1. It’s no news that policy analysts can and do confront not so much discrete events with discrete consequences as unpredictable contingencies coupled (loosely?) with uncontrollable aftermaths, about which there is little causal understanding. This means appeals to anything like prolonged stability in the midst of collectively-evident turbulence should be read symptomatically, namely, as escapism.
But not all escapes are escapism. An example helps.
2. The Precautionary Principle insists on avoiding positions that may have extreme consequences in favor of a more cautious approach. The question immediately arises: Where does the control come from to achieve the avoidance of contingencies and/or aftermaths? You can legislate the Principle, but you can’t control its implementation. To think otherwise is escapist.
More to the point, aren’t critical infrastructures the only real-time large-scale mechanism we have to manage for avoiding or otherwise responding to the dreaded events? Here disaster-averted is escape (the latter being a common synonym for avoid).
3. Unsurprisingly, pressures build to manage the risks not just of escapes but also the escapism. But control is also at the heart of risk management, i.e., the “coordinated activities to direct and control an organization with regard to risk, ” according to the standard-setting international guidelines, ISO 31000 (https://www.eiso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:31000:ed-2:v1:en). The guidelines do admit that “Controls may not always exert the intended or assumed modifying effect,” without however underscoring such aftermaths can increase risks and uncertainties.
4. So what? It’s necessary to historicize and particularize all this.
It was once common to understand socio-political polarization and fragmentation in both negative and positive senses. Yes, fragmentation can represent negative segmentation of authority, but it can also reflect positive functional specialization. Yes, polarization can represent the inability to speak with one voice, but it can also reflect transparency of issues and keeping trade-offs public. Yes, conflict can be bad, but conflict can also be good. . .and so on down the list of putative negatives in American society that in specific contexts, situations and events can be net-positive.
But “on net” no longer makes little sense in static terms of pros versus cons of fragmentation, polarization and the like. “On net” has become fuzzier because of complexities that are inescapable when context, situation and event cannot account for or assimilate all that matters for policy and management in real time. That is to say, we’re dumber until we recognize an unavoidable “it’s-more-complex-than-polarized-and-fragmented” here (albeit maybe not there) and now (even if not then and there).
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 