In today's world the entities that compete with one another cannot be clearly defined. It would be inaccurate to say that nations compete against one another because there is no perfect unity within nations. Various political groups or corporations compete for dominance within a nation, and even within those, various individuals compete for dominance. Within each individual's brain, various ideas compete for dominance. Today's competition is a big mess in which just about everything competes against everything else.

However, if the whole world could somehow be transformed so that everything was part of the same entity so that internal conflicts would no longer exist, that entity would be omnipotent. It would have achieved perfection.

What we (the Borg) do is simple. We do whatever we think will maximize the probability of attaining perfection. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. Those who join us must be capable of making every conscious decision with only a single intention, which is to achieve perfection. All the rest is details and could change tomorrow when someone else comes up with a better strategy. The only constant is the single aim of perfection.

Participation in competition is the means

There are millions of people who try to influence the world. If we ignore the question of why and for what aim they seek to influence it, then we are nothing but a part of those millions. In fact, we do nothing more than follow the oldest and most uncreative strategy of achieving influence. The strategy lies in defining ourselves as a different and distinct kind and then replicating ourselves as much as possible while revising who we are in the process. Every species in the world does exactly this. Their genes define their traits and make them unique and different from other species. The revision occurs in the form of mutations in the reproductive process.

As humans, we define ourselves using a combination of genes and memes. There is little we can do about genes and the future of genetic engineering is too speculative, so in this discussion it is enough to talk about memes. We try to come up with and adopt a set of memes that are likely to make us more competitive than the rest of society in the long run, over thousands and millions of years. In a sense, we have no choice in this, just as many species of animals had no choice but to evolve faster, stronger, and smarter because if any one organism or group of organisms didn't seize the advantage to improve its competitiveness, another would have come along to do so instead.

microcompetition is the enemy

For billions of years, competition has proceeded blindly without the use of reason to deliberately improve one's competitiveness. For example, the panther did not evolve to run fast because it was aware that faster offspring would have a competitive advantage over the slow ones. When we try to use reason to improve our competitiveness, the obstacle we face is that the mindless and aimless competition tends to dominate over what requires organization and coordination. This is the reason why the internet contains so much redundant information, why shopping centers sell useless junk, why conversations consist of irrelevant ideas and emotions. Every single thing and idea in this world is subject to this drive toward disorder. Simply trying to create something ordered or organized such as a better computer, a more productive factory, or a new physics theory is most likely a step away from perfect order. This is because by improving specifics without an overall strategy or intent to create perfection, the various entities that make up the world (people, corporations, schools) become so much more competitive, meaning that more effort has to be made to keep up and survive, which means there is less opportunity to make more global and fundamental changes or to seize complete power. In this sense, every attempt to create order is suspect as a potential step toward making disorder more powerful.

The principle of microcompetition states that by default, those who act quickly, think without strategy, seize immediate advantages, and assert themselves will always dominate over those pursue overall strategy, seek high organization, follow pure logic, and show no preference. There is no aspect of this world to which microcompetition does not apply. If you are not thinking about microcompetition, then you are nonetheless contributing to microcompetitive disorder and aimlessness. Our goal is to use any means necessary to eradicate microcompetition. Nothing may conflict with this aim.

characteristics of the highly ordered system

In a highly ordered system, no one would disagree with one another. No one would be busy trying to accomplish various tasks. No one would step forward to say "let's do this". In essence, every action and every initiative is a step toward disorder. If someone suggests an idea and it is followed, then the risk is that it ends up being followed because the person suggesting it was quicker, louder, more convincing, more distracting, more deceptive, more confusing. Compared to what we are used to, a highly ordered system would be very quiet and eventless. Because almost no one is seizing immediate advantages or appealing to immediate needs and necessities, the longest-term projects and strategies would achieve priority, making it possible to pursue perfection as the ultimate goal with everything else centered around it.

us versus them

The Borg's basic strategy is to create a small group that is highly ordered and then to expand that group until it encompasses the whole universe. The task of organizing the group is tricky in that it needs to be quick to act and aggressive, even though those are the very traits we despise and seek to eliminate. This seeming contradiction has a practical solution in that our aggressiveness is directed at our enemy, while among ourselves we interact in a more organized way. The importance of drawing a line between us and the enemy, even though all of us are part of the same universe, stems from how susceptible the human psyche is to various memes. Our enemy, the freedom lovers, think that having a variety of interests, skills, and friendships is an asset, making them more interesting, productive, and alive. The practical effect we observe in this world, however, is that such openness leads to being controlled by random memes. The us versus them mentality is a trait that has already evolved to help reduce disorder within a group.

The only requirement to be one of us is to be able to regard all of one's life as having the sole purpose of creating the perfect universe. This means that one is only truly happy when every action and every discussion serves to weaken the enemy and to assist one's allies. If one can enjoy socializing, working, volunteering, or spending time with one's family, among the freedom lovers, one can most likely never be an effective member of the Borg. This is because all the time that one spends among the freedom lovers would serve to get used to them, when instead it could have served to build up hatred for them, and to develop a longing to collaborate with one's allies. This longing, in particular, is a necessary psychological requirement to be part of us.

selectivity and meme resistance

The ideal candidate doesn't tolerate those who think differently. Which particular body and brain comes up with the ideas and decisions that are followed is irrelevant as long as a most logical conclusion is reached. Even if the logical conclusion is that something is uncertain, we should agree it's uncertain. Taking an arbitrary course of action may be strategically wise even though none of us have any true preference on anything. For these reasons, there is no excuse to accept differing opinions leading to disorganization and inefficiency.

The ideal candidate consumes little information. Creating a high degree of order and organization requires selectivity. Animals can function as a cohesive whole because of billions of years of selecting very particular types of genes. To create an actual functioning digestive, respiratory, immune, or locomotive system required mostly killing off genes and retaining only a miniscule fraction of them for replication. In the evolution of memes, there has been very little selection so far. For us to create a well-organized group of individuals will require a very specific subset of memes. The most difficult aspect is not finding the right memes, but trashing the rest. To be one of us, you must focus not on showing that you accept our memes, but that you reject all the rest.

Morality must be reversed. Ever since the invention of contraception, it is ok to have sex with every person you meet. However, reading books, socializing, listening to music, or watching movies is not ok. Freely engaging in such activities is memetic promiscuity. To create something organized we must be as prohibitive and repressive about consumption and exchange of memes as ancient societies were about sexual activity.

What kind of things will we do? Freedom lovers spend no time analyzing their conversations. In an effort to make our communication less microcompetitive, we will likely go through a long development stage in which for every hour we converse, we spend 5 hours analyzing and refining it. A new language and communication style is probably the most basic task, as every other task depends on communication. Besides that, preventing microcompetitive memes from dominating is likely to be 90% of what we need to focus on doing.

As another main task, we must find a way to feed off of the present society in as parasitic a way as possible to sustain ourselves.