Weapons of Mass Comprehension

[Scott Nesler]

For the sake of a clearer discussion, please remove my previous query
for February.

Here is the latest essay I have been refining for the Do Good Gauge.
Suggestions on how to improve this essay or where to submit it would
be appreciated. If you don't like the concept, I welcome your
comments as well. All advice, but ambivalence is appreciated.

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"Weapons of Mass Comprehension"

The M1A1 Abram has a unit price ranging from $2.35-$4.10 million
dollar depending on the variant. Over 8,800 M1 and M1A1 tanks have
been produced since its introduction in 1985. I cannot measure the
value of this weapon in solidifying the U.S. national defense, but I
would suggest its value in ending the struggles of Iraq and
Afghanistan is minimal.

George Carlin provides the best insight to our military quagmire,
"fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". The situation in
Iraq and Afghanistan is less about combat and more about reducing hate
and misunderstanding.

It's been said that the root of all evil is ignorance. The root of the
word ignorance is ignore. Ignoring the suffering does little to sooth
the hatred.

A non combative weapon must be developed to address the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. This weapon must open the dialog for understanding
the issues and for providing commonly agreed upon solutions. For less
than the price of one Abram tank, I would suggest a small team could
be assembled to complete the Do Good Gauge abstract and develop a
prototype of a more effective weapon to get out of the Iraq /
Afghanistan quagmire.

-- Albert Einstein - Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be
achieved by understanding.

[Jake Patterson]

hmmm.....
I agree with the premise, but I regard it as fantasy. There are a
number of reasons why fighting for peace is legitimate and defensible
in our world today. The one that I will tackle is culture. The Iraqi
and Afganistani people do not have the same values that you do. They
will battle you no matter how understanding you are. I do not
understand them, their lust for blood and their inexplicable hate.
But it's there and it's not going away.

When they have the same values as Americans, then we can talk like
George Carlin and make sense. But that time has not come. It may
never come. For an enlightened people, we are content to listen to
compromise, to collaborate, to try and understand each other and
refuse violence. But even in our society, I'm thinking specifically
of gangs here, those values are not ubiquitous.

I believe that reason and wisdom will make its way in our world. But
to think we can achieve it right now is to overestimate the progress
that enlightenment has made. It has a long way to go. To say that
the pen is literally mightier than the sword is to assume that the guy
with the sword isn't swinging.

Right now, he is.

[Scott Nesler]

Jake, I'm not suggesting an overhaul of our existing military arsenal,
just the recommendation of an additional weapon to the strategy.

I would like to understand. Killing for the sake of generalities
make no sense. I don't believe Iraq is at war with the United
States. American soldiers are dying because we are occupiers. I
also don't believe we should just pack up and leave. The likelihood
of genocide occurring if we did is to high. Our presence in Iraq has
escalated the hatred to a level which will last for generations.
Violence or extermination will not end this hatred.

My generalization of individuals from the middle east is that they are
as peace loving, respectful, and as rational as any other group I have
come to know. This generalization is based on the hundreds I have
worked with and attended school with.

Please don't categorize my argument as peace advocacy. There is a
time for war. This time is not one of them. If I'm wrong, the
argument should be drawn up in a rational non-generalized manner where
the majority can understand. This is the purpose of the weapon of
mass comprehension.

Jake, thank you for your feedback. It provides great insight into a
counter argument. Suggestions on how to improve my argument or
whether it should be abandon would be appreciated.

[Jake Patterson]

No, don't abandon it. This is going to sound ethnocentric of me, but
I believe that "enlightened Western civilization" is one of the
greatest goods in the world and the kinds of "weapons of mass
comprehension" that you suggest expose more and more people to it. I
believe that these kinds of liberalizing attempts on our part serve a
great good. It's just not a rapidly paced good.

I mistook your argument for pacifists I've listened to before and find
their arguments without foundation. My bad. We agree firmly that the
Iraq war is a problem and our presence there is hard to justify.

But your suggestion of making this "addition to our arsenal" is a wise
one. And I believe that many of our military efforts are doing a lot
of good. Soldiers I've spoken with have told me about the
humanitarian efforts there, the construction projects and things like
that. I think recently we've completely worn out our welcome, but a
lot of enlightenment has occured by our soldiers. I am aware that the
seeds of hatred have also been sowed, but so have the seeds of
understanding and respect. A lot more has to happen, and I believe
that a project such as you suggest would help the situation.

How do you plan on going about it?

> > > achieved by understanding.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Scott Nesler]

My plan is to find someone who is a better planner than me. You are
not kidding when you say this is a slow process. The weapon of mass
comprehension is the do good gauge. My plan is to recruit twelve
respectful and reasonable individuals of various professions,
backgrounds, and beliefs to complete the definition. My hope with
the group refinement is to develop a since of common good among
members to push the project through development, marketing, and
establishment.

I will continue to develop new article for the do good gauge
describing the process of understanding in attempts to recruit passion
in completing the requirements.

Jake it is dialogue like yours which identifies flaws in my delivery
and helps refine a more acceptable message. Getting this level of
feedback has been hard to come by. Ambivalence has been the rule up
till now.

Refining the message to embrace the respect of our solders would go a
long way. You are right in describing the great humanitarian effort
our soldiers have performed. A weapon of mass comprehension would
prevent facts like this from being buried by the fringes of the
argument.

The do good gauge is not a trivial application. Upon the completion
of the requirements, a prototype would take five software engineers
and a graphic artist six to eight months to develop. This needs to
be a funded project. I'm still looking for the second individual
dedicated to refining the idea. Convincing another programmer to
work for free will take another five years.

Getting funding will require support from congress. Congressman
typically listen to voters within their own district. A congressman
is not going to listen to an individual. There is a need for a larger
constituency. Getting the support of soldiers and making this
known through local media could provide enough support to get the ear
of congress.

Jake, thank you for the words of encouragement. Please keep me in
check.

[Scott Nesler]

The goal of this Weapons of Mass Comprehension idea was and still
remains a method to draw interest to the Do Good Gauge. The
conception of the idea initiated a new section for the Do Good
Gauge. This section would provide examples of barriers for
compression plus historical, existing, and conceived methods for
collaborative comprehension.

Below is the start of an article describing a conceived method for
improving comprehension. Please provide feedback for improving
this article.

-----------------------

As a male, it is a trial of masculinity to attend a book club. This
being said, I lone for the dissection of historical masterpieces
such as
in a university setting. Academia should not have a monopoly on
this collaborative book review method.

The website MeetUp provides a process for gathering individuals with a
common interest. An extension of the MeetUp process could gather
members to discuss great works of literature. Similar to a Amazon.com
book review, an individual would nominate a book for review.
Individuals would subscribe their interest to a book. Each book
acquiring four to twelve subscriptions would trigger an email to
subscribers. This notification would signals members to identify a
schedule, a meeting place, and define the process of reading the book.

Many clubs meet on a monthly bases where a book is reviewed in its
entirety. Historical masterpieces such as Plato's Republic requires
a
microscopic dissection. A weekly review of a few chapters of such a
book would provide a more comprehensive understanding.

The described process also provides a wider scope of books for
review. A typical book club reads one book per month. The choice
of book is limited to majority rule and time. The book review
process I described is opened to a larger community, providing a wider
choice for intellectual dissection.

--------

My goal is to wordsmith this idea as an article under the "Weapons of
Mass Comprehension" section of the Do Good Gauge.

[Brett Kraus]

This is to provide a different take on the original post. First, the
challenge of peace is to promote understanding, and there are groups
that are unwilling to understand. Unfortunately ignorance is not only
from ignoring, but it stems also from the inability to obtain
information. Isn't it odd that the majority of those people who plan
terrorist attacks are well-educated people, while those sacrificing
themselves are normally the poor and the desperate?

The standard schools in most of these countries provides horrendously
poor education or opportunities for the people, and many object to
them not being religious enough. So parents send their kids to
Madrassas, some of which are decent schools, while others focus on
teaching preschool age kids to hate - they do not teach math, science,
nor reading, just how to blow themselves up in the name of a religious
tenet that is perverted from what their scripture teaches.

It is no wonder they have a seemingly endless supply of haters, they
are pushed there from their youth. In the scriptures I read, there is
a warning to parents that if they do not train kids in the way they
should go, then the parents will be responsible for the sins of the
kids (yeah I am paraphrasing). Kids are so malleable and teachable,
that it is easy to direct their paths -- even though it takes constant
and persistent work.

Another element of my thought is the way militaries train their
soldiers: They break down their soldiers before building them back up.
The reason for this is that they need to force out many negative
habits that people have. The military is much nicer about it now that
has historically been the case, but the breaking down of the person
allows the military to build them up how a person wants.

Now with a country that is hard, because not everyone will be broken,
and unless the infrastructure and education is replaced, nothing will
change, and with the recent education, I doubt much will change for
years. This will require serious effort, time, and money.

In reading a book about the history of the Islam war, the author makes
the claim that had we put more money into Afghanistan during the
collapse of the USSR, then we could have prevented most of today's
struggles. The country had already been beaten up by the USSR and we
could have built schools and roads and cleaned up a lot and been
treated as heroes. Instead, their political leaders used us as
scapegoats, blaming us for all that went wrong. Decrying our occupancy
of Saudi Arabia, when it was their leaders who invited us there in the
first place.

Essentially the struggle is going to be hard fought and may require
blowing some things up, but mostly it needs true education.