The Gatekeeper’s Dilemma

I have a friend who is running a mix swap, where people exchange playlists they created. He wants this to be as open and friendly to newcomers and easily intimidated people as possible. He has two things to monitor in this regard:

One, playlists need to be formatted properly for listeners to be able to run on their device of choice (iTunes, a CD, etc) with a minimum of fuss. This means editing the titles so that player order is kept between conversions to different formats, and a number of other small and important tweaks.

Two, MAKING the playlist needs to not be so intimidating that a newbie doesn’t break down in tears because they got the format wrong.

Failing at either one of these, could result in the mixclub getting a reputation for being exclusive and difficult. And you see the irony, that an enthusiastic manager could lean very much into one solution, solely out of desire to make sure people feel the mixswap is easy and low pressure, and inadvertently make it harder on participants on the other end of the axis, thus creating the atmosphere of high pressure and elitism.

There is of course no easy solution, and this falls under the broad category of “competing access needs.” But it seems a very specific category to me, that a lot of different fields face - most importantly sharing the characteristic moral irony. If you go to the ultimate lengths to make newcomers feel included on one access axis, you might actually be making newcomers feel excluded because they now have all these rules they need to follow.

I think of this when I browse reddit where various subreddits are passionate about free-flowing and uncensored discussion, but in order to keep that have a great deal of intimidating rules about formatting and on-topicness and whatnot. Or when I see old GMs talking about all the demands a LARP should satisfy in order to be welcoming to new players. Or of course, discussion about the right words to use to refer to oppressed groups, that can involve high level knowledge of academia or the latest fashion in slang to even participate.

It’s important to understand that in all of these cases the rules enforcement is done with the best of intentions. It’s just important to see whether it is really working out well or not. Are you adding or reducing stress to your most marginal participants? And this is a hard thing to monitor, since your marginal participants are by definition the ones least tied into your feedback loops. If someone doesn’t bother to listen because songs are hard to load you might not know, but also if someone doesn’t make a playlist because formatting is too hard you also wouldn’t know. These are the areas where we are just most likely to fly by the pre-established rules we believe in, and think anyone who deviates from those rules just doesn’t care as much as us.

There tend to be three solutions to this dilemma:

1. Decide that one type of newbies really is more relevant than another (because of size of population, or their previous experience, or what you are currently lacking, or just your personal bias) and just go full-throttle on protecting their experience while not worrying about the weight incurred on the other type of newbie. This may in some cases be the right call, though it’s easy to do this while being an asshole too and that is to be avoided.
   
2. Put a great deal of thought and effort into striking the exact right balance, considering concerns of all involved groups, figuring out the comparative advantages where one group’s needs can be satisfied with minimal cost to other groups, and intervening directly to solve problems (like edit playlist files) when necessary.
   
3. A return to deontology, and declare “if I don’t want there to be gatekeeping, then I do that best by not gatekeeping.” This is in some sense “privileging inaction” but in the Kantian sense that the best way to achieve pacifism is for everyone to stop fighting, starting with yourself, rather than hoping you can enforce non-violence with violent power over others.

They all have their merits, and different situations will call for each. All we can preach here is awareness: rather than believing “I am trying to be inclusive and if others don’t agree with me they just aren’t as inclusive as I am”, seeing “this is the choice inclusivity requires, and I am resolving it with this particular solution, but I can see how they care about the same principles but think that other solution is better.”

Relatedly: Freedom always requires someone else be limited, and becomes a discussion of who gets the freedom to enforce what.

Life Under Polyamory Ideology

There’s a lot of… dialogue about monogamy vs polyamory these days, in our cosmopolitan little bubble. No one wants to tell others which lifestyle you should choose so I wouldn’t call it a debate, but there’s a great deal of defending “how your lifestyle works, and why you’re happy with it” that can’t save itself from becoming discourse about the two main options.

This happens enough that we fail to recognize that no, polyamory just won. We all live in its world now.

Or more accurately, we all live free of monogamous ideology now.

Case in point. I have a friend, and she’s monogamously committed to her boyfriend. Sure, she hangs out with a lot of other boys. She even visits them by herself, and crashes in their bed. She’s generous with hugs and other mild displays of physical affection to men. And she kind of pines after some specific men, wishing for greater emotional attachment. This isn’t even hidden, it’s all openly acknowledged. But, this is the definition of monogamy she and her SO have worked out.

The reaction of people from her social circle, the people from our general social bubble is “fine. Whatever works for the two of you. If that’s what you call monogamy, I have no reason to disagree with you.” There’s no call for us to try to strictly define what monogamy should mean for them.

Let me assure you, this is not how it would work under monogamous ideology. In a society where monogamy was the reigning lifestyle choice, it includes a specific definition of monogamy, and “being too touchy with other men” would definitely violate that. Even with her partner’s consent, she would be found guilty of breaking social taboos. (Which is basically how her non-cosmopolitan co-workers react.)

But none of us (which I assume includes most of my readers) give a fuck. Call yourself polyamorous, monogamish, what the fuck ever. As long as you both are happy what business is it of mine? And that is the true spirit of polyamory - anarchism towards society wide definitions of romantic relationships.

You might individually choose to snuggle with just one person, and hopefully can get that special person to agree. But it’s very different when that’s a private agreement between two people (one which can be altered at any time they want), than when it’s an arrangement coded and enforced by the whole social world. And we just don’t have that in liberal cosmopolitania any more.

After all, one of the main benefits of monogamy was that you don’t have to negotiate shit. You’re together, you’re just dating each other, these are the default rules, and for people who don’t want to process and explicitly lay out their preferences, this is a lot easier. But that’s gone now - any couple does have to figure out whether they are poly or mono, and even if they are mono, where they feel those boundaries lie, because ain’t no one else doing that regulating for them.

***

The point is not “be monogamous or be polyamorous.”

The point is that ideology is a society wide phenomenon, and it is not located solely in the individual.

Under monogamous ideology, not only were most people monogamous (at least publicly), but what monogamy meant and enforcement of following this code was a public matter.

If you live in a bubble where polyamory is accepted now, then you also live in a bubble where no one is defining monogamy for you. You can make up the definition of monogamy to fit your relationship. It can include “cuddling other people is ok but no sex”, or hell, it can include “having sex with other people is okay but we still call it monogamy because we want to” and no one is really going to criticize you for that.

Guess what. This freedom is new. It’s a result of living under polyamory, which exists outside just the individual.

(It’s also a burden. It means when you start dating someone, you need to clarify whether your relationship is poly or mono, and if it’s mono what those boundaries are. You can no longer just assume the default rules. Some people understandably loathe this.)

Transitioning from “the rules of my romantic relationship are defined by the social structure around me” to “I get to / must choose the rules” is a big step. But it’s a culture-wide step, and can’t exist solely on the individual level, anymore than “I decide to have private property” is a decision solely by the individual. Both need the social structures that support them.

There’s no escaping this. It’s not saying “polyamory is an ideology yay”, but rather “your society is going to have an ideology about how much freedom people can expect in defining their relationships.” This has always been true, and will be true in the future.

You can say “FUCK OFF I’M NOT POLY” all you want, but I bet if your partner cheats on you none of your friends are going to immediately tell you (at least, as compared to how likely they were to under monogamy), because that’s now your business and not theirs to enforce. This is the anarchy I am talking about.

(And obviously, the current polyamory acceptance only exists in a few very specific bubbles, and monogamous ideology holds sway in most of America and the world still.)

***

WW: Partners were already non-monogamous unless that was specifically defended, the difference is now everyone knows about it.

Obviously.

One of the key things about ideology is that it’s a public performance. With any of these beliefs - monogamy, social justice, Trumpism, rationalism - everyone says in private “oh, I don’t believe all that stuff. I don’t go that far, I’m just reasonable about it. It’s other zealots who actually take this seriously.”

A communist experiences himself as simply an instrument whose function is to actualise a historical necessity. The people, the mythic people - whose instrument the totalitarian leader is - are never simply the actually existing individuals, groups of people and so on. It's some kind of imagined idealised point of reference which works even when, for example in rebellions against the communist rule like in Hungary '56, when the large majority of actually resisting people raises up, is opposed to the regime. They can still say: "No, these are just individuals, "they are not the true people. " When you are accused of: "My God, "how could you have been doing all of these horrible things?" You could have said, and this is the standard Stalinist excuse: "Of course my heart bleeds for all the poor victims, "I am not fully responsible for it. "I was only acting on behalf of the 'Big Other'". "As for myself, I like cats, "small children", whatever - this is always part of the iconography of a Stalinist leader.  

- Zizek, Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

So yeah, in private lots of people have been functionally polyamorous. But they still had to present the public face of monogamy, and would effectively enforce this. This is like the dozen Republican leaders who decided to try Bill Clinton on impeachment, when privately every single one of them was engaging in adultery or worse.


(This does not obviate that many people are not fucking around, and still have and have always had one partner. It’s just the transition from a system where society codifies and enforces that one-partnerhood for you, to one where you must manage it all yourself, is a big and real step that has happened.)

Prometheus: Existentialism, Horror, and Simulation

Since the transformers.pdf went around recently, this reminded me that my favorite film analysis was by SMG on Ridley Scott's Prometheus. (paywalled link, but the relevant text is pasted below so don't worry.)

This is an insanely good thread about existentialism, horror, and simulation, which made me really appreciate the movie more and was largely responsible for my thoughts about horror and meaning (and of course my previous post on the movie.)

I've gone through the thread and selected the posts that present this analysis. It's very long, and you have to get used to the in-media-res of assuming SMG is responding to some argument without seeing it yourself, but it lays out the connections between film-making and how we define our own reality with clarity and wit. It's also incredibly arrogant and ungenerous to his interolocutors, but it's better to have an opinion strongly represented that lets the audience choose for itself whether and where it is correct.

Watching the film first is helpful, but not necessary.

Everything below here is written by SMG, who is not me. "***" separate different posts.

Time Travel Activism

After I’ve rambled enough at people about ideology, and anarchy, and communism, and universal love and acceptance, people ask “Okay Humanist, but what do you do about *real* problems? You mention preventing bad actions, but what does that mean outside the ideological system? If you love everyone and don’t cast justice on anyone, how do you stop all the serial murders and systemic poverty and potential global catastrophes, and that shit” Besides the problems that will whither away when fear and status are less strong - how do you prevent the monstrous, chaotic evil of an uncaring universe.

To which I say, watch a time travel movie.

When a protagonist has seen a catastrophe so bad they must go back in time to stop it, they act in certain ways. They are very very specific. They want to find one tiny thread that led to disaster, and stop it.

Maybe this just means telling someone “don’t do that”. Maybe it means hindering them, or even killing them. Maybe it means moving an inoffensive object at one innocuous moment, changing the course of history. It’s a limited change, but very dramatic and definite.

What do they not do? They do not “form a committee” or “raise awareness”. They do not accumulate their own power base. They don’t shun the person responsible or their works to keep their hands clean - if anything they engage with them as directly as possible. Those sorts of actions are very unlimited in scope, while being vague and ill-defined in their influence on a specific chain of events.

Sometimes the time traveller will for arbitrary reasons “not know” some key information, such as who the person they were sent to stop was, etc. This doesn’t cause them to give up or even change tactics. They must acquire that key piece of information, then again, act definitely. Or perhaps act on the tool that person will use, but still in a specific act definite way.

Think back to your own life, and disasters you’ve seen. Personal or national. Imagine you were sent back before one, and could prevent it. What would you do? How surgical would you be? It would probably involve a lot of yelling at a specific person to get them to change course, and that’s it.

If you are like me, it is very unlikely that your answer to that question resembles what ideological movements in practice do. They operate with less information, yes, but they are not even *trying* to be dramatically specific.

In fact, we can learn a lot from the time traveller. We admire their clarity of purpose. But they are also completely unmoored from society. They are well aware that everyone around them thinks that they are crazy but that doesn’t matter. Their judgment is obviously irrelevant to someone who has seen what they have seen.

The time traveller barely even tries to convince anyone. They don’t need anyone’s approval, so much convincing for our actions goes out the window.

And in a sense, the time traveller is acting completely without reason. No, without cause. For in fact the cause for their actions does not exist in this universe. They are a spontaneous ethical being, doing the right and necessary thing for no prior at all.

The time traveller is beyond class and status. They might remake the entire world, or they might just save one life, but they are laser focused on that and nothing else.

My favorite time travel hero is Ebeneezer Scrooge. He sees the Christmas Future and knows that a doom of loneliness is coming to him. And when he wakes up… he is filled with joy! He can fix things! He does not form a committee to see about this friendship thing, he immediately buys a goose and takes it to his employee’s family.

We can do this too. If something very seriously bad might happen, be as specific about it as you can. Act like it already happened and the details that led to it were realized. Then work backwards and prevent that very specific thing.

Free yourself of fear, status, alienated cruelty, and justice. When you do that many of the concerns that plague you will fall behind. Anything else you need to resolve: be a time traveller from the future to today.

"The role of the activist should not be to push history in the right direction but instead to disrupt it altogether. Žižek writes, 'this is what a proper political act would be today: not so much to unleash a new movement, as to interrupt the present predominant movement. An act of 'divine violence' would then mean pulling the emergency cord on the train of Historical Progress.' To accomplish this act of revolutionary violence involves a switch of perspective from the present-looking-forward to the future-looking-backward. Instead of trying to influence the future by acting in the present, Žižek argues that we should start from the assumption that the dread catastrophic event -- whether it be sudden climate catastrophe, a "'grey goo' nano-crisis or widespread adoption of cyborg technologies -- has already happened, and then work backwards to figure out what we should have done. 'We have to accept that, at the level of possibilities, our future is doomed, that the catastrophe will take place, that it is our destiny -- and then, against the background of this acceptance, mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby insert a new possibility into the past.' In other words, only by assuming that the feared event has already happened, can we imagine what actions would need to have been taken to prevent its occurrence. These steps would then be actualized by the present day activist. 'Paradoxically,' he concludes, 'the only way to prevent the disaster is to accept it as inevitable.'"

-Micah White, Notes on the Future of Activism

Authentic Evil Figures in Cinema

I’ve been reading about the concept of authentic Evil, capital E. Regardless of it’s moral veracity, it’s certainly an interesting literary trope.

We are often fond of shows with good villains. Sometimes it’s because those villains have sympathetic motivations, human details, and understandable logic. They can be so sympathetic that they blur the line between villain and anti-hero. This post is not about those.

Sometimes a villain starts with worldly motivation. They miss their homeworld, or they’re ashamed of their differences, or they’re very attached to keeping their love alive. And they do extreme things to hang onto those, things that we the audience understand are bad. Against the metaphysics of the universe. It’s very human of them, but often weak or even pathetic. We aren’t expected to respect these actions.

And then they lose. Everything.

It’s generally a long process. Sometimes caused by the cruel forces of the world that take away that which we hold dearly. Or even it’s the victories of the protagonists that lead to this stripping away. But regardless, everything they care about - every hope they have for the future - is violently, painfully torn from them.

Anakin Skywalker killed his wife and unborn child (as far as he knows), betrayed and destroyed his order, and lost his normal body. He would live in a black chrome body for the rest of his days, knowing he is responsible for the ultimate tragedies he has suffered. All this for a master he knows cares nothing for him. I cannot begin to conceive of this loss (or the resulting self-loathing.)

When everything is gone, then he can make a choice. He has reached true existential freedom. Nothing he does matters, in that none of his goals can be saved or redeemed. He is beyond status, or class, or hope. He is beyond caring.

Existential freedom is terrifying. It means we are entirely responsible for our own choices. We can no longer blame them on the things we want or forces that motivate us.

That moment of utter despair is a singularity. What emerges after it should have no connection or resemblance to what came before. All that comes is a single, all-encompassing, world-shattering choice.

“evil” little-e is about petty needs and attachments to the world. “Evil” capital-E is about choosing nihilism. Everything the villain cares about is gone, so they destroy the whole world.

It’s only through this authentic Evil that someone can radically remake the world. They do not possess attachment to a person, or their ego, or the respect of others. They are not risk averse. They are infinitely destructive, if that’s what matters to them.

When a villain goes through that, it is awesome.

Anakin Skywalker is a whiny proto-fascist. But Darth Vader is amazing. He cares nothing for what others think of him, or the general racist Imperial structure. He chokes out corrupt incompetents and hires subversive bounty hunters and gets in the thick of battles and comes up with great new plans on the fly. He is totally committed to his cause. (Which isn’t nihilism, but is universal.) And when this happens, his powers as the greatest Jedi finally blossom.

Zod from Man of Steel also falls under this trope. For most of the movie he only cares about his beloved Krypton, and his elitist order within it. When returning to that world is no longer possible, then he becomes a man with nothing to lose (or even gain). That’s also the point when he learns to fly.

Garrosh Hellscream fits this, and this may be the best thing about WOW: Warlords of Draenor. For three expansions fans had gotten sick of him, and his descent into racism and militarism. And he lost the dignity of his people, his city, and his freedom. Another expansion about him seemed abominable.

But instead Blizzard made him cool. He went to war not just with humans, not just with other races, but the whole of his timeline itself. He rejected history as inadequate. He went back in time, killed two gods who would rule his people, and remade the Orcish clans into a competent coherent machine. When he has his final throwdown with Thrall, it is the best, most convincing bit of dialogue that Garrosh has had in five expansions.

He dies. But the authentically Evil villain doesn’t care about their death or life. They only care about the singular choice they have made. When we see them, we find them admirable because they do not care about us.

Ozymandias from Watchmen tried to voluntarily give up those things, so he could become such a creature. But it was voluntary, and inadequate, and his grandiose plans were too caught up in the world as it was. Dr Manhattan had his attachments torn from him, and the freedom he realized was much more austere for it.

The Joker was always authentically Evil, and attempts at his backstory do a great job of showing no matter what sad sack of reasons led to his creation, the only thing that matters is that this being has now been created.

These are horrible people. No, they are monsters. But it is only in being a monster that a character can begin to contemplate the ultimate acts necessary to save the world. The lack of attachment earns our admiration when we see it, and is capable of so much more than all the other characters trapped in the normal system of class and worldly desire.

Who is the best, most authentic Evil villain? Who makes our heart soar for their ability to leave who they were behind?

Picture you are Anakin Skywalker, lying on that medical bed. Your whole life you’ve been training to be the best Jedi, the one everyone is counting on to save them. You’ve been living a double life, caught between your order and your love. And in one day you lost both.

I hypothesize what you would think, is exactly this:

I don't care
What they're going to say
Let the storm rage on,
The cold never bothered me anyway!

It's funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can't get to me at all! 

It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me I'm free!
And I'll rise like the break of dawn 

Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone!

It is only after a monster has undergone this pure and all-consuming choice, that they can make the decision to sacrifice themselves and free the whole world.

Atheism and Fathers in "Rogue One"

Not only does this movie invite comparison to the other recent Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, but the heavily marketed white female protagonists (with slight British accents*) invite comparison with each other. There are some really interesting story telling in the differences between them.

 

It was very confusing that the people who measure how feminist a film is by trope counting, found TFA to be a feminist film due to Rey. Because for all that Rey is indeed a woman, she is a woman motivated almost entirely by her father figures. She starts out the movie scavenging so she can buy food from the patriach-merchant of the camp. She spends most of the movie bonding with and idealizing Han Solo as her new father figure. And she reaches her spiritual summit at the end when she finds Luke as her final father figure. For modern feminist pop culture, this strong female character sure does take the vast majority of her guidance and purpose from men.

(Presumably such critics found TFA to be feminist primarily because their political foes complained about it. That's not a very good metric for obvious reasons, but nor is trope-counting. Neither approach addresses the ideological logic of a story, and each can easily be a trap that leads you to endorse cynicism.)

Jyn in Rogue One certainly does not lack for father figures herself. The difference is that all of hers die. She must accept both the death and collaboration of her father Galen. She sees Saw, who raised her and abandoned her, die and ask her to carry on his mission. This all happens in the first half of the film. In these absence of these guiding lights, Jyn must determine her own identity and mission.

(Jyn does not even have the holocube of her father to check in with. There is a scene specifically to say she has nothing but her own memory to trust now, and to spread among the others.)

This has not only feminist implications, but spiritual ones as well.

***

SMG making predictions back in August of 2015

Rogue One works as a basic concept because you don't necessarily need to put Jesus and saints and prophets in your film for it to be a Christian film.
If anything, those elements can distract from the message. You get people following false prophets just because they talk a certain way and wear the right clothes.
In other words, Rogue One will about a bunch of people who believe in the Force, but none of them will be psychic mutants.

From Jyn's mother and her Kyber crystal necklace, to the badass Force-worshipping non-superpowered monk Chirrut, Rogue One did indeed turn out to be a movie about the Force without a bunch of midichlorian users to dazzle and distract us.

There is one Force user in Rogue One of course. He uses the Dark Side to kill helpless rebels at the end there. This creates a clear dichotomy between the Dark Side of power and death, and the absence of that which is faith and community.

On the other hand, TFA, with its father figures is also the movie that paints a muscular, violent Light Side, which is specifically named and used to control others, and visualized with these bright beams destroying dark orbs.

What we have here is two universes: one which worships an existing God, and one that is an atheist universe. The former promises guidance and certainty and equal power to that of your enemies so that you may crush them. The latter offers only responsibility and freedom (which are themselves one and the same.)

And in the latter, everyone dies, not even knowing if their mission ever succeeded. These hopeless moments recall some of the other greatest moments in the Star Wars story: Padme Amidala's defiant, acausal death, or Luke's suicidal leap into the pit above Bespin, or even the final Throne Room scene in Return of the Jedi.

Edit: Much better Zizek quote for this post:

"To put it in a somewhat simplified way — I simplify it very much, I know — there are two basic attitudes discernible in the history of religions along the axis of the opposition between the global and the universal: On the one hand, there is the pre-Christian pagan cosmos, the divine hierarchical order of cosmic principles which, when copied on the society, gives the image of a congruent edifice in which each member is at each/his/her own place. The supreme good is here the global balance of principles, while the evil stands for their derailment or derangement, for the excessive assertion of one principle to the detriment of other principles, of the masculine principle to the detriment of the feminine one, of reason to the detriment of feeling, and so on and so on. The cosmic balance is then reestablished through the work of justice which, with its inexorable necessity, sets things straight again by crushing the derailed element. With regard to the social body, an individual is good when he or she acts in accordance with his/her special place within the social edifice, when he respects nature which provides food and shelter, when he shows respect for his superiors who take care of him in a fatherly way, and so on and so on. And evil occurs when some particular strata or individuals are no longer satisfied with their proper place within the global order, when children no longer obey parents, when servants no longer obey their masters, when the wise ruler turns into a capricious, cruel tyrant, and so on. 

So the very core of the pagan wisdom resides in the insight into this cosmic balance of hierarchically ordered principles, more precisely, the insight into the eternal circuit of the cosmic catastrophe, derailment, and the restoration of order through just punishment. Perhaps the most elaborated case of such a cosmic order is the ancient Hindu cosmology first copied onto the social order in the guise of the system of castes, and then onto the individual organism itself in the guise of the harmonious hierarchy of its organs: head, hands, abdomen, and so on. Today such an attitude is artificially resuscitated in the multitude of New Age approaches to nature, society, and so on and so on. So that's the standard, traditional, pagan order. Again, being good means that you fully assume your proper place within some global order. But Christianity, and in its own way already — maybe, I'm not sure, I don't know enough about it — Buddhism, introduce into this global balance, cosmic order, a principle totally foreign to it, a principle that, measured by the standards of the pagan cosmology, cannot but appear as a monstrous distortion, the principle according to which each individual has an immediate access to the universality of nirvana, or the Holy Spirit, or today, of human rights and freedoms. The idea is that I can participate in this universal dimension directly, irrespective of my specific particular place within the global order."

Dicators Hate Giving Orders

There are a number of good recaps of what happened inside the White House last weekend [January 28 2016] as the Executive Order to bar immigrants from seven Muslim nations exploded, as Homeland Security Secretary Jim Kelly “clarified” the order to defang its worst parts.

The disagreement between Bannon and Kelly pitted a political operator against a military disciplinarian. Two administration officials gave the following account of their exchange: Respectfully but firmly, the retired general told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with President Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command. If the president wanted Kelly to back off from issuing the waiver, Kelly would have to hear it from the president directly, he told Bannon. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Kelly and Bannon spoke on Jan.

…

Trump didn’t call Kelly to tell him to hold off.

Kelly seems an experienced military officer in the concept of “managing up.” Normally a dictator (or even just a commanding boss) wants everyone to fall in line automatically, without them having to tell them to. That gap is filled by their toadies, who tell the frightened servants “this is what the boss wants”. This gives those toadies a great deal of power.

Actually giving the order from the Bossman himself… requires responsibility. It involves saying you stand behind this thing, that could turn good or bad. Insecure egos hate having to take a stand, when there’s no one to fall back on as an excuse, or to do the stand-taking for them while they nod approvingly.

This calls to mind some of the early chaotic disasters of the transition, where flunkies would call up the EPA demanding the name of everyone working on climate change, and when they exploded in the media, the Trump admin insisted it was just rogue operatives who certainly weren’t speaking for Trump.

This is how it works. The Bossman doesn’t ask for specific things, he just makes it clear that he wants results, and his general leanings, and that he will greatly reward and punish people based on how much they can produce. The flunkies has to guess what he wants. If it succeeds (ie, if it looks good in the media), he praises them and promotes them as people who “really get it” and “take initiative.” If someone tries something (like demanding a list from the EPA) that doesn’t work out, he yells at them for being an idiot and a traitor who was just doing stupid things without any authorization from the top.

This way, every time something goes right, it feeds his ego, and every time something goes wrong, its not his fault. Actually taking a concrete stand would introduce risk into what was previously a very comfortable stasis for the Supreme Leader.

He still says vague, good, bold-sounding things. And he still has to make some decisions; that’s unavoidable. But he avoids laying himself on the line as much as possible, and this leaves a lot of room for people who are willing to a) Do whatever they want until he explicitly stops them or b) Command whatever they want in his name.

---

This also offers illustration of what to do in the age of an authoritative state. Most of the commands won’t come in the form of direct orders (East Germany showed how incredibly expensive it is to actually monitor and order the entire country.) Instead there will be fear that the dictator wants something but no one knows what, and the person who says they know what the dictator wants gains a lot of power. Ignore them, do the minimum the state forces you to, and otherwise follow your own conscience.

Be less cowardly than the dictator.