Humans in boxes

There is only one reason why people get reduced to singular characteristics and behaviours; it sells.

This mechanical, simplistic, and frankly infantile and highly dangerous practice, peddled by people who either don’t know any different, don’t care, or both, is an easy sale. Management who are judged primarily by numbers, buy it. Thus, we have the rump of industrial ‘Western’ management practice run on a principle that humans are, as far as work goes, relatively inert, predictable, work units, defined by a tiny set of functional behaviours.

Is it any wonder that we predict the coming of “AI” as a harbinger of doom? People are by and large reduced to a set of adjective functions, labelled by self-reporting, self-sustaining industrial/ organisational psychology, and contract shufflers (otherwise known as HR). We may as well all just wear badges to identify our thinking and doing capabilities, so that management can more easily organise us into the combinations they’ve most recently bought into.

This is NOT the same as specific expertise or even identifiable attributes. What’s got my blood pressure up is the plethora of ‘consultancy’ diagrams and charts which purport to sort humans into fixed functionality. The one I saw today that sent me over the edge proclaimed that there are “Four characteristics of systems change?makers” and proceeded to explain that these could be used as pens into which different kinds of people should be herded; “Those who can… etc.” Not just laughable, but actually dangerously concerning, and this from someone who proclaims themselves as “Supporting brave leaders ready for #WhatComesNext”. Oh, it quotes from a book, so it must be true, and mentions a few erstwhile coves with whom the author would no doubt like to be seen associating. ??

Brave leaders are engaged in sorting people into simple sets eh… the AI whatevertheyares will be licking their figurative lips!

NO! This is worse than nonsense, I will not have it. I am sitting on my own right now having an intellectual tantrum, in a very human way… perhaps there is a category for this – maybe I’m a “disruptor” and not in a good way? I’d probably be asked to leave if anyone ever let me into this kind of anti-septic love-in, in the first place.

A naked Emperor? How very dare you!?

People are amazing, wonderful, resourceful, surprizing, feeling, emotional, highly evolved, complex, and unpredictable to varying degrees, in different circumstances, at different times. Certain characteristics will surface from time to time, but they will be present according to their cares, concerns, and mood. If this were not the case, there would never be any need to play another football match or any team sport, because the outcome would already be known. Yes, there are singular highly trained and specialised skills which can be accessed for certain very acute requirements, like being the principal violinist in a symphonic performance. In life, however, like, oh I don’t know, an ordinary everyday job that 99% of people do…

At this point, or often quite soon after I’ve begun to point this out, as is my wont (so predictable…) I am told either “it’s just a heuristic” or, “There’s a ton of evidence that proves this”. Allow me to deal with each.

If it is “just a heuristic” then market it as such. Sell this boxing of humans into predictable singular functionality as an approximation, according to some examples someone dreamed up. “Evidence”… simplify humanity into small nomically assigned descriptions, and generalise this into the entire population, and yes, I’m sure there is “evidence”. There is “evidence” that horoscopes are true, and that religious people can and have performed magical miracles. Not quite the same thing I know, but I’m busy being unreasonably human, do you mind? The evidence for these things is fundamentally flawed, it assumes that the numerical assignments and qualitative descriptions can box people into functional characteristics in the first place!

This may not mean anything to a lot of people, but Comedians Bob Mortimer and Jim Muir (Vic Reeves) use a turn of phrase that until now, I haven’t been able to figure out why it's funny. The example that comes to mind is “pocket meat”. Meat has the characteristic of being for one’s pocket. The “sweaty fox”, and the “dove from above” spring to mind now. A thing, especially a creature, which is identified by one attribute. As if it is performing this one function and no other. It is absurd.

Why then do we allow ‘it’s a storytelling human’, ‘it’s a planning human’, ‘it’s a leading human’ etc.?

Enough of this twaddle I say! By all means it’s fine to remember that a person has a propensity to exhibit certain qualities and call upon them. What’s messed up is badging a person “AS” a singular quality and treating that quality as them. It is an utter waste of all that humans can be. Yes of course there are tasks to be done by people, but those are tasks that the person is responsible for, they are not the person.

If I hear, one more time, when I’m explaining the worth of people to “leaders” that “we can just get another one”… I may not be responsible…