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Solving the Black Elephant? Part 1

April 19, 2020

In the previous article I explored “Black Elephants” which are what arises when the ‘Elephant in the Room’ is mated with a ‘Black Swan’, and a politics gets built around not acknowledging an oncoming problem as a problem.

When the Black Elephant, that people have been avoiding, arrives people will announce “no one could have expected this!” and it now may be too late to solve the problem anyway, so the consequences are worse than if it had been recognised earlier. This process of avoidance is tied into power dynamics and what is acceptable to the group. We could call this process ‘the social construction of ignorance’, as opposed to ‘the social construction of knowledge’.

Obvious examples of Black Elephants include most of the world’s ecological problems, which we hope are not going to be that big, and the possibility of pandemics, which we should have been prepared for. Similarly, that we going through one pandemic at the moment, does not mean we cannot have another at the same time, or that this one will not return.

Can we engage with Black Elephants?

The main problem is that a Black Elephant is not just an officially unrecognised problem, but a denied problem. Dominant people don’t want to talk about it. There is a tacit agreement not to talk about it. Its a bit of random chaos or not that important. There may even be penalties for trying to find out about it, or talking about it. You may get snubbed, or abused, by your groups if you mention it, and everyone will be relieved when the subject is dropped. No one has any acceptable model for dealing with it. Social organisation and its values could even be built around this denial, just as there are no servants in Jane Austen novels, although ‘everyone important’ depends upon them and their subservience. The Black Elephant maybe something most people know something about, but they probably do not know that much, as there is no incentive to find out about it. Some people may go out of their way to explain there is no Black Elephant, or it is not as bad as the evil idiots have made it out to be.

Given that it is a socially denied problem and there is social reinforcement of that denial, then openly recognising the problem is difficult, and so solving the problem is difficult. Any solution-process that does not recognise the fundamentally social nature of the problem, its denial and the difficulty of acknowledging the Black Elephant, is probably going to fail.

This means we have to study the rather undeveloped field of the sociology of ignorance (which is sometimes known as agnotology) .

Some pointers to the sociology of ignorance

Problems of hierarchy: such as:

  • Celine’s Law- (“good communication is only possible between equals”), in which people get punished for being bearers of bad news, or the high-ups cannot admit mistakes or vulnerability for fear of loss of face, status, power or wealth.
  • The Peter Principle in which people get promoted to their level of incompetence, and destroy competence around them and beneath them, partly because of
  • Dunning-Kruger effects, they don’t recognise competence when they see it, or do not want to be challenged.
  • Internal focus in which ‘managers’ get more status, power or wealth focusing on gathering internal rewards (office furniture, windows, golf games with important people, funding, more staff etc) than from focusing on external problems.
  • Deniability when the leaders are not be aware of the dirty, illegal or stupid tactics that underlings deploy, in order to carry out the leader’s instructions, or the underlings’ idea of the leader’s instructions.

Sometimes we can hear the argument that flatter hierarchies negate some of these problems, but that is not always the case.

The fewer the steps between the centre and the periphery, the more a hyper-dominant centre can overwhelm the periphery, and render it unable to adapt. The hyper-dominance may lessen ‘unofficial’ information flow still further – even if they can record every key stroke made the periphery. Flat organisations may only work in the long term, if the power differential, or inequality, between the levels is not that great.

Other Oganisational factors

  • Siloing in which different groups in the same organisation are walled off from each other, cannot talk to each other, replicate similar work, or are overridden as of minor importance when they are central.
  • Parkinson’s Law “work expands to fill the time available” or, as a corollary, managers make work for others to show that they are important and in control. This extra work then distracts the organisation’s members from dealing with problems of reality. They don’t have time.
  • Haga’s Law or organisation reduces anxiety and increases the ease of doing things, but there comes a point when the payoffs become less and the organising takes more and more energy for less and less results, which produces anxiety which leads to further organising, and less time for thinking or doing useful work, or recognising future problems.
  • Standardised Lack of Responsibility. Quite frequently organisations and high-ups have standardised ways of avoiding responsibility for their actions and policies. It may be a form of ‘distributed governance’, in which there is always someone else to blame, or channels of authority are not clear. Or it may be forms of attack – there are identifiable “bad people” who can be blamed for any events. Habitual ambiguity of instructions, or contradictory commands can be another form. This latter technique can also function to give those lower-down more freedom to act appropriately, and for the higher-up to take credit for whatever works, and condemn whatever doesn’t.
  • Information structures which hide information from various people.
  • Data is collected because it can be. The more data can be collected, the more time is wasted collecting it and analysing it in the hope it will be useful. If there is too much data, important events can get lost.
  • Disinformation society. In information society there is so much information that almost any argument can be justified in the short term. So without a real desire to explore the Black Elephant, the Elephant can be recognised and downplayed. For example, Bjorn Lomborg can always find some reputable organisation which says, or which produces figures which show, that climate change, while a problem, is not a serious or urgent problem. As a result, all the figures which show it is likely to be truly serious can be ignored. If people don’t want to find out that there is a problem. then they don’t ever have to look for those figures and see what Mr Lomborg is doing. Now he may be acting like this, because if he didn’t then there are groups of people who would not see climate change at all. And it is possibly better that they see it, and think about doing something useful, in other ways, than not to see it at all.
  • Knowledge and Status in ‘knowledge societies’, people are supposedly graded by knowledge and ability. Those higher up can be expected to know everything, and thus refuse to listen to those below, when those below may know things not known by those above. For higher-ups admitting they were wrong can be impossible as it appears to admit their position is not legitimate, yet everyone is wrong occasionally, and failure is one of the ways we learn.
  • Organisational roles, which make the Black Elephants someone else’s problem or indeed create particular Black Elephants by not having a recognised position to deal with those kinds of problems.

Problems of Language and Culture

Language

This is a complicated factor, and much has been written about it, but we can reasonably uncontroversially say that language draws attention to particular features of the world. Different languages may classify the world in different ways – they have different colour terms for example. Languages do not translate exactly because they have different world models. By directing attention to particular features of the world language directs attention away from other features. Thus the language you use may help create Black Elephants, through this direction or through its categories.

Organisations sometimes develop specialist languages and models for work, which again show parts of the world and hide or ignore others. An organisation, for example, might see things entirely in terms of good and evil, where good, means agrees with them, and evil means disagrees with them, and so they become unable to see the ‘evil’ (as classified by them) they do themselves. A language arises as a culture makes a world and deals with a world.

One of the problems with any example of language is that meaning depends on interpretation, and the context of the ‘sentences’, writing or utterance, helps influence their meaning for the interpreter, and this happens in many different ways. We can never guarantee that what we have written will be interpreted in the way we intended. This is why great poems or novels can never be exhausted, they are seen in different contexts by different interpreters. This is also why scientists tend to use mathematics, and frames of objectivity to limit context variability. Culture is one way of trying to give similar contexts, shared contexts with other people. But it is not the only way, and when used to interpret sentences from another culture, or subculture, can frequently be misleading. Violence can be deployed to reduce apparent misunderstanding. This just suppresses obvious variation.

If you write, or announce, a programme, expect that people will read what it differently, or sometimes with difficulty. Communication involves misunderstanding as much as understanding.

Culture

I’m only going to mention one factor here, common in the English speaking world, and that is the positive thinking ‘bundle’ (a collection of destructive reinforcing patterns).

Positive Thinking

Many contemporary people and organisations praise positive thinking. This can become a unofficial but compulsory positivity bundle. These positivity people may say that someone who finds problems is negative or unmotivated, or bad in some other way, and deserves to be silenced or let go. That events are sure to get better. We are marvelous and will deal with the Black Elephants easily when they become prominent enough to cause passing trouble. Problems are unreal and so on. Such an organisation is probably avoiding many Black Elephants. It is also probably good at spreading disinformation, because it only allows the information which suggests it is doing very well, and dismisses all criticism. People may again, be frightened of saying anything negative, or pointing out anything negative, as they think that will make the negative event happen, or that others will judge them as weak.

This positivity bundle is harmful. It is not the same as being able to recognise problems and not let them get you down; recognise that you can either solve them easily or with effort, take advantage of them, need to call in an expert to fix them, or need to evacuate now.

The Elephant Paradoxes

There are many other factors in the dynamics of ignorance, but we do seem to have a specific set of paradoxes about Black Elephants.

First Black Elephant Paradox. People who are doing the problem solving, particularly those people who are dominant or high status, have to want to explore and recognise the Black Elephants – and if we had that, we probably would not have the Black Elephants to begin with.

Second Black Elephant Paradox. The organisations tools of knowledge, like language, culture and technology, may direct attention away from the things the organisation needs to know about.

Third Black Elephant Paradox. Facing Black Elephants takes effort and risks disturbance. It may mean organisational change, which then occupies people’s attention so much, that they go back to ignoring the Black Elephants.

Fourth Black Elephant Paradox The problem space must be open, yet the more open the problem space is to recognising Black Elephants, the more unending the process, and the easier it is to avoid Black Elephants because of finding other more acceptable, easier to deal with, problems – especially such problems the organisation, or certain factions of the organisation, already acknowledge.

Fifth Black Elephant Paradox. To survive in one system, we may need to act in a certain way which threatens survival in another system. To see the threat to our survival in one system may create a threat to our survival in the other system. This paradox creates Black Elephants, as well as providing an incentive to ignore them.

Sixth Black Elephant Paradox.This is not really a paradox, but its close. The organisation may be so busy avoiding the big Black Elephant that they get eaten by termites. Avoiding a Black Elephant may lead to more immediate and recognisable threats being ignored as well. A Black Elephant can be sheltered by other Black Elephants.

With this in mind let us look at some potential ways of solving for Black Elephants. No guarantee is provided that these will work. This is a blog post.

Methods

One fundamental feature of dealing with Black Elephants is that there must be as much equity and open communication as possible, with no penalties for pointing to an unpopular problem. It must be possible to challenge the hierarchy. If this is not allowed then Black Elephants will not be faced.

Open communication is polite and non-threatening. People can say that communication which allows threatening-communication is real open communication, but the point of threats is shut people down. So this demonstrates another paradox: open communication involves restraints, but restraints can curtail communication.

Perhaps the inquiry can be conducted at a particular level in the organisation, in order to free the upper levels from potential inclusion. However the upper levels have to consider and take seriously the results of the inquiries, which is unusual. Every year some organisations find out that workers are unhappy with upper level management, and every year these results can be ignored, downplayed, or seen as purely political. Management has to be able to take criticism as important and meaningful feedback. This is difficult, even if open communication is promised. Criticism can also be political.

Seeking blocks

The first step is to find the blocks to Black Elephant recognition. We firstly have to assume there are Black Elephants. Without that assumption we probably will not find them.

This process involves a negative set of questions, such as: What the processes of ignorance and unconsciousness in our organisation? How can these processes be lessened, or undermined? What will be effective? We can look at some of the factors listed above to start with.

If a Black Elephant is suggested, what would it mean? If it means the organisation should not exist, this is a major block to its recognition. Very few people will destroy an organisation which gives them power, status, and income, to save the world from a Black Elephant. Some will, but that might not be enough.

If such an elephant appears then what can be done to keep recognition of the Elephant and transform the organisation without it expanding the elephant, or attempting to deny the elephant?

Is it possible to change the organisation but keep some of its focus and purpose? Say a fossil fuel company decides to become an energy company. How is this to be done? What relevant expertise and material capital do they already have? For instance an oil company might know how to build floating platforms which can be used for wind power. They may know how to transmit power, or oil, via undersea cables etc….

Blocks need to be made conscious, in order to progress.

Seeking destruction

Another fundamental question for exploration is – what kind of processes does our organisation engage in, which are destructive of its aims?

As a general heuristic, we could propose that: “Most forms of order, create disorder as unintended consequences of their modes of ordering.” If the blocks to perception and information are removed then we might be more able to see what these unintended consequences are and avoid them or deal with them.

If the organisation has a strong authoritarian hierarchy or a culture of fear (which leaders will probably not be able to recognise, or the culture of fear would not exist), it may be possible to ask people to put in anonymous submissions. It may also be useful to explain that destructive ordering is normal, and then appoint a group to explore what kinds of destructive ordering exist in the organisations relations to its ‘ecology’ (business, social, political, technological, religious, environmental, resources, educational etc). As we shall suggest in part two, exploring different contexts in which Black Elephants and self-undermining behaviour, can appear is vital to finding these problems.

An Official Elephant Hunter

Create a high-level semi-tenured position that looks for Black Elephants and informs the organisation as a whole. The only way of removing the person is if they don’t find any Elephants. They have a place in all high level deliberations. They have the ability to produce a ‘committee,’ ‘workshop’ or whatever, that considers the issue of the Elephant and how the organisation deals with it.

Problem. If the other high-ups still don’t want to see it, or do anything about it, they won’t. They can also try to undermine the Elephant hunter. But that is always the case. By being able to communicate with all levels of the organisation, it is possible independent ways of dealing with the problem will emerge anyway, or that the Black Elephant will slip into organisational conversation.

Consultants are supposed to be Black Elephant Hunters, but they are often aware that they have been brought in to recommend particular procedures for which those hiring them do not want to take full responsibility, or who want evidence to justify what they want to do. They are sensitive to the wishes of those who pay the bills. If they get a reputation as unsatisfactory with the dominant management of this organisation, then they may lose work elsewhere, as these managers have ties across organisations. This is why the Black Elephant hunter is semi-tenured.

Expand consciousness

This step is relatively innocuous and does not involve drugs. It simply means, once the blocks are uncovered, how do we expand organisational awareness? The Elephant Hunter is an overt method, but to some extent identification of, and removal of as many blocks as possible will help the identification of what the organisation does not recognise in general, what the organisation does not want to know, and what we personally benefit from (in the short term) by not knowing? (how do we help build the fictive world of the organisation?).

Let us describe a simple management technique which can be employed by any new manager, but is almost never applied. Walk the floor. Talk to the staff you are responsible for, but without being critical or surveilling them (Really!). Catch people doing what seem to be good things and complement them. When there is some level of trust, ask people what could be improved? What procedures do not work? What are the blocks to them doing their job? Take them seriously, check with others, do something about it. Talk with people. Remove the blocks to performance before you do massive change or restructuring. Things may almost be working now. Indeed they probably do work to some extent, or the organisation would have already collapsed completely. Then ask people what the major problems are, especially the problems the organisation does not deal with well. These may be harder to fix. They may be Black Elephants. Try not to get captured by a particular faction, because your underlings will recognise this and information will be tailored to this, or politicised.

The workers, the people on the ‘coal face’ or in the ‘interface’ between organisations or between organisations and those they serve, are much more likely to see some sets of problems than people in management, who are insulated from daily practice, but who attempt to structure that practise. This is both a form of consciousness expansion and Black Elephant detection.

This is long enough…. Part II later…

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The Black Elephant

April 17, 2020

This is largely just a collection of quotes:

The Black Elephant is an unholy union of two boardroom clichés: the Elephant in the Room, the thing which everyone knows is important, but no one will talk about; and the Black Swan, the hard-to-predict event which is outside the realm of normal expectations, but has enormous impact. The Black Elephant is an event which was quite foreseeable, which was in fact an Elephant in the Room, but which after it happens, everyone will try to pass off as a Black Swan.

A: Dougald Hine | Black Elephants and Skull Jackets | A Conversation with Vinay Gupta

“There are a herd of environmental black elephants gathering out there” — global warming, deforestation, ocean acidification, mass extinction and massive fresh water pollution. “When they hit, we’ll claim they were black swans no one could have predicted, but, in fact, they are black elephants, very visible right now…. We’re just not dealing with them at the scale necessary. If they all stampede at once, watch out.”

B: NYT Herd of Stampeding Black Elephants

So to be clear: a black elephant is a known, or suspected, highly dangerous but not yet overtly current problem, which many people, especially powerful ones, do not want to see, or which they downplay hoping it is trivial, exaggerated, improbable or going to occur after it’s not their responsibility.

“In terms of sustainability, there are two questions. Sustain what? And then, can we sustain those things? Right now, more or less the whole of the debate focuses on whether we can sustain hyper-consumption – and the answer is no, of course not. Something is going to give: oil, climate,topsoil, some other factor we’re not even paying attention to. You can’t just burn the earth’s natural resources like a gasflare on an oil rig forever…. climate is just the first of a long list of things that can and eventually will go wrong.”

A:

These ecological, production and consumption problems make up a horde of black elephants, but powerful people appear to lose out if we do anything about them, and we are helped to be comfortable ourselves by ignoring them, or by pretending they are not looming. The powerful do not have to push us that hard to get us to pretend there is no problem or to act half-heartedly about all these problems.

“the power that financiers and corrupt politicians still hold in setting the limits on what we can and cannot destroy in nature — as opposed to the scientists and biologists — remains the bad news.”

B:

And again this is a black elephant. It is pretty obviously not sensible to have the world run by financiers or business, when what they finance destroys the land we are standing on.

Sometimes black elephants were possibly quite normal things or processes which have just grown up with us, and many people have not caught up to realise that the normal has become abnormal. Nearly everyone says, “oh Elephants are only 2 ft tall… and there is only one of them, and its really cute.”

Perhaps black elephants are created by human cognitive and social processes. One writer remarks that science is full of black elephants:

The scientific world is a sprawling and untidy place whose inhabitants practise their craft in myriad ways. Attempts are periodically made to bring order to this world by building model homes in it, so to speak, and declaring that what’s inside is what science is really like – all the activities outside being imperfect versions. That way, we can easily teach it and tell outsiders what it’s about.

Two such homes are particularly attention-grabbing. The first is orderly, its atmosphere logical, and its disputes calmly resolved by proposing theories and taking data. Experiments are good when they get the true result, wrong when they don’t. This house does not have normal people inside – the inhabitants are so exacting and rule-abiding that they live and act quite differently from the rest of us. Discoveries made inside this house are universal, reflecting truths about nature outside. This house was built by traditional philosophy of science.

Another house was erected in reaction to the first. Its inhabitants behave exactly as non-scientists do, motivated by the same social and psychological forces. Experiments are good when they get a result everyone accepts. What’s found in the room is not universal but local – arising from what’s happening in that room. Obtaining consensus about a result is a matter of swapping interests, like the work of diplomats. This home, built by “social constructivists”, has real people inside but no real nature.

The [models] differ in what they include and omit. The first, to oversimplify, gets rid of human beings, who disrupt the rationality inside the house. The second gets rid of nature, which would resist, define and frustrate the negotiations.

Physics World: Black Elephants

Either model diminishes ‘science’ by creating dangerous black elephants. The first by making science objective, inhuman, valueless or ‘unspiritual’ when we know it is human and made by humans and hence limited and slightly weird, and the second by disconnecting it from reality and making a matter of enforced consensus and desire, when we know the reactions of reality are vital to that consensus (or it cannot be called science) – and you will hear both positions taken by those attempting to discredit some science they don’t like….

Historically it has been quite difficult to speak of science as human and riddled with personal politics, and bias without appearing to discredit the ideals of science, its power, and relatively accurate truth. This inability now reinforces the arguments of those who would listen to nothing but their own short-term interests.

We also know that science is nearly always better when it is not played according to government or commercial policy. That is when people say “We would like this. Make it it so, for us.” Then you get a whole load of finance for projects like turning lead into gold, and pressure to push scientists to pronounce certainty when not enough research has been done, especially to get the product into consumption and make a profit.

This dynamic is another black elephant we hope our world can survive, when it comes to things like genetic modification, biotech and so on (which literally have a life and evolution of their own).

Science also sometimes generates black elephants in that there are non-solvable problems, weird occurrences, or theoretical incoherencies, which scientists ignore, in the hope that they are not significant problems, or that they will somehow turn out to be explicable by the current theory. And sometimes they realise things like an atom bomb could cause the world to ignite or that a hadron collider could produce black holes, but “hey let’s do it anyway!”

One writer points to the consequences of an obvious political Black Elephant that was pretty clearly present, but which it is probable hope got in the way of analysis…

Last year, many of us would have been astonished to learn that the Treasury in the United Kingdom had made no contingency plans for Brexit, despite the fact that the polls showed that the outcome of the referendum would be a close call. The British military – which I presume is like most armed forces and makes contingency plans at the drop of the hat – also reportedly did nothing. 

The black elephant challenge for governments
Peter Ho

That author points to another “obvious problem”

governments often ignore the complexity of their operating environment. They typically deal with complexity as if it is amenable to simple and deterministic, even linear, policy prescriptions. In a sense, the crux of public policy has been to apply – if not impose – orderly solutions to the myriad of complex problems that afflict our societies, our politics and our lived everyday experiences, in largely vain attempts to make what is complex merely complicated.

We see this in legal systems that are based on uniform punishments for complex and varied crimes, in public health enterprises that treat patients as largely homogenous, and education systems and pedagogies that assume that all children develop uniformly, or ought to.

We also see the same problem in business, for a similar reason: standardisation makes things appear simple, and allows the illusion of command and control. For some reason people rarely seem to want to admit this problem in business. Perhaps business is now where we put the search for perfection? Anyhow, the idea that business (big business in particular) does not face similar problems to government, is another Black Elephant, and possibly an extremely dangerous one, given how much of government we hand over to business.

The author goes on to ask:

What can governments do to improve the way they manage complexity, and at the same time mitigate the effects of the various cognitive biases that afflict them?

We can start by accepting that complexity creates uncertainty. Prediction is not possible.The right approach is an orientation towards thinking about the future in a systematic way.

We have to be careful here, because we can use unpredictability to hide black elephants from ourselves and others. “The climate change elephant may not come, we cannot be certain about it, it might go away, we might find a technology that can chain it up, if it was a problem people would be doing something about it before us – if we act first then we will be taken advantage of… We can’t be sure, let’s just ignore it.”

Ultimately this author recommends scenario planning, but does not say why this should overcome the social bias of avoiding the elephant.

Just in case you think the idea of the Black Elephant is simple:

Black Elephants capture the postnormal dynamic of the Extended Present, and they are decidedly contextual and ought to be situated and/or articulated from more than one perspective, if only to capture the contradictions inherent to their emergence. Finally, Black Elephants indicate that PNL is present, and perhaps dominant, within a particular system.

https://postnormaltim.es/black-elephant

I have no idea what PNL is either.

You may remember the famous and quite common-sensical lines from Donald Rusmfeld

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

Black elephants are those knowns and probables we don’t want to know, don’t want to acknowledge, don’t want to acknowledge as important, or don’t know we know, and which will effect us. Zizek has a nice essay on this going back to the Bush Jr. Admin and the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in which the army knew what was going on, and decided to ignore the reports. [I wonder if this elephant has almost been forgotten, nowadays?]

In the past several months, the International Committee of the Red Cross regularly bombarded the Pentagon with reports about the abuses [of Iraqis by US troops] in Iraqi military prisons, and the reports were systematically ignored….

To anyone acquainted with the reality of the American way of life, the photos brought to mind the obscene underside of U.S. popular culture – say, the initiatory rituals of torture and humiliation one has to undergo to be accepted into a closed community. Similar photos appear at regular intervals in the U.S. press after some scandal explodes at an Army base or high school campus, when such rituals went overboard….

In being submitted to the humiliating tortures, the Iraqi prisoners were effectively initiated into American culture: They got a taste of the culture’s obscene underside that forms the necessary supplement to the public values of personal dignity, democracy and freedom. No wonder, then, the ritualistic humiliation of Iraqi prisoners was not an isolated case but part of a widespread practice….

What [Rumsfeld] forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the “unknown knowns,” the things we don’t know that we know – which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the “knowledge which doesn’t know itself,” as Lacan used to say.

If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” – the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values.

What we get when we see the photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners is precisely a direct insight into “American values,” into the core of an obscene enjoyment that sustains the American way of life.

What Rumsfeld Doesn’t Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib

In this context, we might also think of this comment:

Republican Rep. Trey Hollingsworth asserted that, while he appreciated the science behind the [corona]virus’ spread, “it is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.”

“It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils. It is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these two evils and we intend to move forward that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office.”

CNN 15 April: GOP congressman says letting more Americans die of coronavirus is lesser of two evils

In other words, he is making a rare acknowledgement that the American way of life, both requires and demands the early death of Americans.

Sartre had a point about this kind of unconsciousness, that we have to know what it is we don’t want to know, in order to ignore it – so we are writing of actively unknown knowns. Or things that are made ignorable matters of chaos when they are actually part of the order of everyday life and acknowledging them would somehow undermine that life, or its (moral) validity.

This is not ignorance but effort. The more upsetting the black elephant the more effort is put into ignoring it, and the less we will be prepared.

Perhaps all cognitive and social life requires us to create a social unconscious, which includes Black Elephants. Things that everyone knows are likely to become a problem, or generate problems, but which they believe would cause them problems were they to mention it. And besides the future is uncertain, perhaps the elephant will wander off, or prove to be a mouse in disguise. “Why should I upset my life for this? Nobody will thank me, and they might even hurt me.”

The other problem is that people tend to think that if it really was a problem then other people (especially people they respect) would be dealing with it. The fact that no one worthwhile is dealing with it, shows it is not a problem. And if everyone worthwhile thinks it is not a problem, then it probably isn’t – it’s certainly not my business. Again this formulation adds to the “Why should I upset my life by screaming about Black Elephants? Couldn’t I be deluded? And it looks tame now. Its not yet trampled anything important underfoot. Other people are not going to thank me, for going on about it”.

This is how a social unconscious is constructed, and it can become personal. Because if something is not acknowledged by people a person respects and desires to emulate, then they to have to suppress awareness of it, to emulate the admired ones. If you are lucky, you may never have your attention drawn to the black elephant, before it kills you. So you can relax – up until that moment.

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US, Australia and pandemics again

April 11, 2020

The last post showed the figures for coronavirus in Australia and the US. It is clear that Australia is doing better than the US. They are both neoliberal governments, but the neoliberal government in the US is Donald Trump who appears incompetent. This demonstrates that there are different types of neoliberalisms and it is not accurate to say all neoliberalisms are the same. Some are actively harmful.

President Trump did close flights from China (announced 31st Jan, in place 2nd Feb), as he boasts, but originally this closure only referred to foreign nationals, and had so many exceptions that another 40,000 people entered the country from China after it was in place. Yes, that does not make sense at all. Two weeks after the flight ban he was saying the pandemic will be over by April. On the 27th Feb he was saying:

we have done an incredible job.  We’re going to continue.  It’s going to disappear.  One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.  And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better.  It could maybe go away.  We’ll see what happens.  Nobody really knows

Remarks by President Trump in Meeting with African American Leaders

and there appears to have been more or less no federal preparation before March. There are reports that hospital workers are still (April 11) massively under-equipped in the US, and still at risk, which will compound problems as medical support is removed by the virus.

For example, a week ago, the New York Governor was expressing gratitude for ventilators donated by the Chinese Government as New York was running out and there was no sign of availability from the US.

Louisiana, which has also been hit hard by the virus, has requested or ordered 14,000 ventilators from the federal government and the private sector. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told NPR on Friday that the state had only received 553 so far.

Time Magazine 6 April Gov. Cuomo Says Chinese Government Delivering 1,000 Ventilators to New York

We now know that Trump’s medical advisers were asking him to issue physical distancing guidelines in the 3rd week of February, but apart from acting as a bad example, he delayed action until the 16th March.

By comparison, in Australia, on 21 Jan, Australia’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, stated that “additional proportionate border measures” are in place. The same day health Minister Greg Hunt declared coronavirus a “disease of pandemic potential.”  Biosecurity and border security staff were meeting passengers from Wuhan to Sydney. The next day flights from Wuhan stopped. On the 29th Jan, the Queensland government requested quarantine of everyone coming from China, and the federal government released its stockpile of facemasks so hospitals would be equipped in advance. 31st Jan the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency. On the 1st of Feb Australia’s air ‘borders’ with China were effectively closed. Peter Dutton suggested Australians about to leave for any overseas holiday should reconsider their travel. Australians evacuated from Wuhan were quarantined on Christmas Island. There were immediate efforts at quarantining all people travelling in from overseas, even if it was largely voluntary. On the 18th Feb the government released its Emergency Response Plan. On the 27th February, the Prime Minister announced that:

based on the expert medical advice we’ve received, there is every indication that the world will soon enter a pandemic phase of the coronavirus and as a result, we have agreed today and initiated the implementation of the Coronavirus Emergency Response Plan…

So while the WHO is yet to declare the nature of the coronavirus and it’s moved towards a pandemic phase, we believe that the risk of a global pandemic is very much upon us and as a result, as a government, we need to take the steps necessary to prepare for such a pandemic….

we need an even greater abundance of caution to ensure that should the coronavirus move to a very extreme level or there is any particular risk that is associated with children, particularly those attending school, that we have the preparedness and the arrangements in place with states and territories. And I want to thank all of the state and territories for their engagement, whether it’s on this issue on schools or the many other issues, the health issues, that are associated… 

we’re effectively operating now on the basis that there is… a pandemic. 

27th Feb: Press Conference – Australian Parliament House

The Australian government’s approach was nowhere near perfect, by any means, there are many criticisms which could be made. For example, after advising a ban on large crowd events on the 13th March, the Prime Minister announced he would be attending a football match on the day before the ban came in. However, they had a somewhat different and more constructive approach to Trump, which has continued. For example while Trump has been trying to suggest a back to normal date is soon, Morrison has been saying:

We have seen what’s happened in Singapore most recently, we’ve seen what happened in Sweden and other countries. If you take your eyes off of this thing, and it gets away from you, it writes its own rules, so we do need to understand what the prerequisites are, the things that we have to achieve before we can start to ease some of those restrictions…

I do want to caution Australians that we’re not in that phase yet we’re many weeks away I think from being in a phase like that.

Interview on Sunrise 14th April 2020

Right wingers often say, no doubt inspired by Trump, that there were howls of ‘racism’ from the left, about his blocking of flights from China. I did not hear those howls personally, and some reports seem exaggerated by those being criticised. I did hear people saying that banning flights was not enough, which is true, and perhaps Trump should have done more than think he could wall off trouble? People, such as the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine and others did make requests for politicians to stop encouraging people to avoid or scream at Chinese Australians, or not go to Chinese Restaurants. That kind of internal disunity and pointless conflict is not helpful in containing a pandemic, although it does allow deflection of blame, which is why Trump loves it. People have also criticised his use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ when the virus has a proper name, and is not the only virus originating in China, but again I guess using the term serves to imply that Trump’s bad performance can be blamed on the Chinese, and that the threat is insidious and cunning – and it also feeds into the laregely right wing narrative that the virus is a Chinese bioweapon, that they decided to test in their own country rather than just release in the US (imagine how much worse the US response would have been if they had no warning there was a problem).

Closing borders as much as possible is a standard response to pandemics, and, apart from when bringing people home from foreign shores, is exactly what you would expect. Queensland has tried to close its borders to the rest of Australia as has Western Australia. That is difficult but not unreasonable. It is normal. It is routine, but it needs other backing as well.

There have also been attempts to say that virus is so bad in the US, because ‘the left’ has sabotaged Trump’s attempts to make firm borders. However, Trump had two years with a friendly congress to do whatever he wanted like make stronger borders or fix Obamacare etc. If he didn’t do it then, he either was not capable, uninterested, or there were good reasons for not doing it, which he is ignoring to now try and build political capital by blaming other people (as usual) for his inabilities. I could suggest that the demand for cheap labor by US business was one reason the borders were not closed. Anyway, the virus seems to have come into Mexico from the US, rather than the other way around. So the issue is irrelevant, and nobody has attempted to prevent him from preparing for a pandemic.

Trump continually says no one could have expected this situation. This is clearly not true. The world has been preparing for a pandemic for years. The possibility is glaringly obvious, and many of us were fearing a much worse event than the current one. Mass globalised air traffic, is an invitation for pandemics and, if you don’t know that, then you should not be in politics.

I quote a comedian – because we are in that realm in which comedians have better political knowledge than presidents. I guess the fools have always known more than would be kings:

“First, Obama officials walk Trump aides through a global pandemic exercise in 2017. Then, in 2017 and 2018, threat assessment intelligence analysts even mentioned a close cousin of coronavirus by name, saying it had pandemic potential. Then in 2018, the director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the national security council told a symposium that the threat of pandemic flu is our number one health security concern. Then, top administration officials said last year that the threat of a pandemic kept them up at night. Then, White House economists warned in 2019 a pandemic could devastate America. Then, intelligence reports warned of a coronavirus crisis as early as November. And then, US intelligence reports from January and February warned about a likely pandemic.”

The Guardian 10 April Colbert interviews Sanders

Then:

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York….

Experts agree that it is only a matter of time before one of these epidemics becomes global—a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes “Event 201,” would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.

http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/

Furthermore, on the 29th January Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro, circulated a memo warning the administration that a coronavirus pandemic that could wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs, erase trillions of dollars in economic activity. “The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil,.. This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.” He also argued that “the clear dominant strategy is an immediate travel ban on China.”

Truly no one could possibly be prepared if they didn’t want to listen.

I have heard right wingers say that Event 201 is suspicious, and shows some deep state planning to run a pandemic to undermine Trump. But that just shows you that they can escape any reality. This was a public event, warning of the possibility of pandemics. If Trump had listened he might have been better prepared, no matter how Machiavellian the organisers were. But he did not listen, and it does help the US to be unprepared if you cut CDC funding by 80%, disband the National Security Council’s global pandemic team, opt to discontinue the “Predict” program which monitored the threat of animal-born diseases crossing over to humans, which is the probable origin point of the current coronavirus, or allow stockpiles of respirators to break down because you cut maintenance contracts. That’s life.

Donald Trump has not had good relations with many States in the US, so coordinating responses has not been wonderful. He has gone so far as to argue the Federal government should not take responsibility for action, and largely left it to the States to do it by themselves.

we had to go into the federal stockpile, but we’re not an ordering clerk. They have to have for themselves. 

Rev: Donald Trump Coronavirus Briefing Transcript April 3

He also decided to end federal support for coronavirus testing sites, leaving the States with the responsibility for testing – although that move may be being reconsidered. He has also blamed the States for failures. So presumably his primary strategy is to end his responsibility and shift it, and the blame, elsewhere. He has helped create a toxic political environment, by this refusal to take responsibility, ‘forgetting’ what he said the day before, saying that he would not have contact with governors who were critical of him, and blaming everyone else for his own mistakes.

The context for Trump’s relationships with the US states is provided by the resentment of aid to Puerto Rico, and his blaming of California for its fires and his twitter threat to order Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cease helping victims of those fires, despite the fires starting on Federal land. During the pandemic, on 27 March Trump declared when asked about his responses to the Governors,

I think we’ve done a great job for the State of Washington and I think the governor, who is a failed presidential candidate as you know, he leveled out at zero in the polls, he’s constantly chirping, and I guess complaining would be a nice way of saying it. We’re building hospitals. We’ve done a great job for the State of Washington. Michigan, she has no idea what’s going on. And all she does is say, “Oh, it’s the federal government’s fault.” And we’ve taken such great care of Michigan…..

All I want them to do, very simple, I want them to be appreciative. I don’t want them to say things that aren’t true. I want them to be appreciative. We’ve done a great job…

You know what I say? If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call. 

Rev: Donald Trump Coronavirus Task Force Briefing Transcript March 27

According to some reports the friendly governor of Florida received 100% of its requested medical supplies  including 430,000 surgical masks and 180,000 N95 respirators while Massachusetts, which is not so flattering, received a mere 17% of what it requested.

It appears that the only way, that Trump could see the toxic environment ending is if everyone keeps telling him that he is the best president ever.

Other accusations seem more serious:

the White House seizes goods from public officials and hospitals across the country while doling them out as favors to political allies and favorites, often to great fanfare to boost the popularity of those allies. The Denver Post today editorialized about one of the most egregious examples. Last week, as we reported, a shipment of 500 ventilators to the state of Colorado was intercepted and rerouted by the federal government. Gov. Jared Polis (D) sent a letter pleading for the return of the equipment. Then yesterday President Trump went on Twitter to announce that he was awarding 100 ventilators to Colorado at the behest of Republican Senator Cory Gardner, one of the most endangered Republicans on the ballot this year. As the Post put it, “President Donald Trump is treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It’s the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives.”

Talking points: PPE and Ventilators Becomes Patronage in Trump’s Hands

See also: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-04-07/hospitals-washington-seize-coronavirus-supplies

Australia’s Prime Minister has been much better, despite similar political views, and despite the support of the Murdoch Empire. The Australian PM may have tried to model himself on Trump but he appears never to have been in that league and, he seems to have improved since the bushfire debacle, which is a good sign he can learn to be better.

Our main source of infection in Australia seems to have been people from the Ruby Princess cruise ship. There are questions as to why they were allowed to dock, including allegations that it could dock because it had Hillsong Church friends of the Prime Minister’s on board, and because home affairs intervened to let them dock. Whatever the results of the current police investigation, it should never have been allowed to dock once, never mind twice. But anyone can make a mistake. So it could be a mistake. A severe one, but a mistake.

We now know that unfortunately, many Qantas flights into the country had infected crews, because apparently crew have not had to quarantine if it turns out there were infected passengers on board. Another mistake, but its not sure whether that is the regulator or the business’ fault. Again another mistake.

Border force, or whoever is responsible, should also have been doing the kind of temperature checks in Australia that you get at overseas airports by distance, or forehead, thermometers. I’ve no idea what has been happening in the US. These thermometers have been available for years. The government has now finally started to take temperatures (I know people who came into the country two weeks ago, and they were checked everywhere other than at Sydney). Apparently the new temperature checks are being done manually – which does risk transmission without extraordinary care, and anecdotally this care is not happening. IF this is the case, and has been for more than a day or so, then it is monumentally stupid as well.

It also would have been good for the Government not to encourage queues of people at Centrelink offices, as that was not helpful, but again that was a mistake anyone could have made – initially. It helps you to make that mistake if you think Centrelink’s prime purpose is to punish people on welfare, but this could be changed. How long the mistake lasted or whether it is still happening, seems to be a subject of dispute and its not like the Republicans in Wisconsin forcing people to queue to vote, despite any rational person knowing at this stage this would be a problem and increase the seriousness of the epidemic. But then Republicans apparently ‘know‘ that mailing the votes in, which allows better checking for voter fraud, would mean no Republicans would be elected. I personally think that some Republicans would be elected, but the fear and the preference to sacrifice voters to power is extraordinary. Let us hope this event was just massive incompetence, instead.

It is probably a good idea to argue for random temp checks of the populace, as well as as much coronavirus testing as possible, although to excuse the PM we have not yet built up supplies of reliable checks (it’s not easy, and you need a decent sample size, and duration of testing to find if a test is working properly). Certainly this action is better than the current chorus of righteous demands for old people to die so the economy can get going. People over 60 have lived their lives don’t you know – but even Trump seems to realise that is probably not a vote winner – especially if older people are his main voters, and they all die off.

The Australian prime minister has been incredibly fortunate. If it had been a Labor person acting as he has done, we would be hearing nothing but screaming about how the party was sacrificing Australia’s economy and prosperity and how it was all financially irresponsible, a suppression of liberty, and an encouragement of dole bludging. But he isn’t, so thankfully he can be largely be left to get on with what is necessary. He has also been lucky that Peter Dutton has been sick with coronavirus and Tony Abbott is outside parliament and that Abbott has only been trying to take credit for it all, which is pretty mild for him.

I’d personally would have preferred it if Morrison had not tried to shut parliament so that there was no supervision or questioning of the government. There are many ways around the contagion problem, as nearly every office based workspace has discovered, and we could still function as some kind of participatory democracy.

So the US and Australia are different, and we are left with the proposition that all neoliberalisms are not equally deadly in every situation.

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Biased Political Announcement

April 6, 2020

Right wing plan:

1: Make money for, or give money to, your mates.

2: Read Murdoch Empire.

3: Believe Murdoch’s ranters rather than science.

4: Call the ranters “quiet Australians” or “silent majority.”

5: Kick a few powerless people if any are available.

6: Claim to be a victim.

7: Claim anyone who disagrees with you, is:

  • a) politicising the subject,
  • b) drinks white coffee or Chardonnay,
  • c) a traitor,
  • d) a communist seeking tyranny,
  • e) just upset, and of no consequence.

8: Find some one else to blame, who had no power to change anything.

9: Give special treatment to some righteous fundamentalist Christians.

10: Destroy the ecology some more.

11: Ignore feedback from reality.

12: Repeat.

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Pandemic and Climate Action

April 1, 2020

The pandemic has shown the world is quickly able to organise against crisis. Charles Eisenstein claims the pandemic “breaks the addictive hold of normality.” Others propose that the coronavirus has “killed neoliberalism,” changed the practical ideology of neoliberal governments, or changed the world. Neoliberal governments have decided to support workers laid off during the pandemic, even casual workers. Retired politicians in Australia, such as ex-state premier Bob Carr, and ex-leader of the opposition, John Hewson, have been agitating for climate action following the response to the virus. George Monbiot points to the growth of bottom up, and often localised, support actions by ordinary people, as showing that communal processes are not dead. Electricity consumption is going down in some places, air flights have been cancelled, oil remains unburnt despite its low price, CO2 emissions are falling, showing what a low carbon future might look like and so on – although it is not certain that it will be long term.

Many are asking whether these systemic changes can be carried into action on climate. To explore this question we must look at the differences between pandemic, and climate, action.  Some of this may sound cynical, but it is also plausible, and given we do not (and cannot) have full knowledge of what is happening, plausibility may act as a tool to help us uncover the problems we face.

Differences

Monetary

Firstly, few organisations stand to make billions out of ignoring the virus. Cruise ships and airlines are losing money, and therefore could downplay the crisis, but they are fighting against fears that the virus comes from outside (encouraged by right wing politicians and media – the “Chinese virus” etc.), and from travellers being easily identified by authorities as infection vectors, so this is difficult. In Australia, Virgin air, despite not being profitable for seven years, is requesting a $1.4 billion government loan to get it through the pandemic. Qantas has argued that if Virgin receives this money it should “get A$4.2 billion in funds because its revenue is three times larger”. In the US, the government has offered airlines $US29 billion in payroll grants, $US3 billion to contractors and 29 billion in loans. Tony Webber, the former chief economist of Qantas, said “Every airline around the world needs help, it’s not just Qantas and it’s not just Virgin, they will run out of cash eventually.” So airlines have an interest in supporting recognition of the pandemic as it will help keep them in business 

On the other hand, many powerful, wealthy and socially central organisations (fossil fuel, mining and energy companies, car manufacturers, etc.) profit out of downplaying the climate crisis, and may lose financially from recognising it (for instance subsidising fossil fuels would look odd, if governments recognised these fuels are destroying us).

Disruption and pollution

The pandemic disrupts ordinary life styles, while pollution, ecological destruction and fossil fuels help to continue these modes of living, until it’s too late. Pollution and ecological destruction are also frequently less visible, or easier to hide away, than sickness. It is common for pollution and destruction to primarily affect the poor or be located away from large influential populations who might notice it. Coal mines are rarely in central public parks.

Escape

Wealthy and powerful people are less likely to think that they can completely escape the pandemic through their wealth and power; they may even say coronavirus does not care about wealth from within a bathtub with floating rose petals. Well-known people like Prince Charles, Boris Johnson and Australian politician Peter Dutton have caught the disease (as have presumably some of those close to them), although, as none of them have apparently died, they might come to think it has been exaggerated. Doctors have died. Even if you can escape to the high-seas in a well-armed private yacht, you still have to come to land to take in food, water and possibly disease, and you may need treatment.

While the wealthy cannot escape completely the disease will affect poorer people more severely. In the US because they cannot afford health care, or time off, and elsewhere because the essential services workers have to interact with other people and live in more crowded conditions. The rich can isolate much easier.

Precedent

We have dealt with pandemics before, the historical guidelines for action are quite clear, and we know how bad they can get. We have precedents for action on disease, but we only have recent, largely unfamiliar, models for climate change and no heritage of action. Action on disease is habitual and uncontroversial, action on climate is not, as there is no routine.

The timeline and future of a pandemic is pressing and short. Intense immediate action is required, but will probably, although not certainly, be over in a year or less. The timeline within which climate change will become an ongoing crisis is absolutely uncertain, and is not marked by a brief agreed upon period of transition from good to bad, and back again. Most people are able to behave as if climate crisis will be at least 50 years away (rather than that we may have already passed, or be passing, the tipping points), so there is apparently no reason to discomfort ourselves or engage in major political struggles against power and wealth elites now. It is easy, and less painful, to postpone action.

Command and Control

As Charles Eisenstein points out, pandemics can be handled within a ‘command and control’ power structure. Violence and penalties are implemented mainly against the general populace rather than the power elites themselves. Again this is a familiar route and, for some politicians, suspending parliament or democratic process presents them with an opportunity to extend their power, as in Hungary, decrease opposition and bring in business as in Australia, or delay elections and hinder public protests [1], [2], [3],[4] – it is hard to protest if people cannot gather in groups larger than two as in NSW. The chances of absolutely unexpected or unknown consequences from these authoritarian actions seem relatively low. With climate change, the elites resist, the chance of unintended consequences is high, and we are not sure how to proceed, or even if we can proceed, without long term disruption. Command and control is not always the best way of dealing with complex or ‘wicked’ problems, so we would have to develop new modes of acting, which adds to the difficulty of agreement.

The technology for pandemics is generally clear. Quarantine, medical treatment and working on vaccines. We do not have to hope for major breakthroughs to deal with the problem. Climate technologies are new and expensive substitutes for already functional technologies which are strongly tied into modernist power, wealth and energy structures. Climate technologies are resisted by those tied to established technologies, and are not always easy to implement without disrupting more people, as when agricultural land is taken for solar panels. The unintended consequences of these technologies are largely unknown, even if the dire unintended consequences of established technologies are known.

Mess of Information

While lots of disinformation and misinformation circulates about the pandemic, with a possible tendency to wander off into political polarisation, or even US vs China slugfests (apparently to diffuse blame for one’s own group’s, or President’s failings), there are currently no major media organisations, or corporately sponsored think-tanks, promoting an anti-medical agenda. They may want to distract from any role they played in helping the initial situation get out of hand, agitate for special compensation or make political capital out of the aspects of the response, but they are not banking on building a political alliance out of pretending the pandemic is unreal (at least not yet). Even Fox News changed its initial tune, possibly after people in the organisation became ill – although it now seems to be trying to exonerate Trump by implying China is the real source of the US’s problems [1], [2], [3], even if other countries are doing much better in the same situation.

One of the main ways of making money from the pandemic, or attempting to lower fear, is through promoting fake or untested medicines [1], [2], [3], but most large businesses are aware that this could lead them into financial, or legal, trouble. So it is mainly small concerns that benefit from this, but they gain no benefit in denying the pandemic.

An interesting perspective on disinformation is visible through the way that President Trump has changed his stance. His initial reaction was to deny there was a problem, state that it would be over quickly, that criticism of him (or alarm at the virus) was a hoax by the Democratic Party, that it was no worse than the flu, and that everything would be over by Easter. Now he is claiming that “I’ve always known this is a real — this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”, and if there are less than 200,000 deaths he will have done a good job. “The president repeatedly asserted that millions would have died if he hadn’t stepped in.” He may have made this change by seeing the effects of the virus on hospitals in Queens NY, and infecting people he knows, or because people from Fox told him that there was a problem. This does indicate importance of personal reference, and the vague possibility that he might be able to change track on climate change with equal speed.

Ecological Disruption and Economics

A major problem revealed by the pandemic is how important ecological destruction is to the workings of our system, despite talk of nature sending us a message. In the US the Environmental Protection Authority has announced it will not be policing pollution because of the outbreak (but see this), and rules for fuel efficient vehicles are to be scrapped. The crisis has not stopped, or slowed, the taking away of Native American land, or stopped Amazon’s anti-union, anti-worker’s rights activity [and 1]. “America’s wind and solar industries have been left out of a $US2 trillion economic stimulus package released by the federal government” leading to job losses. Various companies see the pandemic as an excuse to bring back ‘one-use’ plastic bags. Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia have taken the opportunity to outlaw disruptions of ‘critical’ infrastructure‘, which includes oil and gas fields, through protest or ‘riot’. Building the Keystone pipeline will begin, despite the dangers of pandemic, with massive investments and loans from the Alberta government, and was welcomed in Montana as bringing jobs shut down by the pandemic, as if contagion did not apply to construction work. One paper claimed that “

The construction of the pipeline is deemed critical infrastructure by the US Department of Homeland Security and therefore is allowed to continue as planned provided measures are implemented and followed for safety under current orders.

Other promotions of US fossil fuel continued.

[T]he Interior Department wrapped up an auction to sell oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico, offering up some 78 million offshore acres ― an area roughly the size of New Mexico. It proved to be a bust, bringing in approximately $93 million for just shy of 400,000 acres, the smallest total for an offshore auction since 2016…..

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a panel voted 2-1 to rubber-stamp construction of both the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas export terminal in Oregon’s already-polluted Coos Bay, and the 230-mile Pacific Connector Pipeline. The decision, The Oregonian reported, stunned Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D), who warned that the state had not yet approved permitting in the midst of a national emergency.

Huffington Post 21st March 2020

Former US Energy Secretary Rick Perry warned that warned that US fossil fuel companies were under threat of collapse due to lack of demand and flooding of cheap oil imports.

I’m telling you, we are on the verge of a massive collapse of an industry that we worked awfully hard over the course of the last three or four years to build up to the number one oil and gas producing country in the world, giving Americans some affordable energy resources

Fox News 1 April 2020

Perry also warned of the collapse of the shale gas industry, and suggested government intervention. Other commentators say that the shale gas and fracking industry in the US has never made a profit: “companies spent $189 billion more on drilling and other capital expenses over the past decade than they generated from selling oil and gas.” Fox news reports that the fossil fuel industry and “our energy workers” are supporting the fight against the pandemic by providing energy, and they are threatened by ingratitude and any Green New Deal. So it is conceivable crisis money may be used to defend established corporations against the consequences of destructive and foolish investments, or their refusal to branch out into new forms of energy or more environmentally friendly business. Below-cost oil could also undermine energy transitions.

A $2tn US coronavirus relief package will dole out billions…. and offer low-interest loans that fossil fuel companies could compete for – without requiring any action to stem the climate crisis.

The Guardian 27 March 2020

Despite the ideology that the free market comes first, neoliberals have always been prepared to bail out and support or build up, established, and well connected, wealthy companies, and it seems like the justification for a intensification of that process is beginning. Therefore, we should probably check all the spending of taxpayers’ money to make sure it is not just the normal transfer from ordinary taxpayers upwards.

The trend of defending the past is not just manifested in the US under Trump. China issued permits for more new coal-fired energy stations in the first three weeks of March 2020 than for all of 2019 and has halved subsidies for renewables to balance the budget. The virus has slowed solar installation in Australia’s Victoria. In NSW, an Independent Planning Commission inquiry into the Narrabri gas fields will be launched despite difficulties for audiences or public participation. Coal mining has been approved under Sydney’s reservoirs. So far in NSW, building of toll-roads does not seem to have been affected by quarantine restrictions. The Federal Government is “agreeing to stimulate demand for a fossil fuel” to keep the price stable. The International Energy Agency has warned that political action to deal with the virus could derail the energy transition.

Perhaps the pandemic has been used to cover these economic actions, perhaps they are seen as necessary to recover ‘ordinary destructive order’ after the pandemic. Whatever the case, it does seem that without a lot of political pressure and action from ordinary people, the historical devotion to environmental destruction will continue, even though the pandemic has demonstrated the possibility of enacting radical and rapid social and economic change, largely for the public good.

Conclusion

So we know the modern neoliberal state can act swiftly and intervene in the Economy and life, but what have we learnt of the difficulties of acting on climate?

We have to be prepared for resistance from wealthy and powerful elites, who can pretend that their mode of destruction is necessary for the continuance of contemporary life and its improvement. For them, postponing the appearance of crisis is important for contemporary life to continue, as is postponing the realisation that climate change and ecological destruction affect everyone. If the economy is destroyed through environmental destruction, there is little in the way of further wealth production.

Bringing realisation of the crisis into the lives of the power and wealth elites is important, as they generally see prosperity as arising from their actions rather than destruction, and the media tends to reinforce this, only partially accurate, attitude. The crisis affects them, and their businesses, and they should not expect to be bailed out, when they fail.

Everyone, even the wealthy, is vulnerable to this ecological destruction. This is an important message. It is also important to make people aware of the harsh normality of this irreparable destruction rather than to participate in its cover-up. People should be encouraged to keep protesting against things like the Sydney coal mines and the destruction of water tables, online and through letters, even if they cannot gather safely together. They need to keep trying to hold governments and businesses, accountable for their actions and their spending, whatever is happening elsewhere, and to keep organising themselves to provide support for each other, both physical and emotional. We cannot assume that money will be spent primarily to defend people rather than big business.

Personal experience seems able to change misinformation. When the problem hits misinformers and the problem affects them, their associates or their local areas, then change can come. From Trump and Fox, we know people can do a u-turn while pretending otherwise. There is no point berating them for their previous misinformation, but there is a point to encouraging the spread of reality and accurate information. This does not stop overseas interests from trying to interfere and disrupt connective action, but it will lessen their impact.

There is a romantic glory in fighting against established power. This is the case with fighting for climate action and needs to be made more of. At the moment, the romantic vision is commandeered by the power and wealth elites, in an unlikely pretense of fighting against all powerful science and socialism.

We need to explore how previous civilisations fought against ecological destructions and learn from them, whether they failed or not. This gives us experience we don’t have.

Managerial theory is finally trying to get beyond command and control, to encourage bottom up organisation of the kind that is occurring spontaneously in the pandemic. People naturally function in co-operation as well as competition, but our neoliberal societies discourage co-operation unless it is organised from above, probably because of the fear of revolution or loss of elite property – after all property is a fiction usually imposed by violence and the right to exclude others, and if people refuse to co-operate with the violence and exclusion, then property could get shared and the profit appropriated be diminished.

Community democracy and self-organisation is important to fighting environmental destruction. Few people want their own living spaces to be poisoned. Neoliberalism dismisses this resistance out of hand as NIMBYism (unless it is a new industry like windfarms), in effect saying that corporate profit justifies the destruction. But if you can’t object to your own way of life and your environment being destroyed, when can you object? and if you can collectively organise your environment to be more pleasant and liveable and sustainable, and safe from corporate exploitation and destruction, is that not good?

Finally, most people do not realise the ways that contemporary forms of economic activity destroy their home. This, to me, seems a major point of understanding. Once people get this reality, and it is a reality, then they can truly start to wonder if there is another way of conduct manufacture and trade, which retains freedom to trade with lack of permission to destroy and imperil everyone. Human logic, and civilisational experience, implies there is. So we need to discover the rules by which this new game can be played – and it probably comes down to fluid democracy again, rather than to command and control businesses devoted to authoritarian ways of proceeding.

So climate action is connected to freedom to live, and to freedom to act with others, and by oneself, without being imperiled by corporate power, or by the governments that support that power over the people.

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The old just die out…. and things get better

March 27, 2020

There is an argument going around that all we have to do to solve the climate problem is to wait for all the old people to die off.

Most versions of the theory just assume this is completely obvious and needs no justification, however, one version of it goes something like this: Thomas Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions shows that arguments and experiments by new scientists never produce a paradigm shift, or a shift in world view, but the old scientists just die off, and as they die the new view takes over. (I’m not actually sure that is an entirely accurate way of summarising Kuhn’s work, but it is a possible way of summarising parts of it).

The position assumes that all old people are the problem, not some older people, and that the only important factor is age, not social patterning, technological positioning and lock-in, power and class, ideologies, economic hierarchies etc. Just old people.

In reality, only particular powerful and probably wealthy older people are a problem, and they are generally representatives of groups of people, both old and young, and that group benefits from generating the climate problem, sees themselves as benefiting from what causes the climate problem, cannot see how to live without generating climate change, or thinks change is more costly than non-change like Bjorn Lomborg does. So this idea deletes a lot of social and political reality, and that is never good.

This generation war meme, is nowadays, used to explain almost anything, from crap jobs, to lack of housing, to broadcast music, and it is distracting people from other social dynamics which are probably more important. That is probably why it is encouraged; just as ‘progressives’ in the US are being taught to focus on Joe Biden’s weaknesses rather than Trump’s massive failures.

It works, without having to be thought about, because most spirited young people have problems with their parents and parental restrictions, and it can easily feel like their parents, and old people in general, are the cause of many of their problems, so why not add a few more to the list?

As well as cultivating unconsciousness, and misdirecting anger, the meme acts to prevent alliances and all of this benefits the established groups with wealth and power. We can observe that many climate protests are full of older people and quite young people.

As far as the power hierarchy goes these young and old people, must be prevented from allying, after all experienced demonstrators could probably teach a few effective tactics and give a few cautions, like taking heroin is not radical :).

There don’t seem to me many middle period people at demonstrations, and these people are the next generation to come to power, and if this problem is all about generational movement, you could expect things to get worse rather than better, because of this apparent disinterest. But I suspect many midlife people are busy with children and other stuff, and they are as varied as anyone else, and as open to alliances as everyone else. So they should not be ignored – and they vote.

Anyway, even if dying off, bought positive changes on some occasions, it does not mean it is beneficial all the time. The changes from die off could also be negative. When the old union-based democratic socialists died off you got the neoliberals, stagnant wages, lowered conditions of labour, political exclusion and heightened environmental destruction. Not necessarily an improvement for everyone.

As far as I can tell one of the problems with the youth rebellion of the 60s was precisely that they thought that they would inevitably win, as the old faded away to almost quote The Who. The problem was that real hippies and revolutionaries, although they represented the image of a generation, were probably at the most, 10% of the population. Other people their age, where roughly carrying on previous traditions and views, so no radical change in general could be expected (although feminism and anti-racism became relatively mainstream despite the recent fight backs), and the right found the way of splitting the radicals through libertarianism and anti-Statism, which seamlessly merged into neoliberalism and environmental destruction…. and led to where we are now.

In summary: Youth movements cannot assume they can win simply by old people dying off. They can lose a large number of supporters through those deaths, and the struggle continues anyway against their own generation, because they cannot assume that their own voices and beliefs are those of the majority of that generation. And the fight may really be against social processes, destructive economics, and power/energy relations, and those are what have to change.

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Lomborg cannot be blamed for this

March 25, 2020

The article by Bjorn Lomborg I discussed recently was followed by an editorial in the same Newspaper which significantly distorts Lomborg’s position, twists it into total denial, and do-nothingness, and shows the dangers of that position once it becomes political and is used to argue much harder and far more incoherently than Lomborg himself.

The editorial asserted that the problem with the bushfires was simply their visibility through social media. There was no mention of the clouds of smoke dust and ash which hung around the city making the fires visible to everyone outside social media, of course. Presumably we are expected to have short memories.

The other problem was apparently the unscrupulous “climate evangelists” who were prepared to exploit this visibility through social media: “People have promoted misinformation to push a policy barrow.”

We might even be able to agree with this, but it may not only be the climate activists who have promoted misinformation, or even illogic, for political reasons.

Use of the word unprecedented has been instrumental; by politicians, activists and journalists. It has been deployed since November last year in an attempt to invoke climate change as the root cause of the fire disasters.
This has been contrived and dishonest.

The editorial argues that the reality is that the fires were a once in a generation experience, but we have them all the time (yes the argument was that coherent). They continue by suggesting that maybe the fires were unprecedented, but not all of the fires were unprecedented, so none of them were unprecedented. There have been lots of fire disasters in Australian history, so to say that this one was unprecedented, is dishonest.

Fires are not a new threat, and, even if they were, they cannot be neutered by climate policy, they will still exist.

This is proven by Bjorn Lomborg:

annual areas burned by bushfire across our continent are on a clear downward trend; and this year’s total, so far, is well below average.

Presumably what we are to conclude from all this, is that all fires are similar, and no Australian fire could ever be unprecedented in its intensity or spread, because there have been fires previously. Area of blaze is more significant than intensity of blaze. So nothing to worry about here…

Let me repeat Prof. Lomborg gives no evidence for his assertions about decline in fire areas, and does not explore alternative explanations for these figures. He merely asserts there is evidence. He may be right. He may have irrefutable evidence. But from that article we do not know.

The editorial does admit that the drought probably had something to do with the fires, but the drought is “not directly linked to climate change” – we have droughts don’t cha know? The fires could have been influenced by high temperatures and strong winds which also apparently have nothing to do with climate change. Fires were also caused by “Natural and human-induced ignition, and heavy fuel loads because of insufficient hazard reduction”. So the ‘natural’ apparently makes it ok or inevitable, and the human implies that it was all the fault of arsonists. No mention of the fact that the fire service could not find many wet or cool months to do the hazard reduction, with the addition that that had nothing to do with climate change either. Perhaps three denials of climate change in a row would look to be pushing it.

People also built houses in the bush and were not prepared. So there you are: its all the fault of the NSW State government for not finding the right times for burning, and if people had not built houses in the bush there wouldn’t have been any blaze. No they are not arguing that latter point, but they are probably trying to diminish the number of properties destroyed – by implying it was all the home owner’s fault for being stupid or unprepared. That is what I would call politicising the fires at the cost of the victims…. which is a recurrent theme of theirs used to berate people for talking about climate change.

The editorial remarks that in the good old days we would have all come together with “the all-too-familiar smell of bushfire smoke” but this time the evil greenies split us apart and those days of unity and uniform agreement with Mr Murdoch are gone forever.

Then we learn the crisis was magnified by the mainstream green left-oriented media (!!!) who are hell bent on getting revenge on the Coalition for winning an election. This ‘Love media’ includes channel 9 and “online Twitter feeders such as Guardian Australia.” (‘Love’ obviously has some unique The Australian meaning here.) And there were other jejune people on social media reporting what they experienced as “social media memes”.

“Displaying the corporate and professional memories of goldfish, they gave us a sickeningly revisionist perspective” in which climate change was relevant to the fire, when all sensible people know it was not, even if they didn’t at the time.

This green left media deliberately discourages tourism and politicises everything by disagreeing with us. They engage in abuse! People will eventually see this overreach of climate activists and come back to supporting the government – and we can live in natural harmony once more….

“Facts do matter.” Yes they do whatever the editorial writer asserts,

Whatever climate policies are adopted in Australia, they cannot change our climate because global emissions are still rising sharply.

Yes and they will continue to rise rapidly as long as we have editorials like this, prepared to sacrifice everyone and everything for the continuance of a failed and flailing order.

“Alarmism is the order of the day”. No, unfortunately this kind of editorial silliness is the order of the day: extremism posing as rationality; the victim blamers pretending to be the victim; politicisation pretending to be apolitical and dispassionate.

If “alarmism” was the order of the day, we would have policies to deal with climate change and its consequences. We would be phasing out coal mining, we would not be talking about new coal power stations, we would be limiting land-clearing and deforestation, we would be discussing how to protect our low lying areas from sea level rises, we would be building new energy grids, we would be clarifying energy regulations in consultation with industry and communities, we would enable rather than hinder community energy, we would discontinue subsidies for fossil fuel mining, we would be seriously investigating regenerative agriculture and so on. The fact that we are not doing any of these things suggests that denial, and fossil fuel companies reign supreme.

Apparently this editorial describes what many politicians might believe, or believe it is safe to believe…

To finish with a remark from Lomborg on the glaring inadequacies of the Paris agreement:

President Trump…. failed to acknowledge that global warming is real and wrongly claimed that China and India are the “world’s leading polluters.” (China and the U.S. are the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, and the U.S. is the biggest per capita.)… the White House now has no response to climate change….

The real misfortune for the planet isn’t that Mr. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris treaty. Rather, it is that his administration has shown no interest in helping to launch the green-energy revolution that the world so urgently needs.

Wall Street Journal 17 June 2017

Just like the Murdoch Empire.

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On Pandemics

March 25, 2020

This is just what I’ve put together from various sources, to make some things clear, which do not seem clear in much public discourse about the coronavirus so far… It also represents a change of view for me. This is a general consideration of disease. If its wrong, or seriously inadequate then please let me know, so I can change it…. I’m not an expert.

Probably not good to think about, if you are truly scared in the first place.

1) The problem with disease is not just the death rate. If for instance a virus has 100% death rate but kills one person, then it’s probably no big deal.

2) An important factor/problem is the contagion rate. If the disease is communicated to 80% of the population, as opposed to 10% of the population then its death rate, even if smaller, may be more serious than that of a disease which is hard to catch. If for example it infects 80% of 24 million people that is 19.2 million people. If the death rate is 1% then that is 190,000 people dead and a hell of a lot of overfull hospitals and overworked medical staff. If the virus spreads quickly which it probably will with a high contagion rate then all of these cases happen in a relatively short period of time, further overwhelming the health system (and probably most other social systems). Another virus may have a 10% death rate but be harder to catch and only be communicated to less than 1% of the population… 1% of 24 million people is 240,000 people, 10% of that is 24,000 dead. The first virus is probably more significant, even with a lower death rate – everything else being equal.

This is the big difference between coronavirus and SARS. SARS is far more lethal, but it is much harder to catch. Coronavirus seems very easy to catch, and so will spread further and probably kill more people.

3) The third problem is what I’ll call the incapacity rating of the disease (there is almost certainly a proper medical term for this, but i’m not a doctor – as should be obvious). This is when, perhaps, few people die, but lots of people are really seriously ill, need care, or would die without treatment. Theoretically a disease could exist which may not kill or injure people if they had decent hospitalisation. So the hospitals fill up with people who would probably recover. In this factor we can include diseases which do not kill people, but leave them severely disabled, or incapacitated – this stresses social and medical mechanisms, again – especially if patients all turn up in a short period. Diseases can have both high death rates and high incapacity rates, there is no reason to assume its one or the other.

Many people and politicians seem to be only interested in the death rate, and ignore the serious problems that arise from points 2 and 3. Even if the death rate is low, there can be a case for physical isolation.

4) The fourth problem I know of is the mutation rate. Viruses are particularly prone to mutation. This one has apparently (and the apparently means i don’t know for sure, its just something i read) mutated from an animal virus, to an animal to human virus, to a human to human virus, and now to a multi-variety virus. It is much harder to develop immunity and vaccines against such viruses. This is one reason why we can be affected by flu year after year.

There is a possible good thing about a quickly mutating virus, if it can propagate without killing people, and killing or injuring people stops its spread, then it may well evolve to be less harmful in the long run, but more easily catching. However, this cannot be guaranteed, and a lot of people might be severely incapacitated in the process.

5) Pandemics may need to be treated seriously, even if they do not seem so bad at first, until we work out all these different factors.

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On Joe Biden and Donald Trump

March 19, 2020

Joe Biden is not my favourite Presidential candidate, but I’m not American, so I don’t get to vote for him anyway. I do however seem surrounded by people who say that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, and that Biden is a senile, plagerising, neoliberal warlord, and that there is no point voting for him. Or they say that he is only the Democrat candidate because of mysterious machinations by elite Democrats who want everything to stay the same. They neglect the painful fact that he seems to have won more votes than Bernie Sanders, and a lot more votes than Tulsi Gabbard, who despite having gained a mere 2 delegates when last I heard, is supposed by some to be a sure election winner.

In my opinion, these people are following the Republican line which is being directed to ‘the left’, and which I have pointed to quite a lot – that is “there is no difference between the sides”, especially if you look at foreign policy, so you might as well refuse to vote for anyone who could win against Trump. “Go on, be really principled and vote for someone who cannot challenge him, and has no chance of victory.”

However, there are always differences. Sure they are not as big, or as many, as I might like, but if you exclusively focus on the similarities then everything will move further rightward, and Trump will remain.

The differences are important. If I had a choice whether to vote for Hitler or Mussolini I would easily vote for Mussolini. Not a perfect choice, but a choice worth making. If I had to vote between Thatcher and Mussolini, I might be harder pressed because of personal issues about Thatcher, but I would still vote for her and relatively happily. If I had to choose between Thatcher and Trump, I would likewise vote for Thatcher. I would vote for Trump before Hitler, but that is with hindsight for Hitler – no one knows what Trump might do in a second term, and I would be worried, but I’d still vote.

So what I ask is for people on the left to please stop pretending there is no difference between Trump and Biden (this is not a mistake made by those on the hard right who support Trump), and to make sure that Trump does not get a second term. If he gets a second term, he can keep showing us how fragile the laws are when it comes to preventing a President being above the Law, and that is probably not a good thing.

We now know that it is not a problem for the President to make money from policies and position.

We now know a President can escape from an impeachment case even being heard, if he has enough people in the Senate who put victory ahead of principle, and use their legal right not to hear evidence or witnesses to see if there is a problem.

We now know a President can self-declare that charges against them, have no merit and command members of his administration not to testify even when called by the house.

A President can, we now know, refuse to answer questions, brought up by the house, and certainly does not have to be questioned face to face.

We know that attempts by a President to obstruct justice are apparently ok, even if they involve attempts to blackmail a foreign power.

We know a President will not be charged with crimes or frauds, even if the case against them is open and shut, as with running his charities for his personal financial benefit, and even if the crime is admitted by that President in public, as it was with seeking Russian aid to win an election.

We know that there is no problem if associates of the President are convicted of crimes and fraud.

We know a President can pardon criminals, so nobody who has committed crimes with him need fear any charges, provided they keep loyal to him.

We know there is no penalty for a President lying continually, or threatening to revoke, or wildly reinterpret, the US constitution.

Given he did all this in his first term, what will the second term bring?

Ask yourself, do you want more of this? And….

  • Do you want a climate policy or not?
  • Do you want health care for people or not?
  • Do you want to cut social security or not?
  • Do you want even more military spending or not?
  • Do you want more tax cuts for wealthy people and increases for lower income people or not?
  • Do you want somebody who cannot take advice or not?
  • Do you want walls around your borders or not?
  • Do you want kids separated from parents or not?
  • Do you want a President who encourages racism, sexism and hard-line rightist Christianity or not?
  • Do you want public education or not?
  • Do you want a President who actively campaigns against science and accurate knowledge or not?
  • Do you want a President who encourages pollution and poisoning, restarts discontinued harmful projects and champions environmental destruction or not?
  • Do you want a President who abuses and threatens everyone who disagrees with him or not?
  • Do you want a President who betrays US allies such as the Kurds, and openly prefers dictators to democratic regimes?
  • Do you want a President who attempts to financially benefit from his position or not?
  • Do you want a President who gets members of his family to work for him, even if they have no experience or qualifications, or not?
  • Do you want a President who tries to obstruct investigations into himself or not?

If these things don’t bother you, then I guess keep saying that there is no point exchanging Trump for anyone else and that the Democrats are completely corrupt and watch the Republicans win and win, and the left lose and lose.

Up to you Americans.

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A sketch of the Dynamics of Climate Argument

March 13, 2020

There are several points which seem relevant to the question of the politics of ‘disbelief’ in climate change, and the popularity of refusal to act when it seems needed, even if surveys continually report the result that people say they want action.

General factors affecting information in “information society”

The dominance of neoliberalism with its long established belief in economic growth at all costs, the sanctity of corporate profit, hostility to environmentalism (especially when this affects the profit of established companies), active disempowering of political participation by ordinary people, and its tendencies to plutocracy, is vital to the promotion of climate change denial or do-nothingness. Wealth gives groups of people the power to promote information that suits them. However, I’m not going to consider that here, it remains a background. This post will be about the dynamics of information society and what I call ‘information groups’.

Most of the problems with climate inaction stem from the obvious fact that, in an ‘information society,’ even one with lots of good knowledge, nobody can accurately ‘know’ everything. People cannot accurately know even a fraction of what is relevant to them. Even if they specialise in a field they almost certainly do not know everything in that field either.

Most of us are stunningly ignorant about all kinds of things. The more ignorant a person is, the harder it is for them to recognise their own ignorance – they have little accurate knowledge with which to judge what is plausible or what are the likely consequences of their actions.

Furthermore:

1) Information and communication are only secondarily about accuracy. Information and communication primarily function to create group bonds and group memberships (what Malinowski called phatic communication), and to persuade others to do as the speaker prefers.

Given this, information and communication can be thought of almost entirely in terms of strategy and tactics, or the effect that the message has on others. Rather than keep talking of strategy and tactics, I will, from now on, use the term ‘politics’. If accuracy contributes to this politics then it can be important, but it tends to be secondary. We all know that in everyday life people lie to keep others on side, to avoid hurting them, or to keep bonds functional and relatively harmonious. This is normal in conversation. It is a daily experience at work, in encounters with management in particular.

Truth is not always necessary, and is often avoided to help social functioning, avoid conflict, and get on with those in power.

Although complete inaccuracy could eventually lead to breakdown, it may in the short term contribute to political success in terms of producing harmony and co-operation within the group, and asserting dominance over other groups.

2) Need for information filtering. In ‘information society; with massive amounts of information available, people need to filter information otherwise they cannot orient themselves in the world or act in the world. There are too many contrary positions for ease of functioning, and given that people know information is often false, expressions of ignorance, or deliberate lies for political purposes, they cannot accept (particularly uncomfortable or disruptive information) immediately.

This lack of accuracy and certainty in information, is so fundamental to modern life that it is more useful and accurate to talk of ‘disinformation society‘ than of ‘information society’. The society does not function entirely through accurate knowledge, but through using or dealing with an ‘information mess’. Information mess can be increased deliberately, as when Steven Bannon, who was an adviser to President Trump, recommended “flood[ing] the zone with shit.” This prevents consensus about accuracy or probability from forming, and it creates a disorientation, which might help people to be manipulated by dominant people within the group.

3) Information groups as filters. Because of the disorientation arising from too much contradictory information, people end up relying on other people (groups) for filtering information and belief. This involves the creation of strong group identification, and a level of trust and distrust of that group and other groups. These groups I call ‘information groups,’ they help people decide what is real. In disinformation society, many of the primary information groups seem to be politically oriented. Perhaps this is because politics is about action and orientation in the world, and this is what has become confused.

This kind of group identification involves personal identity as well, as it sets forth who one is to like, admire and emulate, and who one dislikes, avoids and tries to be different to. In that way, a person’s sense of who they are in disinformation society can come from those they identify with and the principles, or information, they identify with. The stronger the boundaries around the groups a person identifies with, the more strongly the group acts as a filter, and can reject unwelcome data in general.

Because of these processes of self-identification, the people in the group have a claim to be moral, while those outside the group (especially if classified as oppositional) rarely appear to have such a claim. Leftwingers are communist, satanist, effeminate whimps who cry a lot. Rightwingers are stupid, ill-educated, redneck, racists.

The prime point of these processes is that if an information source seems to be an exemplar of the group and its values, then its information will seem more trustworthy than if not. If the information appears to come from a source which is not exemplary, or is exemplary of the ‘opposition group’ then the information will seem untrustworthy, or ‘politically motivated’. If a source can make contrary information seem to come from an ‘opposition group’, while their own information matches the information groups’ values and beliefs, then they will often have achieved persuasion, without any mention of ‘facts’ or any real evidence.

Group alliance and identification becomes the primary (and unconscious) way of determining what is to be believed and what is to orient action.

There is also some research that suggests that having one’s opinions confirmed by others is pleasurable, and having others disagree is unpleasurable, so there is further incentive to seek out sources and others who agree with you and thus join information groups, even if without being aware of it.

4) Knowledge and Status. One way of claiming high status and functionality in information society, is to claim, and persuade others in your information group, that you are knowledgeable, well informed and certain, and that others are not. This probably decreases the chance of the person being well informed, because they ‘know’ the truth of their own certainty, and ignore counter arguments and data. However, the certainty (especially if the person is enunciating positions of group identity) can be attractive to other people in the group, and helps those people gain certainty in their own knowledge and orientation, and in the incorrectness, or immorality, of those who disagree. It also grants the original person more power, authority and influence; so it becomes a self-reinforcing loop.

To repeat: Solidarity, or lack of solidarity with the information group, acts as a filter for the information a person receives and accepts. Consequently, it is important for successful propagandists to manufacture a strong degree of solidarity and identity amongst those who support them, and to break the solidarity and identity of those who oppose them. The more confused the information mess, the more the zone is flooded with shit, the more that any hostility of ‘information outgroups’, to the group and its identities, will appear to make the solidarity of within the group reassuring. This also has the result that most conveyors of misinformation will be repeating what others have told them and not be deliberate propagandists.

Experience of repetition of information from multiple sources (even if they are from the same information group), makes that information more compelling, it gives it social backing and certainty – as well as implying people who disagree must be mistaken.

The other side of keeping the information groups’ truth going, involves, increasing the distrust of sources the person might disagree with (because of their group identification), and a degree of building trust for those sources they agree with.

In capitalist information society, distrust can be a general framework, not only because there is so much counter-information, and so much alienation from the ‘establishment’, but because distrust allows a person who finds their favoured sources have deceived them, to say that they never trusted them anyway, and to keep on following them and keep their group identification. It declares their wisdom and freedom – they are not being manipulated, they can tell themselves and others, they know how to evaluate news.

Practical consequences of the above.

Within this framework

1) Winning Rhetoric.

The modern right appear to want to win at all costs, they do not appear that interested in accuracy, truth or principle, which does not contribute to victory. Indeed they may well regard ‘the masses’ as needing to be led, and have no problem manipulating people and lying to them. The current left (such that it is), on the whole, tend to regard the people as equals and as needing to be informed, rather than manipulated. In disinformation society the left is vulnerable, and will generally lose.

2) The Process of Persuasion has several prongs:

a) Binarism. You need to make an opposed binary, ‘us and them’, and to convince people that they cannot trust the institutions and information of the other side.

b) Condemnation In pro-fossil fuel thought, this involves attacks on scientists as socialist conspirators, or as only being in it for the money. In climate action thought this involves condemning people on the other side as corporate tools, trolls, or ignorant ‘rednecks’. The abuse helps keep parties apart when they attempt to discuss the issue (“the other side is so abusive, they can’t think”). If this strategy works, people on our side no longer even have to listen to the other side.

c) Trust? This leads to the situation in which we are virtuous, and (on the whole) can be trusted, while those immoral people who support the other side cannot be trusted with anything.

d) Messy contradictory messages. For example, when Lomborg implies we don’t have to do anything, but research is necessary, nuclear is necessary, CCS is necessary and so on. This allows people to take a flexible position, with regard to winning an argument. “We need do nothing and we must do research into green technology, but not their green technology.”

It actually appears, in this case, that the idea seems to be that we don’t research or explore nuclear or the CCS, even while promoting them as solutions. That way you can confuse the issue, and attract both those who think something should be done but that renewables or social transformation is not the answer, and those who want to do nothing.

These strategies are so common, that people may not even think about them, but just deploy them.

3) Muddy the waters by:

a) Playing on the idea that ‘consensus’ means that scientists got together and agreed on something for their own purposes, rather than were persuaded by the evidence. Its a conspiracy!!

b) Providing other scientists or even non-scientists who can put forward the position there is no climate change, or its not humanly caused. This confuses the issue.

This is effective because in information society, most people are ignorant and confused, and cannot check the research themselves. They probably will not check whether the sources ‘refuting’ climate change are climate scientists or not, but if it turns out the source does not have experience in that field, then it does not matter as climate scientists are immoral and conspire.

c) Insist the media cover ‘both sides’ of the controversy equally. If they won’t then they are biased. Everyone on the right ‘knows’ the media is left wing, because it occasionally criticises the right, so this is easy to believe. This is despite the obvious fact that the media is owned and sponsored by the corporate sector, and hence is likely to support that sector and its established authority. Those people who insist that the media cover all sides of the climate ‘debate’, never insist that the media cover all sides of the economic debate, and that debate is actually a real debate. So this insistence seems purely political.

d) If you can persuade people on your side that only a few media organisations are truthful because they support “our side,” and those organisations run specific campaigns, then people will tend to believe those campaigns, because those media organisations are part of the information group.

e) Flooding the zone with shit, means that much real information will be ignored or become normal, as when the repetitive narratives of President Trump and his allies’ corruption, deceit and convictions become normal, and they pass away beneath new showers of shit, and are not repeated ad nauseam as were the allegations of Clinton corruption, which then appear true, even if they never resulted in anything.

4) Emphasise the costs and uncertainties of action.

Do not mention the costs and uncertainties of inaction. In a social situation where neoliberalism is based on the idea that cost to profit is bad, this will help emphasise the immorality of action.

5) Heroic individualism

The US has a guiding belief in heroic individualism, which grows out of, and feeds into contemporary neoliberalism. Not only does this individualism fit with the survival politics of neoliberalism and disguises the fact that we don’t come to know things by ourselves, it also sets up the idea that the person taking what is portrayed as a ‘minority’ position is heroically doing the research by themselves. They will not realise that most of their heroic research is being channeled by their own side (or propagandists for the establishment, or people appearing to be on their side) into work which supports their sides objectives – which may not be their own objectives of finding ‘truth’.

I have met many climate change deniers who seem to consider they have done research, when that research only involves reading what deniers say. If the group opposition is established strongly enough they don’t have to read that which they might disagree with, as it is clearly faked. They have little to no contact with real research, don’t know how to recognise it if they did, and frequently misuse it when they find it (apparently not even having read it, in many cases). Those people who tell them they are wrong, are clearly being persuaded by the group mind, the dominant faction, the uniformity of the media etc. Again they do not have to listen.

6) Claims of persecution

Another important tactic is to imply the information group is being persecuted for its knowledge by a dominant group. This reinforces the idea that counter-information is purely a matter of the other groups’ politics, and thus dismissable. However those in our information group are heroic individuals struggling to get the truth out against powerful opposition. This is so, even if the side one is on is actually the powerful one largely successful in stopping information from circulating. Thus rightwing governments often insist employees not discuss climate change, take down information from government websites, scrap research and so on, while claiming to be in a persecuted and censored position.

7) Role of Wealth

Information is spread by the use of wealth, which helps generate repetition. If information is considered only in strategic terms (as opposed to accuracy terms) then, if you are wealthy enough, information can be easily disseminated, through the use of people who are not officially connected with you, and who sound like they are members of particular groupings. We can instance the mud that has stuck on ‘Hilary Clinton-criminal’ despite continuing long term ‘witch hunts’ which have never resulted in enough evidence for her, or her associates, to be charged with anything. The repeated allegations are enough, and become reason to stay with the opposition to her.

8) Information hangs around

In information society, refuted information remains, and can always be found by those who don’t know of the refutation and be used again. In any case the refutation can usually be dismissed as biased.

Climate change

Climate change is particularly challenging for human groups, because climate change information generates what we might call an existential crisis in individuals and in society.

If climate change is true, then it changes everything. Almost all the actions we now think of as normal and which contribute to our security and orientation in the world, are harmful. The patterns of order and life-meaning that society has developed disrupt the orders and meanings of that society, and our way of life. There is no easy solution to such problems. We cannot safely simply continue to act in the ways that we have previously supported. Traditional socialism, traditional capitalism, and traditional developmentalism all seem to be dead ends. Historically, and at present, they produce more pollution than functional ecologies can process. Through that action these modes of life destroy their ability to establish and maintain themselves. We cannot return to Lenin with ecological success any more than we can return to Nehru, Menzies or Atlee. This means that our previous understandings and life patterns are useless. This is disorienting in itself.

Likewise, if a person decides to deny the importance or reality of climate change, they still face an existential threat, because they know that others wish to completely change their ways of life, and it is not clear what is to be done to stop them, except to deny the problem, or say it is out of human hands, and continue on as best they can.

In this kind of situation, optimism is both easy and deadly. It is relatively easy, in a situation in which there is no agreed upon solution, to convince people that the established modes of life, and/or theories of life, are both necessary and relatively harmless. People want to continue, and are encouraged to shelter in their established group identities and to enforce them, as the breaking of those identities is an apparently obvious form of disintegration. The strengthening of identity groups serves to reinforce the power of those established in those groups (particularly true in religion, eg. Islam and fundamentalist Christianity), which can lead to encouragement of those identities by dominant factions.

The crisis apparently strengthens the function of information groups, and the need for information groups and leads to political inaction and paralysis.

The only way out is to understand these dynamics and the mess they produce, and start using them properly or undermining them.

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