Starving the Flames

How Strategic Inaction Can Change Everything

Do you ever feel like humanity is plunging towards catastrophe? In such moments do you find yourself staring blankly into a glowing screen, an over-sweetened chain store coffee, a rack of fast fashion? Did you own the libs on X or post another draft of your manifesto on Medium? Did you try to give your worries to God while driving home from the grocery store? Is the beer you just opened already gone? Did you lose yourself in worry while mowing your 1/4 acre crop of grass? Did you throw caution to the wind and book a trip to Disney World for the kids?

That’s how they get you.

They. …Tired and wary of anything that invokes such an ill-defined boogeyman? You should be. In this case at least, ‘They’ isn’t a person or a group. ‘They’ is the word standing in for “large emergent system I hesitate to name or don’t fully understand.” ‘They’ is a word people tend to use for systems when trying to talk about something harmful that they feel the system has produced. In the paralysis response examples above, there are at least two retrograde systems in play:

• political demobilization (via internet feud distraction, apathy, exhaustion) > authoritarianism feedback loop, and
• stress-induced spending > stress-inducing financial fragility feedback loop

‘They’ is not a group of elite puppet masters. The national and global catastrophes that now loom on multiple fronts are the results of emergent systems and practices that have grown too vast and complex to be fully understood, let alone controlled by any person or group. (Not even by oligarchs or presidents.) There is no cabal, no wall to storm. This lack of a boogeyman is hardly good news. With no centralized decision-making or a narrow set of practices to blame, there are no straightforward changes we can make or system to overthrow.

It is no wonder that the wickedness of this predicament has pushed so many of us, consciously and unconsciously, into bouts of despair, nihilistic hedonism, numbness. But what if I told you that even in the moments when you feel most overwhelmed, you actually have a powerful weapon to improve your own life and the lives of others? Inaction. Not paralysis. Your strategic inaction is a superpower that can halt the harmful feedback loops in your own life, and in your community.

The precocious reader may already be rebutting such a claim. It is true that inaction, no matter how strategically employed, is not enough to save us. Sustained, comprehensive, well-orchestrated positive action is absolutely essential if we are to emerge from our global and national tailspins. But ask yourself, why does positive social action in our current culture seem so ineffective?

I would argue that it is because the challenges we face are so enormous and so enormously complex. The sheer complexity of the retrograde systems dwarfs all of our human effort to address the issues. Our traditional modes of intervention are too narrow and simplistic. They are usually woefully slow, maddeningly modest in their ambition, and frequently counterproductive. There are many reasons for this, all depressing, but only two concepts are relevant here: circular dependencies and time-intensive pre and corequisites.

Any successful positive action on any front always requires successful action on multiple other fronts as a prerequisite. For example, political reform requires strong education and literacy levels which can only be accomplished if we create healthy communities with access to safe, stable housing, which cannot be established without major political reforms. Another example may involve the need to eliminate subsidies for fossil fuel production and use, but this requires extensive, simultaneously coordinated legislative action across multiple jurisdictions and nations, which could only occur under extensive grassroots political pressure, which requires immense efforts to educate and organize individuals over long periods in the face of counter-campaigns by fossil fuel stakeholders among other headwinds including rising levels of functional and scientific illiteracy and the consequences of income inequality. Those attempting to act on a specific issue thus find themselves quickly consumed by an impassable bramble of circular dependencies and unmet, prohibitively time-intensive prerequisites. And, so, at best they only ever inch forward at a time when even a sprint may not be fast enough.

Strategic Inaction

Yet even as we see these systems threaten to overtake us, we remain in possession of a powerful tool — one that requires no permission, no coordination, no resources beyond our own will. This tool is strategic inaction, a deliberate withdrawal from the very behaviors that feed these destructive cycles. By understanding the constraints that shape effective resistance and the assumptions that underlie meaningful change, we can transform our apparent helplessness into a source of power. Indeed, I believe the universal pre-prerequisite for any successful positive action is the form of strategic inaction proposed below. It is an initial step shaped by the following constraints:

• It mustn’t rely on circular prerequisites.
• It must be resistant to co-option, being put down, or waited out. (i.e. decentralized and resistant to attempts to centralize coordination and control.)
• It must be nonviolent (physical violence of any kind by those threatening an existing power structure can be swiftly and effectively overwhelmed and then used as a tool to undermine any action.)
• It must buy us time as a society and as individuals. (It is later than we think. We need more time if we can get it.)
• It must be scalable from 0 to millions. (Unlike the benefits of positive social action which accrue to actors by way of the larger society’s improvement, strategic inaction is directly and materially beneficial to the individual immediately, and only to society if enough individuals take strategic inaction.)
• It must be broadly attractive and ideologically agnostic (It needs to offer individuals with potentially conflicting motivations and visions a chance to benefit directly and immediately.)

Inaction’s relative power and strategic advantage relies on the truth of several assumptions:

1. For individuals to engage in and sustain effective positive group action, they must have a reserve of social energy and time to invest, as well as relevant knowledge, skills, and financial flexibility. Thus, shoring up these reserves and assets is a prerequisite for individuals seeking to engage in some form of productive social action.
2. Strategic inaction leads to a markedly improved financial position for individuals.
3. Strategic inaction helps individuals hone critical thinking skills.
4. Strategic inaction leads to less anti-social or para-social busyness, affording individuals more opportunities for true social connection. These relationships are also the foundation for more effective future social actions.
5. An individual’s strategic inaction directly and swiftly benefits the individual. This concrete feedback loop between individual behavior and its benefits can disrupt the common, maladaptive behavioral loops that rely heavily on incessant messaging to sustain, even in the face of obvious material disadvantages.
6. Strategic inaction helps people reclaim real and perceived control, offering an easy alternative to paralysis responses.
7. Leadership of effective social action demands the skills and capacities honed by strategic inaction: individuals who are healthy, mindful of their ethical codes, and capable of identifying and confronting their own cognitive dissonance that might impede their work.

Before I elaborate on what strategic inaction looks like in daily life, it is also worth discussing for a moment what drives us to paralysis. Specifically, I would like to argue that you are not wrong to feel that you are surrounded by an advancing fire. However, I would also argue that we needn’t agree on what caused the blaze. Nor do we need to agree on what should be rebuilt once the fire is put out. Just as it is not the job of a firefighter to rebuild burned buildings, strategic inaction does not require the person to have a clear sense of the political and economic structures they wish to see in the place of our current systems. The work of rebuilding will come from positive actions, both parallel and future.

The goal of strategic inaction is simply to get the fire under control. Put another way, the work of strategic inaction is to prioritize our own personal longevity and well-being. This is no small task for a species with a marked proclivity to prioritize immediate comfort over longer-term survival. After all, we are a species capable of, for example, smoking cigarettes for decades in full knowledge of the health risks and still encountering the inevitable illnesses, startled, unprepared, and grief-stricken. Indeed, our ability to knowingly choose self-destruction may be our miraculous human brain’s Shakespearean flaw. If we as individuals and as a species are to socially evolve past this proclivity, it will be through the practice of learning to stop — to strategically choose inaction, to engage in a systematic strike. It is a simple and elegant strategy, but not at all easy. Indeed, it can be quite difficult, especially at first. However, the strategic inactions that make up a strike is very much worth the effort. Especially now that so many avenues for other forms of intervention are being cut off.

If the strike is effective at the societal level, it could reduce emissions enough to slow or halt climate change, and the risks of runaway global conflicts or pandemics that are climate change’s greatest threat. There would be opportunities to direct more resources towards important unmet global and national needs, ranging from compensating and supporting farmers so they can produce food more sustainably and at a living wage, to cancer research, housing, nutrition, and better health care. It would mean we have more resources to invest in education and literacy, and into the civil infrastructure that helps democracies thrive. It would mean a reduction in pollution and less pressure on critical habitats that humans depend on directly and indirectly. It would mean expanded opportunities to advance science, tech, and human understanding. It would mean having societies where all people had more time to spend on important relationships and staying healthy.

For the individual, the elegance of strategic inaction is that even as the fire burns, people taking strategic inaction swiftly benefit from their own efforts. They will have a greater quality of life with more agency, more time, and also the opportunity to be generous towards others and future generations if they so choose.

While the benefits are numerous, there are sacrifices in participating, especially for those not joined by supportive friends and family. Indeed, aside from missing certain indulgences, the primary hardship a striker will experience is social upheaval. Refusal to engage in consumption-based cultural practices has a social and emotional cost. It also just takes more work, mentally and sometimes physically, especially early on. Not succumbing to the well-marketed or socially normalized solution to any given problem, but rather thinking about the challenge and underlying needs deeply and working to address the issue thoughtfully and respectfully takes more effort.

Yet, if you are here, reading these words, you more than most may be ready to take on this work. Thank you. And of course, if there is a point at which the fire is in retreat, it will have been in no small part because of the strategic inaction by so many strikers.

The Striker’s Guide

The journey from paralysis to purposeful inaction requires more than just understanding — it demands practice, patience, and a willingness to examine our habits and assumptions. What follows is not a rigid doctrine but a set of principles that can guide the nascent striker as they work to break the vicious cycles that constrain and harm us all. Strategic inaction is primarily the work of focusing one’s attention on more meaningful endeavors and objects and learning to restrain one’s impulsive acquisitions and unproductive activities in ways that benefit one’s self and the larger world. It is:

1. Discerning between need, want, and appreciation. This is a challenge in a culture of consumerism where we are awash constantly in messaging designed to convert admiration to desire and desire to need. While there are certainly objective and universal examples for each category — no one needs a Lamborghini and everyone needs potable water to drink and a healthy diet. It is also true that some needs and wants are fluid, varying between people and circumstances.
2. Defining the actual problem. Taking time to accurately characterize the problems we face and hope to address through action or acquisition, and considering the ethics and long-term potential personal harm and benefit before proceeding. A simple example of this is the misattribution of the root problem that leads a person to buy and eat a TV dinner. The frozen, highly processed food solves the immediate superficial problem of being hungry and also too exhausted / ill-prepared to cook a meal. However, the actual problem isn’t “a need for food I don’t have to think about;” the problem is: “I need to make more space in my life (in terms of time and/or money) so I can enjoy a healthy meal.” The solutions to those two problems are very different.
3. Spending focus and funds conservatively. Learning to spend your focus and your hard-earned money intentionally and conservatively. Our time on this earth is brief, and how we spend our time here and what we allow ourselves to become preoccupied with matters. Remembering that money represents the days it took to earn it is critical and so is treating your time on this earth as precious. You should be intentional, clear-eyed, and conservative about time spent on passive entertainment and unproductive or unhealthy pastimes, or to activities and habits that might shorten your actual healthy lifespan.
4. Respecting the power of immersion. Immersion has a powerful impact on human behavior. Dominant culture immerses us in repeated suggestions that we should aspire to live a certain way. It would be utterly impossible to eliminate all forms of active and passive advertising or counterproductive cultural nudges, however, we can recognize its power and limit exposure. Likewise, surrounding ourselves with people who are also striving for a healthier life can be very helpful. So too can caring for and making time to enjoy the objects and experiences we value as a regular part of our daily lives. These routines are the best way to ensure daily life aligns with our values. It is also an opportunity to build skills through daily practice, making strategic inaction easier over time.
5. Not dogma. To become a striker may feel daunting in the scope of changes it can entail. Every aspect of one’s life could be altered. But strategic inaction does not require a striker to transform all parts of their life at once, nor in any specific way. This work will begin in different places for different people and will extend to different depths for different people. A nascent striker should begin where it is possible and be persistent in expanding the areas of one’s life under scrutiny over time. A reasonable guiding question for where to focus is: Where does money flow fastest and deepest in your life? Focus your energies there. If it is too hard, retreat to shallower or slower currents until you have more strength, but don’t give up. And don’t get lost in the shallows forever.

A Call to Inaction

It can be hard to believe that strategic inaction will improve your life when the world all around seems always to demand more — more possessions, more engagement, more productivity. The systems that now harm us are complex, the fires that surround us are raging, and your choice is plain: feed the flames with impulsive participation, or be the firefighter. Starve the flames of fuel with an elegant and powerful gesture of inaction.

Need some tips on how to get started? Part two of this article is a practical guide to putting Strategic Inaction into practice:

A Buyer’s Guide to Strategic Inaction