Culture

The Responsibility Machine

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’ve been preaching the virtues of the book The Unaccountability Machine to the point I bought copies to give people for Christmas. You, my regular readers, shall be spared anything but a reminder – it’s about how organizations go insane following simplistic ideas and shield leadership from accountability. I mean I’m still going to talk about it, but I’ll be taking a new tact and pushing it less.

The thing is someone has to take responsibility in governments, companies, etc.. If everyone goes hands off, everyone dodges responsibility, the organization will continue to fall into insanity. Backside-covering does a lot to keep an organization going, but the insanity will predominate. The organization might fall apart, get bought out, get sold, become completely financialized, etc.

I’d wager we’re going to see a lot of that in the next decade or two. We’ve already seen it from the Tories in the UK to Sears.

But anyway someone has to take responsibility. That means, ironically, the more Unaccountability in a system, the more there has to be some responsibility. The Unaccountability Machine is also a Responsibility Machine. People need to step in to do the right thing, even as others don’t.

You’ve probably been there. You might be the person who is the Responsible one – come to think of it, if you’re one of my subscribers, you probably are.

This Taking of Responsibility can happen for a number of reasons. Some people just can’t stand to see things done wrong. Others like a challenge. Others really care about the system. People have a certain responsible streak in them, if only out of sheer irritation of seeing something done wrong.

This urge to take Responsibility isn’t necessarily benevolent either. A chance to take Responsibility can be a chance to advance in one’s career – to where one can finally enjoy the benefits of Unaccountability. Responsibility can be a way to angle for a raise or bonuses. It can be a way to show off or put someone in their place. Don’t assume everyone rushing to prop up the various bad decisions in an organization is motivated by principle.

But the key thing is there’s only so many heroes and opportunists at any organization. It also means that unless the payoff they want – from seeing something work to a fat raise – needs to be coming. If it doesn’t come, there’s going to be less and less people taking Responsibility and more giving up or even seeking areas of Unaccountability

And no one can cause more damage or grift the system better than someone that actually knows how stuff works – and gave up. They’re also the ones that warn others to not fall into the Responsibility trap or to not even get hired or join up. Even the more evil of the once-Responsible types don’t want any competition.

However the people enjoying Unaccountability can coast on those taking Responsibility long enough to get a payout and leave.

So if we wonder how organizations persist when they’ve gone insane with Unaccountability (beyond money and influence), look for the people who are being Responsible. If you can’t find any then you may want to stop looking and get away.

Take a look at the world now and think that over.

Steven Savage

Dungeons, Dragons, The Internet, Simplicity

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’d like to discuss Dungeons and Dragons and the internet, and not just in the many incredibly nerdy ways I could. Dungeons and Dragons gives us an idea of the mechanics that could help make the internet useful again, as opposed to a bastion of advertising and bad comments.

Trust me on this.

So let’s talk Dungeons and Dragons, that game that pretty much launched Role-Playing Games as A Big Thing. It’s popular,and let us be honest, it’s terribly overcomplicated as befits something that originated in war games. I was there playing it in the 80s, and the critique has always been accurate.

Also I remember when a Paladin could roll a horse that was smarter than them.

A funny thing is Dungeons and Dragons and what it inspired also inspired wonderfully streamlined game systems. My favorite are the open-sourced Forged In The Dark system. The foundation Blades In the Dark showcases a streamlined system for a dark steampunk fantasy. The space adventure game Scum and Villainy combined various tropes, and made the inevitable starship a character. The game Wicked Ones inverted generic fantasy so people play monsters, and did everything from making a simple magic system to envisioning the messy idea of “followers” as “secondary characters.”

Forged In The Dark and it’s children got to the basics of what an RPG was, what people wanted, and made straightforward, playable games. If you haven’t checked out the system, do!

The thing is these streamlined, effective, precise games probably wouldn’t have existed without Dungeons and Dragons and its spinoffs. You needed complicated spell systems to realize “maybe this could be easier.” Complicated piles of various dice seem fun, but also lead one to wondering “could it just be six-sided dice?” Maybe you need levels, skills, saving throws, and so on to get the Forged In The Dark concept where characters are defined by “Actions” – general abilities like “Finesse” or “Science.”

Now the internet itself is terribly over complicated – and deliberately so to extract more income for various companies. It’s a simple thing that evolved to have layer and layer and layer on it, leaving us now in a world that’s called “Web 3.0.” But out of this overdone world maybe there’s a clue to what we actually want – we can learn from the pile of what we don’t want.

Mastodon is nice, and I am all for federation, but maybe Twitter was needed to give us ideas of what to do – and not do.. There’s a lovely Fediverse book review sharing program and video sharing, and so on. People are rediscovering RSS and even think of new ways to use it as the web drowns in crap. The excess gives us ideas, sometimes the idea is “maybe we shouldn’t have done that” – I mean there’s a reason I still send out a cut-and-paste-addresses email newsletter.

So for all the horrible stuff we’re dealing with, we can also ask what worked and what we wanted – and what we didn’t. We probably needed to ask that about ten years ago as a society, but at least we can do what we can now. We ask what we want, how to get it simply, and how to make it work for everyone.

It’s a bigger game to play, but we can find the best rules – and we can drop what we don’t need.

Steven Savage

Six Further Thoughts On Not Being Serious

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’m still processing my thoughts over Ted Giola’s post about how the US and maybe Western society isn’t serious anymore. It’s all watered down, performative, targeted, and just weirdly empty. When I posted my own blog post on the subject, my friends and readers had feedback. I figure I’d round that up – and these might become columns on their own.

So to reiterate, Giola felt our culture lacked seriousness, and I agreed – we’re doing things that aren’t what they say we are, in a performative existence. Combined with capitalism which rewards knowing how to Push The Money Button, and it’s a toxic mix.

So here’s a few things I wanted to explore after hearing from people:

Good Unseriousness: Is it always good to be serious, can’t we be funny or have fun? I’d say that you can be funny and serious (George Carlin, Terry Pratchett), and sometimes the best funny is one with a grounding that is serious and all-too real. I’d also add that FUN might not be serious but it’s also not a lack of seriousness – what Giola targets is a deliberate unseriousness.

Lack of Agency: How often do we lack Agency, so why be serious in the first place? This is a fascinating thought because I “get it” instinctively – and I think there’s something true here. If you feel helpless, all the “serious people” are screwing around and lying, does anything matter? Then you end up with a kind of toxic, spreading, unseriousness.

Curation: We’re not trained in curating, checking facts, and so on. This leaves us to an onslaught of bullshit from politicians, mediocre media, and more. Even if we want to deal with things seriously, it’s hard to sort it out – and exhausting. Which leads to Lack of Agency . . .

Speed: Our culture and time move so fast that it’s hard to keep up with anything. We’ve not just got a lot of media and news, it’s all coming fast. It’s easy to get caught up in something unserious, it keeps us from cultivating, and maybe at some point we just give up. It’s also hard to pay attention to what’s right in front of us.

Misuse of Unseriousness: We’re also used to a very bullying culture that chides people for not being able to take jokes that are just disguised abuse. “Can’t you take a joke” is endemic in our culture, and horrible things can be both serious and not at the same time. This just distorts what’s serious and not – and maybe even the manipulators aren’t sure anymore. The Serious and Unserious become harder to separate.

Fear: This is a conclusion of my own – unseriousness for all its problems also can be due to fear. People are afraid to confront our climate issues. A second generation millionaire faces the fact they might only be there due to birth, not any skill. Politics is insanely complex. Confronting the world we live in is hard and unseriousness is both a tool to cover up your failings but also a possible reaction. Many a political figure has a crackling fear running beneath their worlds, you can feel it, but it seems they can’t.

So those are a few thoughts from some great dialog with friends and readers – and hopefully food for thought for you. I honestly do think we’re in a crisis of seriousness in the world, and its making everything worse. But it’s not as simple as it may seem, so exploring it, well, is serious business.

Steven Savage