As you have read frequently in these pages of mine, I am collaborating in the writing of an election program. As kids of our age, me and my fellow writers excel in identify and write down actions points, things that need to happen, policy issues that are meaningful for our city. But perhaps because most of us came of age when every other big ideology crashed down (and never really recovered) we are not so strong in setting our vision in paper. And election programs, at least in my opinion, should be about vision. The elector needs to know where are we going, and trust us that we know how to get there. If we explain too much about the road, we become yet another bureaucrat loosing his public in the meanders of local legislation. We need vision, and we have it… but we struggle at writing it.
So recently we invited an external person, to help us in the process of writing down that thing, the vision. He entertained us with a long tale comparing the Anglosaxon and the Rhineland corporate model, hoping to guide us to use the second as a structure for our visions to be written.
I was certainly not amused.
Perhaps because I am a theoretical biologist, I am extremely skeptic of simplifications of reality. When I am not skeptical, I believe that one should extremely careful define the uses and the limits of such simplifications. So our guest drone on and on about the benefits of the Rhineland model, where consensus is a strength instead of from-above-imposed decisions, where flexible decision making, due to craftsmanship is the better alternative to mechanistical numerical spreadsheets forcing meaningless rows and rows of numbers and dashboards to replace real knowledge. That was for me the final drop. I did enquire how were we even considering to transition the energy consumption of our city from fossil energy to wind and sun sources without having reliable models and projections? Could a craftsman even consider to start such process as what we have been doing in the last 10 years of co-govern?
And yet, when the day was over, and the discussion went somewhere else, something kept bothering me. After all, when I am not thinking in politics, I am trying to learn iaido and kendo, two extremely traditional forms of japanese fencing. And believe you me, there is nothing anglosaxon about them, but they are crafts, fully embedded in the model that our coach laid down for us. We follow a master, a japanese sensei, who possess the art that we aim at achieving, or at least comprehend. We do not contest her, nor her own master, but we follow, repetitively and for years and years, the exercises that they prescribe to us. Perhaps, in few decades, we will grasp the art. There are no certainties, but repetition.
What made me think, and think again, is that I do not believe that such model is remotely appropriated to run, or govern, a modern city. I don’t believe such thing fits not only my left wing green party, but any city around the Rhin, year 2021. And yet. Here you see me, happily embracing this ancient form of learning, and developing myself. Just doing what my master say, and hoping.
What am I missing?
Sorry to throw something I'm still in the process to understand it... but you seem to be missing Hegel. Quantitative models and craftmanship are both parts of a whole. One tends to think in either/or terms... but, alledgedly, Hegel may help one get rid of that frame of thought. That's what a philosophy professor from the UCV told me recently. I'm not able to go beyond from what I just said. Sorry to interrupt... ciao!