[ a shame you don't read ]
we are being primed for violence.
IF YOU CAN'T SEE THAT, IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT LOOKING.
if YOU'RE NOT LOOKING, you either haven't yet HAD CAUSE TO, OR YOU DON'T WANT TO.
iF this is the first you've heard of our being seeded with a fetish for conflict, WELCOME TO THE BRUTE FACT OF OUR TIME.
If you don't want to look, it's because you already did, and what you WITNESSED WAS SO DISTRESSING, you MADE A HABIT of not seeing.
iT'S A SENSIBLE RESPONSE TO what is ONE OF THE more INSIDIOUS REVALATIONS one might IMAGINE, nevertheless
we are being primed for violence.
Black powder changed everything,
and nothing more than the soldier.
It was no small thing to draw swords and storm, shoulder to shoulder, beneath a rain of flaming arrows, at a legion strangers just as battle-mad as you. High passion, low intelligence, a constitution born of tradition, fealty, honor, superstition, glory.
The same formula makes for a different constitution in a war fighter with low passion and high intelligence. A different warrior fights a different war, and for different reasons. The man with a mortgage anticipating children in a systemically inflationary economy, is not the same man with a patient maiden, a righteous king, and proud god.
War is dead.
Embedded psychologists in both the first and second world wars reported a widespread phenomena that the average industry sponsored military officer would call cowardice, but any considerate human not coerced into concession or compromise would call calculated conscience. 1 in every 5 shots fired during both wars- on any side- was sent high or wide. From the trenches, on the beaches, out of bunkers, the fighters of modern war were obviously disinclined to kill.
unless you have a psycho or sociopathic bent, it's not hard to understand why that would be. Equally obvious is the problem :
Industry will not suffer a coward. so
we are being primed for violence.
Following the second world war, Industry pursued a two pronged strategy to ensure the viability of war planning in the Future.
the efficiency and scale of sanctioned murder has been evolving since it first occured to someone that it would benefit them to murder without moral consequence. Stone, stick, sword, bow, catapult, musket, machine gun, bomb, atomic bomb, missle, hydrogen bomb, hurricane formation and steering, satalitte lasers, and so on and on until the whole coward species objects in unison, or at least a healthy bunch.
the realization by men who start wars that the men who fight the wars are considerate of their conscience (aka cowards) is the genesis of the military industrial complex, which is the first prong of that stratregy. when you can't rely on an army to kill, the sensible thing to do is not need an army. Drones and robot warriors don't need to be pressed into service by debt or propaganda, and if they are not programed to be cowards, they won't be.
the absurdity of a war that does not require the passion and ideological commitment of an army of souldiers- sorry, soldiers- is obvious, glaring, unavoidable, the prememinent paradox of this or any other age, To ensure people don't notice that absurdity, there needs to be at least a handful of token soldiers to give war that human touch. Enter prong two of the industry stratregy, namely:
sow desensitization, reap sacrifice.
Stories about war and mythological treatments of the soldier are nothing new, of course, but there is a categorical difference between a translation of Homer's Odyessy and a cinematic presentation of the same epic. And if NArrative poetry isn't your thing, you were out of luck in Athens circa 200 BCE, but in the year of our empire 2026, you not only have options, it's nearly impossible to escape entertainment's grasp.
WE live in a world glowing with hyper-realistic depictions of violence, on screens big and small, scripted and unscripted, from hand to hand brawls to slaughter on a global scale, bombs, bullets, blades, zombies, psychopaths, terrorists, entertainment seems almost to be ceaseless violence with occasional interludes of sex or skydiving.
Most folk enjoy a good movie or series, many people play first person shooters and the like, but entertainment isn't for everyone. Some people prefer the high drama of real geopolitik.
If that's you, there's the news programming, main stream or "curated" feed, live drone kills, unedited beheadings, planes vs skyscrapers, suburban arson, drunken drivebys, assassinations, double tap weddings, Natural disasters, sanguine mob on mob communication- An unending buffet of explicit and implicit tragedy, served up between commercial breaks,
we are being primed for violence
because if we weren't, there would be no violence.
we are being psychospiritually primed to kill, to mindlessly sacrifice ourselves for reasons that we cannot fully comprehend, We are not zealots. We are no longer the gullible nationalists, much less the sword wielding peasants, that could be coaxed into the fear and loathing that make for war.
So why bother?
War is about profit, but
they already print all the money, and the world's assets have all been stockpiled in a vault of contract law and/0r steele and protected with suprior force-
They don't need money.
war is about control. but
they own the means to control, and we the people have embraced those means, often enthusiastically, demanding more and better.
They have control.
War is a ritual.
they want us to die,
in one last world war, or at the hands of our neighbor in the ruined streets of our own cities- it doesn't matter. just die.
whatever gods live in the psychotic mind,
they demand sacrifice, so
they are priming us for violence
But we are not here to be primed,
we will not excute command and
whatever god would lap blood from the dirt,
that be a coward's god.
don't be coward: buy a t-shirt.