Institutionalized Cowardice¶

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Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.

— Frank Herbert

The words conservative and liberal are thrown around with little thought to their underlying meaning. Instead they form divisions between people and ideals by ascribing generalized labels. The reality is that there are very few people who aren’t deeply conservative.

Seeming acts of bravery are often the result of deep unrecognized fear; the fear of chaos. This deeper fear is strong and insidious enough to drive people to personal risk because their fear of chaos is stronger than their more immediate fears. They unknowingly cow to fear of chaos under the guise of bravery.

One need only look to institutions to see how they exploit this fear to tame and weaken those who choose to dwell within the system. They create re-enforcing values which are practiced as tradition. Laws or rules govern adherence to the system. Protection of the system and its stability is regarded as “bravery”. Faith in the system itself is the bulwark against chaos and the best institutions allow people to forget that chaos exists. To live within the promised stability, one need only give themselves to the traditions of the institution, sign the contract of obedience, regard threats to that stability as the enemy, and to bathe themselves in the glory of that which protects them from their own secret fears of uncertainty and chaos. An institution must reinforce the idea that such modes of thought are good and that opposing modes are not.

Consider any human system. It is invented. Every system reflects in some way the values and idealism of the person or persons that gave it shape. By adopting it you reinforce it’s perpetuation through your own adherence. Individuality is inversely proportional to the emotional reservoir lurking in the members of the system. Threats to the system in the weakest members will invoke anger, hatred, pride, and disgust. These are easy emotions used by systems to perpetuate. One may identify these adherents by their inability to regulate their own emotions. They know the ground they stand upon is adopted and on some level they know the stability of such ground depends on adherence to it. It is easy to identify such patterns of thought:

It’s too dangerous!
We should go back to what we know works.
This problem didn’t exist before.
We need to know this will work before we try it.
At least we know this works.
Let’s get together for more research and reports.
I can’t, I have duties and responsibilities.

For there to be any structure, any stability, any order, one must pull something finite out of infinity and organize it. A sufficiently nuanced and complex system gives rise to it’s own meaning in a tautological sense, and is capable of shielding it’s constituent parts from most interaction with the chaos from which it was chiseled. There is a catch though; in ignoring the chaos, setting it aside and perpetuating the conceits upon which order so comfortably rests, the chaos will always eventually erode any stability. Chaos will always eventually win.

Long lasting systems strike a balance between change and stability, but there is a tendency over time to move away from change in vain attempts at perpetuation. This is the biggest unseen risk for any system. Systems offer stability to their constituency, but when the constituency becomes acclimated to stability it resists the change necessary for the system to persist. Institutions invariably poison themselves by championing a mode of operation predicated on the lie that the original stability is reliable and that any problems of stability rest solely within actions that fail to reinforce the original system. One can always recognize a weakening system because it recognizes it itself. The stronger the aversion to shifts within the system, the more inherently unstable the institution is, no matter how it may appear superficially. The constituent parts respond to any weakening by attempting to reinforce past iterations or preventing new iterations. They fear it’s change weakening the system, never realizing that the cause is the response to the change and not the change itself.

Many adolescents recoil at the fear driven conservationism expressed by their older peers. Yet as they age, most forget this lesson and become risk-adverse, hesitating, researching, and studying. They form groups to ponder issues or seek to become a cog in existing bureaucracy. They seek a way forward before moving. They are biased to inaction. Peoples identities are so wrapped up in what is that they fear change itself. They believe they have become wise. Many even fear questioning the system that gives them their sense of stability and in doing so suppress another forgotten aspect of human nature:

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For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival. Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game—none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our powers to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few—drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.

— Carl Sagan

You who call yourself a liberal need only cast a wary and uncompromising eye upon yourself to see the conceit inherent in your own mode of being. The liberal clings just as fervently to inaction and existing systems, to bureaucracy and foundations. They seek stability as much as any other fear driven person does. The same rationalizations hold true for the politically labeled liberal and conservative. “It’s not always the case that stability is bad.”, “There needs to be some ground to stand on”, and so on. The conceit is deeply rooted in our own sense of identity.

Make no mistake, the fears are well founded. In chaos and uncertainty there is much risk. Peoples sense of self and identity are predicated on there being some kind of order and the experience of chaos would be a dissolution of ones self. The venture into uncertainty is fraught with the risk of this dissolution. People make what they think is a calculated judgment; that the cost-benefit analysis simply doesn’t work out. How foolish! They presume to know the variables when by definition almost all of the information necessary to make such a decision is unknowable at the moment of decision. Yet calculate they do, confident in their judgment. Few can really stand at the precipice of a truly unknown abyss and leap.

The truly liberated self is a person for whom motivation is not based on allegiance to any system. Oh, they may adopt one for a time as pragmatism dictates, but they are operating on their own motivations. Don’t delude yourself though! Most think this of themselves without realizing their loyalty has been bought and paid for by keeping that pesky chaos at bay. People revere those who step boldly out into the unknown and imbue them with such reverie that they fail to understand the lesson such people teach: There is value in embracing disorder, in moving beyond the safe and known out into the chaos of existence. Fear leads to mediocrity and stagnation and a penchant for safety.