Society's ravelled sleeve: A perspective on the planners dilemma

Increasingly, planners in both public and private enterprises will have to cope with the contradictions that make managing our organizations and our society ever more difficult and confusing, a dilemma reflected in the grim mood of pessimism that pervades much of literature today—over despair at ever being able to make wise choices. Every alternative has its adherents, its incontrovertible evidences. At the same time, it can be demonstrated that each alternative leads down the path to destruction. While it may be, as some have said, that the choices are becoming clearer, it is also true that the answers are becoming less certain, which is itself a contradiction.