Submitted by jenny on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 06:14
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Self-contained. Cells are often self-contained; that is, everything they need to operate comes from within. There is no contact with other cells. In a (linguistically) hostile world they either stand alone, or fall down alone; one cell’s success or failure has no bearing on the cells around it. In the cell, the only associations allowed are as follows: with one teacher (up); with one student (down); with a second student (down); and with one equal (across). The four people you associate with do not inter-relate with each other.
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Not open or public. Please! This is not some “secret society”! However, the cell you are starting up is not open to all or exposed to the public eye. If that happened, then many people would come to your doorstep to look for help or to obstruct you (as we read about in Section III). Remember, you are (trying to be) a pioneer; however, you are surrounded by followers. The only way you can get things done well is to be left alone and to operate on your own. The only way to act independently is to shut out the outsiders.
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Independent in operation—no “infrastructure”. Many great and powerful countries, companies, groups, religions and societies have some form of infrastructure, chain-of-command, “overseeing”, management, and the like. Not so here. In real life, cells do this so as to survive against the police, should one of them be “compromised” (i.e., betrayed). You do it so as to be independent in terms of your operation. Here, the “enemy” is inertia, unwillingness to step out and take the necessary risks, waiting in dependence on some outside helper (who doesn’t exist), and paralysis. If you do that, you will be “waiting for Godot”—and waiting for ever. Perhaps the only common “point of reference” which all the “English pioneers” will have is this book. You may “know of” a few other people, but there will be no contact.
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Independent of others—help, money, support, materials. Plainly, this is related to the previous section. You need to survive on your own: look after yourself, finance yourself, sustain yourself, as well as provide the needed books, VCD’s and other materials yourself. Why so? First: if something goes wrong with another group, do you want them to “pull you down” too? It is the “one-to-one” contact of teacher and student which makes the cells effective and powerful; if you dilute/water down that bond through adding in other people (who are in some form of trouble), then you weaken the cell and make it ineffective. If you have no contact with other groups, then you need not trouble yourself with nightmares when they drown, for you never heard them calling. Sometimes, “progress” and “relationship” cannot co-exist. These cells, like certain single-cell bacteria, work best alone and without outside interaction. Second: working as a determined “pioneer” in a hostile environment with nobody to help you or oversee you allows you to be innovative, free to act alone, and perhaps happier. Third: being separated frees you from the curse of envy, comparing yourself with other people or groups, and all those petty rivalries which show themselves inside small groups. Hey, you have gone this far alone; now, be a pioneer and operate alone!
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Isolate groups from each other. Not only must groups be independent of each other, they must have no contact with each other. So, make sure your two “students” know this, and put it into practice.
