… and the hope of the high-commitment, all-in, lock-yourself-in-a-box model was that people would chafe within the frame, without making moves to destroy the frame itself. i.e., once “stuck,” things like Adom’s dissatisfaction or sense of wasted time would propel him to push things in more productive directions, become more present with the group, make needs known, start making trades, etc., and then we’d iterate toward something better.
But this requires something that I and the house and Adom did not manage to synch up on, whether it’s a tight enough box, or a sufficiently high level of ground safety and trust, or individual self-discipline, or what.
(above I’m trying to avoid assigning specific fault because I don’t actually know which billiard balls bouncing around in the system led to the result we got; it’s plausible that this specific case is all my fault or all Adom’s fault or part of each or split between me and Adom and the rest of the house or influenced by outside factors etc. etc. etc.)
But this requires something that I and the house and Adom did not manage to synch up on, whether it’s a tight enough box, or a sufficiently high level of ground safety and trust, or individual self-discipline, or what.
There’s a feeling I’ve been playing with over the last year whose True Name is something like “I would follow this man into battle.”
I think many people nowadays have pretty screwy relationships with authority due to having spent a lot of time being forced to submit to authority figures that they didn’t choose or respect (e.g. parents, random teachers in school), but that in principle a much healthier relationship is possible. Nearly the only example I can easily find and point to of this dynamic is fictional: it’s the way Rider from Fate/Zero interacts with his army. When you respect / love / whatever your commander enough, things you are doing on their behalf should not feel in any way like impositions / homework, they should roughly feel like things you do for your romantic partners but with a different emotional tone.
I would wildly guess that the basic emotional alignment with the commander necessary to get something like Dragon Army to work is that 1) every member feels this way towards the commander, and 2) this fact is common knowledge. Unfortunately if you don’t have a reference experience for what “I would follow this man into battle” feels like, you have no idea how to tell whether you’re feeling it or not. I’m fairly confident I never felt this feeling before the last year, and although I now think I’ve felt a few weak versions of it I’d guess I haven’t felt it at anywhere near full strength.
In addition to safety and contact, another dynamic was that I was generally not S1 expecting much value to come out of Dragon Army, so chafing more within the system seemed like pain, effort, and time spent for little expected gain.
Stag hunts, anyone?
Edit: Though, I will note that it can be hard to find the space between “I’m damaging the group by excluding my optimization power from the process” and “I’m being a Red Knight here and should be game for whatever the commander decides.” It may seem like the obvious split is “expressive in discussion and game in the field” but discussion time is actually really valuable. So it seems like the actual thing is “be game until the cost to you becomes great enough that something needs to change”. If you reduce the minimum size of misfit enough, then it becomes intractable to deal with everyone’s needs. But then you have to figure out if a recent failure was a result of things being seriously broken or just a sign that you need to Be Better in some operationalized and “doable” way. When do you bring up the problem? It’s hard.
… and the hope of the high-commitment, all-in, lock-yourself-in-a-box model was that people would chafe within the frame, without making moves to destroy the frame itself. i.e., once “stuck,” things like Adom’s dissatisfaction or sense of wasted time would propel him to push things in more productive directions, become more present with the group, make needs known, start making trades, etc., and then we’d iterate toward something better.
But this requires something that I and the house and Adom did not manage to synch up on, whether it’s a tight enough box, or a sufficiently high level of ground safety and trust, or individual self-discipline, or what.
(above I’m trying to avoid assigning specific fault because I don’t actually know which billiard balls bouncing around in the system led to the result we got; it’s plausible that this specific case is all my fault or all Adom’s fault or part of each or split between me and Adom and the rest of the house or influenced by outside factors etc. etc. etc.)
There’s a feeling I’ve been playing with over the last year whose True Name is something like “I would follow this man into battle.”
I think many people nowadays have pretty screwy relationships with authority due to having spent a lot of time being forced to submit to authority figures that they didn’t choose or respect (e.g. parents, random teachers in school), but that in principle a much healthier relationship is possible. Nearly the only example I can easily find and point to of this dynamic is fictional: it’s the way Rider from Fate/Zero interacts with his army. When you respect / love / whatever your commander enough, things you are doing on their behalf should not feel in any way like impositions / homework, they should roughly feel like things you do for your romantic partners but with a different emotional tone.
I would wildly guess that the basic emotional alignment with the commander necessary to get something like Dragon Army to work is that 1) every member feels this way towards the commander, and 2) this fact is common knowledge. Unfortunately if you don’t have a reference experience for what “I would follow this man into battle” feels like, you have no idea how to tell whether you’re feeling it or not. I’m fairly confident I never felt this feeling before the last year, and although I now think I’ve felt a few weak versions of it I’d guess I haven’t felt it at anywhere near full strength.
A long time ago these sorts of relationships were much more common. In the history literature, one such pattern is called comitatus.
I imagine the modern literature on the subject mostly falls under cults of personality.
Weber called it “charismatic authority”, so there’s another search term.
I would guess there are some commitment & consistency effects involved here—once you’ve followed someone in to battle, you tend to identify with that.
*person
Endorsed.
In addition to safety and contact, another dynamic was that I was generally not S1 expecting much value to come out of Dragon Army, so chafing more within the system seemed like pain, effort, and time spent for little expected gain.
Stag hunts, anyone?
Edit: Though, I will note that it can be hard to find the space between “I’m damaging the group by excluding my optimization power from the process” and “I’m being a Red Knight here and should be game for whatever the commander decides.” It may seem like the obvious split is “expressive in discussion and game in the field” but discussion time is actually really valuable. So it seems like the actual thing is “be game until the cost to you becomes great enough that something needs to change”. If you reduce the minimum size of misfit enough, then it becomes intractable to deal with everyone’s needs. But then you have to figure out if a recent failure was a result of things being seriously broken or just a sign that you need to Be Better in some operationalized and “doable” way. When do you bring up the problem? It’s hard.