Factors inhibiting collective recognition of the incapacity of governance

Coping Capacity of Governance as Dangerously Questionable (Part #6)

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• Extreme reduction of time horizons: short-termism: There is extensive commentary on the short-term focus of politics, governed as it is by the daily news cycle and opinion polling as these may relate to the prospects for re-election and the loss of power. The short-term can be framed as urgent, and therefore a necessary priority. This is notably evident in relation to the migration crisis (Civil Society Coalition for Cultivation of Short-term Bias International complicity in avoidance of consideration of long-term human suffering, 2019; Migration as a temporal dilemma of ethics exemplified by the "trolley problem"? 2019; Crimes against future generations, 2019; Short-term humanitarian blackmail ignoring long-term human sacrifice, 2018).
  
  
• Minimal long-term obligation: It follows from the previous point that there is very little incentive for politics and governance to focus on longer-term issues, other than through verbal commitments for public relations purposes involving no obligations -- designed to evoke belief in competence -- but which can be set aside or reframed as time goes by (Group of 7 Dwarfs -- Future-blind and Warning-deaf: self-righteous immoral imperative enabling future human sacrifice, 2018; New World Order of Walk-away Wheeling and Dealing: creating strategic dependency and vulnerability through confidence tricks, 2018).
  
  
• Strategic postponement of urgent matters: It is curious to note the extent to which matters upheld as extremely urgent are subject to processes of delay and postponement. This has been especially evident in the delay between the decision deemed historic of the Paris Climate Change Agreement (within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted by consensus at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, 2015) and the subsequent agreement on the guidelines for putting that into practice achieved only in 2018 at the UN Climate Change Conference (What was agreed at COP24 in Poland and why did it take so long? The Guardian, 16 December 2018). This delay is all the greater when compared to earlier recognition of the need at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).
  
  
• Information overload: There is extensive commentary on information overload in general, although this avoids the issue of how decision-makers can handle it -- other than justifying a high order of selectivity, irrespective of the possible significance of "faint signals" as warnings. The issue is of particular significance in the case of oversight functions -- to the point that the question may be how narrowly a mandate can be framed without inviting credible criticism of inadequacy.
  
  
• Complexity: There is extensive commentary on the increasing complexity of the problematique and interconnectivity, aggravating issues of information overload. This creates an environment in which specialized preoccupations can "navigate freely" -- unchallenged with respect to their wider relevance or lack of sensitivity. This can be understood as the systematic cultivation of a form of "tunnel vision".
  
  
• Reliance on expertise complicit in minimizing disruption: The lobby system -- and by extension the military-industrial complex -- reinforces every inclination to focus on business-as-usual. Expertise from beyond that comfort zone is readily dismissed as lacking credibility and authority. Those providing expertise must necessarily take care to formulate proposals which do not disrupt the possibility of funding.
  
  
• "Artful dodging": It follows from the above that an essential skill in governance is to enhance the impression of competence by skillfully avoiding serious consideration of factors disruptive of that image (The Art of Non-Decision-Making -- and the manipulation of categories, 1997; An Inconvenient Truth -- about any inconvenient truth, 2008; Lipoproblems -- Developing a Strategy Omitting a Key Problem: the systemic challenge of climate change and resource issues, 2009). Faced with the failure of processes of denial regarding any issue, a feature of such artfulness is to reallocate resources to issues which are a new focus of public concern from issues which have lost that focus -- as with claiming effective action by "shifting dust from one corner of the room to another".
  
  
• Blindspot insensitivity: As with the drivers of automobiles -- prior to an accident -- there may well be insensitivity to the possible existence of blindspots (Systemic blind spots engendering systemic errors, 2018)
  
  
• Misplaced strategic emphasis: The factors above variously frame a condition in which strenuous efforts, appropriately funded to a disproportionate degree, may be made on secondary issues -- precluding any criticism of inaction and inertia (Vigorous Application of Derivative Thinking to Derivative Problems, 2013).
  
  
• Indifference to contradictions: There is extensive commentary on the nature of contradictions. Striking examples are evident in acclaiming a commitment to peace and cultivating the manufacture and sale of weaponry to unstable regions -- such as to further enhance their destabilization. Commentary also focuses on the indifference to inequality variously enhanced by strategic decisions, despite claims to the contrary (Cultivating the Myth of Human Equality: ignoring complicity in the contradictions thereby engendered, 2016).
  
  
• Complicity: There is extensive commentary on the complicity of decision-makers in the status quo and business-as-usual, despite claims to the contrary, evidence of influence peddling, and a range of financial scandals. With increasing social chaos, this may be recognized through the arguments of Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, 2012). Together with the previous factor, this may extend to a degree of complicity with organized crime, or dependence on it. Such complicity is necessarily vigorously denied.
  
  
• Indifference to human suffering: The combination of short-termism and indifference to contradictions engenders an indifference to human suffering on a larger scale, despite intense preoccupation with particular incidents which are a focus of media attention -- offering multiple photo opportunities for political leadership. This indifference by leadership reinforces tendencies to psychic numbing among the general population faced with repeated media coverage of the death of hundreds or thousands (Indifference to the Suffering of Others: occupying the moral and ethical high ground through doublespeak, 2013).

A previous exercise (Mapping paralyzing factors, 2011) endeavoured to configure factors such as the above in systemic terms as follows (Mapping Paralysis and Tokenism in the Face of Potential Global Disaster: why nobody is about to do anything effective and what one might do about it, 2011).

Mapping paralyzing factors [see enlarged version]

The factors in the above map suggested recognition of the following clusters (articulated into sub-categories in the previous exercise).

Such factors can be reframed and explored otherwise in terms of:

• information diseases, as discussed separately (Memetic and Information Diseases in a Knowledge Society: speculations towards the development of cures and preventive measures, 2008)
• logical fallacies, as listed by Wikipedia (Taxonomy of formal fallacies)
• cognitive biases, as listed by Wikipedia (List of cognitive biases)
• systemic failures, as discussed separately (Variety of System Failures Engendered by Negligent Distinctions, 2016)
• fake news: as a cultivated distraction from more issues of greater validity and significance, as discussed separately (Varieties of Fake News and Misrepresentation: when are deception, pretence and cover-up acceptable? 2019)
• sins: as highlighted by various religions, and notably as the "hindrances" of Buddhism (Sins of Hot Air Emission, Omission, Commission and Promission: the political challenge of responding to global crises, 2009)

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