panem et circenses.
—juvenal (satire x, satires)

the null prophet's guide to being a ruler (not the geometry box one).

step 1: divide and conquer.

not your average algorithms strategy.

an adaptive mind cherishes diversity, differences, and non-conformity because 1. clones are boring and 2. a leading cause of wiping away an entire race in a sec, but 3. conformists (and zombies) fear differences (and are big fans of the hive mind), so 4. divide-and-conquer works right out of the box.

some well-known and battle-tested points-of-differences include: name, age, blood group, sex, ethnicity — wait a minute, you thought i was writing out a medical form? silly you! — but it's very easy to come up with a new one. whatever can instill that 100% true "sense of superiority" within a group is guaranteed to do the dang job.

polarising power of a point-of-difference (p.o.d.) measures how effective a p.o.d. is at dividing a population base into subgroups that'll willingly fight each other to exhibit their "worthiness" for being granted that seat in heaven in afterlife (or its equivalent in beforelife, i think).

humans are essentially recursive data structures, which must be why divide and conquer works so well in their case.

step 2: bread and circuses.

why share power when you can simply not? (sharing power is for losers and you're not one.)

people are forgetting... and forgiving enough if you are manipulating... and distracting enough. (conveniently, collective amnesia has no known cure.)

first, control the narrative. whoever drafts the narrative, holds the key to the truth and that is a key worth having.

second, let everything else control itself. feed them just enough food that they don't starve and sufficient gibberish that they can't distinguish "truth" from the truth.

remember, the state of confusion is a vulnerable one and vulnerabilities are exploitable.

fulfill their immediate demands for sustenance and entertainment, and the complaints go away... mostly. (you can always make the complainants go away if the complaints don't.)

step 3: pride is a sin.

but so is perp(etrating misinformation)/hyp(ing up the "good" stuff you did).

a little pride here and there goes a long way. they like it when the numbers go big and the numbers have never been bigger.

like the increase in cost of rented apartments by 20%, when the previous ruler loser caused a mere +6%.

or being responsible for the jump in crime rates from 1% (what a ducking loser!?) to 15% (#1, finally!); or the influx of (bajillion × avogadro's constant) fiat currency notes into the circulating supply. (who tf is printing this much of this shit???)

bigger is better. and you're here to prove it to them. every day.

issued in the rulers' interest by the silent orchard.