I found some old scribbled notes – see photo. I can’t place the when or where (possibly Adelaide during a ‘Festival’ of Ideas) , but it doesn’t matter, because the pathology is there in Australia or the UK or – my hunch – any other “advanced” Western “democracy.”
People get together for what could be a dynamic, useful event, but thanks to various decisions and institutional (in every sense) norms, the organisers set it up as an “ego-fodder” event, where the attendees are not participants but instead an audience, fed into the mouths of the people at the front of the room, the “sages” (sic) on the stages.
Jabberwocky, btw, before we get to the retronym was an imaginary creature described by Lewis Carroll. It’s all nonsense (like the meetings)
Twas bryllyg, and þe slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in þe wabe:
All mimsy were þe borogoves;
And þe mome raths outgrabe.
So, finally, what’s the retronym?
Just
Another
Bloody
Boring
Egofodder
Ritual
With
Only
Cool
Kids
Yabbering.
The cost – in lost opportunities for connection, for insight – is so tragically high, but largely ignored. There are various reasons –
a) it’s a counter-factual, and who has the time for those?
b) organisers of events are mostly embedded in a “culture” (that’s almost tautological) and have limited appetite – and indeed cognitive or affective capacity (which is the polite way of saying they probably lack brains and/or spines) for innovation, even if they could see the problem and admit that it was one
c) innovation would force the organisers and their chums the Cool Kids out of their comfort zones, and deprive them of some of their narcissistic supply (okay, I may be overegging the pudding a bit. But not by much). For ore on the dynamics at play, see also – https://marchudson.net/2022/05/17/cher-incentive-structures-and-our-inevitable-doom/
So we are going to be stuck with J.A.B.B.E.R.W.O.C.K.Y until the end of human civilisation. On the upside, that’s not so long.
marchudson.net 
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