As I was organizing my Hong Kong Stamps in my Chinese collection, I suddenly realized, with very mixed feelings, I have grown old with Queen Elizabeth II. I remember hearing the radio broadcasts of her coronation. I have, over the years, collected beautiful coins, especially Canadian, with her, till the last ten years, her very beautiful image on them. The Hong Hong stamps are amongst the most artistic the British Empire has produced and all are interesting. But some of the images of Elizabeth II are startling in their beauty and sexual attraction.

Then I also suddenly realized after accumulating a number of random facts about Hong Hong's 'absorbtion' into Red China that it is Hong Hong that has absorbed Red China and not the other way around. The economy of Red Chi9na is now irrevocably tied to the financial well being of Hong Kong and the Red Chinese Yuan STRICTLY pegged to the Hong Kong dollar, BOTH 7.8 to $1.00 US.

Once again small groups of individuals, unexpected and ultimately irreducible individuals, have determined the fate of empires as in NATIONALIST MOBILIZATION. They are not dramatic or even known. Those whose faces get placed in newspapers and magazines and TV are merely those taking advantage of whatever kind of 'group' enthusiasm seizes the actual attention of human action as opposed to mere abstractions. In this case financial strength and ability in the hands of Hong Kong financiers and bankers have seized the attention and will of the active majority of the rest of Red China -- purely individual by individual seeking their own self-advantage.

One wonders about the nationality problems in Red China compared to the still on-going conflicts in the STILL 'former' USSR. Though the Ukraine seems to be truly learning the democratic process, Putin wants to interfere. The Russian Federated Republic bullied Georgia until it got its way using its Abkhasian and Ossetian conflicts against it AS WELL AS Chechnyan refugees from Russian terror in Chechnya. Russia seems to possibly have MANUFACTURED the Muslim menace in Chechnya through their own still-ongoing Russian 'racism' still forced, though much milder, on the autonomous republics like Chechnya, Dagestan, North Abhkasia, North Ossetia, and Tannu Tuva. Muslim Republics in Central Asia separated from the USSR BUT STILL IN ECONOMIC UNION with the Russian Federated Republic have mostly steared a very careful and pro-West + pro-Russian policy over fundamentalist Islamic movements except Tajikistan which dissolved into civil war between the industrialized north and pastoral, fundamentalist south.

Now, taking Chechnya as a clue, I wonder if the creation of anti-American fundamentalist Islam is, at least in part, a creation or mis-creation of secret American foreign policy, in part derived from the mutual stupidity of the Afghan war, a conflict with the Russians we inherited from the British, but also all the miscalculation and misinterpretation and down right bungling since the United Nations voted for the formation of Israel (including the vote of the USSR).

There are two, maybe three, very new, at least to me, concepts in Beissinger's book that seem to completely reverse the whole force of abstractions as group thinking.

The first is "clustering in time" becoming "thickened history" (page 27 -- I'm a slow reader) -- that is, problems that have been 'solved' by suppression like that of the nationalities in the USSR to the point almost everyone involved think only minor changes are possible under the best of circumstances -- suddenly get the chace to freely express themselves and suddenly utterly change the whole landscape of actual human thinking in action, as opposed to abstractions merely in books, whose FUNDAMENTAL ASSUMPTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE AND THINKING change from moment to moment according to circumstances. New circumstances free the pent-up, 'clustered' past. BUT IN TURN the ability to act upon these 'old' concepts in the real present changes them fundamentally also. Just as Jean-Paul Sartre seemed to indicate, in REAL freedom like that, where the old rules of 'good' and 'evil' no longer seem adequate, anything is possible, the game is wholely open, and one may become a Nazi or Communist according to one's circumstances -- or -- as the vast mojority of ordinary human being try to do if their leaders who "know better" do not prevent them, they simply want to lead long, healthy, happy lives in conflict with no one. This is what happened in China after the fall of the Empire. The leaders knew better what was good for the people than ordinary people did, and so forced their leadership upon them, denying them democracy until they were 'prepared' for it. If they had had no leaders, NO LEADERS WHATSOEVER, the same thing may have happened as has happened between Red China and Hong Kong.

The good life is all they want. They have no desire to kill others. Only psychopathic leaders do. Even among the Palestinians.

Going from the consequences of "clustering time" and "thickened history" coming alive out of mere ora;/written history, to the realization of circumstanstial and temporary total lack of all restraints to thinking and acting upon that thinking, however irrational and disastrous in the long run, exileration becomes the most important factor in political action! Suddenl; y "All things are possible!" "Anything goes!" for the moment. One can be as vicious or noble as one wants. One can be Spartan setting very narow limits to thought and action in fear of all the unknown consequences crowding in. One can become Athentian where anything can be said, one can act to legislate one's dreams or resentiment, one can create science and philosophy . . . and one can strive to conquer the surrounding world and make them all your slaves. It is here one can see the limited and realistic aspirations of an 'ordinary' person is absolutely essential to giving solid ground and realistic limits to action.

This lack of restraint and exileration gives rise to another of Beissinger's fundamental concepts where "challenging events" or "contencious events" . . . "constitute an increasingly significant part of their own causal structure". This is "mobilization" being established as a technical philosophical and sociological term without ever forgetting it is the INDIVIDUAL who is actually exilerated! It is "an insight about how the vicissitudes of order alter the context within which the politics of identity plays ot self out" (pg.
25). The difference between personal identity and political identity here obviously becomes very fragile. In the Bolshevik Revolution, one might say the difference between "peasant" identity and "worker" identity play itself out in the clash between the peasant's individual personal desire to own THIS piece of land and who gives a damn what goes on in the cities versus the worker who owns nothing, nothing has no or infinite limits, therefore no limits to aspiration or power.

In a circumstance where no limits seem to apply, then "history" which stored up specific resentiments begins to be rewritten to understand the "infinite possibilities"
(Heidegger/Sartre) available to someone who can 'own' nothing permanently [death versus conscience]. If one is going to die anyway, then "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tommorrow you die" . . . or kill the rich and powerful . . . or . . . the Jews . . . or Americans . . . etc., etc., etc. The "peasant" 'ordinary' person does not want to indulge in any of these disastrous passions.

The point is, 'actual' history ceases to define limits of reality and free action starts a "recursive causuality", the second of the concepts. It motivates itself to act: It acts to motivate itself. Truth becomes a hermeneutic circle

Later,

Gary.C.Moore.