# Moral Jiu-Jitsu

> Moral Jiu-Jitsu is mapped as the refusal: it withdraws cooperation while building discipline, legitimacy, and participation.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:nonviolent-resistance:moral-jiu-jitsu` |
| Family | Nonviolent Resistance |
| Domain | Movements |
| Kind | strategy |
| Archetypal function | The Refusal |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Moral Jiu-Jitsu belongs to the **Nonviolent Resistance** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Moral Jiu-Jitsu withdraws cooperation while building discipline, legitimacy, and participation, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Moral Jiu-Jitsu, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Refusal.** Moral Jiu-Jitsu is mapped as the refusal: it withdraws cooperation while building discipline, legitimacy, and participation.

## Gift

creates moral, social, economic, and political asymmetry; through Moral Jiu-Jitsu, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

romanticizes suffering or assumes repression will reliably backfire; Moral Jiu-Jitsu can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Moral Jiu-Jitsu to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Refusal enters through Moral Jiu-Jitsu. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Moral Jiu-Jitsu becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**leverage.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Moral Jiu-Jitsu; another player names a countermove. Initiative 1.

## Relationships

- **depends on — Constructive Tension:** Constructive Tension depends on Moral Jiu-Jitsu by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **institutionalizes — Backfire:** Moral Jiu-Jitsu institutionalizes Backfire by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **translates into — Mutual Aid:** Mutual Aid translates into Moral Jiu-Jitsu by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **enables — Labor Movement:** Moral Jiu-Jitsu enables Labor Movement by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Moral Jiu-Jitsu from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Moral Jiu-Jitsu is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Moral Jiu-Jitsu: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [Why Civil Resistance Works](https://cup.columbia.edu/book/why-civil-resistance-works/9780231156820) — Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, 2011. Comparative study of violent and nonviolent campaigns, with scope and coding limits.
- [Questions, Answers, and Some Cautionary Updates Regarding the 3.5% Rule](https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/publications/questions-answers-and-some-cautionary-updates-regarding-35-rule) — Erica Chenoweth, 2020. Clarifies that 3.5% is an observed pattern, not a universal threshold.
- [Gandhi Heritage Portal](https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/) — Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, ongoing. Digitized writings and historical materials; interpretations require context.
- [Letter from Birmingham Jail](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/letter-birmingham-jail) — Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, 1963. Direct action, constructive tension, law, justice, and timing.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
