Some organizations are monolithic and distant. Huge, hulking, single-minded set of drones that present an impenetrable barrier to two-way communication. Messages within are often top-down. Big Brother tells you what to do, and all you have is a memory hole at hand.
Should messages be top-down, from the organization but emanating out to the rest of the world, then hostility and autocracy comes into play. The Borg have arrived. Resistance is Futile (and nanites really, really hurt when they take over your blood cells).
Other organizations are smaller, agile, and quick to respond to opportunities and threats. Kind of like a a fox, except without the whole “killing rabbits” schtick.
When these nimble groups do get aggressive, however, you’re more like Jurassic Park Velociraptor food if you get in the way. And I’m not talking Jurassic Park 3, where you can trick them by blowing air into an old skull (as if Sam Neill knew exactly how much air a raptor used to communicate with others). I’m talking the first movie, where they figure out how to open doors.
But let me describe yet another organization. Somewhat less together, and harder to describe.
Tribes exist on separate islands. Some islands are bigger than others, and many are clustered and somehow related, but are separate islands nonetheless. Many islands have not yet established communications with others. Some tribes have not even invented means of communication. Jungles as dense as those on Papau New Guinea, where entire civilizations are still being discovered each year, cover many of these land masses. The tribes are competitive – this isn’t just Survivor, but Survivor: The Villains.
The islands and sets of islands are floating on a giant set of tectonic plates on the most seismically active planet ever. Volcanoes erupt between islands, cutting them off from each other and sending giant plumes of ash that serve to annoy if not disrupt operations on other islands. What’s worse – various well-meaning people die horrible deaths trying to save others that have strayed too close to the edge.
The planet is so active that, like Jupiter’s Titan on seismic steroids, it actually changes shape with eruptions and quakes. At times, the planet becomes almost cubical in shape. It is also like a giant balloon – if you try to poke it with too sharp of a stick, with too much energy, in an effort to elicit a specific response, you just set off more eruptions and discontent.
Welcome to my land of the lost.
note: in no way is my group the fox, the raptor, Big Brother or the Borg (though we could certainly use transwarp tunnels now and then). We are far from perfect and sometimes the messages we send are so mixed that it’s like we just fell from our own tower of Babel. And sometimes I am the one doing the talking. At the least, I am absolutely the one responsible for what we say and do. My comments above do not mean that we are better and perhaps we’re not any different, either.