A Horror Movie Reminder: We Are Fragile
I was watching Evil Dead Rise the other day, and in between all the grotesque horror, one thought stuck with me: humans are incredibly fragile. In the movie, people get torn apart, possessed, and maimed in horrific ways, but what really got me was the simple things—choking, a misplaced step, a tiny wound leading to something much worse.
In reality, we are an imperfect biological system. A small mistake—swallowing the wrong way—can be fatal, yet we can also survive amputations and extreme injuries. We aren’t perfect, but we are adaptable. That’s what keeps us alive.
This paradox of vulnerability and resilience isn’t unique to biology. It applies to every system we rely on. The things that endure are not the ones without flaws—they are the ones that become fundamental, forcing us to build around them, patch their weaknesses, and keep them running no matter what.
The Postal System: An Institution That Outlived Its Prime
Take something as simple as the postal system. It started with a basic purpose: move letters from one place to another. Over time, people built on top of it. Bills, tax forms, legal notices, birthday cards, advertising—every aspect of communication integrated itself with the mail.
It felt like an untouchable system. But then, technology advanced. We got FedEx, faster mail, email, instant messaging. Each innovation chipped away at the postal system, but none of them fully replaced it. Why? Because it was too embedded in the way society functioned. Even as the digital world grew, we still needed a system for official documents, government communications, and physical packages.
And yet, even a system as fundamental as the mail isn’t immune to change. Recently, Royal Mail was bought by a Czech company, showing how even foundational institutions can be reduced to something that can be traded, sold, and reshaped.
Blitzscaling Startups: The Internet’s Patchwork Evolution
The internet didn’t follow the model of the postal system. Instead of being built as a foundational structure, it evolved as a patchwork system. The early internet wasn’t designed for what we use it for today—there was no plan for streaming, encryption, or social media. Every time a new need arose, we didn’t rebuild it from scratch; we just added another patch.
Startups took advantage of this. Blitzscaling companies like Uber and Amazon didn’t create flawless systems. Instead, they grew so fast that people had no choice but to use them, even with all their flaws. They became embedded in daily life, and once that happened, they couldn’t be ignored.
Uber didn’t replace taxis by being perfect—it replaced them by becoming the default. Amazon didn’t kill retail by being the best—it just became too convenient to stop using.
These systems don’t survive because they are ideal. They survive because they are popular enough to force adaptation.
Banks and Legal Systems: When Patching Becomes the Problem
Money and law work in similar ways.
The banking system was originally a foundational system—built on simple concepts like gold-backed currency and physical transactions. But as economies expanded, we didn’t tear down the old system and start fresh; we patched it. Fiat currency replaced gold, digital banking replaced cash, and financial instruments became increasingly complex.
The 2008 financial crisis? That was a direct result of a system that had been patched too many times. Instead of designing something sustainable, we just kept layering fixes on top of old problems. Eventually, the whole thing buckled under its own weight.
The legal system works the same way. The U.S. Constitution, for example, was designed as a foundational document. But because society evolved, laws had to be patched onto it over centuries. The result? A legal system filled with contradictions, loopholes, and outdated rules that are constantly being reinterpreted instead of rewritten.
At a certain point, patches become their own source of instability.
Classifying Systems: Built to Last vs. Built to Adapt
Looking at all these examples, we can classify systems into two types:
- Foundational Systems – Built as a base, hard to change, but provide stability (e.g., constitutions, banking regulations, measurement systems).
- Patchwork Systems – Constantly adapting, flexible, but grow increasingly complex over time (e.g., the internet, cybersecurity, financial markets).
Both have limits. Foundational systems become outdated and difficult to reform. Patchwork systems become bloated and inefficient.
The real question is: what happens when a system reaches its breaking point?
Fate: The Breaking Point of All Systems
No system is permanent. Everything—biological, technological, societal—eventually reaches a point where it can no longer be sustained in its current form. When that happens, there are only two options:
- Rebuild from scratch – A rare but necessary shift (e.g., revolutions, financial resets, technological breakthroughs).
- Keep patching until failure – The more common path, where inefficiencies accumulate until the system collapses under its own weight.
When systems become too big to fail, society finds ways to keep them alive—until it no longer can. The question isn’t if a system will break, but when.
What We Try to Build vs. What We Actually Get
Whenever we create something new, we imagine it as a perfect, self-sustaining system. But history shows that nothing stays perfect.
What we actually get are dependent systems—things that survive not because they are the best, but because people rely on them. These systems don’t need to be flawless; they just need to be too useful to abandon.
So, should we build for perfection or popularity? If perfection is impossible, the best we can do is create systems so fundamental that people will keep fixing them forever.
Sometimes, patching works. Sometimes, things break beyond repair. And sometimes, you just have to burn it all down and start over—though hopefully not in the way they do in Evil Dead Rise. Because no amount of patching is going to fix a system once the demons get in.