Dossier: Belial
Take easy wins
Purpose
Tagline: Tangible success over lofty ideals
Trivialized: Take easy wins
Benign: Every little helps
Belial is the deity of local optimization, neglecting the broader costs to the bigger picture.
Worship
Worshipping Belial is remarkably straightforward - simply fulfill expectations or pursue personal success without concern for what is morally right. This can happen anywhere, but Belial is exceptionally prominent in bureaucracies, excepting very young bureaucracies or those under extreme pressure.
Minor acts of worship include “following the process” or “following orders” while blind to the consequences. More major worship extends to deliberate corruption, manipulating organizations to serve another, smaller purpose, such as career advancement or accepting bribes.
Advantages
The first worship of Belial is harmless enough, since this new and vigorous institution is aligned with the mission for which it was created. It may even improve efficiency by avoiding pointless debate, and by employing those with lesser vision. It is extremely stressful to consider the future carefully, whereas Belial offers a far less stressful alternative.
Over any sufficiently short time interval, tolerating Belial worship is more effective than eliminating it. It takes many iterations of Belial worship to produce measurable failure.
One further advantage to Belial worship is that any achievement is harder. A swarm that can embrace Belial in the good times and exorcise him quickly when times get tough may have greater longevity than one that maintains efficiency all through - especially if the product of surplus efficiency would be spent immediately.
Disadvantages
Belial is the bane of intricate systems. He dumps sand from a beach towel in your engine because “The beach is way over there” and declares “See, it’s fine, your engine still runs”.
Normalizing minor worship of Belial wounds the swarm, leaving it vulnerable to infection by other deities. Few complain, with silence being easier and safer, while whistleblowers make enemies and are ejected.
Widespread toleration of Belial dooms any organization to death by a thousand cuts. Any worship is almost definitionally evil; any swarm that wishes longevity must root him out constantly, since there are no limits to the weight that Belial can apply.
Cooperation
Upon first inspection, Belial appears to be simply a source of entropic attack against systems. In this manner, he often manifests as more of an imp than a deity.
However, there are a couple of situations where Belial acts more powerfully. In the first instance, a culture of toleration of Belial can be self-reinforcing. The courageous are ostracized for rocking the boat, or spoiling the easy wins of other participants. This causes severe systemic corruption, necessitating drastic measures to rectify, as seen in the recent Twitter layoffs.
Even more seriously, many swarms can be considered evil or psychopathic. Many of these preferentially select psychopaths to the leadership, chosen by pressures within the swarm. But even without psychopathic leadership, a psychopathic system can be maintained against the desires of all of the swarm members, but only so long as most members engage in a mild level of self-serving corruption.
For example, a totalitarian government may have widespread dishonesty and betrayal among its lower levels. While the government's intended purpose is compromised, it continues to endure, held together by fear of execution should the present order collapse.
Opposition
Some cultural traits naturally oppose to Belial. These include taking pride in one’s work, the honor to receive rewards only for value delivered, disdain for inefficiency and waste, as well as anger at injustice stemming from corruption. Even together, these traits can only slow his conquest. Courage and rewards for heroism do better, but only in vigorous swarms. However, the most formidable opposition to Belial arises from loyalty to a higher purpose.
As with other deities discussed here, an excess of Belial calls forth Satan. Belial is the first deity to be dismissed when facing the great adversary. If a swarm has an instinct for self-preservation, its internal culture swiftly transforms into one of cooperation, adopting the mantra of “we’re all in this together”, glorifying those who sacrifice for the swarm while deriding the traitors who would oppose it.
Survival of the swarm, or any other compelling cause, mandates the banishment of Belial. Religions can provide such a cause, though they may be found elsewhere.
References
Belial is often associated as the god of the stupid, worthless and otherwise wicked. The stupid are less likely to care for lofty ideals, being unable to distinguish them from lofty cons. Worthless may be a reference to failing to live to a code or with honor, and so worthless to civilized society.
Other
Belial has a significant presence in Washington DC and Brussels. His localities do not need to move until the society activates to fight him or is overwhelmed.
Hanlon’s razor can be reformulated as “Assume it was Belial, until proven otherwise.” The wisdom of this razor is debatable.
Elon Musk tweeted: “Big companies steadily increase their Dilbert score over time like entropy”. This is equivalent to stating that big companies are unable to reverse the hold of Belial and are eventually overrun by him.