0011 — The Five Pillars as an instructional grouping

• Status: accepted
• Date: 2026-08-02
• Governs: src/lib/academy/pillars.ts, /academy/pillars (SURF-22), /academy, /, /philosophy/doctrine, Charter Book I Chapter II

Decision

The Academy's Seven Schools are grouped beneath five Pillars — Capital, Creation, Human Performance, Leadership, Civilization — forming a single ladder:

Mission (increase human capability)
  → Five Pillars
    → Seven Schools
      → Programs → Courses → Lessons → Projects → Real-world results

The Pillars are an instructional grouping. They are subordinate to the six constitutional capabilities of Codex 1 (health, character, knowledge, leadership, capital, creation) and do not replace, rename, or reorder them. Every Pillar names the capabilities it develops, so the two structures remain reconcilable in one direction only: capabilities are doctrine, Pillars are pedagogy.

Why

Seven schools presented as a flat list read as a catalogue of subjects. The argument for their number is a claim about failure modes — financial literacy without character creates exploitation; leadership without wisdom creates tyranny; technology without ethics creates unintended consequences — and that argument needs a visible structure. Five Pillars supply it without inventing a rival taxonomy of capability.

The single test

Will this make someone more capable? is recorded as the question that precedes the Six Questions of Codex 1 Article III. It is a filter for scope, not a substitute for the constitutional gate: a proposal that passes the single test still answers all six.

Consequences

• The homepage now opens with what Anabasis is (the ascent, the pillars, the ladder) before what it has; the six capabilities and the prologue remain below.
• /philosophy/doctrine carries the objective, the core philosophy, and the "why seven schools" argument ahead of the capability glossary, which is unchanged.
• Pillar membership lives in one place. Any surface needing the grouping reads PILLARS / pillarSchools() rather than restating it.
• A sixth Pillar, or a school moving between Pillars, is a recorded decision.