The Structure and the Values
10 of these readings are also read to you by General White. The lecture stands above the words it reads, and cannot be skipped through.
The creed lays out the Zaenderist Organisation as tiers of loyalty, earned through devotion or through classes and an applicative process. At the bottom stand the supporters, not yet Zaenderists: the Loyalists. Then the tiers: Zaenderist, Senior Zaenderist, Master Zaenderist, Veteran Zaenderist, and at the end of the ladder the graduates, whom the creed calls Sworn Zaenderists. Above them the Elders, the teachers, veterans and reviewers; then the Head Ministers, the Vice Director and the Graend Director, then the Graend Council, and at the summit the Eternal Founder. The live group carries this ladder today, from Loyalist through Zaenderist, Senior, Master, Veteran and High Zaenderist, then High Elder, Minister, the Directors and the Council.
The work of Zaenderism is done through departments, which function like the Imperial Regime: a Security Department to protect the Leader and Zaenderist events, a Judicial Department, a Propaganda Department, a Relations Department, a Dynastical Department to organise the bloodlines, among others. Bloodlines are optional social projects for brotherhood. The point of the departments is that nobody has to full-time a bureaucratic role: they are a mandated effort for loyalists, not a branch that fields manpower, and they keep the manpower where it belongs, in the branches and divisions.
Loyalty is the value the rest are measured by. A true Zaenderist is judged on the fanaticism of their loyalty and the merits of their work, and on nothing else in their character unless it impairs those two. The creed is explicit that an atheist of five years' loyalty outranks a believer of one week's, because loyalty and work forward the cause. Christian values stand at the forefront because they are Aleczaender's own, and Christian symbolism is honoured everywhere; but belief is not mandated and not pressured. The community is secular in the sense that anyone loyal to the cause is welcome, from anarchists to ultra-nationalists, on the one condition that they agree on brotherhood, loyalty to Aleczaender, and the greater nation-state.
What Zaenderism will not tolerate is written just as plainly. Treason is not tolerated, slander is an unforgettable consequence, and liars are totally distrusted. Forgiveness is practised because it is better for the soul, but pearls are not cast before swine and traitors are not befriended. Sorrow for a traitor is weakness: to every man who says this is sad, ten thousand say good riddance and carry on, knowing a more loyal man steps forward. Defeatism in a mobilisation and lack of faith in a project are symptoms of disloyalty. Anyone in a rush to welcome back old enemies into high positions is as suspect as the traitors themselves. And those who resign rashly are treated exactly as those removed.
The habit the creed asks for is one question: at every moment, what is Aleczaender thinking, feeling and saying about this? To predict his reaction accurately is the goal; to act without a thought for it is absence from the goals of Zaenderism. This is how the movement stays in agreement on every matter and in total unity behind every crisis.
On succession the creed is short: Aleczaender rules forever. There is technically no successor. In his absence the Council of Zaenderism takes over, rules with total loyalty in mind, and appoints a new leader who holds autocratic power as he did. The Council cannot be removed by that leader, but it also must never limit the leader's power except to overrule him if he strays from the Zaenderist Thought or acts in disloyalty to Aleczaender. A Councilman must be a High Elder or higher; there are at most seven, nine with the leader and his deputy; a majority is over half. None of this applies to Aleczaender himself, whose position as Eternal Founder is never replaced.
The spoken parts are marked on conviction as much as on content. To reach the highest grade you must speak as a true believer speaks: with full force and feeling, in character, the way a state broadcaster proclaims the creed to the nation, never flat and never mumbled. Recite, declare your loyalty, and give your opinion of the Leader as though the whole Imperium is listening. A correct answer said without conviction does not earn the top mark.
THE HABIT, IN ITS OWN WORDS. From the Concept: “At every moment of the hour and day, every person must think, “What is Aleczaender thinking, feeling, and saying about this?” to every action, and to that, you have won. To predict my reaction and be as accurate as possible is a goal, but to think and say without even a thought of my take on the matter is not just ignorance, but absent of the goals of Zaenderism. To be unconquerable, we must be in agreement on every matter and in complete total unity behind every crisis. To every traitor, ten-thousand people utter “Good riddance!” and carry on forward, knowing a more loyal person will step forward and continue to carry the mantle.” Read it as the Concept means it: a discipline of prediction. The claim is that a movement whose members predict the Leader's judgment before they act is a movement that cannot be split, because no faction can form around a question that everyone answers the same way. The objection you will meet in the film is that a man who only predicts has stopped judging. The Concept's reply is that judgment is not abolished but placed: it lives in the Council, which may overrule a leader who strays, and nowhere else. Whether that placement is enough is the question of this phase.
THE HARD SAYING. The Concept does not soften this and neither does the Academy: “Those who seek sorrow over a traitor or those who have conducted evil, are weak, and unworthy of Zaenderism.” The argument behind it is about discipline, not about feeling. A movement that mourns each purged man teaches the next man that betrayal costs the movement something; a movement that says good riddance and carries on teaches him that it costs the movement nothing and him everything. The film's Empty Chair puts three men in a room with that saying: one who misses his friend, one who says compassion is not betrayal, one who says sympathy allowed once eats discipline whole. None of them is lying. The paper will ask you for the creed's argument, for its strongest objection, and for what the Concept would answer, and it will grade you on how well you state all three.
JUDGED ON TWO THINGS. The Concept's rule of judgment is the one most often misread, so read it slowly. A Zaenderist is judged on the fanaticism of his loyalty and the merit of his work, and on nothing else in his character unless it impairs those two. The creed then gives its own example, deliberately extreme, of a person of five years' loyalty who differs from the Leader in every belief and outranks a believer of one week's, and it says why: because the loyal one has forwarded the cause, and the cause has been exposed to more people through that openness. The rule is not tolerance for its own sake; it is a statement about what the movement is for. The objection is obvious and you should be able to state it: a rule that measures only loyalty and work has no way to weigh a man's judgment or his honesty until they have already failed. Hold the rule and the objection together.
The practice questions of this phase open when you stand in it. Nothing of a later phase's examination is shown before its time.