Experts and organizations losing trust
Because of the Web we are putting less and less trust in experts and organizations and more and more in people like us-our peers.
The European Union’s Lisbon Treaty was recently defeated in Ireland. One of the most remarkable things about the defeat was that practically every major organization was for it. Every major political party was for it. The business organizations were for it. The trade unions and farmers’ unions were for it. The churches basically supported it. Most newspapers were for it.
So why did it fail? Many reasons, but two major ones. The first was that people didn’t know what they were voting for. The text of the treaty was simply unreadable. There is an old saying: “Don’t buy a pig in a poke.” (Don’t buy a big without examining it.) Or as one voter put it: “If you don’t know, vote no.”
The second reason is that the Irish have become hugely skeptical of experts and organizations. When I was growing up on a small farm in rural Ireland, there were certain people you absolutely trusted: the priest, the doctor, the teacher, your local politician.
Since the foundation of the Irish state our family supported the Fine Gael political party. The idea that you would vote for any other party wasn’t even an idea. In fact, the idea that you would marry someone who was not a Fine Gael supporter was severely frowned on.
How times have changed. The church has had nothing but scandal. We now constantly unearth medical malpractice. Our teachers used to get children to memorize; now they have to teach them to think.
Our politicians, on balance, are not at all bad. Ireland has done extremely well over the last twenty years and our politicians played a key role in enabling this prosperity. Yes, there has been scandal and corruption, but much of it has now been rooted out.
But one thing is for sure; we don’t follow our politicians like sheep anymore. As a taxi driver told me, he went on the Web, looked up some stuff about the Lisbon Treaty, and decided to vote no.
The Web is about the informed, skeptical society. There is a break developing between this skeptical society and its experts, institutions and organizations. The organization can’t just say: “Trust us. Follow us. We know best.”
The posters for the No campaign were second person and direct, saying things like “IT’LL COST YOU: MORE TAX, LESS POWER”. Many of the posters for the Yes campaign had big pictures of the local politician. These posters were saying: ‘I’m your local politician. Trust me.’ “What we did with the poster campaign was cynical and wrong,” Leo Varadkar, a member of the Irish parliament, stated about his party’s campaign.
People go to the Web to find out what people like them think, and what other voices think. People today don’t give their trust blindly. And this is as true for commercial organizations as it is for political ones.
People want specifics; to dig deeper into an issue. Bland political messages or marketing jargon such as “solving tomorrow’s problems today” just don’t cut it anymore.
In the pre-Web, politicians and marketers saw people as sheep to be lead. But in the post-Web the sheep have turned into wolves hungry for the meat in the message.
Karl says:
Added on July 6th, 2008 at 5:02 pmSo you want us to “buy a pig in a poke” by never telling us what the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty was all about. Did the Irish do the right thing, we will never know!!!
Michael, in UK says:
Added on July 7th, 2008 at 11:39 am“Our teachers used to get children to memorize; now they have to teach them to think.”
Although in the past schools did place greater emphasis on learning facts (names of monarchs, key dates, multiplication tables etc) I thought the main criticism of current teaching is that it is training students to “just” answer exam/course work questions, so that skills in analysing and reasoning(thinking) were being insufficiently developed.
On the Lisbon treat and the Irish vote - read these quotes and decide what you think. The Lisbon treaty replaced the Constitutional treaty after that was rejected in at least two national referenda.
“The fundamentals of the Constitution have been maintained in large part… We have renounced everything that makes people think of a state, like the flag and the national anthem.”
Angela Merkel, German Chancellor - El Pais, 24 June 2007
“The substance of the constitution has been retained”.
Hans-Gert Poettering, president of the European Parliament - speaking to the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 26 June 2007
“The text consists, in effect, of a revival of a large part of the substance of the Constitutional Treaty”.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former French president and chief architect of the EU Constitution - personal blog, 26 June 2007
“All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way”.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, former French president and chief architect of the EU Constitution - EuroMoney seminar, June 2007
Source:
http://questionthat.me.uk/2008/03/how-different-are-lisbon-treaty-and-eu.html
Noel Rock says:
Added on July 14th, 2008 at 8:20 amMichael, man, the last two quotes are out of context, I’m not sure if you know, but maybe it’d be helpful:
“Here is the excerpt in question, which was Mr Giscard’s warning of what should not be done, as published in this newspaper on June 20th, 2007: “The latest brainwave is to preserve part of the innovations of the constitutional treaty, but hide them by breaking them up into several texts. The most innovative provisions would become simple amendments to the treaties of Maastricht and Nice. The technical improvements would be regrouped in a colourless, harmless treaty.
“The texts would be sent to national parliaments, which would vote separately. Thus public opinion would be led to adopt, without knowing it, the provisions that we dare not present directly.”
The last sentence was quoted by No campaigners Declan Ganley and Patricia McKenna in this newspaper during the referendum campaign and has appeared on No posters. None, however, quoted the subsequent two sentences: “This process of ‘dividing to ratify’ is obviously unworthy of the challenge at stake. It may be a good magician’s act. But it will confirm European citizens in the idea that the construction of Europe is organised behind their backs by lawyers and diplomats.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/0626/1214402981610.html
John says:
Added on July 15th, 2008 at 12:02 amWow… where to begin?
Teachers did not simply teach kids to memorize in the past. Yes, there was a lot of emphasis on learning facts, the assumption being that a solid basis of factual information is needed as a foundation for critical thinking.
You should talk to some educators, who will tell you that in the past students (at least at university level) were able to think, but now we’re seeing students who are utterly unable to do research, delve into topics in any depth, evaluate the information they do find (usually via Google) and generally have real trouble with critical thinking.
It’s reasonable to skeptical of expertise; it’s quite something else to devalue expertise, as if deep subject knowledge doesn’t make someone more qualified to explain a topic and offer an informed opinion.
I have no opinion on the Irish vote, not being Irish or European, but if indeed the treaty was rejected because no one understood it, aren’t experts who can explain the complex legalistic language of a treaty and identify the real impact it will have on a country precisely what IS needed and ought to be valued?
Maybe Irish or European politics these days are radically different than what we see here in the US; here, political dialog has degraded horribly, with a population that offers up its opinions on the benefits of our two candidates’ economic proposals without the slightest knowledge of economics, debates foreign policies without any idea where Iraq is on a map or that anything has been happening in Zimbabwe, etc.
None of this strikes me as an example of the web producing an “informed” society. Skeptical, yes. But informed? There’s not much to suggest that. We have a society that loves tiny bits of information, but shows signs of losing its ability to evaluate that information’s quality or aggregrate it into wisdom.