User:Joe Roe/The Wall
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In
uncut rocks roughly mortared: the natural human desire to do what society asks of you, a deference to the "way things are done" that ossifies into bureaucracy, cliques that accumulate power because others allow them to, and above all the fear of the disapproval of your neighbours. Ultimately, the protagonist concludes that his society can only fully realise its founding principles if its members actively and consciously resist the Wall.
We don't like to admit it, but Wikipedia is an anarchist project. Starting with a
A machine, a power machine, controlled by bureaucrats!
“ | "He has power over you. Where does he get it from? Not from vested authority, there isn’t any. Not from intellectual excellence, he hasn’t any. He gets it from the innate cowardice of the average human mind. Public opinion! That’s the power structure he’s part of, and knows how to use. The unadmitted, inadmissible government that rules the Odonian society by stifling the individual mind. | ” |
— Bedap, The Dispossessed |
Wikipedia has a
This repeated exposure to rules tends to erode your sense of perspective. Where you might have first approached them with a sense that it's all a bit silly, really (seemingly encouraged by pithy mantras like
In reality, Wikipedia has many good rules: foresighted principles from our founding editorship, sharpened by two decades of use, refinement and debate. It also has reams of terrible rules: hastily tossed out ideas that happened to stick to the wall because nobody was paying much attention. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell the difference between them. As a result, any attempt to change the rules faces tremendous inertia in favour of the status quo, as (over)socialised editors default to their instinct to protect "the way things are done". Unsurprisingly, this means that very little has changed for many years now.
A practical way to resist this tendency towards bureaucracy is to disrespect the status quo. That is, consciously adopt the opposite stance to that of the oversocialised editor and, when asked "should we change this?", say "yes" until you're convinced otherwise. After all, if we can ignore all rules, how much harm can changing them do?
Resisting the Wall
To summarise, to resist the tendency of anarchistic systems to backslide:
- Respect nonconformity
- Disrespect the status quo
- Shun cliques
- Embrace outsiders (don't circle the wagons)
- Treat ostracism as a last resort