Trump: draining the swamp - or throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

“I thought I knew everything I needed to know - and what I did not know was not worth knowing.”     Quote - anon

In a recent conversation with a philosopher friend, we speculated on President Trump’s declared intention of draining the Washington ‘swamp’, and the effects of his actions following his inauguration. We were curious about the potential implications of his intention on what is known as ‘institutional memory’. Institutional memory is the collective set of facts, concepts, experiences and knowledge held by a group of people. As such it must be a very significant factor in Washington DC, with its long and impressive history of democratic governance. Now ‘draining the swamp’ might sound reasonable, especially when it refers to getting rid of the cadre of well paid lobbyists who typically ingratiate themselves into the influence space of law-makers. And, of course, the swamp might also include the news media which not only reports on, but often instigates the events on which they report. Now since this 'establishment' has been particularly hostile to Donald, one can indeed understand his resentment.

Trump administration

However reports now suggest that many of the very people he has appointed in his administration have themselves been lobbyists. Some for big industrial groupings, and others holding anachronistic and reactionary perspectives that appear popular with his supporters. In respect of the establishment his recent spate of self-generated executive orders shows that he is both circumventing and blatantly ignoring the available insights and experience of the Washington intelligentia. This includes the conventional channels of the democratic system, namely Congress and Senate with its advisers, but also its own informed media. Then too he has also clearly ignored the professionals in his own state institutions. This unfortunately now includes the judiciary, the security agencies, and the foreign affairs corps, etc.

Disrupting the network

Given his on-going spat with the judicial system around the vexed immigration issue, it seems he does not to care much for the opinion of others. He has his own point of view and, some would suggest, all he apparently needs is some flimsy evidence to support it. Whilst his admirers see this as ‘being his own man’ the big question of course relates to the wisdom of his decisions. And that has some relation to the potential impact on institutional memory and the peculiar phenomenon of the White House break with the Washington establishment. What would be the potential consequences of decisions taken by the world's most powerful man when the insights and knowledge of this complex interactive Washington network were to be severely disrupted?

Self-perpetuation

Now someone has suggested that over time the 'purpose of the system' can easily become simply the 'perpetuation of the system' - hence 'the swamp'. No doubt there is some truth in this. For many professionals it would be ‘...don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg’. So there might well be some merit in disrupting the establishment. Chairman Mao of China used to do this in his cultural revolutions. This would especially be the case where the establishment has become a complex interlocking system that has become more focused on self-serving in respect of those with a career in it, than supporting good governance. There is a case for 'creative disruption'.

Web of relationships

But here’s an important issue. Institutional memory exists in a web of relationships. Rather than being centralised, it is diffuse. There is no well-indexed central library. Of course, big data can be stored and processed in a computer, but expertise is also a combination of knowledge and experience. So, the power of institutional memory is more about knowing who to call and where to go at the right time. Institutional memory can therefore also be seen as a paradigm - a shared pattern and culture of thinking. And of course, that is what constitutes the establishment, and indeed that is what lends itself to self-perpetuation. ‘Draining the swamp’ might well be a way to shift the paradigm - but why and when would you want to do that?

Self-validating assumptions

One of the keys dangers in the perpetuation of ‘establishments’ is the natural tendency to rationalize self-validating assumptions. Consider this; the Democrats and the Republicans will both have such self-validating assumptions. And they will have some sort of so-called ‘science’; political, social, economic, and to a lesser extent, ecological to validate their claims. These then support their respective arguments regarding policy and practice. These assumptions then tend to perpetuate the polarization of the two-party system - with both sides often employing what is known as circular logic, as we shall see. That becomes self-reinforcing. So from the two perspectives, being a Republican might represent being conservative, and that considered either as 'antisocial' or 'stable and cautious'. Being a Democrat might represent being liberal, and that considered either as 'reckless' or 'progressive and humanistic'. In ‘groupthink’ this tends to help identify ourselves in contradistinction with the other - the opposition - but it can also lend itself to demonization. Nevertheless, the Washington ‘establishment’, within that known framework, would still be able to 'aggregate' the policy implications of both those opposing sets of general assumptions and ‘work its way through them’. They tended to know what to expect - until, of course Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders came on the scene!

Circular logic

What these two characters achieved was not only to demonstrate that the establishment had become out of touch with emerging public sentiment, but also more clearly shows the fault lines in the logic. In the employment of circular logic, a fallacy is maintained in which the reasoner initiates the argument with the case he is trying to prove. The components of a circular argument might often appear to be logically valid since, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. A stark recent example is Trump arguing that since the USA faces the imminent danger of importing terrorists by allowing entry to persons from certain Moslem countries, then acting to bar them is in the interest of national security. Ergo, because radical Moslem extremism exists, by allowing Moslems into the United States we would be inviting radical extremists. But note that when asked by the judiciary for concrete evidence of such an imminent threat the case was that it would not be in the public interest have to that disclosed. For him, then, his opinion as state president, irrespective of the opinion of the security agencies, must be sufficient cause to justify the exercise of executive powers.

Identity and intellectual arrogance  

Many years ago I coached as senior South Africa businessman who had fallen on hard times. In the course of his career he had built up a fine business and had served on boards and councils and held positions of authority - until the change of regime happened. Then everything changed. From being an admired, albeit privileged, personality he lost both his fortune and his family, especially through his inability to adapt to the radical change that had taken place. He finally made this telling confession:

“I thought I knew everything I needed to know - and what I did not know was not worth knowing.”     

This brings us to the vexing point about ‘knowing’ what is needed to be known. My philosopher colleague reminds that we all live in some sort of 'epistemic bubble'. ‘Epistemic’ relates to knowledge, or to the degree of its validation. In this era of relativism, where the validity of an opinion is confirmed by the general support it carries, we’ve arrived at the situation that is now described as ‘post-truth’. For example through social media we can easily delete information or opinion that does not resonate with our own. And by having our opinion reinforced through that media with which we do engage, it becomes self-validating. Complexity theory shows that, as with systems, we both influence opinion and are in turn influenced by it. Provided there is sufficient common terminology that sounds familiar, it enables us to distinguish ‘us’ from 'them'. We feel comfortable in such an epistemic bubble and it becomes part of our identity. Consequently it is difficult to change. My colleague suggests this is experienced as a 'cornucopia' of righteousness.  

Beliefs and conflict

The trouble though is that whilst we do naturally live in these epistemic ‘mental’ bubbles, we also live in, and increasingly share, this physical world. And in a globalised world we increasingly interpenetrate each other’s geographic and economic spaces. We do have to trade. And with that interpenetration of epistemic bubbles there is an accompanying potential for conflict. So, in the face of this reality, the Trump bubble response supports the idea of building walls and banning Moslem travelers. The Brexit bubble, ironically with its co-traveler in Europe, is that of rising nationalism. This demonstrates just how tenuous this bubble thinking is in offering real solutions to the burning issues of the day. Living in an epistemic bubble heightens the tendency of linear thinking to support circular logic. With ‘groupthink’ we will, when under pressure, dumb things down in our need to build consensus with the like-minded, and thereby we eliminate nuances, especially inconvenient truths, that might ‘rock the epistemic boat’. 

Elephant and blind men

There still is a valuable message for us in the story of the elephant and the blind men (pictured above). Each individual was making an apparently valid interpretation of the evidence available. That of course represents the natural human process of meaning-making. But from their reductionist perspective they failed to realise that they were dealing with a holistic phenomenon - one integrated thing. Had they rather shared their evidence, and temporarily withheld their opinions, they might have come to a better conclusion. Now, we are informed, this same problem exists in reductionist science. Arthur Koestler, in his best-selling book ‘The Sleepwalkers’ (1959), suggested that discoveries in science arose through a process that he described as ‘sleepwalking’ (like the blind men with the elephant). This was not that they arose by chance, but rather that scientists were neither fully aware of what was guiding their research, nor were they fully aware of the implications of what it was that they were discovering. A recurring theme of his book was the breaking of old paradigms to create new ones. Like the rest of us, scientists held on to cherished beliefs with such attachment that they refused to see the wrong in their own ideas and the truth in the ideas that were to replace them.

Paradigm shifting

Similarly, Thomas Kuhn in his ground-breaking book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ (1962), argued that normal scientific progress could be viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an 'episodic' model of the history and philosophy of science. This would accept that the periods of conceptual continuity in normal science would at some time be interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. It was in the discovery of "anomalies" during such revolutions in science that would lead to new paradigms. New paradigms then begged new questions of old data, and would move beyond the mere employment of typical analysis used in the previous paradigm. For example the Copernican revolution changed the rules of the game and the "mental map" directing new scientific research.

According to Kuhn these "paradigm shifts" served to open up new approaches to understanding what scientists could not have considered valid previously. Consequently, and significantly, he concluded, that the notion of scientific truth, at any given moment, could not be established solely by so-called objective criteria. It would of necessity be defined by the consensus of a scientific community. This, by implication, represents yet another epistemic bubble - albeit a sophisticated one. (We do note the challenge this phenomenon represents to the much-vaunted prospects of artificial intelligence.)

Incommensurability

Now he further suggested that these competing paradigms could frequently be 'incommensurable'. This means that they tend to serve as competing and irreconcilable accounts of reality. So, for example, we might consider that Einstein’s problem with certain implications of quantum mechanics was that they challenged his own cosmology. “God does not play dice”, he protested. Now the measures accounting for his ground-breaking formula E=mc2, were indeed valid. But they don’t apply, for example, to quantum non-locality. Einstein did not deny the evidence - that was demonstrated to him, but he questioned whether the evidence should simply be taken at face value. So the story of the elephant again pertains. How, he pondered, did that evidence relate to the greater order. Now, along with Koestler, Thomas Kuhn confirmed that our comprehension of science could never rely wholly upon "objectivity" alone. Science needed to account for subjective perspectives as well. His challenge was that all objective conclusions were ultimately founded upon the subjective conditioning, or worldview, of its researchers and participants. And on this case, contra reductionism, I have shown that holistic science offers its more generative perspective.

Trump - both right and wrong

So, we now face an apparent dilemma. Trump is right in distrusting the Washington swamp - but he wrong in drawing from that very swamp an administration constructed with individuals who tend to support his epistemic bubble. He’s right in ‘being his own man’, but he’s clearly wrong in presuming that he has all the answers. In the science of informatics there is a meaning-making progression that ranges from ‘data’ (the availability of facts), to ‘information’ (those facts becoming comprehensible), to ‘knowledge’ (the implications internalised - as with institutional memory), and to ‘wisdom’ (the information and implications enabling good decisions). But how then do we arrive at wisdom? Surely this must relate to the capacity to offer guidance, and to make and implement decision that are sustainable and ethical - but who adjudicates?

Morality

Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book ‘After Virtue’ (1981), argues that many people in today’s globalised world regard moral pluralism as being desirable. This is considered to represent the best outcome for liberal democratic societies as shaped by the Enlightenment ideals of free rational inquiry and tolerance. But MacIntyre replies that this can only be so if moral pluralism means “an ordered dialogue of intersecting viewpoints”. Genuine moral pluralism he suggested, is impossible when the parties involved are unable to enter into dialogue due to having incompatible conceptual frameworks, including different ideas about what it means to be rational. They are hardly likely to be able to engage in meaningful debate if the views of at least some of the parties are internally confused. This means that there is no clear rationale with which to engage the other's arguments. So MacIntyre regrets that the the difficulty of engaging in a dialogue of intersecting viewpoints, and of understanding the other's rationale underpinning those viewpoints, prevents moral pluralism from being a genuine possibility. How then can we address MacIntyre’s dilemma? And how would we proceed to engage with Trump as the most powerful world leader? 

Epistemic humility 

My colleague suggests the following. Firstly, we need to recognise that we all live in such an epistemic bubble - Korzybski called this a 'map' of the 'territory'. This recognition requires epistemic humility. Secondly, we need to recognise and accept that diversity actually can make opinion smarter. Thirdly then, we need to cultivate the capacity to catalyse epistemically empowered groups. This he suggests in turn requires developing a process of 'system intelligence aggregation'. And that, in turn, will need to function in a framework of complex thinking: through 'reflexive complex adaptive intelligence’. Above all it will require, as MacIntyre stresses, a strategy for cooperation. It demands the cultivation of an enhanced capacity to facilitate - moving from 'label' to 'experience' - from 'content' to 'process'. The attractor of power, whereby we tend to employ ‘thought technology’ to compete for the right to define reality, needs to be subjugated with an attractor of meaning-making. And that is about creating relationship. So, the process of engagement will now become equally about the 'participants' as about the 'content'. And for this, he suggests, complexity catalysts will need to demonstrate ‘antifragile’ qualities - developing further capacity of compassion in the face of resistance. 

Spirituality

If politics and governance is about the exercise of power, and if power is motivated, as we have seen, by the reinforcement of identity, then it is time for an evolution of our deeper motivation. And it is here that purpose presents itself - and that wants a cosmology, ideally one that talks to what is intrinsic in humanity. Now a central theme of Koestler’s book on science was the changing relationship between faith and reason. Koestler explored how these seemingly contradictory threads existed harmoniously in many of the greatest intellectuals of the West. He emphasised that whilst the two had become estranged, in the past the most ground-breaking thinkers were often spiritual. I will suggest the epistemic shift now includes a spiritually informed cosmology.

As promised, in the following posting we shall explore Jan Smuts’ spirituality that enabled him to offer his paradigm shifting perspective of holism as a cosmic phenomenon.