Centripetal force – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

A force which acts on unequal populations in forced interactions to create ponzi schemes of celebrity, wealth and power and endogroups. Slight advantages become huge by the requirement that everyone support those with resources or power in order to benefit. This force creates and upholds endogroups and is an endosocial force.

Expanded explanation

Centripetal force is the inward pull that concentrates advantage and builds endogroups. Acting on unequal populations locked into forced interactions, it turns slight initial advantages into enormous ones through a single mechanism: everyone is required to support those who already hold resources or power in order to benefit at all. Backing the strong is the price of participating, which feeds the strong further, so small leads compound into the ponzi schemes of celebrity, wealth and power that Marsh describes, where the returns to those at the centre are paid by the continual buy-in of everyone below. This is the force that creates and upholds endogroups, pulling energy and loyalty toward a centre, and Marsh names it endosocial because it binds people inward around an idealised core. It is one half of a pair, opposed by the centrifugal, exosocial force that pushes the other way.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh describes the compounding mechanism directly.

“Slight advantages become huge by the requirement that everyone support those with resources or power in order to benefit”
Binding Chaos

Examples

Advantage that compounds: When everyone must back those who already hold power in order to gain anything, small leads swell into the ponzi schemes of wealth and celebrity Marsh names.
The pull toward a centre: Centripetal force draws energy and loyalty inward around an idealised core, which is how it creates and holds an endogroup together.

How others use it

In physics, centripetal force is the inward force keeping a body on a circular path, and Marsh borrows the directional image, inward, concentrating, toward the centre. The social phenomena she attaches it to, cumulative advantage or the Matthew effect, are studied across sociology and economics. Her contribution is to pair it with an opposing centrifugal force and to tie both to the endosocial and exosocial directions of her framework.