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[[File:North Korea.jpg|450px|thumb|center|A weekly [[stakeholder]] work-stream check-in call, yesterday.]] | [[File:North Korea.jpg|450px|thumb|center|A weekly [[stakeholder]] work-stream check-in call, yesterday.]] | ||
}}{{br|Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed}} — {{author|James C. Scott}}<br> | }}{{br|Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed}} — {{author|James C. Scott}}<br> | ||
{{Quote|No battle — Tarutino, Borodino, or Austerlitz — takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an essential condition. | {{Quote|''No battle — Tarutino, Borodino, or Austerlitz — takes place as those who planned it anticipated. That is an essential condition.'' | ||
:—Tolstoy, ''War and Peace''}} | :—Tolstoy, ''War and Peace''}} | ||
{{quote|In sum, the [[legibility]] of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social engineering, [[high-modernist]] ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build. | {{quote|''In sum, the [[legibility]] of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social engineering, [[high-modernist]] ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build.'' | ||
:—{{author|James C. Scott}}}} | :—{{author|James C. Scott}}}} | ||
This one goes to the top of [[JC]]’s 2020 lockdown re-reads. It was published in 1998, so it’s a bit late to get excited — but while it addresses the “[[high modernism]]” of 20th Century government, the read-across to the capitalist market economy, and beyond that into the interior workings of ''any'' large corporation — are you reading, boss?<ref>Boss: “Yes, [[JC]], I am. Now, [[get your coat]].”</ref> — shrieks from every page. These are profound ideas we all ''should'' recognise, and which could transform the effectiveness of what we all do, but — being, well, citizens of a “prostrate civil society” — either we can’t or we ''won’t''. | This one goes to the top of [[JC]]’s 2020 lockdown re-reads. It was published in 1998, so it’s a bit late to get excited — but while it addresses the “[[high modernism]]” of 20th Century government, the read-across to the capitalist market economy, and beyond that into the interior workings of ''any'' large corporation — are you reading, boss?<ref>Boss: “Yes, [[JC]], I am. Now, [[get your coat]].”</ref> — shrieks from every page. These are profound ideas we all ''should'' recognise, and which could transform the effectiveness of what we all do, but — being, well, citizens of a “prostrate civil society” — either we can’t or we ''won’t''. | ||
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Now those infinitesimal interconnections and illegible relations are not just “''invisible''” to the state programme but ''inimical'' to it. Natural forests are replaced with grid-planted Norway spruce: swathes of the unwanted ecosystem — which provide a richness and benefit to participants in that ecosystem which the state cannot “see” — are rejected ''because they don’t fit the model''. But they can play valuable and vital roles in the ecosystem — even for the Norway spruce. | Now those infinitesimal interconnections and illegible relations are not just “''invisible''” to the state programme but ''inimical'' to it. Natural forests are replaced with grid-planted Norway spruce: swathes of the unwanted ecosystem — which provide a richness and benefit to participants in that ecosystem which the state cannot “see” — are rejected ''because they don’t fit the model''. But they can play valuable and vital roles in the ecosystem — even for the Norway spruce. | ||
{{quote|A new term, ''Waldsterben'' (“forest death”), entered the German vocabulary to describe the worst cases. An exceptionally complex process involving soil building, nutrient uptake, and symbiotic relations among fungi, insects, mammals, and flora — which were, and still are, not entirely understood — was apparently disrupted, with serious consequences. Most of these consequences can be traced to the radical simplicity of the scientific forest.<ref>Scott, 20.</ref>}} | {{quote|''A new term, ''Waldsterben'' (“forest death”), entered the German vocabulary to describe the worst cases. An exceptionally complex process involving soil building, nutrient uptake, and symbiotic relations among fungi, insects, mammals, and flora — which were, and still are, not entirely understood — was apparently disrupted, with serious consequences. Most of these consequences can be traced to the radical simplicity of the scientific forest.''<ref>Scott, 20.</ref>}} | ||
The [[deterministic]] belief that the “illegible” details — in this case, literally, “[[in the weeds]]” — don’t matter will eventually come back to haunt you. “Nature,” as Dr. Ian Malcolm put it in ''Jurassic Park'', “finds a way”. | The [[deterministic]] belief that the “illegible” details — in this case, literally, “[[in the weeds]]” — don’t matter will eventually come back to haunt you. “Nature,” as Dr. Ian Malcolm put it in ''Jurassic Park'', “finds a way”. | ||