All Organizations are Garbage: Chapter 6 of The Fundraising Survival Guide
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Chapter 6: ALL ORGANIZATIONS ARE GARBAGE
Honeybees’ division of labor has captivated philosophers and poets for thousands of years. Incredible efficiency and clarity of roles in the hive fascinated the ancients. Aristotle mistakes queens for kings, which is easy to do if you are part of a society where pederasty was stylish:
In every hive there are more kinds than one; and a hive goes to ruin if there be too few kings, not because of anarchy thereby ensuing, but, as we are told, because these creatures contribute in some way to the generation of the common bees.
Mark Twain had a few words too:
A bee that has been trained to one of the many and various industries of the concern doesn’t know how to exercise any other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside of her profession.
While these characterizations and outright mistakes appear cute, they mask the true nature of the honeybee society. Bees enforce their strict division of labor using violence.
Consider the plight of the Queen. The Queen is born amongst her worker sisters, who watch as royalty struggles, glistening, out of her creche. Threats stalk the vulnerable potential matriarch. You see, Queens are bred a dozen at a time in a healthy hive. She who wishes to rule has to fight the other ascendant Queens. Those ascendant Queens who are still in their cells, not yet emerged, are assassinated by a specialized, retractable stinger that only the Queen caste possesses. If any opposing Queens have emerged like her, the ascendant Queen must duel.
Only one can survive.
Upon her crowning, the Queen leaves the hive on sorties to mate then returns to stygian darkness to live out her life of maternal sexual servitude. When our Queen becomes infertile, the hive disposes of her. The hive doesn’t hesitate to create a new run of fertile Queens to begin a new battle for royal supremacy. Organization and fecundity are enforced through the threat of death.
The life of the drone, the male bee, is often made light of. He does no work in the hive and instead begs for food from his sisters and waits for his chance to mate. Every day he leaves the hive to attempt copulation with another hive’s Queen, along with thousands of other drones from neighboring hives. If he successfully mates, his penis is torn off by the recipient Queen in an act so violent that the pop is audible to human listeners. Not the worst way to go.
However, drones are expendable to the hive. If they hang on too long, they’re done for. The hive will throw out lazy males at the first sign of scarcity, leaving them to die in the cold.
But, you might think, the workers seem to enforce organizational division of labor. Surely the worker caste of bees have an easier life? They get stingers, after all, and can regulate the Queen or the lazy drone.
Think again. Workers begin their life with labor. After hatching, they must tend to the nursery, clean up trash, and learn the ways of the hive. Once they have learned to fly, workers begin their dangerous job out in the wild world, collecting the food needed to feed new generations. Some workers guard the front entrance against certain attack. Birds eat them. They die in sudden rainstorms and cold snaps. Humanity fears bees and blasts them with any number of poisons.
I have seen worker bees with missing legs continuing to haul in pollen. They work until their bodies fall apart. On any given day, a hive of 10,000 loses hundreds of workers to the elements. A worker never collects a pension. Retirement doesn’t enter their vocabulary. While Queens live two or three years, a worker can expect to live six weeks. They are, in some ways, lucky that they are even born. Liberalized abortion policies mean that trained nursery workers eliminate any larvae they deem less than perfect in physique. Oh, and the stinger. The act of stinging kills them. They’re asked to sacrifice themselves when danger approaches the hive.
I bring to light the reality of honeybee society as an example of the perfect organization.
Everyone pulls their weight. Decisions are made through chemically emitted consensus. Each bee has its job description handed down at birth. Males are put in their rightful place, and the relationships between females are appropriately toxic. The struggle of existence, for bees, allows no layabouts, slackers, or dweebs.
Work or die. Organizational perfection. You have to respect it.
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