How does a hermit's view of the world relate to risk management in policy-making and attitudes towards climate change?
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Ryōkan, 16th Japanese Zen monk
When you're a university student studying political science and public policy, you're life is inevitably filled with endless assigned articles and book chapters selected by your professors. Usually this is pretty conventional stuff. For example if the topic was 'how can policy-makers draw lessons across time and space?' we could expect to get some articles from Richard Rose. It would cover the basics: definitions, case studies, and outline the general conceptual model. You'll try to absorb before you're next tutorial so you can regurgitate it for your GTA and win some brownie points--standard uni procedure. On some rare occasions however, your professor will have included some crazy article that only very tangentially related to week's topic and is pretty much expected to be ignored or produce confusion among students. In my opinion, these rare gems are usually the best articles for provoking creative thinking because they approach a concept from a completely different way. I'm not sure why professors choose to embed these papers randomly throughout the year (no one mentions them in tutorials or lectures).
I mention this because, at least for me, these articles are probably the most fun I can draw out of university work. These articles sometimes border on being satires of social science research, others focus on seemingly the most obscure areas of academia (a certain paper of German forestry springs to mind). All however tend to be fairly mind-blowing if approach in a positive way.
The most recent example of this actually inspired the post for today. It's something called Cultural Theory, arising from the efforts from anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky (a pioneer in the dark and sexy field of public budgeting). Cultural Theory asserts that structures of social organization endow individuals with perceptions that reinforce those structures in competition against alternative ones. So more simply put, it puts forward the argument that human models of physical nature are socially constructed. When different institutions intervene in natural ecosystems their behaviour is found to vary a great deal but not exhibit total randomness. Their actions and the motivations and logic behind them were informed by a model of the natural world called a myth of nature.
Picture above attributed to Dready (02:38, 27 February 2005)
I mention this because, at least for me, these articles are probably the most fun I can draw out of university work. These articles sometimes border on being satires of social science research, others focus on seemingly the most obscure areas of academia (a certain paper of German forestry springs to mind). All however tend to be fairly mind-blowing if approach in a positive way.
The most recent example of this actually inspired the post for today. It's something called Cultural Theory, arising from the efforts from anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist Aaron Wildavsky (a pioneer in the dark and sexy field of public budgeting). Cultural Theory asserts that structures of social organization endow individuals with perceptions that reinforce those structures in competition against alternative ones. So more simply put, it puts forward the argument that human models of physical nature are socially constructed. When different institutions intervene in natural ecosystems their behaviour is found to vary a great deal but not exhibit total randomness. Their actions and the motivations and logic behind them were informed by a model of the natural world called a myth of nature.
Picture above attributed to Dready (02:38, 27 February 2005)
Wildavsky identifies four broad models of nature which are used by individuals and organisations in understanding the relationship between themselves, their actions, and the surrounding environment. With nature-benign, the world is forgiving and tends to a safe equilibrium. No matter what actions are taken in moving the ball, it will safely fall back to its original position. With nature-ephemeral, the world is an resolutely unforgiving place and is prone to collapse, thus it is necessary to act with great care before intervening. With nature being perverse or tolerant, the world is in between the two extremes. Some action can be taken however there is the possibility that permanent damage may occur. Thus, the managing institution must take action to regulate against unusual occurrences. With nature-capricious, the world is inherently unpredictable and institutions merely respond and cope with erratic events.
These four models of nature implicitly support certain kinds of behaviour. For example if one was to believe that nature was benign then that would justify 'trial and error' and a more laissez-faire attitudes towards one's surroundings. In contrast, with nature-tolerant, people would have to ensure that 'the ball' remained at a stable equilibrium which would create a desire for certainty and predictability. What Wildavsky suggests is that no one model of reality fully captures the dynamics of our surroundings, some things behave in a benign way and some things are fairly ephemeral. However, managing institutions communicate a certain way of the world, often implicitly, and direct to focus on certain aspects of our environment over others. An example of this would be the idea of the 'invisible hand' directing the market toward a stable equilibrium. If the nature of the market was benign then we could encourage and maximise freedom to produce and trade goods and services in any way we wished since the risks involved would be negligible, at least at a systemic level. There would be winners and losers but there would never be a situation where the integrity of the market as a whole would be at stake. Therefore their model of nature would inform and justify how they perceive and calculate risk when making decisions about government regulation of the market.
One may be aware of other theories of risk perception: the main ones being based in rational-choice theory and the cognitive or behavioural school. In the former, an actor would weigh costs and benefits and make an optimal decision accordingly. In the latter, risk perceptions are filtered and shaped through different heuristics and biases (an example of this would be Kahneman's prospect theory). I don't think that Cultural Theory is mutually exclusive with the latter (socially influenced models of the world may count as a heuristic or a bias) but Wildavsky certainly argues against the inadequacies of rational-choice theory. In my opinion, rational-choice theory is quite easily falsifiable anyway, it just remains in use because its a very simple and easy way to model human behaviour. Academics have been known to favour elegant models even if it seldom reflects reality.
What connects this idea to Ryōkan's poem and the hermit's way of life it represents? While the other myth's of nature look in different to manage their transactions with nature, the hermit seeks to withdraw from it nearly completely. While the other biases contest against one another, the hermit's goes against the very idea of portraying the interactions of man and nature as being fundamentally dualistic. The hermit seeks to transcend this illusion (or maya) by recognizing the oneness of man and nature and presumably escape from the cycle of suffering. So what implication does this have for how to model human perception of risk?
These four models of nature implicitly support certain kinds of behaviour. For example if one was to believe that nature was benign then that would justify 'trial and error' and a more laissez-faire attitudes towards one's surroundings. In contrast, with nature-tolerant, people would have to ensure that 'the ball' remained at a stable equilibrium which would create a desire for certainty and predictability. What Wildavsky suggests is that no one model of reality fully captures the dynamics of our surroundings, some things behave in a benign way and some things are fairly ephemeral. However, managing institutions communicate a certain way of the world, often implicitly, and direct to focus on certain aspects of our environment over others. An example of this would be the idea of the 'invisible hand' directing the market toward a stable equilibrium. If the nature of the market was benign then we could encourage and maximise freedom to produce and trade goods and services in any way we wished since the risks involved would be negligible, at least at a systemic level. There would be winners and losers but there would never be a situation where the integrity of the market as a whole would be at stake. Therefore their model of nature would inform and justify how they perceive and calculate risk when making decisions about government regulation of the market.
One may be aware of other theories of risk perception: the main ones being based in rational-choice theory and the cognitive or behavioural school. In the former, an actor would weigh costs and benefits and make an optimal decision accordingly. In the latter, risk perceptions are filtered and shaped through different heuristics and biases (an example of this would be Kahneman's prospect theory). I don't think that Cultural Theory is mutually exclusive with the latter (socially influenced models of the world may count as a heuristic or a bias) but Wildavsky certainly argues against the inadequacies of rational-choice theory. In my opinion, rational-choice theory is quite easily falsifiable anyway, it just remains in use because its a very simple and easy way to model human behaviour. Academics have been known to favour elegant models even if it seldom reflects reality.
What connects this idea to Ryōkan's poem and the hermit's way of life it represents? While the other myth's of nature look in different to manage their transactions with nature, the hermit seeks to withdraw from it nearly completely. While the other biases contest against one another, the hermit's goes against the very idea of portraying the interactions of man and nature as being fundamentally dualistic. The hermit seeks to transcend this illusion (or maya) by recognizing the oneness of man and nature and presumably escape from the cycle of suffering. So what implication does this have for how to model human perception of risk?
What we see is that the actor and the surrounding environment act upon one another. The hermit's myth effectively captures an aspect of the world which the other four do not: the idea that change is inevitable and that properties of nature and the scope of our actions are far from immutable. As the figure on the right illustrates, the actor (the ball) and the landscape (nature) act upon one another. For instances on how this operates in the real world one could look at the ability of economic actors to distort the market and systematically prevent market prices from reaching equilibrium through monopoly industries. One could also listen to this great Radio Lab podcast on human effect on geological strata which necessitates the new term 'Anthropocene'.
In debates about the ecological issues like climate change or bee colony failure, participants often talk past one another. If we were operating around the same implicit understanding of nature then it could be argued that evidence would inform our debate. Such a view is, in my opinion, quite naive since it fails to understand that human institutions and organisations often reinforce a view of the world which justifies certain patterns of behaviour. There's a certain amount of inertia which inhibits behavioural change even when there's all the scientific evidence in the world that our current patterns of global production are unsustainable.
There's also a illusion of separation between our environment and ourselves, between the observer and the observed. Whether this is a product of enlightenment ideas about the primacy of the individual or it is a fundamental core of human psychology is far outside my expertise; but this sort of thinking seems to inform how we prioritise public issues. Issues of the environment often are considered far less important come election time compared to things like unemployment, immigration, crime. A reason for this certainly could be because we consider those sorts of issues as ones of human society, solving them keeps the focus on us and not the dreaded other. What the hermit's perspective underscores is that there is no real separation and that we cannot intervene in nature on the scale that we do without eventually affecting our own capacity to act and behave.
In debates about the ecological issues like climate change or bee colony failure, participants often talk past one another. If we were operating around the same implicit understanding of nature then it could be argued that evidence would inform our debate. Such a view is, in my opinion, quite naive since it fails to understand that human institutions and organisations often reinforce a view of the world which justifies certain patterns of behaviour. There's a certain amount of inertia which inhibits behavioural change even when there's all the scientific evidence in the world that our current patterns of global production are unsustainable.
There's also a illusion of separation between our environment and ourselves, between the observer and the observed. Whether this is a product of enlightenment ideas about the primacy of the individual or it is a fundamental core of human psychology is far outside my expertise; but this sort of thinking seems to inform how we prioritise public issues. Issues of the environment often are considered far less important come election time compared to things like unemployment, immigration, crime. A reason for this certainly could be because we consider those sorts of issues as ones of human society, solving them keeps the focus on us and not the dreaded other. What the hermit's perspective underscores is that there is no real separation and that we cannot intervene in nature on the scale that we do without eventually affecting our own capacity to act and behave.