On Process and Principle, or Why Does Every Fantasy Novel Have A King?

[chris_gerrib]

The proprietor over at Gin and Tacos notes that Americans say they have political principles but really they don't. For example, we should have free speech, but you shouldn't criticize the government during wartime. Or, everybody deserves a fair trial except that guy everybody knows planted a bomb in a crowd.

It's not really principle that Americans (and people generally) don't like, it's process. Trials are slow and messy affairs, and mostly boring. Allowing free speech means you have to put up with people saying things you don't want to hear. Limits on search and seizure inevitably means some guilty people walk, and are inherently inefficient. After all, the cop's got to stop and get a warrant, and that takes time.

We humans, or at least a majority of us, don't like process. The minority of people that do like it we call "born bureaucrats" and dismiss with a sniff of an uplifted nose. Process just gets in the way.

Now, I came to this thought because I read an article (lost in my filing system) about how superhero movies teach us to wait for a white knight to save us. Well, if you watch those movies, a white knight is needed because the hapless bureaucrats can't handle the situation.

Similarly in fiction. Heroes (even my own in Pirates of Mars) frequently go outside the system to solve the problem. We humans like that because we don't like the system! Humans actually like a strong leader to come forth and say "this is what we're going to do," not "let's form a committee and hash this out." Thus, royalty in fantasy novels. Again, from my own experience, for a while Mars was going to be the Kingdom of Mars - I just couldn't figure out how to plausibly make that happen.

But the sad truth is that humans need process. People are in fact wrongly charged with crimes. A political decision that's good for me isn't good for somebody else, and so we do need to form a committee and hash it out. It's like eating your vegetables - we don't like it but we all have to.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Yes, but this was the basis of the “tyrant” concept - originally just a term, as Giver-of-Orders, Imperator, became Emperor. Process is fine when the status is quo - this is what process is for, and what it's designed for.

When it all drops in the pot, there's no time for such fiddle-faddle, and slavish adherence to it can be stupidly self-defeating. [Remember the supply sergeant who refused to release live ammo without the proper authorization and statement-of-intended-use form filled out and signed by the CO. A roolza rool - even if he had to shout to be heard over the Japanese bombs falling there on 7 December 1941, still a roolza rool!]

So you put someone in charge and give him literally overruling power, and sort out the mess later!

- This was, I'm sure you recall, the core funxction of Cordwainer Smith's “Lords of the Instrumentality” - they could do anything they deemed necessary to solve a problem, with the understanding that they would be killed for it if their solution didn't work out. If it worked, well, okay. “We can repopulate the planet later, when the weather systems calm down.”

The only reason this didn't work historically is that the tyrant felt no ethical obligation to step down again, but instead was a one-man Ratchet Effect. As Gen. A Haig said, “I'M in charge now!”

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Istm that there will always be at least a small percent of 'edge cases' which even the best designed and implemented routine process will not be able to handle, for one reason or another. Of course ideally that edge will keep being pushed back; what was a far outlier occurance in one decade, may be routinely handled in the next. (Eg, gay and/or trans people coming out and demanding spousal benefits.)

Chris, do you think the majority dislikes any and all process, per se? Or just processes that don't fit the current near-edge situation/s, or are inefficient, or corrupt, etc?

Of course there are bad reasons for disliking a good process, too. (Eg, organizers of a mob wanting to lynch someone before tempers cool, even when a trial is scheduled and there is no urgency in the actual situation.)

As for an ad hoc tyrant who refuses to quit post hoc, a really well-designed process would both allow for calling him and have as default a limit on his term.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

I think a majority of people dislike processes, full stop. This dislike varies greatly in intensity depending on factors from the (perceived) efficiency of the process and the (perceived) need for it.

A guy that was hit by somebody running a red light is all in favor of traffic laws. Somebody who got a ticket for running a red light in a wide-open intersection isn't.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the old saying, “A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged,” with the obverse, “a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.” In truth, a number of straight-edge hard-core John Birch types found themselves rethinking the issue when it was their own sons who came out as gay or got arrested for possession of seeds. “There oughtta be a law!” isn't always true.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

Imo it's a literary necessity, at least in popular adventure literature. When an event is routine, fits the procedures just fine, it doesn't make much of a story. Unless the procedures themselves are SFnl (Bones, CSI) -- or you're early Ed McBain. And didn't he eventually resort to quite odd villains to make the story interesting?

In real life--.

Woops, real life is calling. BBL.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a lot of military SF and a whole subgenre of mysteries (police procedurals, and Ed McBain isn't the only one in that group) where the procedures work just fine.