get hurt,
just a few Peasants....
Most of the Barons were related anyway......

But, once things had got underway,
even the Barons began to realise
that they'd created something bigger
than anyone could possibly have imagined....
The new machines of war
chewed the earth
and spit the Peasants of both sides
into scenes
of greater horror
than ever before thought possible......

The horror was so stupefying
that even Peasants who managed to survive it
remained in a state of shock
for years afterward....
Many of them
never
recovered......

From the Barons' point of view,
these were embarrassing times....
On the face of it, the stupidity of their greedy obsessions
and the stunning incompetence
of their attempts to stay abreast of the catastrophic circumstances
they themselves had set in motion
were exposed for all the world to see......
How could anybody
implicated in such a monumental disaster
arising out of such a cynical,
such an unnecessary,
such a blatantly evil
game
ever get away with it.......

Well,
fortunately for the Barons,
their control of the communications technology
stood them in good stead......
And because, to a greater or lesser degree,
many of the Merchants and Professionals
were themselves implicated
in the stirring of the "nationalist" fever,
they, for their own reasons,
had no interest in trying to disseminate accurate information
about who had been doing what for which reasons......
The Barons,
surprising even themselves,
were able to dissociate themselves in the public eye
from any
of the blame.....

The great mass
of the surviving Peasantry
were either still in shock
or too exhausted
even to notice.....
And the few brave ones who did notice
and managed to say anything about it
were dealt with quickly and efficiently
by Barons and Lackeys who,
if good at absolutely nothing else,
were always able to maim and kill
Peasant 'troublemakers'.......

In fact, from the Barons' point of view,
things really turned out rather well......
Many of them had profited quite handsomely
as their factories, staffed by Peasant women
working for next to nothing to help the "war effort",
poured out guns and ammunition....
And, as it turned out,
a whole generation of potentially uppity Peasants
had been decimated.....
They'd had the stuffing
kicked out of them.....
It would be a long time before they would be having uppity thoughts again.....
It was the good old medieval times again....

The war was over...
The economy had to be rebuilt....
Keep the Peasants busy doing that,
and the Barons could be left free
to plan
the next one......

Yes,
would you believe it....?
After the horrors of the "Great War",
there were still people around who were stupid enough
to think that another one
might be a good idea.....

But planning for the next one turned out not to be quite as simple
as planning for the first one......
For one thing,
the Barons,
finding the ranks of their Lackeys swelled
with the influx of the self-interested split-aways
from the broad body of Peasantry
(ie. Merchants, Professionals, Representatives, the Press),
found themselves having to assume
an even higher degree
of distance and righteousness......
Already dissociated from the broad majority of the seething masses,
they began to dissociate themselves further
from what was becoming a secondary level
of seething masses.....
The swelled ranks of the Lackeys became boiling pots of greed,
ambition,
and thinly disguised aspiration to Baronhood.....
Lackeys didn't used to be like this...
They used really to know their place,
better even than the Peasants.....
But now they were becoming quite disturbing
and the Barons began to withdraw into themselves
to leave these 'new age' Lackeys
to squabble among themselves.....

So two things began to happen....

First, 'Underbarons' began to emerge....
These were the greediest and most ambitious of the Lackeys
and gradually came to fill some of the space
abandoned by the original Barons....

Second, far from losing their power by withdrawing from the squabbles,
the Barons discovered, to their delight,
that such was the insecurity among the Lackeys;
such was their lack of genuine self-esteem,
that they seemed to revere the Barons even more;
to fawn even more at every diminishing opportunity....
Even the really greedy and really ambitious ones
seemed only too happy to grovel
whenever a 'real' Baron appeared...

This tendency filtered down to the Peasants too...
Now, all their anger at the manipulations and the administrative abuses
directed itself at the more prominent Underbarons,
and the original Barons, by a peculiar twist of informational fate,
became objects of great fondness....
Everybody, right across the whole social spectrum, forgot
the Great War,
that colossal blunder,
that ultimate act in cynical manipulation,
the greatest crime in the history of humankind,
and the way in which the Barons
had orchestrated the whole thing......

But the Barons weren't able to forget....
They remembered the good times they'd had
and the money they'd made....
They remembered the 'old values', when 'men were men'
and everybody knew their place......
And, noting the emergence of the two strange factors above,
they began carefully
to cultivate
some of the more energetic Underbarons,
to join with them
in some of the planning.....
And, sure enough,
it wasn't long
before yet another con
was on the way.....

Yes,
primarily through the speculations of the greedy Underbarons
who, wishing, themselves, to relive the good old days of the Barons
and share in the magnificence and profit
of human conflagration,
and wishing also to divert the more astute Peasants' and Representatives'
critical observations of the way the economic system was working,
yet another Great War,
another "War To End All Wars",
was set in motion......

Imagine the broken hearts....
Imagine the despair........
Imagine the degradation and the frustration of intelligence
as yet another generation of Peasants
got themselves ready
for yet another
meat grinding........

Many of the Peasants and some of their more steadfast Representatives
had been coming up with some truly enlightened ideas
about human organisation and material distribution....
These delicate initiatives found themselves usurped,
compulsorily prostituted,
and put to 'good effect' in the "War Effort"....

As is usual with wars,
control of it was lost almost immediately......
So shocked were even the Barons and Underbarons,
who had originally thought it was such a terrific idea,
by the escalating violence and scale of the war
that they had to grope around looking for systems for organising
that were based on intelligence rather than greed....
And as there were no Barons or Underbarons
whose intelligence outstripped their greed,
they quickly found that they had to call upon
some of these enlightened Peasants and Representatives
to devise systems of organisation
that saw to it that everybody received enough of whatever was available
in order to keep everybody working
to keep the 'war effort' going....
Enlightened ideas for organisation and distribution made sense to everyone
when finally put to work without the hysterical villification of the Press
and the opposition of the Barons and Underbarons....

After several long years
in which this strange situation persisted
whereby society was being run almost fairly
in order to maintain a horrible war machine;
in which, essentially,
the Peasants were conned into trying to rationalise
yet another hideous mess
created by Barons,
this second great conflagration
eventually ran its course
and died down.....

But the awful injustice of the con job didn't end there....

It extended itself to destroying the only real gain
of the entire conflagration....
When the insane con had finally run its course,
the rudimentary but enlightened system of organisation and distribution,
for which many 'ordinary' people had made monumental sacrifices,
was thrown away again;
trampled
and abandoned.......
With the exception of many of the Barons and Underbarons
who, co-incidentally,
had got richer,
everybody found themselves
back
where they were before........

History seems to keep doing this,
particularly to Peasants.....

It always seems that
the nearer the Peasants get
to the equality of resources and opportunity
that they've been seeking for centuries,
the more vicious
the struggle becomes....

Back to the top....

Ineloquence          Interjection 3.

My ineloquence confounds me...

We sit and talk
and I realise
the extent to which your understanding of social reality is divorced
from so much of the social reality
that I perceive
as clear as day....

I can see I lose you
as I try to explain.....
I can see how the simplicities converge
to form complexities
and I can see how the complexities
multiply.....
As I wrack my brain for a catalytic illustration
of the relationship
between the economic structure of our society
and the 'educative' systems it uses to maintain itself,
I can see your attention wander......

To me,
it's like a giant multi-dimensional puzzle
that fits into place with such grace and clarity
as soon as you undermine some of the key "unquestionable" values
punched into your head
from the time you were very very small....

When you querie the unquestionables
using the basic tools of relativity exploration
ie, "....check your sources"
and "....look for contradictions",
the whole thing caves in;
crumbles
like a land slide....

But I can't seem to convey
a precipitating insight....

I can't seem to deliver
a key....

As I speak
and note your declining concentration,
your imminent absence,
my ineloquence confounds me
and I feel as though I'm slurring my words
and stuttering
and generally making myself unavailable
for any further intelligence....

Is it entirely me,
or is there a carefully constructed
subliminal block
in the heads of the less suspecting graduates
of the TV and eduation system....

Back to the top....

HISTORY OF ENGLAND          Part V.

After the second great
conflagrating confidence trick,
many people
became wary.....

Many people, Peasants and Professionals, began to be suspicious
of grand Government announcements
and sensational headline features
in the Press.....
Many people
began to question authority.....

But,
not enough.....

Even after two such spectacular demonstrations
of what unbridled greed and ambition among the rich few
coupled with unquestioning ignorance and obedience among the poor many
can lead to,
many people could still not see
that economic fairness, rationality, and justice is necessary
to achieve social fairness, rationality, and justice
and that both are necessary prerequisites
to political fairness, rationality, and justice.......
Many people still felt
that the most important things
were their own cars and houses and washing machines
and they still couldn't see
how their own indifference to the broader issues
left space for the Barons and Underbarons
to carry on
with their cynical self-indulgences
and games........

And somehow
the very fact of the co-existence
of the growing wariness of some of the Peasants
with the growing materialist self-interest of others
opened the door to more and more vicious attacks
upon the more enlightened Peasants
and some of their more steadfast Representatives........
It seemed as though
the Underbarons (for it was really them running the show now),
encouraged by the indifference of so many of the people,
could heap more and more energy and resources
into suppressing or distorting or hystericising
the views of this wary minority......

This came primarily through manipulations of the "Media",
which now included the new television and radio "Broadcasters"
as well as the Press,
and became a sort of thought war........
But it also took the form of more and more militaristic responses
to public manifestations
and more and more secretive, counter-espial responses
to public organisations.......

Some of these more wary Peasants, Representatives, and Professionals
began to make associations
between what was happening in England
and what was happening elsewhere in the world....
They could see the patterns recurring
all over the planet.....
They could see that what was now happening to Peasants of darker hue
was actually a repetition
of their own history,
their own exploitation
at the hands of the economic controllers.......
They could see that,
as English Peasants became more effective in defending themselves
from the mindless speculation of the English Barons and Underbarons,
so the English Barons and Underbarons took their speculations elsewhere,
to places in which Peasants were still being maimed and killed
for trying to organise to protect themselves.......

This tendency
drove the more wary Peasants, Representatives, and Professionals
to greater degrees of concern
which in turn
distanced them further from the rest of the people
who were still more preoccupied
with their washing machines, hair driers, and colour televisions.....

This distancing
was ruthlessly exploited by the Underbarons
and their Press and Broadcasters......
It was exploited to the degree that
strong feelings of hate
and distrust
began to emerge between the two bodies of opinion....
It was almost as if
some of the 'horizontal' stratification of society
had begun to disappear with the growth of wariness
and so a 'vertical' schism,
developing between those whose wariness outstripped
their desire for material goods
and those whose desire for material goods
outstripped their wariness,
became the centrepiece
of this ruthless exploitation......

In the guise of stalwart "free enterprise"
and, strangely enough, of "rugged individualism",
the Underbarons and their Lackeys (yes, they even had some of them now)
began to make international financial coalitions
the more securely to stake out
their claims to the world's resources....
Vast, faceless organisations emerged
with annual budgets far exceeding
the annual budgets of most of the world's national governments.....
With Underbarons and Barons as 'Directors' and 'Chairmen'
and thousands of the less wary Professionals and Merchants as 'Shareholders'
the whole business of plundering and pillaging the planetary resources
and of exploiting and screwing the less organised Peasants
took on a strange respectability
which even the most dedicated and enlightened Representatives
found difficult to undermine and expose.....

The 'respectability' of this plundering and pillaging
owed much, again, to the Underbarons' control of the Media.....
The Media would happily portray the greediest of these "Enterprisers"
as Heroes
and staunch contributors to the general well being of humankind
and would happily portray their greediest speculations
as high adventure
and gallant, swash-buckling personal risk-taking
(which of course it never was
- all the rules being in their favour from start to finish)......
The misery being created by all this
among the world's Peasants
didn't, of course, make very good copy
and, besides, many of these Media people themselves liked,
as indeed did many Representatives,
to "dabble", as they called it,
in this disgusting and immoral speculation
in other people's well being.....

So what can only be called
Informational Crime
began to emerge as a very potent determining factor
in the 'Thought Wars'
and also provided many of the less wary
with a wonderful Career Structure.....

But the greatest monstrosity,
the most stupendously obscene informational crime
and the most blatant exploitation of the vertical schism
had yet to be perpetrated.....

So out of control had the second great conflagration become
that a whole new concept in mass destruction
was born.......
Supposedly intelligent Representatives of various kinds
supplied supposedly intelligent Professionals of various kinds
with vast economic resources
(more economic resources
than the world had ever before seen concentrated
into one research project)
to work diligently to develop a system for dividing atoms
to make explosions
of a magnitude
hitherto unimaginable.........

No nightmare,
no twisted human vision
could begin to encompass the immensity
of these explosions
or the dreadfulness
of their aftermath..........

But this didn't stop the proliferation
of the system......
Far from it....
And the proliferation of this concept in mass destruction
also gave birth
to a whole new system for generating energy:
the "Nuclear Industry".....
There being no other justification for this new "Industry"
than the production of unstable materials
for use in systems of mass destruction,
many lies had to be told....
Because many of the Underbarons and Barons had speculated
in the colossal extravagance of the Representatives' determination
to fund this system of mass destruction at all costs,
they stood to gain even further
if they could further hoodwink the Representatives
and the Peasants they represented
into continuing, against all the evidence,
to throw money in vast quantities
at the new energy generating system.....

This required considerable creative effort
from the Underbarons' Media....
But of course, as so often in the past,
the Media proved to be
the most effective weapon at the Barons' and Underbarons' disposal
since maiming and killing......

The real beauty of the Nuclear Industry,
besides the obvious one of multiplying fortunes for heavy investors,
was the "Security" angle
which everyone agreed
had to be associated with it....
Everyone agreed
that you couldn't let "Terrorists"
get hold of any of this unstable material.....
So everyone agreed that the Nuclear Industry must be allowed
to keep as many secrets as it liked....
And, before long, just about everything was "secret",
and just about anybody who had any curiosity at all
was a "Terrorist".....

Perfect....

The Underbarons and the Barons were the top dogs.....

Everybody beneath them was twice split
(quartered if you like);
on the one hand between being a nobody or having status,
and on the other between wariness and materialism.....

And anybody who asked questions could be vilified
by an uncritical and sycophantic Media
and, if necessary,
be dealt with
under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.....

...................................................to be continued.

Back to the top....

HISTORY OF ENGLAND    Provisional Conclusions.

As time, of course, moves on
we begin to discover
that all these distinctions are meaningless....

Peasants, Barons, Lackeys....
We are all the same....

Every Baron knows, to himself,
that he is nothing but a Lackey
in Baron's clothes....

Every Lackey knows, to himself,
that he is living a lie;
that he is using socio-economic constructs
to improve his faint-hearted impression of himself.......

And every Peasant, we know, has the true capacity,
if given the slightest chance,
to walk the face of the earth in dignity;
to claim a minimum rightful share of the material world
in order to share in getting on with the problems we all face
with regard to the indifference of the cosmos........

We discover, or re-discover,
that every one of us knows, internally,
that there are no differences......
We re-discover that the entire business of creating differences
and believing in them
is an offshoot
of very primitive behaviour;
the sort of behaviour, in fact,
that we've always assumed we left behind
in the caves....

The whole pretence,
for which people have to suffer and die,
is nothing but an hysterical response to not knowing
what the fuck is going on;
to not having the slightest idea
of where we fit into the universe
and what we're supposed
to be doing........

All of the pretences
are social constructions
upon which those of us who should have known better
have come to rely......

Those of us who should have known better
are those of us who've had the time and the space,
the 'leisure' if you like,
to contemplate these things....
Those of us who haven't had to toil ourselves senseless
just to stay alive.....
Those of us who have actually spent large parts of our lives
supposedly absorbing formal information.....
Those of us who are unimaginably free
of the constraints and responsibilities and agonies
of survival
on a day to day basis......

But in our anxiety
not to lose the social constructions around us,
not to lose the 'status'
we've deluded ourselves into thinking that we deserve,
we fail to face up to the overpowering fact
that we don't know,
any better than any other human,
why we're here
on this planet
in this reality......

In primitive societies,
all kinds of elaborate understandings were constructed
about why what was taking place
was taking place....
As we look back or down upon them,
we are amused....
But how much more do we know....
We still haven't even really scratched the surface
of understanding even the scale of the problem
let alone come anywhere near
an understanding of the nature
of the solution.....

Every member of every society that ever was
believed that the dominant truths of the day
were the ultimate truths....
We now assume that what none of our ancestors ever knew
about "reality"
is that it's full of molecules and atoms
whizzing around....
And that light shines through it,
bouncing off it, this way and that,
at 186,000 miles per second.....

How quaint they were
not to know this.....
How clever we are
to know it........

But what we 'know'
is so ephemeral......
It changes so fast....
Today, some of us can see that....
And seeing that is perhaps the real measure
of how far from our ancestors we may have come.....

But most of us turn our backs
on this uncomfortable, this disorienting aspect of knowledge....
Instead, we concentrate on the primitive task
of assembling social constructs.....
We busy ourselves
ordering our environment
and doing so
usually in terms of short-sighted, short-term material self-interest.....

And perhaps some of that's OK....
A little bit of displacement activity
can help
to get over the main horrific anxiety....

But, like the primitives,
we over-involve ourselves
in the busy-ness....
We become so totally immersed in the displacement activity
that we forget not only what we're displacing,
but also
the very fact that we're displacing it.....

In the old days, in the dark nights,
the elders used to tell the youngers
the reasons for everything,
to soothe the fears of the youngers
and thereby, in a sense, their own.......

But the elders knew they were making it up.....
They knew that nobody knows.....

But after a few generations
of making and believing,
the "truth" emerges;
solid with the years;
steeped in tradition;
cured by time and secured by repetition......

Nowadays,
we still do the same thing....
We believe all this rubbish
from our, admittedly younger, elders....
And then, as we become elders,
we catch ourselves passing it on,
just as if we knew
it was the truth.......

So,
where does this leave us....

Clearly,
it is our various insecurities and self-indulgences
which are inhibiting our collective application
to the task of assembling human knowledge....

But a certain amount of self-indulgence cannot be avoided....
It is even, perhaps, important
in maintaining our balance
as we confront
this disturbingly impossible task....

But some degrees of self-indulgence
are obviously affecting our application
more seriously than others....
For example,
many of us are desperately struggling to keep from dying;
to keep fed;
to keep heat in our bodies
and the bodies of our children.....

Many of us are thus distracted
from the main task of assembling human knowledge.....
The fact that we are thus distracted
is directly attributable
to the indulgences of the economically advantaged
who, by virtue of their "ownership"
of unnecessary quantities of land, goods, and houses,
create unnecessary stresses
on our collective economy
which could otherwise be providing these
to all our members
at a minimum level of pain and struggle
for all.....

This minimum level could assure
that more of us
have more time
with which to deal with the main task.....

Dealing with self-indulgence in the economically advantaged
does seem to require some determination,
and, yes,
some force.....
Clearly,
they're not going to let go
of their own free will.....
History has shown us very very few examples of this......

For one thing,
they're rigid with fright.....
Their whitened knuckles grip
their material possessions and economic advantages
in a state of unthinking near-hysteria.....
But it must be understood
that the cost of their self-indulgence
is too much for the rest of us to bear
any longer.......

The rest of us
want to get on with the vast problem
of assembling human knowledge........
We want do this
before human knowledge destroys itself.....

But as we apply ourselves to the task,
we come, consistently,
up against the brick walls
of economic constraint......
We come up against arguments of "profitability"
as though somehow a divine message had got through
that all human endeavour
must make money......

We come up against cynical hypocrisy
as we recognise that the very arguments about "profitability"
are coming from the economically advantaged
who have long since sewn up
all the avenues to profit known to man
in their own short term self-interest......

If there was a saving grace;
if these people were themselves using their economic advantage
to the advantage of our collective struggle with ignorance;
if they were applying a superior intelligence
one might expect to be arising out of this economic advantage,
there might be an argument for saying,
"OK, keep up the good work...
We'll mark time
until you've got some news for us...."

But the evidence
is completely to the contrary....

All we are seeing
is the proliferation of more and more magnificent examples
of human greed, arrogance, and self-indulgence.....

And besides,
history has shown us, time and time and time again,
that when you give people economic advantage over others
they start playing power games;
they start trying to manipulate
the lives
of the economically disadvantaged.....

The intelligent among us know there's no excuse for it....

We know we have to try to sort out these economic disparities.....

We know that time is running out.....

We know
that in many corners of the globe
the last conflagration has already begun.......

We know
that the time for pretending it's not happening
is passed....

So,
let's not waste any more time.....

Let's just
get
on
with
it,
shall we....?

Back to the top....