Old and New Romes

The miles gloriosus blogger at the Capitol Tribune reviewed a book titled "Are We Rome?". The author presented numerous arguments supporting the rather uncontroversial idea that America is the new Rome, and offered several challenges to that idea. But the idea that the Romes of history are worth defending is usually unquestioned. I'm guessing that the author on some level accepts that the empire hypothesis is, while suffering considerable problems in our own time, a position worth preserving. The author just accepts a soft version of it.

Mental Causation

What: could be more obvious than to say that the things we think about cause the things we choose to do?

Perplexity: how could a non-physical body ever interact with a physical body?

Hence: For every actual particular (object, event or process) x, there is some physical particular y such that x = y.

Tyrannical Hedonism

The argument that one is obliged to obey the law because it is backed by the threat of force does not allow for civil disobedience even in the most egregious cases where civil unrest brews. That view is legal positivism. Contemporary writers have attacked that view considerably. Not too many legal scholars would consider themselves legal positivists. But many consider themselves utilitarians. Some, who think they are attacking utilitarianism, actually come out in favor for a utilitarian view. Utilitarianism is embedded in our society so much that even when we think we are not advocating it, we are in some sense.

In the essay The Justification of Civil Disobedience, John Rawls assumes in his argument that the system in which citizens are civilly disobeying is a "nearly just" system. This already begs the question, but let's consider the rest. He then asks us to imagine a place in which the same degree of injustice is experienced by everyone in society, and whether disobedience would entirely undermine the government. Rawls says obedience should (and would) not happen, for the sake of governmental integrity.

What is this business about governmental integrity? This is a utilitarian point of view, though Rawls is not known as a utilitarian at all, and the basically stated that the needs of the government outweigh the rights of the citizens.

But how did it come to that? Rawls' argument does not meet the "fairness condition", one of Rawls' own creations. Or rather, it does not exhaust the fairness condition. It compromises the "justice for all" principle as well since justice cannot be fairly distributed to all. This is indeed a utilitarian element in Rawls, I have come to see. The principle that there should be equality under the law is mistaken here for justice for all, and ends up permitting conditions of injustice for all.

The careful mixture of equality and rights in Rawls’ work produces a cacophonous blend of inequality and injustice through systemic rights violations and at great costs to autonomy. All for the sake of governmental integrity. In a nearly just system, whatever that means to our present sensibilities, we cannot rebel or revolt or make spectacular demands because government is already nearly just. This is much more like a utilitarianism of rights view, where rights are intended to be maximized, but not accepted as all-encompassing trump cards. One cannot say "Look, this is my right!" because there is a nearly just governmental office in the way.

Utilitarianism sneaks into our conceptions of the law all the time. Some are overtly utilitarian like I've said, but others think their views are more individualized--while in secret they are calculating and maximizing inside their heads from a social welfare point of view. The legal philosophers I agree with argue that rights are trump cards, and there is nothing that any government can do to take away one’s trump card. This provides the only legitimate basis for disobeying one's government, while utilitarianism easily lends itself to government control and subordination. It understands civil disobedience in a way that would not give rise to various forms of tyranny. The tyranny of utilitarianism or the utilitarianism of tyranny.

That I found this element in John Rawls, one of the most revered American legal scholars, is evidence that if there were ever an acceptable model for tyranny in our present age, utilitarianism is certainly it.

Labor and the Militarization of Youth

There are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers world-wide. And although a Kantian practical anthropology would tell us this number is relatively low for contemporary standards, it has enormous potential to garner attention through all sorts of shaming practices. Pointing out that these are, in fact, children, being used already rouses our sensibilities. It is interesting that this is widely known as "child soldering" instead of something like "armed adolescent security". And this has to do with the campaigning that has already taken place and is embedded in our political consciousness.

Children roaming streets are often coerced into joining armed groups, where they are trained, beaten, raped, and sent off into battle. They are used as human shields, human mine detectors, and have fought in the front lines of most of the recent conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Zimbabwe there exists the Green Bombers, a youth brigade amped up on narcotics and used for some of the worst acts of public violence in recent history. Rwanda, still fighting, uses child soldiers to invade parts of the Congo which are thought to house the combatants who instigated the genocide last decade. In Sri Lanka, there have been state collusions in abductions of children to military wings. There also exists the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization that uses young boys and girls as suicide bombers. The most heavily-armed drug trafficking organization in the world, the United Wa State Army, recruits child soldiers to make drug deals and assassinate enemies. The Human Rights Watch list goes on. There are at least 27 countries that have been listed as offenders.

The military use of children is considered a war crime in international law. According the the International Criminal Court, the flat age ban for military use of youth is set at age 15. The International Labor Organization, in the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, stated that the benchmark age was 18.

An optional protocol was drafted in 1999, called the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the protocol itself is highly non-binding. There is no enforcement mechanism. It states that it is itself "optional". There are no provisions about making reservations to articles specifically. Most of the worst violators have, in fact, signed and ratified the conventions and the protocols yet continue to violate them. For states that use governmental armed groups to carry out military operations, however, it would seem there is no clear justification for child soldering to take place. Many nations, however, cannot hold the non-governmental armed groups accountable for the practice. There is also an incentive to eliminate one's enemies before following the international codes, since being tried and convicted in the Hague is not nearly as bad as being captured and tortured by one's enemies.

Any sort of organizing that children might themselves do would easily be broken up by the armed groups. If children want to ban together and sell their labor in developing economies, they could collectively bargain for conditions that are favorable. However, labor movements in militaristic regimes are despotically eliminated. Child unionism would be obliterated. There are few options, however, for orphans (who are already in state control) or street wanderers, who are at the mercy of the armed bandits who employ them or force them to fight their battles. There are some fine libertarian lines one could draw between a child's voluntary use of labor, and the overall coercive military use of children. In violent nations, plagued by child soldiering practices already, the recruitment is inherently coercive.

The top-down legal approach is not going to solve this problem. It only creates the appearance that the problem is being tackled by the international community. Labor and autonomous interest movements need to be organized, however, to combat the problem. Dominant ideological themes and belligerent foreign policy should be completely undermined through shaming and virulent NGO infiltration. Labor organizers also have a role to play here.

The Futurist Military Front

The military has always developed the most cutting-edge technological devices in society. This has given rise to a production scheme, a mode of production, in society that is driven and led by the militaristic enterprise, or the military industrial complex.

What we are witnessing is the beginning of the military technological singularity. Militaries in many countries are beginning Future Soldier projects, such as Britain's FIST (Future Integrated Soldier Technology) and its Soldier System Modernization plan. Since state control over military is incentivized toward greater technological superiority, militaries and athletics will be among the first areas to complete automation and super-human intelligences. Since the 1990s, soldiers have been equipped with experimental military systems like GPS, integrated radio systems, advanced ergonomics, and enhanced weapons sights with cameras attached to helmets and sights integrated into headgear. The French Félin program includes electronic flak jackets which integrate computer units, manager units, radios, man-machine interfaces, GPS, cables and connectors, a flexible water bottle. The French FAMAS chargers and the grenades, and optimizes weight distribution on the soldier. The light caliber machine guns, FAMAS, will still remain the basic French weapon, but it will include an IR sight, uncooled infrared sensors, magnifying optics, be equipped with special sighting abilities that allow weapons firing while maintaining cover behind walls and mounds.

The German idZ program is perhaps the most advanced in Europe. It includes the NBC protection system, a digital moving map which displays the soldiers own position and the positions of friendly units. The British NRBC combat clothing is similar to permanent combat clothing. It is designed to allow combat phases to be carried out with the same efficiency as that achieved with conventional combat clothing. The Félin information network allows for greater networking control, equipped with radios that allow infantry to download logistics, orders, and maps. Each network has a conference channel. The enhanced Australian Department of Defense is enhancing its Steyr rifle, and the Swiss are enhancing their weapons systems in the same manner.

Completely unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been employed by the advanced US military since 1986. RQ-2 Pioneers are automated aerial combat devices used for patrolling and reconnaissance in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq. They're equipped with "75-pound payloads". The first time the RQ-1 Predator engaged in combat was in Iraq 2002. It was shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 in the no fly zone, and thus unsuccessful. The Predators can be armed with AIM-92 Stinger missiles, and in 2002, a Stinger was fired at the Iraqi MiG, but the missile's heat-seeking device was distracted by the MiG missile. Since this incident, the Predators have been used as decoys. But soon it seems more plausible that automated weapons systems will become the new and accepted way to perform combat. Perhaps combat scenarios will no longer be considered in terms of wasted human lives, but wasted weapons capital. Autonomous warfare will dominate in the future. With the development of micro-UAVs, future robotic warfare is showing more possibilities than simply being used as decoy units.

This is only the beginning. Soldiers themselves will become highly sophisticated informatic warfare devices. Their bodies, no longer biological. The soldier will certainly become the first occupation to explore new areas of what is being called the post-biological future. That is, the post human future. What awaits in the future, however, is hopefully not oblivion but rather a future which, from our present vantage point, is a world in which human populations are swept away by the tide of cultural change and usurped by its own artificial progeny that will hold and advance our cultural knowledge at faster paces than is presently available.

At the moment the Future Force Warrior program includes all the specifics of the European digital warfare units but includes highly advanced specifics like artificial powered exoskeletons, and magnetorheological fluid-based armor to provide them with higher force-multipliers to protect them in combat. The program encompasses all the latest developments in nanotechnology and is attempting to integrate them into the future soldier. The new militarism will be for sure a futuristic militarism, like something out of a science fiction film. If there is not the same advances made in cultural knowledge, to combat, in a way, the advances made in militaristic technology, perhaps the future will indeed be bleak.

Eight Replies to the Argument for Political Nihilism

The argument about age and activism comes up quite frequently and I've responded to it before on this blog. I responded semantically before, but now I want to respond to it in a different way. The argument I'm responding to goes something like this. One should not be active in radical politics, or for that matter politics in general, during certain periods in their life because they might later change their views, or come to regret their views and hence any actions taken on that regard.

What makes this argument misguided? Here are eight non-semantic reasons.

1. Linking the aging process to a narrative about the "progress" of one's political ideology and personal identity only collapses into unmitigated skepticism. Since we are always aging, and if age is somehow linked to political identity and progress, then political activism would be put off indefinitely.
2. It undermines individual autonomy and responsibility. Why should anyone in society be taken seriously? If we think that at any given time their views are subject to change, it means that no one should be taken seriously, and no one would be thought of as responsible for political beliefs at any given time.
3. This argument, originally contemplated as a case against radical politics, is itself a radical argument -- albeit, for the status quo.
4. This leads to a dictatorship of the elderly. Since one would come to think that all young peoples' beliefs would eventually end up like the elderly peoples' beliefs, then whatever the elderly are believing at the time would be thought of as the most rational ideas to accept. Instead of taking a broad sample of society beliefs, one would take a sample from the elderly population to discover the most highly developed political ideologies. Revolutions in scientific knowledge defy this, however, and so do political revolutions. Paradigm shifts often combat institutional differences where the elderly hold to outdated practices and views.
5. Those who hold this view about themselves as well as society are either extending their own political impotence to others or are politically agnostic. To think that others would also lack decision-making abilities only applies one's own impotence and ignorance to someone else. For the agnostic it would simply be their civic responsibility to develop their own political self-identities, since agnosticism is an epistemological problem that can only be solved by acquiring more knowledge. It does not advance any political beliefs, it only advances doubts.
6. Political nihilism applies to speech as well as action. If acting on political beliefs could embarrass us later, there is no reason to think we should have the audacity to speak about them either. To illustrate, someone years later could remember what one had said and bring it up in an important business meeting. We might be embarrassed and quit our job. To avoid embarrassment, it would be better if our friends in college remembered us from--for example--dance parties, not by our politics, since politics is not a safe bet. We might become raging Straussians later in life and won't want to be remembered for hosting radical movie nights or engaging in military counter-recruitment. So this is an argument against speech just as much as it is an argument against action.
7. It changes nothing and it invites us to do nothing, and that gives way to domination by individuals who are already acting on their convictions.
8. The argument never gives any justification as to when action is possible or even psychologically coherent. If one accepts the argument, it would never make sense to be a political person, a political animal, since at any time in your life you might consider earlier views counter-productive. In short, this eliminates any story one could tell about "progress" in any political-historical sense, or in the sense of personal identity.