As is the case with many literacy-based institutions, the military became a goal in itself, imposing rules on social and political circumstances, instead of adapting to them. Following World Wars I and II, the military took control of many countries under the guise of various political and ideological justifications. Military, or military-supported, dictatorships, displaying the same characteristics of centralized rule as monarchy and democracy under presidents, sprang up where other modes of government proved ineffective. This happens today in many parts of the world that are still dedicated to economic and political models of the past, such as in South America, the Middle East, and Africa, for example.
From the literate to the illiterate war
The last war fought under the sign of literacy was probably World War II. The very fact that the last world war came to its final end after the atomic bomb was deployed is indicative of the fact that once one aspect of human practical experience is affected by a change of scale, others are affected as well. While the millions of victims (the majority of whom were raised in the expectations of the civilization of literacy) might make us reluctant to mention literacy, in fact, war's systematic cruelty and extermination power are the result of literacy characteristics implicit in the effective functioning of the war machine and in the articulation of war goals. In the history of World War II, the chapter about language is probably as enlightening as the chapters devoted to the new weapons it brought about: the precursors of modern rocket systems, in addition to the atomic bomb. Each of the powers involved in this large-scale war understood that without the integrating force of literacy, exercised in and around the conflict, the enemy could not succeed. Many books were written about the escalation of hostility through the language of political and ideological discourse. Many prejudices associated with this war were expressed in exquisitely literate works, supported by formally perfect, logical arguments. On the other hand, some writers pointed out the weaknesses of literacy. Roland Barthes, for example, studied its fascist nature. Others mentioned the inadequacy of a medium bound to fail because it was so opaque that it covered thoughts instead of revealing them, validated false values instead of exposing them for what they were.
The language of politics extended truly into the language of the conflict. Thanks to radio and newspapers, as well as the rhetoric of rallies, it was able to address entire nations. The industrial establishment, upon which the war machine was built, still embodied the characteristics of the pragmatic framework of literacy. It was based on the industrial model of intense manufacturing. Millions of people had to be moved, fed, and logistically supported on many fronts. The war involved elements of an economy in crisis, affording much less than abundance. Germany and its allies, having planned for a Blitzkrieg, threw all their limited resources into the preparation and execution of the war. Europe was coming out of the depression resulting from World War I. The people were promised that victory would bring the well deserved recompense that had eluded them the first time around. Against this background, literacy was mobilized in all the areas where it could make a difference: education, propaganda, religious and national indoctrination, in the racist discourse of justifications and in articulating war goals. Ideological purposes and military goals, expressed in literate discourse, addressed equally those on the front lines and their families. Literacy actively supported self- discipline and restraint, the acceptance of centralism and hierarchy, as well as the understanding of extended production cycles of intense labor and relatively stable, although not necessarily fair, working relations.
All these characteristics, as well as a self-induced sense of superiority, were reflected in the war. Advanced levels of labor division and improved forms of coordination of the parties involved in the large scale experience of factory labor marked the military experience. The war entailed confrontations of huge armies that practically engaged entire societies. It combined strategies of exhaustion (blockades, crop destruction, interruption of any vital activities) and annihilation. Millions of people were exterminated. The structure of the army embodied the structure of the pragmatic framework. Its functioning was reflective of industrial systems designed to process huge quantities of raw material in order to mass-manufacture products of uniform quality.
What made literate language use essential in work and market transactions made it essential, in forms appropriate to the goal, to the prosecution of the war. From this perspective, it should become clear why major efforts were made to understand this language. Efforts were also made to get information about tactics and strategy embodied in it, as much ahead of time as possible, and to use this literate knowledge to devise surprise or counter-strategies. This is why language became a main field of operation. Enemies went after military code (not a different language, but a means of maintaining secrecy) and did not spare money, intelligence, or human life in their efforts to understand how the opposing forces encoded their plans. The brightest minds were used, and strategies of deceit were developed and applied, because knowing the language of the enemy was almost like reading the enemy's mind.
At the risk of dealing with the obvious, I should state here clearly that the language of war is not the same as everyday language; but it originates in this language and is conceived and communicated in it. Both are structurally equivalent and embodied in literacy. To dispose of the enemy's use of language means to know what the enemy wants to do and how and when. In short, it means to be able to understand the pragmatics of the enemy as defined under the circumstances of war, as these extended the circumstances of life and work. Since language projects our time and space experience, and since wars are related to our universe of existence, understanding the language of the enemy is actually integrated in the combat plan and in a society's general war effort. Climbing hills to establish a good offensive position, crossing rivers in a defensive move, parachuting troops behind enemy lines in a surprise maneuver are human experiences characteristic of the pragmatic context of literacy, impossible to relate to the goal pursued without the shared conventions implicit in language. Some people still believe that the master coup of World War II was the breaking of the ciphers of the Enigma machines used by the Germans, thus making the function of language, in such an effort of millions of people, the center of the war effort. Polish cryptoanalysts and the British operation, in which Alan Turing (the father of modern computing) participated, succeeded in deciphering, reconstructing, and translating messages that, re-enciphered in Allied codes (the ULTRA material), decisively aided the war effort.
By the end of the war, the world was already a different place. But within the framework of war, and in direct connection to the changes in practical human self- constitution, a structural shift to a different dynamics of life and work had started. Various aspects related to the determinism that eventually resulted in the war started to be questioned through new practical experiences: the need to overcome national interests; the need to transcend boundaries, those boundaries of hate and destruction expressed in the war; the need to share and exchange resources. Visionaries also realized that the incremental increase in world population, despite the enormous number of deaths, would result in a new scale of human experiences that could not be handled within a rigid system with few degrees of liberty.
The recent illiterate war in the Arabian Gulf, and the never-ending terrorist attacks all over the world, can be seen, in retrospect, as the progeny of the war that brought down the civilization of literacy. The concept of Blitzkrieg and the dropping of the A-bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a foretaste of the quick, efficient, illiterate war.
The Nintendo war (a cliché revisited)