I realized this when I was on the punk/anarchist left.
I was convinced after spending my first week on the “web,” and then ten years blogging.
Not to mention 17 years in a 12-step program now in its sixth decade, the founding documents of which insist that it “ought never be organized.”
I said this all through the Steyn/Levant battles, when so many otherwise intelligent people wanted to set up “foundations” and “think tanks” and “institutions” and listserves, and continue to this day to donate their money to bloated parties and groups that duplicate and therefore dilute each others’ work.
An activist asked my advice about using social media to get across a vital message earlier this week.
I explained the tactical and strategic facts, as deliniated here.
And she tsked and told me my ideas were crazy. Her “bosses” and “stakeholders” would never go for it. And “what would people say…?”
Note well: many individuals, left and right, are invested in losing, because they enjoy the romantic sensation of martyrdom.
If they win, their “phony balloney” bigshot jobs, with their free booze and benefits and tongue baths, become redundant.
So they refuse to do what has once again been proven to work:
Moreover, hierarchies are at a loss to defeat networks.
Open systems have no leader or headquarters; their units are self-funding, and their members often work for free (think Wikipedia).
Even in principle, you can’t count or compartmentalize the participants, because they come and go as they please—but counting them is unnecessary, because they can communicate directly with each other.
Knowledge and power are distributed throughout the system…
