In the first installment of this two-part effort, I described how social systems can become ossified and maintain an inwardly-focused culture that rests upon assumptions that are no longer warranted.
I will now describe, in turn:
- how quality is inevitably sucked out of such a system;
- how the system enters a competitive relationship with mounting alternatives;
- what happens when the creatives jump ship to join alternatives.
Again, it can be helpful to read this while keeping in mind your favorite obsolete institution in order to map the general to the specific. The model is purposely scale-invariant: with suitable mappings, it could be applied, say, to a modest Ponzi scheme or to society-wide phenomena.
5. Hollowing Out - "Then they laugh at you"
The emergence phase (#4) saw the free radicals made themselves known. In the hollowing out phase, a new category of people, which we will call the aesthetes, begin jumping ship.
These people are the seekers of quality. They gave the system a chance, but early on in its decline, usually without anybody else telling them, they recognized that something was amiss. They have a good nose for staleness, and they can't bear the stink.
These people head for the exit before the smell becomes obvious to everyone else. Such moves are typically met with puzzlement and derision from people who still adhere to the shared culture and can't see what they see.
Together, free radicals and aesthetes begin to form alternative social systems on the margins or outside of the mainstream system. I don’t mean that they necessarily go out and build cabins in the woods; this kind of activity can be pursued as a hobby of sorts.
The alternative systems they create -- clubs, really -- effectively operate as protected spaces or proto-organizations. Each is a scenius that affords members the ability to get to work building coherent languages around new assumptions. This scaffolding will eventually provide the basis for alternative countercultures.
Jumping the shark...
The social phenomenon known as evaporative cooling is at work here; with each aesthete’s departure, the mainstream system's level of cluefulness is diminished. Its institutions become hollow: they still maintain a facade and an unchanged internal structure, but quality has left the building and vacuity has taken its place. Whether people still on the inside believe it or not, the system is running on empty.
The roles of institutions now begin to undergo a reversal: for instance, regulators are actually rewarded for not regulating; Quality assessment organizations serve to conceal quality deficits; sanctioned risk assessors are employed to hide risk, rather than ferret it out. Competent people are actively sidetracked or driven out at this stage. Perverse incentives kick in. The worst career faux pas you can make as a mainstreamer is to tell the truth.
6. Self-organization - "Then they fight you"
After a certain time, proto-organizations become undeniably visible to the mainstream. Because of their coherence and freshness, they begin to actively compete for talent with the social system to which they are a reaction.
The point where alternative systems pick up a significant proportion of new recruits is a significant one: it is the first time actual pain is experienced in the mainstream system, because it begins to shrink, as new recruits are not numerous enough to replace the exits.
For the mainstream system, being starved of fresh blood is really bad news for two reasons.
First, because new people are typically more creative and enthusiastic, they significantly increase a system's ability to adapt. In their absence, the system becomes even more rigid.
Second, the system has gotten used to calling upon recruits to do most of the work necessary to maintain the system; if there is no one to renew the bottom layer, the only thing it can do is to begin squeezing the existing members, something it has never had to do. This unfortunately turns them from satisfied participants into bitter losers, moving them closer to the exit.
The empire strikes back...
Now, the system won't go down so easily. It has to react, and it will react. To this end it can deploy two main weapons, namely, cooptation and propaganda.
Cooptation is what happens to a proto-organization when the mainstream system is able to subtly assimilate it, in such a way that its facade remains but its action is largely rendered ineffectual. The proto-organization becomes a honeypot to get recruits to believe they are building alternatives while ensuring they are actually not doing anything that matters.
Because the system still has a quite powerful attraction, cooptation is actually the typical course for most proto-organizations. However, some of them turn out to be uncooptable: a fundamental incompatibility exists between their cultural DNA and the mainstream DNA. In such cases, it is not just what the proto-organization says, but how it operates at the fundamental level that challenges the mainstream system.
Propaganda also has to enter the stage if the mainstream system is to maintain itself in the face of thriving alternatives. The system has to maintain the illusion that everything is still all right at the ranch, and that the alternatives are but a flash in the pan.
The creatives are absolutely central players on the propaganda stage. Only by harnessing the creatives' power is it possible to keep inventing convincing stories that will circulate and (1) prop up confidence within the system, and (2) spread fear, uncertainty and doubt towards the alternatives.
Retaining the creatives is of paramount importance. Should they drop out of the system en masse, the veil would fall and everybody would know the game is nearly over for the original culture.
7. New Stories
The emergence of alternatives that attract talent pushes the mainstream system into a downward spiral.
Here's a metaphor to describe the situation as the system is starved of resources and inching towards extinction. Picture a ten-floor building, with self-interested people on every floor, and with rope ladders between floors.
Now imagine the building is steadily filling with water, with no signs of stopping. Moreover, there is no way the roof can accommodate everyone.
What do you think will happen? In the interest of self-preservation, if at all possible, people will do their best to climb up. But more importantly, people on every floor will pull out the ladder between themselves and the floor below. (Remember, this is a complicated, rigid system, with few out-of-the-box thinkers, and there is little time to react.)
A tipping point is reached when (metaphorically) the water starts flooding the creatives’ floor. Things that they deeply care about are now overtly being sacrificed.
This is the critical juncture where the creatives stop spinning the old story and start telling new, and vastly more convincing stories. As these stories circulate and gain traction, the erroneous foundational assumption in the mainstream system is finally revealed to all to be unwarranted. The whole system experiences a Wile E. Coyote moment: it stops running, and realizes there is no longer any ground beneath it.
And then everyone else jumps ship.
8. Renaissance - "then you win"
Nature abhors a vacuum, but culture does just as well, so it doesn't take long before people grasp onto new assumptions that are hopefully more in tune with contemporary reality.
Between the existing proto-organizations, common ground is found: new, deep, shared principles that people can believe in and upon which it is possible to build. As agreements spread out, they can then serve as a basis for growing the next mainstream culture.
This phase is obviously very rich, but I've said enough for today; I will go into this in future posts.
Acknowledgement: this post was written under the influence of Xianhang Zhang's writings.
