[2006alum]

Hmm, I looked around, but it appears that this story is not based in fact - it's more probably a fictional urban legend that is common in Christian sermons:


Apparently versions of this story appear in Babylon V and also peg it to the White Cliffs of Dover:




No one seems to have a reputable source for this story, however, so it's probable that it isn't true, even though it makes an elegant point for "anti-bureaucratic bloviators."

Stories, especially old unprovable stories. are a special kind of communication. They can be essentially true without being factually true. All the great religions use stories to explain. That it might be urban legend, or didn't really happen, ought not to void its point. IMO

I mean, if the story isn't factually true, what is the significance of it? Anyone could make up anything and attach the significance of hundreds of years, of Czars, of grand themes and sweeping metaphors. But if it's not in fact the case that an institution ran on auto-pilot for 100 years, then it's using fiction to make an argument seem far more salient and relevant than it is. 

And if anything, unfortunately, I have tended to experience the opposite in the institutions I've worked in in my life: they are only as good as the people who occupy them, and when the founders/originators/change-agents leave and are replaced by less competent successors, the institutions start to fall apart. YMMV as to whether that also applies to the house that went dark last night...

[2006alum]

Hmm, I looked around, but it appears that this story is not based in fact - it's more probably a fictional urban legend that is common in Christian sermons:


Apparently versions of this story appear in Babylon V and also peg it to the White Cliffs of Dover:




No one seems to have a reputable source for this story, however, so it's probable that it isn't true, even though it makes an elegant point for "anti-bureaucratic bloviators."

Stories, especially old unprovable stories. are a special kind of communication. They can be essentially true without being factually true. All the great religions use stories to explain. That it might be urban legend, or didn't really happen, ought not to void its point. IMO

I mean, if the story isn't factually true, what is the significance of it? Anyone could make up anything and attach the significance of hundreds of years, of Czars, of grand themes and sweeping metaphors. But if it's not in fact the case that an institution ran on auto-pilot for 100 years, then it's using fiction to make an argument seem far more salient and relevant than it is. 

And if anything, unfortunately, I have tended to experience the opposite in the institutions I've worked in in my life: they are only as good as the people who occupy them, and when the founders/originators/change-agents leave and are replaced by less competent successors, the institutions start to fall apart. YMMV as to whether that also applies to the house that went dark last night...