Excerpt from Endgame

Morality TM (p. 530)

From chapter "Winning"

A question not often enough discussed among those killing the world and too often discussed among those of us trying to stop them has to do with the relationship between strategy and tactics on one hand, and the morality of those strategies and tactics on the other. The first option of those in power is to explicitly delink the latter from the former. Indeed, as George Draffan and I discuss in Welcome to the Machine, the civilized generally consider themselves to be highly rational, and a great working definition of rationalization is that it is the deliberate elimination of information unnecessary to achieving an immediate task. This information to be eliminated can certainly include morality. As we say in that book: “If your goal is to maximize profits for a major corporation, all you need to do is ignore all considerations other than that. If your goal is to maximize gross national product (that is, the rate at which the world is converted into products), then all you need to do is ignore everything that might stand in the way of production.” The second option of those in power, when de-linking morality and strategy (or tactics, what have you) falls too absurd, is, as mentioned earlier, to invoke claims to virtue. Given the insanity of most of the members of this culture, it is almost not possible for claims to virtue to be too absurd to be accepted by many. The point is that by claiming the moral high ground on the strategic level those in power then exempt themselves from morality on the tactical level: Under the sign of the Cross (or capitalism, freedom^TM, democracy^TM, or civilization) we just this once (time and again) go forth and conquer, and in doing so we may end up committing any number of what would be considered, if someone else did them, atrocities.

Those of us at least pretending to oppose the horror that is this culture play a complementary role in this same game. We de-link morality and strategy as surely as do those in power. They carry strategy and tactics without effectively concerning themselves about morality. We carry morality without concerning ourselves with effective strategies and tactics.As always, this is a convenient game for all who play it. We all get what we want (or have been enculturated to want). Those in power get to extend their perceived control. We get to feel moral. All players get to reap the material rewards of playing this game. And of course wild humans and wild nonhumans are still driven extinct.

We members of the too-loyal opposition often spend far more time discussing morality than we do either strategy or tactics (or heaven forbid, actually accomplishing something). More to the point, when we do discuss strategy or tactics, nine times out of ten (or more realistically 999 times out of 1000) we don’t need to discuss morality because we’ve so thoroughly internalized premise four of this book that the possibility of violating it under any circumstances is entirely incomprehensible. Our morality has become morality^TM, defined, designed, and pre-packaged for us by those who are killing the planet. And our strategy and tactics have become strategy^TMand tactics^TM, also defined, designed, and pre-packaged for us by those who are killing us, defined, designed, and pre- planned to be ineffective.