Introduction
Blog post 134 tentatively proposed that leeway may open when people encounter signs that another person, institution, or narrative remains connected to lived reality. Facts, arguments, and narratives do not necessarily lose their value. Yet they may become less effective and relevant when they appear detached from reality as experienced by those receiving them.
The blog post primarily focused on individuals. Could something similar apply to institutions?
Continuity systems
Blog posts 129 and and 130 introduced the concept of continuity systems. Continuity systems provide enough stability for people to orient themselves in reality. They create predictability, recognition, and a sense of normality.
Institutions are among the most visible continuity systems in contemporary societies. The question is whether continuity systems themselves must continuously maintain a relationship with reality.
Legitimacy
Institutions depend on legitimacy. Part of this legitimacy emerges from procedures, expertise, legal authority, and formal mandates. This is the liberal part. Yet these elements alone are seem sufficient. Another part of legitimacy emerges from responsiveness to citizens (see for instance: blog post 25). This is the democratic part.
Many contemporary criticisms of institutions do not begin with disagreements about specific decisions. Instead they often begin with a perception that institutions have become detached from reality. People regularly complain that institutions no longer understand everyday life. That they speak a language that feels abstract. That they rely on indicators, procedures, frameworks, and metrics that no longer correspond to lived experience. Whether such criticisms are justified is not the immediate question. The interesting question is why this criticism appears so frequently. Perhaps institutional responsiveness is at least partially judged by whether institutions appear connected to reality.
The attraction of the concrete
This possibility may help explain a recurring tension in public life. Scientific findings are often nuanced. Evidence accumulates gradually. Conclusions remain probabilistic. Uncertainty remains visible. Lived experiences often appear differently. They are immediate, concrete, emotionally salient, easy to communicate. Take a parent describing a child’s struggles with social media, a student describing feelings of anxiety, or a citizen describing dealing with bureaucracy - these experiences do not necessarily invalidate scientific evidence. Yet they often possess a quality that statistics alone may struggle to communicate. Nevertheless, they feel real.
The question is whether institutions are capable of responding not only to evidence but also to the perceived reality carried by such lived experiences.
Fact-speaking and belief-speaking revisited
Blog post 30 distinguished between fact-speaking and belief-speaking. Perhaps the distinction becomes more complicated when viewed from the perspective of institutions.
Fact-speaking provides evidence, accountability, and reasoned argument. These functions remain indispensable. Yet institutions may also require some form of belief-speaking. Not in the sense of replacing evidence with conviction, but in the sense of remaining visibly connected to lived experiences. If institutions become exclusively fact-speaking, they may risk appearing unresponsive. If institutions become exclusively belief-speaking, they may risk abandoning evidence. The challenge may therefore not be choosing between the two. The challenge may be preserving a visible connection between them.
Thin line
Institutions are walking a thin line. On the one hand, they need to defend their continuity, on the other hand they may not alienate themselves too much from citizens. When their autopoiesis consists mainly of self-maintenance, they open themselves to criticism of being a self-centred elite. When it consists mainly of auto-correction, they risk being seen as steered by symbolic politics, moral panics, or media-enhanced extremism.
A tentative question
Perhaps the issue is not whether institutions should follow evidence or follow experience. Perhaps the deeper question is how institutions can remain visibly connected to lived reality while preserving the discipline that evidence requires. Blog post 134 proposed that leeway opens when reality remains visible.
The challenge for institutions then seems to be to continuously demonstrate that what they do and communicate remains connected to the realities people experience, without becoming captive to the most visible, emotional, or politically salient experiences on the one hand, and without abandoning continuity on the other.
A possible answer to the question
One possible answer runs throughout this blog. Rather than asking institutions to choose between evidence and experience, it may be possible to create procedures that continuously connect the two. This is one of the basic premises of the Saufex project.
From this perspective, democratization and decentralization can be understood not only as normative goals, but also as autopoietic feedback mechanisms. They allow institutions to encounter a wider range of lived experiences rather than relying exclusively on expert abstractions or on the most visible voices in society. The aim is not to replace fact-speaking with belief-speaking. Nor is it to replace expertise with popular sentiment. The aim is to create conditions under which evidence and lived experience remain in continuous contact.