Chapter Three
FREE LANCE SOCIAL SCIENTIST
Adult education has never been an easy task. Today, as we experience the Closing of the American Mind, few occupations are more difficult. Fragmented into fortified enclaves of people, all of whom have arrived at total closure on the Big Questions facing this nation, adult as well as pre-adult Americans act as if our education is complete.
Yet, if it is true that we are entering a time when the concept of National Sovereignty is to redefined, a time of foundational realignment of the tectonic plates upon which nations rest, our education is far from complete. We need individuals committed to identifying facts selective perception in the various fortified enclaves has found convenient to ignore. Such is the job description of the free lance social scientist.
The FLSS will not be a popular figure on the American scene. A Closed Mind loathes facts not presently contained within World View. Theories and arguments and objections raised by competing and contrary World Views are easy to handle: they merely stimulate resistance; altogether an exhilarating experience--especially with an audience present. Facts, though, present a different problem. Facts long ignored then brought to mind, strike terror in the soul of the Closed Mind.
Since few people voluntarily choose to be terrorized, the effective FLSS, in order to be heard at all, would have to become a consummate diplomat. But a diplomat would make no mention of a potentially disruptive fact. A crisis of calling would exist. If the desire to be heard was predominant, our FLSS would surrender his lance and be transferred to the Diplomats Corp.
Of course the Diplomats Corp is now overflowing with practitioners. Many potentially effective FLSS' have chosen the occupation because of problems encountered in the FLSS field. Such overcrowding makes advancement slow, but the work is steady.
But what of the FLSS whose calling is fixed? Is there no way to fulfill that calling? Several devices have been tested by avid FLSS' throughout history.
Early on, the parable was popular. The device proved to be altogether too transparent. One prominent early FLSS was executed in gruesome fashion when the facts disguised by his parables were ferreted out by a powerful enclave of Closed Minds. This naturally gave great pause to subsequent FLSSers; but ever true to their calling, the search continued.
Fairy tales proved to be a much safer medium. Their efficacy was diminished somewhat though since only preadolescents paid much attention to them.
Satire finally became the vehicle of choice. While not an altogether safe vehicle, satire proved to be effective as long as the facts spotlighted were not particularly troublesome, or as long as the facts were in concert with the World View of an existing Closed Mind enclave. Under those circumstances, satire proved to be quite profitable for practicing FLSSers.
But true FLSSers who documented critical facts ignored by everyone still did so at their own risk. The only certainty in their chosen profession was resistance to their ideas, resistance that inevitably took the form of refusal to listen.
So getting someone--anyone--to listen becomes the first duty of a dedicated FLSS. Once one has said, Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead! nothing of consequence is accomplished if you are invisible to the world at large. At that point in the process it is very easy for a dedicated FLSS to fall prey to the temptation to sacrifice the goal (communicating ignored facts) and focus all energy on getting noticed. Thus many potential FLSS' have become high wire walkers, clowns in circuses, assassins, or politicians. While these callings may themselves be worthwhile and necessary in certain contexts, they are beside the point for a dedicated FLSS.
The key to success as a FLSS is patience. Patience requires faith that, through waiting, one can accomplish the thing that cannot be accomplished through premature action.
Patience is available when one understands the power possessed by the fact. A fact is not just a string of sounds--words--that create images in the minds of people. A fact is something that exists whether people know it or not. Because a fact is here, inevitably it will announce itself. Powerfully. So powerfully, in fact, that no one on earth can ignore it.
It is only with this knowledge in mind that a FLSS can rest assured that the goal of a FLSS will inevitably be accomplished. It is only a matter of time.
And method. Since the fact has the power to announce itself, the only question remaining is the method through which the fact will be announced. The methods through which facts are announced are clearly problematic. For instance, earthquakes can be announced in one of two ways: a forecast can be issued by responsible seismographers alerting the public to an impending quake, or the quake can announce itself.
Polls would demonstrate a clear consensus on the public's choice of method in the case of earthquakes. The fact of earthquakes has taught us through the ages to greatly prefer advance warning whenever possible.
Paradoxically, though, when the subject concerns social upheavals that carry the potential for much greater loss of life than the most powerful earthquake recorded in history, the public prefers to go unwarned. The evidence of the public's attitude becomes clear when one examines the way FLSS' have been treated when the FLSS brought a message concerning facts that tended to prove a major social upheaval was imminent. The public has invariably reacted in one of two ways: either by ignoring the messenger, or, failing that, by killing the messenger.
This public reaction occurs for two reasons: (1) since a major social upheaval, by definition, involves very complicated realities, most people feel powerless to know how to respond to the danger (it's not like an earthquake where all you have to do is go outside and run); (2) most people know that all social upheavals in history can be traced to the fact that people started talking to each other--thus there is a certain logic to the idea that if we stop people from talking about the impending upheaval maybe the threat will go away.
Is it any wonder FLSS' tend to be a frustrated lot? They are truly damned if they do, and because of their calling, damned if they don't.
Still they persist. An incorrigible FFLSSer who believes he's seen an unperceived critical fact has little choice in the matter. It's his fate.
Such dedication sometimes leads the most objective scientist to overstate his case, to exaggerate the facts in order to prove his hypothesis. I will be the first to admit that most everything I have pointed out so far is speculation about future events that no man can forecast with certainty. Perhaps the New World Order will not require a redefinition of National Sovereignty. Perhaps the United Nations can be used as a peace-keeping force that has the power to police nations and people-groups to prevent nuclear terrorism without a wholesale transfer of Sovereignty from nations to the United Nations. Perhaps the United States can continue to head a global alliance of Superpowers that will be able to finesse obdurant nations and cliques into giving them a legal excuse to control those nations without having to redefine the present definition of National Sovereignty.
But it seems very likely that the nations of the world will learn from Saddam Hussein's error. In the councils of the world's discontented underclass of nations the moral of the Gulf War will be clear: if you plan to take on the Superpowers, don't do anything to give them an excuse to declare war until you have nuclear weapons. If that is the case, the United Nations will not be legally used again to justify intervention in a nation's affairs unless that intervention occurs after the United Nations has redefined the present definition of National Sovereignty.
Since the thing called National Sovereignty is targeted for a new coat of paint, it would be helpful to first sand it down to bare metal. The bare metal of National Sovereignty is called government.
Most explanations of government become bogged down in the infinite details of government machinery and leave the reader with much insight into particular forms of government but little knowledge of government itself. That is because government itself has nothing to do with structure and everything to do with content. Government is not bureaucracy; government is ideas enforced as law.
To demonstrate this thesis, government will now be examined from three overlapping perspectives: the role the idea of god plays in justifying governments; the relationship between the will of the one and the will of the many; and the role the consent of the governed plays in government affairs. These three perspectives overlap because each perspective contains within itself most details of the whole. The value of examining government from these three perspectives is that we are allowed to see the thing called government in the round rather than from the truncated nationalistic or structural perspective in which government is usually viewed.
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