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Musings Report 2024-4 1-27-24 Nothing Changes Until It Collapses
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Nothing Changes Until It Collapses
"Nothing changes until it collapses" may sound cynical, but it's the opposite of cynical: it's a description of human nature's response to when whatever worked well in the past stops working well and begins to decay, erode and unravel, a process that leads to breakdown / collapse.
This spiral to collapse is in many cases the first step in a positive evolution of adaptation, trial and error, reset and renewal. From this perspective, collapse is not negative, it is positive, for only when things that are failing finally break down are we forced to respond in a positive fashion.
Our default response to the slow unraveling of functionality is denial and hope: we dismiss or diminish the evidence that things are no longer working well, and we hope that doing more of what worked in the past but is now failing will once again fix what's broken.
Why do we deny evidence of decline? The basic answer is we're fearful: fearful of losing what we have, fearful of an uncertain future, fearful of losing control. Our instinct is to cling tightly to whatever we have and hope that whatever we're continuing to do will restore whatever is failing.
We deny that we're in denial. Yes, there are problems. But we persuade ourselves that the problems aren't that severe and that doing more of what's failing isn't magical thinking, it's an incremental approach to fixing problems.
Incremental advances can restore what's failing, but the advances have to be real, not just declarations and proposals. These incremental advances must be put in place early in the decline, or they will be outrun by the unraveling.
Ironically, our instinct to tamp down our fears with denial and magical thinking consumes the time we had to change the situation incrementally. By the time we finally admit things are breaking down, it's too late for incremental changes to reverse the spiral into collapse. By the late stage, even radical reforms are ineffective--and in the late stage, we're still denying that radical reforms are necessary because radical reforms step on many powerful, entrenched toes.
The position of entrenched insiders and the multitudes drawing benefits from the status quo is: there must be some way to stop the decline that leaves everything I have and need securely in place.
When the functionality of the status quo starts failing because the ground is shifting beneath it, the incremental reforms that fixed problems in the past are no longer enough to restore functionality. As dysfunction increases, our instinct is to "do more of what's failing" because that was successful in the past. But the ground has shifted, and now whatever we're doing is actually accelerating the decline rather than reversing it.
As a default of human nature, this dynamic is scale-invariant, meaning that it describes the sprawling Ming Dynasty in 1600 China, the decay of regions, cities, towns and villages, the decline of enterprises large and small and the breakdown of marriages and families. It even describes the descent of the addict, who either turns their life around after hitting bottom, or they continue "doing more of what's failing" and expire.
As you know, I discussed these dynamics in Musings #2, The Status Quo Has Already Failed, We're Just Not Aware of It Yet, with an eye on what I learned about the Ming Dynasty's failure to grasp the necessity of radical changes in the structure and functionality of the dynasty's centralized state.
Most of us experience denial and hope in one setting or another: my job is fine, my marriage is fine, our business is fine, my health is fine, and so on. Sometimes we get a terrifying alert that collapse is much closer than we'd imagined: we have a heart attack, or we come to in ER and realize that we really have to stop our addiction.
In other cases, we have a disturbing epiphany: actually, I hate my job, I want out of this marriage, our business is doomed, I'm done with this place. This revelation shakes our life to its core, for the reason we held onto a happy facade was the fear of what happens if everything we have tumbles into the abyss.
So we try half-measures. The empire cuts a deal with the Barbarians, the couple try a trial separation, the enterprise cuts back staff and hours, the city spruces up Main Street, and so on.
If the ground has only shifted a bit, these half-measures might buy time and things slowly get better.
But if the ground has shifted fundamentally, half-measures are just feel-good expressions of denial and hope.
This description of the prevailing denial in late-stage Western Roman Empire by Michael Grant aptly captures the zeitgeist of an appealing form of denial: a completely unmoored confidence that past successes are proof that the present crises will resolve themselves without any undue messiness:
"Enmeshed in classical history, all he can do is lapse into vague sermonizing, telling the Romans, as many a moralist had told them throughout the centuries, that they must undergo an ethical regeneration and return to the simplicities and self-sacrifices of their ancestors.
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all."
If all we've known is success, the idea that everything that was successful in the past cannot possibly work now that things have fundamentally changed is alien: how could what worked so well in the past not work now?
Breakdown / collapse clears away the complacency of denial and hope and focuses our attention on the need for a complete overhaul, a complete housecleaning, finally letting go of all that we've clung to as things unraveled. Collapse isn't a disaster, it's the necessary first step in admitting the ground has shifted dramatically and we need a new way of interacting with the new conditions.
If all the cycles I've discussed over the years manifest, this default of overconfident complacency, denial and hopeful magical thinking will become increasingly relevant in projecting what will unfold over the next six to eight years.
I recently added this to my Elevator Speech: understanding is wealth, too.
Highlights of the Blog
Isn't It Time We Have Social Security for Families with Children? 1/25/24
The Template of National/Imperial Decay and Collapse 1/24/24
Have Our Elites Lost The Mandate of Heaven? 1/22/24
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Started the third draft of my next book on the modern ideal of Progress. Already tossed a 45,000 word first draft and also gave up on the second draft. This is how it goes... hopefully third time's the charm.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
Notes: Black T-Shirts, Murakami and The Ideology of Sameness: Navigating Cosmopolitan Uniformity Through Murakami's Lens and Beyond
What Is the Ideology of Sameness? Part 1
What Is the Ideology of Sameness? Part 2
Half of recent US inflation due to high corporate profits, report finds: Thinktank report says ‘resounding evidence’ shows companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop
My kid had too much screen time – so I tested out these alternatives -- switch to an old AT&T landline and toss all screens?
The Silent Epidemic Eating Away Americans' Minds
Death by a thousand paper cuts--unproductive complexity and Turchin's over-production of elites?
The gig economy sucked in millennials like me. Will we ever get out?
Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? -- roughly half go to Social Security and health insurance programs....
Rules for the Ruling Class: How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy. -- oh the irony....
"It is in changing that we find purpose." Heraclitus
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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