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new-classical · 3 years

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A Draft Critique of the Meritocritique

The big problem with critiques of meritocracy is that the critics are rarely clear about they want instead. Mere calls to “be better” are just the Nirvana Fallacy, and aren’t worth addressing. And those contributing to the “meritocritique” aren’t usually even calling for a replacement for meritocracy, they’re just loosely suggesting some kind of redefinition of merit—often holistic approaches instead of SAT scores, even though elite schools and private employers already use a holistic approach.

I recently looked for empirical papers that looked at one way to compare meritocracy to some concrete alternative: Are Ivy grads in today’s SAT era better or worse than those that graduated before the SAT era?

George W. Bush, for example, was at Yale just around the time that SAT scores started mattering more, and some profiles of W noticed the tension in the Ivies at the time—old money competing in the classroom against smart outsiders. It was just a fast-enough transition that an enterprising economist could try using it as a natural experiment that asked a question like this:

Are there more or fewer Nobel laureates/U.S. Senators/patent holders/CEOs/leading philanthropists from one era rather than another, adjusting for the expected time trends? Does it look like a structural break in graduate quality?

I couldn’t find much of anything; though since it’s outside my area, perhaps I’m not searching efficiently. But here’s one interesting paper, looking at CEO performance by using 2 measures of stock performance, published in a good management journal:

“We found that an Ivy degree granted before 1960 did not confer any performance advantage; the opposite was true for degrees granted after that date. Thus, the value from an Ivy degree is derived not so much from the social capital conferred during the earlier era of social elite selection, but rather the talent associated with selection in the more recent meritocratic era.”

That’s not a clean test, since it really is just lumping all CEOs older than 55 in one group, and all under 55 in another, but by measures of both statistical significance and economic significance, the Old Boys’ Network looks at most half as valuable as the New Meritocrat’s SAT-Infused Diploma. The cynical “Matthew Effect” would predict that the value of an Ivy degree should increase with age as your network of Ivy insiders grows tighter and more powerful, but in real life it shrank—just what you’d expect if SAT-driven college admissions were actually a good way to find real-world, practical talent.

This is just one test—the world needs more. But the world also needs more than mere lamentations about how meritocracy is far from perfect.

Since the meritocritique is so vague, let’s consider nepotism and clientelism as the alternatives—if the meritocritiquers have a better concrete alternative, I hope they’ll spell it out.

But alas, economists usually blur together nepotism, clientelism, and corruption, and since the vague critics of meritocracy are really really sure that they are against corruption, it’s hard to point to evidence on the costs of nepotism and clientelism that holds corruption constant.

That said, I think the corporate governance literature has a relevant, non-utopian message: That the good old days of not-too-meritocratic corporations, the kind that JK Galbraith wrote about in The New Industrial State, were actually terrible, and that the relatively more meritocratic LBO era of Milken et al. was much better for the world, warts and all. As an SAT-style analogy:

Meritocracy is to corporate raider America as non-meritocracy is to pre-LBO America

Nostalgia for the comfy old days when insiders ran cozy corporate clubs is wildly misplaced, and likewise the utopianism of a more comfortable, less rough-and-tumble, not-too-meritocratic elite selection process is likewise misplaced. I’d turn to Shleifer and Vishny’s influential paper, “Survey of Corporate Finance” on this. Searching for the words “family” and “insider” in their paper gets as some of this.

To exaggerate only slightly, if meritocracy imposed a huge cost, then I’d expect current Italian and pre-Asian-Financial-Crisis Thai firms to be ruling the world: familial capitalism and crony capitalism should be winning corporate models.

Again, it’s hard to know what alternative to compare meritocracy to—vague utopian hopes of turning to “true meritocracy” seem to be the norm. Until the critique of meritocracy arrives at something like, “We want meritocracy done better, and he have a practical way to achieve it,” we should just treat it the way we treat complaining about death and taxes—to be ignored by serious people.

A non-utopian critique of meritocracy would probably have to start by providing serious evidence that the spoils system and at-will employment in government helped cause prosperity and human flourishing, and that the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, on net, hurt prosperity and human flourishing.

A non-utopian meritocritique should probably also offer evidence that the Foreign Service Officer Test is, on net, bad for the State Department and that the U.S. military should stop using the Armed Forces Qualifying Test to screen out military recruits. If you’re serious about the meritocritique, I suspect you’ll have to be serious about dramatically reducing the role of test scores in U.S. government institutions. Now that’s a critique I’d be interested to read.

-Garett Jones

#meritocracy spoils afqt gmu economics publicadministration FSOT

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astranemus · 5 years

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Healing the bifurcation of Nature allows natural philosophy to avoid committing what Whitehead called “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” which is what Einstein falls prey to when he dismisses lived experience as a dream and falsely concretizes a conjectured geometrical model as though it was identical to actual Nature. Of course, as the history of modern science has made evident, appearances are often deceiving. Taking lived experience seriously doesn’t mean accepting reality as it first appears to us. The Earth is not flat and is not orbited by the Sun. As Whitehead says in the excerpt above, we instinctively search for deeper realities and are not satisfied with superficial appearances. There is always more than what at first meets the eye. But the dismissal of our lived experience of temporal becoming in favor of an atemporal theoretical model asks us to accept that Nature is less than our experience reveals. To dismiss lived time would be to lose the thread of experience that makes scientific reflection and experimentation possible in the first place. Even the mind-bending paradoxes of contemporary theoretical physics are, according to Latour, “child’s play in comparison with the multiplicity and complexity of the dimensions that are simultaneously accessible to the most minimal experience of common sense.” Inheriting the protests of Bergson and Whitehead, Latour invites us to return from outer space to re-inhabit the solid ground of our common sense experience. The interlacing ecological complexity of our everyday experience of standing on earth beneath the sky, enveloped within an atmosphere alongside many millions of unique species of plants, animals, and other human beings, makes even the mathematical quantum and relativistic realms of theoretical physics look like toy models in comparison. The world of common sense experience is even more difficult to fathom than the abstract micro- and macroscopic worlds modeled by physicists, since, as Latour reminds us, the former “has been infinitely less explored than the other!” We have as much to learn from artisans and philosophers as from scientists about the textures of this world, our world.

Matthew T. Segall, Time and Experience in Physics and Philosophy: Whiteheadian Reflections on Bergson, Einstein, and Rovelli

#text #quote #Matthew T Segall #Time and Experience in Physics and Philosophy #Whitehead #Alfred North Whitehead #Bergson #Henri Bergson #Einstein #Albert Einstein #Rovelli #Carlo Rovelli #physics #philosophy #time #experience #science

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johnsparker · 5 years

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Ignorance The Buddha describes ignorance as one of the fundamental causes of suffering. Many Buddhist schools interpret ignorance in line with Whitehead’s fallacy of misplaced concreteness. We have an idea, an abstraction, that we call our “ego”—the “I” or “me.” We confuse this idea-ego with our actual, true identity and then act as if the idea is more real and more important than our own infinite depths.

The Long Trajectory by Dr. Eric M. Weiss

#commonplace book #ego #ignorance

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ethanjsomers · 3 years

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A Precis on Chapter 1 of Process and Reality

Find this book here, and find a great resource on Whitehead here.

Process and Reality is the seminal work from Alfred North Whitehead that has influenced the philosophical world greatly, spawning off all sorts of secondary literature. Originally a lecture series given at the University of Edinburgh in the late 1920s, Process and Reality sets out his metaphysical musings and in Chapter one Whitehead focuses on setting the stage by discussing large picture views on the very nature of philosophy itself. He divides his chapter into six parts which I will individually discuss and look at the main themes he espouses and lays importance upon.

Like any good philosopher Whitehead begins his first section with a definition, and will continue to focus on defining his terms throughout the chapter. His first is of speculative philosophy which he sees as a “endeavor to frame coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of every element of experience.” A definition that, may encompass it’s meaning, far from elucidates its underlying impact upon the discussion. I took it to mean a type of philosophy that looks at the world and attempts to draw generalized, logical, systems of explanation for everything that is around. This system includes both rational and empirical study and will face certain difficulties due to it’s intention to apply generally.

In the second section Whitehead explores just what generalization means. He says that philosophic generalization should be understood as a means to utilize specific notions, applying to a restricted group of facts, for the divination of generic notions which apply to all facts. These in their final form ought to be rationalistic ideals which bring coherence and logical perfection. This, however, is no simple task.

He writes in his third section that many philosophers attempt generalized theories but few successfully avoid two fallacies he points out. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness comes about when the philosopher forgets how much you can actually abstract the thing worked upon. This leads into the second which is a false estimate of the logical procedure in respect to certainty and in respect to the premises. Essentially what that can boil down to is by abstracting too far from those specific facts, philosophers are want to build large generalizations on weak foundations. This can compound when philosophers fail to heed his advice in section four in which he argues that in a similar way to how the Newtonian physics had to be updated as time continued, so too our foundational generalized principles should also be updated and changed. He says that one aim of philosophy should be to challenge this first principles of both science and previous philosophical thought.

In section five he discusses the tools of the philosopher, namely language. This he believes is a powerful tool but limited in that by using it in the form we have it we can allow language to hide complex diverse meanings in a simple subject predicate statement. This impact is most clearly felt when we forget that metaphysical systems should only be approximations of the general truths sought.

Finally he writes about philosophy in relation to science and religion. He has been referencing how philosophy and rationality can critique each other but now he puts a finer point on it by suggesting that philosophy should be the conjoining point between science and religion bringing those both into one rational thought.

Coming away from this chapter I feel excited by his focus on the problem of generalization. The first paper I wrote on philosophy, back at the start of my college career, was on the nature of truth and relativity and the largest problem I found there was the ability to generalize a position. To do a deep dive, then, with Whitehead into what problems generalization has for metaphysics at large will be gripping and help to elucidate some issues I have felt with the discipline in the past.

#whitehead #process and reality #philosophy

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jesseturri · 7 years

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Toward Omnisensitivity: Society, Parenting, Freedom, and Increasing Our Scope of Concern

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others” –Nelson Mandela

With all that’s been going on lately regarding the evocation of “free speech” from hate groups on the right, I wanted to jot down some more reflections on societies, parenting, freedom, and sensitivity.

When thinking and theorizing about “society” as a whole it becomes very abstract and very totalizing very quickly. This is a problem. What happens all too often is that we commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, thinking of humans in abstract terms, so much so that we may eventually end up saying very classically liberal/libertarian things like “free speech at all costs.” I’ve written before about how I think reality is constituted of societies all the way down and what I’ve been doing lately is trying to make these conversations more concrete (just for my own benefit and thought experimentation) by drawing parallels between the small society known as the family to the larger society as a whole. I realize that not everything will necessarily scale up from the family to our larger societies, but thinking of societies in this way (as indeed holarchicly nested with many common characteristics) might help a bit with avoiding too much abstraction and totalizing.

One of my axioms is that some type of governance/order is necessary in a society. Even the most hardcore anarcho-primitivists would not disagree with me here. Government is like food: the question is not food or no food, but do we eat healthy food or poisonous food? Likewise, questions of small government or big government are sort of irrelevant in my mind; what we need to ask is: What type of government works best for any given, particular society? Take the family for instance. Many different families have many different ways of organizing and conducting themselves. Some families are more democratic and relational, some families are less democratic and more authoritarian. Some parents are permissive, some are prohibitive and punitive. Obviously, as with most things, there are dignities and disparities associated with being a permissive parent and dignities and disparities associated with being an authoritative and/or prohibitive parent. My point here is that, in the case of parenting, I think it would do us well to focus on the goal of raising healthy, happy, well adjusted, moral, responsible, sensitive, caring and loving children, keeping in mind that these children will eventually become the leaders of our larger society. If we can agree to this then we can ask: How best do we accomplish this? Again, any definitive answers largely depend on particular contexts, but I think we can say a few general things here about the important roles of freedom and sensitivity in societies.

First, freedom. I’ve written about this before, but very briefly, I’m convinced that the more relationships we enter into (or the more aware we become of the always already existing relationality of all things) the more we realize how complete autonomy is simply illusory. Expanding our scope of care/concern for those around us, those that we love, may mean shutting down some possibilities that have always sort of been around for some people (e.g. maybe white people can’t tell racist jokes anymore, or fly Nazi swastika flags. Boo hoo!), but by doing this it also means we open up brand new possibilities that never existed before for all people, especially those who had previously been marginalized precisely because of the existence of these other nefarious possibilities that were only available to the privileged. Now that’s freedom! I think MLK is right, we’re not free until we’re all free. Understanding how our societal systems condition, constrain, and empower certain people over others is absolutely vital.

At this point one may rightly ask the psychoanalytic question: “OK, well doesn’t prohibition just end up fueling desire in the end and making things worse?” And I would agree that, yes, if we’re dealing with self-centered, irrelational, and insensitive people it certainly can. This leads me to want to talk about sensitivity.

One of the things that has become increasingly apparent to me as a parent is that my life has become very complex; my small society, once only consisting of my spouse and me, has grown and gotten more complicated. My life is now overflowing with storgē love, and along with this I’ve become more sensitive than ever as a result. I would argue that good parents are some of the most sensitive people around entirely because they are constantly concerned with the well-being of their children; we can say their scope of care has increased. Now I want to be very clear: my analogy here is less about the State being our parent in the authoritative, punitive, legalistic, infantilizing sense (no one wants an authoritative, vindictive, oppressive, punitive, infantilizing parent OR government ((again, no poison food!))), as it is about the State taking on the virtuous qualities of being responsive, relational, and sensitive like a good parent (viewed positively, the State could also be thought of as a good parent in the sense that it can be a provider of social goods, providing positive liberty or “freedom to”; another topic for another time). In a democracy, the State should be a reflection of the people, and if we are a people who are for the most part raising healthy, happy, well adjusted, moral, responsible, sensitive, caring, and loving people, then it seems our State should reflect this. Perhaps, like good parents in any familial society, the more complex our societies get the more sensitive we all need to become.

…

Sculptures above by Cristina Cordova

Toward Omnisensitivity: Society, Parenting, Freedom, and Increasing Our Scope of Concern was originally published on TURRI

#family #free speech #freedom #politics #relationality #sensitivity

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larrygmaguire · 4 years

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via Larry G. Maguire

Article by Larry G. Maguire

I watched The Truman Show for the second time in a couple of days this evening. It was released in 1998 - imagine that! It's such a great movie with an excellent script and actor in the leading role. Carey understood the metaphor. He knew what the movie needed to portray, I would argue, because he perhaps had already lived it. Or maybe he was living it. Either way, he played the part well. I believed him. The story attempted to show the thinness of contemporary life, the deception of the firework display, and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness

Get the article in full here Whitehead: The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness

#Creativity Art Books Time Space Author

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mikaelseppala · 4 years

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Tweeted

Alfred Whitehead spoke of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. (cf @NoraBateson’s book). Practiced systems thinkers are modern day mystics. It’s crazy to have found a discipline that gets you where the Buddhists get you but within (and then out of) the matrix of the West.

— ρђ๏є๒є Շเςкєɭɭ (@solarpunk_girl) June 22, 2020

#IFTTT #Twitter

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writepath · 7 years

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Thirty-one

To See the World in a Grain of Coltan

In a theatre near London’s Leicester Square, comedian Stewart Lee scolded the audience, the so-called metropolitan liberal elite, for blithely buying phones containing conflict minerals like coltan. We laughed at the absurdity, but this is not fiction. Frequently our behaviour is at odds with our values. Individualism and the unthinking consumerism it begets are doing damage. On reflection, we need to see - indeed feel - the interconnectedness of the global economy, because only then will we act together to overhaul it. ‘Business as usual’ is unethical and therefore unacceptable. A new and honest narrative about the true cost of our petrol and phones is needed if we are to live the values we claim to hold. If we are not free to buy products that are morally untainted, to what extent are we really free?

Individualism underpins much of our philosophy in the West. Much of what we consume is tainted, because concern for profit trumps regard for other people. To change this, activism and cooperation will be needed. In his recent book Blood Oil, Leif Wenar explains how products like petrol are some of the last remnants of the ‘might makes right’ political economy. It doesn’t matter how brutally oppressive you are: if you can build a fence around an oil well, secure it (and the pipeline) with guns, you can legally sell the ‘black gold’ on the global market. In the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Columbia, this applies to the mining of coltan – a mineral needed for phone capacitors. In this context, Leif Wenar outlines the ethical imperative that in a true democracy the people, not militias or cartels, should have control over their natural resources.

This material history of the stuff we buy is veiled by politicians who are in thrall to Gross Domestic Product. Thanks to the insight of mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, we can avoid this fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which mistakes wealth for the public good. Economic theory may be used to justify the system, but we know that our petrol consumption feeds dictatorships and we hold products that were clawed from the earth by the bare hands of exploited children. While our material wealth all-too-often depends on the poverty of others, Leif Wenar’s counsel is not one of despair. Indeed, he reminds us that consumer activism and collective action were instrumental in ending the injustices of the past.

We are encouraged by our governments to be individualistic. Buying the latest phone and myriad similar purchases – these acts are essential to our economies. But according to psychologists, we might be happier if we spent less on objects and more on experiences – this is because experiences connect us with other people, and it is in our relationships that we tend to find happiness. If we told a more honest and sympathetic story about the people at the other end of the iPhone supply chain, we might wish to improve that relationship.

Pressured by the politics of Thatcher, Reagan and their progeny, many of us have lost touch with just how interconnected we are. We are mistaken if we believe it is a Hobbesian world in which all things are individual, unique and singular. Dualistic thinking is also misguided: developed countries distinct from those still developing; Us versus Them; you are either with us or against us. The Tang-dynasty Chinese Buddhist philosopher Fazang captured our reality more accurately:

All is one, because all are the same in lacking an individual nature; one is all, because cause and effect follow one another endlessly.

We can see this in commerce and trade, and in the very objects we buy. Our smartphones encapsulate not only coltan, but also this truth of interconnectedness. The phone is a phone because of each of the parts that make it up (‘all is one’), and the coltan capacitor is what it is because it is part of the phone (‘one is all’). Things are relational. All stuff is what it is due to context, contingent on other stuff.

Similarly, we can ask the question ‘Who am I?’ I’m a father, husband, brother, taxpayer, teacher and consumer. Each of these attributes is relational: I’m a father because I have a son; I’m a consumer because I have an income with which to buy goods produced by others. These things I am related to are also defined by me. People are mining the coltan under brutal conditions, because I (and millions of others) demand iPhones.

Philosopher Bryan W. Van Norden humorously uses gravity to show there is even a relation between his pet dog and Charon, the largest of the moons of Pluto. But bring human agency into these relations and we get to the serious point that our consumerism has a material impact on the lives of other people.

History teaches us that consumer activism can change these structures. The dynamics are as pertinent today as they were during the transatlantic slave trade. In Fazang’s terms, cause and effect followed one another endlessly when West Africans were enslaved by Europeans – relational repercussions connected millions of others to the evil of the slave ships and the cotton fields. Products like sugar became morally tainted. We should view modern goods like petrol and coltan in a similar way. We should acknowledge the connection. Leif Wenar writes about how people in Britain came to face their consumer complicity in the enslavement of people from West Africa:

The richest members of the British parliament owned slave plantations, and the Church of England had such extensive holdings that the Church’s brand (burnt into the slaves’ chests) was recognized on every Caribbean island. The leaders of the first modern consumer boycott—the boycott against slave sugar—tried to punch through their day’s “business as usual” by connecting consumers mentally to the slaves.

In 1791, the campaigner William Fox pulled no punches in his persuasion. He felt people should really sense the repercussions of their consumption. If we purchase the commodity, he said, we participate in the crime. He added, ‘In every pound of sugar used … we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh.’

Today, we need to connect mentally with the people who suffer to bring products we desire to market. It is a failure of the imagination to not see that cheap, plentiful supply is often related to the subjugation of others. Only when we feel the connection will we act together. Our economies still run on tainted products. And as consumers, we feel trapped. Our wish to live ethically is in tension with the practical necessity of sustaining our life-styles. Very often, Wenar reminds us, we are ‘bringing home products made with resources forcibly taken from some of the most violated people in the world.’

In terms of our values, individualistic consumerism is a luxury we cannot afford. Even if the price of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance can be borne, the injustice and misery at the other end of the supply chain is indefensible. The public good, indeed the global good, should be on our minds. Thinkers like Lee, Van Norden and Wenar are encouraging us to examine our lives and the stuff we fill them with. When our material possessions depend on the brutalisation of others, we have a stark choice: business as usual or build new relationships. For just as people abroad should have democratic control of their resources, so we should be free to buy blood-free phones.

References

Leif Wenar, Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World, Oxford University Press, 2016.

Bryan W. Van Norden, Foreword by Jay L. Garfield, Taking Back Philosophy, A Multicultural Manifesto, Columbia University Press, 2017.

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perkwunos · 6 months

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Last night I found myself on the dance floor next to a symbolist-style painting of an angel with a sword.

I ought to spend more time learning logic and reflecting on linguistic frameworks and their construction: the metadata by means of which we catalogue observational reports and inferences therefrom, like Leibniz—not merely for the sake of a calculus deriving conclusions from the reports but to better intersubjectively understand what these reports mean, what they presuppose.

I have been thinking about the difference for Whitehead between an intuitive judgment and a derivative judgment: an intuitive judgment being almost a conscious perception, a judgment of what immediately is perceived, such that it is only incorrect due to distortions in the route by which one’s perception has derived from environment perceived. Whitehead’s critique of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness is essentially a critique of the practice of taking derivative judgments—those inferred from intuitive judgment—as basic and not inferred (ie, taking the abstraction for the concrete).

So we could say sentences can be considered observational reports insofar as they are verbal records of intuitive judgments, with fallibility introduced by the origination of the perception, the recollection, and the means of recording said recollection. Thus the verbal record is no certain foundation, it is subject to pragmatic criticism.

“Concreteness” for Whitehead is the immediacy of experience which we have intuitive awareness of, cf. the American pragmatists. But then in his metaphysics, attempting to construct a framework to discuss this concreteness as fully as possible, he has to construct the speculative category of the “actual entity” to try to describe what this is—and the description is of course derivative, a speculative inference from our intuitions guided by logical rules. Whitehead characterizes his speculative philosophy as an attempt to rescue the philosophies of Bergson and the American pragmatists from the accusation of anti-intellectualism (rightly or wrongly made): meaning basically that he wants to utilize appeals to intuitive experience within one logically consistent system.

If I could pick three philosophers to sit down and talk to each other, right now it’d be Whitehead, Leibniz, and Carnap.

And I also ought to submit some poetry for publication.

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anniecarminkegraphics-blog · 7 years

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guest lecture: Supermundane

from the midlands

not a fan of man made rules

‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’

working week doesnt have to be monday to friday, 9-5

skeptical not critical

half Japanese: how to play guitar - it your guitar, do what you like with it

chain of influence - may or may not be aware

didn't vertically up the career ladder, instead moved around, shifted, many different jobs

late 80s: no computers, let ra cet, cut and paste,

first job out of college was for Haden, package design

early 90s: moved to london, worked for the company who invented lava lamps

ministry of sound, Ibiza

1999: put together website

west cost america saw it = commissions

sleaze nation job

good for nothing mag: art directed from scratch, 2003/4

often made redundant

anorak - childrens magazine

commissioned illustrators

fire and knives: wasnt lots of single subject magazines then

now: does commissions and creates own graphic art

Ivor cutler (john peal) intelligent nonsense - literal time, fact fist punches creativity

superleeds train station commission - minimal ‘leeds’ hidden in design on both sides/ways

moo hq, shoreditch mural

how? masking tape curves

dots & lines

comic printing

newspaper portrait: printing made up of dots, half tone dots - idea that he was so conscious that printing was made up of lots of dots, embraced it rather than ignored it

slight shirt: simple - complicated

haywood gallery: architecture, notices lines everywhere

own brian has to work out the depth of his work

billy childish: originality + authenticity

he is an optimistic pessimist (which is better than a pessimistic optimist)

badge: Citizen of Nowhere - people sent his self addressed envelopes and he back the stamps for free = ‘as creative people we are able to do this’

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ferawpi · 7 years

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Ahok-Djarot Bagus. Kenapa sih Segitunya Dukung Anies-Sandi?

Dari tulisan ini, izinkan saya menyampaikan pendapat sebagai orang tak dikenal yang juga dijamin kebebasan berpendapatnya. Sejujurnya agak segen sih ngebahas masalah pilkada rasa pilpres ini di publik, selain sensitif dan juga sebenernya udah mau selesai, saya juga tipe orang yang lebih suka menyalurkan pendapat lewat diskusi sama orang-orang terdekat, sama orang yang memang sengaja saya ajak diskusi, atau teman yang memang bertanya pendapat saya secara langsung. Karena satu hal yang disadari bahwa setiap orang memiliki pendapatnya masing-masing, jika memang sudah condong pada satu hal, ya pasti sulit menerima hal lain dan bisa jadi memicu gesekan-gesekan banyak pihak tak terkecuali orang-orang terdekat (saling mengharagai pendapat dan sikap yang dipilih aja). Tapi semakin kesini, semakin sedih rasanya jika terus memendam pikiran dan pendapat saya. Lagi-lagi ini hanya sekedar pendapat, untuk sekedar meluruskan sesuatu dan menggambarkan sebuah sikap, dengan harapan dapat dipahami meskipun tidak sampai pada tahap penerimaan untuk pihak tertentu.

Banyak program-progam yang baik untuk Jakarta dari kepemimpinan Ahok

Saya setuju, karena itu juga pernyataan yang saya tulis sendiri. Jika ada orang yang tidak mendukung Ahok karena beralasan program-programnya tidak baik, saya rasa itu irasional. Buat pihak yang bukan pendukung Ahok, bukan berarti bisa menutup mata dengan beberapa program yang memang baik. Ah tidak adil rasanya, menghilangkan kebaikan orang lain. Saya sendiri setuju sama program KJP, sistem smart city, pasukan oranye, sama reformasi birokrasi yang kata saudara-saudara saya di Jakarta mah pelayanan kelurahan lebih baik. Itu program siapa? Program Ahok yang tidak bisa kita tampikan kebaikannya. Tapi kembali lagi ini adalah pilihan, dan saya memilih untuk tidak memilih Ahok. Kenapa? Pertama karena saya warga bekasi jadi tidak punya hak pilih untuk paslon manapun, kedua saya memilih untuk hanya bisa berdoa dan mendukung Anies-Sandi. Saya setuju jika banyak yang menganggap pilihan saya kontradiksi dengan pernyataan sebelumnya.

Terus kalo kinerjanya bagus kenapa ga didukung?

Mungkin banyak orang yang berpendapat saya sih lebih baik memilih pemimpin non muslim selama dia jujur, kinerjanya bagus, programnya oke dibandingkan pemimpin muslim tapi kinerjanya ga bagus. Tapi biarlah itu menjadi pendapat mereka. Bagi saya itu salah satu bentuk kesalahan berpikir (fallacy of misplaced concretness) yang muncul karena mengkonkretkan sesuatu yang abstrak. Ini bukan persoalan non muslim dan muslim, tapi membandingkan sesuatu yang bukan apple to apple dan tidak berdasar. Pertama tidak sebanding jika jujur, kinerja bagus dibandingkan dengan kotor, kinerja buruk. Kedua, apa cukup adil jika pemimpin muslim selalu dinilai dengan kecakapan kepemimpinan yang rendah? Disini saya tidak akan membahas keburukan selama kepemimpinan Ahok walaupun hal yang wajar jika dalam keberjalanannya ada kesalahan atau sesuatu yang cukup kontradiksi. Buat apa jika sekedar untuk saling menjatuhkan? Jauh lebih cerdas jika saling membahas keunggulan satu sama lain. Beberapa program Pak Ahok bagus, ya saya sepakat. Tapi saya tidak sepakat stereotype yang membandingkan pemimpin non muslim bersih, bagus dengan pemimpin muslim yang korup, dan tidak mumpuni. Saya ambil contoh. Mungkin sebagian, banyak yang sudah mengenal nama Ali Sadikin? Beliau Gubernur DKI Jakarta era Soekarno (1966). Puncak keberhasilan kepemimpinannya, saat mampu menangani kekumuhan Jakarta khususnya MH Thamrin melalui KIP (Kampung Improvement Program) sampai sempat mendapat penghargaan Internasional dan menjadi best practice bagi negara-negara Internasional. Kepiawaiannya juga terlihat saat beliau berhasil mengatasi keterbatasan dana APBD yang hanya 66 juta untuk berbagai pembangunan dan masalah Jakarta saat itu, bayangkan hanya 66 juta! Era beliau juga yang mulai konsen dengan masalah pembangunan sampai akhirnya berdiri Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan di Indonesia. Masih banyak lagi keberhasilan yang dilahirkan dari kepemimpinan beliau, lengkapnya bisa baca sendiri di buku Membenahi Jakarta Menjadi Kota yang Manusiawi. Siapa sosok beliau? Beliau adalah pemimpin muslim. Jadi jelas disini stereotype perbandingan yang menurut saya cukup tidak adil tersebut terpatahkan. Banyak pemimpin muslim yang jujur dan berkinerja baik.

Tapi tetep aja program petahana lebih bagus dan konkret dibandingkan paslon lain yang cenderung theoretical bgtt. DP Rp 0 itu duit darimana? Ga salah rumah tapak? Kalo gitu lahannya dimana?

Sebelumnya saya berharap lontaran pernyataan-pernyataan itu sudah didasari dengan pengetahuan atau pencarian informasi yang lengkap, tidak berdasarkan atas ketidak sukaan terhadap satu pihak atau chauvinisme semata (mendukung siapapun sah-sah saja asal jangan saling menjatuhkan dan tetap terbuka dengan nilai2 kebenaran). Well, sebagai anak bawang dalam ilmu PWK, izinkan saya berbicara dari apa yang sudah pernah saya dapatkan di bangku perkuliahan buat sedikit ngebahas program masing-masing paslon. Udah jadi rahasia umum kalo lahan di Jakarta semakin terbatas sedangkan penduduk Jakarta yang terus meningkat pasti menuntut kebutuhan untuk tempat tinggal, solusi yang dinilai paling tepat saat ini ya memang vertical housing dan Ahok menggalakan program itu saat kepemimpinannya. Lagi-lagi saya sepakat dengan prinsip intensifikasi lahan, pembangunan yang mulai di arahkan ke bentuk vertical building. Saya mendukung langkah Pak Ahok yang menggencarkan program itu, tinggal sasarannya saja yang lebih diperhatikan. Sekarang gimana sama program DP Rp 0? Pasti banyak orang yang bertanya-tanya darimana sumber uangnya Pemprov buat nalangin dulu? Jawabannya dengan menggandeng berbagai pihak, khususnya swasta. Disini saya sadar dengan kapasitas saya yang bukan anak ekonomi, tapi saya berusaha menyampaikan apa yang sempat menjadi bahan diskusi saya dengan dosbing saat itu, kebetulan skripsi saya pun nyerempet-nyerempet masalah pembiayaan. Intinya bukan hal yang tidak mungkin melibatkan sektor swasta dalam pembiayaan pembangunan selama skema dan payung hukumnya jelas. Bagi saya keterbatasan dana bukan suatu hal yang bisa menghentikan program untuk kesejahteraan masyarakat banyak, bagi saya keterbatasan itu suatu tantangan untuk pemimpinnya memutar otak mencari inovasi atau skema-skema pembiayaan baru. Dalam memimpin, hal yang biasa bukan, bertemu dengan masalah-masalah dan kesulitan? Sewajarnya jika pemimpin yang baik rela mengalami kepayahan demi kebaikan hidup warganya. Memang tidak bisa dipungkiri keterbatasan dana bisa menghambat keberjalanan program tapi bukan berarti selalu membuat program itu tidak terealisasi, disitulah letak tantangannya bagi pemimpin. Jika banyak yang bertanya-tanya tentang keberhasilan program tersebut, saya sendiri tidak bisa menjaminnya karena saya bukan cenayang yang bisa menerawang masa depan :). Tapi bukan suatu hal yang tidak mungkin, jika kita melihat langkah Ali Sadikin yang berhasil membawa wajah Jakarta lebih baik dengan extra keterbatasan dana. Menurut saya itulah tugasnya pemimpin.

Sebagai mahasiswa yang pernah mendapat mata kuliah pengembangan lahan, perumahan dan permukiman, saya juga memiliki pikiran sama tentang persoalan bentuk rumah tapak yang sebagian besar digiring sebagai bentuk rumah dari realisasi program DP Rp 0. Jika memang benar seperti itu, rasanya aneh dengan konsep rumah tapak untuk KDB ibu kota yang sudah padat, mungkin realisasinya bisa menjadi bahan lelucon di meme dagelan kemudian hari, Inilah kemajuan teknologi informasi yang sayangnya tidak dilengkapi dengan filter untuk menyaring informasi terlebih dahulu dan menelususrinya secara lengkap. Saya pun sempat terbawa dengan program yang rasanya kurang masuk akal diterapkan di Jakarta jika memang berbentuk rumah tapak. Akhirnya rasa penasaran saya mengajak untuk mencari informasinya secara lengkap, tidak sebatas membaca dari tulisan orang atau situs tertentu yang agaknya sebatas kepingan-kepingan informasi. Berdasarkan hasil meluncur di dunia maya dari berbagai situs berita saya bertemu pada satu titik kesimpulan bahwa program ini bukan persoalan penyediaan rumah yang bentuknya saklek ditentukan Pemprov Jakarta tapi ini persoalan skema pembiayaan, ingat pembiayaan rumah bukan penyediaan rumah. Jadi selama memungkinkan lokasi rumahnya terserah dari warga Jakarta. Beda halnya dengan properti yang emang ditawarkan sendiri oleh Pemprov DKI Jakarta melalui program DP Rp 0, propertinya berbentuk hunian vertikal dengan harga sekitar Rp. 350 juta. Meningkatkan investasi rumah susun juga merupakan program lain yang diusung, jadi jelas bagi saya kesimpulan bahwa program DP Rp 0 Anies-Sandi dengan menyediakan rumah berbentuk rumah tapak tidak bisa dipertanggung jawabkan lagi kebenarannya.

Saya juga tertarik masalah penanganan permukiman kumuh yang ditawarkan masing-masing paslon saat itu. Kebetulan atau tidak, skripsi saya menyangkut pembiayaan untuk penanganan permukiman kumuh setidaknya saya akan menjelaskan sesuatu yang bukan hanya berasal dari pemikiran saya, tapi juga referensi yang pernah saya baca untuk keperluan skripsi. Secara garis besar permukiman kumuh ditangani dengan cara peremajaan lingkungan kumuh (menggusur/memindahkan permukiman ke daerah lainà terjadi perubahan fungsi peruntukan dari kawasan sebelumnya), pembangunan kembali permukiman kumuh, pemugaran/perbaikan lingkungan (salah satu programnya kaya KIP, PLPBK, dan NUSP). Kalo Ahok terkenal dengan program menggusurnya, Anies menawarkan program urban renewalnya atau perbaikan lingkungan. Mana yang lebih baik? Bisa jadi versi kebaikan saya di antara 2 opsi penanganan tersebut berbeda menurut versi yang lain. Jadi bukan kapasitas saya untuk berbicara mana yang lebih baik dari 2 program tersebut.

Penggusuran pastinya banyak menyisakan kesakitan tersendiri untuk pihak yang digusur apalagi kalo ditambah dengan ketidaksiapan pemerintah menyediakan tempat tinggal dan sistem yang bisa dipahami warga bisa jadi malah menciptakan kantung kekumuhan baru karena ketidaksiapan warga dan tekanan yang dirasakan untuk pindah dalam situasi baru. Untungnya sejauh yang saya tahu, selama kepemimpinan Ahok, pemerintah memang menyiapkan hunian pengganti (relokasi ke rusun) yang umumnya dengan sistem sewa. Jujur dari segi fasilitas, bagi saya rusun punya fasilitas yang cukup layak untuk masyarakat kumuh. Saya sempat berpikir kenapa masyarakat yang tinggal di permukiman kumuh enggan pindah ke tempat yang lebih baik? Semakin kesini, dari pengalaman sendiri saat berinteraksi langsung dengan masyarakat yang tinggal di permukiman kumuh dan coba belajar memahami dari perspektif lain banyak hal yang saya sadari. Ini adalah masalah hidup seseorang, bukan hidup kita yang sekedar memberikan penilaian dari luar tanpa merasakan. Berbagai sebab yang menjadi alasan keengganan sebagian besar masyarakat untuk direlokasi dari mulai alasan mata pencaharian, ketidak nyamanan mereka tinggal di hunian baru yang bersusun-susun, keberatan untuk membayar sewa rusun, sampai alasan emosional karena dari dulu sejak lahir udah tinggal dan dibesarkan di lingkungannya. Menggusur memang tidak selalu buruk menurut saya, jika memang sudah tidak memungkinkan dengan cara lain dan pemerintah pun sudah menjamin kehidupan korban penggusur tidak terlunta-lunta. Tapi satu hal yang sering dilupakan, yang digusur itu manusia. Ya manusia yang tidak cuma terdiri dari jasadnya aja tapi juga ada hati yang bisa merasakan sesuatu. Jauh lebih baik jika mereka diajak untuk sama-sama ikut berdiskusi, karena yang sedang diputuskan adalah kehidupan mereka bukan kehidupan kita. Gimana sama urban renewal? Saya ambil menurut Pimentel Walker (2016) penanganan kekumuhan dengan cara penggusuran udah banyak ditinggalkan karena berbagai dampak dan perbaikan lingkungan dinilai langkah yang lebih baik untuk penanganan permukiman kumuh. Saya setuju dengan ungkapan obat yang sama belum tentu berhasil untuk penyakit yang sama di pasien yang berbeda (ingat belum tentu ya, bukan berarti tidak berhasil :) ). Tapi dalam kasus ini bukankah pasiennya masih sama? Sama-sama kawasan kumuh di Jakarta, yang dulu pernah dapet obat serupa (perbaikan lingkungan) dan terbukti berhasil.

Kenapa sih segitunya dukung Anies-Sandi? Dari pernyataan sebelumnya udah mengakui program petahana bagus, dia juga berpengalaman. Apa karena dia Cina dan non muslim? Hari gini masih rasis dan intoleran.

Sebenernya saya bukan pihak secara langsung yang diuntungkan atau dirugikan mau siapapun kepilih, dah saya mah bukan orang Jakarta juga. Tapi dorongan hati dan logika yang membuat saya untuk memilih sikap. Kalo berbicara rasis, banyak temen saya dari SD sampe kuliah non muslim atapun keturunan cina dan selama pertemanan mereka baik, bahkan ada yang sangat baik, asyik, saya nyaman berteman dengan mereka. Lagi pula bukannya kita diciptakan dalam keberagaman? Tidak ada alasan bagi saya untuk rasis. Mungkin banyak yang mempertanyakan kepuasan masyarakat terhadap kinerja Ahok yang mencapai 74,3% (Populi Center, 2016) tapi kenapa yang milih sekitar 40%? Lagi-lagi ini soal pilihan. Ada batas yang sebagai muslim tidak bisa kita langgar. Jika ada yang berpikir saya kolot masih bawa agama, silahkan saya tidak terganggu dengan penilaian manusia. Saya belum jadi muslim yang sepenuhnya baik, tapi disini saya cuma berusaha menjalankan apa yang emang udah jadi aturanNya. Sesederhana itu. Lagipula sangat aneh jika memisahkan agama dengan kehidupan kita. Bukannya Allah juga memberikan kebaikan dan asupan oksigen tidak hanya saat kita sholat atau di masjid aja? Tapi diberikan setiap saat tak luput satu detikpun dalam gerak kehidupan kita. Sah-sah aja bagi saya mendasarkan pilihan atas agama. Begitu juga pihak non muslim. Jika alasan yang tidak setuju soal potensi, program, dan stereotype antara pemimpin muslim dan non muslim silahkan baca kembali di atas. Kalaupun tetap tidak sepakat kembali lagi itu adalah pilihan masing-masing.

Itulah gambaran apa yang saya pikirkan, rasakan, dan yakini. Awalnya tidak berniat untuk mencurahkan semuanya tapi saya hanya ingin kita bisa menghargai pilihan masing-masing, berjuang untuk yang didukung secara sehat tanpa harus saling menjatuhkan atau bahkan menganggap cara pandang kebanyakan orang Indonesia yang lebih menghargai orang dengan perkataan ramah, santun, bijak, dan pandai mengambil hati orang lain dibanding orang yang benar-benar bisa menyelesaikan masalah. Saya rasa seperti tuduhan yang maaf tidak berdasar dan membuat sedikit kecewa. Jika masih ada yang ngerasa tidak adil dan aneh, bukankah paslon itu sama-sama melalui pesta demokrasi dan Ahok sebagai kaum minoritas di tengah mayoritas warga Jakarta yang muslim juga masih bisa merasakan kesempatan yang sama bukan untuk berjuang selama sekitar 18 bulan ini? Saya tidak berniat rasis, tapi ingin menggambarkan warga Jakarta ataupun kaum mayoritas yang sering dianggap rasis tidak serta merta melarang Ahok buat mencalonkan diri jadi Gubernur bukan? Artinya entah minoritas ataupun mayoritas dalam kasus ini tetap mendapatkan kesempatan yang sama.

Bagi teman-teman saya yang non muslim ataupun keturunan cina yang merasa tersinggung dengan curahan hati dan pikiran ini, saya meminta maaf. Tidak ada maksud menyinggung siapapun apalagi menebar kebencian. Tidak ada embel-embel lain selama saya berteman dengan kalian, saya merasa senang bisa mengenal kalian sebagai teman dan pastinya ada nilai positif yang bisa saya ambil dari kalian selama berteman. Tapi ini soal pilihan dan aturan untuk hamba Nya. Saya rasa agama manapun juga memerintahkan untuk taat dengan Tuhannya bukan? Mari kita sama-sama menghargai pilihan masing-masing tanpa berprasangka buruk satu sama lain. Saya masih tetap ingin berjalan bersama dalam kebaikan sama teman-teman semua.

Bagi teman-teman saya yang muslim dan tidak sepakat dengan pernyataan saya, seperti yang saya bilang di awal bahwa tulisan ini tidak untuk pada tahapan penerimaan bagi siapapun hanya sekedar dorongan bagi saya untuk meluruskan prasangka selama ini dan memberitahukan apa yang seharusnya memang tersampaikan (sampaikanlah walau satu ayat). Bagaimanapun penerimaannya, mangga itu hak teman-teman. Saya hanya meminta untuk saling menghargai tanpa berprasangka yang secara sadar atau engga bisa menggiring pembentukan pikiran yang bisa jadi salah. Semoga kita bisa terus saling belajar dan mengingatkan. Semoga Allah senantiasa memberikan petunjuk Nya buat kita dan mengistiqomahkan dalam kebaikan.

Semoga tulisan ini bisa bermanfaat dan memberikan pemahaman (tidak menuntut penerimaan) baru yang baik untuk semuanya. Aamiin

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