Thomas Friedman's article in the NYT for 01 July is a classic expression of the obsolete Command and Control mindset in action.
It assumes something as dubious as the measly carbon-trades Waxman-Markey Bill bill can be 'sold' to the USA people, those millions that Walter Lippman called 'the bewlidered herd', by Brand Obama making 'Speech after speech after speech '.
Speech after Speech!!! And that's going to do it? Obama's election-winning mix of rousing rhetoric, low cunning and toothy charisma is going to rouse the people of the USA to do what needs to be done to tackle climate change.
Paulo Friere would describe this as 'a monological' approach and, as such, inherently oppressive and an obstacle to real learning and meaningful change, for all concerned.
The complex, "WICKED', nature of climate change also means that devising and implementing effective responses to the issue will require revolutionary changes in our societies, changes that willl have to go far
beyond the market-mimicking tinkerings and wet-noodle compromises currently on the table.
Obama knows this. And his speech after speech strategy on health reform is hardly making a dent in the votes that will take place in the Congress or the corporate-friendly mouse that will eventually emerge. Because, here too, the issue is a 'wicked' one and the usual policy-making and interest- trading process is incapable of addressing its complexities adequately. He's out there for image purposes not to make any serious impact on the eventual outcome. And there are only so many days in the week to make these speeches.
In cybernetic terms, this is 'monological' strategy that is incapable of generating sufficient variety to match the complexities of the challenges that stand in the way of the fundamental systemic changes that are needed .
There's a famous British political story in which when asked why he had failed to adopt a particular fiscal measure, a former Labour Chancellor bleated, "Nobody told us we could do that."
If Obama and Friedman and the rest could look beyond the limitations of their command and control mindset, they might be able to see that there are other models of leadership through which rapid, sustainable and
fundamental systemic change can come about through using what Freire calls 'problem-posing dialogues' to tackle 'wicked' problems.
What is needed initially, is for Obama to lead the people of the USA in a series of nation-wide dialogical change-processes that will generate outcomes with sufficient variety and complexity to match those of the issues that he - and they - have to address.
If Obama could begin to think in those terms, then nation-wide variety-matching processes could be designed and implemented within the next three to six months.
In this a brief description of the 1971 O.R.A.K.E.L. process, for example, it is clear that an updated 2009 version could rapidly begin to 'dissolve' the corporate-funded obstacles that stand in the way of the USA ever
taking meaningful steps to tackle climate change and at the same time, produce the basic concepts and methodologies with which the systemic complexities of the issues could be addressed at every level from the
local to the federal.
The O.R.A.K.E.L. Project was designed by the Systems Research Study Group at Heidelberg University in collaboration with the Second West German TV channel (ZDF). The ZDF cleared their TV schedules for two
evenings and transmitted a (rather truncated) ORAKEL programme that was designed to enable the viewers to co-create and agree upon a national policy on “Pollution” The programme consisted of:
* An explanation of the O.R.A.K.E.L. and of the Phone-in Voting Process (Now commonplace but then totally novel)
* A 20 Minute film on the causes and consequences of Pollution
* A studio discussion between representatives of industry, government, ‘the man in the street’, scientific specialists and expert commentators on the causes and consequences of pollution
* A randomly-selected Viewers’ Panel who were given a special number to phone if they wanted to check disputed facts or inaccuracies or challenge the line taken by a particular ‘expert’. At one point, the Government representative was accused of being too closely identified with the industry representative, for example.
* A Data Bank on Pollution (punched card references and technical specialists) that could be referred to when facts were in dispute.
At the end of the discussion, a group of “Proposers” in the TV studio put forward THREE OPTIONS:
* Pollution is the unavoidable price that has to be paid for technical progress
* Industry is already taking the necessary steps to deal with this danger
* Federal taxes should be increased by 10% to deal with the problem of Pollution.
Viewers were invited to phone-in their responses to the Three Options. (A Panel of 30 phone-operators took the calls and entered the responses on punched cards since no computer was available in 1971). The result was that 80% of callers favoured a 10% increase in Federal Taxes.
The Studio participants then developed a further series of options so that the discussion could move towards more concrete policy-options on which the TV audience could express their preferences.
The final question put to the TV audience was whether O.R.A.K.E.L. could be used to shape real political decision-making. 70% of the TV audience favoured this idea.
In 2009, the data-processing and information-retrieval processing technologies of 1971 could obviously be replaced with computer-based systems. Internet and video-conferencing facilities are now commonplace and provide many possible ways of coordinating large numbers of problem-posing dialogues into the process.
The new versions of the ORAKEL process would also be invaluable for establishing the strategic frameworks within which large- and small-group participative processes could be developed to tackle complex 'wicked '
issues at every level from the street to the neighbourhood to the city to the state.
Using updated and constantly improved versions of the O.R.A.K.E.L. process our societies could design and implement the processes of mutual learning and confidence-building that our children and grandchildren will need if they are to adapt their life-styles to meet the complex challenges we are only now beginning to understand and think seriously about.
As long as we frame the issues within the obsolete models of command and control leadership exemplified by Friedman, however, we will most certainly fail, no matter how hard we try and how much we care .
As someone once said, "There is no right way to do the wrong thing".
Roy Madron
