Three Inside-The-System Lifestyle Strategies

Insider Lifestyle Strategies

Dissidents sometimes have a nasty habit of having interest only in outside-the-system strategies. But there are a lot of useful inside-the-system strategies that can help ease our current situation, or to help prepare for stronger outsider options in the future.

For instance, if we voted in dissident-friendly local leadership, it will make it a lot easier to develop outsider alternatives than if we’re under Portland’s mayor.

That’s just one small example. We shouldn’t negate the importance of these insider strategies, even if we realize that we can’t rely solely on them to save us.

The system will fall, we all get that. But we should use the system to our advantage as it’s falling, so we can survive the crash.

For this article, we’ll look more closely at lifestyle strategies. There are other more mundane day-to-day options like the one I mentioned in a previous article (voting), but those can be saved for another article.

I see three different reasonable, beneficial insider lifestyle strategies.

These three strategies include:

The Lying Flat Strategy
The Infiltration Strategy
The Prosper Strategy.

Starting with Lying Flat. This is the strategy used by many under the communist Chinese government, which shows its versatility even under the harshest of potential environments:

A sort of listlessness is taking hold, summarized by a Chinese phrase that became popular last year: “tang ping,” which translates into “lying flat.” It’s emblematic of a lifestyle that eschews the rat race and embraces low expectations for professional and financial success.
As youth unemployment steadily rises, Bloomberg reports a more ominous phrase is now emerging: “bailan.” It means “let it rot.”

Both “bailan” and “tang ping” mixed together describe the strategy of Lying Flat.

Lying Flat is not a bad idea for many dissidents. If you can help it, lying as low as possible is a decent strategy. Don’t improve the system, minimize your participation to the bare essentials, and don’t actively try to harm it.

The first two are obvious: don’t improve or take part in a system that you disdain. But the latter (don’t actively try to harm it) is true as well, because much like the Chinese system, if you try to actively harm this system it will destroy you. Look at the Jan 6 defendants who didn’t even actually do anything, or Alex Jones who is going through sham trials for our supposed free speech. Look at Torba that has been de-banked and de-person’d just for creating a Twitter alternative.

In a system that will destroy you, sometimes it’s best to take this Soviet citizen approach, which is simply following the “they pretend to pay, we pretend to work” sequence out to its logical conclusion: which is state failure and collapse.

If millions of us did this, the state could not sustain itself. It relies on us actively taking part and working in its interest like good “patriots”.

This is why Lying Flat can be a worthwhile strategy. Still, there are drawbacks. Drawbacks to the Lying Flat Strategy is that it only takes away from the enemy, it does not give benefit to the individual or the dissident community. This strategy is the safest, but is also the most uneventful and least impactful of the three. It is probably the weakest option of the three.

Another potential strategy is the Infiltration Strategy. Do exactly what the cultural Marxists or post-structuralists (or whatever your favored term is) did. Take over the institutions, quietly and meekly. Get to top positions and then enact your preferred cultural narratives slowly and discretely until many of us do the same. In effect, this strategy seeks to do exactly what the leftists are currently doing. Combat them at their own game of institutional takeover. This strategy is a fight for the culture, rather than money (Prosper Strategy) or a tactical mass noncompliance (Lying Flat).

The drawback here is that it takes a tremendous amount of time and commitment, and can fail spectacularly along the way. Making this strategy a high risk, but potentially high reward strategy. It also only really works if many people follow it, as one institution can do little in the face of thousands of leftists competitors. Adherents to this strategy will also need to benefit the institutions as they work their way up through them, giving aid and benefit to the system during this interim period. However, if they are successful, that interim system benefit will be very minor compared to the final results of the institutional takeover.

The third inside-the-system strategy is the Prosper Strategy. This strategy encourages a person to become as prosperous as possible, using any system strategies that the system cannot target them for. Owning a normal business while not being involved politically or working a high-paying job while being a normal, non-political person, for instance. Then the person can use this money to support a wide diversity of political dissidents and organizations. This differs from the Infiltration Strategy because the focus is on silent dissidence, whereas the Infiltration tactic is for a more open dissidence when the situation is right (the institution is controlled).

The Prosper Strategy will be what finances and funds those that can’t simultaneously make money and fight politically, because those who dissent from the system get expunged from positions of money-making. Again, see everyone getting removed from banking and use of credit cards. These people and their organizations can only run by those who support them financially, and those people are usually those who follow the Prosper Strategy.

We could definitely use rich people in these inside-the-system positions, quietly financing those of us who can strategize both inside and outside the system. Once someone is officially outside the system, the system rarely lets them back in. This provides a way for our more active dissidents to operate in both, while the Prosper Strategist can stay peacefully under the radar.

They are, in a military sense, the artillery in the back. Whereas the infiltrators are the spies.

The drawback to the Prosper Strategy is obviously providing aid and benefit to the enemy through whatever avenue they take to become prosperous. Their actions will help the state maintain itself and they will certainly pay more in taxes than a Lying Flat strategist. Their taxes will then get funneled into organizations that target us. Still, the importance of financing artillery cannot be negated.

There is no “best” strategy or one strategy for everyone.

A man with a family should stick to the Prosper Strategy, because we do not want a budding family to be harmed by the mob like what could happen to an infiltrator.

A youth could consider the “do nothing” strategy if they do not feel they are intelligent or cunning enough to infiltrate. The more intelligent and calculating youthful dissidents should at least attempt option #2 or #3. If they fail, they can re-align to option #1.

If the situation gets too dire that we can’t perform a #2 or #3, then we should all pivot to #1. If an outsider dissident organization arises that actually has promise, more of us should focus on #3 because #2 and #1 would be less advantageous.

All three strategies are useful for different people at different times. It’s up to you to decide which you think is most appropriate.

There are certainly other strategies, but most I could think of while writing this article were outsider variants. Building parallel institutions, becoming actively involved in noncompliance, and sharing knowledge on dissident subjects all lean a bit more “outsider” in my view. One could argue that a lawfare approach (become a dissident-supporting lawyer) or getting involved politically (become a dissident-supporting politician) would be two other insider strategies, and I would probably agree given the context. Both use the system’s tools against itself. But the three I have presented are the main three insider options for most people, at least.

All three strategies are useful in their own capacity. What is not useful are the dissidents that claim no inside-the-system strategy can aid us. Insider actions won’t save us, but they will be essential in getting to the point of having viable outside-the-system options that will.

Don’t toss the baby out with the bathwater. And strategize appropriately.

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