Institutional Hearings: Introduction: Why We Audit Systems

We live in a world structured by systems that claim to serve us. Democracy promises agency. Capitalism promises opportunity. Education promises formation. Governance promises security. Society promises virtue.

These claims shape our expectations, our hopes, and our moral reasoning. They justify compliance, guide effort, and frame legitimacy.

Yet, as this series demonstrates, structural optimisation often diverges from stated purpose. Systems are designed to stabilise, scale, and survive — and in doing so, they may sacrifice responsiveness, equity, depth, and even ethical integrity.

This is not a matter of conspiracy, error, or negligence. It is the emergent consequence of optimisation: systems do what they are optimised to do, not what they rhetorically claim to do.

The Institutional Hearings are a forensic audit: a careful examination of claim, mechanism, outcome, and ethical tension. They trace divergence where it exists, with precision and clarity.

This is an invitation to look with unsentimental clarity at the structures that organise our world — and to recognise the space for leverage, reform, and ethical recalibration.