Today, 02:45 PM
Well, I can't speak for a large organization like this, but I've been president of a Church before, which sounds similar, if microcosmic by comparison. There's a legal structure, and there are rules to follow, and there are people who literally can't operate without making sure those rules are being followed, and there are others who couldn't give a shit about the rules if they were force fed ex-lax for a month.
And having played my share of D&D in the past, I have to say her analogy is really spot on. Except for one thing. In D&D the word of the DM is law. If he says we're ignoring that rule and moving on, that's what is happening, and he has the power to turn your character into a duck for the rest of the adventure if you don't like it. In a church parish, if you were wise and chose one with a priest who has final say, then the priest has final say and you STFU and go with it or you risk excommunication.
A good DM / priest won't arbitrarily do stuff like that though. And if he does, then there are mechanisms in both scenarios for a groundswell of rejection to manifest in a replacement of that authority. But the point remains: the authority is there.
On the other hand, I've been involved in legal proceedings in churches that don't have final say... and TBH the current LP sounds way more like that. If you don't have a final authority apart from the law, then the law is your authority. And the law does what it does: it creates a godawful mess. Especially at a church... I mean you're supposed to be there with good intentions and you're supposed to be listening to stories every week about how you have to try to get along with each other and work things out without fighting or malice... but if the guy saying all that is just a mouth with no teeth, then it gets ignored, and people get really shitty really fast. Particularly about rules-lawyering and trying to force other people into their desires without trying to work things out at all.
But in the LP you have a whole lot of people who have zero exposure to, and often complete rejection of, the need to try to be nice to others and work out win-win scenarios.
In those cases you definitely see good-old-boys clubs forming. Or mafias, or the oligarchy, the in crowd, or whatever you want to call them. There's always a core of people who all see eye-to-eye and think it's their club and theirs alone, and who really only use the rules as an excuse to get their way. Some of them might be in positions to work toward getting their way but often they aren't in the actual positions needed to push things. And the oligarchy never prioritizes new ideas and never welcomes new members who aren't 100% in lock-step. They would rather the organization die. They may not say it, but that's a fact.
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Originally Posted by Anti Federalist
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