Marcus' description reminds me of stalk formation in slime moulds (*wink* to Nick). It is the image of individuals motivated to fashion themselves into a structural component, one that acts as an administrative *ice-nine*, management as *grey goo*. Further, he imagines these *altruists* (those willing to be the body) as being predisposed to select for the consensus-oriented over the unfriendly. I appreciate his insight.
At the moment, I am listening to a DW documentary on inequality, how wealth becomes power[1]. The documentary mentions a paradigm shift in finance away from labour and towards investment, and mentions that very few in the world can profitably take part in this economic rebirth. What the shift indicates, to my mostly ignorant ear, is a recognition that we are leaving a stage in the world where resources are available and now the future will go to whoever can hold assets. This piece of the stalk formation model is either missing or latent in Marcus' description. It seems important to me to ask why we see this behaviour and in such abundance (the behaviour of those so strongly inclined to be the body that they are willing to contribute to the death of an institutions function). I speculate that it is worth considering whether or not perceived scarcity (resources, wealth, liberty to do otherwise) is a significant driver of this stalk formation mechanism. If so, then my hope is that there are ways to frame the problem such that there are actions to solve it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIxi7BiScI&ab_channel=DWDocumentary -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
