An acceptance speech delivered to the United Nations General Assembly by a man who understands precisely why he should not be in charge.
So, you want me to run the world? Well, there’s going to be some big changes. First, I should point out that this is an extraordinarily stupid idea. I’ve spent most of my life explaining why nobody should be trusted with this much power, particularly people who think they deserve it. Still, here we are. Humanity has apparently exhausted every other possibility, including several billion years of evolution, and settled on a slightly deranged systems philosopher in a cape. Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
First, we’re abolishing the Department of Simple Answers. It’s enormous. It occupies most of the world’s governments, universities, corporate headquarters and television studios. Its principal function is to convert problems nobody understands into policies everybody must obey. Its employees will be reassigned to observing actual consequences. This will be traumatic. Counselling will be available, although they’ll have to demonstrate that it works.
Second, nobody gets to be in charge of anything they cannot explain without referring to their own authority. This will leave approximately six people running civilisation, three of whom are plumbers. Frankly, I’m comfortable with that. Plumbers understand feedback, pressure, leakage and the consequences of ignoring what comes out of the pipe. Economists will be required to complete an apprenticeship.
Third, we’re going to stop pretending that competition automatically produces intelligence. Sometimes it produces intelligence. Sometimes it produces seventeen competing brands of toothpaste, a burning planet and a billionaire explaining why poor people lack ambition. Natural selection also produced tapeworms. Survival is not a certificate of excellence.
Fourth, all institutions will be required to identify the problems they reproduce through their attempts to solve them. This should keep everybody occupied for several centuries. Universities will investigate why knowledge becomes less accessible as its administration expands. Governments will examine why every reform requires another department. Corporations will explain why efficiency invariably seems to involve making somebody else’s life more difficult. Consultants will be permitted to attend, provided they remain silent.
Fifth, we’re abolishing the compulsory performance of certainty. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on. Some people know considerably more than others, but the relationship between confidence and competence has become sufficiently disturbing to warrant international intervention. Every public statement will include an account of what its author doesn’t know, what would change their mind, and who benefits if they’re wrong. Political speeches will consequently become much shorter.
Now, some of you are worried that Captain Fractal intends to impose a grand philosophical system upon civilisation. Absolutely not. I’ve spent forty years studying why that doesn’t work. The universe is not a filing cabinet, reality does not come with an instruction manual, and anything sufficiently stable to look permanent is already engaged in the exhausting business of becoming something else. My government will recognise that continuity requires change, stability requires movement, and control generates precisely the uncertainty it attempts to eliminate.
Naturally, I shall establish a Ministry of Constitutive Incompleteness to enforce this principle. Its first responsibility will be to abolish itself. Its second responsibility will be to explain why it cannot. I anticipate an extremely productive bureaucracy.
Finally, there will be no golden age, no complete solution, no perfected civilisation and no glorious destination toward which history is marching. Those are stories told by people who want everybody else to march. We will instead attempt the considerably more difficult business of remaining alive together, recognising that every freedom depends upon constraints, every identity upon difference, and every system upon relationships it cannot entirely command.
Which brings me to my resignation.
You see, the moment Captain Fractal becomes indispensable, the entire experiment has failed. A world that requires a supreme intelligence to keep it functioning is not intelligently constituted. It is merely dependent, and dependency has an unfortunate habit of dressing itself up as loyalty.
So I’m giving the world back.
Try not to fuck it up.
And for God’s sake, stop electing people who promise to make it simple.
