Who’s With Stupid?

This would probably be funny if it wasn’t so serious!

Recent events, together with a book I’m reading – “The Stupidity Paradox: The Power and Pitfalls of Functional Stupidity At Work” by Mats Alverson and André Spicer (Allen & Unwin/Profile Books) – have challenged me to pause and reflect.

The US primaries, the UK “Brexit” referendum, and the imminent Australian general election all provide me with a lot of evidence that the “stupidity” of which Alverson and Spicer write does not just manifest itself in the workplace. No, it has become a seemingly acute element of the political game, abused by political leaders who ought to know better, used as a cynical stimulus for hitherto trusting citizens, who respond seemingly without understanding the consequences because these have been deliberately hidden from them.

The thesis of the book is that: 
"Functional stupidity in the workplace is best described as when smart people are discouraged to think and reflect at work. The ramifications can ultimately be catastrophic, leading to organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. However, there are countless commonplace examples of businesses accepting and encouraging functional stupidity within their organisations; from unsustainable management fads to an over-reliance on brand and image."
However, a dose of functional stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is what the authors refer to as the stupidity paradox."

Alverson and Spicer define five kinds of functional stupidity:

• Leadership-induced stupidity
• Structure-induced stupidity
• Imitation-induced stupidity
• Branding-induced stupidity; and
• Culture-induced stupidity

Obviously, you should read the book for the full explanation, but some are self-evident, and the others are also pretty obvious after just a little thought. The embarrassing part is how easy it is to be sucked into one or other of these forms of stupidity unless we pause to reflect.

And so it is in politics. Now, you may say I’ve been na?ve, and wonder what it has taken for me to finally see the bleeding obvious; I’ll simply take little comfort in knowing I’m obviously not alone.

The rise and rise of Donald Trump in the US seems to me to exploit, deliberately, all five kinds of stupidity above. And now, before the US electorate even votes, we see the strange prospect of the Republican Party wringing its hands about its presumptive candidate, whom the GOP itself is reluctant to support. How did that happen without some industrial-grade, organised stupidity?

Things seem little better on the Democratic side, where Hillary Clinton is the presumptive candidate despite having more excess baggage than first-class passengers on the RMS Titanic. That metaphor might even be extended…! The outcome is regrettably obvious.

In the UK, departing Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged in 2012 “the need to ensure the UK's position within the European Union had 'the full-hearted support of the British people' but they needed to show 'tactical and strategic patience”; in 2013, Cameron announced that as part of its 2015 General Election policy, a Conservative government would hold an “In-Out” referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017. And so it did, with a now well-known outcome. This might not seem stupid but rather, very democratic – were it not for some history about the way the UK has engaged with the EU since 1975, and how the referendum campaign unfolded. On the first, I’ll stick my chin out for the purpose of brevity: bar some early work by Margaret Thatcher, and then a little bit more in the early Blair years, the UK systematically punched well below its weight in its negotiations with and within the various EU structures (it’s not alone, either!) with the result that the EU is a huge, maddeningly frustrating bureaucracy within which UK citizens, among others, feel powerless. In this context, the simple “In/Out” referendum is as na?ve as the six-year-old child departing the playground, taking the bat and ball! Did someone actually say “Keep it simple, stupid”?!

On the second, the campaigning that emerged reflected the very worst exploitation of human frailty and emotion. Nostalgia, innocent xenophobia, genuine concern about over-regulation created a clamour, above which could be heard the dog whistles of racism. Unedifying, yet it worked. Yet the result is met with surprise. What we saw deployed here was no innocent stupidity.

In Australia, we have a general election campaign underway. A double-dissolution election, exposing all HoR and Senate seats. A campaign over 7 mind-numbing weeks! Supposedly, all this is to enable the solution to the problem we’ve had since 2007, which is – let’s face it – a case of a poor government being followed by a poor government, followed by a poor government and then, yes, another poor government! I’m being non-partisan: that’s how it looks, and is. Yet, the major political parties are all suggesting this time we’ll get a different result. You don’t have to be Einstein to know this is the very definition of stupidity.

And why will we get another poor government? Well, I’d say because the Australian political system currently embodies all five kinds of functional stupidity described by Alverson and Spicer. You don’t have to look hard.

We, the people, are not stupid. But we are generally too trusting of our governments, we take things on face value too often, and we allow ourselves to be manipulated. No democracy -- neither we nor the Americans nor the British or anyone else -- should have a political system that allows this to be exploited. We deserve better.