SUBTRACT as a disaster enabling process

Risk-enhancing Cognitive Implications of the Basic Mathematical Operations (Part #5)

The SUBTRACT process offers a reminder of the subtly remarkable tendencies to -- subtext -- hidden agendas commissions (taking a cut)

Withholding facts or a proportion of them: This prevents appreciation of the truth with regard to a wide variety of economic, social and psychological processes. This is now obvious in a variety of domains:

Science: Various disciplines have been associated with tendencies to suppress facts as anomalously disruptive of preferred theories. Extreme examples include cases of scientific fraud.
Marketing of products: Corporations have provided numerous examples of misleading advertising and the suppression of information regarding dangers associated with their products, most notably the tobacco industry (Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, 2010)
Statistics: It is widely recognized that official statistics are vulnerable to being "massaged" to frame official policies to the advantage of their advocates.
Classified information: Vast amounts of information are held under various degrees of classification for various periods (as in the case of official archives). As revealed by the release of diplomatic cables via Wikileaks, significant facts are deliberately withheld to ensure strategic advantage.
Secret treaties and agreements: It is recognized that an array of treaties and agreements between governments are secret, as are many agreements between corporations (possibly associated with the price-fixing arrangements of cartels)
Secret knowledge: Various groups are believed, and may claim, to have secret knowledge of fundamental significance to the future of civilization. Ironically more evident, however, is the extent of the tendency to SUBTRACT from any presentation of the "whole truth" through a code of silence -- omertà (Varieties of the "Unsaid" in sustaining psycho-social community, 2003).
Transparency: This becomes most evident with respect to financial transparency and undeclared conflicts of interest in the case of those holding some form of public office. It is the focus of periodic scandals, notably enhanced by unsuspected sexual implications.

Denying facts or a proportion of them: This variant follows from arguments regarding any withholding of information noted in the previous point. It may be a characteristic phase prior to admission that facts have been withheld, especially following formal investigation -- possibly with respect to criminal malfeasance.

Science: To the extent that any body is recognized as speaking on its behalf, "science" may vigorously deny problematic DIVIDE processes in its handling of knowledge -- even when this may amount to an equivalent of gerrymandering (Scientific Gerrymandering of Boundaries of Overpopulation Debate: review of The Royal Society report -- People and the Planet, 2012). This has been recently evident in controversies in the case of climate change data. More generally this has been a theme of the work of Rupert Sheldrake (The Science Delusion, 2012), as separately discussed (Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science: insights from the crisis of science and belief, 2012).
Marketing of products: Corporations, as noted above, are extremely vigorous in their denial of any wrongdoing -- irrespective of the degree to which health has been endangered. Attention was dramatically drawn to this process by Rachel Carson (Silent Spring, 1962)
Statistics: Again, the manner in which statistics are "massaged" may either constitute a denial of facts, or give credibility to such denial.
Classified information: The very "fact" of the classification of indeterminate quantities of information, on an unknown range of subjects, constitutes a form of denial and reinforces that tendency. Dissemination may have the severest consequences, as first made clear in the case of the Pentagon Papers relating to the Vietnam War.
Secret treaties and agreements: These are necessarily denied, again possibly as a consequence of any provisions for "official secrets"
Secret knowledge: This is exemplified in the case of the supposed secret knowledge of the Freemasons, and the existential threats to any members who divulge it.
Transparency: Most cases in which transparency is subsequently called for typically involve a phase of denial of unforeseen levels of corruption. The Libor banking scandal may be seen as one example.

Ignoring facts or a proportion of them: Potentially more problematic, following from the above, is the incapacity to recognize some facts as being of relevance -- consciously or unconsciously treating them as irrelevant. This tendency has been separately discussed (Map of Systemic Interdependencies None Dares Name: 12-fold challenge of global life and death, 2011). The situation is exacerbated by the process of "dumbing down" to reduce sensitivity to the possibility of such relevance -- essentially a process of eroding connectivity and any sense of "how the dots are connected". This can be recognized as the cultivation by the DIVIDE process of "sub-understanding", fllowing the argument of Magoroh Maruyama (Polyocular Vision or Subunderstanding? Organization Studies, 25, 2004)