Saturday 15 December 2012

Training courses to fill-in forms... the end stage of civilization

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The end stage of our civilization is upon us: it has arrived.

I realized this when I had failed to write enough on a complex and apparently-meaningless form, and was told that the organization has helpfully laid-on a seminar about how to fill-in this particular form.

It is little things that tell us most about the big picture.

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The micro-incident provoked a slow-burn double-take on the state of things - how did we get to this situation?

An illuminating comparison comes from the process for applying for research grants - there have been not just seminars but whole courses on how to complete research grant forms for a long time, twenty five years or more.

And why were research grant the first place for training in form-filling?

Simple. Because the process of science had became dishonest; in fact, in the UK, science was dishonest before dishonesty had permeated the large bureaucracies.

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Think about it: when a form is honestly trying to get some necessary information, and when the person completing the form is honestly trying to communicate - then it is trivially easy to complete a form.

But when people began to be evaluated on their research funding, when salaries depended on it, when winning the research grant became more more important than any discovery which might be enabled by it... then began an arms race of dishonest complexification of forms.

So dishonest form-fillers operating in a system which rewards successful dishonesty - this is one source of the problem of complex forms.

Long, complex, forms in which the same question is asked in multiple different ways, are de facto mini-audits - designed to elicit contradictions and reveal wrong-doing on the part of the form filler.  

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It became usual for forms in large bureaucracies to ask for what could not honestly be supplied, for organizational propaganda purposes and to provide a dishonest and on-paper response to external control and regulation.

The form-fillers had to be induced to provide propaganda fuel as if it was information - thus the need for courses to induce people to fill in forms such that they could support organizational claims.

For instance, if government requires that the organization engage in affirmative action or recycling, then the forms will include questions which require each individual employee to state how they are building affirmative action and recycling into all aspects of their work.

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There are innumerable and fluidly-changing examples of such initiatives and imperatives, changing according to fashion and - sometimes being about Leftist ideals, sometimes trying to impress big business - and the rank and file are required to respond to these initiatives by generating the necessary lies to be deployed by management.

Management are thus freed from the necessity to generate lies, and escape from having to originate and assert specific lies - they simply create a structure which requires lies; then when dishonesty has been thoroughly permeated throughout the organization, and everybody is complicit (having literally signed-up to lies) then responsibility cannot be pinned on any specific person.

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And management don't just shirk responsibility for lying, but benefit materially; because each initiative leaves behind an extra layer of administrative processes - of forms to be filled, processes to be processed.

This drives the familiar accretion of bureaucratic manpower and structures - each new 'initiative' 'requires' further coordination, and novel systems of inter-communication.

The possibilities for administrative expansion are, apparently, endless...

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But what about a seminar to fill-in a form?

Since this whole process is a matter of lies built upon lies, the employees often need guidance and training in how to generate the necessary lies at ground-level; so that senior administration can collect, collate and process these lies for presentation to government and other external regulators.

So these ridiculous and ever expanding forms, full of vast numbers of questions that are apparently meaningless - are in fact the core business of bureaucratic modernity and its project of building society on the basis of Leftist lies.

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That is why seminars are laid-on to fill in a form: because while wickedly dishonest in terms of real-reality - the truth about how things are; almost the whole of bureaucratic-reality is created by the data elicited by such forms.

And the dominant ideology of secular Leftism, is only real at the bureaucratic level: bureaucracy is the bottom line, bureaucracy is what upholds the whole edifice.

Rank-and-file lies, collected in these absurd forms, are the data upon which the whole thing depends. 

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Leftism cannot 'solve' the problem of society being killed by ever-expanding bureaucracy, because for Leftism bureaucracy is not the problem but reality itself.

The more bureaucracy, the stronger is Leftism.

A seminar to fill in a form - any form - is simply a training camp for Leftism.  

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And that is why the tail is wagging the dog.

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3 comments:

Sylvie D. Rousseau said...

This corresponds exactly to the description of the Kafkaesque mad-driving house from the movie "Les douze travaux d'Astérix" (The Twelve Tasks of Asterix).

JP said...

At work I often have to go through an incomprehensible, laborious, and time consuming "process" in order to get the simplest thing done. What I want can be explained in three words... the people I want this from understand those words and could fulfill my need in a couple of minutes... but weeks later it is still not done because the process gnomes are not yet satisfied.

George Goerlich said...

Public education itself is this expanded to various forms. Once a slightly intelligent youth figures out the key to "A" grades is simply parroting the teacher, and not trying to actually learn or think, it is no longer put any effort into the work. It is even rather pragmatic, as putting too much effort and thought into things could actually result in controversy and bad grades.

Math and chemistry were different for me, but liberal arts were always a breeze.

I'm not sure what those work entrance exams are supposed to do either. It seems to favor those who would lie and simply provide whatever the obvious "right" choice is.