When the last great technological revolution founded upon electricity and oil became widespread it completely changed our entire economic, social and political structures.  If we add in Darwin, Nietzsche  and modern science we can say religion was completely brought into question also.  The disturbance that fell upon humanity 150 years ago was cataclysmic when comparing before and after.  The computer and AI revolution will be at least as transformative.

When I was a US naval officer, I was assigned the duty of navigator on my guided missile destroyer’s deployment from San Diego to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf and back.  This was before GPS and we still used paper charts and gyrocompasses and sextants.  Dead reckoning, a running sun line and lead soundings were my living tools yet to be replaced by the easy and constant near-perfect position via satellite.

When people think about magic, it is usually images from the television that arise. Witches or wizards speaking powerful words and doing terrible things. That fantasy overlay in our mind blocks us from seeing the real magic being word and image smithed by politicians, intelligence agencies and advertisers all around us. Citadelization is white magic, the defensive kind, that shields our personal space. Inside and outside.

The core tenet of citadelization is to “know thyself” so as to ensure each interaction with other humans is a well-negotiated win-win relationship.  Civil war can only come about by the systemic and sustained collection of poor choices in relationships that should have never been agreed to in the first place.  Over time, the win-win relationship that founded the human organization becomes compromised by pockets of self-interest no longer connected to the original agreement.  Then, a civil war must be fought or cancer and death set in.