A home of hiddenness, poet Jane Hirshfield writes, “is the Ryoan-ji rock garden in Kyoto: wherever in it a person stands, one of the fifteen rocks cannot be seen. The garden reminds us something unknowable is always present in life, just beyond what can be perceived or comprehended – yet as real as any other rock amid the raked gravel.”
And that is one of the paradoxes of hiddenness, at least for a time when it comes to policy and management: If unhidden, it becomes real in another way.
“Nobody knows for sure what is hidden in the depths of the European Treaties as they now stand, hundreds, even thousands of pages depending on the typeface,” notes critic, Wolfgang Streeck: “The only exception is the CJEU [Court of Justice for the European Union], and this is because what it says it finds in there is for all practical purposes what is in there, as the court always has the last word” (https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/rusty-charley). Better, of course, to say: . . .” as the court always has the last word, for now.
The tanker hits the dock and the Coast Guard investigates the incident from the vessel and waterway side it regulates. But isn’t there now the “dock-side” as well? Isn’t one response to accidents within the Coast Guard’s anchorage area to render safer the area as an area (its own level of analysis with its visible elements inside and outside)? In fact, how could we now “unknow”–forgetting later is another matter–that the dock would be more reliable if better armored against such incidents?
One thought on “The relevance to policy and management of hiddenness”