City official suggests that psychological belief will repair decades of infrastructure neglect without requiring actual maintenance investment
New York City
A New York City councilmember proposed solving the city’s chronic subway dysfunction through prayer and positive visualization, suggesting that “if we all collectively believe in functional transit, the universe will manifest it into reality.”
Councilmember Patricia Donovan explained her transportation philosophy: “The problem with the subway isn’t actually the aging infrastructure, inadequate funding, or decades of deferred maintenance. The problem is our mindset. We’ve been thinking negatively about the subway. If we instead visualize trains that run on time and believe in the possibility of reliable transportation, that belief will create reality.”
An engineer responded that “belief doesn’t repair signaling systems” and that “positive thinking doesn’t fix aging track infrastructure.” Donovan dismissed this as “negativity bias” and suggested that engineers were “part of the problem” by acknowledging that physical infrastructure requires actual maintenance.
The councilmember’s proposal gained traction among people who liked the idea of solving complex problems without spending money or doing actual work. “This is great,” one voter said. “I’ve been wanting the subway to work. I just never realized I could manifest it through belief rather than, I don’t know, the government actually funding repairs.”
When informed that the subway had been deteriorating for forty years despite many people believing in its improvement, Donovan suggested that “people clearly weren’t believing hard enough” and that “a more intensified belief campaign” might actually work this time.
The MTA installed the decorative lights to support the belief campaign, on the theory that “beautiful lighting will make people believe more strongly in functionality,” which is not how infrastructure works but which is how some politicians think about governance.
More political satire at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
SOURCE: bohiney.com