First things first. If in five years’ time anyone thinks that what is aerating everyone today will be remembered as significant, I will eat my hat (1). I think part of our (my) fascination with what is unfolding is only in part a “they cannot be that incompetent, can they?” reaction (2): it is more that it means we don’t have to confront what actually matters. What’s that? I’m glad you asked.
The planet is burning up. Our agricultural systems are not going to cope. When people can’t eat, shit gets extremely real.
It’s all too depressing, and we (3) are all too culpable for either failure to (i) acknowledge the problem, or (ii) be decent activists. In the face of that depressing and guilt-inducing horror, we have our displacement activities (4): Sunak and D-day and all the fascinated outrage.
On to the Borg and Brexit. Brexit first. See the FT article (paywall) about the downward trend in Tory support, and especially the most recommended comments. As someone points out, Brexit acted a selection pressure. If you thought it was stupid, or if you weren’t loyal to Boris, you were out. As babaganoushuk puts it so succintly.
Indeed. Another contributing factor to the 2019 inflection point is the Johnsonian purge of the competent wing of the party, and the over-promotion of bootlickers.
Which brings me to the Borg. They are a computerised Big Bad from Star Trek: The Next Generation. There’s an episode I first saw in May 1992, and recently re-watched (it stands up) where an isolated Borg is captured. Captain Picard asks his team to cook up a virus, put it in “Hugh” and release him to be found and re-integrated into the Borg. They come up with an idea and then there is this dialogue.
PICARD: How can a geometric form disable a computer system?
DATA: The shape is a paradox, sir. It cannot exist in real space or time.
LAFORGE: When Hugh’s imaging apparatus imprints this on his biochips, he’ll try to analyse it.
DATA: He will be unsuccessful, and will store the shape in his memory banks. It will be shunted to a subroutine for further analysis.
LAFORGE: Then when the Borg download his memory, it’ll be incorporated it into their network, then they’ll try to analyse it.
DATA: It is designed so that each approach they take will spawn an anomalous solution. The anomalies are designed to interact with each other, linking together to form an endless and unsolvable puzzle.
PICARD: Quite original. How long before a total systems failure?
LAFORGE: Not until the shape has gone through several hundred computational cycles.
So, I want to say that Brexit was the anomalous shape that has worked its way through several electoral cycles and has now killed the Tory party (as we now know it – it will mutate, obvs.)
That’s fine. Only trouble is, the same scene from Star Trek works for humans and climate change. It’s something we can’t “see”, can’t deal with, that is growing, ramifying, driving us mad and will kill us all.
Oh well, fun while it lasted, I guess.
Footnotes
(1) I don’t wear a hat.
(2) Why yes, yes they can. Never ascribe to conspiracy (“Sunak wants to lose so he can piss off to California”/”Sunak is being set up as the fall guy by Dark Forces”) what can be ascribed to stupidity. Occam and all that.
(3) The we pronoun as blame-spreader is a topic for another blog. Short version – the more money, education, free time, access to information you have [distinct from your willingness to process it], the more guilt you have.
(4) Fun fact. In 1989 I put habits into a rat (a hooded Wistar). We taught it that pressing a lever meant it got a food pellet. Once we embedded that, we reduced the frequency of pellets, inducing confusion/stress. The rat started grooming compulsively. This is known as a “displacement activity.” Fortunately humans are far far smarter than rats and never ever ever engage in comparable activities.
marchudson.net 
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