The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom

Author:Howard Bloom
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

THE PUZZLE OF COMPLACENCY

In a world where some cultures elevate violence to a virtue, the dream of peace can be fatal. It can make us forget that our enemies are real and can blind us to the dark imperatives of the superorganismic pecking order.

For thousands of years, China was an empire of unbelievable size and stability. Its technology and wealth were the envy of its neighbors. In 221 B.C., the Chinese laid out a standard length for the axles of carts. The result: a wagon could roll over tens of thousands of miles of highway, and its wheels would fit precisely in the ruts left by previous travelers.517 The Chinese had paper money and uniform standards of weights and measures while Europe was still blundering through the Dark Ages.518 Chinese weaponry and military strategy were light years ahead of anything else around. While Roman emperors were still relying on mechanical catapults, Chinese generals were deploying gunpowder mortars.519 As early as the fourth century B.C., Chinese princes were already sending armies of half a million men into battle, and those legions were equipped with hardware the Europeans of their time could not even imagine. They had trigger-operated crossbows, chain-mail armor, and swords and spears of a miracle metal—steel.520

But the Chinese were periodically blinded by their own power. Slipping into the cheerful conviction that they could simply wish warfare away, they overlooked the potential of barbarians. One of the first to make that mistake was Chinese Emperor Wu Ti. In A.D. 280, Wu Ti took a good look at the colossus over which he ruled and discovered that it was in economic trouble: trade was in a shambles. The people were poor and burdened with unbearable taxation. When Wu Ti examined the problem more carefully, he quickly found its root. China was being dragged into the pit by a burden that had grown like a cancer: her military budget. Taxes were sopped up by the needs of a massive army, and most of the country’s coins had literally been melted down to make weapons, forcing merchants to abandon money and rely on primitive barter. There was so little cash available that even government bureaucrats had to be paid in grain and silks.

But there was good news on the horizon: Wu Ti’s armies had just overcome the two great powers that had for years posed the empire’s major military threat—the muscular kingdoms of Wei and Wu. Now the moment had arrived when China could discard her military burden, lighten the load on her people, and set her economy free.

Reducing the military budget was a good idea, but the Chinese took it too far. In the year 280, Emperor Wu Ti made a staggering announcement, one that must have gladdened the hearts of Chinese everywhere. He decreed a general disarmament. The anvils of the swordmakers and the armorers grew silent. Generals were commanded to decommission their troops. Soldiers were ordered to go back to civilian life. The government hoped that its former infantrymen would

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