I’ve spent a good bit of time trying to figure out the WordPress “autosaving” problem that I’ve been having, where I can’t edit or publish my posts lately, so I decided to retype the blog post into a new post and see if I could publish it – that worked, although there’s a shading in the background for part of the post that I didn’t put there and I have no idea how to remove. I also decided to leave part of the post off and I’m going to add that here.
I know a lot of people aren’t familiar with the military and many women just automatically veer away from military topics, but a lot of ways of thinking that military planners and thinkers use can be applied to life in general – and they don’t involve violence or brute force. Often military people use the term, force multiplier, and here’s a quick definition from Wiktionary:
“Noun[edit]
force multiplier (plural force multipliers)
- (military) A factor, such as better positioning or equipment, which increases a unit’s combat potential, allowing it to fight on a par with a larger force.”
As odd as it may seem military strategy and concepts can be applied to your own life to help plan, prepare and organize. Businesses often borrow those military concepts and retool them to improve how their businesses organize and operate. I like using military strategic concepts in my thinking, because they have been tested under the most extreme and difficult human endeavor – war – and they work.
Being able to still find some quiet resolve and good cheer, no matter how chaotic and crazy the world gets, is a huge force multiplier when all sorts of powerful people and entities are trying to implement and sell dramatic changes in the world. The noise from all that chaos, as experts and politicians flood the zone with fear-dripping hot takes, dire warnings, crazy policy decisions and most of all more “spin word games” can not only leave you scared, it can leave you immobilized. The liberal media does these repetitive messaging spin games, where they repeat the same spin words and phrases constantly, to condition you into adopting and buying into their deliberate language manipulation.
It’s terrible to feel powerless to change anything, so don’t let anyone make you feel powerless, because the minute you buy into that, you’ve surrendered. Each of us can still carve out our own bits of self-autonomy and personal agency, by being committed in our beliefs, by sticking to our values and by not allowing all of the rapid changes bombarding us to scare us into panic or disarray.
Knowing what you believe and staying calm – no matter how crazy things get can also be a huge force multiplier, for not only you, but for your family and if you work on building a circle of like-minded friends and community, well, that increases your ability to not jut survive, but to thrive. Don’t forget how to smile and laugh. Life without some lightness and joy can feel crushing.
Even in the worst of times there are usually a few practical things people can do to better their chances of survival. Throughout history people have had to deal with devastating natural disasters, political turmoil, economic devastation, famine, plagues, and they didn’t have even a fraction of the material goods most of us take for granted.
Yes, we are in unchartered times with very big events, that could upend our way of life, playing out, but each day we have, where we can still set out to prepare, organize, work on some new skills and projects, is a day we won.
Try to look for the good. I’m trying to work on “something that I can do” and feel that each day of hope is a day I’ve used as a force multiplier in combatting the forces (these can be politicians, media, even people you know, who try to deflate your efforts or spread doom and gloom) trying to spread fear or pushing me to buy into things that I do not believe.
Taking that Edward Everett Hale idea about Ten Times One Is Ten, is about being a force multiplier – one person’s generosity and kind heart changed the lives of ten people, who did not even know each other or that he had helped so many other people. Everyone can work to be a force multiplier for spreading kindness, lending a helping hand and being a good citizen.
Hale’s religious and patriotic writings were intended to spread not only Christian values, but also civic virtue. Up until the 1960s in America, teaching good citizenship, based on instilling values (civic virtue) was considered an integral part of children’s education. We can all work to fill in those gaps in our own education and in those of our children.
For me, I know I believe in God, I know I believe in the oath I swore to defend the Constitution, against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I know I believe in the right to free speech and peaceful assembly. I could go on and list the right to self-defense and the other rights guaranteed to me as a law-abiding American citizen.
And beyond these, I believe love can defeat hate and most of all I believe truth is more powerful than even the most sophisticated spin information war apparatus in the world. Even the tiniest spark of truth can defeat miles of the darkness of lies. And if each of us works to spread a tiny spark of truth, well, the darkness of lies doesn’t stand a chance.
Each of us has to decide what we believe and wear it as a sort of coat of armor against all the crazy spin word games and other craziness hitting us the minute we turn to news media or social media these days. We can even choose not to give so much of our time to so much darkness. Each of us has the power to limit a lot of the chaos and political noise in our lives and we have the power to focus on the “something that I can do” every single day.
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