Dueling Elites and Their Catastrophic Visions

Anyone who has been around humans and their institutions for a sufficient length of time understands that motives and agendas are almost always complex and frequently even unconscious. Accordingly, generalizing about them should be understood as necessarily reflective of particular perspectives. Nonetheless, such simplification can help to create intelligibility and order so that we may respond ethically, rationally, and responsibly to the complex world within which we find ourselves.

In this spirit, consider two of the primary dialogs of our times that, while superficially quite different, are in fact disconcertingly similar in intent and tone. One is the current U.S. Administration's insistence on a continuing and constant threat of ubiquitous and unpredictable terrorism, a campaign which appears designed to (and does) create continuing fear and insecurity in the population (that the cultural animosity underlying whatever anti-US attitudes do exist is to a significant degree a result of Administration choices and policy is either supreme irony, Machiavellian brilliance, or incompetence, depending on who one listens to).

The second is the significant acceleration in stories and publicity regarding predictions of planetary disaster as a result of human activities, especially global warming. At least one of the agendas behind this appears to be a desire to create a sense of fear and even panic that, in turn, can be directed towards the reengineering of developed country societies, especially as regards consumption patterns (directly challenging consumption patterns and pressing for wealth redistribution is politically difficult, which is why positioning the need for such changes as unfortunate but necessary side effects of avoiding "planetary disaster" is much more effective).

Details of the catastrophic visions of Islamic terrorism and global warming are obviously different. Nonetheless, it is striking how such visions are being generated by the elites on the right and left to advance their idea of an appropriate society. In the case of the conservative elite behind the terrorism vision, for example, a primary goal seems to be to reengineer society to reflect "social conservatism" and to strengthen the "Christian values" basis of American society, and to institutionalize conservative domination of American politics. In the case of the liberal elite behind the climate change planetary disaster vision, a primary goal seems to be to reengineer society to a more agrarian, egalitarian, and reduced consumption state.

Behind these goals lie quite different teleologies: in the first case, a Golden Age that seems to include in somewhat jumbled order components of American exceptionalism, a relatively unsophisticated Christianity, and a medieval reintegration of religion into all aspects of life. In the second case, the teleology appears to be Edenic, a return to a Golden Age in a much simpler world strongly resembling Rousseau's idyllic state of nature. That both elites should seek instantiation of a Golden Age is not surprising, for the lure of such imaginary pasts is a common human characteristic; that both should choose the vehicle of catastrophic imagining as part of an effort to get there is intriguing.

Such catastrophic visioning does appear to work to some extent. But it is a costly tactic: by oversimplifying reality, catastrophic visions encourage adoption of policies and perspectives which are dysfunctional and fragile, rather than contributing to the complicated but stable governance systems appropriate to complex situations (the invasion of Iraq is a good example).

Equally important, they end up undercutting the very interests they purport to be advancing. Thus, the association of anti-terrorism in the United States with loss of liberty and Constitutional protections, not to mention torture, destroys the moral stature of American culture at the very time when that is most critical. Similarly, the single minded focus on catastrophic global warming increasingly turns the complex and multifaceted challenge of environmental management in an increasingly anthropogenic world into a single issue discourse, and one which is increasingly being based on power politics rather than rational dialog. Such oversimplification trivializes their respective discourses.

For the manipulation of these discourses by determined elites does not mean that the underlying phenomena, be they terrorism or global climate change, are not real, or that they should not be of concern. Any viable catastrophic scenario in fact requires a certain core of realism. What it does mean is that a global governance system based on generation and exploitation of oversimplified emotional responses and fear is unlikely to be viable in the long term, and thus undercuts the political process and dialog necessary for real solutions in a highly complex world.
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Brad Allenby is professor of civil and environmental engineering at Arizona State University, a fellow at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business, and previously was AT&T's vice president of environment, health, and safety.