We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves. Margaret Atwood
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Albert Einstein
Improperly documented history, or more precisely, fraudulent versions of history not only deprive the victims of pasts injustices due recognition of their suffering, but also rob the living of a fair chance at a future free from the dangers of repeating past injustices. A.E. Samaan
We have learned primarily by tinkering. Curt Gabrielson
In talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. William Maxwell
If we don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish. Jeff VanderMeer
It is in this childishly speculative state of mind, so different from common sense and its logic, that we know the world to be good. Vladimir Nabokov
Thanks to the confidence placed in me by a colleague, Barbara Adams, I recently published an article in a journal of development policy entitled “A Volatile Context: A Revisionist Lens on Good Governance.”
I’m not going to invite you to read the piece. It’s not dis-similar to the themes of this weekly post, but it is longer and surely more dense. It also reflects an assignment which I only accepted due to the editorial staff’s embrace of the “what if.” What would the world look like if our structures of governance were devoted to fostering care and equal access among constituents? What if governance were as competent and transparent as it often claims to be? What if governance were as concerned — in terms practical more than rhetorical — with the needs and aspirations of constituents as it is with its own protocols and power dynamics?
These and other, similar questions punctuated my piece, for better and worse. To be honest, I’m surprised it got published at all. In an age driven by data and branding, by professionals seeking control over smaller and smaller domains of human experience, speculative writing of the sort I indulge in has become a bit of a reach, and not an altogether welcome one. People in our governance and educational bureaucracies are rather preoccupied — and not without reason — with the accumulation and management of data, data that can establish trends and help ensure that, in the realm of policy and to the extent we are able, human and financial capital are directed towards the holes in security and justice that need to be filled and can be filled.
But it is clear in many places, including at the UN, that data of varying levels of sophistication and reliability does not always bring us closer to governance that is caring, responsive and trustworthy. Indeed, the pursuit of data can be its own endgame, accumulating “information” that in many instances is untethered to strategies to both unlock and incarnate its power to effect change; moreover, such data is often in flux as its gaps are only slowly recognized and fresh experiments are conducted that render the previous “truths” subject to a revised consent.
One of the smartest statements coming from youth climate activist Greta Thunberg was when she said, “don’t listen to me, listen to the science.” Yes, listen to the science, listen to those with data pertinent to the rendering of what are often dire predictions for our common future if we do not mange to revise our ways. But as Greta already knows, as any of us who ply our wares in the halls of global governance knows, such governance is as likely to render the power of science to something akin to a “petting zoo” as it is to unleash its full and furious influence over all our actions.
Simply put, we now know more than we do. Just this week, several good UN events underscored the degree to which having accurate data and incarnating relevant policy commitments are still at loose ends. We “know” that hording vaccines is ultimately detrimental to both the global economy and to the suppression of future variants — as noted this week in a special, high level event on “Vaccines for All” hosted by the president of the UN Economic and Social Council — and yet our commitment to equitable vaccine access remains well short of the need. We “know” as was stated often during an important UN event this week on “Financing for Development,” that a combination of debt burdens, limited investment access and illicit financial flows has made pandemic response and recovery a mere pipe dream, and yet our commitment to a revised, more inclusive financial system remains more the subject of speechmaking than practical application. We “know” as a civil society advocate from South Sudan testified in the Security Council this week that the wide availability of often-trafficked arms fuels so much of the violence and abuse in her country (and many others), and yet our addiction to the production and trade in deadly weapons shows little signs of abating. We “know” the many thousands in Yemen whose lives remain threatened after years of war by famine and economic collapse, and yet the Security Council remains largely impotent to end the violence let alone the impunity to which it has given rise. We “know” that we are unlikely given our current course to forestall the biology-altering consequences of a rapidly warming planet, but we continue to take more credit for our limited climate responses than to earnestly prepare to enact what the president of the UN General Assembly this week urged: “a greener and more equitable recovery that can keep our SDG commitments on track,” including and especially our lagging climate actions.
These disconnects between knowing and doing should not be laid at the feet of scientists, many of whom have no doubt had more than a few sleepless nights over these past months as emissions continue to rise and policymakers continue to defy reasonable, pandemic-related limitations in the name of disinformation or “freedom.” The same scientists who developed safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time and implemented health protocols to keep many more virus victims alive than was the case last spring — including no doubt many COVID-deniers — know that such measures alone won’t end the pandemic if large segments of the public remain uncooperative and revision-phobic, and they certainly won’t help us prepare for the pandemics sure to come as we continue to wantonly disrupt the planet’s biological safeguards.
It may be the case, as suggested above by Curt Gabrielson, that we learn primarily by “tinkering,” through small-scale revisions to what is known and seen, small-sale adjustments in what is given. But for the policy community such revisions at small scale are no longer suitable, if they ever were, as they don’t sufficiently address the diversity of threats facing our current world. They don’t sufficiently address the barriers that keep so many human skills — of youth, of cultural minorities, of women, of persons with disabilities — on the sidelines of policy deliberations and decisions. And they don’t address the deficits of trust which are themselves a legacy of promises deferred or ignored, assistance barely rendered, entitlements and privileges not shared or even acknowledged.
If we are not careful, if we are not sufficiently vigilant, the “bubble” that institutions like the UN are accused of operating within will morph into an “island” to which we in the policy community might well be exiled. Such exile would complicate positive change as it would cut off large swaths of the global community from a UN system which still connects, still convenes, still calls attention to looming threats and policy options — and often with considerable skill. But the threat of exile looms, primarily from constituencies who feel that they can no longer believe in us or in the words we speak, who display an eroded confidence in our ability to distinguish between what can be counted and what counts, to prioritize those responses that truly matter to human and planetary well-being.
In this regard, I worry most about any potential erosion among the youth, this large and diverse generation trying to organize their lives and dream their dreams under clouds of pandemic, climate change, weapons proliferation, and massive debt. Despite all the outreach the UN does to young people, do they –will they — find the UN sufficiently responsive, sufficiently committed to their future, sufficiently savvy on matters from technology access to policy inclusion? Will they find value in our answers to compelling crises let alone consent to at least some of the questions we are actually willing to ask? Will they find in their interactions with us evidence that the world is good and beautiful, and will they continue to feel that it is worth their time and energy to preserve that beauty and extend that goodness?
On this the jury is out. Among the formal events on the UN’s calendar this week was a side discussion, organized by the Youth4Disarmament initiative of the UN’s Office for Disarmament Affairs, which brought together diverse young people — including several of our colleagues — to examine that elusive “what if,” their dreams of a world that is fit for the aspirations and well-being of both this large generation and those who will come after. What if nuclear weapons were abolished? What if emissions could be brought firmly under control? What if the discrimination and incitement to violence highlighted by France and others this week could finally be stricken from the human register? What if our grand institutions — so often stuck in the mud of their own cultures and working methods — could be made to truly breathe again, breathe the air enveloping a human race which finally understands that care for the planet and solidarity with each other are practices, not premises?
At this “what if” event, the invitations to youth were sincere: to share stories from diverse contexts that need to be heard even if those stories (like many of my own) wouldn’t always pass the muster of fact-checkers; to envision (as High Representative Nakamitsu invited) what the world might actually look like if we spent less on weapons and more on people; to imagine as well (as Costa Rica’s Ambassador Chan advocated) a world “where “people no longer felt compelled to take up weapons in the first place,” where we were able to educate every child, where climate change impacts could be mitigated and even reversed? Can we envisage and then build a world where (as Pakistan noted) “power rivalries are disavowed,” where impacts from human selfishness are not a foregone conclusion, where injustices and atrocity crimes are no longer in mortal danger of endless repetition?
As the older speakers at this event noted, the policy and legal groundwork has been laid for such aspirations, including at the UN. But many traps have already been set in the form of crises we should have seen coming, crises that we failed to prevent in the first instance or forthrightly addressed in the second. There is still much for us to revise in our institutions and in ourselves, much in our own, sometimes “fraudulent” versions of personal and cultural history to clarify and confess, much in the stories of young people — especially those compelling “what ifs” — that can guide and inspire their practice but that must be better honored by the rest of us if they are ever to achieve their full flowering.
For better and worse, prospects for a more caring, trustworthy and visionary governance are still in old and worn hands like my own. We who are attached to such hands must undertake the revisions that history and circumstances now demand of us, revisions to our institutions and to ourselves, as we seek to deposit data and dreams into the anxious, younger hands of others.
gapwblog 