Intensity Beats Numbers, Money, and Legitimacy

When Lulu Cheng Meservey, who runs the communications firm Rostra and learned the craft working with the startup Anduril, was studying counterinsurgency, her instructors gave the class an unusual assignment. Meservey recalled that they told students to "pretend to be a terrorist group" and write its mission, vision, and manifesto.

That exercise left her convinced of one line she still cites, though she notes it may be apocryphal: “one man plus the truth is a majority.”

By that, she argues, a serious manifesto starts by admitting disadvantage. The other side has more numbers, more money, more force, and more legitimacy. The insurgent answer is intensity. A handful of deeply committed people who want something far more, and are willing to risk everything for it, can overcome money and incumbency. The manifesto turns that private intensity into something other people can see and share.

That is why she calls the manifesto a magnet. Once people see a clear picture of a different future, she says, they become willing to leave jobs, families, and security to make it happen. And unless a leader has articulated a vision that compelling, she argues, that leader has no right to ask anyone to leave a comfortable life for what she calls "probably a death mission."

The test, she says, comes before any public argument. The founder must first convince himself or herself, standing alone at the center of concentric circles as what she calls the sovereign individual.

She makes the point through generals. If Napoleon is not going to die for the cause, she asks, why should you die for it. If he will not charge the bridge, she asks, why should his men run across it. At the battle against the Gallic leader Vercingetorix, she says, Julius Caesar dressed so distinctly that he made himself the easiest target, and his men rallied when they saw him.