The illusion of Completeness

The powers that were to be once made a decision that was to define humanity in times to come.

They decided that a society was essential for a dignified way of life.

Hence the powers decided that we need some rules to abide by that separate us from our less evolved counterparts.

So once we had rules, it was a given fact that we needed rulers. Rulers in turn needed rule enforcers and rule enforcers needed rule interpreters.

In this entire scheme of rulers, enforcers and interpreters there came in an unofficial, however highly ubiquitous species of rule fixers.

The emergence of fixers was to a certain extent an evolutionary certainty. I was reading an interesting piece on the incompleteness theorem by Godel. Now the mathematics behind this theorem is not very comprehensible the basic premise of it is very interesting. He says that within any system there exist statements which can’t be proved or disproved by using data from within the system.

For a moment, consider the theorem to be valid and binding.

Then it implies that within the boundaries of a system, there will be situations or problems that cannot be solved using resources from within the system. Now replace system with society and resources with the broad categories of rule makers, rulers, enforcers and interpreters.

Hence naturally there will be situations that cannot be solved or closed using these internal resources only.

As a proof, to the above theorem think for a moment of your workplace.

There would be plenty of work which you think could be done easily and would certainly benefit the people, but there is somewhat of a reluctance or inability of people within the system to do that work. This reluctance or inability is often captured in a singular statement of “This is how things are done around here”. (I am not implying that inefficiency in an organization is a certainty, given the evolutionary mandate, I am merely giving an interesting interpretation to world in general)

Now rule fixers facilitate the scheme of work in the ruling world. You see every rules interpretation could be facilitated or delayed, every enforcer could be persuaded either way, and every ruler could be pleased or be displeased.

Consider the role of a fixer in real world. 

Again I take the example of a workplace.

There would be situations or problems you would have encountered at your workplace when you felt it to be prudent to be confide in the one person whom you believe could help. Now this person could be very well a friend, any gender, but if you pause for a moment and consider the personality trait(s) I am certain you could spot these. Firstly, there would be a complete lack of ego or pride, and secondly an average capability and performance.

Miraculously once you confide to a fixer, things seem to be less burdensome. A part of the relief maybe due to the emotional aspect of getting it out of your system, but there is now a faint belief that now it could be resolved.

It may seem that Godel’s theorem is contradictory considering the above example as the fixer in this case comes from within the system. Actually it is not, I leave it to you to figure out why. (Clue I missed on personality trait of a fixer, - a very elastic nature and a highly checkered past)

Fixers are essential to any society, organization or institution’s survival.

This is because work cannot be completely linear-ised & output cannot be completely quantified. And that in turn is because when you deal with people there are always emotions to handle and they are not always rational.