"To be a professional success in America, whatever the field, means above all to have made the grammar of empire coextensive with one's mind and manner."

["...the primary function of written communication is to facilitate slavery. The use of writing for disinterested purposes, and as a source of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, is a secondary result, and more often than not it may even be turned into a means of strengthening, justifying or concealing the other." [1]

More than four and a half centuries before Claude Lévi-Strauss recorded this observation in his seminal work on indigenous societies in South America, the Spanish scholar Antonio de Nebrija presented to Queen Isabella of Castile in 1492 the first grammar of a modern European language, entitled Gramática. When the queen asked what it was for, the bishop of Avila who was present replied, "...language is the perfect instrument of empire." [2]

Power's vice-grip on language is like Jupiter's influence on Io. Held in captured rotation and squeezed into permanent volcanism by immense tidal forces, the tormented satellite keeps itself covered in vomit for the amusement of the gas giant: a model for understanding not merely academia's relationship to power, but that of institutions generally, and people individually as well.

In exchange for tight little orbits around nodes of power and profit, professionals in all fields of endeavor train long years to embrace the grammar of a language corrupted, deformed and enslaved by the gravity of the power it serves. Upon completing the training, scarcely a professional would deny he is a free-thinking person in command of his own mind. And scarcely would a single one be right.

The overriding concern of American education is to cull, sort and homogenize the millions of minds given over to its influence in preparation for a life of programmed allegiance to a fascist-corporate state. Is this too cynical a view? The question itself proves the truth value of the observation. The beneficiaries of a nation founded upon mass murder, slavery, gender inequality, land theft and environmental destruction (and those who identify with them and their crimes) are invariably the same who dismiss the observation as pure cynicism. In doing so, they prove that the system produced in them the desired results. Moreover, to think that central planners at any level of control would promote, as a matter of policy, an educational system of intellectual honesty and self-reliance, before the government they cravenly serve has apologized and atoned for the staggering crimes of its past, and declared a new beginning, is naïve stupidity.

Beyond the immediate purpose of providing specialized training, the ultimate goal of education is to make us more human, to expand our humanity. Yet this is at variance with the dictates of empire. Because the US has always behaved as an imperial entity, the conflict between education and empire was present from the beginning. For America's devastating economic project to prevail in the world (the triumph of capitalism over everything, even the physical and biological conditions necessary for life) education in the US is culturally pre-determined to function as an institution of dishonesty, classism, thought control and private advantage.

Indeed, it no longer makes sense to talk of education in America as a social institution. It's now an industry of profit, greed and corruption gathered into the hands of the business elite. Seeing this transformation take place in stages over a period of decades, American academics might have organized themselves long ago to resist a trend so obviously detrimental to society. Loyal instead to a system that confers on them considerably greater privilege, status and advantage relative to working- and lower-class people, they have always behaved politically as a class of professional collaborationists. As such they allow themselves but two choices: to accept and rationalize to themselves and others the conflicting goals of education and empire; or to dispense with the conflict altogether by working to destroy education as a vehicle of social and economic uplift accessible to all. The first choice is profoundly dishonest; the second profoundly sadistic. In both cases they are cowards and traitors to humanity.

Obama's nauseatingly-named "Race to the Top" initiative is not merely a continuation of the abysmal "No Child Left Behind" policy of the Bush Administrative, but an intensification and acceleration. Public education, if properly and uniformly funded by a progressive tax structure, is a powerhouse of solidarity, social uplift and democratization; automatically, as if by magic, it spreads the wealth of a nation far and wide. As such no other social institution is of greater importance or economic value in the universal struggle for freedom, justice and equality - precisely why public education is public enemy number one for corporate America, and must be destroyed. For decades Republicans have been the hired assassins of choice for this job. But if the Clinton era proved anything, it's that democrats can be counted on to deliver the coup de grace to a public-sector institution which Republicans have been trying to kill off for years. So Obama may reform education as Clinton reformed welfare - by destroying it, and liberals everywhere will stand up and cheer.

To be a professional success in America, whatever the field, means above all to have made the grammar of empire coextensive with one's mind and manner. For this feat the professional fancies himself highly capable. Indeed, he is empire's perfect instrument who uses language to cover himself in disgrace, first by denying his own truth and vulnerability as a human being, then by attacking the truth and justice of the world. For this humiliation he garners large salaries, privilege and access, which makes his humiliation feel exactly like success. For every exception, like Lévi-Strauss, to this almost immutable social law operating inside imperial societies, there are legions of others, like Nebrija, the bishop and the queen, who (consciously or not) use the faculty of language for the enslavement of other people.

The cowardice that dominates academia is deeply entrenched in all sectors and institutions of American society (public, private, non-profit; government, business, media, military, entertainment, religion). The recent decision taken by the US Supreme Court (Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, Jan 2010) illustrates how inimical the cookie-cutter products of American education are to the safety of humanity and the health of the planet. This odious decision, overturning a century of well-established law, now permits unlimited corporate spending in public elections. Could anything be more destructive of democracy and justice? A tyranny perhaps that celebrates its own crime - which is where this decision points. How much education is needed to understand this? Not much. How much education is needed to make such a decision, then to defend it as fair and impartial? A lot.

The grammar of empire governs the priorities of science and research no less than law. Take for example genetic engineering - the practice of injecting the genes of one species into the DNA of another, creating an unnatural, biological product that can be patented and sold at great profit. Why does this promise to be a catastrophe for the world if allowed to continue? In the 4.5 billion years of Earth's natural history the genes of widely disparate species have never been permitted to mix. Those who support this practice say, in effect, that they are smarter than the wisdom of 4.5 billion years of evolution - an obscene display of boundless arrogance only possible perhaps in a culture already obliterated by the enormities of corporate lawlessness. Educated to the highest level of their stupidity, loyal only to false power and profit, those who support this practice are little more than hired slaves working to destroy the integrity of human and non-human DNA alike. How does one begin to quantify the crime of supporting a technology that threatens irreversibly to destabilize the DNA of living things?

The same stupidity and arrogance is seen in those who support nuclear power. Why is this practice a catastrophe for the world? For many reasons; here is one. A reasonably informed pupil knows that the energy cycle in nature is a closed system. Nature produces no waste that cannot be broken down and recycled. Here again professionals in government, business and research claim to be wiser than 4.5 billion years of natural evolution. So producing mountains of highly toxic nuclear waste is not a show-stopper. Never mind that this waste can never be broken down and recycled; or that it remains a deadly threat to all life on Earth for hundreds of thousands to millions of years, i.e. forever; or that its containment and safety can never be assured. Would the modern world exist, had antiquity bequeathed to it an eternal legacy of toxic waste to poison, kill and bankrupt every succeeding generation? What class of fools would rush to fill up a fragile, finite planet, already on the brink of environment collapse, with this kind of junk? World-class fools, of course.]

Mes bien chers professeurs,
en qui jadis j'avais confiance,
pour qui jadis j'avais beaucoup
d'affection - pardon my French,
but your assholes are clogged
with monstrous quantities
of mind-constricting shit,
and every year you fall more foul
of unevacuated bowels.

What Hercules now could clear
the course of higher thought,
and flush buggery-clean
the once pan-decorous
anus of academe?

What a gift to be dismissed
by the pavid, learnèd minds
of sophisticated people,
because you have no thicker
armament than naked art-
lessness...

And O what sweet touché,
when nature proves is they
are slaves and you are free,
to watch them shrink and cower
from the truth for fear of lost
careers; to see them keep them-
selves aloof and glare at you
askew through unquiet eyes
that all but say, their tongues un-
strung, but we thought you
were dumb!

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo. [3]

little big pine
april 2010

Little Big Pine: citizen, patriot, poet; may be reached at littlebigpine@gmail.com.

Endnotes

1. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 299.

2. Anecdote from Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians (Chicago: H. Regnery, 1959), 8. "Siempre la lengua ha sido compañera del imperio" is what Nebrija wrote in his introduction to the work.

3. Borrowed from the Latin poet Catullus, carmen 16 (first century BCE). I remind the reader here that all words are symbols. Until one comprehends this basic truth and its implications, one is never fully literate, no matter how much schooling.