Every society is run by an increasingly small number of cynical decision-makers. Barring a change of circumstance where cynicism is discouraged, their actions and plans are ultimately rewarded, and more power is accrued to them. Success begets success. Secrecy and immorality is incompatible with a free society, a free press is necessary to provide the necessary information for which society's members can decide the direction society may go. However if the response to a given event is to claim that it isn't happening, this constrains the freedom of action by which society's leaders can devote resources to an issue. Furthermore, it is the interests of cynical decision-makers in the accrual of power to alter society so that various leaders are cowardly and so unlikely to take an unprecedented action. Organizations that operate in accordance to inertia can be easily predicted and deviations from a course can be noticed and responded to accordingly. This is paradoxically incompatible with long-term stability, the people who desire access to the levers of power do not disappear, and if they did, cynical decision-makers do not make up a majority of society's members, they themselves are constrained from making public decisions or actions that would in it self be threatening and lead to a reaction by society's leaders to effect their removal out of a desire for self-preservation (unless it was sufficiently clear that ambition was not synonymous with hazard). Thus even the response to threats to a political order is constrained by perceptions, and this in turn constrains the allocation of resources to respond. The press, if dedicated to preserving the current political order, cannot describe a threat to the political order in terms that would allow for the threat to expand in support beyond society itself is willing to provide in responding to it. Every lock has play. The only lock that cannot be picked is one that cannot be opened.
Too many people are just doing their jobs. Is the job worth doing? After the work is done, how does it impact anything? Dangerous questions yes, but these are the ones asked the least.
participants (1)
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Ryan Carboni