Monday morning eloquence from Stephen L. Hall.
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As some of you are aware, I have been out of town last week, and that shall form the basis for my post this week. Where I have been has involved a safari of sorts, viewing bureaucrats in their native environment, a convention.
Large throngs of people are oddly interesting, because there is distinct norms and mores of such groups, identifying habits of inclusion from dress to mannerisms even to visible markings. The fact that bureaucrats are human does not significantly alter their behavior from that of any other herd animal.
First thing I would note is that being amidst thousands of people at a convention, there is a certain sound, a background drone, that you notice when you are not part of the herd. It is a white noise of hundreds of bleating from numerous conversations creating an average sound pervading the crowd as they shuffle to their next grazing field, or meeting room.
The sound decreased when the herd is alerted to danger, or a speaker, of people mulling about, shuffling papers, and just hundreds of little shifts and movements. The thrum of the herd is unique to each species of animal, so it is odd when you notice the sound of humanity.
It really is like grazing, people moving from one room to the next, taking their seats in the same irrational patterns, first occupying the aisle seats leaving all the interior seats empty, forcing the late comers to climb over them to take their positions, while inconveniencing themselves at the same time having to move aside with every person entering the aisle. It is not courtesy which occurs to them, but staking out the prime positions.
Perhaps the habits and purpose of these creatures are more interesting. At this gathering of bureaucrats, the participants go through days of classes to listen only semi-attentively to a droning lecture about how certain minutia of largely pointless rules of filling out endless forms and reports on data of those forms have ever so slightly changed from the previous gathering.
That is really the grass upon which the bureaucrat feeds, the processing of data in a continuous reassignment of government resources. Bureaucracies exist for the sole purpose to implement regulations, and see that rules are followed, forms completed, data filed, and reports generated on that data. Often those lengthy reports simply get reduced to a single calculation or two, to be published and made available, only to be generally ignored by people who were never really interested in that piece of datum in the first place.
But within the bureaucrat herd, they continually talk about the importance of the work that they are doing and how essential it is to the proper functioning of whatever goal is currently being espoused to justify the existence of the bureaucracy. That is the ultimate purpose of any and every bureaucracy, to justify its continued existence and push for its expansion, to enlarge the herd.
There is a lot of trivial insider jokes, mutual admiration, and other trivial social bonding which these gatherings are designed to foster. After all, if the purpose was merely the dissemination of information it could be done much more efficiently and cheaply than one large gathering at an expensive convention center varying locations every year. No the purpose is to create a group identity of the bureaucracy.
Observing the people in the herd there are many observations to make. One of the most curious of observations is that this particular gathers, like many before it, was overwhelmingly female, between 80 to 90 % of the people. It is not an accident.
The values of the bureaucratic herds are very much feminine values, in part because it is that any bureaucracy is so much like a herd. The values of being part of the group, of conforming, and getting along.
But the most disturbing observation was to look at the faces of withing that crowd of bureaucrats and see bland expressions with little thought behind the eyes that I saw. There was a realization about the nature of bureaucracies from those multitudes of blank expressions.
The ideal bureaucrat is average. Discussing topics on a political blog, you get the impression of other people as intelligent, opinionated, unique, and dynamic. It comes as a bit of a shock to watch faces which really have none of that. However, we make a mistake in thinking that the bureaucrat is below average, they are not the least bit stupid.
I’ve seen a number of statistics about people believing that they are more intelligent than they really are. The numbers I remember said something like 80% of people believe that they are above average intelligence. Though I have seen varying numbers both higher and lower. It is however, consistently inflated.
Let us go with the 80% number just for illustration purposes. The average, or mean, IQ is defined on the IQ scale as 100, setting the starting point for measuring population IQs. The standard deviation for IQ distributions for the general population is about 15 points, making the average person’s IQ really a range from 85 to 115.
Generally speaking, about 68.5% of people will be within one standard deviation of the mean. Leaving about half of the 31.5%, or 15.75% of the population who are actually above average. Meaning that about 4 out of 5 people who think they are above average, are really average.
Why is this important in observing bureaucrats?
Because most normal people are aspirational, they seek to improve. We set up systems which reward and encourage intelligence, so people want to be of above average intelligence. People want to believe they are more intelligent than they actually are.
Never dismiss the average person, because statistically, the average is also the majority. The average is main street America, it always has been and it always will be. The hard work and success of Americans is not in the exceptional, but in the drive to be exceptional, the ambition to excel. Politically, in a majority elected republic, your political views must appeal to the average.
However, every bureaucratic system is geared around and aims at the average. Being part of the herd is being average, in the middle, undistinguished. The bureaucracy discourages the exceptional just as much as it discourages the incompetent. That average look you see on the face of the bureaucrat is the real face of bureaucracy.
There is something inherently wrong with any system which promotes in people a desire to be less than the best you can be. A system which aspires to be average, will always fall short. Bureaucracy is the participation trophy of life, to graze with minimal effort on the wealth of the nation. The bureaucracy feeds upon an acceptance of the bureaucratic system itself.
