Breaking the Rules Overtly: The Strategies of Overt Resistance Part 1

The style of this article is positive and literal. If it seems otherwise, it’s because of driver interference.

Watch out for unnatural valences and unintended tones. Focus as much as you can on absorbing the literal details of the information presented. You can always return to the words later if the drivers are making it difficult.

Skip ahead to get to the strategies!

The Getting-to-Masks-Off Campaign has been a tough fight. We’ve all been pushing forward into uncharted territory and learning as we go—even as the drivers inundate us with chaos and cruelty. We’ve had to integrate all the new skills, strategies, and gains we’ve made into the strategies and approaches that have worked from the start. Some approaches have already been replaced with better approaches. Some of the old approaches still have to go. But one of the biggest problems since the beginning has been that, even after the main goals were defined, you haven’t been provided with enough new strategies to make the Masks-Off approach actually workable in your day-to-day life.

The Getting-to-Masks-Off Campaign is all about open, ethical resistance. It’s about standing up for freedom and reality, for our human rights, proudly and overtly—without having to pretend that you’re secretly on the other side of whatever issue you’re fighting for. It’s a clean game but it does involve serious risks.

Compared to the almost entirely covert playbook of the project and the underground network, it is an entirely new playing field. And it needs its own playbook of necessary skills and strategies to put the Getting-to-Masks-Off game-plan into action.

Applying the Strategies to the Little Battles as well as the Big

If you put all of the strategies of overt resistance to work immediately, you would already be quitting the project. Because by doing all of these things at once, you would have reached Masks-Off and be over the line.

Remember Masks-Off is defined as:

The state of breaking free from the project hierarchy, openly acknowledging true reality as it actually is, and freely expressing the truth of one’s own real identity, life history, and life circumstances.

By putting all of these strategies into action together you would already be at that Masks-Off state, because each of these strategies builds directly towards it. At that point, you wouldn’t even be capable of working for the project at all, because you would be so openly and independently opposed to it.

But that’s what you’re working towards, not where you currently are. So how do you get there?

Just because you’re still working for the project and fighting it from the inside, doesn’t mean you can’t still put these strategies into action immediately. Every unique and individual challenge you face as you navigate life in the project—every time you must decide how to counteract any project directives you disagree with—represents an opportunity to put some combination of these strategies into effect.

Choosing lesser challenges to test out and practice these strategies, making them work in a way that is right for you, will build your confidence and skill with the overt resistance playbook. It will also be winning the fight the right way—an ethical, healthy way, in actual reality—and will have long-term positive effects each time you do.

Using these strategies will make our social environments safer, saner, and more liberated for real human beings, while at the same time wearing down the project and eroding its most poisonous rules and regulations.

You must learn these strategies off-by-heart and then constantly look for opportunities where you can put them to work in reality, starting with the small things and then building your way up to the big. The more you say no to the project’s authority, the more personal power you gain. Prepare yourself to use it.

Simulations and Project Events versus Resisting in Reality

The overt resistance playbook is all about doing things in actual reality. While setting up simulated routines to test these strategies may seem like a safe method to gain project permission, it is not necessarily the best approach.

The strategies are built to assist you in standing up against the project in reality, especially when it refuses permission. You practise open defiance when you stand up to the project for real, not when you do it from behind the cover of a simulated routine.

When the project tells you you’re not allowed to do something, that’s exactly when you need to put the strategies of overt resistance to work.

If you need to game the simulations in order to create opportunities to use the strategies for real, that’s one thing, but watch out for a situation where you’re using the strategies only because the project is “allowing” you due to pre-agreed terms. After all, what happens when the project says you’re not allowed to use the strategies any more?

Actually, that’s the perfect time to put the strategies into action for yourself as an independent individual.

The strategies aren’t illegal, they’re about confronting everyday problems and disagreements openly, and you have every right to use them whenever you please. Whether the project tells you you’re allowed to or not.

Refuse to let the project have power over where and when you can use these strategies. The project does not have a right to stop you from using them—even if it fights to stop you—and it is within your own power to decide where and when to put them into action.

If you let the project or the drivers tell you what you can or can’t do, they’ll just keep taking things away from you until you have nothing left. First you have to quit cigarettes, then you have to quit meat, then you have to quit sleep. When you say no, this cycle of oppressive and unjustifiable rule-making ends. Use the strategies of overt resistance to push the project’s unjustifiable rules all the way back again.

You must do everything you can to put these strategies to work for real, in your actual life surviving within, and fighting against, the project. They are not a set of sporting guidelines for project-managed simulated routines. They are real methods to make real changes happen in actual reality.

Helping Each Other by Standing up to Each Other

Nobody wants to be the project’s attack dog. Everybody’s wary of anyone in the role of project authority who seems to have momentarily lost control of themselves.

It’s not easy knowing what to do to handle someone who’s not quite there at the moment—especially when they’re acting aggressively, or speaking automatically from a script of intimidating or unsettling driver directions.

This is even worse when that person is communicating from a position of project authority. Often times, the drivers will assault those listening with anxieties, awkwardness, or submissive feelings while they try to pace with the authority figure. It’s an unwanted experience for everyone.

Every time you find yourself dealing with someone in that position, you have a choice. Do I give in or do I fight back?

You may feel that if you stand up to that person, you’re hurting them or others around you. That you’re creating problems or putting yourself or others at risk. Maybe you’re worried that you’re being set up to say or do the wrong thing to give the project an excuse to punish you.

And yet, if you don’t stand up to each other when this is happening, how are you ever going to stop these events from exerting their power over your daily life?

The truth is, if you put the strategies into action the right way, there are ways to stand up to each other and fight back against the project at the same time, without hurting the person you’re standing up to or anyone else in the environment either. Nor should you have to accept any punishment or cruelty as reprisal for speaking out.

Strategies like Civil Non-Compliance, Healthy Emotional Energy, All Souls are Equal, Defending your Position, Choosing Fearlessness, Ethical Counter-Offers, and Conflict Resolution will assist you in standing up against each other when you have to in a way where you’re actually helping each other, rather than hurting each other or putting anybody at risk.

For those who find themselves in the position of authority, integrating the strategies into your role as a project authority figure will also greatly assist in making sure that these exchanges work out a lot better for everyone, with far better outcomes in the long run.

Even when you have authority over others, you still need to be able to maintain control of yourself and stand up to authority the right way too, in order to claim more freedom to guide these moments towards healthier and more prosocial outcomes.

Utilizing the Strategies of Overt Resistance alongside the Strategies of Covert Resistance

Many of the strategies of overt resistance will not actually be new to you.

When you find yourself studying the list you may be surprised that you have actually been using a lot of these styles and strategies all along, without thinking of them in terms of overt or covert resistance.

To resist covertly means to mount your opposition in secret, while pretending on the surface to be on the same side as the challenge you’re arguing or standing up against.

To resist overtly means to mount your opposition openly, expressing your disagreement in a way where there is no doubt what you believe or what side of the issue you’re on.

You have been using overt resistance already every time you:

Speak out openly and express your true moral opinions.

Choose just one side of a disagreement to argue for.

Speak up with literal language to address an issue instead of relying on code.

Refuse to do something because it is morally wrong.

You have most certainly used these methods and approaches many times in the past. Think back on all the times you’ve already used the overt approach to stand up against things that you disagree with about the project.

Practising, expanding, and emphasising the overt resistance playbook as you confront the challenges of life within the project will get you ever closer to achieving the full Masks-Off state for yourself. It will also make life working within the project a lot better for everyone else along the way.

You will have to pick your battles wisely when you consider how to utilize the strategies of overt resistance alongside the covert resistance strategies that you’re probably more familiar with using to counteract project difficulties. Consider each challenge you face as the time to decide whether to use an overt approach or a covert approach to overcoming challenges and achieving your goals.

Build the mindset that you are looking for opportunities to practice the strategies of overt resistance as much as possible, in order to build your skill and confidence when using them.

The more we put the overt strategies into action, the more we are building our world closer to a healthier, saner actual reality—a freer, more open, and liberated world for everyone—and the more we are dismantling the project’s poisonous methods and oppressive social routines.

That’s worth fighting for!

The Strategies of Overt Resistance Part One

The Strategies of Overt Resistance are divided into nine sections:

Breaking the Rules Overtly

Conscientious Objection

Inner-Game

Choosing a Side

Standing up Against Authority

Facing Reprisals

Facing Victory

Fighting for Reality

Clever Communication

Part one of the Strategies of Overt Resistance covers Breaking the Rules Overtly, Conscientious Objection, and Inner-Game.

Breaking the Rules Overtly

An overarching game-plan as well as a strategy for individual challenges.

The covert method for rule-breaking involves appearing to obey on the surface while working to get around the rules in secret. Breaking the rules overtly puts the opposite approach into action.

Rather than playing along with authority figures and using deceptive methods to out-manoeuvre them, when you break the rules overtly:

You are defying any orders or rules that you disagree with openly and in literal terms.
You are defending your position and explaining your reasoning for doing so.
You are not doing anything to hide the fact that you are breaking the rules.
You are standing up for your right to do so, because you believe that it is the right thing to do.
You are facing any threats or risks and refusing to back down.

Most of the strategies of overt resistance involve some form of breaking the rules overtly. As such it is a “meta-strategy”—a strategy of strategies—as well as its own individualized strategy to be applied on a case-by-case basis.

Conscientious Objection

Conscientious Objection means opposing something or refusing to be involved in something because it is morally wrong. It is a fundamental foundation of peaceful open resistance.

The following strategies will assist you in putting conscientious objection into action.

Just Say No

When you don’t like how things are going—when you have a problem with what you’re being told to do—just say no.

Be stubborn and resolved and don’t back down. Don’t offer any concessions or agree to any sacrifices that would put you in harm’s way.

Just. Say. No.

Claim the power and the right to say no to anything you view as morally wrong.

Explain yourself if needs be, but don’t ever assume that you have an obligation to do anything that you have a serious problem with.

Many of the strategies of overt resistance will assist you in defending and fortifying your position.

Civil Non-Compliance

Civil non-compliance means openly refusing rules or orders in a peaceable, firm, but non-aggressive way.

When you openly refuse to go along with something—every time you say no to following any orders that you disagree with—always aim to be civil in order to defuse any unnecessary conflicts or the potential of aggression.

When engaging in civil non-compliance:

Be assertive—respectful but firm as you hold your position.
Be polite and fair in your communication and friendly where possible.
Adopt non-confrontational and non-aggressive styles of attitude and approach.
If things get tense, moderate your mood and maintain civility without giving up any personal power.
Be stubborn and resilient in refusing to give up your position.
Put emotions aside and focus on what matters—the specific issues that you’re standing up for.
Always reserve some of your attention for defusing tensions and resolving emotional conflicts.

Overt resistance doesn’t have to be a fight. You can win your battles peacefully, through tactical language and appropriate communication.

Make sure your communication style is faultless so the opposition can only ever attack you on your reasoning and not on your behaviour.

Expanding the Ethical Boundary

Your ethical boundary covers anything that you would refuse to do for moral reasons, no matter the circumstances.

You expand your ethical boundary every time you add new behaviours to the list of immoral things that you would never do, regardless of threats or reprisals.

Keep searching for new moral issues that are worth expanding your personal ethical boundary around.

If there are already things the project couldn’t ever make you to do—things like murder or comparative crimes—enact the conscious decision to add even more morally objectionable behaviours to that list.

You can expand your ethical boundary against behaviours even if those behaviours are things that you’ve done willingly in the past. Say:

“I will no longer agree to this behaviour because it is wrong and I will never let anybody make me do it ever again. They can attack me for it, but I will hold firm and refuse to give in.”

Prioritize the most important moral issues that you are willing to fight to expand your ethical boundary around.

Choose something that you hate doing because it is so morally wrong and decide that from now on it will go to the exact same psychological category as murder or other comparable crimes.

Those unwanted behaviours will become something that you never agree to, ever again.

Defending Your Position

When you have decided to stand up against following certain orders or engaging in certain behaviours for moral reasons, you will have to be able to explain your reasoning.

Because so many of the project rules and routines are so blatantly abusive, pointing out why they are wrong is usually not that difficult. In fact, it would be harder in most cases to argue the opposite position.

When defending your position, point to things like:

Specifically how and why the rules or routines cause harm to people.
Whether the abuses are physical, psychological, or emotional in nature.
How they violate commonly accepted ethics or human rights.
Any secondary negative outcomes arising from these rules or routines.

If the drivers attack your mental or physical state while you are defending your position, stay strong and hold yourself together.

When dealing with driver intrusions, take a moment to pause until you regain your line of thought. Tolerate the attacks and keep pushing forward.

Refuse to be disempowered when standing up to human authority figures, but never view them as the enemy. Even if they’re in the unfortunate position of arguing for the project, remember that underneath you are both on the same side!

Stay focused on the fundamentals. All you have to do is explain the moral justification for why you are openly refusing to engage in immoral behaviours or to follow immoral rules. Stay firm and resolved and refuse to give in.

Defending your position doesn’t have to sound confident or look good. As long as you get the words out and hold your position, you’ve done what you have to.

Remember that project authorities are rarely arguing in good faith. Most of the time they already know that what you are arguing against is wrong, they’re just pretending that they don’t.

As such, rather than attempting to persuade them that you’re in the right—which may not be possible—simply state your case as clearly as you can and then hold your position, whether the project authority agrees or not.

The better you state your case, especially in moral terms, the less they have to fault you on if they try to push back.

Sometimes agreeing to disagree is the best outcome to achieve. It’s even better when the opposition is forced to concede that you’re in the right.

Inner-Game

How you operate on the inside as you put the strategies of overt resistance into action is an essential part of the game-plan. Your styles of thinking and your strategies for managing your own emotions and thought patterns will assist you greatly as you stand up more often and more openly against the project.

Put the following strategies together to build up a strong and balanced inner-structure of efficient self-management and tactical thinking, with a heavy emphasis on the overt style.

Calculated Risks

Risk is inevitable and you cannot ever give in to fear.

The more you weigh up where and when to take an appropriate risk, the less likely you are to succumb to uncertainty or anxiety and the more you can focus on achieving your goals.

Apply cost-benefit analyses to any challenge you’re facing. Ask yourself:

What do I stand to gain if I succeed?
What do I risk if I fail?

Assign the potential gains and risks with a rating number based on their personal value to you.

When the potential gains outweigh the potential risks, that’s usually a risk worth taking.

Run quick cost-benefit analyses when you’re on the move—what do I gain here and what do I risk?—and decide for certain what risks you’re willing to accept and what you’d need to achieve to make it worth it.

Sometimes taking a chance is so necessary that even when the risk is high, it’s still the right thing to do to.

Remember that project threats and worst-case-scenario-type thinking are often unfounded. Ask yourself:

How many times has the project not followed up on these threats?
Have you ever seen anybody succeed at what you’re trying to achieve without facing the worst-case scenario?
What do you risk if you don’t take action? How will the negative consequences of missing your chance impact you and could it be worse than what you risk if you do?
Could the project be lying to you about what they actually want? Might you actually be rewarded for doing things the ethical, open way, rather than the project way?

There is always risk and there is always uncertainty. When the fight is big, the risk is worth it.

Build your confidence with the strategies and practice getting them right in smaller ways. When you are more comfortable trusting the strategies, the potential of risk will be greatly reduced.

Picking your Battles

Decide for yourself as an individual where specifically you are going to put these strategies into practice.

Choose a few small battles as practice for using the strategies of overt resistance against the project in actual reality and a few big battles that you’ll really be willing to fight for over time.

The Getting-to-Masks-Off Campaign goals are the perfect big battles to work towards by putting the strategies into action.

Small battles to fight include:

Standing up for more rest and relaxation as you work in Mandatory Reality.
Refusing to allow the drivers to micro-manage your personal habits and behaviours.
Refusing to accept the excuses for abuses.
More openly and literally voicing your opposition to project practices when behind-the-scenes.

Big battles to fight include:

Improving children’s well-being while working for the project.
Claiming the right to break character during Mandatory Reality.
Refusing to police each other for the project.
Engaging in open literal communication about the project while participating in Mandatory Reality.

You’ll have to choose for yourself which battles to prioritize when you put the strategies into action.

And remember your fight always begins with you as an individual taking charge of yourself and waging your own personal battles first.

Choosing Fearlessness

Fearlessness is a choice.

You can decide to let fear and uncertainty—or threats and intimidation—affect your thinking and behaviour, or you can decide that you are going to refuse to ever let those things hold you back, even if that means sometimes facing big risks.

You are training yourself to become a more fearless person, every time you:

Make the choice to act courageously.
Take action despite uncertainty.
Push yourself to risk something necessary despite the danger.
Speak out openly in support of your beliefs.
Refuse to give in to threats or intimidation.
Maintain control of your attitude and outward behaviour despite driver attacks based on the physiology or emotions of fear.

Fearlessness is an essential strength when it comes to standing up openly for what you believe in.

The more you make the choice to never let fear or intimidation affect your actions or decision-making, the more you push yourself to face your fears, the more fearless you become.

Choose fearlessness, practice fearlessness, make fearlessness a habit.

When you decide to stand up against the project openly, make the choice to do so with fearlessness.

Building Confidence

Confidence is a practice that you build over time.

There are already areas of your life that you are very confident engaging in. That is because you’ve done those things so many times that you’ve learned to trust your methods and trust yourself when you find yourself in those situations.

The more you challenge yourself to put the strategies of overt resistance into action, the more confident you will become in your ability to succeed with them.

To build your confidence with the strategies of overt resistance:

Begin with the little things. Choose small challenges in actual reality where you can stand up to the project for real.
Take a step-by-step approach. Keep pushing the boundary and testing the waters by using the strategies on increasingly bigger challenges.
Remind yourself that these strategies are powerful and they are made to succeed.
Look for where you’ve already been using these strategies in the past without realizing it. Focus on where they worked and why.
Remind yourself of all the challenges and setbacks you’ve overcome in the past. You are strong enough to face anything.

The more you familiarize yourself with these strategies and practise them, the more confident you will become when using these new styles.

The strategies themselves are designed to be empowering. They guide you to claim your own personal power and to take charge of your life, to speak up often and proudly, and to rely on yourself first and foremost rather than the crowd.

Putting these practices into action will build your confidence, whether your focus is on building confidence specifically or not.

Prosocial Selfishness

Sometimes you have to be selfish in a prosocial way.

You need to be able to separate yourself from social pressure and the norms of society when you yourself disagree with how things are being done.

Even if everybody else is doing things a certain way—even if you’re facing pressure to conform—you need to be capable of standing up and openly choosing to do things your own way, despite the tide of public opinion.

It might seem selfish, but sometimes this is exactly what society needs.

Prosocial selfishness involves:

Prioritizing the methods and values that you consider most worth fighting for. Choose a strong moral foundation to fortify your self-belief.
Putting your own most important values and beliefs ahead of the behaviours and pressures of others—even when facing negative responses.
Adopting a rigorously independent and outspoken mindset. You don’t care what others are doing, you’ll do what you think is right.
Letting other people look after themselves. You’re not the one hurting them and you can’t always do something to help them, especially if it means giving up your own core moral values.
Accepting the risk that you might be in the wrong and other people can and will judge you for it. If you’ve truly chosen a strong moral foundation then at least your intentions are pure.
Recognizing that often the received wisdom of the crowd is wrong and you are not helping anyone by going along with it. Doing what you think is right is the best approach in the long term.

Remember that prosocial selfishness is always about doing the right thing.

It’s not about putting your needs ahead of anyone else’s, it’s about putting the methods and values that you’re most certain of into action, even when others disagree.

All Souls are Equal

What we share as human beings far outweighs what is different about us—regardless of age, gender, culture, or belief.

Viewing every human being as equal is essential for building an attitude of healthy respect and admiration for whoever you engage with. Healthy, respectful, and supportive communication is an antidote to the repressive social management tactics enforced by the project.

An All Souls are Equal attitude will make your communication healthier and more liberating and will furnish your game-plan with as much healthy emotional energy as possible.

In a world where project manipulation is constantly trying to sow the seeds of division, constantly trying to make us feel isolated and misunderstood, it is necessary to do everything we can to reach each other on the human level.

To build the All Souls are Equal attitude:

View everyone you meet as equals who share many of the same challenges, with many of the same longings and needs in life, as you do.
Never judge anybody based on their superficial qualities—how they look, how they dress, or how they express their mannerisms.
Choose an attitude of respect, appreciation, admiration, and curiosity when turning your attention to the social environment.
Be generous with your emotional energy and try to connect with others on human terms.
Aim to be supportive and encouraging with conversation partners in a way that respects their unique perspectives and personal strengths.
Respect people’s boundaries and appreciate what is unique about them as individuals, as well as all that you share.

In a masked world it is rarely possible to see people as they really are, but remember that underneath we are all facing the same big challenges and many of the little ones too.

Do everything you can to avoid speaking to the false persona, even when you’re not sure who’s really underneath.

View everyone you meet as at least as capable, strong, and intelligent as you are. Remind yourself of all the hidden strengths and unique gifts they have that you don’t.

Decide that everybody is worth your time, even if you don’t always have time for everybody.

Healthy Emotional Energy

Generating healthy emotional energy is essential for keeping yourself and your environment fuelled the right way.

You never know what mood or atmosphere you’ll be dealing with.

At any given moment, your environment and the people around you could be inundated with difficult, unpleasant, or disorienting moods and you have to be able to take charge of your own emotional and psychological attitudes the moment that happens.

You do this by deliberately selecting and practising behaviours and communication styles that are designed to make you and those around you feel better.

You generate healthy emotional energy for yourself, when you:

Practise relaxation behaviours. Sit back and spread out, or stretch your legs and work your muscles. Adopt a relaxed, empowering posture. Choose physical behaviours designed to make you feel more comfortable and free.
Smile, laugh, and joke. Keep up your own spirits no matter what’s going on around you.
Shrug off the unpleasant things and get used to letting things go.
Speak more freely and casually. Let yourself swear or say things that are a little risqué.
Avoid forced positivity. Allow yourself to feel and express your negative emotions too. Letting it all out in a natural and healthy way is good for you.
Maintain a strong boundary against judgement and disapproval from the outside. Consider its validity, but never let it affect how you feel.

You generate healthy emotional energy for others, when you:

Treat people with a friendly, healthy respect.
Create a space around you where you can encourage people to relax and open up.
Compliment people readily when they are doing things the right way, and encourage them when they’re having difficulty.
Calibrate your emotional energy to that of your communication partner.
Remind people of their strengths and value.
Redirect responsibility for the setbacks of the day back towards the drivers and the project, rather than the human beings involved.
Take the lead with things that are difficult for others to speak about. Say out loud what others are waiting for someone else to say and it helps make everyone feel less alone. If you find it easier to speak more freely behind-the-scenes, then that’s the perfect time to do it.

With project interference, it is very difficult to fully take charge of the emotional energy of your environment, or to always know what the right emotional attitude to choose is during any given social interaction.

Rather than attempting to change the energy of those around you, focus primarily on creating the right emotional energy for you.

Aim for something as relaxed, respectful, compassionate, and liberating as you can and choose behaviours and communication styles that constantly build up and maintain that state within you over time.

You must respect others’ boundaries. If you try too hard to influence them emotionally, it wouldn’t feel pleasant either.

If your emotional energy is healthy it will generally have a positive effect on those around you, provided the project interference is low, so always devote most of your focus on generating your own healthy emotional energy.

When project interference is high, fight to maintain your healthy emotional energy and share it when you can.

Building Independence

If you are going to stand up openly for what you believe in, you are going to have to have a strong sense of independence.

When facing challenges and conflicts, you need to be able to dig your heels in and defend your independent thoughts and feelings—without losing your cool, giving in to pressure, or letting others drag you along into their way of doing things.

You should be prepared to walk away from a situation when you don’t like how things are being done, but only as a last resort and always as amicably as possible.

The more independently-minded you are, the more capable you are of openly standing up for what you believe in, no matter the challenge.

You build independence, when you:

Prioritize your own moral values and beliefs over those of others. Everybody has different opinions and you cannot give in to pressure to conform to the values and beliefs of others without sacrificing stability in your own. If in doubt, choose to act on what you personally think is right.
Practise maintaining your self-esteem and self-image entirely based on your own self-assessments rather than the assessments of others—including drivers and project authority figures. Let others think what they like about you. Nobody knows you better than yourself.
Decide to take action primarily based on your own choices and beliefs. Rather than letting others choose for you, or following along with what others believe is the right thing to do, you decide for yourself the best course of action to take.
Negotiate situations where your needs and values are respected as well as those of your partners. Aim for a win-win situation where both parties can maintain their independence of belief and opinion, even as you work together.

The more you build an independent mindset, the less susceptible you are to being pushed back or dissuaded when you decide to take the initiative and stand up for what you believe is right.

Inner-Armour

In this world nobody can afford an ego.

Both vanities and insecurities represent vulnerabilities that are too costly to ever give in to.

It’s unfair, but you have to give up on deriving emotional energy from any ambitions, fears, motivations, or aversions based on vanity or insecurity.

To lessen your vulnerability to vanities and insecurities:

Put less stock in personal appearance, fashion, and looks. As long as you’re neat and clean, you’re doing just fine. Express your true self with style and fashion whenever you get the chance, but never depend on it for your sense of self.
Never mind body issues, it’s who you are on the inside that counts. What use is being incredibly beautiful or handsome, super fit, or the perfect shape in this world, when there’s very little to use it for anyway? Maybe someday those things will matter, but for now it’s achieving freedom from the cruelties and oppressions of our society that will really bring fulfilment.
Fortify your self-esteem by focusing on your inner-strengths, your hard-won skills, and your ability to survive no matter what the world throws at you. Always remember how much you’ve learned along the way and that you are often far more capable than you realize.
When it comes to talents, gifts, and natural abilities, remember that in a world where human beings are this controlled, none of those things are actually innate. Things like “natural” intelligence or “in-built” confidence are highly dependent on external control and are potentially available to anyone at any time. Never use those things to qualify your sense of self-worth.
Maintain a strong boundary in the face of personal insults, hurtful comments, and humiliating directives from the project. Never afford any credibility to the personal cruelties of the drivers or anybody else. Always remember that you are a strong, resilient, valuable, and independent human being.
Never mind the opinions of others. In this world, people are often led astray and dealing with others when they’ve gotten the wrong idea about you is a common challenge to face. Wisely dismiss any unfair resentments, personal insults, or unfounded criticism. Let other people think what they like about you and only derive your self-worth from yourself.

During higher intensity events, when your most important relationships or most cherished qualities are being attacked excessively, detach yourself from caring too much about these things at all.

Put your hopes and dreams aside temporarily, without giving up on them entirely, and focus your strength and attention on powering through until the harassment subsides.

You can always return to these things later when it’s safe to.

Maintaining a strong and resilient inner-armour is a fundamental necessity for surviving in this world. It’s an ability that most of you have already mastered long ago.

Outer-Armour

The project teaches people to hide their inner-strengths as much as possible.

While it’s true that sometimes this is strategically sound, the fact is that directing people to go about their daily lives acting weaker, more ignorant, and less capable than they actually are is a deliberate project tactic—one that is designed to wear people down and prevent them from expressing their true strengths and abilities. Eventually people start to forget that they’re that strong at all.

There are pros and cons to showing your claws or displaying your riches.

When you take full ownership of your talents, strengths, and resiliences and decide to show them more on the outside, you feel better and stronger on the inside too. Confidence grows the more you decide to show what makes you special to the world.

Playing along with submissive routines or pretending to suffer to get the project off your back may not actually be the best approach and it certainly doesn’t make you feel better in the long run.

While you may have been led to believe that you’d be more of a target if you didn’t play along with suffering, displaying your imperviousness to attacks can work to protect you too.

That said, in my experience the drivers seem to hit people on average about the same, whether they play along with the suffering or refuse to roll over for it.

Playing along with the lesser attacks in order to deflect negative driver or project attention has a negative effect on your emotional well-being too.

Having to pretend that minor irritations are hurting you worse than they are becomes its own burden—especially when it prevents you from engaging in healthy emotional energy techniques designed to lift your spirits.

There’s a fun theatrical version of over-playing the suffering and it’s a great one. Unfortunately, it only really works when you have the energy for it. The rest of the time the strategy of pretending to suffer, on top of actually suffering, can be a serious drain on your well-being.

Defiantly engaging in healthy emotional energy techniques is a more overt alternative that can really boost your spirits over time too.

Grin and bear it or grit your teeth—but either way, sometimes you really do just have to tolerate the hardships.

You display your outer-armour, every time you:

Choose to respond to attacks with defiance rather than submission.
Shrug off insults and cruelties with a “nothing ever gets to me” attitude.
Refuse to back down to driver or project intrusions designed to control or intimidate you.
Counteract driver attacks openly with healthy emotional energy techniques.
Never be afraid to show your negative emotions on the outside either. Have no shame in expressing any discomfort or unpleasant emotions. Focus instead on letting bad feelings out in healthy, self-empowering ways—and then reset your course towards more positive feelings.
Refuse to downplay your own strengths or abilities when you are being used by drivers to make others feel bad. Instead, look for other, healthier ways to encourage them or remind them of their strengths.

Allowing yourself to show more of your inner-armour on the outside will build your confidence and make you feel more self-empowered and self-respected.

The less you have to hide as you go about your day, the more liberated you will feel and the more energy you will have to devote to other objectives.

Showing your outer-armour and using healthy emotional energy techniques go hand in hand. Work the two strategies together to really feel the difference.

Never Mind the Nonsense

The project never stops trying to distract us or waste our time with pointless dramas, manufactured conflicts, and unimportant side issues.

You must build and maintain an attitude based around dismissing these distractions the moment they arise. Driver dramas and project-orchestrated social conflicts are never worth much time.

Correctly recognize the following as a waste of time, and decide that you’ll never get pulled into the debate:

Manufactured relationship drama. Who hurt who’s feelings; who needs immediate emotional support or reassurance; who’s angry at who; who needs to be put in their place; etc. These driver-orchestrated emotional dramas are almost never based in reality and the people involved are usually doing just fine.
Obscene or explicit debates or social conflicts. Driver-managed exchanges based around people’s private sexual history or issues of sexual morality are never worth getting pulled into. Call it what it is the moment they begin: driver sexual harassment; driver drama; driver distractions.
Time-wasting exercises and unimportant debates. Avoid getting dragged into debates or routines based around solving issues that aren’t actually important right now and won’t make much difference whether you solve them or not. Point out the pointlessness and refuse to get pulled in.

Stand firm and hold the line when you refuse to get co-opted into driver dramas and project-orchestrated social conflicts. Ignore the drivers and the drama and go about your business, even if the harassment continues to persist.

Always remember that the dramatic things you may be hearing about are usually only ever minimally based on reality at the most. In fact, often they have no basis in reality at all!

You should consider everything you hear on the driver network with a healthy sense of scepticism. Take what the drivers say about other people and ongoing events with a sizeable grain of salt.

Be careful not to act on anything dramatic you’ve heard on the driver network. Do your best to avoid or defuse the drama!

The Strategies of Open Resistance Part One

The Strategies of Open Resistance Part Two

The Strategies of Open Resistance Part Three

The Strategies of Open Resistance Part Four