Much has been written in recent years about a pandemic of laypersons with fundamental disregard for expertise and the potentially dire consequences of this phenomenon for global economic and political stability. In reviewing Tom Nichols’ “The Death of Expertise” in 2017, the New York Times noted that its illustrious predecessors include Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason,” Susan Jacoby’s “The Age of American Unreason,” Robert Hughes’s “Culture of Complaint” and Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 classic, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.”
This tells a tale! The 20th Century was the “American Century” which ultimately saw it establishing its global economic, cultural and military hegemony. It matters. 21st century China is still the “new kid on the block”. As the dominant hyper-power, the exultation of unreason in America may be the source of the tsunami of its replication worldwide. It may be the “Wuhan” of the Fake News pandemic.
In a May 2020 CNN interview, Nichols spoke of a pandemic of narcissism, where fake news partly arises from an excessive belief of laypersons in their mastery of specialised matters beyond their knowledge horizon. With the global spread of democracy, this has combined to produce a concerning trend: representative democracy is being replaced with a distorted direct democracy where vote-chasing politicians regurgitate the mass opinion reflected in the latest opinion polls; rather than what they sincerely believe to be in the national interest. As mass opinion becomes increasingly shaped by the narcissism pandemic and by my observation of a parallel amorality pandemic – where any ends justify any means – these twin pandemics make our world perilously unstable. Ok. But, none of this is news. What insight is on offer here? Well, there has been much grinding of intellectual teeth about a disrespect for “facts”. But what is fact? Online dictionaries relate it to “truth”, “reality”, “certainty” etc. and therein lies the problem. “Truth” is a mish/mash of objectivity and subjectivity. Laypersons now ask why their versions of the truth are less compelling than those offered by “experts”. So, I have focused on a popular management tool that we routinely use to understand situations - the 6 Illuminating Questions:
In my childhood, access to these six questions was relatively restricted: either through lack of access to education in the Global South or through world-wide state or other concentrated ownership of information channels in the pre-satellite broadcasting, pre-internet and pre-smartphone era.
Experts had a relatively free hand, which they arguably abused in disciplines ranging from the military, medicine, journalism and politics to business and economics. The last three have possibly seen the greatest betrayal of public trust in experts. For example, we had the gross political misrepresentation in the UK of the infamous “dodgy dossier” that formed part of the justification for the Second Iraq War. A war whose unintended adverse consequences still haunt the world to the present day. In Britain, millions of rightly concerned citizens took to the streets in protest at the prospect of the Iraq war; but were dismissed by political “experts” in power. We have had the enduring Thatcher/Reagan legacy of inequity in pay that has led to “expert” business leaders implausibly claiming to have earned vast sums that effectively assert them to be more infallible than the Pope – driving societal inequities globally and threatening social cohesion . We have seen the Global Financial Crisis where the very same infallible business leaders created an economic meltdown and then socialised their losses whilst privatising their gains.
So, laypersons have had good reason to distrust “experts” in recent decades. They have seen the global emergence of an irresponsible elite in systems of representative democracy and economic governance that were designed for the enlightened representation of the common good.
As education expanded across the world and the satellite, internet and smartphone era arrived, citizens were unshackled from their dependency on experts and national monopolies for access to data. They have understandably fed with abandon. However, data are necessary but not sufficient for reasoning and knowledge. The architecture of global politics, science, economics and the natural environment is too sophisticated to be amenable to sustainable management by opinion poll. Which brings us back to our 6 Illuminating Questions.
The data revolution has liberalised access to “who?”, “what?”, “where” and “when?” i.e. four of the six illuminating questions. These are now easily communicated by 24 hour TV, Google, Facebook and other social media. But data conveys awareness of the existence of an issue but does not communicate comprehension of the matter or its implications. For that, the other two questions are essential: “how?” and critically “why?”. Those have yet to be liberalised and remain the privy of expertise. So, the data revolution has brought a mass delusion of comprehension; for the knowledge revolution has yet to dawn!
The paradox is that “experts” have proven themselves to be irresponsible and have deserved their disrespect. But as men and women have complained about the opposite sex throughout the ages: “can’t do with them, can’t do without them!”. The world desperately needs to re-energise a sense of responsibility among experts for their duty of care in the service of the common good. Then, perhaps, they can regain the trust of laypersons, and a more sustainable world order might be regained before it’s too late. Ebola and COVID 19 may be nature’s playful experimentation in its irritation with our species. There will be no vaccine to Nuclear Armageddon.
© 2020, All Rights Reserved. Omodele Jones, May 2020 The author is CEO of tech startup GQRDOtCOm Ltd (registered in England & Wales) and operating as GovernanceQualityRatings.com incorporating AuditQualityRatings.com. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of GovernanceQualityRatings.com. You can view his profile on:
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