The Basic Challenge: Controlling the Many with Limited Resources 🤔
Let Me Explain What Power Is.
Imagine there are 1000 people in a town. Only one person has a gun, and it contains fewer than 5 bullets. How do you use those 5 bullets to control 1000 people? 🔫
Intimidation through force?
That definitely won't work. With only 5 bullets, they'll be gone in an instant. Besides, if you control others through fear, everyone will eventually turn against you. So, what should you do?
Building the First Layer: The Coalition 🤝
The best approach is to build a coalition. Find some timid, trouble-averse individuals—let's say 10 people—and form a small group. Promise them protection with your gun and assure them they'll receive many benefits, provided they help you carry out tasks.
Now you have 10 followers. How do you use these 10 people to control the remaining 990?
Establishing the Management Tier: Confidants 🧑💼
First, you need to cultivate these 10 individuals into managers. Publicly announce that your team now consists of 11 people plus a gun. Tell the rest that if they join your group, you will grant them protection—ensuring their property and lives are safe, and no one will dare infringe upon them. All they need to do is periodically contribute some crops, livestock, alcohol, etc., for the maintenance and development of the group.
You can then divide the remaining 990 people into 10 areas, assigning each area to one of your 10 confidants to manage. At this point, these confidants are unlikely to betray you. They are subordinate only to you but superior to the other 990 people; overthrowing you offers them no advantage. Therefore, you form a community bound by shared interests.
Crucial Check and Balance: Division Among Confidants ⚖️
Remember this crucial point: you must ensure that at least two competing factions form among these 10 confidants to keep each other in check. Never allow them to become completely united, as that would put you in great danger.
Adding Another Layer: Overseers 🕵️
With the 990 people divided into 10 areas, each managed by a confidant overseeing 99 people, how do you ensure these 99 obey their confidant but don't dare to unite with that confidant to betray you?
The solution is to establish another layer of hierarchy. Identify individuals with strong management capabilities among the 990 and designate them as, let's call them, "overseers" [originally "priest/cleric", used metaphorically for mid-level manager]. Structure it so that 1 confidant manages 5 overseers, and 1 overseer manages roughly 20 common people. This further fragments the power structure.
Diluting Authority and Fostering Tension 🤼
These overseers assist the confidants with management, but they ultimately answer to you. You entice the overseers with promises of future advancement (like "drawing a cake"—making appealing but potentially distant promises). This effectively dilutes the confidants' unified authority while also fostering tension and mutual checks between the confidants and the overseers.
Just as you managed the confidants, you can also create conflicts and constraints among the 5 overseers under each confidant. The overseers' benefits and status are lower than the confidants' but higher than the general populace's.
Why Unity is Difficult Below 🕸️
At this stage, the 99 people in each area cannot easily unite ("twist into a single rope"). There are too many intricate power dynamics and competing interests; everyone has their own agenda, and there is no single figure to rally around (except, ultimately, you).
This is how ancient monarchs maintained control. 👑
The Core Principle: Division and Interest 💡
So-called power is the art of continuously dividing and differentiating centers of influence. From an individual's rational perspective, it is often more beneficial to obey you and gain advantages within the established system than to undertake the costly and risky effort of uniting and rebelling.
Why did ancient systems include practices like the "extermination of nine familial relations" [株连九族 - a severe form of collective punishment]? With elders above and children below, it was designed to make the cost of betrayal devastatingly high! 💀
Fear vs. Interest: The Sustainable Method 🌱
Fear is never sustainable in the long run; only manipulating interests can provide eternal control. ✨