The Banality of Systems

05 – 160626

I’m convinced there’s a voodoo doll of me somewhere, stabbed with long pins by someone who doesn’t even know me. Which is better, of course, than being stabbed by someone who does.

I truly believe in the banality of evil: that the worst things happen for the silliest reasons. Maybe the person harming me out of ignorance and boredom is me.

My injuries I collect like souvenirs from adventures in pursuit of fun.

The systems we operate in hate fun. They never mention the word in their written or unwritten rules. Fun and desire, your desires, have no place here. There is no time to spare. You may fit them in where the system permits. We regret to inform you that there is no space available, therefore they are not allowed.

To remain within the system, we suppress our desires and pretend they don’t exist until, eventually, we forget them and they truly no longer exist.

Growing up, I loved systems. I was happy to perform and excel, pleased by the engineered harmony of keeping the peace. So much so that I studied Industrial Management.

The dream of a factory running smoothly, like a perpetual domino contraption moving endlessly in loops, was comforting.

That dream was very much a fantasy.

Production required constant back-and-forth. Mistakes and problems emerged at every turn. More often than not, the unexpected turned out better than the planned. My ego is always surprised and reluctantly admits, Fine, this is better than what we set out to achieve, but it is still not what I envisioned.

In manufacturing, we mostly use the word human when we sigh in exasperation and say, human error.

Now, many years, many people, many projects, and many systems later, I must admit that I miss the human.

I want to see more humanity.

Not as an error or a shortcoming, but as the point of all this.

I want systems to support artists in producing art instead of all of us serving systems merely to keep the systems alive.

The system can become an extraction machine that reproduces itself.

As though burning away our dreams and creativity pleases it, until we become like it: predictable robots running outdated programs that serve no one except the machine itself.

I must admit that in the past I associated the word artist with reckless, impulsive, unreliable, emotional, misfit, fickle, annoying, improper, willful, uncontrollable, inconsolable, weak, poor, dirty, suffering, starving, and more.

Now when I think of an artist, I think honest, real, expressive, human, meaningful, creative, unique, interesting, contributing, courageous, intuitive.

I’d rather limp toward what I love and what loves me than drag myself in the luxury of a pain-free body toward what I hate and what hates me.

The longevity package many of us are subscribing to promises to deliver us to death in the best possible condition.

I don’t know about you, but I imagine death prefers battered luggage that bears the signs of travel.

We cannot escape systems, nor do I want to.

Again, I love systems, rituals, and routines.

Systems are everywhere, from the family you were born into to heaven and hell. Anything built upon hierarchy and people assigned roles, titles, numbers, or rankings.

What I want is to belong to systems that refer to me by my name rather than my title, role, or number.

When I receive a rejection, I want it to come from a human being, someone with a name, in person.

Not from a system informing me by text message that I failed to meet eligibility criteria that seem to change every year and without an explanation.

Systems that respond to my particular circumstances instead of merely applying a general policy or rule. With our current technology, this is more possible than ever.

If fairness comes to mind, I would call it the foolish fairness fallacy.

We are not equal, nor are we static.

My five-year-old self was not my twenty-five-year-old self.

What these systems need is not fairness, but trust.

Trust that the people who design and administer them care about your personal well-being because it contributes to our collective well-being.

Trust that your personal sense of dignity is honored always.

Is that too much to ask?