12th May 2008
| Draft
An Inconvenient Truth
about any inconvenient truth
- / -
Produced on the occasion of the world response to global
climate change, global financial crisis, global food crisis, global energy
crisis, global water crisis, and continuing cycles of violence
An inconvenient truth is always framed so as to:
- imply the minimum need for change in the thinking and behaviour of those
who choose to recognize it
- maximize the worthiness of those recognizing that truth by stigmatizing
those who fail to accept it -- or any implied need for action
- ensure that there can be no valid doubt as to its veracity -- thus inhibiting
any meaningful dialogue with those believing otherwise
- maximize the need for the skills of those framing and recognizing the
truth
- imply a form of possession of it by its proponents -- thereby, as a
form of intellectual property, creating a challenging dynamic with those
who have not acquired rights to use of that property
- effectively constitute the formulating principle of what amounts to
a conceptually gated community -- ensuring a form of closure against other
possibilities
- necessarily to belie truths otherwise held to be more convenient
-- thereby undermining any individual or collective patterns of behaviour
or identity that may be associated with them
- maximize the investment required of those who are likely to be most
inconvenienced by the truth
- effectively postpone immediate action by focusing on the call for such
immediate action -- and on the preparatory steps necessary to any such
action
- avoid reference to the continuing action of primary causative processes,
effectively too inconvenient to be appropriately considered, by focusing
intensively and urgently on the only too evident symptomatic secondary
phenomena and on their disastrous, tragic nature
- avoid the challenge of configuring any disparate range of associated
insights that together would constitute a critical mass able to engender
appropriate responses of deeper significance
- avoid recognition of past formulations of such inconvenient truths,
of the pattern of responses to them, and of the failures to learn from
them -- so that history may gracefully repeat itself
- maximize the visibility of whatever is actually undertaken, especially
including calls for such action, in order to obscure the inadequacy in
responding to the regenerative capacity of the challenge
- focus resources on narrow ("soluble") technical forms of
intervention, the more complex and costly the better -- and
whatever their degree of success -- such as to avoid
addressing more complex psycho-social patterns engendering the challenge
- avoid any consideration of the problems for the future arising
from the implementation of narrow technical solutions -- that the future
may recognize as ill-considered
- ensure the possibility of acclaiming the achievement of any remedial
technological success, however narrow or problematic, as an
exemplification of human genius, and the capacity to sustain business as
usual in the face of any challenge -- and irrespective of any failure to
address underlying issues
- postpone to the extent possible any need to evaluate the success of the
initiative and any implication that any inadequacy (as with those of the
past) might be a source of fruitful learning
- marginalize systematically those who question any of the above patterns
-- as being necessarily part of perpetuating the problem rather than
being part of the solution so creatively and enthusiastically proposed
- honour, to the extent possible, those who have acted in this way, or
subscribed to such action -- as a means of obscuring any flaws in such
behaviour that are likely to perpetuate and exacerbate the challenge
in the future
As an "inconvenient truth" in its own right the above formulation
should necessarily:
- conform to the pattern it describes
- fail to evoke the expected response from others, for whom it is purportedly
intended
The degree of convenience of a truth is typically a function of the brevity
of its formulation, the ease with which it can be articulated, communicated
and comprehended, and the degree to which this enables any more inconvenient
truth to be obscured.
--
Prime candidate for a truth that is too inconvenient for
consideration -- at the source of the crises named above, : overpopulation
Action responses in conformity with the above pattern
Initiation of:
- Appeals -- to the world, the international community, to nations and
to individuals
- Research -- to substantiate the reality of the challenge
- Technological development -- to circumvent the problem and mitigate
the symptoms
- Prayer -- to evoke higher powers, recognizing human limitations
- Security measures -- in anticipation of social unrest arising from the
challenge
- Communication -- to inform people of the challenge and the need for
them to change their behaviour
- Solicitation of funds -- to respond to the dire needs from those in immediate
distress
- Humanitarian intervention -- to provide relief to those in distress
- Celebrity buy-in -- to provide a symbolic focus for recognition of the
challenge
- Meetings of stakeholders -- to discuss the challenge and evoke collective
response
- Organization of task forces -- to coordinate action in response to the
challenge
- Declarations and resolutions -- to focus collective recognition and resolve
- Strategic plan of action -- to determine responsibilities for subsequent
coordinated action
Technological illustrations of the
inconvenience of any inconvenient truth relating to global governance
The simplicity, comprehensibility and communicability of an inconvenient
truth is well-illustrated by:
- automobiles: which few are capable of making or repairing,
although many (but not all) claim an ability to drive, and an aspiration
to do so -- despite their dependence on non-renewable resources and their
impact on the environment
- electronic consumer products: despite extremely widespread
use of radio, music players, TVs, and computers, who is capable of understanding
their operating principles to a degree enabling their design, development
or repair, in contrast with the number whose familiarity with their use
in practice obscures their inability in those respects? The classic example
of "inability to program a VCR" is now matched by "inability
to use a computer", let alone to program one.
- space rockets: whilst "reaching for the stars" has
been promoted as a comprehensible ideal justifying allocation of resources
as a priority to that end, who is capable of comprehending the complex
control systems that renders them viable, and of developing the technology
in practice? How was this allocation of resources rendered credible to
those without that understanding?
In the light of such various degrees of engagement with technology:
- who
is likely to to be able to envisage the requisite new "technologies" of
governance appropriate to the challenges of the times?
- who might understand how to design and develop them in practice?
- who might comprehend their significance sufficiently to allocate resources
to that end?
- who might have the skills to use them?
Again, the comvenience of the explanation of any technology depends on
it being significantly shorter than that required for its operationalization
in practice -- implying that any remedial technique is necessarily both a
challenge to implement and to justify funding for its development.
What inconvenient truth does this imply about the democratic global
governance desirable for the future?
The inconvenient truth about truth
would seem to be that its simplicity is not to be found
where it would be most convenient for it to be
References
Jared M. Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. 2005
Thomas Homer-Dixon. The Upside of Down: catastrophe, creativity, and the renewal
of civilization. 2006
Anthony Judge:
- Begetting: challenges and responsibilities of overpopulation. 2007 [text]
- Dynamically
Gated Conceptual Communities. 2004 [text]
- Warping
the Judgement of Dissenting Opinion: towards a general framework for
comparing distortion in rules of evidence. 2002 [text]
- Collective Learning from Calls for Global Action. 1981 [text]
- Checklist of Nasty
Methodological Questions -- regarding development analyses and initiatives.
1981 [text]
John Ralston Saul. The Unconscious Civilization. 1995
Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable.
2007
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