It is necessary; therefore, it is possible.
Chinese proverb, found in fortune a cookie
Issue complexity renders traditional adversarial power politics incompetent. |
The statement above is inescapably true, says The Muddlebuster. From that follows an inescapable conclusion. The unworkable adversarial power politics paradigm must be rejected, and we must move to an alternative that works. The ability for human society to advance, and in the plausible extreme to avoid catastrophic collapse, depends on accepting this truth.
Why should you believe this?
- Objective analysis of adversarial process reveals numerous fatal and uncorrectable flaws which prevent it from working effectively as a tool for resolving complex contentious issues.
- An examination of past history right up to the present reveals that real success with adversarial process happens very rarely if ever.
- No one The Muddlebuster has ever asked has been able to refute the assertion that adversarial politics is incompetent when faced with a complex and contentious issue.
- Therefore, it is futile and dangerous to continue using adversarial process for issues of critical importance.
So, why do we continue on the old, futile path? When The Muddlebuster declares that adversarial power politics is incompetent, people do accept that, but seem unable to imagine any alternative. We’ve always done it the old way. People think we can’t change and won’t try, so it’s back to the old ways, regardless of where that leads. Somehow in the past we’ve managed to fumble, muddle, wrangle and bungle our way along. When the issues did not rise to the level of an existential threat we have gotten away with it, and we suppose we can continue to do so in the future. We may get by with issues such as tax reform, national medical care, abortion, civil rights, income inequity, and so on. With these issues, muddling through falls short of optimum but is not fatal.
However, there are now issues that present an existential threat: climate disruption, global water shortage, pandemic disease outbreaks, to name a few. If we do not successfully deal with issues of this sort, it is plausible that the consequences could be the decimation of the human race. Adversarial power politics, as we know it and practice it, cannot give us effective answers to issues of this sort. To refuse to undertake the transformation of politics to a collaborative mode of solution discovery exposes us to serious risk.
A Heads-up: Challenge and Opportunity
The turbulence that roils our political world is sending a strong message: the time is ripe for the next big step in the evolution of governance. That step is being driven by a push and a pull. The push is the inability of our antiquated adversarial power politics to handle the complexity, contentiousness and scale of current issues. The pull is the availability of competent collaborative solution-discovery methods that enable and empower broad stakeholder participation leading to a successful outcome.
The looked-for evolutionary advance will be a paradigm-shifting transformation of our political process:
- From the current adversarial system conducted by elites as we watch from the sidelines
- To a collaborative system with answers to tough issues emerging from the knowledge, creativity and wisdom at the grass roots.
This transformation is both necessary and feasible. The barriers to the transformation are two: (1) the persistent and misplaced faith in the old adversarial paradigm as the only possible form of governance in a democratic republic, and (2) a failure of imagination to envision a new possibility.
Fortunately, there is nothing blocking people of vision and pioneering spirit from building the new system at the grass roots, bypassing the entrenched political system and bypassing the skeptics and cynics who say change is impossible. The key components of the new system are three:
- Stakeholder engagement supported by a combination of social media and AI processing of large-scale grass roots inputs,
- A competent process roadmap,
- Transformative leadership attuned to the principles of collaborative process.
All it takes to get it started is a small independent core group with the technical smarts. Create the AI-supported process platform and set it loose in the world. It will grow of its own accord on the thrust of its successes as people discover it for local issues, then spread it to regional and national levels.
Why should politics evolve?
The current experience of political chaos certainly suggests that traditional adversarial politics, practiced in an atmosphere of extreme political polarization, is incompetent. But that would continue to be true, even if politics were conducted in a civil and orderly manner. The reason, at base, is that unaided human consciousness is incapable of encompassing the complexity of our serious issues, the equally complexity of solutions to those issues, or the complexity of the process necessary to get from one to the other. We need competent mental tools to help us deal with complexity, and adversarial politics is not that kind of tool. It oversimplifies and fragments our understanding of the issue. It freezes creativity in polarized positions. Good intentions and good manners are insufficient to overcome the deficiencies. Only with the necessary complexity-surmounting methods and tools, applied in an orderly and disciplined manner, is it possible to create the solutions we need.
Seeking a Better Way
Clearly, we are living in a moment of extreme disruption. Unrest and resentment coupled with denial among the people and dysfunction in government render us seemingly unable to address the many real crises mounting up on all sides.
We can’t go back. We might think the solution to our predicament would be a return to a state of civility with a centrist orientation (if such ever existed) between the two traditional parties. If that were even possible, it wouldn’t work. The tools of adversarial process that got us by in simpler times are inadequate in our current situation. In such chaotic times the only choice is to move forward, and not back.
In searching for that better alternative, we must recognize a very formidable elephant in the room, which is the overwhelming complexity of most serious issues. Finding good solutions to complex contentious issues requires more than the good intentions of the participants in the solution search. It requires a high order of skill for navigating through the thicket of complexity that lies between initial problem awareness and consensus on a good solution. So where can we find those skills?
The Muddlebuster comes from an industry (aerospace) where finding excellent solutions to highly complex one-off challenges is our forte. The methods developed there and in many other fields that face similar challenges are effective. Furthermore, these methods are in essence general and universal, not limited to technical issues. But these methods are seemingly unknown to those who organize the process we now use in politics in futile attempts to create effective solutions to the tough issues. This widespread ignorance of effective process needs to change, and it can.
The way forward is open, so let’s go.