Reprint from 2017, tied to today’s theme. Later I realized that Desistance, trying to starve or bore the monsters, works far better than fighting them. Edited to include the better understanding. Nevertheless, the Harding breakup of Wilson’s monstrosities was a real-life example of excising the monster instead of starving it. So both paths can be realistic.
= = = = = START EDITED REHASH:
Start with LIFE IS PURPOSE and LIFE IS ORDER.
Organisms and organizations and businesses and agencies and governments have a naturally limited life. Tanh curves.
Activists EXPect their actions to be EXPonential. They assume more action will lead to more results, to more action, to more results, more action….
EXP always fails. EXP is pure myth, pure math. You can do EXP in an equation or a computer simulation. Now that our “economy” is entirely run in a computer simulation, EXP provides infinitely increasing “riches” for the rich. But Nature never does EXP, even when you think you’re forcing her to do EXP. At best Nature does TANH. Grow to maturity and be satisfied with life. Often Nature tells you to fuck off, or kills you. Even when you get to repeat your idiocy for a while, sooner or later it fails.
Parkinson’s Law describes an unnatural attempt to turn tanh into exp, turn negative feedback into positive.
The organization’s original PURPOSE has decayed. Normally the organization should fade out smoothly and let other agencies or churches or businesses use the labor and money that it’s consuming.
Instead, the business or agency tries to go exponential by running a bubble or waging a War On. The bubble is carefully calculated to make fake demand and fake price feed each other in an unending upward spiral. The War On is carefully calculated to make the “problem” worse, so the organization desperately needs to MULTIPLY ITS EFFORTS to make the problem evener worser. War On Poverty, War On Drugs, War On Terror, War On Inequality, War On Virus. All the same. Turn tanh to exp.
When an organization has metastasized into a Parkinsonian tumor, the intuitive cure is Iconoclasm. Rip the agency or business out by the roots. Shut’n’shoot.
Thus it’s not unusual that we have Parkinson and Iconoclasm dominating the scene. The trouble is that Iconoclasts are disorderly by definition since their PURPOSE is disorder. Their impulse is rational and necessary, part of Nature’s fuckoff, but they’re tearing down meaningless statues and slogans instead of excising tumors.
The more natural path is to deprive the Parkinson of its resources instead of giving it another reason to fight.
As I’ve noted before, USA STRONG managed to excise the Parkinson after Wilson’s multiple Wars On. Nearly all of Wilson’s massive agencies quietly and smoothly faded instead of turning into tumors. The only exception is the Federal Bureau of Instigation, which continues to generate Current Fake Enemy so it can make War On Current Fake Enemy.
= = = = = END REHASH.
Polistra's Mill 