Chapter 3: Modes of Operation
“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.”
-Abraham Lincoln
All this is very idealistic, however. It merely gives us a vague direction of what path must be taken in order to bring the dream of Creator management of society to fruition. Questions about the specifics remain that must be answered in order for such a lofty plan to succeed. We know that the key must be to strategically leverage the current of the times and the Creators innate abilities to escape attack and gain control. But what, foremost, should be our mode of operation?
Influence (that is, the ability to control the future state of a system, whether it be societal, ideological, or otherwise) can be exerted in one of three ways. Force, the most immediately primal route, is the use of violence to push an individual into action. However, if history has shown anything at all, it is that Force, while immediately effective, does not provide the groundwork for any kind of sustainable growth since it inherently seems to create inefficiencies and distortions of intent. The term “violence breeds violence” suggests, too, that Force is inherently self-destructive, since it breeds resentment and retribution. Consider the paramount example of this use of influence on a mass scale in the form of the oppressive dictatorship. While able to exert its will in the short run with an impressive success, its ability to maintain that sort of cold minded and mechanical mobility is rare if not backed in some other way than force. And, at least in a moral context, the effort to refute a societal doctrine of the cheapening of action (see: Rage) seems to deny us the position of haphazardly using force in all situations without any justification.
Secondly, Love, the most difficult to define of the routes of influence, provides for sustainable growth, but two reservations halt us from utilizing it towards our ends. That is, that in the battle to stop the cheapening of human relationships, the instrumental use of love towards an aim seems incongruous, not to mention the fact that love itself seems too unstable and uncontrollable force to build a macrocosmic system upon.
This leaves, ultimately, with the use of the Mind, that is, the utilization of persuasion and other routes of purely immaterial force to move others to a defined route. Therefore, we are not only pragmatically restricted to using this route as a mode of operation in putting forth our plans, we are morally required to as well. Force, or more likely, the threat of using force (the, note, mental, use of Force), becomes our secondary tool, justified only when there remains no other option to pursue our larger goals and the attention it draws to us is not too great.
-Abraham Lincoln
All this is very idealistic, however. It merely gives us a vague direction of what path must be taken in order to bring the dream of Creator management of society to fruition. Questions about the specifics remain that must be answered in order for such a lofty plan to succeed. We know that the key must be to strategically leverage the current of the times and the Creators innate abilities to escape attack and gain control. But what, foremost, should be our mode of operation?
Influence (that is, the ability to control the future state of a system, whether it be societal, ideological, or otherwise) can be exerted in one of three ways. Force, the most immediately primal route, is the use of violence to push an individual into action. However, if history has shown anything at all, it is that Force, while immediately effective, does not provide the groundwork for any kind of sustainable growth since it inherently seems to create inefficiencies and distortions of intent. The term “violence breeds violence” suggests, too, that Force is inherently self-destructive, since it breeds resentment and retribution. Consider the paramount example of this use of influence on a mass scale in the form of the oppressive dictatorship. While able to exert its will in the short run with an impressive success, its ability to maintain that sort of cold minded and mechanical mobility is rare if not backed in some other way than force. And, at least in a moral context, the effort to refute a societal doctrine of the cheapening of action (see: Rage) seems to deny us the position of haphazardly using force in all situations without any justification.
Secondly, Love, the most difficult to define of the routes of influence, provides for sustainable growth, but two reservations halt us from utilizing it towards our ends. That is, that in the battle to stop the cheapening of human relationships, the instrumental use of love towards an aim seems incongruous, not to mention the fact that love itself seems too unstable and uncontrollable force to build a macrocosmic system upon.
This leaves, ultimately, with the use of the Mind, that is, the utilization of persuasion and other routes of purely immaterial force to move others to a defined route. Therefore, we are not only pragmatically restricted to using this route as a mode of operation in putting forth our plans, we are morally required to as well. Force, or more likely, the threat of using force (the, note, mental, use of Force), becomes our secondary tool, justified only when there remains no other option to pursue our larger goals and the attention it draws to us is not too great.
posted by Tim at 5:35 PM
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