Crash Early, Crash Often (Ribbonfarm Roughs Book 3)

by Venkatesh G. Rao

The mask operates in either an impressionist mode (letting more information in than out) or expressionist mode (putting out more information than it is letting in). Generativity is lost by letting one mode dominate. The impressionist mode can be fatal if the external environment is too chaotic for the daemon to process — this is why we seek out familiarity and beauty when the daemon is weak. If we fail to take such restorative actions, the mask deadens and the light starts to visibly go out behind the eyes. That is one kind of death of generativity. The expressionist mode operates in exactly the reverse way. It seeks to create unfamiliar new beauty. When the outflow of imaginative creativity is not strong enough to conquer the chaos in the environment with a sufficiently large dent, it backslides into projective authoritarianism. If we fail to rein in ambition when such overreach happens, the mask of authority turns cruel, demanding and grasping. The eyes turn a cartoon-villain red. That is the other kind of death of generativity.