Arendt, Information, & Democracy

Ran across a great interview with Hannah Arendt from 1964. Amazing how relevant her remarks remain, when most of what is said today is worthless tomorrow. In one part of the interview, she gets to the nut of politics, which is who makes the decisions and how that process is structured and organized, essentially including what information is used in determining any decision.

Arendt talks about how perspective plays a great role in how we process information. Speaking at the end of the Modern Era, she notes individual perspective is increasingly confused, an individual’s orientation in the larger society problematic. She says,

“First of all, this inability to be truly oriented applies not only to the general populace, but every other stratum of society, I would even say to the statesman.

“The statesman is surrounded, encircled by an army of experts. And actually, the question of action here is between the statesman and the experts. The statesman has to make the final decision. He can hardly do that realistically, since he can't know everything himself. He has to take from experts, from experts who in principle always must contradict each other.”

This is a fundamental understanding of the structure of information processing that grew across modern society. Even those at the top, and where Arendt is using statesman, you could just as well substitute CEO, “can't know everything.” The statesman is responsible for bringing about the separate specialists’ (experts) understandings into a generalized whole, in so doing deciding the public. Through the statesman, this combination of specialist understanding and decision making is politics.

She continues,

“Every reasonable statesman gets opposing expert opinions because he has to see the issue from all sides. He has to judge between them and this judging is an extremely mysterious process in which the community spirit is to be expressed.”

This is an especially important point. In the past, any effective statesman would seek a variety of advise. Today, that's not so true, established thinking seeks only reinforcement. In addition, in the political realm, established views come attached to established power, who have zero interest in seeking a wider spectrum of views and the power to drastically narrow the spectrum. It is not by accident one seeks in vain any public figure today who could rise to the once respected title of statesman — no matter what gender.

Next, Arendt talks about the same process of information availability and decision making among the general public:

“Now, as far as the populace is concerned, I would say wherever people come together, it doesn't matter the size, public interests come into play and the public sphere is formed. And in America, where there are still these spontaneous associations, which then split up again, the kind of associations that Tocqueville already described, you can see this very clearly.”

“Some public interests concern a specific group of people, in a neighborhood, or even a house, or in a city, or some other sort of group. Then these people will get together and be very good at being able to act publicly in these matters since they oversee them.

And there, believe me, the difference between the statesman and the man on the street in principle isn't very great.”

This is an excellent democratic understanding. When Arendt was speaking, the associations first documented by Tocqueville as fundamental to democracy in America, still existed, though greatly deteriorated. Today, they barely exist, thus, so too democracy in America. These associations were organized information processes, people came together defining and creating public. Democratically organized, these associations pluralistically decided as opposed to the individual statesman’s decree.

Arendt lays out the politics of information, which in this century has become an even more essential component of society. Our current societal organization of information is entirely specialized. Little value is placed in bringing together disparate specializations to create the whole — the public. It is the failure of politics.

Today, specialization creates an infinity of experts, who are incessantly trotted out as advocates or rationalizers for any given action, representing the limited expertise of established interests. Alternatives are shunted aside with decision making becoming ever more centralized.

In regards to the inability of any person in this era to know everything or even know any one thing, the key questions are what information is used to make decisions and who makes decisions. In a society ruled by specialist expertise, the wise words from another era of Justice Louis Brandeis prove useful:

“My early associations were such as to give me greater reverence than I now have for the things that are because they are. I recall that when I began to practice law I thought it awkward, stupid, and vulgar that a jury of twelve inexpert men should have the power to decide. I had the greatest respect for the judge. I trusted only expert opinion. Experience of life has made me democratic. I began to see that many things sanctioned by expert opinion and denounced by popular opinion were wrong.”

In decision making processes, we can all be equal. How public decisions are made defines politics. A democratic reform of politics begins with reorganizing the current architecture of information, a necessary explosion of associations providing perspective, networked together to create new public space.

In this regard, Arendt concludes,

“Politics is action, all action is a venture, this venture is only possible with trust in humanity, which means, quite difficult to precisely formulate, but a fundamental trust in what's human in all people. Otherwise it couldn't exist.”

I've long asserted belief in mythical gods is easy, faith in your very real fellow human beings, very difficult, it’s tested every god damn day.

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