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error, the first challenge, is
society’s deadliest cancer: people destroying people. The second challenge is
the gnawing doubt of whether we can improve society at all, whether we can
steer it, whether we are at the helm, if there even is a helm. This chapter
deals with things running out of hand, getting out of control. This challenge
is about political and governmental inability. It is about what happens when we
do what we can to steer the boat, but the boat does not respond or responds
wildly and unpredictably. This sphinx makes us feel helpless and impotent.
It
is easy to feel that we can do nothing to change the world. In ancient times
people believed that the gods were in control, and as everyone knows, gods are
weird, fickle, easily angered, difficult to placate and impossible to understand.
Or people viewed priests, soldiers or the prince as being in command. Princes,
like gods, often behave capriciously, and priests and soldiers always bicker
among themselves and with princes. Later, princes and tyrants become kings and
then bicker with barons and courtiers. Read Antony Jay for an analysis of the
present-day successors of these officials. In cities, oligarchies of the
rich and powerful called the shots, and members of these oligarchies always
bickered at home and abroad.
Today
we talk about social forces, the establishment, class struggle, racial tensions
or the low intellectual and moral standards of politicians, to explain why the
world is not moving more quickly in the right direction. What can a human do?
What can a community do? What can a government do? What can humanity do?
We
are responsible for the world we make. This position is clear and simple. If we
reject that, we are stuck with fatalism, with an attitude of not bothering, not
caring, and we believe that the buck, if there is any, stops elsewhere.
Even
when we accept the view that those who are at the helm are actually us, it soon
becomes painfully clear that this ship that we call society often does not respond
to our most forceful prompting. Even if the world is controllable, obviously it
is only partially so. Ostensibly there are limits to what we can do, as one
version of the Serenity Prayer makes clear: ‘Oh God, give me power to improve
what I can, to accept what I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.’
Here
we will talk about that difference, realizing that at times we may choose to do
or not do something that later leaves us no choice. Some developments are like
traps in that we may choose to enter, but we cannot leave of our own free will.
Often, we are like the sorcerer’s apprentice who knew the spell to make a broom
fetch water but did not know the spell to stop it, and nearly flooded everything.
The
previous chapter dealt with people being treated in beastly, inhumane ways.
This chapter deals with people who are dragged along by processes that they
have started but can no longer control. The sorcerer’s apprentice effect crops
up wherever we start something that becomes more difficult to stop than to
continue. Having more of something becomes easier than having less of the same
thing; moving forward becomes easier than moving backward. Often such forward
movement is worsened by a self-feeding, accelerating loop.
How Developments Run out of Hand
Since Norbert Wiener, Hal Ashby,
Stafford Beer and others, the old art of steering has become the new science of
cybernetics. Cybernetics applied to people is called management. Today, since
we understand the conditions and dynamics of management, we can pinpoint the
conditions of unmanageability. Management or control relies on feedback:
results achieved are compared against results expected or desired, and the
difference triggers a corrective action. Thus, the pathology of control becomes:
1.
If we do not know what we want,
there is no course we can take;
2.
If we cannot take corrective
action, whether by lack of capability,
guts or feedback, we will
drift along in the dark;
3.
If we overreact, the resulting
oscillations will destabilize the sytem;
4.
If we do not register feedback,
or even reject feedback, the system
becomes rigid;
5.
If effects do not weaken their
causes but instead strengthen them
(feed-forward instead of
feedback), things spiral out of hand or
lock themselves in.
The first pathology, that of not
knowing what we want, shows itself in persistent differences of opinion. The
methodology that is usually employed to deal with this state of affairs is
called politics, a mix of advertising and bargaining that usually results in
compromises that fall short of what was expected, or even prove to be
irrelevant. This shortfall in results leads to still more politics. When the
political approach is compared to grand strategies that move toward lofty
goals, politics is essentially a muddling through, but surprisingly this
process rarely gets stuck. Politics resemble a Brazilian traffic jam: somehow
the cars keep crawling.
The second pathology, that of
inability to take corrective action, is seldom present in society as a whole,
but becomes evident when communications break down, as well as when demoralization
and anarchy appear.
The third pathology, that of
overreaction, prevails in times of mass hysteria, and in times of anxiety in
general. Much overreaction also appears in the dialectics of intellectual
fashion. If a particular approach has been overadvertized and has underperformed,
critics who propose an inverse approach may suddenly drift into prominence.
The fourth and fifth pathologies are
probably the most persistent and pernicious. Barbara Tuchman explores the
fourth pathology, that of rigidity, in her March
of Folly. She analyzes beautifully the course and effects of this
tragic condition, but does not analyze its origins. Societies indulge in stark
folly either when they do not register feedback, or they reject that feedback.
But how and why does this folly occur?
The fifth pathology may show itself
in either a feed-forward cycle that snowballs or spirals out, accelerating or
escalating like a chain reaction, toward explosion and collapse; or a
feed-forward cycle that works like a dark hole, spiraling inward toward
implosion and deadlock. Very often, spirals and deadlocks are two sides of the
same coin. Armament spirals accompany disarmament deadlocks; deadlocks between
decision-makers accompany spiraling costs.
The challenge of unmanageability is
ultimately the challenge of protecting and repairing social, economic and political
feedback systems. This challenge also involves the wisdom of timing. The acute
sense of things getting out of hand or having gone out of hand is called ‘crisis’.
Therefore, this challenge also includes dealing with crises: preventing a
crisis if prevention is still possible, or finding a way out of a crisis that
already exists.
Many
people believe that we may prevent crises by forecasting the future. This
belief assumes that political ‘business as usual’ will continue. Some
criticized Meadows’ report to the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth, for not foreseeing the effects of its own
publication. Maybe these same people also point out that certain traffic signs
that warn of the danger of flying off the road at a dangerous curve actually
prevent this danger from happening, and therefore are incorrect. Scenarios and
futurology are not intended to predict the future, but to show probable future
effects of present circumstances. World modeling offers a new type of feedback;
it enhances control and represses crises. The real question is not which future
will arrive, but how any future is created and what factors determine which
future will arrive.
Anxiety over lack of control is not
new. Prophets of doom satisfy deep human urges and therefore do a steady business.
They play Victim, Prosecutor and Savior simultaneously. The Cassandra complex
is a firm step toward the Messiah complex.
Too
much talk of The End of the World has discredited prophecies of doom. Yet there
may be smaller doomsdays ahead, days that are bad enough to warrant a look
through the windshield and a hand on the steering wheel, even if we cannot take
our foot from the accelerator. If we are on a collision course or a
self-destruction course, we need to be warned of this.
What
type of crises do we want to avoid? First are the ancient fearful four: war,
revolution, famine and pestilence. Secondly, we wish to avoid their
forerunners: financial crises, economic crises, social crises, political
crises. How to do that?
From: The Ten Global Challenges: How People Make the World. An Essay on Politics, Civilization and Humanity. Ordering the book
