FUNCTION NOT VINDICATION!

My interest has been, and always will be, improving and increasing function in human societies.

This is the critical difference between my efforts and most others who are, conscious or unconsciously, deliberately or blindly, participating in the ongoing dialectic towards change on Planet Earth.

I am objective and deeply concerned and committed to the common good, while others are driven by interests, mostly by self interest; though this is obscured and concealed from most individuals by the mechanism of repression, they delude themselves that this is not the case.

I began this struggle in earnest in the USA in 1996 when I became aware of the state of education in this country while participating in a Course in Public Speaking at the Central Campus of the Broward Community College; it became painfully obvious to me that fifty per cent of the class could not read, and that those who could read were the older members of the class.

I tried, completely unsuccessfully, to create awareness of the clear and present danger inherent in this odious state of affairs.

It was like speaking into a vacuum, all the letters I wrote to educators, politicians and journalists outlining this dire situation produced very little response.

Those who did respond said I was completely wrong, that there was nothing wrong with the education system.

I got a response from only one journalist, a doyen of journalists in South Florida, Michael Putney, who lauded my writing ability and seemed to agree with my conclusions about what was happening in education but seemed at a loss as to why I had taken the trouble to communicate my findings to him.

The decline in education is the root cause of the palpable incapacity of the people of this nation to resolve the numerous and manifestly urgent problems that beset this nation.

Why they cannot appreciate and remain completely oblivious of the validity of the prescription I am promoting, that the solution to social problems lies in doing the right thing, that morality is the bridge between facts and function.

I felt that my efforts were completely vindicated when it became clear that the 911 attack could have been exposed and thwarted - if Americans had been able to connect the dots.

If I had succeeded in alerting anyone to the dangers inherent in the decline in education in 1996 when I began my quixotic crusade, and the necessary action had been taken to reverse this very dangerous trend, we might live in a very different world today.

Mr. Putney’s response was very enlightening, not only because he, a prominent journalist, was unaware of the dangers inherent in the decline in education, and what he should do about it; but also because he was oblivious of my motive in writing to him.

I was fully aware of my ability to write a letter that would hold his interest to the very end; this was not worth mentioning when compared with the momentous and potentially catastrophic information contained in that epistle.

That he saw fit to mention and emphasize that capability in a letter describing in graphic detail the scam being perpetuated by teachers on the young of this country is compelling evidence, if this were needed, of the pervasive and debilitating very selfish attitude of human beings; that causes individuals to subordinate the common good to their selfish interests.

Theories and other vital information created by social scientists and others who seek to expose the true nature of social reality is not perceived by the vast majority as being connected in any way with function; but such ideas are seen to be a means of procuring wealth and status for the individual who makes these discoveries.

This is another variation and effect of the Cassandra Syndrome that causes human beings to be much more comfortable and receptive to palpable and destructive lies than to disquieting and unpalatable truths.

But the sere, harsh reality is - only the facts will support function.
It was not always so.

For many millennia, in most social systems, it was coercion, the application of force or the ever real and present threat that force would be applied that produced function.

In this environment, thinking was dangerous to the well being of every individual; those who were subject to the draconian punishments that created order and function in Absolutist Regimes, if they dwelt too long on their predicament, on the injustices meted out to them, were prompted to rebel, which would cost them their lives, and little was changed, little could be changed by their futile, untimely deaths.

Those who meted out these punishments, so inconsistent with the Christian dogma they professed to follow, could not think about what they were doing lest they be so consumed with guilt to a degree that they could no longer engage in the patterns of behavior required by society,

So coercion produced function, and human beings engaged in rituals and ceremonies that reduced their burdens of guilt to a bearable level, and their higher mental processes atrophied from lack of use.

I feel constrained, at this point, to inject a description of the coercion applied to slaves in Jamaica, a description taken for the doctoral thesis of Professor Orlando Patterson, “The Sociology of Slavery,” who went on to head Sociology Departments at Harvard and Princeton Universities, which states:

Sloane, who never questioned the idea of slavery and whose evidence is therefore reliable with regard to punishment, wrote that the usual punishment for rebellion was:

Burning them by nailing them down on the ground with crooked sticks on every limb and then applying the Fire by degrees from the feet and hands, burning them gradually up to the head, whereby their pains are extravagant …

For crimes of lesser nature Gelding, or chopping off half of the foot with an Ax … For running away they put Iron Rings of great weight on their Ankles, or Pottocks about their Necks, which are Iron

Rings with two long Necks riveted to them, or a Spur in the Mouth … For negligence, they are usually whipt by the overseer with Lance-wood Switches, till they be bloody, and several of the Switches broken, being first tied up by the hands in the Mill-Houses … After they are whip’d till they are Raw, some put on their Skins Pepper and Salt to make them smart; at other times their Masters will drop melted Wax on their skins and use several exquisite tortures…

This description was of chattel slavery as practiced in Jamaica in the Eighteenth Century, less than three hundred years ago.

The rigors and suffering produced by this type of social system was made more intense in this particular setting by several factors, most importantly, the slaves greatly outnumbered their masters in Jamaica; this fact also ensured that there were more servile revolts in this country during this period than any other country except Brazil but some lesser degree of coercion was the basis for order and function in the vast majority of social systems for all of the many millennia of human history.

Is it not easy to see why it is so difficult for so many of us to apply our higher mental processes to social problems, when to confront reality means confronting the brutality of human beings, of me and you?

From this perspective should it not be easy to perceive the source of the rising tide of chaos in democracies which have reduced the degree and extent to which coercion, in any form, can be applied to citizens?

Should it not be easy to see why we have a distorted view of the past, which causes us to repeat our checkered with savagery and brutality past, over, and over and over again?

Westerns are very popular in this nation, is it not clear that with the spread of democratic principles and ideals have affected these movies, that later examples of this genre, have different attitudes towards the treatment of Native Americans, and have African American cowboys?

In every art form we create civilized vignettes, in which human beings are civilized; in which good conquers evil; in which there are happy endings; is not clear that if we fail to create such circumstances in real life that there must be some major obstacle like repression that prevents us from creating existences we so passionately and palpably hope for?

Recently, just this morning, I witnessed a program dedicated to political commentary, in which the moderator indicated that an assessment should be made of what could be achieved in Iraq in a given time frame, and that should be set against the cost in lives and funds.

That was an assessment I made several years ago and concluded that the attack on Iraq must result in a situation diametrically opposed to American interests and increase the danger that the State of Israel would be destroyed, attitudes now belatedly conceivable to some Americans.

I do not feel vindicated by the fact that I have successfully predicted that there would come a time when the Bush Administration would be almost completely isolated, I do not feel vindicated that I predicted accurately the course of events subsequent to the 911 attack, because I have no real interest in vindication my objective is to improve functioning in human societies, all human societies.

Nor do I have any interest in martyrdom, a phenomenon which is closely related; I totally understand why good guys come last.

I totally understand the fates of those hapless individuals down the centuries who instead of paying lip service to ethics and values actually practiced these; they saw the reality as it was; they saw what would produce function; they were exposed to, and experienced very intensely the misery and suffering of the vast majority of human beings and felt constrained to try to communicate ideas that would produce function.

But in describing the reality they were exposing the injustices and brutal actions of the powerful; a reality these individuals carefully insulated themselves from and could not bear, resulting in the inevitable destruction of those who saw them as they really were, territorial predators.

This hypothesis explains the fate of the Ancient Prophets, of Jesus, of Frank Serpico, of the Thikol Engineers; of all those who were persecuted and eventually destroyed to preserve the delusion that good has ever conquered evil.

I have avoided this fate, because the World Wide Web has provided the means to disseminate these ideas without risking destruction, a destruction that would not contribute to improved function, but would be a seven day wonder that has become the traditional way the status quo defends itself against positive changes - a pattern that I discerned very early in my odyssey and declined to be a party to repeating it.

Improved function will only result from a bare majority in any human society developing the capacity to interpret and applying the facts that will produce function, they must develop the capacity to apply their higher mental processes that atrophied during the vast period when our race languished in coercion based culture.

The problem is not that I have not developed the solution to the social problems that confront humanity; the problem is that intellects lamed by repression, an inevitable consequence of socialization in coercion based culture, makes it well nigh impossible for a bare majority of individuals to accept these viable prescriptions.

I keep plugging away in the hope that circumstances will conspire to cause human beings to begin the journey out of the ‘state of nature’ that our shared past has created.

I repeat to save this nation’s soul we must secure the majority needed in the Congress to impeach President Bush.

When these votes are in place, we must offer him the choice, do what needs to be done to produce function or suffer impeachment and jail time.

What he needs to do is cause Vice President Cheney to resign, and replace him with Senator John McCain.

President Bush then must go to the United Nations and disclose his real reasons for attacking Iraq, announce the restoration of Saddam Hussein to power, and indicate that the withdrawal of all Allied Forces which will be replaced by a United Nations peacekeeping force that will oversee the transition of power.

In that forum he must also announce that the date of his resignation.

In return, he will avoid impeachment, jail time, and do something to make up for the pain and suffering his bellicose policies have caused American and Iraqi families to endure.

Senator McCain must agree to appoint as his Vice President, Senator John Kerry, and create an Administration that could begin the process of returning this nation to freedom and prosperity and restore its tarnished reputation worldwide.

Most fundamentally, this course of action would be most likely convince the world that the USA has determined to reject the notion that might is right and that in the future this nation would treat with other nations, big and small, with simple justice.

I suggest that this is what must be done to avoid World War Three, and begin the journey out of the ‘state of nature’ that the human race became habituated to and has created and recreated everywhere since the beginning of time.

I have no animus towards President Bush, or for any other human being, they, every one of them did not know what they were doing, their actions were, and are, determined.

I am only blazing a path to freedom, and whatever the result I am sure I acted out of my boundless love and compassion for the endless tragedy I came to perceive through practice of the discipline of truth that was the lot of the vast majority of human beings.

William E. Virtue

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