Comments on: Vinay Gupta: The Authoritarian Cause Will Be Defeated by Its Own Cognitive Dissonance

By: Kevin Carson

Kevin Carson — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 00:13:35 +0000

NOTE: John Boyd made a similar argument about morally isolating the enemy, both in terms of disrupting the moral unity between leaders/command and people/subordinates, and disrupting the enemy’s internal moral unity through cognitive dissonance:

Physically we can isolate our adversaries by severing their communications with outside world as well as by severing their internal communications to one another….
Morally our adversaries isolate themselves when they visibly improve their well-being to the detriment of others… by violating codes of conduct or behavior patterns that they profess to uphold or others expect them to uphold….

Such contradictions within ourselves “destroy our internal harmony” and “paralyze us.”
–John Boyd, “The Strategic Game of ? and ?” (1987).

By: Nick Taylor

Nick Taylor — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:09:34 +0000

Tangential thing – which is the first thing that springs to mind… I used to be in the band where the other guys were very well-versed in violence – first time in my life I’d ever come across it. Anyway – they would say that in a fight, the factor that really mattered the most in winning, is how in the right you think you are. People who KNOW they are right, and the other guy is wrong (and he knows it), tend to win.

By: Carl Swanson

Carl Swanson — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:48:55 +0000

Community based democratic organizational forms would seem preeminent. Especially those that give rise to disruptive technology and create uncertainty for incumbents. I would add that what wins a war is focus but what trumps a war is peace.