Chapter 37: More on Strategy and Tactics

The Transition date should ideally be set for some time in early to mid Spring, in order to minimize the potential impact on the Community of any disruptions that may occur in spite of our best efforts to prevent them. Such disruptions would likely come in the form of attempts on the part of members of the former (now deposed) ruling elite to suppress the Transition and re-assert their power structure. This timing gives the maximum window of time to stabilize vital services before winter cold creates dangers, while also allowing a few months before summer heat creates potential hazards, especially for the elderly, infirm, and very young. As pioneers of the Transition, we must be watchful for at-risk individuals and communities around us and make it our personal mission to care for and protect them to the best of our ability.

Meanwhile, in the time between now and the Transition, we will become stronger if each person, to the best of their ability and circumstances, forms committed support groups with others upon whom we can count and entrust our lives. These support groups will work best of they go beyond just moral and emotional support. To be truly effective, they will need to extend to the point where each support group commits to ensure that nobody in the group falls by the wayside alone in the event of loss of livelihood or other calamity. This mutual inter-reliance and support will be in a spirit similar to that which exists among members of Special Forces teams and other combat units.

Among members of these support groups, resources can be shared and efforts pooled. This goes contrary to the prevailing social pattern common in Capitalist paradigms, which enforce, condition and encourage each individual and family to struggle individually for survival, effectively dividing us and keeping us conquered and disempowered.

To some extent, we can also begin developing the distributed power and food production that will become the norm in the new Paradigm. We do not have to wait for the Transition to begin this process.

When we have chosen and agreed upon a day to initiate the Transition in any given country, we must be strongly focused on the goal of Transition. We must not be distracted by personal or side issues, our own anger and frustration, or the efforts of those who will try to stop us by drawing us into unnecessary conflict and bloodshed.

Those seeking to protect and preserve their power, wealth, and influence will be quite willing to resort to violence, blackmail, and slander. They will do their best to use the media to portray our Transition as criminal acts of terrorism, disruption and vandalism perpetrated by hooligans, terrorists and ruffians. We must make sure to be true to the principles that guide us in our Transition and in the establishment of the new Paradigms, both for its own sake and in order not to give our opponents/enemies any real public-relations ammunition. Letting our emotions drive us to violence, overreaction, disrespectful behavior, vandalism, or revenge-seeking even in the face of violent attempts to suppress our Transition, would give our enemies just such ammunition.

We may likely have to defend ourselves, physically and in other ways. We must be scrupulous and painstaking to employ the absolute minimum level of violence necessary to neutralize real threats, seeking to temporarily disable those trying to stop us without killing or maiming them. We will be the ones working hard to keep vital goods and services running during the Transition. Those exerting to stop us will necessarily be forced into the role of trying to disrupt the flow of goods and services. The Feudal Lords of Capitalism will reveal themselves as the hooligans, terrorists and bullies that they are.

We must be prepared to extensively use video streaming, social and news media, and every other means to make sure that the world sees this in real time and understands the true nature of the Transition.

As previously mentioned, in a classical strike, workers stop the flow of goods and services to force employers to make concessions in pay, benefits, working conditions, etc. In the current socio-economic climate, employers often use the media to portray strikers as economic terrorists bent on disrupting the public good, and present themselves as the champions of the People.

In contrast, we who carry out the Transition will in fact be the ones demonstrably working to keep things running smoothly, forcing our opponents into the role of disruptors of the public good. We will in essence be "striking" on the economic side of things by abstaining from, and blocking, payment and charging. People will not pay for goods and services, and those on the front lines of delivering and producing them will not ask for payment. Financial institutions will be completely shut down.

Goods and services are real. Currency is an artificial construct with no utility, purpose, or real function, except to limit and block access.

Whereas in a traditional strike both sides have something the other wants or needs; negotiations proceed with the goal of resuming normal functioning in the Capitalist paradigm with just a few changes when it is resolved. In contrast, in the Transition the supporters of Capitalism will have nothing that we want or need. There will be no return to Capitalist norms when it is done. We will not be conceding anything. We, the real players on the field, will be changing the way the game is played, the way life is lived, and there will be no going back to the old ways.

Those removed from power when the entire economic power structure is dismantled, will be rendered powerless to reassert their dominance. We must then treat them with the same respect and firmness as someone who is violent or hostile due to mental illness, trauma, or fever. Our goal and purpose is to create a new kind of community dedicated to empowering all members to live in fullness, dignity, freedom, and respect.

Those who seek to crush our overthrow will attempt to draw us into traditional modes of conflict. Our response must be guided by different principles. While we act to overthrow their power, we do not seek to place ourselves in power in their place or to avenge ourselves upon them. We must endeavor to craft a Community that provides a niche for our former oppressors to thrive in while not enabling their addictions and personality disorders.

In the meantime, the more we detach from dependence on the Capitalist infrastructure, the better. As much as possible, this entails growing food crops, capturing rain water for home use (covertly if local municipalities or state governments have outlawed doing so), setting up small-scale electrical generation (solar, wind, very small-scale hydroelectric and other), practicing carpooling, learning first-aid and basic field medicine, and more.

We will also improve our situation if we make a point to teach ourselves to consciously tune out, ignore, and disregard the constant bombardment of advertising and other propaganda to which we are exposed, and to de-program ourselves out of the conditioned reflexes that have been programmed into us that lead us to perceive and experience a feeling of need to buy, replace, and consume ever more material possessions. Placing conscious attention on the psychological mechanisms of manipulation will be a good starting point.

In explaining, sharing, and spreading the principles behind the Transition and the new Paradigms to come, it is important to focus primarily on principles of operation, goals, quality of human life, factual information, what-works-and-what-doesn't, how and why. Of course it is important to foster unity in our diversity and to deepen commitment to the Transition. We must appeal to the heart as well as the intellect.

It is vital, however, to avoid us-vs-them rhetoric or thinking. Instead of calling for the overthrow of the CEO's, power-brokers, billionaires and other Capitalist Feudal Lords, we must think, intend, and express in terms of the overthrow of the Capitalist paradigm. Capitalism has enabled and reinforced the destructive, oppressive behavior of these people when we would have done better to diagnose their obsessive, addictive disorders and give them treatment. We have all unwittingly played a part in enabling their behavior by living life according to Capitalist principles and imperatives.

In order for the widest possible range of people to be able to hear the message and concepts, and for them to listen long enough to consider, research, and discuss them, it is absolutely essential to avoid wording and terminology that have strong negative emotional content or associations for cultural, religious, ethnic, political or other reasons. We must strive to avoid triggering conditioned-response psychological and emotional rejection mechanisms.

For example, we will do well to avoid terms such as "bourgeoisie," "proletariat," "lackey," "purity," “liberal,” “conservative,” and the like. Specific emotionally and/or culturally-charged words and phrases will vary from country to country, culture to culture, community to community. Our goal is to create an inclusive, empowering societal paradigm and vocabulary that honors and fosters the fulfillment, well-being and happiness of every member, in all of our diversity.

As we prepare to lay the foundations for this, we must avoid rhetoric or thinking that divides the Community into "Us" and "Them," the "good guys" and the "bad guys." We must find ways to express the truths and messages of the Transition using fresh, factually based, sympathetically resonant terms that do not trigger the unconscious landmines of our fellows' psyches.

The goal is not to manipulate and never to mislead, but rather to clarify, educate, motivate, empower, inform, stimulate inquiry and lively honest dialogue, demonstrate the need for change, introduce the likely modes of achieving the change, identify the kinds of changes needed and why.

The truths behind our operating principles, both in terms of identifying the underlying the dysfunctional dynamics and realities of Capitalist paradigms and of elucidating those of the Transition, are truths of human dynamics, motivations, and conscious self-determination. The issue is the game, not the identities of the players. The players are playing the game as it is set out. If the results are harmful and unsatisfactory, then the game itself must be re-examined, redefined, changed and, yes, all of the players must adapt.

We dare not go after the players personally for playing brutally when the game demands and reinforces brutality. We need to redefine the goals and rules of the game. Indeed there will be players who will resist and object, sometimes violently. We may need to physically stand up to and contain these players. To the extent that this happens, it must be based on their behavior, not on their role in the game that is being phased out.

If a human being harms, or attempts to harm or bully, another human being, then the behavior must be compassionately but firmly contained and stopped with minimal harm to any and all. This is the same, whether it is a former CEO and his or her loyalists trying to reassert their dominance, or whether it is an overzealous pioneer of the Transition who loses touch with the principles of the new Paradigms and tries to beat down a former CEO or slumlord.

This will not only be a new set of paradigms and operating principles for human beings and their Communities. It will also be a whole new set of principles and paradigms defining the People-driven, forced transition from a dysfunctional, established, enforced paradigm to a new pattern. A Transition more than a Revolution.

Both strategically and in keeping with the peer-based orientation of post-Transition paradigms and the deliberate, by-design shift away from hierarchical social structures, it is vital that we implement these principles even before the Transition as much as possible. We must make a conscious choice to avoid establishment of institutionalized leadership of an individual, individuals or groups.

In some ways, strong leadership and hierarchy streamlines processes. Yet it also suffers from fundamental flaws, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. Central leadership focused on individuals or a cadre of individuals, institutionalizes and magnifies the limitations, biases, dysfunctions and weaknesses of the leaders and propagates it outward throughout the Community even if it also magnifies the positive traits of leaders.

We know only too well the corrupting effect of power on human beings. As time goes on, any hierarchical structure takes on a life of its own, indiscriminately enforcing the will and points of view of the leaders upon the members of the Community, be they beneficial and wise or harmful, capricious and ill-advised.

In addition, the habituation of members of a community to rely upon leaders to guide, solve, plan, envision, and fix, in the long run disempowers most members of the Community and reinforces their living and functioning far below their maximum capacity as individuals and citizens. Think of a controlling parent who does everything for their children as they pass into adolescence and young adulthood, without teaching them life skills. More often than not this leads to offspring entering the world ill-prepared as young adults.

The very concept of leaders as parent-like figures and the rest of the population as child-like, personifies the problem. Even where the leaders may be wise, compassionate, caring, and motivated to prioritize the well-being of the Community and its members, the model's flaws out-create its advantages.

Strategically speaking, having strong and identifiable leaders is a serious vulnerability in another way. Those who will inevitably try to block, thwart, suppress, or undo the Transition and the New Paradigms, could destabilize, demoralize, confuse and diffuse any Transition or Revolution by attacking the leaders and removing them, whether by assassination, imprisonment, bullying, violence or through propaganda carefully crafted to discredit the leaders in the eyes and minds of the members of the Community.

Of course assassination, violence, bullying and imprisonment of the leaders of a Movement do have the effect of elevating them to the status of martyrs, which can strengthen and galvanize resistance; but the focus then shifts from the principles and goals of the Transition to those of loyalty to and defending the leaders. This also generates a strong righteous indignation while it promotes revenge and payback emotional reactions, which undermine the core principles of our Transition.

If the assassination, harassment, or imprisonment of leaders is accompanied by swift and brutal attacks upon rank-and-file members of a movement, a predictable percentage of them will be discouraged and, out of fear, cease their Transitionary activities.

A more intelligent, sophisticated cadre of our opponents and adversaries would favor the tactic of discrediting our leaders, if we had them, in our own eyes. If we encounter convincing evidence that our leaders are planning to become dictators, are in league with harmful interests, are guilty of atrocities, betrayals, gross avarice, corruption or of betraying our goals and principles, then we will be less inclined to follow them. Thus we see that if we were to have leader figures, their capture, murder, imprisonment, forced capitulation, or orchestrated discrediting could demoralize us and put us into disarray, making us more easily re-conquered and subdued. In addition, we have already established that hierarchical social structures reinforce some of our most destructive traits while suppressing many of our most constructive ones. Leaders of any stripe can and usually do become distorted, despotic and corrupt. If such a leader has become synonymous with the Transition in people’s perceptions, then their failure or discrediting could trigger widespread abandonment of the Transition itself.

Such discrediting propaganda would not come to us through the media outlets of our opponents. It would be carefully staged. There would be documents, audio and video recordings, photos, and other “evidence,” skillfully faked, then seeded or planted where it would be internally discovered by people in our own ranks. Alternatively such “evidence” could be contrived so it seems to come via our own information and communication networks.

If we remain strongly peer-based, each of us assuming a cooperative and synergistic co-leadership role, and form an organic whole with no head that can be cut off, we will be virtually unstoppable.

Our opponents and enemies on the other hand, will be vulnerable to these same tactics. We can exploit this to further weaken the power of the current neo-Feudal Lords but only by uncovering and publicizing true abuses, betrayals of public trust, hypocrisies, excesses, and corruption that can be verified as factual. We must never plant or fake such evidence.

On the other hand, we must not hesitate to hack, infiltrate, engage in espionage, and otherwise use any effective nonviolent tactics to gain possession of such information, regardless of laws in place to defend the Feudal Lords of Capitalism from any accountability to the People. The source of their power is also their vulnerability.

We must always keep very much in mind that our goal is not to avenge ourselves upon the neo-Feudal Lords, to vent our frustration and righteous indignation upon them, or to "make them pay." Our goal is to dismantle and decommission hierarchical, pyramidal socio-economic systems that reinforce and enforce destructive paradigms, that enable these abuses to occur and give these people power over the rest of us.

The fact that they will fight to thwart our efforts is the only reason why we must oppose them and probably fight them. Let us never forget that the goal is the end of a dysfunctional paradigm and the establishment of a better one. Part of that is to take responsibility for the fact that we have all, unaware and in our ignorance, helped to create and perpetuate the destructive paradigms by living, working, and playing by their rules and dictates. The dynamics are similar to the family of an alcoholic who enable the disease by covering for them and buying them whiskey or wine, instead of performing an intervention to help them heal and end the danger and dysfunction.

Before, during, and after the Transition, we must, individually and as Communities, never pass up or shirk an opportunity to support and uplift one another, especially the most painfully struggling and afflicted among us. Let this be established as a fundamental core behavior that we reinforce in ourselves and in each other from the beginning and every day thereafter. We are each and all imperfect. Yet we must establish norms, attitudes, and cultural practices that favor going the extra mile for one another while not abusing those who are going the extra mile for us. Let this be our reality, and let the people of the world see this for themselves.

Under Soviet communism, the central government served to regulate and drive production and consumption by imposition. Corporate command structures function in exactly the same way under Capitalism. In the new paradigms, the central function will be to gather and coordinate data, display it and make it available in easily understandable forms so that people and facilities around the country will adjust their operations accordingly of their own free will. The central function will be more like the conductor of an orchestra then like the CEO of a company, a commissar, or a corporate headquarters.

The new post-Transitional Paradigms will function as an organic whole, in which each person, facility, and function supports the others in a symbiotic, synergistic manner. Organization will be peer based rather than hierarchical in nature. Producers and providers will be able to access the central database to see how much of what is needed or is available and adjust their activities accordingly, updating the database as they do.

Consumers and recipients of goods and services will be able to update the database to reflect their needs. Services such as electricity and water will be metered, monitored, and automatically update the database. Goods will have passive RFID (Radio Frequency Identification chips) which will automatically update the database when taken out of Distribution Centers or returned to them. This mechanism will help to coordinate production and consumption processes in real-time, and also act as a forum for dialog, discussion, and sharing of ideas, technology, information, and culture.