SOME OBSERVATIONS REGARDING A MISSING ELEPHANT Donald N.
Michael
[A version of this article appeared in Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, January, 2000. Copyright 2000 Sage
Publications, Inc. Don Michael is the author
of Learning_to_Plan_and_Planning_to_Learn, the formative
book on organizational behavior, which he wrote in 1973
before there was a field of Organizational Behavior.
I'd like to hear the "scientific," "systems" and cyberneutic response to
the points made in this article.
NKM]
"I'd like to share some of my current thinking about the
predicament of being human -- the dark side, as well as the
bright. This is my thinking in process; I have not reached
any conclusions. Your willingness to consider these ideas,
and your critical response to them, will help me with
further mulling.
"I'll begin with a Sufi story we're all familiar with. It's
the story of the blind persons and the elephant. Recall
that persons who were blind were each coming up with a
different definition of what was 'out there' depending on
what part of the elephant they were touching. Notice that
the story depends on a storyteller, someone who can see
that there is an elephant. What I'm going to propose today
is that the storyteller is blind. There is no elephant.
The storyteller doesn't know what he or she is talking
about.
"Less metaphorically, I'll put it this way: What is
happening to the human race, in the large, is too complex,
too interconnected and too dynamic to comprehend. There is
no agreed upon interpretation that provides an enduring
basis for coherent action based on an understanding of the
enfolding context.
"Consider. Take any subject that preoccupies us. Attend
to all the factors that might substantially affect its
current condition, where it might go, what might be done
about it, and how to go about doing so.
"I'll take, as an example, poverty. Think of the variety of
factors that connect with poverty that we must comprehend
if we are attempting to understand everything that
seriously impacts poverty. One would have to attend to at
least: technology, environment, greed, crime, drugs,
family, media manipulation, correction, education,
governments, market economy, information flows, ethics,
ideology, personalities and events. All of these infuse
any topic that we pay attention to and try to do something
about. But, clearly we can't attend to all of these (and
others) because each has its own multifaceted realm to be
comprehended.
"Poverty is just one of endless examples. What we're faced
with, essentially, is the micro/macro question: How
circumstances in the small affect circumstances in the
large and how circumstances in the large affect
circumstances in the small. And we don't know --
'butterfly effects' and chaos theory, notwithstanding --
how the micro/macro interchange operates in specific human
situations. And for reasons I shall come to, I don't think
we can know. In effect, we don't comprehend the kind of
beast that holds the parts together and how they're held
together for the human condition we call poverty. There
isn't any elephant there.
"Having said this, let me emphasize before we go any
farther, that I'm in no sense belittling our daily efforts
to engage issues like poverty, or other aspects of the
human condition. I wouldn't be taking your time if I felt
that what many of us are about was futile. Instead I hope
to add a deeper appreciation of the existential challenge
we face, the poignancy of our efforts, and the admiration
they merit as we try to deal with our circumstances.
"If we could acknowledge that we don't know what we're
talking about when we try to deal with any of the larger
human issues we face, this acknowledgement would have very
significant implications. These implications would cover
how we perceive ourselves as persons and how we act to help
the human condition, including ourselves. I'll come to them
later.
"But first, I want to offer some observations in support of
my proposal that we don't know what we're talking about in
the large, by describing six contributors to our ignorance
-- six characteristics that seem to be to be the source of
the storyteller's blindness. I call them 'ignorance
generators.'
"One more prefatory remark: I intend my observations to be
as non-judgmental as I can make them. I believe I am
describing characteristics of the human world that simply
*are*, analogous to the laws of nature. I am trying to be
an observer, not an evaluator. However, the very nature of
my language and what I choose to emphasize conveys values,
hence judgments, often unknown to me.
"The first of the six is that we have too much and too
little information to reach knowledgeable consensus and
interpretation within the available time for action. More
information in the social realm generally leads to more
uncertainty, not less. (Consider, for example, the status
of the world economy. We need more information to
understand the information we have.) So the time it takes
to reach agreement on the interpretation increases. During
that time the information increases as well. We need more
information to interpret the information we have and on and
on.
"Among the information we have is that which increases our
doubt about the integrity and sufficiency of the
information we do have. There's enough information,
nevertheless, (or too little in many cases) to generate
multiple interpretations of that information, which then
adds another layer of information and interpretation that's
required to use that information.
"Related and central, information feedback and feed forward
very seldom is available at the time appropriate to use it.
It arrives either too soon or too late, if at all. So there
is too much or too little information at the wrong time.
So, the first ignorance generator is too much or too little
information to reach knowledgeable decisions in a finite
amount of time available for taking action.
"Second, there is no shared set of value priorities. We
make much of the fact that we share values - it is a truism
that humans want the same basic things. Perhaps, at a
survival level, they do. Perhaps, but certainly beyond
that there is no shared set of priorities with regard to
values. Priorities change with circumstance, time, and
group.
"Here are some examples where value priorities differ
depending on the group and circumstance: Short term
expedience versus long term prudent behavior and vice
versa. Group identity versus individual identity.
Individual responsibility versus societal responsibility.
Freedom versus equality. Local claims versus larger claims
for commitment. Universal rights versus local rights that
can repudiate universal rights (fundamentalism, for
example). Human rights versus national interest (e.g.,
economic competition or nationalist terrorism). Public
interest versus privacy (encryption versus crime-fighting).
First amendment limits (pornography, etc.). One potential
gain versus it potential social costs. Who sets the rules
of the game and who decides who decides? These are all
issues in which the priorities of values are in contention.
There's no reliable set of priorities in place that can be
used to interpret the larger issues. A third contribution
to this lack of comprehension is what has been called the
dilemma of context. How much do you need to know in order
to feel responsible for actions and interpretations? How
many layers of understanding are necessary to have enough
background to deal with the foreground? There are no
agreed-on criteria or methodology for how deeply to probe.
"(I should have said at the beginning that these 6 factors
are interconnected, interactive, so that the question of
how much context is necessary in a situation to decide what
to do about that situation very much depends on what values
are held by participants in that decision making. And that
raises another intractable context question: who are the
legitimate participants in the decision making with regard
to what constitutes the context? And who says so?)
"The obvious example we're all living with at this time has
to do with what domains of context are applicable to the
Clinton impeachment inquiry. Just to remind you of a few:
The dramatis personae, their motives, the world of the
media, cultural differences in public responses, political
styles and susceptibility to rhetoric, the legitimacy of
public opinion as a basis for evaluating the situation.,
the intentions of the Constitutional founders, and so on.
"You can choose any issue that's important to you and ask
yourself, 'How much do I/we need to know about x to have
adequate context for thought and action?' And then, for x,
you can use that list of topics I enumerated in the poverty
example. This is an unresolved realm. And it is unsolved
for me as well in the very act of giving this talk.
"A fourth item. Our spoken language, the language we hear,
can not adequately map the complexity that I'm talking
about. Our language, because we hear it or we read it, is
linear. So, one thought follows another. Our language can
not adequately engage multiple factors simultaneously.
(Perhaps poetry can, but we haven't yet figured out how to
use poetry to make policy, or to resolve issues of context,
or to value priorities, or the like. And perhaps some forms
of visual language can, because they can be presented
simultaneously in three dimensions.) Our noun/verb
structure emphasizes, items, events, static-ness, [i.e.,
is-ness]---e.g., we say, 'this is a microphone', rather
than engaging it as a multitude of processes in time and
space.
"Nor can our language adequately map in our minds the on-
going circularity of cause and effect -- producing causes,
producing effects. Nor can it map the sustaining of a
system as a system, by virtue of the in-built circular
feedback that holds its boundaries together. In other
words, our spoken, written language doesn't allow us to
talk about these complexities in ways that are inherently
informative about the complexities. In fact, it compounds
these complexities because in its linearity, language
unavoidably distorts a world of simultaneous multiple
circular processes.
" The fifth contribution to our inability to know what we
are talking about is that there is an increasing, and given
the other factors, an unavoidable absence of reliable
boundaries. By boundaries, I mean boundaries that
circumscribe turf, relationships, concepts, identity,
property, gender, time, and more. Without boundaries, we
can't make sense of anything. William James, wrote of a
boundary- less world as one of 'booming, buzzing
confusion.' Boundaries are about how we discriminate, how
we partition experience in order to create meaning in all
those non- material realms, not just turf. But what is
happening in this world, for reasons I've been describing
(and others as well), is that these boundaries and their
reliability are increasingly eroded and disintegrated.
They are becoming more and more ambiguous. All systems,
including social systems, require boundaries in order to be
coherent systems. The feedback that is determined by the
boundaries of a system allows that system to be self-
sustaining. If there are no boundaries, there is no
feedback, no self-sustaining quality and no system. In
other words, no 'elephant'.
"Everything I've been saying so far reduces the agreed upon
criteria for boundary- defining feedback. Here are some
examples of blurred boundaries: political correctness,
identity, public versus private, intellectual property,
biological ethics. These are increasingly ambiguous areas,
taken very seriously, that, nevertheless, don't allow the
kind of linguistically and behaviorally discriminating
boundary defining I think necessary to begin to comprehend
the incomprehensible complexity that we humans live in.
"The sixth contributor to our inability to know what we are
talking about is the self- amplifying, unpredictable acting
out of the shadow residing in each human; our instincts,
our extra-rational responses. These could be considered a
consequence of the other contributors to our ignorance --
though each of them is also a consequence of all the
others. (Or so I think.) To be sure, these allow for more
creativity, but often in this complex world, they also
serve up violence, oppression, selfishness, extreme
positions of all stripes. They are the source of an
upwelling of the non-rational, the non-reasonable that is
so increasingly characteristic of all the world, not just
the United States.
"There was a time -- a long time -- when this sort of
shadow-driven acting out was more restrained. The elephant
depends on constraints, on boundaries, to be an elephant.
In the past, ritual, repression, and suppression served to
constrain such acting out or to quash it entirely. One's
social and economic survival depended on playing by many
explicit and implicit rules. Boundaries were stronger.
(Think of the up welling of violence after the collapse of
the Soviet Empire.) These circumstances make human
governance uniquely problematic. By governance, I mean
those shared practices by which a society's members act
reliably toward each other. Government is one such way such
practices are established via laws etc. Shared child
socialization practices and formal religions are others.
For the reasons I am proposing here the processes of
governance can only become less and less effective. This in
turn increases unreliably and adds it's own contributions
to the incomprehensibility of it all.
"So much for the six 'ignorance generators'. Perhaps they
are variations on one theme and surely others could be
added. But I hope these are enough to make a presumptive
case that our daily activities are ineluctably embedded in
a larger context of ignorance--- that we don't know what
we're talking about.
"So, what to do, how to go on being engaged in a human world
we don't understand--and, if I'm on to something, we won't
understand?
"Here are eight ways I find helpful that respond to the fact
of our ignorance. Perhaps they may be helpful for you. I
hope so! (In spite of speaking assertively, I hope it's
clear that I include myself among those who don't know what
they're talking about!) These aren't in any particular
order, though I think the sequence they are in adds a
certain coherence .
"The first is to recognize that, given our neurology, our
shaping through evolutionary processes, we are,
unavoidably, seekers of meaning. Recognizing that we are
seekers of meaning, we also need to recognize that,
unavoidably, we live in illusions, socially and
biologically created constructed worlds, nevertheless
personally necessary. I'm not implying that we can live
outside of these constraints, but we need to be self
conscious about the fact that we do live in illusions and
there is no way for humans, to avoid this. So, each of us
needs to be self-conscious about our deep need for there to
be an elephant and for someone to tell us there really is
an elephant. ( Lots of authors and publisher thrive on that
need)
"Second, it seems essential to acknowledge, our
vulnerability, our finiteness. This starts with our selves
and extends to our projects. Thus we will be unavoidably
ignorant, uninformed about the outcomes --the consequences
of the consequences of what we do.
"Third, as all the great religious traditions emphasize, we
should seek to live in poverty. Not material poverty but
rather to be poor in pride and arrogance and in the
conviction that I/we know what is right and wrong, what
must be done, and how to do it. Nevertheless we must act -
- not acting is also to act -- regardless of our
vulnerability and finiteness.
"Thus, my fourth suggestion: that one or a group acts in the
spirit of hope. Hope, not optimism. Here I draw on the
insight of Rollo May. As he put it, optimism and pessimism
are conditions of the stomach, of the gut. Their purpose is
to make us feel good or bad. Whereas hope has to do with
looking directly at the circumstances we're dealing with,
at the challenges we must accept as finite, at vulnerable
beings and activities, recognizing the limits of our very
interpretation of what we're committing ourselves to, and
still go on because one hopes that one can make a
difference in the face of all that stands in the way of
making a difference.
"Fifth, this means one acts according to what I've been
calling 'tentative commitment'. Tentative commitment means
you' are willing to look at the situation carefully enough,
to risk enough, to contribute enough effort, to hope enough,
to undertake your project. And to recognize, given our
vulnerability our finiteness, our fundamental ignorance --
we may well have it wrong. We may have to back off. We
may have to change not only how we're doing it, but doing
it at all. And then do so! Tentative commitment becomes an
essential individual and group condition for engaging a
world where we don't know what we are talking about.
"Suggestion six, then, is to be 'context alert' as a moral,
and operational necessity. Among other things, this carries
a very radical implication, given the current hype about
the information society that promises to put us in touch
with practically infinite amounts of information. That is,
if you are context alert you can only be deeply
understanding of very few things. Because it takes time to
and effort to dig and to check and to deal with other
people who have different value priorities . This means
there are only a few things that you can be up on at any
given time. But this is a very serious unsolved, indeed
unformulated, challenge for effective participation in the
democratic process--whatever that might mean..
"Number seven: One must be a learner/teacher, a guide in the
wilderness. Be question-askers all the time, not answer
givers.
"Number eight again echoes the great religious traditions
(all of which recognized our essential ignorance): practice
compassion. Given the circumstances I have described,
facing life requires all the compassion we can bring to
others, as well as to ourselves. Be as self-conscious as
possible, as much of the time as possible, and thereby
recognize that we all live in illusion, we all live in
ignorance, we all search for and need meaning. We all need
help facing that reality and that help goes by the name of
practicing compassion.
"The blind must care for the blind."
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Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from "Norman K. McPhail" <norm@socal.wanet.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Sep 11 2000 - 22:08:22 BST