82,893
edits
Seeing Like a State: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 32: | Line 32: | ||
{{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 [[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”. | ||
But the [[high modernism|high modernist]] believes the future is solvable, and the ''[[certainty]]'' of that better future justifies the disruption and “short-term side-effects” of one’s grand plan to get there. | |||
The alternative — which terrifies the [[high-modernist]] — is an [[iterative]], ground-up, organic management by those on the ground, best placed and best incentivised to use their judgment and experience to best solve their own problems and improve the general lot as they personally perceive it. Their “read” of the landscape will be necessarily far richer and more detailed than the state’s. This is both far more effective for society, and far ''scarier'' for administrators: they have less ''control'' over progress, less ''sight'' of it, (therefore) less to do, and a harder job justifying the [[Rent-seeking|rent]] they extract (in a government, this is called a “tax”; in a corporation, it is executive [[compensation]]) for providing their “vital” administration.<ref>It is, of course, a heresy to question it, but is any [[CEO]] ''really'' worth the hundred times the average employee the firm pays for him?</ref> | |||
{{Quote|''Once the desire for comprehensive urban planning is established, the logic of uniformity and regimentation is well nigh inexorable. Cost effectiveness contributes to this tendency. Every concession to diversity is likely to entail an increase in time and budgetary cost.''}} | {{Quote|''Once the desire for comprehensive urban planning is established, the logic of uniformity and regimentation is well nigh inexorable. Cost effectiveness contributes to this tendency. Every concession to diversity is likely to entail an increase in time and budgetary cost.''}} | ||
Another cost of the [[high modernist]] ideology that seeks to regularise and unitise is ''[[diversity]]'' in the things so regularised. | Another cost of the [[high modernist]] ideology that seeks to regularise and unitise is ''[[diversity]]'' in the things so regularised. That [[diversity and inclusion]] is the ''cause célèbre du jour'', in the public and private sectors, hardly [[Falsification|falsifies]] this observation. It just sharpens the irony, since the typical approach to ''delivering'' diversity chimes with this desire for narratising [[legibility]] and [[high-modernism]]. | ||
That [[diversity and inclusion]] is the ''cause célèbre du jour'', in the public and private sectors, hardly [[Falsification|falsifies]] this observation. It just sharpens the irony, since the typical approach to ''delivering'' diversity chimes with this desire for narratising [[legibility]] and [[high-modernism]]. | |||
[[Diversity]] ought, you’d think, to be ''hard to pin down'', its manifestations being naturally — well — ''diverse''. | [[Diversity]] ought, you’d think, to be ''hard to pin down'', its manifestations being naturally — well — ''diverse''. So, to get a handle it, organisations must make [[diversity]] ''[[legible]]''. They do this by defining it in a strikingly limited and homogenous way. They gather ''data'' from their staff on that limited metric — to make it more [[legible]], so that the organisation can propagate statistics about its “improving” [[diversity]]. Thus, “[[diversity]]” as the administration knows it is a formalised, homogenised, parameterised and regularised [[second-order derivative]], and no attention is paid to the outcome of this diversity (compared with the illegible diversity it replaced) at all. As long as the firm ''looks'' diverse, and ''talks'' like it’s diverse, and everyone fits neatly, in the mandated proportions, into one of the five boxes it has prescribed for them, it has achieved its goal. | ||
Sounds a bit like an Aldous Huxley novel, doesn’t it? Feels a bit like one too. | Sounds a bit like an Aldous Huxley novel, doesn’t it? Feels a bit like one too. | ||