Who’s In Charge?
The other day, Farshad and I were talking about the ways of the world, how things seemed to be getting worse. Farshad offered his belief that the problems of the world were due to the lack of will on the part of a “higher power” (read: government). It was to blame for society’s inability to solve the Big Problems in the world. But I wasn’t so sure.
As Thomas Homer-Dixon pointed out near the end of his wildly popular book, The Ingenuity Gap:
“Such explanations are specious… [they] blame all our troubles on an amorphous, undifferentiated group of leaders who could fix things if they weren’t so venal or cowardly, and they conveniently let the rest of us off the hook.”
The problem with assigning blame is that in a world of nonlinear, intertwingled problems, pinpointing the responsible party is like trying to pick up soap in a prison shower without making an unwelcome new friend – entirely impossible. As Dixon points out, the truth is there isn’t a responsible party. Instead, there are multiple responsible parties – namely: us.
Anyone who’s had dreams of being their own boss by starting a company has soon recognized the illusion of control. At first, it’s just yourself – until you actually have to get something done. You hire some other employees, form a board of directors, get some investors, and then, wham! You’re answering to other people! You’re no longer really the one in control! It’s just as true for governments as it is for corporations.
The significance of this point was driven home while I was visiting the Government of BC website as part of my research with the Premier’s Technology Council. I found this fantastic document on the BC Investment Climate that showed, in concise, quantitative terms, why BC kicks supreme ass as a location for companies. I had neither previously heard of this document, nor any of a variety of the points it raised. How is this possible? I read the news! I’m “plugged in”! Delving deeper, I discovered that the Premier has a weekly radio address! Weekly! Address! Am I totally clueless about what’s going on in government?
This disturbs me. Why? Let’s recap: Governments and corporations are responsible for getting things done to change our world; however, that’s actually a red-herring, because I’m actually responsible, albeit indirectly, for spurring them to get things done. But if I’m actually in charge of them being in charge, and I don’t even know what the heck is going on, how is anyone supposed to get anything done?
Then again, perhaps that’s exactly the explanation for the situation we find ourselves in: everyone’s in charge. Like an unhelpful crowd witnessing a mugging, the responsibility for action is dispersed – despite being in a position to make the small, incremental effort required to affect change, we are instead paralyzed by our own self-interests from actually expending that effort.
Are you sure that the responsibility is dispersed? I recently worked on a group project where everyone wanted to be in charge (as a school project, it had the quirk that there was no true authority to make the final decision – unlike most real-world situations). I’d argue that it’s not that people aren’t taking responsibility – they’re just not in agreement about what needs to be done as the highest priority. If you tie 5 cats together by the tail – they’ll run like hell. And probably end up going nowhere at all…
(and it’s ‘effect’, not ‘affect’ change, my friend… 😉
Hmmm – I’m not so sure about this. On the one hand, I think you have a valid point. Not a week goes by that some previously irrefutable “right thing to do” gets refuted, further defocusing efforts. Coupled with individual preferences, that’s a heck of a problem to solve. Why bother doing anything until the “right thing” is nailed down?
The problem is one of individual incentives. If I choose, for example, to take the bus instead of drive, thus incurring inconvenience but arguably (according to the “right thing” theory of the day) reducing pollution, what’s my reward? Other than perhaps a slightly elevated sense of superiority, pretty much nothing. So why should I incur this inconvenience when no one else does it?
The trick is to devise mechanisms that align individual incentives with the “right thing”, something I look to government to do. But as I look to the government to do this, government is looking to me to dictate what’s important, and we’re back to square one: individual incentives pandemonium.
On a grammatical note, “to affect change” is correct. According to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the verb “affect”: To make a material impression on; to act upon, influence, move, touch, or have an effect on.
For those of you who might be wondering about the difference between “to effect change” and “to affect change”: “to effect change” means “to bring about or accomplish change”, whereas “to affect change” means “to influence [the course of] change. My intention was to indicate our inability to influence the course of change, rather than to bring the final changes about.
I’m not convinced. I think the connection of responsibility to the masses is like string – it’s easy to tug on it and pull the masses into blame, but when the masses want to push on the string to effect change, the string falls limp. No doubt taking the bus makes a difference, like a butterfly does on the weather in China, but to hold the masses accountable the same way you can a single person or even (somewhat) an organization is naive.
It sounds pretty selfish, but unless the specific problems out there affect the people making decisions, there’s no real rush for them to get fixed. I think if people were really dissatisfied with how things were run there would be daily uprisings. But for the most part, people are happy with their lives. Sure you see isolated demonstrations about random things, but that can’t ever be more than .5% of the population.
If it really mattered to more people, people would make a bigger deal about it.
My own personal opinion is that most things people consider ‘problems’ are relative. No matter how the situation, there’s always going to be things to complain about.
Consider an alien from another planet, arriving at earth. They observe the human complaining about not having free medical attention for their children. On their planet, all young if sick or injured are put to death. Alien observer doesn’t understand why humans aren’t simply happy that their sick children aren’t killed. For them, our problem isn’t a problem.
Consider another alien planet with no hunger, famine, disease, or war where males upon reaching a certain age are given a harem of 100 females to live with them for the rest of their life. A human from earth arrives on their planet, and observes the male complain they don’t have enough time to couplate with all of them in a reasonable amount of time. For that alien, this is the worst problem they deal with on a daily basis. For us, this problem seems insignificant.
The other theory is there needs to be some kind of lower class for an upper class to exist. Whether it’s the upper ones screwing the lower ones over, or making them do the labor for the upper class, or whatever. So there will always be the problems of a lower class as long as people aspire to live at a higher standard.
Look at me, getting all philisophical. Step away from the keyboard, Barry…
To err is human – and so is the urge to deny error. “Affect change” is a common solecism, Brendon; caught in it, you first deny the criticism, imagining that you refute it with an irrelevant dictionary citation, then assert that you know the usage, but meant something rare and different. Review of the passage does not support this; you meant “effect change”, and used the wrong word.
Why do we care about honesty? Because it is at the core of the personal responsibility on which our social life depends. Ironic then that a discourse on personal responsibility becomes the occasion for a violation of it. Physician, heal thyself.
Boy, when it comes to English usage, everyone seems to cling to the hard and fast rules they learned in elementary school. Everyone sing along! “When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail…”
Let’s try this again from the top, shall we?
I’m not arguing that there isn’t a correct usage for the term “effect change”, or that it’s usually the intended meaning when people use the term “affect change”. What I am arguing is that there is a correct usage for the term “affect change” which is distinct from the meaning of “effect change” and was applied correctly here.
You state you read the article, yet it seems you missed the point. My point, through the entire piece, is that the system prevents anyone from being in a position to “effect change” – to accomplish the end result. The government operates in accordance with the opinions of its constituents and, vice versa, constituents react to information provided by the government. This feedback loop, due to its inherent inefficiencies, prevents each party from not only accomplishing the end result of change, but also from even influencing the process by which change might be accomplished. Thus “affect change” (to influence the process of transitioning from one state to another) in the final paragraph, instead of “effect change”.
Welcome to the nuances of the English language.
Honestly, you’d think by now that people would understand the subtleties between affect and effect. Yet they are two words that could keep students of philosophy debating “did the author really want to choose that word” in an Exposition and Arguement course for an entire semester. Trust me, I know. Unless you can get people to completely follow your commands, take away free will, and have total control of all events, you can only affect change. People may want to be able to effect change in the world, but in reality you can only affect it. It is only by effecting change in ourselves that we can affect change in the world.