Low Red Cell Count
Trust is the lifeblood that keeps societies alive, and by extension, what keeps the lives of hundreds of millions of people from harm. Without trust, societies can't exist. You need to trust that your employer will honor your salary, your bank to keep your money safe, and your Angie's list-sourced plumber to not show up with an ax to chop your head off.
At the beginning of human existence, morals and reputation within the tribe represented a kind of currency of value, which was used to interact cooperatively and constructively to further the shared goals of survival. Trust, it can be argued, is behind human's success on this planet. As hunter-gatherer groups grew in size, our brains' mental capacities to assimilate and process trust maxed out. After all, keeping a mental score of the number of people that have betrayed you in the tribe reaches a limit (called the Dunbar number) fairly quickly. Due to this mental ceiling, humankind demographic growth was constricted.
But then the next generation of trust-building was invented: government and institutions. The great innovation consisted of outsourcing the mental score-keeping of remembering who to trust to a centralized entity. Not only the institution per se kept track of it, but also those who abode by the tenets embedded in those trusted institutions were --by implication-- trusted individuals. People could afford --at much less intellectual expense-- to trust the system imposed by the institution instead of every person individually.
But of course, an explicit agreement to uphold the institution's rules is required, or else none of this matter. Trust is, despite all, a bet on the future behavior on somebody else. And without that agreement, you're bound to lose your bet. By lending legitimacy to those institutions, we are in a way coaxed into obeying what those institutions dictate --a pledge of allegiance of sorts. A persuasion that keeps people from defecting, compelling them to act cooperatively for the proper functioning of society. When the behavior that's fomented by the institution entails acting against our own short term benefit for the benefit of a society as a whole, a high-functioning society reaches a stable equilibrium. We prosper. We no longer have to spend our day protecting our belongings from theft and are able to afford non-survivalist endeavors. Like writing a silly, boring blog.
Institutions are, hence, the lifeblood that keeps societies alive these days, and by extension, what keeps the lives of hundreds of millions of people from harm.
But then (first gradually and then suddenly) institutions became illegitimate. People started to withdraw their trust in them --mostly because of social media, if you ask me. Everyone started questioning them. Got pissed at them. Became toxic.
Reneging on them became the norm, not the exception. Shitting on them even became cool. And those who jumped on the "shit on institutions" wagon got popular. One even actually rode that wagon into the oval office. And things have been shaking ever since.
Institutions are not magical places that we imagine into existence. Yes, they need the allegiance of the people who believe in them, but they are also very tangible places of work, sweat and dedication. If institutions are the lifeblood of society, their red cells are the competent, honest people who run them. If institutions don't have them, they can't fulfill their goal. When people perceive that institutions can't fulfill their goals, they withdraw their vote of confidence from them. And an institution is nothing without the legitimacy that emanates from the trust of the people. Without it, the persuasion that keeps people from defecting dissolves, and anarchy ensues.
Turns out that this massively inexperienced administration, whose aim was "the deconstruction of the administrative state", is well on its way to deprive institutions --the lifeblood of society-- of their red cells. And in the process, risking the very legitimacy that summons them into existence. The hemorrhage is severe. Not just of cancerous, leukemia-ridden cells, but also of healthy, oxygen-rich ones.
And now we start to see (surprise!) that people don't want to work there anymore. The capable ones are running away, scared of the potential destruction of their future professional lives, while the only ones left are sycophants, opportunists, crooks, or incompetent, unprepared innocents incapable of calculating the costs of joining an utterly despised institution. Why joining an underpaid, underappreciated job in a place people hate?
The red cell count is going dangerously low, and I don't know if we are even aware that leukemia has set in.
At the beginning of human existence, morals and reputation within the tribe represented a kind of currency of value, which was used to interact cooperatively and constructively to further the shared goals of survival. Trust, it can be argued, is behind human's success on this planet. As hunter-gatherer groups grew in size, our brains' mental capacities to assimilate and process trust maxed out. After all, keeping a mental score of the number of people that have betrayed you in the tribe reaches a limit (called the Dunbar number) fairly quickly. Due to this mental ceiling, humankind demographic growth was constricted.
But then the next generation of trust-building was invented: government and institutions. The great innovation consisted of outsourcing the mental score-keeping of remembering who to trust to a centralized entity. Not only the institution per se kept track of it, but also those who abode by the tenets embedded in those trusted institutions were --by implication-- trusted individuals. People could afford --at much less intellectual expense-- to trust the system imposed by the institution instead of every person individually.
But of course, an explicit agreement to uphold the institution's rules is required, or else none of this matter. Trust is, despite all, a bet on the future behavior on somebody else. And without that agreement, you're bound to lose your bet. By lending legitimacy to those institutions, we are in a way coaxed into obeying what those institutions dictate --a pledge of allegiance of sorts. A persuasion that keeps people from defecting, compelling them to act cooperatively for the proper functioning of society. When the behavior that's fomented by the institution entails acting against our own short term benefit for the benefit of a society as a whole, a high-functioning society reaches a stable equilibrium. We prosper. We no longer have to spend our day protecting our belongings from theft and are able to afford non-survivalist endeavors. Like writing a silly, boring blog.
Institutions are, hence, the lifeblood that keeps societies alive these days, and by extension, what keeps the lives of hundreds of millions of people from harm.
But then (first gradually and then suddenly) institutions became illegitimate. People started to withdraw their trust in them --mostly because of social media, if you ask me. Everyone started questioning them. Got pissed at them. Became toxic.
Reneging on them became the norm, not the exception. Shitting on them even became cool. And those who jumped on the "shit on institutions" wagon got popular. One even actually rode that wagon into the oval office. And things have been shaking ever since.
Institutions are not magical places that we imagine into existence. Yes, they need the allegiance of the people who believe in them, but they are also very tangible places of work, sweat and dedication. If institutions are the lifeblood of society, their red cells are the competent, honest people who run them. If institutions don't have them, they can't fulfill their goal. When people perceive that institutions can't fulfill their goals, they withdraw their vote of confidence from them. And an institution is nothing without the legitimacy that emanates from the trust of the people. Without it, the persuasion that keeps people from defecting dissolves, and anarchy ensues.
Turns out that this massively inexperienced administration, whose aim was "the deconstruction of the administrative state", is well on its way to deprive institutions --the lifeblood of society-- of their red cells. And in the process, risking the very legitimacy that summons them into existence. The hemorrhage is severe. Not just of cancerous, leukemia-ridden cells, but also of healthy, oxygen-rich ones.
And now we start to see (surprise!) that people don't want to work there anymore. The capable ones are running away, scared of the potential destruction of their future professional lives, while the only ones left are sycophants, opportunists, crooks, or incompetent, unprepared innocents incapable of calculating the costs of joining an utterly despised institution. Why joining an underpaid, underappreciated job in a place people hate?
The red cell count is going dangerously low, and I don't know if we are even aware that leukemia has set in.
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