The Utopia of Rules

Freedom [..] really is the tension of the free play of human creativity against the rules it is constantly generating.

A fascinating look at the bureaucracies and structures in our world, that are simultaneously stifling yet also upholding the societal systems in our world.

We send the most successful and innovative academics in their fields higher in the hierarchies towards dull tasks of administration. We write books with grammar rules and monitor their correct usage, despite language being a perfect examples of slow and continuous adaptation. We've created bureaucratic systems of ‘fairness' that have turned oppressive. If we don't send the needy through an obstacle course of forms, how will we tell which of them is the most in need of help?

Graeber perfectly documents the hate-love affair we have with rules and the bureaucracies that uphold them. Games are perfect utopian systems of everyone adhering to the same rules. Play is free of rules, and potentially poses danger. Until children free-play and create their own rules. Even the fantastic escapist utopias we create for entertainment are full of celestial and magical hierarchies.

Super thought-provoking.