The Precedent Phoenix

 

It's the May Day bank holiday weekend, so let's try to wangle a mythological angle -  

We navigate our way through life by avoiding surprises and our most important social navigation guides are precedents, something we learn from our earliest childhood.

Adopting fashionable ideas or any ideas endorsed by precedent minimises social surprises, we know it so well that it becomes automatic. With precedent as a guide it is easier to navigate our way through life this way, both socially, professionally and politically.

Rejecting fashionable ideas or going against important precedents is often a problem, socially, professionally and politically. Eyebrows are raised and maybe worse, including police officers knocking on the door.

It’s a major problem for realists – but not a surprise.

This ease of following precedent, its vital importance as a social lubricant is why we cannot trust politicians – ever. There is no realist route to political power until the pressures of reality become so acute that it resets the precedents and the old ones become obsolete.

Then the precedent phoenix rebuilds itself from the ashes of the old and realists are side-lined again.