On The Revolution and how everyone can prepare for it

What happens when something disruptive happens. Maybe you want the disruption or maybe it was forced upon by external factors beyond any individual's control. Either way, disruptions are generally bad, but it's important to be prepared for them. In politics and in civics it's of utmost importance to plan and prepare for the vacuum following a disruptive event.

In a disruption the existing institutions and their representatives will be unable to serve in their existing positions. It is possible, and happens quite often, that they may be prevented from accomplishing their regular tasks for an extended period of time. In such an event one should find alternatives to the tasks and folks who can perform them the best.

In such political or social vacuum often people who are the most power-hungry or bloodthirsty tend to take over, undoing the disruption and undermining its original purpose. Because you focused so much on creating the disruption and not enough on what happens after the fact, you are the kaalu who did the work, and your adversaries are the bhaalus who will be eating the makai. You have wasted time energy and manpower only to make things a lot worse than they would otherwise have been.

But do not worry. That situation can be avoided!

Not everyone needs to become an expert, not everyone a cadre. They don't even need to be your supporters necessarily. What they need to support is a new social structure, and they need to be good at whatever they do. In case of crumbling institutions they need to be able to use their skills and abilities in whatever field of work they are to provide alternatives.

While they may not instantly get to the competence level of old institutions, there's an easy way for you to encourage your compadres to be in that mindset.

For every argument debate decision, ask them what they would do if they were in the position of power. Give them difficult questions tricky situations, and make them evaluate their options, hopefully guiding them towards your outlook on institutional resilience. Ask them how they would do things differently if their voices mattered, ask why current institutions are not doing that, and what can be done to avoid the existing roadblocks. Get them to identify the new blocks their decisions would lead to, and how they would solve problems.

It could get annoying at first, a little tedious. But it gets better. Give them cool names. "Shadow ministry", "shadow hospital", "learning bureaucracy". Books on policy and politics are great, but they don't all need to be top political players...they need to be doing one thing well...which is whatever they are good at. Provide them with the hypothetical political backing they would require. Take examples of places where your proposed policies have been opposed and/or failed, identify why that has been the case and what they would do to ameliorate that. Get them to engage their stakeholders with similar conversations. Organize this frame of thinking as 'war gaming' and 'disaster preparedness', they're both technically true no one can reasonably accuse you of lying or misleading.

Run actual wargames. Pretend existing institutions have fallen. Evaluate the merits of their responses, provide feedback. Make the situations more and more realistic as you go, strengthen their belief in teamwork and their trust in you and other teams to back them up in hours of need. Build trust and confidence. Make it about their groups not their individual selves.

Replicate this across increasingly larger groups.

And eventually, the disruptive event will have come and gone and no one will have noticed. The revolution will have turned over will waiting for something decisive to happen.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Tell me what you think. I'll read, promise.