Compaction Cycle posted:

Compaction Cycle: The compaction cycle is a major factor in how Narrativist groups function and is my term for an unrecognized (but very important) constant low level cycling of individual Narrativists through a variety of different Narrativist groups. The compaction cycle is of primary importance because it describes the trend towards radicalization in Narrativist groups, and even provides something of a barometer than can be used to approximate the general pace of and anticipate when a Narrativist group is about to radicalize. That is to say, when you see a compaction Cycle play out you know the group is about to radicalize further. The more frequently that compaction cycles are occurring, the more rapidly a given Narrativist group is radicalizing. This cycle is also important because it is a major factor in how Narrativist groups build common ground with each other when they are looking for allies. (It also plays a large role in the cross pollination of various strings of Narrativist thought.) To explain this facet of Narrativist behavior I will call forth the metaphor of a snowball. Specifically, a snowball made of that wet slush poo poo that is right on the border between being frozen and being a puddle.

If you have never gotten a chance to play with such a snowball then let me elaborate. By snowball standards they are heavy, awkward projectiles that travel slowly and are easily dodged. Even when you do hit something with such a snowball, the effect is minimal, usually a wet *punt* sound. This snowball then is a metaphor for the average Narrativist group when it is not under pressure. Unwieldy, awkward, not terribly effective, but can still get the job done. Put a Narrativist group under the pressure of "Narrative Dysphoria" (Defined in detail elsewhere) though, and things change.

Let us return to our wet snowball. If you take it in both hands and compact it, you will squeeze out a surprising amount of water. You will then be left with an ice ball. Although much smaller and having less total mass, an ice ball is a nasty projectile. Fast, accurate, hard to see coming, and can leave a hell of a bruise. To take this example a bit further, if you drop your new ice all in a pile of snow and scoop it all up, you will now have slush ball with an ice ball core. A better projectile than you started with, but not as good as the ice ball by itself was. However, if you compact this new ball down, you will squeeze out the water, and be left with an even larger total amount of ice in a solid ball at the core. Now you are creating a dangerous weapon indeed. And you can keep adding on layers of ice so long as you have a supply of snow, eventually getting a baseball sized projectile of solid ice that can really gently caress something up. Even though you lose much mass every time you compact the ball down, as long as you have a snowbank handy to keep dipping your ice ball in, you can keep adding more total ice.

Now back to Narrativist groups. An average Narrativist group when not experiencing narrative dysphoria is like our slush ball. A mixture of hard and soft members, since when forming Narrativist groups are like an annoying new Multi-Level Marketing scam. "We welcome everyone and anybody can be a success if you just adhere to our Narrative!" They will accept anyone willing to pay lip service to the groups ideals and show up to meetings. When not under pressure or threatened, Narrativist groups are much more relaxed and make a conscious effort to be welcoming to outsiders (some of whom are then selectively groomed for admittance into the ever-present-in-Narrativist-organizations "inner circle").

All such groups when under pressure (particularly Narrative dysphoria) however, start to drive softer members out. Stress rises, tempers flare. Rhetoric becomes harsher, group identity becomes more important, aggressive members start to scrutinize for any perceived flaw in the tribe. Eventually someone (or a group of someones) finds themselves on the wrong side of an internal dispute. It could be that they are genuinely at fault, it could not be, doesn't really matter. In the end they were guilty of the sin of not spotting the group think searching for a scapegoat fast enough and as a result they became the scapegoat and are summarily driven out.

This idea can be seen to play out over time on the (in)famous conservative political discussion forum "FreeRepublic.com", hereafter referred to simply as "Freep". This discussion forum is notorious for the compaction cycles that play out like clockwork every Presidential election cycle. Once the website owner (a gentlemen by the name of Jim Robinson) publicly announces his preferred option for the nomination for Republican candidate for POTUS this is treated as an official announcement of support. From that point forwards the owner of Freep simply bans any member who speaks up in support of of another candidate or criticizes the candidate he has selected. The remaining users on Freep have observably become noticeably and steadily more radicalized over time as a result- and the standards of the community have gradually eroded over time to the point where open racism has gone from being verboten to being essentially the socially acceptable default stance.

Returning once again to our earlier metaphor- with the "softer" members (or water in our slushball) compacted out, the remaining members are more radical overall. While the overall mass, or number of members has decreased, the remaining members are the ones who have proven themselves to be the most competent at falling in line and will prove less likely to disagree with the group think in the future. They have become like the Ice Ball.

Next the Narrativist group will enter a growth phase, and seek to add new "softer" members (or more snow/slush) who will be welcomed in while a semi-secret inner circle not so publicly makes all the real decisions. This addition of new members will continue until the Narrativist group comes under pressure or is subjected to narrative dysphoria, at which point a new compaction cycle will form and another member (or potentially small group of members) will be made into scapegoats for the group's failures and cast out. (In the metaphor of our slushball, this is another round of compacting the water out of our slushball once again and winding up with an even larger core ball of ice.) The remaining members will become more extreme/radicalized, and will then seek to add new members to the group once again.

The metaphor does not end here though, because we need to consider what happens to those outcast members. Most of the time (85% or so if I had to guess) they will go on to join another group. Since they are Authoritarians they will join another group that also follows the Grand Narrative. (While I would like to mention that this is how you get 9-11 truthers that become UFO nuts that become Objectivist "Captains of Industry" and then wind up being 9-11 truthers again over the course of a long enough period of time, I want to stay mostly with the Freep example.) The Freep members that join some other online Conservative community will be quite a bit more shy about rocking the boat. They will be more sensitive and more alert for changes in their new home-tribes groupthink. They will find themselves drawn to the new groups hardliners and will become more hardline themselves. Often, abused becomes abuser, and when this Narrativist group finds itself under pressure, (particularly narrative dysphoria) the formerly outcast member will be among the most vicious attackers of whoever winds up as the new groups scapegoat.

The overall trend here is that Narrativist groups swap members more often than many realize, and one groups rejected softie becomes the next groups hardliner. Just like our slush ball, the weak are driven out and the ice remains, then more members are added and the cycle repeats until eventually everyone is either a hardliner or has stopped associating with Narrativist groups altogether. I feel this is a good explanation for what we observe in the modern GOP. In raw numbers GOP voters/supporters are in serious decline, but the remaining members are rapidly becoming radicalized. Because of the Authoritarian takeover of the GOP over the past 40 years the less hardcore Republicans are being pressed out of group after group until they either become hardliners themselves or find no home in the GOP.


Think of the Grand Narrative as a sort of basic format that the Inner narrative will take, a set of hooks that you could hang any Inner Narrative on. So the more compaction cycles a Narrativist experiences, the more developed their Inner narrative becomes, which inevitably leads to the Inner narrative conforming more and more with the basic structure of the Grand narrative. As the conceptual confines of the Grand Narrative are embraced as a consequence of Inner narrative evolution, the Narrativist is compelled to more extreme forms of anti-social behavior, until at the highest levels the Narrativist feels morally justified in committing acts of violence. Think of it as a hypothetical scale from 1-10, with 1 being the lowest level of compaction and 10 being the point at which there is a strong compulsion to engage in acts of violence. (This scale is meant as a conceptual rough approximation to illustrate this concept.) As a Narrativist experiences more compaction cycles, the compaction level of their Inner narrative rises in response. Put a Narrativist through enough compaction cycles and the resulting Inner narrative evolution eventually they will experience a strong compulsion to commit acts of violence.

I must specify here that just because a Narrativist reaches a 10 on my hypothetical scale it does not mean they will become violent; rather, it means that they feel morally justified and obligated to commit acts of violence. Whether they engage in those acts depends mostly on two factions: 1.) how much social stability is there in the community in which the Narrativist resides, and 2.) how much encouragement the Narrativist is receiving from communicating with other Narrativists who are at a similar level of compaction.