Tuesday, April 21, 2020

12,750. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,032

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,032
(freshet)
There's a lot of prescience
in science. I always thought
that to be pretty funny, even
though a scientist would probably
dispute me and go on saying
how the whole idea of 'Science'
is in not knowing things
beforehand, and thus making
the conjectures and the line
experiments by which to prove
premises. I won't argue the
point; the scientist would
probably be right. By Science's
terms. Mine are different. It
always seemed to me that the
'future' is always already out
there, in front of it, and that
we just walk into it; it having
already been constructed for
and by us by the manner of
assumptions and things we do.
The trick of the best people is
in knowing it beforehand. That's
where the big hump of prescience
is. Fancy names for other things:
necromancy, fortune telling, tarot
cards, etc. Go see the Gypsy lady;
she'll tell you gladly.
-
Life unfolds its own battlements,
but they are all already there. The
pennants and flags of logic and
assumption, ritual and rite, by
which we try, as people, to claim
the field, are in place long before
we reach their meadow. Interestingly
enough, History proves this out, in
an odd way : There was a time, in
old Europe, about the early 17th
century, known now as the 'Age of
Limited Warfare.'  Restraint, it
meant, on the battlefield, as if all
the endings were already known,
and no one really wished to go
through all the groan and gore
of battle. After the bloodbaths
of the religious wars, the new
'Enlightened Age' offered Europe
a relief, less from the fighting
itself than from its worst horrors.
War was 'moderated,' through
the adaption of more formal rules
for combat and engagement by
the specialization of the military
function. Those restraints, which
made warfare less destructive
also made battles, and war, less
decisive. During the colonial
period, European history was a
story of continual, indecisive
warfare. About Euro-warfare,
Daniel Defoe remarked : "Now
it is frequent [1697] to have armies
of 50,000 men on a side stand
at bay within view of one another,
and spend a whole campaign in
dodging, or, as it is genteelly called,
'observing one another,' and then
march off into winter quarters. The
difference is in the maxims of war,
which now differ as much from
what they were formerly as long
perukes do from piqued beards,
or as the habits of the people do
now from what they then were.
The present maxims of war are
"Never fight without a manifest
advantage, and always encamp
so as not to be forced to it." And
if two opposing generals nicely
observe both these rules, it is
impossible they should ever
come to fight.'
-
I feel that to be the same sort
of shadow-dance that Science
does with its own prescience.
The play-act of sincerity and
of career undertake the genteel
pulling out of what is already
there.
-
Battles, in this period mentioned,
tended to take place on large, open
fields, where the customary rules
and formations could be obeyed.
At the opening of a battle, the
opposing forces were set up like
men on a chessboard; each side
usually knew what forces the
other possessed, and each part
of an army was expected to
perform only specific maneuvers.
Sneak attacks, irregular warfare,
and unexpected and unheralded
tactics were generally frowned
upon as violations of the rules.
I have a lot more I could put
here about battles-from-formation
and all that, but I'll just summarize
it together like this: Those Brits
coming over here, they all had
those formation-militaries in mind;
the soldiers and the settlers. They
quickly grew amazed by the tactics
of their 'Indian' native antagonists;
hiding and attacking rashly and
suddenly from behind trees and
shrubs, violent raids and sneak
attacks, a pure and vicious brutality,
often as possible sparing no one,
infants, females, and the rest.
Torture, maiming and more.
The settlers soon themselves 
 found this to be a better tactic
and in 80 years or so, when the
Revolution here came on, it was
the same irregular tactics they
used against the vain, Royalist
troops sent here to resist them. 
Those Royalists often used the
same, old, orderly Euro-means
of warfare.  The wild-fighters
of the Continentals and militias
and Revolutionaries triumphed.
Fast forward all this some 180
years, or whatever it is, and it
amazes me how simple the entire
thing had fallen back into its
own predictability in Vietnam.
In that case, OUR forces were
the equivalent of the Royalist
troops sent to another land to
fight, and the Vietcong, using
those same, crazy tactics, which
we then labelled 'guerilla' forces
and 'guerilla' ambush tactics, 
bested' us; in much the same 
form of wear-down attrition 
that we'd done to the British.
Those 'guerillas,' in 12 years
had turned out forces into
bedraggled, drunk and drug
addled commissars of a losing
battle with no end in sight
and no way out. Instead of
continuing to fall apart and
kill each other, fragging
officers, and pop-blasting
at will, the fool's game was
called off, and the team 
went home. Frantically.
-
Yeah, well, we all got hit,
I suppose. A freshet is the
flood that comes after a heavy
rain or a large melt of snow.
I always felt that this was
all akin to that.


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