HERE A PROBLEM, THERE A PROBLEM

One of the problems with most scientific thinking as applied to political science, what this blog has pointed out as the incorporation of the political systems model during the 1950s, is its tendency to frame a point of interest as a definite set of variables.  Usually, the question that scientific analysis asks:  what happens to factor Y when factor X varies? 

If enough cases are looked at and a pattern is detected, a relationship is proposed.  For example, if people with more education (factor X) vote (factor Y) more often than people with less education, then one can establish a relationship between education and voting.  It even suggests a cause and effect between the two. 

Theoretically, one can say there is something about education that, at least, encourages people to go out and cast their votes on election day.  This is never stated as a fact, but a theoretical relationship.  Other factors can be affecting this correlation.  Perhaps higher educated people have jobs that allow them the time to vote and that’s what is really causing the uptick in voting.  That mystery will not be solved here but it is cited to illustrate a point.

          The point is that this sort of scientific investigation tends to narrow one’s gaze to very narrow factors or variables.  As such, something is sacrificed.  That is, by having a narrow view one misses the wholistic realities that inhabit the various landscapes and environments that social scientists investigate.  And this is not just a matter of social scientists being deprived of important information, but in turn, it also affects all those professional managers that depend on the work of those scientists to make their managerial decisions.

          This narrow perspective has a name – reductionism.  Earlier in this blog, David Brooks was cited over this concern.  To repeat, here is what Brooks writes:

This way of thinking [reductionism] induces people to think they can understand a problem by dissecting it into its various parts.  They can understand a person’s personality if they just tease out and investigate his genetic or environmental traits.  This deductive mode is the specialty of conscious cognition – the sort of cognition that is linear and logical.

The problem with this approach is that it has trouble explaining dynamic complexity, the essential feature of a human being, a culture, or a society.  So recently there has been a greater appreciation of the structure of emergent systems.  Emergent systems exist when different elements come together and produce something that is greater than the sum of their parts.  Or, to put it differently, the pieces of a system interact, and out of their interaction something entirely new emerges.[1]

Another expert, the social scientist Sydney Dekker, delves into this problem of narrow viewing, and brings out some patterns and ironies that his observations reveal.

In an article, “Drifting into Failure:  Theorising the Dynamics of Disaster Incubation,”[2] Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki begin by citing a historical event that they feel makes their overall point.  That event was the initial attacks – by an Arab coalition – that ignited the Yom Kippur war.  Given the very competent intelligence capabilities the Israelis enjoy(ed), they were caught off guard by the onset of the hostilities.  No, one cannot say the needed information was not available or did not exist.  It existed and it was available to their intelligence apparatus.

The intuitive bias is for people to believe such “screw ups” happen to less competent people or organizations.  They might happen to them, but they also happen to the gifted or skilled-laden entities.  As a matter of course, their very skills and competencies can facilitate the actuality of such unfortunate results.  They can even lead to systems collapsing.

This blogger believes that success (the product of being skillful and competent) leads to complexity in that success usually leads to expansion.  In turn, success and expansion lead to systems thinking which includes the development of protocols, chains of authority, established theoretical allegiances, modes of deference, norms, and other mental constructs that define how one entity – a company, a governmental agency, a government – “sees” things and, in turn, determines how it behaves or should behave. 

And this includes factors such as organizational values, attitudes, dispositions, and shared (what is taken to be) knowledge.  All this leads to a problem; that is, in that complexity, certain problems exist and they, due to the set of lenses shared by that organization’s personnel, are hidden.  This reminds one of what Donald Rumsfeld pointed out:  “The things we don’t know we don’t know.”  And since they are unknown – twice over – they just fester and grow, i.e., they become malignancies. 

In short, they incubate.  Somehow, the common thinking that says find the broken part and fix it, just does not lead to discovering and addressing a malignancy that is growing and causing not just problems but undermining the very legitimacy of the system.  There are various reasons for this “blindness.”

Here is how Dekker and Pruchnicki conclude their analysis:

·       Larger, successful organizations usually operate in environments of pressures due to (1) scarcity of resources and competition against other entities, (2) an imposed lack of transparency with sprawling, complex structures, (3) information being pre-formatted in developed styles or language, and (4) the usual incremental pacing of decision-making which becomes more incremental over time. 

·       Accepted ways and beliefs that develop to protect the organization (e.g., risk assessment or risk management strategies and personnel) encourages false confidence in them and serves to obstruct seeing what “is not known.”

·       Structural elements that seek the “unknown” have counter forces, i.e., costs involved with uncertain technologies and un or underdeveloped knowledge and technologies that change promises to entail.  These potential costs tend to be considered next to the incremental nature of incubating problems. 

·       If needed, transformational change (calling for changes in beliefs, attitudes, and/or values) is judged against the pressures of scarcity and competition, making needed change appear to be impossible – even when they are not – or just too expensive. 

·       And

Organisations incubate accident not because they are doing all kinds of things wrong, but because they are doing most things right.  And what they measure, count, record, tabulate and learn, even inside of their own safety management system, regulatory approval, auditing systems or loss prevention systems, might suggest nothing to the contrary.[3]

These are the terms in which problems develop and go unnoticed for meaningful extensions of time; what Dekker and Pruchnicki describe as incubation.  This results in disconnects between the organization’s goals and assessments and the decisions their staffs make.  The temptation is to “kick it down the road” or simply ignore what might result in extraordinary, unforeseen events.

Incubation occurs not because of incompetence, but because the organization is doing things correctly by the “book” of success.  The problem is the “book” doesn’t address the problem incubating under everyone’s nose.  So, what does all that have to do with polarization, the current concern of this blog?  The answer is found in the next posting.

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[1] David Brooks, The Social Animal:  The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (New York, NY:  Random House, 2011), 108-109.

[2] Sidney Dekker and Shawn Pruchnicki, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 2013, accessed 7/8/2020, https://safetydifferently.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SDDriftPaper.pdf , 1-11.

[3] Ibid., 8 (Australian spelling).

PENDING BALKINIZATION?

An issue this blog will visit at some future point is whether people due to their nature hold a bias for their group.  That could be their race, their nationality or ethnicity, their locality, their age, their religion, even their gender.  And if that sense of belonging exists, to what extent does it exist?  How much does it trump other motivations, such as personal interests? 

Professional team sports count on people having a strong enough sense of loyalty to one’s locality to sell expensive tickets to witness their encounters with the representatives of other localities or to buy paraphernalia they can wear or otherwise exhibit.  All that is fine as long as it is considered a source of harmless fun. 

Yes, at times it has led to fisticuffs or strains within families, but for the most part, it is just a way to pass what would otherwise be boring interludes within one’s life.  This writer, in his past and when he lived in a more urbanized area, partook in such expenditures – he shared season tickets in baseball, basketball, and even football.  Plus, at times, he drove long hours to attend football games at his alma mater.  These days, though, all that has been abandoned and he follows only golf, a non-locality-based fandom.

          Yes, aging takes one through exotic turns.  But through all that, he agrees with the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.  That historian writes:

Most Americans, it is true, continue to see themselves primarily as individuals and only secondarily and trivially as adherents of a group.  Nor is harm done when ethnic groups display pride in their historic past or in their contributions to the American present.  But the division of society into fixed ethnicities nourishes a culture of victimization and a contagion of inflammable sensitivities.  And when a vocal and visible minority pledges primary allegiance to their groups, whether ethnic, sexual, religious, or, rare cases (communist, fascist), political, it presents a threat to the brittle bonds of national  identity that holds this diverse and fractious society together.[1]

One can almost hear the reaction to citing this concern.  The problem does not lie with individuals of one group being able to exert themselves in dominating others but of attempting to protect themselves – in terms of political power and/or economic standing – against those with power.  For example, the “Black Lives Matter” reaction to case police abuse goes beyond mere racial pride or promotion. 

To the extent they are legitimate protests of unjust treatment by government personnel, these need not be acts that undermine an otherwise unified nation.  Instead, they can be viewed as expressions of what minimally this nation needs to sustain to allow such a diverse nation to survive.  Therefore, as with most of reality, this topic is somewhat nuanced.

In that light, what Schlesinger has to say can be useful in finding a workable solution to what this blog is currently addressing; that is polarization.  Not only is this topic subject to nuanced realities, but it also plunges one into ironies that defy simple ideations or policy resolves over related problems.  The main irony is that a pathological adherence to group identity undermines the very individual motivation that spurs it into existence and maintenance.

While the motivation emanates from one’s natural proclivities, its manifestation undermines that individuality.  As Schlesinger points out, one loses him/herself, one’s identity, into the identity of a group.  In turn, the ideas, perceived interests, and other aims and goals of the group become inviolable and beyond questioning.  To the extent this is true, it adds to those forces sustaining the nation’s current malady of polarization. 

Again, ironically, how these problematic allegiances develop, even those that reflect racial/ethnic divides, has participants of such dueling to fall in line with one or the other of the grand national groupings – the progressive one or the conservative one.  Unfortunately, the current political landscape has Black Lives Matter “team up” on the progressive side and the white supremist group on the conservative side.  This is a shaky arrangement, but the realities of the current politics fall in line with such a division and they add to the general polarization.

And one is invited to guess over such developments:  is the nation the midst of a social collapse?  Has this descending digression taken on a life of its own?  “The contemporary sanctification of the group puts the old idea of a coherent society at stake.  Multicultural zealots reject as hegemonic the notion of a shared commitment to common ideals.”[2]

As that historian points out, what has sustained this nation – a nation without a common ethnic origin – has been an allegiance to ideals.  And those ideals include a commitment to democracy and human rights.  The nation’s constitution – admittedly needing some interpretation – spells out what that means.  It speaks of union and even striving to be perfect in that union.  Yet, in an age of natural rights, this basic sense comes into question – go figure.

And that historian points out another historical factor.  To be allegiant to the prevailing culture, by the historical setting in which it exists, does call for one to acknowledge the society’s Anglo-Saxon colorization.  The term “colorization” includes the notion that it has by natural evolutionary developments shifted to incorporate the influences of the various immigrant groups that have affected what Americans are culturally today.

Does the acknowledgment preclude the existence of a Little Italy or a Little Havana?  A China or German town?  Of course not.  These communities exist as transition spaces – both in terms of physical location and time.  Their ongoing existence even creates tourist destinations.  Why?  Because it’s a cheaper way to get exposed to another culture while still being able to speak English and be under the legal and political structures of the US.  Win-win!  And concerns over these communities underestimate the attraction of the overall American culture.

This writer can personally attest to this latter factor.  He can remember that in the fifties, living in a Latino home and wanting to be American and for all the efforts of multiculturalists, this attraction still exists.  What youngsters under that situation learn is that there is a way of being at home and a way of being beyond home and the neighborhood.  Most of these concerns turn out to be aesthetic in nature.

This gets solidified as the young person attains higher levels of education.  For the few that insist on holding on to the immigrant culture, fine.  The system can accommodate these exceptions, it has broad shoulder as long as the basic sense and administration of rights – individually and those of groups – are respected.

This blogger of late was entertained by watching a film from 1939 – the same year that produced Gone with the Wind.[3]  That other film, produced in a federated influenced society, portrays the values of that other construct.  The film, Let Freedom Ring,[4] is a story about the railroad extending into the West and its agents engaging in exploitive practices. 

While the film is a venue for Nelson Eddy (without Jeanette MacDonald[5]) to exhibit his “pipes,” it does illustrate how moneyed interests rode roughshod over disadvantaged groups including small farmers, immigrant workers (from various nationalities such as Italians and Germans), and modest townspeople.

There is one scene, toward the end in which all of these oppressed groups congregate – a social event – and become convinced that their group interests are aligned; and that commonly, they needed to unite to check the power of the railroads.  This mirrors the basic strategy E. E. Schattschneider in his book, The Semi-Sovereign People,[6] reports.

The main relevant message Schattschneider offers is that the disadvantaged need to unite to challenge and possibly win over the power machinations of the advantaged.  Divisions based on artificial factors – artificial in terms of what is at stake – such as ethnicity, race, religion, and other non-affectual factors interfere with this type of leaguing.  They lead to dysfunctional alliances or dysfunctional affiliations.  Of course, at times it is one of these attributes that is at stake, as with the Black Lives Matter movement.

This posting leaves the reader with a prophetic insight Schlesinger shares:

The republic embodies ideals that transcend ethnic, religious, and political lines. … But the experiment can continue to succeed only so long as Americans continue to believe in the goal.  If the republic now turns away from Washington’s old goal of “one people,” what is its future? – disintegration of the national community, apartheid, Balkinization, tribalization?[7]

The current state of polarization seems to verify this historian’s concern and to how it challenges the nation.  And, as such, it is a concern civics teachers should be addressing in their classrooms.

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[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992), 112-113.

[2] Ibid., 117.

[3] Victor Fleming (director), Gone with the Wind (Selznick International Pictures, 1939).

[4] Jack Conway (director), Let Freedom Ring (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayor, 1939).

[5] For the younger readers, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald were a duo who appeared in many popular films and were noted for their singing prowess.

[6] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York, NY:  Hole, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[7] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America, 118.