The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'A man digging a trench rainbow.'
Once upon a time, I was at a rainbow gathering in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Our camp included a couple dozen people, about half of whom I knew. A few days in, one guy I didn't know decided to improve our communal fire pit. The way he did this was by digging deep trenches around the fire pit and making mounds of dirt behind each trench.
Before the digger started work, I voiced my opinion, suggesting that any improvements we made should meet everybody's needs. This idea was summarily disregarded. As he got started, I noticed that he paid no attention to the where he was digging or what he was doing. His labor was feverish, and soon there were others helping him dig. Within an hour, there were trenches two feet deep surrounding the fire pit. Everyone in the camp seemed delighted, showing the diggers with compliments and doobies. I hung back, withholding comment. What I saw didn't look like an improvement. It looked like the guy had made our fire pit less useful.
Originally, there had been space for many people to sit or lay down on the ground next to the fire. I love sleeping next to the smoldering embers of a campfire and was disappointed that the improvements made this impossible. And instead of easily accommodating a dozen souls comfortably as the flat ground had, the trenches this guy dug allowed just three or four people to sit next to the fire pit.
The trenches themselves were deep and very hazardous at night. Imagine approaching a friendly looking fire in the forest and then suddenly falling two feet into a hidden trench. This is exactly what happened to several people. Fortunately, there were no major injuries. The rounded mounds of earth on the outer edge of each trench were shaped in such a way as to make it impossible to lay down without rolling off, either into a trench or away from the heat. And the earthworks also made it much more difficult to cook on the communal fire.
For the rest of the gathering, I listened to people around camp sing the praises of the digger and his work. This was a little surreal, because at the same time I was watching gatherers fall into the dangerous trenches and fail repeatedly to find comfortable spots to sleep around our fire. Not wanting to be a complainer, I mostly kept my opinion to myself. After all, the damage was already done and no one around me seemed at all interested in undoing it.
This experience was sadly not unusual. Society is filled with the products of misguided work. Nearly every government project falls into this category. Just think of how many work hours went into Obamacare.
It is interesting to note that the trench digger's work happened in the context of egalitarian anarchism. He just started digging and the community around him was supportive. The same thing happens in society at large, except the supportive community has financial instead of social motivations. As it turns out, neither situation guarantees a good outcome.
One of the missing ingredients is pause. If people would pause before acting to confirm that their course of action was the right one, surely there would be fewer missteps. Another missing ingredient is accommodating relevant perspectives. Had the digger listened to me, he would have dug intelligently. The third missing ingredient, of course, is wisdom, which can only be learned through experience.
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