Jesusism-Paulism, Part III: Every Man a Panzer, Every Woman a Soldat

 

If we view Paul objectively — as the hyper-lingual ex-State-Church secret-policeman with training in history, science, politics, philosophy that he was — we can see what he saw. We can read the tactics and strategies he devised and published so plainly, like Mao and Ho after him.

Paul saw what the 20th Century feminist Rebecca West famously saw while researching her magnum opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, and captured as

 

“The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.” Rebecca West (Black Lamb and Grey Falcon)

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a travelogue of ex-Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Kosovo) immediately before the Nazi invasion. Over and over again she saw the same pattern: men were swept away by far-away schemes and ideas (like lunatics), while women were so absorbed by families and personal relationships they ignored those same forces (like idiots). To Dame Commander West, men were idiotically refusing to focus on the real details of daily living while women were foolishly refusing to focus on the fate of their nation and culture. In other words, men are idiots for not engaging in long-term coalition building on a family level (in “tight” or “dense” networks) while women are fools for not engaging in long-term coalition building on the national and ideological level (in “loose” or less “dense” nets).

Rebecca’s West breakdown of mankind:

To an anthropologist this might be interesting. To a feminist, troubling. But to a netstruggle strategist, it is a description of the warriors and an opportunity.

Paul built his population of Christian warriors — what he called “wrestlers” — on this difference. Men would be maneuver-warriors. Women would be occupation-warriors. And together they would build a Christian future worth creating.

Paul’s breakdown of mankind:

Where else do we see the same breakdown?

Maneuver Warfare + Occupation Warfare = Victory

“PISRR” is an acronym invented by Col. John Boyd to describe the steps to victory. It stands for Penetrate-Isolate-Subvert-Reorient-Reharmonize. In netwar or “4GW” PISRR, like China with Mao or Vietnam with Ho, guerrillas build up from small cells in a very loose network to ruling and controlling a dense network. We can apply this to a Christian “attack” on a family:

Christian-Family PISRR

1. PenetratePreacher converts small number of family members
2. IsolateConverts denormalize old beliefs
3. SubvertConverts co-opt family (mini Roman takeover)
4. ReorientFamily power relationships further new beliefs
5. ReharmonizeParents raise children in Christian home

The latter in the attack, the dense the network. It is no surprise then that the later in the attack, the more “feminine” the attack becomes. The first stage, Penetration, would be done by a preacher who finds a convert. The last stage, Reharmonization, would be done by mothers who raise their children to think of Christianity as natural.

It may help to think of the Christian take-over of a Family like the Nazi takeover of France.

German-French PISRR

1. PenetrateBlitz shreds French lines, occupying little
2. IsolateMop-up attacks separate French troops from friends
3. SubvertCollaborators co-opt nation (Petain’s Regime)
4. ReorientFrench economy geared to German economic union
5. ReharmonizeNew generation grows up “occupied” (ABORTED!)

The Germans did not have the same force-structure conquer France as ruled France. As Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett said

It’s time to admit that you can’t have the same 19-year-old kid doing all these things

Indeed, and the Germans did not. The first weeks of the war were fought by panzers and other high-maneuverability low-density fighting machines. When we think of 1940, we think of tanks and the style of war that Erich Ludendorff created. But panzer brigades could hardly pacify France! Soldats — Germans in charge of walking-the-beat-style policework did that. Maneuver war needs panzers, but occupation war requires soldats.

What Paul’s ideas did for Christians, and the Ludendorff’s for the Germans, was to deconflict the elements of the attacking force. A PISRR victory requires two different forces fighting in two different battlespaces. The panzer-soldat deconfliction is what Dr. Barnett means when he talks about the separate “mixes needed for front-half [war waging] and back-half [peace making] portions.”

When forces for very different battlespaces are combined — when an attacker foolishly becomes “joint” — that attack loses. The French had “better” tanks fighting jointly with “better” soldiers, France lost her army to inferior tanks and nearly lost her history to inferior soldats. Like the Germans, the Christians started out weak, poor, and oppressed. Like the Germans against France thousands of years later, the Christians in Rome deconflicted the components of their movement, exploited each to its maximum comparative advantage, and won.

(Sidenote: The economic version of the easier victory an appropriately deconflicted force has over an inappropriately joint force has be known since David Ricardo, Spanish-Jewish-Britain, invented the doctrine of “comparative advantage” in the early 19th century. An extremely good introduction to this, leading up to point “R” on ” Figure 16: World production possibilities curve,” is available at http://www.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ355/choi/ric2.htm).

So now Paul’s words aren’t so strange or contradictory at all. He was setting up two different forces for two different struggles in two different arenas. Paul recognized and exploited the natural differences in men and women to further Christianity. Indeed, the grand strategist Tom Barnett makes almost the same distinction as Paul, for almost the same ends. Talking about his front-half force (the “Leviathan”) and his “back-half” force (the “System Administrator”), Barnett writes

That’s why I call the Leviathan your Dad’s military (“Don’t make me come in there!”) and the Sys Admin force your Mom’s military (“Oh, you make me so proud when you do that for yourself!”).

We can see the basic Panzer-Blitz-Leviathan-Fast-Father / Soldat-Police-SysAdmin-Slow-Mother divide as so…

… just as we can see that the feminization of religion is as self-defeating as the French joint tank-soldier method of losing the Second World War.

Centuries later, Paul’s creation would deform under the frictional heat of Islam. But such is a post for another time…

Update: Feministing links to an article that focuses on pitch and harmony processing instead of network density.

---

Jesusism-Paulism, a series in six parts
1. Love Your Enemy As You Would Have Him Love You
2. Caiaphas and Diocletian Did Know Better
3. Every Man a Panzer, Every Woman a Soldat
4. The Fall of Rome
5. The People of the Book
6. Embrace and Extend