Law and War II
In Law and War I we adopted Grotius’ simple definition of war: contention by force, whether between individuals, states or some combination thereof. In this article, I consider the different sorts of forces applied in warfare. Contention by force may be divided into several planes: the “physical plane of war...the political, economic, and psychological (also known as moral) planes” (Clow, Ryan. Psychological Operations: The Need to Understand the Psychological Plane of Warfare. Canadian Military Journal, Vol. 9 No. 1.). In this article, we consider Psychological Warfare, or Psy Ops.
As Clow points out,
“Psy Ops have been defined as planned psychological activities designed to influence attitudes and behaviour affecting the achievement of political and military objectives. Arguably, part of the problem with effectively integrating Psy Ops into modern military tactics is the definition itself. As it stands, it says everything and nothing, all at once.” (ibid.)
The psychological plane of war is especially important, because it could be used to cause a population subject to war to believe it was not subject to war: the classic 1984 dictum “war is peace. freedom is slavery.” Through Psy Ops, subject populations might have their entire lexicon destroyed, in service of, Clow notes, political and military objectives; thus Psychological Operations may be long-standing, and, indeed, may be used to achieve the formation of psychological states in a subject population.
If we adopt this view, we are at risk of everything becoming a Psy Op, especially if done by political or military actors. It is, however, entirely possible to conceive of institutions as wide as public schools, public hospitals and Legislatures as psychological operations, in whole or in part. Take, for example, how the school regiments children and grades them on aspects of their behavior in, for example “social studies.” Children are not taught that it is a “theory” that the state exists, nor are they told it is a corporation. In this sense, the Psy Op is to naturalize belief in the state. We might, therefore, say that the public school exists to inculcate developmental delay, and belief in the state.
Certainly, this is in the political and economic interest of the teacher, who requires a continual stream of pupils, to justify continuing employment. Therefore, we see at least an apparent conflict of interest, and potential Psy Op, whenever a Government employees (the one-in-five) utter statements like “the state exists” or “the state may tax you.” Obviously, these statements could be true, but, more likely, they are the state employee directing active Psychological Operations at children, in order to groom them for a life of subservience to the corporation.
One way to resist this indoctrination is to homeschool your children. This will provide you with a safe-haven from state indoctrination, at least to a degree. Unfortunately, if you are a single parent, or lack the economic means to have one parent stay at home, the state may even try to seize your children under the guise of “child protection,” another corporate employment program. There are no easy answers to resisting corporate Psy Ops, but perhaps the first step in arming yourself and your clan against them is to recognize what a Psy Op is: in some sense all assertions about the existence, or powers, of corporations (such as states) are psychological operations, because, as Coke says, corporations are “framed by the policy of man.”
In some sense, therefore, corporations are themselves psychological operations, as are all classes of entities on a par with them: rights, uses, trusts, inheritances, etc. This will be explored in the third part of this series, the general notion of incorporeal things.