Mediacology

This is why I think the traditional/classical military empire is on it’s way out. (All supplemental quotes from McLUhan’s Understanding Media, “Roads and Paper Routes” chapter)
The Dali Lama has said that war is irrelevant because in a global culture, if you attack in one space, it affects everyone else (MM: “Our electric extensions of ourselves simply by-pass space and time, and create problems of human involvement and organization for which there is no precedent,” p. 105 and “What emerges is a total field of inclusive awareness. The old patterns of psychic and social adjustment become irrelevant,” p.104).

The idea that a land and its peoples can be controlled afar through military means is an outmoded way of being, based on old concepts of the world that I feel are on there way out (such as the retribilization of our world described by McLuhan). In “paper routes” McLuhan talks about the fringes of empire becoming new centers, and in a sense, in our flat, decentralized and atomized world, we have become a network of nodes and minicenters based on information exchange (”Sea powers thus tend to create centers without margins, and land empires favor the center-margin structure. Electric speeds create centers everywhere. Margins cease to exist on this planet,” p.91).

In my view, the power of the future is who controls information and flows of information, not bodies in space as the military model is based on (”Now that man has extended his nervous system by electric technology, the field of battle has shifted to mental image making-and-breaking, both in war and in business,” p.103). Furthermore, we are bankrupt. It is a matter of time before international finance pulls the plug. It happened to the British after they invaded the Suez Canal. Look what happened to them (”The time factor in every decision of business and finance will acquire new patterns. Among the peoples of the world strange new vortices of power will appear unexpectedly,” p.99).

This is not to say that there won’t be continued efforts to unleash violence upon the world in an attempt to control the chaotic situation, but as they say in South Africa, the dying bull kicks the most (”War is never anything less than accelerated technological change,” p.102).

And finally, when the US attacked Iraq did its best to destroy arguably the weakest military in the world and its infrastructure, and it still can’t control the situation. If this isn’t an argument against empire, I don’t know what is. Mao was wrong. Power does not come from the barrel of the gun. That’s mugger’s logic. That kind of control is ultimately ephemeral and impermanent. As the Aztecs say, empires come and go, but what remains is flower and song (flor y canto). The illusion of eternal control via empire should have gone away with the Nazis. Beware of anyone who still holds this thought form. They are very dangerous to you, me and everyone around them, especially themselves.