So do you think, then, that this inefficiency is deliberate, meant to preserve the status quo as it is? That is certainly an interesting proposition, wouldn't you say?
IC:
You invite a question. What does "deliberate" mean when applied to an entire civilization?
Galactic Man refers to itself as an 'Imperium of Man.' Linguistic analysis of certain fragments suggests that this means not only the political structure, but Man's right and authorization to rule over space and peoples.* The institution thus announces that it is, at its root, a self-reinforcing, self-supporting statement of its own authority. Presumably this authority is attributed to 'Man.'
But who is 'Man?" Naively, we might suppose that the Man in question is a singular human male. If so, who? No candidate presents himself. The name has been in place for long ages when no single human, male or otherwise, ruled the Imperium.* Why not 'the Imperium of Woman' or 'the Imperium of Those Twelve People Over There?'
We conclude that the Man is a term for a collective construct, a sort of notional 'giant.' The giant, for reasons best understood by humans, is imagined as male-presenting, but this is unimportant. More importantly, this giant, upon closer examination, is actually a composite figure. Many individuals, standing on each other's shoulders, clinging to each others' arms and legs, forming the shape of a Man.
Man is an aggregate of all the many individuals who exercise 'imperium,' the official power of control over those who belong to Man. Grammatically and conceptually it is useful to imagine 'Man' as a single nigh-immortal being with prodigious scope and power, but the reality is that 'Man' is a collection of institutions, interactions, and customs governing the conduct of the individual components of Man.
Man acts 'deliberately' and without deliberation at the same time. Man cannot actually form a singular coherent mental process that makes something you or I would recognize as a 'choice.' Humans are not a hive-minded species,* after all. And telepathic humans are systematically excluded from Man's exercise of authority, making the idea of Man ever truly 'deliberating' in the way that you or I would even more out of the question.
At the same time, Man does many things that can obviously be said to serve some purpose or other, such as operating starships, building massive temple complexes, detonating planets, or detonating planets with starships that are also temple complexes.
Man is not a man. Man is an institution, a collective word. Man does, and does not, deliberate.
Does Man deliberately cultivate inefficiency to make its belongings easy to control? Good question. Do 'the Drukhari' deliberately do all the things that 'the Drukhari' do? I cannot claim to know, but I surmise that many of the things 'the Drukhari' do not deliberately do, nonetheless serve a purpose in the structures that make 'the Drukhari ' a coherent, meaningful concept as opposed to a random mass of individual Eldar.*
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*(please correct me if I'm wrong about this)
