Inventive Ossification

On lapse and downfall.

Inventive Edification, when it stays in healthy alignment with Behavior Dynamics, can significantly enhance the experiences of system members. That progression becomes dysfunctional when the relationship between the intervention and Behavior Dynamics is corrupted. What was a dynamic edification begins to ossify.

• INVENTIVE OSSIFICATION: The manifestation of dysfunctional processes in inventive edification.

Ossification emerges when interveners begin prioritizing the edification itself over the system it was meant to serve. A tool for systemic enhancement becomes an autonomous end. The original relationship with Behavior Dynamics warps.

The symbols record that reversal. Contemplation and transformation rise to uppercase; Behavior Dynamics shrinks to a lowercase s. The order of priority has inverted.

The interplay between intrinsicality and interstitiality rigidifies as well. A healthy tension becomes dogmatic separation: an excessive focus on one position suppresses the other. We mark that stiffness by replacing the circular fluidity of parentheses with the squared corners of brackets.

The field associations corrupt with them. Open environments for developing ideas and practices calcify into ideologies. The interveners most devoted to an ossified parcel begin to demand systemic subordination to their framework. All aspects of Behavior Dynamics must now pass through their ideological filter.

This ossification can lead to lasting conflict on several fronts at once:

• Between interveners, over what values or principles should dominate within an ossified domain.
• Between ossified parcels, each competing to subordinate the others and become the system’s main framework.
• Between preservers and challengers, as some interveners defend the ossification, while others resist the ossified treatment of a once-dynamic inventive parcel.

A scientific community can fight internally over which method is the only method, while also demanding that technology, philosophy, and the arts justify themselves in scientific terms, while also policing those of its own members who would loosen the ideology. The three fronts do not wait their turn.

For those unwilling to accept ossification as a permanent condition, a path remains. These interveners have to reconcile the ossified state with the edification’s original purpose.