[Algemeen] A note on pirate ideology.

[Ikke]

Piratism? Let's not go into isms.

At the forefront of our 'pirate ideology' should be the realization that 
a there are as many ideologies as there are pirates. Any attempt to 
generalize one ideology as /the/ pirate ideology would be wholly 
undesirable for the following reasons:


1) A multitude of ideologies brings forth a multitude of views and 
approaches to a problem. This means we, as a party, have a wide array of 
intellectual ammunition for our cannons. What we need to agree on is 
only the target.


2) 'The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without 
ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor 
can the wise lay plans against you.' -Sun Tzu, the art of war. This 
holds true in an information arena as well as in war. By denying a 
general ideology, we deny our opponents an easily discernible weakness. 
They might hack down individual ideologies, but they lack sufficient 
time and resources to counter the torrent of our movement.


3) Last but not least, people are tired of ideologies. The worker's 
parties bail out banks, the green party doesn't mind shopping that much, 
the Christian parties monopolize morality – ideology at present is 
merely a nice promise, of which people know all to well it won't be 
kept. Rather than hiding behind the same old fancy words of other 
parties, we should only say what we do, and do what we say.


What we need to agree on, ideologically speaking, is merely how our 
ideas can coexist and be aligned in mutually beneficial ways. /Our 
ideology should be one of facilitating ideologies rather than imposing 
them./


Yours truly,


Thijs Markus