Protest and Decision-Making in a Society of Blame

The modern globalised society takes for granted that future and development can planned and controlled. Economic and political decision-making processes propose goals and intentions; protest movements show how this can be dangerous, but do not have realistical alternatives. Adopting the instruments of systems theory the paper focuses on two topics that are the very social conditions of modernity and globalisation. First, decision-making can only affect variables on the level of formal organisations, but not on the level of society as a whole. Second, the result of planning are never those expected by the decision-makers. Society is a result of evolution, not of (good or bad) intentions. Protest in the society against the society is then the reaction of society to itself, once that which is possible to do is a consequence (positive or negative) of a future without shape and the only available resource is uncertainty.