Category: Consciousness

Here’s the post by post breakdown of the Beginners Guide to Taking Over the World series. No doubt you didn’t really enjoy it first time round because it was very long winded. If you did enjoy it you’ll be glad to know that I’ll be regurgitating another piece of creative writing from uni in digest form starting later this week – the Self Help Guide to Writing Self Help Books.

• Foreword
• The Early Years
• Modern Examples
• The Power of the Dollar
• Historical Figures
• But Why?
• Getting Started
• Sink or Swim
• Winning Over the Masses
• Where to Next
• When things go wrong
• Appendix

When things go wrong

Responding to a crisis as a leader is a three-step process. You need to blame shift, punish and move on, and you need to do it fast. As a ruler you need to maintain the appearance of infallibility. To do this you always need to have a scapegoat handy, preferably a willing, dedicated scapegoat, preferably a goat. Appoint a goat as your undersecretary and whenever anything goes wrong you can have a ritual goat sacrifice, hire a new goat and get back to the business of running your empire. It’s always a good idea to hire a mute goat, you don’t want them bleating out all your secrets in a bid to get their head off the chopping block. That way forging written confessions is easy. The goat can’t verify anything, and you’re in the clear.

If crises are occurring too regularly it may be that you aren’t delegating enough, be prepared to let go of a little control, it will make blame shifting easier in the long run, and if an underling makes a grab for too much power you can easily crush them using the blame shift, punish and move on method.

What now?

So, you’ve conquered all, you’re at the pinnacle of human civilisation. You’ve erected statues to honour your achievements. You’ve named cities after yourself. Rock stars make an effort to perform at your charity bashes, for free. What do you do now? It’s like buying a birthday present for a man who has everything, you spend ages agonising about what to get him and then you capitulate and buy him something that he’s already got lots of, like hankies. When it comes to taking over the world your options are much the same, you can, if the thought grabs you, try to take over other planets, stake your claim there, try to be the human master of the universe. Or you can give in to the one great truth. Everyone, sooner or later, dies. So spend the rest of your life trying to come to terms with that. No matter how much you achieve your going to die, and you can’t take it with you. Now if you’re anything like Attila the Hun, you’re going to want to eat your children because they sure don’t deserve your empire, but lets face it, no one deserves your empire. My advice is, write a book about how you managed to achieve what you achieved, sell everything and go and live in a cave somewhere as a hermit. Or try to return to normal life in normal society and when people come running up to you for autographs be polite and sign them, it doesn’t take too much effort, and who knows, maybe one day they’ll be the ruler of the world and you’ll need a favour.

Overcoming opposition
Sooner or later, as your empire expands, and your threats of global extinction begin to reach the wrong ears, you will face some form of opposition to your vision statement. This opposition is likely to come up at the most inopportune moment so it is a good idea to prepare for it early.

The universally recognised quick-fix method for combating opposition is to blackmail your opponent. If blackmail fails you should blackmail your opponents enemies into attacking your mutual adversary.

The problem with blackmail is that you need to have something over your opponent. The best way to get dirt on your opponent is to throw mud at them. You would naturally think that I’m speaking figuratively, not literally. But no, in this case, literally might actually work. A leader with dirt on their clothes is obviously not fit to be governing a country. The best way to achieve this sullying of your foe’s image, figuratively and literally, is to invite all the world leaders to a barbeque at your new palace. At some point during the barbeque you should have your clown goons interrupt proceedings with some apparently spontaneous mudslinging. Have a cameraman on hand to capture the foreign dignitaries with mud all over their best suits. You now have the dirt on all your potential opposition. This should prevent anything other than a token effort on your future opponents behalf.

Where to next?
The ball is truly in your court, your opponents are subdued, your army is trained up, and your people love you. What is your next move going to be? You need to expand the only way upwards is outwards. If you want to become the next global authority you need to increase your grip on the globe.

The key to successful expansion is to do it incrementally. There’s an old fable about a farmer who very slowly increases the size of his paddock by moving the fence posts, no one notices, and eventually the kings castle is inside the farmers paddock and he now owns the kingdom. The moral to that story should be quite clear. The application should also be clear. You don’t want to conquest in leaps and bounds, that creates ripples and the other international parties like everything to sail very smoothly.

I’m also reminded about that story about frogs on the stove, when you put a frog in a saucepan of room temperature water on a stovetop and turn the stove on the frog doesn’t notice the water heating up and eventually expires because it is too hot.* If however you put a frog in hot water he tries to make his escape and at that point if you want cooked frog you have to hit him with your wooden spoon, at least that’s what I imagine you do, I’d never do that to a poor frog. Unless it was a Freddo and for some reason I wanted melted chocolate.

Anyway the meaning to be found amidst all that rambling is that your best bet is to take small steps, slowly moving up in the world. If you started with Tasmania, your next move might be to take New Zealand. Then Samoa, Fiji, the list goes on, there are plenty of small island nations to take over before you move onto the continental mainland. Sooner or later, everyone who wants to take over the world has to invade Poland, it’s like a rule, or a tradition, it’s not worth breaking traditions over trifling matters like logistics so you should include Poland in your schedule somewhere.
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*One wonders what would happen if room temperature was the temperature at which water boils, if the frog instinctively jumps out of the water, does he still die – is it a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire? Who knows.

Winning over the masses
The international community is taking you seriously. You have a name. Now it’s time to turn your eye to the local community. If history has taught us anything it’s that if the local community isn’t behind you then you’re not going anywhere fast.

The Roman Emperors of old got the public on side by throwing huge festivals that ran for months. Your empire isn’t that large yet, but that’s something to consider in the future. However, calling public holidays, particularly in Australia, is one way to get the public on side very quickly.

Other, less cost effective options include canceling of debts owed, tax cuts, and other options that are equally likely to leave you in financial trouble down the track. No, you want your solution to cost you as little as possible.

It’s no secret that a smiling population is a happy population. I would suggest that the best way to create a happy population, tighten your grip on your society and further your plot to take over the world in one swoop would be to hire a large army of mercenaries and dress them as clowns. Your clown goons patrolling the streets will bring happiness to the masses, prevent crime and later help you in your bid to expand your empire. This street time is invaluable experience for a soldier. Australia’s involvement in several peacekeeping exercises in the Oceanic region has simply been an opportunity to have other nations provide the training for our troops. That’s why the government doesn’t step in sooner, or preemptively, as the US, who believe that their armed forces are already up to scratch, did in Iraq.*

It may also be a good idea to teach your clowns a few card tricks or jokes to please the kiddies. Happy kids make happy parents. The Clown Goon army’s guns should also be disguised, but not in a way that encourages children to play with them. Broccoli shaped gun covers should be standard issue.
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*In fact the US army are so well trained, and keen to do battle that they often make the mistake of shooting each other during conflict, unaware that in conflict they are using “live” ammunition as opposed to the “dead” ammunition they use in training exercises, perhaps it is possible to train too much after all.