So how do you bail from a runaway train? Ideally the train should be stopped or at least moving very slowly, and the faster it gets going without the benefit of brakes, the tougher this problem gets.
Even worse, what if that train is all there is and that you need to fix it, or even rebuild it as it is moving and now running away?
This is one way to read the preposterous flailing of the ruling class in the US during the Covid pandemic. There was an initial attempt to half-heartedly and half-assedly fix the thing, but the complexity of the problem - given the corner the ruling class had painted themselves into - produced a complex wreckage that was set in motion during the closures and stoppages, which caught up with them and they had to re-orient and renege on their half-ass platform, opting for reckless and careless neglect instead, and eventually much more damage was done down the line.
This simplified case study is another instance of one of the driving aspects of modernity: the energy-intensive need for things to move with perpetual and even accelerating rapidity to bridge indescribably massive and complex entities across vast spaces, and those bridges must be sustained without fail. As once a bridge has been built, it must support a constant stream of life flowing over it - the purpose of which necessitated such a huge expenditure of energy in the first place - which must be maintained lest that stream of life be disrupted, which could have serious consequences indeed for whatever is building the bridges.
If you smoosh the opening train metaphor and this bridge metaphor together, you get something resembling our predicament. To quote Admiral Ackbar, "It's a trap."
This is a predicament I've covered plenty of times before, and will describe in plenty more ways in the future. Predicaments may not have nice solutions like their kin, the problem, but like problems, predicaments do add a whole lot of interest and meaning.
