With the advent of technology, the time of waging war on the battlefield has passed. The honor of meeting your foe face to face has gone, and so has the privilege of knowing what repercussions your actions have. There’s no sanctity in battle anymore, at least none that be encapsulated in classical terms.
Nor do might or brawn count as much. They’ve been replaced by a new kind of warfare: intelligence.
Many of you are already engaged in a fight against idiocy, folly, self-delusion, and all kinds of stupidities
Some of you may cringe at the thought of fighting, deeming it barbaric and dated, striking through this comment, putting your faith in sounder and better things than war, and you would be right, to a degree.
But here’s the deal: at some point in time one realizes (remembers) that the term ‘intelligence’ carries a triple meaning:
- The gathering of information through espionage
- The implementation of security through overt or covert means, and
- Good old wisdom.
Now here’s the interesting part. Many of you – many of us, to be precise – are engaged in a fight against idiocy, folly, self-delusion, and all kinds of stupidities, which drag everyone down, and which we confront with common sense, reason, and intelligence. (Those of you who claim not to be engaged in a battle against idiocy, folly etc are liars, hypocrites, and parts of the problem at large.)
Fact is, we’re in the fight for our lives, all the time. Slip up, and the moron wins, and we’re done for. One has to keep pushing, scrapping, arguing, pushing back, do whatever it takes to stay standing.
So be careful when you diss fighting. Like it or not, you’re embroiled in a great war as you speak, confronting whatever is geared to throw you off. The necessity to fight for what we stand for is a real, and embracing it is an honest and wise choice.
The Enduring Kind
Once again, let me reiterate: this is an age where the war of honor, might, brawn and other such virtues have given way to the war of intelligence.
Let’s embrace this new conflict, and win it. It’s the only way to oust folly.
Seizing the world from idiocy and delivering it to perspectives that work is an admirable task
Come to think of it, there’s honor left in warfare after all. Seizing the world from idiocy and delivering it to perspectives that work is an admirable task.
As for might and brawn, they’ve not gone away, just switched platforms, earning victory through the strong-minded and the willing among us.
Let the strong-minded and willing rise up to the challenge and win back the initiative. Let the soundest and most solid viewpoints seize the day in all fields, from science and technology, to politics and the economy, the environment and conservation, to growth and sustainability and new ways to organize ourselves, to cybernetics and nanotechnology, space travel and exploration. Theirs is the future and the wisdom that holds it. For as long as there’s life, intelligence rules, if not in the short term, then over time.
And when intelligence runs its course, or into a wall, or abyss etc, we end up like Babylon: a place that is no more, about which intelligent people in other places tell entertaining stories to each other while having moved on with their lives, looking back on the relics to amuse themselves.
Some compare Babylon to the Tower of Babel. They also compare the Tower of Babel to our uncoordinated multilingual world.
With good reason, too.