Jan Sadeler I: The False Shepherd (c. 1575)

"There never were any other options."

I was reminded again yesterday, while reviewing a justification statement for a USDA Forest Service project in our watershed, how projects tend to start. They virtually never begin with a full disclosure of conditions and intentions, for revealing those details could only confuse what the author hoped might be a straightforward process of receiving approval of their proposal and consequent funding. Anyone might understand that one must pick and choose rather carefully lest too much disclosure encourage an unresolvable mess. Certain aspects of the effort naturally get underplayed, while others become overemphasized. There's rarely any safety in the middle ground, either, for funding authorities require a relatively simple story with clear objectives, heroes, and villains. The result won't precisely be filed under the category of fiction, though it might just as well have been.

Anyone opposing such an initiative always faces numerous potential disqualifications. Focusing solely on the inevitable and necessary oversimplifications might yield far too many objections to be of much use when litigating. Successful challenges tend to find an Achielle’ tendon that closely maps to some universal legal precedent, one capable of disqualifying the whole without necessarily exhuming the entire graveyard of omissions that most proposals try to obscure. One well-placed arrow can kill a bad idea just as dead as an avalanche might. Focus upon finding some path of least resistance.

The authors of these proposals are well aware of what they haven't disclosed. The listed risks often appear overly optimistic and rarely suggest any possibility of catastrophe. Part of the art of proposal writing lies in appearing capable of handling any contingency. Mentioned downsides usually exclusively include only the more manageable ones. True catastrophes fall into a tacit category labeled Unthinkables. These are rarely mentioned, and when included, tend to be heavily discounted as if absurd to even consider, given their extreme unlikelihood of actually occurring. One or, at most, two of these can, when properly framed, make the project proposer seem even more capable due to their ability to confidently predict away catastrophe. Those who disagree might be easily characterized as cowards.

Most of these FalsePretenses are offered for the very best of reasons, or at least the very best of reasons from the proposer's perspective. The proposer properly fears full disclosure, if only because their project's benefactor is rarely experienced enough to understand the differences between apparent and probable difficulties. In such instances, full disclosure seems equivalent to suicide. One focuses their benefactor's attention on beneficial outcomes and acceptable challenges. The utter impossibility of ever achieving the proposed end should never appear in any proposal, though every effort ever proposed, at the moment of proposal, was, indeed, utterly impossible to achieve. Always was and always will be.

The reality that every successful (and unsuccessful) project was initially justified under FalsePretenses says nothing about the project proposer's morality or ethical underpinnings, other than to suggest that they are each quite human. We seek approval, not criticism. We want support, not an inquisition. We conflate approval with success, though every failure began with what was initially considered a successful proposal. This sin, if universal, usually hardly qualifies as a serious infraction. The proposal game has always been questionable, and adheres to intricate and fairly well-understood rules. The desire to accomplish something encounters the desire to avoid catastrophe, and the manner of play seems to inevitably resemble Liar's Poker. Approving the proposal serves as just the first of ultimately innumerable assessments, any of which could spell life or death for this project. The most successful ones are rejected before they cause much damage or manage to maintain their useful fictions until they can deliver something of value. There never were any other options.

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