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Perspectives
Dueling Elites and Catastrophic Visions
by Brad Allenby
Anyone who has been around humans and their institutions for a sufficient length of time understands the complexity and internal contradictions that characterize motives, agendas, tactics and strategies. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if cognitive dissonance is synonymous with human nature. Nonetheless, it is sometimes interesting and even worthwhile to try to take stock of changing patterns of behavior, in hopes that a modicum of understanding can be drawn from them.
In that exploratory spirit, consider two of the primary dialogs of our times that, while superficially quite different, are in fact disconcertingly similar in intent and tone. One is the current U.S. Administration’s insistence on a continuing and inescapable threat of ubiquitous and unpredictable terrorism, a campaign which appears designed to create on-going fear and insecurity in the population. (That the cultural animosity underlying increases in anti-US attitudes is to a significant degree a result of Administration choices and policy is either supreme irony or Machiavellian brilliance, depending on who one listens to.) This campaign is characterized by constant reference to worst case scenarios (e.g., nuclear attack on an American city), patterns of government intervention in common activities that reinforce a siege mentality while providing no obvious additional protection against threats (e.g., certain TSA procedures and requirements at airports), few public details regarding actual threats or specific situations, and the implicit message that the current state of affairs will persist for the indefinite future.
The second is the significant acceleration in stories and publicity regarding predictions of planetary disaster as a result of human activities, especially global warming. This challenge is characterized in remarkably similar terms as the terrorist threat: ubiquitous and uncertain with a potential for unexpected disaster, an emphasis on worst case scenarios, and suggestions that extraordinary government intervention is required and justified because all other values pale in comparison to the threat. So, for example, Vice President Gore recently stated that global warming was “infinitely” worse than the Iraq quagmire, while UK environment secretary David Miliband suggests issuing all British adults with annual carbon allowances. Indeed, the UK government has formed a study group to report back on the idea; Nature (442:340) reports that researchers favor such quotas as “a sensible way to extend emissions trading to the personal level.” The connection between social engineering and environmental disaster as lever could scarcely be clearer. Similarly, a recent report in Science notes the reluctance of some climate scientists to consider geoengineering solutions to global climate change not because they don’t work, but because they don’t require social engineering (314:401-403). As one European climate scientist complains, “You’re papering over the problem [by even considering geoengineering options] so people can keep inflicting damage on the climate system without having to give up fossil fuels.” Whether scientists should arrogate to themselves the responsibility for deciding for everyone that fossil fuels should be given up, as opposed to other alternatives to managing climate change, is apparently not to be subject to dialog.
An immediate initial observation is that the underlying perturbations are serious. Terrorism and the complexity of increasing conflict among different cultural and religious traditions are growing challenges, as are the implications of global climate change. The question I want to explore, however, is the way that catastrophic visions are used in an effort to limit public perception and public debate of the complex issues raised by these challenges. Indeed, it is precisely because such issues are so foundational and complex that transparent, multicultural, open and sophisticated dialogs about options, costs, benefits, distributional effects of alternatives, and related policy issues are important. But it is here that the catastrophic vision becomes valuable for its wielders, for the insistence that we face an overwhelming threat is a powerful rhetorical and political device for stifling the discussion of alternatives. When complex problems are framed as impending catastrophes, the political process and dialog necessary for real solutions in a highly complex world are undercut, because a global governance system based on generation and exploitation of oversimplified emotional responses and fear is unlikely to be viable in the long term.
The actual agendas behind these catastrophic visions are not always clear, and obviously details of the catastrophic visions of Islamic terrorism and global climate change are different. Nonetheless, it is striking how such visions are increasingly being manipulated by the elites on the right and left to advance their idea of an appropriate society. In the case of the conservative elite behind the terrorism vision, for example, a primary goal seems to be to achieve and maintain political power, and more specifically to reengineer society to better reflect “social conservatism” and to strengthen the “Christian values” basis of American society, and to institutionalize conservative domination of American politics. In the case of the liberal elite behind the climate change planetary disaster vision, at least one of the underlying agendas appears to be a desire to create a sense of fear and even panic that, in turn, can be directed towards the reengineering of developed country societies, especially as regards consumption patterns and increased egalitarianism (directly challenging consumption patterns and pressing for wealth redistribution is politically difficult, which is why positioning the need for such changes as unfortunate but necessary side effects of avoiding planetary disaster is much more effective).
Behind these agendas, which sometimes even become fairly explicit in relevant dialogs (as illustrated in the above quotation about geoengineering), lie quite different beliefs about how the world should be: in the first case, a Golden Age that seems to include, in somewhat jumbled order, components of American exceptionalism, a relatively unsophisticated Christianity, and a medieval reintegration of religion into all aspects of life (ironically—or perhaps not—fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims are much closer to each other in this latter desire than they would perhaps admit). In the second case, the ideal appears to be Edenic, a return to a Golden Age in a much simpler world reminiscent of Rousseau’s idyllic state of nature. That both elites should seek instantiation of a Golden Age is not surprising, for the lure of such imaginary pasts is a common human characteristic; that both should choose the vehicle of catastrophic imagining to try to get there reflects an intriguing convergent evolution of political strategies.
It is not that catastrophic visions have not been used in the past, for they have, but that the effort on the part of elites to distort choice and dialog by intimidation through catastrophic vision seems to be accelerating. Perhaps the increasing diversity of the world has increased the utility of responsive catastrophic visions, an ironic antithesis to a thesis of technologically mediated radical democratization of discourse. For democratic transparency and multiculturalism are clearly not what catastrophic visions promulgated by these elites are all about. The British, for example, have long been exposed to the risks of terrorism, first from the IRA, and now from Islamic radicals. But their commonsense response stands in marked contrast to that engineered by the American Administration, which has fostered a highly emotional environment of fear characterized by simplistic, almost paranoid, rhetoric and demonization of domestic opposition. For Brits, terrorism is a manageable challenge; for Americans, a constant reminder of vulnerability, uncertainty and looming catastrophe.
Such catastrophic visioning does appear to work to some extent (the cruder efforts, such as claiming all Democrats are traitors for questioning the President, seem to be failing, but that should not hide the underlying strength of the “war on terror” catastrophic vision – note that others attacked by terrorists, from the United Kingdom to Indonesia and Australia, have not found such a “declaration of war” necessary or even useful). But it is a costly tactic: by oversimplifying reality, catastrophic visions encourage adoption of policies and perspectives which are dysfunctionally rigid and fragile, such as the invasion of Iraq, rather than the complicated but stable governance systems appropriate to complex situations. Equally important, they end up undercutting the very interests they purport to be advancing. Thus, the association of anti-terrorism with loss of liberty and Constitutional protections, not to mention support of torture, in the United States destroys the moral stature of American culture at the very time when that is most valuable. Similarly, the framing of global warming as an impending catastrophe turns the complex and multifaceted challenge of environmental management in an increasingly anthropogenic world into a single issue discourse rooted in flawed conceptions of human society as static and brittle, and radically circumscribed notions of the range of choices and trade-offs available to a society obsessively focused on a single variable: greenhouse gas emissions. Both exemplify the aphorism, usually attributed to H.L. Mencken, that for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Why such visions? For one thing, elites generally benefit from stability; moreover, in this case the relevant elites are heavily invested in particular worldviews. Their challenge is thus to impose stability and their belief systems on an increasingly fractious, complex, information-rich, networked, and multicultural world. Mere communication, even propaganda, is increasingly inadequate in such an environment; indeed, even the Big Lie technique loses efficacy (although it is still tried by aficionados; consider the Administration’s efforts to link Al-Qaeda and Saddam’s regime). Under such circumstances, when the global information structure itself creates a radical heterogeneity, those who do not ideologically agree must be coerced, and only catastrophic visions are adequate to compel the necessary homogeneity. Modern technology has enabled radical ontological diversity, and those who wish ideological hegemony over political discourse, be they neoCons or global warming activists, must generate apocalyptic constructs if they hope to overcome it. The more diverse the dialog, the more catastrophic the necessary vision must be. Terrorism and environmental perturbations are real; the catastrophic constructions based on them are weapons of cultural imperialism.
For the point is not that the underlying phenomena are not serious, complex challenges requiring sophisticated understanding and responses. Indeed, it is precisely because they are that their conversion into necessarily oversimplified catastrophic visions by elites blinded by their own belief systems is so dangerous. For this process is not about actually responding to the challenges, but about short-circuiting democratic and open dialog for the purposes of ensuring the dominance of particular worldviews. What is at risk is not just the opportunity for exploring rational and robust policy alternatives, but the democratic and transparent governance processes which an increasingly complex world demands for stability, resiliency and understanding. Behind these catastrophic visions lies not salvation from disaster, but the medieval reassertion of the validity of ideological authority over secular values and the free individual of the democratic polity.
The author is a Lincoln Professor of Engineering and Ethics, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and of Law, at Arizona State University. He is also teaches in ASU’s new School of Sustainability and is affiliate faculty with the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes.
The views expressed here are those of the author. |
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