On the scale of each of our lives and each of the seven communities of which we are members (family, circle of friends, company, place of living, country, all human beings, all living beings), we too often let ourselves be lulled by illusions. We think that all it takes is for an action to be stated for it to be done. For example, all we have to do is boast about the efforts we’re going to make to practise a sport regularly, and we’ll think we’ve done enough for today; all we have to do is talk about the energy we’re going to save drastically, and we’ll rush off to the catalogs for vacations thousands of miles away; and, more generally, all we have to do is talk about the savings we’re going to make, and we’ll think the deprivations are enough.
In France, for example, there has been so much talk about budget savings, which everyone agrees are so urgent, that no one is bothered about actually making them. In Europe, we’ve heard so much about the need for a defense industry and a common army that we’re reassured by the idea that it already exists. And worldwide, so much has been said about the urgency of climate change that many believe that everything is on the way back to normal.
This cognitive bias is very difficult to overcome. Because each and every one of us can sincerely believe that our word is worth action; that public words are the announcement of certain action. And even more so, that a law or a voted budget is, by its very nature, bound to be implemented.
In reality, this is not the case: many laws are not applied, or are applied with great delay, because the implementing decrees are not published; many benefits are not distributed, because the beneficiaries are not informed; many savings are not made, because nobody checks that they are.
In no community (and in no country, to my knowledge) is there a clear mechanism for checking that words are followed by deeds.
On a personal level, who seriously thinks about checking at regular intervals that they have actually done what they promised to do? And even less so what he has promised others, if they don’t remind him. In business, it’s the same: many decisions are announced and only vaguely followed up, if at all.
On a national scale, there are highly sophisticated mechanisms to punish those who break the law; others to verify ex post the impact of a law. But no institution, anywhere, checks directly whether a law has really been implemented immediately and completely; whether the implementing decrees have been issued; whether previous texts have been set aside. In particular, there is little verification that negative laws, punitive decisions, budget cuts, restrictions on the use of polluting or harmful products, are actually implemented immediately and everywhere.
In France, for example, such control is not the task of the administration, nor of the administrative courts, nor of the judicial courts, nor of the Cour des Comptes. It’s nobody’s primary mission. So nobody does it. Unless there is a culture of rigor and integrity, a fanatical respect for one’s word and extreme political pressure on public officials.
One day, sooner than we think, reality will come knocking at our door. And when it comes, it will be terrible. Not for those who have procrastinated. But for all those who are and will be its victims. In other words, for the global stakes, for each and every one of us.
In France, many companies will perish because the bosses will not have checked that the decisions taken have been implemented. At government level, if radical budgetary reforms are not implemented (and not just announced) as soon as possible, a major financial crisis will soon be upon us, and the poorest will pay a very heavy price.
We urgently need to give words their true meaning; to consider them as demanding avant-gardes of the reality they announce. And not to reduce politics to a vague discourse floating on the zeitgeist.
Pere Borrell del Caso, Escaping criticism, 1874