STATES OF EMERGENCY - Patrick Lagadec

6. Perspectives: the debate is openWe have just examined a series of resources and conditions that should bedeveloped to avoid falling immediately and ineluctably into the grips of acrisis. On many points, however, we had to open parentheses that could notbe closed. This should come as no surprise: the very nature of a crisis is thatit cannot be grasped as a whole - otherwise it wouldn't be a crisis, but simplya small, localized disturbance easily nipped at the bud. Our remaining task,then, is to return to these questions that were left aside. As for any trueproblem, it is the answers given to the essential questions, or the lack thereof,that finally govern the ensemble, from the most general strategies to the mostelementary tactics - and the more the crisis is acute, the more this holds true.Our approach has followed three lines of investigation, and we shall returnto them here.The first line dealt with those in charge and the problem of navigatingthrough the crisis: how can you set sights on a general direction when allaround the foundations are crumbling?The second line broadens to include the range of actors present and raisesthe problem of complexity: how much room for manœuvre is left in thegeneral context in which a technological breakdown takes place today?The third returns to questions that haunt many thinkers and have a heavyinfluence on behavior, even when the events in question are not out of scale:how far can destabilization go in a really serious case? What types ofresponse would be possible? How could we meet the challenge?1. The people in charge: how to manage in a great black void?Guiding a system through what resembles a great black void is undoubtedlythe primary and the most difficult task facing top levels of leadership. In anycrisis, there comes a moment when the contradictions become overwhelming,when the information available is dramatically insufficient, and yet it isabsolutely necessary to act and to make decisions. These periods of darkness