You are in a Dark Room...

"You are in a Dark Room. You sense there is only one exit."

Thus we wrote on the front of the card announcing the birth of our baby daughter, Megan Aisha Elisabeth Carels.

The way this text is written, as much as the text itself, is a reference to some old-skool computer games; Text Adventures like Zork, maze games like NetHack and Paganitzu. Often these fledgling adventures would "set the scene" in their introduction with a phrase like this.

Like the player in one such adventure, Megan has no notion of what lies ahead, no idea of what will be required of her, and whether there will be a cool prize when she reaches the finish (or if there will be a finish at all...). She will be embarking on her grand adventure, learning as she goes along, finding new depths and new intricate, interwoven, storylines at every turn. Hopefully ever-curious to explore and discover each of them.

But right now, she has just emerged from the dark room, and, proverbially, still blinking in the bright sunlight, is busy just getting to grips with reality around her.

Megan's parents grew up and "matured" (more or less) alongside the technology that enabled those old adventure games. Simple, text-based, things at first, but evolving into ever more complex and intricate epics.

For them too this is a reference to a new adventure that is to begin. Or at the least the latest and grandest twist in their ongoing adventure so far. One quite unlike any they've encountered before. One, that will make all the adventures before it seem like mere scratchings on the surface. Or so we are assured by legion of other players, who seem to be collectively unable to be any more specific on this claim.

So both Megan and her parents at this point have no idea of the story ahead of them, or even the new  "interface" it came with. Though I feel this is not something we should be scared of. Indeed, to stick with the computer game analogies, a long, long, time ago, when my father got some new game on the old C64, it was my "job" to figure out how it worked and in turn explain it to him. To figure out the unknown, to find what "makes the world tick".

Like I hope Megan will face the world with an eagerness and outgoing curiousity, so I hope we will be eager and curious about getting to know her.

In many ways, how I feel about this moment, is perhaps best captured by a quote from Dr. Seuss's "Oh the places you'll go"[1].

They're the last lines, from his last book. And you can kind of imagine them fitting as you, the adventure player, exit the proverbial Dark Room.

They say...

"You're off to Great Places!

Today is your day!

Your mountain is waiting.

So... get on your way!"

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh,_the_Places_You%27ll_Go!

Chaos, or Anarchy?

As some may have noticed, I've been visiting Egypt a few times recently. And one thing about Egypt that most Westerners will immediately notice is the traffic. Especially around Cairo. It's quite simple, you do not mingle in Egypt traffic, as a foreigner, unless you have a death wish.

Roads around Cairo (or more specifically the use of them), at first glance, seems a total chaos. Lanes are largely disregarded, everybody merges wherever they like, there seem to be no rules on right-of-way and traffic lights, if present, are just a colourful way of lighting the tarmac.

Accidents are rife, and often terrifyingly tragic. And the ones that aren't still have consequences that are difficult to oversee as there cannot be any insurance on these roads. Conflict as result of damaging one's property needs to be resolved with the parties involved and right on the spot.

Yet, it's not true chaos. Of course not, there are humans behind the wheel. Humans can be irrational, emotional and illogical, but they also tend to be predictable. So, if not Chaos, then within the confines of my blog's context, it follows that I'm implying that Anarchy rules the Cairo Highways.

Anarchy, in one popular meaning, is a state of lawlessness and disorder. With the latter more or less by consequence of the absence of the former. For many a orderly society, the prospect of falling into anarchy is a near worst-case scenario.

But in another meaning of Anarchy, it implies a functional method of governance in a society... Namely one without the need of a hierarchically enforced, coercive, and authoritive set of rules. The anarchist's idealism proposes that people "voluntarily" living together in a society will tend towards a form of respectful working equilibrium.


In all fairness the roads around Cairo are "not entirely" without authoritive oversight. But the police is rather understated, understaffed and ineffective in the role as enforcer. About the best they can manage is to clean up the worst of accidents, some minor traffic-management during the worst rush hours and stage the odd checkpoint now and then, causing the general motorist to quickly put on their seatbelts to prevent a dressing down and providing extra income to the State.

And the "voluntarily" part of the anarchist's definition is pretty much substituted with "necessarily". The majority[2] of people here have a car, and a cellphone, but no hope or means of truly getting out of here.


Back on the roads around Cairo, as the driver brings me from A to B, I still cannot determine a set of rules, but I can sense they are there. There is a certain rule, a certain pattern, a certain signal in the noise, that these people on the roads are tuned in to, but that my antenna is failing to pick up.

Perhaps there's something a little more than "mere" anarchy. The ancient Egyptians had a philosophy of Ma'at [1]. Ma'at was the embodiment, the spirit, of truth, balance, order, law, morality and justice. It was a philosophy of living rightly and properly, embodied in 42 confessions (hieroglyphs on papyrus had a slightly higher data density compared to stone tablets, hence the Egyptians had space for more than 10, I guess). Old habits, old morals, die hard.

Whether the Cairo highway is a huge field-experiment in benevolent anarchy with 15 million participants, or a side-effect of a deeper ancient social-cultural disposition, I can't really tell. And it's pretty easy to see where the system has deep, and often fatal, flaws. But, there is one. And one that springs forth from the mere tiniest sliver of rule-of-law and nothing further than the common goals and necessities of man living together in close proximity.

A weave and evasive maneuver of the car breaks my reverie,
and I see we're close to our destination.

Time to go to work.

[1] Wikipedia page on Ma'at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
[2] Edit: This I need to correct after reading an article on fuel subsidies. The huge traffic load of cars on the roads is caused by a very small minority of the people. Less than 5% of Egyptians own a car.

This bickering is(n't) pointless.

A long, long, time ago, in a fishing village at the southern coast of The Netherlands, I sat, mesmerized, watching the events on the screen unfold. There, in a conference room, a collection of serious looking gentlemen were having a discussion that was quickly heating up. Just when the debate seemed to really start to throw sparks, an elderly-looking gentleman came in and confidently declared...

"The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."

Gasp! OMG! The Senate has been dissolved! The Old Republic is dead...

It is funny, really, how the movie could convey so overwhelmingly a sense that this, what had just happened, was "A Bad Thing"(tm). How the imagery of the room so conveyed the message that these were "The Bad Guys".

But it is the thing that was said next that I have never before been able to judge on its real value...

"That's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"

Think about this for a moment... How often do we not wish we would have less bureaucracy? How liberating wouldn't it be to totally do without it... Was it a sign of their being ultimate evil that they actually wished for it to exist? To wonder how the Emperor could hold his Power without bureaucracy seemed to somehow suggest that there was a link between bureaucracy and the ability of evil dictators to gain, and hold, their position. Down with the bureaucracy I say! Out with the breeding ground for evil dictators!

Like we didn't have enough reasons to want to get rid of bureaucracy yet, there is more, as Jerry Pournelle has described it in his (admittedly apocryphal) Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1];

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

This touches on the tendency of (large) organizations to become self-perpetuating; to promote their continued existence as a purpose of its own, rather than for the benefit of the initial stated goal.

But here we seem to have hit a paradox. If the Imperial Senate were evil and corrupted to the benefit of the Emperor's position, would it not have been working solely for its own continued existence? Would it not have resisted being disbanded? And, if it were beneficial to the Emperor's position, why disband it in the first place? The only possible conclusion here is that there must have been something about this Senate, this Bureaucracy, that was impeding the further gain of power by the Emperor (and his cronies).

To gain insight into this, we may find some enlightenment in the very definition of a Bureaucracy [2].

"A bureaucracy is a group of non-elected officials of a government or organization that implements the rules, laws, ideas, and functions of their institution."

And furthermore in the description of a "Representative Democracy"[3]:

"The power of representatives is usually curtailed by a constitution (as in a constitutional democracy or a constitutional monarchy) or other measures to balance representative power"

The Senate, defining new Law and, being a part of the "other measures", scrutinizing it against existing Law, thus apparently acted as a voice of reason (or at least delay) and a roadblock for the Emperor implementing his every whim. Its disbanding leaves the Emperor as both Dictator and the Ultimate MicroManager, which is indeed confirmed by those present in the room.

While this movie I enjoyed so much as a kid is a piece of fiction, also in our real world we should not underestimate the importance of the "established" Institutions of State, which essentially make up the Bureaucracy.


In the not-so-fictional case of, say, Egypt, the country has recently chosen a new President. But the previous rulers had, mere weeks before the elections, disbanded the (newly elected) Parliament. And to add insult to injury, the only thing resembling a Constitution in effect was the permanent State of Emergency that the previous President had imposed for over 20 years.While there still is plenty of bureaucracy, it's mostly the kind you do want to cut out; corruption and the kind that is the result of "Pournelle's Law".

But at least in part, and an important one, it is the lack of a decent established framework of bureaucracy that is keeping Egypt from moving forward at speed.

Well, today, on September 12th, we're electing a new parliament, and, in theory, by relative fractional representation, also a new government. And, technically, we should be fine. With a decent Constitution, the proper measures in place to avoid democratic mob-rule, and (maybe just a bit too much) Bureaucracy to implement the laws, we should be set for the next four years. And yet...  

"I find my lack of faith... disturbing..."

[1] "Jerry Pournelle"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pournelle#Iron_Law_of_Bureaucracy

[2] "Bureaucracy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy

[3] "Representative Democracy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy