Review-eng-vernee,j.p.(2009) Our Icebergs Are Melting

Our icebergs are melting A few observations on ‘Our Iceberg is melting’ versus ‘Collapse’ Jan Vernee (freetrader) 10/2009

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Kotter, J. & Rathgeber,H. (2005) - Our Iceberg is melting. Changing and succeeding under any conditions.

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Diamond, J (2005) - Collapse. How societies choose to fail or survive.

John Kotter is a ‘leadership and change guru’ from Harvard Business School. Based on numerous studies of organizations he formulated an eight step method for change in an earlier book. In Our Iceberg is melting he illustrates this method by telling a fable of a colony of penguins living on an iceberg that is melting. This creates a crisis which they overcome by implicitly using Kotter’s method. According to the booklet, it should be applicable for organizations and nations alike. Since in the fable his method of change management is applicated to an entire society, one could even take it as a political philosophy (I think). In Collapse, Jared Diamond analysis several historic societies and the way they collapsed or survived crises that had environmental aspects. Norse Greenland and Easter Island being amongst the ones that failed, Japan and Tokipia that succeeded. I started reading ‘Our Iceberg’ because of changes needed in the organization where I work. But being on a self-appointed project about the causes and solutions to the environmental crisis, I end up looking at it in a more sociological and politicophilosophical way.

Method The eight step method for ‘succeeding under any conditions’ as stated in ‘our iceberg’: 1. Set the stage 1.1. Create a sense of urgency 1.2. Pull together a guiding team 2. Decide what to do 2.1. Develop the change vision and strategy 3. Make it happen 3.1. Communicate for understanding and buy in 3.2. Empower others to act 3.3. Produce short term wins 3.4. Don’t let up 4. Make it stick 4.1. Create a new culture Although the fable is a very charming story of mostly loveable and admirable penguins, as is the way of methods, it can be used to achieve anything. From the loftiest (rescue humanity) to the most devilish (organize the Endlösung): It is a means that can be used to any end. In fact I can see some parallels with ‘methods’ 1

used by Jesus in creating a new religion, Buddhism striving towards Enlightenment, Lenin and the Russian revolution. I’d like to point out a number of characteristics of this / any method for change: 

Facts play no role; they are taken to be undisputed by the change team. They have been established once and for all by the experts. This is a technocratic aspect.

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Morality plays no role; this method as a method is about ‘succeeding under any conditions’, not about fair play. This is a machiavellist aspect.

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Faith in social engineering, the manufacturability (Dutch: maakbaarheid) of people, organizations and societies. How else can you claim to succeed under any circumstances? This is a thoroughly modernist aspect.

Content Although the method is ‘empty’, i.e. devoid of specific personal, cultural, or any other context, the fable works with content that seems somehow to be an essential part of what is happening. To name a few: 

A situation is constructed where everyone is forced to have the same overarching interest: to survive the meltdown. In real-life organizations one can always look for another job, and examples are known where managers earned a lot of money while the ship sank.

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The ‘guiding team’ is headed by the leader of the penguin society and rather surprisingly this happens to be a very benevolent, able and wise leader. This enables the telling of a story where no real revolution has to take place; at the end of the day the old guard mostly stays on the job.

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In real-life this can be quite problematic. It is here where Diamond is much more critical of leadership. In a number of historic cases as well as in modern US, he identifies an elite that sticks to its own privileges and ways of living, while letting others take the damage. They protect themselves from the impact of the changes for as long as possible, ‘thus buying themselves the privilege of being the last ones to die’.

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In fact (according to Diamond) in most cases, it is the elite that get entangled in a status competition amongst themselves, which is a big part of the problem. E.g. on Easter Island this was competition about who could have his underlings built the biggest statue. At some point it must have been clear to the leaders that this was using up all the forest (gliders for the statues). But none of them could afford to stop the insanity and having the smaller statue and thus having lesser status, being a less powerful leader. On the short term status is more important than the fate of the island on the long term.

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What to do with such leaders is a question that in real-life cannot be avoided. It either leads to promoting them to harmless places or to revolution.

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Epistemology of the leaders vs. the masses. The first woman and the leader of the community are persuaded by carefully presenting facts and theories and a lot of discussion. Opposed to that the masses seem to be a lot more intelligent; they can be persuaded by a few facts and a few sweeping rhetorical questions of a charismatic leader. If it where a democracy, it would have been the old tension between enlightenment democracy (where decisions are taken on rational grounds that everybody understands) - and mass democracy (follow the leaders and the 2

slogans), the tension between democracy and leadership. In all its innocence the story drives home this point: enlightenment democracy is an illusion, people are too stupid, the situation too complex. We need ‘realpolitik’ if we are to be saved. 

A number of antagonistic forces are identified and neutralized in specific ways: o

Irrational fear mongering. Nono as an exemplary of all those people that see any change and any venture into the unknown as highly dangerous and surround is with the vision of extreme disasters. The professor is put to use here. However, his constant arguing with Nono, is not the free and open discussion of the Enlightenment, but functions as a basketball player covering another: it merely prevents Nono from acting.

o

People who are afraid to be left out in the new situation. The old kindergarten teacher. Here behavior and feelings are seen as irrational. She is coaxed towards a more compliant and optimistic behavior by the …

o

Obsolete cultural habits. Old habits might be harmful in the new circumstances. It is irrational to hang on to them. In the fable it is the children that push their parents towards new behavior patterns.

o

This is a point that Diamond confirms with historic material. E.g. The Norse Greenlanders that stuck to their food patterns of eating flesh instead of fish. Would they have started eating more fish, living more like the Inuit, they might have survived. This also has to do with status: only poor people eat fish. And no one wants to look poor.

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Point is, that in a method where the facts play no role, any resistance to the change team has to be identified as ‘irrational’. The only question for the change team is how to channelize the resistance, neutralize it. Luckily a lot of methods are available these days. On the individual, the political as well as the massmedia level. Among my personal favorites are the Broad Societal Discussion (Brede Maatschappelijke Discussie) (nuclear energy is save), and the objective scientific information campaign (genetically manipulated food is good for us).

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So I think the method should have one more explicit step under ‘make it happen’: -

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Deal with antagonistic forces (in a ruthless way)

Becoming nomads. Although in the method the cultural change could be in any direction as the circumstances ask for, the fable is highly suggestive of one specific change. On this meta level it says that circumstances are always changing, so the best for everyone is to be nomads – if not in the immediate physical sense, then in our minds. Always be prepared for changes, don’t cling to cultural habits. We should no longer see a specific culture and its values as part of our identities. As Marx already stated, ‘all that is solid melts into air’ (and he was not speaking of an iceberg).

Our icebergs really are melting Latest predications are that within ten years the North Pole will be free of ice in the summer and free of ice around the year only ten years after that. Luckily for them, penguins live on the South Pole. The message of this story about the penguins seems clear to me. Don’t wait until everyone understands / is willing to understand what is happening and what we should do about it. We need a Leninist vanguard party that understands the objective interests of humanity and organizes the saving of the world in a ruthless way. Any 3

resistance to this vanguard party will be identified as coming from ‘class enemies’ and has to be neutralized. The vanguard party is allowed to do this, because it is working for the good of mankind. For this vanguard party to operate, democracy as it is does not have to be abolished; it is enough that the vanguard party takes control of it. The only question that remains is: who is going to organize the vanguard party, where are the charismatic leaders that will take hold of the situation? I think at one time the people of the Club of Rome where willing to do this. To wit, this is if you believe in unconstrained social engineering, and have no doubt about the facts. Personally I don’t doubt the facts, but I think the 20th century has proved that an unconstrained believe in social engineering in all cases leads to totalitarianism. So, probably it is either that or us falling from the earth in the next century or so.

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Citations Marx on melting The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It ... has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment” ... for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation ... Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. (Marx & Engels / The Communist Manifesto, cit. Wikipedia)

Machiavelli - means versus ends He praised men for knowing what they wanted and knowing how to get it, and he blamed them for not knowing what to do or not daring to do it; he scarcely ever passed judgments on their ultimate purposes. (John Plamenatz / Man and Society / Machiavelli)

Leninist vanguard party according to Georg Lukács (1) It is this that demonstrates that the Leninist form of organization is inseparably connected with the ability to foresee the approaching revolution. For only in this context is every deviation from the right path fateful and disastrous for the proletariat; (2) If events had to be delayed until the proletariat entered the decisive struggle united and clear in its aims, there would never be a revolutionary situation. (3) But the masses can only learn through action; … (4) For the stringency of the demands made on party members is only a way of making clear to the whole proletariat (…) where their true interests lie, and of making them conscious of the true basis of their hitherto unconscious actions, vague ideology and confused feelings. (Georg Lukács - Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought)

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