john-taylor-gatto-weapons-of-mass-instruction

1I6
WEAPONS OF MASS INSTRUCTION
violent means necessary to create and maintain the British
Empire. Darwin's explanation, on the other hand, that continuous
competition of a life and death variety was nature's
way, put the voice of Science squarely in the camp of imperialism,
globalism, racism, colonialism, free trade economics,
and much else of moment to the powerful in 19th century
Britain. But if life were found to be inherently better where
cooperation rules, as Wallace said, the privileged world
would turn upside down.
By Darwin's day, among the powerful, Christianity had
become merely ceremonial, a dangerous relic of the past to
be kept under State control as it was in the Anglican order.
But Wallace, although not arguing his case from any theological
perspective, still marshaled his theory in a way which
led to the age-old Christian conclusion: we are our brother's
keeper; patience, not violent action, is the wisest course in
the face of the inevitable.
The revolutionary ability of the Christian message to
stir up the masses and put them maddeningly out of reach
of carrot/stick control machinery was regarded with horror
by the British upper classes. When people build the meaning
of their days out of relationships, love, piety, loyalty, and frugal
self-sufficiency, the notion of happiness through an accumulation
of stuff suffers. But what were the ramifications of
that for a commercial civilization On the other hand, when
competition is seen as essential to a good life, when winning
against one's neighbors is put at the heart of society, business
thrives. To win, others have to lose: the more losers, the better
winning feels.
My dear Bruno, you could build a bridge to the moon
and back on the corpses which accrued from Darwin's contentious
work and the work of his first cousin, Francis
Galton, in initiating out the politics of his biological suppositions.
He provided policymakers already disposed to