Please, Just the Evidence

Many policy issues are tractable, if not solvable, if we limit ourselves to the evidence and if we possess the collective will and unbiased capacity to serve the Common Good.

Just the facts ma'am.
― Joe Friday, Fictional Television Character

Robert Geyer uses a Hoylake Beach canvas to illustrate a compelling concept known as the Stacey Diagram. The Stacey Diagram is the brain-child of Ralph Stacey, a scholar who studies complexity and creativity in organizations.


Complexity and the Stacey Diagram from Brightmoon Media on Vimeo.

From the Agreement vs. Certainty axes in the Stacey Diagram, one might infer how governing bodies become mired in the quicksand of partisan groupthink and self-serving agendas.

The quicksand of partisan groupthink and self-serving agendas, particularly the quicksand that is the fact-averse and evidence-bereft terrorists who hijack rational discourse and media cycles by making outlandish, patently false, or inflammatory actions and assertions (e.g, Political Personality Sarah Palin or Russian President Vladimir Putin), consistently fails to serve the Common Good.

A governing body with the will and capacity to drive policy from evidence, rather than from a the dull blade of a partisan political ax, or from the battle ax of a power-brokering personal agenda, has much greater potential to elevate the Common Good.

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed. ― Woodrow Wilson

A Big Narrative

Credit: Alyson Hurt / NPR,
graphic by Andree Valley

Tiny zircon crystals found in a remote part of Western Australia known as Jack Hills are dated at 4.4 billion years old.

Looking at an info-graphic that accompanies an NPR article reporting on the dating of Earth's oldest rocks, I am struck by how comparatively recent humans arrived on the existential scene.

I am also struck by how willfully ignorant it is that many cultures deify a human-featured god in the form of (insert heralding trumpets) an adult male.

Perhaps what we share most deeply as humans is an unanswered need for a compelling existential narrative ― A Big Narrative.

I follow the narrative of cosmology and earth science. This narrative satisfies and reassures me as it unfolds. This narrative is a page-turner with potential plot points as new information arrives on the doorstep of scrutiny.

I am rapt.


REFERENCES

• At 4.4 Billion Years Old, Oz Crystals Confirmed As World's Oldest, NPR, Nell Greenfieldboyce, 24 February 2014.
• Oldest dated rocks, Wikipedia.