At the beginning of the 2020s we were taken on an unplanned and involuntary journey into the future. I’ve been taking notes. Let’s get equipped.
It’s all too easy to get lost. Nobody starts out pouring their efforts into misguided endeavors that barely interface with reality. Plans begin their life as logical descriptions of an unbreakable road to victory. Everything that could possibly go wrong tends to elude the planners until the decisive moment, unfortunately. Shuffling and byzantine systems of vast complexity are often the result, as administrative functionaries learn the worst lessons from each failure, bolting new logically dubious additions to the original structure until it crumples into irrelevance or worse.
How do we avoid this fate? If you are seeking to build something truly lasting, an overworld that you can pass on to generations, then you had better consider each step carefully. Especially the first ones. As the complexity of our institutions grow, the branching pathways towards degradation multiply. Maybe you’re here because you despair of the institutions you’ve inherited and have decided to strike out into the unknown to build for yourself. Or, perhaps you have come of age within such an edifice and become responsible for the upkeep of a crumbling maze you don’t fully understand yet. How will we move forward, confident that what we build will last?
I cannot make promises, but I have some observations. First we distill our grand effort into a brutal essence. What is our goal? What is the single action that defines our endeavor? This is the tip of our spear, the end of the Kill Chain. A kill chain is a military model that examines the steps necessary for a unit to perform their ultimate task: killing or incapacitating the enemy’s forces. In order to achieve this objective, each step in the chain puts the unit in position to effectively neutralize their target. A kill chain is a ruthlessly efficient goal progression, focusing not on the beneficial but the essential. We must build one if our lofty goals are to have a chance of succeeding, not just tomorrow, but years into the future.
I. Let Go of Complexity
The Kill Chain is not intended to be twenty or even ten steps long. We can no longer afford to hide our ineffectual efforts in layers of comfortably complicated procedure. The old systems and environments have so degraded that their complexity now works against us, seeking to choke any new shoots of living growth that try to fight to the surface. Rebuilding, or building anew, is a fearsome task. We cannot risk any unneeded complications. Define your singular action, then minimize the steps required to secure victory. Check and re-check your assumptions. Test the chain under live fire, iterate based on combat experience. Do not rest until you have dispensed with everything beneficial and only the necessary remains. Train in real world conditions, not under the artificially favorable circumstances. What could you leave behind while still accomplishing the mission?
I think you’ll find quickly that many of the nice-to-haves you eliminate were really preventing the speed and maneuverability that are most necessary in times of chaos. Better to be flexible than perfectly equipped. Better to act first than act flawlessly. Kill Chain thinking will force you to identify what victory would actually look like, and then optimize and incentivize for exactly that. Your enemies, or the system you are battling, or the environment you face, will have the monopoly on defense-in-depth. When you are attempting something truly new, you have to let go of your expectations of resource access, compute mastery, and information dominance. What if all of the accustomed domains and technologies fell into enemy hands? You must be ready with a strategy that plans around low-resource success. Complexity in strategy and execution simply offers more opportunities for your enemy to size control of vital systems. Shrink the vectors for assault against you by stripping every superficially comforting shell of cruft.
II. Embrace the Fearsome Essentials
Once we have removed what is distracting, we are able to focus on bringing devastating focus towards our goal. If your enemy can deny access to your vital tools, then learn to perform with tools that cannot be denied. In homeschooling our children we have learned and benefitted from a “stick-in-sand” philosophy, which encourages using learning aids that can be summoned at will anywhere you might be. Our enemies in this case is no more fearsome than “children being distracted” and “teaching well while keeping a varied routine.” But the principles remain the same. When your primary toolkit can be carried on your person, or better yet in your mind, you are suddenly free to attack the problem in new ways. This discipline frees you to address your central goal with fluid creativity. You will quickly realize the actual progress that is possible once efforts that do not contribute to victory are eliminated. Our anxiety over centralized forces denying access to centralized networks and tools betrays our unspoken belief that those structures themselves are the central work of our lives.
But the reality is shatteringly simple. Our forbears were the priests in their home, the rulers of their domains, the masters of their crafts, with little more than sharply-honed minds. Well-preserved truths carried in their communal memory, the few books they possessed, perhaps a handful of enduring implements to shape their world. A child of ten can carry all of the knowledge to live righteously, a few lines of catechism and several lessons learned through youthful experience. The sure belief that the way to God is a path that can be trodden by grace through faith. The way is narrow, but the door swings even for tiny hands. What have I truly added to the knowledge and faith I possessed as a child? Many of my enthusiastic additions have since proven heavy weights, discarded again with regret at a turning in the path. I’m not peddling Children are the Future bromides, just observing that all the wisdom of age rests soundly on a foundation that narrows to a razor’s edge. You learn better how best to ply your trade, but each new experience is a reminder, not a discovery. I’m not sure you’ve really mastered anything until you can carry it out stick-in-sand, teaching the next generation truths that have made their way into your heart and bones.
III. Proliferate Unseen
And once you can do that, nobody can stop you. You’re free now to let go of the ceaseless agita at supposed efforts by your enemies to control your domain access and stamp you out. They can no longer do so. As long as you are thinking, you are able to fight. Store the crucial data of your life’s work in your mind. Commit yourself to the lifelong process of becoming a walking weapon. Passing your wisdom on to untold numbers of disciples who will themselves instruct and counsel countless more. What exactly is the Enemy supposed to do with that? As long as one of you survive, your goal remains in reach. And since you know exactly what your goal is, and have identified the exact steps needed to secure it, you’re now able to turn your weaknesses into strengths. What was a lack of resources is converted into nimbleness and flexibility unthinkable for your better-supplied rivals. Your invisibility is only a handicap if your greatest wish is to be seen. Can you not execute the kill chain in silence? Isn’t it, in fact, easier to do so? The real work never gains notoriety. If your life’s goal is simple enough to execute without fame, fortune, power or influence, you just might be able to accomplish it.
Stepping back from the ensnaring webs of accumulated detail allows us to see what’s really important. There is such a thing as too much information, too many resources. When abundance distracts from the task, even poverty might be better. I’m sure there is a wiser way to build over long spans of time, one which could recycle more of the existing structures and not start over from scratch. I don’t have to explain that Truth cannot be jettisoned so lightly. But governance systems and methods of execution aren’t truth. They need the occasional renewal.
Reinvigorated by the weights we’ve dropped from our pack, we can confront our singular task without distraction. A pastor I respect immensely once told me that anything his church did which could not be packed up in a bag and done in the middle of nowhere, without building, equipment or resources, was a secondary thing at best. I strive to pursue my own ministry with the same focus. You won’t necessarily always discard every nonessential. But a periodic review reveals much that the slow growth of years loves to hide. Don’t let go of anything necessary. But don’t necessarily hold onto much else.
I’ll see you in the Future.
Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept? ~ Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune
With the blast shield down, I can’t even see! How am I supposed to fight?
Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them. Stretch out with your feelings! ~ Star Wars: A New Hope
No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins--and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins. ~ Mark 2:21-22
Amen! Once I surrendered my will to God’s will things, thoughts, & many people fell away. Weight, negative thoughts, anger, fear are diminishing. I ask myself “ what can I live without?” I have a goal to stand up to the Godless & in my bag as a spiritual warrior I have critical thinking & love. A new community is forming. Thank you for writing this article. The kill chain concept put into action surely coincides with my spiritual warrior essence.