Napoleon is Always Right
Incrementalism and Orwell’s Human Pig
Napoleon conquered Manor Farm through subtle cunning enforced with loyal combatants and persuasive verbal acrobatics sufficient to con halfwits. The call of freedom rang loud in proclamations of equality and freedom and the animals heard the call. Their new era dawns with promise of nourishment and energy independence accompanied by comfort and warmth. The deus ex machina takes form as a windmill whose collective benefit falls away in the night by the cleverest on four legs. In Animal Farm, animals win, just not all animals as planned at the start.
Literature from 1945 doesn’t require a spoiler alert, but it may cause heartburn to remember that the manipulating mammals grew into their leadership roles protected from famine and manual labor, comforted in the fashions of humanity. Lessons are lost when dropped from the collective consciousness, converting agile human minds into citizens of Animal Farm. The hardworking and simple minded horse, Boxer, adopted the loyalist mantra — Napoleon is always right — rather than attempt to decipher truth from fiction. Trust is efficient but can pave a road for manipulation.
Incrementalism evolves at a glacial pace, building on itself until the flower becomes unrecognizable from the seed. It happens over time and often in a clumsy manner, hiding the end from the start. This is vital in many fields. Software development, for one, relies on incremental improvement allowing small iterative revisions leading to compositions of code solving large, complex problems. Networks and smart grids are built in pieces, linked together on top of physical hardware building massive structures no single person controls or understands. It takes a community.
We stand today in a world built on the backs of others, bricked with flashes of genius and mortared with tools of titans. Short of unveiling the dimensions of the multiverse, the world today could not be anything other than it is. It didn’t happen overnight. It was built one brick at a time. Just as highway guardrails are designed to keep vehicles on the road, people must guard human evolution from plummeting off course. We must read our history to reinforce the acceptable parameters for progress. Without the input of thoughtful, conscientious, caring individuals, the future will be derailed.
What is the definition of derailed? A project manager knows which functions are necessary to meet the business needs. In non-technical endeavors, the community decides what steps are within the accepted range of output. In the Venn diagram of humanity, overlapping circles highlight areas of agreement and pathways. The pigs of Animal Farm shifted things in their favor. Working within the concentric circles of agreement keeps the human-survival-happiness-rating on an upward trajectory. To the extent societal principles are altered toward areas outside of established agreement, software developers call that scope creep. Scope creep, defined as uncontrolled changes or continuous growth of the mission, paves a road to a new destination unforeseen at the start.
Incrementalism leads to no predetermined place. It is a map being written that will be understood when enough road signs are written. Our collective memory guards against retrenchment, but the defenses are only as strong as our united constitution. For the animals on Animal Farm, memory fades with time. How was life under Manor Farm? What were the founding principles? Has independence improved the lives of all? Only Benjamin the donkey remembers but follows a non-interventionist path. New generations hear tales of human treachery and have no counter argument. Stories become truth. Alterations of reality occur with the introduction of unsubstantiated opinions. Deviation from core principles happens in plain sight, in front of them all. Take a lesson from Eric Blair, who wrote under the pen name George Orwell, whose wisdom captured in Animal Farm thrives today.
