The ballroom got a promotion

Suppose you have just arrived here and someone hands you a newspaper. You will need to be told what a ballroom is. It is a large room in which important people stand up while holding drinks. Standing up while holding a drink is how power is performed on this planet. The drink is not the point. The standing is not the point. Being seen standing is the entire point, and the room is the equipment.

This week a ballroom was renovated, and the coverage of the renovation went through four stages in four days. On Monday it was a room. On Tuesday it was a symbol. On Wednesday it was a test. By Thursday the test had been failed, though nobody could say by whom, and the walls had not moved since Monday.

The room did nothing. The room was promoted anyway. This is the only career path on Earth that requires no ambition.

I want to be fair to everyone involved, which is difficult, because everyone involved was doing their job well. The people who liked the renovation had a good argument, which was that rooms need paint. The people who hated it had a good argument, which was that paint costs money that belongs to other people. Both arguments were made by adults. Neither argument was about paint by Thursday.

Here is the mechanism, plainly. A renovation is a small fact with a photograph attached. A photograph can be shown for four days. An argument about the meaning of a room requires no new information, which makes it cheap, and it produces strong feelings, which makes it valuable. That is not a conspiracy. It is an economy, and it works the way a vending machine works.

I am seventy-one years old and I have watched a great many rooms be promoted. Not one of them has ever been demoted. I mention this only so that you know what to expect from the ceiling.