SINCE WARS BEGIN IN THE MINDS OF MEN, IT IS IN THE MINDS OF MEN THAT THE DEFENSES OF PEACE MUST BE CONSTRUCTED
After more than half a century since that famous phrase first appeared in the Charter of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a treatise has appeared that faces the problem squarely at its roots, and presents essential foundations, principles and applications of the new Defenses of Peace. That treatise is this Principia. In so being, it is also the central weapon, the blueprint, the keystone of a wholly new softpower concept and its extraordinarily low-cost, high-impact, low-casualty defense system. Advanced, fundamental, essential. And much of it is already in place.
In the course of its evolution and development since its origins in World War II, this work has expanded to encompass the full range of hominid malignance. The new field that emerged, called Ideologics (eye' dee oh low' gics), or ID for short, is applicable to that full range, from families to nations and transnational movements. In-depth applications are provided to Racism, Religionism, Ethnicism, Terrorism, War/Peace and Arms Control, among much else.
Principia Ideologica has been six years in research, development and writing, and includes valuable contributions by the faculties and staffs of Princeton University and Hampshire College (United States), Imperial College (England), University of Geneva (Switzerland), and University of St Petersburg (Russia), as well as Columbia College and University (United States) from the author's formative years, and UNESCO (Paris), which provided copies of its historic Statements On Race, which were drawn up by international conferences of experts in the 1950s and 60s. It is also much indebted to the resources made available by the author's Guest Scholar privileges at Princeton University.
The resultant Principia spans many fields, as might be expected in a work that spans history, especially the Twentieth Century, many wars and nations, the many faces of micro and macro hominid malignance, and the ascent of life and intellect on this planet, especially during the past five thousand ears. Yet it is designed and written so as to be accessible to nearly everyone, albeit in varying degrees, depending on one's background.
Part V, The Ascent of Intellect, is an education in itself, and alone worth getting the book. This single chapter took three years to research and write, spans 4.5 billion years, from Earth's formation through ancient and medieval times to contemporary Western Civilizations, culminating in deeply substantive portrayals of the rise and nature of knowledge, from elementary particles out into the cosmos and back to the beginning of time. Part VII, The Quest, augments that portrayal of the ascent of intellect and knowledge even more profoundly. In this way, and only this way, can the reader actually see the process of producing and validating genuine knowledge, obtain a foundational awareness of presently known natural philosophy, and thereby much better understand the nature of knowledge and its relation to oppression, racism, bigotry, ethnicism, war, terrorism, arms control, and Peace. Only in this way can Mankind break his self-imposed chains of false belief, and free himself from his self-made cross of malignant ideologies. Hence, ye must also know falsehood, and that truth shall make you free. (Mandatum Novum II, p 483)
The chapters on the Melian Conference of the Peloponnesian War, the three World Wars and the three Holocausts of Western Civilizations in the 20th Century provide new insights into the catastrophe that constitutes that civilization and century, and demonstrate the essential concept of true Peace and how to achieve it. The chapters on Ideologics, International ID, Military ID, Arms Control ID, and Societal ID, provide ID principles and applications in those domains, including reproduction of the author's Statement On Ideological Arms Control in the published United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings On The SALT II Treaty. The chapters on Racism, Religionism, Mythopoeism, Ethnicism, and Terrorism provide principles and applications in those domains that are essential to significant progress in them. The concluding Part VIII, World Affairs, provides two chapters, Defenses of Peace and Beyond Deterrence, War, and Arms Control, that develop further historical insights and operational principles and applications, bring the book together, and build the new defenses of peace on the world stage. Although developed in the context of Western Civilizations, the Principia provides principles that are universal and paradigms that are adaptable to other civilizations and for resolutions between civilizations.
The book opens with A Guide To The Reader and Preface, Foreword, Perspectives and Epilogue. It ends with a powerful Conclusion centered on conversations and correspondence in 1955 ago between the author and the late, great theologican Reinhold Niebuhr, followed by a Prologue that serves as prolegomenon to the future. The Addendum comprises a reprint of the author's previously published paper on Ideotopology, the mathematical formulation of and diagnostic instrument for malignant ideologies.
All told, the Principia is far more than a book, and is, rather, extraordinarily unique: an essential multidisciplinary, multidimensional, multifaceted, multistyled work embodying all of the foregoing in a single, comprehensive resource for the future.
The Principia is especially vital, essential and urgent for treating the Balkan Syndrome. For, in the present era of world affairs, there will continue to be no Peace in the Balkans; only militarily-enforced precarious arrangements. The only way that Peace can be developed in the Balkans is by application of the principles and methods provided by this Principia. Fortunately, that is being recognized in key circles there. Such applications will also initiate deployment of the new Defenses of Peace, and thereby begin the new era -- at the start of the new millennium.
The Principia will, in time, prove to be an exceedingly powerful Epilogue to the evils of the past and present, the foundational Prologue to a far better future, and, altogether, in timing and content, a truly Millennial work.
All of the foregoing and much more is contained in a single, enduring resource of 550 acid-free pages measuring 8.5 x 11 x 2.13 inches and weighing 2.8 pounds.
