- THE WALL IS THE WALL: WHY FORTRESSES FAIL
- Brittle vs Resilient Systems
- The Limits of Hierarchy: Brittle Systems
- Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Success in preparing a counterstroke requires a great deal:
- Giving up the notion that you can restore what was.
- The carving out of some space that is hidden to create the counterstroke. Why it is “hidden” doesn’t matter. It can be (and often is) that the insurgent simply doesn’t believe that you are capable of preparing a counterstroke.
- Creating a genuinely new and disruptive complex system for your counterstroke. As an ongoing real-world example, women are on the ascendance everywhere in the world, regardless of political disagreements across communities of women, because they are coherently creating something new together. Men, on the other hand, are on the decline, because they are trying to defend what they have. All else being equal, creating something new will outlast and eventually replace the current reality, no matter how much effort, even successful effort, is put into the defense.
- Never allowing fear to trigger a premature counterstroke.
- Waiting for the maximum feasible disintegration of the insurgent before launching the counterstroke.
Note how foundational patience is in the success of all this.