Chapter 6: Strategy and Tactics

"To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.”
-The Chinese

Obviously, what has been outlined above has only scratched the surface of what we mean to do. It has only sketched a small portrait of our plans, intentions, and conceptions of the world. What is necessary is a consideration of points that relate to the actual functioning of the operating Creator group in its march towards the pinnacles of power and the central hubs of the decentralized society. Thus, to this end, what follows is a series of subsections, each considering an important issue in the movement, some of which bear little explanations, while others may be more complex. I hope that it is somewhat helpful or at least somewhat interesting towards a greater understanding of the aims and mentalities of the Umbrella.

The Defeat and Control of Decentralized Organizations
History has consistently proven that in the battle between centralized organizations and decentralized movements, the latter is always the winner. Consider, most dramatically, the conflict between hierarchical, controlled militaries and loosely associated, fluid guerilla fighters. The Chinese Civil War between Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. Winner: Mao. The Vietnam War between the US and Communists. Winner: Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong. Even the American Revolutionary War between the British and Patriots. Winner: the Patriots. Obviously, our traditional conception of how to control, destroy, or otherwise triumph over an organization is misunderstood.
Essentially, the difficulty arises in the need to see the controlling unit of an organization as its leader. It is simple, for example, to destroy the coordination of an army or nation through destruction of its leaders. However, against a decentralized group, there is no core to fight against, no enemy that is readily available. So, what to do?
The important part is to not see the group as linked by a physical construct, such as a single leader, but by a mental one. An idea is what leads them, with perhaps a few individuals working as influential interpreters of that idea. But often, the idea is not only a single quanta of a concept, but a whole culture which binds them together. There are only two options to defeating such a problem. The first, and most difficult, is to eliminate all of the carriers of this particular idea or meme. But, like the ease of transfer of ideas, it is difficult and not to mention dangerous to destroy the enemy in such a complete manner. After all, the mistake of allowing a few to survive will only polarize them into a further insistence of the organization’s survival.
The second, and far more effective, is to fight the battle of ideas. The aim is to first assume all the trappings, mannerisms, and tics of that particular community. Once actually internalized, the agents outside persona has effectively become a reflection of the idea around which the organization is based. This allows him or her to gain a degree of influence over the culture itself. From this point, the group can be made to self-destruct through the dissemination of information or new memes which will create fractures in the groups unity. A controversial idea, for example, is a fine use of this subversion. And, if control is the pointed aim the agent can use the acceptance in the community to slowly become more influential and to identify major routes of information. This gives the power to spread memes which will alter the original course of the organization and to discredit any rivals who would resist this change in purpose. In this way, the decentralized organization is brought under the thumb of an Umbrella agent. If done well, no one the organization will even know they are under our influence. In the interest of maintaining secrecy, this is best. In short, become the organization to control the organization.
Note that this particular point will best work against and is best well taken often against groups which are fundamentally unstructured in nature. A community of artists, for example, or grassroots political activists. However, in regards to more centralized enemies or targets, the strategy is simple: aim to subvert or destroy the high corridors of control, and the entire organization will go with it.

The Surrealism Initiative
In an oft cited classic experiment of human behavior, a subject (or, more accurately, “victim”) is unknowingly placed in a group with ten of the experimenter’s confederates. The group is then presented with a series of three lines of different lengths, with one line being clearly longer than the others. They are asked, in turn, which one is the longest, with each confederate clearly giving the wrong answer. The subject is slated to go last. More often than not, individuals will elect to also choose the incorrect line. It’s fun to see photos from the experiment, since the subject looks so utterly confused by a string of answers which are blatantly incorrect. But the point of the matter is that the behavior of individuals around us has a direct impact on how we ultimately act as well. As a corollary, we extend this rule to generalize that the behavior (or state) of our environment can exhibit large scale changes on how we act, think, and what we say. Cannibalism, for all its ghoulish datedness, acts as a perfect example. Take a normal middle-class suburban individual and request that he devour a cooked leg of a small child. He’ll probably refuse, citing all degree of moral justification and the like. However, take him out of this societal context and put him into a wartime situation, in which starvation is a constant possibility and options for food are scarce, and behavior will no doubt change dramatically in many cases.
Now consider what this dynamic implies for our society as it stands. Essentially, it sums up the problems first presented in the introduction to this manifesto. A quick, uncaring, unthinking, disposable society leads to quick, uncaring, unthinking, disposable people, mostly due to the fact that we have adapted to our surroundings. In particular, the lack of creativity which seems to crop up in our culture seems to be a result of the shocking amount of environmental stasis in our lives. Our lives follow the same, repetitive structure, and the only drastically changing form of stimulation is the television, which is perhaps why it is so attractive in this day and age. Thus, the need for creativity and innovation has certainly declined somewhat. Shaking up the daily landscape with a healthy dose of surrealism, either through physical changes (that is, a tangible change in environment, a sudden, inexplicable appearance of installation art, or the like) or individual action promotes initial confusion and eventual creativity. If properly done, the weird humor inherent in doing something completely odd and inexplicable is a social good, promoting positive behavior and individual thought. Even if the work under question might be considered slightly offensive, the initial shock will breed questions, and from questions, the creative and unusual nature of the art will implant itself in the mind of the viewer.
Strategically, this serves the Umbrella by not only awakening Followers with unrealized Creator potential, but to create a small system shock to unsettle Maintainer resistance. After all, the Opposition, working within their defined social structures and context, expect a certain kind of response to a stimulus. Something new, then, will only be useful in halting or confusing their efforts (quite simply, they won’t know what to do!). And, of course, this pursuit of this, the Surrealism Initiative, is, metaphysically, an assertion the power of the newly organized and united Creators in their campaign. It expresses, to be somewhat longwinded, the Umbrella spirit of the creative, often eccentric experience, and fun inherent in any kind of true innovation, learning, and use of intelligence.

The Organizational Rule of Fives

“‘...a simple mathematical relationship. It’s so simple, in fact, that most administrators and bureaucrats never notice it. Just as the householder doesn’t notice the humble termite, until it’s too late...Here, take this paper and figure for yourself. How many permutations are there in a system of four elements?’”
“Joe, recalling his high school math, wrong 4 x 3 x 2x 1, a read aloud his answer ‘Twenty-four.’”
“And if you’re one of the elements, the number of coalitions—or to be sinister, conspiracies—that you might have to confront would be twenty-three...Just consider it pragmatically—its the number of possible relationships which the brain can remember and handle. But now suppose the system has five elements...?”
“Joe wrote 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 a read aloud, ‘One hundred and twenty.’ ‘You see? One always encounters jumps of that size when dealing with permutations and combinations. But, as I say, administrators as a rule aren’t aware of this. Korzybski pointed out, back in the early thirties, that nobody should ever directly supervise more than four subordinates, because the twenty-four possible coalitions ordinary office politics can create are enough to tax any brain. When it jumps up to one hundred and twenty, the administrator is lost...”
“‘Now,’ he said, ‘put yourself in the position of the head of any counterespionage organization...Force X gets to seem more and more implausible to all of them, because it is intrinsically incredible. It is incredible because it has no skeleton, no shape, no flesh, nothing they can grab hold of. The reason is, of course, that Force X is the Illuminati, working through five leaders with five times four times three times two times one, or one hundred and twenty different basic vectors. A conspiracy with one hundred and twenty vectors doesn’t look like a conspiracy: it looks like chaos. The human mind can’t grasp it, and hence declares it nonexistent.”

-Robert Anton Wilson, The Eye in the Pyramid(Pgs. 269-270)

The Illuminatus Trilogy, for all its contrived stream of consciousness, 60s mish-mash psychedelic philosophy, and gratuitous explicitness, probably finds its most interesting point in this passage. The so called Law of Fives serves both as a rule of thumb for organization and as an offensive tool for the Umbrella. As to the former, the point is simple: for smaller organizations and operations, it is necessary to keep direct contact between a very small number of members. True, in turn, these subordinates can have contact with five other subordinates, but the critical point is that each member in a network of people should ideally supervise or work with no more than four others. This allows as the passage indicates, a reduction of inefficiency and group turmoil as a consequence of politicking, as well as creating tighter, more effective personal relationships. Note that groups of Creators must behave as a decentralized mass, a community, but hierarchical actions within that community, operations, leadership, and the like, must be done in terms of the rule of Five. In terms of offense, the Law of Fives indicates the power of remaining decentralized, members of the organization will naturally be unaware of everything the Umbrella is doing, knowing, rather, what their particular local group is planning. While this may serve as a disadvantage in some cases, the great benefit of decentralization is that detection is near impossible, and the Umbrella lacks anything corporal to strike at. There is no center and it is therefore difficult to attack, much less recognize.

Symbols and Power

Symbols inherently have a great deal of sway over the behavior of society since they are, effectively, physical representations of an abstract set of ideas. And that kind of physicality is reassuring, makes us believe that beyond all the rhetoric, that there is something real behind it all. Symbols, too, are easy to understand, they are an image which can be easily reproduced and capture an idea succinctly to the initiated. Essentially, these symbols are powerful mediums through which memes can travel from one to another in their propagation. Creating new and powerful symbols is a viral process: it can spread through a system quickly, bringing a message or a new belief to many individuals without much work on the side of the initiators. Rather, he or she develops a symbol, which is then inserted into a network of individuals, and the members of the network themselves will spread it to one another. In essence, a powerful symbol is a distilled form of power itself: the means to sway the future state of a human system. The Umbrella then, in the need for subverting and controlling the memetic lives of the Followers, must become well versed in the use of repeated symbols as their route of communication and persuasion. Or, even more towards the route of subversion, Maintainer symbols can be placed in a new context or new format to give it a different meaning than it initially began with. The concept of “Adbusting,” in which a corporate logo or design is reworked in a creative manner to protest the business itself, seems a perfect example of this use of “symbol warfare” towards subverting, controlling, and destroying Maintainer controls of the memetic life of the Followers.
(See adbusters.org for examples and details)

Symbols also serve a particularly pragmatic purpose for the Umbrella. Since the conception of the organization is inherently decentralized and one group is often unknowing of the actions of other smaller groupings of Creators, symbols can be used to signal the presence of the movement to others in the know publicly, while maintaining secrecy from others who do not understand the meaning of those symbols. This will become more powerful as the Umbrella becomes larger, but plays a role in these commencing phases as a way to rally members together. However, some kind of standardization must take place for this kind of communication to occur, and thus, our symbols are to be defined as follows.
1) The Umbrella: The symbol of our unity and its protection against Maintainer opression.
2) The Penguin: The symbol of patent eccentricity and humor.
3) The Kite: The symbol of power to transcend above stagnant societal rules and barriers.

Betrayal and Dependency
One of the most unsettling aspects of the Followers is that they seemingly have no compunction about mindlessly accepting a meme and resisting changes to it without ever questioning the value of the idea that they hold. On a whole, the Maintainers are good at reinforcing their sphere of influence such that the great majority of people fall under their sway. The problem with creating communities of Creators is that it, too, may unintentionally create fields of inference which may capture stray Followers who have the meme-accepting ethic but for one reason or another do not fit into the Maintainer ethic. Beware these people, for their true loyalty is not to the process of creation or creativity, but to the adoration of a single concept, usually for the psychological purpose of acceptance. Many of them preserve deep seated desires to be “normal” and will trade the goals of the Umbrella for the chance to fit in to the system. Many of them will find no difficulty in either knowingly or unknowingly stabbing you in the back or being highly fickle to achieve their aim of “normality.” Others have decided that the attention given to them for being “weird” fulfills their mental desires and thus flaunt a “weirdness” which is merely a crude caricature of what they perceive. One should always take pains to remember that the “eccentricity” which is alluded to in this manifesto is not what is paramount about the Umbrella. We must first be Creators, and then the uniqueness of our creations will reflect on an internal “strangeness” in comparison to the Maintainer conception of the world. Thus, the way to identify these traitors to the Umbrella is to merely examine them not from their external appearance, but what they do. If they are trapped within the Maintainer meme or as a currently existing reflection of a group, not actually creating anything new, they are most definitely to be watched out for. If potential exists in that they exhibit classic Creator behavior (flashes of creativity, intellectual curiosity, “cleverness”), they should not be removed, but instead, they should be brought to the Umbrella ideal and awoken to their true potential. However, even worse, one that spreads memes only within the Maintainer context are dangerous in that they are capable of polluting other members of the group, turning them from Creators to Followers. These should be eliminated or neutralized immediately.
Of course, what is most obvious about these individuals is that they are so in need of a meme to mindlessly follow that they have become hopelessly dependent. This degree of dependency to a meme (not an ideal, however, as previously stated) and, more generally, dependency to anything at all, is weakening to a true agent of the Umbrella, in that it encourages obsession over a single “thing” rather than the evolution and development of that “thing.” To this end, one should always seek to minimize dependency, since the means to become independent of anything, whether it be a meme, or, in more concrete examples, drugs, sex, and otherwise, is the ability exert influence as authentically yourself, and not the influence of that object on you. And to be yourself in the truest sense, gives rise to the kind of unique, individual thought that should characterize the Umbrella. That you command yourself, and not something else, is significant, since it is uniquely a Creator trait.

Recruiting

What is most interesting about this morality play of Creators, Maintainers, and Followers is that they already exist without the recognition of this somewhat terse, dense prose. Everyone knows individuals who fit quite strongly into the category of the Follower and the Maintainer. And the Creator will always be a Creator, regardless of what kind of labels and descriptions are placed to analyze them. Thus, the Umbrella must always seek to bring individuals who are already acting as our agents into this larger community to protect them against forces which might otherwise be less than encouraging and promote their minds. Furthermore, they must be made to realize that they are not to shy away from their internal drive to develop and rework the paradigm of their endeavors, but to rather show it with pride, for the Umbrella as a community will only appreciate them for it. In doing so, they must understand the supremacy and power that is inherent in them that will have no doubt been repressed through years of disapproval and oppression by the Opposition. In realizing their full potential, they will rise in the ranks of normal society and lend the Umbrella their strength and potential.
Essentially, it seems to me if modern society and the Maintainer dynamic have placed demands on the individual which make it difficult to be creative. Often, we are kept so busy or required to pass through choking bureaucracy to express our creativity (in terms of permits, permission, and otherwise) that it makes it near impossible to give free rein to our innovative creations. The communities of the Umbrella must aim to remove these obstacles within themselves, using their resources to free bright, talented minds from having to deal to hindrances to realizing their ideas. As Umbrella members climb towards the top, for example, their financial resources will grow, allowing them to free others in their community from the problems of grants for research, experimentation and the like. One of the key themes at work here is that once recruited, the individual must participate in and receive the benefits of a community which is dedicated to the removal of everyday, petty obstacles to creativity. To this end, this acceptance of all kinds of innovation and imagination also requires an equal refusal to maintain any pretense of superiority or any kind of superiority within the community at all. The Followers are not lower than the Creators in any way, they are merely fulfilling their natural route and no more. They are not willfully unquestioning, they have just been trained that way. Within the community, the talents of each member is respected, and as such, no superiority is allowed between them. In this sense, an insufferable genius who refuses to recognize the creations of others is not a Creator but a Maintainer in the deepest sense. True, there are ideas which are “wrong,” but if the idea is truly new, however, improbable, it fulfills a kind of Schrodingers Cat position of not being in either the state of right or wrong. Newness, therefore, must be respected as legitimately new, with no judgment given. Superiority is not to be a part of the Umbrella culture. And even when natural superiority exists (in the case of someone who is on a raw level better at, say, mathematics, than another), it should never be recognized as such, but, rather, respected. Thus, no superiority is touted, but a recognition of hierarchy (a completely different concept) is present in Umbrella society. In short, natural superiority should not give rise to the pretense of superiority over others, but merely the respect that it engenders.
But the idealistic leadership of this movement should never forget, too, that they are an all embracing organization of talent. An artificial renaissance requires all of the disparate skills and fields of expertise to be put together. No one should ever be turned away from the Umbrella just because they are deficient in some arbitrary way. As long as they embody that spirit of creation and are a positive addition to the power (in one way or another) and collective will of the group, they should be brought in.
After all, it should be noted here that there is one qualification: that not everyone is a perfect Creator, Maintainer, or Follower. Rather, these are idealizations for the purpose of demonstration. We are all, to greater or lesser degree, some of all three types, particularly in certain situations and skills. However, there are definite tendencies which characterize an individual particularly in the way they approach their everyday lives on the whole. And, on a case by case basis, it is identifiable if their tendency lends itself to the Umbrella.
The old cliché that “it takes all kinds” is a true one, especially in the movement of the Umbrella towards all encompassing authority over the minds of society in all aspects. The climb to the top will be one which requires skills and abilities of all kinds of Creators. No stronghold for Maintainer restriction of human development must be available. In assuming their position, the Creators will tend in a Maintainer manner (protecting the stability of society), but moving society towards progress and prosperity.

How To Hide

Maintaining secrecy in the slow movement of the Umbrella as it moves up and otherwise subverts the chains of command for its aims will be a critical issue. At any point, being discovered could be grounds for Opposition destruction of years and years of slow progress towards positions of influence. At the same time, the message of the Umbrella must be spread to people internationally to allow the decentralized attack to function properly. So, how can the movement possibly stay hidden and safe, simultaneously? The answer, to wit, is that it is impossible, these are mutually exclusive goals with an organization that maintains an agenda such as ours. But, two methods seems particularly of note is maintaining a good balance between the two in practice.
The first is for Umbrella organizations to openly advertise themselves in a humorous manner. Outsiders will clearly take all of it for a joke, since the entire posturing of the movement sounds so patently ridiculous and implausible. Why, indeed, would a secret organization make its presence so blatantly obvious?, they might ask. And, of course, therein lies the advantage of this tack. Individuals with which what we say strikes a chord will move toward us and join the movement. Others, who it is not ring true with (Followers and Maintainers), will see it all as a joke, and it should be played up to them as much. Thus, our organization, hidden in plain sight, is able to act freely, promote ourselves, and participate in open debate without much hindrance at all. In the meanwhile, subversion can take place secretly as the general public is only aware of our presence in terms of an elaborate parody.
The second is the development of the precious quality known as credibility. The members of the Umbrella must obtain all the trappings of respect and talent from the Opposition. They must be well known, be recognized publicly, do well in Maintainer measurements of skill, and otherwise be a “fine, upstanding member of society.” This gives them a reputation which is powerful in the sense that what they say is given a certain degree of gravitas and understanding. With credibility, an Umbrella member is able to freely move through the Maintainer structure without suspicion and is given “legitimate” access to resources. Essentially, credibility allows an agent of the Umbrella to work within the system without undue resistance and scrutiny. Cloaked in it, they are virtually undetectable as they go about subtly changing the fabric of a community.
In these two ways, the Umbrella has been given routes through which to hide without really “hiding” in the strictest sense. They can be useful when classic cloak-and-dagger secrecy is impractical for the purpose of subverting a certain organization, though a degree of that must always remain, for some operations and goals should never be known by the Opposition.

Macrocosmic Thinking and Umbrella “Jokes”

Since the aims of the Umbrella tap into a goal which may take decades, or centuries before finally completed, the members of the movement should always be sure to exercise what I fondly refer to as “Macrocosmic Thinking.” That is, thinking which lasts beyond the next week, or next month. The large scale effects of what is being done must always be considered, and in doing so, the Umbrella should always remain one step ahead (or more, if possible) of people who would expose its agenda to the Opposition. Never get bogged down in the petty, small bumps and scratches of everyday life, because they are exactly that: small, petty bumps. Rather consider what one’s plans mean for in the grand scheme of things. Realize the mass scale of things and make a decision based on that. In the moral question of “would you personally kill half of the worlds population if you were absolutely sure that you could achieve world peace and harmony forever?”, the Umbrella member considers the long term removal of human conflict and the birth of selfless human cooperation and gives the affirmative. True, the moral responsibility would have to be given and placed directly on you for the removal (well, to put it bluntly, murder) of millions of people, but in the macrocosmic scale, it is worth it. Because if you think about it, in the end, many lives are wasted in conflict and concerned in the petty trivialities of everyday life (no fundamental dream giving meaning to it all).To halt the deaths of the first and give meaning to the second is something that is no doubt worth the anguish of one life (yours) and the death of others. To the point, there are two Umbrella “jokes” which are running themes that reflect a certain kind of irony present in macrocosmic thought.

1) The Anti Rebellion Rebellion: Back when civil rights and the war in Vietnam were real political issues, acting rebellious was matched with real rebellion. But, macrocosmically speaking, as the meaning has disappeared, only the image has remained. Isn’t it somewhat odd that teenagers are constantly rebellious in the exact same way? Isn’t it odd that rebellion is now a cliché? Perhaps then, the only way to be truly cool, is to recognize the irony and to be firmly establishmentarian in dress and act. Suits and ties, briefcases, and the rest reflect on a kind of Umbrella style that recognizes the pettiness of teenage rebellion and laugh on the culture that produced such a contradictory statement. After all, when anarchy is conformity, being the Man is rebellion.

2) Anachronism: Times come and go, but every society wants to think that its current state is the most advanced and “cool” its ever been. But on the macrocosm, that’s never true. Everything will one day become dated. For this reason, anachronism is a patent Umbrella joke. Top hats, monocles, fedoras, disco balls, bellbottoms, you name it. It all serves as a proper reminder for us all that culture is a very temporary thing, and that in the long run, the cool will be “something our parents did.”

Self-Adaptive Human Software and Culture Hacking

Big Question: What is culture?Big Answer: A set of rules and beliefs shared in common by a group of individuals on what reality is and how best to respond to it. “Why” you might be asking, “is that such a big answer?” Namely since it implies that society, at least in theory, can be boiled down to a long list of rules and statements that define precisely how the culture ‘models’ or understands the world around them. These statements, working in tandem, determine the behavior of the members of the group. In essence, it acts in very much the same way as a computer program, and can be viewed as such. But, much more than that, the community under question updates these rules as the culture comes into contact with new stimuli and information. A tried and true example, of course, is the change from believing that the world was a flat disk to the world as a sphere. While reality was indeed a sphere (or so we think now!), Western European culture ‘modeled’ reality in this format and responded as such. These updates imply, too, that we can understand societies and cultures as self-adaptive human “software” which governs what we do. (“hardware”)
Though, in practical terms, we cannot simply sit down and produce a list of rules and statements which will develop the computer program of the mental world in which we inhabit. There’s simply too many in even a “simple” civilization to deal with at once. Hence, we take society in slices and attempt to unravel their underlying coding in the academic fields. Economics, political science, sociology, and other fields, in particular, continue to try to model our model of reality.
Though a salient point occurs when we realize, however, that while the information and stimuli available in reality is effectively infinite, the rules with which we are attempting to describe them are inherently finite in nature. Thus, there will always come a point in which a society encounters something which conflicts with a previously existing “absolute” rule. When a society is unable to deal with previously unrecognized phenomena, that society seeks to update its programming to respond more realistically in modeling reality and to find the most (or more) effective “solution” in response to it. Even should the society succeed in changing its mental profile of its environment, the process always seems to breed strife. Consider the sudden political and societal turmoil that occurred in the shift from understanding a deterministic, deity operated reality to a rule based, Newtonian one. Consider too, the kind of confusion and unrest that occurred in the wake of the shift from Newtonian to Quantum modes of thought. And if it does not change fast enough, it collapses. Consider the last era of the Chinese emperorship. Unable to deal with the stimulus of new technology, and unable to update its software to begin producing modern weaponry, the system starved for awhile as the puppet of European nations before a revolt brought it down, moving China into the modern era.
As a result, this search for the optimal solution given certain statements and rules reflecting what society believes “reality” to be indicates that communities can be considered to be a distributed network of processors, all performing “calculations” to determine the best solution to dealing with the “best” currently existing model of reality. Media, in helping to aid the creation of a more cohesive ‘common’ culture, means that each member (each ‘processor’) is updated quicker and society develops at a faster rate in response to new stimuli which is instantaneously transferred to all.
But hear this: since there always exist an infinite number of stimuli and a finite number of rules, there will always be backdoors which will be able to confuse and manipulate the system. Furthermore, recognition of the rules of the program allow the Umbrella agent to make use of their weaknesses to prompt certain behaviors and actions from others. This most elegant of maneuvers represents a kind of “social hacking,” in which the individual exploits the implicit rigidity of societal programming for an advantage. The most evident example of this is in con-men of all kinds. They have learned the rules of society to use a blind spot of the individual into readily giving them their money when it is in fact quite unwise to.
However, the most drastic example of social hacking was an unintentional one, but nonetheless demonstrates the power of this concept. Both the Aztecs, the great ancient empire of Mexico and the Incans, of South America, believed in a prophecy in which the end of world is brought on by the coming of “bearded white men as either ‘angelic warriors of Viracocha’ (Brundage 239), as with the Incas; or a god and his army in Aztec belief in Quetzalcoatl.” In probably the most fantastic culture hack that has ever been seen, Cortez’s arrival coincided with this description completely. Needless to say, Cortez’s impact was right in the blind spot of an entire culture and its prophecy became self-fulfilling as Europeans laid the civilization low and subjugated them. No doubt European technology was of benefit, but one wonders of the sheer impact that a returning god signaling the end of the world (as they saw it) would have on the structure of their societal programming. More likely, it “overheated,” with the culture losing its cohesiveness as some chose to leave their belief, editing their software, and others surrendered, resigned to what they perceived to be their fate.
With this kind of power, imagine the opportunities offered to the Creators, who stand outside of the normal stream of society as a natural consequence. In being aware of the Opposition’s societal rules and statements, one can search for weaknesses which will allow control or manipulation of the entire system. And since they are limited by their mental context, they will not even be aware that they are working towards the ends of the Umbrella. Consider the common rule of “reciprocation” (See ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ by Robert Cialidni) which states that one individual must always give back in turn when they were given a gift. As far as optimization goes, this is good for a society: its members cooperate in each others well being and offers incentives for “being nice.” However, the hacker knows this, and therefore can give something of relative unimportance. (a “secret” or so on) and then use the rule to force an individual caught within the context to reveal something they would otherwise not have. Of course some communities are easier to ply this game with than others. A perfect dictatorship, for example, in which the whim of a single leader is followed without question, there exists only one processor (the despot) and many receivers of information (the hapless citizens). It is easy to hack this sort of system, since only one set of rules pervades the group. A lack of diversity (however, note its cohesiveness!) means that it is easy to identify the rules and to use them in all cases to receive the expected response. However, in a perfect democracy, in which every member acts as a “processor” spewing out their own set of rules (which is, highly disparate) to generate a basic consensus, hacking is considerably more difficult. Now, the hacker must work on a case by case basis, using knowledge of general tendencies and majority rules and statements to gain his advantage. At any rate, it presents an interesting way of viewing culture and offers us the Umbrella a distinct method in subverting, controlling, and otherwise gaining the influence we aim for in our march towards society-wide rule over the Followers.

A Justification For World Unification
(What follows is a previously written essay that seemed like a good fit to find a place in this manifesto. It justifies an admittedly controversial position of world unification, of which I place credit. It, however, should be noted that this is not directly endorsed by the Umbrella. Rather, this should serve as an example of some classic Umbrella thought: an old paradigm reworked into a modern context to change the currently existing social idea of national sovereignty. Enjoy, or attack. Both are Umbrella hobbies.)

The drive for world unification is a concept that has been viewed throughout human history as something to be halted or, at best, feared. We observe that figures from Alexander the Great to Napoleon Bonaparte have been viewed in their own times (and, indeed, far after the twilight of their reign) as being heartless tyrants and vicious conquerors. This pattern, far from disappearing in the 21st century, has found a new battleground in the conflict between the centralized forces of globalization and grassroots forces of a modern, neo-liberal movement.
One might be tempted to agree with the ideological thrust of the latter. After all, increasing corporate power has only seemed to impose a new era of capitalist imperialism on many of the same Third World nations that organizations such as the IMF and the WTO have vowed to assist. However, deeper analysis reveals that there lies serious flaws in the contention of this position and, furthermore, that global unification is a justified, necessary, and most of all, humanitarian concept. In short, there is a line to be drawn between the current implementation of world hegemony and the root, abstract concept that the above organizations are aiming to achieve.
History, being first and foremost a human construct, is capable of being understood through an infinite series of permutations and sub-divisions. Hegel understood it in terms of three abstract concepts: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Marx adapted the model and understood history as a battle between the classes of haves and have-nots. To this end, I would propose that another valid model of history occurs in the conflict between the forces of unity and the equal, opposite force of separation and disunity.
In short, we see that human progress has always been indivisible from the movement towards greater and greater linkage between all fields of human endeavor. On the other hand, that reactionary and stagnant conservatism has found its role to break apart the creation of new bonds between disparate units. The skeptic would ask, and rightly so, how such a broad statement could be argued. Since it would be literally and impossible task to argue it on all levels of every human culture and civilization, it seems only reasonable to boil the solution to this problem by analyzing “progress” in terms of a small number of broad topics and subjects which, in the very least, would give a rough justification for the thesis. To this end, on arbitrary distinction, it seems as if three subjects warrant analysis: political, technological, and economical.
On a political basis, this model seems immediately to run into difficulties. Specifically, the most significant events of Western history seem to run counter to the idea that progress is somehow inevitably tied to unification. This is noted in the ideological push and eventual result of the liberalist, continental revolutions of France and the United States during the 18th century. Particularly in the case of the US, the ultimate goal of revolution was to separate the bonds between that of a group of colonies and the British Empire, rather than to support any unification of entities. Other examples seem to suggest a similar conclusion. The entire battle against Axis forces during the Second World War is not only a battle for supremacy in a pragmatic, concrete sense, but, more importantly, it was a conflict between the forces of an individualistic philosophy and the principles of a totalitarian one. In short, all evidence tends to point towards the forces of progress being linked with that of division and not that of fusion. However, the key point is being missed in these examples. That is: all these attacks on conservative forces were executed with the sole aim to break apart a unity which had become so entrenched and established that they were no long conducive to further integration of more political ideologies or entities, for that matter. The American Revolution sought to break a network of mercantile control over the Atlantic by the British throne. In the same way, the French revolution was a battle to allow the expansion of political consideration from the arbitrary rule of a crowned head to the majority rule of liberal democracy. History is the story of a cycle of revolution and stagnation. In other words, the aim of a movement seeks to accomplish greater integration but ultimately becomes halted due to their failure to assimilate the political changes of the future. As time progresses, the only possible result is a stagnation of unity and an eventual revolution to place a new system of unification in power to further its course. Even the concept of war, in a certain sense, is a last political resort to unify a metaphysical ideology. The Cold War was serious exactly because both the Communist bloc and its Capitalistic counterpart were so balanced and unable to achieve a unified network. In the end, what is important here is this: that progressive political movements have always sought to first break the hold of an older unity and to establish a larger, greater unity on a group of people. After all, we might ask of all ideologies what their ultimate aim is. Monarchy? Simply, a unity under a divine mandate. Liberalism? A unity under reason. Democracy? A unity under the individual. Communism? A unity under labor. Fascism? A unity under community. Totalitarianism? A unity under a political party. Ultimately, progress in a political sense, is, for lack of a better phrase, the movement towards a union of some kind.
The unifying aspects of technology are particularly evident to us as individuals inhabiting a current 20th century consciousness. The rise of the information age, combined with the tremendous leaps made in transportation technology within recent decades, all point to the nature of technological progress as part of the transformation of society and ideas into parts of a whole. In a certain sense, these technologies allow a unity of a spatial kind. In other words, that ideas, for example, are no longer prevented from moving from individual to individual by difficulties of communication. In point of fact, electronic exchange of ideas has made this problem all but obsolete, Furthermore, resources and individuals are no longer prevented by from this problem with the advent of fast moving, affordable transportation. The cliché that the world is becoming smaller has real application, particularly in this era. However, this is not a recent development, either. Technology has always followed the route of allowing individuals to become part of a greater, integrated unity. Certainly this is most salient in modern examples but it is just as central a part in past developments as well. What historians refer to as the agricultural revolution was merely a symbol of the destruction of a restriction on the ability of individuals to become parts of a unified community. By this point, of course, the analogues to the political are obvious. What we perceive as a technological “revolution” in a conceptual sense, is indeed, on all levels, a revolution on the order and mechanic as the overthrow of an ideology. Technological revolution is the destruction of an old restriction of greater unity and its replacement by another, more expansive mode of operation. A powerful example lies in the idea of the Industrial revolution. Society was restricted by an inability to unify whose source was the problem of producing products on a mass scale. To elaborate, mass production of consumer goods were necessary to develop a common, coherent culture. And mass transportation and communication equipment were necessary to provided the groundwork for providing a new societal hegemony. Furthermore, mass production military technology provided conglomeration in the same way warfare did in a political sense: it provided the means of creating fast, albeit involuntary, unification with other entities. In order to overcome this barrier, innovations such as the factory and the assembly line were developed, which in turn, ushered in a new period of unification. Ultimately, the conclusion is again repeated, that human progress on a technological level is the development of the means to overcome barriers to unity. And again, what has stood against technological progress, by consequence, have been the forces which have desired only to maintain those barriers.
Finally, the movement of economic progress to the modern day is also the story of greater economical unity among individuals not only within a nation, but between nations as well. Humans have moved from single, self-sufficient villages (or manors, in the European tradition) with a small privileged class and a large body of peasant laborers to our modern conception of the modern, first world international economy. That is, an interdependent system of speculative markets powered primarily by the actions of a large group of middle class players. Succinctly, if man is a social animal, than he must be an economical one as well. Nonetheless, the reader should take caution to not confuse the idea of freedom with that of unity, The command economies of totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century and the nations whose governments maintain tight controls over production into the present are indisputably an oppressive environment in the consideration of individual freedoms. The fact remains, though, that the totalitarian conception of economic progress is to bring about unity through the exercise of government authority. On the other hand, a capitalistic version finds that unity should be accomplished through the activity of each individual in the lassiez-faire market. The important point that in either school of political school, there exists a very real human drive to accomplish a sense of unity. The aim of economic progress is to provide unity.
After this brief overview of the political, technological, and economic aspects of human culture, it should be evident that one major point can be made. That is, that human progress is indeed associated with greater and greater unity among all entities. Consequently, human conservatism and, indeed, stagnation is it’s reverse: it is linked irreparably from the destruction of bonds and creation of barriers to prevent unity.
We can learn from this. Namely, we can draw the conclusion that the original idea of the establishment of world hegemony is not something to be feared or attacked. Far from it; it should be assisted. When we say that world unification is something that is justified, necessary, and humanitarian, then, we contend that it should be assisted for those reasons.
Bringing about world unity is justified, since history clearly demonstrates that all human progress is based upon the construction of unity. Global political, technological, and economic unity, therefore, must be the greatest conceivable pinnacle of human endeavor.
Next, it is necessary, since history proves that greater unity, and therefore global unity, is mandated by history. In fact, it is impossible to prevent history’s flow. As briefly mentioned above, it seems that revolution will sweep the opposition from consideration in order to allow for a new order. To become part of it, then, is not an option. It is necessity.
Finally, and most importantly, it is humanitarian, since human progress, despite its earmarks of turmoil and unrest, has provided new flows of resources and has made human civilization anew. To prevent such a thing is to support the mistakes and injustices of our condition. To help unity is not to hope in vain for some unrealistic utopia, but to achieve a world in which the mistakes can be learned from and the injustice prevented.

Life is Theatre

We normally think of theatre as a simplified version of the dynamics and mechanisms present in everyday reality. But, if this is so, then it is just as arguable that the reverse is true: life is just a more detailed, complex version of drama. In essence, what this statement reflects is the idea that, at least on a conceptual level, the methods and techniques present in good playwriting and acting provide the basis for what is good living. Or, in the very least, living gracefully. It also provides a context for understanding the Umbrella approach to life and mental idea of reality.
Of course, the cynic immediately argues to point out the flaws in making such a comparison. To take the problem of the “playwright,” the critic contends that the entire lack of any discernable script makes it a moot point. However, a deeper and more detailed analysis reveals that, while not so rigid as a scene-by-scene line-by-line list of orders, there exist many societal rules and guidelines that provide the groundwork for repeating storylines throughout the play of life. When they are made rigid enough, we refer to them as “ritual,” in which every line and every action is given a predetermined time and weight. Observe, for example, the incredible degree to which every marriage, graduation, or funeral appears the same. But, on a more general level, it is true that we are improvising, but, like the actors who know what the basic content of a scene before they begin, we are all acting within a set of unspoken systems and expectations which govern what we can express. In this case, the “playwright” of life is those who hold the strings to these rules, a script if you will, the governments, the cultural leaders, the musicians, and so on. In the parlance of the Umbrella, these are the nodes of influence which are constantly grabbed to and fro throughout history by different Maintainers and Creators.
What of the actor, then? How is an individual acting on this scene set by society like the actor on a stage? In taking on a character with certain motivations and personal rules of their own, the challenge of dramatic interpretation occurs in the attempt to express the abstract in terms of physical behavior, voice intonation, and the like. A truly great actor is one who is able to express this mental abstractness in such a dead-on visible form that the actor becomes a clear medium. We as an audience are no longer aware or able to perceive who the person is, only what his character (his abstract idea) is expressing. The phrase, “getting into character,” hints to some degree at this interpretation, of entering directly into a set of ideas and beliefs. Like life, one lives gracefully when what is conceived of mentally is perfectly expressed physically. However, the unfortunate fact of it is that the different scenes that we enter into, depending on our location, the other “actors” we are interacting with, and otherwise, call upon different characters to be used as a consequence of their rules. Thus, the human being finds himself at odds with having expression distorted by the very scene that he or she is playing out. But, since it is indeed impossible to escape from these scenes (even the scene of “loneliness” is a scene in of itself!), the good actor learns to work through these rules and situations to further express themselves. But this, instead of leading to the kind of pure acting we would expect, results in many different characters, each an aspect of the whole actor. Learning to mitigate these masks, and crafting new ones to better express, is the key to living authentically and gracefully. An unskilled actor, a Follower, one who lives awkwardly, is one who stubbornly refuses to improvise and use any other masks or scenes that have been given to him or her by the director. At its worst, the unskilled actor refuses to adapt to respond to a new scene, insisting that the mask that is being worn is “his own” and is the best for all situations. His performance is loud, irritating, and weak. A skilled actor, a Maintainer, one who lives well, is one who is creative at expressing scenes and using currently existing masks in new ways. And finally, a great actor, a Creator, is one who is inspired by what has been made and creates new scenes and masks to express something new.
And in the end, how does this affect our view of reality? That in the end, these moments in life, these scenes and masks, is nothing more than part of some kind of cosmic game, entertainment for some bored god. If so, our primary approach to life should be playful, enjoyable, and experimental. Make your life something someone would be interested in watching. Tragedy, farce, you name it. Your character, performing for a lifetime, should be complex, full of powerful lines, more than just a bit player who crosses a street in a background while a shoot-out goes on in front of a saloon. And most of all, make your performance something worth talking about. If you’re going to play a villain, play it well. If you’re going to be a hero, be an interesting hero. If you’re going to be a failing artist, be a good failing artist. And, as always, there is the struggle for meaning. Lady Macbeth finds it in her heart to tell us that “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.” But what is missed here is that while our play of life may, on its own, seem to have no meaning, it is a sense of drama that gives it significance. To that end, make the theatrical power of each moment in your life count. Play each moment up for its emotional import and make your short time here on stage worthwhile. Use silence, be well timed in your lines, and make sure they roll trippingly off the tongue. If it is a happy scene, may you make it a most hilarious scene you can muster (unless it calls for subdued happiness!). If it is a tragic one, make it realistically one. Throw yourself into the mood of the scene, and play it to the best of your ability.

There’s always an invisible audience watching your performance, so good luck.