Shikasta

In i

But this was not possible for the governments, which had to face the problem of multitudes of people, nearly all young, who had no prospect of any kind of work, who had never worked, and whose education fitted them only for idleness.

At some point their numbers had to increase to the point where much more than occasional and haphazard violence, casual vandalisation could be expected. Crowds, masses, would, as if at a signal, but seeming to themselves "by chance," pour through cities, smashing everything they could find, killing - casually and without reason - those they found in the streets, and when the orgy of destruction was over return sullen and bewildered to their homes. Hordes, or small armies, or bands, or even smallish groups, would rage through countrysides, killing animals, overturning machinery, burning crops, working havoc.

It was clear what had to be done. And it was done. Numbers of these potential arsonists and destroyers were taken into various military organisations that had civilian designations; what was done, in fact, was what always was done in times of such disturbances on Shikasta: the thief was set to catch the thief, the despoilers were controlled by the despoilers, put into uniform and made into public servants.

But there would be more, and more, and more... there were more and more: millions. And millions.

Armies have their own momentum, logic, life.

Any government putting men, or women, into uniform, and keeping them in one place under discipline knows it has to exercise this mass constantly and vigorously, to make sure its energies are safely harnessed: though few Shikastans understood that phrase in its dimensions as they could, and should. Masses of individuals in military conditions are no longer individuals, but obey very different laws, and ca

The remedies were not many, and not effective, or at least not for long. One was to create not one army, owing allegiance to one slogan, commander, idea, but as many as possible, and in many uniforms. In each geographical area were dozens of different subarmies, encouraged to think of themselves as different from each other. And encouraged to compete in as many ways as could be devised. Sports, public games, mock battles, treks, hikes, climbs, marathons - the whole of Shikasta was overrun by energetic young people in a thousand different uniforms, competing energetically and vociferously in what were being kept, by dint of much official vigilance, harmless ways.

And still the millions increased.

Even more the wealth of the planet was being spent on war, the nonproductive.

These armies were fed, were kept warm, were cared for, but outside the armies the populations were fed increasingly badly, and there were fewer and fewer goods to go round. Terrorised by their "protectors," dependent entirely on the good will of the uniformed masses, the civilians, the unorganised, the unmilitarised, the uninstitutionalised, sank always more into insignificance and helplessness.

The gap between the young - in uniform or hoping to be - and the old, or even the middle-aged, was almost total. The older people became increasingly invisible to the young.

At the top of this structure was the privileged class of technicians and organisers and manipulators, in uniform or out of uniform. An international class of the highly educated in technology, the pla

These myriads of armies of the young, with their variegated uniforms, or, at least, ba

In every country were small specialised armies, trained quite differently from the young. These were armies whose function was actually to fight. The high technology had made mass armies of the old sort redundant. The specialised armies were mostly mercenaries: that is, people recruited from volunteers who had an aptitude for killing, or experience of it in previous wars, or a desire to find an excuse for barbarism.

Although most of those in the armies of the young had been given very little education, and that of no relevance to the problems that faced them, this did not mean that they had been left without what was in fact an extremely thorough indoctrination, mostly into the virtues of conformity, through the propaganda media. The various forms of indoctrination did not always coincide with what was imposed on them in the armies. And it must be remembered that even the simplest and most basic facts taught to a young Shikastan in the latter part of the Century of Destruction were bound to be more accurate - nearer reality - than anything his father and grandfather could have approached. To take one example, the ordinary, mass-produced geographical maps in use in classrooms: the information in these, for accuracy and sophistication, was beyond the wildest dreams of geographers of even two or three decades before. And geography is the key to an understanding of the basics - much more than most Shikastans had any idea of at all. Even the most sketchily educated and ill-informed youngster had at his or her fingertips facts that had to contradict, in all kinds of ways, obvious and implicit, the propagandas which afflicted them.

What Shikastans had early on in the Century of Destruction called "doublespeak" quickly became the rule. On one hand every Shikastan used the languages and dialects of indoctrination, and used them skillfully, for the purposes of self-preservation; but on the other they at the same time used the ideas and languages of fact, useful method, practical information.

Always, in epochs when the languages and dialects of a culture have become outstripped by development of a practical sort, these languages become repetitive, formalised - and ridiculous. Phrases, words, associations of sentences spin themselves out automatically, but have no effect: they have lost their power, their energy.

What happened very soon was what every government had foreseen, been terrified of, had tried to prevent: the armies of the young began to throw up leaders, not those designated by authority. These young men and women were able to understand, because of the amount of information still available (though governments always tried to suppress it) the mechanisms of the organisations they were in, the methods used to control them: their subjection, in fact. And these they explained to the masses under them.

Very quickly, the masses of youth were conducting what amounted to self-education in their own situation. That they had been set to compete with each other, make formal enemies of each other, were not allowed or at least, not encouraged, to mix and mingle, had been taught to see uniforms and badges not their own as the mark of the alien, the feared; that their very existence made governments tremble; that the arrangement, organisation, every moment of their lives was a function of their redundance, their uselessness in the processes of production of real wealth - their lack of worth to society - all this was taught to them by themselves.