Skilluminati Research

Comments

• 1. stefano on May 08, 2008 at 3:29 PM permalink

  Ahoy (can everyone see this comment? I couldn’t see any others?)

  Thanks for your hard work, I’ve been tuning into your blog pretty regularly. In re your question… I’m not violent and think violence is justified only in defence. Because the law says so - the law says so because human laws and ethics are the verbal expression of instincts that developed at the mammal stage. Read Robert Ardrey’s The Territorial Imperative, I think you’d like it, or Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression.

  The violence that murders (not kills), the truly vicious kind, is the potential to hurt without hurting, the guy who can kill and who at the same time knows he’s untouchable. When everyone has atom bombs, or rifles, or knives, violence will go down. The truly super-empowered agent won’t need to use violence, if he can make his adversaries understand the extent of his empowerment.

  Cheers man

• 2. Harflimon on May 08, 2008 at 6:27 PM permalink

  "how does a super-empowered free moral agent approach violence in 2012?”

  Disseminate your information to others and let them start the killing.

  Don’t read that as an attack on yourself. It’s something to seriously consider. And the “others” don’t necessarily have to be human or alive for that matter.

  When it comes to warfare in the next century, everyone will use proxies.

  Morally, really it’s a personal decision. If your a pacifist, victory lies in overwhelming strength. A child can attempt to hurt a huge man, but is generally incapable.

• 3. Tron on May 08, 2008 at 8:05 PM permalink

  I’ve always thought of violence as emanating from power struggles. One lens I attempt to look at human history through is seeing it all as a big karmic energy game. Whether that energy takes the form of basic survival needs, material wealth and creature comforts or emotional energy such as happiness and bliss, human history seems to be a big contest to secure those needs for oneself or one’s tribe or whatever.
  Now if the individual really does become a node of super-empowerment and not just a cog in the wheel, and this applies to every individual so that the idea of a hierarchy of power becomes obsolete, then could violence simply disappear from the human drama? Could reality become infinite play as Carse suggested it should?

• 4. Modulus on May 08, 2008 at 11:46 PM permalink

  "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” The fictional Mayor of Terminus in Isaac Aasimov’s Foundation novels had a very good point. The super-empowered individual will have to add violence to his toolkit but only as a means of last resort. You will always be out-gunned so you will have to employ subterfuge and strategy instead.

  The problem is that you will more than likely encounter adversaries who are more than willing to employ violence as a first and last option. Study a martial art, learn how to use small arms weapons. You may never need the knowledge 99.99% of the time but in the 0.01% you do, you’ll be glad you studied and practiced. There is a saying my Grandmaster uses , “Those who speak of peace cannot be weak so sharpen yourself until your fingers are daggers and your hand is a sword”.

• 5. Eldude on May 09, 2008 at 5:11 AM permalink

  how does a super-empowered free moral agent approach violence in 2012? Is violent action part of your toolkit?

  to find the answer, lets re-arrange your question slightly; as a morally free agent, what is it that is stopping you from being able to resort to violent action if needed to achieve one of your aims?

  Nothing.

• 6. Eldude on May 09, 2008 at 6:20 AM permalink

  Ooops i think i read that wrong

  I’d look to Just War theory:

  http://www.justwartheory.com/

  An article on Terrorism and Just War Theory:

  http://www.wickedness.net/ejv1n2/ejv1n2_lowe.pdf

  Morality and Political Violence by C.A.J Coady:

  http://www.amazon.com/Morality-Political-Violence-C-Coady/dp/0521705487

• 7. Thirtyseven on May 09, 2008 at 9:32 AM permalink

  Don’t you think “Just War” theory is mostly liberal hand-wringing?  Nobody who’s declared a war in the past century referred to that material as anything but intellectual cover, after the fact.

• 8. Garrett from Wishtank on May 09, 2008 at 9:49 AM permalink

  You answered a very similar question in the interview we did for Wishtank Dot Org:

  “WT: Speaking of weapons and armies, does 5GW employ violence as earlier generations of warfare have?

  JB: Not if it’s any good. 5GW is sometimes referred to as “Invisible Warfare” because of the emphasis on out-thinking your opponent and operating in secret…

  ... If there is violence, it will be largely inadvertent, if not entirely unintentional. Precise hits on vulnerable infrastructure will be getting more common in the next decade. I have no idea if that will lead to smaller, more resilient communities or towards a more iron-clad and energy-efficient version of globalist capitalism.”

  If anyone wants to read that interview, it’s here:

  http://www.wishtank.org/magazine/commons/fifth_generation_warfare/

  peace and love.
  Garrett
  e:

• 9. InternetWeasel on May 09, 2008 at 10:11 AM permalink

  I’ve never exercised violence against anyone in my life, never been in a physical altercation, nor had to defend myself from a violent attack.  I’ve always known, though, that if I found myself in a situation where I had to defend myself, I would not hesitate to do so, to the point of at least incapacitating the aggressor.

  Certainly, the case can be made that there are always other options, other means to any given end besides taking the path of violence.  However, humankind has always contained its share of violent, aggressive elements.  There’s always going to be someone out there who will throw the first punch, or fire the first round.

  I think the important distinction is the difference between offensive action and self defense.  The pen is mightier than the sword, until someone is swinging a sword at you.

• 10. Mr. Nowhere on May 09, 2008 at 12:53 PM permalink

  Well, one could argue that we’re all subject to the violence of the state, since govt. always has a monopoly on violence. But does that automatically give us the excuse to use violence in return?

  I often feel as though I’m beating my head against a brick wall when it comes to this topic. There are many in the US who seem to fetishize violence, across the political spectrum. A lot of this is due to the entertainment industry’s portrayel of violence as noted above, and it doesn’t help. I do feel that violence is a literal and metaphorical dead end. It only helps to put more weight behind the govt.’s rationale for added security measures and anti-terrorist legislation. It creates distance and alienation between those who embrace violence and those who do not, no matter how noble the cause. And then there’s the added irony of any incident that does occur becoming voyeuristic entertainment via the media and serving to further numb out the populace.

  How successfull do you really think a violent uprising, even in the name of self defense, no matter what the cause, would be before it was crushed? And it wouldn’t take much to crush it either. Non lethal weapons developments being what they are.

  White luxury? What luxury?

  If you really want to make inroads into meaningful change, how about stressing radical self-reliance, cooperation and getting off the grid? Don’t engage the system, bypass it and render it and its authority meaningless. And don’t forget to keep a sense of humor while doing so. Laughing at authority is more effective than shooting. And its contagious.

• 11. Thirtyseven on May 09, 2008 at 3:08 PM permalink

  I think we’re both talking about very separate circumstances, and making the mistake of generalizing from there.

  I’m wrong to make it sound like violence is an ongoing nescessity or perhaps an obligation. But there will be circumstances that demand it.

  I’m also wrong to even suggest there’s a “morality” to violence when it’s always regrettable even when it was nescessary.

  You’re wrong to make it sound like ridicule and self-reliance will always work. Once you’re rounded up and placed in camps behind barbed wire, laughing at authority is beside the point.

  As a side note—I’m sure most SR readers know this—I don’t think it’s paranoid to propose those circumstances when it’s happened before, repeatedly, all over the world.  Right now in the US, plans exist for rounding up dissidents and criminals and bringing them to mass detention centers which are already built.

• 12. MAD on May 09, 2008 at 8:23 PM permalink

  Greetings. My name is Michael (MAD) and I run the website http://www.upsidebackwards.info (formerly http://www.nwowatcher.com). I am trying to get in contact with the person(s) who run Skilluminati News about a special new project which I was hoping you might consider being involved in, along with the purveyors of other websites/blogs and well known authors. Since I can’t find an email address for this website, if you could get in contact with me through as soon as you’re available, I would very much appreciate it and hope to hear from you (afterwhich I’ll give you all the details of this project to see if you might be interested).
  THANKS very much for your time!
  Sincerely,
  MAD
  http://www.upsidebackwards.org

• 13. Thirtyseven on May 09, 2008 at 8:38 PM permalink

  There’s also “Military-Style Damage with Non-Violent Tactics”:

  http://cryptogon.com/docs/pirate_insurgency.html

• 14. Themikenesedude on May 10, 2008 at 6:09 AM permalink

  Well (ahem) since I’m not violent I can say yes it is true like some of these posts say that nonviolent assaults can be just as or more harmful to an opponent. I believe that violence is something that can be abused one way or used for dominance another way.

  Really though I agree with both sides of the fence on the issue- Martin Luther King, Jr. said nonviolence was a powerful weapon because no weapons could take out nonviolence. Then again some of the Black Panthers said nonviolence could be used as a tool to subjugate the masses. I think when the guns are only in the hands of the police it’s a recipe for police brutality and more violent crimes and more gangs trading arms under the table. (After all what a better way for the mafia to have had a lynchpin on New York where civilians are not allowed to carry firearms or at least weren’t when John Lennon was staying there. This is discussed in the part of “The Covert War Against Rock” by Alex Constantine where Yoko was saying living in New York was awful when Lennon was being stalked because of the fact that civilians couldn’t have guns at that time.)

  Eventually if people are fed up enough they’ll create their own munitions. Especially if there’s too much of a stranglehold on the supply of weapons. Now don’t get me wrong. I hate that anti-gunners and the nra and those types of groups both have goals that are entirely political. When it comes to what would happen if a bad apple got a hold of a weapon each of them gets close to religious fanaticism in their answers instead of looking at things practically and observing all the important flexible variables that are a part of life.

  My point is, to put it quite simply, I had lived in a neighborhood before where no one would do anything about assault from the type of homeless people that are not peaceful and eat dogs or feces or whatever- those sorts of homeless people- the ones that are like CHUDs. Well sooner or later someone had to strike back. The people who assaulted all the neighbors on that corner were let off again and again. Now of course knowing myself if I had been assaulted I’d fight back. And if I was arrested because of it you know what as bad and as hypocritical and unfair as it would be I’d take responsibility and swallow it up. Some people need to protect themselves in the big city. I’m reminded of the time when writer Lucien Carr had stabbed a gay man who was obsessed with him that Lucien was leading on the whole while. This was after the man infatuated with Lucien had hung his cat as a sign of obsession and chased Lucien with a knife and the whole “if I can’t have you no one will” type of bullshit. Now I see where some people feel sensitive talking about that and how his friends had done time not to give him up. And I know that my sister, if when she’s in high school or college, is attacked by someone or has them force themselves on her (and the sad thing is it happens all the time) if she’ll hurt him it will be in her best interest. And I know that I totally would take all the blame for that because I love my siblings and will do everything to make sure they are happy and safe.

  Really violence is just one of those mysteries. And in actuality no it is never good (Well okay it’s kind of fun if you brawl now and then but not if you lose then that’s a different story.). But sometimes it is necessary. War is definitely never fun to look at and never good at all but sometimes its necessary. There have been enough unnecessary wars though sadly. So there that’s the short-hand version: “Violence: Never amusing but a staple of protecting home, family, health, and other necessities and civil protections.”

• 15. Bruce on May 10, 2008 at 1:03 PM permalink

  Great comments!

  I’d like to underscore two concepts mentioned previously, that it is best to employ violence through proxies, if it is necessary, and that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.  Or perhaps the desparate.  It carries a much higher personal risk than “leaving the room before the fight starts,” and as noted above strengthens the dominant system.  There is an astounding amount of agent-provacateur stuff going on out there-- violence is the favorite tactic of the enemy, and a game they are well practiced at.

  There are some good thoughts in the article on military style damage with non-violent tactics.  The author correctly notes that SPENDING LESS MONEY is a direct strike at the dominant system.  This simple principle obviously has a tremendously wide variety of applications, and the beauty of it is that it is synergistic with personal development-- skills, community connections, alternative perspectives. It decreases dependence on the dominant system and increases the practitioner’s resources.

  Every little bit helps-- it’s great to talk about getting off the grid, but that’s a rather big step.  A small adjustment in spending habits is really all it takes to start doing damage to the dominant system, and enjoying the personal benefits, and success at small easily achievable steps may someday result in low or no grid dependence

  The author is wrong, I think, to suggest that file sharers are ignorantly or non-ideologically damaging the system.  I believe part of the desirability of such actions is often the thrill of sticking it to the man.

  It would be amazing if the meme that reducing personal spending was the best way to stick it to the man/help make a better world gained widespread adoption.

• 16. Eric Patton on May 10, 2008 at 2:28 PM permalink

  Truth is, they are already rounding people up. It’s just immigrants here in the US, the agent-provocateurs (and they are busy as hell), Arabs who are in the wrong place, and drug offenders. It’s too expensive to house/feed/clothe everyone, that’s why there are ghettos.

  Let’s face it, once you lose your mobility and can no longer choose how you engage these people, you’ve lost.

  We all know the excessive amounts of violence that state uses, how quickly they are willing to kill or imprison someone without cause. If they have this knee-jerk reaction, then why can’t we redirect this to unknowingly attack other aspects of the system?

• 17. Eric Patton on May 10, 2008 at 2:30 PM permalink

  I.E. taking advantage of the extreme level of compartmentalization, secrecy and distrust that arise from this.

• 18. Themikenesedude on May 11, 2008 at 5:00 PM permalink

  Eric, perhaps to take advantage of the “extreme levels of compartmentalization, secrecy, and distrust” that come out of the creations of ghettoes and new classes of criminals (i. e.: “drug users/dealers”, “terrorists”, or “so-called ‘terrorists’") is to think of it in terms of chess. Make up a stalemate- Think of a way so that your enemy can perceive he or she can “win” but actually has done nothing of any gain. Then also have it in place so you do not lose anything of an advantage to you. Basically in circles of distrust I have come to the conclusion that it is about morale- whoever loses morale first “loses” and whoever gains it “gains”. Keep you biggest assets close to you. Come up with ideological or theoretical assets that only generate speed (Think in terms of something similar to “Moore’s Law” here- a concept that generates more and more speed and the more and more it is put under literal or metaphorical “attack” the more it gets faster and more of a sidetrack.). Have a cover or some secrets or some ego incentives for your main advisor(s) in case they should change sides. Always placate your advisors ego so if you can so that they do not strike against you- For example if they pass off some of your own ideas as their own that they can put out there for the community then it helps them feel obligated to you. If there is any demoralization separate yourself from the demoralization used against you and wait until those who would make offenses towards you get further and further down into themselves. The youth are the most important people I feel to reach when it comes to positive reactive change. Firstly they have not decided their place yet. Secondly they can look up to mentors more and more the more their mentors teach them things and expose them to positive reactive change they can produce on a gradual level. Also if they haven’t started hanging out with more fuck-ups or losers and want to prove themselves to peers and so on then this will give them a chance. I have come to the conclusion that the demographic of mid20s to mid30-somethings leaves something to be desired because the majority of the type of post-gen-x demographic that may dig this site might just be too pessimistic… to worn out.... to skeptical from past bad experiences to really change things for the better in a really energetic way. That is my opinion. Already if the youth feel indebted to your loose unnamed collective/cause and know that they know how to empower themselves with or without essential (note the keyword: “essential!") uses of violence then there you have it- you are made and the community can once again be more likely to be answerred to. Also you have another incentive with other “front” or non groups that have their members imprisoned for unnecessary violent actions so it only proves with the track record that they will be safe and will not have to worry about arrest for unnecessary violent acts or that they would be asked to do such acts that would imprison themselves and/or turn their peers and colleagues against each other and more paranoid.

• 19. Eric Patton on May 11, 2008 at 6:45 PM permalink

  Actually, I was thinking more of using the trigger-happy SWAT teams, though using gangs is a great idea.

• 20. Themikenesedude on May 12, 2008 at 9:05 AM permalink

  The only problem with gangs as opposed to SWAT teams is that gangs don’t have the “legitimate” cover. You could do what different “criminal syndicates” in several different nations (i. e. Mafia, Hezbollah, Harry O [See the movie “Welcome To Death Row"], Christopher Walken’s character in “King Of New York”, and “legit” criminals the C.I.A. making money for weapons and programs and further developments by coke sales) do and donate from an under-the-table or less legit cash stream such as drug sales. Weapons whether made D.I.Y. or bought legitimately or not or bartered are a cause for respect and fear among the community. But using a “legit” cover like the SWAT team idea and tailoring renditions independently from photographs of uniforms etc would give “authority”. There’s been an idea used in more than one storyline before about what it would be like if someone got a cop’s uniform and what it would do to the person’s confidence, persona, conscience, etc. So you see all that “authority” really is is… well… fashion. People see someone wearing a uniform and they back down. People see someone in plainclothes and they are more likely to resist if they choose to. And also people don’t immediately scan an outfit to see if its unique. It’s like Travolta’s line in “Swordfish”, “Harry Houdini always said ‘Whatever the eyes see and the ears hear the mind believes.’” The issue with using violence in a “non-legit” outfit that gets sympathy from the community for keeping the peace where police can’t or won’t is that the use of violence would hypothetically have a blind eye turned to it if used when necessary. If violence is used in that instance to put down someone who beats their wife or is a sex offender then a jury of one’s peers might as well turn a blind eye. That or its more likely that a cop would taint the evidence. So if violence is used as a last resort and people have an outfit more around the lines of the “Guardian Angels” or something then the outfit earns its legitimacy, but especially if it could totally blend in with civilization and be unnamed or take gangs names and reuse and recycle gangs names for credit. So there is the praise by the community on one hand which deals with a “self-governing” (like the “Guardian Angels” example) cover. That earns the praise of people for standing outside the lines of a bureaucracy. On the other hand there is the use of violence when adorning the outfit of a “bureaucracy”. This earns fear of retribution. So you have the intimidation tactics of rumors on the hand of the former example and the intimidation tactics of secrecy and unexpectedness on the latter. Then again if you make up a type of organization that is costumed as if they are a part of a “legit” operation it can look more like the Boston Tea Party, whether you want to insurect resistance from the community to oppression by using spies to deconstruct things from inside out or you want to create your own type of well-organized militia. Also if you start a secret society that might involve intimidation and fear based tactics by the very nature of secrecy. The only problem is would that secrecy get corrupted? But the fact that there are those who do not know what you are doing makes you a more powerful force to be reckoned with (i. e.: If you find people who passed away by natural causes and create rumor mills and naysayers saying that they had left the organization and then mysteriously passed away- like some people who were suffering from apnea and died from it for example.). Those are my opinions on pros and cons of using something more organized and legitimized like “SWAT” type systems or on the other hand using loose, community-involved, more flexible “gang” type organizations.

• 21. Themikenesedude on May 12, 2008 at 9:13 AM permalink

  I just thought of an idea where non-violence could be more useful. If a group or individual has munitions it already balances out, because they’d have the element of surprise and dominance (i. e.: “Will they use them?”, “Will they retaliate if I do them wrong?"). Of course these munitions would have to match or be stronger than their opponents (example: “You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.").

  Bribery of officials would work pretty well too hypothetically and actually be a lot more useful than the use of force- or at least make the use of force more permissible. And that option should always be around.

  I feel like a lot of controversy stems from the part of this type of discussion about “What happens when people take advantage of having the privilege to be violent if they choose? Can that corrupt a person to have that power when typical, ordinary people don’t have that privelege?”

• 22. MalaKai on May 12, 2008 at 4:41 PM permalink

  why humanity still uses violence in a supossedly post-primate existence seems like a good place to begin to understand any kind of likely future trajectory.  suprisingly, belief plays a major role and has done so throughout history.  i think belief actually has gone hand in hand with resource control/dominance imposition/geopolitical & economic interests/etc.  it’s simply a more evolved form of territoriality.  i don’t use a morally relativistic ruler when asserting that some ideas are better than others in this respect.  acts of aggression which are directed towards, it would seem, innocent parties from a transbiological perspective, given that technology & resource availability allows radical changes to be made in the redistribution of global priority, are seen as obsolete.  human violence by it’s very nature is unsustainable since it inevitably leads to further violence.  i mean, does violence somehow keep our planet in balance or somethething based on current carrying capacities?

  i guess it really depends on how far you want to go with this question.  some folks advocate voluntary human extinction as a means for planetary survival…

  in my opinion, the gap between “us” and “them” is such that it is reasonable to assume that most people in the western world are essentially “good.”

  things seem to be getting better and worse simultaneously.

• 23. MalaKai on May 12, 2008 at 7:24 PM permalink

  here’s something else to chew on (via http://www.realitysandwich.com/after_america):

  “We are living through the third great power shift in modern history,” writes Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria. “At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension––industrial, financial, social, cultural––the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.”

  In his new book, The Post-American World, Zakaria argues that the loss of dominance is not the loss of relevance or prosperity. “The post-American world is naturally an unsettling prospect for Americans, but it should not be. This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else.”

  Along the way, Zakaria makes surprising observations about the state of the world, noting the massive distortions of the media that have twisted the “series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.” Hard to swallow? “Looking at the evidence, “ Zakaria says, “Harvard’s polymath professor Steven Pinker has ventured to speculate that we are probably living ‘in the most peaceful time of our species’ existence.’”

• 24. enigma_foundry on May 12, 2008 at 10:08 PM permalink

  No violence cannot have a place in moving humans forward.  It is always anti-progress.  All of the most basic moral precepts found in religions and moral structures preclude violence.  The principle of reciprocity: “Do unto to others...” cannot include violence.  Are their ever exceptions: Yes, but they are rare.

  “I don’t know what weapons will be used to fight World War III, but I do know what weapons will be used to fight World War IV: sticks and stones.” --Albert Einstein

  Re Ghandi in Palestine:

  http://samiawad.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/the-man-who-brought-the-mahatma-to-palestine/

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