The power that we find in large groups is a peculiar thing. It is, effectively, the power of human consensus… but it is prone to many failings. I want to advocate a familiar paradigm we have failed to take sufficient advantage of: the impossible power of small ‘rings’ of tightly-knit companions.

Our entire evolutionary history is made of this. Not armies — ‘cell groups’. A ring of (perhaps) 5-7 individuals, each with unique skills, disciplines, and abilities, united for a sacred or noble cause. Existing as a relation-body whose members are totally committed to each other, their learning prowess, their goals and their world. More intimate than a family; a nursery for trust and cooperative capacities.

Three such groups, properly endowed with ways of knowing that augment their intrinsic capacity to learn and accomplish the seemingly impossible could transform the world in a month.

What the hell have our armies and seething subcultures accomplished? Nothing. Most often: big productions, mountains of graves, the rape of our lands and cultures, and little noble result. If you want revolutionary results, look to our evolutionary history, and use the forms conserved there. We are ‘small group’ animals, and our skills, minds, spirits and intelligences are developed to prosper in precisely these contexts.

Small, tightly-knit, autonomous cells. It is no accident that our governments fear this specific form of human agreement… for it is the most powerful, the most difficult to trace, the most effective, and the most flexible. We were born for this. The social construct we call ‘a band’ is the modern representation we have conserved, but has been co-opted by commerce and culture. Remember the old form. Discover its capacities. Use it.