The Opposite of Understanding is Procedure

Every strength is a weakness.

My great passion has always been understanding. How can this be a weakness?

The opposite of understanding is procedure. The opposite of a philosopher is a bureaucrat.

A bureaucrat doesn’t care why things are the way they are, they care only that the procedure is followed.

Throughout my life I have viewed bureaucrats with suspicion – sometimes even contempt. I once complained about someone at a pitch who was reading from a script ‘This is wrong!’ I argued ‘we shouldn’t be putting people in a pitch if they don’t understand what they are talking about!’. The person I was complaining to said ‘well, for people who don’t understand I would rather they have a script to read from.’

Sometimes this has seemed like the only way to make progress: to convert everything into a procedure, a script to be followed. A set of conventions that people will enact unquestioningly.

I suppose this has been my critique of education – that what we sometimes call ‘learning’ is entirely bureaucracy, a meaningless process carried out by people intent on following procedure. People endlessly shuffling terminology. Even the ‘science’ has been pressed into service: which version of paperwork is marginally preferred over another? Imagine that: science itself concealing a complete lack of understanding.

I can’t see a resolution to this dilemma. Fundamentally, there are a vanishingly small number of people with the stupidity to ask ‘why’; and a vast majority with the good sense not to ask questions.

Image: @tracehudson