Sebastian Milbank has an interesting Critic piece on what he calls British proceduralism.
Proceduralism is killing Britain
Process triumphs over principle and practicality in every aspect of life
Britain recently woke up to the startling revelation that Keir Starmer now knows what a woman is. How does he know? Because a court told him. According to Sir Keir “A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear. I actually welcome the judgment because I think it gives real clarity.” This change of heart could be read as an act of political opportunism in the face of fast-changing public attitudes, but the way the Prime Minister framed the shift was telling. It seemed to speak of a man who had outsourced his rationality and morality to the legal system, patiently waiting for “clarity” to descend from on high, rather than making his own mind up.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a useful interpretation of the managed cultural and political decline which seems to be the best we can hope for. Particularly interesting because of the implication that the problem cannot be tackled by more proceduralism, but if proceduralism is all we know...
Proceduralism is killing Britain
Process triumphs over principle and practicality in every aspect of life
Britain recently woke up to the startling revelation that Keir Starmer now knows what a woman is. How does he know? Because a court told him. According to Sir Keir “A woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear. I actually welcome the judgment because I think it gives real clarity.” This change of heart could be read as an act of political opportunism in the face of fast-changing public attitudes, but the way the Prime Minister framed the shift was telling. It seemed to speak of a man who had outsourced his rationality and morality to the legal system, patiently waiting for “clarity” to descend from on high, rather than making his own mind up.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a useful interpretation of the managed cultural and political decline which seems to be the best we can hope for. Particularly interesting because of the implication that the problem cannot be tackled by more proceduralism, but if proceduralism is all we know...
This inability to think outside of numbers, preferring even the most synthetic sort of data over the best rational arguments, is now a defining feature of British institutional life. Every large organisation, from hospitals, to universities to government departments, is afflicted by this kind of thinking and language.
And it is precisely a linguistic failure. Despite our abysmal failure to foster STEM learning at school and university, we are even more deficient in the domain of the liberal arts. At school and increasingly at university too, those studying English, History, and Philosophy are trained to pass exams, fill out worksheets and apply pre-chewed, sub-sociological “critique” to the material they encounter. The bones of grammar, memorisation and facts are missing, and anyway lack the flesh of a wide reading of classic sources and texts. Absent these fundamentals, it is little wonder that the arts of classical logic and rhetoric have fallen into total abeyance.
6 comments:
Many thanks, AKH, that's an excellent article. The phrase "a man who had outsourced his rationality and morality to the legal system" has more heft to it than many learned papers.
Again, I come back to Weber and his "Iron cage of rationality". Whereas political disputes used to be sorted with violence or appeals to religious doctrine, we now slug it out in bureaucratic jargon. The most rational solution wins, and so the starting gun fires for a race to show who is most in line with bureaucratic precedents. Weber thought we would never get out.
Meanwhile, vote lawyer, get lawyer.
Sam - I must read Weber because he was probably right - we'll never get out of the cage. It's now weighted to being part of what we are collectively if not individually, something we see in our hopeless voting choices.
I was an engineer. Does one ever stop being one?
I worked in a small company , by a process of takeovers, mergers, whatever or little company became part of a much bigger international company.
Our little company was successful. We made stuff that worked reliably and we had customers in quite a few countries who bought our stuff.
We had clever engineers who could continuously improve our stuff and modify it to suit any customers needs.
Then the word came down from on high that we must produce Procedures compliant with ISO2001, or 3, or whatever.
Our Quality Assurance Engineers (They used to be called Inspectors) and the few Peter Principal engineers we had decided that this was their escalator to top management.
Soon, well after a year of so, we had a tome, a thick document, backed up on computer so that all could read and comply with the Word.
Regularly , people who had ascended a bit higher up the Peter Principal tree would come, at an appropriate price, to assess our suitability to have the ISO200X legend on our company letter heading. Every worker was instructed that when asked about what they would do under certain circumstances, were to reply, " I consult the Book. " (A bit like answering, " Ah, that would be an ecumenical matter. Thank you Father Jack.)
And that was it. Apart from some petty observation, just to prove due diligence, we were ISOwhatever compliant.
Of course our wee sub-company went down the gurgler. We had the most perfect set of Procedures, but when everybody has ticked all the right boxes then nobody is to blame when the final product is a turkey.
Sigh regulate the country to death.
Doonhamer - an interesting story and I bet it's not unfamiliar elsewhere. Years ago we visited the Wedgwood pottery where in one area we watched a skilled chap painting a figurine. After a while we asked him if the work was enjoyable. "It was until ISO9000 (or whatever it was) came in," was the reply.
It wasn't too bad in laboratory work because we were never particularly large and the standards weren't too prescriptive as long as they were documented and we followed what we'd documented.
Tammly - and no obvious route out of it.
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