That's a very interesting quote about the reachable person in an agricultural society. It's worth noting that after taking power, one of Mao's highest priorities was raising the literacy rate.
One of the ideas he discusses is intentionally keeping your literacy low and your population itinerant.
"...under the French, administrators would complain that they could send delegations to arrange for labor to build a road near a Tsimihety village, negotiate the terms with apparently cooperative elders, and return with the equipment a week later only to discover the village entirely abandoned—every single inhabitant had moved in with some relative in another part of the country."
Graeber on the myth of the ignorant savage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvUzdJSK4x8
I'm not sure that itinerance or illiteracy are strategies I would recommend to anyone. :)
Dreher's Benedict Option seems like a Western perspective of a similar strategy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan#Etymology
> 'Malays had informed him the ape could talk, but preferred not to "lest he be compelled to labour".'
For more literate sandbagging, in Oflag XVIIA (POW camps actively discourage itinerance): https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~michor/leray.pdf
> "Recteur Leray lectured mostly on calculus and topology. He had succeeded in hiding from the Germans the fact that he was a leading expert in fluid dynamics and mechanics (a mécanicien, as he liked to say). He turned, instead, to algebraic topology, a field which he deemed unlikely to spawn war-like applications."
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For a certain period (when the lifestyle was actually militarily superior) roaming worked well for steppe peoples.
I doubt there'd be much theological overlap, but do the BenOp people ever think to look at what the least english-dependent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_people already practice?
Bossmang! Mi du sensa. Milowda na sasa lang inya, keya?
[1] protestant, catholic, and orthodox, in that order. One is reminded of the person who is constantly looking for the New Shiny Library/Language instead of writing their app with the ecosystem they have at hand. (cue GKC quote on difficulties untried, Benedict on Sarabaites)
For more similarities to open source schisms, consider https://blog.ayjay.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/BenOp-788x... and replace the christian references with geeky projects such as "building a modern operating system", "immanentising the crypto eschaton", "welcoming our new GPT-N overlords", etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA
[2] who are still around to ask. There's a non-benedictine abbey near me which celebrated its 1'500th birthday a while ago, and at least a handful of benedictine which are probably not many centuries younger.
TIL Benedictines are more Marxist than Marx.
From each according to their ability: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c...
To each according to their need: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50040/50040-h/50040-h.html#c... (no private property, nor personal property, nor even personal volition)
[3] as I'm not charitable, I'll suggest that being afraid of Obergefell then writing phrases such as "L.G.B.T. activism is the tip of the spear at our throats in the culture war" reminds me of Poe's law. Then again, I'm not sure if he fears swallowing "liquid modernity" as much as being swallowed by it. (a complaint which I believe Dreher shares with another movement I doubt he covered: the Taliban)
"Political Limitations of Psychological Warfare." and "Definition of the Enemy." are interesting sections.
He does mention that communication, even mid-20th century, was prone to retweeting: "German broadcasters who emphasized the anti-capitalist character of National Socialism in the programs beamed to Eastern Europe found that B.B.C. picked up the most tactless statements and repeated them to Western Europe, where the Germans posed as anti-Bolshevik champions of private property. American attacks on the Germans for associating with Japanese monkey-men were passed along by the Japanese to the Chinese, who did not like the slur either."
(Another anecdote he tells is about getting into a flame war that went around the world. In hindsight, he regrets getting mixed up in it, yet admits he'd had the dopamine hit at the time.)
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interesting to view this para of "Political Limitations" in hindsight:
> "President Roosevelt, in his conduct of the political world role of the United States, promised Manchuria to the Chinese, Korea "in due course" to the Koreans, and the integrity of the French Colonial Empire to the French; outside of that he avoided specific promises. In another instance (to put a complicated matter baldly), the British promised Palestine to both the Arabs and to the Jews in World War I, and consequently got themselves into a political mess which, thirty years later, was still a mess."
It not only explains indochina/vietnam but also I think we could fairly update that "thirty years" to 100.
This one resonates with me in our current moment:
> From the very beginning the British had the lead. They nailed German propaganda as propaganda, while circulating their own as news, cultural relations, or literature.