I was sort of struck by the claim that "plans and counterplans" and "purposes and cross-purposes" are _all_ planned towards _one_ purpose.
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Yes, that phrasing was unfortunate.
I meant plans within plans, more or less. The ceaseless activity, sometimes involving battles between different elements of the ruling strata whose interests, beyond those defined by class-based opposition to sharing power and wealth with 'the rest of us', can be quite diverse. I imagine, to geek out for a moment, a photon torpedo; a contained maelstrom of seething energy that appears on the verge of flying apart, yet which is still directed as a weapon towards a target.
I think there's an old word for this phenomena, when a seemingly fragile or excessively stressed system is held together, paradoxically, by the aggregate force of its collective weakness or against flying apart by the nullying effect of its ever clashing tensions: tensegrity. Being, that tension which produces structural integrity.
Now I've gone too far, for this is geeking out at an even deeper level - pulling a Buckminister Fuller reference from the ether.
Where was my copy editor (also known as my lovely wife) when she was needed?
DRM
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