So you’re trying to start a movement? A lot of people try to do that, much more than you’d expect. Before you go any further you might want understand what you are up against. One of the biggest barriers you will need to face is what is inside people (ideas and emotions are some of the biggies). For now we will cover some of the main emotions you and others will face in the mission to start a movement.
The first thing you will need to understand is that as soon as a movement starts it spreads like wildfire. The problem is being at the right place at the right time. The right way to do this is creating a nice sustainable group that does not have continuous highs and lows. For example a group’s members might be constantly changing, when this happens you will quickly find that you lose control. What you need to do is keep everything at a steady pace and as quickly as possible build up, just do not rush.
Emotions to have highs and lows and are one of the biggest causes of this horrible system of running things I just talked about. If you get rid of emotions control over your movement you will find that things will go a lot smother. Now technically speaking there is no way to get rid of people’s emotions unless every single member makes a commitment to doing it and that is very inefficient. Needless to say what you can do is get rid of a great deal of emotional control by simply seeing what it is doing and stopping it dead in its tracks.
So what we are going to do is cover a few basic emotions and their roll in movements.
1. Love
This one is a very important emotion overall. The problem with it is that people think that the same things that happen on the inner level will happen on the outer level. Just because love can really shake people to the bone does not mean it will shake the world to the bone. Love is a mind state and like most mind states it wants to radiate itself outwards. It wants to inflict itself on others and that is why people want to spread love.
Love is the justification for lack of action, when things like violence are brought to the table people never listen to the idea. There is a common misconception that love and pacifism are connected. The only reason people pull them together is because pacifism is another tool for love to justify. You see this all the time. People don’t want to blow up oil rigs out of fear so they change the emotion to love. That goes on and on until the ideas of pacifism and love are so interlinked that they are dependent on one another.
To stop this you simply need to do is raise awareness of this. In your group tell them that there is no time for inaction so love should not be discussed in meetings. Because love in this case is more of an idea than anything else if it is not talked about then it will not rise up.
2. Fear
This is another common problem you might have. The fear of action is the most well-known emotion for its utter control over movements. Because this emotion is so ingrained in people it is really hard to fight. People don’t even want to break a law if the chances of getting caught are outrageously low and by doing so it could further the cause massively. In fact most won’t even consider. The other problem is ideas and philosophies are powerless against this emotion. You cannot tell someone about some philosophy about law one on one and get this person to decide your right.
But here is what you can do. Most people over-look the fact that one on one people don’t change but in groups people do. You need to create a culture in your group where the ideas are against fear. People’s minds work differently in a large group then they do on their own. When people are alone their ideas have more control over them, people tend to stay firm to their beliefs. In short when on their own peoples states of being have more control over them and in groups this is destroyed by group think. What you need to do is create a collective mind where people want to break laws.
3. Boredom
Boredom might be your movement’s biggest threat. People seem to be terrified of this emotion and will do anything to avoid it. The very second boredom hits someone the person will take control of his environment to get rid of it. One of the problems is that people get bored way too easily. It is very likely that your meetings will be found boring by some people who will drop out. There is no way to change it so you must expect that to happen. The reason why these kinds of people join in the first place is every bad reason you can think of.
My course of action is to not allow these kinds of people in the first place. The question is what should we do when the people that matter get bored? A contact perhaps? Or maybe a trusted member? My solution is to dig to the source of the boredom because when you find it you can see the way to counteract it. Say for example a person gets board because none of his friends are in the group anymore. Then that means this guy has sensitivity to people, he needs to be around them and he cares about what people think of him. So the way to counteract the boredom is by applying peer pressure and group think. Just get the other members to tell him how much they need him; however the overall act of applying it depends on your resources and knowledge.
4. Hate
Hate is a very powerful emotion and is the cause of a great deal of the world’s sorrows. This emotion affects movements to a large extent because of its weakness, it is driven by thought. People need to justify their hate. People target it towards a certain group or a certain event. In short people direct there hate towards the reason of the cause. If it is environmental then hate the oil riggers, if it is feminism then hate rapists and if it is communism than hate capitalism. The question is whether or not this will slow you down.
My answer is that it will if you cannot control it. Think about it, hate is an emotion and like all of them it just wants more of itself so one thing leads to another and it gets out of control. The first step to mastering it is by bringing it into the light. You will find that it has a presence that most people just ignore. Most people do not want to admit that they are feeling hate, what they do is cover it up. If you get them to see this then people will know when the emotion is rising up and they will stop it.
The problem is that it is incredibly hard to do this and the bigger you get the harder it will be to do. So you really need to pick and choose who you can work with. My advice on this is teaching the most powerful people in your movement this and because they are the ones who have the most influence over your group they take priority. Then afterwards you can use their power to direct the lesser members with this emotion.
5. The Felling of Rebellion.
I don't know if you want to count this as an emotion. The reason why I am discussing this is because it is a very important sensation. Often times when people join rebellion groups they are fuelled off it. The feeling of rebellion generates something I like to call "The Felling of Oneness" which makes you feel different and separate from everything else. When in some group that no one but the members know about you feel alone and separate from normal people. That leads into every part of your life. In a conversation you’re having with someone you get accused not living a life worth living then no problem justify it by thinking "little does she know I am doing my share!" Watching a documentary about action against the government then no problem just justify it by thinking "little does he know I am doing my share!"
This is not harmful but useful; the only problem is that some people only join groups because of the feeling. As the numbers of these people ad up your group can suffer from lack of will power. You cannot have a group of people that only want to work because of a feeling. If that were to happen then people would do more and more things to get the feeling. Perhaps it will come via bragging? you know when a member tells his girlfriend about what he is doing? Or maybe it will come out in people’s actions as an urge to commit a crime for no reason? Not only that but some people have different reactions to the feeling, there are those of us who get ashamed of themselves, there are those of us that experience this sensation in short bursts and then it wears off. You see? Once again if this is not mastered by your members there will be big problems.
How do we master this? It is very easy to identify, there is no mistaking this feeling and at first you will probably like it. You want to think about what you are doing, how you never thought your life would end up like this and a bunch of other things to stimulate you. What you need to do is shut of the thinking and then it will have no more control over you. The problem is how you get the members in your organization to do the same thing. As far as I know there is no way to force emotional control on people so you will simply need to stay safe and block off all the different ways this feeling can cause damage to your group one by one.
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