Militarized Society

A hierarchy is a chain of urgency, importance, or communication, a system of efficient control. 

The first militarized hierarchy likely formed when we started building large, permanent, immobile settlements.  If threatened they couldn’t be easily mood or rebuilt. They needed defense. Those who controlled the weapons and warriors became the protectors and leaders, the rest of society organizing to support them out of mutual need, the common good. Inevitably the protectors became oppressors and then conquerors causing other societies to militarize. 

Slaves were originally taken in conquest or sentenced for crimes. They weren’t only labour, but a perfect visual reminder of the inhumanity of the enemy and the fate of the disobedient. Later it expanded into use as payment for debts of honour or money. Then capitalism got hold of it. There are more slaves, in the traditional sense, in the world today than in any other time in history. The human trade is booming and completely free of economic barriers. Slavery has always been good for the economy and profits. 

A social hierarchy is basically divided into levels and sub-levels of slavery under one master or a few. You do what you are told. You become conditioned to obey commands without thought. Militaries need to dehumanize recruits in order to build a coordinated killing machine willing to die when ordered.  You always sacrifice the lowest rank first. Especially when enforcing control. You demonstrate that weakness and disobedience will not be tolerated, that the lower ranks are disposable.  This makes everyone feel stronger and weaker at the same time, so they prove which on those below. 

Hierarchy helped kill the attempts at communism. Instead of levelling the hierarchy, they squashed it down into two or three levels with party leaders at the top, party members and enforcement below and everyone else at the bottom. Korea has basically gone feudal with its divine leader. 

Command and punishment flow down a hierarchy, privilege and wealth up.  everyone is turned on everyone else. Levels cluster for defence and stratify within themselves. Your level becomes your fate, a deserved one.  Order is maintained by dangling the hope that if you are lucky enough, attractive enough, talented enough, or amusing enough, those above will let you “pass” among their glory. The fight for the gold ticket begins. It perpetuates the idea that only the most special and best of people reach the top. That they all got there on their own from the bottom without climbing over, stepping on, holding back, betraying, or being supported by any of the people  below. Their victory can be ours. 

If you have to rely on exception qualities, talents, or luck to move, you likely won’t be able to manage it. Mobility requires self-control, the power to move, and no restraints. Individualistic hierarchy takes these away by focusing it at the top of the pyramid. 

A military needs an enemy to justify its existence and control. If it can’t find an external one, it looks inward and downward. The lowest ranks are expendable.  Modern liberal democracy is an attempt to demilitarize and break the hierarchy. That makes democracy the enemy, and the people. 

That’s what we’re up against, an ancient system actively fighting egalitarianism and community while actively championing war, weapons, oppression, dehumanization, torture, nationalism, and privilege.  A system based on paranoia, brutality, and tyranny.  A system bleeding us dry, with destruction its main purpose.  We’re just meat for the dehumanizing privilege machine. 

If we obey.

We need to keep the military in its proper place as honorable protectors and demilitarize the rest of society. We're not an army except in times of declared war like WWII. Then everyone is recruited. We need to take a military's violent purpose and strict ranks out of our social structure, institutions, organizations, and laws. Governments, religions, schools, businesses, and societies should not be based on a military hierarchy, strategies, tactics, or philosophies. Designed as tools for the work of improving of the common good, none should be used as tools of war. Tools used to protect the hierarchy of privilege.

Their roots are healthy, but the growth has been forced into a detrimental shape by the gardeners. They aren't  inherently bad, but the purpose for which they have been organized is. Efficient control through fear and conditioning.

It is time we unite to protect ourselves from the parents who would keep us children, orphans without support, obedient.

Look to Syria. The butcher Assad would rather rule a graveyard than surrender his privilege. His institutionalized torture of children turn a peaceful revolution into a bloodbath that is spreading misery around the world. A divided opposition allowed him to dig in an hold on until a fellow criminal tyrant, Putin, came to his aid. He would have been gone long ago, if the Russian Godfather hadn't given him protection on the "Security" Council. Both are criminal. Assad's war crimes and crimes against humanity are just more blatant. Putin has a modicum of subtlety. He was a spy before he became a gangster, a leader of organized crime. Russia is his major in-progress crime, assault and robbery, the Russian people the victims.

Most crimes in society are actually crimes of war, the Privilege War. Time to end it.

We are responsible for what we earn or take. We are not responsible for what we are given, just what we do with it. We don't choose what we are, but we do choose who we are and what we want to become. We can help shape the future or we can remain trapped by the past. Now is the time to choose. Otherwise, the decision gets made for you and you have no choice. 

Trade and markets are economic tools. They shouldn't be more free than us.

We aren't an army, military or economic. We are a civilization.

Over time, the perception of labourers as part of enterprises declines into dehumanizing stratification with the majority viewed as expensive abstract data instead of essential participants. At first all are equal partners, then inequality arises in partnership until most become servants, then beasts of burden, robots, cogs, and then numbers. This is the structure of corporations and the foundation militarized society. 

Militarized hierarchy protected early civilization but it is keeping it from maturing.

Time to grow up.

Everything is always in process

Only compassion defeats dehumanization.