-----Original Message-----
From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sunday, August 09, 1998 12:39 PM
Subject: Re: What planet are you proposing for this experiment?
>Ed Weick wrote:
>>
>> When I was young and naive, I tried very hard to present my superiors
with
>> facts, only to be told that those could not possibly be facts since they
>> didn't square with prevailing opinions, especially those held by
politicians
>> who "had their ear to the ground". Professionals other than economists,
but
>> supported by economists, also tried to present their superiors and
political
>> masters with facts, but they too were ignored. The citizens didn't want
>> them.
>[snip]
Brad McCormick responded:
>How sad for us all! But
>I was particularly struck by two words:
>
> my superiors
"Superiors" is intended only describe my place in the organizational
hierarchy, which was rather junior at the time. But many of these people
were superior in the sense of being very clever men and women. What is
particularly sad is that their cleverness was bent to the purposes of the
bureaucracies in which they worked, bureaucracies which were designed to
serve their political masters and keep them out of trouble. If the
politicians wanted fish, they got fish even if they had to be imagined into
being - "smoke and mirrors".
But this is not to say that all politicians are self-serving and all
bureaucrats are toadies. I have known politicians and bureaucrats who tried
very hard to understand the problem and do the right thing. Sometimes they
were successful, but at others things simply got away on them. The scene
shifted and took unexpected turns. Instead of action, there was stalemate,
or action of was taken but of a kind that made things worse instead of
better.
Even where there are facts, their interpretation is never value-neutral. I
have been in situations in which two contending parties were both given the
same set of facts. How they interpreted them resulted in entirely different
conclusions. Instead of coming together, they found themselves even further
apart.
So, in summary, what I'm saying is that I really don't have much faith in
human rationality, or in the possibility that we will find rational
solutions to global problems, and perhaps even local problems. I don't
think man is a problem solving animal, except on a small scale for problems
of a particular kind. Wherever and whenever he has tried to solve big
problems, involving different value systems and different interpretations of
"reality", his success has been quite limited. The solution to one problem,
such as high infant mortality, has led to others, such as excessive
population growth.
All of which leads to the question of how we get ourselves out of the mess
we are in, a global mess which can be described as a rapidly growing
population which is dependent on an industrial structure which is in turn
dependent on depleting non-renewable energy resources. There may be
technological solutions, such as fuel cells, a return to nuclear energy, or
even cold fusion. But if there are not, the system will inevitably wind
down, and our descendants will have to find another to replace it, one that
does not use energy in the same way as ours does.
Ed Weick
