Tootfinder

I tried to write something up to talk about an idea, but it didn't quite work. I have a lot more I need to put into it. But I want to get an idea out, and, after talking with a person who pointed out some of the flaws in what I wrote, I think I can maybe write down the kernel of the idea here.
An acquaintance of mine did a deep dive on Operational Art and wrote his thesis (which prompted an earlier set of posts and an article I wrote for my professional-ish blog) on the intersection of the OODA loop and critical philosophy. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Kilcullen's Three Pillars model (after watching Andrewism's wonderful video) and Beer's VSM. The TL;DR of it is that there's a much better insurgency model. Of course, the insurgency model also works for a bunch of other things, because cybernetics lets you do all kinds of cool abstraction like that.
So as I was reading the essay of a comrade the other day, that model popped back into my head and I'm going to try to share what I can of it.
When colonizers came to the Salish region, they saw what they believed to be an untouched wilderness. They failed to see the ways in which Salish people tended the land. Indigenous fire practices were common on the northwest coast, and the suppression of those practices remains a problem. There is an interrelationship between an environment and the systems within it. Systems, like people, animals, and cultures, adapt to the environment. In doing so, those systems will also change the environment.
Social technology was invisible, so colonizers defaulted to either some kind of Rousseauvian or Malthusian model of these people. They were not, for the colonizers, people who had developed advanced social technologies to live in harmony with their world. They were, rather, people in "a state of nature."
The European influenced left continues to draw this Rousseauvian model, which continues through a lot of Anarchist revolutionary thought. European anarchists were heavily influenced by observations and theories around the behavior of indigenous people. The remnants of this thought still exist in the idea that the system must only be destroyed for us to be free.
This is the same obliviousness to social technology, that social technology actually exists, often informs both early colonizers and modern radicals.
It is through this obliviousness that we fail to recognize how capitalism is a social technology that is managed into existence and maintained, and how changes in the environment can threaten institutions that have become over-adapted to a specific version of that environment.
We can extend Kilcullen's metaphor of a "conflict ecosystem" through cybernetics into a much more rich model, populated by viable systems. The ecosystem itself has a fitness function, which drives adaptation within the environment. But all actors in the environment also affect it. Some try to manage the environment. Revolutions are often over who manages a social ecosystem, over who controls the social technology and what it does.
Once we see this dynamic at play, calls of "riot" and "revolution" make a whole lot less sense. Rather, the question becomes, "how do we change the ecosystem in such a way that it cannot be 'managed' at all?"
Graeber/Wengrow talked about Turtle Island indigenous social technologies in Dawn of Everything, such as the system of moieties and clans described in the book. So I have a good reading list as I think through this model, but I hope the "ecosystem" model is helpful (if not completely fleshed out).
I'd be interested in any critiques or thoughts to help develop this idea more.

Wir können unsere Kinder nicht immer und vor allem beschützen, wir können ihnen nur die Werkzeuge¹ mitgeben, irgendwie in dieser Welt klarzukommen. Und das beinhaltet die Werkzeuge für eine ordentliche Revolution, um diese alten weißen Männer wie mich ordentlich aufzumischen und die kapitalistischen² Machtstrukturen niederzubrennen.³
Ceterum censeo jedes Kind hat das Recht vom Baum zu fallen.⁴
__
¹Selbstvertrauen, kritisches Denken, Mitmenschlichkeit, Bildung, Solidarität

It's interesting to know about some of the historical strategies for preventing revolution. There were basically two strategies to protect the institution of monarchy.
Metternich believed that brutal repression was the only answer: censor the press, monitor communication, create a coalition of kings and persecute revolutionaries wherever they could be found. Giving even an inch, he believed, would open the door to revolution.
But there was another approach: concession. By giving a little bit - create a constitution (even if it's meaningless), allow people to vote (even if the people they vote for have no power), etc - could offer a release and prevent revolution. There are still monarchies in Europe. They're no longer absolute, but they still hold a lot of power (even if people *think* of them as being decorative). They held that power by giving up a little bit at a time to slow down progress.
The fact is, they were both right.
The US has kept their regressive oligarchy stable by oscillating between the two. We are in the brutal repression phase, where concessions are stripped away and radicals are suppressed. This phase breaks up the progress made and pushes back the clock. The next phase, if the US makes it that far, if the fascists are smart enough to let go, will be concession. They will give a few inches to keep everything from collapsing. They'll give just enough room to get people back to brunch.
While they're at brunch, the next phase will be planned.
This is not really conscious, but an emergent behavior of the two party system. It's just kind of how the dichotomy of liberalism and conservatism works. Government is a fundamentally oppressive entity. The question is really, how long will we let the pendulum swing? How small of a concession will we accept, or will we demand everything now?