(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)
The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS (techno-social system) and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.
A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified (and directed) energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
In its most simplified form, a military organization is a numeric subset of the larger population of individuals making up a particular TSS — these individuals are its base energy source and generally consist of a selection of the most optimized body-systems. Outside of that social system, a military organization appears as an amplified and coherent signal (noting that the Latin root of the word “coherent” is “cohort,” a Roman military unit). Coherency of the signal in this case is the quality of how effectively and efficiently this sub-system expresses the desires of the TSS. It accomplishes this primarily through operations that secure energy sources and that stabilize the pathways of utilization.
The selection process for participants in the military system is crucial. Individuals are chosen for their generally optimized body condition or because of specially amplified characteristics which are necessary to the ultimate expression of the system. Because coherency is an important value to the output energy, individual participants in a military system are subject to a rigidly defined set of pathways for all impression and expression and so, need to be highly socialized individuals. This means that they are comfortable with having their position within larger flow pathways determined not by individual preference, but by the hierarchic expressions of the system. Protocol rules: eccentricity is not rewarded. As always, optimization of the process is essential to the execution of coherent expression.
The primary outward expression of all military systems are via weapons. Weapons are themselves amplified energy sources: weapons are the output of amplified and directed pathways of energy flow. Weapon systems require the complex concentration of sometimes quite diverse matter/energy flows. When in the hands of optimized individuals, weapons then amplify the energy expressions of that individual. Weapon systems can range from the body itself to intensely complex concentrations of energy requiring the direct participation of millions of individuals to procure. Weapons are tools, are defined by technology, and are the amplified expressions of the TSS.
Consider a sword. A sword comes into being through the energy-intensive combination of iron, carbon, perhaps some leather and bone, along with traces of manganese, chromium, and vanadium. This combining process is obviously dependent on the availability of the resources which exist only in certain local concentrations. The locus of concentration must be secured over a long period of human-scaled time as it takes a long-term commitment of human resources to actually extract iron ore. The ore must be removed from the surrounding matrix material using the life-energy of individuals along with other energy amplification processes. A significant amount of heat energy is required to render the iron ore into the necessary basic form of raw iron. The source of this heat energy has to be secured by assembling a quantity of materials which can be burned at a specific location where specific types of fires are necessary to get the ore hot enough to transform into raw iron. The raw iron is subsequently forged via the life-energy of an individual also in concert with other pre-existing technological pathways. The forging process requires a skill-set that is not usually possible for an individual to directly assemble from scratch in a single life-time. The process therefore requires the presence of a stable enough TSS that allows for the transmission of information across generations along with the ensuing innovation/optimization that inevitably occur. Depending on the complexity, it may require the existence of externalized memory systems which consequently require special protocols. The complexity of the pathway is such that making one sword would not represent an optimal outcome, suggesting instead that many swords should be produced. This requires that a system of standards is developed. The entire process demands an ordered, coherent, and harmonized set of energy flows from many individuals such that the particular amplified signal be actualized.
When all these steps are completed in an optimized manner, the sword, the weapon, is placed in the hands of the optimized individual. In the hands of the soldier, the sword increases the efficiency of the individual in their ability to secure the pathways of their Regime of Amplification, their TSS. It increases their viability as an individual and consequently the viability of the collective. This increase however comes only after they are trained to use it. To teach the optimized use, the experience of other humans, stored in living or external memory, needs to be available. Learning, the soldier forms both his body and his embodied behavior in relation to the sword in order to optimize the combined body-weapon potential. The potential energy of the combined system that creates the sword and makes it available to the soldier plus the life-time submitted to learning to use it is the source of this increased efficiency. Without the complete set of refined pathways for concentrating energy, the soldier would not be a pathway for optimized expression. This is the fundamental process of arming a military through particular weapon systems.
Each weapon system is the product of an extremely specialized process flow which is more or less complex. The more complex the flow, the more energy that the TSS has to expend on maintaining the pathway and the structural elements of that flow. This increasing complexity must be offset by a resultant increase in the efficacy of the body-weapon combination. The weapon system must deliver a saturating energy flow, a lethal expression, into the enemy.
The example of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 is the sword amplified by many orders of magnitude. The techno-social infrastructure required to produce the physically rather small device was colossal. It was historically the largest weapon production system in areal distribution, in numbers of people involved, and in energy consumption. It included substantial sub-systems for the prospecting and mining of the uranium, for the construction of the uranium processing system which included the largest single-purpose electrical grid sub-system ever constructed, and for the construction and operation of sophisticated facilities for research and testing in remote and extreme environments. All of these had to operate at high degrees of precision and with an ordered, coherent, and highly secure system of command and control down to individual lives. Altogether, an enormously energy-intensive pathway to construct and maintain. It is no coincidence that its ultimate expression was the most massively concentrated and rapid release of energy that the world had experienced before. It securely guaranteed for some years the viability of the Regime of Amplification which deployed it.
Feedback is critical to a military system. A rigidly defined set of pathways for the concentration and expression of energy is constantly at threat from changing external and internal conditions. The history of the TSS is littered with body-systems sacrificed by the rigid clinging to a specific set of pathways of expression. This slaughter came about when changing conditions de-stabilized those pathways, reduced the optimal efficiency of the military system below some threshold, and consequently ended its viability. Feedback is dependent on complex communications systems which report on the affect of the projected body-weapon engagement systems. These command and control systems are vital to the optimization process. A military structure that is blinded by the loss of its communication system is in immediately crisis.
In the end, the Regime of Amplification has its weapons systems which are deployed via its most optimized individuals against any real or perceived threat. A threat is fundamentally defined as a condition which obstructs access to external energy sources or that distorts the requisite pathways of power within the system. The weapon systems have to provide a saturating expression of energy to the enemy system. There are many nuanced examples scattered throughout human history where the specific dynamics are more or less complex, but at base, the vast majority of events which take place among and between social systems are driven by a focused desire to sustain viability. This desire drives the preparation and deployment of military pathways for expressive energies to flow. The Regime of Amplification is constructed on the broadest of such pathways.