Causation: How Things End Up Needing Social Engineering

Social engineering is to a large extent a matter of helping people meet their needs. There are many reasons why people’s needs might not be getting meet due.  This unordered working list will give you a feel for what can happen.  I’ll go in more detail over time.

Many important social problems do not get resolved because of the failure to address enough of the different components of the problem fully.  The synergy created does a lot of the damage; and can best be combated by addressing as many different causes as possible.  For there to be just one cause is rare.  Look for all causes that might relate to the matter at hand.

Causes may include:

• Lack of insight
• Lack of knowledge, attitudes and skills
  
• Lack of leadership examples
  
• Lack of mentoring
  
• Lack of incentive to do the right thing- simply doesn't matter if you do or not
  
• Lack of recognition of those who are doing the right thing
  
• Lack of a conduit for the communication or the facilitation of the various resources that could be made available
  
• Lack of enforcement of standards
  
• Lack of enforcement of ethics
  
• Lack of enforcement of laws
  
• Lack of public or group awareness of the various problems and solutions
  
• Lack of assistance for those who would accept help, but are not sure how to go about getting it. (such as a referral line)
  
• Lack of monitoring of the problem or of the outputs of the situation
  
• Deadlock caused by unresolved situation conditions
  
• Taking Freedom Away
  
• Taking Right to Privacy Away
  
• Too much red tape
  
• Antiquated technologies
  
• Penalties due to errors made by authorities
  
• Antiquated laws and rules
  
• Excess error rates
  
• Laws and rules created by people who don’t have first-hand knowledge and experience
  
• Unreasonable, inconsistent or overreaching rules and laws
  
• Intention of law or rules gets lost
  
• Redefined constitutional issues
  
• Too much exposure to the possibility of abuses by government authorities
  
• Too much exposure to the possibility for criminals to participate as legal enterprises
  
• Too much exposure to the possibility of abuses of any type to increase and spiral out of control
  
• Industry or group unable to resolve problems themselves
  
• Industry or group splinters excessively
  
• Groups inadvertently exclude key potential contributors
  
• Denying due process
  
• Only proposal to address a problem requires extreme or unpredictable changes
  
• Negative, attack posturing towards others
  
• Lack of accountabilities, checks and balances, and burden-free remedies
  
• Lack of belief by adapters that things can change
  
• Unwillingness to stay open-minded
  
• Lack of thorough research and study
  
• Martyr and ego behaviors
  
• Semantic games
  
• Whining, instead of constructive work for a better situation
  
• All proposals to improve a situation are substantially flawed
  
• Lack of formal structure within a group
  
• Expecting something from technology that it can’t do yet
  
• Lack of active governance
  
• Making a system intentionally difficult to use
  
• Over-formalization
  
• Making things too constraining
  
• Being fettered by an existing structure
  
• Trying to get too much done from one constituency Group
  
• Overburdened Systems and People

The Core Principles of the Social Engineering Discipline

Typical Essential Components of a Successful Outcome

Phenomena and Dynamics That Can Be Utiltized in Social Engineering