Especially in analytic philosophy, we have come to value a certain measured style that comprises perspicacious structuring of arguments, clear signposting, definite conclusions, systematic presentation of evidence, elimination of the author’s distinct voice and autobiography, lack of flourishes and digressions, avoidance of ambiguity, and other such stylistic properties. We may call such a style the ‘objective style’ of discourse.
https ://academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/article/61/4/559/6402993
Response? Total social construction, that “objective style”! Logocentric, Eurocentric (and probably worse).
Compare then to the genre strategies identified from a review of current fiction in the Italian literature market on the climate:
In techno-scientific thrillers, agency is concentrated in heroic figures (scientists, experts) who must overcome institutional obstacles to implement solutions; they express a decisional verticality (hierarchical authority in crisis decisionmaking) that contrasts with social inertia. Techno-scientific thrillers are dominated by anxiogenic urgency; anxiety is amplified by means of tight narrative rhythms and the constant threat posed by imminent disasters. An emotional mobilization is consequently ignited, oriented toward immediate action. This pattern corresponds to a form of “technocratic imagination” (Gagné 2019) in climate discourse, whereby specialized knowledge becomes the primary force driving environmental action. Besides, post-collapse dystopias manifest themselves in survival micro-agencies (limited agency focused on day-to-day survival). In this context, agency is reduced to the daily dimension of survival in a hostile world, formally exhibited through task-oriented dialogue and routine-centered plots. It is the expression of a destabilizing horizontality that makes it impossible to plan and achieve long-term goals. Dystopias also show traits of an affective tension between nostalgia for a lost, almost idealized world and present trauma, thereby producing what could be called ecological grief, namely, an incomplete psychological processing of environmental loss.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41290-026-00289-9
Response? But, but the underlying urgency, that anxiety, those obstacles and inertia, the loss and grief, the trauma and dystopia if we don’t do something now–all that is true!
Response: Read more complicated literatures, if it’s policy and management you’re worried about.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 