Teamwork Vs. Collectivism

Max Velocity Tactical

So: I am now revealed as a rabid communist, intent on victimizing innocent families just trying to survive, redistributing their stuff.

That is not even half the truth of it: in fact I am a secret agent of King George (who is still alive in a sealed wing of Buckingham Palace). My mission is to foment revolution in order for the King to take back the thirteen colonies, upon which two hundred years of back tax is due to the Crown. The King will also outlaw coffee, making tea drinking compulsory. There is a fleet of Royal Navy wooden ships armed with cannon off the coast of Virginia right now, loaded with Red Coats armed with muskets, who will invade to enforce this..   

OK, so lets get back to conspiracy reality, rather than conspiracy theory. Over the last couple of days I took a decision to poke into the darker psyche of some of the citizens out there. I did so in each of these posts:

The Ingredients for your Victory: Tactics + Gear

Expanding on two comments: The Ingredients Post

I know that most of you out there, the silent majority who read this blog, read, understand, and comprehend what I am getting at i.e.my essential point. There are others who don’t get it. Now, granted some of these are simple trolls, aiming to dilute the message because it is harmful to the tyrannists, but others are tied up in a mindset of their own, and I would like to reach some of them.

I get comments like this (which may be a troll, but I don’t know – either way it seems to be an actual threat):

Will Poe October 2, 2013 at 10:58 PM
Redistribution huh? You smell like dead, rotting meat.

But I also get sensible ones like this:

seth October 2, 2013 at 9:27 PM

If people actually read your book they would realize that you do talk about what those not capable of infantry work can do. They are not liabilities, which some think you suggest, but are absolutely necessary to make the resistance function.

The first comment is either a troll or an example of the mindset I am referring to. Seth, in the second one, is an example of someone with good reading comprehension!

The mindset I spoke of was that which I sarcastically refer to as ‘exceptional selfishness.’ It is a perversion of the idea of rugged individualism. It equates ‘team’ with ‘collective and ‘communist’.

Here is a useful comment on team:

Chuck October 2, 2013 at 6:35 AM

Seems as though the first commenter left out a third consideration: looters and raiders who are neither Resistance nor Regime. Good luck fighting those off all by his lonesome. Effectiveness of the “lone wolf” sniper model of retreat defense diminishes exponentially with each additional adversary in the group attacking the retreat. It also fails to take into account that there are 360 degrees in a circle and 24 hours in a day. Even killer bees can’t be everywhere at once and have to sleep sometime. 

He might want some help from time to time.

This illustrates the problem we face.

I am not arguing at the notion of a family hiding out and surviving. I have already stated that this is the default setting; your first thing to achieve. However, if tyranny is to be fought and overcome, we need to aspire to move onward to firstly tactical teams, and then a resistance model. Being on a team and helping others does not make you a redistributive communist. Charity in itself is a Christian act, and helping those actively fighting in the resistance is an act to defeat tyranny.

The mindset I was poking at is the selfish grasping ‘its me, its mine’ prepper mindset. These are the types who will make it very dangerous for everyone when they deploy their ‘killer bees’; when they decide that they will attempt to snipe anyone coming near their retreat at long range, never giving consideration for friend or foe. These are the guys who want to indiscriminately engage in fifty meter killer firefights. It’s a perversion of the idea of rugged individualism into a ‘selfish lonerism’.

However, I will fight for your right to Liberty, and your right to be a selfish loner. I just hope that once those that fought are dead and gone, wiped out and killed, that when you emerge, you do something to earn the freedom from tyranny that hopefully those that fought have bought you. Earn it by your subsequent actions, restore the shining city on a hill. But somehow, with the selfish loners, I don’t see that happening.

Let’s put it in movie terms: in the Western movies: the settlers who trek as a group are able to circle the wagons and mostly keep the ‘injuns’ off. How many times do you see the re-making of the scene where there is an isolated farmstead, the injuns/outlaws ride in, kill the man in the field, the kids run towards the house, the wife is raped/killed on the porch?

What I am driving at is team. If you are not one who is willing or able to actually fight, then you have a place in the ‘underground’ or the ‘auxiliary’. That is part of the team. This does not involve forcible redistribution of your hard bought Mountain House supply, it asks for support to those fighting, who have less time to tend the tomatoes.

There is another side of this, and that is discipline. However much of a rugged individualist you are, you need to be able to work with others in a team in order to have any realistic effect on the enemy. That is one of the reasons I push TEAM at my training site with my drills. To work in a  team, you have to be able to be both a leader and a follower. This does NOT mean you are subjecting yourself to assimilation by the collective!

However you figure it out, you need team leaders. This does not mean they tyrannize your life, it just means they have tactical control of the team. This involves self and group discipline. When you hear SF guys talking about the resistance fighters, the ‘G’s’, they are referring to a force with a strong group discipline that is required for the force to operate. There is a time for discussion and argument, then there is a time for leadership, followership, and action. There is a time to leave that over-sized ego at the door, and get on with teamwork, however much of legend you are in your own lunch break.

Back when I was doing my infantry officers course, we were all equal rank on the course, a whole company of us. When we were on field exercises, we would fill ‘command roles’. After each phase, we would get into a  hollow square, have an AAR, and then the new command appointments would be announced. The new platoon leader and squad leaders would be handed the binos, a symbol of their command role. We would all slip into our newly nominated roles and work as hard as we could to make it work for the new guys. You may have just been the platoon leader, under pressure, and now you are rifleman number five in 1st Squad. That is how you work being a leader and a follower, without losing your identity to some sort of collective.

So that is really my point: to have a real effect against the tyrannists, we have to move past the selfish lonerism and get to a point where we can work as a network, a team. Initially, as discussed in the LR posts, you may not have that network when SHTF begin, and you may just be surviving as a family or a small group. If there is any way you can make alliances, rather than killing anyone that comes onto your land, then the resistance model has a chance of growing into something effective.

Live Hard, Die Free.

MV

http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/2013/10/teamwork-vs-collectivism.html