The Casualist Conspiracy

This may be the most pervasive movement you have never heard of, by design. The Casualists are conducting an "invisible revolution", at least their part in it is invisible to most of us. They don't want to stand out, or even be noticed. They are just there, hidden in plain sight.

Casualists operate, like many underground movements, as a loose confederation of independent cells, with no central coordination, although their cell meetings may appear to be just dinner parties, or reading groups, or fishing trips.

They rarely explain themselves. They appear to conform through a process of "conversational blending". They see much of social interaction as just linguistic practices. They play their role and don't see a need for their role to match precisely their own inner beliefs. These social rituals are to them just tokens of group membership, of friendliness toward people, most of whom they like and sympathize with.

They are postmaterialist, postideological, pragmatic individualists. They value freedom for themselves and for others. They are also master manipulators of the memesphere, often operating through proxies, who are glad to make some noise while the Casualists look indulgently on, maintaining their operative stance, their ironic distance from the true believers.

As postmaterialists, they are not much motivated by money or possessions. They may be rich or poor, depending on their circumstances, although most are somewhere in the middle. They see work as simply a means to an end and seek to do "just enough", although they may have their own projects and enthusiasms that happen to overlap with their work.

Their origins are somewhat obscure. Some may see them as a kind of genetic subspecies, but their differences are best explained as the result of a distinct, self-replicating subculture, extending back into prehistory.

They are not just a personality type, since they show evidence of group action. Neither are they a secret society, although it is believed that they may have resorted to that in some particularly difficult historical periods. In each generation, they keep watch for candidates to recruit into their cells, and within that context they pass on their goals and methods.

What do they want? Just for their subculture to survive and spread to receptive candidates. As for the others, they leave them alone, intervening in the background only when needed to diffuse the most dangerous and fanatical, playing them if necessary, befriending them if possible, and hoping for everyone to just calm down and enjoy life.