is of interest. In my mind the most interesting application of that was the contemporaneous Falun Gong movement in China.
Falun Gong practitioners would show up at a park and practice a set of simple physical and spiritual practices; the organization was deliberately structureless because organizations of all kinds in China are required to admit a cadre of Communist Party members to surveil and control the organization. No organization = no control network. (The very act of gathering a group of people at a point, however, is a basic practice of military science)
The one bit of authority in the organization is a book which is said to be infallible, which defends them from having the book rewritten by the authorities. (We know pretty well how the Communists and Republican governments oppressed folk religion movements such as the Huxian cult, but Taoism in its established form has always been some selection of folk practices which are approved by the authorities as long as China has had governments)
An unfortunate consequence of this is that Falun Gong cannot change any doctrine, such as their belief that "being gay is bad for your gong." They lost the support of mainstream western organizations and descended into pandering to right-wing nuts to get what support they could.
I think this misses the deeper relationship between the Falun Gong and western intelligence agencies, that goes beyond just "pandering to right-wing nuts" after a period of "spontaneous" support from mainstream western organizations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
is of interest. In my mind the most interesting application of that was the contemporaneous Falun Gong movement in China.
Falun Gong practitioners would show up at a park and practice a set of simple physical and spiritual practices; the organization was deliberately structureless because organizations of all kinds in China are required to admit a cadre of Communist Party members to surveil and control the organization. No organization = no control network. (The very act of gathering a group of people at a point, however, is a basic practice of military science)
The one bit of authority in the organization is a book which is said to be infallible, which defends them from having the book rewritten by the authorities. (We know pretty well how the Communists and Republican governments oppressed folk religion movements such as the Huxian cult, but Taoism in its established form has always been some selection of folk practices which are approved by the authorities as long as China has had governments)
An unfortunate consequence of this is that Falun Gong cannot change any doctrine, such as their belief that "being gay is bad for your gong." They lost the support of mainstream western organizations and descended into pandering to right-wing nuts to get what support they could.