Concerning Nuclear Power Plants and Saruman the White
From the desk of the Master of Buckland, Brandy Hall
October the 7th, 2021, the Fifth Age
Foreword
Editor-in-chief, Jeff McNukes, graciously asked me if I would like to write something for the Iron Age Inquirer (this Substack). This was serendipitous as I was working towards something to finally write. But as I started to prepare it, I realised this was a larger task than I could accomplish in the time Jeff had given to me, so something else needed to be prepared. And so, I started to think about what should be said before I say what I really wanted to say, and so now, here I am saying it, or at least writing it.
For those of you waiting for the much-touted ‘Bucklander Manifesto’ (all three of you) I have bad news. After much thought about how it would happen, I realised that manifestos qua documents are a product of the rational mind and the enlightenment. These are the very things I am trying to get away from. So, what does a pre-enlightenment manifesto look like? The conclusion I have come to is that it is indirect and decentralised. So, the Bucklander Manifesto, insofar as it will be written, will look more like English Common Law than the Napoleonic Code, which is rational and constructed, rather than the more organic structure that I am trying to grow rather than build. Why do I say this? I am writing an essay for the IAA, not the Bucklander Manifesto, right? Well, I think I will accomplish the former while beginning the process of the latter here.
Disclaimer
The Danger in tackling the subject of the technocracy that Jeff and I, and the rest of the IAA team, are attempting to get to grips with is that it is not a linear system to analyse. It is complex. What does this mean? That will be addressed in more detail in future essays, but let the following suffice.
The technocracy is more like a nuclear power plant than a car factory. Both are systems. A factory processes the inputs it receives in a linear way, step by step. If the engine unit (sub-system) of the factory fails, the factory could outsource some engines in. The rest of the factory could then continue for a time (depending on how tightly coupled the processes are). Also, the engine sub-factory is quite modular. The parts can easily be replaced due to this modularity and the dedicated purpose of the engine assembly area. Machines that have a single function are generally simpler and more easily fixed, especially because they don’t need to be kept running to perform some other function. And we shouldn’t forget that if the factory cannot produce cars for a bit, then that’s bad economically but does not destroy the area around the factory which can still be lived in.
This is not what the technocracy is. Rather it resembles a highly complex, tightly coupled system like a nuclear power plant.
One cannot truly write a step-by-step guide of how to run a nuclear power plant. Theoretically I could, step-by-step, build a car by myself, because of the linear nature of the process. Indeed, there are instructions for how to do this. But a lot of things need to happen simultaneously in a nuclear power plant. And lots of things in a nuclear power plant perform more than one function. Which means there is no true ‘step 1’ to generating power from a nuclear power plant, and stopping and starting the process is much more complicated then picking up and downing tools at a factory.
Consider the following: one of the problems that occurred at Three Mile Island was that a component, a pump, failed that acted as both a heating and cooling unit. How can this be? The pump possessed a ‘common function’. It both cooled the water inside the reactor and heated the water outside of the reactor that powered the turbines. It was a heat transfer. When a component in a complex system with a common function fails, like the pump-cum-heat transfer, you do not have one problem, you have two, or more. Now instead of having to just cool the water inside and heat the water outside the reactor, you have to come up with a solution or solutions that do both. And you MUST do this. Both of these processes must continue to prevent a disaster. This is not a car factory where it’s a bummer for the shareholder if you shut down for a few hours. If you shut down this process for a few hours, thousands of square kilometres around the plant may become uninhabitable, and that might actually be one of the better scenarios. All of this is because it’s a complex system. (Not all complex systems have such disastrously negative possibilities, in fact most do not, but the impact the stoppage puts on the system is much more difficult to recover from, by the standards of that system, than in a linear system.) As I said, lots of things are and need to be happening all at once because nuclear power is not produced in a linear way.
The other aspect of complex systems is that failures in one area can unexpectedly cause issues in other areas. And the combination of those two, or more, failures can cause a problem bigger than the sum of its parts.
The problem with all this is that we ought to expect things to go wrong due to the insanely, and increasingly, complex nature of the systems we are increasingly dependent on. This is what Charles Pernow calls a ‘Normal Accident’. We will be looking more at complex systems, loose and tight coupling, and the normal accidents that describe the technocracy and the world it has, and is creating, more in the future, and credit for this analysis goes to Charles Pernow’s Normal Accidents and the ideas therein.
But what am I trying to get at with this? Besides the truth about the technocracy that I think the metaphor possesses (which when it goes wrong possesses the ability to go wrong on a scale greater than that of a Chernobyl), it also represents the difficulty that exists in talking about it. I would like to start with ‘lesson one’ of understanding the technocracy, but there is no logical starting place to begin from. Rather, like understanding the system of a nuclear power plant, we have to just sort of start and build pieces and put them together and muddle through, until we begin to have a clear picture, and fix and clarify and refine as our perspective develops.
So, I apologise in advance for being unable to provide a linear description of a complex system, but we have to start somewhere.
But before we do, and at the risk of never getting to the point a la The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman I include one last section before we begin.
Prelude: The Parable of Saruman
It would be remiss of me if I did not weave some Tolkien into my first piece for the IAA and this point of departure for the Bucklander Manifesto.
`This is grievous news concerning Saruman,' he said; `for we trusted him and he is deep in all our counsels. It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill. . . Consider Saruman. If any of the Wise should with this Ring overthrow the Lord of Mordor, using his own arts, he would then set himself on Sauron's throne, and yet another Dark Lord would appear. And that is another reason why the Ring should be destroyed: as long as it is in the world it will be a danger even to the Wise. For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so. I fear to take the Ring to hide it. I will not take the Ring to wield it.' – Elrond
Those of us who see what is going wrong in the world and wish to address it find ourselves in a frustrating position. To what extent do we learn about the technocracy? How dark is it? How deep does it go? (They dug too deep . . . but that is a Tolkien metaphor for another day.) Will it corrupt us? And, most controversially, to what extent do we take on its methods?
If anything is to be done, we must know some things. We cannot be totally ignorant of the Enemy and hope for the best. Both Gandalf and Saruman learned about the methods of the Enemy. Both are changed by the process they endure. But there’s a significant difference in what they learn and how they’re changed.
Saruman learns about and tries to emulate ‘the arts of the Enemy.’ Saruman the White becomes Saruman of the rainbow, aka clown world Saruman—just ask him about his Uruk-hai immigration policy and why is Grima known as Wormtongue? Ewwww. And Saruman is lost to the Dark Powers in the process. But the danger of this is not obvious to everyone who fights with us against the Enemy. We see the seeds of Boromir’s downfall in his reaction to Saruman’s betrayal and desire for the Ring.
'I do not understand all this,' he said. `Saruman is a traitor, but did he not have a glimpse of wisdom? Why do you speak ever of hiding and destroying? Why should we not think that the Great Ring has come into our hands to serve us in the very hour of need? Wielding it the Free Lords of the Free may surely defeat the Enemy. That is what he most fears, I deem.
Boromir redeems himself after his moment of weakness. But the lesson is simple: power, especially the power of the Enemy, corrupts. Unfortunately for him, there is no redemption for Saruman. He is too far gone. After he loses his power—the power of the Enemy he sought—the corruption still remained without the power. The corruption leads him to take over the Shire (read the books) which he accomplishes despite the loss of his powers as a wizard... And for the record, the thing the technocracy fears the least is us becoming like them, which should tell us something, as it will eventually make us like them, and so it is even worse than Sauron. Sauron does not want anyone else to have the Ring of Power. Technocracy’s Ring of Power, albeit not a finite resource, is just as corrupting (maybe technocracy is more like the Borg [… I think... I am not a nerd so I do not know anything about Star Trek] but it is too late now, I am committed to the Tolkien metaphor).
What about Gandalf? Gandalf learns enough about the Enemy in order to try and understand him and predict his behaviour. Gandalf the Grey dies and becomes Gandalf the White. He sheds or loses his humanity (Maia-nity?) and becomes a more powerful and effective weapon. After they have won, Gandalf departs Middle-Earth and goes to the undying lands. My theory is that Gandalf the White was not able to or could not bear to stay in the land that he loved as Gandalf the Grey. It has changed and so has he.
If you have ever made a big move in your life you will understand the following: you can never go home. People who have moved to other countries or joined the military or even gone to university are transformed by those experiences. You return home and notice the changes. But worse than that you notice where it has not changed. Your friends are still sitting around doing the same thing they were doing, the stupid things which you thought were the height of entertainment not too long ago. But now that magic that that place and those activities had is gone. We will never reforge some lost England or America. We must brace ourselves for what is to come, win or lose. But if we allow ourselves to be changed too much in this battle, there may be no place for us in whatever we win when we are done. We must learn just enough about our enemy but not enough to make us like him.
Does Gandalf become what Saruman was? Is ‘the-White’ an office? Did it make Saruman brittle? And threaten to do the same to Gandalf? Did Gandalf succeed because he had reserves of Maia-nity to use up in his transformation from the-Grey to the-White? And was there none for Saruman to call upon during his trial because his Maia-nity couldn’t coexist with the office of the-White he occupied? Given enough time would Gandalf have fallen victim to the same deficiency?
If we are going to take on the technocracy it will do us no good if we join the technocracy or become like them. This truth represents the biggest divide among the opponents of the technocracy. There are those who will have us use their weapons and tactics. Well before we begin our investigation, I must warn you of this danger. Some of you will treat this warning as naïve and will think ‘I’ll just invade the technocracy a little’ or ‘I'll be fine living in the cities, they won’t corrupt me too much, and I can’t give up their conveniences anyway.’ You’ve been warned. Now, to begin.
What’s that Jeff? I’ve run out of time and words? Oh. Well. You’ll have to wait for my next essay for us to begin in earnest. But I’ve laid out here what I hope to accomplish: 1. write some interesting stuff for the IAA; 2. begin the Bucklander Manifesto, in the style of common law; 3. describe some very complicated ideas and issues in as simple a way as I can with a tool kit of analysis built around complexity; and 4. I’ve given the necessary warnings about the dangers that lie before us.
Until next time.
The Old Took, Master of Buckland
aka
Bucklander