Definition of styles
The boat normally sinks
February 23, 2015
Recently, I had the opportunity to have a forty-minute interview with a politician, an elected official, a deputy. An ENA graduate. I expected him to have some gaps in the subject we were going to discuss. In fact, he told me honestly that not knowing the technical aspects, the reality of things, the ground, was by no means a handicap when it came to producing a report and formulating recommendations, on the contrary. Yes, "he knew nothing about it," but that was not a reason for him to be unable to give an opinion on the subject.
It recalls a line from a dialogue by Audiard:
- "It's not because you have nothing to say that you should shut up!"
The logic that this representative of the French citizens, democratically elected, relies on the words of an expert. The one who, within his political party, an important one, "knows the subject." So I asked him the question.
Yes, there was indeed an expert, a polytechnician from the prestigious Corps of Mines. But examining his professional trajectory raises serious doubts about his skills and ability to evaluate. Facing this question, the only answer was "he wrote books...". Damn, I could mention members of the Academy of Sciences who have written books full of nonsense, and directed faulty studies, sanctioned by stamped reports, whose conclusions were invalidated by facts, "basic" documents that no one would dare to amend.
Do you remember that passage where the Little Prince lands on a planet occupied by a financier, who spends his time aligning numbers. And the Little Prince asks him: "What do these numbers represent?" "What do I know?" he replies. "I don't have time to worry about it. I count, I calculate the inflows and outflows. I do subtractions, I calculate profits, losses, return on investment."
We could transpose it by imagining a planet occupied by a politician. He speaks, "communicates."
- What are you talking about? the Little Prince asks. I'm addressing a subject, an important, current issue. So you know this subject well, then? No, not at all, but I have an expert who informs me, gives me a summary of the essentials, which allows me to form an idea, to guide my recommendations and decisions. He shows me numbers, statistics.
He displays a "pie chart."
- You see, this represents the essentials. In blue, what's positive, in red, what's negative, in purple, the rest. And what does it represent? The essentials. Every subject can be summarized in a few key sentences. The important thing is the pie chart, which allows me to formulate an opinion. If the blue sector is important, I'm for it, I recommend it. Otherwise, if it's the opposite, I'm against it. I don't need to get into the details, to get lost in them. After that, I put words together, I make sentences, I communicate. My role is then to convince, by finding the right images, those that resonate, that strike the public opinion. In speech, it's not the content that matters, it's what you convey. It's the ABC of communication. But excuse me, I have to prepare my next intervention.
Take an elected official, your local deputy. Ask him to write down what he knows about a subject he is supposed to deal with, regardless of his political orientation, whether in the majority or the opposition, or in a marginal, "non-aligned" party. You will be in for great surprises, if the person agrees to play along, which would be surprising.
There are "responsible" people who even go as far as proudly claiming their incompetence with disarming honesty. An ENA graduate learns to speak about a subject he understands nothing about. That's the job they teach him. Those who gain some experience, some mastery of this art of speaking without saying anything, even manage to make you believe that they actually possess this skill, this knowledge.
Why shouldn't people without particular skills use others who are more informed about the facts and the issues? But then the latter become a danger for the former. Thus, the elected official will tend to surround himself with less dangerous people, hence, with incompetent ones. Elected officials recognize each other, co-opt each other, gather together, form "groups." Their mutual help, their complicity, is the only field where a form of intelligence is exercised.
There is another kind of people in power, much more dangerous: those who believe they know, and who sometimes have some talents, like inventing acronyms, slogans, strategies, designating responsible people, scapegoats. These can be dictators, religious leaders, visionaries, people carrying ideas, a grand project, potentially planetary. These people mark history with their imprint, leave their names in books, chronicles. Most of the time they have expansionist ambitions, to defend a people, an ethnicity, a race, a system, a worldview.
Their actions generate powerful upheavals, which sometimes advance science and technology, usually through wars, possibly global. Wars that are started by individuals or small groups, who mostly have never left their village and have a bookish vision, or simply an imaginative, or a conviction-based view of the world around them. One of them will attack a large people, occupying a vast territory, which he imagines to be populated by subhumans, incapable of defending themselves. Another will try to terrify opponents, thus making them negotiate in his favor. Others will bet on high technologies, on "remote wars," from a simple chair, safely away, and on perfect information systems, based on satellite interception of message-carrying waves, forgetting about simple paper sheets.
And every time, it fails. Sometimes the authors of this grand project commit suicide, leaving others to pay for the bill of their madness, their foolishness, and multiple mistakes.
But no one learns the lesson. A few generations are enough for these bandar logs that are human beings to forget everything. Thus, history proceeds at the pace of conflicts, with damages, which are repaired. As the saying goes, "When the building is going, everything is going." We exploit technological advances. We create new economic circuits, new inequalities, the seeds of future conflicts.
After each new conflict, it takes just a few decades for new hegemonic projects, imperative or insidious, cunning, to form and emerge. If financiers see only numbers, others project themselves onto future battlefields with a vision borrowed from the previous conflict. They support today allies who will become their enemies tomorrow. Today, be sure, many strategists juggle with "tactical" nuclear weapons (which defense specialists call "theatrical weapons"!) as if they were conventional chemical weapons. None of them has any perception of the lasting damage, the duration of which would exceed that of human history...