The Authority Gap

Reflections upon reading Mary Ann Sieghart’s book, The Authority Gap.

The basic premise of the book is that women have to work harder than men to earn the same authority. Both as influence through expertise and as the power exercised in leadership. I do not disagree with this premise, nor that it is suboptimal socially and economically, nor that it is rooted deeply in social constructs and biases, nor that it is, frankly, unfair. Which personally meant a lot of wading through self-evident evidence in search of the real gems of insight. Of which there are a few, although – spoiler alert – almost the whole of Sieghart’s core argument fits onto page 280. This is quite a simplistic read.

Responsibility

Thoughts on managing societal responsibility around matters of climate change policy, especially transport.

The text theorises how differences in the shape of expected and actual rates of policy delivery may render a zone of despair. And how global perception of issues limits policy intervention at local level, where they are most needed to affect practical change. Both risk engendering a void in transactional responsibility: One that prevents issues being adequately transacted across the entire societal structure, tending to a failure of policy.

My conclusion:

1. Ensure policy actors are presented with comprehensible problems that are within their agency.
2. Despair at the slow initial rate of change will risk societal disconnection and policy abandonment.
3. Meanwhile confidence and familiarity will gradually accelerate the rate of delivery.
4. But only if policy processes adequately transact across society, without voids.
5. So it is important to differentiate structurally inadequate process from initially slow delivery.
6. Consequently one should primarily monitor the adequacy of process, not the pace of delivery.

Understanding Transport Decarbonisation

“Understanding Transport Decarbonisation” explores the dualistic denial-vs-panic tension around climate change, through the prism of a British transport policy structure that is ill suited to reconciling it. The text outlines the challenge to that policy structure, and analyses the fractious duality at the heart of our topic. Then destroys any lingering faith that anyone can really understand anything, by documenting the limitations of using money to affect societal transactions, and by considering how to relate to a decentralised freight sector. Before concluding with a couple of bold assertions that place transport and understanding at the heart of climate change, to show how mapping transport onto an otherwise abstract problem of understanding, may allow that problem to be tackled. This essay was inspired by DecarboN8’s recent Real Zero conference, to whose participants I am grateful, although the essay’s method is somewhat more syncretistic.

El Procés in 7 Photographs

This photo-essay summarises the Catalan independence process by reference to seven photographs that trace events from the 11th September rallies to the aftermath of Catalunya’s December 2017 regional elections. This is a more accessible text than the original Patria and Patrimonio sequence, which started with The Act of Referèndum. This photo-essay also serves as a postscript, outlining the events in November, December and January.

The Moral of Sovereignty

“The Moral of Sovereignty” is the fifth essay in a sequence that explores the current Catalan independence process. This essay characterises condominium.

Absolute Devolution

“Absolute Devolution” is the fourth essay in a sequence that explores the current Catalan independence process. This essay characterises power.

Patria and Patrimonio

“Patria and Patrimonio” is the third essay in a sequence that explores the current Catalan independence process. This essay characterises state.

1714 and All That

“1714 and All That” is the second essay in a sequence that explores the current Catalan independence process. This essay characterises hope.

The Act of Referèndum

Foreign observers are easily confused by the Catalan referendum, the supposed 1st October 2017 (mischievously notated “1-O”) self-determination of the hitherto Spanish region of Catalunya. The British libertarian press, whose readership naturally warms to stories of plucky little Catalans struggling against the oppression of the Spanish Empire, is invariably befuddled by the lack of political plurality in the process. The very observed absence of such plurality, on a topic that routinely divides the population of Catalunya, itself reveals the “Referèndum” as the action solely of the independentist cause, not the holistic process of resolving the actions of all parties, which is what the word referendum usually indicates. The linguistic deception hidden in plain sight remains remarkably enduring propaganda.

Fluidity and Good

If I am disinterested in ethics it is not because I am disinterested in humanity, rather that I make no distinction between the moral (human) and the metaphysical (divine). Syncretism, that Platonist disease. Murdoch (Sovereignty of Good) jokes that the asylums are full of people that consider all to be one. The singular idea is surely an impossible edifice for any human mind to maintain – such minds being within the very one they claim to conceive.

The idea of perfection (to borrow from Leibnitz) describes principles, not a particular construction. This distinction is essential given the arbitrary nature of any (logical) position that might be adopted (Godel in mathematics, maybe Bergson in philosophy, perhaps Kuhn or Popper for practical science). Arbitrary is not code for despair, that we should confine metaphysics to the realm of “don’t know”, or append the word belief, in the knowledge that we can’t do without. The least arbitrary is that which creates itself, that which we have as good an insight in as any.

The thing of itself echoes Husserl, the contemporary, anthropological auto-genesis. Modern accounts are prone to emphasise action – the very language of creation is tainted by perception. Irony: We can only but hope to apply such methods to our understanding while time marches ever forward.