POSIWID

The purpose of a system is what it does. Stafford Beer’s principle strips away the comfortable illusions of intent and moral posturing to reveal a bleak symmetry between cause and consequence. If a society continually produces homelessness, addiction, disaffection, and loneliness, then these outcomes are not malfunctions—they are the operational outputs of the system. The distribution of misery is neither random nor accidental; it is systemic throughput, the steady-state equilibrium of a machine that thrives on alienation.

We may speak of reform, compassion, or justice, but these function as stabilising myths—feedback mechanisms to keep the machine from collapsing under its own cruelty. Every good intention becomes another loop in the circuit, another homeostatic regulation of despair. The system sustains itself precisely through those who seek to change it, their moral energy metabolised as proof of its responsiveness. If the purpose of a system is what it does, then our civilisation’s purpose appears to be suffering itself—an intricate architecture of pain, polished to perfection by denial.