Precautionary vs. Proactionary?

Proactionary WITH precautionary

How to begin? Let's start with the conclusion. As with many things, especially in the socio-political realm, everyone is a little right. The error or the disagreement in my opinion comes from degrees, or lack of moderation. So rather than it being precautionary vs. proactionary, maybe it should be proactionary WITH precautionary. Diligence and vigilance; expectation and acceptance of mistakes.

The proactionary as a response to the precautionary principle made many extreme assumptions that are plain wrong. Part of this of course is to illustrate their point but we have to acknowledge what is actually happening rather than an abstract extreme. Taking precautions is not equated with the entire annihilation of innovation and creative thinking. Yes it can “slow” down the process but if anything I could see it stimulating along this front. In addressing the potential impacts you can expand and even come up with new ideas and inspiration along the way. It is simply a different mode of thinking, not a complete cessation of the other.

The counterpoint to this of course is that we are not seers. Even through all of the risk assessment and asking groups to be affected how to do something with the least chance of a negative outcome, unforeseen things can still occur. Sometimes even monitoring isn’t enough. I think of Godzilla 2014 (and actually Bhopal too) where a denial of  detection and practiced neglect of monitoring respectfully were motivated by very human reasons. In Godzilla, they  (one small group of people) were proactionary, trying to hatch a monster for the sake of how cool and amazing and awesome it would be. It of course later caused Godzilla to emerge and wreck large sections of city murdering hundreds if not thousands of invisible people. While this is obviously fiction, it fully illustrates the danger of pursuing innovation and technology simply for the sake of pursuing it without forethought to the outcomes and impacts.

This also makes me think of, however, the argument or maybe the example rather historically of great inventions and great inventors and even artists. That those that are truly great are also a little crazy and it was only through stepping outside of the box that they got anywhere and were impactful or made progress. This notion has been subsumed into the proactionary approach. It is for some reason only by being a marginal thinker or visionary that progress can be made.

What would proaction + precaution look like?

For this I turn to a recent ethnography that I’ve been reading for Language and Gender called Mitzvah Girls by Ayala Fader. In this Hasidic Jewish community everyday, mundane, tiny practices are considered sacred and holy. By thinking about how to dress, how to bathe, how to eat, how to walk, etc. etc. and cultivating these actions in line with what is prescribed by the Torah and Rebbe, Hasidic Jews are constantly thinking about the impact and implications of their actions on the soul and holiness of themselves and their community. However, this doesn’t mean they always get it right. There is inevitably room for error and “honest” mistakes. An example from this book was a father approving a long, dark skirt for his daughter to wear not knowing that denim was actually banned because it was too Gentile. What this means is that even with careful thought about impact and consequences going into every single action, errors still occurred. Human errors.

As such, I would venture to make compositionalism a compromise. As LaTour demonstrates modernism is out. It no longer functions as a means of representing reality, people are understanding reality as inherently intertwined (and apparently for the French hasn’t been the case for a while anyway in regards to the pristine nature/people divide). We should be compsitionalists in taking this extreme amount of care and diligence in our actions. We should also be a little bit of a modernist and be forethinking and ask, how do we do this with the least amount of impact? We should hold the agents creating the technologies responsible just as they should care about the technologies they make. But there should also be the expectation and acceptance of unintended consequences. For example, as we’ve read about previously the non-intuitive outcome of protected areas actually harms more than it helps. Even in conservation efforts the idea of supply and demand, the market economy still applies.

Diligence + Vigilance

Thinking of a model for this, again in something I recently read about Japan’s volunteer agencies developing after the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995. After a fiasco involving well-meaning but sometimes in the way volunteers, an infrastructure and networks were developed so that in future disasters, it would be easier for volunteers to come and be effective. This meant coordination with quasi-governmental offices such as social services but the main point is that instead of people coming and volunteering spontaneously on their good will, they would look at listings and see what needed to be done and come and contribute. In the recent 3/11 disaster, this even went so far as to have pre-departure orientation before going into the disaster area and helping out. This kind of regulation is what the proactionaries are against, they would say it squashes individual spontaneity and productiveness. However, for the common person, those affected by the disaster, this was probably more helpful to have an organized way of receiving aid rather than completely relying the whims of individual people. Today, there are entire networks of volunteers who maintain training in disaster response that can be called upon when the next earthquake or tsunami happens.

While these disasters are (debateably) not man made, there is a parallel in this type of outlook. Yes Japan  builds seawalls to preemptively mitigate the damage of a tsunami (modernist) but also has a network in place for when even those are not enough (compositionalist). And this doesn’t necessarily rule out the spontaneity of volunteers either. When a disaster happens the volunteer agencies can try and keep it as organized as possible but inevitably people come and do what they want because they think it is the right thing to do. We can only hope that everyone involved truly thought out their actions and are taking care in what they do. Diligence and vigilance.

But…

I would, however, note that while I like to believe this to be plausible, that people are capable of thinking out the consequences of their actions in order to take the least damaging course, many are not. This takes a large amount of empathy that I think many, many people lack. We live in a world where ruthlessness for the bottom line is praised and crying or being vulnerable at higher levels of leadership is frowned upon. As such, like many any other social and political problems, it’s going to take a concerted effort on many fronts to change hearts and to change minds.

This goes back to the stories that we tell ourselves and each other. Even back to Deans Beans and virtualism where we make up stories and they shape reality to conform to their narrative. We have to tell ourselves and each other that more than just your mother and your father matter. We have to remind people that not just your future children matter, that there are more people worthy of life than just those that go to your church. This is not to erase priority, but cultivating a mindfulness where everyone matters, each individual human that makes up that 7 billion, each individual animal that makes up that population, each individual plant that makes up that ecosystem and environment so on. Stories that draw connections from the micro to the macro to make them real and relevant. This is of course a large task and I wouldn’t demand each individual to constantly carry these things in mind, that is impossible. Simply a way of thinking, an approach that is informed by this kind of story running in the background. This is one way where we could achieve that diligence in creating technologies for the future.