The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 38

Some might say that this state of affairs is nothing new. Even Shakespeare criticized lawyers. Far from being a wholesale attack on the profession, the description I have given deserves to be contrasted to the possibility of effective judicial mediations in the civilization of illiteracy. Since changes occur so rapidly, the law of yesterday rarely applies to new circ.u.mstances created today. It used to be, people often find themselves reminiscing, that laws and rules (the Ten Commandments, at least) were expected to last and be respected, in their letter-which was carved in stone-and spirit, forever. No one will argue that justice is not an eternal desideratum. But achieving it does not necessarily mean that laws and the methods of lawyers are eternal. Some actions that society once accepted-child abuse, s.e.xual hara.s.sment, racial discrimination-are now considered illegal, as well as unjust.

Other crimes (whistling on Sundays, kissing one's spouse in public, working or operating a business on Sunday) might still be in some legal books and locally observed, but they are no longer considered instances of law- breaking. The result of changes brought about by changing pragmatics is the realization people have that there is no stable frame of reference, either for morality (as it is subject to law and law enforcement) or for legality.

Did lawyers create this situation? Are they a product of new human relations required by the new pragmatics? Who judges the legal system in order to determine that its activity meets expectations? There is no simple answer to any of these questions. If justice is to affect human practical experiences, it has to reflect their nature and partic.i.p.ate in defining its own perspective in respect to the rights that people integrate in new practical experiences of self-definition. It is all well and good for the legal system to use non-literate means, such as DNA evidence, videotapes, and access to legal information from around the world via Internet. But if they are then subjected to literate pettifogging, all this effort is to no avail.

The programmed parliament

Politics in action means not elections but the daily routine of hard work on matters of interest to the people represented.

Party affiliation aside, in the end the common good is supposed to be maintained or improved. Legislative political work continues a tradition that goes well beyond literacy.

Nevertheless, effective legislation became possible only within the pragmatic framework that made literacy necessary. Once literacy itself reached its potential, new means for the political legislative practical experience became necessary. The driving force is the expectation that the legislative process should reflect practical needs emerging in a context of rapid change over shorter patterns of recurrence. As within the entire political practical experience, forces at work continuously collide.

Although literacy-based perspectives and methods for political legislation are no longer appropriate in handling issues and concerns stemming from a pragmatics that invalidates the literate model, politicians seem to be unwilling to realize the need for change. They find it more useful, and easier to defend, to legislate improved literacy- based education, for example, instead of rethinking education in the context of its necessity. They accept the mediating power of specialized knowledge, the generalized network of information, use all means for disseminating their own programs, but work within constraints originating in the literate practice of politics. It is hard to believe that in an age of limitless communication, speakers, mainly in the USA, arguing for the most intricate programs, will perform before an empty room in Congress. It is also hard to believe that a language rooted in experiences established a long time ago, and many times proved ineffective, is maintained. Procedures, testifying more to the past than the present, govern the activity of many legislative bodies (not only in Great Britain, where this legacy translates into a dress code as outmoded as the British monarchy). As with the executive political experience and the infatuation of justice, symbolism overtakes substance.

Nevertheless, under the pressure for higher efficiency, major changes are taking place. Legislative practical experiences, as disconnected as they are from new human practical experiences, are less and less an exercise in convincing writing or in formal logic. They increasingly reflect the expectations of globality and often apply mediation, task distribution, and interactivity.

Electronic modeling is applied, simulation methods are tried out. The new methods of accessing information free the legislative politician from the time-consuming task of acc.u.mulating data. Consultants and staff members make use of powerful knowledge filters in order to involve in the political process only information pertinent to the subject. Politicians know that knowledge, at the right time and in the right context, is power. Their new experience, as members of computerized parliaments of many countries can testify, is that everyone has the data, but only few know how to process it effectively. In fact, political parties develop compet.i.tive processing programs that will give politicians pursuing their goals more convincing arguments in a public debate, or in discussions leading to legislative vote. The transparency brought about by means in the civilization of illiteracy ensures public access to the debate.

The compet.i.tive edge is provided by the intelligent use of data.

Power, that elusive aspect of any political activity, comes from the ability to process, not from the amount of information stored.

All this, kept at a minimum in this presentation, might sound like antic.i.p.ation, or dreams for the politician of the future.

It is not. The process is probably still at the beginning, but unavoidable. It will sooner or later affect such components as time in office-permanence of a representative reflects literacy-based expectations- procedures for public evaluation, candidacy, and voting. It will also require a rethinking of the relation between politicians and const.i.tuents. Rethinking the motivations and methods of legislation, even its legitimacy, are goals worthy of being pursued. Increased mediation affects the connection between facts and political action. Unless balanced by the use of the new means of communication that allow personal interaction with each voter, it will continue to alienate politics from the public. Ma.s.s-media politics is already a thing of the past-not because television is overridden by the Internet, but because of the need to create a framework for individual motivation for political action. Political efficiency is based on human interaction. What counts is not the medium, as this will continue to change, but what is accomplished through the medium.

To create a legislative framework that reflects the new nature of human relations and is appropriate to the pragmatic context means to understand the nature of the processes leading to the civilization of illiteracy. Consolidation of bureaucracy is as counter-indicative of this understanding as is the continuation of the monarchy and the House of Lords in Great Britain. Both these phenomena are as convincing as the ma.s.s generation of electoral letters that report on how the political representative best served his or her const.i.tuency. A sense of the process, as it involves the need to overcome models based on sequentiality, dualism, and deterministic reaction, can be realized only when the political process itself is synchronized with the prevalent pragmatics.

A battle to be won

As a practice of building, changing, and destroying coalitions, politics today is a summation of human practice. Professional politicians design strategies for coalition implementation and identify the most effective interactions for a certain policy.

They develop their own language and criteria for evaluating the efficiency of their specialized practice and of their mediating function in a society of many and varied forms of mediation.

The obsession with efficiency, whether applied to politics or not, is not imposed by forces outside ourselves. The tendency to transfer responsibility does not result in some curse spoken by a disappointed politician, philosopher, or educator. The shorter political cycles that we encounter correspond to the dynamics of a human practical experience focused on the immediate within the framework of a global existence. It seems that the transition is from the small communal life striving for continuity and permanence, to a global community of interacting individuals, whose ident.i.ty itself is variable, prepared to experience discontinuity and change. Coordinations of actions in this universe are no longer possible through large integrative mechanisms, such as language and bureaucratic inst.i.tutions.

Small differentiating operations, in the nature of coalitions tested through polling or electronic balloting, and modified in accordance with the rapid change of political roles, represent an alternative.

Monarchies embodied the eternity of rule; treaties among monarchs were supposed to outlast the monarch. The 15-minute access to political power, far from being a metaphor in some parts of the world, is as relevant as any other form of celebrity (Warhol's included), since political processes and power relations are more and more uncoupled from each other and disconnected from the obsession with universality and timelessness. A 15-minute coalition is as critical as access to power, and as useful as the new principles accepted by the people involved. Instead of the top- down model of politics, we can experience a combination of bottom-up and top-down procedures. Under these circ.u.mstances, the making and unmaking of coalitions remains one among very few valid political functions. The centers of political power- economics, law, interest groups-const.i.tute poles around which such coalitions are established or abandoned.

One should ask whether such coalitions do not come into being in the universal language of literacy. Literacy is defended with the argument that it is some kind of common denominator. What is not accounted for is the fact that coalitions are not independent of the medium of their expression. Literacy-based coalitions pursue and further goals and actions consistent with the pragmatic framework that requires them. Needs characteristic of a pragmatic context incompatible with the structures imposed by literacy-based practical experiences require other means for establishing coalitions. When the leaders of the most advanced industrial states agree on indexing the value of their currency, or when friend and foe establish a political coalition against an invasion that could set a precedent and trigger consequences for the global economy, the means in place might take the appearance of literacy. In fact, these means are freed from words and literate articulations. They emerge from data processing and simulation of behavior in financial markets, virtual reality scenarios turned into actions for which no script could provide a description in advance. While politicians might still perform their script in a literate manner, the centers of power choose the most efficient means for evaluating each new coalition. As a consequence, and this is a distinguishing element, there is little connection between the authority of political inst.i.tutions, as it results from their literate premise, and the dynamics of coalitions, reflecting the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy.

The sense of beginning experienced in our day goes well beyond the new states, new political means, beyond the science (or art) of coalition making. It is basically a beginning for the new zoon politikon, for a political animal that has lost most of its natural roots and whose human nature is probably better defined in terms of political instincts than cultural accomplishments.

Culture is by and large discarded. People simply cannot carry culture with them, but neither can they negotiate their existence without political means appropriate to a social condition structurally different from that experienced in the past. The self-centered individual cannot escape relating to others and defining himself in reference to them. "We Am a Virtual Community" is not merely a suggestive t.i.tle (conceived by Earl Babble) for an article on Internet interaction, but a good description of today's political world. The specific forms of relations, the We Am faction among them, are subject to many factors, not least to the biological and cognitive redefinition of the human being. When everything, literally everything, is possible and indeed acceptable, the political animal has to find new ways to make choices and pursue goals without facing the risk of losing ident.i.ty. This is probably the decisive political battle that the humans have yet to win.

"Theirs not to reason why"

High precision electronic eyes placed on orbiting satellites picked up the firing of the rocket and the launch parameters.

Data was transmitted to a computer center for information processing. The computed information, specifying angles, firing time, and trajectory, was relayed to antirocket missiles programmed to intercept enemy attack. The system-consisting of a vast, distributed, highly interconnected configuration- incorporates expertise from electronic vision devices, knowledge encoded in software designed to calculate rocket orbits (based on launch time, position, angle, speed, weight, meteorological conditions), fast transmission networks, and automated positioning and triggering devices.

This integrated system has replaced literacy-based modes of practical experiences pertinent to war. Instead of manuals describing the many parameters and operations that military personnel need to consider, information is contained in computer programs. These also eliminate the need for long training cycles, expensive practical exercises, and the continuous revision of manuals containing the latest information. Distributed knowledge and interconnectedness have replaced the structure of top-down command. The system described above contains many mediating components that allow for highly efficient wars.

Examples similar to the relative annihilation of the infamous (and ineffective) Scud missiles can be given from other episodes of the Gulf War, including the 100 hours of the so-called ground battle. This battle displayed the deadly force of artillery and tanks, the power of modeling and simulation, and major planning and testing methods independent of literacy-based military strategy and tactics. The enemy consisted of an army structured on the principles derived from the pragmatic framework of literacy: centralized line of command, rigid hierarchy, modern military equipment integrated in a war plan that was essentially sequential and deterministic, and based on a logic of long-term encounters.

The first war of the civilization of illiteracy

An earlier draft of this chapter-introductory lines excepted-was written when no one antic.i.p.ated a conflict involving American troops in the Arabian Gulf. During this war, theoretic arguments regarding the inst.i.tution of the military in the civilization of illiteracy were tested in the flesh and blood of confrontation, probably well beyond my, or anybody's, expectations or wishes.

The Gulf War reported by the media resembled a computer game or a television show. As I watched, I felt as though someone had lifted part of my text and sent it through the news wires. The story made for great headlines; but out of context, or in the context of a reality reduced to the TV screen, its overall meaning was obscured. In many ways, the armed conflict ended up trivialized, another soap opera or spectator sport. Other reports related the frustration of the troops with the limited number of phone lines. The reports also commented on the replacement of the traditional letter by videotape as the preferred method of communication. We also heard about an almost magical device, called CNX, used to help orient each person involved in the vast desert theater of war. And we saw or heard about the exotically named preprocessed and prepackaged food, about the pastimes of the troops.

The context started coming into focus. This was to become the first war of the civilization of illiteracy: a highly efficient (the word takes on an unintended cynical connotation here) activity that involved non-sequential, ma.s.sively parallel practical experiences. These required precise synchronization (each failure resulted in victims to what was euphemistically called "friendly fire"), distributed decision-making, intense mediation, advanced specialization, and task distribution. These characteristics embodied an ideology of relative value disengaged from political discourse, and even more from moral precepts. n.o.body expected this war to reinvent the bow and arrow (doc.u.mented shortly after human self-const.i.tutive experiences in language), or even the wheel (originating in the practical experience of populations whose home was the territory where the fighting took place). It is possible that some of the military personnel had heard about the book ent.i.tled The Art of War (written by Sun Tzu in 325 BCE or earlier), or about the books, some of undisputed notoriety, filling the libraries of military academies and the better research libraries. But this was not a war fought for the Book, in the spirit of the Book (Koran or Bible), or in the way books describe wars. In a way, the Gulf War was truly the "mother of all battles" in that it rewrote the rules on war-or did away with them.

All the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy are retraceable in the practical experience of today's military: highly mediated praxis through electronic information storage and retrieval; transition from an economy of wartime scarcity to a war of affluent means of defense and destruction; shift from war based on the positivist notion of facts (many requiring incursions into enemy territory) to a relativistic notion of image, and the corresponding technology of image processing; shift from a hierarchical structure of rigid lines of authority and command to a relatively loose line of context dependent on freedom of choice extended almost to the individual soldier; a discipline of austerity and isolation from the non-military (conditions accepted in the past as part of a military career) replaced by expectations of relaxation and enjoyment, derived from the permissiveness and drive for self-satisfaction of society at large. That some of these expectations could not be fulfilled was criticized, but not really understood. The hosts of the American army live by different standards. Muslim law prohibits alcohol consumption and certain forms of entertainment, as well as burial of dead infidels in a land claiming to be holy.

The Gulf War, on its various fronts, was not a conflict of irreducible or irreconcilable religions, morals, or cultures. It was a conflict between an artificially maintained civilization of literacy, in which rich reserves of oil serve as a buffer from efficiency requirements in all aspects of life, and another civilization, one that entails the illiteracy of a society and an energy-hungry, global economy that reflects a dynamics of high efficiency.

It might well be that the final attack reminded experts in war history, military strategy, or evolution of tactics of the surprising maneuver tried by Epaminondas, the Theban commander (371 BCE) in the battle of Leuctra: instead of a frontal a.s.sault, an attack on one flank. General Schwartzkopf is not Epaminondas.

He succeeded in his mission by allowing for task distribution in an international army-more of a pain than a blessing-that resulted in many flanks. Helmuth von Moltke, in the exhausting Franco- Prussian War (1870-1871), changed the relation to his subordinate commanders by letting them operate under broad directives. The generals and commanders of the many armies involved in the Gulf War took advantage of the power of networking in order to orchestrate an attack that tested extremely efficient, and costly, annihilation technology under a plan that today's computers have simulated many a time over.

But once I confessed that I wrote much of this chapter three years before the Gulf War, the reader might question whether I looked at the war through the spectacles of my hypothesis, seeing what I wanted to see, understanding events as they fit my explanatory model. I asked myself the same questions and concluded that presenting the argument as it stood before the war would shed light on the question and ultimately qualify the answer.

War as practical experience

"War is a sheer continuation of politics with other means," wrote Carl von Clausewitz (On War, 1818). It is difficult to argue against this; but a paraphrase, intended to put the line in historic perspective, might be appropriate: War is the continuation of the practical experience of survival in the context of a society trying to control and adjudicate resources.

Accordingly, combat follows the line of other practical experiences. The practical experience of hunting-formerly combat with non-human adversaries-required the weapons eventually a.s.sociated with war. These were the tools that primitive humans used to wrest food for their survival and the survival of their community. Future aspects of these activities, and the a.s.sociated moral values, make us sometimes forget that the syncretic nature of human beings, i.e., projection of their natural endowment in the practical act, is expressed in the syncretism of the tools used. This syncretic condition evolved under the need for labor division, and one of the main early demands of labor division resulted in the establishment of the semi-professional and professional warrior.

As the tools of the martial profession diversified more and more from working tools, a conceptual component (tactics and strategy) became part of the praxis. The conceptual component set forth a sequence to be followed, a logic to be used, and a method for counteracting enemy maneuvers in order to achieve victory. Von Clausewitz was the first to explicitly point out that war continues politics, while other writers on the subject, living centuries before he did, perceived war as a practical effort. Two Byzantine emperors, Maurice (539-602) and Leo, called the Wise (886-911), tried to formulate military strategy and tactics based on the pragmatic premise. They stipulated that the pragmatic framework defined the nature of the conflict and the actual condition of the battle, weapons included. Indeed, every known change in military materiel in a society has been synchronized to changes in the status of its practical experience. The invention of the stirrup by the Chinese (600) improved the ability of men riding horseback. It opened the avenue to wars where the backbone of battle formation was no longer composed of foot soldiers but of warriors on horses.

Mechanical contraptions (e.g., the Trebuchet, acknowledged at 1100, based on releasing a heavy counterweight) for throwing large stones or missiles, opened the way to what would shift superior defensive capabilities (through fortifications, city walls, castles built before the 14th century) to superior offensive power. This was also the case with the cannons that the Turks used to conquer Constantinople (1453). But it is not military practice per se that concerns us here, but rather the implications of language, in particular literacy.

At a very small scale of human activity, with many autarchic groups composed of few people, there was little need for organized combat or specially trained warriors. Incipient, rudimentary military practical experience, in its basic functions of aggression and defense, became desirable at a larger scale of human activity. This experience was simultaneous with the establishment of language, especially writing. Sun Tzu's book, as well as many earlier testimonies to battles (mythology, religious writings, epic poetry, and philosophy), can be mentioned here. This military practice integrated the means and skills of survival, such as hunting and safeguarding the territory from which food was obtained.

Awareness of resources corresponded to awareness of scale. The scale of human activity in which the const.i.tution of community member-warrior took place corresponded to increased settlement of populations, increased demand for resources, higher productivity, and acc.u.mulation of property-all reflected in the need to expand the practical experience of language beyond the immediate characteristic of orality. The efficiency of work and combat was at about an equal level. In a sense, wars lasted forever; peace was merely respite between conflicts. The notion of prisoner (usually sold into slavery) confirmed the importance of human labor and skill for consolidating a community, producing wealth for those in power, and subsistence for everyone else. The social const.i.tution of the military was not excepted from pragmatic requirements of efficiency and mediation, i.e., of ensuring the highest efficiency within the given scale of human experience, as needs and expectations corresponding to this scale were manifested. While it is true that combat efficiency was spelled out in units of intentional destruction or preservation (of life and various artifacts relevant to human self- const.i.tution), combat efficiency also referred to defenders whose goal was to make destruction by the enemy less possible (even impossible).

While individual conflicts did not require the intervention of language more than orality could provide, conflicts between larger groups made the need for a coordinating instrument clear.

Human language, through new words and constructs, testified to the experience of conflicts and the a.s.sociated mytho-magical manifestations. Through language, this experience was projected against the background of many different forms of human praxis.

As a general rule, armies of all types, under every type of government, acquired a special status in society due to the function they fulfilled. Written language did not generate armies; but it served as a prerequisite (even in its most rudimentary notation forms) for the inst.i.tution of the military.

Writing introduced many elements that influenced the combat experience: a record of means and people, a record of actions, an instrument for planning, a record of consequences. All the components of the military inst.i.tution objectify the purpose of war at a particular time. They also objectify the relations between a society at war and, during times of peace, between society and its warriors. Language is the medium through which objectification takes place. The sequentiality of writing and the need to express sequences pertinent to conflicts are consubstantial. Von Clausewitz's line encompa.s.ses the extension in language of the many aspects of wars.

"Did Gideon know how to read Hebrew? Did Deborah?" some people might ask, referring to leaders of decisive battles doc.u.mented in the Old Testament. Others would refer to examples from the same time that are accounted for in Greek epics and the chronicles of the Middle East. Roman mythology and the testimony of Islam do not tell us whether all their warriors wrote or read. These doc.u.ments do inform us of the pragmatic circ.u.mstances that led to the inst.i.tution of the army as a body const.i.tuted in continuation of syncretic practical experiences, progressively const.i.tuting its own domain of existence and its own reason for being.

From face-to-face conflicts that required almost no language, and which resulted in the victory of the stronger, to the conflicts between humans in which much technology-requiring little language-was also involved, changes parallel to the levels of literacy occurred. Under the circ.u.mstances of wars fought by armies facing each other, language was the medium for const.i.tuting armies and coordinating action. In order to define goals, to share plans for achieving victory, and to modify plans in response to changing conditions, language was as important as the number of horses, quality of swords and shields, and quality of ammunition. The profession of warrior, as much as the profession of hunter, was based on the ability to attack and defend, and on the skills needed to adapt means to goals within a changing balance of power. The first wars, and probably the majority of them, were fought before generalized literacy. The major warriors-the Egyptian pharaohs Tuthmose III in the battle for Meggido (1479 BCE), Ramses II battling the Hitt.i.tes at Kadesh (1296 BCE), Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, the Spartans under Leonidas (480 BCE), Alexander the Great (conquering Babylon in 330 BCE), Julius Caesar (49-46 BCE) and Octavian (31 BCE), and the many Chinese warriors of this period and later-did not need literacy for their battles as much as for their politics. Their strategies resulted from the same expectations and pragmatic requirements that gave rise to the experience of written language.

Wars were fought on terrain well chosen, by armies composed of men who carried out orders selected from a limited set of possibilities. To paraphrase the terminology of generative grammars, it was a limited war language, with not too many possible war sentences. Once improved means of work and production became the means of carrying on war, those in command could write more war texts, more scripts. As war efficiency increased, so did the possibility of a breakdown of the effort due to lack of integration and coordination. The military structure reflected the characteristics of the human praxis that fostered written language and, much later, literacy: relatively limited dynamics, centralized, hierarchical organization, low level of adaptability, a strictly sequential course of action, a deterministic mentality. David Oliver convincingly described the process: "Mechanics is the vehicle of all physical theory.

Mechanics is the vehicle of war. The two have been inseparable."

He refers to the practical demands of warfare in the context that led to the science of mechanics and eventually to the beginnings of projectile ballistics. By 1531, Nicolo Tartaglia of Brescia overcame his disdain for war and devised the gunner's square, which was perfected 100 years later by none other than Galileo. In 1688, the French introduced the socket bayonet on their muskets, which occurred simultaneous to changes in tools used at the time, i.e., the tools that allowed for manufacturing the bayonet.

The framework that created conditions for the ideal of literacy affected the pursuit of war not only in technology, but also in the way wars were played out. The advancing line of exposed troops were involved in a dynamics of confrontation that reflected linearity, a phenomenon prevalent in the practical experience of civilian life. Destructive power was added until the enemy was destroyed. Row by row, soldiers stopped to fire platoon volleys, then continued onto the decisive bayonet charge.

The structure of writing (sequences, hierarchy, acc.u.mulation, closure) and the structure of this particular military engagement were similar. Literacy as such was registered rather late as a qualifier of the warrior. But once integrated in the practical experience of military self-const.i.tution, literacy changed the nature of making war and enabling higher levels of efficiency corresponding to the new scale of war. These were no longer skirmishes among feudal warlords, but major conflicts between nations. These conflicts diminished in number but grew in intensity. Their duration corresponded to the relatively long cycles of production, distribution, and consumption characteristic of literacy-based practical experiences.

Under the pressure of many types of necessity embodied in human pragmatics, war was submitted to rules. It was civilized, at least in some of its aspects. The Catholic Church, preserver of literacy during the Dark Ages, when many little wars between feudal lords were carried on, took the lead in this direction. In order to avoid destruction of crops and lives in the barbarian societies of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, the only viable hierarchy tried to tame warriors with the literate rules that the Church preserved. With their own pragmatic considerations in mind, rulers accepted these prescriptions. It took a millennium for people to discover that wars never have final results. But they also learned that the experience of war creates knowledge-for example, of means used, weather patterns, territory, characteristics of the enemy-and creativity-what is called the art of war. Resulting in death and destruction, wars are also instances of self-education in one of life's most unforgiving schools.

The inst.i.tution of the military

"The draft is the legitimate child of democracy," as Theodor Heuss defined it. Obligatory military service was introduced during one of the first modern revolutions- the French leve en ma.s.se (conscription) of 1793. The citizen-soldier replaced mercenaries and professional soldiers. The call "Aux armes, mes citoyens" that became a stanza of the French national anthem, glorified the expectations of the moment. Prussia followed suit almost immediately, motivated by economic reasons: cheap manpower for war. During the prolonged process of becoming an inst.i.tution, the military enlisted the support of the state it defended or of those private establishments (church, landowners, merchants) that needed its services.

Feeding off the means generated by society, the military inst.i.tution integrated the practical experience of the people in its structure and actively pursued courses of action meant to increase its efficiency. At every juncture of humankind's continuous change, the military had to prove levels of efficiency that justified its own existence as a factor in the active defense of resources. When it was no longer efficient and weighed too heavily on the socio-economic foundation, it was eventually overthrown, or the society supporting it stagnated, as we see happening time and again in military dictatorships.

As one of the many highly structured environments for human interaction, the military identified itself, as did all other social mechanisms, through repet.i.tive actions. Each action could be further seen as a set of tasks, or orders, connected to motivations or justifications, which antic.i.p.ate or follow practical experiences specific to the military. Some were connected to life within the organization, such as the possibility to advance in the hierarchy and affect future activity. These were internal in the sense that they were affected by the implicit rules adopted by the inst.i.tution.