Thoughts on the dream of science without politics

Thoughts on the dream of science without politics
Torrey Orton
Feb.27, 2009

I wrote the following in response to the policy draft mentioned below. I blog it now because it captures the outlines of my understanding of the world we are in and some challenges for science and public decision making arising from it (and recursively, contributing to it!). My intent was to add context understanding to the deliberations of the summit. I am not hopeful of immediate impact but I am certain of the need for my effort. These sketches will be explored in two larger pieces on (1) blame and responsibility in the Victorian fires review, and (2) is politics possible now? The Policy Position Draft is in re-write now by participants in the Summit.

Re: Australian Climate Action Summit – Policy Position Draft #2 Jan. 23, 2009

I’m concerned at the hope implicit in the segment extracted below.

“ … an Independent Science Committee that:
… identifies policies, measures and targets required to tackle climate change underpinned by sound science not political convenience.” (pg. 53, Sec. 8 Keeping Australians Informed; Australian Climate Action Summit – Policy Position Draft #2 23 Jan. 2009)

There is no human organisation that does not have ‘politics’, including scientific and religious ones. The ‘politics’ of life is about purposes and the distribution of resources to achieve them – a task all organisations have to handle. To distribute by any political system requires negotiation about the priorities, ends and such – even if a kingdom or a dictatorship. Failure to adequately and appropriately resource our priorities leads to their under-fulfillment. We have a lot of evidence of that now. In order to establish support for particular priorities and ends, we argue for them with facts and values and beliefs seeking to attract people to our preferred objectives.

So, for these among other reasons, the hope of separating “sound science” from “political convenience” is a dangerous fantasy about the world we are in. Getting to a world in which this is not the case will have to pass through this one, the denial of which will produce its own confusing problems on top of the current ones… and so…

What is this ‘political’ world now?

1) At the moment, public confidence in most sources of information is flagging, most notably in science or ‘evidence’ based sources. As well, we are all swamped with pithy data and summary generalisations from positioned commentators through which we can seldom see a common thread other than the domain name – health, education, etc. – or the attracting dog whistle. This leaves us wondering if they are talking about the same world even if the headline says transport, or education or health. How can we tell the truth rather than just lean towards our natural political or social comfort zone?

2) Back to our calamitous times. The world of material certainties is fading around us as a (perfect) storm of personally uncontrollable forces assail us. Not merely is it the economy stupid. It’s also the climate and the fluids (fuels and waters), the food and the pervasive speed of movement of them all, plus a gathering of insights and innovations which mark the growing edges of the sciences.

Second, we are engaging these forces from a weakened position in our fragmented relationships. And these weaknesses will be enhanced by the times which are the reasons for our worries in the first place. Making the effort for the longer term will be even more important as each day of its decline passes.

3) In addition, underlying these things are damaged components of our core adaptation systems. Let’s call them deep institutions:
· Everyday language is so debased that truthful speaking about almost anything in public life is impossible – all things are commoditised, some fetishized as a result, and reduced to potential calculables in short term ROI projections. This is the language of business speak and its associates celebrity speak and greed speak.
· The public deliberative process is now conducted almost wholly in adversarial terms – demonising the others as the first move; every public issue is now a “debate” (a secondary school exercise for verbal bullies – see Parliament at work) to be settled by point scoring, not truth making. This derives in part from the first point – the only common denominator is feelings: fear, loneliness, etc.
· As the tangible and intangible pressures on daily lives increase, relationships fragment and thought fundamentalises , and the two aggravate each other. These affects are visible across any political spectra you prefer – but, most obviously the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’.
· Our systems and tools of political representation are damaged. In other Anglo countries the participation rates in major elections – national and regional / state – yield results based on victory by less than half of less than half of the possible electorates (and politicians are reviled almost without exception across the electorates). So, only with the greatest bi-partisan care are decisions prevented from being illegitimate in the eyes of their populaces. Similar patterns can be found across the EU, especially about the EU itself.
· Add the above together and you have the basis for the no accountability processes and discourses which dominate public space – it’s all spun.
So what to do now?

First, at the internal level within peak climate groups (and local ones!!) one approach is to build workable truth relationships through which to share the ‘facts’ as we discover and articulate them. These would be existing relationships at work or in personal associations of various kinds (sports, religious, community groups). We should add a focus on linguistic reform to their everyday activities – for example you could work on a few weasels by:

countering expressions of personal unaccountability – e.g. ‘whatever ‘ replaced with an explicit expression of feeling about the relationship at that moment; ‘It’s all about…’ replaced with statements of the actual undertaking or intentions, etc.;
making assertions about matters of public concern – especially environmental, health and educational – which present the whole picture of the issues, or the reliability / validity constraints of the unknown features of the evidence about them;
challenging uses of business-speak which obscure real differences – e.g. ‘customer’ for patient, student, etc.; ‘assets’ for human capabilities, relationships, etc.; ‘business’ or ‘industry’ for activities which are certainly not businesses or industries (education, health, law); ‘market’ for relationships which are not transactional (student, patient, parishioner, plaintiff, etc.…); and,
interrupting premature closures in discussions and meetings – e.g. ‘at the end of the day…’, ‘the reality is…’, ‘the truth is…’, ‘the fact is..’, etc. - by presenting the discussed and unresolved content as dilemmas or uncertainties which pre-mature closure denies.
Second, at the external influencing levels:
1- keeping the perspectives in view on major issues – starting with acknowledging one’s own in every influencing initiative;
2- identifying where the specific issue being discussed borders, depends on or has interdependencies with other issues;
3- sponsoring face-offs between different positions focussing on what facts they could agree on in their domains of struggle – and which are emotional argument for the hidden paradigm;
4- providing key issues development scorecard(s) for (a) major life need domains – education, health, economy; and (b) daily life quality indicator domains – crime, cost of living, transport performance ….;
5- having an articulated cultural / historical differentiated models of well-being within which the target issue(s) can be interpreted;
6- the contexts considered should include local, regional and global comparisons or applications of the points argued; and,
7- an assertion of possible common ground across all discussants should be made as part of each contribution to the discussion (these might include shared facts, beliefs values and standards).

1. If I’m mad, why a diary?
   Torrey Orton 130109
   
   I realised many years ago that unsourceable angers occasionally seized me. More recently (10 years ago) I began to find the traces after having some small rages which obviously did not belong to their apparent objects. They were often inappropriate surges of frustration, especially at moments of bad or invasive commercial interactions (notably, not real long term commercial relationships like monthly for 35 years with my barber, or regularly visited local restaurants of similar duration, or the 20 years of daily paper delivery). Since then I have studied these phenomena with a view to getting a grip on myself, and most recently (last 5 years), to finding ways to work with others about them. I am still more in the grip than getting a grip, hence this blog.
   
   Recently I realised that I am not drawing on my anger as a motivation for my writing – not that I wasn’t motivated by it, but I didn’t honour the motivation and so did not extract full motivational potential from it. The most important potential is that the anger gives energy connected to a proven (to myself at least) sense of disconnect between many aspects of the world I inhabit and my need for truth (or justice, fairness, honesty, etc.) Pick your favourite feeling(s) and it (they) will tell you how the world is going for you and you are going with it.
   
   Angers and thinking
   These angers disclose developed lines of thinking on the anger eliciting events. For example, about 4 years ago I rediscovered a tool I had created 18 years ago for work with groups affected by traumatic change in organisations. At that time I was caught in a “merge-over”, as it was called internally, between two Melbourne banks arising from the Tricontinental affair (a bubble entity from the cowboy days of the late ‘80’s). It was represented by the banking and political authorities as certainly unlikely to be to anyone’s detriment in either of the merging entities. This, at the time (and now), was so palpably untrue and (consciously?) deceptive that my outrage bells clanged persistently. Anyone can see intuitively that two into one doesn’t go on almost any organisational level. This was, of course, not discussable at large in the banks, though in close quarters of immediate workmates it was (with an eye out for the management thought police). The subsequent pain for many staff of deception by their top leaders (including a state government premier and both banks’ CEOs) was intensified by the explicit threats against any who considered publicly doubting (e.g. – to the press) the deceptions. However, in times of great change, many new spaces open up and into them I introduced “Facing the Facts” - an intact workgroup event designed to increase the chances of engagement rather than flight, fight or fadeaway. About 500 staff in our bank went through an exploration of their perceptions of the changes, and their implications for themselves, in normal work groups – teams, departments, regions. The aim and outcome was acknowledgement publically that a single traumatic event could, and did, have very different but equally valid effects on those exposed to it. Once validated, other options began to appear. That’s another story.
   
   I carry that experience as a piece of my acquired professional wiring which is cued into action by any conditions of large scale change like the nows we are incontrovertibly in (see below for detail). Whatever adaptations, accommodations, or avoidances of these nows we undertake will be done under the major influence of traumatic change on individual, group and organisational life – feelings which both provide energy and distort relationships and thinking. Anger is but one of these. Others may include a range from euphoria at being released by chance from unwanted work settings to sadness at loss of colleagues and anger at injustices in the process, all enveloped in a fog of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety, pierced by varyingly attractive and recuperative glimmers of hope and anticipation.
   
   ‘Negative’ feeling is central…
   As psychologist I am aware that what I feel is central to what I think (which contents get into my awareness with what affective tones), how I think (the degree of flexibility in my concepts) and how likely I am to act ( my motivation) and in what manner (passive-assertive-aggressive). Our times are ones with immense, persistent and personally salient subliminal stressors, with an array of overarching and forward projecting ones which are seriously challenging (scary, terrifying, mystifying….). Their effects are hard to correctly source, and so they are often missed, assumed to be personal foibles and so not discussable (only to be quibbled) and consequently, unvalidatable. This tends to increase distance between people and pressure for holding them together is achieved by calls for joining a jihad of some description against some bad guys of variously composed differences from ‘us’. This is the process of fundamentalising thinking in a context of fragmented relationships. It is difficult to avoid and hard to counter.
   
   Mostly here I will focus on the notionally ‘negative’ end of the feelings spectra. This is recommended by the pervasive scale, intensity and persistence of threatening nows. It is also recommended because there is a natural tendency to avoid fear, anger, sadness…because they are distressing. Some pop socio-psychological trends have all but eradicated open discussion or use of these feelings – these are the “positive” sciences and their happiness minions. In as much as they dismiss the ‘negative’ they reduce access to data which is most necessary when we (culturally) do not know what we are doing. This fact, our failing socio-econo-politico know-how, is the heart of the nows we are in. As yet, no public political figure has acknowledged what most competent public intellectuals and commentators have – that we do not know what we are doing, nor could we.
   
   Nows we are in…
   As I begin again to write my perceptions of what I call the ‘nows we are in’, my intentions are not fully clear to me. They presently include: i) clearing my own internal processes by ordering the contents a bit (to reduce the stress of confusion); ii) developing a more complete picture of the nows are in, with emphasis on their effects on personal engagement and commitment (to increase the energy of purpose and potential competence by creating a field of action(s)); and, iii) developing a natural language manner of dealing with matters which are now so clouded by spinmeistery and weasel words as to be almost empty of tangible meaning (to counter the loss which generates some of my anger and sadness). I am also very aware that part of this project will be a struggle to (iv) clarify and separate anger based in my own historical personal issues from that which can be tied to some objective (external and internal) realities (though I doubt that is ever fully attainable, nor should it be); and, v) finally, understanding how appropriate anger (and other feelings) can be relevantly converted into productive effects (or, at least, efforts).
   
   My earlier researches on little violences, and more recently on the nows we are in (big violences), disclose clear perceptions that I am being assaulted by many little violences (30 or more) which have a strong impact in five valued aspects of my life:
   
   
   
   
   Public civility - e.g. not standing in line, using two car parks, driving without regard for others convenience…
   Public trust - e.g. government & corporate lying, dissimulation, denial of exposed faults (the financial meltdown), unaccountability of leaders,….
   Personal taste - e.g. too much perfume / aftershave, getting smoked out, noised out….
   Personal space - e.g. too close, marketing calls at night, no access to persons at bank, etc.
   Personal risk – road & other rages, disease (SARS, bird flu), crime, etc.
   
   Of these, my sense is that the key anger drivers are # 2 and #4, based on what incidents I consciously have a threat spectrum response to. #2 stands out far and above #4 and the others. In what follows I am assuming that this assessment applies pretty much throughout the original Anglosphere, and significant parts of the EU. Some elements can also be found in the three Asian giants (China, India and Japan) and their satellites. My professional association has recently published an exploration of these matters (see http://www.psychology.org.au/Assets/Files/NPW_FactSheet_1108.pdf ). This somewhat validates items in my lists, but more importantly suggests there are many others having the same experience, though their most salient domains may be different from mine and each others’.
   
   Big violences…
   However, over those years the big violences have become much more prominent – e.g. there are four or five working at once now globally: for example, (a) speed of change, (b) fluid (fuels and water) shortages, (c) food vulnerability and shortages (GM crops, directing food crops to fuel alleviation, drought and urbanization, etc.), (d) finance (and general economic) insecurity (leading to job uncertainty, housing uncertainty, rapid price fluctuations, etc.) and (e) climate change. You may have a list of your own that are real, ‘big’ and affecting you directly in your view. Three (a, b and e) of these have been working away on us for some years, only recently achieving general recognition that they are inextricably related in various ways. They appear as a tangle of perceptual inputs which are constant, intense, fast and beyond my control, unless I focus on one part of one of them – for instance the right to die as a facet of the endless human conversations about the boundaries of living. Such pathways are already laid in the myriad of single subject, single issue, pressure groups whose impact on the general passage of discussion is to increase both fragmentation of civic relationships and fundamentalising of thought in one strike. They also get more attention than their numbers warrant because they are fearlessly raucous in putting their cases.
   
   Anger strength
   The strength of my anger(s) comes from my sense that one effect of the last 20-30 years has been (and continues daily to be) the undermining and conscious degradation of our public infrastructures. The state of much physical infrastructure (or the simple failure to build it) is a concern, but not primary here. Much more hurtful for me is the loss of interpersonal, social, and political infrastructures. At one level these are the core materials of cultures: languages, values and standards, and systems of relationships. Their degradation has been achieved, in part, by abuse of the social systems of their delivery – health, education, transport, governance. The means and manner, and counter-measures where possible, of the abuse will be the subject of many entries in this blog. The reality of these losses can be seen in various facts accepted as valid across political spectra -
   1- The debasement of post-modern public language has been remarked occasionally (see Unspeak; Wordwatch, and in various Op Eds around the world as an addendum to other discussions) and systematically (see e.g. Don Anderson’s Weasel Words; Death Sentence; George Lakoff’s Don’t think of an elephant , etc.) for 10 years; and the loss of shared markers for factual integrity are evident in the public discourse / debates which engage the same issues from different interpretative and data frames.
   2- The decline in family structure reliability, and in connectedness to friends, neighbours and workmates are also widely remarked at both anecdotal and systemic levels (see Richard Sennett’s Corrosion of Character and Respect; Michael Pusey’s The Experience of Middle Australia, etc.).
   3- Participation rates in major elections in the US have been below 60% approx. for decades (and similar in UK and EU; see “I will not vote…” here newmatilda.com/2007/11/14/i-will-not-vote.); declining everyday social civility (situations of contact with unknown others in public) is a commonplace of news – the more exaggerated forms of ‘rage’ attracting louder reports. The public esteem of highly placed and paid leaders in many areas of life could hardly be lower – particularly where these leaders sit on top of foundational structures – government, law, accounting, nation-scale corporations… .
   4- The widely researched matter of comparative happiness across economies and ethnicities reveals we ( the first world) have gained next to nothing in the happiness stakes over the 3-4 decades of our abundance – more or less constantly increasing consumption with flat perceived improvement of living (life style, yes; living, no).
   This is a sketch of the project of defining and delineating the abuses, without which the steps to any futures will be clouded by the continuing abuse – as happens in family abuse, bullying and so on – since the abusive attitudes, values and behaviours are systemic and cultural, not just occasional and individual. Some alternatives will be proposed, too!
   
   A personal indulgence?
   However, there is something potentially (actually?) self-indulgent about starting from and continuing with my personal emotional attachments and events as a thought grounder and direction finder. And yet, it seems appropriate (apart from being motivationally necessary) for me at this time in my life and this place of my existence (Australia). My argument for the indulgence is that it is a necessary corrective to the linguistic and social distancing which characterises public discourse and, by socio-cultural colonization, private talk, too. Beneath this discussion surface lurks the challenge of the unknowability of the world we are in.
   
   I am also aware that my writing is, and will continue to be, constantly hedged by contingencies, doubts, and wonders, expressed, as just here, by over-expression and over- specification of the fact that contingency is the context of the nows we are in (just what the constructivist and relativist (post-modernist?) intellectual project was telling us, only now we are forced to be in that flux much of the time rather than some!). An attenuating side-effect for me is that I am constantly aware of what I don’t know in the same breath that I call up what I think I do – the breath which animates this enterprise. This should moderate my excesses of certainty and definitiveness.
   
   A somewhat larger scale perspective: I was wondering a while ago what my parents (born in the first war period (1910-20) thought about their world towards the end of their lives. This question arose from observing that generations tend to throw up clouds and occasional storms (I think Socrates died in one of these) of objections, disappointments and disputes with the emerging world which their lives had helped to build but wasn’t what they thought they were building – or even if they had actively opposed it along the way. I know there’s a reasonable amount of that in domains of serious concern to me. So, maybe my angers are supported by a quantum of intergenerational meanness or curmudgeonly disregard for new forms of humanity.
   
   Perhaps this is all an expression of three facts about me: one, I am temperamentally drawn to the notional ‘left’ – I’m a helper by life-time choice (teacher, psychotherapist, executive coach, trainer….) with an ear / eye for the less privileged; two, I’m a natural sceptic, always able to look at the side I’m attracted to naturally and see that it is not the whole picture of anything; and, three, I am an intuitive information handler (I see what’s happening) with an intensely logical decision style (I present the intuitions in logical arrays, argued with definition and conviction. This is actually quite a good combination for a helper. It prevents me falling into the world(s) of my clients, patients, students. Thus, I do listening well, and joining badly. And, I know I have insight that’s worth attention (while always being doubtable!) so I can supply structure, content and direction where it is needed with testably appropriate levels of certainty (from ‘I guess’, ‘I suppose’.. to.. ‘I think’, ‘I know’…to ..’I’m sure’,. ‘I recommend’, etc.). In addition, I am more pessimist than optimist and a bit cowardly about conflict (though I won’t stand bullying).
   
   Learning to write…
   To have a humane view of other people requires understanding them roundedly, multi-dimensionally. City neighbourhoods, country towns and small workplaces are settings offering best opportunities for close understanding of others. The distance(s) across which much contemporary discourse occurs about major issues is exactly the condition for automatic demonising or idolising of others. It supports the contextually driven fundamentalising of thought. So, one challenge for my work is to write so as to reduce the opportunity for distanced, two-dimensional perceptions of others and their issues. I hope to achieve some wholeness of description and judgment in every piece I create. Unfortunately, I cannot now say I know how to do that consistently and adequately. Bear with me or, preferably, tell me off, please.
   
   I believe, for the moment, that my excursions here will arise from 5 main sources, expressed through all manner of substantive topics. The sources are: outrages and irritations (a thicket of which can drive an outrage), puzzles and dilemmas (being puzzles without solutions), and reflections on the whole process encouraged by unpredictable mixtures of the first four sources. Some of the topics I expect to visit over time include:
   what is enough of anything in life (but especially enough material goods)?;
   moral and ethical confusions in everyday life (e.g. in Oz the belief in a right to public funding for private schooling );
   imbalances between individual and group focus in public policy and private practice;
   challenges of cultural differences
   workable truth – how can we know what we can believe about everyday matters in health, education, politics or personal commitments…?;
   correctable language in public life – concreteness over abstraction (e.g. dead for passed away or deceased; changed for backflip; lost or reduced for smashed, slammed, and so on).
   Where possible (when I can think of something) I’ll include suggestions for actions to be taken at various levels (personal, group, organisational) about the subject discussed. I will try to identify the source(s) of the feeling(s) giving rise to the piece, and point at the contiguous and tangential domains within which the subject is set.
   
   I invite your comment, especially expanding or challenging comment. I will probably not respond directly, but a specific request or proposal will be considered, especially where some course(s) of action is in question…or should be!