Plans are useless!
The following (condensed) assertion is attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Planning is essential; plans are useless.”
I believe he was referring to the necessity for military commanders to be able to react instantly to changes in a battle, regardless of their original strategy. While the plan is expendable, the planning that goes into it is never wasted; planning is what informs the commander’s judgement in split-second decisions.
Today we are all engaged in a struggle for our planet’s life. Not for the planet; it will be fine, as it has through numerous mass extinctions in the distant past. But for the current ecosystem on which we humans depend. Actually I shouldn’t say “current” ecosystem, since a large fraction of it is already dead, thanks to our indiscriminate exploitation and disregard. But there is still enough left to support human civilization if we act promptly and with full commitment. We must adopt a “war footing” to deal with this mess, as did the world that Eisenhower led to victory.
So in what sense are plans useless in our struggle to save our ecosystem? A good example would be the goal of the Paris Climate Accord: to hold the rise in average global temperature due to greenhouse gas emissions to under 2 (and preferably under 1.5) degrees Celsius. This “plan” was the equivalent of Britain’s “appeasement” of Hitler in his annexation of neighbouring countries. Since we have almost reached a 1.4 C rise in the past century and the most optimistic projection of the effects of voluntary efforts of Paris signatories is that, “The rate of increase is starting to decrease,” we can forget that plan and start planning for a very hot world. Things are going to get as unpleasant as Europe in 1940. A “war footing” is being thrust upon us.
In that context, it is important to understand that any plan we make today will be hopelessly inappropriate within a year or two. We will need a new plan every few months. Since nothing can be accomplished without more or less universal cooperation, as long as we attempt to enforce that cooperation “from the top down” by diplomacy between governments, we will still be acting out Neville Chamberlain’s folly. The required level of cooperation can only be imposed “from the bottom up” by the people of Earth, who are moved not by plans but by a determination to make it stop.
While I was only an arm’s-length supporter of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, I was very encouraged by their refusal to list a fixed set of specific demands that could be suborned, co-opted, deconstructed and dismissed as naive by The Powers That Be. They simply wanted an end to the reign of TPTB and all the havoc wrought — intentionally or unintentionally — by same. They didn’t have a plan, they had an objective, a desire; and that fueled the movement, which lasted a lot longer than anyone expected. But the movement still needed more planning.
While TPTB on Wall Street are a big part of the problems we now face, they are not their source. We are. All of us who put those problems behind the cloak of invisibility that Doug Adams called “SEP” for “Somebody Else’s Problem”. All of us who drive big gas-guzzling cars and trucks because they’re cool and we like them. All of us who enjoy bluefin tuna sushi while we still can. All of us who buy soft drinks and water(!) in disposable plastic bottles because they are so much easier to throw away. All of us who fly to distant Marine Reserves to angle for gamefish species that have vanished everywhere else. All of us who are retired and dependent upon interest from our investments, whether directly or indirectly through pension funds whose managers will withdraw funds from corporations who make ethically responsible decisions that reduce profits.
Okay, I’m talking about myself. I am the source of the problem. But, like you, I am embedded in a system that assumes and enforces perpetual growth and expansion. Withdrawing from that involvement is going to take planning….
