A WORLD WHERE ANYTHING GOES!

May 17th, 2007

Several years ago I heard George Will, one of the commentators on the television show, “Sunday Morning with David Brinkley,” describe the social milieu in which the human race exists; as a world where anything goes.

One consequence of practicing the discipline of truth is that I know the truth when I hear it; and, when I heard that description I knew it was valid, that this was a concept that was adequate to the existing reality; and, ever after I have been attempting to create an wholly accurate and meaningful description of the origins and development of a world where anything goes.

Another phrase that made a very significant and unforgettable impact on my sensibilities came from “Trinity” a novel about the history of Ireland written by Leon Uris, he described the existence of that oppressed and perennially victimized people as a ‘nation without a future, just the past happening over and over again.’

My hypothesis, one that I was always have been struggling to more closely and accurately identify, specify and clarify, so that I could communicate this perception to other human beings; was that we live in a world where anything goes, and that the human race was trapped in its past, that what we were forever experiencing was that past happening over and over and over again.

This is ultimate paradox and consummate irony of human existence, one that may apply to every sentient species, which may apply to every species in the universe that has developed, or will develop sentience; the capacity to learn, to think and to reason.

What I am suggesting is that every species must evolve out of a ‘state of nature’ similar to that which existed on Planet Earth in its nascent stage; that period of cooling and contracting when life, in many different forms evolved in the oceans and began to gain a foothold on land.

It was a period of vast and frequent bouts of instability, when there were periods of intense volcanic activity producing cataclysmic earthquakes, of Ice Ages, of massive flooding when the ice melted.

I have heard individuals disputing the validity of the process of evolution; speculate as to why the significant changes that occurred then, most notably, the transformation that produced humanoid creatures, that eventually produced Homo sapiens, no longer occur.

It is obvious to me that those changes no longer occur because there is no longer any need for monumental adaptations to occur because the physical environment has stabilized, because the planet no longer experiences the throes of extreme climatic and physical changes and the seismic events such changes precipitate.

This period, the infancy of Planet Earth, lasted for millions of years, as perforce it had to.

Critical to the appreciation of this hypothesis is the fact that the written history of the human race is approximately twelve thousand years, the period beginning when homo sapiens emerged as the dominant species on the planet and ending with the discovery of agriculture which was the watershed innovation that led to the creation of human civilizations, lasted for a minimum of approximately half a million years and could have lasted as long as several million years.

During this period when human beings existed in the intense crucible of extreme climatic and physical changes, humanity contended for scarce food resources with denizens, for example, dinosaurs, who were physically much better equipped for this competition that determined who would survive.

The human animal which lived in tribes because no individual could long survive on his own, had to become adept at using force in relations with other beings that shared the world which meant adopting and becoming habituated to playing the roles of territorial predator and prey.

It is here, I suggest, that the ultimate paradox and consummate irony that I referred to began to impact human existence.

The human race became the dominant species because it had the capacity to learn; but the habits of reliance on coercion that humanity learned during that crucial and critical period is what is preventing this species from realizing its potential for civilized, peaceful existence.

When human beings learned to domesticate certain species of grasses, the basis of agriculture; and, no longer needed to engage in a nomadic existence of hunting and gathering, existence continued to be far too primitive and uncertain for anyone to even consider embarking on the monumental task of unlearning the deeply ingrained and embedded habits of relying on force to motivate the other.

Cities developed on the deltas of rivers where deep alluvial soil existed, and sufficient water was available to support large populations; and, humanity began to escape the natural circle that limited the populations of all other predators whose numbers were limited by available food resources.

But conditions existed that required the use of force, since there were human populations who continued to move from place to place to find fodder for their flocks of sheep and goats who with the domestication of horses produced hordes of raiders and pillagers, which were a perennial threat to the security of city dwellers.

One of the effects of the 911 attack was that it precipitated a world wide diminution in freedoms; human beings were willing to give up some of their cherished rights, prerogatives and liberties in the hope that this would increase their physical security.

The inhabitants of early cities beset by hordes produced by nomadic tribes who pillaged and robbed them of the wealth they accumulated from agricultural surpluses, were willing to submit to a formidable warrior who commanded an army which could protect them; and, so developed the institution of kingship and created the roots of Absolutism, the form of government that has been the most popular and widely utilized for most of human history.

After several thousand years of this mode of existence human beings developed ethics, the notion that the weak should not be seen as a food source, but that as human beings they should have certain rights, for example, the right to justice and personal autonomy.

Two major ethical systems emerged from Western civilizations; democracy in Greek city states, and, the Christian theology.

Democracy emerged among the inhabitants of Greek city states out of the need to create and sustain a powerful means of defense, the phalanx, in which most healthy adult males participated.

Equality of status which was required for the efficient functioning in this form of military organization over time translated into a semblance of equal rights for all citizens of the state.

Christianity was based on the Hebraic Christian notion of the equality of man before God.

But both of these ethical systems were far in advance of a time in human history when they could be widely applicable or functional because of the powerful habit of reliance on coercion to motivate the other.

Humanity found a means, repression, to in effect have their cake and eat it; they consigned to their unconscious all information pertaining to the use of coercion.

I began a journey of discovery of the dynamics of human culture when, because of the guilt occasioned by my numerous infidelities that I believed was my contribution to my imminent divorce and the destruction of my family life, I decided to tell the truth whatever the consequences for the rest of my life.

I had no idea then that telling the truth would erase from my psyche the depression that lamed my intellect that it would cause me to more and more come into contact with the existing social reality.

The evidence supporting the hypothesis that coercion determined the nature of human culture, and precipitated the widespread neurosis that allowed the perpetuation of that culture with the discovery of ethics, is so overwhelming when allied to the evidence of the impact of reducing and limiting the extent to which coercion, in any form, can be applied to individuals in society; is so pervasive and obvious that this in itself is incontrovertible proof that human beings are oblivious of, and are unable to intelligently process any information that relates to the use of force to motivate the other.

I arrive at this conclusion not only because I have completely failed to interest any individual or organization of the print and electronic media, or, of any political or governmental institution, or, of any academic or scholastic institution, to consider and validate or debunk this hypothesis; this failure may arise from sheer prejudice and xenophobia, a refusal to admit that any individual with mixed blood from the Caribbean is capable of the intellectual prowess required for such an insight; or, because the intense and virulent competition in this society might have prompted individuals with access to this information to decide, sometime in the future, to claim that they were the progenitors of this monumental watershed innovation.

What is extremely alarming and debilitating is that no human being or organization in the USA is capable of making the connection between the removal of corporal punishment from the Public School system when the schools were integrated, because white parents did not wish black teachers to be able to apply such punishments to their children; and, the secular decline in discipline that has resulted in near chaos in many schools, transformed them into fortresses patrolled by police officers, protected by metal detectors and resulted in the USA becoming the dropout nation of the world.

That nobody is aware, or can be made aware by the information that I have painfully and painstakingly accumulated, that the failures and resulting dysfunction in every social organization, the decline in family life and high rates of divorce; the low level of production and productivity in the economy; the palpable incapacity of successive governments and administrations, whether they be composed of Democrats or Republicans, to confront and find solutions to the social ills of poverty, crime and drug abuse; has one fundamental cause - the failure to provide adequate levels of motivation to galvanize individuals to the patterns of behavior which would produce function.

What human beings achieved a long time ago was the means to continue to play the roles of territorial predator or prey - without being aware of the brutal, deadly and often catastrophic implications of their actions utilizing the simple, easily accessible devices of lies, deceits and obfuscations, to such a degree that Jesus was constrained to report as he suffered on the cross, “Father, forgive them they know not what they do.”

How else can be explained the holocausts and disasters of recorded human history, the unrivaled barbarism displayed by the Christian Crusaders, the unrelieved cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition, the relentless savagery of European colonizers that resulted in the extinction of numerous American populations, the unmitigated horrors and atrocities of the Middle Passage, the murderous depredations of Nazi Germany that resulted in the millions of deaths in the crematoriums and ovens of concentration camps constructed and operated by near contemporary human beings, the racial cleansing in the Balkan States.

These atrocities, and many other committed by human beings regardless of national or ethnic origin, cannot be explained except by referring to a common heritage when the human race became habituated to reliance on coercion as the necessary prerequisite to survival and developed ways of thinking, attitudes and patterns of behavior that facilitated this necessity, habits that we have so far been unable to break - because we are completely oblivious of the fact and the implications of our reliance on coercion as the means use to motivate action.

This world view is deeply embedded in contemporary existence, it is the major obstacle to humanity finding solutions to the massive social problems that beset us, the major factor that prevents our overcoming the failure, the abject failure of every social institution, of governments, of the family, of education, of the economy, all cannot function because of low levels of motivation.

There is another very apparent and obvious contrast, if only human beings could perceive it, that should make the situation unmistakably clear; the difference between the stagnation, dysfunction and anomie in many large democratic societies and the bustling and dynamic enterprise displayed in human societies that continue to be autocratic, for example China and Singapore, that continue, in precept, to hew to the tenets of Absolutism.

In these democracies, romantic and idealistic concepts about liberty, equality and justice create a patina of civilization, a facade of modernization that conceals the reality of a widespread, massive and exponentially growing monolith of injustice and poverty; of masses of human beings seduced and reduced to an abject and passive docility by addiction to alcohol, drugs, television and most recently, the internet.

Most notably, principally and emphatically the medium of television because that legitimate, glittering, addictive screen brings into every single household the Greek innovation, theatre, a mechanism that provides catharsis and solace for the masses by allowing them to vicariously live out their fantasies for a better quality of life while simultaneously reducing the massive burdens of guilt and shame engendered by the sere and degrading reality of their existences.

And if that were not enough, it is a means to inundate them with news reports that are so replete with negativity, with reliable, authoritative and ostensibly authentic reports of their collective inadequacies and failures that they are reduced to a lethargic and immutable apathy, unable to label or express or demonstrate their deep seated and wholly justified discontent.

Without the means to motivate, the institutions of government, of law and order have become pathetic, wholly corrupt and meaningless instruments; wholly incapable of providing for the body politic the balm and solace of simple justice, unable to stem the rising tide of crime and drug abuse, they are reduced and resigned to being deeply symbolic and meaningless perpetuators of a static, rigid, inegalitarian status quo.

When the modus operandi which is an extension of this world view takes hold in an organization, any degree of corruption is possible, without anyone getting caught or being punished.

I first confronted this when I worked in the Esso Kingston Refinery, where I was employed from May 1963 to May, 1973.

After the start up of the refinery late in 1963, every member of the process department who worked on shift began to steal gasoline, every member of the process department stole gasoline habitually for a decade - and no one was ever prosecuted for so doing.

Two inferences can be made from this immoral state of affairs:

The first, since expatriates from the USA and Canada, were in charge during the initial two years of the operation; and, the pilfering of gasoline could not have occurred without their participation and tacit consent; we may conclude that the same situation obtains in oil refineries in the USA and Canada and that tradition and component of industrial culture was transplanted to the Jamaican refinery.

Also, this provides an insight into governmental corruption and corruption in justice systems by politicians, judges and police officers; if refinery personnel a relatively powerless group could conceal and engage with impunity for such a long time in this practice, then it follows that politicians, judges and police officers who are much more powerful and strategically located can ensure that the corrupt practices endemic in governmental and justice institutions remain relatively free from publicity, are unrecognized, and, that they go unpunished.

When I resigned from the employment in the refinery I went to work for the largest labor union in Jamaica and represented thousands of workers and handled thousands of cases involving the dismissal of workers, but only one worker during the five years I did that job was dismissed for stealing.

That worker was employed to the electric utility; and, in the event of an accident involving one of that Company’s vehicles he was first on the scene to strip that vehicle of anything and everything of value; the same was true of anything of value that was accessible on any property owned by the Company whether it be copper wire or insulating material or tools; he even derived income by stripping fruit from trees on land owned by the Company; yet the worker delegates petitioned me to request mercy from the management, which I did, and he was saved from prosecution.

I feel constrained to expose the activities of international telephone operators in Jamaica who routinely connected overseas calls for members of their friends and family, calls which did not result in revenue for the Telephone Company; this was an acceptable practice in that organization only attracting opprobrium if the operator went into business on their own account and began collecting monies or other benefits for connecting overseas calls.

I spent a complimentary weekend at a cottage in Maumee Bay on the North Coast of my island in the sun, that cottage was aptly named “Casa Joya,” a perk I qualified for because I had a girlfriend who was an overseas operator.

I stopped stealing gasoline when I saw a laboratory technician stealing gasoline on his wedding day with his new wife in his car on his way to his honeymoon in Negril.

I deemed that this incident indicated that we all had become too complacent about this practice; and, that as a result, someone must be caught and I did not want it to be me.

It was no different in the USA, when I made reservations from a rental car company, there was an incentive for each reservation made, and one of my colleagues bought a new car from the accepted practice in the call center of resurrecting cancelled reservations to increase the take home pay of every employee, except me.

The fact is that in concept most people and honest and good; in precept immorality is endemic in human societies.

What would be the result if one morning the world of men and women everywhere were to wake to find that everybody knew everything about everybody else; would anyone’s life remain unchanged or would this result in the fall of most governments, the end of the vast majority of marriages, the end of human civilization as we know it?

I have a sibling who met a girl when he was sixteen and she was fifteen, they eventually married and have been together ever since; in concept they have a perfect marriage and several years ago they celebrated thirty years of connubial bliss.

But what about the reality of their lives?

He has a daughter the product of a one day stand with someone he considered beneath his station and so black that he could never marry her, he has a child that he has never recognized and for whom he has never provided one penny in support; and, a son whom a DNA test would probably reveal as not a blood relation.

He had three girl children before the son that he needed to validate and reinforce his masculinity; and, fearing that he might be incapable of producing a son, that she might have to endure a never ending succession of pregnancies in his quest for a male heir; his wife provided assistance in the form of a sperm donor who looked a lot like him and who probably gave his heart‘s desire.

They continue to live together, in a marriage of convenience, he continues to be unfaithful to her every chance he gets, completely oblivious to the fact that this modus operandi provides her ample opportunity and motivation to be unfaithful to him, in concept they are the perfect long lasting union, in precept they are one big unhappy family.

I speak as someone who was once an agent of coercion based culture, who dared to make fun of the mother of my children by telling her, at a family gathering, that I was seriously considering trading her in for a later model of femininity.

When I began to practice the discipline of truth, the first insight to reward that practice was that I perceived how stupid I had been to neglect my young healthy wife whom I gave every opportunity and motivation to be unfaithful by engaging in numerous sexual escapades and peccadilloes.

Yet when she took a lover, an outcome my neglect and disdain had made inescapable and inevitable, I was unable to bear it, though in hindsight it was clear I had done everything in my power to produce the intense anguish and pain that resulted for all concerned.

My marriage and my family might have been saved - if I had not committed the other cardinal sin of allowing my idealism to prompt me to accept a cut in income, the substantial reduction in income working for the Union produced.

But my story has a happy ending, because I was not content to settle for the fact that happy endings only occur in Literature, the Theatre; and, of course in movies and on television; so I canvassed my alternatives and decided to practice the discipline of truth and so achieved wisdom in the conduct of my affairs, redemption and, most of all, a repeal of my life sentence in a world where anything goes.

That is my simple message, which telling the truth will provide each and every individual with wisdom in the conduct of their affairs; and, the possibility of happiness.

The wolf is at the door, when in 1996 I became engaged in what I considered to be the transcendent enterprise of communicating this information to the American people the situation and circumstances were such that there was time to rectify and redeem this situation, today as I write, we are all out of time.

Unless the American people can find the will, the intelligence and, most of all, the moral fiber to dispense justice to the people of Iraq, there will be a World War Three and, as a result of that conflict, human civilizations will regress into savagery.

In the American Heritage Dictionary that I own, one definition of justice is moral rightness; equity.

I deem the practice of this value the principal support, the irreducible, necessary prerequisite to creating an enduring civilization.

I suggest that the American Revolution did not result in individuals that could dispense justice, that it was a sterile, meaningless exchange of elites.

That the practice of democracy and the right to vote in free and fair elections has not produced the capacity to dispense justice.

If it had the Women’s Movement would not have had to endure physical assaults and rape to get the right to vote.

If it had the Workers Movement would not have had to engage in strike action, riots and demonstrations to receive decent wages and working conditions.

If it had the Civil Rights Movement would not have had to face lynching, fire bombings, murder, assassination, powerful streams from fire hoses and attack from savage dogs to achieve civil rights.

Conflict can only generate conflict; it cannot produce justice or a just society.

What will create the objectivity that will permit any individual to dispense justice and become collectively a member of a just society is the practice of the discipline of truth.

The point I have laboriously tried to make is that the problem is cultural; that it is fundamentally and intrinsically an inability to process information about certain issues into ideas adequate to the existing reality that would support function; this incapacity adversely affects leaders in every sphere, and, ordinary men and women from all walks of life.

This year the road will fork in the path of human beings, the high road of morality will be the way into the future; the low road, the well worn well traveled path of tradition and Absolutism, will inevitably lead to a regression into barbarism and savagery.

The choice of which road a bare majority of human beings will choose, my dear reader, is irrevocably and undeniably, yours.


William E. Virtue

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