Chapter 37: More on Strategy and Tactics

In order to minimize the impact of any disruptions in the flow of goods and services that may result from sabotage or interference by newly deposed former feudal lords trying to re-establish their dominance through force, it’ll be best to time the Transition for early to mid Spring. This gives the longest time for things to stabilize before winter cold sets in, and a reasonable time before summer heat could create hardship. In hotter climates, early to mid fall might be similarly more beneficial. Going into Transition, we’ll have to identify at-risk people and populations, and consciously strive to protect them and see to their welfare through the process.

The timing can be coordinated via the Internet through the same means used to organize flash mobs and treasure hunts, as well as by email, word of mouth, and any and all possible media.

Leading up to the Transition, there’s a lot that we can do to strengthen ourselves. Rather than continue living as individual and family islands, we’ll become much stronger if we form deeply committed support groups, to strengthen and sustain each other mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, financially, and in every other way. Each group’s members will cultivate strong mutual trust and interconnection, ensure that no member is left on their own in the face of calamity, and create a safe space in which all can thrive. Resources, tools, skills, efforts and knowledge will be pooled, counteracting the current paradigm’s disempowering default pattern of isolation, separation and alienation. We will carpool, share childcare, plant food, set up small-scale wind, solar and hydroelectric generators, learn first aid, field medicine, household maintenance skills and more.

We also don’t need to wait for the full Transition to begin to roll out small-scale distributed food and power generation, though we won’t be able to fully implement it until the Transition is done.

Once the date of Transition is set and committed in any country, we will need to stay clear and laser focused on the goals, principles and purpose of the Transition. We dare not let ourselves be distracted by anger, pain, frustration, fear, obstacles, or engaging with the actions of those who try to oppose the Transition.

The modern feudal lords will almost certainly remote to violence, blackmail, intimidation, slander propaganda and other extreme means to hold on to their power and the status quo. They will portray us as violent aggressors, terrorists, and hooligans. It’s vital that we rigorously speak and act consistently with the principles of the Transition at all times, both for the success of the new paradigm, and to not give our opponents any real ammunition for their propaganda. We must remain resolute, compassionate, and respectful, even if we have to fight for our lives. Vengeance and emotional purging must never enter our behavioral vocabulary.

When forced to fight, we must use minimum violence and strive for minimum harm as we neutralize threats. As much as humanly possible, we must strive to disarm rather than kill or maim, contain and de-escalate rather than fight, temporarily disable rather than permanently harm our foes. In truth and in the eyes of the world, we will be the reasonable, level-headed ones striving to keep goods and services flowing, to keep harmony and order, while those trying to suppress us will be revealed for all to see as the terrorists, bullies, hooligans and dangerous parties.

In order to ensure that the world sees the reality of Transition, every one of us must become a live-streaming reporter. News media must be encouraged to extensively report events.

Traditional strikes, which disrupt production to pressure employers into making concessions, leave strikers vulnerable to being spun as disruptors, “economic terrorists,” and troublemakers, as has happened increasingly and very effectively since the 1980’s in the U.S. Employers are spun as job-creating benefactors devoted to public good.

In the Transition, we will keep real goods and services running, but shut down all financial activity at every level. No payments will be asked, given, or accepted. This will force our opponents into the role of petty, violent hooligans and disruptors. Remember that goods and services are real, while currency is a made-up thing with no intrinsic value of its own, other than as a means of controlling access to goods and services. Completely eliminating currency will actually speed up the flow of goods and services and make things dramatically more efficient and less wasteful.

In a traditional strike, each side has something that the other side wants. The strike ends when a compromise is reached, and then the same paradigm resumes operation, with minor tweaks. In the Transition, the feudal lords have literally nothing that we want or need. There will be no negotiation or compromise. The current paradigm has proven itself to be toxic and non-viable. We will shut it down and initialize a new paradigm operating on completely different principles. There will be no return to the way things were. We, the players in the field, will fundamentally change the game from the ground up.

When the current feudal lords react badly to seeing their power, privilege, and the socioeconomic power structure that sustained them dismantled, we must treat them with the same compassionate firmness as we would apply to a friend, stranger or relative who becomes violent when suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, addiction, or other disorder. Our purpose is to create a society that empowers and respects all of its members and strives sincerely to foster symbiotic, rather than predatory, dynamics.

Always keep in mind that we do not seek to displace those in power and take their place. We will dismantle the whole hierarchical social structure and replace it with an organic, peer based, synergistic one. There will be no positions of power to be coveted or disputed. When all is said and done, we will need to help the former lords to find a niche to thrive in alongside everybody else. This will reduce our dependence on the current paradigm and our entanglement with it.

In the pre-Transition period, we’ll benefit greatly if we work together consciously to deprogram ourselves from the consumeristic responses conditioned into us from birth. It is possible to make ourselves impervious and immune to advertising, marketing, and conditioned urges to shop. It is possible to study and become fully cognizant of the strategies and mechanisms used to manipulate people into mechanistically shopping, consuming, and spending. Thus immunized, our quality of life will already improve and our stress levels decrease.

In talking and writing to people about the new paradigm, we want to focus on the goals, principles of operation, and the impact on quality of life, on the practicalities of what works and what doesn’t. We will not vilify individuals or groups. We must appeal to both the intellect and the heart. We will maintain a strong commitment to unity in diversity.

We will avoid us-versus-them rhetoric. We will not call for violence or punitive action against the modern feudal lords. Remember that their behavior is selected for and reinforced in our societies. Instead of diagnosing their addiction to privilege, wealth, and power, we have unwittingly played our part in maintaining the same pattern. Both the modern feudal lords, and the modern feudal serfs and peasants, have played a part in perpetuating this destructive paradigm. This will change, and those affected will receive treatment to support them in recovering from their addiction.

In order for word of the Transition to be listened to by the widest possible number of people and sectors, we must be aware of, and scrupulously avoid, the use of culturally, emotionally charged terms. These will vary from country to country and culture to culture. We will need to avoid terms like “bourgeoisie,” “proletariat,” “military-industrial complex,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “class,” the names of specific political parties and many more. The new paradigm is neither capitalism, nor communism, nor socialism. We do not want to trigger landmines of conditioned responses associated with the interactions of those or other past “isms” that have left a strong emotional imprint.

We will not speak in divisive terms of good guys and bad guys. We will speak of systems and principles that work, and that don’t work, factually and matter-of-factly. The new paradigm will benefit every one of us, as we are, and exclude none.

Our presentation of our message must never mislead or manipulate. We will inform, educate, clarify, identify the problems and present the solutions, and explain how to implement them. We will stimulate honest, open dialogue and inquiry.

The truths of how and why the current paradigm is harmful and unsustainable, and the new paradigm is sustainable and beneficial to all, are based on the operating principles and dynamics of each. The issue is how the “game” is designed and is set up to be played. The identity of the players is largely irrelevant. A game that, when played as designed, causes massive harm, must be re-examined, decommissioned, and replaced with one that is mutually beneficial to all. We must never go after the players, the modern feudal lords. They have played the “game” of this paradigm, as it is designed to be played. As have we all. When the “game” reinforces playing brutally, we can’t punish the players for doing so. We must change the game, its rules and goals. When some players object violently to this, yes, we will have to contain and restrain them from doing harm, but not punitively. Instead, we will treat them as we would treat a friend or neighbor with a drug, video game, or gambling addiction – with compassion, firmness, and supportive therapy.

Any person or group who attempt to bully, intimidate, or harm another will be contained and prevented. It makes no difference whether the individual is trying to force a return to the modern feudal paradigm, or is trying to punish former modern feudal lords for harm suffered from their actions. The new paradigm will be one of inclusiveness, empowerment, and symbiosis. We must always use that as our guiding compass.

This Transition will bring more than just a new paradigm with new operating principles for human communities and societies. It will also pioneer a whole new approach to how to enact a forceful needed fundamental paradigm change, from the grass roots, without bloodshed or major disruptions. That is why this is a Transition more than a Revolution.

Since the new paradigm will be non-hierarchical and peer-driven, we’ll benefit from beginning that shift, even before the Transition, in how we interact, and avoid creating institutionalized power positions, hierarchies, or asymmetrical deference and respect for some more than others.

A hierarchy with strong leadership may seem to streamline processes, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. Such structures magnify, reinforce, and enforce not just the positive traits, but also the dysfunction, incompetence, biases and weaknesses of leaders, impose them upon the rest of the hierarchy, set them in stone, and suppress initiative and collaboration such is natural in a peer-driven structure. We’ve seen it thousands of times. Human beings’ most destructive traits are reinforced in hierarchies, and their most constructive traits are suppressed.

Hierarchies also suppress the full empowerment of their members in other ways. When a society is conditioned to look to leaders to make decisions and solve problems, its members are thus stunted and fail to develop or express their full creative and productive potential. This gives disproportionate power to leaders at the expense of suppression of the rest of the people. This is built into the very nature of hierarchies.

Hierarchical societies often view leaders as parent-like and citizens as child-like. Even when leaders are well-intended, the paradigm’s flaws far outweigh its advantages.

Having strong, identifiable leaders also creates a strategic disadvantage. Leaders can be assassinated, intimidated, incarcerated, bribed, manipulated, and discredited in followers’ eyes through propagandistic disinformation. This demoralizes followers, making it easier for those who are intent on suppressing their goals to shut them down.

It is true that assassinated or persecuted leaders often become martyrs, thus galvanizing followers, strengthening their resistance. Unfortunately, this usually refocuses energy and action on defending, freeing and rallying around the leaders, often in a violent emotional urge to vengeance, and away from the goals, strategies and principles of the movement. Thus even when the movement responds in such scenarios, they have often already lost sight of their values, principles and goals.

In the event that assassination or suppression of leaders is accompanied by swift, brutal attacks upon all movement members and sympathizers, the movement is often broken. We saw this in Nazi Germany, the Mongols under Genghis Khan, and other examples.

If the Transition were to have a strong established leader or leaders who become synonymous with the Transition, then more clever, less brutal opponents might be able to manufacture “evidence” to convince us that our leaders are corrupt, untrustworthy, or hypocritical, using paid “witnesses” and deepfake technology. Such disinformation would not come from sources hostile to the Transition. It would be “leaked” to sources we trust from planted “whistleblowers” or left where it would surely be discovered by people involved in sources that we trust. Such disinformation could also tip people who are unsure what to think about the Transition, towards hostility towards.

Let us also not forget that the very fact of experiencing being in a power position, soon shuts down the brain centers for empathy and compassion. There would be a very real likelihood that at least some, if not all, of our leaders would indeed become corrupt or lose their compassion and empathy to at least some degree. That would doom the Transition to failure right out of the gate.

Therefore we must remain strongly peer-based up to, through, and after the Transition. As an organic, collaborative association of symbiotes united in our diversity with no central leadership, we will likely be unstoppable.

Conversely, our opponents will be intensely hierarchical. We can exploit their inherent vulnerabilities by aggressively identifying real corruption, abuse, betrayals, and hypocrisies of their leaders, the modern feudal lords, and publicizing them widely. We must only use actual evidence, and never “manufacture” evidence. In order to obtain such evidence, we must be prepared to hack, infiltrate, tap, spy upon and use every effective nonviolent, nondestructive approach. The modern feudal lords will not just disclose such information on their own.

Always keep firmly in mind that we do not seek to punish the modern feudal lords, to avenge ourselves upon them, humiliate them, or beat them down in righteous indignation. Our purpose is to replace the socioeconomic paradigm, the “game” at which they’ve become master players, with a completely different one with different operating principles, in which there will be no power to abuse, nor any way to control resources that others use or need. They will have no power to wield over anybody but themselves.

The only reason why we’ll probably have to fight at all with those addicted to the current paradigm, is to defend ourselves and the new paradigm if and when they try to forcefully and violently enforce their power. The goal is the non-violently forceful change of paradigm. We must be honest with ourselves and recognize that the only reason why the modern feudal lords have had such power, has been because we have all unwittingly played our parts as serfs and peasants in the game, maintaining their power by working for them for the wages they offered, buying from them at the prices they charged, and giving them further wealth and power by using credit, and in addition, charging and paying each other in currency for goods and services among us. If they’ve been the quarterbacks, we’ve been the defensive ends. Our Transition will come about by simply (and not so simply) changing the way the “game” is played, the operating principles and goals of the socioeconomic paradigm, from the bottom up. Instead of a feudal lord deciding that a corporation will shut down a plant in a town, leaving the down shattered, in this case the people of the town will simply run the plant on their own and inform the feudal lord that their services are no longer needed and their orders will no longer be followed, but that they are invited to become a valued member of the team. Once the Transition is established, we will respond to displaced former feudal lords with the same firmness and compassion that we bring to a friend or family member with any addictive disorder. Our goal is to make it possible for every member of the community to be fully actualized, empowered, fulfilled, and engaged.

Change rarely comes easily. It will be hard on some, and some may have fears and uncertainties. It’s vital that we each take it upon ourselves to observe our fellows, our friends, family members, workmates, neighbors and anybody around us and notice anyone who is struggling or in distress. We must make it the norm to support, uplift, encourage, and care for one another, to go the extra mile for one another and to appreciate and never abuse those going the extra mile for us. This is the culture that we will bring about. It must start with us, with you, with me. We must start this immediately and not wait for the Transition. This is part of setting the stage and creating positive social momentum. This is the behavior that we will reinforce.

Both Soviet style Communism and commercial corporations drive, control, and dictate production, consumption, and working conditions by central decree. In the new paradigm, the purpose of a central organization, be it governmental or professional, will be to gather, coordinate, analyze, and display information and make it easily accessible to all. This will allow producers to see actual need and voluntarily adjust production accordingly. It will allow consumers to give feedback and present actual need. Of course, consumers and producers are really the same people – us, in different roles. The function of central organizations will be more like a jazz orchestra conductor than like a commissar or the board of directors of a corporation. Production and consumption will become a collaborative dialog among all members of the community, participating as equal partners, communicating openly, relevantly and productively.

The new paradigm will be a peer-based synergistic symbiosis, with all individuals, groups, and other social entities supporting each other organically, like the organs and cells in our bodies.

Central databases will update in real time. Fluid goods and services like electricity, water, and Internet bandwidth will be metered so that production can rapidly adjust to actual demand. Solid, discrete goods and services will have passive RFID embedded in them, so that when items are taken out of, or returned to, a distribution center, the database will update automatically. The central database will facilitate coordination of production and provide an open forum for suggestions, feedback, questions, requests, ideas, discussion, and development.