change and tamper monkeys

(via amazon dot com)

It’s true that saktra is all too prone not only to revisit the same restaurant every time, but even to sit in the same chair at the same table, & order the exact same item on the menu. Nevertheless, this is more about an internal sense of the order of the world, than attachment to actual places or things. At odds with this intransigence, seemingly trivial, stands an army of agents of change: sheer randomness, entropic deterioration (resisting this is, alas, not even in favor, often enough, among neurotypicals, who you’d think would like to have their Great Machine run, if not elegantly, at least with unimpaired forward motion--), but most of all by the incessant compulsive activity of a small class of humans i will henceforward refer to as "tamper monkeys".

Their salient trait is an irritation with, not just the rules of the status quo, but its very arrangement. Now, saktra is in favor of any change, even a radical one, so long as it makes the situation better (--or is this just an INTJ trait?...must consider). But why spend hours moving furniture around in a room whose functions & contents will remain unaltered afterwards? Well, the itch will have been scratched. For the moment.

Saktra is apt to feel irrationally persecuted by such spasms. They occur in corporate contexts under the guise of “restructuring” & the like; when not a covert assault upon jobs, pay, or privileges, they often occur when someone who has been undeservedly empowered with such options starts moving colored squares around on a computer screen. Why they can’t be content with video games is beyond me. (Probably it comes from a subconscious realization of being otherwise useless.) Do tamper monkeys serve a real purpose in the scheme of things?

Yes. Because the people with good ideas are not going to be listened to, social evolution depends upon tamper-monkey innovation as the single motor of progress.

The Kludge

The word “kludge” originated in computer programming & remains a useful way of describing the typical company programs that long ago escaped the comprehension of their users, so many have been the hired tinkerers & so scanty has been the window of taking time to figure out the actual relations of every part. A kludge is like a patchwork quilt too big to see all of at once. Supremely inelegant, yet for the purpose supremely essential, even in this form, as long as it works.

It recently occurred to me that not only is the Law—our body of laws—a sort of super-kludge (one where no one understands it all, & the difference between what one lawyer knows & what another lawyer knows may equal defeat or victory), just about any human tradition is as well; & furthermore, that this is one of our core human characteristics (at least as neurotypicals). When a critic examines “The Novel” it is to the super-kludge of the majority of novel-like books written, that he refers. (No one has read them all.) An explosion of originality in one area may trigger unfathomable repercussions all over the entire network… And of course, each one is read, in part, for what it says in its place among the others.

But we seldom actually talk about about kludge-ness, instead of its icons. It would be to add a counter representing the unknown, to the counters in the game of knowns. Then saktra comes to the game, not only not knowing kludge-ness but expecting, what? Things to be done for a reason? You go & play the game according to your own lights. The result somehow doesn’t refer back enough. It needs some of those invisible tokens added.

And knowing that you work—even as an artist in isolation—within a context that will be perceived as the evolving kludge: not saying so, says something you may or may not intend. Something that for many, at first, will be the only thing they hear in it.