WHAT YOU'VE BEEN SOLD
The rules went soft and multiplied.
Upstairs, the rules went soft, and then, as soft things do, they multiplied. One clear rule became ten guidelines, then a hundred best practices, then a seventy-page policy document and a set of terms nobody has ever read, each one hedged and softened and cross-referenced into total uselessness. The forest, by contrast, kept exactly one rule, and enforces it without appeal: crispness. Everything else it decluttered centuries ago. Seventy pages of policy versus one cold, clean snap. The woods, it turns out, win on clarity.
Seventy-page policy documents versus one cold clean snap. The woods win on clarity.