Marginalizing Dissent: Engineering And The Public Hearing Process

In a core class for non-engineers at Boise State University, I focus on helping students understand the impact of engineering decisions on their individual and communal lives. I attempt to de-mystify engineering design, but also try to explain the engineer’s over-reliance on convergent thinking, and the dissonance response of engineers to project opposition (denying, marginalizing, or baffling the opposition through intentionally turgid language and the appeal to “special” expertise). We discuss Habermas and Discourse Ethics, and as one of the principal assignments, I have them attend and report on the public hearing required to enable federal funding for some local engineering project. The Idaho Department of Transportation, and the Ada County Highway District, because of their funding source and extensive range of projects, are the two main providers of hearing opportunities. The interesting thing is that the public hearings of both these agencies have moved from the town meeting model, and to the open house/poster session format—spreading the hearing over several hours, with individual stakeholder participation limited (by the call of nature, so to speak) to a portion of the designated time. While the new model allows for more intimate interaction between staff and stakeholders, it sharply curtails interaction between stakeholders themselves (stakeholders as a whole are fragmented into much smaller groups). Is this a blatant attempt to hijack the public discourse (weakening dissent by limiting the mutual support of dissidents)? Is it reasonable to attribute the drawbacks of this policy change to insensitivity rather than malice? Or perhaps contrary, are the benefits of the new format sufficient to justify the inherent reduction in dialogue between “civilians”? This paper will examine the change in public hearing format in light of the evolving, “historic” view of political thought; Hegel’s appeal to zeitgeist (world-process) and the universal (administrative) estate; and Habermas’ notions of deliberative politics. Let me begin with two related premises that are simply the opinion of the author: • the ostensive, legislative intent of the federal public hearing requirement is to empower stakeholders—giving them access to information, an opportunity to formulate informed opinions, and the power to change the proposed local use of federal funds before those funds have been rendered into mortar and steel; and • the esoteric, agency intent of the local public hearing is to demonstrate that a measured effort has been made to allow the previously unconsulted public an opportunity to impact the minds responsible for the proposed use of federal funds. Project designers have technical expertise, but need to stay in touch with the larger picture of local social concerns. Local stakeholders need to be adequately informed, and gain a sense that their concerns are being considered. Ethical deliberations regarding changes in the public P ge 12033.2 hearing process might be better understood within an evolving “historic” paradigm of social contingencies; in light of Hegel’s view i that political decisions (such as those involving engineered public works) should be controlled by a knowing bureaucracy (Hegel’s “universal estate”); and in consideration of public will-formation as an aspect of the “deliberative politics” discussed by Jürgen Habermas ii . The Historic View of Social Development At the Renaissance blossoming of western culture, science moved from a principal reliance on ancient, “deductive” disciplines (e.g., geometry, astronomy, and optics) to a reliance on the more “empirical,” Baconian sciences (e.g., Galileo’s two “new” sciences of dynamics and strength of materials). The parallel shift in moral theory was away from a divine, eschatological, “first principle” explanation—to an inductive reasoning from the empirical observations of nature. “Natural Rights” theory—perhaps finding full-flower in Thomas Jefferson and our own Declaration of Independence—was the attempt to ground ethics in scientific observation. But while technology made natural observations increasingly precise, and nature seemingly determinate; moral behavior had to be indeterminate (“ought” implies the freedom of choice). We could always catalogue moral observations (moral anthropology), but any objective basis of free morality had to transcend determinate experience. Hume’s problem of induction—that there is no “good” (i.e., deductive) reason to believe that unknown events will follow the pattern established by known events—caused serious problems for Natural Rights theory, and Kant’s “two realm” explanation (the phenomenal realm of determined behavior, and the noumenal realm of freedom) was an attempt to found moral theory on man’s historic (i.e., social) being, rather than in his natural (animal) behavior. But Kant recognized that political development toward increasing freedom (his Universal Cosmopolitan State iii ) was driven by the natural animosity between individuals, and the analogous, deadly posturing between individual states iv . This required humans to purchase political progress at a horrendous cost in human suffering, and was one of the reasons that Kant refused to turn against the French Revolution after it initiated the Reign of Terror. Hume’s objection to social contract theory (the collectivization of Natural Rights) was that governments more typically formed as a result of usurpation and conquest, rather than consent. Such a reality seemed to preclude “bloodless” revolutions. In a similar way, Burke complained that Natural Rights seemed to support imposed ideologies (such as those of the French Revolution), where ideologues try to pursue their own happiness by destroying everything (and everyone) that fails to conform to their ideology (i.e., the Reign of Terror). This acceptance of human suffering as a necessary component of social progress seemed to coalesce in the worldprocess theories of Hegel. Hegel and ‘World-Process’ Hegel’s view (early 19 th Century) of the cultural movement toward perfect freedom entails the creation of a universal estate to manage affairs for the agricultural and commercial (immediate and formal) estates, under the administration of a Civil Society. Civil Society itself is the second movement of his Ethical Life: created as families dissolve into the self-dependent players of a market economy, and leading ultimately to a constitutional state, international law, and something on the order of the Federation of States proposed by Kant. The three estates grant P ge 12033.3 representation to individual families (under the husband, as the family head) and recognition. The administration of Civil Society, assuming that justice prevails, develops unity and allows everyone personal freedom under an Ethical Life. However, Hegel was not a fan of universal suffrage, and felt that unified families, focused under the leadership of a father and self-renewing as each successive generation of children established their own families, might move beyond the constraints of “civil society” thinking, and develop free, ethical institutions within the modern state. Since women (according to Hegel) find their substantive destiny in the family, while men have their substantive life in the state, the assumption of justice and unity might not bear too close scrutiny (unity achieved at the injustice of institutionalized gender inequality is no unity at all). While perhaps inconsistent with 21 st Century America, there is some appeal to Hegel’s Civil Society reference to dedicated estates. First of all, engineers have a much better understanding of the physical requirements of their projects. While engineers are certainly not above being swayed by self-interest, most engineers are sincere in their respect for the public welfare, and want to see that welfare enhanced by their projects and through their expertise. Hegel may be right, and decisions concerning engineering projects with federal funding may be best left to the discretion of caring engineers; but this begs the question of why there should be public hearings at all. Nietzsche, in his response v to von Hartmann’s manipulation of Hegel’s “world-process,” agreed that ethics could not be based on any chimerical allusion to Natural Rights. But while Rousseau, Kant and Hegel posited a moral foundation in man’s historic (social) nature, and the inevitable movement toward global freedom, Nietzsche felt that an optimistic allusion to history and “world-process” would prove similarly fruitless. He agreed that his supra-historical view was nihilistic, and morally debilitating, but none-the-less felt his to be the inevitable conclusion of adequate reflection (and that the inevitable chaos would be embraced by “great” men—who would thus become noble, blonde beasts). The progress of historicism through the 19 th Century, culminating in the supra-historicism of Nietzsche, seemed callously willing to accept human suffering as the inevitable price of moral (political) progress. Unfortunately, the period of contemporary (“historic”) political thought seems characterized by the kind of painful ideologies that it was all-too willing to accept (e.g., the French Reign of Terror, the contemptuous injustice of Social Darwinism, and the 20 th Century clash between fascist and socialist political systems). Accepting benefit from such suffering seems slightly immoral in itself. But if pain and suffering has driven us to an ever-deeper appreciation of freedom, then perhaps it has led logically (in a Hegelian sort of way) to the kind of practical inclusiveness posited by Discourse Ethics. Assuming that the need for public hearings is legitimate—we need informed stakeholders (the ostensive premise) and grounded administrators (the esoteric premise, at least to the extent of culpable deniability)—it would seem that public discourse should be enhanced beyond anything envisioned by Rousseau, Kant, Heg