A beaten wing which is put out of joint decides the fate of all that was connected with it. Von Clausewitz’ On War

But what is the center of gravity for an insurgency or any guerrilla movement? In Iraq, on which joint does the rest hinge? I would assert that they don’t have one. Maybe because they are not a “they.” It’s like saying “what’s the center of gravity of capitalism?” Marx said it was the means of production. That you could seize them and the system would crumble. What he didn’t understand is that factories and private property, those are all just expressions of capitalism, not capitalism itself. For insurgents in Iraq, there is no center of gravity. And it’s why they are an enemy we can hardly understand, let alone defeat.

That’s the parable facing newspapers as they try to fight blogs and the internet. “How can we undercut them?” THERE IS NO THEM. What you’re fighting isn’t a group with ideas or a vision or even a goal, you’re fighting progress. You’re fighting people; people who have an inevitable drive towards power, status and wealth. People act on that impulse. Corporations do not. if you read Gonzo Marketing, he really drives that home. A corporation can’t care about a cause, or love or hate something or even want to make money. A corporation wants nothing but to exist. People, obviously, want more than that. So as you get further from that core, efficiency diminishes.

Maybe it’s because in an office or in a company, you become less concerned with your position in the world as a whole and entirely focused on your position within that microcosm. You lose the forest for the trees–and big movements and change can’t work that way. For instance, I spent pretty much all of yesterday trying to find a bathroom key so I wouldn’t piss myself and pondering why it needs to be locked in the first place. That doesn’t happen at my house. A terrorist in Iraq doesn’t focus as much on rank or stars or procedure, it’s about killing, going home and then killing some more.

What is so fundamentally revolutionary about the internet is that it has made it possible to scale without size. (Or have a military without mass) You can have the reach of a huge company without the politik and the strife and the stupidity that comes with the whole ‘a person is smart but people are not ‘concept. What technology does it is allows for individuals to wield the power and force of thousands but by themselves. It harnesses individuality and collective strength at the same time. Military Intelligence stops being an oxymoron.

Over the last two thousand years, guerrilla warfare has continually shown itself to be the most efficient of all military strategies. It’s not the highest form, it is formlessness. Without a center of gravity, there is nothing to attack. That leaves the enemy with two options: Withdraw or Engage on the new plane.

Both personally and strategically, how do you remove your center of gravity? Simply being aware of them is not enough. Hierarchical decentralization is the worst of both. Howard Dean was this, not big enough for mass but concentrated enough that a scream decimated him. For many companies I think that is going to mean an utter restructuring of the business or in most cases, dying and then starting over. More relevant to us, how does a decentralized company refrain from the pressure to centralize?

It is actually the same question. And that’s what Tapscott meant when he said that companies become ossified in their own success. Today, in the newspaper analogy blogs are not a thing and bloggers are not a they. It is just the force of progress and innovation, something that is impossible to defeat. But as it develops and certain models because successful, people who take the easy route will imitate and follow. That is, they will become the enemy–dependent on a single stream or the status quo. They will form around a center of gravity. They will no longer be part of an amorphous, decentralized network and become corporations or armies. They commit strategic suicide.

The smartest people I know are trying to avoid that. I think you probably should to.

I am thinking that there should be some ethical guidelines regarding the praise that goes on book jackets.

The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason (which is excellent) features a giant quote from Seth Godin on the front. Coincidentally, Seth is quoted pretty liberally throughout the book as an expert. Or even more egregious, in Know How by Ram Charan, there is praise from the CEOs who just happen to all be subjects in the book lauded for their leadership skills. Do you think Steven Covey’s opinion that it was “brilliant and immensely practical” had anything to do with the Ram making an example of his “know how?” Which brings us to “Advance Praise” which has the balls to ignore even the pretension of propriety. Someone mailed me a book to review last week and the back cover has 13 different quotes on the back and it hasn’t even been released yet.

As books become cheaper and faster to publish and blogs become increasingly reputable as alternatives, destroying the credibility that comes along with the jacket praise is probably not the best idea. I quit Know How when I realized that Ram wasn’t going to be drawing any ethical lines between author and salesman, reporter and friend.

So where do you draw the line? I don’t think the subjects of the books should praise it on the cover, just like a newspaper wouldn’t let them write a review about it. And even more generally, it’s probably inappropriate for Google CEO Eric Schmidt to be lavishing compliments on books that “coincidentally” happen to validate the business model of his company like Wikinomics and The Long Tail. Is it just me or are these textbook conflict of interest cases?

We’ve talked before about how hard it is, but let’s revisit. It’s fucking hard. We’ve talked a bit about what it’s like try and run the marathon–to consciously set out on a path totally your own, to train and attempt something many think is foolish. But let’s try this marathon, what we face as we stand on the cusp on an entirely new age.

As everything I see and read and hear converges, I become more convinced of a single conclusion. That the whole fucking world has been built on a foundation of lies, of exploitation, of moving food around on a plate. And it’s not working anymore. The Emperor Has No Clothes. Apparently, he never did.

I know it’s hard to believe but many of the people you respect from afar, cherish for their business acumen, or generally defer to as intelligent are utterly incompetent. Literally, people who were on the top of industrial power just a few short years ago are stumbling around like idiots, clutching for just a shred of their former kingdom. And we have a generation of carpetbaggers who think they can beat them to the chase–like what they had is worth holding on to.

Think about how scary that really is–that hey, even though it’s still working today, still pulling in millions of dollars, I am going to stay clear of it because it could fail in the future. It’s called the Entrenched Player’s Dilemma for a reason. And the difference between a dilemma and a problem is that problems have solutions. What we stand on the face today is as big a change as the Industrial Revolution–a fundamental shift in technology and interaction that will force a realignment in how we fight our wars, govern our people, discover or create meaning, accumulate wealth, and the organizational structure of our cities. A change in literally almost every aspect of life.

And so culture shifts with it. How we think shifts with it. Who we are shifts with it. So you have a choice, are you going to lead, muddle along or die in the transitional chaos. It’s not easy. It’s so fucking easy to be a douche. To throw words around like viral and openness and change but then get your nails done and think about ways you can sell the infant off into prostitution.

Consider for the first time that there is an alternative course. You don’t have to buy in. It’s hard sure, but it’s certainly not harder than it used to be. It’s like John Galt standing up in the middle of the meeting and saying that he’d had enough, that he’d destroy their world. And then doing it…

With a large group of young, hungry people willing to take the pyramid/privilege model seriously, Hollywood has no business model. Privilege and fear are never far from one another. And the writers I knew, for all the yakkin’ I heard about “the integrity” of their craft, were as every bit as complicit in preserving the pyramid scheme as anyone else I met. Hugh/GapingVoid

Again, buying in makes sense. I know all about the sucker’s payoff. But I also know about the dead cat bounce. At 20, we’re faced with a choice. At any age, in any position, you’ve got decide today whether you want to exist in this universe much longer or not. And that means a total change in how you think, how you plan and how you live your life.

Can you cut the ties and run hard and fast? Can you resist the impulse to extract–to rape value? Instead, trying to create it for yourself and the others whenever possible. Can you understand that differences in efficiency structures and stop trying to play God? The Zero-Sum Game is dead. Can you ignore pageviews and Alexa? Cherish influence and connection. Can you drop the buzzwords and the bullshit and just be honest? Analysis. Insight. Surprise. Responsibility. Humor Creativity. Guts. Respect. Charisma. Vision. Calm. Love…

from: Tucker Max tuckermax @ gmail.com

to: ryan.holiday @ gmail.com,

date: Jan 10, 2008 7:34 PM

There a very people like me and you. And they generally get rid of us or co-opt us before we destroy them.

There is this Aurelius line about sticking with the right thing, even though they’ll “stab you with knives and shower you with curses.” The right thing here is so intuitive that it’s counterintuitive. Looking for something that helps, that entertains, that you don’t try to trick people into paying more than its worth. Thinking less about eyeballs and more about people. Forgetting business school because no matter how well you master it, the lessons will never mean more than the love, the passion and the energy.

These are the things I am learning here in Hollywood. Figuring them out, one by one. Seeing the illusions shattered and ironically, the idealism strengthening. So that is my question, what are you setting yourself up to be? A relic, a carpetbagger or a wolf like me?