The Iron Law and the Waste -and- The Dominating Presumption · 9:13pm Jul 30th, 2013
The Iron Law of Institutions can be rendered in the most simple form thusly: A person would rather that an institution fail and they keep power in it than it succeed and they lose power in it. That is, if the company or organization crashed and burned but they got to keep on being Grand Supreme Illustrious Chief Executive Super-Poobah they would swill champagne-flavored caviar and dance in a pile of money as the misery of a disintegrating organization flared around them. They would be offended and scandalized and disgusted if they were demoted or somehow reduced in status, especially if some mistake could be attributed (going back to cognitive dissonance form last week), but if the organization kept moving along and even got stronger.
This is seen in business with disgusting regularity, and is likely the reason golden parachute clauses exist. Everyone has entered into a mutually-reinforcing game, aware they will all be throwing everything away, that they will always run things into the ground for temporary profits. The market cannot correct what it cannot hurt. Indeed, they are often rewarded by the market, in the form of all those bonuses. They no longer need to work, they can float the golden parachute to a beach in a foreign nation. This is also in some sense the reasoning behind the "Pump and Dump" scam, though as a scam it should be more accurately said that the reasoning is money while the Iron Law only allows the scammer to feel good, since they remain in position even as the dumped company tanks.
Bad Apple in some sense confronted Any Random with this very thing in The Bad Apple Chronicles 5- Apple Shrugged.
"Bah! What would I do with the laws of second-hoofers and parasites? The worthless laws of precedent and ministers and the princesses. No. I reforged the laws into the proper form. The law of identity is first and foremost, A is A. But only very slightly below that is the most important law, the imposition of the forbidden. The word that may never be uttered."
""Give."" Bad Apple laughed, loud and long, with such force and duration that Any initially intended to order further abuse but slowly changed her plans and settled her face into a look of disturbed disgust. "Yes, I see your new law. The iron law. Is that really how you build a strong, robust and stable society? Would you actually prefer to RULE a dead rock than HELP enrich a live land?"
As in the link above, it could be said that Milton expressed the Iron Law through the character of Satan.
It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Both quotes show the real cost of the Iron Law, the price of ego to be paid not by the ruler but in the sighs, groans and abject despondency of the suffering masses below them that must suffer through the effects of being under one who cares for their personal power and not the stability of institutions. They will lose everything to the madness of a selfish heart and, naturally, the selfish overlord will not care one whit. They may either be internally focused to the point of simply not seeing the world as present, or they could have performed the dire mental gymnastics required to convert living, breathing beings into faceless automata, to believe that other people are simple Turing machines and not real minds. To dehumanize a population such that they are fit for suffering and slaughter.
Don't think it is not still so; there are not that many centuries between us and the arrogant moneyed class that believed peasanthood was, perhaps not a disease, but an unconquerable status. Their modern counterparts use University attendance (usually Harvard or Yale in the US and Oxford or Eton in the UK) or location of upbringing to determine the relative worth and "human status" of an individual.
So what is this about the Waste? There came a short discussion in the comments under "New Pony Tales" more particularly the chapter "The Emperor." It was mostly about video games but some sliver of it emerged from my author notes which were spawned by a focus on one particular part.
"He did it. And we all cheered," Aquarius said, suddenly stern. "You did not hear the other side. The waste-walkers played all sides for their own benefit, not for the benefit of all, and their ends were to sustain the waste, not erase it. Most were intent of leaving a way to be famous. And that is besides the ones who did not care when they wiped entire towns out of existence..." The unicorn shook his head and smiled. "His highness reported all things he did with the secret warriors, laid out all the facts and the consequences, and asked that we vote on his fate. He gave us his life and we gave it back. He wanted only to keep the waste free from those that would continue the squalor and misery for the sake of their own arrogance."
By 'waste-walkers' I was trying to subtly imply the kind of douchebag Fallout player, or player of any sandbox-style game, who just blow up entire towns, depopulate all areas they can and play all factions it is possible to play, within the limits of programming though not logic. They are also meant to represent the programmers who, rather than programming endings that fix the problems of the world, which is theoretically possible, program in sequels and profitable add-ons. Art subverted for the contrivance of games.
The limitations of technology (particularly AI design and the ability to impact the game environment) prevent any real development as far as that goes. One might assume that in stories there would be more change, that the population and environment could be changed in a more positive fashion. However even in writing, the Iron Law holds. Wasteland writers tend to be obsessed with their own protagonists, and harshly impose the Iron Law, such that the Waste is perpetuated so that their new Sue-style darker and edgier author avatar can be a legend, or a nightmare.
The Iron Law is so direly common it is amazing that the subspecies of fic has not consumed itself. As each iteration tries to become more gory and morally 'complicated' (read: edgy and falsely-controversial) the charnel house setting becomes gray and repetitive and the gun-wielding, grit-caked, hard-drinking past-escapers become the boys from central casting. It should have reached saturation, if not the point of cancellation but there is no accounting for how folks will react to things. Sandbox games with unlimited lives and no real penalties for douchiness are still selling like exploding hotcakes.
- - -
Loosely connected to the above, the world is still washed in a very ancient literary convention. Because my training was primarily Western in focus I will stick with that, though I have reasons to suspect that this applies to non-Western cultures. What I mean is that we are fixated on the hero. It sounds a bit silly to say but I will expand on that. We fixate on a particular big and 'designated' hero to the exclusion of, and even execration of, lesser persons, especially peasants and the other laboring classes. Also to reassure you, no, I am not a Marxist. More a socialist and collectivist, but politically a supporter of democratic republics. Some might try to paint me with a broad brush of anarcho-syndicalism but I think of governments as reasonably essential, as I am weak and lightly armed and prefer police and others to help. (See: The Leslie Fish-performed song "Guardian" from the album "Fever Season" based on the shared-world anthology series "Merovingen Nights.")
One of the things that angered and horrified me about Waste-based stories (what a name. I'll keep that...) was how casual the slaughter of billions of ponies, zebras and every other species in the world was handled. "Oh yes, they all died. Billions. But it's cool! Some folks were in metal boxes and THEY are important. They've got heroes in there. The rest of the box-ponies will die in hideous ways but they're stupid, and not the star, so they don't count as real." The only exception, other heroes. "Oh yea, some of the folks that died in the past left behind lots of memory thingies, so feel sad they died. But forget that pony next to them. They're not important, so it's good they turned into a gaseous state."
This is not hard to see in other things. At the most base, check the Bible. Faceless armies are recorded through unfeeling (and thankfully exaggerated) numbers occasionally referenced by the general leading them to slaughter. And often whole communities, nameless and without any history, are listed as having been slaughtered, from the old to the unborn. Except for the Midianites. Every good atheist know about the Midianites, just as sure as every religious person tries to ignore Numbers 31:17-35. This is true in most recorded mythohistories. Greek legends love to record certain names (like the crew of the Argos) but leave a lot of names off. Nordic myths do the same. Important heroes get lengthy asides naming fathers and forefathers. The rest just die in droves and rot. Even in the afterlife this is so. If you're not a mass-killer and raider you are worthless scum. This gets an illustration in Skyrim, in a throwaway line from one of the servants of one of the jarls. The exact words escape me but it runs something like this: There's no Sovngarde awaiting dust-cleaners. 'Sovngarde' in this context is the Skyrim equivalent of Valhalla.
This matters because it creates a very disturbing trend. Some folks notice that people act against their best interests, giving tax breaks to the wealthy or special legal allowances for the powerful. My personal thought is it may be a kind of wishful thinking of one of two varieties. They think they will someday be as rich and powerful and thus they want thing 'prepared' for their ascendency, however it hurts them, or they think their simpering sycophancy will make the rich notice them and draw them up to glory as reward for injuring others of their class.
Even in fiction it becomes so. "Blow up all those useless civilians, Master Sergeant Killguts! Collateral whatever! Hit the airstrike buttons! Blow up more!" The audience, like a whimpering enabler, associates itself with the commanders. But something I have noticed in video games and in stories is that it's not about heroes anymore. It becomes about being transgressive. Naughty. A simple, thoughtless inversion of what has come before. But this is not a genuine turning on the head, which would be the elevation of the peasant class, a concern for their lives and thoughts. It is a connection to the villain protagonists. No more are they on the side of paragons. The audience and enablers cheer in bloodlust-fueled delight for the monster and dictator. The Franco and Pinochet and others like them.
This is not idle speculation. Read the comments of any gore story on here. The audience will attach themselves to the murderer, the monster. They will actually celebrate and compliment the bloodiest deaths, or simple sadistic tortures. I remember a story with the trumpeting of sexual, mental and physical abuse of foals, several of them. Not the one you think, but that one too sort of. Now granted, the main one was a 'designated victim.' Silver Spoon. Because the immature readers are still stuck in elementary school where popular kids pantsed them, or in high school where the popular girls refused to touch them any popular characters are considered ripe for vicarious revenge. Though not adults. Adult jerks like Chrysalis and Gilda and Trixie make their privates tingle in masochistic delight, while the weak-but-sneering young characters are easily bent to their bloody vengeance.
But that is neither here nor there. The important idea is that readers and players feel disconnected and disinterested in the lives of the ordinary. The faceless ones are little more than disposable lumps of meat. It forms part of the reason I write so much about just any one I can. Everyone is worth noticing, worth knowing. The stories are worth telling. Think of it like O. Henry and "The Four Million."
Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen – the census taker – and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million."
-O. Henry, Introduction, The Four Million
I am a prole. I am of the working class. I am of the dust-cleaners. I am not a hero. I am not a general. I am not a monster. I am what I seem to be, suburban and contented. I am the caring heart and gentle hand. I love, I sing, I sweetly consider the kindnesses of life. Please, judge me softly.
After such poetic a post, all I can reply with is
FIRST ZOMG FiRsT !!!!!!1!!1!
Beautiful though, we need more of an appreciation for the little people that make everything run. Honestly, how much power does the president really wield?
So in other words, status trumps success.
God, I hate business.
1250806
It always does. Try to imagine someone facing the choice of losing credit and fame or of the organization lasting. The choice tends to be towards remaining powerful. Business as usual. Ugh.
1250138
As much as the Constitution allows, which places selection power in many hands.
For the love of your sanity, keep off of TV Tropes. It is as evil as 4chan.
The issue with games is that the ones in which choice is presented as to which way the story will go, the ultimate end always puts one in conflict with the other. Take a look at MMO games with predetermined factions, of which WoW is the famous one. Ultimately you have two factions that may have good people that make up the whole, but both sides are locked in bloody conflict largely because of past slights or because someone from one side or the other has been too bullheaded and caused an incident. Choices in life ultimately reflect this as well; eventually, one choice you make will put you in conflict with someone who made the opposite choice. However, not all games follow this model. But it's also not a new model, morally ambiguous choice has been a fixture of games for a while.
1258909
Conflict is sort of not required if there is sensibility in play. Some things are objective. Like the quote says, "You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts." My next blog will take up the question of how to determine the best possible choices for the benefit of all, but I can say that a lot of it seems to be composed of false dilemmas. True, things like resources are finite but they can be spread with proper logistics. Justice and freedom are not finite yet are often hidden from some.
1258940
I think you're going to run into some disconnect here, however. You and I have very different worldviews.
1258969
But we get on well and that is the important bit.