@umairh Here's some more stuff we can pimp--oh, sorry, I mean "privatize"--while we're at it. The atmosphere, the oceans, our grandkids. Oh, wait...
In response, I pointed to @owenbarder 's blog Enclosure of the Commons – 21st Century Edition.
@umairh Exactly. That's why fighting back with "open-source"/commons principles is so disruptive--and important.
But the history of enclosure doesn't suggest that it can be defeated by "principles". Wikipedia: Enclosure. Fighting back may be important and disruptive, but surely disruption needs more than principles? After all, people have often defended enclosure with another set of equally plausible principles - protecting the environment, increasing agricultural productivity, or whatever.
Here's a more general question - to what extent have "principles" ever contributed significantly to social or political change. Many key historical changes - examples might include the abolition of slavery in the USA, the enfranchisement of women, and the independence of India - were heralded by strong and principled campaigns. But why were these campaigns more successful than those against enclosure?
We might note that in each case of successful progressive change, there is an alternative explanation for the event, based on socioeconomic and geopolitical forces. For example, with the availability of cheap quinine (reducing the economic dependence on labour of West African origin), slavery ceased to be the cheapest form of labour in malaria-ridden plantations. Such socioeconomic explanations should caution us against regarding the forceful articulation of principles as the sole driver of social change.
In business and engineering, as well as politics, it is customary to appeal to "principles" to justify some business model, some technical solution, or some policy. But these principles are usually so vague that they provide very little concrete guidance. Profitability, productivity, efficiency, which can mean almost anything you want them to mean. And when principles interfere with what we really want to do, we simply come up with a new interpretation of the principle, or another overriding principle, which allows us to do exactly what we want while dressing up the justification in terms of "principles".
The BBC Moral Maze programme this week discussed a recent case of a Christian couple in the UK who refused bed-and-breakfast to a gay couple, thereby offending against recent anti-discrimination legislation. This case appears to involve two conflicting applications of the same principle - tolerance and human rights. Listening to the programme, I thought how easy it might have been for the Christian couple to turn away guests they regarded as undesirable by appealing instead to the principle of security, and how often "security" and "risk" is used as a reason for being unpleasant or unhelpful to other people. I also remembered FakeSteveJobs' recent rant against Christian intolerance, in which he offered the following interpretation of the Good Samaritan story. "Jesus, your big hero, was saying that if you have some rule or conventional wisdom that causes you to do harm to people, violate the goddamn rule." [FSJ December 2010]
So much for principles then.
I have previously written about the over-emphasis on principles within the discourse of enterprise architecture: What's Wrong With Principles
Like most things in life, the power of a principle depends on timing. Everyone knows the aphorism attributed to Victor Hugo: "There is nothing so strong as an idea whose time has come." But no one seems to know the wag who coined: "There is nothing so weak as an idea whose time has not yet come (or has passed)." See eg http://bit.ly/hID0YD .
ReplyDeleteSo a principle, like any idea, at the right place and time can galvanize and influence action. While at the wrong time, it is simply empty rhetoric. Unfortunately, we never seem able to predict such timing. We only observe it in hindsight.
Victor Hugo's aphorism, as well as Carmen Medina's reversal of it, indicates that the force of an idea changes over time. The history of ideas also shows that the meaning of ideas changes over time. As Nick knows, Gartner has a very simple theory of the changing force and meaning of technological ideas over time, which it calls the Hype Cycle. (See my comments on the Technology Hype Curve.)
ReplyDeleteBut I think there is an important difference between principles and other kinds of idea. Victor Hugo, we might note, changed his principles during the course of his life, responding flexibly and intelligently to the prevailing events and ideas of the time. When has a principle ever had the effects you describe?
I think the abolitionist principles that led to the end of slavery in the US are a great example of the power of "an idea whose time has come." I think the principles of the US Civil Rights Movement are another example. Darker examples might be Nazi ideology being "an idea whose time has come" in post WW I Germany; and the October Revolution in Russia, when the time came for the prinicples of Marx/Lenin.
ReplyDeleteOf course, proving the causality of ideas in shaping history is something historians have debated at least as long as they have debated the hero in history. I count myself a member of the "history as narrative" school (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history#Narrative_and_history ), and since good narrative is a narrative of ideas as much as it is actions, ideas and principles play a leading role in history.
I just noticed your contention that there is "an important difference between principles and other kinds of ideas." I don't really see a a clear distinction. I follow Rorty, who spoke mainly in terms of a "final vocabulary." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_vocabulary )
ReplyDeleteCould you elaborate on the difference between principles and other kinds of ideas?