Family? Family is a biological granfalloon. Memetic similarities override biologic relations. In the War Between the States, brothers fought for opposing ideologies. I have grave respect for life. I love life. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that love is life. Life is not always love, but it works
the other way. Matter is energy. Energy is matter. Energy materializes. Love is that which binds. Fuller says that love is metaphysical gravity. Love is the antonym of Entropy.
Excerpt from Poker without cards.
19.3.08
pirates created countries
[ ... ]Political science is a field studied at universities, entities that only exist
because of their endowments. Did you know that before corporations,
sovereign governments were standing endowments? And that monarchs
weren’t the actual source of power? The great pirates, the traders and sea
dwellers who needed men organized on land to expedite their trading created
monarchies.
Pirates were inherently outlaws.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Okay. You lost me. We were talking about Foucault and now we’re talking
about pirates.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Doctor Fink, you think I am talking, which I am, but these aren’t my ideas.
I’m using Bucky’s ideas to give you a Fuller explanation. Bucky was
interested in systems. In order to understand a system, you have to get
outside the system to see other possibilities. Bucky felt oppressed because
there aren’t options to live outside the system. Pirates lived outside the
system. The only laws that could, and did, rule them were natural laws.
Pirates battled with one another to see who was going to control the vast sea
routes and, eventually, the world. Their battles took place out of sight of
land dwellers and the keepers of written history. The losers generally went to
the bottom of the sea. Those who stayed on top of the waters, and
prospered, did so because of their comprehensive abilities. They were the
antithesis of specialists.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Running a ship means knowing about navigation, weather and managing
people.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Yes. Pirates were applied scientists. The wider and more long-distanced
their anticipatory strategy, the more successful they usually were. Experience
proved that multiple ships could outmaneuver one ship. So pirates created
navies.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
No. Countries created navies.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
No. That’s what our history tells us. But, history is simply a story agreed
upon.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
No, wait. Only countries had the infrastructure to build and sustain navies.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Therein lies the rub.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
What?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
The rub. The catch. The cost of doing business.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
I’m not following.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Pirates created countries.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
How do you figure?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
You think Western civilization just sprung up simultaneously along different
coasts?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
People were trading via shipping routes. Businessmen.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Pirates. Pirates created foci of power. These powers expanded until they
overlapped with other powers. Wars require immense resources. Boundaries
emerged as means to focus resources on their ports of trade. The pirates, or
businessmen, were constantly demanding output. Defending takes less
energy than attacking. Boundaries allow for the proper focus of energy.
When one has excess resources, you can expand and attack. But I’m getting
ahead of myself.
To consistently sustain a navy, pirates had to control mines, forests, and
lands to build the ships and establish the industries essential to building,
supplying, and maintaining their navy. The pirates went to the various lands
where they either acquired or sold goods, and picked the strongest man there
to be the pirate’s local headman. The chosen man became the pirate's
general manager of the local realm.
If the chosen man in a given land had not already done so, the pirate told
him to proclaim himself king. But this king was a stooge to commerce. His
sole job was to maintain order on behalf of the pirates. Order was most
easily maintained by having the local king proclaim that he was the headman
of all men, the god-ordained ruler on earth. The locals weren’t traveling, so
they saw no disparity. The pirates gave their stooge-kings secret lines of
supplies that provided everything they needed to enforce their sovereign
claim. The more massively bejeweled the king's gold crown, and the more
visible his court and castle, the less visible was his pirate master.
Masters had to sleep occasionally, and therefore found it necessary to
surround themselves with super-loyal, muscular, but dumb-as-shit, illiterates,
who couldn’t see, nor savvy, their masters' strategies. There was great safety
in the stupidity of these henchmen. The great pirates realized that the only
people who could possibly contrive to displace them were the truly bright
people.
Secrecy was the pirate’s strongest defense. If the other powerful pirates
didn’t know where you were going, when you’d gone, or when you were
coming back, they wouldn’t know how to waylay you. If anyone knew when
you were coming home, small-timers could come out in small boats and
waylay you in the dark and take you over, just before you got home tiredly
after a two-year treasure-harvesting voyage. Hijacking and second-rate piracy
became a popular activity around the world's shores and harbors. So, secrecy
became the essence of the lives of the successful pirates. That’s why so little
is known of these pirates. This secrecy was at the heart of Bucky’s obsessive
search through literature. Bucky held that secret knowledge was real.
Furthermore, Bucky sought It. A book like Buckminster Fuller’s Operating
Manual Spaceship Earth was named too peculiarly to be normal. After reading
that book, he studied topology for four months. But back to Bucky’s pirate
story.
These great pirates said to all their kings, statesmen who were functionally
only lieutenants, "Any time bright young people show up, I'd like to know
about it, because we need bright men." So, each time the pirate came into
port, the local king would mention that he had some bright, young men
whose capabilities and thinking shone out in the community. The great
pirates would say to the king, "All right, you summon them and deal with
them as follows: As each young man is brought forward you say to him,
'Young man, you are very bright. I'm going to assign you to a great history
tutor, and, in due course, if you study well and learn enough, I'm going to
make you my Royal Historian, but you've got to pass many examinations
given to you by me and your teacher.'" And when the next bright boy was
brought before him, the king was to say, "I'm going to make you my Royal
Treasurer," and so forth. Then the pirate said to the king, "You will finally
say to all of them: 'But each of you must mind your own business or off go
your heads. I'm the only one who minds everybody's business.'"
And this is the way schools began, as royal tutorial schools. And, it’s the way
specialization began. It is our current form of education. Academic
education equals specialization. Exclusively, the great pirates retain
comprehensive knowledge. Exclusively the great pirates, known today as
businessmen, enjoy knowledge of the world through its resources.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Is this just a metaphor or some kind of syllogism?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
In his journal, Bucky emphasized that he was not being facetious. He meant
the pirate story to be literal history. Bucky stressed that this was not a
metaphor, but the way he saw where our current world order came from.
This was the beginning of schools and colleges, and the beginning of
intellectual specialization. The development of the bright ones into
specialists gave the king very great brain power, and made him and his
kingdom the most powerful in the land and, therefore, secretly and greatly
advantaged his patron pirate in world competition with the other great
pirates.
The power rested not with the power figureheads, the kings, but with the
men behind the kings, the great pirates. Just as today, a corporate president
may be the king, but the power is in the hands of the board of directors.
Transcript from Poker Without Cards.
because of their endowments. Did you know that before corporations,
sovereign governments were standing endowments? And that monarchs
weren’t the actual source of power? The great pirates, the traders and sea
dwellers who needed men organized on land to expedite their trading created
monarchies.
Pirates were inherently outlaws.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Okay. You lost me. We were talking about Foucault and now we’re talking
about pirates.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Doctor Fink, you think I am talking, which I am, but these aren’t my ideas.
I’m using Bucky’s ideas to give you a Fuller explanation. Bucky was
interested in systems. In order to understand a system, you have to get
outside the system to see other possibilities. Bucky felt oppressed because
there aren’t options to live outside the system. Pirates lived outside the
system. The only laws that could, and did, rule them were natural laws.
Pirates battled with one another to see who was going to control the vast sea
routes and, eventually, the world. Their battles took place out of sight of
land dwellers and the keepers of written history. The losers generally went to
the bottom of the sea. Those who stayed on top of the waters, and
prospered, did so because of their comprehensive abilities. They were the
antithesis of specialists.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Running a ship means knowing about navigation, weather and managing
people.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Yes. Pirates were applied scientists. The wider and more long-distanced
their anticipatory strategy, the more successful they usually were. Experience
proved that multiple ships could outmaneuver one ship. So pirates created
navies.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
No. Countries created navies.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
No. That’s what our history tells us. But, history is simply a story agreed
upon.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
No, wait. Only countries had the infrastructure to build and sustain navies.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Therein lies the rub.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
What?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
The rub. The catch. The cost of doing business.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
I’m not following.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Pirates created countries.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
How do you figure?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
You think Western civilization just sprung up simultaneously along different
coasts?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
People were trading via shipping routes. Businessmen.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Pirates. Pirates created foci of power. These powers expanded until they
overlapped with other powers. Wars require immense resources. Boundaries
emerged as means to focus resources on their ports of trade. The pirates, or
businessmen, were constantly demanding output. Defending takes less
energy than attacking. Boundaries allow for the proper focus of energy.
When one has excess resources, you can expand and attack. But I’m getting
ahead of myself.
To consistently sustain a navy, pirates had to control mines, forests, and
lands to build the ships and establish the industries essential to building,
supplying, and maintaining their navy. The pirates went to the various lands
where they either acquired or sold goods, and picked the strongest man there
to be the pirate’s local headman. The chosen man became the pirate's
general manager of the local realm.
If the chosen man in a given land had not already done so, the pirate told
him to proclaim himself king. But this king was a stooge to commerce. His
sole job was to maintain order on behalf of the pirates. Order was most
easily maintained by having the local king proclaim that he was the headman
of all men, the god-ordained ruler on earth. The locals weren’t traveling, so
they saw no disparity. The pirates gave their stooge-kings secret lines of
supplies that provided everything they needed to enforce their sovereign
claim. The more massively bejeweled the king's gold crown, and the more
visible his court and castle, the less visible was his pirate master.
Masters had to sleep occasionally, and therefore found it necessary to
surround themselves with super-loyal, muscular, but dumb-as-shit, illiterates,
who couldn’t see, nor savvy, their masters' strategies. There was great safety
in the stupidity of these henchmen. The great pirates realized that the only
people who could possibly contrive to displace them were the truly bright
people.
Secrecy was the pirate’s strongest defense. If the other powerful pirates
didn’t know where you were going, when you’d gone, or when you were
coming back, they wouldn’t know how to waylay you. If anyone knew when
you were coming home, small-timers could come out in small boats and
waylay you in the dark and take you over, just before you got home tiredly
after a two-year treasure-harvesting voyage. Hijacking and second-rate piracy
became a popular activity around the world's shores and harbors. So, secrecy
became the essence of the lives of the successful pirates. That’s why so little
is known of these pirates. This secrecy was at the heart of Bucky’s obsessive
search through literature. Bucky held that secret knowledge was real.
Furthermore, Bucky sought It. A book like Buckminster Fuller’s Operating
Manual Spaceship Earth was named too peculiarly to be normal. After reading
that book, he studied topology for four months. But back to Bucky’s pirate
story.
These great pirates said to all their kings, statesmen who were functionally
only lieutenants, "Any time bright young people show up, I'd like to know
about it, because we need bright men." So, each time the pirate came into
port, the local king would mention that he had some bright, young men
whose capabilities and thinking shone out in the community. The great
pirates would say to the king, "All right, you summon them and deal with
them as follows: As each young man is brought forward you say to him,
'Young man, you are very bright. I'm going to assign you to a great history
tutor, and, in due course, if you study well and learn enough, I'm going to
make you my Royal Historian, but you've got to pass many examinations
given to you by me and your teacher.'" And when the next bright boy was
brought before him, the king was to say, "I'm going to make you my Royal
Treasurer," and so forth. Then the pirate said to the king, "You will finally
say to all of them: 'But each of you must mind your own business or off go
your heads. I'm the only one who minds everybody's business.'"
And this is the way schools began, as royal tutorial schools. And, it’s the way
specialization began. It is our current form of education. Academic
education equals specialization. Exclusively, the great pirates retain
comprehensive knowledge. Exclusively the great pirates, known today as
businessmen, enjoy knowledge of the world through its resources.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Is this just a metaphor or some kind of syllogism?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
In his journal, Bucky emphasized that he was not being facetious. He meant
the pirate story to be literal history. Bucky stressed that this was not a
metaphor, but the way he saw where our current world order came from.
This was the beginning of schools and colleges, and the beginning of
intellectual specialization. The development of the bright ones into
specialists gave the king very great brain power, and made him and his
kingdom the most powerful in the land and, therefore, secretly and greatly
advantaged his patron pirate in world competition with the other great
pirates.
The power rested not with the power figureheads, the kings, but with the
men behind the kings, the great pirates. Just as today, a corporate president
may be the king, but the power is in the hands of the board of directors.
Transcript from Poker Without Cards.
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