Genesis, Paradise Lost, Camelot and Cultural Entropy

Critical Lessons for 2025

What if the greatest societies fall not from external enemies, but from within—like a sudden storm in paradise?

A Fleeting Wisp of Glory: Remembering Camelot

In the Fall of 1967, I was a First Year Undergrad at Boston College. I remember quite clearly attending the film, Camelot, with the fantastic music of Lerner and Lowe. So many wonderful songs…so many vignettes into the human condition. The one that sticks in my mind is Camelot Reprise:

ARTHUR:
Each evening, from December to December,
Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,
Think back on all the tales that you remember
Of Camelot.
Ask ev’ry person if he’s heard the story,
And tell it strong and clear if he has not,
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot.
Camelot! Camelot!
Now say it out with pride and joy!

TOM:
Camelot! Camelot!

ARTHUR:
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.

Somehow, even as an 18-year-old college freshman from the Midwest finding himself in cosmopolitan Boston, I knew there was something significant about this story, especially this final reprise, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Years later, I began to realize this was a story that had long held a fascination. It is an old story, as old in fact as humanity as it was the subject of the third chapter in Genesis (Bereshit).

From Paradise to Exile: The Original Fall

Mankind really had it made! They were literally in Paradise! No sickness. No death. No hunger. No worries! Wow…Who could ask for more? Well, somehow, they found a reason to “complicate” things. Defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory.

In Paradise Lost, Milton fills in the backstory. So much has been written about this by individuals far more credible than I, but I can highlight some key points. Some have gone so far as to characterize Satan as the “epic hero” in the first two books of this poem. Others, like C.S. Lewis have pointed out this is flawed reasoning. Satan is, and always has been, evil. One thing, however, is certain: it is the pride and anger of Satan that is responsible for pushing Adam and Eve into the terrible decision that they made, and once the damage was done, it took a supernatural effort to remedy the wrong.

In the retelling of the Arthurian legend (with some artistic license) Camelot touches on the same important elements: Camelot truly was a most remarkable place:

ARTHUR:

It’s true! It’s true! The crown has made it clear.

The climate must be perfect all the year.

A law was made a distant moon ago here:

July and August cannot be too hot.

And there’s a legal limit to the snow here

In Camelot.

The winter is forbidden till December

And exits March the second on the dot.

By order, summer lingers through September

In Camelot.

Camelot! Camelot!

I know it sounds a bit bizarre,

But in Camelot, Camelot

That’s how conditions are.

The rain may never fall till after sundown.

By eight, the morning fog must disappear.

In short, there’s simply not

A more congenial spot

For happily-ever-aftering than here

In Camelot.

Camelot! Camelot!

I know it gives a person pause,

But in Camelot, Camelot

Those are the legal laws.

The snow may never slush upon the hillside.

By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.

In short, there’s simply not

A more congenial spot

For happily-ever-aftering than here

In Camelot.

To this idyllic location, Arthur envisions a system of justice where might doesn’t make right but might is used for right. What a novel thought for Britain in the Fifth Century…or was it?

Echoes of Citizenship in History

In The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, Victor Davis Hanson describes that this idea, at least for citizens, predated Camelot by centuries. The concept of citizenship, first budded under Greek city states, then blossomed under Roman law and flourished for centuries. The magnitude of its importance can be seen from the experiences of Saul of Tarsus, the later Saint Paul, cataloged in Chapter 22 of The Acts of the Apostles:

²² The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”

²³ As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, ²⁴ the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. ²⁵ As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”

²⁶ When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”

²⁷ The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”

“Yes, I am,” he answered.

²⁸ Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”

“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.

²⁹ Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.

If the Roman commander was alarmed that he may have put a citizen in chains, it really meant something! Note that Paul did not have to produce a passport or any document. The mere assertion was enough to stop the action.

The Britain of Arthur had descended into tribalism after the withdrawal of the Roman legions in the early Fifth Century, but a memory of the power of Roman citizenship, even under the Empire, most likely remained in living memory. Might for right may have been an echo of that, as postulated by Jack Whyte in the novels of the Camulod Chronicles.

Unfortunately, the only thing today that protects that precious citizenship in the United States, with its rights and responsibilities, is our collective allegiance to the United States as a Constitutional Republic. Hanson makes the ominous statement:

[our protection] is only as good as the citizens of any era who choose to preserve and to nourish it for one more generation. Republics are so often lost not over centuries but within a single decade.

As Ben Franklin famously responded when asked what kind of government we have, A republic…if you can keep it.

But how exactly does that collective allegiance function? What does it mean? Can we experience this in our own lives? I think we can.

My Mini-Camelots: Peaks and Crashes

I have experienced many “Mini-Camelots” in my life, and I would wager so have you. These are experiences that just seem so “right” …so heightened above the ordinary. Perhaps it was an athletic team that just hit on all cylinders. Maybe it was an orchestra that somehow captured the essence of the music to a degree that was somehow a notch above ordinary. Maybe it was a work group or an academic class or seminar where everything just “fit”. You may have wondered “What was that! What just happened?” And then, try as you may, that experience was difficult to recapture or repeat.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explored this in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. His protégé, Keith Salyer, extended this to emphasize that this optimal experience and creativity was most often due to Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration.

As described by M. Mitchell Waldrop in Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, such creative activity is best understood as the result of a Complex Adaptive System, which is characterized by dynamics where the total is indeed more than the sum of the parts and small differences in starting point can lead to massive nonlinear differences in outcome.

In a prior Brownstone essay and a Substack, I explored how the result might look if the concepts of Organizational Entropy and Organizational Culture were intertwined. My prior “Mini-Camelots” all seemed to follow a similar trajectory:

· A spark of an unplanned and unexpected “something” allowed a nonlinear explosion of Organizational Performance in:

o A year of academic study with a group of fellow American students in Vienna that created an intense experience of the importance of social and academic heterodoxy (before that was even a concept).

o Massive improvements in Clinical Quality Improvement in a large tertiary care medical center.

o A medical subspecialty society that created an educational program far beyond what was expected or even imagined.

o A graduate degree program in a major business school and another in a College of Health Solutions focusing on the delivery of health care education, both of which made massive strides forward.

o A congregation that grew into the largest and most dynamic church in my state.

· Unfortunately, the rapid collapse of all these organizational efforts was equally unexpected:

o The organizational heterodoxy of my experience with my Vienna colleagues recently collapsed into one of rigid social and academic orthodoxy.

o The Clinical Quality Improvement program in the medical center imploded in a matter of weeks when it was seen that monetary considerations trumped quality.

o The medical subspecialty society surrendered its role in education and lost the “noble cause’ that was its purpose.

o Both the program in the business school and the one in health policy folded when leadership moved in a different direction.

o The congregation fell apart under new leadership.

How and Why did This Happen?

In retrospect, the answer is crystal clear. That is one of the paradoxes of the Wicked Problems that are part and parcel of the dynamics of a Complex Adaptive System. To know the answer, you must solve the problem. That sounds like something Yoda would have said but consider this: Solving a Sudoku puzzle can be challenging, however once you have the answer you can check it is seconds. The same is true of solving a Wicked Problem.

In Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright described Organizational Culture as the primary determinant of Organizational Performance. Dave Logan and I went on to build agent-based models to visualize how this happens.

We defined Organizational Culture as a shared meme expressed as “The pattern of, and capacity for, constructive adaptation based on a shared history, core values, purpose and future seen through a diversity of perspective”. It is not static but can be gained and lost based on internal and external pressures. It doesn’t just “happen” but must be cultivated. Successful organizations must intentionally spend effort on both advancing their culture and developing and marketing their product. Simply put, the organizations involved in my “mini-Camelots” forgot that lesson.

Organizational Culture is the energy that works by countering the Organizational Entropy that otherwise would cause the organizations to “die”. The danger is that many organizations forget about advancing their culture because they give into the complacency that naturally occurs when everything seems to be going well. By the time entropy takes over, it is often too late to overcome the energy deficit. They have entered a death spiral.

The Rogue Culture Trap

Now, back to Genesis, Paradise Lost and Camelot: the bottom dropped out catastrophically, not gradually, because of a failure to constructively adapt to internal (pride, human emotions and free will) and external (Mordred, Satan) pressures. In effect, the Culture went Rogue! Dave Logan described it this way:

My CBS Money Watch blog this week focused on Greg Smith’s allegations about Goldman Sachs. If they are true, I pointed out that many tribes within Goldman are “rogue tribes,” according to Tribal Leadership. Rogue tribes share many of the characteristics of “Stage Four” — including triadic relationships and a sense of vision, but the driver of behavior has shifted from core to non-core values.

Rogue tribes are dangerous because they are high performing but essentially lack a conscience. Stage Three tribes are self-indulgent and “me” focused but are also hampered by ineffectiveness. They are agonizing to watch, especially when the tribes run the government, the place that delivers your healthcare, or controls your paycheck. But their lack of agility and the inability to move as one limit their damage and provides endless inspiration for Dilbert and The Office. After one quick look at the stages that make up Tribal Leadership, most people can spot Stage Three, and see the goal: moving to Stage Four

But what do you do when tribes at Stage Four remain effective but lose their focus on doing what’s right? This question may be the most important of the decade. Military tribes are often Stage Four, and many recent stories show that they are not immune to going rogue, when individuals encourage or allow behavior that violates their core values. Schools and universities should be focused on learning as a core value, and Penn State reminds us of the great can go bad. When Stage Four tribes lose sight of their core values, they can destroy economies, companies, governments, and tip the world toward war.

Isn’t this what happened in Genesis and Paradise Lost? Satan started out as the Angel of Light but lost his core value and went rogue. In looking at my own experience with organizations which lost their mission, it seems that each organization lost sight of their core values and switched to non-core values, destroying their effectiveness and the good that they had accomplished.

The same thing happened in Camelot but with a sinister twist. Lancelot and Guinivere lost their way and this internal dissent played into the hands of the external force embodied by Mordred and committed to the destruction of the very essence of Camelot.

Lessons for MAGA, MAHA, and Beyond in 2025

Currently, we in the MAGA and MAHA movements face similar internal and external pressures. While most of us thought the battle was won with the 2024 election, both the MAGA and MAHA agendas have been weakened by those inside the organizations who seem to have gone rogue and lost sight of the core values so integral to their success.

I am particularly thinking of politicians in the House and Senate who seem more concerned with grandstanding than with consolidating victory. They insist on “majoring in the minors”. Because of this, the critical balance wheel keeping the “shared” and the “diverse” elements of our Organizational Culture has taken a hit. By going rogue they have diluted the Cultural Energy opposing the inevitable force of Cultural Entropy.

Even more ominous, they have played into the hands of those who are inimically opposed to our movement. Let’s remember just as Sherlock Holmes had a dangerous opponent in Professor James Moriatry, the Globalists have their own Organizational Culture, and it is powerful indeed.

Diversity is only a strength if it leads to unity of action. We understood that decades ago with the concept of a “melting pot”. Metallic alloys are important because they exhibit the positive qualities of their various components! As Scott Page emphasizes, though, diversity of perspective, is critical because it is the only way to identify the ‘global optimum” instead of remaining at a “local optimum”.

Breaking the Entropy Cycle

Lest someone think this is only an admonition for Conservatives, the same advice could be given to the Progressives. They have lost their way precisely because of the same lack of balance between the “shared” and “diverse” aspects of their organizational culture.

In fact, let’s take this a step further and consider the lack of balance in the larger political arena. The polarization that has taken place is acting as an anchor on our national progress. While this is most apparent, at least to me, in “Trump Derangement Syndrome” by progressives, the similar illogical dismissal of sound progressive ideas by conservatives leads to the same dead end of our national culture and plays into that unfeeling relentless force of Cultural Entropy.

Groucho Marx, that masterful societal critic, put it to music in the song, Whatever it is, I’m Against it, in the 1932 film, Horse Feathers:

I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
No matter what it is
Or who commenced it
I’m against it!

Your proposition may be good
But let’s have one thing understood
Whatever it is, I’m against it!
And even when you’ve changed it
Or condensed it
I’m against it!

I’m opposed to it
On general principles
I’m opposed to it!
(He’s opposed to it)
(In fact, he says he’s opposed to it!)

For months before my son was born
I used to yell from night to morn
“Whatever it is, I’m against it!”
And I’ve kept yelling
Since I first commenced it
“I’m against it!”

It was comical in 1932; in 2025 it is tragic.

Unless we remedy this situation, we risk loss of everything for which we have so earnestly worked. We must spend as much time advancing our Organizational Culture as our Legislative and Social Products. There are specific tools to do this, such as using generative future-based language, ”triading” and core value identification. These must be embraced and those in leadership positions must employ them to their fullest and do it quickly. Perhaps formal coaching by experts in Organizational Culture and Organizational Performance would be a wise investment.

As history and our own personal experiences show, the end can be sudden and quite unexpected.