24 MILITARY FORCE - INTERNATIONAL ARMED CONFLICT
The truth about present worldwide human reality, that has constantly to be kept in mind, is that in many ways it is hard and often brutish. This overlying fact is borne out by the existence, in every nation, of military forces, and by the frequent occurrence of war. It is not the fundamental nature of humankind that makes this so but that of the Machine. True human nature is otherwise, an underlying fact borne out by the existence everywhere of concerned and caring family and social community life. Both hateful war and loving companionship are traditional features of the here and now. This is senseless, but to make sense of the world is not at present the normal objective of our vast intellectual powers. We take sides in the automatic competition, apply tame logic to justify our own side, then allow biased emotion to bring us into conflict.
What are military forces? They are groups of human beings who submit, voluntarily or involuntarily, to the special laws, and deploy the armaments, of organisations - institutions of the Machine - whose ultimate purpose is the killing, maiming and subduing of other human beings. Their weapons include guns, mines, fire, gas, germs, conventional and nuclear explosives, carried by tanks, aeroplanes, ships and rockets. The world's existing weaponry, in particular nuclear and chemical, is capable of destroying all human and animal life on Earth. National Governments, divided one from another, control most of the armed forces of the world; their activities are cloaked in secrecy, and the public conscience may normally exert an influence only through dubious political channels. Once war is declared it becomes the duty, enforceable by law,of every able-bodied man to become a soldier, of every soldier to kill enemy soldiers, or civilians where required, and of every member of the public to give support.
Armies are traditional. They perpetuate themselves almost without question. In times of peace they are docile but in wartime they are given priority and all effort is devoted to prosecution of the war. We accept armies as a matter of course but why is this so, and why have they come into such common and unquestioned existence? They originated right at the beginning of human history when it was necessary to co-ordinate our efforts under a leader so as to overcome any threat of catastrophe. Subsequently that leader would form an armed guard to protect his dominant authority. To this end he would make it unlawful for any but this guard to carry arms, for fear of rebellion. When neighbouring leaders threatened to invade, the public being unarmed their leader would be obliged to establish a larger, permanent force of fighting men, an army, to defend his territory. Feeling powerful and ambitious he himself might order the invasion of a weaker neighbouring country, and thus become militarily and economically stronger. In this way a worldwide international norm has been established by which the size, success, prosperity and safety of a nation partly depends upon the size and efficiency of its armed forces. Commercial success can make a nation economically strong, for modern instance Japan, but military weakness can make that nation feel vulnerable in this world reality, and will inevitably lead it to arm itself.
In the more enlightened modern age it might be asked why humans continue voluntarily to join the armed forces and serve them loyally. To begin with, these forces are closely tied in service to the governing authority - that is why they are called 'armed services' - and representative of patriotism. Many magazines are published on the subject of flags, uniforms and weapons. Numerous books and films are produced which tell of the glorious adventures of war but not of its tedium, suffering and tragedy. There is an understanding amongst TV and press reporters, who see at first hand the bestial ugliness of war, that according to the strange morality of the here and now the public are not to be exposed to these real horrors. Those who have fought in wars shield their families from its realities in the same way. Members of the armed forces are usually recruited from the younger generation, youths of eighteen attracted by the glamour, unable to get any other job or wanting to learn a trade, seeking to distinguish themselves in a damanding career - all ignorant of the true significance of their service and of its realities, either in 'peace' or war. And when war comes, the political leaders, whose sabre-rattling intransigence with 'foreigners' may have brought it about, send countless innocent young men to kill or be killed, and might do so out of similar ignorance of the reality of war, influenced, perhaps unwittingly, by the knowledge that they themselves are privileged to escape it.
As intelligent beings we should be prompted by conscience to be guided by our true minds; we should do nothing until supraconsciously certain that it is right. But this requires that we are fully aware. The young person who can join the military forces in peacetime without a qualm is incomplete, not fully awakened, just as the whole human race which perseveres with automatic reality is not fully awakened. His reason for joining is that the war organisation exists, and its advertised glories and advantages are apparent, whilst the true reasoning against the whole concept is not mentioned but banished to a much more remote field of thought. To the young, being close to danger is better than boredom. Permitted violence, spurred on by fear, is an outlet for frustration, with the added advantage of being lawful. The soldier goes beyond acceptance of amoral automatic reality; in addition he obediently submits to much more limited and rigid rules. To some extent the same applies to all in uniform. When competitive conflict shows signs of erupting in violence the human collective conscience needs to be at its most sensitive if war is to be avoided. But the response is normally a military one - a matter of the soldier's mentality, the worst extreme of automatic thinking in its robot-like obedience to prescribed rules of combat without conscientious choice, representing human sensitivity of mind at its lowest ebb. Politicians do have some choice but this aggressive road is the easiest to take because it can be backed by established military reason, whereas pacification could lead to military defeat. In the world of the Machine, right belongs to the victor.
It might be asked why, when our enlightenment is advancing and our awareness of the folly of war is increasing, we continue to maintain military institutions. It is because these and other automatic institutions powerfully exist. By their peculiarly separate constitution and motivation they perpetuate themselves by their own momentum and are not easy to remove. When there is no true reason for divided nations existing, artificial reason is manufactured from the fact that they do exist and are bound to defend their sovereign independence with military force. The individual's reason for accepting the military and war is that, being lumbered with this reality, he or she has to behave appropriately to the here and now. This means that we, as patriots and if called upon, must help to defend our nation against other nations, and protect its internal system of law and order against civil disobedience. Automated individuals will also go along with the strong money economy reasons for military activity. The armed services provide a considerable proportion of civilian employment, from scientists engaged in research and development of weapon systems to workers in the armaments factories. Production of arms is made financially viable by selling to other nations the weapons that are surplus to home requirements. From the automated human viewpoint war can benefit the money economy by transforming recession into prosperous full employment.
All this is undoubtedly presently so but the contrary is humantrue. This reality, with its cold and hot wars, continues because the normal mind accepts it. It is our humanity which is the important element of our reality, and intellectual integrity is the foremost element of our humanity. If individuals on all sides saw the truth they would also see that there was no need for nations to defend their different positions, for their peoples would then hold the truth in common. And a humantrue constitution, resulting from this recognition of what is right, would prevent wrong-doing from arising, as Part VII will show. It is the fact of our acceptance of the Machine which requires that we maintain it. Non-acceptance would lead us to abolish it, chiefly by withholding support.
Wars occur with an automatic will and are not otherwise justifiable. They occur because every nation has an army whose use is available to its government; because sooner or later the competitive conflicts of automatic reality must come to a head; because when that happens there is no other realistic solution but war, for reasoned peacable alternatives would reveal the basic folly of competition and could not be allowed by the Machine; because all humans in all occupations and at all levels are harnessed to automatic objectives, including military ones, and will obey the Machine when it orders them to fight. We have reduced the extremes of conflict within nations - civil war, for instance, seems to be a thing of the past in many countries - but it is yet beyond us to control war between nations. The reason is that violent release of aggressive forces is necessary to the Machine. As its minor expressions are controlled it boils up towards a major and more devastating explosion. The will of the Machine for war, supported by automated human will, is presently much stronger than the majority human conscience. This is one explanation of the ultimate failure of the United Nations Organisation. There is a human intellectual wish for unity and peace but the Machine overrules it. By their automatically constituted nature nations cannot agree, and by way of the right of veto which the UN allows them, sovereign nations are enabled to remain determinedly competitive. The concept of national defence, commonly adopted without thought, arises from this determined competitiveness whereby all nations must look to their protection because each poses a threat of attack. If that competitive threat did not exist, neither would organised military forces exist, whether ostensibly for defence or actually for attack.
Wars are ruinous of true human interests and the permanent existence of armed forces is an affront to our intelligence, yet by working the competitive system we all contribute to the causes of war. By government propaganda and media preoccupation with automatic rather than true human interests, we are generally pressed into the mould of normal reality which embraces wars as constant realistic probabilities. The military has little human conscience and war can never be morally justified, but war can be politically justified and is conventionally provided for in international law. Though we have no wish for it, once war is declared we are involved. Once we are involved there is one-way pressure to fight for our own side and most of us become enthused by patriotism. Wars do not bring out the morally-aware best in humans but the instinctive worst. A most dramatic example of humanly unnecessary automatic build-up to major war was the East/West confrontation. With the defeat of communism in Russia this particular confrontation no longer exists, but it must be remembered that Russia turned to communism in 1917 to eradicate gross inequality, and that such unfair inequality still exists both in Russia and, to varying degrees, everywhere else in the world, so that the 1917 revolution could be re-enacted anywhere. Since the causes of East/West conflict still exist, I shall repeat my comments on it which were written in 1990, when the conflict itself did exist.
The East/West confrontation is unnecessary because although representing opposite extremes of human reaction to reality - the political Left and Right - this bitter conflict is due to these extremes being polarised in the opposing attitudes of Russia and America, whereas the human cause can be served only by rejecting both, and the false reality they reflect, and by peacably folowing humantrue reasoning. But despite the fact that there is no real difference between the millions of people of both East and West, this confrontation exists because of the inflexible enmity of two governing authorities. The East/West differences are supposed to be a matter of ideology, but that is not the truth of it and serves mainly as excuse. Any reasonable mind should perceive that there is a lot of moral sense in Marxism but not in Russian-style state control, and that democratic freedom is desirable but not in the form of American-style money-managed autoprogression. Both preach parts of the true human cause but neither practices the whole. The people of both sides are similar humans, with the same basic needs and interests, whom neither side truly represents. Any reasonable mind should also perceive that the way to resolve these differences is for the two sides to discuss them honestly and reach agreement in the interests of all people. This means each giving way to the other and implementing necessary changes as agreed. But the present fact is that the ruling minorities of both East and West are locked into situations which prevent them from reasoning truly. They feel bound to nourish the fabric of life which is their reality, which gave them responsibility and rewards them for doing so, and to hold it together with the forces of law and order. It seems to them that not to do so is to court disaster. That is their personal conditioning. But they are also subject to the general conditioning of automatic reality. This lays down that it is in the nature of individuals and nations to differ, to compete so as to bring their differences into conflict. In the absence of intellectual reason for such belief the argument between communism and capitalism shows instinctive causes. So the East/West conflict persists for no intelligent reason. Were all human minds reasonable it could be resolved tommorrow, leaving no more valid excuse why all our differences cannot be resolved peacably. But our instinctive hard outer shells are not averse to war and have the upper hand. Yet our inner consciences, aware of the danger of nuclear holocaust, are not altogether stifled. Leaders of the two sides meet for discussions about nuclear weaponry, but only with the object of eliminating this the worst symptom of their unnecessary enmity, not of eliminating that enmity itself or its 'acceptable' symptom, i.e. conventional war, by addressing its true causes. They both seek artificially to stabilise an insanely unstable situation, just as they similarly, each in their own way, try to control the internal conflicts of their own social systems by efficient enforcement of its law and order. In their selves all humans want peace, including these leaders but they, hamstrung and unrepresentative of true humanity as they are, can only achieve an insecure, lunatic East/West stand-off. This is a cold war unrecognisable as true peace whereby, neither side intending but both fearing attack, both are deterred from attack by each being capable of crippling if not destroying the other. I have already mentioned the subject of freedom and it is on this that the East/West conflict pivots. It is important to face this subject freely and clearly, for it is made an obscure question by the fact that both sides frown on individuals who do other than praise their own side and condemn the other. The West is relatively free from state interference but not free from economic control; it is responsible to the lore of the money economy and shirks its responsibility to humanity where the two are in conflict. The East is strictly state-controlled but freed from preponderant control by market forces; it puts basic responsibility before that of economics. People in the East who seek the interest of self, or of a forbidden doctrine, may be punished by the state. People in the West who do not or can not serve the Machine as it requires, or who put the common interest before self-interest, are liable to suffer the poverty of the unrewarded and to be made ineffective by lack of official support and by general indifference.
It is a matter for profound relief that the East/West confrontation - the cold war - is at an end, but we should be in no doubt that, given the present Machine-reality, a similarly desperate situation could arise again.
Military force is a familiar feature of our existing reality whose logic shall be removed when replaced by a humantrue reality in which there can be no cause for war. The case against war is a logical part of an intellectual and compassionate human race's case against our existing, unworthy reality.
The absolute essence of this case is that all the trappings of nationhood are superfluous. We are all similar individuals. I am one such individual, writing to others, bypassing everything which has no true human meaning or value. In this relationship we have no differences. We share the same view, that the efforts of humanity need to be re-directed, in a spirit of comradeship, towards making it possible that all shall be joyfully fulfilled by life.
Pt.IV REVELATION
AUTOMATIC CONTROLS
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