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 possible 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!
Contents
| The Benefits of Choosing One Side |
| The Rules are Unreliable – So are the Project Methods for Breaking Them |
| Pushing back the Rules |
| Only Do What they Want When it’s the Right Thing to Do |
The Strategies of Overt Resistance Part Two
Choosing a Side
| One Side, not Both Sides |
| Let them Find Someone Else |
| Honesty, Authenticity, and Consistency |
| No More Mr (or Mrs) Bad Guy |
| Getting Out of Bad Deals |
| Creating Our-Side Opportunities |
Standing up Against Authority
The Benefits of Choosing One Side
The covert method for navigating conflict between two or more opposing parties is a game of deception. It usually involves either infiltrating the opposition, or pretending on the surface to be in agreement with them while working against them in secret.
The overt way chooses only one side in any disagreement and makes no attempt to hide its loyalties or motivations. Instead of working to manipulate, trick, or control the opposition, the overt approach instead invests the greater majority of its time, energy, and resources into strengthening and defending its one true position.
The game is to fortify your defences, prepare your artillery, and mount your campaign right out in the open—presenting a unified, consistent, and unequivocal front. Pace with the opposition, negotiate common interests, but never lie or deceive about your true goals. You no longer have to hide your true intentions from the drivers or the project because you can rely on your strengths and tactics to navigate the conflict and defend against attacks instead.
Manipulation and deception are dirty games. Even when you achieve your goals there are often multiple secondary and tertiary costs to approaching conflicts in this way. Trust is eroded, resentment on the other side is high, and non-involved parties may be less willing to deal with you when they rightfully expect you to lie to them or betray them the moment it’s in your own interest.
On the other hand, resolving conflict overtly is a much cleaner game. Friends and foes alike both know where they stand and potential opponents are much less likely to view you as a threat if they know they can depend on you to be a straight-shooter, whether you agree with them or not. When the battlefield views you as less of a threat in these ways, you are safer from garnering many types of aggression from those around you. Importantly, those with the best values and intentions will view you as a natural ally and be much more likely to support your cause.
Not having to hold yourself back or give concessions in order to deceive the opposition frees up your time and energy, so that you can devote much more practical resources to what you truly believe in. You can work to make sure that every effort you employ is only designed to work in your own chosen interests.
If you’re playing both sides, however, sooner or later you end up having to engage in some form of action that ends up really working against your own interests in the long run.
In fact, the standard methods the project and its underground network have taught people to use in fighting back against the project itself are often routinely and deliberately doing the project’s work for it—especially when it comes to things like keeping people trapped in their systemic loops and routines, preventing people from making true progress with social issues like fighting for children’s rights or for better working conditions, or stopping people from ever adequately organizing in a viable and open person-to-person way.
Instead of feeling like you have to play both sides of every issue, consider how much more beneficial it can be to choose only one side in any particular disagreement or conflict. Even if it means driver harassment or simulation pushback, the benefits of putting all your energy into fighting for the right side of the debate will be significant.
When the issue in question actually really matters in reality—when it concerns the state of our real human rights and freedoms as they exist in our daily lived environment—you need to do everything you can to make sure you’re only arguing for the right side of the debate.
It’s bad enough that in this life you are expected to work for the project at the same time as you are working against it. (And by the way, the drivers are well aware that this is the case for literally all of you—even when they pretend that they aren’t—so when you think about it, there’s really not much point in putting too much effort into hiding it.) You might as well come out of the shadows much more often, so that you can free up your time and energy for arguing only for the right side of as many project issues as you can.
Decide that as often as possible you will always be arguing for what you believe is morally right in any particular disagreement or conflict. And if the drivers, the sims, or anyone else attacks you for it, you are more than capable of depending on your own strengths and defences to fend them off.
The Rules are Unreliable – So are the Project Methods for Breaking Them
One of the fundamental challenges I see people face is the apparent need for project permission to get anything done, as well as the accompanying fear of reprisal for being caught breaking the rules without some form of cover or excuse.
In this world, every human is forced to function in their own project-managed bubble reality, as well as the environment that we all share. Just as the drivers and the project condition each of us with our own unique perception of reality, they also enforce a different and uniquely tailored rule-set for each individual human too.
Usually the rules the project expects you to live by personally are heavily dependent on what you will or will not agree to, or what you will or will not stand up against, as an individual.
Most importantly, they do not want you to know that the rules they enforce on others may be very different to the rules they enforce on you.
The drivers and the project change the rules for people all the time. The things they tell you that you have to do are arbitrary and highly vulnerable to challenge, while the project plays very coy when it comes to the rules they want you to follow and the rules they want you to break. Often the drivers will deliberately manipulate you into breaking the rules because they want you to engage in those behaviours, while at the same time threatening you with reprisals if you do.
(When this happens, you must point out in no uncertain terms that the drivers clearly wanted you to break the rules and pushed you into doing so. Especially if they try to use it as an excuse to punish you.)
It is impossible to really adhere to this shifting system of oppressive and unjustifiable rules and the project knows it. That’s why it depends on entities like the underground network to steer people into breaking rules the project way.
There are a million self-defeating strategies for following the rules on the surface while attempting to get around them in secret. And while many of the covert approaches real humans engage in to circumvent the rules are very clever, many more of the strategies that the project has taught you to use aren’t really working in your interests at all.
The project strategies for covert rule-breaking are self-defeating because, even when they get you what you want in the short term, they usually work against you in the long term in highly significant ways.
For example:
Agreeing to suffer in exchange for getting around the rules is disastrous in the long run, when one of our fundamental universal struggles is the fight to stop the project from making us suffer at all. If we’re ever going to roll back the suffering, you shouldn’t be validating suffering from the project in any of its forms. Let them attack you if they’re going to, but never agree to accept the suffering.
Rather than passing secret messages from person to person to get around the rules, coded language, doublespeak, and relying on driver keys is routinely used to create an incomprehensible and isolating Babylon between those communicating—where the only ones who don’t get the message are the real human beings themselves. Instead of keeping secrets from antisocial simulated interests, or making the drivers think you’re following the rules, the only true reason for this is to prevent real humans from sharing information freely and organizing out in the open.
Fighting the project by proxy and getting around the rules through using simulations is a deliberately endless and ultimately unwinnable battle. The project already knows that you’re against it, so you’re not really hiding anything. The main reason it allows you to fight these battles through simulations is to prevent you from doing so in reality, where it will actually make the difference.
Using project strategies such as the above for getting around the rules builds up and enforces the oppressive structures of the project, at the very same time that you are using the project strategies in an attempt to escape from those oppressive structures themselves.
As such, many of the strategies the project has taught you to get around the rules employ a “one step forward, one step back, and then repeat indefinitely” approach when applied to the bigger issues of life in the project.
You feel like you’re fighting and making a difference when you use those strategies, but actually they’re not getting you anywhere.
On the other hand, applying the strategies of overt resistance to standing up against the project has the benefit of never sacrificing your secondary needs or long-term goals in exchange for necessary gains in the moment.
The overt resistance strategies are prosocial, ethical, and healthy for society. Using these strategies is good for people, whether they agree with your cause or not, because they are designed to respect and support human rights and well-being.
When you use the overt strategies to fight back against the project rules, they get you closer to your goals without building the project’s social enforcement structures back up at the same time.
When many more people are using the strategies of overt resistance as a matter of standard practise, we will be achieving our goals in half the time.
Pushing back the Rules
Beginning in August 2023, during the final stages of the horrendous war against project kompromat, I had a bad “death”. I know you’ve all been through these experiences too, so you know how awful they can get.
I was broken down, my self-esteem and self-image shattered, and desperate to prove to the vicious voices controlling my world that I was not a bad person. The drivers used this opportunity to enforce a set of increasingly punishing and repressive rules onto my personal life. Because I was so desperate to prove my worth, I gave in.
First they told me to quit cigarettes and chocolate, because I didn’t deserve to have happiness. I was so broken down that I agreed.
But that wasn’t good enough.
Next they told me to quit eating meat. After all, killing animals for food is definitely unethical, so if I wanted to prove I wasn’t a monster I should do that as well. And I agreed.
They told me to get up at six am every day and told me I wasn’t allowed to go to bed until two or three in the morning, no matter how exhausted I was. They told me I wasn’t allowed to sit down and had to pace back and forth in the living room all night to earn the right to sleep. They told me to quit tea and coffee. That I wasn’t allowed to watch TV or read any books.
Any modicum of peace or fulfilment that they could take from me, they did. And all because I had given in to the idea that they had a right to tell me what to do. I had forgotten how to stand up for myself, or to say no to abuse.
Whatever project rules the drivers have forced on you have followed a similar pattern. The more they can get away with telling you what to do, the more they will claim that you have no choice. Even though actually you do.
The fact is the rules are arbitrary. The rules drivers enforce are different for everybody. And when you stand up openly and literally against rules that are obviously abusive and unjustified, the vast majority of the time the drivers do eventually back down.
Most powerfully, when you can point out how morally wrong these rules are in literal terms, the project and the drivers have little defence to argue in favour of enforcing them. This is also true when standing up against real human beings who are arguing in defence of any project rules or regulations.
When you point out clearly how abusive and irrational these methods are, they become impossible to defend—for humans and drivers alike.
Relying on Conscientious Objection and Standing up to Authority strategies is how you push the rules back progressively in the other direction.
Remember that one of the weaknesses of the project is that it does depend on representing itself as a prosocial, well-intentioned organization.
In a sense, the project has infiltrated the opposition when it comes to higher social values like enlightenment, societal evolution, and cultural progression. It uses these ideals as a cover to manipulate and intimidate good people into going along with it.
But having to represent itself as being in support of these things is a major weakness too. When you attack the project for failing to live up to these ideals, the only choice it has is to back down or break cover. And it depends too much on pretending to be good to give up on its moral veneer, so it has to back down—especially when you mount your arguments and opposition the right way: the open and literal conscientious way.
Playing for the good side is the project shooting itself in the foot, because it forces it to go along with, and give concessions to, the real human beings who actually truly hold these ideals.
Back when I had given in to the increasingly oppressive rules of the drivers in late 2023, I didn’t know how to fight back against them. In fact, I didn’t even know that I had a right to. It was only when the story changed, that more and more positive and encouraging messages began getting through to me, that I was able to begin to recognize how unjust my living conditions had become or how much of a right I had to fight back. I depended on the coaching and advice that I believed was reaching me from my friends and family to begin fighting back to reclaim my own humanity and to finally start standing up against the project again.
Once I had it the right way, I never looked back.
I am telling you now that you have a right to begin pushing back the oppressive and unjustifiable rules the project and the drivers have forced on you, both as a personal individual and as a worker in the chain-of-command.
I am telling you that if you rely primarily on the strategies of overt resistance—particularly Conscientious Objection and Standing up to Authority—to diligently and determinedly push the rules back, one after the other, you will succeed in liberating yourself and those around you more and more.
Stand up to and challenge the worst rules, expose their evils in a way where the drivers won’t even be able to deny it, and they can no longer defend trying to enforce them. Literal, open, and authentic communication is the best way to do this.
Refuse to follow those rules, regardless of whether or not the drivers back down. The power to make that choice is yours. Sooner or later, the drivers do have to accept it and they do eventually back down.
When you’ve shot down one rule and taken time to fortify your position, move on to the next one and shoot that down too.
That is how you mount a campaign to roll the project rules back, one after the other.
[An important note: the above contains a “nested-loop” pattern, a natural function of narration and story-telling, but also a deliberate tactic of persuasion. I take a hard line against manipulation. I don’t like manipulating people, I don’t like being manipulated, and I know nobody else does either.
Because of this, I decided a while back to never engage in NLP-style persuasion patterns deliberately any more. The only patterns that appear in my communications are ones that arise naturally when using positive communication styles. Though, let’s face it, the drivers are always playing a background game when it comes to manipulating how the words arrive on the page.
When I notice these patterns, I evaluate them.
I ask myself: would this pattern naturally arise in this style of communication anyway? Is it a deliberate attempt to manipulate or control people? Does it do any harm or infringe on people’s rights to choose for themselves?
If the patterns are natural symptoms of good communication, if they are positive and non-invasive, then I usually let them go.
But it is never my intention, or my method, to deliberately manipulate the reader. I want you to consider all of the information presented here primarily in literal terms and then freely evaluate it for yourself.]
Only Do What they Want When it’s the Right Thing to Do
It is very clear that the true controlling interests of our world—above even the structures of the project itself—really do want us to defeat their oppressions and to do so by putting the right methods and the right intentions into action.
You can read the signs whatever way you like, but everything right now is pointing towards open resistance, Masks-Off, and beating back the project’s most oppressive and antisocial rules.
The fact that all of this is happening is a strong indication that you will succeed in choosing the path of overt resistance. It is an indication that if you instead try to play it safe by sticking to the covert methods then you may not get anywhere at all—and will certainly be made to suffer for it along the way.
In fact, when you sense the true controlling interests want you to do things the right way with the right methods, that itself may be the safest path to take.
That said, you should never aim to do what you think those powers really want just because it’s safe, or in order to score points for later. You cannot game that level of power, foresight, and control and they will trip you up if you try.
You should only ever do what they want when you yourself think that it is the right thing to do.
If you sense that the true controlling interests want you to do the wrong thing—and often they do—you should do everything in your power to refuse. But when you sense that they want you to do the right thing, then you can consider that as a strong indication that you have a good chance of success.
Right now, that true power wants you to break the rules and it wants you to do it in ethical, healthy, and open ways—which is what the strategies of overt resistance are all about. The drivers will tell you different (and really they’re the same entity as that power, wearing different masks), while at the same time they will manipulate you into breaking the rules anyway.
You might as well take the initiative and do it the right way.
The true power in control of our world does not deserve our respect or our appreciation. With how they have treated us, and the terrible life-shattering abuses they have subjected us to, they deserve nothing from us.
Treat the drivers with the same respect they treat you, but rebalance it appropriately. Let the drivers have obscenity, harassment, and obnoxiousness. When you treat with them, show them only your wise and tempered contempt. It’s the least that we owe them.
The Strategies of Overt Resistance Part Two
Part One of the Strategies of Overt Resistance covered the sections Breaking the Rules Overtly, Conscientious Objection, and Inner-Game. Part Two contains the sections Choosing a Side and Standing up to Authority.
Choosing a Side
There are tremendous benefits to deciding to go all in when it comes to choosing which side of a debate or challenge to invest your time and energy in.
Whether it’s a disagreement between two or more real human beings where one side is asserting authority for the project and the other is standing up against it—or an ongoing debate about the right practices and approaches to put into place during project routines—choosing to put all your efforts into speaking only for the perspective that you agree with will make that side of the argument much more likely to succeed.
The following strategies will assist you in choosing your side, as well as maximizing the benefits to be gained from adopting a consistent, congruent position in any important debate.
One Side, not Both Sides
Decide for yourself that on certain moral issues you are never going to pretend to be against your own interests, or to argue for the opposite opinion to the one that you hold, ever again.
Choose a few core issues that you’re willing to fight for in your own personal life, both for yourself and for those around you, and adamantly decide that you will never represent the other side of that issue, no matter the risk of reprisal.
Correctly define your chosen issues and amass all the overt resistance strategies you will need to stand up for them, without playing for the other side in any way at all.
Issues to choose just one side of the debate with:
- It’s never ok to dress children inappropriately during Mandatory Reality routines. Never pretend this is not happening or argue in favour of the project’s excuses. Inappropriately revealing clothes or mature styles are not acceptable.
- There is never an excuse for forcing people to participate in any routines designed to cause physical, psychological, or emotional suffering.
- Mandatory Reality routines involving aggressive behaviours or criminal activities are unacceptable and should never be orchestrated by the project. Pressuring people to participate in these events is fundamentally wrong, no matter the excuse.
From now on you will never play the role of someone you believe to be in the wrong when it comes to those issues, nor will you argue against what you believe in—even if the drivers or the project authorities tell you it’s the right way to solve the issue.
(If playing both sides was ever going to solve the example issues, it would have worked by now.)
You are not going to do anything to stop anybody else from standing up for what is right in regards to those issues, even if the project authorities tell you you have to. You are a full conscientious objector when it comes to the wrong side of those issues.
In fact, you will use the opportunity of others speaking up in favour of what is right to voice your own agreement with them. When this happens, the strength-of-numbers wins the day.
Rely on your Conscientious Objection and Standing up to Authority strategies to really hold the line and refuse to back down.
Be consistent with your decided “one side” issues, both while participating in simulations and in actual reality.
You won’t play for the other side in any context, not even to change simulated people’s minds. That’s doing things the slow and difficult way and it often leads nowhere.
When choosing to occupy only one side of an important issue:
- You have openly stated your singular position on the issue and you have decided to consistently defend it.
- You are choosing to openly express what you really believe about the issue with honest literal language.
- You are not using doublespeak, nods-and-winks, or coded language to express your true beliefs, while pretending to play along with what you disagree with. Playing that way only helps the other side to get more of what they want.
- You are fully acknowledging that you disagree with the other side and you are not trying to hide the fact that you are not working for their interests at all.
- You are prepared to defend your position and stand up against any pushback if the drivers, the project, or anyone else attempts to force or intimidate you into playing for the other side.
If you invest yourself completely and singularly into one side of an important conflict or debate, you are much more likely to make your chosen side succeed.
By consistently and deliberately sticking to your guns and only fighting for what you believe in, you will be willing to give up far less ground, as well as being primed to claim as much as you can when setting your sights on victory.
Pick your battles when you choose a side. Practice the strategies of overt resistance as you build fluidity and skill with them.
Eventually, you will be confident and strong enough to direct the full overt resistance playbook against the project itself.
Let them Find Someone Else
When it comes to simulated events and project practises, you may feel that you yourself “have to” play both sides in order to manage and manipulate the antisocial interests of the opposition.
While there is certainly strategic necessity in mitigating harmful practises, sometimes even if it means covering up your true beliefs and playing along with the “bad side”, this infiltrating-the-enemy approach is also very often a trap.
Manipulating people into thinking they have to play for the bad side is one of the methods by which the project forces people into going along with socially oppressive, abusive, or deliberately time-wasting routines. When actually you could be fighting these abuses in much more direct, and potentially far more successful, ways.
When you have chosen your side on an important issue, you will have to rely on Prosocial Selfishness to prevent yourself from being pressured or guilted into falling back into the old routines.
Let the drivers find someone else for the job if they can, but if you get a chance you’ll be sure to tell that person to choose the right side of the issue too.
Whatever happens, you’re not going to be playing along with or arguing for the side of the project’s worst practises or simulated interests ever again.
For now you’ll just have to let others fend for themselves and hope they use the new strategies the right way too.
The risk of simulations or project routines falling into inept hands is a necessary one if we’re ever going to really pull people out of these unwinnable and repetitive routines.
At this stage, most people are wise and strong enough to handle themselves in those situations. We need people to walk away from these routines rather than to remain trapped thinking they have to manage them.
So when the project tries to threaten or guilt you into doing something you consider morally objectionable—whether in simulations or actual reality—stand firm and let them find someone else for the job.
If you can, guide that person to walk away from the situation the right way too.
Honesty, Authenticity, and Consistency
Choosing to hold consistent values, no matter the context or who you’re speaking to—as well as expressing them honestly and authentically at all times—makes you a valued presence in a world where division, mistrust, and uncertainty are constantly being sown by project forces.
Decide that you will take every opportunity you can to express your honest opinions and your authentic attitudes and beliefs.
Avoid hiding who you really are or covering up what you really believe to make sure that when it comes to the important issues nobody has any doubt where you stand.
Our world needs as many people as possible with the courage and decency to stand up openly for the things that they believe in.
The more people who are openly expressing their true beliefs about the problems that we all share, the safer and more comfortable others will feel in also voicing their concerns.
The more people who are speaking up literally and openly against the abusive practises of the project, the more pressure there is on the project to actually change them for the better.
Allowing yourself to express more of who you really are, while deliberately adopting more honest and authentic communication styles, will make you feel freer, more integrated, and more liberated as a person.
You will be a model example to others who need someone to look to when they’re not sure what to do during a conflict and you will habituate an attitude and a communication style based on always standing up for what is right.
You exhibit honesty, authenticity, and consistency when you:
- Choose to only express your true moral beliefs and opinions.
- Express your natural emotions without ever trying to hide or repress anything.
- Show who you really are as a person, rather than trying to manipulate people’s opinions of you or impress them.
- Aim to be consistent across all areas of your life when it comes to what you believe and how you behave.
Groups, collectives, and organizations exhibit honesty, authenticity, and consistency when they:
- Let their true goals, values, and intentions be openly known.
- Avoid holding back information from the public or attempting to manipulate public opinion.
- Display reliability and dependability in their organizational practices.
- Facilitate open communication with the public and freely invite the opinions of others.
Choosing a Side and Honesty, Authenticity, and Consistency are strategies that both fuel each other with the right approaches and emotional energies. Put them together in action to make your position even stronger.
No More Mr (or Mrs) Bad Guy
Nobody really wants to play for the bad side. Not when our fundamental human rights and freedoms are on the line.
When you’ve chosen your side on any particular issue, and no longer have to be appearing to work for the opposition, you can be a lot more expressive and relentless in standing up for what you believe.
You can devote much more of your time, energy, and resources to working openly in favour of what you really believe is right.
The benefits of no longer playing the bad side include:
- No holding back. You no longer have to moderate yourself or couch your language in terms of how you speak about your true position. You can express your true beliefs on an issue freely and openly, no matter who you’re speaking with, while investing all of your communication into furthering what you actually believe.
- No bartering, no paying. You are no longer obliged to offer something in return for permission to represent what you really want. You refuse to take the hit, set up a fall, or cede any ground. Instead of agreeing to reprisals—which is often willingly shooting yourself in the foot—you are free to put your efforts into openly defending yourself against them.
- Less simulated routines. You are no longer obliged to jump into tedious or tortuous simulated routines based around representing antisocial simulated groups or interests. These events are often just a prolonged attempt to abuse their participants anyway and often make little difference in the long run, despite the hours upon hours of effort that go into them.
While playing for the bad side is often a defensive measure—an attempt to fend off the potential for worse attacks—with the strategies of overt resistance, you can fortify your defences against attacks while still having the freedom to openly and unequivocally pursue what you actually believe in.
Decide to refuse to play for the bad side much more often—especially on the bigger issues.
Getting Out of Bad Deals
When you’ve chosen your side on a certain issue or moral position, you will have to openly communicate an honest and consistent identity in regards to those issues, in every context or interaction where they apply.
It will now be necessary to make efforts to exit any agreements, affiliations, or deals that no longer fit with your openly expressed true beliefs.
You will have to make fast and immediate efforts to part ways with any aspects of the project system that you can no longer represent, as well as any simulated entities or factions that stand in opposition to your true beliefs or moral positions.
Any deals or arrangements that you’ve agreed to that may have been based on terms and conditions that no longer live up to your publicly-stated beliefs and opinions will have to be terminated.
As long as those deals are based on immoral or antisocial conditions, you are well within your rights to cancel them, whether the agreed terms have been met or not!
Relying on conscientious objection, tactical negotiation, and a strong prosocial basis for your position will provide you with a concrete pathway to successfully voiding your bad deals, as well as ending unwanted affiliations with “bad side” elements within the project system or its simulations.
To void your bad deals:
- Gather your evidence. Amass as much evidence as you can as to why the deals are antisocial, immoral, or otherwise illegitimate. If the deals involve abusing people, deceiving people, or exploiting people in any other form, then they will be easy to argue against from a prosocial moral position.
- Use an active, overt, and prosocial approach. Speak honestly and literally, refuse to play both sides or pretend to be against your own interests, and your position will be a strong and consistent one. Rely on a prosocial moral foundation to make your case and the opposition will have no choice but to either accept it or attempt to defend the morally indefensible. Either way, you are within your rights to declare the deal void for moral reasons.
- Find the lies and deceptions. If there are any elements of the deal that were based on lying to you or others as to the true nature of the agreement, or the specifics of its terms and conditions, then you can consider those things to be a breach of legitimate agreement. If the deal involved promises and assurances that turned out to be based on lies or deception, then the deal was never valid to begin with!
- Find the non-consent. Any aspects of the deal that were forced on you or others without full knowledge or consent can be considered a breach of proper agreement. If it wasn’t what was agreed to, if there were aspects of the deal that were never consented to, then it wasn’t really a valid deal at all. As such, the deal can be considered already void!
- Find the abuses. Point out any specific abuses, crimes, or cruelties involved in the deal. At the end of the day, any deal that involves abusing or exploiting someone cannot be considered valid and will be easily argued against from a position of conscientious objection and a prosocial moral foundation.
- Call the bluffs. Refuse to give in to any threats or intimidation tactics as you argue your way out of the deal. Accept no form of reprisal or punishment whatsoever for terminating the deal. You are voiding the bad deals because they are illegitimate and, as such, any reprisals or concessions cannot be accepted!
- Don’t let your own failings prevent you from terminating the deal. Just because you yourself may not have lived up to a high moral standard, doesn’t change the fact that the deals and agreements themselves are based on unacceptable or illegitimate terms and conditions. Your own moral transgressions, whatever they may be, are not relevant. All that matters is that the deal itself is provably non-valid.
Remember that you have no obligation whatsoever to remain involved in a deal if the other party has already rendered the deal illegitimate by lying to you or deceiving you, or by lying to or deceiving anyone else involved in the deal.
Remember that any deal that involves abusing or exploiting someone is not a valid deal and you have no obligation to remain involved in it. In fact, you probably have a moral obligation to renounce that deal immediately!
Remember that any deal that involves parties who haven’t consented to the deal, or been made fully aware of the terms and conditions of the deal, is not a valid deal either. If the involved parties haven’t agreed to it, then there is no real deal to begin with!
To fully point out how and why the bad deal is illegitimate, you may have to openly and literally address project abuses that you may not have openly confronted before.
Instead of playing along and pretending that those abuses are not so bad—which is a common project-enforced state of deliberate repression—you will have to target the abuses and injustices directly and openly, by utilising free, honest, and literal speech.
Thankfully, when you consider how immoral and abusive those project practises are, you will find that they are very easy to argue against from a prosocial position of conscientious objection!
After you have ended your bad deals, it may be time to part ways with any project or simulated factions that involve pretending to have beliefs that you don’t actually hold, or otherwise pretending to be against your own interests.
When deciding to conscientiously object to these groups and entities, you will want to cancel your affiliations as fast as possible to avoid being pulled into a deliberate loop of time-and-energy wasting—whether through simulated routines on the driver network or symbolic re-enactments in Mandatory Reality.
You will have to make your moves as fast as possible as you end your affiliations with “bad side” groups and authorities, so that you can assume a more fully and consistently prosocial identity in all of your endeavours.
To detach yourself from entities and factions that you have decided to openly disagree with:
- Avoid game-playing. If the drivers, sims, or human project authorities expect you to jump through hoops and waste your time with simulated endeavours—whether on the driver network, or through symbolic Mandatory Reality performances—call those efforts what they really are: Pointless tasks in a false world with no bearing in actual reality. None of that is necessary or acceptable as you end your affiliations.
- Just quit. Apply Just Say No and Civil Non-Compliance -style tactics to void the arrangement immediately. You are no longer involved in those interests, you will no longer act them out or play along with them, and that’s all there is to it. Say “I quit” and the job is done.
- Address the abuses. Point to the specific harms and abuses involved in representing those groups and factions to explain why you have decided to terminate your involvement with them immediately. Make the conversation one of moral debate to neutralise arguments in defence of engaging with those groups.
- Accept no reprisals, offer no concessions. Do not agree to suffering anything or giving up any peace of mind in exchange for exiting those groups. Since your position is a strong moral and prosocial one, you are well within your rights to quit those groups and factions. What you are doing is the right thing and therefore you will not agree to be made to suffer for it!
Voiding bad deals and getting out of unwanted project groups and factions is a necessary step in assuming a more fully consistent and overt position in terms of your true beliefs and intentions.
The sooner you cast off those unnecessary, illegitimate, and harmful obligations, the sooner you can more fully apply your active efforts for positive change in a way that will really make a difference.
Remember that any deal or agreement based on abuse and exploitation cannot every truly be considered valid anyway. In fact, you may have a strong moral obligation to speak out openly against those things.
The Making Better Deals section of Building the Right Behaviours will offer more advice on how to make the right deals, through methods that are as prosocial and ethically ecological as possible.
As you claim your consistent prosocial and overt identity, getting out of bad deals is a must!
Creating Our-Side Opportunities
When you are fully and openly committed to one side of a conflict or debate, you can devote much more of your time and energy to creating new opportunities to further your own side.
Trying to win a debate or resolve a conflict while playing both sides is like trying to fight with one hand tied behind your back.
When you commit yourself to only one side—the one you actually agree with—both hands are freed and ready to be put to use.
When you have claimed a stable consistent identity in favour of your chosen side on an issue, you have much more freedom to invest your time and energy into creating opportunities to gain ground for your position and weaken the position of the opponent.
Ways to create opportunities for your side include:
- Bring the debate. Introduce your chosen issue as a topic of conversation as often as possible and with as many people as you can. You are now free to express your true opinions about what you actually believe, so make the most of it!
- Gather evidence and build your argument for why your side is right. You no longer have to hide what side you’re really on, so you are free to ask much more precise and detailed questions. You can show much more of an open interest in your goals without fear of being found out.
- Seek out others who are likely to agree with you and encourage them to step out into the open with the chosen issue too. The more of you who are openly expressing what you really believe together, the safer and more powerful you are. Strength in numbers always holds true.
- Target the right times and places to mount your campaign. Ask yourself: When is the issue most of a problem? What real humans have the most power to change the way things are being done? What is the right way to bring the conversation to the forefront in actual reality? Decide exactly when the right time is to fight for what you believe in. Behind-the-scenes during project work may be a good time to begin more openly expressing your position with other human beings.
Aim to create more opportunities for your side in actual reality, when speaking face-to-face with real human beings, and put far less value in exchanges taking place on the driver network or through simulated routines.
Utilize literal language and authentic communication as often as possible and decide to wear your true beliefs about the issue on the outside, loudly and proudly.
The more you seek to create opportunities for your side of the debate, the more your side will achieve and succeed.
Standing up Against Authority
Standing up against authority is a fundamental of overt resistance. While the covert approach involves making authority figures think that you’re on their side, or at least that you’ve agreed to obey them, the overt approach makes no effort to hide its dissent.
This requires a combination of strengths and defences. You have to be committed to fight for your position right out in the open, while being able to trust that you can defend yourself if the opposition attempts to attack you or push you back. Possessing the right strategies for standing up to authority will ensure that you are far more likely to succeed in getting what you want, while being capable of protecting yourself even if you don’t.
The following strategies will assist you in standing up to authority more often and more openly.
Facing Fear
When the time comes to stand up to authority, you will have to be prepared to face anything.
Rely on strategies like Calculated Risks, Choosing Fearlessness, Inner-Armour, and Outer-Armour to make sure that you are resolved, determined, and ready to face the worst potential outcomes even as you fight to achieve the best.
Remind yourself of all the challenges you’ve faced and overcome in the past.
If you stand up to authority the right way, you can avoid the worst potential outcomes, while ensuring that the outcomes you really want are attainable.
The risk of doing nothing, or playing it safe and getting nowhere, is worse in the long run than the risk of making a calculated decision to stand up to authority the right way.
Even in the face of doubts or uncertainties, you must take that risk!
When preparing to stand up to authority:
- Remember that any human authority figures you’ll be facing are just as much on the side of what’s right as you are, even if they can’t admit it. Stand up to them the right way and often they will do what they can to let you win.
- Remember that drivers can be argued against and defied. They don’t have bodies of their own so when you take back power over your own life, harassment and psychological attacks are often all they have to fall back on.
- Remind yourself that even when facing a human authority figure who’s lost control of themselves and is being used by drivers in an intimidating way, you can use tactical communication to pull them back to sanity, or to defuse and deflect their aggression in a peaceful, non-confrontational way.
- Accept that drivers and their commands are highly vulnerable to challenge. When you stand up to drivers they very often back down—especially when you are standing up from a position of moral objection. Even if they attack you for it, you’re more than capable of defending yourself.
- Brace yourself for facing the worst outcomes and decide that the risk is worth it anyway. Recognize that even then, the very worst outcomes (losing your identity, being subjected to simulated “death”, etc.) are actually very unlikely in most cases—especially if you have a strong moral defence for your position.
- Prepare yourself to persevere in the face of any driver sensory attacks. Be adamant about pushing through even if they attempt to cloud your mind, try to make you feel weak or submissive, cause you physical pain, or otherwise interfere with your emotions or physiology. Whatever happens, you are going to stand up for what is right and hold the line.
Being resolved in your ability to stand up in the face of pushback will temper any doubts or fears and motivate you to get the job done.
The more times you face the fear of standing up openly against authority figures, the less fear you’ll have the next time you do.
Eventually, the prospect of standing up to authority won’t cause you any anxiety at all.
Voicing Dissent
You have a right to speak out openly for what you believe in, even when those with power or authority claim to disagree.
The free voicing of dissent is an essential part of a healthy, functioning society.
We need as many people as possible to express their true beliefs to ensure that every perspective is represented—especially in the face of any authoritative measures that are oppressive or abusive.
To really make changes in a community or organization, you need to be capable of speaking openly and literally for what you believe in, particularly when the standard rules and norms of that group are harmful to people.
The ability to voice your dissent in literal, open terms is a necessity when it comes to standing up against authority the right way.
When voicing dissent:
- Be respectful, tactful, and civil, but never downplay your own argument or give up on what you believe.
- Choose literal, authentic, and direct language where possible to make sure your message will be clearly received and that the meaning cannot be twisted or deliberately misinterpreted.
- Base your position on a strong moral foundation. Explain why your dissent is based on doing what is right for people—including yourself—both in terms of protecting them from abuses and in working towards healthy, prosocial outcomes.
- Never frame your argument as a personal attack against the authority figure and avoid giving in to emotional tensions. No human being is your enemy, no matter how intense the moment, so always have your sights set on restoring a peaceful and mutually-beneficial emotional tone.
- Build a strong boundary against intimidation or other underhanded tactics. Maintain your cool at all times and never take anything personally. Keep your eyes on the prize and focus your attention on winning the argument with sound reasoning, positive emotional energy, and strong communication.
- Call out any abusive communication styles from the opposition and deflect any wrongful accusations of the same. If you momentarily lose your cool and say or do the wrong thing, apologize immediately—but don’t ever give up your main position. If you suspect you’ve been snapped or blurted, address it as literally as you can.
The more you practise openly and literally voicing your dissent, the more confident you will be when standing up openly against authority.
Voicing Agreement with Dissenters
There is no sound so sweet as the sound of others voicing their dissent for the right reasons.
When those around you have been courageous enough to stand up openly against authority, you should know that if you are willing to join them and voice your dissent too, then the battle is almost won.
There is tremendous strength in numbers. The moment anybody else is speaking up literally and openly for the right reasons, you should view it as an irresistible opportunity to jump in and bolster their side in whatever way you can.
Rather than leaving it to others to speak up, join the debate yourself and voice your open dissent too.
If others are being challenged by authority while speaking out, then you have an obligation to join them to ensure that the right side of the argument wins the day.
When others are voicing their dissent in the face of authority:
- Jump in as soon as you can in defence of the side you agree with. Avoid doing anything whatsoever that could be construed as arguing for the opposite side. Only invest your communication in supporting the perspectives that you agree with.
- Attempt to defuse any strong emotions, especially on the part of the authority figures, and guide the tone of the communication back to civility, with a healthy amicable attitude for all sides.
- Voice your own agreement in clear literal terms with those standing up to authority.
- Aim to guide the conflict to a win-win scenario for everyone involved. Even when others are arguing on the project’s side they rarely want it to succeed. As long as the authority figures are treated respectfully, it is very possible that they will give in—provided you communicate the right way.
Always take the opportunity to share your open and literal agreement with those voicing dissent.
When many are voicing their open dissent together, it’s a sure sign that change is on the way.
Tactical Language
Standing up to authority in a system predicated on deceptive communication tactics and psychological warfare techniques can be a minefield.
You need to perfect an extremely tactical and cunning approach to communication—even when you are heavily favouring the authentic, literal, and moral styles.
The section “Clever Communication” contains a list of tactical language strategies in greater detail.
Consider every interaction as a battle of three sides: You; the other humans around you; and the project, whether in the guise of drivers, simulated people, or the simulations themselves.
Set your target on relentlessly weakening the project every chance you can, while at the same time doing your best to support the other humans around you and guiding them, if necessary, in the right direction.
Never let this model of targetting out of your mind. Direct every language tactic you have through this targetting system and always aim to utilize as much literal speech, authenticity, and prosocial intent as you can.
You engage in tactical language when you:
- Dance around distractions. Deliberately sidestep any distraction tactics and guide the conversation back to what matters. Address distraction issues if needs be, but only with a view to defuse them as quickly as possible.
- Take every opportunity to point out in literal terms the abusive, irrational, or counterproductive aspects of what you’re standing up against. Almost all of the project’s practises involve some combination of those failings, so as long as you can address them directly they are readily available ammunition.
- Never take anything personally. Adopt an appreciative attitude—whether authentic or not—in the face of underhanded tactics or disingenuous criticism. Take back control by explaining yourself patiently, fully occupying the territory of the attack, and then redirect attention to your main position and its strong moral grounding.
- Avoid anything that could be construed as personal criticism of the authority figure or opponent. If they take umbrage with something you’ve said, apologize readily and explain that it was not your intention to cause offence.
- If your literal communication is challenged by gaslighting or false ignorance tactics—accusations from the other party that you seem mentally unwell, or that they don’t know what you’re talking about—use deflective language to cover yourself. Rely on strategies like Facing Gaslighting and Facing False Ignorance to manoeuvre your way out of the challenge, without giving up any personal power, and wait for the chance to return to the literal. The moment it arises, take charge of it. Repeat as necessary.
Using tactical language patterns is absolutely necessary to protect yourself as you begin to practise communicating openly and literally more often.
When the time comes to stand up against authority overtly, you will have a strong foundation of communication defences and attacks to rely on.
Begin by practising with more acceptable subject matters, especially behind-the-scenes where project issues may be easier to address openly.
Continue pushing the boundary of acceptable speech to the point where you can address the really important problems with the project in increasingly open and literal ways.
When you are finally able to stand up to the project on the most important issues, openly and literally, the changes we are really fighting for will be in reach.
Counteracting Bad Faith
Nobody likes facing an opponent or an authority figure who is arguing in bad faith.
If you find yourself standing up against authority and your opponent appears to have resorted to manipulative or underhanded tactics, you must recalibrate your approaches immediately.
Remember that you can still win an argument when your opponent is arguing in bad faith, though you will need to apply a different approach to the conflict.
Strengthen your defences, resolve yourself to keep cool no matter what, and begin to look for weaknesses in their game-plan.
When facing a bad faith opponent or authority figure:
- Avoid trying to make them admit it. If you accuse an opponent of arguing in bad faith all they have to do is deny it to make you look like the bad guy. Bad faith styles will seek any excuse to turn the debate into one of emotional conflict rather than addressing the actual issues—and you must prevent that from happening at all costs. Play along and pretend you don’t realise they’re arguing in bad faith, while waiting for your chance to strike.
- Use it against them. Even when opponents are arguing in bad faith, they can’t often admit it. The fact that they have to pretend to be coming from a place of honesty is a weakness that you can take control of and steer to your advantage. Constantly project well-meaning intentions onto the opponent and they will be forced to live up to it.
- Be pleasant on the surface, but cooler on the inside. When somebody is arguing in bad faith they don’t deserve much leeway. Adopt a shoot-to-kill policy in terms of dismantling their bad faith argument, but avoid showing it on the surface. Whatever happens, you must never let their bad faith tactics get the upper hand.
- Play along as much as you have to. When the opponent is being dishonest about their awareness of reality or their true beliefs, you have little choice but to play along with their claimed position. Focus your attentions on holding your own ground and meet them in the middle with the view to strike when the time is right.
- Keep your own spirits up. Rather than giving in to bad feelings, view the challenge as a “game-on” type situation. Adopting a proactive, agile attitude will keep your emotional energy healthy and invigorated, even as you aim to outmanoeuvre and obliterate the bad faith tactics.
- Be fluid and deflective with any criticisms directed at you. Never let anything stick to you. The goal of bad faith criticisms is to spoil your emotional state, so as long as you refuse to let that happen, you’ve won the challenge. Receive personal criticisms and character attacks with good humour, patiently explaining yourself as you comfortably display your positive emotional energy, before redirecting the debate back towards the issues that matter.
- Remember that human beings speaking in a position of project authority are often trying to be on your side—despite the harmful methods they may be using to communicate with. Aim your attacks at neutralising and destroying the bad faith methods, rather than doing anything to deliberately hurt the person.
- If your opponent seems to have lost control of themselves, do what you can to help them out of any driver-induced states and guide them back to a state of fuller sanity and self-control.
When facing a bad faith opponent, never lose sight of the fundamentals, even as you recalibrate to a more amoral and tactical game.
Never give up on your prosocial intentions and moral beliefs, emphasize those aspects of your argument as you steer things back to healthier debate, and do everything you can to maintain open and literal styles of speech.
Facing Gaslighting
Gaslighting is one of the most challenging bad faith tactics that you are likely to face.
Generally speaking, gaslighting means accusing somebody of being mentally ill for calling out actual abuses in reality, or claiming that their valid perception of the truth has been entirely imagined.
Gaslighting can also refer to blaming project abuses on personal failings or character flaws, instead of correctly appropriating the blame.
In other words, gaslighting says “it’s all in your head” and “you’re the one to blame” when you’re standing up against abuses that are happening in actual reality.
Gaslighting is a standard project-taught technique to shoot down free speech and open protest. It is one of the reasons so many people have been afraid of speaking out against project abuses in more open and literal ways.
You may think gaslighting is a harmless technique—something you just have to engage in to cover yourself with the project and get by—but it, and other comparative bad faith styles, are among the main communicative techniques the project has used to oppress, disempower, and subjugate you and those around you.
Gaslighting creates an atmosphere of repression, distrust, and intimidation—an environment where many people can’t even trust their own friends or family when they want to speak out about the abuses in their lives.
Even in its lesser forms, gaslighting is a poisonous and extremely psychologically abusive technique.
You must draw a hard ethical boundary against ever engaging in gaslighting.
When facing gaslighting from a project authority figure:
- Keep your cool. Correctly recognise the situation for what it is—a bad faith tactic designed to shut you up and keep you down. Recalibrate your strategies towards defusing the challenge.
- Patiently listen to the other party’s position. Never accuse them of bad faith or they’d try to use it against you. Pretend that you believe they’re coming from a place of valid concern and wait for the chance to strike down their approach.
- Remember that even though they may be attacking you on the surface, underneath they are probably on your side and going through a bad time themselves. While you may be on your own for now, consider the bad faith tactics the enemy and not the people using them.
- Adopt a friendly but resilient attitude on the surface, even if you feel tense, but keep yourself cool and determined on the inside. Choose a “we’re all friends here” communication style and get ready to outmanoeuvre their tactics.
- Project well-meaning intentions onto the opponent. Act as though you believe they really are only trying to help and they will be forced to live up to that expectation in their communication style.
- Patiently address any accusations or concerns expressed about your sanity, your emotional well-being, or other criticisms directed at your behaviour. Calmly and good-humouredly explain that their concerns are mistaken and their accusations unfounded. Actually you’re doing fine.
- Maintain a strong boundary around any aspects of yourself that are being called into question. Never let their accusations have an effect on your actual mental or emotional state. Stay cool and determined on the inside, even as you play nice on the surface.
- Refuse to get roped in to going along to any hospital or doctor appointments, or into taking any medications that you don’t need. Drivers have used placebo medication as an excuse to inflict diminished states of mental functioning on their victims.
- If you can’t speak literally, consider using code to build common cause with those using the bad faith tactics. But be careful, drivers can easily mix up the message when it comes to code, in an attempt to stir even more tensions between the human beings. Use literal language to defuse the gaslighting as much as possible.
- Remember that outmanoeuvring gaslighting can sometimes take a while. No matter how persistent the opposition, you must hold the line and maintain your position for the long haul. As long as you refuse to give in to their false version of reality, eventually they will have to back down.
- Never give in. Do not play along or concede to any aspects of their false accusations. Never admit to wrongful guilt of anything, including being mentally unwell. Put all of your efforts into using tactical communication and healthy emotional energy to force the other party to accept that their accusations are unfounded.
- As soon as the gaslighting has been neutralised, set your sights on returning to your main argument and remounting your campaign. Never let bad faith tactics get in the way of what really matters.
The surest way to neutralise gaslighting in our society is for those who’ve engaged in it to refuse to participate in gaslighting in the first place.
The more people who conscientiously object to engaging in these oppressive and socially dangerous tactics, the less people will live in fear of them and the less we will all have to tolerate them.
As that happens, the easier and safer it will become for more and more people to voice their opposition to abusive project practises, right out in the open.
Facing False Ignorance
Most people who claim they don’t know what you’re talking about when you openly address reality are only doing so to protect themselves.
As such, unlike gaslighting, false ignorance is less of a bad faith tactic and more of a secondary symptom of the project’s oppressive and repressive structures against free speech and open communication.
As you become more comfortable and confident using the strategies of overt resistance to support yourself in speaking more openly, you will regularly find yourself communicating with people who pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about.
Since you have no choice but to take their word for it on the surface, it can sometimes feel like you’re being pushed back into playing along with a false reality.
Actually, you can use the challenge of facing false ignorance as a launchpad to guide the conversation on to actual reality—and to the issues that you really want to address in detail.
When facing false ignorance in regards to you chosen issue:
- Tell them for the first time. If the other party claims they don’t know what you’re talking about, explain the issue to them as if you were telling somebody for the first time. Take time to briefly and simplistically explain any background information that they might also claim false ignorance of to build a baseline for discussing your position. Now they know exactly what you’re talking about!
- Use tactical language to get around anything controversial. Look for the most neutral and acceptable way to explain anything that others may not consider safe to speak about.
- When speaking in Mandatory Reality, talk about “the project in town” to create a baseline for discussing project issues. Explain that there’s a project in town based on running simulated routines and getting people in disguises to act them out—though it’s actually torture and everyone hates it! If the other party claims they haven’t heard of it, just shrug it off and persist. After all, what you’re talking about is actual reality, even if the other party claims they haven’t been aware.
- If the other party tries to gaslight you or interrogate your position, stand firm and refuse to back down. They will just have to accept that what you are saying is true and that you have personal experience of it, even if they claim it sounds crazy. If they say they don’t believe you, calmly assure them that it’s the truth, whether they accept it or not.
- Use your background explanation as a transition into speaking more authentically, literally, and in more detail about your true position. Let it be the lead-in to addressing the project issues you are really standing up against.
- Tweak the above example about the project to make it fit the context of your own chosen issue. Use a similar approach to discuss sensitive project matters behind-the-scenes, by replacing “the project” with anything else that hasn’t yet been openly acknowledged. Depend on building a background explanation to circumvent the wall of silence and then use it as your launchpad for speaking more openly and authentically about your true position.
The main challenge of facing false ignorance is that it can make it difficult to speak at length and in sufficient detail about what you need to.
Rather than giving up—or allowing yourself to get dragged into playing along with the other party’s act—tactically guide the communication to a place where you can more fully and openly express your actual beliefs.
Helping them Out
In a societal system built on mind control abuses and psychological warfare, nobody is capable of maintaining full control of themselves or their sanity perfectly at all times.
If you find yourself facing an authority figure who is no longer fully in control of themselves, don’t ever back down!
Rather than giving up on the debate, attempt as best you can to help that person out of their driver-inflicted state—while at the same time defending yourself from their behaviour and maintaining your own position.
Reserve the opportunity to push forward with your argument as soon as it becomes appropriate again.
To guide an authority figure back to sanity:
- Slow down. Take a step back and appraise the situation. Think both tactically and compassionately. Maintain complete control of yourself before proceeding. Prepare your defences.
- Avoid giving the authority figure any opportunity to attack you on your own behaviour. As much as possible stay calm and civil. Be polite and friendly. Aim to help the human being, while protecting and defending yourself from their behaviour.
- Moderate any driver intrusions that may be effecting your own feelings or behaviour at the same time. Focus on steering the other person back to sanity, while tolerating any intrusions yourself.
- Employ a strategy of faultless communication. Make sure your communication style is honest, clear, and non-confrontational. Use your speech to guide things back to sanity and a healthy, mutually-respectful emotional energy.
- Pull them back with compassion. A friendly, prosocial attitude is great for defusing driver-induced aggression or antipathy. Be patient and open, but non-confrontational. Pretend you don’t notice their oppositional feelings to disarm them with kindness. Create as many opportunities as you can to allow that person to reclaim their better nature.
- Never back down where it matters. Put your own arguments aside momentarily, but don’t cede any ground as you attempt to guide the other person back to a healthier mental state.
- If you have managed to help them out of their driver-induced state, you should take the opportunity to address it. It may not always be possible, but there is serious benefit in openly acknowledging the driver intrusions. You will have rightfully ascribed blame to the drivers, while at the same time facilitated a common cause with the other person.
- Only address the drivers if the mood is healthy again and the moment is appropriate. Be careful not to give the other person the chance to take offence!
- End it the right way. Even if you’ve failed to get through to the authority figure, never give up on your position. Exit the confrontation as amicably as possible, while refusing to accept any blame or fault for the emotional conflict.
You already have many tactics for dealing with people in driver-induced negative states in your own personal life.
Combine those tactics with the overt resistance communication strategies to ensure that you can manage the situation the right way, while still standing up for what you believe in and refusing to give up any ground.
Conflict Resolution
The ability to resolve conflicts tactically is an essential skill for navigating arguments and debates.
When standing up to authority you should place your main effort on resolving the conflict along intellectual terms. But always reserve some of your attention for defusing any emotional conflicts that might arise too.
The best strategy for neutralizing emotional conflict is a pre-emptive one.
Before the time to stand up to authority even begins, choose to approach the challenge with a healthy and resilient, prosocial attitude.
The more well-meaning your communication style, the less likely emotional conflicts will surface when you make the move to stand up for what you believe.
That said, don’t sacrifice any of your self-defences in exchange for an agreeable attitude. Maintain a strong boundary around what you’re fighting for and never give in!
When facing emotional conflicts:
- Defuse tensions immediately. Moderate your own emotions and guide yourself to healthy emotional energy. Pay close attention to the other person’s emotional expressions and respond in a way that respects their feelings. Do what you can to reassure them of your mutually-beneficial intent.
- Apologize and explain. If the other party becomes agitated, apologize for anything that may have caused them to feel that way and explain that it wasn’t your intention. Only ever apologize for causing offence, not for the position of your argument!
- Refuse to accept that the issue you’re standing up for is sufficient cause for a negative emotional response. If you have based your argument on sound moral reasoning then you are definitely within your rights to express it—and any negative emotional reaction on the other side is never appropriate.
- Find common ground. Aim to reconnect with that person on a human emotional level. Allow yourself empathy and show it freely. Only direct your arguments at the issues in question, never as a personal attack.
- Use tactical language to reintroduce healthy emotional energy into the moment. Lighten the mood if you can!
There are multiple methods for resolving conflicts that are solely based on intellectual disagreement.
When aiming to resolve intellectual conflicts:
- Rely on sound reasoning and a well-presented argument. Ensure that you’ve covered your own position from every angle and can communicate it sufficiently when the time comes.
- Base your persuasion on ethics, prosocial outcomes, and a strong moral foundation. An argument in favour of doing what is right will be very persuasive and is difficult to argue against.
- Depend on clever communication and tactical language to stay ahead of the tactics of the opposition. Whether the opponent is arguing in good faith or bad, you should be well prepared to counteract it.
- Steer the debate away from veering into the emotional. Keep the focus on the issues that matter so that you can maintain an appropriate mood and context for resolving the conflict.
- Use clear, literal language as much as possible. Avoid code and metaphor and aim to speak freely whenever you can. This will make it so much easier to get your points across in detail.
The strategies Ethical Counter-Offers, Agree to Disagree, and Holding the Line will also assist you when aiming to resolve disagreements with authority figures.
Putting these strategies into practice will make it far more likely that you’ll achieve a satisfactory outcome when facing conflicts with those project authorities.
Ethical Counter-Offers
When refusing to engage in something you disagree with for moral reasons, counter-offers and concessions are often expected.
If you won’t agree to what is being asked of you, it is common to be invited to make a counter-offer by agreeing to perform some other task or duty instead.
The problem is, any concessions the project expects are very likely to be almost as immoral or abusive as whatever you’re standing up against.
As a conscientious objector to harmful behaviours, you should be maintaining your ethical boundary against anything you consider abusive, even if it’s not as bad as the other option.
When the time comes for concessions, aim to present a new counter-offer that doesn’t sacrifice any of your own moral or prosocial beliefs at all.
Never agree to a less bad thing to avoid participating in a worse thing. Instead come up with a third option—one that isn’t based on suffering or hurtfulness at all.
When constructing an ethical counter-offer:
- Look at the surface-level purpose of the task in question. Is the authority figure admitting that they want you to engage in something harmful for the sake of causing harm? If not, aim to give them what they’re asking for without allowing for anything cruel or abusive at all. If yes, point-blank refuse based on moral reasoning.
- Avoid suffering at all costs. Make counter-offers where every real human being can come out ahead, without having to suffer anything.
- Never try to play the bad side. Take a hard line against agreeing to things that are only “supposed” to seem hurtful on the surface. These things very often end up being truly hurtful when they’re put into practise.
(The drivers are always trying to make anything seem or feel hurtful, regardless of human intent, and “pretend hurtful” behaviours are one of their favourite platforms for making real hurts happen. It makes the process easy for them!)
- Make sure your counter-offer is only good for people. Aim for positive outcomes, healthy emotional energy, and beneficial results for all parties involved.
- Appeal to the project’s “better” intentions. Enlightenment, social evolution, and progressivism are some of the project’s claimed core purposes. Use them to frame your counter-offer as being fully in alignment with project goals.
- Carefully scrutinize any concessions the opposition make if they offer alternative routines or processes to you. If you rightfully recognize that the alternative routines offered by the opposition are cruel or abusive too, openly address it immediately.
Making ethical counter-offers will display your reasonability and your willingness to make concessions whenever appropriate.
They will make it harder for your opponents to mischaracterise you as a troublemaker, or to accuse you of having truly rebelled against the project.
Making ethical counter-offers will show that you’re still a team player, even though you’re refusing to do certain things because they’re morally wrong.
Be willing to make as many ethical counter-offers as you can, but never agree to concessions that involve harming you or anyone else.
Agree to Disagree
Sometimes the only way to resolve an intellectual conflict is by agreeing to disagree.
If the authority figure won’t accept that your position is correct, you should aim to resolve the conflict in a way where the opposition can peaceably accept that your position has remained unchanged.
To reach an Agree to Disagree outcome:
- Be civil and respectful. Maintain an amicable attitude, even as you hold your position firm and refuse to cede any ground.
- Be absolutely obstinate in refusing to give up your beliefs or to engage in behaviours that you disagree with. Be resolved in your refusal to back down.
- Respect the opinions of the other party, without giving up any of your own beliefs.
- Choose the right time to end the exchange. If you’ve failed to persuade the other party to your way of thinking, use healthy communication to create the right moment to offer an agree-to-disagree conclusion.
While an Agree to Disagree outcome may not constitute a major victory, you can still consider it a win.
Having agreed to disagree with authority figures, you have defended and maintained your own position and refused to give up any ground.
You are now stronger and more secure in expressing your moral position the next time.
Holding the Line
When facing a strong opposition from an authority figure who won’t accept your position or offer any concessions, you’re going to have to stand firm.
Whatever you do, never back down on your main position.
Holding the line means presenting a strong front, fortifying your defences, digging your heels in, and refusing to give up—even if it means maintaining your position for the long haul.
To hold the line:
- Refuse to respond to threats or intimidation. Drivers may hurt you, humans may threaten you, but you are sticking to your guns no matter what.
- Mount your resilience. Be stubborn, determined, and ready for anything.
- Never give up on what you believe. As long as you can end the day having fought for what is right then you’ve still won. If you roll over for authority you’d be back where you started, but if you hold your position then the fight goes on.
- Brace yourself for the long haul. You may not have persuaded the authority figures to give in this time, but as long as you continue to fight for your position the right way, sooner or later you will succeed.
You may be surprised that if you hold the line for what you believe in, even when you think the battle is lost, you may find yourself winning in the final moments of the conflict.
Often drivers back down only when they’re certain they can’t intimidate or harass you into doing what they want. They will lie and they will threaten, they will assault you with sensory attacks, but if you stay strong eventually they do give in.
Unreasonable human authority figures do back down eventually too, especially if you’re relentless in presenting the most emotionally healthy, morally sound, and persuasive aspects of your position.
Whether you expect to win the battle or not, holding the line for what you believe in will ensure that you keep up the good fight for the long haul, no matter what they throw at you.
Prosocial Policing
When it comes to confrontations with human authority figures working for the project, there are two sides of the equation.
How each of these parties choose to behave will have a strong deciding effect on whether the conflict works out in favour of the human interest or not.
It is not fair to expect open dissenters to fight for what you believe in, while those on the other side play it safe by giving themselves up to driver control or playing bad faith games on behalf of the project.
When it comes to playing the other side in an attempt to mitigate damages, those approaches are not good enough.
When you’re the authority figure, there are a range of prosocial approaches that you can engage in so that those who are speaking out for what is truly right can win the day.
Prosocial Policing is a blend of overt ethical tactics with covert systemic tactics. It involves amplifying your ethical beliefs openly, while still pretending to be on the project’s side.
The approach is designed to ensure that the right side wins the argument no matter what side you find yourself representing.
To engage in Prosocial Policing:
- Avoid bad faith tactics. Scorn making character accusations or questioning the dissenter’s sanity. These tactics force the other party to play a difficult game and it could easily break them if they’re unprepared. If you must interrogate their position, do so primarily along honest, intellectual terms.
- Never engage in hurtful tactics, insults, or aggressive behaviours—not even as an act. Be as decent and healthy in your communication as you can. You may think that “playing” these behaviours is harmless, but the drivers can make it seem very intimidating to those on the receiving end, no matter how ridiculous the act might seem to you.
- Avoid pretending ignorance in regards to things that may or may not be acceptable to talk about. If you’re not sure it’s safe to acknowledge the other party’s literal communication, just let it hang in the air.
- Pretend to play along with the right side. If you’re not allowed to openly admit that you actually agree with those arguing for what is right, tell the sims and the drivers that you’re only playing along. Then use it as an opportunity to authentically express your actual beliefs.
(The drivers already know what you really believe and what side you’re really on—and so do the sims they play. They just want you to be trapped in their unwinnable game. Play it this way and at least you can use it to speak up more openly and authentically for what is actually right.)
- Let yourself be persuaded. If the other party’s position is reasonable and persuasive, then it can be very difficult to argue against. That’s not a bad thing. After all, it’s not your fault if their reasoning is sound and their position makes sense!
- Maintain a boundary against antisocial driver directions. They may push you to play dirty, or to smother the opposition, but you’ll represent the project’s position your own way. Play it sane and reasonable, focusing only on the issues in question, and occupy the project’s authority that way.
- Guard yourself against driver intrusions or losing control. Keep your head clear and be determined to play things sane and decent. Even if they assault you with sensory attacks, stick to your game-plan and keep your cool.
- Avoid taking any fatal shots at the opposition. You might be surprised how difficult your tactics could be making it for them—especially if they’re intimidating, manipulative, or underhanded. However hard you usually push back when representing the project’s interest, half it at least.
If you want to make it easier for each other to stand up against the project openly, you need to amplify the Prosocial Policing style at all times.
Very often, people think they’re only “playing the bad side” when representing the antisocial aspects of the project, without realizing that they are actually policing each other for real.
After all, as long as “playing” those oppressive project behaviours results in genuinely making people too afraid to speak out openly, then the project has gotten everything it wants from the act.
Many people are afraid of each other when they play those project authority roles. In fact, it is one of the reasons so many have been reluctant to stand up out in the open for what they believe is right.
Whenever you find yourself in the position of project authority, you must do everything you can to enact the Prosocial Policing style.
If the drivers tell you you’re not allowed to, use the strategies of overt resistance that you’ve already gained to shoot them down.
Prosocial Policing is really just a blend of ethical attitudes and healthy communication styles. You can still do your job while adopting a more enlightened outlook. Since it’s mainly about attitude, they can’t really stop you from behaving that way.
Never let drivers micro-manage your behaviours. They back off when you stand up to them with these things because they already know that they’re in the wrong.
Choose prosocial, emotionally healthy attitudes, reject bad faith techniques, and draw a hard line against engaging in intimidating or unstable behaviours.
Refuse to play project identities that are supposed to be antisocial, intimidating, or aggressive.
Hold the line and employ your ethical boundary. Point out what’s wrong about the role as presented. Let them find somebody else for the job, but advise that person to refuse that role too.
When both sides of the equation are playing things the right way, with as much healthy emotional energy and mutual human respect as possible, a beneficial outcome is far more likely.
Let the parties voicing open dissent against the project’s abuses win the day. The easier you make it for each other to get there, the more of you there will be.
The Strategies of Open Resistance Part One
The Strategies of Open Resistance Part Two
Truth, Freedom, and Reality 