This article is from WeChat public account: Economic Observer Observer (ID: eeoobserver) , author: Susie, from the title figure: Figure worm
Large modern society is becoming more and more complex and fragile. The large scale, high mobility and high correlation allow crisis to spread instantly and geometrically, which makes people appear more and more passive in responding to crisis. It seems to have become the conclusion.
It seems that countless facts are supporting this conclusion. The rapid evolution of social formation and technology is beyond our control. Relying on technological progress to conquer the natural transformation of society suddenly became suspicious, and people began to fear the irreversible consequences that might arise. Technological progress itself often becomes a source of chaos.
Facing this fast-changing world, past knowledge and coping experiences are easily out of date, which results in the institutional mechanisms and coping systems based on these knowledge becoming obsolete and thus overwhelmed. The complexity of social operation has long exceeded the cognitive scope of ordinary people. People have to rely heavily on experts to provide professional knowledge, but how to form synergy among experts in different fields has become a new problem and requires administrative experts to cooperate.
Politicians who represent public opinion must, on the one hand, build a platform for experts to allow them to fully display their talents, and on the other hand, they must set up appropriate firewalls to block pressure from populists, so that experts can be relatively neutral. Think and solve problems from a professional perspective. At the same time, they have to prevent the self-interest grouping of experts, which requires professional judgment and the opinions of corresponding experts. After a few cycles, people will find more and more expert and professional opinions, and making decisions more and more difficult.
To make matters worse, the explosion of information has not made it easier to collect information, because invalid, false, and even “toxic” information floods it, and the audience seems to be more, thus forming the so-called “false public opinion” , Making politicians tired of coping.
As a highly complex and fast-moving societyTo a large extent, it relies on trust and inertia. For example, people rarely question whether there will be large-scale fraud in financial institutions, and whether there will be large-scale misdiagnosis of medical institutions. Therefore, once a link or a local system is biased, Out of order and out of control, it is particularly easy to cause panic. People hope that related problems can be resolved quickly and social operation can quickly return to the right track.
However, because of the complexity and high speed of social operations, politicians are even more fussy about the operating system conversion involved in correcting the problem, because the possibility of derailment caused by braking and braking is itself prohibitive. Just like a high-speed driver, considering the huge cost of derailment and the unpredictable effect, they often dare not choose to brake suddenly, and let the situation spread, which is ultimately difficult to clean up.
People can also corroborate it from the perspective of system theory. With the deepening of globalization, human society has become an out-of-the-box community of destiny, operating together as a highly connected large system. In this high-speed large-scale system, there are also various subsystems running at the same time. These subsystems are linked and interdependent, which affects the whole body. This “guarantees” the contagion of the crisis. However, it is frustrating that the operation of these subsystems does not always form a joint force, but often forms a mutual hedge, which not only reduces the possibility of “common will”, but also affects some subsystems. Self-healing creates constraints.
The above analysis is reasonable and full of examples, but if you think about it, you will find that human beings are more and more effective in responding to crises and performing better and better. For example, it is unimaginable to be totally helpless or do nothing in the face of a pandemic. The human knowledge community has been formed and is playing an increasingly huge role. Although there is no lack of magic and a sense of powerlessness, there are more and more tools and solutions available after all, and with the information sharing and interaction With the increasing frequency, the time to find the answer is also shortened.
In the era of the information and action community, the possibility of concealing disasters and epidemics and causing irreparable disasters is also significantly reduced. Every time a disaster comes, people will be linked to history, but everyone thinks that it is unimaginable to have millions of deaths due to epidemics and natural disasters. Although tolerance for pain and loss varies from country to country, generally speaking, “thousands” of casualties are already in the category of “horrifying”.
I feel that it is becoming more and more difficult to cope with the crisis. First of all, it may be due to the “illusion” caused by the explosion of information. The flood of information itself will lead to the feeling of “crisis clusters”. In the past, distant and indifferent disasters now seem to come to our door in minutes. And the speed of the spread of some outbreaks seems to provide a solid foundation for this feeling and strengthen it.
The spread of democracy and the expansion of the right to know have also raised people’s awareness of subjectivity. However, people’s rationality has not increased at the same rate. People’s vulnerability to fear and the ability to mobilize public resources have eroded themselves. It has risen exponentially. They are no longer reconciled to their passive roles as targets of policies and responses, full of initiative or blindness. The arrival of the era of empathy has made people feel full of participation in distant sufferings. People are not allowed to remain indifferent and let the relevant parties do nothing.
While people ’s expectations for disaster and crisis management have risen sharply, their ability to tolerate suffering and losses has plummeted. A pandemic like the Spanish flu and huge loss of life and property are considered intolerable. Pre-modern event. There is also a decline in patience. People have become accustomed to seeing the effects in time. Even if people are fully aware that some crises and poor response are caused by institutional reasons, they are unwilling to bear the time and other costs of structural change.
This will naturally lead to some short-term behaviors, which will solve the problem quickly on the surface, but bury the hidden dangers of recurrence again and again. Another factor constraining structural change is the cost allocation mechanism. Although in the age of empathy, people are unequivocal about avoiding their own costs. The more people who have more refuge resources, the more they have the ability to lobby, so that more fair and effective solutions are difficult to produce. This selfishness and cynicism of the elite will in turn trigger populist frenzy, sometimes It will destroy all the solutions of rational reality. The recurrence and prolongation of problems caused by structural changes and dystocia will also make people feel that crises become more and more difficult and difficult to cope with.
Of course, acknowledging that the crisis is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with is to some extent an “illusion” and does not mean that people can be complacent. There is always room for improvement. In addition to the structural changes mentioned above, there are many ways to improve the operational efficiency of individual and global societies from the perspective of systems and networks.
In this era of great connection, the behavioral patterns of organized societies are obviously easier to predict, and it is easier to form synergy, while atomic societies are obviously easier to act blindly, and energy is easier to hedge or dissipate. Therefore, it is imperative to improve the degree of organization of society. This is especially important for societies that lack modern organization with modern network tools. It is sad that the modern network superimposed on the pre-modern organization and management model seems to be a more common standard configuration, and the resulting governance anomaly has become the norm.
How to make each subsystem reach a desired resonance is a greater challenge. It can ensure that the subsystem can detect problems in a timely manner, and repair the problems through independent innovation in a small range, so that they will not spread.Extending the overall situation and coordinating the overall situation. In the case of a local system collapse, it can pool the resources and energy of the entire system for repair, and at the same time maintain the normal operation of the entire system. It is not easy for any large society, let alone the global This huge system of society.
From the perspective of the global large system, there is a very large subsystem that is most terrible. On the one hand, this subsystem is connected, nested, and resonant with the global system on many levels. On the other hand, the operating system of this subsystem is relatively closed and the self-healing mechanism is relatively rigid. When problems occur in this subsystem, how to help it self-repair more effectively so that it does not hardly decouple or endanger the operation of the entire system, and is better compatible with large systems during the repair process, I am afraid it is a new round Globalization is stable and far-reaching, and it is also the biggest challenge faced by the smooth operation of this huge system in the global society.
This article is from WeChat public account: Economic Observer Observer (ID: eeoobserver) , author: Susie