Friction

The end of Viktor Orban’s reign had all the hallmarks of similar transitions from the authoritarian governments of Eastern Europe thirty years ago: a largely peaceful transition of power because the people finally decided that they would be ungovernable by this particular tyrant.

Autocracy runs on fear—on the assumption that enough people, confronted with sufficient consequences, will decide that compliance is safer than truth. What dismantled Orbán’s operation was the accumulation of individual decisions to the contrary.

Orban is still in parliament as opposition leader and his state apparatus still exists. But his election loss, although not the same as the fall of the former Eastern European Communist governments in the 1990s, put me in mind of the thesis championed by Havel, of living in truth. It seems that the Hungarian people, despite election rigging and gerrymandering, just got sick of being ruled by an illiberal autocrat with deep ties to the insane administrations of both Russia and the United States. My hope is that the people of Hungary have demonstrated the way, even through rigged electoral politics, to depose of a “democratic dictator.” Others may follow.

Another article about what it’s like to teach in the era of LLMs. I’m interested to read these and see how they change over time as the LLMs change, school policies and pedagogy changes and students change. The part that resonates for me about this one is “friction.”

Helen Palmer has collected a number of different voices describing the Cynefin framework and some if it’s underlying theory and practice. It’s a useful primer to where the thinking is on this particular framework