Migratory endo-ideals – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

When a transcendental endogroup has an overpopulated group of endo-ideals, or they are under pressure, they will begin to swarm by creating a multitude of smaller endogroups at lower levels. This results in alienated societies and in the colonization of negative image groups both within and without the original endogroup.

Expanded explanation

Two conditions trigger the swarm, overpopulation of endo-ideals and pressure on them, and the response to both is the same. Rather than compete for one centre, surplus endo-ideals disperse downward and create smaller endogroups where each can occupy a centre of its own. Marsh describes them as the 21st century Habsburgs who create empires, and the mechanism accounts for a pattern that is otherwise puzzling. New endogroups are usually formed from intelligentsia revolutionaries, a migratory endo-ideal or the endo-ideal of an enemy endogroup, because no negative image can self identify as the negative image without becoming an endo-ideal, so a group cannot found itself from below. Someone has to arrive from an endo-ideal position, and migratory endo-ideals are often welcomed by the negative image groups they come to head, whether or not they had any role in creating those groups or any claim to the identity. This is where the law of the last circle meets them, since when an endogroup collapses with nothing above it to absorb it the people revert to their last real or imagined loyalties, and the migratory endo-ideals head the groups that reform. Their motive is guilt. Swarming is first seen as an attempt to avoid collective guilt by dissociating from the former endo-ideal while continuing to use endo-ideal power to define reality. Academia has boosted the pattern, since graduates are taught to see themselves as superior and their institutional homes define themselves as endo-ideals.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh gives the reason new groups are almost never founded from below, which is what makes the migratory figure necessary.

“Migratory endo-ideals are often welcomed by the negative image”
The Creation of Me, Them and Us

Examples

Why groups cannot found themselves: No negative image can self identify as one without becoming an endo-ideal, so a founder has to arrive from above.
Dissociation from collective guilt: Swarming begins as an attempt to escape the guilt attaching to a former endo-ideal while keeping the power to define reality.
Academia as accelerant: Graduates taught to see themselves as superior, in institutions defining themselves as endo-ideals, supply the surplus.

How others use it

Elite theory after Pareto describes the circulation of elites and Mosca the organized minority, and the literature on elite overproduction, particularly Peter Turchin's, holds that too many aspirants for too few positions produces instability and factional conflict, which is very close to Marsh's first trigger. Studies of movement leadership document outsiders assuming leadership of causes not their own, and the term allyship has its own contested literature. Marsh's account differs by supplying the structural reason the outsider is necessary rather than merely opportunistic, since on her reading the group could not have acquired a centre without someone arriving from a position that already had one.