From F. A. Hayek’s 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society”:
But those who clamor for “conscious direction”—and who cannot believe that anything which has evolved without design (and even without our understanding it) should solve problems which we should not be able to solve consciously—should remember this: The problem is precisely how to extend the span of our utilization of resources beyond the span of the control of any one mind; and, therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.
The problem which we meet here is by no means peculiar to economics but arises in connection with nearly all truly social phenomena, with language and most of our cultural inheritance, and constitutes really the central theoretical problem of all social science. As Alfred Whitehead has said in another connection, “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” This is of profound significance in the social field. We make constant use of formulas, symbols and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up.
Something from R. G. Tugwell’s 1932 piece, “The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez-Faire”:
Of course we were not trying to attain any of the institutions we have. They resulted from the chance conjunction of changes. Only the backward look, determined by the view from some contemporary hillock, gives history a meaning. We have, nevertheless, as we are just now dimly beginning to see, the possibility, in a world of discontinuous development and chance combination, of producing a new history guided quite consciously toward foreseen ends.
And finally, an opinion piece by David Brooks about the comedown that many are experiencing after having taken delight in Obama’s rhetoric and then subsequently finding that it lacks much actual substance:
Up until now The Chosen One’s speeches had seemed to them less like stretches of words and more like soul sensations that transcended time and space. But those in the grips of Obama Comedown Syndrome began to wonder if His stuff actually made sense. For example, His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?
2 Comments
Some thoughts:
“if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?” I think it’s reasonable that if people feel that they don’t have the agency to effect change, if they lose their sense of dignity and feel powerless to influence the running of their own country, they might just “wait” around until something in the power structure changes and some dynamic person comes in promising to restore their dignity, to restore them to power, to bring about the change they want. I’m not saying Obama *will* bring about the change they want, but just that this particular claim does in fact make sense.
As for the first passage, it makes me think of not just the trend toward lack of conscious control in production, but in our own lives, in our own social interactions and even our own interactions with ourselves. We’re supposed to just live life in the moment, enjoy things, without really *thinking* about them and making them meaningful. Action without the mental processing of that action makes our lives meaningless. Only when we take charge and conscious awareness of everything we do – typing this message, playing with my toenail, deciding to live another day – do we become Human.
Your more philosophical outlook isn’t what Hayek was discussing, but is interesting nonetheless.
In Hayek’s argument, the desirability of non-conscious production is that it allows beneficial outcomes without the need for producers to be compelled by external forces. It’s basically an argument against central planning: we should seek to “create” (I think he might oppose that word) modes of production that allow individuals to see the benefit of their own production, rather than having some external authority inculcate modes of production for their supposed benefit.