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The newest and
most world-shaking extremity
of violence and change is what I call paranationalism —
any organised attempt through terrorist acts to draw attention
to the evils of the status quo anywhere in the world. It aims
to destroy the root-attitudes of people supporting the formation
of power and privilege — conventions so integral and
fundamental to a society that even to the radical political
mind the attempts seem senseless and even psychotic. This
is especially so since the violent means employed usually
involve the death and injury of innocent people.
Pure paranationalism
does not preach revolution, anarchy, nihilism or ideological
fantasy. It is not idealistic in the least. Using indiscriminate
violence against the expectations, values and unquestioned
loyalties of western society, its strategic weapon is violence
itself. Instead of taking on the police, paranationalists
take on the politicians and society's leaders as a means of
getting at the people. They know that no one can get directly
to the people, who in a modern society are completely shielded
from change by the mass media, the authorities and social
convention.
For the paranationalist
the people are as much the enemy as the objective. This seems
a contradiction, but to the dedicated terrorist there are
no people in the western world, only positions. In his mind,
people act out their positions. Positions have to be destroyed
in people's minds for the real person, the individual, to
be reached. So the terrorists show no mercy, no compassion
of the kind that conventional people in conventional positions
relate to.
The paranational
terrorists are a new breed of suicide fighters, like the kamikaze
warriors of Japan (whose name translated means 'Divine Storm').
To the paranational terrorists death is nothing, and living
is ignoble once the evil of positions-without-people is seen.
The terrorists'
motivations cannot be comprehended by the conventional mind
or western attitudes because they operate at a subconscious
level; they represent a new psychological phenomenon rising
out of the unconscious in man. Its only purpose is to destroy
the certainty of the westernised mind.
Paranationalism
depends on the stark terror and horror of its indiscriminate
actions to drive home its idea or message like a steel pin
into the subconscious of humanity, through the armourplate
of the enemy — the contented mass position. It aims at
the individual, not the masses. Every terrorist act has a
subliminal message that lodges somewhere in the human psyche
where it will slowly rise to consciousness among the younger
generation, tomorrow's rulers. But from the western viewpoint,
the terrorists' motivations, like their achievements, are
inscrutable.
There is no conventional
power-drive in this kind of terrorism, no personal reward
apart from death. As the precursors of an approaching new
culture, paranational terrorists tend to come into western
civilisation from the geographical East. Where the westernisation
process is most advanced and the social conscience is most
likely to be outraged is where terrorism will strike most
hideously and most often. But paranational terror is not restricted
to democracies. As a new expression of power it is currently
mixed up with nationalistic and religious struggles on every
continent. It has yet to divorce itself from these conventional
freedom struggles and realise its independent identity and
task — as it has yet to do its inconceivable worst.
The
beginning of the end
The first shock-waves
of paranationalism, unnoticed or forgotten by the majority
almost as quickly as they disappear from the headlines, represent
the beginning of the end of western civilisation. The millennium
of decline is here. It is difficult to imagine that our familiar
way of life can possibly come to an end as a way of progress.
The populations of past great civilisations probably felt
the same. No civilisation seems able to visualise its successor.
And yet all lie in dust apart from a few relics.
The time that is
left is virtually no time at all. Just before the end there
may be a final, brief cultural flowering, the natural result
of our civilising achievements. This flowering will be distinguishable
by the feeling in the individual or the society that life
has reached some worthwhile peak.
One day it may
be said that western civilisation gave more men more years
to live in better health, comfort and luxury — so that
finally it could destroy more than if it had never existed.
Whatever the means of destruction, through terrorism, nuclear
devastation or some other cataclysm, the barriers that separate
the different nations and peoples will fall down. They are
intolerable anachronisms in a world civilisation.
Evolution proceeds
on this planet haltingly, in distinct stages of time in which
the process stops, gathers, bursts . . . and out of the shambles
and chaos leaps the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the era, to seed
a new attempt at civilisation containing that which was best
of the old.
Decline
and fall
All civilisations
are attempts at civilisation. All have failed due to an inherent
flaw in the social conscience stemming from humanity's inability
to grasp what civilisation is for.
Within the more
impressive achievements of each great civilisation is the
means of its inevitable destruction. Where it was thought
to have succeeded most is where the poison will be found.
It is like a parasite that gets into the flower in full bloom
and infects the fruit before it has formed. The Romans' genius
for colonisation and government was the means of their downfall.
For the earlier Mediterranean peoples it was rampant curiosity
about the external world; seeking distraction, they gradually
forgot man's astonishing origins which were the foundation
of their culture. They subverted the power of that knowledge
— original art — and created beautiful ideas and
things instead of excellent men. This ignorance and moral
laxity finally allowed the barbarians to invade their territory,
as well as their psyche, and eventually destroyed them. Vandalism
in all ages lives on in the hills of the mind.
Many other civilisations,
such as the Inca and Aztec cultures of South America, collapsed
because the people were indoctrinated by priests who turned
their myths into superstition. Rule by priests prevents the
necessary development of discrimination and common sense in
worldly affairs which is part of survival and the struggle
for civilised excellence.
The destruction
of our civilisation, Western Civilisation, will come through
its super-technology, probably in some form of almost instant
wipe-out as a logical improvement on the older, slower process
of degeneration and decay.
The means of destruction
of a civilisation must not be confused with the cause of destruction.
Moral failure has been the cause of every civilisation's downfall.
Our moral failure, the worm in the western flower, was cultured
by the drive among the privileged to have more while the many
by comparison had little or nothing.
Ours is the first
world civilisation. In that we are unique and represent the
end of a phase in man's development. Western civilisation
is an extension or culmination of all earlier civilisations
and their aspirations for ever-more conquest, wealth and influence.
But now western civilisation has gone the limit and conquered
the globe. The conquest has yet to be consolidated and consciously
realised, if there is time. But the pattern of consolidation
is inevitably established and there can be no major changes,
just modifications. Any pockets remaining of the ancient cultures
are already regarded as backward or underprivileged; and by
their own consent and connivance are being eroded further
every day.
Our main civilising
achievement has been to bring humanity together through our
technological and intellectual genius without anyone needing
to change their position on the globe. Through western thought,
politics, weapons, transport, finance, science and telecommunications
we have created a westernised world civilisation, exciting
everyman's wanting and ensnaring him with his own expectations.
Each day the world gathers more solidly under the flag of
intellectual materialism, in spite of its ideological differences.
Never has there been such solidarity. The common aim is for
more, more of everything, more freedom, leisure, government,
power, peace, military hardware, information, travel, flush
toilets, drugs, computers and unlimited credit. There is no
other way to go and no evidence of any meaningful demand for
an alternative. The remaining obstacles to the completion
of the westernisation of humanity are not due to any outraged
opposition but to sheer lack of the resources to satisfy the
universal scramble, whether white, black, brown or yellow.
The world is populated by westerners: first, second, third,
fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh-class citizens; in other
words man's privileged rulers, the super-rich or powerful,
the wealthy, the workers, the poverty-liners, the exploited
and the abandoned. These are the schisms of failure in western
civilisation.
Ours, like all
the great civilisations before it, has served the planet's
evolutionary cause. As a part of the cosmic earth experiment
it has succeeded. But its failure, and unfitness to endure
as the permanently civilising way of life, lies in the expediency
of its shifting values. Our particular failure is intellectual
duplicity, our double standards. In two thousand years western
civilisation has not been able to be honest to itself, to
its people. The times we lived in would not permit it. By
the 'times' I mean the power mankind has attained in any age
to control matter, or circumstance, morally. Man who can control
matter morally is a man who puts man first.
We have not possessed
the moral strength to stand against the pressure of wealth
and self-interest, to uphold in practice the worthy ideals
we protested. Where men rose to rule, the ruled became the
sacrifice. Now, after two millennia of opportunity, no man
or men can ever again rule in this civilisation. The 'rulers'
are ruled by circumstance, the force in matter. They are powerless
to change anything significantly, as previously was possible
— and the thoughtful ones know it. The privileged position
of rulership on this planet in this civilisation has been
forfeited and withdrawn.
Barry Long
An extract from 'The
Origins of Man and the Universe'
© The Barry Long Trust
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